Faith Venture

Philosopher Ken Wilber wrote, “Civilization is a competition to overcome testosterone.”

My contemplations lately have centered on the results of testosterone meeting ego meeting fear meeting need for power. The resulting compound includes will to power, struggle, destruction, loss of life.

Jesus presented his way of living in the kingdom of God as a stark contrast to the world of power. Perhaps the power was that of the religious rule makers and enforcers of the day. The larger competition was Rome and its worship of power in every relationship.

We think we can change the entire world. We can see real-time events from everywhere around the globe and want to change everything.

The reality is that we must change ourselves. That, in turn, helps others to change—not by preaching or teaching, but by the way we live. As others change, it spreads as if by contagion. It happened from about 35 CE to about 350 CE. Then, the church gained power.

Today, we are presented the same choice of the way to live as those who met Jesus face-to-face. We can live in the kingdom of God (peace, freedom, relationship) or the kingdom of power (others make rules, fear, struggle).

I made my choice many years ago whom I will follow. What about you?

Her name was Joanne. She had a husband and two children. Her personality was on the quiet side. Her demeanor was gentle. Overall an attractive person in every dimension.

Then the family decided that it would be good for her to get a job. She found a position as a dispatcher for the city police. She left interactions with women at the church and book club. Every working interaction was with every troublemaker in town. She knew the guys who physically assaulted their wives / girlfriends. She knew the drug users who were continually arrested for theft. Every interaction was negative.

When I talked with her a couple of years later, she was negative, cynical, darkly moody. A changed person in almost every way.

We teach balance in almost every practice I’ve studied. Our professions can lead us into a false understanding of the state of the world. It can also influence your very personality. Finding balance in our associations becomes the linchpin of an integrated personality.

That is why wise people have taught the value of periodically stepping outside ourselves and seeing ourselves as others (and God) see us. Vision gives us the ability for course correction.

Choose your associations carefully.

Tomorrow begins the 40 days of Lent. A period of time on the Church calendar set aside for adherents to search their hearts, confessing those areas of life where they fall short, and looking with anticipation of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus.

Without the resurrection, Christianity is nothing. A false dream. Even as an adolescent as I met some followers of “liberal Protestantism” and read books on the subject, I wondered what they preached if not the resurrection. Why call yourself Christian? God-follower, maybe, but Christian, no. And I was raised in the Methodist Church (not United Methodist), a semi-liturgical church. Some vestiges of Anglicanism left but not as liturgical as the Lutherans down the road in our village. And I classify myself a liberal, except for that.

Today is the day historically when people would clean out pantries to eat up food that might spoil during the next six weeks of fasting. So, people got fat celebrating the beginning of Lent, lost weight by fasting for 40 days, then gained it all back Easter Sunday.

Easter is spring in the northern hemisphere. The time of rebirth. Growth beginning. Jesus returning to life. The Church beginning its spectacular growth.

So, today, I started off with a traditional Polish Fat Tuesday treat, Paczki (poonch-key, approximate pronunciation, I’m not Polish and don’t have the right ‘a’ vowel on my keyboard).

I’d better celebrate, because I’m already deep in reflection on areas where I’ve fallen short of the target. And Lent doesn’t even begin for 20 hours.

The scene is imprinted in my memory. High school. Lunch. Teacher sitting at a table with several of her students. Someone pointed out she was not eating with the same etiquette as she taught.

“Do as I say, not as I do,” she replied.

At 16, I thought that was inappropriate. Years later, the new me concurs.

Yet, I wonder if that could be said of many (or most?) of us who point to Bible verses that someone else should follow?

Or the advice we give. “Eat right and you’ll lose weight and be healthier” said just before we snack on potato chips.

What is your view of Christians in general? Would it resemble that? If so, where is the failure?

My nephew just wrote to me that he is studying the ancient book of Job. I responded, “Oh, the book that shows the limits and futility of giving advice.” Only half joking.

Telling other people what to do or how to do it can deflect back to indict the speaker. Take care with freely giving advice. Parents know that children learn more by watching them than by listening (or not) to all the admonitions freely distributed.

Last time I thought about focus. Reading further into Romans, we see Paul criticizing his fellow Jews. We could take that as something for us to beware of today.

“Instead of trusting God, they took over. They were so absorbed with their ‘God Projects’ that they didn’t notice God right there in front of them.”

That thought caused me to pause to reflect on the many board and committee meetings I’ve attended, local level or state level, where he could have said the same thing about us.

How often we are so wrapped up in ourselves that we lose focus of the ultimate goal.

When I was in training as a soccer referee, I had to learn to concentrate on my stride and pace, yet I had to maintain a focus on the ultimate goal and time.

Similarly, we have to have the meeting, the project, the daily disciplines, yet we must not lose sight of the real goal.

It’s focus…focus on God. This God who is paradoxically right there beside us all the way.

Anytime you’re practicing renunciation, you’re deluded. How about that! You’re deluded. What are you renouncing? Anytime you renounce something, you are tied forever to the thing you renounce. There’s a guru in India who says, ‘Every time a prostitute comes to me, she’s talking about nothing but God. She says I’m sick of this life that I’m living. I want God. But every time a priest comes to me, he’s talking about nothing but sex.’ Very well, when you renounce something, you’re stuck to it forever. When you fight something, you’re tied to it forever. As long as you’re fighting it, you are giving it power. You give it as much power as you are using to fight it.”

Anthony de Mello, Awareness

Sometimes there is a paradox in our focus. We focus on what not to do, and there is what our attention draws toward.

Jesus knew that. He taught that we follow where our heart leads, not necessarily what the Law says or what people tell us to do. Paul knew that. He taught in Romans that a problem of the Law was that we focus on it instead of the Spirit.

We become what we think about.

We can choose where to place our focus. But that takes work. And courage. And often we don’t want to work. The easy road beckons.

Therein lies the power of daily morning routines. Rise, fix our coffee or tea, focus on God for a period of time, then focus on what we wish to accomplish with these next 16 hours, and now we shall not drift aimlessly during the day.

I also write about what is called these days “digital transformation.” Magazines and company blogs tout it as something new and revolutionary. But, it is neither, exactly.

My first baby steps into that world occurred around 1978 when I entered a lot of engineering data into the company computer for the use of the materials and cost accounting departments. Note: computer == digital. I have either done that or written about it ever since.

Why did we begin “digitizing” our data? Managers and workers wanted to make better decisions. Today, companies may spend millions of dollars to accomplish that.

I thought about making better decisions that result in more effective actions while I read the Apostle Paul writing the the Jesus-followers in Rome. He discussed becoming aware of the difference between living in sin and living in the Spirit. He wished to decide for the Spirit, but, he tells us, his decisions often did not lead to actions.

Paul wants me (us) to decide to live in the Spirit…and he wants to see that my actions follow through with that decision.

I decided to lose weight this year. Have my actions through these seven weeks resulted in eating less, emphasizing healthful foods, and exercising more?

I decided to live with more kindness. Reviewing my actions of the past seven weeks as if I were a detached observer, what have my interactions with other people reflected?

My Welsh Baptist ancestors emphasized making a decision for Jesus. The question that indicts is whether my actions have changed because of that decision.

Make a decision that sticks.

We are “binging” an English/French TV series almost every evening working our way through 11 seasons. I like it because it is humorous, bordering on comic book, even. I don’t need tense drama prior to sleep.

An important visiting police investigator comes to the small island of St. Marie in the Caribbean. She is checking up on the local Inspector. In one scene, the friendly local bar owner takes the detective aside and tells her the police team often discusses cases at the bar and “I’ve even helped solve a couple of cases.”

Of course, that does not help the Inspector’s cause. But that scene points to a universal human condition—our need to feel important, our compulsion to say something to boost our own self-esteem.

I have a personality type where I have occasional painful flashbacks of stupid things I’ve said.

That should be just one additional warning building on the teaching of James about the tongue.

But at least my words are not recorded like those of James and John (and/or their mother, there are two stories) where they, misinterpreting the Kingdom (again), ask to be the most important.

Often it is best to be still.

Oh, and the TV story—just like when I teach on the Revelation of John, in the end it all works out OK.

Paul begins his journey into describing the path of spiritual formation with a list of ways we act drawing us away from God in his letter to the Romans. Before proceeding with the solution, he pauses for a warning.

I have a special word of caution for you who are sure that you have it all together, and because you think you know God’s revealed word inside and out…The line from Scripture, “It’s because of you Jews that outsiders frown on God,” shows that it’s an old problem that is not going away.

Letter to the Romans, Message translation

“The Jews” were to be the light of God to the world. Their ancient scriptures criticized them. Paul, echoing what we hear Jesus say, brings it up to the his present day.

The question for me, and for you if you are part of a Christian church, is am I so convinced that I am right that I turn people off? More broadly, what part do Christians play in driving people away from God?

It’s too easy to criticize others. Especially those whom I cannot influence. But what about me? Do I lack humility? Do I cause people to turn away from God?

Questions for each of us to ponder in quiet meditation.

Paul leads us through the process of spiritual formation in his letter to the Romans. He gets to a point where he needed an example. All good writers need to pull in an example. Paul uses Abraham–father to the Jews (and many others). He talks about Abraham trusting God, even before the ritual sealing the agreement, and that trust was credited to him by God making Abraham right with him.

Then Paul tells us that God is always there for all of us. He uses the images that we throw open our doors to allow God in and discover that God has already opened his door for us.

That’s sort of weird. But it’s something I can picture. I’ve decided to trust God and allow him to enter a relationship if he wishes only to discover that he has opened his door already and is waiting for our door to open.

The way I look at it is like this–God has always existed, even before what we call time, and God is around us at all times. It is up to each of us to open our awareness and allow the spirit in. It’s like Jesus telling people that the Kingdom of God is all around us just waiting for us to enter.

Theologians will devise all manner of fancy words. Some will add rules, rituals, regulations. In the end, it’s really very simple. Open your spiritual eyes and see.