Grace Harbor - Blog

Champion of the World (Part 2)

Fri, 01 May 2026 00:29:02 GMT

His Life for Your Life, and Your Life for His

Megan is in a difficult place. She’s been married to Jared for twelve years and they have two children. Jared and Megan agreed that when they began having children that Megan would stay home to care for and begin educating the kids. Megan loves being a mother and is grateful for the opportunity to be present for her daughter and son.

Meanwhile, Jared feels the weight of providing for his family and is increasingly stressed by his work responsibilities. He’s been promoted, which was timely since the growing family is stretched financially. With that promotion, however, comes greater expectations from his employer. Jared is working longer hours, including a few overnight trips each month. To cope with the pressure, Jared’s gone from drinking an occasional margarita after he gets home to frequently drinking several in one night. Megan’s tried to engage Jared and made some attempts at addressing her overall concerns for him, but he’s largely discarded her worries as invalid and overreacting.

Megan is feeling increasingly lonely and detached from Jared. She’s doing everything in her power to hold herself and the family together. It’s exhausting. One day, on the way out of the building where her kids attend co-op two days a week, Caleb, who teaches math and science to the students, complimented Megan on the work she’s doing in educating her kids. Megan was caught off guard and felt her face flush. By the time she got to the car, she was afraid Caleb noticed her red-faced reaction. Yet his compliment felt good. To complicate matters, Megan couldn’t remember the last time Jared had genuinely complimented her on anything.

Setting Jared and his issues aside, I want to take this fictional case study and map last month’s edition onto Megan. She’s in more immediate trouble, and I would want to encourage her where she is and for what lies ahead. That said, let me take some space to frame the theological truth that underlies the application for Megan.

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I’ve worded the subtitle of this two-part series as, “His life for Your Life, and Your Life for His.” In Part 1, I focused on His life for your life by describing what God did in Christ to bring us into union with him. In this part, I’m focusing on what it can look like when a Christian gives his or her life back to God as a living sacrifice.

To refresh Part 1, I took the Bible’s description of Israel being “in David” at the defeat of Goliath to illustrate what it means for Christians to be “in Christ” when Jesus defeated Satan, sin, and death at Golgotha. Perhaps the most well-known Scripture verse that captures a Christ-follower being united to Christ is Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (NKJV).

“If you are in Christ, this is now the defining truth of who you are. Your life, your story, becomes enfolded by another story—Another’s story. That’s one way to define faith: faith means finding your identity in Christ” (Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ, p. 47). Further, one of the primary ways being “in Christ” is different than being “in David” is that Jesus wins by losing. The path to glory for Jesus, from start to finish, was that of a suffering servant (Isaiah 52:13-53:12).

Jesus did all of that suffering as our substitute, and we love him for it. That is, until he says, “follow me.” The true path to glory in God’s kingdom involves suffering. This is hard to hear, so he gives us promises of his covenant love, his Spirit’s abiding presence and sustaining grace, along with a future where we reign with him. Out of context but still applicable, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40, ESV).

It may help to know that not all suffering is the same. To suffer like Jesus does not mean we must physically be nailed to a tree, nor that we need to be stoned like Stephen or persecuted like Paul. When looking at the topic of suffering in the Bible, we find differing categories. There is suffering because of the Fall (e.g., diseases and natural disasters); there is suffering that is a consequence of personal sin (e.g., addictions and broken relationships); there is suffering that is the result of persecution for one’s faith; there is suffering that is either refining or formative; then there is suffering that defies neat categories and is not fully accessible to our understanding.

What all suffering has in common is a sense that something is wrong. Whether it’s bodily affliction, emotional distress, existential dread, social alienation, or some other dimension of daily living that is negatively affected, there is an experience of uninvited and unwelcome pain.

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Now let’s get back to Megan. There is yet another category of suffering in Christian living that theologians refer to as participatory suffering. This kind of suffering is rooted in our union with Christ in that we somehow share in Christ’s sufferings while he also enters into our sufferings. For example, “If we die with him, we will also live with him. If we endure hardship, we will reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:11-12a, NLT). “But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering” (Romans 8:17, NLT). See also 1 Peter 4:12-19 and Colossians 1:24 in the same vein.

Would any of this apply to Megan, and if so, what would it look like in her current situation?

First, Megan can practice forgiving Jared. I’m classifying forgiveness as a form of participatory suffering in that Christians forgive because we’ve been forgiven. And for Jesus to forgive us, it cost him dearly. Some treat forgiveness in purely transactional terms. As if simply saying the magic words, “I forgive you,” does the trick. This is certainly not what Jesus did.

Since Jared is not asking for Megan’s forgiveness, she will suffer by practicing the private forgiveness of Mark 11:25. This will keep Megan’s conscience clear and is preparatory for the day, if and when, Jared repents of his attitude and behavior and asks for forgiveness. Until then, Megan will likely need to forgive Jared regularly and in faith before the Lord. Like Jesus paying our debts against him, Megan will pay the relational debts that Jared is accruing against her through his neglect.

Second, Megan can practice the virtue of longsuffering toward Jared. (Think of longsuffering as exceptional patience.) Let’s say Jared, for any number of legitimate reasons, is not as spiritually mature as Megan. His walk is slower and his growth trajectory is lower. Megan acknowledges Jared is growing in some ways but not in others. Jared’s inconsistency is hard on her and the kids. As Megan remembers the longsuffering of Jesus toward her (1 Peter 3:17-20, NKJV), she is then better able to “walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:1-2, NKJV).

Finally, Megan can participate in the sufferings of Jesus by resisting sin and temptation. Megan will need to guard her heart when thinking about and crossing paths with Caleb. Whether Caleb was just giving an honest compliment to Megan or whether he’s angling for something more, Megan will suffer by denying herself speculative thoughts and emotions when Caleb comes to mind or sight. Due to Jared’s neglect, Megan needs to recognize she’s in a vulnerable position.

“When you see trouble coming, don’t be stupid and walk right into it—be smart and hide” (Proverbs 22:3, CEV). This is not to say Megan can’t be polite and civil when interacting with Caleb at co-op. It doesn’t have to be weird or awkward. He’s a Christian brother, after all. But she will need to check it and keep it there.

Unlike Jesus, “in your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Heb. 12:4, ESV). But Christians do struggle against sin. “Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name” (1 Pt. 4:16, ESV).

None of this will be simple, quick, or easy for Megan. In fact, Megan will struggle unnecessarily if she has anyone in her life to antagonize the situation. On the other hand, Megan will be helped along the way if she has a seasoned Christian community for support and encouragement.

Because “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

Champion of the World (Part 1)

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 01:51:11 GMT

His Life for Your Life, and Your Life for His

“Send your man out!”

“Send him out—if you have one!”

The challenge was for a winner-take-all combat. A guaranteed sold-out prize fight with a massive payday. Two champions going mano-a-mano, with each representing an opposing side.

Except no one would accept the challenge. Day after day, the champion would harass, harangue, and mock that there was no opponent from the other side. Was there no strong man against which he could measure himself? No challenger to slake the giant’s boredom? If nothing else, send out a dog to kick around just for the sport of it. Why no takers?

When one finally stepped forward, the champion could hardly believe his eyes. Goliath began mocking the mockery, scorning the child’s play. His question, “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” is most likely a dig at David’s legs compared to those of the giant’s. But with those two sticks David would run—not away—but right into the battle, his face set like flint, knowing he would not be ashamed (Isaiah 50:7).

As for the giant, the Scripture is clear to say that his armor was a “coat of mail” (1 Samuel 17:5, NKJV). Follow the details—they are there for a reason. Christian Scripture uses images, symbols, types, and patterns to convey messages. When we read, “coat of mail,” we should imagine armor that is layered, resembling snakeskin. And when you think of a snake in the Bible, where else do you see that image?

Very purposely, Goliath is presented to us as a giant snake. Israel had its own giant in the form of Saul, who stood head and shoulders above his fellow countrymen. But Saul was not the man for this enemy. Nor was Saul’s armor, the best technology his country had to offer for self-defense, going to work. That would have been nothing more than human self-sufficiency, which is why it didn’t fit David. No, this was to be a spiritual battle on a cosmic scale waged in material form.

The ancient prophesy from God to the serpent that a human offspring, “will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” was about to take another step toward fulfillment (Genesis 3:15, NIV). Assuming you know how David defeats Goliath, watch now what happens to Goliath’s head. Again, the details matter.

“Then David ran and stood over the Philistine, and took [Goliath’s] sword and drew it out of its sheath and finished him, and cut off his head with it. And David took the Philistine’s head and brought it to Jerusalem. So when David returned from killing the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul with the Philistine’s head in his hand” (1 Samuel 17:51, 54, 57, NASB).

The writer of 1 Samuel never tells us what David, Abner, or Saul did with Goliath’s head. Likely in disgust someone dug a hole and buried it outside the city. It would take another thousand years (according to Matthew’s Gospel, 3 sets of 14 generations) before we find Goliath’s head surfacing. Just that over those thousand years Goliath’s head became a placename for where his head was buried. “And they brought Jesus to a place called Golgotha (which means ‘Place of the Skull’)” (Mark 15:22, NLT).

Jesus being crucified atop Goliath’s head is no coincidence. In retrospect, we know this was the plan all along. The serpent would indeed strike at the heel of the Son of man. And Jesus would in fact suffer, bleed, and die. But the effect of the serpent’s strike was temporary. Jesus’ vindication came three days later with his resurrection from the dead, thereby breaking the power of Satan and restoring God’s authority over his creation. Jesus’ battle cry, “It is finished,” is the champion’s shout of victory!

There’s more.

Recall that when Goliath and David went to fight each other, they did so as representatives of their two sides. David “fought as a champion on behalf of [Israel]. He was their representative. And David’s victory was credited—it was imputed—to those he represented. All of Israel, we could say, was ‘in David,’ even though they themselves were not active participants in the battle” (Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God, p. 44).

To take a word from C. S. Lewis, there is a deeper “magic,” as it were, going on here. As the Israelites were “in David” when David defeated Goliath, so Christians are now “in Christ” when Jesus defeats Satan, sin, and death. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old [life in sin] has passed away; behold, the new [life in Christ] has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17, ESV). Theologians refer to this “in Christ-ness” as union with Christ. And the implications of this union of God and humankind are truly staggering.

Consider, “But by [God’s] doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30, NASB). What we could not do through good works and law keeping, God did for us in Christ. Therefore, “as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1:31). At one level, with Christ as our righteousness, he stands in God’s court as both our attorney and substitute. He pleads our innocence through our union with him, and the verdict comes back, “Justified!” That is a legal declaration, and the rendering happens outside us.

At another level, there is a relational intimacy in one’s union with Christ that is profoundly beautiful, powerful, and mysterious. Paul tries to capture the intimacy when he writes, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20, ESV).

I will continue to give this statement further thought, but I’m inclined to say that the phrase, “who loved me and gave himself for me” is the foundational truth of all the counseling I give in a typical week. If we would sit with and increasingly internalize the reality of God’s love for us in Christ and our union with him, then healing, security, humility, and freedom would follow. There would be grace upon grace, both given and received. And then like Jesus has done for us, we could give ourselves away to others for their sake rather than our own.

With this little hook: one cannot live in this world as Jesus did and not suffer. We are “fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:17, ESV).

I hope to expand on this in my next post.

Be assured, fellow Christian, that the good work Christ has begun in you he will surely finish.

“We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith” (Hebrews 12:2, NLT). Happy Easter, everyone!

Have I Become Your Enemy by Telling You the Truth?

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 01:34:28 GMT

On Lies, Fear, and Love

I was sitting in our home office bleeding all over myself. I had been deeply cut and was taking time to lick my wounds. A little while earlier, Tamarah said something to me straight and true. I didn’t like what she said and was having a hard time accepting it—partly due to her delivery—straight, and partly due to my suspicion that her point was on target—true. At that point in our marriage, I had not yet learned the depths to which committed love can go nor was I mature enough to know how to receive it as such.

If that weren’t challenging enough, Tamarah eventually came to the door of the office and knocked on the frame. The office desk faces away from the door, so in the swivel chair I turned around to face her. As soon as our eyes met, she asked me, “You know what you’re doing, don’t you?” I hesitated. My initial thought, unuttered, was, “Yes, I know what I’m doing. I’m bleeding all over the place from that gunshot comment of yours thirty minutes ago.” Too afraid to say that, I sat there silently looking up at her. After an awkward moment, she said, “You’re pouting” and walked away.

She said it matter-of-factly, not hatefully. And even though her second comment didn’t feel very good, either, it affected me differently. If I received her first comment like a .38 to the chest, her second comment felt more like a cauterizing knife—cutting and healing at the same time. I cannot fully explain why, other than I remember being prompted to ask myself, “Is there any truth whatsoever to what she just said?”

Yes. Painfully, yes. To whatever degree, there was some truth to what Tamarah said to me. It didn’t feel good, but somebody needed to tell me even if I didn’t want to hear it. I was thirty-something years old with two children when she said that to me. I remember continuing to think to myself something like, “I’m a grown man and right now I feel like a third grader. Somehow, I don’t think that’s a compliment. I have work to do.”

As an aside, if you have Leader traits, then I will kindly remind you that tone matters. In my experience working with natural leaders, they find discussions about tone to be tedious and sometimes ridiculous. True, today’s culture has trained people to be hypersensitive and too easily offended. At the same time, Christian Scripture acknowledges there’s wisdom in adjusting delivery and tone to the audience and context.

For example, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Proverbs 25:11, ESV). In this word picture, the apple is the message being communicated. If the message is true, then it’s gold. The setting is the context and the way in which the message is conveyed. If the message is communicated humbly and with grace, then it’s silver. But if the message is false, or the delivery is arrogant or graceless, then the word is not fit. Meaning, it doesn’t stand a chance of being accepted.

A second example would be the Apostle Paul’s ability to nuance his delivery when he writes, “But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children” (1 Thess. 2:7, ESV). And then in the same paragraph, “You know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children” (1 Thess. 2:11, NASB). The maturity of Paul—someone with Leader traits, bar none—to be both mother-like and father-like is a prime case study for what Proverbs 25:11 looks like in real time.

Having said all that, my target in this post is people who are constituted like me—those with Helper traits who instinctively avoid conflict, those who are people-pleasers, those who are peacekeepers. We are nice people. And tender-hearted. We mean no harm. And therein lies a problem.

People with Helper traits have a dark secret on the inside of that get-along exterior. The dark secret is that kind people like me have a bad habit of lying. Not so much what we might call bald-faced lying. Although that can happen. More often than not, people-pleasers tell what I refer to as passive lies. Passive lies are half-truths or truths not told at all. In certain contexts, we would struggle to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Even if God helped us.

I suspect that the contexts in which people get compromised in truth-telling have to do with real or perceived need and risk. As in, if it’s the end of the day and I’m already tired, and I calculate that if I say what I’m thinking will lead to a thirty-minute tug-of-war, then no, I will not say it. It feels like I need some peace and quiet, so I will not take the risk of full truth-telling.

There are, of course, legitimate reasons why a person may not tell the whole truth. Like the trapped victim of an active abuser. There are countless iterations of this, both domestic and vocational, which are for another post on another day. But I at least want to acknowledge that such situations do exist.

For now, I’ve been thinking for the past several months about Paul’s question to the Galatians, “Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?” (Galatians 4:16). I’m taking the verse out of context but I’m after the principle. I’m thinking about this because I don’t like having people not liking me for something I said. Except I now have people in my life who don’t like me for what I’ve said—sometimes for the truth I believed could not be ignored, and sometimes because I did not communicate the truth in a gracious way.

My instinct before speaking is to pause, measure, edit, review, then maybe say it. Or maybe not. Sure, there can be some wisdom in not just blurting out words. But I know myself. And the driving force for not speaking the truth is fear. Fear of conflict. Fear of not being liked or respected. Fear of not being needed or wanted. Fear of not being loved.

The Apostle John’s response to that is to say, “There is no fear in love. A growing understanding and valuing of God’s love for you will cast out your fear; otherwise, the one who is captive to fear is not really experiencing God’s love” (1 John 4:18, my translation). Another way to say it is, the more I know and experience God’s love for me in Jesus, the freer I am to repent of my fear of your response when I speak truth in love to you. I can now love you for your sake rather than loving you for my sake.

Here’s a funny thing: I just asked Tamarah if she can think of an example where I spoke truth to her in a way that she found either hurtful or challenging. We talked about it for a while, but she could not come up with a clear story. She said she knows I’ve called her out for things like interrupting me and others, and for things like tone and delivery. We’ve concluded that this is also a feature or trait of Leaders—take it, assimilate it, and move on. But for those like me with Helper traits, we can only wish it were that simple.

Because God has said, “Stop telling lies. Let us tell our neighbors the truth, for we are all parts of the same body” (Ephesians 4:25, NLT).

What to Make of a Diminished Thing

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 01:30:18 GMT

Let Jesus Have the Final Word

I’d like to introduce you to Thomas Clarkson. Clarkson went to the University of Cambridge and graduated in 1783. He was ordained a deacon in the Anglican church that same year but did not continue into the priesthood as his father had done. Two years later, he entered a Latin essay competition and was asked to answer the question, “Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?”

Clarkson won the competition with his answer and was subsequently troubled and possessed by the research he gathered for the Essay. Of his travel from London back to Cambridge post-competition, he journaled, “I stopped my horse occasionally, and dismounted and walked. I frequently tried to persuade myself in these intervals that the contents of my Essay could not be true. The more however I reflected upon them, or rather upon the authorities on which they were founded, the more I gave them credit. I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the roadside and held my horse. Here a thought came into my mind, that if the contents of the Essay were true, it was time some person should see these calamities to their end. Agitated in this manner I reached home. This was the summer of 1785.”

Clarkson’s sense of Divine calling that he “should see these calamities to their end” propelled him over the years to come. He would travel more than 35,000 miles across Britain to gather physical evidence from slave ships and conducted interviews with 20,000 sailors—the “authorities” that Clarkson previously referred to. There were several occasions (most notably at the port town of Liverpool) when Clarkson would risk his life to collect ever-more material to bolster his case against the very profitable slave trade. Sounds something like the Apostle Paul’s encounter with the Ephesian merchants in Acts 19.

Clarkson would eventually enlist the better-known William Wilberforce, a fellow Anglican connected with the British Parliament. Wilberforce was sympathetic with the work Clarkson was doing, and a question about the slave trade was soon put before the House of Commons. Where it quickly died. In 1791, Wilberforce introduced the first Bill to abolish the slave trade, and it also died with a 163-88 vote.

Year after year, Clarkson (the campaign’s quiet engine) and Wilberforce (the campaign’s public voice), along with their supporters, introduced motions in Parliament in favor of abolition. And every year the House of Lords voted to keep slavery going. By 1794, Clarkson’s health was failing—likely some combination of exhaustion and compassion fatigue.

More darkly, unknown except to a few, Clarkson was beginning to lose his faith. Some of Clarkson’s friends had him retire from the campaign for a season and sent him to the Lake District. Clarkson ended up purchasing a cottage in which to hide. What Clarkson didn’t know is that at the other end of the village lived Samuel Taylor Coleridge—a famous British Romantic poet who happened to also be an abolitionist sympathizer and Clarkson fanboy.

As Providence would have it, Clarkson and Coleridge happened to meet one day. Coleridge was surprised to find the hero who inspired him now exhausted and depressed. But these two were Englishmen—meaning, they didn’t share any of these details with each other at the time. However, they would begin writing letters to each other.

In one of his letters, Clarkson opened up and wrote, “My dear Coleridge, let me confess: I have no idea anymore of the Divine.” It was honest and raw. Coleridge then wrote back to him and said, “My dear Clarkson, don’t worry now whether you have any idea of the Divine. But never forget that you are a Divine idea!”

Coleridge is saying to Clarkson something like, “The Lord thought of Thomas Clarkson. And He wanted to speak Thomas Clarkson into the world for this moment. And the Lord has not yet finished saying what He has to say. The Lord is the Logos and you and I, Thomas, are Logoi—we are little words being spoken by the Word. So let Jesus finish saying what he has to say to the world through you.”

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Hold that thought while I pivot to the American poet, Robert Frost. Some time ago as I was preparing to teach a class on aging, I came across Frost’s poem, The Oven Bird. I didn’t use it at the time, but I’ve kept it in a folder for such a time as this. As Frost’s poem unfolds, there’s a progression through the seasons—spring to summer to fall—that corresponds to a person’s progression through life—youth to mid to old age. Here is the poem:

There is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers

Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.

He says the early petal-fall is past

When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

I cannot help but see and feel the connection between The Oven Bird and the effect of Clarkson’s lifelong calling upon him. Coleridge finds his hero—at one time “a singer everyone has heard”—diminished after years of commitment, labor, disappointment, and service of love. Which I hold in tension with all the Scriptures I know about the Spirit of Christ being a well of water springing up inside of us, nourishing us and bearing fruit, even in old age.

That said, I have no simple way to tidy up the end of this post. I’ve worked at the conclusion for an hour now with nothing I can reduce to three sentences. And maybe that’s the point. Live long enough and life will take it out of you—age, illness, labor, harms done by others, self-inflicted harms, the Fall. Walk with Jesus deeply enough and He will give life back to you—redeeming grace, renewed strength, faith to endure, mercies every day.

Because Jesus Christ, God’s eternal Word, still speaks, and He will have the final word.

We Will See

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 02:13:21 GMT

Discerning God's Great Plot for Your Life

If your mother dies when you’re four years old, and then six years later your dad dies, we would understand if you struggled to adjust in life. If that loss wasn’t hard enough, let’s say your stepmother was a difficult person so you went to live with an older brother. Some years pass and then, despite all the challenges, let’s say you were able to get into a big-time academic college. All of this is exactly what happened to Thomas Shepard.

Thomas was living an out-of-control life at Cambridge. In his diary he admits he couldn’t see straight for all the turmoil he was in. And who could blame him? But then, on a particularly difficult day, he went outside and found an open field and began crying. In those moments of desperation, Thomas cried out for help. By his own testimony, this marked the beginning of Thomas’s relationship with Jesus that would affect his vision the rest of his too-short life.

Thomas Shepard is further evidence that coming to saving faith in Jesus doesn’t always make one’s life easier—instantly, or ever. Fast-forward some years and Thomas gets married and has children. And then his eldest son dies. The Shepard family eventually decides to move from England to America. Almost beyond comprehension, after the long and difficult voyage to Massachusetts in colonial America, Thomas’s wife died. More time passes and Thomas’s second wife and other children die.

Eventually, Thomas would lose his own life at age 44 from, of all things, a complication of tonsillitis. In his abbreviated life (1605-1649), Thomas was considered a leading minister in Massachusetts. The witness of God’s effective grace in his life can be seen in the diversity of his ministry—his reputation for serving both Native Americans as well as students at the recently formed school for the training of ministers—Harvard University. Even today, nearly 400 years after the fact, a plaque remains at Harvard to commemorate the impact Thomas Shephard had on the school.

One of the lasting artifacts of Thomas that I value—both as a Christ-follower and as a counselor—is what he came to refer to as, “God’s great plot.” Amid all his loss, suffering, and grieving, Thomas took what he believed—by faith and experience—and put together a framework that held together an unwinding life and made sense of what appeared to be senseless.

In his book, A Heart Aflame for God, author Matthew Bingham uses Thomas Shepard and others of that time as examples of those who learned how to do self-examination within a wider net of theological understanding. “This broader sense involves thinking deliberately about one’s life as a story that God is writing. It involves training one’s mind and heart to reframe life’s apparent chaos as something orderly, purposeful, and imbued with divinely ordained meaning” (p. 211).

What Bingham spells out, using Thomas Shepard as an example, is just the kind of work I help people process during their own seasons of lost vision. The practice of “training one’s mind and heart to reframe life’s apparent chaos” requires the sorts of things to which today’s culture runs counter: focus without distraction, down time, self-suspicion, and willingness to not get it right the first time. Or the second or third.

There are the usual suspects that cause people to lose sight of their lives and purpose in life. We all fall into them—either momentarily or for longer stretches of time—like selfishness, greed, envy, coveting, bitterness, jealousy, anger, and anxiety. These sins and struggles are what we could call lens dilaters. When we engage them, our line-of-sight narrows. We lose touch with what we would otherwise properly love if we were not blinded by the passions that preoccupied us.

Beyond these, there are other culprits that can cause degrees of distortion in seeing life clearly—like traumas, illnesses, chronic pain, substance abuses, relational brokenness such as marital discord, family dysfunctions, and co-worker wounds. I’ll call these places in life de-humanizing. These struggles can make a person feel as if they are losing their true self, their dignity, and their place and purpose in the world. These disorientations are also what we might call “seeing” problems.

Mercifully, Christ-followers believe in the God-who-sees, even as Hagar learned in her duress and so had her vision corrected (Genesis 16). The servant of Elisha also had his vision corrected when, after seeing a great enemy army and being convinced of certain defeat, Elisha prays for his servant’s eyes to be opened. Not only was the servant then able to see the host of heaven’s armies and be comforted, but then Elisha prays again and the hostile army of Aram is struck with blindness (2 Kings 6:8-23). The irony!

These acts of God in correcting our seeing are not frozen in time in the Bible—they should be regularly occurring experiences for those who seek and follow Jesus. God Almighty has a plot line, and we should expect His sight adjustments as we read and meditate on his Word, as we look to him in corporate worship through sermon and song, as we participate together in communion, as we go through each day waiting on him and looking for him wherever he may be found.

As this calendar year winds down and our eyes look ahead, I’d like to ask if you’d consider partnering with me as I endeavor to help others see God’s great plot line in their own lives. Grace Harbor is a nonprofit that depends on donors to make up what we do not make in our service fees. It could be a rural pastor who cannot afford it, or a wife whose husband is not supportive, or a family who is simply stretched too far through a job loss or illness. These, and others, are the kinds of places people find themselves lost.

If your giving plan allows it, we’d be grateful for your financial support and your prayers—for sustaining the ministry and for the minister. You can donate to Grace Harbor several ways, both now and throughout the year:

You can mail a gift to Grace Harbor, P.O. Box 25333, Greenville, SC 29616.

You can donate via our PayPal link on our web site: Here

You can donate stock by contacting us directly: (864) 915-7070

Thank you. Merry Christmas, everyone!

When Life Throws a Curveball

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 01:39:51 GMT

Bitterness and Brokenness Revisited

“Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” (Job 2:10, NLT).

Sometimes you can see a curveball coming and swing. Other times the off-speed pitch comes when you were expecting a fastball, and you get caught looking. In all candor, I was planning to write this month’s newsletter on the topic of the Maternal Marriage. But then a big looping ball got thrown at me. Thing is, I was expecting it but not until the 7th inning. This curveball came in the 2nd inning, and it changed the dynamics of the inning I was in. The breaking ball came in the form a family member whose dementia took a dramatic turn downward.

The day before I left town to help my family, I had two unexpected conversations. One was with an old friend, and he encouraged me to be transparent and write something rather than skip this month’s newsletter entirely. But what? Later that same day, I taught a class on forgiveness at a local church. Before I got up to teach, a gentleman came up to me and thanked me for a newsletter I had written years ago. I was both grateful and curious. When I returned home later and looked, I wrote that piece in 2017.

I’m taking that man’s reference as another pitch. Therefore, what follows is a lightly edited version of that 2017 article I entitled, “Bitterness and Brokenness.” I pray it proves to be a hit for at least one reader.

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When someone asks me where I grew up, I say I’m from a small farm town in central Iowa. The response I often get is, “Oh, where in Ohio?” Really? For the past forty-four years, I’ve lived in the Upstate of South Carolina where the clay is red like rust and hard as iron. In central Iowa, the soil is black as coal and soft as saw dust. The soil of my childhood easily turned over; the soil of my adulthood just… doesn’t… want… to… turn.

Think of bitterness like red clay and brokenness like black soil. I’ve seen both kinds of ground when I survey the landscape of people’s lives. The differences are both subtle and significant. Here are some observations:

No one stumbles into either bitterness or brokenness. To experience either one requires a crisis, a trauma, or repeated series of events to begin with, followed by an extended period of time. No one would wish the crisis upon anyone else. The pain that goes on in a person’s life that begets either bitterness or brokenness is profound and life altering.

Because of the crisis and/or trauma, there is deep emotional anguish for both the bitter and the broken. Both can shed tears over what has happened. But the bitter weeps with worldly sorrow while the broken weeps with Godly sorrow. Only a very thin line separates the one from the other.

The broken feels how thin that line is, and that it wouldn’t take much to become bitter; the bitter feels that there is a great gulf to the other side and cannot imagine getting there.

Both the bitter and the broken have expectations—and the expectations can be legitimate. But the bitter cannot let go of his, while the broken regularly surrenders his.

One can remain bitter and still relent, bitterly; one can be broken and still hold his ground, brokenly.

The bitter person does not trust another; the broken person does not trust himself.

Both bitterness and brokenness would have the flesh and blood of another: for the embittered, that of the offender; for the broken, that of Christ.

Both bitterness and brokenness involve a deep shift of personal identity. In bitterness, identity is shifted from personhood to shattered victimhood. The bitter person’s identity is centered on the offender or circumstance. The broken person’s identity is oriented to and rooted in Christ, and he gains a wounded but whole self. One is predicated on pride, the other on humility.

The bitter person refuses or is unable to forgive by losing touch with the details of why he first needs to be forgiven; the broken person fights to forgive by staying in touch with the details of his own need to be forgiven.

The embittered person self-inflicts the high price of injustice by replaying the tape in his mind. The broken person lives in the freedom of God’s forgiveness because he replays the tape, over and over, that Jesus pays the highest price of justice once and for all.

Just because you’ve been embittered or broken at one point in your life through one set of circumstances or relationships doesn’t mean it won’t happen again at another point in your life through a different set of circumstances or relationships.

Bitterness will not bend while also demanding justice (which never comes); brokenness bends to the challenging will of Christ and finds justice in His cross. One is forever grinding it out internally while the other practices contenting his soul and stilling his mind.

Because the content of your habituated self-talk makes all the difference.

The Aspirational Marriage

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 22:27:37 GMT

The Rise or Fall of the Power Couple

When he was three years old, Pravin’s parents moved to the States in pursuit of a better life. They largely succeeded by working their way up in the hospitality industry. What they didn’t expect were Christian neighbors who, through their own hospitality and witness, led the parents into saving faith in Jesus. Pravin was twelve years old when his parents converted, and their life-change was real and lasting. By the time he was a late teenager, Pravin, too, committed to following Christ.

Pravin was a bright and precocious teenager. He was more verbal than others, had a hard time sitting still, and was often bored in school. Despite all that, Pravin went on to earn a graduate degree in biomedical engineering. Now in his 40s, Pravin looks back with great respect for his parent’s industriousness, ingenuity, and vision. Following in his parent’s willingness to take risks, Pravin started a medical research business that now employs twenty-three people. The long-term strategy is for a larger firm to buy Pravin’s business in the next twelve to fifteen years.

Katherine met Pravin while she was working on her nurse practitioner degree. They’ve now been married some twenty years. Whereas Pravin’s parents had ambitions for their son and told him he could do anything, Katherine’s Christian father was obsessed with appearances. Which came out as regular criticisms of Katherine. No matter how hard she tried, regardless of her academic accolades and athletic awards, Katherine’s father always had a critique. Guilt and shame were ever-present for Katherine as that voice in her head kept saying, “You can do better” even though her classmates voted her to be class president. Katherine is a Christ-follower who’s also driven and high-achieving. Despite exuding confidence, Katherine is insecure and sensitized to any comments connected to her appearance and performance.

This fictional marriage is comprised of two people who both have Leader traits. If you recall the Quadrant concept I’ve described in my last three posts (men on the horizontal X-axis, and those with Leader traits to the right of midpoint; women on the vertical Y-axis, and those with Leader traits below the midpoint) then you can see that Pravin and Katherine’s marriage sits in the bottom-right quadrant. They are in what I refer to as an Aspirational marriage. I will also call this a Power Couple.

When the Aspirational couple is spiritually healthy and both are maturing in their relationship with Jesus (represented by the midpoint on the spectrum), the energy this couple generates is life-giving to many. They are big-hearted and are agents of change; their impact can be positively significant. They are passionate about what they are into and have a high degree of resiliency. Whether that’s running a company, managing a family, leading a volunteer group, organizing a school event, or overseeing the care of a neighbor who’s an elderly childless widow, this couple can and will do all of it.

However, the Aspirational couple can be tempted to over-commit. The effect over time is that by over-extending themselves, they lose the margins on their lives for the disciplines that keep them spiritually healthy. At a low level, the drift from center can show up in their tendency to interrupt each other. Or to be reactive. Or to escalate. Since this is the only one of the four quadrants that does not have a Helper person in it (i.e., a person who quickly defers or acquiesces), the Power couple locks horns and inflicts wounds on each other.

Let’s go back to Pravin and Katherine as a case study. Katherine gets confused because, while Pravin is naturally animated to begin with, his pace accelerates and his volume increases both when he’s excited about something but also when he’s upset or frustrated about something. Due to Katherine’s conditioning from her father’s judgments, she now mostly takes her husband’s communication style as also judgmental.

For his part, Pravin grows frustrated because, while Katherine can get all passionate and engaged about something, she then, for reasons he fails to understand, stops communicating and shuts down. Pravin views their exchanges mostly as verbal sparring and competitive debate while Katherine interprets their engagements as deeply personal and often hurtful.

There are endless variations on this, obviously. But what would it look like for all Aspirational marriages to stay healthy? And to grow together over a lifetime? I’ve said in previous posts that for people with Leader traits, one of the primary evidences of grace is one’s willingness to strategically surrender the moment rather than trying to win the struggle.

Think of surrender as Gospel re-enactment: while those who want Jesus killed are convinced they’re right and Jesus is wrong, Jesus knows he’s right but does not engage them on that basis. Instead, he changes the question from who’s right/wrong to who will win/lose. Which leads Jesus to live out the most amazing act of grace—to know he’s right yet choosing to lose. The self-sacrifice of the one for the life of the many.

Like all marriages, Aspirational marriages must first keep their accounts short. Gospel re-enactment means both husband and wife practice slowing down, self-regulating, and taking a self-audit. Since people are more important than projects and problems, Aspirational couples practice shifting the agenda from getting something done to being present with the other. If any relational debts are discovered or revealed, then confessing, repenting, and forgiving are the graces that get exchanged between the two. This pattern is the bread and butter of any healthy relationship.

Now apply Gospel grace to the trait we call ambition—something Aspirational couples naturally possess. If ambition is exercised for its own sake, the Bible calls that selfish ambition. One way to frame selfish ambition is accumulation—of arguments won, of reputation magnified, of greater influence, more material goods, expanded opportunities, even time gained back—for one’s own sake and often at the expense of others. This is a Power couple who’s drifted from the center who, at the end of life, are left without anything to show for it. Think of Ahab and Jezebel as prime examples of a fallen Power couple.

Now think of ambition surrendered as accumulation held with an open hand—the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. Surrendered ambition is for the blessing of others, for the advancing of God’s name rather than one’s own. Surrendered ambition still does the things ambition does—building and developing and getting things done, but it does so with the awareness that the source of one’s own energy and vision and the accomplishing of things are all gifts from the Lord (see Deuteronomy 8:11-20). Think of Boaz and Ruth as prime examples of a rising Power couple.

What final pointers could we give to those in the Aspirational, Power Couple quadrant? I’d say the book of Ecclesiastes is a good resource to internalize. Specifically, “Better to have one handful [of ambition] with quietness [surrender] than two handfuls with hard work [selfish ambition] and chasing the wind” (4:6, NLT).

Because we have only one life, and it will soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.

The Paternal Marriage

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:45:45 GMT

The Role-Correct Marriage and How it Can go Bad

James works long and hard in the world of finance. Like others in his field, James started out as an entry-level analyst, but he aspires for more and is determined to rise to the C-suite. The firm values James’s commitment, loyalty, and work ethic. James is now the youngest senior manager in the firm. Most subordinates think well enough of him—until a process is hung or someone can’t keep up. Most have also come to terms with James’s impatience; it’s just those flashes of anger that has some on edge.

Hannah’s been married to James for ten years. She worked as an interior designer right out of college and for the initial years of their marriage. She was happy in that job, but the professional life was never Hannah’s dream. With James’s agreement, Hannah’s now a stay-at-home mom. Hannah loves her three children—she’s currently pregnant with their fourth—and has fully embraced motherhood and domestic life. Hannah’s friends marvel at how put-together Hannah’s home, children, and life appear to be.

With this brief sketch, I’m going to lay out what I call a Paternal marriage. There are too many variations and nuances for me to detail in a marriage like this, so I must generalize the principles. The Paternal marriage is comprised of a husband with Leader traits and a wife with Helper traits. This marriage sits in the upper-right quadrant of the X and Y axis that I described last month.

I’m also calling the Paternal marriage the “Role-correct” marriage since the husband operates naturally as the biblical head and the wife functions naturally as the biblical Ezer. The strength of the Paternal marriage is that they do not need to work at aligning with their biblical roles. He naturally leads and gets satisfaction by seeing forward movement, and she naturally supports him. She understands that she and her children are the beneficiaries when he rises in the world.

In my experience, there are two primary ways the Paternal marriage can go bad. In one scenario, the husband talks directly and sometimes aggressively to his subordinates at work. The subordinates with Leader traits appreciate his no-nonsense approach, but subordinates with Helper traits are often stung, feel diminished, and cannot speak freely to him for fear of his reaction as their boss. The Helper subordinates keep their honest thoughts to themselves, which leads him to believe that all those under him think well of him.

Consequently, he makes no adjustment to his delivery when he gets home. If he’s not mindful that his wife is a people-pleaser, then his direct and sometimes commanding tone cuts her. Because she’s conflict avoidant and already tired from the kids all day, she must make a split-second decision whether to speak up or not. Most of the time, she chooses to keep her thoughts to herself. It doesn’t occur to her that when she does that, she’s lying and now complicit in their marital dysfunction.

At the same time, she’s learned from experience that if she self-advocates it will set him off into an argumentative state in which she’ll have to endure a thirty-minute debate she will never win. Instead, she gets hurt, doesn’t speak up for fear of his power (i.e., his quick and sarcastic comebacks, his strong tone, and/or his physical size), and withdraws. He’s confused and frustrated since no one else in his world acts this way toward him.

A step downward in this pattern is that the Leader husband makes unilateral decisions that affect others. He doesn’t ask his wife, he just tells her that he’s going with the guys to their hobby—the gym, golfing, gambling, the garage. He’s worked hard and has earned it. Besides, what does she have to complain about—he’s made sure they’re financially secure, they have the big house in a safe neighborhood, she drives the vehicle she wants, she and the kids all wear the leading fashion. When he compares his place and family to his peers, he’s ahead of most.

What he’s missing is that while she appreciates all the material goods he’s earned, those things are not her highest value. She’d be willing to live much more simply if she could be attached to him emotionally. But in fact, she feels very alone in their marriage. This is exacerbated by his frequent nudges for sex. Even though she’s not emotionally connected to him, since she’s a pleaser she will give it to him. Rather than real lovemaking, they’ve fallen into duty-sex. And eventually she taps out. Which frustrates him since he can’t understand why she’s not more grateful. Since they are not resolving their hurt and frustrations, they are slowly drifting apart.

Another way the Paternal Marriage can go bad has to do with a positive feedback loop the husband experiences at work. As a man with Leader traits, he’s all-in. He gives his job 100% effort. The Bible says the man is to take dominion of his world, and he is excelling at that vocationally. The company values his commitment and results, and they pay him for it. The company also recognizes he has capacity and is not afraid of doing more, so they give him more. And with that come promotions and increased pay. This fires his motivations as someone who prizes influence and accomplishment. If the firm doesn’t do enough for him, he’ll create a side-hustle.

Over time, however, his margins get increasingly squeezed. He will likely make it to his kids’ ballgames and school events, but he no longer has time for deeper Scripture study and personal application. His mind is filled with all the responsibilities he carries along with all the great plans he has for the future. The busier he gets, the more he doubles-down on his natural abilities and inclination toward self-sufficiency.

The wife notices and feels her husband’s spiritual drift before he does. She’s conflicted, though, since he prays over meals and their church put him on a board. She has some consolations that he keeps the rituals and hasn’t apostatized. Yet there’s no real fellowship—either with Jesus or his wife. Her insecurities grow as they grow farther apart, so she throws herself fully into mothering her children.

She longs to be emotionally attached, but he’s too impatient to hear her complaints and his success at work reinforces in his mind that he’s likely more correct than his wife. He’s frustrated that he’s working his tail off and has provided generously for her and the kids. And yet she has complaints?

What are we to say to such a couple? The simple yet profound reply goes to the core of Jesus’ gospel. We could use 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 as an example and template. For the husband in the Paternal marriage, he would do well to become increasingly self-suspicious that his worldly success and self-sufficiency have grown in him a hidden conceit that God is opposed to. Rather than being annoyed and frustrated by his wife’s deficiencies and needs, the husband should ask himself what God might be exposing in the husband through his wife’s other-giftedness. I understand that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was likely physical and not relational, but the principle is the same: the problem is not success or capacity, but pride in what looks like the fruit of being powerful.

For the wife in the Paternal marriage, she should not let her impulse to people-please be the controlling force in her life and relationships. It is not her job or role to make or keep her husband happy. She is not a true Helper if she is little more than a yes-person. She can grow, in her weakness and present suffering, to know the contentment that comes from the sustaining power of Christ in her. It is God’s sufficient grace that will strengthen her with wisdom and courage to know when and how to speak and behave toward her husband. Perhaps the Spirit of Christ will use the wife’s steady witness to become the iron that sharpens the iron that is her husband.

Because God’s strength is provided in our varied weaknesses to sanctify our marriage.

The Quadrant, Roles, and The Compatible Marriage

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 01:25:25 GMT

Why "Ignore It" is Not a Strategy

People are complicated, and I’ve found it helpful to others if I can take their intricacies and distill them into basic shapes, patterns, and forms. In that way, I’ve long held in mind the statement by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the late Supreme Court justice who said, “For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig. But for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life.”

For the past six months’ worth of newsletters, I’ve attempted to lay out a simple yet substantive framework for understanding people’s personality. In my February through April newsletters, I described what I refer to as people with Helper traits; in my May through July newsletters, I described what I refer to as people with Leader traits. Doing so is my way of working through the nuance and complexity of who people are and describing them with a degree of simplicity that honors their individuality.

What I want to begin to do now is illustrate what happens in marriage when two people are united, each with their own personality traits. Picture the classic X and Y-axis on a 2D graph. Men sit on the horizontal X-axis, and women sit on the vertical Y-axis. The mid-point where the X and Y intersect is called the Origin (for Christians, the Origin would be absolute Christlikeness in terms of personality). The farther out a person drifts in any direction, the less that person accurately images Christ to others. Meaning that person becomes increasingly difficult to live and work with.

Men who sit to the left of Origin are men with Helper traits, and men who sit to the right of Origin are men with Leader traits. Women who sit above the point of Origin have Helper traits, and women who sit below the point of Origin are women who have Leader traits. On the graph, we now have four quadrants, or what I will refer to as four different kinds of marriages. Each quadrant has both strengths and deficits, so no one quadrant is better than another.

One value in knowing this information is that we can now get fairly predictive in the way each sort of marriage will engage and conflict within itself. Another value in knowing all of this is that it points out where maturing will need to happen for each individual in the union and how a couple can partner in helping each other grow.

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In this newsletter, and then in the next three that follow, I plan to unpack the basics of one of the four quadrants. But before I do, I should clarify that personality traits are not the same as Biblical roles. Each human has a personality, and all humans are made in God’s image. Whatever are the characteristics of being made in God’s image—theologians debate that—my interest has more to do with the function of being an image-bearer. I think of it this way: humans are imagers of God, and one way we image God to each other—more or less—is via maturing personalities and growing into the roles that God gives to husbands and wives.

I detailed these roles last year in a three-part series called, The Deviation Spiral (September through November 2024. See here , here , and here .). Without repeating all of that, of special relevance to the quadrant is part three (Nov. 2024) where I explain the over/under identification of those roles. I’ll state here that men and women who have Helper traits often under-identify with their roles, and men and women who have Leader traits often over-identify with their roles.

Now on to the first quadrant…

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Gavin and Jessi are in a Compatible Marriage. This marriage sits in the upper left quadrant of the X/Y graph and is comprised of two Helpers. Of the four quadrants, the Compatible Marriage appears the easiest to be in. That’s because both the husband and the wife are gentle souls, people-pleasers, and conflict avoidant. When others see this couple walking down Main Street hand-in-hand on a Friday night, it’s like, “Awww. They’re so sweet.”

However, Gavin and Jessi can never seem to find a good time to engage in hard and necessary conversations. They delay, punt, avoid, and sweep things under the rug. Since neither one appreciates friction, their main relationship strategy is to ignore whatever it is that needs attention.

The weakness of a Compatible Marriage can go on for a shockingly long time before it comes to a head. I refer to it as, “The Slow Rot.” As in, that beautiful old white oak tree that everyone admires. And then a storm blows through and knocks it down. Friends are stunned. Until they drive by the next day to take a closer look and then discover that the trunk is hollowed out. It’s beautiful on the outside and gutless on the inside.

Gavin and Jessi are now twenty years in and in serious trouble. Jessi has found porn on Gavin’s phone multiple times over the last five years. On the one hand, this gives her some insight into why they’ve always had a difficult time with sexual intimacy. On the other hand, Jessi’s forgiven Gavin quickly and repeatedly but now wonders if that’s the right move. She might be right.

Each time the porn comes to light, it’s always Jessi finding it. Each time Jessi brings it up, Gavin acknowledges it. Because there’s never resolve, whenever Jessi questions Gavin further on another day, more details come out. The piecemeal confessing under duress is doing further damage to her trust. What else does Jessi not know?

Let me here invoke Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher. He used the example of a string—one on a bow, another on a lyre—and noted that only when the string is taut is it any good. No arrow can be shot, and no tune can be played, if there isn’t any tension. Tension is necessary for function, and couples in a Compatible Marriage need to learn to both accept and then manage tension in their relationship.

While a book could be written here, let me at least say that Gavin will grow when he accepts that no maturing and no real intimacy will happen until he accepts his responsibility of taking dominion over these parts of his life and marriage. Gavin will likely need assistance to learn how to secure his identity and acceptance in Christ so that he can endure safely the fiery furnace of hard and honest-to-God conversations with Jessi.

Jessi will benefit and grow when she understands that there are times when public forgiveness should be withheld. Gavin has never repented of his unfaithfulness, so it’s not yet time for public forgiveness. Jessi can forgive him privately before the Lord, but not publicly to Gavin’s face. That’s going to threaten Jessi’s people-pleasing instinct. This is where Jessi can grow as a true Ezer, a battle-mate, by not giving in to her weaker impulses.

Because tension is your ally when you know how to use it.

Running the White Flag up the Pole

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 02:26:29 GMT

How Leaders Grow

With my wife’s consent, let me tell you a story. We were sitting on the couch one evening when the conversation turned to travel. This is tricky territory because, while traveling is not at the top of my list of personal values, it so happens that Tamarah’s middle name is Wanderlust. I’m pretty sure if I came home from work today and told Tamarah I received a vision from God that we’re supposed to move to Madagascar, she would have her bags packed within the hour.

On this evening, we were discussing an overseas trip that would likely be a once-in-a-lifetime tour for us. Tamarah got excited at the thought, stood up and walked over to the computer table. Within a minute, she found some ridiculously priced round trip tickets from GSP to The Dream. She turned around from the computer table to face me and said something like, “Those are some crazy prices right there.” I said, “No kidding,” but then dropped it since I don’t make big decisions like that spontaneously.

As I’ve noted in other posts, I have Helper traits and my wife has Leader traits. What that looks like in this instance is I need time to process the opportunity while Tamarah is ready to tap the purchase icon right now. On my account, we waited.

Two or three evenings later, we were sitting on the couch again when the topic of that trip came up. Without saying a word, Tamarah got up to check the status of those ticket prices. With her back to me, I could see the computer screen come to life. The computer is on a table fifteen feet from where I sit, so I cannot see the details. Based on what Tamarah did next, I assume the ticket prices must have doubled or tripled and put the trip out of reach.

She took her little fist and, like a bolt of lightning, gave the computer table a single, solid strike. The crack of thunder that came with it made our napping dog jump and slink off to another room. I can hear Jael say from the cloud of witnesses, “You go, girl!”

I do not want to resent or punish my wife for having Leader traits. As I noted last month, Leaders get a lot of value by moving things along. That’s a strength. Leaders make the world go around. But the weakness, or shadow side of that strength, is that Leaders have problems with varieties of anger. Correspondingly, people with Leader traits have problems with their tongue and patience.

If that evening of missed travel opportunity had happened, say, twenty years ago, Tamarah would have stayed angry for a day or two. Not so much anger at me but at herself—that she should have trusted her initial instincts to pull the trigger at the sight of those first tickets.

Now comes the beautiful part. No more than thirty seconds after Tamarah hit the table, still seated with her back to me, her shoulders rose and then, slowly, lowered along with an audible exhale. She then stood up, came over and sat down beside me on the couch. And then in the most contented way said, “I guess the Lord has something else in mind.” And I replied, “I guess so.”

What happened in those few minutes? In counselor-therapy speak, what Tamarah did there is called self-regulating. Self-regulating is a good term and useful. Take a moment, inhale deeply and exhale slowly. Get perspective. Relax the tension. But I also think self-regulating is a low-resolution perspective. There’s far more going on here than getting all philosophical. Que sera, sera.

A high-resolution assessment from a Gospel-relational orientation would call what Tamarah did a moment of practiced surrender—an internal shift of functional trust.

Let me break it down. When I think of all the gifts and talents that work for those with Leader traits—determined, self-sufficient, pain-tolerant, problem-solver, high resilience—those same abilities can also work against them. How? By placing too much confidence and trust in themselves. By taking a situation and working it and working it and working it until something finally works out.

On the surface, that doggedness is impressive. Below the surface, there is often an idol being threatened—like losing status, reputation, or control of the situation or of one’s ability to make something happen. And that sense of losing is interpreted as weakness. No one likes to feel weak, and people with Leader traits are allergic to it. Leaders don’t respect weakness in others, and they despise weakness when it comes knocking on their door.

Except it appears in Christian Scripture that God Almighty seems especially drawn to weakness—not for its own sake but as an indicator of one’s trust. If the watchword for those with Helper traits is courage—courage to step in to the situation, then the watchword for those with Leader traits is surrender—surrender to step down in the situation. And that is going to feel like weakness to a Leader.

Last month I referenced Peter as a case study for leader traits, and I’ll do so again in this case to make the point. In Luke 5, Jesus steps into Peter’s beached fishing boat, asks to be pushed out just a bit, and begins teaching those who are following him. After wrapping up the teaching, Jesus tells Peter and his partners to take the boat out into the deep water and let down their fishing nets. Peter’s reply is revealing:

“Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless, at your word I will let down the net” (5:5, NKJV). Can you hear the internal wrestling match Peter is having between trusting his good name and native abilities, and giving his reputation and the results over to Jesus? We’ve toiled! Caught nothing. We’ve exhausted our expertise! We’ve fished this lake our entire lives! Nevertheless…

That “nevertheless” is what I’m calling surrender. It’s a white flag that will need to be run up the pole of a Leader’s life over and over again. There is, to be sure, an initial surrender when a Leader comes to Jesus for eternal life. But the evidence that has occurred is there is then a recurring surrender as the Leader practices trusting Jesus with the details of one’s life.

Let me say that surrender should not be construed as quitting. Leaders are to hold ambition and contentment in tension—like having goals and holding them loosely. The fundamental lesson is something like the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, trustworthy is the name of the Lord.

All of this gets me thinking of the little church I grew up attending and one of the hymns we would sing. The hymn is entitled, “Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus.” A line in the chorus goes, “Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him, how I’ve proved Him ‘or and ‘or.”

When Tamarah said to me, “I guess the Lord has something else in mind,” that was just the most recent evidence that she, like Peter long before her, has learned to trust Jesus, not just with her eternal life but with her daily life.

Because surrender is not giving up but letting Jesus in, ‘or and ‘or.

The Prodigal, Peter, and Body Parts

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:17:36 GMT

More Insights on Those with Leader Traits

Picture an exclamation point—a vertical stroke with a ball underneath—as an upright tent stake with a human head below it. It was Jael, wife of Heber, who made an emphatic statement about God’s punitive justice when she pounded a stake through the skull of the sleeping Sisera (Judges 4:11-24). What sort of person does that? Someone who possesses Leader traits, that’s who.

Jael’s on-the-fly strategizing and bold action helped bring years of national suffering to an end. And when Deborah and Barak sing about it on the day of Jael’s closing act, the very first line of their song begins, “When leaders lead . . .” (Judges 5:2 NKJV). One would think that leaders lead, obviously. But it so happens that leaders don’t always lead. Sometimes leaders burn out. Sometimes they grow entitled and get sloppy. Sometimes they get stuck in grief. Sometimes they fear losing status or power among peers. But that’s not my focus here.

What I’m focusing on here are the sorts of traits that Leaders generally possess to get or keep things moving. As a reminder and in continuation of what I wrote last month, I’m contrasting Leader traits with Helper traits. I did that in my last post by referencing a handful of pairings the Bible gives that offer compare/contrast examples of personality traits.

One contrasting pair in the Bible I’ve not yet referenced is Jesus’ story of the younger and older brothers in Luke 15. To get the full meaning of what Jesus is conveying in that parable, I’d encourage you to read Tim Keller’s book, The Prodigal God . For now, my interest about that story is much narrower and has to do with the personalities of those two brothers.

Here’s how I’m seeing it. The older brother stays home and keeps the rules. The younger brother leaves home and breaks the rules. The older brother does not voice his thoughts (conflict avoidant) and performs his duties. The younger brother exercises his agency (risks conflict) and verbalizes his desires. The older brother maintains the status quo, while the younger brother moves quickly and breaks things. The older brother is more of a legalist, while the younger brother is more licentious.

I’m suggesting these are trait tendencies. With tendency being the key word. If there’s any merit to this, then the older brother has Helper traits and the younger brother has Leader traits.

Beyond those observations, what other traits are often part of what constitutes a Leader? There are many Bible characters to choose from, each with their own unique personalities. For my purposes I’m going to use Peter, the lead apostle, as a case study.

For example, Leaders tend to be what I call, “Hundred percenters.” Meaning, when Leaders commit to something, they’re in it one hundred percent. They tend to be all-or-nothing people. If the thing is worth doing, then Leaders are all in. If the thing isn’t worth doing, then they stop and get out. Why? Because Leaders do not like wasting time, energy, and resources.

We can see this hundred percent trait playing out in Peter when Jesus comes to wash Peter’s feet (John 13). Peter cannot get his head wrapped around the humility of Jesus as the True Leader. As emphatically as Jeal swings her hammer, Peter says to Jesus, “You shall never wash my feet!” Peter’s out, hundred percent! Jesus replies, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with me.” One hundred percent. To which Peter replies, “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!” Now Peter’s in! One hundred percent! Which is just how the Father treats the younger son upon his return home.

People with Leader traits also tend to be willing to take risks. My assessment of this is that Leaders have a higher degree of resiliency, so they are not debilitatingly afraid to make mistakes. Leaders calculate that if a mistake is made, one can always recover and come back. Just like the younger brother. Also, because Leaders tend to be aspirational, the potential reward is worth the risk.

You can see this risk-reward dynamic in Peter when the disciples are caught in a storm at sea sometime between 3 and 6 in the morning (Matthew 14:22-33). While trying to navigate in the storm, Jesus comes walking to the disciples on the water. Peter gets a crazy thought and asks Jesus to invite him out onto the water. Which is about as unconventional as the younger brother asking for his inheritance prematurely. In Peter’s case, think of faith as risk, and Jesus responds positively to that kind of faith and allows Peter to then walk on the water. Briefly. But still.

Another trait that is often characteristic of Leaders is that they tend to be big-hearted. What I mean by that is Leaders get a lot of satisfaction out of making a tangible difference in other people’s lives. Leaders tend to be problem-solvers and fixers, and if they can be a positive agent for change, they want to do that.

Interestingly, this big-heartedness will sometimes get Leaders in trouble. For Peter, I see this happening when Jesus gets candid with the disciples and lets them know that he, Jesus, is going to suffer, die, and rise again. Upon hearing this, Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes him. Like Jael taking Sisera aside to have conversation, but unlike Jael because in this case Peter wants to make sure no one dies. To which Jesus rebukes Peter in return by saying, “Get behind me, Satan” (Mark 8:31-33). Which probably hurt Peter like a tent stake driven into his heart.

Loyalty would be another trait that Leaders often possess. My speculation is this is an extension of being a hundred percenter. If you find yourself with a friend who happens to have Leader traits, then you can for sure count on that person to be there for you.

We see this loyalty in Peter’s life when Judas shows up to betray Jesus. As the exchange between Judas and Jesus is unfolding, the disciples can see what’s coming. Luke records it as the disciple’s asking Jesus, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword” (Luke 22:49)? From the Scripture’s description, Peter doesn’t wait for a reply. Peter takes his sword and swings it at the head of the high priest’s servant. Fortunately for the servant, Jael proved a better aim since Peter can manage to only cut off the ear of the servant (John 18:10).

Finally, I’ll note that yet another trait common in Leaders is impatience. Not always, but often. I think this relates to Leaders placing a high value on getting things done, or as I put it, “moving the football down the field.” If Leaders are running perfectly good plays but the ball isn’t moving, that’s when people with Leader traits become impatient. Because now we’re wasting time, energy, and resources.

When Peter and John hear the report from Mary Magdalene that the tomb of Jesus is empty, both men go running to the site to see for themselves. John outruns Peter and gets to the tomb, but upon arrival John stops and looks inside from there—cautiously older brother-like. But when Peter finally shows up, he doesn’t stop but instead runs right inside the tomb—younger brother-like. Only then does John follow Peter into the empty tomb.

Heads, ears, hearts, hands, and feet. These are the instruments that, when a Leader is not leading well, becomes the means of real pain for those who follow. The challenge is for those with Leader traits to learn how to regularly surrender their traits to the True Leader. Which I hope to illustrate next time.

Because in God’s kingdom healthy Leaders must practice being followers.

Running with Horses

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Initial Insights on Those with Leader Traits

It was June in the year 323 BC when Alexander the Great died in Babylon. When he fell at age thirty-three to illness and heavy drinking, Alexander left no heir. Infighting ensued to settle who would rule what was that young man’s vast empire. In Plutarch: The Age of Alexander , it says, “In the struggle for power which developed, the infantry and the cavalry, which broadly speaking represented the peasantry and the aristocracy respectively, were at first ranged on opposing sides” (p. 515).

Using Plutarch’s description, “ranged on opposing sides,” imagine a spectrum with infantry to the left side and cavalry to the right side. Which then places the blue-collar workers on the left side and the white-collar workers on the right side. To knead that idea out just a little more, I’m saying we have plodders on foot to the left side and horses to the right.

More particularly, the categories I’ve come up with to help me understand and serve people are Helpers to the left and Leaders to the right. I’d like to think this binary way of seeing people’s personalities has Biblical precedent, like Abel to the left and Cain to the right. Or Jacob to the left and Esau to the right. Or Mary to the left and Martha to the right.

My last three posts centered around the description of and insights into people who lean toward the left side of the spectrum—those with Helper traits. For a quick summary, Helpers tend to be creative, supportive, grace-giving, contemplative, long-suffering, forgiving, nurturing, deferential, merciful, patient, gentle, and identify with those who are or have less. I think of Helpers as being emotional processors—they think through their feelings. Consequently, because that processing is deep and entangled, Helpers are often slower to the start line and take longer to finish—on pretty much everything. Think Plutarch’s infantry.

With this post and likely for the next couple of posts, I want to shift attention to the right side of the spectrum—to those with Leader traits. To be clear, these two sets of traits—Helpers and Leaders—are not mutually exclusive. I’m not saying, for example, that because Helpers are known for their patience, therefore Leaders are never patient. I am saying, however, that Leaders will not be characterized by or known for their patience in the way that Helpers are.

What, then, would I say are the traits that characterize Leaders?

Let me begin by going back to ancient Babylon, where Alexander the Great died. Three hundred years before Alexander, it was revealed to the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah that God would be using the great Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar to take the kingdom of Judah into exile. Sadly, for Jeremiah, he would live to see the day.

In one of the exchanges that Jeremiah has with Yahweh, the God of Israel, Yahweh replies and says to Jeremiah, “If you have run with infantrymen and they have tired you out, how can you compete with horses” (12:5, NASB2020)? In context, God is warning Jeremiah by saying if you’re struggling to be ok during times of non-conflict (i.e., the infantrymen), then you’re really going to struggle when the invading Babylonians arrive (i.e., the horses).

What I’m going to do now is take Jeremiah 12:5 out of context by using the imagery to fit my personality profile of Helpers and Leaders. Just like Plutarch contrasts the infantry with the cavalry. We have infantrymen (Helpers) and horses (Leaders). Infantrymen cannot keep up with horses. But then they’re not supposed to since they have a different role to play. Infantrymen are designed to follow rules, stay inside the lines, and don’t talk back. They march. Horses are designed to get horsey, they jump around, they’re known for their capacity. They run.

One diagnostic that separates Helpers from Leaders is decision-making. At the point of crisis—are you in or are you out—Helpers will hesitate while Leaders will pull the trigger. I was reminded of this yet again in my recent Bible reading. I was working my way through the book of Judges, which provides one case study after another of those with Leader traits. And guess what? Horses show up.

As a quick aside, horses in the Bible mostly show up in the context of battle. They are a symbol of military strength and national security. Which is why many of the ancient pagan kings accumulated them. Yahweh, however, has a low opinion of horses and chariots. Israel’s kings were forbidden to accumulate horses (Deut. 17:16) because, like men, horses are made of “flesh” (Isaiah 31:1-3). King David captures the essence of God’s teaching on this when he writes, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm 20:7 ESV).

Now back to Judges. Because of Israel’s unfaithfulness, God gave them over to Jabin, the king of Canaan. Jabin’s army commander was Sisera, and Sisera had at his disposal 900 chariots. Let’s just say that Jabin and Sisera were big horse boys. And the Bible minces no words on the way Sisera raised hell on Israel for twenty years with all those horses (4:3). When God decided to put an end to it, the Lord raised a flash flood on all those horses and washed them away (5:19-22).

As for Sisera, that big horse guy, he was able to get away on foot (4:15). Which now puts him on the left side of the spectrum where he’s more vulnerable. And I have to say, at least for myself, the irony of this story from here on makes me laugh. Almost to tears. Possibly as an echo of the way God laughs at the nations and kings who rage against Him (Psalm 2:4).

While still on foot, running but not with horses, Sisera makes it to the tent of Heber who happens to be at relative peace with king Jabin. Heber is evidently out of town when Sisera shows up, but Jael, Heber’s wife is there. And it’s soon clear that Jael has Leader traits. Partly because of her discernment (Leaders’ judgments are not clouded by their emotions like they are with Helpers) and partly because of her decisiveness.

Jael assures Sisera that he’s in a safe place and gets him to calm down. She is not caught off guard. She quickly sizes up the situation and formulates a plan. Jael gives Sisera a sedative and puts him to bed. When she sees Sisera sound asleep, Jael does one of the most Leader-trait things possible—she takes a tent peg and hammers it repeatedly into and then through Sisera’s head.

There’s no way Jael has Helper traits. If so, she would have been pacing around the tent second-guessing whether to do it. She would have wanted to get a Sharpie out to put a dot on Sisera’s temple to have a precise target. She would have tapped a few times on the tent peg to get it set, and then after the first real blow—and it’s doubtful a Helper could get there—she likely would have stopped to throw up.

But no, not Jael. When Deborah sings of the victory that day, she says of Jael, “She pounded Sisera, she pierced his head, she split and struck through his temple” (5:26 NKJV). Decisive. Determined. High yards after contact (see last month’s post). Justice-seeking. Truth-telling. Finisher.

And with that I will end for now. More on those with Leader traits in my next posts.

Because God has given leader traits to some, and for those who lead, they should lead with zeal (Romans 12:8).

Smooth Sailing, YAC, and Dreams

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 01:36:33 GMT

Still More Insights on Helper Traits

When you get down to the last five cents of toothpaste in the tube, do you work and press and squeeze until you get all the paste out? Or do you just toss it and get a new tube? In this post, I’m not going to try to squeeze everything out of the tube of insights I have on helper traits. But in continuation of my last two posts, I want to note a few more characteristics of people I’m calling helpers before I move on to describing people with leader traits.

Frictionless is one of the words I’ve settled on that is often characteristic of helpers. Helpers would love a world that has no friction in it. And what would that look like? Few responsibilities. Simple decisions. No hard conversations. Do one thing at a time. No stress at work or home. Helpers want to live in a world where things run predictably and it’s smooth sailing. Think island life.

This is one of the reasons helpers can have a hard time staying in healthy physical condition—because to stay in shape requires that you voluntarily stress your body. It’s also why helpers tend to be conflict avoidant since conflict equals stress. Decisions also equal stress. Multi-tasking equals stress.

Which leads me to two related ideas.

First, helpers tend to have low YAC. For those who are not into football, YAC is a statistic applied to running backs and receivers. Once those offensive players have the ball and begin to run, they are quickly going to get hit. Some players have a reputation for being one-hit players, meaning they get hit once and fall down. But the players who are more determined and have stronger resilience get hit multiple times and keep going. That’s called Yards After Contact (YAC).

Helpers don’t like getting hit. If a true helper was handed the football and saw conflict running at them, a helper would prefer to just run out of bounds. Meaning, avoid the hard conversation. For example, if a small business is owned and operated by a helper, these people will often undercharge for their service, or let the customer deny payment, because the helper is willing to be cheated if it means there’s no conflict.

This same phenomenon happens in parenting scenarios where a helper parent will not want to upset the child. In which case the child can become entitled and learns to flout authority. I’ve seen plenty of family dynamics where a leader parent is overruled and controlled by a helper parent allied with helper children. In these cases, a parent is just a noun. Forget the verb of parenting.

There are, to be sure, times when helpers do not need to keep taking hits. As in domestic situations that involve either repeated or patterned physical or emotional abuse. These cases are particularly troublesome, partly because it’s the instinct of a helper to want to please. What often happens is the helper spouse takes the mistreatment too long for fear of incurring the other’s displeasure. I don’t want to unpack the Hegelian Master/Slave dialectic here, but I’ll at least note that when the Slave (in this case, a helper) finally decides to self-advocate for equal value and respect, the Master (in this case, a person with leader traits) will predictably pitch a fit. Which is exactly the power play leaders use to stay in the Master seat.

Second, people with helper traits are, by definition, not leaders. Leaders tend to think strategically and are goal setters. That can entail something as small as making a to-do list or as long-range as a multi-year outlook. But people with helper traits operate on a day-to-day basis.

When helper people consider the future, they dream about it. Helpers are not strategic and not sure of next steps. In reality, then, helper’s most important day is today (while leader people’s most important day is the end date of their goal). Because helper people are not natural goal-setters, they operate instead on motivations.

And now we’re back to helper people being emotional processors. Since motivations are essentially feelings, and since feelings come and go, this is why helper people have a hard time sustaining disciplines. A helper might get motivated for a day, a week, or three months. But eventually they lose that lovin’ feeling and there goes the motivation.

This is also why helpers are not visionaries. If, in fact, a vision is a series of goals laid out in succession, but helpers are not goal-setters, you can see why a wife with leader traits is very frustrated by her husband with helper traits who cannot come up with a vision for their marriage and family.

Now, to squeeze the tube of helper traits just a bit, here are a two more characteristics among others that are sometimes true of helpers:

Helpers can have a hard time delegating. At the emotional level, this is often due to the fact that people with helper traits don’t like to be put upon. And as a result, they assume others wouldn’t like that either. So helpers end up just doing the task themselves. Then privately aren’t happy about all the work they’re doing.

Helpers also have a problem with lying. Not bald-faced lies but lies that are half-truths or what I call passive lies. Rather than risking upsetting someone by telling the truth, the whole, truth, and nothing but the truth, helpers will compromise the truth to keep the status quo.

What’s a helper to do with all of this? For now, I’ll at least suggest two things. My theological understanding of persons is a dichotomist position—meaning I believe we have a body and a soul. There’s the physical you and the metaphysical you. Both domains have equal value (meaning Jesus died and rose to provide for both your soul and your body), are interconnected, and both should be cared for.

I’m also of the belief that much of the life’s work of helpers is learning to manage their anxiety. At the physical level, much can be said about nutrition, sleep, and exercise. Managing anxiety can also take the form of learning how to breath before, during, and after stressful moments. People who have leader traits or who tend to over-spiritualize things will mock this idea. Except there’s simply too much solid research literature on how stress releasing it is to slow down one’s inner processing (anxiety for helpers is often physically experienced as racing or overwhelming processing) through deep breathing.

For the more spiritually minded, I’ll offer that after God creates a body for the first human, God then breaths into the man’s nostrils—not his mouth—the breath of life (Gen. 2:7). Now look up some deep breathing exercises and see how they instruct you to do it—mostly in through your nose and out via your mouth. I just think that’s a bit interesting.

Then on the spiritual side, as I’ve noted in the past two month’s posts, growing in trusting God by stepping courageously into the fiery furnace—like hard conversations, for example—is a real practice. Yes, any fiery furnace looks intimidating, but as Daniel’s three friends found out, Jesus shows up in those times to sustain, encourage, and enable you. True, there are valuable communication skills to learn for such times, but at the emotional level it’s the very real presence of Christ who keeps us steady and grounded.

“Because God is my helper, I sing for joy in the shadow of His wings. We cling to God; His strong right hand holds me securely” (Psalm 63:7-8).

Overcoming the Frenetic Standstill

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

More Help for the Helpers

It was night and I was driving on an unfamiliar, curving country road. Tamarah was with me, and I was toggling back and forth between chatting with her and looking at the map on the car screen. Though my wife might beg to differ, I consider myself a better than average driver. That said, I wasn’t paying attention to anything going on behind me.

It was more than alarming, then, when out of nowhere an ambulance with lights flashing—no siren—showed up hot on my tail. Then, ALL AT THE SAME TIME: there’s a ditch on my right, there’s oncoming traffic, Tamarah is shouting at me to use the approaching driveway, and the ambulance driver decides to bring clarity by turning on his siren while also stomping on his horn like someone’s life depends on it.

Whatever is the opposite of grace under pressure, it was happening in our car right there. I was scrambling to make everyone happy—the ambulance driver, his fellow EMT, the supposedly dying patient, my wife—but no one was happy.

In my binary spectrum way of considering personality differences, we have leader traits and helper traits. These are not mutually exclusive, but you will tend to be more of one than the other. I spent last month’s post writing some observations on and words of encouragement to those who have helper traits. This month, I want to make a couple more observations about those with helper traits—of whom I am chief.

As I wrote last month, I consider people with helper traits to be emotional processors. Such people think via our emotions—that is, we use our emotional state for sensing, motivation, and decision-making. There are pros and cons to this way of processing.

One deficit of emotional processors is that we’re prone to getting flooded. When too much information comes upon us quickly—like that crazy ambulance scene that occurred just two nights ago—people with helper traits react by involuntarily shutting down or by flipping into uncharacteristic aggressive control mode.

Shutting down is essentially going into survival mode—flight, fight, or freeze. To borrow a phrase from the French cultural theorist, Paul Virilio, “frenetic standstill” captures the idea—that everything around us is in flux and yet nothing is happening because nothing can happen. On the other hand, flipping into aggressive control mode in the hands of an emotional processor is a last-ditch effort to get all the craziness going on in their head to stop.

Another deficit of emotional processors is the strong desire to please. Put negatively, people with helper traits try to avoid situations in which personal rejection is possible. People like this tend to compromise themselves to keep the other emotionally stable and safe. Think of helper traits as room regulators, always trying to keep the relationship temperature comfortable.

This tendency can help at times, as in de-escalating a conflict. On the other hand, such acquiescing is how people like this end up getting lost in their marriage, bound to family systems and secrets, and rolled over in work environments. To keep the peace and/or the status quo, helpers regularly give in. Why would someone do this?

Because a core value—if not the main value—of people with helper traits is attachment. The pain worse than me doing what I don’t want to do is the pain of another acting or sounding like they are rejecting me—conveyed through something as mild as a negative tone to something more extreme like physical violence. When the desire for attachment is elevated to the level of need, psychologist refer to such a relationship as “fused.”

Fused relationships cannot be described in any biblical way as loving since the need for attachment means I’m loving you not for your sake but for my sake. Truly loving relationships develop and mature over time, but fused relationships do not since the needy one seeks regular contact, validation, and agreement from the other. Any sense of individuality within the relationship is blurred as the helper-trait is seeking over-attachment out of the weakness of need.

Evidence that someone with helper traits is growing in Christ is that they are increasingly willing to risk finding their voice and differentiating themselves from the other. As in, can I be okay even when I know someone I love is not okay with me? People with leader traits have little struggle doing this since they tend to be more internally secure and confident. But for people with helper traits to speak and act more autonomously as a secure individual requires something beyond their natural instincts.

For example, let’s say a young adult man with helper traits gets married and then finds that his mother and his wife don’t get along. He is regularly frustrated as he finds himself trying to keep both women happy. It’s an impossible task. When he comes to my office, we’ll eventually get to the point where I’ll say to him something like, “You cannot have it both ways. One of these women is going to be disappointed or upset with you, and you get to decide which one.”

If he decides to play it both ways, then he’ll be miserable as neither one of these women will feel his love and neither will respect him. If he decides to commit to loving his wife as he should and placing limits on his mother, then he’ll feel the periodic displeasure of his mother. But that will be more than compensated for from the love and respect he’ll get from his wife.

As a Christ-follower, differentiating oneself from others means that you can maintain yourself in relationship with another, especially when the other is pressuring you to conform to what they want. That young man can agree with his mother if he genuinely agrees, but he can also respectfully disagree with her without feeling like he’s losing himself when he gets pushback or threats. He also shouldn’t leave the relationship altogether just because he’s feeling the discomfort of his mother’s disapproval.

Where does the Christ-follower get this ability? The answer is one’s ongoing and growing relationship with Jesus and his Spirit. Whether it’s Moses speaking to Pharoah, Esther speaking to king Ahasuerus, Daniel’s three friends speaking to Nebuchadnezzar, or any of the prophets speaking truth to power, they share what Peter and John experienced when engaging the Sanhedrin: “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).

Or, to turn that around, we test out God’s promises by practicing standing, speaking, and acting according to the wisdom and truth entrusted to us. We find out that in the crucible of relationship friction, as uncomfortable as that can be, we don’t die. In faith, we believe Christ’s Spirit is right there with us, in the fire and in the flood, keeping us fully attached to Jesus.

Because maturing Christ-followers are increasingly less needy for others’ approval as we grow in our internalizing of God Almighty’s eternal approval of us in his Son.

Rockets, Lions, and Shields

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Take Courage, Fearful Friend

Three weeks ago, on January 16, SpaceX sent one of their massive Starships heavenward. Around eight minutes after launch, the mega rocket exploded sending fiery debris streaking across the sky over the Caribbean islands. Despite the setback, the accidental pyrotechnic display was a sight to behold.

Moviemaker and explorer, James Cameron, posted soon afterward on X, “NASA has this phrase that they like: ‘Failure is not an option.’ But failure has to be an option in art and exploration, because it’s a leap of faith. And no important endeavor that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks. So, that’s the thought I would leave with you, is that whatever you’re doing, failure is an option, but fear is not.”

As a Christian, I’m going to take Cameron’s thought and reframe it. Jesus tells his disciples to take up their cross and follow him. The “take up” part of cross-bearing means it’s a voluntary step of faith. And the cross part means there’s risk—as in, you might lose, you might suffer, parts of you might die off. And with that come varying degrees of fear.

For example, loving and forgiving are voluntary and risky. We don’t know what’s on the other side of those actions, but we follow Jesus down that road and see what comes of it.

It’s also true that some people are more fearful than others. The more fearful people—and I count myself among them—are the ones who happen to be risk-averse, conflict-avoidant, and prone to catastrophizing. People like this are emotional processors. We think via our emotions and feelings. And because all that computing is deep down in our gut, it takes emotional processors a long time to figure out what we’re really thinking.

If you ask an emotional processor a good question that we didn’t see coming, our best answer is going to be 24-36 hours after we’ve been asked. But then it’s too late. And then we beat ourselves up over the dumb reply we gave yesterday. Emotional processors can get hung in a state of indecision when the choice is non-moral. As in, where would you like to eat, Chipotle or Moe’s? Uh…um…well…hmm. Meanwhile, sequential processors are losing their minds. For these and other reasons, emotional processors sometimes lack confidence in themselves as they see others who process faster.

Since I’m subject to fears, I’m always on the lookout for help to engage it. I’ve learned, sadly, that my fears aren’t going away. Instead, I own my fears and repent of them. I actually say to myself at the moment of pressure, “Jon, repent of your fears,” and that’s two-second shorthand for, “Step in.” My instinct is always to step back in those situations, and if it’s a mountain lion, then sure. But if it’s a hard conversation or a decision to be made, then step in.

It's just that fear-based people tend to make lions out of cats. “There’s a lion outside! I shall be slain in the streets” (Prov. 22:13). Maybe, but probably not. Instead, “The righteous are bold as a lion” (Prov. 28:1). And where do the righteous get their boldness to step in?

I recently found more help with this in the past couple weeks as I follow a Scripture reading plan for this year. On January 11th, I read Psalm 11. Verse 1 reads, “In the LORD I take refuge; how can you say to my soul, ‘Flee like a bird to your mountain’?” David, under duress, is being advised by others to flee. After doing a bit of digging into this Psalm, I came across this little poem by John Newton,

“Though hot the fight, why quit the field?

Why must I either fly or yield,

Since Jesus is my mighty shield!”

For some reason, the imagery made an impression on me, and I walked into that day with some more courage. But then I also remembered similar language in Psalm 3. I went back and took another look at that psalm. Verse 3 says, “But you, Lord, are a shield around me; you are my glory, the one who holds my head high” (NLT).

It so happens that back in the day, there were different kinds of shields for different miliary actions. You might have a small, circular shield attached to one of your arms for self-defense while you wielded a sword with your other arm. But then there’s a much larger shield that’s nearly full-body in height and practically wraps around you. Those larger shields are used when besieging a fortress—a situation where you’re either going forward, following the Lord, or you’re at least holding steady while the enemy pours their hatred upon you. Either way, God shields me IN the danger, he does not keep me from it.

One of my good friends once asked me, “What is the difference between confidence and courage?” Since he was unwilling to give me twenty-four hours to get back to him on that, he answered his own question: “Confidence feels good.” Man.

Upon reflection, the reason courage doesn’t feel good when summoned is because it’s in active tension with the fear you have to hold at bay. I’ll venture that in many pressured situations, especially for those who are fear-based emotional processors, what’s needed is not more information but more courage. If you need some time to gather courage from the Lord, I get it. But then I’d encourage you to give yourself a time stamp to be done by and then step in.

This now gets me thinking about my favorite meta-narrative of the Gospel, The Lord of the Rings . As the story builds to its epic ending, the king, Aragorn, sits on his horse facing his own soldiers. They are at the Black Gate of Mordor, and as the gate begins to open and the Eye of Sauron lights upon them and the horde of evil comes rushing at them, Aragorn says this:

“Hold your ground! Hold your ground! Sons of Gondor! Of Rohan! My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!”

Or in the original story, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

Because the shields of Men will shatter but the shield of our God will not.

A Surface Excavation of Some Deep Dirt

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 01:41:45 GMT

Can You Dig It?

The sump pump under my house recently died. Since the crawl space is tight, I enlisted my limber, older son to join me to pull the old pump out and replace it with a new one. By the time we were finished, the clothes we were wearing was stained all over from the red clay of upstate South Carolina.

That’s a far cry from the rich, black farmland soil where I was born in central Iowa. Push a spade into that dirt, turn it over, and all kinds of life springs forth. There are the obvious creatures—worms, ants, beetles, snails, and slugs. But then there is all the microscopic life we can’t see—bacteria, fungi, viruses. One estimate indicates that in a single gram of soil there could be as many as 50,000 species of microscopic organisms. In other words, there’s a lot of life going on down there under our feet.

I’ve had random thoughts about dirt before, but my sump pump saga has me thinking it’s finally time to put some of those thoughts down on paper. I’ll say there is no New Year message here. Sorry. I just happen to be thinking about dirt these days. So, for your consideration, and hopefully for your edification…

~ When God created the first human, God created him from the soil of the garden. It happens that the Hebrew word for soil is “adam” and there’s some discussion among scholars as to when adam in Genesis is first used as a personal name. Regardless, adam does refer to the first person God creates, both in relation to the fact that Adam comes from dirt and that is his name.

~ It also happens that adam can mean “red” or “ruddy.” We could debate if we should take this literally, as in the first man was red-skinned or ruddy-complected. Either way, the Bible’s main point is to source the man as coming from the ground. Secondarily, I do think we have a strong argument to make that Adam had color in his skin. We refer to people as humans—hue-man—colored-man.

~ Not to gross anyone out, but we come from dirt and there are living things in that dirt. That’s why, as you grow older, things start growing out of your body. We’re slowly returning to dirt as we age. Which I think somehow connects to all those ceremonial laws in the Old Testament regarding the health and possible sicknesses of your skin and hair. Leprosy is definitely no bueno! In the education of the OT priests, there was likely a six-credit class called Dermatology 201.

~ This is why my family knows that whenever my mortal body goes into death-sleep, I want a natural burial. No embalming. No fancy casket. No concrete entombment. Just bury me in the dirt like a seed, plant a tree beside me, and wait. When the King returns, I will rise again. Praise God!

~ Just last week, I was watching a documentary on the 20th anniversary of the December 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that took around 230,000 souls in one cataclysmic day. As the waters began to recede, one scene that struck me was that of survivors kneeling and touching the ground with their lips. It was an act of abasement, of humbling oneself. The Christian Scripture provides examples where this same act is done for similar reasons (e.g., Job 2:12; Ps. 72:9; Lam. 2:10, 3:29). I wonder what it would take for us to learn how to so humble ourselves.

~ There’s a reason I don’t like the taste of hummus. It turns out that the Latin word, hummus, means soil, or earth, and that’s where we get the word humility. I’m convinced it requires some kind of supernatural act for a person to like eating hummus. I have not arrived.

~ While dirt is often associated with the lowering of oneself, it is also associated with greed and ego—as in, rich men, strongmen, and nations fighting over it. Yes, fighting over dirt! If history could give us a head count, I bet it would be worse-than-horrifying to know the number of lives lost in skirmishes, fights, and wars over dirt.

~ This past year I re-read Leo Tolstoy’s short story, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” If you’ve never read it, or it’s been a while, I’d encourage you to read it.

~ Tolstoy’s story reminds me of Johnny Cash. If you don’t want to read Tolstoy’s story or don’t have time for it, then you really should listen to Johnny’s brutally honest and powerful song, “Hurt.” Better yet, watch Johnny sing it on YouTube ( here ). It’s a biographical sketch of his life, and here are a few lines from it:

What have I become, my sweetest friend

Everyone I know goes away in the end

And you could have it all, my empire of dirt

I will let you down, I will make you hurt

~ In the story of Job, part of his initial torment is when fire falls from the sky and consumes his property (1:16). Commentators Keil and Delitzsch say this fire is likely not ordinary lightening but more like brimstone falling upon the land (as in what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah). It’s interesting then that when the Satan continues on by attacking Job’s body, he does so in the form of fiery brimstone-like boils that cover Job from head to toe. The Hebrew reads, “burning sore.” Job is portrayed as a ruler, or king, and kings are tied to the land they rule, so it makes sense that the Satan would then go after both the king and his dirt.

~ In 2 Samuel 6, David is bringing the ark of the covenant back to Jerusalem. The ark was being pulled on a cart by oxen. At one point along the way, the oxen stumbled, and the ark began to slide. A man named Uzzah was right there as it was happening. Wanting to preserve the sanctity of the ark, Uzzah reached out his hand and grabbed the ark to prevent it from hitting the ground. Upon which God immediately strikes Uzzah dead. One commentator I read years ago, and who I cannot seem to track down now, said the reason Uzzah died is because he thought his hand was cleaner than the dirt on the ground! So many thoughts there worth teasing out at some point…

~ Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden where this all begins. There are rivers that flow out of and through that rich soil to nurture and bless all that it touches. Jesus likens our heart to a garden and a river flows out of it. When we’re living under sin, what flows out of us are defiling issues. But when the Redeemer invades the ground of our heart and does His purifying work, then living water bubbles up and flows out to nurture and bless all that we touch.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Horrors and Their Trauma

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Mingled with Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Just ten days ago, I received a text from a family member asking prayers for a family related to their business. There had been a car accident on November 20 in which twin brothers (18) and their sister (16) died in a car accident. I don’t know the family, but I do know the surviving family will never be the same.

What happened in that tragic car accident is called a horror. All horrors entail an uninvited invasion of loss—death-like—to some aspect of a person’s life with the result that their life is set on a radically different path. Now think of horrors as running along a spectrum from common to gross. The horror could come in the form of a congenital birth defect, or in the form of domestic abuse; it could come in the form of a scammer who bankrupts an elderly couple, or in the form sexual harassment at work.

What complicates recovery is the response many people have after experiencing a horror. If a horror is the experience, the effect is trauma. Counselors refer to such victims as trauma survivors because survival is the new reality in which these people experience the world. Trauma survivors often struggle with doubts about the goodness of God (In light of this, can he can be trusted?); doubts about the possibility of meaningful living (In light of this, is there safety anywhere?); and doubts about whether there is hope for a better form of human life (In light of this, will these memories always haunt me and will life always be this way?).

The nature of horrors can be so appalling that the human mind cannot fully take it in at the time it occurs. One author says it this way: “Memories of [horrors] become fragmented, even as they take up residence in the mind where they have a life of their own. Contradictory though it may seem, these memories can be neither forgotten nor escaped, even though they exist as shattered moments of experience” (Kathleen O’Connor, Jeremiah: Pain and Promise , p. 3).

I’ve had my share of trauma survivors in my office who, when working through a horror in their life, involuntarily tremble, recoil, and often cry. Surprisingly, they almost always apologize to me for that, which I then quickly reassure them that they should take their time and continue giving voice to their experience. Just how we see people in the Bible responding to horrors done to them.

The most graphic Old Testament example of a life of horrors would be the prophet, Jeremiah. We know that Jeremiah was by nature a tender person, yet God gave to Jeremiah while he was a very young man a message that was completely in opposition to the people. For his entire ministry, everyone mocked and laughed at Jeremiah. As he put it, “I am hated everywhere I go” (15:10). At one point, as the weight of his mission bore down on him, Jeremiah pled with God, “Lord, don’t terrorize me” (17:17).

One peak of terror Jeremiah experienced comes in chapter 20 where a priest named Pashhur had Jeremiah attacked and physically tortured. Jeremiah then curses and lashes out at God, “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed” (20:7). Even Job, in all his horrors, never cursed God with his mouth like Jeremiah did.

After that, from chapter 21 right through to the end of the book, scholars note that Jeremiah has no chronology. This could be due to Jeremiah’s assistant, Baruch, who re-wrote Jeremiah’s prophecies after king Jehoiakim burned the first edition. Another possibility is that Jeremiah’s letter “may be shaped as it is because Jeremiah wrote it piecemeal in the midst of his turbulent life so that it reads more like what political prisoners and refugees write than what persons writing in settled places and times produce” ( ESV Study Bible , p. 1363). In other words, we can read Jeremiah’s book as trauma literature.

It is sometimes helpful for people who have suffered a horror, or are in an ongoing horror, to hear this kind of detail from the Scriptures. Yet survivors still have questions. One of which Jeremiah asks: “Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look and take note! Search her squares to see if you can find a man, one who does justice and seeks truth , that I may pardon her” (5:1).

Christians cry out, we have such a man! When the Son of God incarnated himself, he willingly chose to enter the house of horrors as a fellow-sufferer. Right from the outset, Herod, along with others who would follow, sought to destroy the Christ. He endured a lifetime of horrors, and through it all we have a steadfast Immanuel, God with us. As such, he now opens the possibility of justice and truth for all the horrors of this life.

Jesus gives us a taste of what’s to come by both condemning horrors and making them right. He cast out demons and he healed the sick and lame. He set captives free, and he brought the dead back to life. But Jesus also redefined and intensified what constitutes a horror with his famous, “You have heard that it is said… but I say to you…” indictments of those in power. To their dismay, the horror-makers will have justice done upon them.

If that were not enough, there are tidings of comfort and joy available now to the sufferer. The benefit to Christ-followers is that in his incarnation, the Son of God has suffered as an earthly insider and has general empathy for all of us. Further, the indwelling of Christ’s Spirit in us means that God has specific empathy for each particular Christian. And therefore, he knows from the inside of your particular life what it’s like for you to suffer as you do!

Christians in their horrors and traumas have on their side two strong and gentle advocates. Christ in heaven is advocating for us to the Father. And the Spirit of Christ in our heart advocates for us, and to us, helping us grow in Christ to better process, heal, endure, and eventually overcome all that is against us in this life.

I’ll close with a stanza from Martin Luther, a man who did most of his work while sick and in hiding. Christians sing these truths in faith, grateful for the first Advent of Christ and eagerly looking for his return.

Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side,
The Man of God's own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is He!
Lord Sabaoth His Name,
From age to age, the same.
And He must win the battle.

Fellow Christian, may the Prince of Peace reign in your heart and over home this Christmas season.

The Deviation Spiral (Part 3)

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Mastering the Marital Garden

One day last week, Tamarah and I set out on a morning walk. We were not more than three blocks from leaving our house when Tamarah asked me if I cared if she mowed the grass later that day. She said it was dual-purpose: mow the grass while also bagging the newly fallen leaves. I had, just the week before, put down on the lawn a winter feed fertilizer. In light of that, my response to Tamarah was to say something like, “I do not want the grass cut, but I will adjust the mower height so you can use it to pick up the leaves.”

She responded with something like, “But why can’t I mow the grass, too? It’s barely grown, so going over it with the mower at the usual height will not hurt the grass.” I said, “It hasn’t rained in forever, and I want to give the grass a break and a chance to absorb the fertilizer I put down.” I can’t one-hundred percent say that’s how grass fertilizer works, but that’s the rationale I’m sticking with. We went back and forth like that for a while, then a period of silent walking, and then we changed the topic.

Walking on, I said something like, “Back to the grass. I try to honor your requests when you ask something of me, like step out of the way when a car is coming toward us on our walk. And then on those times when I don’t, you get upset with me. Now I’m asking something of you—I’ll change the mower height setting so you can pick up the leaves, but please do not mow the grass.”

Silence.

A few blocks later, Tamarah willingly offered, “I’m sorry. I won’t mow the grass.” And I kindly said, “Thank you.”

For the point I want to make, some readers of this are going to think my example is lame compared to what they have going on. True enough. But my story here is just the most recent example of a thirty-four-year marriage in which Tamarah and I have learned to manage the inevitable battles, big and small, that every couple faces. The larger point I hope to make is, what is the Christian way of managing the deviation spiral in marriage?

Considering what I wrote in my October newsletter—that Adam is oriented to his work and Eve is oriented to her home, and that man (‘ ish ) and woman (‘ ishshah ) are oriented to each other, I now want to add a third and final category—also from the early chapters of Genesis—that further inform the marital deviation spiral.

The third category to factor in has to do with roles within the marriage union. To be clear, roles are different than worth and value. Both the man and the woman are created in God’s image, equally, and Peter says to husbands that wives are to be treated as, “a fellow heir of the grace of life.” For husbands to treat wives as less than that is to incur a severe penalty on himself (1 Pt. 3:7). Think, then, of Christian marriage as a coin. Whether we’re looking at his side or her side of the coin, the value is the same. But God in Scripture also uses terms that distinguishes and differentiates the two sides by giving them roles to fulfill.

When these marital roles are functioning in synchronicity (not friction-free!), it creates a beautiful, effective, and fruitful union. However, when these roles become corrupted—and they can do so in at least two different ways—the result is painful, ugly, and sometimes horrific. Let’s begin with the husband, since that’s where Scripture begins.

In the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2, the sequence of the man being created first is of significance. Paul is open about this (1 Cor. 11:8-9; 1 Tim. 2:13). One thing this means is that the man is imbued with authority—he is given the responsibility to garden the garden, and his wife stands at the apex of all he’s responsible for. Man is to bring and maintain order, to oversee his world, and to cultivate his garden in such a way that all that’s under him flourishes.

But a married man can go bad in his role at any time by either under- or over-identifying with his role. If he under-identifies with his authority, the husband can shirk or shrink back from his responsibilities. He will garden the domains that come naturally to him but will run from those domains that are too painful or require sustained energy. His wife, and if there are any children, suffer from varying degrees of neglect. This man is often shot through with fear.

If the married man over-identifies with his role, the husband can tend to operate autonomously as if he doesn’t have to give an account to the Master Gardener. He makes unilateral decisions that those in his house must accept without question. The wife will suffer a severe penalty if she’s interpreted by him as disrespectful. His wife, and if there are any children, suffer from varying kinds and degrees of abuse. This man is often shot through with anger.

As for the wife’s role, the word God uses in describing her is ‘ ezer , which is often translated as “helper.” Much has been written about this word, with most noting that the word is often used to describe God. It is obvious that the word itself implies that people—and in the case of marriage, husbands—are not self-sufficient. Dig deeper and we learn something more profound in defining the wife’s role in marriage.

Every time the word ‘ ezer is used in the Old Testament, it is used to describe a military or political ally. For example, the traveler of Psalm 121 begins his journey by contemplating the dangers that lie before him, and asks, “Where does my help come from?” His reply is, “My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

I will again credit Peter Leithart (as I did in Part 2 of this series) when he more specifically defines ‘ ezer as “battle-mate.” In his little book, The Glory of Man , Leithart says much more than what I can only summarize here when he writes, “Adam’s ‘ ezer will be similar, but across the table, face-to-face. Her power will be complementary—just as powerful, but a different power. The battle-mate’s power is a necessary power, for Adam cannot be ‘good’ or whole without her. We know there there’s a hierarchy in marriage; the husband is the head, and the wife submits to the husband as to Christ (Eph. 5:22-33). But she submits as a queen to a king” (pp. 65, 66).

If the married woman under-identifies with her role, she too quickly acquiesces to avoid conflict and asks forgiveness too quickly for the same reason. She loses her individuality for the sake of either the marital union or for peace. But it’s a false peace. Her husband might feel served but he doesn’t respect her. This woman is often shot through with fear.

If the married woman over-identifies with her role, her lost sense of accountability to the True Helper will cause her battle-mate approach to emasculate her husband. She can become fierce, and while she cannot subdue her husband physically, she will put him down with the intensity of her words and emotions. This woman is often shot through with anger.

Finally, if you take the under- or over-identified husband in his authority, and you take the under- or over-identified wife as a battle-mate, and mash that all together, we will find different kinds of marriages based on those combinations of couples. And it’s each couple’s life-task to master their tendencies by God’s grace and with the Spirit’s help so that what would naturally become a jungle instead supernaturally becomes a garden.

Back to the grass. In the early years of my marriage, I would under-identify with my authority and Tamarah would over-identify with being the battle-mate. I still don’t like conflict and Tamarah still wrestles with following my lead at points, but this past week’s argument showed what growth can look like when both husband and wife are finding their worth, identity, purpose, and roles in Christ. It’s then that we live together as true partners and not as competitors.

Because even though Tamarah asked me again two days ago if she could mow the grass, I said not until after the next rain falls.

The Deviation Spiral (Part 2)

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Insights on the Original Normal for Marriage

I ended last month’s newsletter with the thought that every deviation spiral begins with an original normal. For the air boss responsible for pilot safety at an airshow, the original normal includes a hard copy plan with clearly spelled out details for keeping airborne planes separated. When we think about what the original normal looks like for relationships, and marriage in particular, Christians refer to the Bible as their source for first principles. When we deviate from first principles, we should not be surprised that people and relationships spin into ever-increasing deviancy before crashing.

I also gave two examples last month of what a deviation spiral can look like in marriage. In those examples, I put an emphasis on how different the couple’s personalities were from one another. And that those differences were contributors to the spiral. I believe that’s true, and I take time in marriage counseling to show couples the content and impact of that dynamic. However, according to the early chapters of Genesis, there are deeper realities going on that inform our marital spiral experiences with hints as to how to correct the spin.

Before I go any farther, I should acknowledge that most of the insights I detail next come from Peter Leithart and a lecture he gave on The Theopolis Podcast, episode 729 (“Male and Female He Made Them”). Peter received his Ph.D. from Cambridge and is the President of Theopolis Institute in Birmingham, AL. His fascinating lecture has far more detail than I can cover here. For my purposes, I’ll point out just two insights that connect to my main point of identifying marriage’s original normal and the motive and means of working back to it.

First, in the creation account of Genesis 1, why is Adam not having a partner the one thing that God says is not good? It seems obvious that Adam could use some help to care for the garden. We could go further and say Adam needs help to have dominion over the earth. Beyond that, Adam as a male needs help to reproduce and fill the earth as he's called to do. Therefore, we might conclude that woman is made to fulfill a functional need that Adam has. But that’s a very transactional, superficial relationship.

Digging deeper into the text of Genesis 1, God doesn't create man the same way He creates the woman. He could have formed a woman from the dust, just like the man, after the animals went by. God could have then breathed into his nostrils, and then her nostrils, the breath of life.

But that would mean the woman has the same origin as the man. She'd be the same kind of being as the man—maybe anatomically different but only anatomically different. Leithart believes the image of God in man must be a more radical difference than simply an anatomical one. So God goes through a convoluted process of creating the woman from part of the man.

Some translations use the term “rib” in reference to what God used of man to build the woman (Gen. 2:21-22). Except that Hebrew word never anywhere else in the Scriptures means rib. When that word is used elsewhere, it's almost always used as an architectural term. It's a wing, like the side chambers of the temple—they’re the “ribs” of the temple. It's like God removed one side of Adam, not just one rib from his rib cage. It’s like God split the man in two.

What we have in the creation of woman, then, is a sacrificial procedure. God places man in a death sleep. He splits him in two. He puts him back together by presenting the woman with whom he becomes one flesh, and he's reunited. Man regains his integrity as a person by uniting with the other that is presented to him. That's a sacrificial procedure, and every one of the sacrifices of the Old Testament goes through that same kind of death and transfiguration process.

When we look ahead to 1 Corinthians 15 and Ephesians 5 with the typology that Paul uses, it’s not just the last Adam (Jesus) who sacrifices himself for his bride, the Church. The first man (Adam) sacrifices his body so that his bride, Eve, can exist and have life. We can say then that the cross is inscribed in the heart of mankind’s sexual difference as male and female right from the very beginning of creation.

Although Leithart doesn’t say this, it’s not a stretch to say this sacrificial image right in chapter one of the Bible is a grace from God. It’s more than foreshadowing; it’s planting the seed of the Gospel. The sacrifice is making provision for what will follow—both by way of enablement to do what is commanded and for redemption when the deviation spiral begins.

Second, with the sacrificial imagery in mind, the woman is created and presented to the man. And the man is transformed. He becomes something other than what he was. Man is made from the ground, Adam. That is his name. He's built up like an altar, but he's not yet lit until the woman comes. And when she does appear, man receives a new name, the name 'ish , (pronounced Eesh) which is related to the Hebrew word for fire. So the man now has two names: Adam, because of his relation to the ground he came from, and 'ish , because of his relation to the woman. Man is transformed from being earth to being glorified earth, burning in the presence of his bride.

When the woman is presented to Adam, she is then given a name, 'ishshah , (pronounced Eeshah) because of her relation to the man as the material from whence she came. Then, in Genesis 3, she’s given a second name, Eve, because she’s the mother of all the living. She is actually called Mother when she gives birth to Cain. Adam and Eve each have two names, which we might think of as a double orientation in the world.

Think of it this way: man as 'ish and woman as 'ishshah have an orientation to each other, as husband and wife. But the man is also Adam who is oriented to his origin, the ground, and the woman is also Eve who is oriented to the children which are the seeds she produces.

Do you see in this double orientation a starting point for spiraling? The man is divided between his orientation to his wife and his work, and the woman is divided between her orientation to her husband and her children. There is a tension here, built in by God. Right from the beginning.

This is the original normal for marriage.

Remember, this creation dynamic is good and pre-dates the fall in Genesis 3 (Eve having children is not the result of the fall). The tension certainly gets exacerbated by levels of magnitude once the fall goes down. Everything gets cursed and the man and the woman are now estranged and competing against each other.

But then, in God’s sovereign grace, there’s that sacrifice that was also built in from the beginning and fulfilled through Jesus Christ, the last Adam. He bleeds grace and glorifies himself by being a Reconciler. When the deviated man and woman come to Jesus at the cross, the animus between them is broken down and they have a new origin in Christ.

Following in our first parents’ footsteps, Christians are first and foremost oriented to Jesus. He puts us back together again, and we find our common origin in him. When we humbly come to Jesus, he gives us the daily grace needed to manage the tensions of our now secondary orientations—our work and our families.

Because daily grace from Jesus overcomes the daily default of deviating into a marital spiral.

The Deviation Spiral

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Crashing Airplanes, Marriages, and Other Things

On November 12, 2022, at the Wings Over Dallas air show in Dallas, Texas, there was a completely avoidable and tragic accident. Billed as “the nation’s premier World War II airshow,” Wings Over Dallas is a three-day event with opportunities to see vintage aircraft both in the air and in static displays.

During one segment on the second day of the event, there were five bombers and three fighter aircraft airborne and participating in the show. The individual responsible for planning and coordinating the aircraft is called an air boss. A “daily participant safety briefing” is one of the air boss’s responsibilities, and in that meeting the air boss is supposed to give each pilot a hard copy plan for that day’s show. One of the details to be included is the plan for de-escalation, a technical term for the plan to keep the planes separated while flying.

Surprisingly, the plan that the air boss gave out that morning contained no details for de-escalation nor did the pilots question the air boss about it. By the time Wings Over Dallas 2022 arrived, the air boss had already done sixteen shows that year and over three hundred shows in his career—all without incident or mishap.

As the three fighters made a banking turn to the left in single file to set up a flyby of the grandstands, the third fighter in line, a P-63 Kingcobra, didn’t see the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber on his right. To the horror of all the onlookers, as the P-63 came banking in he flew right into the B-17 sending both planes crashing to the ground. In an instant, six men with over eighty-five thousand hours of flying experience between them, were dead.

An investigation soon followed, and one of the questions the air boss was asked had to do with de-escalation. Only then was it exposed that the air boss never gave pilots a de-escalation plan—that day or in any of his previous shows. His explanation was, “we do it [no de-escalation plan] all the time . . . it’s never a problem.”

There’s a captivating breakdown of this incident on Pilot Debrief, a YouTube channel hosted by Hoover, his callsign as a former Air Force F-15 pilot. You can watch the video here (24:32). At the 11:23 mark of the video, Hoover explains the deadly failure of the air boss as “the normalization of deviance,” or “the deviation spiral.” Think of a dot on the center of a piece of paper, and then begin to draw an ever-expanding spiral going out and around.

The starting point of a process is called the “original normal.” In the case of the air boss for the Wings Over Dallas air show, we can go back to his very first show in which he deviated from the original normal by not giving the pilots a detailed plan for de-escalation. That’s one trip out and around the spiral. And because he got away it, that first deviation became his new normal. Then he had his second show, which was another deviation away from the original normal. And again, he got away with it. We then get all the way out to the air boss’s two hundred ninety-ninth show, all without incident. It all worked until it didn’t.

At the macro level, we could apply the normalization of deviance to all kinds of domains, from organizations and institutions, all the way up to cultures and governments. If it seems to you like things are slipping away at a large scale these days, there you go.

However, I work at the micro level and my interest at Grace Harbor is primarily marriage and family relationships. I witness the deviation spiral at work not infrequently. Here are two generalized, stereotypical marital examples of deviation from the original norm.

Stuart marries Debbie. During the honeymoon, Stuart gets frustrated over the rental car and vents on Debbie. This catches Debbie off guard since she never saw that anger in Stuart while they were dating. She’s a little hurt and confused but she doesn’t say anything. Over the years, Stuart’s anger has not only persisted but gotten worse. Early on, Debbie would summon some courage to speak up. But she quickly learned that speaking up only provoked Stuart and made it worse for her and the children. Maddeningly, Debbie counted the immediate cost and kept her mouth shut.

Can you see where this is going? Stuart doesn’t. Stuart is completely caught off guard when he gets home from work one day and Debbie tells him he needs to move out. She’s done. Stuart is shocked and confused. He knew things weren’t great, but he did think they were ok. She was, after all, still having sex him. Stuart got away with it for a long time, but now they’ve crashed.

Flipping this dynamic around, let’s say Frank marries Macy. Macy turns out to have the dominant personality and Frank is conflict avoidant. Macy is a no-nonsense kind of person and Frank is afraid of Macy’s emotional intensity. Frank has things to say and feelings to express, but whenever he tried early on Macy either interrupted him because he was taking too long to get it out or she discarded Frank’s thoughts as weak. She’s got things to do. And deep down she has little respect for Frank’s lack of capacity. Macy is then completely shocked one day when she finds out that Frank is deep in a relationship with another woman. And here come the fatalities.

There are any number of worthwhile paths we could go down at this point, but there’s one in particular that would bear rich fruit if we gave time and energy to it. That point would be to define the original normal. As in, is there an original normal for marriage? What about all our other relationships? Is there source material to know?

Let me suggest using first principles thinking, which is the approach scientists use for problem solving. First principles are the fundamental building blocks of an idea. They are the purest parts that we know to be true and that are then used to build more complex thoughts upon. For example, reducing matter down to the periodic table of elements is first principles thinking. The more intimately a scientist knows each element, the better he can understand why a component breaks down and which elements are best suited to work together.

The analogy breaks down, but isn’t the Bible to Christians what the periodic table is to scientists? The truths revealed to us in the Bible are in their purest form and we use those truths to build, and often rebuild, a flourishing life.

At the same time, it’s not like simply reading the Bible will produce a strong Christian any more than simply reading over the periodical table will make a good scientist. God inhabits his Word, and we look into his Word to the point that the Word increasingly inhabits us. The first principles of truth and grace, of law and gospel, of love and obedience, of faith and repentance, of confession and forgiveness, of security and identity, of humility and courage—these are examples of building blocks for making healthy marriages and relationships.

Because the God who never deviates is loving to give us the original normal so that we don’t have to guess and wing it through life.

Taking Charge of Sex Ed for Your Children (Part 2):

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

If Parents Don't then Others Will

Like last month, I’m republishing this piece from 2019. Partly because I have a list of newer subscribers since then but mostly because I regularly have adult clients who, as part of their history, were sexually abused in childhood. I wonder how much of that pain could have been spared had their parents taken on the responsibility of sex educating their child. This, then, is my shout from the rooftop to parents of young children: please, for your child’s sake and their faith in Jesus, take up the moral education of your progeny.

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The school year has just begun. The teacher isn’t in the room yet, so the girls are huddled in groups near the front and the boys are hanging out in the back. Haley hears her phone buzz. It’s a text. Since there’s time and she’s curious, Haley decides to look.

As a parent, have you prepared her for this? Because when she sees the text, it’s going to be from Liam. And he’s going to ask her for a nude of herself. If you think that’s bizarre, consider this:

“A small 2018 study found that two-thirds of teenage girls say that they have been asked to send nude photos of themselves to boys. The study does not say it, but common sense would suggest, that the more time boys and girls spend on social media, interacting with their friends and strangers, the more such requests will seem normal. By contrast, very few people walk up to teenage girls in person and ask them to take off their clothes. Indeed, when women who grew up before the age of social media find out about this culture of sending ‘noodz,’ they can’t understand why girls don’t simply laugh at these boys or tell them where they can stick their cell phones. The more time you spend on screens, the more that real life starts to seem distorted.”

Sadly, and frustratingly, the statistics are even worse if your family is a minority. (You can see the fuller report here .)

Why would someone like Haley allow—or even want—that kind of request to tempt her into complying? Another researcher presents some options:

“In her analysis of the responses, [University of Arizona researcher Morgan] Johnstonbaugh found that the odds were four times higher for women than men to say that they sent sexually explicit images of themselves in order to prevent the recipient from losing interest or to prevent the recipient from looking at images of others. Women were [also] twice as likely as men to say they sent such images to boost their confidence.”

The confluence of all these pressures is, as we say, complicated. (You can see Johnstonbaugh’s short report here .)

Let me suggest that, when taking on the responsibility of sex ed for your children, you take a two-pronged approach: teaching about threats from without (e.g., the world, the culture, fallen human nature, spiritual warfare) and teaching about threats from within (e.g., insecurity, jealousy, pride, shame, our own brokenness). Because these threats are intertwined and the forces to comply so unrelenting, having “The Talk” as a one-time sex ed event is not going to cut it.

It’s possible at this point to despair or become overwhelmed with all the ground we must cover with our children. But consider the basic categories I detailed in the previous paragraph. If we’re coming at sex education from a Christian orientation, we’re already miles ahead of the world around us who’s norms are constantly changing and who has little if any developed conscience about sex and sexuality.

Take to heart Hebrews 5:14, “But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” Then be asking yourself, what can I be doing to be regularly training this particular child to discern between good and evil?

Imperfect as we were in parenting (no parent does this without regrets), here are some of the things my wife and I did in the sex ed department when our kids were growing up:

Talk about sex regularly to normalize the topic (it’s not weird, gross, or dirty), while at the same time referring to sex as a beautiful and powerful gift from God to be stewarded with grace and truth. As Christ-followers, our role is to reclaim and redeem all that is marred, twisted, and broken in this world—including sex.
Discuss social media, its implications for today, future relationships and employment applications. Digital history doesn’t go away. Explain restrictions. We did not let our sons have social media accounts until late high school, and by then one son was not interested and the other son thanked us after seeing all the grief the kids around him were enduring. ( Here is some research, with further ideas, to substantiate this approach .)
To help your kids stand against the tide of peer and social pressure to create an amazing identity, they’ll need ongoing conversations about who they are in Christ—that their true and more substantial identity comes from being God’s child and a part of His family. There’s no need to play the fool and shame yourself in an attempt to signal to others that you are somebody.
Have your kids sit with you occasionally at the computer and watch lyric versions on YouTube of the songs your kids want to download. Don’t lecture; ask questions. Ask the kids if they know what certain words and phrases mean. Have conversations where they can practice exercising discernment between good and evil.
Read previews of movies your kids want to watch and have them read it as well. Then talk about it in the same way I suggested in my comments about music.
Hug and hold your kids to incarnate the love of Christ. Tell them regularly how much you love them for who they are. Remind them God in Christ loves them even more. Point your child regularly to the cross of Christ as their unchanging source of security. Then pray with and for them that each member in the family, including you, will increasingly grow in understanding and valuing these truths.
Study your children to be able to point out the internal traits and giftedness of each child. Separate this from things that are performance related. Their inherent dignity, value and worth come from being made in God’s image.
Be careful to not use negative examples in the world around you to point out how stupid others are and how smart you are. You’ll either end up with a child as self-righteous as you are, or they’ll abandon the legit things you’re saying because they can’t stomach the prideful attitude that surrounds the truth you’re trying to convey.

Because your child’s sexual health, sanity, and sanctity are your God-given responsibility.

Sex Ed for Your Children (Part 1)

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

It's a Parent's Responsibility

I’m republishing this piece from 2019. Partly because I have a list of newer subscribers since then but mostly because I regularly have adult clients who, as part of their history, were sexually abused in childhood. I wonder how much of that pain could have been spared had their parents taken on the responsibility of sex educating their child. This, then, is my shout from the rooftop to parents of young children: please, for your child’s sake and their faith in Jesus, take up the moral education of your progeny.

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I’ve written before about growing up in a small farm town in central Iowa. In many ways it was the perfect place for a child to develop. Most people in town knew each other and very few homes had fencing on their property. As kids, we could run all day from yard to yard, block to block, playing pick-up games of kickball over here and football over there. All without any real concerns.

It was shocking then, when I was roughly in the tenth or eleventh grade, to be walking home from school after basketball practice when that idyllic façade came down. It’s an eleven-block walk from the high school building to the home where our family lived. For reasons I don’t remember, my parents were out of town that day. That left just my younger sister and me home alone.

About half-way home that day as I was approaching an intersection, a car I didn’t recognize pulled up to the stop sign perpendicular to me. The man driving the car opened his door and whistled at me. I glanced, unsure of what was happening. A bit unnerved, I began walking at a quicker pace. Two blocks later, the same car pulled up to that corner’s stop sign and the man repeated his actions. Open door, look at me, whistle. Once I had passed through that intersection, I started running. Running as fast as I could without looking back.

Three blocks south of our house there’s a park. The first two blocks northward from the park are up a small hill. By the time I got to within a block of home I was gassed and my lungs were burning. But I was too anxious to stop. I ran into our house, panicked, but no one was home. I grabbed the family car keys, got in our car, and went speeding back to the high school. I remember thinking I wanted to create a posse of cars manned with basketball players who would spread out across town to try to find that guy. My memory is fuzzy at this point. I think there were only a couple guys left in the locker room, and we just talked it out. I made a few extra turns on the way back home thinking I might cross paths with that stranger. It never occurred to me what any of us might do if we actually found the guy—which we never did.

That’s as close as I’ve ever come to being a victim of sexual assault. Which isn’t much at all compared to many of the stories I’ve heard from clients over the years. But I’ve never forgotten that event and my brief encounter with that stranger gave me a little taste of the fear and trauma that people experience more deeply who have been sexually assaulted.

Consequently, when my two sons were growing up, my wife and I were determined to educate them as best we could regarding the way Christian Scripture speaks to the care and respect humans should have for their and others’ bodies. I did the research and settled on a sex ed curriculum created by Stan and Brenna Jones. It’s not the only good curriculum out there; it’s just the one we settled on.

Unlike my case, the sad and maddening reality is that the group of potential physical sex offenders to your children are the people you are the closest to yet least suspecting of. Statistically speaking, that group consists of people such as a parent, an older sibling, an extended family member, a babysitter, a neighbor across the street, a youth worker at church or camp, a fellow playmate of the same age who’s been exposed to porn or who’s been violated from a family member you know and trust.

Since passivity and neglect are not neutral, it makes sense, doesn’t it, to be taking charge of sex ed with your kids? If you don’t, you’re leaving your children at even greater risk of exploitation than is already the case. Please don’t leave the sex education of your children to their peers, school, or culture. If you don’t teach your children up, you can be sure that others will bring them down.

I clearly remember our boys coming home with sex ed permission slips each year of middle school. And each year we refused. For three years our boys sat out of that class, along with only one other boy whose parents were Muslim. Each year our boys would come home after school that week shaking their heads at how far behind their peers were from where we were in our family conversations regarding sex ed.

I’m not saying my wife and I were stellar examples in this area of parenting. I am saying we did something, and that’s better than nothing. We had many awkward moments over the years working through the various stages of sexual maturity. One of my sons was precocious and asked all manner of questions that sometimes made me uncomfortable; my other son was so reluctant about the topic of sex ed that he would ask if he really had to say the “P” word out loud when referring to his own body parts.

Here’s the thing: it’s simply not possible to eliminate all risk to a child from being sexually assaulted. But we can reduce the risk by educating and empowering our children to be aware of who they are in God’s eyes, by creating a safe environment at home, by giving them skills and words to handle sexualized situations, and by giving them the permission and freedom to speak to their experiences with the assurance we will listen to and value what they have to say.

If you’re the parent of young children (or pass this along to someone you know who is), start talking about sex ed when your kids are young, around age 4 or 5. Begin with a book like, God Made All of Me , or, The Story of Me . Then build on that. If you need some confidence as a parent to jump in, then read through, How & When to Tell Your Kids About Sex . Take the long approach that you’re going to be talking about sex as much you talk about things like money—not as a one-off topic but as an ongoing topic of conversation that’s age-appropriate and graduates up so that by the time they leave your house there’s very little they don’t know short of the experience of it. Don’t make the conversations weird; make them regular, safe, and God-honoring.

Because to Jesus our body is as sacred as our soul.

Flags of My Two Fathers

Sat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

A Reflection 80 Years After D-Day

Flag (noun): Identifier attached to the end of a staff or standard; the ensign/sign carried at the head of a military band (cf., bandum , Latin, which meant first a “band,” an organized military troop, and then a “flag” or “banner”), to indicate the line of march, or the rallying point; used to indicate possession of a space or territory.

In the early evening of June 5, 1944, nearly seven thousand Allied naval vessels began departing from ports across southern England. It wasn’t until the personnel were out to sea that word spread—they were headed for the coast of France. Their mission was codenamed Operation Neptune. They were the naval and assault component of the larger mission, Operation Overlord, to defeat the German war machine. In the twilight of June 6, little did that great assembly know they were entering into the fog of what would come to be known as the longest day. D-Day.

The trip across the English Channel was timed for a break of dawn arrival. The armada was comprised of a vast array of military vessels—from massive battleships to defensive minesweepers to much smaller 36-person Higgins boats. Among that flotilla was the USS LCI (Landing Craft, Infantry) 209, and the signalman on the 209 was a twenty-one-year-old by the name of Andrew Hagen.

The 209 was assigned to the flotilla attacking Utah Beach, the most westerly of the five beaches of Normandy. At 5:50 a.m., eighteen warships began pummeling with their big guns the German defenses, and at 6:10 a.m. three hundred B-26 bombers came in low and dropped their munitions on enemy lines. At 6:30 a.m., the captain of the 209 called down from the bridge, “Alright, Hagen, fire!” The signalman dropped a dry canister into a tripod welded to the deck. A massive flare then shot high into the sky, causing the warships to cease their bombardment and signaling the beginning of the invasion at Utah Beach.

During that longest of days, the 209 ferried soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division from troop ships to the beachhead. No small amount of blood and water would mix for the U.S. Navy that day as over a dozen landing craft, two destroyers, two troop ships, and three minesweepers were sunk. In one of the runs from a troop ship to shore, the 209 was churning alongside a smaller-version LCI loaded with soldiers. The smaller LCI was there one minute and gone the next. It had hit a mine, and in an instant all aboard were lost.

D-Day has gone down in history as one of a handful of single-day military engagements that changed the world in a significant way. As in the Battle of Marathon where the Greeks held off the invading Persians, the Battle of Waterloo where Napolean lost his grip on power, and the Siege of Bastogne where the American 101st Airborne Division held off the German assault during the Battle of the Bulge.

Epic as those battles were, a little more than four months prior to D-Day, sometime during the week of January 22-31, 1944, the USS LCI 209 was tasked with a much less notable mission. They were to attempt a rescue of Army Rangers who were surrounded by German troops on the beach in Anzio, Italy. Despite having only rudimentary equipment and a slim chance of success, the sailors of the 209 were able to locate the Rangers in the dead of night and pull them to safety.

Signalman Hagen took the 209’s American flag from that week and, rather than destroy it as protocols stated, he stowed it in his seabag for the remainder of the war. Eighteen and a half years later, Andrew and Gladys Hagen would give birth to their fifth of six children, making Andrew Hagen, Sr. my father and I, his son. Thirty-eight years later and two years before my father died, I received a box for Christmas. Inside was that American flag from the Anzio mission: forty-eight stars, frayed at the ends, shot through with shrapnel, stained by the sea. It now hangs in my living room as an artifact of that great and terrible war which won the freedom from tyranny for so many.

I have another father, and I’m his son through adoption. My mortal father introduced me to him before I was old enough to read. This Father of fathers called me to Him when I was a young boy, for reasons I do not know. He also has another son, one that came before me. That other son, now my older brother, also went to war to win my freedom from tyranny. The turning point in that son’s war came down to a single-day engagement—the ultimate day—that changed the world forever.

Unlike the Allies on D-Day, when my older brother engaged the enemy, he told his allies to put their weapons down. This was not to be a battle between flesh and blood where thousands of lives would be laid to waste. There would be only one casualty on this day, and it would count for all eternity. At the top of a hill, just outside the city gates, the Captain of my faith paid the ultimate sacrifice. Three days later, our Father would raise back to life his son and vanquish death, the greatest of all our enemies.

There’s now a second flag, a much greater one than the first, in my house. Rather than a metal pole, the standard on which this preeminent flag is unfurled is made from rough-cut wood. The colors that fly are blood mixed with water, and the name of the flag is The Gospel of Peace. It is so named in Ephesians 6:15 because those who march under this banner go out into the fields each day armed not with guns but with grace. Why? Because we’ve been conquered not by our enemies but by one who loves us.

And so, in honor of my father, Andrew Hagen, Sr. on this, the 80th anniversary of D-Day, and in thanksgiving to God my Father for freedom from the power of sin and death, here are the four historic stanzas of the Navy Hymn, Eternal Father, Strong to Save :

Eternal Father, strong to save,

Whose arm does bind the restless wave,

Who bids the mighty ocean deep

Its own appointed limits keep;

O hear us when we cry to Thee

For those in peril on the sea.

O Savior, whose almighty word

The winds and waves submissive heard,

Who walked upon the foaming deep,

And calm amid the rage did sleep;

O hear us when we cry to Thee

For those in peril on the sea.

O Holy Spirit, who did brood

Upon the waters dark and rude,

And bid their angry tumult cease,

And give for wild confusion peace;

O hear us when we cry to Thee

For those in peril on the sea.

O Trinity of love and pow’r,

Your children shield in danger’s hour;

From rock and tempest, fire and foe,

Protect them where-so-e’er they go;

Thus, evermore shall rise to Thee

Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

Amen.

The Eternal Cry for Justice

Wed, 01 May 2024 00:29:11 GMT

Revisiting the Empty Tomb

Last month, in keeping with Easter Sunday, I wrote about the strong historical evidence of the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. As a result, Christ-followers should find great assurance in, and take great joy from, their faith in Jesus being substantiated.

The Scriptures go on to say that there were forty days between Jesus’ resurrection and his ascension, and that Jesus spoke often during that forty-day period concerning the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3). I have too many thoughts and emotions swirling inside me when considering the significance of Acts 1:3, so let me tell you a short story to set it up.

Some years ago, I was invited to go to Haiti. I was tasked with helping build a cinder block school in the daytime and teach marriage classes in the evening. Before leaving, the team leader told me to not take or wear any valuables since it was highly likely we would be robbed sometime during the 7-hour ride on a flatbed truck from Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital, to Pignon, a small village in the northeastern mountains. The story of why we didn’t get robbed is too long to tell here, but what I witnessed while there was even more shocking.

The shock upon landing and extending all the way up into the mountains was the degree to which governmental corruption had nearly everything and everyone in danger—the material poverty, the physical illnesses, the environmental havoc, and the spiritual bankruptcy were inescapable and profound. There are scenes and experiences I witnessed that have marked me. I often think of the people I worked with for just one week whose lives continue to be one of ongoing, unjust suffering. They did not ask for this pain; it was put upon them. And they have no recourse. They will live their entire existence there, suffering unjustly, and then fade away into what?

Back in the confines of my safe and sanitized home, whether I’m looking over the headline news or my counseling schedule for the week, the cries of injustice—a wrong has been inflicted or a good has been denied—are everywhere. Wars are obvious places of injustice, where innocents are handicapped and others die, where victims starve while their leaders luxuriate. Then there are the uncountable daily injustices that occur outside of war: discrimination based on age or race, favoritism based on beauty or wealth, family secrets of abuse and neglect, scams preying on the elderly and vulnerable, workplace malpractice in both corporate life and church body. On and on it goes. There are times I just want to scream.

Christians believe those screams are heard. From the first one to the last one. “And God said to Cain, ‘What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground’” (Genesis 4:10). “They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’” (Revelation 6:10).

Of course, the cry for justice requires there be a judge to adjudicate each case. If you have no judge, well, you’re out of luck. The drone that was sent into your apartment building and eviscerated your non-combatant family, or that drunk driver that hit your grandmother head-on and took her out, none of that matters a thousand years from now if there’s no justice. It was all just an accident in stardust. Or maybe just bad code in the simulation.

If you’ve lived a mostly comfortable life, you might be willing to accept that. But if you’ve really suffered, are you ok with that?

Christian Scripture is not ok with that, and this is where the resurrection of Jesus comes into play. Christian theologians say that Jesus holds three offices: prophet, priest, and king. Jesus comes into the world holding those three offices and he dies as such. But if Jesus has not risen from the dead, then he’s a false prophet, an ineffectual mediator, and he has no kingdom.

For my purposes here, I will only point out the value of Jesus as a risen king. It’s in the role of king that Jesus reigns and rules. He has the authority, integrity, wisdom, and power to judge each injustice. As the story unfolds in the Bible, a tension grows of one who’s coming, like but superior to king David (1 Samuel 2:12). I believe that is Jesus. Here’s a very brief sample of what Scripture says about Jesus’ rule as king:

His rule is universal. “His rule shall be from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth” (Zechariah 9:10).

His rule is everlasting. “May his name endure forever, his fame continue as long as the sun!” (Psalm 72:17).

His enemies are defeated and destroyed. “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies!” (Psalm 110:1-2).

His people are delivered and protected. “For he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight” (Psalm 72:12-14). “He shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness’” (Jeremiah 23:5-6).

Perhaps the most glorious snapshot of the fulfilled justice we all long for and what Jesus promises via his resurrection is found in Isaiah 11. I’d encourage you to meditate on those sixteen verses and let your heart be filled in anticipation of the day when the cries for justice from God’s people are finally fulfilled.

Since all of these are Old Testament prophecies about the coming king, it’s fair to ask when does Jesus actually sit down on his throne and begin his rule? Though Jesus was always a king, it is the resurrection and ascension into heaven that he fulfills the complete role of his kingly office. Think of Easter as a coronation ceremony at which point the King sits on his throne, takes up his scepter, gathers his troops, and then the great conquest begins.

You and I, fellow Christian, are now part of that ongoing conquest until our King returns. How? Now that Jesus has made us righteous through his atoning death and then guarantees our justification through his resurrection (Romans 4:25), we are to go about our day doing justice as Jesus did. We can’t make every wrong right, nor can we completely heal all that is broken. But we can do something for “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, since they do not have the means to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:13-14).

Because the complete satisfaction of justice requires both a bloody cross and an empty tomb.

But is He Risen Indeed?

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 01:02:01 GMT

THE Existential Question for Your Life

I’m running out of time. There are too many books to read. The list of subjects to know more about is too long. There are too many places yet unvisited. Then there are the people—loved ones to love more, injustices still to remedy, wrecked lives to make whole.

Much of the anxiety, angst, and anguish tied up in these desires, though, subsides if Jesus really rose from the dead. If it could be substantiated that Jesus, whom Christians call the Christ, physically rose from the dead, then surely all of his lesser promises will also be fulfilled—time becomes timeless eternity, all things in Christ will be made new (including the earth), tasks and opportunities to engage beyond the grave are then unbounded as acts of worship to the Lord of all.

With so much at stake, is there a way to demonstrate that Jesus really rose from the dead? Let’s acknowledge two things right off: First, if you don’t believe in God, then this question is silly. Without a reality above and beyond the natural, the possibility of coming back to life after death is zero. Instead, you live, you die, you go extinct. Or maybe off to Elysium.

Second, Christians do not have a higher authority than the Bible to appeal to for truth. We sum it up with statements like, since the Bible says Jesus rose from the dead, that’s enough for me. Christians also appeal to the Holy Spirit as an internal witness when seeking to understand Scripture, especially in moments of struggle to believe. In reverence we humbly pray, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from your law” (Psalm 119:18).

Even so, that doesn’t mean Christians need to stop there when questions arise. I often have questions when reading my Bible. My questions, however, are not those of a skeptic let alone a cynic. No, my questions are more along the lines of, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. When looking outside of Scripture for knowledge, when that knowledge is true, then what is learned gives greater assurance and deeper conviction to what is already believed.

It is with that thought in mind that I’ve worked my way through much of Michael Licona’s book, The Resurrection of Jesus . Licona, a professed Christian, comes to his research as a historian. He writes, “The objective of [my] investigation was to learn and apply the approach of historians outside of the community of biblical scholars to the question of whether Jesus rose from the dead” (p. 619).

Licona’s book is a 700-page research vessel that goes deep and wide, so trying to distill it to some big picture observations will not do it justice. Despite that, what follows are two brief takeaways I found helpful in bolstering my belief in Jesus’ resurrection.

“Historians cannot obtain absolute certainty for many of the same reasons that absolute certainty always eludes us in most areas. The wise person is rarely hindered by her inability to possess absolute certainty; instead, she acts on probabilities” (p. 128). However, when looking to confirm a one-off event, “historians largely shy away from statistical inference in general” and instead appeal to what is called, “argument to the best explanation” (p. 120). Historians work at this by looking at sources beyond the original claim for corroborating evidence.

Licona then spends hundreds of pages testing various hypotheses that attempt to explain Jesus’ empty tomb, including the resurrection hypothesis. He is fair with material and acknowledges that personal bias can be a factor in coming to conclusions, not only for himself but for all historians. He goes so far as to say that he’s willing to become a deist if it can be proven that Jesus did not rise from the dead.

In the end, Licona concludes, “Since the resurrection hypothesis is the best explanation, fulfills all five criteria [for determining the strength of a hypothesis] and outdistances all of its competitors by a significant margin, I contend that we may declare that Jesus’ resurrection is ‘very certain,’ a rendering higher on the spectrum of historical certainty than I had expected” (p. 619).

This is encouraging and faith-building all on its own. But then when such research is held up against other belief systems that have little to no known support, the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus looks even more convincing. As an example, in a recent interview I listened to, Lex Fridman, an MIT professor and one of my favorite interviewers, sat down with Sam Altman, the co-founder of Open AI, for a wide-ranging talk. These guys are highly influential in our current moment, and I want to know what and how they think.

Almost two hours into the interview, Lex and Sam discuss the Fermi Paradox. When I prompt ChatGPT 3.5 (one of Open AI’s creations) about the Fermi Paradox, the reply I get, in part, is, “The Fermi Paradox is the apparent contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial civilizations existing in the universe and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations. Named after physicist Enrico Fermi, who famously asked, ‘Where is everybody?’ in reference to the absence of observable extraterrestrial life despite the high likelihood of its existence.”

Lex asks Sam for Sam’s thought about that paradox, and Sam replies, “I deeply want to believe that the answer is yes. I do find the Fermi Paradox very puzzling.” Lex then replies, “I find it scary. But at the same time, I think that I’m pretty confident that there’s just a very large number of intelligent alien civilizations out there. It might just be really difficult to travel through space.”

From my perspective, this is not a paradox. This is unbelief. And as much as I like Lex and think we could be friends if we were neighbors, I’d want to lovingly say that his position reminds me of Soren Kierkegaard’s observation that there are two ways to be fooled: to believe what isn’t true, and to refuse to believe what is true.

Take heart, dear Christian. Your belief in the resurrected Christ is not a blind faith. In fact, we have very real reasons to believe our faith in Jesus is not in vain.

Because Jesus is not just risen from the dead, he is risen indeed!

A Total Eclipse of the Heart

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 02:34:28 GMT

When Bonnie Shoots Clyde with some Light

Let’s say Clyde is a car guy. He notices them and sometimes studies them. And let’s say Clyde is now in the market for one to replace his El Camino that finally died. Clyde’s wife, Bonnie, knows and agrees they need to replace that classic 1970s car, but other than the replacement being reliable and safe Bonnie doesn’t care much for the details.

Clyde interprets Bonnie’s dispassionate approach as permission to go searching for his dream. When Clyde had the El Camino, he was okay with it but always aspired to having a bigger box on the backside. That meant having a big boy truck and now is his chance. He commences his search, consciously careful to not share his full thoughts with Bonnie. At least not yet.

Clyde is calm. Clyde’s cool. You would never know by his outward demeanor just how excited and eager Clyde is that his wish will soon be fulfilled. In fact, even Clyde is not aware of what’s happening to him internally. All he realizes is what he’s feeling. The fun. The rush. The anticipation! But now it’s time: Clyde needs to share his full dream with Bonnie.

Dinner is over and Clyde’s keeping an eye on Bonnie in an attempt to read her mood. He needs her to be in a good space. Bonnie eventually jokes about something innocuous and Clyde takes that as a green light. Clyde carefully lays out his arguments as convincingly as a criminal defense attorney. All he’s asking is for Bonnie to agree.

Except Bonnie doesn’t agree. She’s taken aback by Clyde’s willingness to blow the bank. They have a budget. They’ve both agreed to the budget. Yet here is Clyde, willfully it seems, forgetting all of that.

As Bonnie is responding with her thoughts, Clyde can feel himself clinching and his blood thinning. He’s loading his mental Tommy gun with arguments to fire back at Bonnie. No sooner than he thinks Bonnie is done, Clyde unloads on her. Despite years of a mostly happy marriage, Clyde’s acting in the moment like he’s willing to throw it all away over a truck.

In fact, Clyde’s temporarily lost his mind—no self-awareness, no impulse control, no larger perspective. How did that happen? Would it be possible to trace a discernable progression of thinking in which a person moved from a fairly innocent desire into a blood-bath rage against someone he or she truly loved? What would that processing look like and could it be interrupted short of a shootout?

I’ve lost track of time, but around twenty years ago I travelled to Philadelphia to take in more counseling training. Others like me gathered to learn from Paul Tripp who, at the time, was teaching at the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF). From his curriculum, Instruments of Change , came the following diagnostic tool which I have taken liberties of amending to suit my own way of thinking.

Paul begins by asking the question, “How do the normal desires of daily living take control of the heart?” He then spells out a six-step progression that we can all benefit from as a tool to use, not just for growing self-awareness but ultimately for maturing in Christ as we learn to depend on him and also relationally as we take pressure off those around us. Take note of the subtle progression not only downward but also outward (as the heart corrupts, it corrupts others):

Desire : Expressed internally as, “I want.” There’s nothing wrong here. We could say Clyde’s looking at trucks is in a neutral state. At this level Clyde could take it or leave it as his heart is not set on anything in particular. Desire as such is properly held in the heart with an open hand. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Need : Expressed internally as “I will.” This is where the subtle corruption begins. Clyde is no longer kicking tires; he’s now zeroed in on one truck that’s caught his eye and he keeps coming back to it in his mind. Clyde’s hand begins to close around the desire and he’s holding onto it more tightly than he realizes. Something that was once just a desire is now seen as essential.

Demand : Expressed internally as, “I must.” Through a series of internal arguments and justifications, Clyde has convinced himself that he cannot live without the truck. He hasn’t paid for it, but in Clyde’s mind he owns it. No one ever says it that clearly because, at this degree of intensity, there’s a total eclipse of Clyde’s heart. No light can get through as the “need” is controlling Clyde and beginning to leak out around the edges toward others. Bonnie can tell something’s up, but she really has no idea.

Expectation : Expressed externally as, “You should.” This is where Clyde is being candid with Bonnie, and Bonnie may attempt to regulate Clyde. Clyde’s thinking and maybe saying, “I really, really want this truck. It’s always been a dream of mine and you know that. It seems right to expect that you will meet my need if you really love me. If you don’t agree to my dream, then you really don’t love me.” Bonnie tells Clyde he’s over-interpreting the situation and can’t accept Clyde accusing her of not loving him. She’s simply trying to shoot a little light into Clyde’s heart, but that doesn’t feel like love.

Disappointment : Expressed externally as, “I can’t believe you didn’t.” Clyde’s upset and shows it. He’s also obsessed and likely doesn’t know it. Bonnie is standing in the way of what Clyde needs, so he’s going to make her pay for her non-compliance.

Punishment : Expressed externally as, “Because you didn’t, I will . . .” Clyde opens up his semi-automatic mouth and responds in anger. His anger could come out in a passive form, like silent treatment, or an active form, like hurtful words and acts of violence.

A few brief observations about this framework: 1) This story could just as well be reversed with Clyde being the one who, in all good conscience, could not go along with Bonnie’s spending outside the agreed-upon budget. 2) There is an inflection point at each step in the framework. With God’s grace and the Spirit’s enabling, Clyde could choose to take a step back into life and avoid the path that leads to death. 3) The presence of sin we carry around inside our heart is always looking, like a parasite, to attach to good things in life and corrupt them. Each step down in the framework is another step into slavery to our own desires.

Praise God that in Christ we’ve been set free from slavery to sin. Each day we ground our life to Christ, the more we can say no when we need to since we have our greater yes in Jesus.

Because, as St. Augustine confessed, “For you, Lord, have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Christ.”

Ten Questions for the New Year

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Let's Grow!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what do you think a good question is worth? Put at the right time, a good question can open up a whole world you would never have accessed if you hadn’t asked. It happens all the time in counseling. It should also happen when self-reflecting.

Questions can, and maybe should, lead to other questions as curiosity is piqued. That, in turn, can lead to more discoveries. Yes, there are hazards, like rabbit trails, that can take you far afield. Or a deeply held belief might get thrown into a time of doubt. But it’s worth the risk as we pursue fuller answers, deeper convictions, and a more integrated life. Questions are essential for learning as they challenge us and cause us to grow.

It's not surprising, then, to find out that Jesus is full of questions. Even from a young age. When his parents finally found Jesus after he had gone missing, Joseph and Mary found their son in the temple both listening to the teachers and asking them questions (Luke 2:45-47). When looking at the entirety of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry, asking questions turn out to be one of his primary teaching tools. We might take note.

I have a mantra I often repeat in counseling: resist making statements; instead, ask questions. I also have an equation I encourage clients to employ regularly: curiosity = care. When we ask good questions, we’re not primarily acquiring information but better, clearer understanding. Either of others or ourselves.

Some time ago I came across a list of ten questions created by Donald Whitney. Don is the founder of The Center for Biblical Spirituality and is probably best known for his book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life . I’ve sat with these ten questions for days now, slowly putting together the answers I’m committing to. I share these questions with you in the hope that maybe one or two of them, or the entire lot of them, may provoke you to more health, growth, and fruitfulness throughout this coming year.

1. What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?

2. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?

3. What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?

4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?

5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?

6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?

7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?

8. What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?

9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?

10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

Because Jesus asks us, If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him! (Mt. 7:11)

Interstellar Love

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

More than Evolution Requires

One evening several months ago I found myself home alone. I happened to be in a mood—an epic movie kind of mood. Got a little food, turned the lights down and the stereo up, and settled on an old favorite: Interstellar . Everything about this movie is big—cinemaphotography, soundtrack, plot line, philosophy, emotion. So much of the human condition is on display in this drama, and there are a number of scenes that are sunk deep into my soul. Here’s one of them.

A conversation comes up between the movie’s two main actors, Coop (played by Matthew McConaughey) and Brand (played by Anne Hathaway). The two of them are having to decide, along with a third shipmate, Romilly (played by David Gyasi), which of two planets they should go to. They have enough fuel to get to only one.

All three of them know that one of the planets had a scientist-explorer, Dr. Wolf Edmunds, previously sent to it. However, Romilly doesn’t know that Brand has an emotional connection with Edmunds. Coop thinks Romilly deserves to know that information. When Romilly calls for a vote, Coop then forces the truth out of Brand so Romilly can see it. The insight on the nature of love that the conversation draws out is memorable (begins around 1:28:00 in the movie):

Coop: Well, if we’re going to vote, there’s something you [Romilly] should know. Brand, he has a right to know.

Brand: That has nothing to do with it.

Romilly: What does?

Coop: She’s in love with Wolf Edmunds.

Romilly: Is that true?

Brand: Yes. And that makes me want to follow my heart. But maybe we’ve spent too long trying to figure all this out with theory.

Coop: You’re a scientist, Brand.

Brand: So listen to me. When I say that love isn’t something that we invented, it’s…it’s observable and powerful. It has to mean something.

Coop: Love has meaning, yes. Social utility, social bonding, child-rearing.

Brand: We love people who have died. Where’s the social utility in that?

Coop: None.

Brand: Maybe it means something more, something we can't yet understand. Maybe it's some evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we can't consciously perceive. I am drawn across the universe to someone I haven't seen in a decade who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that even if we can't understand it yet.

We do love people who have died. You know that’s true. For me it’s people like my grandmother, my parents, a sister, a roommate, a handful of clients. You also know there’s no social utility in working to maintain that love. Still, we do.

Some weeks after watching Interstellar , I began piecemealing my way through a long interview that Lex Fridman had with Neri Oxman. Neri is an Israeli-born American scientist. She earned her PhD at MIT and has won several prestigious awards in her field. In the midst of all the fascinating conversation surrounding Neri’s work, I was not anticipating her citation of a letter written by Albert Einstein to his daughter. Einstein asked his daughter to not publicly reveal for twenty years the contents of what he wrote to her. When she eventually did, here’s part of what he wrote:

“When I proposed the theory of relativity, very few understood me, and what I will reveal now to transmit to mankind will also collide with the misunderstanding and prejudice in the world. I ask you to guard the letters as long as necessary, years, decades, until society is advanced enough to accept what I will explain below.

“There is an extremely powerful force that, so far, science has not found a formal explanation to. It is a force that includes and governs all others, and is even behind any phenomenon operating in the universe and has not yet been identified by us. This universal force is LOVE.”

Neri goes on to share other parts of the letter in which Einstein comments on his famed equation E = mc2 but how he considers love the greater force that shapes the universe. He likens love to forces like gravity and light in love’s power to attract people to each other.

Lex then responds by citing the last paragraph of Einstein’s letter to his daughter where he writes, “I deeply regret not having been able to express what is in my heart, which has quietly beaten for you all my life. Maybe it’s too late to apologize, but as time is relative, I need to tell you that I love you and thanks to you I have reached the ultimate answer!”

Neri then says, “It is everything. Love is everything. I forget who said this, but, ‘I love my daughter more than evolution required.’ And I feel the same way toward my other half, and I feel that when you find that connection anything and everything is possible.”

Amelia Brand, the fictional scientist, intuits the character of love going beyond a utilitarian end. Neri Oxman, the very real top-rate scientist, discerns the nature of love as exceeding the requirements for the sustaining of basic life forms. But then why? And to what end?

I’d like to add an additional thought on love. Love always has a subject. Brand loves Edmunds to the ends of the universe, and if Edmunds knows that it might well help to keep him alive on a very inhospitable planet. Neri loves her daughter and husband more than evolution requires, and I bet the husband and child relish the deep security attached to such intense love. But love also has an object, the one who is doing the loving. Everyone who is loved has a lover.

Let me ask, then, what does the love that would go interstellar for you have as its object? Some might say the universe itself, or earth, even. Except you know our universe is cold and heartless. And earth, left to itself, will eat you alive. Because these are such terrifying thoughts, we now have people thinking up the possibility of multiverses in the hopes of increasing the odds, and others calling earth our mother rather than our sister in the hopes of rebirthing. Except there are serious-minded scientist like Neri who, in her interview with Lex, acknowledges the math doesn’t add up that other intelligent life forms exist beyond the little blue marble we inhabit.

Which leaves Neri speculating about magic and Lex speculating about aliens. To which I’ll add that interstellar love is one of several reasons why I cannot convert to the atheist faith (though I did take a serious look at it nearly a decade ago during a crisis of faith—and this love is the only thing that kept me from stepping into the abyss). Love that goes beyond evolutionary requirements, curiously enough, is also one of the reasons so many atheists still retain and practice some form of spirituality.

But would you then find it any more sensible and satisfying to place the object of love in an ambiguous, subjective, nameless source such as the Divine-in-all-things or the Spirit-that-inhabits-all-life? If so, what justification do we then have for loving anyone more than evolution requires? Where is the objective evidence that guides and compels us to love like this?

Let me propose the answer to all of these questions is summed up in Christmas.

Love went interstellar. Love embodied. Love suffered. Love bled. Love died. And Love lives again. Beyond anything evolution would require or imagine. Love did this for you. For YOU.

Merry Christmas, friends.

Because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

Family and Holidays

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 01:24:13 GMT

Drawing Circles and Lines

Now is the time of year when a subtle alteration in the topic of conversation occurs in my office. Family relationships are a year-round subject matter in my counseling, but the holiday season and the expectations people bring to that time amplify the challenges of spending time with and getting close to relatives.

To create a framework for thinking about how to relate to family from a Christian perspective, I’d like to begin with how the Bible talks about the Church. After all, the Church is mostly a collection of families, and we refer to fellow Christians in familial terms—brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers. True, how you relate within a domestic family is not identical with how you relate to each other in a church family. Yet there are enough similarities between the two that we should take note.

For example, there’s clear teaching in Scripture that tells us we should endeavor to maintain unity within God’s family. Jesus prays for his disciples, “Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given me, that they may be one, even as we are” (John 17:11, 20-23). Years later, Paul provides color to Jesus’ prayer when he writes, “Now I appeal to Euodia and Syntyche. Please, because you belong to the Lord, settle your disagreement. And I ask you, my true partner, to help these two women” (Philippians 4:2-3).

As a Christ-follower, then, one of our aims in family is unity. We look at the unity within the Godhead and then, with His grace, work to incarnate such unity within the family. But as we all know from experience, and as Scripture is honest about, maintaining unity, whether in the domestic or church family, can be challenging and sometimes not possible.

Even though Paul taught unity and urged others to work at it in the family of Christ, he and Barnabas were not able work together for a season due to differences of opinion regarding John Mark’s fitness for missionary ministry. More poignantly, at the very moment Jesus was praying for unity, one of his very own disciples was scheming to betray him.

That said, let me provide a word picture, or mental filter, through which to process the way in which we relate to others. Think about circles. More specifically, envision concentric circles. There’s a small inner circle, then maybe four or five more circles expanding out from the inner circle. The inner circle consists of relationships in which you know each other deeply and in which there is strong trust. These are the people you look forward to spending time with. In fact, the joy there is strong enough that, like Jesus and His Church, we want to invite others in to share in that joy.

But then you have other family members who do things that irritate or annoy you. Let’s say there’s an uncle who openly and unapologetically burps at the table, or the in-law who’s always playing with her hair and then dropping the loose ones on the floor. Would you say something? Could you resist being judgmental and work to cover the issue in love? Would you place them in a circle a little farther out while working to maintain unity?

Let’s say you have a family member who’s hurt you through some sarcastic comment, or their child has punched your child. But then they or the parents recognize the problem and do the work of repair. They confess, they repent, and you forgive them. But then next visit it happens again. They repair and you forgive them again, but now you don’t trust them. Are they still in a circle of yours? If so, how far out?

Now let’s say there’s a family member who doesn’t just commit the occasional hurt, they’re actually creating real harm. Maybe the relative gets drunk and then says or does things to others that crosses a moral or physical line. Which then raises the question: Are there only ever-expanding circles, or are there ever lines? Does love always cover everything? Or does love ever say enough is enough and puts an end to the evil by drawing a line?

Scripture provides guidance and real help on this. In a letter on how to shepherd God’s family, Paul says to Titus, “Do not get involved in foolish discussions about spiritual pedigrees or in quarrels and fights about obedience to Jewish laws. These things are useless and a waste of time. If people are causing divisions among you, give a first and second warning. After that, have nothing more to do with them” (Titus 3:9-10). Does that sound like a circle or a line?

Paul’s counsel to Titus is an echo of Jesus’ teaching on family relations when Jesus says, “If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Then if he or she won’t accept the church’s decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector” (Matthew 18: 15-17). Again, does that sound like a circle or a line?

One more example, this time from the Old Testament wisdom literature: “There are six things the Lord hates—no, seven things he detests: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that kill the innocent, a heart that plots evil, feet that race to do wrong, a false witness who pours out lies, a person who sows discord in a family” (Proverbs 6:16-19).

One of the things about Proverbs that’s helpful here is how often it draws lines. A way it does this is by giving us categories of sorting out who people are—some tend toward being wise and others toward being foolish. Within the category of foolishness, Proverbs gives us three subsets with each one more challenging and difficult to be around.

There is the Naïve/Simpleton (14:15). These people cause the least amount of grief and trouble among the fools, which isn’t saying much, as they waste their life chasing fantasies and stumble into trouble (7:6-23). Then there’s the middle category which is the common Fool (15:2). This person wastes your time (14:7), is a repeat offender (26:11), and loves to argue and debate (18:2, 6). The Fool brings all kinds of sorrow to family members (10:1; 17:21, 25). Last but definitely not least in impact is the Scoffer. This kind of fool does not try to hide his evil (21:24), everyone detests this person (24:9) and Proverbs doesn’t hesitate to draw a hard line with this person (22:10). Amazing how quickly things calm down and peace ensues in a home when the Scoffer is no longer present.

Let’s acknowledge here that drawing circles and lines among family members, both domestic and church, is less like art class and more like astrophysics. We’re trying, using the Bible’s guidance and wisdom as our instrument, to determine the nature of people, to discern what and how and when Truth applies, and come up with applications to our observations and experiences all while everything is spinning. The Bible admits this can get complicated and cause deep and lasting grief even though it’s our heart’s desire for there to be unity.

Further, where one person might draw a circle, another person in the same situation may draw a line. That can happen in a marriage let alone among gathered relatives. There are a host of legitimate reasons to account for the difference. One essential reason is a person’s conscience. And Scripture leaves room for that difference without judging either party (see Romans 14). Then, beyond differences in conscience, there are simply too many other variables in a person’s life—such as family of origin, personality, maturity in their faith, life experiences—to say where and when one should draw a circle or a line.

Much more could be said here, but I at least want to put this on the public record. Some of my motivation here is to be a source of help to any who read this. And some of my motivation is due to the surprise I have at reading some Christian counselors’ material who believe the concept of boundaries is not Biblical. And to that I must draw a line.

Because while Jesus invites all to come as you are into His circle, He also draws lines and says you can’t stay as you are in His circle.

The Inner Ring (Part 2)

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Stand Out but Fit In

It was 2010 when I went as a parent chaperone on my older son’s 8th grade field trip to Washington, D.C. The trip was supposed to be educational, and it was. The group size required we take two chartered buses, and the school prescribed that all the girls sit on the righthand seats while all the boys sat on the lefthand seats. Before we could leave the parking lot, the boys started talking and the girls got on their phones.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. On the one hand, I have only sons as children so the girl-world is a bit foreign to me. But even my son noticed and made a comment to me. On the other hand, I had begun following Jonathan Haidt around that same time, and as a social psychologist at the University of Virginia (he’s now at the New York University Stern School of Business) he was making public some very interesting observations.

One of those observations is that both boys and girls are violent, just that they express their violence differently. Generally speaking, when boys get upset with each other they fight it out physically on the playground and settle things that way. When it comes to girls, their violence against each other is generally expressed through exclusion.

In C.S. Lewis’s talk, “The Inner Ring,” originally given to college students, he puts it this way: “It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons, but to have them free because you don’t matter, that is much worse.” Indeed. For a current and dramatic example of this, look no further than the University of Alabama (UA).

I was not aware until recently that there’s a serious rival to football at UA. It so happens that UA sets the benchmark for universities who recruit out of state students. As they do with football, UA has student recruiters who scour the country looking for mostly white affluent kids at the top ranked high schools. Forget qualified local kids; out of state kids bring in more money.

If you’re privileged enough to get on campus, you then face next level Inner Ring pressure. Especially if you’re a girl. In her documentary, “Bama Rush,” director Rachel Fleit attempts to capture what trying to enter the Ring of sorority life looks like—what’s called “rush.” Rush at UA consists of four rounds (open house, philanthropy, sisterhood, and preference) over eight days. The process is highly competitive with the sororities voting for their top candidates (referred to as “prospective new members” or PNMs) at the end of each round.

In moments of candor, girls in the documentary will say things like, “Being in a sorority will help me figure out the person, like, I want to be because I feel like I don’t really know who I am, you know?” And, “I have trust issues with people and I get nervous that people are gonna leave me.” Even, “There are a lot of things that you’re entitled to when you’re in a top tier sorority. The rankings come from fraternity boys so the top house has the [it] girls.”

Mature observers of the documentary say things like, “Rush is a social stratification, a ritual of power, of status, of prestige.” Rachel, the producer, says, “This is like something much larger than just rush. This is about belonging.” Outsiders who gave Rachel feedback on what they were seeing said, “There’s no celebration of individuality when they’re telling me that they have to dress a certain way for rush, and their hair has to be a certain way for rush. They have to stand out but fit in.”

The tears flow. The desperation rises. The pressure and anxiety are palpable. I was getting stressed just watching the drama play out. I’d say these girls are in a sanitized but no less cruel Hunger Game where the value of their personhood depends on a positive vote from The Machine. In fact, after one of the girls, Shelby, dropped out of the documentary over the threat of losing her place in the rush process, Rachel comments, “You know, the desire to belong is so great that like nothing [such as the filming of this documentary] could jeopardize that. And the desire to be a part of the sorority system is so great that nothing could jeopardize that.”

Lewis references the dreamy longings that go on in the heart of one hoping to be chosen. He also lays the heart open further when he says, darkly, “I must not assume that you have ever first neglected, and finally shaken off, friends whom you really loved and who might have lasted you a lifetime, in order to court the friendship of those who appeared to you more important, more esoteric. I must not ask whether you have ever derived actual pleasure from the loneliness and humiliation of the outsiders after you yourself were in; whether you have talked to fellow members of the Ring in the presence of outsiders simply in order that the outsiders might envy.”

It's not just Greek life on university campuses where the Ring dynamics play out. I can tell you I’ve been on both sides of the inside/outside fence. I’ve been in group conversations where I was one of the insiders, where I knew one of the people in the conversation didn’t have either the same qualification or know the same people or experience what the rest of us had. And I’m familiar with that twisted feeling of satisfaction in knowing that I was in and someone nearby was not quite as in as I was.

But I also know too well the feeling of being the outsider in other conversations where I hadn’t gone to the moon like the others had. And I’m familiar with the feeling of malcontent in knowing that in this life I am, in all likelihood, never going to own a roadster to fly me into space let alone go to the moon so I could talk about it. And at that moment, you can feel everyone’s Hunger Game camera turn away from you to others in the group who’ve made it and seem more than willing to be in the bright light of attention.

As Christ-followers, we don’t need to strive and be wracked with anxiety for fear of being on the outside. There are many examples in Scripture to draw on, but a current favorite of mine is when Jesus says to his disciples, “Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:32-33).

We know, in one sense, that Jesus is the ultimate outsider. He comes to his people, but his own people reject him. This rejection is a cause for real sorrow and pain for Jesus, but not to the degree that it devastates or consumes him. He absorbs the rejection and stays anchored to his identity and calling. Now Jesus forewarns his followers that they, too, will know the pain of being an outsider—they will be scattered and face trials for their faith.

But it doesn’t take physical persecution to make you an outsider. It could actually come while talking with a group of fellow church-goers who have a Ring they’re in that, through no fault of your own, you happen to be near the fringe of or even on the outside of the Ring. It’s at that moment, and beyond, when you feel like you have nothing to say to the group that you could talk to yourself. Just like Jesus did.

Say something like, “I am not alone because my Father is with me. I have everything I need—meaning, purpose, identity, belonging, security, a future—all in Christ. Even though I’m a minority, or I possess little in this life, or I disagree with the majority in some way that gets me excluded, none of that is a comment on my value and place in God’s family. If I can’t get to the moon, I’m happy for those who can. I’ll have eternity in the new earth to get to all of that. In the meantime, I’ll give myself to the things Jesus gives me daily to be a steward of. And that is more than enough.”

Because Gospel truths are not consolation prizes for those who come in second or even last—they are the very substance of your life.

The Inner Ring (Part 1)

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Running in Circles

I was a non-starter on the basketball team in high school my sophomore year. In fact, I wasn’t on the second string either. Same for my junior and senior years, too. But I did love being part of the team and was willing to go through all kinds of blood, sweat, and tears to run in that circle of brotherhood. I’ll never forget my sophomore year, though, because of the shoes.

In the small farm town I grew up in, there was only one store—a men’s clothing store—that carried the basketball shoes for the team. Back then, you didn’t get to order anything. You simply had to pick your size on a first-come, first-served basis. I must have been slower than my teammates to go get shoes that year because by the time I got to the store all they had left was size 12. I wore a size 10.5.

The entire Spartan team was supposed to be wearing white and burgundy Converse high tops. I loved the look. Except I now faced a painful decision: either get the same style as the rest of the team but nearly two sizes larger than I needed, or get a pair of shoes that fit but didn’t look anything like the rest of the team.

Compare my story with the one Marc Andreessen tells in an interview I recently listened to. Marc was a tech innovator back in the day, and is now a venture capitalist with Andreessen Horowitz. He’s one of the richest people in America. He’s also quite the historian, impresses as intellectually humble, and runs in circles I will never have access to.

Marc tells a hypothetical story based on real life examples in which a young tech inventor hits it big. When the inventor gets to billionaire status, he finds himself invited to gatherings that are populated with A-list movie stars and high-ranking politicians. As he’s welcomed into the club, he listens to the things they talk about and the causes they support. He also notices the euphoria he feels being with this group. The young inventor quickly learns, in unspoken terms, that if he wants to stay in the club he’s going to have to show up at other events if he’d rather not. He going to have to support the causes the others support even if he privately disagrees.

The social pressures to conform at the highest levels of status are tremendous, Marc notes, and it takes a lot of courage for someone in that young inventor’s shoes to choose to wear Puma when everyone else is wearing Converse.

Back in the late 1970s when I was in high school, the only C.S. Lewis books I was aware of was, The Chronicles of Narnia . I still have my boxed set from back then. Too bad I didn’t know then about a talk Lewis gave to college students entitled, “The Inner Ring.” That talk is now one of a collection of Lewis essays in a book entitled, The Weight of Glory .

In that talk, Lewis observes, “I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.”

Think of it this way: If the first local, or social, Ring an infant knows is one’s family, then you can see why struggles with separation anxiety can be so acute for little children. As a person develops through the life cycle into adulthood, the only thing that changes with respect to local Rings is the standard for entrance. One Ring might require wearing Converse while another Ring might require eating caviar.

Lewis is clear: “My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire [to be included in a social Ring] is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. And if it is one of the permanent mainsprings, then you may be quite sure of this. Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care.”

If you didn’t take measures to prevent it, what would that look like? “Many even of the rulers believed in Jesus, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God” (John 12:42-43). To be sure, how one is perceived in the eyes of others is a dominant theme in the dynamic of Inner Ring aspirations. Other Inner Ring themes would include status and access to power, “it” people, and money.

Lewis continues, “If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an ‘inner ringer.’ I don’t say you’ll be a successful one; that’s as may be. But whether by pining and moping outside Rings that you can never enter, or by passing triumphantly further and further in—one way or the other you will be that kind of [person].”

That kind of person. Always striving but never sure.

We might hope that the Church is free of this social dynamic, but it is not. Even within the group of twelve disciples, a Ring in itself, there was a desire to get into an ever-closer Ring. “And they came to Capernaum, and when Jesus was in the house he began to question them, ‘What were you discussing on the way?’ But the disciples kept silent, for on the way they had discussed with one another which of them was the greatest” (Mark 9:33-34; cf. Mt 18:1; Lk 9:46, 22:24).

Lewis goes on, “I am not going to say that the existence of Inner Rings is an evil. It is certainly unavoidable. [For example,] “there must be confidential discussions, and it is not only not a bad thing, it is (in itself) a good thing that personal friendship should grow up between those who work together.

“But the desire which draws us into Inner Rings is another matter. A thing may be morally neutral and the desire for that thing may be dangerous. Let Inner Rings be an unavoidable and even an innocent feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one; but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in?”

I have more to say about this next month, but for now I’d like to commend “The Inner Ring” to all readers from middle schoolers on up. Families with kids could read and discuss this. Couples could think about how this might apply to them. Church youth groups could mine this material for several weeks. The idea is to expose the Inner Ring dynamic and question it. The pressure to obey the Ring is heavy, with the promise of deep satisfaction. But once inside, are you truly free or a slave?

PS: I bought the size 12 Converse. Felt like running with ankle weights the entire season. With blisters, too.

Because there’s always a price to pay when you want to be in an Inner Ring.

Our Messed-Up Family

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 01:29:03 GMT

Can We Talk? If Not...

What follows are three ideas I have rolling around in my head. I have not completely worked out a smooth connection of these ideas, but see if you can follow where I’m headed.

First, take a quick scan of the families in the Bible, even the ones in the ancestry of Jesus, and you’ll find a mess. Abraham’s a bit of a character whose philosophy in ethics seems to be that the ends justify the means. If you’re his wife Sarah, this is not good news. On two separate occasions, whether concerned for his own life or that the promise of God might fail, Abraham throws Sarah under the bus by having her play the role of sister (she is, in fact, his half-sister) rather than wife. On one of those occasions, it’s implied that the Pharaoh had a sexual relationship with Sarah (Gen. 12:15b).

There are additional choices of Abraham’s that are problematic, such as enriching himself in Egypt through his deceit with Sarah, then his passivity under pressure from Sarah and the ensuing relationship he has with Hagar. And this is father Abraham!

The apple doesn’t fall far with Isaac following his father’s bad example of mistreating his wife. When famine hits the land, Isaac takes Rebekah and heads out of town. When he settles in Gerar, the men of the land inquire about Rebekah. To save his own skin, Isaac tells the men that Rebekah is his sister. Mercifully, Rebekah is spared any abuse.

Which makes me wonder how much of that duplicity is either the cause or the result of the way Isaac and Rebekah parent their sons. True, Paul says in Romans 9 that God told Rebekah, regarding her twin sons, that “the older will serve the younger.” But did she then share that with Isaac? Whether she did or didn’t, Isaac favors Esau and the painful outcome is not surprising. There’s a terrible family split, and when Jacob flees for his life little does he know that he will never see his beloved mother again.

Jacob turns out to not be a stellar example of virtue either. The same ethical faults of his father and grandfather show up. Jacob, too, is a deceiver, and cowardice shows up over and over in his life. The end justifies the means is the same mantra that characterizes Jacob as much as his progenitors.

We could go on to explore the line of succession through whom God chose to work specifically into his family name—men like Judah and David and Solomon. All of them created extensive and painful family trouble.

If your family has brokenness within it, you have some distinguished company.

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Second, I came across a book review the other day that I can’t let go of. The book reviewed was published in 1970 and is entitled, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States , by the economist Albert Hirschman. The reviewer says this book is one of the “top 3 most important books a student in the social sciences should read.” Well, then…

The book explores the options people have when they are no longer satisfied with their employer, organization, or country. The options boil down to two: voice and exit. Voice is where a person expresses discontent and attempts to improve the organization. Exit means a person or group leave when it’s realized that the organization is decaying. Hirschman writes, “Under what conditions will the exit option prevail over the voice option, and vice versa?”

This kind of analysis catches my attention because, as I’ve noted in other posts, macro concepts applied in the business world and even on the global stage also apply at the micro level of marriage and family. A civil war at the national level is divorce at the personal level.

As you might expect, voice is far messier than exit. Voice is defined as any attempt to change, rather than escape from, an objectionable state of affairs. My impression from reading the book review is that voice ranges on a spectrum from mild, like questioning why something got handled the way it did, to extreme, like yelling and even violence in a last-ditch attempt to force some kind of change or response.

If voice proves ineffective, then people start considering exit. The book reviewer then makes this interesting observation: “For exit to work as a mechanism of recuperation from decline, it is ideal for an organization to have a mixture of ‘alert’ and ‘inert’ members. The exit of alert members provides feedback to the firm—‘People are leaving, maybe we should figure out why.’

“Inert members provide the firm with time and financial cushion for the recuperation to take place. In other words, it’s best if most members are unaware of, or unperturbed by, decay.”

Could this, then, explain why, in some families, some members “get it” while others don’t? Some are “alert” and ask questions or at least try to signal voice through problematic behavior, while “inert” members are either not paying attention or are not affected by the decaying nature of others’ relationships.

A complicating factor in determining when and how people use voice and exit is loyalty. If you really care about an organization or have high regard for the institution of marriage and family, then the less likely you are to exit. At the same time, loyalty means you’re more likely to try to use your voice to effect change. To outsiders who have no skin in the game, a person’s loyalty under conditions of decay looks illogical.

There are many more insights in this book review that I’d like to explore, but for now I’ll just say that if you’re a Purist at all (see last month’s post) we should be very careful to not judge someone when they choose to exit if we don’t know the details of their story. It’s possible they’ve exhausted their voice under conditions which are no longer habitable.

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Third, in some marriages and families, when mess and brokenness need to be addressed, voice is either suppressed or not allowed. When I see this in my counseling office, it often comes down to power, fear, and/or shame. As painful as that is, please know that however flawed and broken your life and family may be, you have a Voice who advocates for you. Christ is your Voice in heaven, speaking to the Father confidently and with joy on your behalf (Romans 8:33-34). And the Spirit of Christ is God’s Voice in your heart, speaking to and reminding you that through Christ you are a beloved and favored member in God’s holy family (Romans 8:14-16).

Because “Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters” (Hebrews 2:11).

Baptists and Bootleggers

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Jesus says Bottom's Up

I picked up the phrase, “Baptists and Bootleggers,” from a podcast on artificial intelligence. The experts on AI are currently debating if and how that industry should be regulated by the government. Amongst the conversation, one guy referenced the short backstory of how the phrase, “Baptists and Bootleggers,” came to be.

In the early 1900s, there was a hot and long dispute in North America over the legal consumption of alcohol. Those with high moral standards worked hard, sometimes using violence (check out Carrie “Hatchet Granny” Nation), to enact laws prohibiting the making, selling, and drinking of alcohol. There’s no question, both then and now, that the moralists had hard evidence on their side as to the negative consequences alcohol has on people’s health and society. But the moralist’s hardline approach ultimately backfired and as is so often the case when morality gets legislated, it simply drives the restricted industry and behavior underground.

The podcasters went on to note that historians observe anytime there’s a social reform movement, two groups of people often show up. Development economists build on that observation and label the two groups metaphorically as Baptists and Bootleggers. Baptists despise Bootleggers as evildoers and seek to shut them down; Bootleggers think Baptists are crazy but take advantage of the situation since the Baptist’s way of handling the issue makes the Bootleggers rich.

Without regard to denominations or the topic of alcohol (I’m a teetotaler but with an open conscience), I think there are several applications for Christian living using the Baptist/Bootlegger analogy. For now, I want to start with what I think is the most foundational of all applications from a Christian perspective. And I want to get at it by renaming the categories as the Purists and the Compromised. The Purists work very hard at maintaining high moral standards and traditions while the Compromised are viewed as such by the Purists because they are in some way “less than” in terms of status, character, reputation, pedigree, or some such other external category.

Now let’s say that when Jesus showed up on the scene, he enacted a social reform movement. And guess what? Two groups of people emerged—the Purists and the Compromised. While Jesus loved both groups, he gave hard warnings to the Purists about their sense of entitlement and self-righteousness. And, by word and action, he gave the Compromised a clear message that life at the bottom was no impediment to rising into God’s family.

Taking this one step farther, Luke’s Gospel, more so than any other book in the Bible, spotlights the Purist/Compromised contrast. Every chapter, save the last, gives at least one example of each group and then shows the mercy of Jesus to those at the bottom. I wonder why Luke in particular, a physician, repeats this pattern over and over again. Is it because he knows that the Compromised have such a strong voice of condemnation in their heads that they need to have the Good News repeated to them over and over again in order to really believe it? Is it because he knows that deep wounds need ongoing treatment and clean dressings with each chapter of their lives? Is it a wake-up call to the Purists that their law-keeping as a means of being in good standing with God is not how the Gospel works?

Without elaborating, here is a list of each chapter in Luke with an example of the Purist first and the Compromised next:

1: Zechariah, old member of the religious elite / Mary, young, unmarried yet pregnant

2: The wise men from the east (in Matthew’s Gospel) / Shepherds, blue-collar, socially marginalized

3: The direct descendants of Abraham / Common rocks and stones that everyone walked on

4: Those who took pride in Elijah and Elisha / a Gentile widow and sick pagan soldier

5: Those with the highest education and moral standards / Levi, a tax collector

6: The rich, the laughing, and the reputable / the poor, weeping, and reviled

7: Simon, a Pharisee / a “woman in the city, a sinner”

8: Jesus’ actual mother and brothers / the common people

9: The disciples arguing about personal greatness / a child

10: A priest and a Levite / the socially despised Samaritan

11: The crowds / the men of Nineveh

12: A rich man / those who help the needy

13: Those who expect to get into the kingdom / people from the east, west, north, and south

14: Those initially invited to the banquet / the poor, cripple, blind, and lame

15: The older son (Scribes and Pharisees) / the younger son (tax collectors and sinners)

16: A rich man living in luxury / a poor man named Lazarus

17: Ten cleansed lepers / The one who returned to give thanks, a Samaritan

18: The morally clean and socially praised Pharisee / the despised tax collector

19: Those who grumbled, who thought they were better than / Zaccheus, chief tax collector

20: The original tenants of the vineyard / other tenants (Gentiles)

21: The rich who give / the poor widow who gives

22: Those who recline at the table / those who serve the table

23: The condescending spiritual rulers / the repentant criminal being crucified

As for the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, we could say it’s the summation of how Jesus makes it possible for both the Purists and the Compromised to enter into God’s family. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus explains to Cleopas and his walking companion that it was “necessary for the Christ to suffer and to enter into His glory. And beginning with Moses and with all the prophets [Jesus] explained to them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:26-27).

From the very beginning, it was God’s design He would come incarnate in order to keep His Law perfectly since even the purist of the Purists couldn’t, and that He would suffer and die more alienated than any Compromised ever has, and that through His resurrection He guaranteed the justification, from the bottom up, of all who trust in Him.

Because life in God’s kingdom is always and only all of grace.

Tending the Flame

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Look Up, Not In

There’s a stanza in the Leonard Cohen hymn, “You Want it Darker,” that goes,

Magnified, sanctified

Be the holy name

Vilified, crucified

In the human frame

I have this song in one of my playlists, partly for Mr. Cohen’s voice, partly because I fantasize about being able to play bass guitar, but mostly for the richness of the summary of the Christian Gospel in those four lines. Then, tragically, Mr. Cohen reduces that life-giving truth to ashes in the next stanza:

A million candles burning

For the love that never came

You want it darker

We kill the flame

As I understand it, Mr. Cohen wrote this song, and the album of the same name, while knowing he was dying back in 2016. (If you’re curious and decide to listen to the song, the word “Hineni,” is Hebrew for, “here I am”—the same phrase Abraham uses in responding to the Lord’s calling on him to go sacrifice Isaac in Gen. 22:1.) Part of me grieves for Mr. Cohen. He had enough of an understanding of the Gospel to be able to articulate it, but not enough faith to trust it; he had some knowledge of Jesus and His cross-work, but then seemingly misinterpreted Jesus’ good purpose.

The result of Mr. Cohen’s misinterpretation and/or lack of faith in Christ is that he then decided to snuff out the flame—the very thing that God implants in the heart of those who look on Jesus and believe (2 Cor. 4:6). And with that move, I let out a deep breath and wonder about the nature of faith and how it gets tested over the course of a lifetime (see the rest of 2 Cor. 4).

Christians fully expect our faith in God will be tested along the way. Our holy Scriptures are honest and straightforward about this. I also remember reading John Bunyan’s, Pilgrim’s Progress , as a child, but at the time had no idea what a “slough of despond” was until I fell into one when I was thirty years old. Same with “doubting castle” in my forties. As Pilgrim’s Progress so clearly illustrates, there are many hazards to Christian on the way to the Celestial City.

In my work as a counselor, I get a front row seat to many of the ways people’s faith in Christ is challenged. Back in the March edition of this newsletter (“The Speed of God, part 2”), I observed that some people’s trust in Jesus fails when they grow up in a Christian home where a corrupted version of the Gospel is taught. When that child then grows up and begins to think for themselves, the incongruities of belief and life create a crisis that some don’t survive.

Other ways I’ve witnessed faith in God being assaulted include trials such as the unexpected death of a loved-one, prolonged suffering, unanswered prayer, and now more commonly, prosperity. We should also not forget Satanic or demonic attack. I’ll also observe it’s not getting any easier for people to come to faith in Christ and stay in the faith. Historians have well documented the rise in atheism in the last century due in large part to the seeming absence of God in the world.

“With respect to the question of origins, developments in biology (the theory of evolution) and physics (such as quantum theory) furnished humankind with all that was needed to explain, at least in principle, cosmic and human origins. God, we might say, was out of a job—our progress in knowledge directly proportionate to the narrowing gaps left for God to fill” (Joseph Minich, Bulwarks of Unbelief: Atheism and Divine Absence in a Secular Age , p. 12). Minich goes on to detail how neuroscience is now working to better understand how the brain works, so much so that there’s a reach for scientific explanations into the immaterial world of the mind and soul.

Minich’s book, which I’m picking my way through, makes the case that not that many centuries ago it would have been hard to be an atheist due to a lack of knowledge about the inner workings and origins of the material world. Even if a person was an atheist back then, one would have stayed in the closet for fear of persecution. But now the tables have turned. God is no longer necessary. We have knowledge, we have wealth, we have the technology to save ourselves. Which, for an increasing number of people, renders the Christian Gospel both unnecessary and uninteresting.

Take heart, dear Christian, and regularly tend to the flame of faith in Christ which is in you. Remember that every belief system, every worldview, require degrees of faith or trust, and that they have their own doubts and unanswerable questions. Further, there are other ways of knowing things that are outside the realm of science—like history, law, sociology, and philosophy. All of these are tools to use to grow your faith in Christ. Jesus and his resurrection, for example, are not reproducible (scientific) but a strongly evidenced reality (historical).

I often use music as an instrument to fan the flame of faith in Christ, so let me end this post with another song. My wife, older son, and I returned recently from hiking out in the Southwest desert—mostly in the circuit of the Grand Canyon, Sedona, and Page, Arizona. After biking and hiking along the rim of the Grand Canyon, after sitting atop a mesa in Sedona to watch the sun go down and the stars come out, we found ourselves on Highway 89 driving up to Page when we came to Antelope Pass Vista. It’s an overlook of a breathtakingly wide valley north of the Grand Canyon and a place you could sit all day in reverence.

As we stood there in quiet taking it all in, my older son spontaneously said, almost in a whisper, “I feel small.” That’s all he said, and that’s all that needed to be said. It was the culmination of all the stunning wonders we had seen that week. No question, non-Christians can also experience a sense of awe and even transcendence in such moments. But the Christian faith is not man-centered (we don’t look within ourselves for hope and answers, and we don’t work our way into a relationship with the divine). Christians look at moments like this as yet another opportunity to fan the flame of faith implanted in us through the Spirit of Jesus Christ. We look up, not in.

When we got back in the car, I said to my wife and son, “Before we leave here, let’s listen to this.” I synced my phone to the car’s radio and played Sara Groves’ ninety-second version of, “For the Beauty of the Earth.” And that little breath fanned the flame just a little stronger.

For the beauty of the earth

For the beauty of the skies

For the love which from our birth

Over and around us lies

Lord of all to Thee we raise

This our hymn of grateful praise

Because ultimately, Christians are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed at any time (1 Peter 1:5).

Why, Georgia, Why?

Mon, 01 May 2023 02:04:36 GMT

Prying into the Peace-Violence Paradox

There was a day a couple weeks ago where I had the happy fusion of a song on a playlist sync with an article I came across later that evening. It got my mental turntable spinning, and I’ll try to document it here.

Depending on the mood I’m in, no telling what podcast or playlist option I might choose. On this particular day I was feeling it for some blues/acoustic vibe, and John Mayer’s old hit, “Why Georgia,” was one of the songs that fit the bill. At one point, Mayer muses,

‘Cause I wonder sometimes

About the outcome

Of a still verdictless life.

Am I living it right?

Why, why Georgia, why?

It’s a tormented refrain that recurs three times in the song. I wouldn’t want to interrupt the artist at work, but I do kind of want to raise my hand and respectfully whisper, “But wouldn’t you like to know?”

It’s that same uncertainty that shows up in a recent article in the peer-reviewed journal, Trends in Cognitive Sciences . The authors state that, “Humans present a behavioral paradox: they are peaceful in many circumstances, but they are also violent and kill [fellow humans] at high rates. The ‘peace-violence paradox’ (also referred to as the goodness paradox) has precipitated passionate philosophical and sociological debate about human nature.”

From the counselor’s chair I sit in, this is not just a scholastic debate reserved for those who populate the ivory tower. Down on the street, I’d like to suggest that this is the very kind of debate that Christians have much to offer and with significant implications—especially as society is actively questioning what it means to be a human being while also working to imbue complex technologies with human modes of being.

The article continues, “The Rousseau-Kropotkin and the Hobbes-Huxley theories capture the opposing interpretations of human nature and aggression. The Rousseau-Kropotkin theory posits that humans are intrinsically peaceful, with tendencies for violence attributable to the corrupting influences of culture.

“In contrast, the Hobbes-Huxley theory posits that humans are intrinsically aggressive, with culture restraining innate capacities for violence. However, by viewing aggression as a unitary cognitive-behavioral phenomenon, both theories fail to recognize that peace and violence are equally likely to reflect evolved tendencies” (“Evolutionary and neuroendocrine foundations of human aggression,” Amar Sarkar and Richard Wrangham).

The Christian has a very different understanding of the peace-violence paradox. What separates humans from other creatures is that we are made in God’s image (thus we have capacity for great good and majesty), yet paradoxically we are fallen creatures through original sin (thus we have capacity for great evil and misery).

Another level down, an evolutionary view of human nature sees the world as raw material out of which meaning and purpose can be created by the individual. There is no objective authority is this world; instead, rather than God being the potter and we the clay, in the evolutionary mind we are both the potter and the clay. Today, you can shape yourself with your own power and for your own purposes. Human nature is something you invent and create on your own. Per Invictus , “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

No question, there’s a strong appeal there to one’s ego. But at some point I hope someone courageously steps forward and asks questions like, To what end? Within what limits? Because if there is no defined end and there are no limits to human nature, then it’s open season just like the ending of the book of Judges: there is no king in the land and everyone does what’s right in their own eyes. Which brings to mind another song, Jasmine Thompson’s version of “Mad World:”

All around me are familiar faces

Worn out places, worn out faces

Bright and early for the daily races

Going nowhere, going nowhere

And I find it kind of funny

I find it kind of sad

The dreams in which I’m dying

Are the best I’ve ever had

I find it hard to tell you

I find it hard to take

When people run in circles, it’s a very, very

Mad world, mad world

For a sane world, historic Christian belief sees the world as having a given order and meaning, and our project as the most ennobled of God’s creatures is to discover that meaning and then conform ourselves to it. Think Romans 12:1-2 as an example. Far from eviscerating our creativity, Christians consider themselves to be sub-creators who imitate our God in constant creation within the bounds of holiness, love, goodness, truth, and grace.

We have sophisticated insights and nuanced responses to the complexities of human nature. We get to that by asking humane sorts of questions: What is the purpose of my life? What constitutes the good life and thriving? How do I understand myself in relation to others and the world around me? And we respond with the merciful message that God created this world with intrinsic meaning and humanity with a specific, given end. We don’t run in circles trying out identities in an attempt to heal and create ourselves from within. In fact, we’re enroute to see Someone greater than ourselves, knowing our ultimate healing and purpose is eternal communion with God, the Giver and Lover of our very life.

Because the God who created human nature has not left us alone and guessing with a life that paradoxically possesses both virtues and vices.

A Sunny Place for Shady People

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Sign Me Up

A few random thoughts this month, beginning with greed.

“King Pyrrhus of Epirus was planning an attack on Rome. A trusted advisor asked, What if we should defeat Rome, what then? The king vowed to attack the rest of Italy. What next? Libya and Carthage, then all of Greece! And then? We will live at our ease, my dear friend, said the king, and drink all day and divert ourselves with pleasant conversation. Replied the advisor, What hinders Your Majesty from doing so now?”

Unlike the aspirations of King Pyrrhus, we can’t have it all. Choices and trade-offs have to be made. You’ve likely heard of FOMO, the fear of missing out. But how about JOMO, the joy of missing out? Learning to say, “No” appropriately might be one of the most liberating decisions you make. Not having it all doesn’t mean you don’t have everything that really matters.

To say it another way, “Because idols are fashioned out of created matter, rather than ex nihilo , something good is taken from creation and turned into a god. Wright notes four Old Testament things from which gods are manufactured: things that entice us, things we fear, things we trust and things we need” ( Their Rock is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions , Daniel Strange, p. 207). It seems to me that these four things can also function as sources to which greed can attach itself.

Digging a bit deeper, “Herein lies a deep irony of human existence. According to Jesus’s teachings, when people seek to keep everything together and provide for themselves apart from God, the result is not the sought-after peace, but rather, anxiety. That is, there is an organic connection between the warning against greed in [Matthew] 6:22-24 and the exhortation against anxiety in 6:25-34. Greed causes anxiety.

“It is the non-God-directed heart that is laying up earthly treasures that ironically does not have peace. But the people who live like the flowers and birds, apparently foolish from the world’s financial perspective, are the ones who are free from anxiety. They seek first God’s kingdom and as a result get all their needs met without anxiety.

“This is not to say that all anxiety is caused by greed; there are many other sources of anxiety, real and perceived. But it is to say that greed will inevitably result in the double-souled anxiety that is the opposite of the human flourishing to which Jesus is inviting his hearers” ( The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing , Jonathan Pennington, p. 252).

Lastly, “Sociologist Cecilia Ridgeway describes experiments that tried to locate the point at which our need for status, once acquired, stabilizes. ‘There was no point at which preference for higher status leveled off,’ she writes. The researchers thought one reason the desire for status is ‘never really satiated’ is because ‘it can never really be possessed by the individual once and for all. Since it is esteem given by others, it can always, at least theoretically, be taken away.’ So we keep wanting more. And more and more and more.”

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More than one friend of mine has encouraged me to watch The Chosen series. I recently came across an excerpt entitled, “ Why Haven’t You Healed Me? ” (6:35) and it may be enough to get me started. True, the exchange here between Jesus and James is fictional, but if you’ve studied the Gospels at all then this short conversation is certainly within the framework of Jesus’ character and teaching. I deeply identify with the struggle James is voicing, and I know many of my clients would too. Maybe you or someone you know might as well.

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Last year, my wife and I spent some time out of town with family. As we were driving down a road to where we would eventually eat dinner, we passed a restaurant that my brother in-law was familiar with. He told us that the owner refers to his restaurant as, “A sunny place for shady people.” I immediately fell in love with that line because, whether the restauranteur knows it or not, the line smells of the Gospel of Jesus.

One of the ironies of Jesus’ Gospel is that for His Spirit to shine through your life you must first be honest with yourself and Him that you’re a shady person. As in, “The corner office, or head place setting, over there is for the Chief Shady Officer, and I occupy it. And the sunshine that radiates from it is not that I drop lines about what I’ve accumulated or signal status by what I’ve done or have but that for reasons unknown to me God has been merciful to love me in all the many shades of my shadiness.

Because “A smile from Jesus in the morning will be sunshine all the day” (Charles Spurgeon).

The Speed of God (Part 2)

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

When We Transpose Grace and Law

In a study I recently came across, participants were asked to sit alone in an empty room for fifteen minutes with instructions to entertain themselves with their own thoughts. If at any point they found that time too painful, they could choose to administer an electric shock to themselves. Sixty-seven percent of the men and twenty-five percent of the women chose to shock themselves.

I now have questions. As in, if this study were ever replicated in a church, I’d be curious to know if the results would be similar or significantly different than the one conducted at UVA. Do men generally have a harder time being still and unoccupied? Is this study in any way a reflection of the spirit of the age in which we live? What about the Christian practices of prayer and meditation? Clearly, the lack of internal contentment incites the need for external stimulation. So much so that people are willing to shock themselves.

I made the observation in Part 1 of this short series that it’s against the Way of Jesus to put Doing before Being, that the grammar of the Gospel is that the Indicative should always come before the Imperative. To transpose those two modes proves deadly to one’s spiritual walk with Christ and creates ever more cycles of anxiety (work harder, do more) and depression (it’s never enough, I’m stuck in a loop). To continue operating in a Doing-in-order-to-Be pattern is to continue shocking yourself rather than learning to be still long enough to content yourself with Christ, His world, and your place in it.

In this post I want to observe another and equally deadly transposition: putting Law in front of Grace. It’s obvious to say that Exodus 19 comes before Exodus 20, yet the implications, that Grace precedes Law, are significant. God carries His people on eagles’ wings out of slavery as an act of pure grace (Ex. 19), and then tells them that the way to stay truly free is to live in line with His law (Ex. 20) as an expression of His moral character.

However, when we resist accepting God’s grace (He loves and accepts us in spite of our inability to keep the law) and instead attempt to live by the law (He will love and accept me if I keep the rules and standards), we will find ourselves in a nasty anxiety-depression loop. Not only will that cause grief and pain to the one working at law-keeping, those who live and work with the law-keeper will also suffer for it.

For example, let’s say there’s a guy named Jim who has some ambition inside him. When Jim looks around and sees what other ambitious guys are doing and where it gets them, he gets motivated. Now let’s say Jim has two friends, Bob and Dave. Bob and Dave also have ambition, but their ends—how they define success—are different than Jim’s.

Let’s go on to say that Jim’s unspoken but very real definition of success is measured in material goods. Bob is also interested in having things, but he’s not as driven about that as Jim is. For Bob, success is more about achievement and rank in his military career. As for Dave, while he does enjoy boating at Jim’s lake house, and while he really respects Bob’s climb up to working at the Pentagon, Dave is mostly psyched about his family—his wife and three kids.

Now let’s note a naturally occurring dynamic when we set our heart on something, even good things like property and work and family. When we set the eyes of our heart on something we desire, there immediately comes with it a set of laws we must keep in order to achieve success.

Jim is driven to work many hours a week in order to create the revenue stream he needs to possess the things he uses to measure success. The law of a rising standard of living demands it. Bob will not only do the required work of the Marines, he will go above and beyond the call of duty to obtain the next rank up. The law of honor and image demands it. Dave, on the other hand, will never miss a game or event his kids are in. The law of family respect demands it.

Add to this the fact that laws always require a sacrifice. For Jim and Bob, they may well have to sacrifice time with their families to get the what and the where of their desires. For Dave, he may well have to sacrifice a job promotion and newer material goods to have the kind of family life he wants.

But what if Jim’s wife is increasingly lonely and is asking for him to be home more? What if Bob’s wife feels like she’s in competition with all the accolades Bob receives so she begins an emotional connection with a co-worker who affirms her? What if one of Dave’s kids begins to rebel and embarrass the family in public? Jim, Bob, and Dave are now being confronted by the graceless laws that govern them, and they will face a terrible and emotional decision: either double down and try harder (hello anxiety) or be judged a failure (hello depression).

Jim might become increasingly frustrated with his wife, and as a way to justify himself Jim might accuse her of not being grateful for all the work he’s doing to provide for her. Bob might become incensed when he finds the secret messages his wife and her male counterpart are exchanging, and as a way to justify himself he could seek consolation from other officers who’ve experienced the same thing. Dave might experience shame and the anger that comes with it over his child’s foolishness, and he may justify himself by cutting off his delinquent child so he doesn’t have to deal with being judged by the very law he’s following.

Finally, apply all of this to the Christian life. If you’ve been led to believe that to stay in good standing in the eyes of God and your fellow Christians is through law-keeping, you’re going to end up feeling judged. You’ll then face a terrible and emotional decision: double down and try harder or feel as though you’re a failure. Then the cycle of anxiety and depression will kick in.

I’ve encountered a few too many people who’ve grown up this way. And what a travesty. After thinking they’ve encountered Christianity by working the Law-before-Grace life and are completely worn out by the cycle of anxiety and depression, some choose to opt out—they walk away from what they think is Christianity but in fact is a false gospel.

Because Christian law-keeping is the way we demonstrate our love for Jesus and not the conditions under which we earn and keep His unearnable love for us.

He's a Shape-Shifter

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 03:50:57 GMT

The Many Faces of Pride

Tamarah and I invited some couples over for dinner this past fall. We were sitting around the table telling stories as the sun went down and the soft glow of hanging lights lit the patio. All was well until I engaged one of the men I went to school with forty years ago. I asked him if he was in one of the classes I had taken, and he said he wasn’t sure. I then said something like, “Well, I can’t remember right off if that class was during my first or second Master’s degree.”

Instantly, the entire group rained grief down on me for letting my pride show. You would have laughed had you been there. And no question, I deserved it and tried my best, despite the sting of exposure, to roll with it like a good sport. The thing is, though, right up until the group busted me, I wasn’t aware enough to know that pride was resting there right on the top of my heart waiting to spring into action.

If getting caught with egg on my face wasn’t embarrassing enough (think wounded pride), I then spent the next couple days berating myself (pride in the form of self-pity) for letting my pride show like that. The pride was unrelenting: How could I let that happen? That was not my best self. I can be better than that.

There is some debate about which sin should be considered the chief sin, with some saying godlessness while others would say pride. I don’t know, but what I do know from firsthand experience is that pride is a stubborn root that, when exposed in one form will shape-shift and manifest itself in another form.

What follows is a starter list of the variety of faces that pride can show itself. I’m stating many of these in an extreme way just to make the point; the challenge is to not discard it for yourself without taking the time to consider the possible nuances within the description. Keep in mind that we would NEVER say these things out loud. How uncouth! These are all self-talk expressions of pride we think within ourselves:

“I am selfishly ambitious. I really want to get ahead and make a name for myself. I need some r-e-s-p-e-c-t. I like the buzz of having a position or title or status.”

“I am overly competitive. I always want to win or come out on top, and it bothers me when I don’t.”

“I like to talk, especially about myself or persons or things I am involved with or places I’ve been. I want people to know what I am doing or thinking. I have a hard time being succinct. When I’m being quiet and letting others talk about themselves, I resent it and wish they knew about me like I know me. Maybe I’ll go post that on social.”

“I tend to be deceptive about myself. I find myself lying to preserve or inflate my reputation. I find myself hiding some truths about myself. I don’t want people to know who I really am.”

“I am often anxious about my life and the future. I can have a hard time sleeping at night because of fearful thoughts and burdens I carry. I don’t have much of a prayer life.”

“I am overly self-conscious. I tend to replay in my mind how I did that, what I said, and how I came across to others. I am concerned about my appearance and what people think of me—whether I’m in or out of shape. Styles and brands are important signals. I think about these things a lot.”

“I often feel insecure . I don’t want to try new things or step out into uncomfortable situations because I’m afraid I’ll fail or look foolish. I am easily embarrassed.”

“I am self-critical. I tend to be a perfectionist. I can’t stand for little things to be wrong because they reflect poorly on me. I have a hard time putting my mistakes behind me.”

“I feel special or superior because of what I have or do or who or what I know.”

“I think highly of myself. In relation to others, I typically see myself as more mature and more gifted. In many situations, I have more to offer than others even though I may not say so.

“I feel deserving . I think I deserve what I have. I’ve worked hard for it. Or maybe I’ve suffered more than others. In fact, I think I ought to have more considering how well I have performed or in light of all I have gone through.”

“I often feel ungrateful . Instead of thanking other people, I tend to complain about them. I grumble or fuss or whine about my life or the current state of affairs.”

“I sometimes find myself wallowing in self-pity . I am consumed with how I am treated by others. I tend to feel mistreated and hate being misunderstood. I seldom recognize or sympathize with what’s going on with others around me because I feel that I have it worse than they do.”

“I can be jealous or envious of others’ abilities, possessions, positions, accomplishments or friends. I want to be what others are or want to have what others have. I find it hard to rejoice when others are doing well.”

“I am pretty insensitive to others. I feel some people aren’t worth caring about based on how they look, what they’re wearing, how they speak, their ethnicity, or the like. I have a hard time showing compassion or extending mercy to others who don’t look and act and believe like me.

“I feel compelled to stop people when they start to share something I already know.”

“I find it hard to admit it when I don’t know something . When someone asks me something I don’t know, I will make up an answer or avoid the question rather than admit I don't know.”

“I have a hard time listening to ordinary people . I listen better to those I respect or people I am wanting to leave with a good impression. I don’t honestly listen when someone else is speaking because I am usually planning what I am going to say next.”

“I interrupt people . I don’t want to forget my very important idea, so I jump in with what I want to say. I don’t let people finish what they are saying.”

“I’m not very open to input . I tend to be unteachable and slow to change when corrected. I don’t really see correction as a positive thing. Instead, I will accuse the one correcting me, or I will dwell on their faults, or withdraw and stay angry.”

“I am easily angered and offended . I don’t like being crossed or disagreed with. I find myself thinking, ‘I can’t believe they did that to me.’ I often feel wronged. I hate to be misunderstood by others especially those I respect and desire to think highly of me.”

“I am a slanderer and gossip . I find myself either giving or receiving or seeking out negative reports about others. I am not concerned about the effect of slander or gossip on others. The things I say about people are usually true, anyway. The info just proves I was right all along.”

“I am divisive . My actions and attitudes separate people rather than unite people. My words frequently undermined the confidence and trust people have in one another. I also tend to resist or resent authority.”

“I am unaccountable . I don’t ask others to hold me responsible or to challenge my life. I will not be subordinate to anyone. I surround myself with yes-people or with those who are impressed with me or afraid of me. I think I’m too powerful for others to handle. I rarely apologize, let alone ask for forgiveness.”

What to do with all of this? If we’re still long enough to be honest with ourselves, we’ll come to the conclusion we’re a hot mess internally regardless of how we present ourselves externally. And knowing this about ourselves is the first step toward a growing freedom in Christ to deal with it all.

Because God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

The Speed of God

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

On the Tension of Being and Doing

My hands seem fused to the steering wheel and it feels like we’re going a hundred miles an hour. Then, redlights—redlights—redlights, annnnnd STOP. Wheels start rolling, picking up speed, and we’re going a hundred miles an hour again. Then full stop. Jarringly. Bumper-to-bumper, side-by-side. I typically love to drive, but this was Talladega with no roll cage. It was the Sunday after this past Thanksgiving, and we were northbound on I-85.

I’d say we were fifteen miles shy of the South Carolina boarder when, for no discernible reason, everyone decided to stop. Again. It was supposed to be a unanimous decision, but a car or two somewhere behind us decided to vote no. We heard it before we saw it. Screeching tires. Then successive banging. I looked in my driver-side mirror and saw the accident scene unfolding and approaching us. All I could spit out was, “Please, Lord.” It all ended four cars short of where we were sitting on the highway to hell.

No sooner had the crashing stopped then the traffic ahead of us let loose. There was no time to assess—I could only hope there were good Samaritans behind us as we launched full throttle ahead. Little Rock to Birmingham was the warmup; Birmingham to Greenville was a white flag, last lap, stress and anxiety induced sprint to the finish line. Thank God we made it home safely.

I’m taking those last five frenetic hours on I-85 as a metaphor for an unexamined life—life in the fast lane, as it were, where speed is one of the conduits to supposed success. But as I see it in my office, feel it in my bones, and read about it in both ancient and current literature, that fast-paced, always-distracted, adrenaline-filled life is also a significant contributor to anxiety and depression.

This is not a new problem and there is a remedy to be practiced. I’ll use as my case study the well-worn example of Martha and her sister Mary in Luke 10. When you read the text straight-up, it’s clear that Jesus is not correcting Martha for her acts of service. First, Jesus loves Martha (John 11:5), and second, Jesus does not make any such correcting comments to her when Martha’s serving a different and important meal (John 12:2). What then is the issue with Martha in Luke 10?

The issue seems to be one of order, or priorities, or values, within her heart. Jesus and the writers of Christian Scripture think of the heart as the mechanism through which a person sees things and life—as if your heart has eyes (e.g., Matthew 6:19-24). If your heart is full of greed, for example, then all you can see around you are things and ways to acquire them. If your heart is possessed with lust, then you’re looking for the next person on which to feast your eyes. If your heart is occupied with insecurity, then you’ll surely see the flaws in others and judge them for it.

We don’t know exactly what Martha’s heart was full of, but Jesus points out that she was “anxious and troubled about many things.” In that place, Martha’s heart showed its disordered priorities in the way she made verbal judgments on both her sister and Jesus. In that moment, Martha’s heart was running a hundred miles an hour. Her heart’s misorientation showed when she suddenly stopped to make a wrecking comment.

Jesus offers a remedy to all that chaotic racing in one’s heart. When the Spirit of Christ comes into a heart, He recalibrates it and then functions like a governor on the speed our heart runs. When I say recalibrate, I mean that Jesus takes our natural heart’s inclination to do-in- order-to-be and turns it around into a be-in-order-to-do inclination. It’s a critical observation regarding how the Gospel works. Christ makes you His child first (the being part) through no effort on our part, and only then commissions us to service (the doing part). Yet our natural selves reverse that order in an attempt to create our own identity. The result is more striving, more working, even more serving, but with proliferating dysfunctions.

In technical terms, the grammar of the Gospel says the indicative (be) comes before the imperative (do). For example, Ephesians 5:14-15 says, “For this reason it says, ‘Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you’ [the being of the Gospel]. Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise” [the doing of the Gospel]. This echoes what Paul writes earlier in Ephesians 2:1-10, where we are dead in our sins until God makes us alive in Christ (be) and then assigns us good works (do).

We are first loved by God. Just be. And then we live as those who are loved by God. Go do.

In his book, The Life We Are Looking For , Andy Crouch cites Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama as saying that “the speed of God” is three miles per hour—the speed at which Jesus moved through His earthly service to humankind. Koyama writes,

“God walks ‘slowly’ because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is ‘slow’ yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, whether we are currently hit by storm or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore it is the speed the love of God walks.”

Let’s admit some walk faster than others. I struggle at times to keep up with my wife when we’re out walking. The natural pace of leader personalities is just faster than that of helper personalities. Regardless, the indicative-imperative, be-do, of the Gospel still applies. Leaders will struggle to “be” and helpers will struggle to “do.” Leaders show their love by getting things done. Helpers show their love by being with others in their need. Yet leaders will get healthier when they practice surrendering their plans, and helpers will get healthier when they practice courage by stepping into the unknown. Their common link is trust: Do you really trust that God loves you in your being and in your doing?

If we don’t purposely and regularly spend time reorienting our heart to this Gospel grammar, we’ll naturally, without thinking, go back to our heart’s default setting of doing in order to be. In which case we’ll be running wide open down the highway. Exhausted. Stressed. Edgy. Critical. Anxious. Depressed.

When we gear down for periods of time in order to pay attention, to take in, to meditate upon, to orient the events of each day to the love of God for us in Christ, we’ll find ourselves with more capacity, clearer thinking, and the ability to steady our emotions. We’ll be able to love others for their sakes rather than use others for our own sake. We’ll be more charitable with those who’s flaws we see. We’ll be better able to rejoice even in the face of all the sadness and brokenness of this world.

Because the love of God in Christ walks at three miles per hour exactly for your benefit.

Ode to The Grinch

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 02:58:56 GMT

Can Your Heart Grow 3x?

In the original version of, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!,” you’ll likely remember the green grumpy guy filled with malice. Not only does the Grinch not want Christmas, he’s also determined that the people of Who-ville shouldn’t have it either. So he schemes and sneaks to rob the people of Who-ville of their gifts and possessions. Surely that will wreck their Christmas.

Dr. Suess suspects “the most likely reason” for the Grinch’s hate “may have been that his heart was two sizes too small.” That would explain the grump’s complete surprise at the response of the residents of Who-ville upon finding out all their goods had been stolen.

As the Grinch is getting ready to toss the contents of Who-ville off the top of Mt. Crumpit, he hears a growing noise coming up the mountain. Despite their material loss, the people of Who-ville were singing. And singing joyfully at that. After three hours of puzzling over this contradiction, the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t thought of before: maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store or from having more!

The people of Who-ville say what happened next is that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day. Back down the mountain he went, joyfully returning all he’d taken. But wait. Can a heart really grow three times its size? And what is the process going on inside a heart that causes it to grow?

It’s an interesting phenomenon I experienced just two weeks ago. I was the guest speaker at a local church to a group of people working on their marriages. The meeting began with the group standing and singing, and I was sitting in the back of the room waiting for my turn to go up front. I was there as the expert, prepped and ready to go. As I looked around the room at the people attending the class, there were many in the room who began to express themselves in worship by raising their hands.

Then that Grinch-thing happened. I was stabbed in the heart. It hurt, almost to tears. Upon further reflection, the closest I can come to what I think happened is the incident in Elijah’s life (1 Kings 19; Rom. 11:2-4) when, while doing the Lord’s work, Elijah got caught thinking he was Somebody Special. At that moment, the Lord informed Elijah there were seven thousand other men in the area who Elijah was not aware of who also loved and served the Lord. I might have been the expert in the room that night, but I got caught with thoughts about myself as Somebody Special that are not true.

Where there’s a humbling, it hurts. It hurts because your heart is being recalibrated. For the Grinch, for me, and for Elijah, that moment of realization came in a seemingly spontaneous moment. It happens. One never knows when, out of God’s sheer generosity, he chooses to convict and humble us in order to give us more grace. It’s actually an opportunity to grow your heart.

Since one can never know when such kindness might occur, it’s wise to do what we can to plan for those moments to happen more regularly. The Wind blows where it will, but we can at least have our sails ready!

How, then, can we plan for this?

Christian Scripture tells us there are prescribed means by which God conveys grace to his people. Regularly gathering for corporate worship is one such means. Another of those means is the intake of Scripture itself. For example, “Rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, and like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord” (1 Peter 2:1-3).

What I’m going to do over the next month, and I’m encouraging you to do the same, is to make or acquire a plan to regularly read Scripture throughout the coming New Year. This past year, for example, I decided to slow down and read through the New Testament in a year (there are lots of plans available for free on the web). If you’ve never read through the entire Bible, you should make that a goal. Download a 2-year plan that does it since a 1-year plan is pretty aggressive if you follow my next recommendation.

To help my understanding of Scripture, I’ll always be reading other books that complement the Scripture I’m reading. If you’re going to read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, then find a book that works like a throughline to tie the whole of Scripture together. It will do your faith wonders to see the arc of Scripture’s story as well as the various threads that tie it all together. Or you could get a commentary on a specific book you’re interested in. Then create a reading schedule for yourself to work through it at a pace that’s doable for you. If you want recommendations, I’m willing to help.

I’m a slow reader. Mostly because I’m making both written and mental notes as I go. The more you read Scripture, the more you’ll make connections with other parts of Scripture. You can sometimes feel your heart coming to agree with Paul when he cries, “Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways” (Rom. 11:33).

Here's what I can promise you: mostly imperceptibly, if you do something similar in reading, studying, meditating, and internalizing Scripture, you’ll be building your faith in Christ and creating a worldview that will help you keep perspective in a world clamoring for your attention. Slowly, the concern of what others think of you will be replaced with concern for what God thinks of you. Progressively, the desire for status and how to signal it will be replaced with contentment that your place in God’s family is secure. Bit by bit, anxiety about being smart regarding the things of this world will be replaced by the wisdom of Christ that settles your heart and brings peace. In fact, your heart will have grown!

Finally, some are concerned that scheduled Bible reading has within it the danger of becoming rote and ritualistic. True. But that is just a different danger than reading on a when-I-feel-like-it approach which then mostly doesn’t happen. You’re more likely to find gold and diamonds when digging in the dirt than you are by hoping it’ll someday just drop in your lap.

Because “you have been born again not of seed which is perishable, but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Peter 1:23).

Recurring Sins

Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Careful Throwing Stones

Here’s a horse pill you might have a hard time swallowing: “If your brother sins against you seven times in a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him” (Luke 17:4). So challenging is the command that when the first disciples heard it, they gagged on the standard and cried, “Lord, increase our faith!”

Luke’s account echoes Matthew 18:21-22 when Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive his brother when his brother sins against him. Jesus replies with an equally demanding standard. “Not seven times but seventy times seven.” In both passages, the number isn’t actual counting, it’s a way of saying the command is always in effect and its enactment has no end. Is this difficult? Yes. Is this impossible? No.

Applications of Luke 17:4 come up in my counseling on a regular basis, and out of all the things that could be said about this verse I’m going to make three observations. First, no one can repent perfectly. Which means, second, that some sins are going to be repeated. Third, the command is to forgive in such cases requires a particular perspective on the part of the offended.

For example, I’m of the belief that some of our sins and their patterns are tied to one’s disposition or personality. Like an intractable parasite, we carry these specific sins with us our entire life (similar to universal sins we all struggle with—pride, selfishness, envy, idolatry, etc). It keeps us regularly frustrated and often humbled. For sure, God can act decisively in one-off events, such as turning water to wine and raising Lazarus from the dead. But it’s also evident in Christian Scripture that God regularly accomplishes his purposes through ongoing development.

“Time and process are aspects of the creation that God made and called ‘very good.’ Because he is compelled by love rather than mere production, [God] takes slower routes. Exodus normally takes time, calling for faith and growth. Process has always been his normal pattern” (Kelly Kapic, You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News , pp. 143, 149).

Let’s imagine a person, man or woman, is known to have leadership gifts. For all the strong drive, high expectations, quick mind, and strategic ambition which are positive traits of a leader, this same person will also likely struggle to varying degrees with patience, social awareness, empathy, and delivery.

Now let’s say this same person is married, has children, and owns his/her own business. Naturally. It’s the start of a busy day, or maybe the end of one, and The Plan is falling apart. Spouse has forgotten point 3, child 2 is melting down, and employee 1 just called in sick. Body armor, anyone? It wouldn’t be surprising if this leader’s communication had some volume and an edge to it. So much so that the one to whom the words are directed feels shot at with harsh, agenda-driven, rapid-fire words. There’s metaphoric blood here and there.

If that incident happened once, it’s not hard to imagine those wounds being recoverable. But what if this incident were recurring, to whatever degree and to whatever frequency? If the offender shows no remorse and no indications of repentance (i.e., a good-faith effort resulting in a changing attitude and behavior that is observable and repeatable though not perfect), then clearly the relationship is going to deteriorate over time and possibly fail.

But if the offender does show remorse and does show signs of repentance (what the Bible calls Godly sorrow), however strong or weak, then forgiveness is warranted and a risk of love is taken to open the relationship door. Tentatively, perhaps. Under supervision, if egregious. But still, there’s an opening to work with.

What should not happen, given the offender’s flawed repentance, is the offended person acting out recriminations. True, it wouldn’t be surprising to see an initial reaction of defensiveness (e.g., withdrawing, shutting down, pushing back, etc.), since no one likes getting shot, but there should not be a state of stone throwing at the offender.

When the scribes and Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman caught in the act of adultery, Jesus cancelled the schemers by asking for the innocent to begin the punishment by stoning. In a rare moment of honest introspection, they all dropped their weapons and walked away. Had you and I been there, we too would have disarmed ourselves and left the scene.

After dealing with the posturing scribes and Pharisees, Jesus then looked at the woman and showed her all the mercy and tenderness we’d want in that situation. Note that she shows no signs of repentance, so Jesus doesn’t say, “I forgive you.” He does challenge her lifestyle, however, by saying, “Go and sin no more.” No throwing of stones, just mercy and time to grow.

I like to imagine this lady reflected on the mercy of Jesus that protected her that day. She was nothing more than a pawn in the hands of those who were using her to pit God’s law (forbids adultery) against Roman law (forbids anyone excepts Romans from being executioners), in an attempt to trap Jesus in a legal bind. Kicking the haters aside yet retaining the power of life and death in his hands, Jesus instead dignified this lady not only by sparing her life but giving her a path toward freedom. I pray she took it.

One commentator put it this way: “Once more Jesus refused to back Jewish nationalism against Roman imperialism. And he did something more, which is, I think, not irrelevant to present day discussions about marriage, divorce, and second marriage: he gave a plain hint that the mechanical and rigorous administrations of laws, however lofty the ideals they embody, is not, in the last resort, the best way of dealing with sinners as persons; particularly when the administrators themselves cannot be expected to have perfectly clean hands” (T. W. Manson, in R. V. G. Tasker’s Tyndale commentary on John, p. 113).

Because “judgment is without mercy to the one who has not shown mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13).

Conflict Resolution (Part 2)

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 01:21:07 GMT

The Other Foot

[Note: what follows is a continuation of the conversation from last month’s edition]

Tamarah said, “And now I need to ask you to forgive me.” For context, here’s some backstory to her question.

Over the years, when my wife and I are out and about and bump into someone, or let’s say we’re having dinner with some friends, we invariably end up sharing stories. The stories we tell are true, but obviously from our individual perspective and interpretation.

Here’s the incident around which Tamarah is asking for my forgiveness. She and I were out on our morning walk. We crossed paths with a lady we hadn’t seen in years. The lady is younger than us and has kids who are now in high school. As we were catching up, the lady wanted to know how our sons made the move from high school to college.

I said, “Our sons went to Greenville Tech Charter High School. One of the great things about that school is that not only could they take dual credit classes, but the school also offered a ‘13th year free’ for their high school graduates--meaning their first year at the college had no tuition.”

Tamarah quickly replied, “Well really that 13th year was just the Life Scholarship.” Tamarah’s point, technically, was accurate. But I was ticked. I’ve asked her before, “If the details of the story I’m telling are inconsequential, then please-please-PLEASE don’t make an editorial comment. It feels disrespectful. And why do that?”

Charge with me wounded pride or being shame-sensitive. Probably so. Yet Tamarah gets it, and has made a real and noticeable effort over the years to not make these knit-picky statements. However, like everyone, including me, patterns are hard to completely eliminate and sometimes The Thing resurfaces.

Breaking it down further, my wife’s a truth-teller and I’m a grace-giver. She has an impulse to get the facts straight and I’m inclined to look over nickel-dime stuff. I’m like, just go with it and don’t ruin the moment. She’s like, maybe the other person would benefit from more details. Sigh.

After rehearsing the incident and committing to not doing it again, Tamarah asked, “So will you forgive me?” “Sure Baby, yes, I forgive you,” I replied.

What’s my point? I’m wanting to give a flesh-and blood example of Biblical conflict resolution because a common occurrence in my work with couples is where one spouse is attempting the Confess-Repent-Forgive cycle of conflict resolution but the other spouse isn’t. Conversely, one sign of a healthy relationship is that they do conflict resolution as a two-way street. Not as score-keeping and not always, or even often, at the same time as the other. But both are regularly owning their share since the shoe always fits the others’ foot. As Christian Scripture teaches, both are offender and offended in some way.

Here are several scenarios, in their most basic form, of what a resolution imbalance looks like. I know these scenarios are far more complicated than I have space to account for. Here’s a preliminary sketch:

In one scenario, let’s say the husband is a rule-keeper and good at it, while the wife is a people-pleaser who tends to over-interpret people’s reactions to her. The wife in this situation will often try to work the conflict resolution process along due to her pleaser sensitivities, but he’s not owning much since he doesn’t see where he’s done anything that needs confessing.

Quick feedback : In his self-righteousness, the husband either needs to see how he’s cherry-picking standards he can keep and/or make Jesus the standard rather than his peers. He can then better own his share when he’s adequately humbled. In her neediness, the wife would benefit from better valuing and internalizing God’s love for her in Christ. Her heart will relax, she will be open to challenging her own interpretations, and not use conflict resolution to superficially soothe her anxiety that something’s not right in a relationship.

In another scenario, let’s say the husband’s had an affair while his wife has remained faithful. If the husband feels remorse and is convicted, he will try to work the conflict resolution cycle along. But if the wife cannot imagine herself capable of ever doing such a thing, or if she’s afraid that he’ll over-interpret her forgiveness as meaning everything’s alright, then the resolution stops where she stops.

Quick feedback : In his brokenness, the husband needs encouragement to persevere in resolution. He needs to be careful that he doesn’t grow resentful and even bitter that his spouse isn’t responding to his attempts to heal and be restored. In her fear, the wife might need help distinguishing between forgiveness and trust. She will also need courage to take the risk of extending forgiveness knowing she might get hurt again.

A third scenario might be that one spouse is a bully (in my office, it could be either the husband or the wife), gas-lighter, or a grandiose narcissist, while the other spouse is fearful and acquiescing all the time to the bully. The fearful spouse will make resolution attempts, sometimes to de-escalate the situation and other times just to survive.

Quick feedback : In his/her immaturity or unbelief or mental illness, the offender needs a life-changing encounter with Jesus and/or intervention for how he/she is processing life. In his/her fear, the other needs to know there are limits to engaging those with high degrees of foolishness. Boundaries need to be set, even if that means leaving the relationship for a season.

I acknowledge these scenarios require much more feedback and nuance than I’m giving here. For now, my hope is that these initial suggestions would provide direction for people in these kinds of relationships. Conflict resolution is beautiful, powerful, and life-giving when two people work at it. May it be true for you.

Because God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God (Mt. 5:9).

Conflict Resolution

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 01:20:33 GMT

Resisting the Rabbit Hole

“First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering” (Mt. 5:24).

My wife, older son, and I were returning from a road trip to the Midwest a few weeks ago. As we approached a very hot Atlanta from the Northwest, it was time to stop for gas, lunch, and a restroom break. Angling off the interstate, we noticed a shirtless man pushing a motorcycle up the exit ramp. Tamarah said as we got closer, “I wonder if that guy could use some help.” I replied, “Nah, there’s a gas station right up there and he’s got it.”

I coolly zipped right past the perspiring biker without a second thought. At the top of the ramp, Tamarah looked back at the biker plodding uphill, “I bet that guy could use our help.” Without commenting, I turned left, crossed the interstate, and went to the gas station I had my eye on. By the time we got to the gas pump, my wife was ticked. There were no words, but the vibe was obvious.

“What?” I said, acknowledging a problem but not grasping the extent of it. “We pray every morning,” she said earnestly, “that God would give us the awareness of people in need. Why do we pray that and then do nothing about it?” I volleyed back, “Don’t even go there. Do you live up to all YOUR prayers?” There was a quick back-and-forth, then silence.

We finished our business at QT and our son drove us home. Tamarah was in the back seat and I sat in the front passenger seat. Aside from the radio playing, it was a pretty quiet two-hour ride home—plenty of time to get ammoed up for the coming skirmish.

We arrived home in one piece but fractured. Each of us began quietly unloading the car and unpacking our suitcases. Once I had the suitcases put back in the attic, I went looking for Tamarah and found her sitting in the living room. The clock indicated it was 3:00pm. “Are we done with the motorcycle guy?” I asked. “No, we’re not,” Tamarah replied. “I’m still pretty ticked at you.” I said, “Well, that’s good, since I’m pretty ticked at you.” The exchange was just beginning to swirl when I heard our son doing something in the kitchen.

“Hey Nick,” I said, “come in here for just a minute.” “Yeah?” he asked. I said, “You saw and heard that exchange Mom and I had back in Atlanta, and we haven’t resolved it yet.” In a theological attempt to smooth things over, Nick said, “Well, everyone’s fallible.” “True enough,” I replied, “but I want you to witness [again, since he and his brother have grown up with us trying to model Biblical conflict resolution for them] how Mom and I resolve this issue.”

I continued, “Mom and I are on the cusp of the rabbit hole. We each have a gripe with the other, and if we keep at it like we have been, we’re going to go down that hole. And that could be the beginning of the end.” Not that our marriage was going to end right there, but that the pattern of attack-defend-counterattack, if established and repeated long enough, would eventually rupture the relationship. I said, “But we’re not going to do that. We’re going to turn around and try another way.”

At this point I asked Tamarah what it was that was so hurtful to her when I blew past the biker. She said, “I can’t tell you how many times in all the years we’ve been married that I’ve asked you to stop for something like that, and you’ve never stopped. What if I believe the Spirit is prompting me to help someone, and I ask you to help me help them, but then you don’t. What am I supposed to do with that?”

I had no argument. Sadly, to my shame, she had her finger on an inconvenient truth. The fact is, I wasn’t afraid of the biker doing something to us. I knew if we stopped to help the guy, it was going to set us back thirty minutes or more. The part of the morning prayer Tamarah was throwing back at me was, in my mind, intended for grace for myself when I’m behind a slow driver in the left lane. Turns out my wife is taking that prayer and actually thinking more like the Good Samaritan.

“You’re right,” I said. “I can’t argue with that. While I’m really sorry I’ve hurt you like that in the past, here’s what I’m going to commit to moving forward: Anytime you ask me to stop, I’m going to stop without asking twenty questions or ignoring your request. I’m going to write this down and review it to make sure it happens.” “Thank you,” she said, with a degree of emphasis that underscored I was getting the point.

I responded, “What I want to ask you now is, Will you please forgive me?” “I can’t right now. I’m still too angry,” she said. I replied, “I get that. I know I’m asking a lot.” Tamarah went grocery shopping, and I started digging out of the admin work that piled while we were gone. At 6pm, Tamarah found me in the home office and asked if I had a minute. “Sure. What?” She said, “I want you to know that I forgive you. I do.” I said, “Thanks. I really appreciate that.”

She went on, “And now I need to ask you to forgive me.” At which point she covered an issue I had cited earlier. I’ll save those details for another day, but once Tamarah cleared the debt I had with her, we could hug, kiss, and be done.

The core steps of Biblical conflict resolution are Confessing (communicating to understand the experience of the offended), Repenting (committing to a change of behavior that goes the opposite direction of the offense), and Forgiving (where the offended pays the relational debt of the offender). With limitations of space here, there are many details I’m skipping. Still, my desire is that our imperfect example gives you hope that there’s a way through the conflicts you may be having. If you want some help working it out, I’d be glad to partner with you in it.

Because Christ reconciled you to himself with his grace, that same grace is available for you to be reconciled to each other.

On Solomon and Society

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:43:01 GMT

One More Stab at Envy

The psychology within the following extended quote, from Rob Henderson’s book review of, Sadly, Porn , is insightful and timely:

“Two women claim to be the mother of a baby. Solomon is believed to be both wise and powerful. The fake mother believes he is powerful but not wise (otherwise she wouldn’t try to fool him). The real mother believes he is powerful but might not be wise (she is worried the fake mother will fool him).

“After King Solomon declares that the baby would be cut in two, each woman to receive half, the fake mother is pleased. She says that if she can’t have the baby, then neither of them can. But the real mother begs him, ‘Give the baby to her, just don’t kill him!’

“And you know the rest: King Solomon believes her to be the true mother, reasoning that only the real mother would give up her baby to save its life.

“But [author Edward] Teach correctly says that it’s not true that only the real mother would give up her baby to save it. [While] it is true that both women claim to want the baby, only one of them is satisfied by depriving the other—either by taking the baby from her or having it killed. In other words: Getting the baby is not satisfying. Depriving the other woman is satisfying. But she needs a defense against that. ‘Wanting the baby’ is a pretext for depriving the other woman.

“Plus, her defense has an added benefit: Solomon was going to be the one responsible for killing the baby. She’s off the hook. She can say ‘It’s not my fault the baby died, it was caused by…some other omnipotent entity.’

“This is the logic of envy: Getting another to deprive your rivals, while you continue believing yourself to be a good person. Most people want their envy-driven conflicts to be settled by what Teach calls ‘some other omnipotent entity.’ As a result, the only people who have true agency in such a system tend to be [dark personality] types.

“As a kid, I remember teachers would sometimes say ‘It doesn’t matter who started the fight, everyone is responsible.’ Some kids heard that and thought, ‘Okay, I have to avoid fights at all costs.’ Other kids thought, ‘Okay, I can punch anyone in the face and it’s not totally my fault.’

“The former would avoid fights, get beat up, and run to teachers after the fact for help. The latter didn’t care about the rules and would scrap with anyone.

“Because of how we have structured our society and raised kids, Teach claims, most people now feel powerless. They want an omnipotent entity to act for them. Which means only a small number of extreme personality types who have no inhibitions will act on their own.”

____________________________________

I thought I was done writing on envy after last month’s post. Then I read more of Rob’s book review and made some notes. Here are some thoughts I’ve jotted down:

There is no joy in envy, only resentment. Envy thinks, “If I can’t have what you have, then you shouldn’t have it either. If I can’t deprive you of it physically, then I’ll run you down via gossip to others and/or demeaning you to myself.” If we scale up that thought, then not only can one person envy another, so an organization or a nation can envy another.

Reading Scripture straight up, it also appears that envy is the motive driving Satan and his minions. If the Evil One cannot have what God has, then it makes sense the betrayer does whatever he can to destroy what rightfully belongs to God. And what might that envy look like today if it were worked out on a grand scale? Maybe the progression is something like this:

--Ideologies are subsuming and replacing religion as belief systems and structures.

--Collectivism is more powerful than individualism.

--Social media facilitates collectivism without individual accountability.

--Collectivism takes a belief and goes to scale with it, making those beliefs more powerful.

--The collective power center can now help to more fully actualize the belief(s) of the less powerful individual(s).

--Entire societies are influenced and shaped by these collective power structures, sometimes to the destruction of what is good, wholesome, and life-giving.

--Christian Scripture teaches that demonic influence works behind social structures, including false religions.

That said, God’s society for His people is the Church, both universal and local. Its motivations are the complete opposite of how envy works. The local church is where individual Christians are more influential as a collective, and use their resources with the power of the Holy Spirit to bring life to their communities. I hope you’re regularly participating in such a church.

Because, as Eugene Peterson says it, the church is, “a colony of heaven in the country of death.”

Envy (Part 3):

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 01:55:17 GMT

It's All About Your Eyes

I was in a tour group of about fifteen people a few weeks ago. Casually scanning the group, there was a couple—the husband in particular—who got my attention. The couple looked to be close to the same age as my wife and me. The husband, more than the wife, was all labeled up. From his shirt to his shoes, he signaled high status. It didn’t help that he appeared to be in better shape than me and his hair was perfect.

It never occurred, but let’s say that as the group walked around during the tour, the guy I envied stumbled going up some steps. Had that happened, I could see myself chuckling with a bit of satisfaction—even as I feigned concern. Publicly: “Oh, are you ok?” Internally: “Guy can’t even do stairs. Loser.”

I catch myself thinking like this sometimes, envying someone, and it bothers me. A lot. Hence, I’m working it out by reading and writing about it, and endeavoring to be repenting of it too. Fact is, there is no little amount written about envy. As in, I’m sure I could easily spend the rest of this year reading nothing but more insights on envy’s dynamics.

For example. “All of us feel envy, the sensation that others have more of what we want—possessions, attention, respect. We deserve to have as much as they do yet feel somewhat helpless to get such things. Envy entails the admission to ourselves that we are inferior to another person in something we value. Not only is it painful to admit this inferiority, but it is even worse for others to see that we are feeling this.

“And so almost as soon as we feel the initial pangs of envy, we are motivated to disguise it to ourselves—it is not envy we feel but unfairness at the distribution of goods or attention, resentment at this unfairness, even anger. [We think to ourselves] the other person is not really superior but simply lucky, overly ambitious, or unscrupulous. That’s how they got to where they are” (Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature ).

Rather than continuing to investigate envy under the microscope ad infinitum , I want to share some thoughts on engaging and repenting of envy. One writer takes a stab at it this way: “You normally focus on those who seem to have more than you, but it would be wiser to look at those who have less…gratitude is the best antidote to envy.” In other words, look down with your eyes when you’re going down in your own eyes.

I think this can work as an occasional strategy for fighting envy, but I don’t think it’s best or ultimate. First off, this strategy can just as easily feed one’s pride. Our hearts are so wiley that it doesn’t take much to flip the script from hating being the envier to loving being the envied. Second, if you look at those who have less in order to feel gratitude, what is the one being looked down at supposed to do? Look up at you and what? Envy you? What if you’re really at the bottom of the barrel and can’t imagine that one has less than what you’re struggling with? In that case, the advice to compare yourself to those who have less in order to feel gratitude doesn’t work.

Mercifully, Christian Scripture has a great deal to say about envy. For time and space, I’ll confine my remaining comments about overcoming envy to Psalm 37. The more I look at Psalm 37 in light of all the reading I’ve done on envy, the more I think this Psalm is all about envy and how to respond to it both in one’s heart and in one’s behavior.

From the top, verse one says, “Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers!” The rest of the psalm is arranged as an acrostic (each letter of the Hebrew alphabet begins another verse), which served as an aid to learning and retention. I suspect the design is a nod to just how deep envy runs through our hearts—we need all the help we can get!

Verse 3, “Trust in the Lord, and do good” is about as clear a summary of overcoming envy as you’ll ever find. “Trust” is the private work we do in shifting our eyes from the one we’re envying to looking instead to the Lord Jesus as the One who contents my heart and supplies me with what I need. “Do good” is the public repenting we live out in place of the hurtful designs that envy wants to perpetrate on the one being envied. The rest of the psalm is, to me, an extension of that sentence in verse 3.

What, then, does trusting in the Lord look like? Here are a few of the ways this Psalm of David describes trust: delight in the Lord, commit your way to the Lord, rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him. Since we don’t trust instantly, trust has to be built over time. For 2022, here’s how I’ve committed to doing this (as an example): I’m reading through the New Testament over the course of the year (a chapter a day, M-F). This pace allows me to slow down, think more clearly about the text, and try to come up with at least one truth I can pray in and take with me through the day. That’s my morning practice.

Then, as the last act of my day, after the lights have gone off and my wife and I have done our hugs and kisses and my mind is gearing down for sleep, I think back through the chapter I read that morning and mentally scan the chapter for a truth or idea I can go to sleep with. Sometimes it’s an entirely new thought, sometimes it’s affirming my morning thought, and sometimes it’s a standout thought I had from several days previous.

More often than not, the thought I and the Spirit have come to has borne fruit at some point that day. Which continues to grow my trust in Jesus, helps put my envy to death, and motivates me to do good to my neighbor.

Because learning to trust the Lord satisfies the heart and helps out the competition.

Envy (Part 2)

Sun, 01 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Taking a Look Through the Microscope

My wife and I are Pittsburgh Steelers fans. When the Cowboys or Patriots make a dumb draft pick or run a poor play or stink up the season, a bit of glee comes over us. Something deep and dark inside us quietly goes “Yessssss” at the misfortune of our rival. To give it a name, that something is called envy.

After reporting some initial thoughts on envy last month, I’ve continued researching envy for another month. I can no longer hide the news that the lab doors to my heart have blown off. Under the microscope, envy is an ugly parasite and I painfully find it hiding out in the crevices of my psyche. It also looks, at the same time, like envy is endemic to human nature. If you care to take a look…

From Cain’s envy of his sibling Abel to Satan’s envy of his Superior at the end of time, the Bible directly and indirectly refers to envy from Genesis to Revelation. Interestingly, the search engine at the American Psychological Association’s home page has nearly three thousand research references to envy. Turns out the business community encounters envy at the corporate level and pays real money to have studies done to understand the dynamics of it. Their common grace insights are both functionally helpful and convictingly painful. It looks like anytime two or three are gathered, there’s the potential for envy to show up and do its divisive work.

To continue building out a working definition of envy from where I landed last month, what follows are some of the better descriptions I’ve come across. The common denominator is the dynamic of fortunes (real or perceived) rising and falling. Those whose fortunes are rising are tempted to pride and self-sufficiency, while those who fortunes are falling are tempted to envy. Please note that one aspect of your life, like finances, might be rising while another aspect of your life, like your marriage, might be falling. The sobering reality is your fortunes can change in an instant any day now. Ready?

“In the ledger of envy, your gain isn’t reliably someone’s loss, but their gain is always your loss and your loss is always someone’s gain” (The Last Psychiatrist, via Cambridge scholar Rob Henderson).

“An envier doesn’t care whether you have earned part of your success or whether some golden parachute from heaven has dropped straight into your lap. To an envier, your advantage is totally unfair either way. From the dawn of the human race, says Genesis 4, human beings have clashed over their differences—not just their differences of opinion but, much more profoundly, their differences of wealth, status, race, gender, social acceptance, intelligence, physical attractiveness, achievement, and general flourishing. Down the ages, the haves and have-nots keep glaring at each other and grappling over their differences” (Cornelius Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be , p. 159).

Dialing the microscope in, here are some finer points on the internal workings of envy:

“Envy is always disguised, hardly ever appearing in a straightforward manner. The expressions of envy in social and interpersonal contexts can be extremely subtle and undermining, ranging from discrete spoiling behavior and withholding what a person needs, such as praise, empathy, warmth, attention, admiration, support, or comfort, to actively spoiling or destroying the object” (American Psychological Association, online, May 2005).

And now, taking a scalpel and dividing the infected cell, there’s this:

“Envy stems from a social comparison with a superior standard. Its two distinct forms are directed at changing this situation in different ways, either by becoming as successful as the envied person (in benign envy) or by lowering the envied person’s advantage (in malicious envy). In essence, envy is thus a social phenomenon” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Sept. 2015).

Informed with these insights into the inner working of envy, just read through the Gospels and you’ll see envy everywhere. In my observations last month, I pointed out the blatant example of Pilate knowing “that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered Jesus up” (Matthew 27:18). These guys were so possessed with envy that they were looking to also kill the resurrected Lazarus (John 12:9-11). Why? “Because on account of [the resurrected Lazarus] many of the Jews were going away, and were believing in Jesus.” The fortunes of Lazarus were ascending, physically and metaphorically, which pointed out Jesus’ superior life and character, while the fortunes of the religious leaders of the day were descending. And the dudes in the descending crowd couldn’t stand it.

With an eye toward detailing next month some strategies for fighting against envy, let me now begin to make the turn in that direction. King Solomon helps us when he writes, “A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot” (Prov. 14:30 ESV). Working toward a tranquil heart is a worthy aim, and there is a way. Ironically, people who get there sometimes provoke others to envy.

“While envy is usually associated with material possessions, social status, personal attributes, and professional status and accomplishments, envy can also apply to another person’s capacity to tolerate not having something or managing frustration related to absence and lacking” (American Psychological Association, online, May 2005). In other words, another person’s ascendency is no threat to a tranquil heart, and that kind of internal composure will move observers to wonder how that’s possible and become envious of such tranquility.

Because when God’s love for you in Christ is ascending in your heart, you’re on the way to overcoming envy.

Envy and Easter

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

From Perdition to Paradise

Remember that guy who did commercials for Men’s Wearhouse in which his last line was, “You’re going to like the way you look”? This brief internal audit doesn’t begin that way. A couple months ago I saw a Tweet on the topic of envy that piqued my interest. I got to reading around on the topic, and quickly and unexpectedly found myself in a deep hole lined with mirrors. While I definitely do not like the way I look, I do believe that Jesus is the Master Clothier who helps us come out looking far better than we deserve.

One of the clearest explanations of envy that I’ve come across is in Cornelius Plantinga’s book, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin . He writes, “Envy is the resentment of someone else’s good, plus the itch to despoil her of it. Its natural corollary is what the Germans call Schadenfreude , the enjoyment of someone else’s despoilment. The envier not only sorrows over another’s good fortune and wants it to change; he also rejoices in another’s misfortune and wants it to persist” (p. 169). That’s a pretty despicable look, isn’t it? And yet, sadly, it fits.

Now try this on for size: “Enviers want to be envied: they want to turn the tables on the people whose success makes them so miserable” (p. 170). And then, “The envier gossips. He saves up bad news of others and passes it around like an appetizer at happy hour. The envier grumbles. He complains that all the wrong people are getting ahead. Envy appears in the lists along with debauchery and dissension (Rom. 13:13); with quarreling, factions, anger, and slander (2 Cor. 12:20); with friction, suspicion, and malice (1 Tim. 6:4). These are devastating anti-community sins, the sins of attack on communal peace” (p. 171).

When I read that extensive description, there are parts of it I do not currently identify with. Which tempts me to then conclude I’m not guilty of any of it. But I know better. Think of the scope of any one particular sin as if it’s pants with an elastic waist band. Try as I might to shrink it down, the damnable thing still fits.

Upon further inspection, the look gets worse. In his book, Taking the Word to Heart: Self and Others in an Age of Therapies , Robert Roberts refers to pride and envy as, “invidious twins.” He writes, “The proud person is nothing without someone inferior to himself from whom to get his sense of worth. And who fits this role better than one who voluntarily shows, by his envy, that he recognizes the proud person’s superiority and hates it because he wants the very same thing the proud person cherishes—ascendency? The envious one would not suffer this particular self-hatred if he did not join the proud person’s game of making his personal worth depend on how well he is doing in the competition” (p. 178).

Within a matter of a few minutes I can be in a place where I’m feeling rather proud of something, and with a little piece of information the script can flip and I find myself wracked with envy. Let’s say I learned that one of my kids just got hired by the Amazing Dream Company, and I couldn’t be more proud. I want to tell you about it. But then you tell me your youngest child just got accepted into the Amazing Dream University after I just learned the day before that mine did not. I then find out a short while later that the wife of Mr. Uber Successful had a stroke last week, which brings his life down a few notches and I somehow feel ok with that.

Here’s the crazy thing: I can experience a version of all that during the meet-and-greet at church on Sunday.

It was no different during Jesus’ day. For one example among many, in the parable of the vine-growers, Jesus makes the point that, “when the vine growers [the Jewish leaders] saw him [Jesus], they reasoned with one another, saying, ‘This is the heir; let us kill him that the inheritance may be ours’” (Luke 20:14). Which, when they were finally able to execute their plans, the Scripture could not be clearer regarding their motive: “For Pilate knew that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered Jesus up” (Matthew 27:18; Mark 15:10).

What are we to do with this hot mess of envy going on in our hearts? In the book, The Laws of Human Nature , author Robert Greene, who makes no claim to being Christian, makes an insight worth ironing out. “Schadenfreude, the experience of pleasure in the pain of other people, is distinctly related to envy, as several studies have demonstrated. When we envy someone, we are prone to feel excitement, even joy, if they experience a setback or suffer in some way. But it would be wise to practice instead the opposite, what the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called Mitfreude —'joying with.’ As he wrote, ‘The serpent that stings us means to hurt us and rejoices as it does so; the lowest animal can imagine the pain of others. But to imagine the joy of others and to rejoice at it is the highest privilege of the highest animals.’”

Now we see the beginnings of the end of envy. The serpent of Genesis 3:15 will inflict his sting on Jesus, stripped of all clothing, at Calvary. Yet, at the very same time, our Messiah “imagines the joy of others and rejoices at it” as he nails our envy to his cross. The work we see Jesus doing on the cross on our behalf is anti-envy. For all the hellscape that our competitive envy would create if left unchecked and undefeated, Jesus paves the way to Paradise by taking our sin on himself and triumphs over it. Where our envy is anti-community, Jesus makes a way for us to be clothed in his perfect righteousness and welcomed into his family.

Now that Christ has done his work, my work is to spend time thinking over, studying, meditating, internalizing, and praying into my heart Jesus’ love for me. I’m not competing with you, I neither need to look down on you in pride nor take joy in your misfortune for me to be good. I can love you for your sake, even as Jesus loved me. I can rejoice when you rejoice, and weep when you weep. And when that impulse of envy springs up inside me, which it surely will, I can put it to death just as quickly by reminding myself of all that I am and have in Christ.

Because when your heavenly Father sees you clothed in Jesus’ sinless life, He likes the way you look.

Thunderstruck

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 01:36:22 GMT

More Notes on the Compassion and Anger of Jesus

It’s not happening. At least not the way I had hoped. I’ve had an article in my head since last month, and now that it’s come time to get it out it’s hung in the birth canal. I wanted to present a fully developed idea—my baby—but the best I have at the moment seems like nothing more than swirling amniotic fluid. Partly because I have, like Rebekah, multiple babies inside me competing for who’s coming first, and partly because I’m just, as Tolkien calls us, a sub-creator who’s hit the creative wall. Nevertheless, here comes what I have.

I got to wondering last month when reading through parts of B.B. Warfield’s, “The Emotional Life of our Lord”, why a scholar of Warfield’s stature would choose to research and write on such a subject. That treatise was no small effort, reflected in the paper’s one hundred twenty-eight footnotes. Writers write for reasons that move them, and there had to be some underlying motivation for such work. I got to digging into Warfield’s life and learned that he was opposed to some of the religious fervor of his day. Maybe “The Emotional Life of our Lord” was written as a response to what Warfield perceived to be the emotional excesses of some Christians.

Further conjecture leads me to suspect Warfield’s relationship with his wife. Benjamin married twenty-four year old Annie Kinkead in August of 1876. Not long afterward, the couple shipped off to Europe so that Benjamin could continue his studies. The record of what happened next is incomplete, but from the accounts we do have it appears the newlyweds went for a stroll in the Harz mountains of Germany and were caught in a very nasty thunderstorm. So much so that Annie appears to have been traumatized by what occurred. There is some dispute over the severity of Annie’s trauma, but there’s no question she came away from that experience deeply affected.

At the news of Annie’s death in 1915, one of Benjamin’s fellow professors at Princeton wrote, “I have faint recollections of her walking up and down in front of the house in the early years of my Princeton life, but even that diversion has long been denied her. I never spoke to her. Her trouble has been partly nervous, and she has seen hardly anyone except Dr. Warfield. But she remained, they say, until the end a very brilliant woman. Dr. Warfield used to read to her during certain definite hours every day. For many, many years he has never been away from her more than about two hours at a time.”

There’s additional documentation that shows Benjamin cancelling meetings and lectures due to “family illness” and that Annie suffered from an increasingly debilitating fatigue and anxiety. The record also shows that Annie was “pining for a baby” in 1881 yet the couple remained childless.

All of this makes me wonder what Benjamin was thinking and experiencing as he researched his paper on “The Emotional Life of our Lord.” As I noted in last month’s post, Warfield lists “Compassion” as “the emotion which is most frequently attributed to him.” To his credit, Benjamin appears to have embodied such mercy to his ailing wife throughout the duration of their nearly forty-year marriage. I wonder how often Benjamin reflected on God’s compassion toward him as the fuel that motivated and sustained him in having compassion on his broken wife.

It’s also interesting to me that the second emotion Warfield addresses in the life of Jesus is anger. Constrained by time and my capacity, it’s best if I give you a snapshot of some of what Warfield notes regarding Jesus’s anger. “The emotions of indignation and anger belong to the very self-expression of a moral being as such and cannot be lacking to him in the presence of wrong.” My interpretation: for justice to be satisfied, we must have an Authority who is capable of righteous anger.

Later in this section, “It is Mark who tells us explicitly [in 3:5] that the insensibility of the [religious authorities] to human suffering exhibited in a tendency to put ritual integrity above humanity filled Jesus with indignant anger.” Warfield goes on to write that anger is “the discomfort of heart produced in Jesus by the sight of man’s inhumanity to man.”

This is so affirming and confirming of my own moral sense and emotions when I’m listening to clients tell me their histories of mistreatment, abuse, and trauma at the hands of fellow human beings. It’s not unusual at all on any given day for me to interrupt a client to let them know that the story they’re sharing with me is ticking me off. Not ticked AT them, obviously, but ticked at the way someone or some organization has treated them. And the more I think about this sort of anger on behalf of the offended, the more I think of it as a form of compassion for the offended.

Annie Warfield never recovered from being thunderstruck. Why was she so affected and not Benjamin? Likely for the same reasons some police and military veterans have varying degrees of PTSD after shared traumatic experiences. So many complicated questions with simple answers hard to come by. Yet I think we can say with confidence, based on their lived testimony, that Benjamin and Annie were sustained to the end by riffing on God’s grace to them in Christ.

Because Jesus not only acts on our behalf, He feels on our behalf as well.

Apocalypse Now

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

What's a Christian to Do?

Imagine that many years ago you experienced first-hand a tsunami while vacationing along the coast. You and a few others you love were enjoying the beach when you saw the ocean water rushing away from the coastline. You didn’t know what to make of it, but a stranger nearby knew exactly what was coming, briefly explained it, and told you to run up as many flights of stairs as you could in your nearby hotel. You paused at the third floor to catch your breath and take a look at the ocean now rushing toward you. You and your group managed to get to the fifth floor before the devastation hit. You were delivered, and those with you could do nothing but hold each other and weep.

Now imagine the same scenario, except you’re the stranger on the beach who knows what’s happening. The reason you know what’s coming is that your father is a seismologist who called you forty minutes earlier to let you know about an earthquake far offshore that would generate the tsunami. The advance warning meant you had time to not only safeguard your loved ones but to also tell as many others as you could about what was coming.

When the father in scenario two shared what was, what is, and what is to come, the revealing itself is what we call an apocalypse (e.g., the book of Revelation in Christian Scripture is an “uncovering,” akin to pulling a curtain back to see what’s going on). Surprisingly, perhaps, is that the apocalypse God’s Spirit gave to John happens to report more about Christ and our present reality than it does of future calamity.

That said, since Christians are told in advance via Scripture of the whole arc of human history and that the story ends in joy, then shouldn’t that affect how we interpret and respond to the cultural and historical space we currently occupy? And since the sections of the New Testament that are apocalyptic happen to be optimistic in tone, despite ongoing and lived tragedy, shouldn’t Christian’s attitudes, speech, and behaviors reflect that hopefulness?

The answers are obviously yes, but what should that look like when it appears that there are multiple categorical tsunamis inbound? I’m going to invoke the late B.B. Warfield for my reply. Warfield was the last principal of Princeton Theological Seminary (1886-1902) before it succumbed to liberalism. While at Princeton, Warfield wrote a lengthy essay entitled, “The Emotional Life of our Lord,” the contents of which are timeless. I’ll briefly summarize his first main point.

Warfield observes, “The emotion which we should naturally expect to find the most frequently attributed to Jesus is no doubt ‘compassion’. In point of fact, this is the emotion which is most frequently attributed to him.” He cites Matthew 20:34, Mark 1:41, and Luke 7:13, among others, as examples. Warfield continues, “The Divine mercy has been defined as that essential perfection in God ‘whereby he pities and relieves the miseries of his creatures’: it includes the two parts of an internal movement of pity and an external act of beneficence’.”

Any thoughtful Christian knows and has felt our heavenly Father’s pity and ongoing acts of beneficence (primarily through the forgiveness of our daily sins). Because God’s kindness toward us is all of grace, we’re humbled and ask ourselves the question, “Why me?” That’s a good posture to maintain for this reason: pity is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder’s eye is shaped by what one spends time looking at.

If, for example, you spend time looking in the mirror and are impressed by what you see, I suspect you’ll have too discriminating an eye on the beach when it comes time to have compassion on those around you. Conversely, if you look in the mirror and loathe what you see, I suspect you’ll not be compassionate to anyone on the day you’re called to help.

What, then, allows us to unhesitatingly extend compassion, even as God does, indiscriminately to rich and poor, to black, brown, and white, to native and immigrant, to those on the left and those on the right? It has everything to do with what, or to whom, you take repeated looks. It has to do with training your eyes. And I cannot say what that is more clearly than this man (although please forgive the stiff and stodgy men in the background who amazingly seem unmoved by the Good News): (3:52 minutes)

https://youtu.be/xk9wgJBoEd8

If the Spirit of Christ has compassionately revealed the Gospel of his grace to you, how will you steward that mercy while you have time? Since Jesus has given us his name in good faith, then let’s give Jesus a good name to others in the way we treat them.

Because I remain undone by the Man on the middle cross when he compassionately welcomed me in!

Grace Harbor - Blog

Champion of the World (Part 2)

His Life for Your Life, and Your Life for His

Champion of the World (Part 1)

His Life for Your Life, and Your Life for His

Have I Become Your Enemy by Telling You the Truth?

On Lies, Fear, and Love

What to Make of a Diminished Thing

Let Jesus Have the Final Word

We Will See

Discerning God's Great Plot for Your Life

When Life Throws a Curveball

Bitterness and Brokenness Revisited

The Aspirational Marriage

The Rise or Fall of the Power Couple

The Paternal Marriage

The Role-Correct Marriage and How it Can go Bad

The Quadrant, Roles, and The Compatible Marriage

Why "Ignore It" is Not a Strategy

Running the White Flag up the Pole

How Leaders Grow

The Prodigal, Peter, and Body Parts

More Insights on Those with Leader Traits ﻿

Running with Horses

Initial Insights on Those with Leader Traits

Smooth Sailing, YAC, and Dreams

Still More Insights on Helper Traits

Overcoming the Frenetic Standstill

More Help for the Helpers

Rockets, Lions, and Shields

Take Courage, Fearful Friend

A Surface Excavation of Some Deep Dirt

Can You Dig It?

Horrors and Their Trauma

Mingled with Tidings of Comfort and Joy

The Deviation Spiral (Part 3)

Mastering the Marital Garden

The Deviation Spiral (Part 2)

Insights on the Original Normal for Marriage

The Deviation Spiral

Crashing Airplanes, Marriages, and Other Things

Taking Charge of Sex Ed for Your Children (Part 2):

If Parents Don't then Others Will

Sex Ed for Your Children (Part 1)

It's a Parent's Responsibility

Flags of My Two Fathers

A Reflection 80 Years After D-Day

The Eternal Cry for Justice

Revisiting the Empty Tomb

But is He Risen Indeed?

THE Existential Question for Your Life

A Total Eclipse of the Heart

When Bonnie Shoots Clyde with some Light

Ten Questions for the New Year

Let's Grow!

Interstellar Love

More than Evolution Requires

Family and Holidays

Drawing Circles and Lines

The Inner Ring (Part 2)

Stand Out but Fit In

The Inner Ring (Part 1)

Running in Circles

Our Messed-Up Family

Can We Talk? If Not...

Baptists and Bootleggers

Jesus says Bottom's Up

Tending the Flame

Look Up, Not In

Why, Georgia, Why?

Prying into the Peace-Violence Paradox

A Sunny Place for Shady People

Sign Me Up

The Speed of God (Part 2)

When We Transpose Grace and Law

He's a Shape-Shifter

The Many Faces of Pride

The Speed of God

On the Tension of Being and Doing

Ode to The Grinch

More Insights on Those with Leader Traits