Make a Smilebox slideshow

Relative Values

There is a huge difference between faith as "group think" and personal faith as the result of reflection and self-actualization. We know the movements, and outcomes, of "group think" in our history. Some are positive and some are negative. But is there ever a time when self-reflection, personal integrity, and self-actualization would not be desirable?

Surely, through cell groups and small groups -- whatever you want to call them -- self-actualization is furthered even in the largest churches. But there are (do not doubt it) many, many small churches where people gather who are looking for intimacy and personal attention. Often they are Fowler stage twos who find themselves in a stage three or four world. The faith development of their peers and secular post-christian thought has made them speechless and uncomfortable in a faith understanding they feel no longer fits the world they observe around them. They hunger for one-on-one or opportunities to be gently led into a larger understanding. I am not speaking of demythologization alone -- though the breaking and reinvesting symbols with meaning is a large part of this process. I'm speaking of the social aspect of the process -- finding a safe place for this to happen. Then, once the work is done, once faith is broadened, they are safe and secure and empowered to re-enter a larger "faith-society," if you will, of their peers. They are now comfortable and not intimidated. They know "the language" and can embrace the concepts of a more mature (or at least more contemporary) way of understanding.

I know there will be a lot of people who think I'm just nuts saying this, but I hold to it with all that I am. I have seen it over and over and over and over. If you had, for example, a psychological problem that caused you to feel out of touch with your peers, and you went to a psychologist for therapy with a wonderfully successful outcome, then you would not buddy around with your psychologist forever--you would be off to better things. In a real sense, small churches struggling to survive in urban areas can find a niche in this specific place of need. I know this is so. This type of personal attention is often prohibitive in large churches -- because, by nature, they DO live as 'group think,' often with a charismatic leader. This is wonderful! It is a gift to be in a large church with all the ministries and programs and opportunities. However, the small church has value as well -- and often must struggle because those who come to such niche ministries are often the very ones who are learning the disciplines of spiritual devotion and stewardship.

We just can't afford to forget that Jesus came for the least and the lost, not the most influential or the most lucrative, or the "most time left to serve." There is a real need for the small church, with all its survival struggles, to remain an important and recognized part of the overall landscape of Christian community.

Rick Warren put it this way:
"Small ministries often make the greatest difference. The most important light in my home is not the large chandelier in our dining room, but the little nightlight that keeps me from stubbing my toe when I get up to use the bathroom at night. It's small, but it's more useful to me ... " [Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Church]

I am praying for the United Methodist Church and all her leaders.

Love in the Lord,
PH

Itchy Ears and Intersections of Truth

Taken on a December evening traveling north on 1-45 to Houston

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth...”
[2 Timothy 4:3-5]

I guess there is a certain sort of comfort in living inside a lie – especially of one’s own making. As in the “choose your bliss” mentality, people do have the opportunity to pick and choose what to believe and what to discard. Human free will preserves the option to throw absolutes out the window. Morality is easily morphed into utilitarianism. What is good is what best serves the moment – and that in one’s own eyes.

It seems that this is the way some people choose to survive. Self-deception allows a person to escape the need for change. It means no course adjustment is needed. We can ignore the theological warning: Chosen paths of least resistance are not morally neutral! They lead downhill and are lined with sleep-number self-defense systems that allow us to remain lulled in a spiritual sleep.

Reality does offer occasional jolts of unexpected, pronounced truth. For some, these jolts are a welcome, though not necessarily comfortable, road sign that reorients them toward the ultimate that God once called “Good.” For others, jolts of truth are perceived as existential threats. The construction of mental bridges, tunnels, and all sorts of internal infrastructure occupy minds determined to circumvent the truth. The “fleece police” of gossip and chatter go before them to identify potential threats that might puncture a false reality.

In the end, thanks be to God, truth will be told and experienced. Jesus said it would be shouted from the rooftops. I think that promise must be for those who refused to hear when it was whispered personally in Divine Love by the Holy Spirit.

There’s an impassable abutment that crosses every known path of humans that is not aligned with the truth in Christ Jesus. Zigzag as we may, spiraling determinedly around our ‘stages of faith’ we will finally realize that “we can’t get there from here” unless we want God’s truth more than our own self-deceptions, right teaching more than content that scratches our self-inflamed itchy ears, and true friends that tell us what we need to hear instead of what we want to hear.

Truth in our path is more than an intersection we can bypass or mentally engineer away. It is an opportunity for life that entails some level of necessary death. For some it sounds like thunder, to others, angels.

“Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?” [Galatians 4:16]

Love in the Lord,
PH

Beyond the Gaps

When I was a teenager, back in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the term used to name the problem of adults and youth being unable (or at least challenged) to communicate clearly and compassionately was “Generation Gap.” Somehow, having a name for the problem legitimized it. Kids my age taunted our elders: “You don’t understand – you’re too old; there’s a generation gap!” (Our parents just rolled their eyes; obviously they’d felt the same way when they were our age.)

As I grew older, I learned about other gaps. When a dear doctor finally diagnosed the pain in my neck that I’d suffered for ten years as a 2 ½ inch, thorn-like bone that was growing from the back of my neck and poking into my throat, I was ecstatic! It was an “elongated styloid process!” Finding out that my symptoms had a name meant I was not alone! Others had been here and experienced this before me! Someone had crossed the gap and was able to explain it—or at least treat it! Ahh... hope!

When one of our sons was finally diagnosed with autism when he was four years old, I felt like I was tied to a see-saw teetering back and forth between relief and despair. I had known something was amiss. The ‘gap’ in our relationship with Tommy was not being experienced by other parents with their children. It wasn’t a gap of ‘things’ but a gap of ‘missing things.’ Being told by the doctors that my instincts and observations were right was affirming and stress-relieving. Knowing that many other parents had been able to live the life that would now be ours was comforting. Autism was still there; it was not conquered, but something just as important was: the gap was crossed. We were not alone. We found fellowship and compassion and even accountability and direction in a community of parents of autistic children.

We are not made to be alone. God spoke to Adam in the Garden of Eden saying, “...It is not good that the man should be alone...” [Gen 2:18a]. “Anthropos” (man) also translates as “human being.” NONE of us human beings are made to be alone. We have to somehow overcome the gaps between ourselves and the others God has placed in our lives if we want to have the blessing of not being alone.

I have a favorite children’s sermon I share using a piece of pottery I purchased at a folk festival back in Charlotte, NC in 1971. It is a sort of pitcher that is one-third unglazed, one-third glazed in deep blue, and one-third glazed with the deep blue covered by a thick clear finish coat. Holding the pitcher one day, I saw it as an image of myself and my relationship with God. Part of me is as rough and scratchy as the unsmoothed raw clay fired without a finish. This is the part of me that I have not yet put into God’s hands for refining. We all have those parts. Other parts of me are being finished – being transformed by the love and discipline of God. Finally, there is a very small part of me that is transformed and completely sealed with a smooth, clear finish. Not much – but some.

Amazingly, when others look at the old clay pitcher on the sealed, finished side, they are able to see their own image. They can see themselves. Nothing is there to break up the reflection.
Could it be that it is only as we are refined by God – as the clay of our being is smoothed, and transformed and sealed, that the gaps that separate us from one another are polished away? Could it be that only as people are able to see themselves in us – or as we are able to see ourselves in them – do we have the comfort and assurance that we are understood and not alone? Could it be that that this is what Jesus meant when he prayed for us in the Garden of Gethsamene saying:

“Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.... The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” [John 17:11b, 22-23]

I guess another way of saying all this is that a fully sanctified, refined soul can welcome and be in relationship with anyone without a gap – especially autistic sons, or head-strong children, or (gulp...) sinners, because a refined soul knows the time spent on the potter’s wheel in the hands of God that it took to get there.
I’ve got a long way to go...

Love in the Lord,
PH