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Personal Exploration of People, Personalities and Meaning
Browsing All posts tagged under »Jesus«
Perspective Makes the Difference
March 27, 2012
Have you ever noticed that in life, perspective can make all the difference on how you act, react or judge a situation or person? I’ve recently rediscovered this principle at work in my life. I am not proud of the fact but when I see someone do something which I would not do or ‘not do’ something which I believe they should do; I have begun catching myself as my first inclination is to judge that action in such a way as to ascribe a negative motivation for the action or inaction.
The reason is that whether or not we consciously acknowledge it, we all have an internal barometer or scale which we use to assess ourselves and others against. The fact that all have such an internal measure guide is not wrong in of itself. The main problem with using our own scale to evaluate actions or inactions is that our scale is fundamentally flawed. There are two primary flaws with using our own scales to evaluate ourselves and others against.
- Our scale is flawed in that it is biased in favor of us and biased against others.
- Our scale uses the wrong measurement criteria.
Let me explain.
I Will Give You the Treasures of Darkness (Tanzania Part VII)
January 13, 2012
My first experience of Nairobi was the evening ride from the Nairobi Airport to our hotel. My travel companion and I were exhausted after a day spent traveling; confined to our cramped airplane seats for twenty+ hours, waiting at security screenings and the boarding areas in Seattle, Amsterdam and Nairobi. While physically and mentally fatigued, another long slumbering part of me seemed to quicken and come to life, as I described in Part VI.
The heat of the day had dissipated only slightly, so I relished leaning my head out my open window. Catching even a warm humid breeze was a welcome relief from the stagnant air of the Nairobi airport. Our driver Muhammad engaged us in conversation, telling us about the Nairobi National Park and other notable items as we passed by them, as he deftly navigated his way through a challenging obstacle of people, cars, motorcycles, pot holes, bumps and debris in the road. I marveled as he seemed to know every crack, dip, or bump in the road, slowing for them well in advance. I imagined that he had driven this route many times before.
I Will Give You the Treasures of Darkness (Tanzania Part IV)
December 31, 2011
The experience of preparing to go to Africa and my time in Africa was revealing to me that the importance we place on our actions is a misleading one. The motions that we externally go through in this life are less meaningful than our reasons and driving motivation for doing them. It is our attitude and the condition of our heart that moves us to action which is the single most crucial aspect of walking out our faith. God is concerned first and foremost about the condition of our soul more than our vain human attempts to deceive others into believing that we are better than we actually are. Is it not from out of the abundance, the overflow of our heart that the mouth speaks? Doing the right things for the wrong reasons earn us nothing except perhaps the deception of others and their misguided praise.
I am reminded of Jesus’ admonition to remember Lot’s Wife. She heard the message of warning from the angels to leave the city before it was destroyed. She acted upon that knowledge and left the city with her family. She was with people being saved, BUT she looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt. What’s up with that? It’s not like she didn’t do anything; she at least made an attempt, she went through the motions, she was with others getting saved but in the end she is lost, turned into a pillar of salt. How different is she from the countless folks who dutifully take their seats in the pews of churches each Sunday morning and go through the motions and the rituals of religion without the understanding the spirit behind the actions? They are hearing the message and with others getting saved yet I can’t help but wonder if their fate will be any different than that of Lot’s wife.
I Will Give You the Treasures of Darkness (Tanzania Part III)
December 30, 2011
For all my myriad of faults, when I commit to a work, I am invested in going the distance. So when I formally confirmed that I would be going to Tanzania, come hell or high-water, I was going to find myself in Africa. It was then the problems began to pile up. The ‘old’ me would have expected this, but as I mentioned previously, I was just getting my spiritual footing again in the area of service. I should have been familiar with this ‘cause and effect’ process by now, but apparently I had become spiritually rusty as of late.
The principal is this. Whenever someone takes a step of faith, the one thing that you can count on is that problems will begin to surface. It seems as if the entire world, previously occupied in a plethora of various disparate pursuits, is suddenly solely focused on providing reasons for you to second guess your step of faith and the excuses to extricate yourself from the commitment begin to pile up. It’s the Death of the Vision principal. God gives you a vision of something amazing that you can accomplish or be part of and immediately afterwards, the world conspires to killing the vision. At that point, you can give up and walk away; many people do BUT if you move forward in faith, holding true to the original vision, the vision which had died is miraculously resurrected, frequently even bigger.
I Will Give You the Treasures of Darkness (Tanzania Part II)
December 29, 2011
Everyone is wired differently. The things that motivate one person may fall flat when used to motivate someone else. I have found that I am wired to be needed. Let me clarify. If someone approaches me with a request that I can’t turn down (the Godfather request); basically telling me that I have to do something, then my first instinct is to dig my heels in and resist, regardless of whether or not I want to do it OR have the spare time to do it. Reason usually wins out in the end and I determine whether or not I can fully commit to the request or not.
However, if someone approached me and I am there last option and instead of telling me that I have to do it, they appeal to me based on their valid need for me to help them out; then I have a hard time saying no to that type of request. It usually leads to me overcommitting myself and stressing myself out, but the service tends to be its own reward. Those of you, who give of your time to charitable works, understand what I mean by that.
Emancipate Yourself from Mental Slavery: Freethinker or Well Programmed Automaton
September 27, 2011
Like Rome of old, each one of us knowingly or unknowingly incorporates personal experiences into our existing playbook; the repertoire of who we are and how we interact with the world around us. It can be as mundane and innocent as incorporating lines from movies into day-to-day communications with friends. I can recall how 25-40% of my vocabulary with friends in high school was driven from endlessly repeating lines from movies or television shows like: Stripes, Caddyshack, SCTV, Blade Runner, Harold and Maude, Repo Man, etc. Why, because in that community of friends, it was expected. It was understood that if you wanted to engage with these folks successfully, you needed to have a familiarity with these kinds of movies or shows. People gained their sense of identify from being in that group.
Modern Christianity: All Take and No Give
September 16, 2011
As human beings we all carry within ourselves a myriad of past experiences; some joyful and others painful, each uniquely shaping the way that we make sense of the world around us. All of our life experiences change us. Sometimes the effects are subtle almost imperceptible, while other times the influences are significant and life changing. We are changed, regardless of whether or not we are consciously aware of the impact or not. We live each day, we are altered and frequently, we are forced to develop more and more complex coping skills. These skill are employed on the hope that they can heighten our experiences of joy and lessen our experiences of pain.
A Picture, Even if Painted with Words, Speaks Volumes
September 2, 2011
The human brain doesn't function/learn as if it had a hard drive to store specific knowledge and memories. While knowledge doesn't need to be packaged into campfire stories, using your own word, it does make it more "memorable". A picture, even if painted with words, speaks volumes. That’s what parables are and that’s why they are some memorable – pictures are the way our brains learn.
Scarface was Right, We are the Masters of Deflection
August 28, 2011
I think that most of us, especially those in the church, fear being known and knowing others. We isolate ourselves; stay home (think ostrich with its head in the ground), so we do not have to learn that our neighbors (or friends or family) are in ‘need’. It’s as if, so long as we are not consciously aware of a specific problem, we are not accountable for how we respond.
Be the Exception to the Rule
August 25, 2011
People in the church often err by labeling groups of people with broad strokes (e.g. liberals, democrats, homosexuals, etc.) and not spend the time to see that all people are unique individuals. There may be similarities, but just as all church attenders are not identical clones of one another, people outside of the church are not either, regardless of what group one labels them with. The reverse is also true, non-church folks tend to label church folks as all being hypocrites, illogical, insecure or hateful. If that were true, how do they account for Billy Graham, C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Mother Theresa? Here’s the hope. When we individually as Christians engage non-Christians in a Christ-like manner, an amazing thing happens; it helps to falsify the stereotype of Christians that others may have previously held. Individuals impacted by our Christ-like actions can no longer claim (at least not honestly) or live comfortably with their previous label for “all Christians”. They are forced to broaden their prior stereotypical thinking to now include, at the very least, exceptions to the rule. They can no longer use “All Christians are…” because they now know a Christian who does not do that. It’s a two way street. As the Christian, in this case my friend, got to know this transgendered individual as a unique person with common human fears, hurts, dreams and hope – we begin to see others more and more like ourselves. Our common humanity is reinforced and mankind’s artificial “walls of separation” are broken down, if only a little bit.
Scripta Manent 
August 14, 2012
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