At various points in my life, I have come to a crossroads of faith. In those times, events internal and external have caused me to reexamine the whole foundation of my trust in God.
When I am in such moments, I long for simpler days of believing. But in the long run, these wrestling spells are pure gold for my soul. For they force me to face the truth of both my faith and my response to that faith – how I live out what I believe.
This day is a momentous one in the history of my home country, America. And yet I am intrigued, ok, confused by the response of so many of my brothers and sisters in Christ. Many are choosing at best to downplay the significance of President Obama’s inauguration, at worst to boycott it by literally and purposefully tuning it out. Generally political differences of the campaign season are put aside at the inauguration in respect of the office, but this time that “putting aside” feels embarrassingly anemic.
My spiritual siblings may have reasons for doing so – political differences, concerns about moral positions, other misgivings. But in so doing, their responses pull back the curtain on one of the core sins in the history of American Evangelicalism over the past century. The American Evangelical church has a horrible history on race relations, a heritage Twenty-first Century believers by and large conveniently forget or refuse to own.
For me, this issue is a personal one, not because I am a man of color, for I am not. I’m as white as they come. But because for me this issue, the default Evangelical response, has confronted me like a bad dream at each of these critical crossroads of faith.
For a while as a young man India’s great statesman, Gandhi, lived in South Africa. While there he sought to visit a Christian church. He himself was Hindu, but he had heard much good about Jesus. However, when he came to the church, there was a sign outside which read “No dogs or Indians allowed”, the “dogs” referring to blacks. He was embarrassed and confused and never got over that slap in the emotional face. Years later, he told his good Christian missionary friend, E. Stanley Jones, that he thought Jesus a great moral leader, one he deeply admired, but that the followers of Jesus hindered him from getting closer.
It is not enough to have faith, the Apostle James wrote. You have to live out that faith. In fact, he went so far as to say, show me your actions and I’ll tell you what you believe.
Anyone growing up inside the church has stared hypocrisy dead on, for the church as the embodiment of those who follow Jesus is far from perfect. We do well not to walk away from Jesus because of what we see in the lives of others who are redeemed. Rather, such imperfection can show us that we too are welcome even though we are not perfect. But when the church as a body has been unfaithful to the high calling of her Lord, it bodes well for that Body to repent of her sins and to do so thoroughly and publicly.
Repentance is not merely crying big tears or washing the feet of those who have been victimized; repentance is leaving behind the behavior that so pains the heart of God and embracing the new order of the Age of the Spirit. There have been times when specific Evangelical church bodies and leaders have shared publicly their repentance and repudiation of past sins, including racial sins. But rarely do we learn our history lessons as well as we should, and the sin of racism is a glaring example.
That the Evangelical world has been so slow to capture this historic moment in American life shows that we as believers, particularly white believers really do not understand the implications of our own history. Whatever actions Barak Obama does or does not take in his time as president, he, simply by taking the oath of office, has smashed one of the ugliest idols in American spiritual life. We do well to glorify God that this day has come at last. It does not mean the end of racism, but it is a significant milestone, one we as believers all can and should celebrate.
2009-01-13
Authenticity on a Pedestal – Part II
Many effective leaders and communicators project an intimacy with their audience that at least imitates their more private backstage selves. As a result, we the audience take away the impression that we really know the speaker even if the speaker doesn’t have a clue who we are. The effective speaker bridges the gap with the listener while maintaining a safe distance, thanks to the platform.
That platform protection is lost once the speaker descends. To maintain a necessary defense barrier, the public person learns to project a careful balance of warmth and arm’s-length positioning when working the crowd. People want to know that this person is touchable, that he or she is truly flesh and blood.
Some great platform communicators can exude the same platform warmth up close. Others struggle with it. I remember when I met Bob Hope in person when I was a college student. The dean had handpicked a few of us for a small group shot where Hope would field questions for a campus program he was filming to be aired on national TV.
On camera, he was vintage Bob Hope. We felt warm and connected. Afterward we got to shake his hand, get his autograph, and chat for a minute. As I did, I felt a strange and foreign presence – a plastic Bob Hope I’d not sensed a few minutes earlier or when I’d seen him on TV. Hope and I were trading commodities – or maybe we were the commodities to each other.
There is no way you can give yourself away to thousands and expect to have anything left, unless the self you are giving away is sourced elsewhere. Those who learn to pull off this sharing of self with the masses know how to refuel. They aren’t giving themselves away as much as they are allowing themselves to be a channel through which energy from elsewhere flows through them.
But no one can truly do this channeling unless they have a backstage life where they can fully be themselves and get their own needs met. Not just expressing what they choose to share in public, but where they share with the guard down.
A funny thing about muscles and muscle groups. If you use them 24/7, if you never relax them, they eventually lose their ability to function. A muscle is not a bone, which is set. A muscle is designed to tighten (contract) and loosen. And every person needs to exercise these public/private muscles or they will freeze in place.
The reason for the need for the public guard or defense, the reason Bob Hope couldn’t risk being intimate with my friends and me, is because the more intimate we are, the more vulnerable we become. We risk losing ourselves to the other person(s) entirely.
Contrary to the mindset of this modern hookup society, you can only do so – become intimate – in a very safe, secure setting. Anyone who has sex with a stranger is not being emotionally intimate, for you can only give what is intimate to you in a context where that intimacy is mutually shared and protected. Otherwise there is no intimate self to share.
When a public person no longer has those safe havens, those backstage hideaways, he or she is in mortal danger. The risk is high for failure of some sort no matter how strong a person is. Strength is not the issue. Human beings are designed for being open, and as I’ve said, openness requires protection, something you don’t get with strangers.
That platform protection is lost once the speaker descends. To maintain a necessary defense barrier, the public person learns to project a careful balance of warmth and arm’s-length positioning when working the crowd. People want to know that this person is touchable, that he or she is truly flesh and blood.
Some great platform communicators can exude the same platform warmth up close. Others struggle with it. I remember when I met Bob Hope in person when I was a college student. The dean had handpicked a few of us for a small group shot where Hope would field questions for a campus program he was filming to be aired on national TV.
On camera, he was vintage Bob Hope. We felt warm and connected. Afterward we got to shake his hand, get his autograph, and chat for a minute. As I did, I felt a strange and foreign presence – a plastic Bob Hope I’d not sensed a few minutes earlier or when I’d seen him on TV. Hope and I were trading commodities – or maybe we were the commodities to each other.
There is no way you can give yourself away to thousands and expect to have anything left, unless the self you are giving away is sourced elsewhere. Those who learn to pull off this sharing of self with the masses know how to refuel. They aren’t giving themselves away as much as they are allowing themselves to be a channel through which energy from elsewhere flows through them.
But no one can truly do this channeling unless they have a backstage life where they can fully be themselves and get their own needs met. Not just expressing what they choose to share in public, but where they share with the guard down.
A funny thing about muscles and muscle groups. If you use them 24/7, if you never relax them, they eventually lose their ability to function. A muscle is not a bone, which is set. A muscle is designed to tighten (contract) and loosen. And every person needs to exercise these public/private muscles or they will freeze in place.
The reason for the need for the public guard or defense, the reason Bob Hope couldn’t risk being intimate with my friends and me, is because the more intimate we are, the more vulnerable we become. We risk losing ourselves to the other person(s) entirely.
Contrary to the mindset of this modern hookup society, you can only do so – become intimate – in a very safe, secure setting. Anyone who has sex with a stranger is not being emotionally intimate, for you can only give what is intimate to you in a context where that intimacy is mutually shared and protected. Otherwise there is no intimate self to share.
When a public person no longer has those safe havens, those backstage hideaways, he or she is in mortal danger. The risk is high for failure of some sort no matter how strong a person is. Strength is not the issue. Human beings are designed for being open, and as I’ve said, openness requires protection, something you don’t get with strangers.
2009-01-06
Authenticity on a Pedestal – Part I
One of my favorite images from our life in Xi’an is of this guy who was operating a jackhammer on top of a pillar at the neighbor’s house across our little street. I detested the endless sound that went on for days and days. And, oh, the dust! But the visual of that man up there remains a fascinating and treasured memory. [You can see an actual photo by visiting hnkconnect.com/about-hnk.]
A lone man perched on a narrow column of concrete and rebar, with barely space for his own two feet plus the heavy jackhammer he was operating – all a story or two high above the ground with nothing but his own balance between him and tragedy. And up there so long. Hours on end. Day after day, one column after another. Slowly working his way down, vibrating and pounding his own perch until nothing remained but a crumpled heap on the ground below.
His was life on a pedestal, like a great orator with a machine for a voice or like a leader soaring high above his people showing them the way of life. Pedestal living is what we require of those who guide us. Get up there where we can see you and can see how you do what you say. The American President exposed to all the world, the pastor or parish priest on display, the boss high above the office paeans.
Pedestals, aside from that one the guy in Xi’an was working to demolish, are generally considered glamorous. Life’s a stage and everyone dreams to be on it. A position from which you can be admired and applauded.
Or attacked. I never liked eating at a Western-style head table, especially one where you sat at on stage facing the world for all the world to see. You feel exposed, your every bite thoughtfully or thoughtlessly chewed over by everyone watching. Pedestals and platforms are dangerous places, really, justifying most perks that might accompany them. Somehow the perks and the praise are supposed to make up for the loneliness and danger that inevitably come with such lofty positioning. I’m not so sure, any more than I am sure they are entirely necessary.
Public figures have three selves: the Platform, the Door, and the Backstage selves. They are all expressions of the person’s true self.
The Platform Self is what people see of the figure up in front on stage and what they glean of that leader’s or speaker’s life through what is shared in the monolog or speech or is demonstrated publicly. The self that is shared up front is part of that person, the public self or perhaps better said, the preferred public self. The self we wish people to see in us.
When that person on the platform descends to shake hands, greet and chat one on one with his or her audience, then the Door Self appears. I call it the Door Self for a doorway is often where we meet the Platform speaker face to face. Whatever feeling of intimacy can possibly be shared by a speaker with an audience of one hundred or ten thousand, the one-on-one encounter magnifies that opportunity. And yet, without either of us trying, the engagement is acted out. Not so inauthentic as it is projected, the preferred self presented once more in deliberate, careful choreography.
It is only backstage that the true self appears. Here is where we let our hair down, where we take off the guard. Maybe the Backstage Self is not any more or less authentic than the other selves, but there is something to this unguarded, unprojected self that is genuine and truly intimate.
We’ll continue this theme next week …
A lone man perched on a narrow column of concrete and rebar, with barely space for his own two feet plus the heavy jackhammer he was operating – all a story or two high above the ground with nothing but his own balance between him and tragedy. And up there so long. Hours on end. Day after day, one column after another. Slowly working his way down, vibrating and pounding his own perch until nothing remained but a crumpled heap on the ground below.
His was life on a pedestal, like a great orator with a machine for a voice or like a leader soaring high above his people showing them the way of life. Pedestal living is what we require of those who guide us. Get up there where we can see you and can see how you do what you say. The American President exposed to all the world, the pastor or parish priest on display, the boss high above the office paeans.
Pedestals, aside from that one the guy in Xi’an was working to demolish, are generally considered glamorous. Life’s a stage and everyone dreams to be on it. A position from which you can be admired and applauded.
Or attacked. I never liked eating at a Western-style head table, especially one where you sat at on stage facing the world for all the world to see. You feel exposed, your every bite thoughtfully or thoughtlessly chewed over by everyone watching. Pedestals and platforms are dangerous places, really, justifying most perks that might accompany them. Somehow the perks and the praise are supposed to make up for the loneliness and danger that inevitably come with such lofty positioning. I’m not so sure, any more than I am sure they are entirely necessary.
Public figures have three selves: the Platform, the Door, and the Backstage selves. They are all expressions of the person’s true self.
The Platform Self is what people see of the figure up in front on stage and what they glean of that leader’s or speaker’s life through what is shared in the monolog or speech or is demonstrated publicly. The self that is shared up front is part of that person, the public self or perhaps better said, the preferred public self. The self we wish people to see in us.
When that person on the platform descends to shake hands, greet and chat one on one with his or her audience, then the Door Self appears. I call it the Door Self for a doorway is often where we meet the Platform speaker face to face. Whatever feeling of intimacy can possibly be shared by a speaker with an audience of one hundred or ten thousand, the one-on-one encounter magnifies that opportunity. And yet, without either of us trying, the engagement is acted out. Not so inauthentic as it is projected, the preferred self presented once more in deliberate, careful choreography.
It is only backstage that the true self appears. Here is where we let our hair down, where we take off the guard. Maybe the Backstage Self is not any more or less authentic than the other selves, but there is something to this unguarded, unprojected self that is genuine and truly intimate.
We’ll continue this theme next week …
2008-12-29
Anxiety and Authenticity - Part IV
While I don’t have answers for the causes of my anxieties, I do know what to do with the anxiety itself. Do as my therapist, a man full of faith, has taught me. Don’t just ignore the anxiety and push past it. That’s what I’ve done too often in the past. The old saying “Get a ladder and get over it” is like saying “open the presents and get on with the holidays”. When I sat down to eat that Thanksgiving turkey I didn’t rush through it. The process itself has value and there is value in learning to face the anxiety head on, not just get over it.
Face the anxiety. Process it and the thoughts that swirl around it. Feel the feelings (fear, sadness, anger). Work out the anger (good for the physical body as well). Then turn this processed anxiety over to God.
The fear, for me, comes in being out of control. When I am not in control of my world, it feels as though my world controls me – and to no good. When the fear comes, I freeze like the proverbial deer in the headlights. If I try to push past that fear without facing it, the fear stabs me in the back.
So as I process that anxiety and those feelings of fear, I learn to face that fear with the confidence that comes from what I know about God. That He is all powerful. That He is completely just and totally love. That He will indeed carry me no matter what. I am secure in Him – even when I don’t feel like it. Even when I fail.
Even when I fail. Doesn’t matter what others think. Doesn’t matter what others do. These things may change my environment, but that cannot affect my anchor, my standing, my relationship in Christ. When I am flush with a fresh word from God that He is both in control of my world and has a firm grasp on me, then my anxieties wilt. The causes of those anxieties don’t disappear – they are there as much as they ever were. But the fear of those causes fades in the face of my renewed strength.
Face the anxiety. Process it and the thoughts that swirl around it. Feel the feelings (fear, sadness, anger). Work out the anger (good for the physical body as well). Then turn this processed anxiety over to God.
The fear, for me, comes in being out of control. When I am not in control of my world, it feels as though my world controls me – and to no good. When the fear comes, I freeze like the proverbial deer in the headlights. If I try to push past that fear without facing it, the fear stabs me in the back.
So as I process that anxiety and those feelings of fear, I learn to face that fear with the confidence that comes from what I know about God. That He is all powerful. That He is completely just and totally love. That He will indeed carry me no matter what. I am secure in Him – even when I don’t feel like it. Even when I fail.
Even when I fail. Doesn’t matter what others think. Doesn’t matter what others do. These things may change my environment, but that cannot affect my anchor, my standing, my relationship in Christ. When I am flush with a fresh word from God that He is both in control of my world and has a firm grasp on me, then my anxieties wilt. The causes of those anxieties don’t disappear – they are there as much as they ever were. But the fear of those causes fades in the face of my renewed strength.
2008-12-15
Anxiety and Authenticity - Part III
In the word itself – the word of God that comes to me – is the strength I need. That word from God to me is my daily manna. I’ve tried to store it up. It doesn’t work. God’s word to me, God’s word through others, can fill a reservoir to draw on as needed, can inform the word God has for me at a specific moment. But God wants to meet with me daily. As He did with Adam and Eve in the garden.
This word is not the routine itself. It is not merely the discipline of meeting with God. That is the problem with stale habits and traditions. The form is not the word. We won’t hear from God just because we have a routine.
But the form gives place for the word to come. How can we hear from God without those forms? We are more likely to hear from Him if we set aside place in our lives to hear from Him. That is the strength of regular time with God, of regular time of coming together with His people. In relationship, quantity time and quality time are not the same, but it is hard to have quality without quantity. So setting aside time for hearing from God is one thing.
A second thing is also required. I am reminded as I write that expectation is a necessary ingredient. The old ketchup commercial so effectively expressed the feeling of “anticipation” – the expectation that through the long wait, the ketchup will come. The joy of dating when we are in a relationship that is moving toward commitment is that something special may come of that date. Dating, even the relationship itself, gets stale when we lose that sense of anticipation, of expectation.
The old tarrying custom of Believers in earlier decades was filled with expectation that in waiting on God something was going to happen. But eventually that activity of tarrying became an end in itself. When I was a teenager, a group of us started gathering for a prayer meeting because we were motivated to pray. The prayer meeting grew and with it a sense that God was at work in our midst. Then came the day that we were encouraged to come to the prayer meeting so that we could pick up that sense again. By then, the value of the meeting had been lost.
We don’t get back to the sense of expectation by reviving the habit of tarrying – or by adopting any other particular style of spirituality – any more than we can revive the sense of impending discovery in our married lives by dating as we did before we were committed. We can still date, but the secret is not the form. It is coming to the current forms of the relationship with a sense of anticipating that something fresh will happen.
This word is not the routine itself. It is not merely the discipline of meeting with God. That is the problem with stale habits and traditions. The form is not the word. We won’t hear from God just because we have a routine.
But the form gives place for the word to come. How can we hear from God without those forms? We are more likely to hear from Him if we set aside place in our lives to hear from Him. That is the strength of regular time with God, of regular time of coming together with His people. In relationship, quantity time and quality time are not the same, but it is hard to have quality without quantity. So setting aside time for hearing from God is one thing.
A second thing is also required. I am reminded as I write that expectation is a necessary ingredient. The old ketchup commercial so effectively expressed the feeling of “anticipation” – the expectation that through the long wait, the ketchup will come. The joy of dating when we are in a relationship that is moving toward commitment is that something special may come of that date. Dating, even the relationship itself, gets stale when we lose that sense of anticipation, of expectation.
The old tarrying custom of Believers in earlier decades was filled with expectation that in waiting on God something was going to happen. But eventually that activity of tarrying became an end in itself. When I was a teenager, a group of us started gathering for a prayer meeting because we were motivated to pray. The prayer meeting grew and with it a sense that God was at work in our midst. Then came the day that we were encouraged to come to the prayer meeting so that we could pick up that sense again. By then, the value of the meeting had been lost.
We don’t get back to the sense of expectation by reviving the habit of tarrying – or by adopting any other particular style of spirituality – any more than we can revive the sense of impending discovery in our married lives by dating as we did before we were committed. We can still date, but the secret is not the form. It is coming to the current forms of the relationship with a sense of anticipating that something fresh will happen.
2008-12-08
Anxiety and Authenticity - Part II
There are times when I have wavered greatly in my faith. But I have never abandoned it.
I could not let go of God any more than I could let go of myself, including my questions. I discovered (ironically at the hands of one who worked to destroy my security in God) that God is bigger than my questions, and indeed welcomes them. Certainly that is the example shown me by the Psalmist Asaph.
Recently, Pastor Ray taught that our theology influences our actions, meaning that bad theology leads to bad behavior and good theology leads to good behavior. What I believe and what I do cannot be separated, this is true.
As an ethicist, I am often asked what ethics means? I have always said that ethics at its most basic component is living out what you believe. I can learn more about your theology from your behavior than if you just tell me what you believe. James says something along the same lines in his letter in the New Testament.
When I have struggled with anxieties and fears, I am not sure my theology has gone bad. What I am sure of is that my strength comes from having a firm grip on what I believe – or more precisely who I believe. The crux of the matter is do I really believe what I believe?
This I have seen again and again. The encouraging words of others, even my wife’s, and these various voices this morning in my devotional time, do much to help. But in the end, it is as Wilkerson writes, the word of God has to come to me.
I could not let go of God any more than I could let go of myself, including my questions. I discovered (ironically at the hands of one who worked to destroy my security in God) that God is bigger than my questions, and indeed welcomes them. Certainly that is the example shown me by the Psalmist Asaph.
Recently, Pastor Ray taught that our theology influences our actions, meaning that bad theology leads to bad behavior and good theology leads to good behavior. What I believe and what I do cannot be separated, this is true.
As an ethicist, I am often asked what ethics means? I have always said that ethics at its most basic component is living out what you believe. I can learn more about your theology from your behavior than if you just tell me what you believe. James says something along the same lines in his letter in the New Testament.
When I have struggled with anxieties and fears, I am not sure my theology has gone bad. What I am sure of is that my strength comes from having a firm grip on what I believe – or more precisely who I believe. The crux of the matter is do I really believe what I believe?
This I have seen again and again. The encouraging words of others, even my wife’s, and these various voices this morning in my devotional time, do much to help. But in the end, it is as Wilkerson writes, the word of God has to come to me.
2008-12-02
Anxiety and Authenticity - Part I
I think I know what to do.
I had written in yesterday’s entry of my personal journal, “Is turning this anxiety over to God more a matter of will or of knowing how?” In other words, am I just needing more will power or am I needing to know how to do it? This morning I admit it is both.
As I journal this morning, I think I know what to do and how to be strong. And not be overcome with anxiety. I learned to be strong as a boy growing up. But I came to discover many years later that that strength was in part a coping mechanism. The “in part” was my own strength. And that strength carried me – for a long time, in fact – until I ran out of steam. But it was, as I said, only a part.
Much of that sustaining strength came from a confidence in God that He would, and would always, carry me through. There are those words again. That promise He gave me in the spring of 2006 as this whole nightmare was beginning: “He will carry you.”
If I had only known where this path was taking me. But I had no idea. It is a very good thing. I could not have handled all that information at once. As they say these days, TMI. So he has given me the strength as I have needed it, one step at a time. I see that now.
I see it in the texts I read this morning – Proverbs 11 and Psalm 80 and Luke 1. I hear it in the voice of David Wilkerson has he writes of the Old Testament David’s courage to go on when all was lost at the hands of the Amalekites. I read it in the story of the railroad superintendent in In His Steps, as Alexander Powers is about to bring down his own comfortable world by doing the right thing. What is it that Eric Liddell says in the movie, “Chariots of Fire”? “From where does the strength come? It comes from within.”
I had written in yesterday’s entry of my personal journal, “Is turning this anxiety over to God more a matter of will or of knowing how?” In other words, am I just needing more will power or am I needing to know how to do it? This morning I admit it is both.
As I journal this morning, I think I know what to do and how to be strong. And not be overcome with anxiety. I learned to be strong as a boy growing up. But I came to discover many years later that that strength was in part a coping mechanism. The “in part” was my own strength. And that strength carried me – for a long time, in fact – until I ran out of steam. But it was, as I said, only a part.
Much of that sustaining strength came from a confidence in God that He would, and would always, carry me through. There are those words again. That promise He gave me in the spring of 2006 as this whole nightmare was beginning: “He will carry you.”
If I had only known where this path was taking me. But I had no idea. It is a very good thing. I could not have handled all that information at once. As they say these days, TMI. So he has given me the strength as I have needed it, one step at a time. I see that now.
I see it in the texts I read this morning – Proverbs 11 and Psalm 80 and Luke 1. I hear it in the voice of David Wilkerson has he writes of the Old Testament David’s courage to go on when all was lost at the hands of the Amalekites. I read it in the story of the railroad superintendent in In His Steps, as Alexander Powers is about to bring down his own comfortable world by doing the right thing. What is it that Eric Liddell says in the movie, “Chariots of Fire”? “From where does the strength come? It comes from within.”
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