Lovers

It seems that love is ubiquitous.  Even Adolf Hitler had his loves.  But like him I can only love you so much and no more and that is how it is with you too.  There are limits to our loving...it does not in actuality go beyond our liking.  Love is for us an ebb and flow of sensibilities.   There is a reasonableness to love that is perpetuated by the myth of the straightness of our thinking and evaluating.  When it comes to love, we make decisions on it based on how we determine the rightness and wrongness of each other.  Fairness of love is evaluated constantly.  We love but only so far...so far as we think is best.  Love was never intended to be reasonable though.  It is as chaotic as a hurricane when it gets in the hands of God.  The swirl of crashing wants and desires wrecks our love at every turn.  But God's love is determined; a bulldog that won't be budged.  He loves the adulterer, the molester, the perverter of justice, the liar, the racist and the despot.  The miracle of God is that He somehow turns the sins of the many into the Sin of the One and through Christ, Love is unleashed into the unreasonable world.  I cannot love a single person I don't like yet in the boundless mercy of God, I have the capacity to love where love is not found in me.   No Christian with the Love of Christ in him or her can say, "I cannot love that far!"  We can.  And we must.  If God has worked His way in us, then His love must work its way out of us or we will be the most miserable of creatures.  Love withheld becomes a stench within.  But when we let His love flow from us wherever He chooses to take it, a swelling joy takes it place so that it too spills out like Mary's perfume...which she poured out onto Christ in love.

 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 1 John 4: 7-8 NIV

Will of Man

The assumption that we have somehow given our best to God is an absurdity.  What we have to give is His already and what we think is a form of best is so riddled by sin and vanity that we cannot in any way assess its quality.  We do have something to offer though...it is our will.  Our Lord will never forcibly retrieve our will once He has given it to us.  It is ours for eternity...a gift of God that makes us in His image.  Belief is not our will but rather a function of our will.  Why is it that hell is a gaping abyss for those who deny God His devotion?  To not give the abyss would be to deny us our will and destroy the basis of our humanity.  We take our will with us wherever we are sent and a will that refuses God and the humanization of His love, His Son, cannot be pushed or squeezed or manipulated into Heaven no matter how great the goodness and mercy of our Savior.  We truly choose our life, whether that life is redeemed from Sin or wrecked by it.  The devil cannot break your will either...he can make a scramble of your mind but he cannot kidnap your will.  You may hand it to him and then he has the free run of your head as seen in Judas and Herod.   The obstinate unbeliever is no more or less willful than the most saintly of believers.  What separates the two is the throne at which the will has been placed.  When Peter and the other disciples handed Christ the will each of them possessed, they found themselves at once beside a lake, next within a temple and finally upon a hill.  It all seemed a whirlwind of following, following, following.  But as they went with Christ in the full power and depth of their individual wills, they became transformed by Him and His crucified and resurrected life into His actual presence so who they were was merged with who He is and their wills became His...bearing much fruit.

I am the vine; you are the branches.  If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit;  apart from me you can do nothing.  John 15: 5 NIV

The Psychology of Pain

Psychology of Pain

Job 16:6 NIV

"Yet if I speak, my pain is not relieved; and if I refrain, it does not go away.”

Why Do We Have To Face Pain?

I can’t make up my mind.  What is the worst form of pain to face?  Unconscious pain, manifested in nightmares and unexplained depression and anxiety is debilitating.  Conscious pain, brought on by clear and obvious events that make us miserable and breed anger and despair.  Physical pain which can be excruciating or more or less just tolerable is terrible too.  When I was in high school, I separated my shoulder playing goalie for our soccer team.  We didn’t have anyone else to play goalie so I finished the first half and then the second half.  I could not lift my hand above my shoulder which made it pretty tough diving to stop shots and that night I could not sleep because of the pain.  In fact it hurt to even breathe for two weeks.  The pain prevented many of my favorite activities…I could not play basketball, couldn’t practice with my softball team and could barely take notes in class.  I often prayed during the next few weeks that God would take the pain away, that He would help me get to sleep and that He would (I thought this somehow was needed) forgive me of whatever sins I had been committed that led Him to push such pain upon me.

When we are pain free, we are also many times carefree.  We can think about anything we want, daydream, put plans into place and take on whatever projects we care to start.  But when we are suffering from pain, we get swept away by it.  If you have lost your job and you are dumbfounded by your bills, the pain of your circumstance clogs your mind and makes it so you can think of nothing else.  When you have suffered a great trauma in childhood, the pain of it never really leaves you and it bubbles up in your dreams, your relationships and in your handling of problems and trying times.  Physical pain numbs your brain to everything else.  A broken finger, a bad back, an upset stomach and it takes a tremendous act of the will to think about something other than the pain.  You have done it and so have I, tried to get rid of pain with aspirin, Motrin, or perhaps illegal drugs or heavy drinking.  We go to counselors when our psychological pain is too much to bear and to chiropractors for the physical pain.  But why do we have to suffer pain at all?  What is the good of pain?  Why would God let us face pain if He could stop it?

There is nothing speculative about pain…we all face pain and some of us experience it every single day.  At the risk of being misunderstood and misinterpreted, it would be worthwhile to consider the point at which pain became a part of the human experience.  When Adam and Eve first sinned, the outcome was that Eve would suffer pain in childbirth and Adam pain in trying to get his work done.  To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.  Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (Genesis 3:16 NIV)  That is both physical pain and tremendous potential for psychological pain for the woman.  To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. (Genesis 3:17 NIV)  Again, we have for Adam physical pain and psychological pain built into the struggle to make a living.   Pain, in its most raw sense is the result of sin, of Adam and Eve deciding to be the master of their souls, to live as if God is absent.  That is the essence of all sin, the declaration of independence from God.  Sin is the force behind all that is wrong in our world and all that is wrong in us.  Both the sins we commit and the sins of others warp our personalities and our thinking.  Enough sin and God becomes an enemy and a prison guard rather than our joy and freedom.  Sin wrecks us from top to bottom and we often don’t even know it.

Pain knocks the legs out from under our independence.  If I have come to think that I am the boss, pain makes a fool of the thought.  Pain makes itself king and it refuses to be carelessly cast aside.  Try to ignore pain and if it continues, you cannot.  You can medicate pain but it comes back up and rules over you as a fierce tyrant.  You can go to Disneyland, hang out at a jazz bar, watch your favorite team on TV or start a new relationship but pain won’t let go of you and you cannot just shake it off.

The ancient book of Job located in the middle of the Bible is a sort of case study on pain.  It gives us a fresh understanding of what pain is and why God lets it continue for now.  Job lived a pretty care-free life up to the moment God and Satan had their monumental meeting in the heavens.  God pointed out just how good Job was and Satan contended that he was only good because God kept him from pain.  God insisted that Job would still be loyal to Him if he faced pain and Satan replied, “Let’s see!”  However, God only let Satan bring Job psychological pain.  This is not to belittle Job’s pain!  What he faced was horrific.  In one day all his kids died and he lost his wealth.  It is fascinating though to see that this psychological pain did not knock him off his feet.  At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart.  The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised."  In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.  (Job 1:20-22 NIV)

For many, psychological pain is the worst sort of pain and it renders them unable to function practically.  The loss of a loved one, the abuse suffered as a child, the devastation caused by financial ruin, the experience of rejection all create a level of pain that can be unbearable.  But Job was not brought to his knees by psychological pain and so Satan demanded (if one can demand anything of God) that the Lord let Job suffer physical pain…and that did the trick.  The sores Satan used to afflict Job knocked Job off his feet.  He was wrecked by his pain.  He wished he had never been born.  "May the day of my birth perish, and the night it was said, 'A boy is born!'” (Job 3:3 NIV)  He wished he could just die. "If only you would hide me in the grave and conceal me till your anger has passed!” (Job 14:13 NIV) The pain was so intense that Job was forced by it to turn to his friends to help him cope with it.  But his friends did not have the capacity nor the will to really help him in his pain, and so Job did what pain is intended to stir in us, Job turned to the only one left to him.  God!

Before the pain, Job was carefree and unperturbed by what he faced.  When pain attacked him though, Job had only two categories of thought…pain and God.  Now we must admit Job’s thoughts about God were not civilized as we think of religiously civilized thought.  He said God was unfair.  "As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice, the Almighty, who has made me taste bitterness of soul, as long as I have life within me, the breath of God in my nostrils, my lips will not speak wickedness, and my tongue will utter no deceit.  I will never admit you are in the right; (Job 27:2-5 NIV) He thought God didn’t care.  “…then know that God has wronged me and drawn his net around me.  "Though I cry, 'I've been wronged!' I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice.” (Job 19:6-7 NIV) He decided God was his enemy.  “God assails me and tears me in his anger and gnashes his teeth at me; my opponent fastens on me his piercing eyes.” (Job 16:9 NIV)

Something happened though with Job as his pain continued.  He began to think of God in a new way…as the one He needed, as his redeemer.  The Hebrew word translated redeemer is a fascinating term.  It describes one who is a relative that has the means to get you out of debt when you sold your land because you were too poor to keep it or a relative who marries you as a widow to protect your family or one who buys you out of slavery.  The redeemer was a savior who paid the price for your rescue.  When pain comes upon you and when it is deep pain, you can only think seriously of two matters: your pain and the hope of someone saving you from your pain.  Job voiced this well as his pain had evolved from psychological pain to physical pain and then to spiritual pain.  “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes — I, and not another.  How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27 NIV)  If you read closely the last parts of Job’s comments before God intervenes, all he can think about is God…His mind is on nothing else; not his marriage, not his friendships, not his finances; he is laser focused on God.  He does not need a tasty dinner, a new flock of sheep, a house with more rooms, an upgrade on his computer, a better smart phone, a wife who listens to him or friends who respect him.  He needs, and really needs a redeemer…he needs God.

Pain is the psychological button God uses to awaken us so that we will not waste our life with Him.  Imagine someone brilliantly talented at singing never developing her voice, a savant mathematician never bothering to study math, a greatly gifted inventor never working out one of her ideas.  The absurdity of unfulfilled talent is a terrible tragedy and yet there is not a talent we possess that compares to the opportunity before us to live our lives with Jesus Christ.  To cast our time with Him away is the greatest mistake of our lives and when we risk doing so, God pushes the button and pain erupts.  Suddenly we are thrown off our game, disoriented and like a driver trying desperately to get his car straightened when it begins to spin in a patch of black ice, we find pain shutting down every single concern we have but these two…our pain and our God.

Job’s story is about two matters only:  pain and the need for God.  Your life is the story of one matter…your life with God.  If you get distracted from this; if you lose your mind on something other than Jesus Christ saving you, it is a terrible tragedy for you.  Set your mind on Christ again and again and again.  When your mind is set on Christ and fully upon Him, then your mind is aligned with the mind of God and every thought you have has the power of God working in it and through it.  Why waste that great and glorious opportunity?  Why wait for pain to snap you back to reality?  God is present, God loves you, and God will work through you if you give Him the opportunity to do so!

Confounded By Grace

Nothing is more confounding to the world than the life hidden with Christ in God.  It is the most absurd of all determinations and cannot be explained on rational grounds it seems.  Such a person seems stubborn, obtuse; any reasonable soul would go ahead and "break the rules", "take a break", "bend a bit".  It certainly seems that something is mixed up in the mind of the poor one not fitting in with the crowd.  The nonsense of it though is not to be located in the mind of the life hidden with Christ in God...it is in the mind of Christ joining with that other mind.  The mind of Christ breaks out in unexpected ways...love for an enemy, the forgiving of a grievance, an integrity that can't be bent, a standard of purity that is "quirky".  Jesus asked what good it did to gain the world and lose one's soul.  That thought dominates the life hidden with Christ in God and it is manifested in real ways that become unreasonable to the watching world of lost souls.  Don't fight the determination of Christ to work His way out of you...not if you want to possess His peace and joy!  Give in to the urge of God to be holy and pure and full of love and compassion.  Settle in your heart that you are joined to Christ in a wonderful and glorious adventure of holiness and purity.    Let the world say and think as it wishes.  You love the God who saved you and it is your great privilege for Him to work His way out of you in the nooks and crannies of each day He gives you.

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  Colossians 3:2-3 NIV

Anger

James 1:19-20 NIV

 My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.

Do You Ever Get “Too” Angry?

A few years ago I was driving and someone without warning cut in front of me and nearly hit my car, and flew ahead of me, switched lanes again and then had to screech to a stop when the signal light turned red.  I was steamed.  I think I would have been sickly happy if the guy’s tires had blown out and he had flipped his car a thousand times because he would have “deserved it.”  At least that is how my anger perceived things at that moment.  Ironically, the two of us ended up side by side at the stop light and I had my opportunity to flash the guy my great wrath.  I turned my head as I pulled beside the guy and stared disdainfully at him, hoping he would look back and catch my ire.  Oh boy, he sure did.  The other driver turned to me and we locked eyes and he felt the fullness of my rage.  Then he did something that caught me off-guard.  He gave me the one fingered hand-signal of contempt and made motions that he was ready to fight me on the side of the road.  I was not ready for that.  I sized him up and felt pretty confident that I could handle myself ok with him but was I really going to let my anger take me that far?

Is anger helpful to us?  Does it make us better people, more capable of getting our work done, better able to parent our kids, give us what we need to be good husbands and wives?  Has anger saved marriages or enhanced friendships?  Should we be grateful for our anger and proud of the times we lost our tempers?  We all have known people who had “bad” tempers and most of these people we try to avoid but some we can’t because they are a part of our families or authorities at work or school.  Perhaps there is a “Tempers Anonymous” somewhere that has already been organized for those who get mad easily.   Maybe we know someone who should register with the group.  Should we be concerned about anger and those times when we lose our temper?  How should we evaluate our own anger?

Anger is one of the rawest of all emotions and is mentioned often in the Bible.  I remember how surprised I was to discover that God Himself gets angry.  Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses… (Exodus 4: 14 NIV)  The Lord's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God. (2 Samuel 6:7 NIV)  Even Jesus, “meek and mild” flashed a temper.  He (Jesus) looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. (Mark 3:5 NIV)  Anger is a part of our divine nature, not something to be thought of as a curse but rather one of the ways we see God in us.  Yet anger, like every other part of the human personality has been warped by sin and we have lost its holiness. 

We see the very first flash of human anger described in the ancient book of Genesis.  The third person of recorded history, Cain became angry when his brother Abel was honored by God for the quality of his offering.  In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. (Genesis 4:3-5 NIV)  This anger of Cain’s is important to study because it provides a glimpse into the immediate effect of sin upon one part of our divine nature.  Most of us have learned to control our anger because we have grown accustomed to the sin damaged personalities we possess.  We are sophisticated in our approach to our lusts and rebellion.  Cain was not.  He was a novice to the damage his own sin was doing to his personality.  Like a baby just learning to walk, Cain had not adjusted to being a sinful person and when faced with for perhaps the first time God’s unwillingness to accept his bad behavior, something many of us would just slough off and perhaps ignore, Cain became unglued.   Anger, which God built in Cain for his protection against sin and temptation, became his undoing when it teamed up with sin.

God warned Cain about his warped anger.  Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." (Genesis 4:6-7 NIV)  This is a most interesting set of statements God makes to Cain and it gives us much to consider when it comes to anger.  First, the anger at its pioneer stage as a union with sin was linked to something specific.  Cain was angry that his offering to God was not accepted.  Abel and what Abel did was not the reason Cain was mad.  Cain was angry because his sacrifice was insufficient.  We almost never consider this when it comes to our own anger.  Nearly always we decide that we are angry because someone else did something or thinks something or won’t do something.  We are wrong here though.  Our anger starts with us and what we have done, what we have thought or with what we have not done. 

Now, those of us familiar with what happened next understand God’s warning about sin crouching at his door.  At this point Cain had sin merely at his door; it had not come inside his house.  His anger was not the sin but it was the warning bell of sin. We all, including Cain, can be angry and not sin.  The Apostle Paul, who was an expert on anger, knew that was so.  "In your anger do not sin":  (Ephesians 4:26 NIV) But Paul was quoting a slightly longer statement found in an older book than his, the Psalms.  In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent. (Psalm 4:4 NIV)  Anger is the alarm that something is not right with us and if the alarm is to do us any good, we must get away and silently figure out what sin is crouching at our door.  For Cain, it was murder.  He was about to murder his brother Abel.  For me, it could be greed or selfishness or rebellion.  For you it could be lust or idolatry.  For someone else it might be stubborn pride or a lack of gratitude.  We all have our sins that come crouching at our door.  We should never be surprised by them.

Many of us have been embarrassed by our anger but for the wrong reasons.  Cain clearly wasn’t but we have been humbled by anger.  When it is public and we yell at someone or snarl or pound our fist in anger, we can be humiliated by our anger.  Our mistake is that we think it is the anger that is embarrassing when it isn’t.  It is the sin that we have let get too close to us that should make us red in the face.  Although it may not be clear to the waiter or our husband or the kid who ran into our car, it is to God and it should be to us.  Anger has sounded the alarm.  We have sin at our door.  We have either done something that has corrupted us or we are about to do something that will soon corrupt us.  We must never think that the other person has angered us or the trying circumstance has angered us.  It is the sin within us that has stimulated our anger and we must be silent and consider what sin it is that we have.

I had a friend who had a huge problem with anger and he used to get mad at me quite often.  I could always tell when his anger was starting to rise because his neck and cheeks would become red and although he might be smiling, I knew he was furious about something.  I had a warning sign that this man was angry.  Well, we have a warning sign about sin.  It is our anger.  When we become angry, we must, if we are to live closely with Christ and have His power guiding us rather than our sin, get off to ourselves and consider what sin has been exposed by our anger.  Then with the cruelty and compassion of a surgeon, cut it out.  Confess it and cut it out.  We should never take too seriously someone else’s anger but always with the gravity of a Supreme Court justice take seriously our own.  We never know how far the sin our anger uncovers will take us.  For Cain it was the destruction of his family line for they never recovered from his sin.  We though can chart a different course.  We can be holy.  And, if Jesus is being forthright with us (see Luke 19:17), we could be kings.