Archive for the ‘Relationship’ Category

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Solve Disagreements Within The Church Family

November 2, 2015

“What happened to that couple?” she asked. “I haven’t seen them in a while.”

“She got mad at something someone said and quit coming,” I replied.

“Well, we should settle those things in the family instead of just quitting,” she replied.

Problem is that no one within the family reached out to them. I told a pastor who had a better point of view to address the situation than I. But neither one ever contacted the other.

Both Jesus and Paul addressed settling things within the family. They addressed a similar matter about taking a brother to court. But the point still was that we should settle matters.

Check out Matthew 18: 15-17 and the first verses of 1 Corinthians 6.

Let’s take a look at both sides and see if there is some discipline that we should apply

Jesus also told us a couple of time that if we have something against a brother or sister (meaning within the fellowship) that we should make things right before proceeding with worship. I think even modern psychologists and therapists would tell us that we bear some responsibility with initiating reconciliation.

Often people say things that they have no idea would be offensive to anyone else. If you don’t go tell them, they’ll never know. And everyone will wonder.

Sometimes you say something and think “Oops, I didn’t mean that.” Or sometimes you get upset and say things. Self-awareness brings the conviction of having hurt someone. It’s important to put pride aside and go make things right.

Letting things go never works. Don’t go off and pout. Confront with love. Respond with love. Work things out within the family.

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All The Stuff I Put Up With

October 6, 2015

“You can’t believe all the stuff I had to put up with.” 

That was a person justifying an adulterous relationship that was quite public and resulted in the breakup of two families.

The relationship was not abusive. One party just got frustrated with the other. Actually, they were  both frustrated. Communication was nonexistent. 

Then came the opportunity for passionate sex. Emotions–dangerous things if not handled.

To this day the people who initiated the affair fail to see where there was sin in the situation.

They had put up with so much stuff, they couldn’t take it any longer.

I heard the quote the other day. I thought, gosh, we all put up with a lot of stuff. It’s called living with someone who isn’t 100% devoted to fulfilling my needs. I’m not so sure I could stand that, personally. But maybe a little would be nice….but I digress, and jest.

Paul spent much time on reconciling relationships. The letters to the Corinthians, for example. More to the point would be Philemon.

Adultry is a sin. It breaks relationships and draws the people away from God.

Paul spends the first couple of chapters of Romans talking about the ways we sin. Then he talks about how we have to recognized them, and our part in the situations, and then our confession, healing, and restoration.

I have a great deal of empathy–and even anger–with abusive relationships. The abused must leave, somehow. But for those who justify “lots of stuff” as grounds for adultry, well, that’s too much a stretch. 

God likes to see us grow in maturity. We work out stuff one way or another. That is what grown-up people do. Heck, even kids know that.

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Don’t Let Words Get In The Way of Communicating

September 3, 2015

The tone of my last post about the guy who put forward and argument based on a shallow interpretation of Scripture was pretty sharp. I tried to separate out my dislike of the interpretation from any possible personal dislike. I don’t know that I succeeded. Perhaps I was snarky in a couple of comments.

Sometimes we just come out and call things by names that were poorly chosen.

Christians sometimes have a way of moving a conversation to the personal perhaps a little too quickly. Maybe making a judgement about saved or not saved based on superficial information. Or even no information.

Sometimes in analyzing we place a label on people that we shouldn’t. It could be wrong. It could be right. But it changes the entire discourse usually away from the direction we wished we were going.

How about when we name something and people get an entirely different interpretation of our event or program than what we meant. Now, we cannot recover or recover only with great difficulty.

Ad hominem attacks, such as we often see in politics, never move a discussion forward. Attacking a person instead of discussing her ideas and trying to understand and empathize is just the easy way out. And it will never lead to reconciliation and relationship.

Those of us who  use words must especially be careful. Paul says those who teach are especially at risk if we don’t teach correctly. Let us strive to use words correctly and intelligently.

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Teach Your Children Well or Lose the Helicopter

September 1, 2015

Our pastoral staff just completed a summer series of teaching on parenting. I actually got out my acoustic guitar and sang Graham Nash’s song (Crosby, Stills, and Nash) “Teach Your Children” to help cap off the series.

I have always loved the parallelism of “teach your children” and “teach your parents”. We actually do learn from each other.

The next line is “feed them on your dreams.”

It doesn’t say live out your dreams through them.

Yesterday’s reading through my news feed contained a post on Big Think about Helicopter Parenting. Click the link and check out the infographic.

Helicopter parenting comes from the concept of one or both parents continually hovering over their kids. They just can’t turn them loose to learn to become independent, self-functioning adults.

It hurts the child. The infographic points out a number of dysfunctions among the children victims of these bad parenting practices.

I’ve had some involvement with athletics since I was quite small. Never even close to a star athlete, I could play tennis reasonably well and could run fast. But I started umpiring baseball at all levels at age 16. Even at that age i saw dads living out their dreams through their sons. It turned my stomach back then.

Then as I got deeper into soccer, I have seen countless parents, especially moms, who do everything for the kids except actually get out on the pitch and make the calls. I trust these kids to go out and be referees or assistant referees. Yet, they cannot call me for assignments. Mom must do the calling. Mom checks up. Mom calls to complain.

I’d tell them, if you’re old enough to referee, you’re old enough to contact me to either pick up a game or tell me why you have to drop a game.

The dad of a kid coming into the area to attend college actually called me several times to get him signed up and get “good” games. Guess what? The kid got a bad reputation among other referees before he crashed and burned and disappeared from the scene.

Let’s make it a spiritual discipline to try to parent in such a way as to let our kid (and grandkids) grow up strong and independently functioning adults. And help other kids, too, while we’re at it.

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Confronting People The Right Way

August 31, 2015

There was a meeting at church. Suddenly one woman spoke up aggressively. She was complaining about someone who evidently was in the worship band at one of the services.

She was upset about the person’s lifestyle. “He’s living in sin, and he knows it. And he needs to stop, or else stop coming here. And he’s even on the platform.”

She had confronted the person, but he did not change.

I was thinking about confrontations such as this over the weekend. Must have been a book I’ve been reading. But the story of this meeting returned. In full color. In my mind. With the harsh judgementalism.

And I wondered, just how did that confrontation go? I’m guessing it was not done in a gently and loving manner. Given that the meeting was some time after the confrontation, I’m also guessing that the confrontation had no effect.

People do need to be confronted at times. Addicts need someone to stop enabling them and tell them no and tell them where an AA meeting is. At a smaller scale, someone you know is about to make a bad decision. Giving your point of view can be helpful.

But there are ways to do it. 

The judgemental, angry, finger-in-the-face “you’re going to hell” confrontation will seldom have a desired effect.

I’ve found on the soccer pitch that watching my tone of voice as a referee helps immensely. When I lose my cool and shout something stupid, guess what, I don’t obtain a desired change from the person.

Saturday, I had a high school boy get too aggressive on a foul. I called the foul, checked the fouled player quickly for injury, then made a public, but quiet, gesture and word to the player. He nodded. He understood that I was trying to help him curb his aggressiveness a little so he could stay in the game.

It’s all in the approach. When to be gentle, when to be tough, when to be a little of both.

But I’ve never found the in-your-face method beneficial.

Works the same for evangelism.

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I Confess

August 24, 2015

We were taught as children that God is always watching us. Well, we were also taught that Santa Claus was always watching us, too. And both knew when we were naughty.

The writer of Hebrews, a document in the New Testament, talked about a great cloud of witnesses.

Worse than all of those–the Internet is watching you. The Web knows when you’ve been naughty. And it stores that data. The story is that they store it so that they can serve ads to you that are relevant to your wants. But, who knows what nefarious use could be made from all that knowledge about you?

I confess–that I am not scrambling to do damage control. I don’t have to go to my wife and explain why my name got linked to a Website that is designed for married men and women to “hook up” for casual sex.

I have never seen the Ashley Madison (no link provided) Website. I’ve seen ads. I’ve seen stories about it and its competitors. But I confess, I never clicked. For those who do not follow technology, the Ashley Madison Website was “hacked”, that is, broken into. And the “hackers”, aka thieves, downloaded the customer list including names and email addresses. If you enrolled at that site, soon the whole world will know.

I don’t write about technology on this blog. However, there is a spiritual discipline point to talking about technology.

For whatever reason some (many?) married men and women feel a deep need for sexual encounters. There seem to be many reasons for this. I’m not going to delve into psychology. But for more information, check out the first 9 chapters of Proverbs.

God knows what you do. He knows what’s in your heart. But if you want to do immediate relationship damage, register your email on these hook up or porn sites. When (not if) they are hacked and emails are released, the words of Desi Arnaz will come back to haunt you, ‘Lucy, you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.”

The damage between you and God is already done. Better restore that relationship soon.

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They Made Their Own Rules

August 11, 2015

Ever play games with children?

They are always making up rules. Often they change the rules arbitrarily. They change the rules to put themselves at an advantage.

Thoughts of this behaviour came to mind as I was meditating on Romans 10. “For being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness.”

At the time Paul wrote this, Jewish religious leaders and teachers had managed to take ten commandments of God and turn them into an incredibly complex set of rules designed to put them at an advantage. They could then condemn others for not following all the rules.

Jesus blasted that idea. He taught that what is most important is what’s in your heart. If your heart is in a right relationship with God, you’ll do what’s right. Trying to live by following a rigid set of rules leads to a life of slavery or hopelessness. It also leads to a life of comparison. It breeds the “I’m better than you, and you’re going to hell” <snicker>. 

Andy Stanley’s current Your Move series is titled Christian. The premise is that since “Christian” is not defined in the Bible, you can make it whatever you wish. But the word Jesus used, disciple, is a word easily defined.

Beyond that, Stanley has been asking, “Do you know any angry, judgemental Christians who seem to derive pleasure by thinking you’re going to hell”?

Of course, the answer is Yes.

The Roman Catholic church has tons of rules. Each protestant denomination seems to have its own set of rules different, of course, from anyone else’s set of rules. Everyone make up rules.

Even today.

Even while saying they are following the guy who said to worry about the condition of your heart first.

Back to Paul. They made their own set of rules, just like children do. And they lost.

It’s not rules, it’s relationship.

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Andy Stanley—New Rules for Love, Sex, Dating

April 13, 2015

How many people have lost career, families, respect due to sexual passions run amok? How many marriages have you seen that just never got started off right?

Andy Stanley’s latest book, “The New Rules For Love, Sex & Dating,” is targeted at single people of all ages, but the wisdom works for all of us—even those like me who are many, many years past the subject.

Stanley is one of the best communicators in the Christian church today. I listen to him every week. He talks about focusing on making better decisions in order to live a better life. In other words, he’s not like the generation that was in charge during his (and my) youth that stopped at “thou shalt not” moralism. He applies teachings from the Bible much as common sense rather than finger pointing.

This book talks of relationships, treating people well, and how to handle those powerful emotions of “love” and sex. I single out the word “love” partly because we are just past Valentine’s Day where love is celebrated as an emotion. Stanly emphasizes, much as I always do, love as something you do, not always as something you feel.

I especially appreciate his descriptions of the elements of love that Paul the Apostle discusses in 1 Cor 13. Especially he defines patience and kindness as decisions. Of course, that is true. You decide in the moment that you will be patient in the situation. You decide in the moment to act with kindness toward another.

Decisions, though, when repeated lead to habits. You develop through your repeated decisions the habit of patience or kindness. It becomes a part of who you are. You become patient and kind, and by extension, loving.

Oh, and for sex—don’t do it. Well, don’t do it outside of marriage. His most powerful teaching, as well as the hardest, is for those who have left or are leaving a sexually active relationship that is floundering. Take a year off. Do not date for a year. Take time to be the person that the person you are looking for is looking for.

[DISCLAIMER: I received this book from North Point Publishing in exchange for this review. There was no guarantee what my review would be, though.]

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You Are Known Because You Love One Another

April 2, 2015

People gather together in little groups and talk about other people in the organization. Suspicious of motives, then share negative thoughts and feelings about “those in charge.” Ever critical, the pastor’s last sermon was below average. The lay leaders don’t care about the rest of the congregation.

I’ve spent most of my life in church. That’s my experiene in general wherever I’ve been. Jesus must shudder when many of these people call themselves his followers.

The only Lenten time observances we had while I was growing up were Maunday Thursday (today) and Easter. We did not “observe” Lent. We did not have Good Friday services.

Today was remembrance of Jesus’ washing of the disciples feet.

He took off his robes. Sort of in his underwear? Not like ours, of course, yet, not how one would appear in public.

He wrapped a towel around his waist. Even today there are vestiges of that practice with waiters with small aprons. Servants, servers, they looked like that. Not important leaders.

 But Jesus did.

He washed their feet. They were shocked. Characteristically only Peter blurted out what they all were probably thinking–Not my feet, Lord, You are not a servant.

Jesus followed this up with one of his last instructions. “You shall love one another, just as I have loved you. You will be known as my disciples by your love for one another.”

In the US, at least, it will be hard to find an organized group of people who call themselves Christian who truly practice this command.

Imagine, if you will, a group of people filled with the spirit who have that kind of love for one another. That love that will do anything for a brother or sister. Imagine what an awesome experience.

Oh, if only we could actually follow Jesus’ teachings.

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Optimum Communication

October 29, 2014

My daughter recommended the book “Crucial Conversations” the other day. I now recommend it to you. It is a useful guide for both personal conversations (say, with a spouse) as well as for business settings whether for an individual situation or for meetings.

Achieving dialog forms the platform of the teaching. But perhaps we wonder what true dialog is.

Reading about Socrates as a youth, both through Plato’s writing and through a magazine series on the subject that I’ve long since lost and forgotten the title, bred my ideal of dialog.

A dialog is a conversation among two or more human beings on a topic that:

  • treats each person as an adult
  • moves the idea(s) forward to greater depth and understanding
  • is focused on the topic not the self

Accomplishing dialog requires focus on the other–what is said, not said, emotion, gestures. It allows for pauses as the conversation shifts from person to person. The reason for pauses is to give time to think rather than thinking while the other is talking.

It requires respect, in yourself as well as the others.

I have had great dialogs during business dinners (we don’t talk “business” the whole time, if at all) about life in the Spirit. I long for more dialogs about Jesus and the Spirit. They bring such joy.

There is much more to the book. I’ll share later. If you are about to have an important conversation with spouse, co-worker or boss, grab this book quickly.

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