• heart3

    First Sunday of Advent – Waiting

    December 3, 2012

    1 Comment

    I’ve said before that the events which lead to my husband and my separation last year was so intense and sordid that it would have made a great episode of Dateline Special Edition. If only we had no shame and one of us were a homicidal maniac. But, since we enjoy healthy levels of shame and we didn’t devolve into poisoning one another (not that such a thing was never contemplated), it’s a story which will have to wait ’til the great by and by to be widely disseminated. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t really anything either of us did that pushed us over the edge. Rather, it was the way the response to events unfolded which undid us.

    In his book, Passionate Marriage, Dr. David Schnarch says that couples are pretty much always working at about the same emotional level. It’s why they are able to bond to each other. Couples who are a mismatch in terms of emotional depth, maturity and functioning who somehow marry each other nearly always end up with a failed marriage within the first two years. What happened with us, and what I believe happens to many couple facing an intensely traumatic experience, was that as we coped (or didn’t cope) with what was going on, we were jolted into wildly different places emotionally speaking. Instead of being matched and basically moving forward and growing up emotionally in the normal push and pull ways that couples do, we were suddenly completely out-of-sync. And within two years, our marriage was kaput.

    Of course, we’re back together now although I can’t begin to say that everything is fixed. Instead, we seem to have stumbled into a way forward which is familiar to any serious Christian: waiting. We’re just waiting. Waiting for the other to work through their issues. Waiting for greater empathy and understanding to form. Waiting for time to take away the sting of the past. Waiting.

    Waiting on God and for God is a theme found all throughout scripture. Abram waited. Joseph waited. Moses waited. The psalmists waited. The prophets waited. Jesus waited. The women and the disciples waited. We still wait today through dry times and unanswered prayers and silence that as a psalmist said is like a dark cloud God wears about him. As Christians, these waiting times are frustrating. We know that somehow this waiting is for a reason. Usually. Maybe it’s for our benefit. Or maybe it’s because there’s a problem elsewhere that needs to be worked out. Which is part of the frustration – we don’t really know. Continue reading »

  • Churchill-Quote-When-going-through-hell-WEB

    God is Good

    November 27, 2012

    16 Comments

    Despite the fact that I write pretty obsessively about religion here, I don’t have any delusions that I’m doing it in order to serve God or man. Mostly I do it so I’m not inflicting myself on everyone around me by prattling on about my latest ideas, theories and spiritual experiences all the time. When I sit down to write, it’s not inspiration or following God’s lead or any such high falutin’ motivations at work. It probably sounds awful, but the fact that what I’m sharing may be helpful or enlightening to other people is usually just a pleasant by-product of dumping what’s in my head onto the page so I can be rid of it.

    But every once in a blue moon, I do stop to ask God, “is there something you want me to say?” Usually there’s not. In my experience, God is far less opinionated about our lives than you’d think from listening to many Christians talk. But several times recently I’ve asked God, “is there something you want me to say?” And each time, I’ve gotten the same answer: “Tell them that I’m good.” Just that – “Tell them that I’m good” over and over. Which is fine and true and all, but doesn’t make for much of an essay. So finally I asked, “anything else?” And there was. “The only way out is through.” Ahh, now I’m beginning to see.

    Here’s the deal; we’re all waiting to be rescued – aren’t we? I know I am – or was. I’ve pretty much accepted that there’s not a miracle or even necessarily a break just waiting around the bend. It’s a hard thing to make peace with. It’s probably a particularly hard thing for Christians to accept. From the time we are small we are raised on stories of the God who rescued the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt. The God of the Psalms who is our deliverer and will not let us fall. Who brings victory to us by his mighty right hand. A Savior with such healing power that simply touching the hem of his garment healed the woman with the issue of the blood. God is our savior, our deliverer, our ever present help in times of sorrow. The God who rescues is mother’s milk to us. And it’s all true. Every last bit of it.

    But mother’s milk has to give way to meat. And it’s not a parent’s job to provide meat to a child for their entire life. At some point, we have to learn to go hunting for ourselves. And I believe firmly that we – Christians and humanity as a whole – have arrived at a time of having to grow up. God is with us. God will redeem whatever we go through, but it’s time for us to go through. Continue reading »

  • talents

    Church and the Parable of the Talents

    November 26, 2012

    9 Comments

    With cold and flu season upon us, I have 2 words for you: neti pot. You can thank me later. Now, onto biznez . . .

    Our lesson today, ladies and gents, is the parable of the talents and what it can tell us about ways we Christians end up being like the bad servant:

    “Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

    “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’

    “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

    “The man with the two talents also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.’

    “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

    “Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ Continue reading »

  • Illustration of Mother and Children Carrying Thanksgiving Dinner by Douglass Crockwell

    Thanksgiving Family Survival Guide

    November 20, 2012

    2 Comments

    An oldie but a goody! BTW, I have something you’re going to love in the works for y’all. If you enjoy the advice I share here, you’re going to love The Upside Down World’s Guide to Enjoying the Hard Life. It’s a collection of enlightening essays for thinking better, being better and growing where you’re planted. I’ll be taking pre-orders for delivery well before Christmas starting after Thanksgiving. At only $5 it’s the perfect stocking stuffer. (The price will go up to $6 a copy after publication.) If you’d like a sneak peak, just send your email address to ratrotter73@yahoo.com and I’ll hook ya up. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving, all!

    Since I am a contrarian at heart and everyone and their brother is doing the “Let’s talk about what we’re thankful for” bit, I’m going to offer up something completely different.  Because as important as gratitude is, I also know that on Thanksgiving there are an awful lot of people for whom the answer to “what are you most grateful for?” is “that I don’t live any closer to these people.”  So for those of you going over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house which had damn well better have a well stocked liquor cabinet waiting, I’ve dug through the archieves to create The Upside Down World’s Thanksgiving Survival Guide:

    1. Develop an Appreciation for the Absurd: My grandmother once had to be dragged away by a horrified aunt from her very concerned inquisition into the causes of my obesity.  One of my cousins made a big deal out of being “sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk” after resolutely ignoring every smile, nod, wave or question we threw her way from the next table over at my brother’s wedding.  Learning to laugh is a much better tactic for dealing with people being absurd than any other I know.

    2. Learn to Tolerate Conflict: Wishing you would have stood up for yourself is only rarely less painful than the discomfort of conflict.  The determining factor being whether you hold it together long enough to cry in private or abruptly leave the table after bursting into tears in front of everyone.  Thanksgiving probably isn’t the best time to confront your family with a list of all the things they have done to hurt you, but being able to speak up for yourself is a form of self-care everyone needs to know.

    3. Learn to Avoid Conflict: At the other end of the spectrum, sometimes we need to tone it down.  Not every confrontation need to happen and not every invitation to conflict needs to be accepted.  Learn to see the difference and how to stop it before it gets started.

    4. Deliberately Look For the Good in People: Thanksgiving with relatives is the perfect place to put this idea into action.  One of my grandfathers used to corner us Continue reading »

  • spain path

    Ways to Make a Christian Faint

    November 12, 2012

    16 Comments

    “Christians have always tended to transform the Christian Revelation into a Christian religion. Christianity is said to be a religion like any other or, conversely, some Christians try to show that it is a better religion than the others. People attempt to take possession of God. Theology claims to explain everything, including the being of God. People tend to transform Christianity into a religion because the Christian faith obviously places people in an extremely uncomfortable position that of freedom guided only by love and all in the context of God’s radical demand that we be holy.” –Jacques Ellul

    We Christians really are a faithless bunch. Want to send the average Christian – particularly a Christian like a pastor or church elder – into a nervous sweat? Tell them, “Jesus said the world would know his disciples by how loving they are” without adding any qualifiers at the end. No mention of morality or the need for correction. In fact, if you want to send them into a dead faint, point out that the biblical definition of love doesn’t include correction, purity or virtue.

    Or tell them that you’ve decided to take Jesus’ instruction not to judge literally. From here on out you’re just going to take a live and let live approach. A person’s choices are between them and God so you’ll just leave the judging to God. You may want to bring smelling salts. If they’re still standing, you can add in that Jesus said we should be perfect like God who causes the rain to fall and the sun to shine on the good and evil alike. So you think we should help anyone in need without regard to whether they deserve it or not. And no making loans – if you’re going to help someone, you need to do it without expecting repayment. That should finish the job.

    You could suggest that instead of fighting to protect our rights, Christians should follow Jesus’ teachings and example and refuse to fight. Let the other side defeat us without resisting it. They’ll either give you a blank, uncomprehending stare or quickly escort you off the premises.  On the way out you could add in that God doesn’t really care if you receive or keep what you’ve earned through hard work. Just to make sure you’re never invited back.

    Of course, not all Christians are like this. There’s a growing segment of Christians who already have a live and let live attitude. They work hard to be loving, accepting and willing to lose. Not that they have it all together either. Try telling them that no one has a right to inflict the horror of fatherlessness on another human being, so Christians are morally obligated to refrain from sex outside of marriage and to encourage others to do the same. Tell them its a matter of social justice. Be prepared to witness much equivocating. Continue reading »

  • songsol867

    When My Beloveds Talk Together

    November 10, 2012

    2 Comments

    I’m going to tell you strange things today. Like about the times early in my marriage when I prayed to God, telling him about the pain of being married to another broken human being. I brought to God things I had never said to my husband because I knew he wouldn’t be able to receive them. And it happened more that once that my husband came home from working so hard to take care of us and said, “today, I really felt like God was telling me . . . ” And nearly word-for-word what I had said to God came out of his mouth. It turns out that the man who God provided for me has an uncanny ability to listen and hear God. It wasn’t the last time he would tell me things he had no way of knowing.

    But one of the strange things about this life is that as much as we might want and seek after God as a way of protecting ourselves from the chaos and pain of life, it just doesn’t work that way. In time when the blows of life finally overtook us, this marriage of ours fell apart. I’d always said that we’d either end up as one of the world’s great love stories or self-destruct in a truly spectacular fashion. For a long time, it has seemed that the latter was our fate. It wasn’t that we stopped trying – far from it. In fact, in the middle of our worst arguments, my husband began to stop to pray and listen to God. I followed his lead and began doing it as well.  We became the only couple in all of creation perhaps that would actually stop to seek God in between throwing accusations and curses and venom at each other. And yet, even with both of us seeking after God, our marriage continued to devolve.

    Only I’ve discovered that hearing God isn’t enough. In communication there is what is said, what is heard and what it understood. And it turns out that one must know God better than we humans actually know him to understand what he is saying. I learned this when one day my husband told me, “be careful – God told me that there are two voices you are hearing.” The way he said it made it clear that he thought I was being deceived. This was his own belief – that I was wrong and refusing to deal with reality. He thought God was confirming this. Only unbeknownst to him, I had been praying regularly to God complaining that I was no longer sure if I was listening to Him or just hearing what I wanted to hear – talking to myself. Over and over again, I had asked, “how do I know that when I think I hear you, I’m not just hearing what I want to hear?” And he answered me – “you’re hearing two voices.” I knew what it meant – you’re not just talking to yourself. But my husband, working with a different set of assumptions and knowledge, took away something totally different. As we can see perfectly well with all the people who know God’s word yet know little of love, simply hearing God is quite different from understanding Him. Continue reading »

  • phil-4-12-13-014

    Godly Thinking vs The World

    November 4, 2012

    7 Comments

    “Encourage one another and build each other up ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:11
    • Godly thinking believes you can be the person you heart desires to be and accomplish the things your heart longs to accomplish.
    • The world believes you can be the person they want you to be and accomplish the things they think you should want to accomplish.
    “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. ~ Romans 12:2
    • Godly thinking celebrates every little victory as evidence that you will accomplish what it is you’re working towards and see the setbacks as irrelevant to your ultimate success.
    • The world views setbacks as proof that the whole way you’re doing things is flawed, probably fatally and certainly evidence that you should be adopting their vision of success, a good life and yourself as your own.
    “They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the LORD. ~ Jeremiah 1:19
    • When you’re frustrated or discouraged, Godly thinking reminds you of all that you’ve accomplished already as evidence which points to the reality of ultimate victory.
    • When you’re frustrated or discouraged, the world sees all your accomplishments as evidence that you should be doing better than you are. Past victories are evidence of potential not met.

    We have troubles all around us, but we are not defeated. We do not know what to do, but we do not give up the hope of living. We are persecuted, but God does not leave us. We are hurt sometimes, but we are not destroyed. ~ 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

    • The world believes coloring outside the lines is evidence of failure.
    • Godly thinking knows that people who do great things almost always color outside the lines.
    He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.” ~ Luke 16:16
    • The world focus on failure.
    • Godly thinking focuses on potential.
    God began a good work in you and I am sure he will continue it until it is finished. ~ Phillipians 1:6
    • Godly thinking believes that what we get right is ultimately more important and more powerful than what we get wrong.
    • The world believes that what we get wrong defines us.
    Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. ~ Phillippians 4:8
    • Godly thinking believes that everything works out in the end and if it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end.
    • The world believes that each moment represents a point at which success or failure can be judged.
    Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ~ Romans 8:17-18
  • hands-holding-baby

    Why I don’t consider abortion when voting

    November 3, 2012

    15 Comments

    Let me be clear up-front: I do not support a right to abortion on demand. In fact, if I were made ruler of the universe, I would make abortions enormously difficult to get. Because I’m a mean and cruel woman. No, not really – I’m actually very kind and empathetic. But I am in agreement with Mother Theresa: “it is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live”. I don’t think abortion is an answer to what is really a societal failure. I don’t only oppose abortion from a pro-life perspective. I think abortion is bad for women, worse for relations between men and women and displays a level of animosity towards women as they are – people whose bodies can start new life – which is evil and vile. If we have a society where the normal functioning of a woman’s body regularly ruins women’s lives, we’re doing it wrong. And abortion doesn’t do anything to fix that – it simply enables it. Nearly 60% of abortions are influenced by pressure from fathers, husbands, boyfriends or others with power in a woman’s life. That’s not empowering. Nor has ready access to abortion resulted in a world where people who shouldn’t have children don’t as abortion proponents used to argue. Far from it. And yet . . . the issue of abortion has nothing to do with how I vote.

    Yes Democrats not only support abortion rights, but celebrate them the way most of us celebrate Grandpa’s 90th birthday. But despite using the abortion issue to garner votes for the last 30 or 40 years, Republicans haven’t and won’t do anything to stop abortion either. Sure, they’ll fiddle around the edges and I’d much rather live in a country where doctors don’t deliver a baby up to its neck before suctioning its brains, crushing its head and completing delivery. But show me one child who is alive today because we banned “intact dilation and extraction”. It’s a symbolic victory at best. The reality is that for all their rhetoric, the Republicans have shown no more willingness to do something about Roe v Wade than their Democratic opponents. If anything, I can at least give the Democrats credit for being honest about their support of abortion as birth control. But voting for someone simply because they claim to be pro-life does nothing what-so-ever to advance pro-life policies. It’s just giving my vote to the person who has set their dog-whistle to the right pitch.

    Another reason abortion isn’t a factor in my voting is that abortion is only marginally a legal issue. 1.2 million women have abortions each year. By some estimates, one in three women will have an abortion in her lifetime. Including a good number of women who are Christian, pro-lifers. That’s a social problem. You don’t fix social problems with laws. Social problems get fixed with people. Continue reading »

  • Gen-22-Abraham-Offers-Up-Isaac

    The Sacrifice of Isaac . . . Or Provincial Much?

    November 1, 2012

    2 Comments

    Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. ~ Micah 6:7-8

    In the pantheon of weird stories in the bible, the Sacrifice (or Binding) of Abraham is often treated as the most inexplicable or as the clearest evidence of how capricious the God of the Old Testament is. However, it seems to me that these conclusions simply demonstrate our poor understanding of history, God’s ways and human nature.  In context and with a decent concept of human nature as well as a proper understanding of what God is about, the story and it’s moral aren’t so hard to understand.

    The reality is that infanticide has always been part of human behavior. It’s been practiced everywhere and through all time periods. Including during the time of Abraham. In fact, there is evidence from both ancient writings and from archaeology of wide-spread infanticide and ritual child sacrifice in the Ancient Near East continuing into Greco-Roman times. Continue reading »

  • pharisee

    Do you read scripture like a Pharisee or like Jesus?

    October 30, 2012

    32 Comments

    Way back in college, I took a class on the history of religion in America. One day during a discussion about some Christian evangelist, one of the other students offered this criticism of the man’s work: “it’s like he’s actually trying to be like Jesus.” I sat there a bit bug-eyed. Can you imagine – a Christian who was actually trying to be like Jesus? Whatever could that evangelist have been thinking? (Clearly, not everyone I who attended my college was the best or the brightest.) But the reality is that a lot of people – including a good number of Christians – are as unclear on the concept as this young man back in my college days was. How else to explain the fact that many people read the bible the exact same way that the Pharisees did rather than trying to read it like Jesus did? (For anyone who is really unclear on the concept – the Pharisees were Jesus’ main opponents in the gospel stories. We’re supposed to try to be like Jesus, not like the Pharisees. Just so we’re all on the same page here.)

    At the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were experts on the bible. In fact, they had managed to find all the laws in the bible – 613 of them. They had further figured out that there were 365 negative laws – thou shall nots. And 248 positive laws – thou shalls. So they knew all about important rules like thou shalt wash your hands before eating, thou shalt not perform miracle healings on the Sabbath and how long to keep the fringe on their garments. Somehow they had managed to miss those very important rules about card playing, drinking alcohol and dancing. No one’s perfect, I guess. But they had mastered the very important biblical teaching to avoid the appearance of evil. Like they wouldn’t eat with unclean people because if they did, the other biblical rule followers might call them evil. And evil is bad, donchano? (I once attended a church which demanded that members not drink alcohol on the grounds that other church members might be scandalized if they saw you coming out of a liquor store.)

    So long before the teaching of sola scripture, the Pharisees were experts in biblical living. If you needed to know the biblical way to weave your cloth was, they could tell you. (Using only one type of fiber is biblical. The Pharisees would not have stood for our unbiblical polyester/cotton blends!) The Pharisees were also very good about setting a good example for other people – praying in public or announcing their contributions to the synagogue loudly. Because it was important to “witness” to those around them so that people would be inspired to honor God the right way, of course. Continue reading »