life

Thoughts on life, in general.
general / life — 1 Comment
12
Oct 10

vulnerable

“I want to expose the wound to as many people as possible because there may be someone who could help the healing” :: Jeremy Current, Watershed Charlotte

There are moments of artistic openness that as a listener you absolutely have to seize, to grab ahold of knowing that you’re likely to learn something incredible. This was made true for me this past Sunday at Watershed when Jeremy Current, a guest vocal artist, began telling some of his story. While exposing some of the wounds that birthed one of his tunes he shared the quote above.

I was absolutely captivated, evidenced by my leaning forward in my chair and widening eyes. What I felt was a combination of a deep connection with this truth and yet an amazement at the succinctness with which he was able to verbalize truths that have taken me 30 years to even acknowledge. There are still chasms to cross before I begin to understand it.

It is not that I was unwilling to be vulnerable for fear of showing weakness. There are not enough über-masculine bones in my body to justify this. Essentially vulnerability required me to be satisfied with being embarrassed about the nature of my wound and required others to be at all interested in my being wounded and needing healing. Neither were realities that I could comprehend.

What I’m learning about vulnerability, though, is that it is provides the fuel for inspiration, transformation, and even revolution. Consider the concept of famous last words. When faced with challenge, defeat, looming destruction it depths of your soul, your heart, your core desires are the things that come out. The most well-known response when staring down the barrel of a gun is: “Please … I have a wife and family.”

These things come from down deep. It’s unfiltered soul-speak without any pretense or filter.

These are the important things.

The “I don’t want to be here anymore” things.

The “I don’t know what to believe” things.

The “I’m sure we can make it if we just have one more chance” things.

And, it is often in the vulnerable moments when we hear ourselves audibly speak the confessions and fears and troubles and questions that have been floating around in our heads that change can take took.  It’s fertile ground.  It’s shaken.  It’s soft and prepared for new things.

Seize those moments when you or someone close to you is being vulnerable.  Drink in the confession.  Let it stimulate your mind and heart. Let it stir your soul.  Let it connect you to another being.

And while you and I may never stare down the barrel of a literal gun, our hearts will break and our souls will be wrenched. We’ll be disappointed in our self.

Our failure.

Failure, though, and disappointment are the critical components for relationship.  Transparency breeds trust.  It is in the togetherness of life that my vulnerabilities and your concerns become our collective strength.

life — Comments Off
6
Oct 10

like

I’m probably that guy that you don’t know very well.

There’s good reason for this. Until very recently, it probably seemed that I didn’t have much time for or interest in you. First, I’d like to apologize for this because you’re a very important person and I certainly don’t mean to give you the impression that your not.

When I say “it’s not you: it’s me” I truly do mean it.

Well, I used to mean it.

But something very strange has been happening to me for the past few weeks… maybe months. I know that people always experience change and sometimes it’s lasting and sometimes it’s not. With this, though, I’m convinced that I’ll be looking back at August and September a few years from now and be able to distinguish a couple of powerful milestones, reference points along my journey.

I’ll reference things as being being before or after September 2010. It really has been that profound.

I’ve been a hermit for as long as I can remember. As a child in would spend hours by myself in my room: reading, playing, whatever. Contentment for me was sitting by myself, keeping myself occupied without any need for human interaction. I didn’t need anything else.

So it should come as a considerable surprise to you and me both that the profundity of what has happened to me has instilled a voracious appetite for meaningful social interaction in the self-proclaimed king of social-awkwardness.

I am . . . or was . . . that king.

While I can’t explain the mechanics of the situation I can at least attempt to deal with it from a philosophical perspective.

With no hesitation whatsoever, I can say that I had a lot of misplaced intimacy. I didn’t need any other interaction with people: I had reached capacity, however dysfunctional this may have been. There was no room for anything else and therefore no drive for developing relationships beyond casual acquaintances. There was no room for genuine interest for the joys and sorrows of another human being, because I was to interested in my own self-aggrandization.

If you’ve read my previous post, Clean, then you already have a sense for this, so I won’t go into it again.

I can testify, though, that when this substantial malignancy was exorcised from my soul, the vacuum it created was back-filled with utter happiness, awe, and an affinity for relationships that I never thought was normal, let alone possible.

I am a changed man.

Going forward, I will likely be as overbearing as I was once (and possibly still am) socially-awkward. You should know this and take the appropriate precautions. But I can’t apologize for this.

It’s only because I like you.

general / life — 1 Comment
18
Sep 10

clean

“Pobody’s Nerfect”

If the state of the world wasn’t enough to have to deal with, we all go through life adding on and disposing of mental baggage. Sometimes it’s a lack of confidence. Sometime’s it’s rejection. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s much more serious. Many times, however, our baggage accumulates from the myriad of mistakes that we are prone to make or the poor decisions that we felt would end with a different set of circumstances.

What complicates life is that we can have an aversion to just coming clean – of telling someone that we messed up, that we’re not perfect, that we haven’t got it all figured out.

Success in 2010 depends on a great deal of self-promotion. We have to be conscious of presenting the idealized self. And so on Facebook we tell other’s about the books we’ve read that affirm the image we’re trying to project. We careful craft our status postings to reflect the level of sophistication we want to portray. In real life we buy suits and cars and homes that reinforce our status and dress for the job that our ideal self deserves.

So it makes sense that we hide the aspects of our lives that are less than desirable. Having skeletons in our closets can be scary (I do not want to be attacked by zombie skeletons when all I really wanted was a sweater… just sayin). Admitting these skeletons can mean that you won’t get that job, or that thing, or that you will lose respect, or admiration, or that you ego will no longer be stroked.

Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, it is the catharsis that comes from telling another human being about your shortcomings that may help you deal with them. While I can speak only anecdotally about this (that is, I have no proof), there is a change that happens when you move from a defensive, hidden posture to an active, humbling posture in relationship with someone. There is a definite shift. It may be just the simple reality that the truth has been spoken and yet the world around us has not spontaneously erupted with laughter or ceased to exist whatsoever.

My situation on this front was one where I falsely believed that I had to live up to an idealized version of the real me. And so there is baggage that I’ve accumulated over the years that I made every effort to veil. To have someone else know these things, I rationalized, would have been far too costly and, frankly, embarrassing. Mine was a personal struggle, I reasoned. There were times when I even tried to convince myself that it would actually be harmful to the OTHER PERSON if I were to tell them.

(As an aside, I do realize that I’m speaking very cryptically at the moment. This IS intentional. If I’m interested in going into detail, I’ll do it in person… not to the safety of my computer screen).

I want to be able to say that the act of telling people about these experiences has been very rewarding. They’ve not. Or, at the very least I would not use the word rewarding. Perhaps I need only to go back to the opening line, here, and say that it has been cathartic. The world, in fact, has continued, as have my relationships with those on the receiving end of my confessions. Now there are people in the world who seem to think about me in much the same way as they always have, except now I KNOW that they know that I am not, and cannot be, perfect. And, so, I no longer have to chase after this unattainable ideal with the same fervor as before.

The other interesting component of this experience has been the affirmation of “there can be good in every situation” mentality. For me, this good has been a new down-to-earth-edness that didn’t exist before. For you readers of Velvet Elvis, it’s the take “super-whatever out back and end his worthless existence.” This humility has come in waves. The first recognition come with an admission to myself that something was amiss. My behaviors didn’t line up with my beliefs and claims. I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. That took a while to sink in before I could move on to step two: needing someone else to know that I’m not as good as I thought I was.

Step two is altogether hard, incredibly worthwhile, and sometimes unexpected. For me, it started following a flippant, passing remark during dinner one night at a local pizza place. The opportunity blindsided me like nothing had ever blindsided me before. Within the eternity that was just a couple of seconds, I reasoned that this was do or die; a “you HAVE to walk through this door” moment. So I did. And with that, the remorse and guilt and fear that saturated my consciousness for literally half a lifetime began to precipitate out. It was visible. It was just there. In the open. It could be measured and poked and prodded and evaluated.

But it couldn’t be ignored. And it couldn’t easily be dissolved back out of sight.

And then today I had the opportunity to be the first to walk though that same door rather than simply responding to someone else’s first move. It was undramatic and worthwhile and altogether incredible.

Once and for all it suddenly seemed like something separate: something that wasn’t me, but something that had continued to live parasitically from me. It didn’t drain me of happiness or joy or life. It just took the excess. It didn’t need all of my self-confidence. But it took enough so that other areas of my life suffered. It thrived when I should have been thriving. It lived when I should have been living.

It suddenly seemed so overdramatic to have spent such a great deal of the last fifteen years working to hide and feed this life-sucking leech.

And so freeing to live free of it.

From here, your guess is as good as mine as to which way this will go. I’m not expecting it to be the easiest thing in the world. Once you get used to living a certain way, changing is a challenge to put it lightly. But it’s intriguing to me that it’s in my weakness that I’m strong. It’s in my shame that I’m proud. It’s in my pain that I’m alive.

There are a few moments that I can honestly look back on and say they’ve changed my life. The day I learned about “active and passive” living and my wedding day are two that come to mind. I suspect, in a few years that I’m living another of those moments right now.

life — Comments Off
28
Aug 10

everyday terrorists

In listening to NPR a few days ago, an expert was discussing something called “nature deficit disorder.”  This is not a diagnosable disorder by any set of medical guidelines. But there is a real movement (and plenty of verifiable research) that links our lack of exposure to the out-of-doors with childhood obesity, attention deficit disorder, and all of the well-known issues that exist all around us.

Both the interviewer and the interviewee were middle-aged or later and both had vivid recollections not just of playing out side as baby baby-boomers, but being forced by their parents to play outside… the “don’t-come-back-in-until-dinner” variety of playing outside.  There was a freedom in this that was taken for granted as children, but was dramatically real.

Later the conversation turned to questioning the course of events that have seemed to turn that scenario on its head.  We now live inside our homes, parenting our children from the business end of our remote controls, allowing them to soak up the rays of the LCD, without ever guiding them to thrust their hands into dirt, of lying in the grass.  We certainly never utter the words, “Go outside and play and don’t come in until dinner.”

Their supposition was that we are afraid.  We have a sense that the world outside the protective custody of our homes is a dangerous, perverted, evil place where criminals are lying in wait.

What’s interesting, though, is that year after year, rates of crime against children continue to decrease.

Could it be that the world is just not an interesting enough place to support the 24 hour news cycle?  Some days, obviously, there’s enough to saturate the airways, but it’s probably more accurate to say that the world is otherwise pretty boring.  So, in an effort to sell advertising space to companies that want evermore viewers, we hear about the same abduction or plane crash or ongoing investigation, over and over and over.

The market has taken this to the extreme now with unrepresentative voices like Beck and Olbermann being the archetypes and leading the pursuit of polarization.  More money is made when more of our eyes are glued to our televisions and when our notions of living in safety are irrationally questioned.

Wikipedia says that terrorism is “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.”  I realize it’s a bit of stretch to call our media outlets terrorists.  But, I dare you to watch with an objective mind and simply count the number of references that are meant to induce fear, or question your safety, or make you believe that it’s more likely than not that a cold-war era nuclear missle is en route to your backyard in suburbia…. RIGHT …. NOW.

My advice: go outside.  Enjoy it.  We’re not meant to live in fear of war or terrorists or socialists or conservatives.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise

general / health care / life / politics — 1 Comment
24
Mar 10

declaration of dependence

I am a Canadian. I am not anti-american.  You know it’s going to be good when it starts that way.

The following thoughts are not anti-american. They are an outsider’s view of a fascinating history with an opinionated leaning.

None of us are free.

It all started with health care….

There is an incredible undercurrent of suspicion that I pick up on in this country. It’s a suspicion directed squarely at the government. This is not a universal suspicion but I don’t think it’s out of place to say that it’s prevalent. And there is plenty of good reason – the government that this country broke away from was supposedly pretty oppressive. Even in the past 100 years, it’s been prove that government officials have lied to pursue or protect American interests.

It was this oppression, this suspicion, the lies, and worse that led several to declare a new nation absolved from allegiance to the British crown. A tyrant prince acting unjustly and repeating injury in response to repeated petitions drove away an entire people and caused revolt.

As it was, it was completely justified. July 4, 1776 will perpetually and rightfully remember as the birth of the wealthiest nation this planet has ever seen.

The declaration was for freedom from oppression.

The declaration was for independence.

Not entirely, however.

The declaration was also for a new sort of dependence.

With the final stroke of the pen, the founding fathers bound citizen’s of a new nation to each other. Declaring independence from the crown was at the same time a declaration for interdependence on one another. Butchers, and bakers, and brewers formed communities of people that were free to live to their own devices inasmuch as it were beneficial to the fledgling community.

They had freedom to live and choose and be with an understanding that an interdependence on everyone in community meant that sometimes our “freedom” to choose ought best to be in support of the entirety of society.

Freedom never means unchecked reality.

Turn the calendar ahead a couple hundred years or so and this place is very different. History has shaped the views of each citizen. Swarms of people vie for a place at America’s banqueting table where cups runneth over.

For many, our relentless pursuit for freedom has been hijacked by a culture that extols the virtues of independence, suggesting that the down and out pull themselves up by their boot straps, where the cream rises to the top, where self-made men and women have the most influence and the most inspiring stories. Never mind that this inspiration tends to be based mostly on the amount of individual wealth that can be amassed within legal-if-not-ethical systemic confines.

What we now long for is autonomy.

We want to each sign our own declarations of independence from the nation that first inspired such a radical move. We want to make our own rules and act to protect our own interests. This is paramount to our individual rights and freedoms. My hateful speech is justified by my individual worth and to deny my voice is to deny my sovereignty. My wealth has been earned by my own hard work free from the influence and efforts of others. Who is any entity to dictate how funds from my treasury are used.

We are empires of self.

Freedom implies that I make my own decisions within a set of confines established by some social order. Government, community, team, club, company, etc.

Autonomy expresses the idea of “self rule” – complete independence from everything. The autonomous are nations unto themselves.

We live and move and operate in a system that has corrupted the idea of community – that has exalted the individual at the expense of all else. A system that has promoted autonomy.

The same system can now have it’s own way with the hearts and minds of these individuals – free from the social checks of community. When others are of lower priority, our individual opinions trump the controlling processes introduced by others with whom we share mutual concern. We’re tempted to revolt. We’re tempted to declare our own independence.

As I’ve said, the founding father’s, by their very declaration of independence declared an almost socialistic dependence on one another:

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Autonomy rejects the understanding that as a human we are by definition communal beings, not only with our neighbors but with our generations of ancestors and our neighbors ancestors who have built the foundation on which we live our lives. We are but small hiccups in the fabric of space time as lonesome creatures – but in communities learning to live and love and support each other we can truly be significant. Autonomy lives free from history written by any victor but me. “This is my wealth. I earned it myself. I have sovereignty over my life.”

And so we come full circle to health care…..

This nation has adopted a bill that forms a strong framework on which a system that provides medical care to all of it’s citizens can be built because we believe that all men are created equal and has an unalienable right to life. It requires that citizen’s purchase health insurance – purchasing and the consumption being the very blood that courses through the nations core. Factions have expressed their view that government should not be the “single payer” for medical services, and other factions now say that government has no right to make me pay for medical coverage, even though my failure to do so will likely result in some cost to my neighbors.

If my actions don’t protect them, is it not the government’s right to ensure their protection?

We are looking for an autonomous answer that does not and cannot exist. Though our culture, our financial system, our educational systems all seem to champion the concept of self, we live completely dependent on those around us in even the most mundane aspects of our lives.

Our freedoms dictate that when our governments overstep their boundaries, we can register our disagreement with our votes, but even in that freedom we are dependent on scores of others to cast their ballots, to participate in their civic duty.

The hope that I have for this, my temporarily adopted nation, is that we reject this destructive, divisive view. The pursuit of an idealist freedom that so many people seem to be chasing is futile. Such a freedom does not and cannot exist. Realize that we are not enemies, that there is great pride in being your brother’s keeper, and that the pursuit of happiness can only be carried out within the rich confines of community.

general / life — Comments Off
17
Mar 10

selfish idiots

We live in this world surrounded by selfish idiots, in a less disparaging, more literal sense than you may be assuming I mean.

Firstly, I believe that it is perfectly justified to say that we are a selfish people. We have learned to be possessive of our belongings, or family, our freedoms, our guns, our time, our food, our privacy, and anything else that can be construed as being ours.

We are irrationally self-indulgent – “I absolutely need a pedicure today” or “What a long day at work… I need a beer”

We are unnecessarily self-reliant to the detriment of community. Our deepest friendships are often tainted with worries about boundary issues and limitations on what can be expected of one another.

We hoard our effectively limitless material wealth in gargantuan homes.

Secondly, you must understand that Idiot is an interesting word for a lot of reasons. It’s generally meant as an insult. It assumes some sort of comparison – that is, “I’m stupid compared to you.” But if you go back far enough, it actually comes from a greek word that means “own/private.” A man that keeps to himself, that does things his own way.

We are now in an alternate universe where the man who was once considered worthy of insult for trying to do things outside the bounds of community is now exalted as the fully self-actualized archetypal human.

Something is amiss.

I’m indubitably aware that we are victims. Marketers appeal to our sense of individualism, our desire to rise above the commoner and excel, to ride the tidal waves of commerce and materialism and prestige to new lands that need conquering. We are ourselves unselfish. Rather we are creatures persuaded into this harsh lifestyle of wine and LCDs and imported automobiles.

Excuses are meant to minimize the effect of one’s own mistakes and misgivings.

And as people die from starvation, and as others are held down by failures of systems supposedly designed to help, and as resources that could help are hoarded, our advice seems all the more surreal:

“Pick yourself up by your bootstraps, get your life back together, do something with your life.”

The message seems to be “If you were just a little more idiotic you clearly wouldn’t’ be in this mess.”

As our toxic individualism has grown, we see psychological and often physical barricades to concepts that are obvious in community. Universal healthcare makes sense to those unconsumed with self. Peaceful resolutions take the place of pervasive war metaphor because it’s not OK that innocent men, women, and children should die. To suppose this is necessary evil is to be only half correct.

As dangerous as this individualism to our world at large, I’m aware that cynicism is equally as damaging and it is an aspiration to be free of this. It is my affliction.

To combat this, surround yourself with people that have an unselfish heart, those who have an appropriate perspective on how to navigate these lives we find ourselves in. Long for relationships that intertwine regularly with deeper meaning and purpose and those in need.

We are not alone and we are not meant to live lonely.

general / life — Comments Off
7
Mar 10

war metaphor part ii

The metaphors we use to describe day to day events speak deep truths about the say we approach life in general. Missed to ground work for this discussion? Check it out here: War Metaphor Part I.

We unconsciously use war metaphor to in many different facets of our lives. Already, we’ve said that sports, and science, and conflict are ripe with it. We talk about inner battles, battles of will, waging war against pick-an-injustice. For those of us that are trying to model the way that Jesus lived, is it appropriate to approach the world with this same angst? (I was about to say “spiritual world” here, but I’d rather not divvy it up like that)

“War” and “Battle” are words that are used fairly often throughout scripture. And the old testament is practically crammed with God-ordained conflicts between people that claimed the lives of thousands. But most of these references are literal references – either to actual wars or the prospect of wars if the people don’t respond in a certain way. They’re not figurative – i.e. they’re not metaphor language. The other interesting thing you see in the prophets of the Old Testament are the references to the end of war – to peace. Micah 4:3 as classic example talks about the conversion of weapons of war and destruction into weapons of provision, and that nations “will not train for war anymore.”

The New Testament talks far less frequently about these concepts. Jesus mentions war when outlining the cost of being a disciple as an illustration.

Then there’s the armor of God. Can’t forget this. This is perhaps the most blatant use of war metaphor in the Bible when the author of Ephesians says:

Be strong in the Lord and in this mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.

Perhaps this isn’t as metaphoric as it sounds. I’m not suggesting that there is literal armor – but I am saying that the readers and the author himself were literally being physically attacked and chained for their beliefs. They were, in fact, in a type of war scenario.

One last thing before I attempt to get far more practical with this. In this same passage we read this:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rules, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Growing up, I was very involved in a church that heavily used war metaphor to describe Christians relationship with sin. It was very much a battle, a near-literal altercation with demons and evil. Shouts of praise were often inter-mingled with battle cries. I understood that I was to be engaged in a spiritual war against an axis of evil (made up of beer, drugs, crossing “the line” with the opposite sex, smoking – up for consideration for the axis were cussing, lusting, and gambling). Looking back, it also took on the scope of “if you’re not for us, you’re against us.”

Given the significance of all things spiritual to many people, it’s not hard to understand why the fight becomes so important. All of this is very much in keeping with the use of war metaphor.

I felt as though that those who took part in any of the activities in the axis of evil were not just casualties, but they were brain-washed prisoners of war, recruited to fight the forces of good. On the one hand, I knew that I was called to “Love my neighbor as myself” but at the same time, these were “enemy forces” that had the potential to attack me. It’s shoot-to-kill time.

My biggest hang up with the use of war metaphor is that it promotes a sense of defensiveness. Even if we constantly on the attack, we feel as though at any moment enemy forces can strike. Defensive people and groups act very differently than the rest of us. There is a primal instinct that begins to emerge in even the most well-intentioned people. If at any point we feel threatened, we are liable to act out of desperation. In our figurative war, this could mean something as a comment/accusation that precipitates the alienation of a person or a group of people.

There is nothing as polarizing as war. Being at war means that opposing forces have become as diametrically opposed to one another as possible. It is the ultimate consequence to unmanaged conflict, or tension.

While it leads to alienation and destructive processes, there is a nobility to it all. In war, finding the power to continue the fight is admired. Officers are commended with medals or other awards for exceptional bravery. Conversely, there is shame is surrender, in humbling yourself to the enemy. It is a display of weakness to bow out of battle.

In the church, we have allowed this paradigm to permeate everything that we do. We have battle hymns and fight songs, chants that reinforce the diametric opposition of the forces of good and the forces of evil. And while there may be theological basis for this concept, that good cannot exist where there is evil, we are practically raining terror down on those that need our love the most. We rationalize by saying that we “love the sinner, and hate the sin” which can lead quickly to justifying our force with statements like “there’s gonna be some collateral damage,” or “it’s for your own good,” as if we have the capacity to decide what that should be. The consequences of our bloody battles are years and years of distrust, malice, alienation, and hatred.

We see this over and over. Homosexuals have long been essentially metaphorically labeled as terrorists to modern-day Christianity. We go on the offensive against abortion clinics, perversely assuming that God is smiling as we spew hateful slogans, carry placards plastered with the graphic images of aborted fetuses, or as we literally use lethal force.

Hatred for Christ’s sake is still hatred.

As long as we continue to propagate war metaphor in our churches, we will continue to falsely indoctrinate our people to believe that anyone that is “in” is good and that anyone that is “out” is the enemy.

It continues to be striking to me that Jesus’ harshest words were for the religious. A man marked by unwavering compassion across people groups and ethnicities and situations turned hostile when he looked inward towards those who were thought to be representatives of God on earth.

We could learn a thing or two from this Jesus character.

It’s also striking to me that aside from the disciples, we never hear about what happens with any of the people that Jesus encountered. We know that he was kind and loved regardless of the circumstance and never implied that he was about to bomb the enemy with righteousness and blessed sanctification. It was seldom more than a brief encounter, the beginnings of relationship, filled with understanding, compassion, and grace. If we approach life as though we’re all in this together, that we can learn mutually beneficial things from one another, that we are all part of a well-intended creation perhaps we’ll see the transformation that we’ve been trying to force for so long.

And maybe, the other people will change too.

faith / life — 1 Comment
17
Jan 10

favor

It was disgusting and altogether expected when a visible, if not influential, Christian leader this week connected the events of Haiti with a “pact with the Devil” this the country has supposedly made.  The implication here is that the 7.0 magnitude quake that leveled the city of Port-au-Prince was beckoned from the depths of the earth by the people themselves and their actions.  It further implies that because much of the western world enjoys unprecedented wealth our actions mean we have built up enough credit to receive showers of blessing from the banker in the sky.

(For an interesting take on this, see this link from NPR’s Two-Way Blog. NOTE: I don’t agree with 100% of the contents of the post at this link, but find the concept incredibly relevant.  Donald Miller has also written a response to the aforementioned comments at his blog.)

This concept – that God reinforces good behavior and punishes bad – is deeply damaging to people and to faith.

On the one hand, you have people who begin to subconsciously view themselves on a level akin to rats in a lab.

In college, I had one such rat, named Gilligan.  My goal for him was to increase a behavior (namely, pressing a button in his cage) by using positive reinforcement (i.e. small pellets of food).  The progression was interesting to watch. Once he discovered the button, and began to press it, it was important to reward his behavior every time – this “charged” the button and let little Gilligan know that if He was faithful in pressing, the Button would be faithful and deliver food from the pellet chute in the sky.

If you’ve never read anything on this, you may think that this approach would be the most effective at achieving an increase in a behavior.  Interestingly enough, once the Button was “charged” what really cranked up Gilligan’s Button-zeal was when we switched to an uncertain, variable reward system.  Now instead of getting a ration every time, Gilligan had to wait on the Button’s judgement (aka the software that determined if “now was the time for chow”).  This transformed my little rat from casual worshipper to religious radical.

I imagine him crying out when his prayers did not solicit a reward, “Button, why have you forsaken me, Button?” or “”What have I done to deserve this?  I have no food with which to satisfy my hunger” or “squeaky squeak squeak squeaketh” (untranslated, due to use of explicit language).

When we make God’s providence or punishment contingent on our day to day behaviors, we are engaging a most primitive component of our existence.  We had developed wiring like this to increase our survival skills thousands and thousands of years ago.  And while it’s still useful when studying rats and pigeons, our abilities to reason, decipher, and decide should probably take more of a leading role.

Otherwise, we begin to develop a deep-seeded sense of entitlement; that we deserve to be rewarded for the good work that we’ve done.  The work itself, the satisfaction of helping others, the benefits inherent in a job well done will not be enough.  We do good, we expect good to be done to us.  We expect blessing. Frankly, we expect money, and vehicles, and houses and trips and health. If all good things come from heaven above then we start to wonder why our good would not be rewarded while others have so much.

This view is unhealthy and yet seems to be rampant in communities of faith.

Often, I hear (more realistically, I read on Facebook) people say things like, “I know that if I do this (e.g. pray faithfully, read the Bible, love people), then God will provide for my needs.” There is an incredibly sarcastic (though incredibly funny) side of me that wants to say in response, “I know that if you don’t, God will still provide for your needs.”

For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.
Matthew 5:45

In Button world, church and faith become about a series of behaviors that are reinforced when we, usually mistakenly, connect them with reward-”gifts” from above.  These gifts can be any kind of reinforcement, from money to a “feeling” to a sense of God’s “presence”.  We act to get rewarded.  We act to avoid punishment.  The reasons are steeped in selfishness.  Our attempts to represent selfless love and compassion are voided – they become transactional instead of transformational.  Instead of being an extension of God showing relentless love in all circumstances, we become a relentless prospector showing love to others when our investments show promising returns for ourselves.

Button faith attracts the “worst” of the faithful (those who are “in it for themselves”) and the “best” of the critics (those who say “you don’t do anything without it being selfish”). It introduces handcuffs and restraints to lives intended to be lived free.

One thing is for certain: the people of Haiti did not call destruction on themselves.  We can choose to make this disaster about us, attempting to carve out our own rewared, or about helping people because it’s the right thing to do.  Be the extension of God’s unselfish love.  Make unconditional love truly unconditional.

Pray for the people of Haiti, and those that are there to provide some sort of relief.  The scale of this tragedy is unimaginable.  There are stories that can never be told. Support them by providing relief agencies with the money they need to rebuild Haiti.

life — 2 Comments
6
Jan 10

redemption

Redemption gets me every time.

Behind my obviously gruff exterior is a soft-hearted man who would cry at the drop of a hat and its subsequent return to its rightful owner. There is something about redemption and restoration and encouragement that clutches my heart and simply will not let it go before ensuring that my eyes well up and that I have to sniff back tears.

I don’t mind admitting this. I’m not a proud man.

It speaks to a sense of belonging to an inclusive human family as well as a belief that we can live counter to the entropy of the universe. We tend towards chaos. But we neither belong there nor do we have to remain there.

We’re told that God wants whats best for us and has a plan for us. I believe that there is a ‘right’ way for us to live as individuals and as a collective. While I don’t believe that the Creator has packed our calendars full of events and appointments, tasks that we are to complete save eternity hangs in the balance, I think it’s appropriate to say that God would have us live in such a way that we both actively and passively find opportunities to make life better. Simple things. Ambitious things. Things that are a doomed to fail. Things that are overnight sensations.

These things shift our trajectory away from the chaos. They give us purpose and direction in more than one sense of those words. It was the grand intention of God not that I would give a homeless man a sandwich on Aug 17 at 2:34pm but simply that we would live with kindness, generosity, understanding, integrity, and a designed desire to crave justice for our fellow creatures.

It’s these things that make miniscule corrections to our path – a state of perfect redemption approached by the assimilation of millions and billions of unnoticed acts.

There are aspects of my life that I’m not prepared to share on my blog, and so it makes this next bit much less dramatic. But, for a brief moment in time I was able to zoom out and get a wide-angle shot of my life and realized that there is a redemption that’s been happening all along, a restoration, a return to how things should be and how I want them to be. It’s millions of little things that are coalescing into a beautiful work of redemptive art.

And that may make me well up, just a little bit.

faith / life — 1 Comment
28
Dec 09

too soon

On Boxing Day, a Saturday this year, Kristy and I headed out to reclaim a long-lost tradition of ours: boxing day skating.  We were unaware of the fact that just 3 miles from our apartment is the Pineville Ice House where they offer public skating year round!  To get there, we had to pass through a major commercial area in South Charlotte – shopping malls, lots of big-box stores, etc.

As we passed through what most uphold as a modern-day, mini Mecca, my heart hurt a little.

I understand that we live in a consumer driven economy and very smart people imply that this is a good thing and that I should be thankful.  I understand that a byproduct of this economy is that we have to put up with long lines at shopping malls and traffic jams entering the parking lot and several lanes of pavement in some parts of town.  And, I understand that having all of these buildings closed for one day (i.e. December 25).

But I couldn’t help but be a little sad that thousands of people were flocking back to Mecca after being banned from there for an entire 24 hours.  These worshippers were unsatisfied with the blessing they’d received just days before and made the pilgrimage back to the holy land in search of something, anything, more.

Are we really so desperate?

It could certainly be that I’m reading far too much into this situation and over-dramatizing a completely benign situation.  I’ve been convicted of similar crimes in the past and have yet to be reformed.  However, the unquenched longing that is represented by these traffic jams and gift receipts and incidents of road rage is altogether depressing to me.  I’m a different person than I used to be, granted, and the prospect of a “cheap” 42″ television would have perhaps called me to a great pilgrimage of my own.

So I am in no position to condemn….

I can simply say this.

This year was the simplest (read: fewest gifts under the tree, fewest days spent on the battlefield of the mall) Christmas that we have ever had. It’s also been THE most rewarding by far.  It’s freeing.  It’s enabled us to be compassionate and generous in other ways – not new ways, simply ways that had been concealed by our own selfishness in the past.

What would it look like for your family to try this?  Plan for Christmas in much the same way – save money, clear the credit card, however you handle Christmas, but instead of trying to outdo the annually-increasing precedents you’ve set for yourself, commit to buying one gift (at the most!) for your immediate family members.  Take the same resources and funnel them towards a family who may have nothing – buy them food, or gas for their car, or presents for their kids, or sheets for their bed.  Try it.  Just once.  See if it’s not the most rewarding Christmas that you’ve ever had.

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