Tomorrow I will have the very strange, yet exciting, opportunity to teach the older, retired ladies class at my church. I've been ignoring the lesson all week, because lately I've been feeling very distant from God and I didn't know how I was ever going to pull off teaching these extremely wise and wonderful women. But today being Saturday, the day before Sunday, I hunkered down and pulled out the lesson book and my Bible, hoping that God would be kind to me and make all of this very easy.
The result? Well, He certainly has been kind to me, but this lesson is not easy. The title is Will You Remain Faithful. According to the book, this lesson can impact your life by teaching you how to "commit to follow God's will even when it is difficult, and discover resources that strengthen you as you follow His will in difficult circumstances."
They weren't lying. I only wanted to share a couple of things from the lesson that really got me thinking.
The first part of the book talks about Jesus praying right before he is led away to be crucified. He goes back to God again and again saying the same thing: If there's any way you can do it Father, please take this cup away from me. Yet not as I will, but as You will. I'm so blown away that I've never noticed that Jesus knew exactly what God's will was, but he still struggled with it, so much so that he was sweating blood. Yikes. I think I usually deify Jesus to the point where I forget he was ever human at all.
One of the hardest parts of following God is trying to figure out what the heck he wants me to do in the first place. But more difficult than that is knowing exactly what God wants you to do and wanting very very much to NOT have to follow through. There are various reasons for this: the results of following his will are difficult to deal with and might even by painful, his will just doesn't seem as much fun as other options, etc. What is better? Obedience with difficulty, or disobedience with consequences? Of course, the correct answer is obvious, obedience with difficulty! Hooray! Good church kid answer. Well done. But why? Why is that better? Sometimes disobedience to God doesn't come with immediate consequences, when obedience sometimes, and usually, brings difficulties along with it that are scary and seemingly unpleasant. The reason obedience with difficulty is better than disobedience is because when I willingly follow God's plan, even if it's into the deepest pits of the earth, I can benefit from God's infinite knowledge and resources.
One of the points that this lesson brings up is that difficulty in following God isn't anything new and we definitely shouldn't be surprised by it. I love this verse in 1 Peter: "Dear friends, when the fiery ordeal arises among you to test you, don't be surprised by it, as if something unusual were happening to you." It makes me laugh because I'm always surprised when following God is hard. Oh crap, I think, what a strange situation I'm in. Dear God, shouldn't life with you be easy? I mean, you are God and everything. :D There is a funny thing about following God's will though. Even if it sucks, it is so comforting to know that I'm doing what I should be doing....and it doesn't hurt that I'm stacking up rewards in heaven either. (God knows us so well. He knows we wont love Him and other people just because, so he gives us an incentive.)
So anyway, this lesson rocked. And at the end there was a little list, Five Principles for Dealing with Trials. I love lists. And this one is especially good. And since I'm so nice I will share it with you. Here goes:
Five Principles for Dealing with Trials as found in 1 Peter
1. Anchor your hope in God by faith (1:1-5)
2. Accept trials as God's way of preparing you for eternity (1:6-12; 4:12-19).
3. Authenticate your relationship to God by holy living (1:13-2:12)
4. Appropriate Jesus' attitude of humble submission to others as God's will toward government (2:13-17), business (2:18-25), family (3:1-7), church (3:8-13, 4:7-11, 5:1-7), and society (3,14:4:6).
5. Affirm your absolute confidence in God (5:8-11)
(Did you notice that all five of those start with an "a" word? Pretty clever, huh?)
There it is! The lesson that kicked my butt and that I will be teaching to older, wiser, less inept women. I'm really expecting them to whip me into shape....in a loving way of course. I'd be quite disappointed if they didn't.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
The Way To Go
Well hello there. I've been at my sister's for almost two weeks now. This is the perfect amount of time for a vacation; just long enough for one to experience all the different parts of the vacation and get homesick at the end of the second week. Being away for only one week doesn't really do it for me. In order to really miss my friend and family, I need at least two weeks. Get's the missing juices flowing.
I can't seem to spit out what I really want to say.
I would really like to be sure of what is most important. One of the problems I have with this, however, is that narrowing down what in life is most important is possibly the biggest task anyone could undertake. Today my sister and her husband invited a friend over to have dinner with us. He is getting a doctorate in Eastern religions, particularly Japanese religions. We asked him how he got into all of that. He said that when he was living in Japan he would talk to people about their beliefs and their religion and they would tell him that they didn't consider themselves religious people, they just followed the traditions of Buddhism because those actions were just that: traditions. He said he wanted to know why, and that he hadn't figured out the answer yet.
This insight into the spiritual lives of the Japanese led us to a conversation about religion (for clarity reasons I'm going to refer to religion as just the actions and traditions of a belief system, not the belief itself) and belief and how there are a lot of people who will practice a religion but not believe in what it values or says. My brother-in-law gave examples of a Jewish friend he has who is an atheist in belief, but practices Jewish customs and traditions.
At first I was blown away by this and thought to myself, well that's just stupid. If you don't believe in something, why would you go through the motions. But then I realized, people do just that all the time. Not just people in Japan or in American, but everywhere. Religion to a lot of people is just a cultural practice, something they do to be accepted into their society, something that shows they have the same set of values as the rest of their community. Naturally there is a group of people for whom this is not true; those that really believe and practice religious customs because those things matter to them. But for a lot of people (and I'd say for a majority of people)the things they do at church, in the synagogue, at the mosque, at their dinner tables, are just a big elaborate, and intricate, show of allegiance to their community.
I know, I know, this sounds very "consipracy theory," but the more I think about it, the more I believe it is true. The fact is, believing what your religion says is true and then applying those beliefs to real life is really, really stinking hard. It has become harder as the years go by. I don't know why it has become harder, but my guess is this world has become more and more desensitized to religion. People aren't as willing to put up with religious practices they don't believe in just to fit in with their community. And at least in the United States (based on my limited experience) the community is become less religious and more secular, to the point that being religious and expecting others to do the same is becoming abnormal.
This is not to condemn, this is simply for observation sake. I don't know what to think about this. My first reaction is to get really passionate about my faith and try to think up schemes and plans that would entice people into believing what I believe--really, truly believing. However, that is super, super dangerous--a reaction that leads to legalism, self-righteousness, and even violence.
I think that a lot of people believe that human history was always filled with people who had devout devotion to some kind of belief system. There are all these Greek and Roman temples to the gods, Buddhist and Shinto shrines, Hindu temples that date back to ancient periods. We see these things and we say "Wow! These people really believed in something! And it's like all of them did!"
Maybe a lot of them did, I can't believe that ALL of the people, everywhere, from day one, believed everything they were told. That just didn't happen. Human nature is too strong-willed. Some people might have been scared into submission, and some people really did believe, but I don't think all of them believed in those higher powers at all times. Some people really believed and lived that way. Other people didn't really care, but lived that way because if they didn't they'd get humiliated, or shunned, or killed. Apostacy isn't a new thing. It's not like we haven't struggled to find true believers before. This generation may be "morally bankrupt", but they were no more immoral than any of the generations before them. I think we're simply more upfront about our immorality than the Victorians were. But let's face it, before the Victorians, morality had little to do with true virtue and more to do with reputation. If everyone said you were pure, you were pure. It didn't matter if you were a nymphomaniac baroness with a taste for juveniles.
Is it better to believe and not live like you believe, or to live as if you believe and not really believe?
That question reminds me of a parable that Jesus told. In paraphrase, he said that there was a father who had two sons. He told both of them to go out into a vineyard and work. The first son said, "Sure Dad, I'll get right on it." but he never did. The other said, "Nah, I'm not going to work." but then later he went and worked in the vineyard. Jesus asks those standing around him "Who obeyed his father?" And they answered, "The one to did the work."
Somehow those two things relate, but I'm having trouble figuring out how. That's not for right now. I'll think about it later.
I don't think that the Christian community, as a whole, is being very shrewd. We do not address serious issues with understanding about human nature or with compassion. Our first response is usually to condemn, to throw the first stone. A lot of the time my first reaction is to condemn the problem, and the person who has the problem gets condemned right along with it. We are not nearly as compassionate or loving as we should be. We are prickly people with stone-cold hearts. What's ironic, and incredibly sad, is that the man we believe is God was not like we are. He was open, compassionate--he was in love--and he told us to be more like him and less like our hard-hearted selves.
One more thing before I go to bed. I've been wondering about this one for awhile. Why does the Christian community get so incredibly upset about apostacy? Okay, okay, I understand why it would be upsetting. Lots of people spurn the God we love and that makes us angry. Yeah, yeah. But...shouldn't we be celebrating? Isn't a huge apostacy a sign of Jesus' return? So really it's a...good thing? Sounds incredibly twisted doesn't it? Being happy that people are rejecting God is like being happy that you just shattered your legs in a freak accident. Yay, I'm so excited that I'm going to be in pain and that life is going to suck. But God is always pulling this 'be happy even when life sucks' stuff. He's really good at that. He talks a lot about it, telling us to buck up and look heavenward, don't get so obsessed with how lame this world is that you forget how awesome heaven is.
Love is not complicated. We think it is because human beings are complicated. But love is very simple--it covers.
I can't seem to spit out what I really want to say.
I would really like to be sure of what is most important. One of the problems I have with this, however, is that narrowing down what in life is most important is possibly the biggest task anyone could undertake. Today my sister and her husband invited a friend over to have dinner with us. He is getting a doctorate in Eastern religions, particularly Japanese religions. We asked him how he got into all of that. He said that when he was living in Japan he would talk to people about their beliefs and their religion and they would tell him that they didn't consider themselves religious people, they just followed the traditions of Buddhism because those actions were just that: traditions. He said he wanted to know why, and that he hadn't figured out the answer yet.
This insight into the spiritual lives of the Japanese led us to a conversation about religion (for clarity reasons I'm going to refer to religion as just the actions and traditions of a belief system, not the belief itself) and belief and how there are a lot of people who will practice a religion but not believe in what it values or says. My brother-in-law gave examples of a Jewish friend he has who is an atheist in belief, but practices Jewish customs and traditions.
At first I was blown away by this and thought to myself, well that's just stupid. If you don't believe in something, why would you go through the motions. But then I realized, people do just that all the time. Not just people in Japan or in American, but everywhere. Religion to a lot of people is just a cultural practice, something they do to be accepted into their society, something that shows they have the same set of values as the rest of their community. Naturally there is a group of people for whom this is not true; those that really believe and practice religious customs because those things matter to them. But for a lot of people (and I'd say for a majority of people)the things they do at church, in the synagogue, at the mosque, at their dinner tables, are just a big elaborate, and intricate, show of allegiance to their community.
I know, I know, this sounds very "consipracy theory," but the more I think about it, the more I believe it is true. The fact is, believing what your religion says is true and then applying those beliefs to real life is really, really stinking hard. It has become harder as the years go by. I don't know why it has become harder, but my guess is this world has become more and more desensitized to religion. People aren't as willing to put up with religious practices they don't believe in just to fit in with their community. And at least in the United States (based on my limited experience) the community is become less religious and more secular, to the point that being religious and expecting others to do the same is becoming abnormal.
This is not to condemn, this is simply for observation sake. I don't know what to think about this. My first reaction is to get really passionate about my faith and try to think up schemes and plans that would entice people into believing what I believe--really, truly believing. However, that is super, super dangerous--a reaction that leads to legalism, self-righteousness, and even violence.
I think that a lot of people believe that human history was always filled with people who had devout devotion to some kind of belief system. There are all these Greek and Roman temples to the gods, Buddhist and Shinto shrines, Hindu temples that date back to ancient periods. We see these things and we say "Wow! These people really believed in something! And it's like all of them did!"
Maybe a lot of them did, I can't believe that ALL of the people, everywhere, from day one, believed everything they were told. That just didn't happen. Human nature is too strong-willed. Some people might have been scared into submission, and some people really did believe, but I don't think all of them believed in those higher powers at all times. Some people really believed and lived that way. Other people didn't really care, but lived that way because if they didn't they'd get humiliated, or shunned, or killed. Apostacy isn't a new thing. It's not like we haven't struggled to find true believers before. This generation may be "morally bankrupt", but they were no more immoral than any of the generations before them. I think we're simply more upfront about our immorality than the Victorians were. But let's face it, before the Victorians, morality had little to do with true virtue and more to do with reputation. If everyone said you were pure, you were pure. It didn't matter if you were a nymphomaniac baroness with a taste for juveniles.
Is it better to believe and not live like you believe, or to live as if you believe and not really believe?
That question reminds me of a parable that Jesus told. In paraphrase, he said that there was a father who had two sons. He told both of them to go out into a vineyard and work. The first son said, "Sure Dad, I'll get right on it." but he never did. The other said, "Nah, I'm not going to work." but then later he went and worked in the vineyard. Jesus asks those standing around him "Who obeyed his father?" And they answered, "The one to did the work."
Somehow those two things relate, but I'm having trouble figuring out how. That's not for right now. I'll think about it later.
I don't think that the Christian community, as a whole, is being very shrewd. We do not address serious issues with understanding about human nature or with compassion. Our first response is usually to condemn, to throw the first stone. A lot of the time my first reaction is to condemn the problem, and the person who has the problem gets condemned right along with it. We are not nearly as compassionate or loving as we should be. We are prickly people with stone-cold hearts. What's ironic, and incredibly sad, is that the man we believe is God was not like we are. He was open, compassionate--he was in love--and he told us to be more like him and less like our hard-hearted selves.
One more thing before I go to bed. I've been wondering about this one for awhile. Why does the Christian community get so incredibly upset about apostacy? Okay, okay, I understand why it would be upsetting. Lots of people spurn the God we love and that makes us angry. Yeah, yeah. But...shouldn't we be celebrating? Isn't a huge apostacy a sign of Jesus' return? So really it's a...good thing? Sounds incredibly twisted doesn't it? Being happy that people are rejecting God is like being happy that you just shattered your legs in a freak accident. Yay, I'm so excited that I'm going to be in pain and that life is going to suck. But God is always pulling this 'be happy even when life sucks' stuff. He's really good at that. He talks a lot about it, telling us to buck up and look heavenward, don't get so obsessed with how lame this world is that you forget how awesome heaven is.
Love is not complicated. We think it is because human beings are complicated. But love is very simple--it covers.
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