Faith Venture

I was taught to write in a positive, forceful manner. At least, to write like I know what I’m talking about. You have to do this in business whether you are reporting on progress of a project or trying to persuade others on a course of action.

So I write these blog posts in the much the same voice.

Then I worry. I hope people don’t think that I think I’m perfect. I’m not.

Still I’m amazed at the number of “professing” Christians who continue to be exposed (so to speak) as downright nasty people. Aren’t we supposed to be trained in the spirit?

It’s no wonder that so many early Christian writers repeated and emphasized one point in their writings on the spiritual journey. They warned of the power of “the flesh” or as we might say, “being overcome by our urges and desires, failing to place them under the power of the spirit.”

That is universal, that problem of subjecting the flesh by the spirit. The New Testament is full of warning and advice. Then read also the Desert Fathers such as John Climacus or The Confessions of Augustine.

You realize, you’re not alone.

That is where humility comes to play. We all struggle with one thing or another. When we succumb and then fail to acknowledge it–confess is our word–then we compound our problem.

I think I need a break from the news. There just is so much of this being revealed.

So, I’m at a conference in Houston this week. The company sponsoring the conference, Rockwell Automation, led the media day presentations yesterday talking about how its employees responded to the severe problems caused by the hurricane. The company manufactures an electrical component called “drives” that control the speed of electric motors that are used in turn for pumps. When the electrical components were destroyed by all the water shutting off the water supply in areas, they worked extra hard to find, ship, and install new drives to restore drinking water. Then there is the training program it has initiated that trains veterans to be engineering technicians so that they can find good employment in manufacturing. And they help them find jobs.

Thank God that the good people seem to outnumber the bad.

Don’t you wish that these guys who do illegal and/or immoral things would just admit it with a huge dose of humility when they inevitably are exposed?

That they would cease looking for an out?

Or an excuse?

Or going into attack posture and begin accusing the accuser?

I just saw this article “Lack of Intellectual Humility Plagues Our Times, Say Researchers.”

This fits with other research I’ve seen on how rampant narcissism is in our society.

And research on the paradox where we have more and bigger stuff in America than in any time in history, yet we feel deprived, poor.

Humility doesn’t mean being weak like a sheep (often the image pulled from the Bible that men shy away from). Humility in this case means being strong, being a true man.

Humility doesn’t mean in-your-face public displays of religion. It comes from` the heart. And for most of us, well, we need that change of heart that begins with humility.

Humility recognizes God. And how I failed to aim for the target. And how I hurt other people by my actions. And how I accept responsibility for what I’ve done. And if my career is over, well, that’s the consequences. I can always build another career with my changed heart as the foundation.

Yeah, I wish…

Most of the jobs I’ve had lasted only a few years.

The graduate school department shut down the program. Economic forces (and maybe some bad management) forced several more jobs to end. Then I left one position for a better place. That better place lasted 10 years but then changes occurred that were going to undo everything I’d built, so I left that one. What I’m doing now is not designed to last.

I thought about that while contemplating the growth of the disciples of Jesus. Our small group has been studying the gospel of John. We’re still puzzling through Chapters 12, 13, 14. The story of the last supper and “final” instructions.

They are puzzled. Where are you going? Just who is this Father you keep talking about…and to? Why are you talking about your death?

It had barely been three years. Great years. They were traveling around. Crowds followed them. Surely this would last a long time, right?

Jesus seems to be saying that it’s all over. But something new is coming.

Sometimes reading through these stories, we need to maintain some perspective.

It’s only 40-some days from these stories to Acts 2.

Those 40 days were packed with growth. They finally understood what was happening. Those 40 days changed the world.

Henry Cloud wrote a book called “Necessary Endings.” It’s on my recommended reading list.

Sometimes it’s good that things don’t last. Because ending one thing can lead to something much better. Not unlike a caterpillar going into a cocoon and a butterfly emerging.

Yesterday I talked about Barry McGuire’s interview with John Fischer on The Catch.

McGuire mentioned at one point, “People ask if I’m a follower of Jesus. I say, no I don’t follow him. He’s in me, and I’m in him.”

That’s an interesting take on the spirituality of Jesus. I’m puzzling through chapters 13-14 of the gospel of John. Jesus keeps repeating that language. And if it’s repeated, it must be important. He talks of being in the Father and the Father is in him. And he is in us, and we’re in him.

And his followers don’t understand…yet.

Show us the Father, one commands.

Where are you going, supposing a physical location.

We get a hint in the gospel. It comes alive in the early chapters of the book of the Acts of the Apostles. There it is recorded that they and thousands of others learn what it means to be in Jesus and have Jesus in them.

And if I’m in Jesus and he’s in me, what does that mean?

It means that we recognize each human we meet (physically or through some media) is a child of God and we are to love them whether they are worthy or not. Thomas Merton said that it isn’t our job to determine worthy.

It also isn’t easy.

And we have to remember that love doesn’t mean condone their thoughts and actions. It means treating them with the respect that sometimes they didn’t show others.

And with every new revelation of sexual misconduct, especially when men in power force sexual incidents upon teenaged and younger girls, it just grips my stomach. Yet, how am I supposed to show grace in the situation? No one ever said it was easy.

But twice in today’s devotional reading I was told to show grace and God’s love to everyone. So, I begin by not writing mean and vindictive things. And hopefully I will remember this thought with everyone I meet and in every conversation I have today.

If you are around my age, you may remember a 1965 protest song from folk music singer Barry McGuire–The Eve of Destruction.

By 1971 he had joined the incipient “Jesus movement” and was singing a new type of Christian music.

My training as a percussionist began when I was around 7 and lasted through playing in the University of Cincinnati marching band (with all those College Conservatory of Music geeks). Then I ditched drums for guitar and got into folk music and early rock. There was Christian folk music at the time that I learned from Catholics. And then that early Christian music.

I grew up with country music, but then it went big time with the “Nashville sound” and I grew bored. Christian music went from the Jesus movement to “praise songs” that repeated 7 words 11 times (a friend referenced the convenience store chain–7/11 songs) and then bands performing big concerts. Money could be made–for the labels if not for the performers.

Back to McGuire. He was just a guest on John Fischer’s (another Jesus movement pioneer) The Catch podcast. John has been trying to figure out what happened to the music.

He thinks it was money.

McGuire said that it used to be that they took the music to the streets. They were ex-hippies who discovered Jesus and took the joy out to the people. Then “we all went indoors”. The music went into the churches and got lost.

What have we lost by huddling together in our buildings instead of going out into the world?

Did you ever start something and then walked away? Maybe you had a vision for a little vegetable garden where you could harvest fresh vegetables all summer.

But, you never got around to tilling the soil, planting seeds, cultivating the plants, pulling weeds.

There was no harvest of fresh vegetables to grace your table and enhance your health.

I see churches and other organizations do the same thing.

Initiate a program. Get people excited.

But it never becomes part of the culture or workflow or daily life of the organization.

Jesus instructed us many times that blessing lies not in the hearing of the word but in the doing. Noted Catholic activist Dorothy Day said, “We talk about the Sermon on the Mount. It is amazing what happens when we start living it.” She did.

I just finished “Hit Refresh” by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Part of the book talks about his personal journey toward gaining empathy. Then he expands by talking about how he went about changing the notoriously noxious Microsoft culture. Good reading for leaders of any type of organization who wish to move the organization forward and not merely exist. (“Hit Refresh” refers to your browser when you want to update the page.)

The Word does us no good unless it becomes an integral part of our everyday life.

I was just starting down the trail along the pond beginning the day’s exercise, when I startled a kingfisher. It had been staring down from a tree limb probably contemplating breakfast. 

It knew the direction I was coming from, and it flew 30 yards or so ahead. Again as I approached, it flew another 30 yards ahead. Repeated again. 

What if it could see patterns? After two times, it could have thought, he’s coming in a straight line. If I go back to the original tree where I had scoped out breakfast, he will be long gone.

But it didn’t see the pattern and instead just flew to the end of the pond and then away.

Our small group is immersed in chapters 12-14 of the gospel of John. This includes the “last supper” and many instructions.

Jesus, of course, sees the big picture. He knows what’s coming. He tries to alert his team.

But they are so focused on the way things have been the past 2-3 years and also on what they think is supposed to happen, that they cannot see.

“I am going, and you can’t follow?”

“Where are you going? Bethany? Bethsaida? Nazareth?”

They are thinking physical reality.

Jesus, as always, is thinking spiritual reality.

They didn’t get it until they all met again on the other side of the crucifixion. 

We can read ahead. We read the other end of the conversation before we understand the beginning.

Are we so focused on the Jesus we think should be that we can’t see the Jesus that is?

Are we so focused on ourselves that we can’t experience the Holy Spirit?

Are we so focused on ourselves that we forget that Jesus told us that those who love him will follow his commandments—Love God with all our being and love our neighbors (even the despised foreigners)?

We focus so hard on seeing that we just fail to see.

I read an essay in the news yesterday. Must have impacted my subconscious.

I woke up this morning with bad thoughts about political leadership, people who drink certain kinds of beer (that ad still rankles), and probably other negativity.

People of some religious persuasions like to use the term convicted. As in, “I was convicted.” As in, found guilty.

There it was in today’s email inbox, 300 Words a Day from Jon Swanson. Convicted

I am dissatisfied with the quality of reflection that I am hearing these days.

There is the kind of name calling that I find demeaning and diminishing of people. Words are chipped from blocks of ice and dropped with freezing precision on dreams and new ideas. Adjectives are measured into saucepans with tainted sugar, brought to a boil and then simmered until they are as sticky as caramel, bitter as aspirin. Then are they poured over naming nouns, forever modifying that one to “Foolish”, that one to “mindless” and that one to “bigoted”.

He reminds us of David’s words from Psalm 19 and verse 14, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

Careful of the difference between reason and excuse—what I often teach about watching what we feed our minds returned to haunt me. It is said that you can’t help it when certain thoughts pop into your mind. It’s the dwelling upon them that is sinful.

However, if the thoughts are a direct result of what we choose to read or listen to, then they are our sin.

I knew a preacher who began every message with that prayer. It never occurred to me before, but that is a great prayer to begin each day.

Thanks, Jon. Hope you have a blessed day.

We turn religion into politics and politics into religion. 

We turn the foods we eat, should eat, shouldn’t eat into both politics and religion.

Following up on the areas of spiritual formation that includes your body, I have meant to talk about food a little.

I’ve read so many books and listened to many podcasts and I find too much religion (not in the sense of the Old Testament and pork) in the whole debates.

There was “How we get Fat” which discussed simple carbohydrates explaining how bad they are for us. He spent a paragraph on better carbohydrates. Turning the page, he based the entire premise that an anthropologist, who I guess had been there and studied them, said our distant ancestors ate meat and whatever fruits and vegetables they could pull from the ground or trees. 

I guess they lived long and healthy lives.

Yet, I wonder why humans didn’t develop civilizations, cities, long lives (at times), cultures until they learned to cultivate grain. They could now settle down. A few people could feed many. Life was better (except maybe when politics and religion got out of balance, but that’s a different topic).

I read about white sugar. I’m betting those people have never been in a sugar refinery. Their assumptions are entirely wrong.

The real problem with sugar is we eat way too much of it.

The real problem with grains in bread is that we no longer ferment bread with yeast, but give it a chemical to quick rise and bake fast.

Other grains we cook too quickly and not thoroughly.

I read about the evils of processed meats. Then they include burgers and sausage. Those are just ground meat sometimes with added spices and herbs. One problem is that they can have too much fat—another thing that is good for us, but we eat too much. Some processed meats are also injected with a variety of chemicals that are not healthy.

You can go argue any of this stuff. But 90% of the “science” I see is incomplete or even wrong.

Eat a balance of good carbs, protein, and fats. Your body needs them all. Eat real food. And not too much of it. And exercise. We discover every day even more reasons to exercise. Go for a  walk. Or even a run—at any age. After all, our ancient ancestors had to run to chase their dinners. And the whole tribe from old to young, male and female had to run along with the hunters.

Mother Teresa

There is only one God, and he is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic.

Source: A Simple Path

This quote came in a daily meditation I receive from Plough. It seemed timely. Sometimes we let any of a variety of negative emotions rage through our bodies and minds and we forget to return to the one God, residing in his Spirit, giving us power and assurance.

As the apostle Paul said, “…one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” (1 Corinthians and Ephesians)

I am blessed to be at yet another international conference where I meet people from many cultures. Talking with them, I can go beyond stereotypes and see that people are people. And that God created and cares for each.