Expressing Admiration for Someone Close

Expressing Admiration for Someone Close

I am part of a large family.  One member recently died.  While he was alive we never told him what a good man he was.  Why is it we seem to have to wait until good ones are gone before we really can express what we admired and enjoyed about them?

 

That’s a really good question.  By the time I was 28, everyone in my immediate family (brother and parents) had died.  Also, I have been to many funerals over my 83 years.  So I have thought about this a great deal.  I ran across a comment in a book by the late Albert Camus (The Fall ).  Camus said that the reason we find it easier to give voice to our admiration of someone after that person’s death than while he or she is still alive is simple: “With the dead there is no obligation.” And I think he was right in a very real sense.

Your question brought back a memory of a lunch I shared with a close friend some years ago.  As we were eating I realized that that he is a remarkable man and has great ability and humility about it.  I started to tell him but suddenly felt very awkward and nervous about doing so.  I decided to go ahead and tell him, and as I was doing so I realized why I had hesitated.  Somehow—because we live in the same town and sometimes work together—I was afraid that he would expect me to “follow through” on this affirmation and provide a deep and lasting friendship—and I wasn’t sure if I could.  So I told him about what I had felt and thought as I had spoken about my admiration of him.  He responded by telling me that he, too, had felt uneasy hearing me affirm him that strongly, because he was afraid he’d disappoint me if I really thought he was that fine of a man.

But we decided these fears are part of the risk of loving people, and that for us the results in terms of emotional health and happiness are worth the risks.  The crucial thing, it seems to me, is to be sure that affirmation is genuine.

Dear Lord, sharpen my conscious awareness of what I value in my friends and help me find the courage to tell them.  Help me not to over-affirm, or flatter people for some hidden manipulative purpose, but rather to let others know whenever I recognize something I admire or enjoy or appreciate about a friend.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

 O my dear brother Jonathan, I’m crushed by your death. Your friendship was a miracle-wonder, love far exceeding anything I’ve known— or ever hope to know.

(David’s Lament over the death of his best friend, Jonathan).

2 Samuel 1:25-27, The Message

Friends love through all kinds of weather, and families stick together in all kinds of trouble.

Proverbs 17:17 The Message

 

Just as lotions and fragrance give sensual delight, a sweet friendship refreshes the soul. 

Proverbs 27:8-10 The Message

Expressing Admiration for Someone Close

What Kind of Honesty Does God Want?

Dear Keith, I am having real trouble.  Some time ago I heard you speak about honesty and realized that I have been phony all my life.  So I decided to change my ways and began to confess to everyone exactly what I feel regarding them and life.  My husband was horrified at some of my past actions (which I confessed) and now we are not speaking.  I am telling the truth, compulsively, in fact.  But everything is cratering.  Please send suggestions!


I am not sure what you heard me say when you heard me speak about confessional honesty, but let me tell you what I intended to say.  In the first place, confession of old sins may be healthy and not harm anyone.  But there are ways in which thoughtless confession can be very destructive to a relationship.  Compulsive confession is a bit like vomiting on someone—it may make the confessor feel good—but it doesn’t do much for the recipient.

Some years ago I spoke about the lack of honesty in my own life at a church group meeting.  After the meeting an older man came up and said very thoughtfully, “You really spoke to my condition.  I’ve been dishonest for years and I’m going to change.”  He seemed to be deeply moved about his decision.

About a month later I got a call and as soon as I picked up I heard two hostile words from the other end of the line: “You bastard!”  I was dumbfounded.  “Who is this?”  I had to ask.  It was the man from the meeting.  He had gone home and confessed to his wife (among other things) that he had often committed adultery over the years.  (A fact she had never suspected.)

“Now,” the voice said, “she’s under the care of a psychiatrist in a mental hospital.  Got any more ideas about Christian honesty, Keith?!”

As a result of that encounter I realized, in a way I’ll never forget, that raw honesty is not the highest value in the Christian life and in fact that “honesty” can be a very selfish thing, or even a way to clobber people under the guise of being a good and honest Christian.  The highest values for Christians are love and concern, and it may be that one may have to confess some things to God before his pastor or a close Christian brother or sister… and not his or her mate (even though there are things which one can confess to his mate in time which will not destroy the relationship).  Alcoholics Anonymous has a marvelous plan to the effect that one confesses his sins to a third party he trusts (not the party he has harmed), and makes restitution to the offended party except when making restitution would hurt that person or someone else.

So although I believe in the therapeutic value of confession before a trusted fellow Christian, I try to be careful not to hurt other people just to “get it off my chest.”  And I’ve made plenty of painful mistakes even trying to follow that rule.

Dear Lord, thank you for James’ explanation of why I am to confess my sins—so I can be in helpful and healing relationships with you and with others in my life.  Help me to be more loving and sensitive to the feelings of other people with regard to my confessions, so as not to needlessly hurt them just so that I can feel better or “keep the rules.”  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed.

James 5:16, The Message

Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.

John 13:35, The Message

God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us.

1 John 4: 17-18, The Message

How Much is Enough?

How Much is Enough?

Dear Keith, how much ambition is normal?  I have been raised always to be ambitious, to use my talents and abilities to the max and “make something of myself.”  But recently someone told me I am focusing too much on getting ahead, and that I’m an overachiever—maybe to the point of being self-destructive.  If ambition is normal sometimes, when does it become excessive?

I think that a certain amount of “ambition” is necessary to get anything done beyond a mere survival level of existence.  Jesus evidenced considerable ambition to do God’s will as perfectly as He could—sometimes paying a great price to do so.  So did Paul.  Dr. Rollo May, a very perceptive psychologist in the 20th century, said that normal ambition “proceeds from strength, is a natural function of the living being, and is not necessarily anti-social.”

But “normal ambition” becomes excessive and, in my opinion, sinful, when it satisfies itself through controlling, or climbing over, other people, shaming them, or when it is directed toward evil ends.  In other words, I think it is natural and Christian to want to accomplish things as long as those things are not (1) bad things for the person as a follower of Christ. (I.e. As long as the goals are not counter to the purposes of God as Jesus revealed them), and (2) as long as the means one uses to accomplish them are not deceptive or destructive to other people.

And for me as a serious follower of Christ, “Ambition” is particularly dangerous, because it is so easy for me to hide the fact from myself that my ambition is often to accomplish things that will make me look good, smart, and exceptional—even when the things I am doing are helping other people.  The reason this is particularly difficult is because all motives are mixed, so I must always have the courage to risk being selfish and trust God and my fellow Christians to keep my eyes—and ambitions—focused on God’s will.

Dear Lord, guide me in my daily life and work so that I remember that loving you, and others (as well as myself) is more important than whatever I may achieve or acquire.  In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

 

Do you want to be counted wise, to build a reputation for wisdom? Here’s what you do: Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It’s the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts. Mean-spirited ambition isn’t wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn’t wisdom. Twisting the truth to make yourselves sound wise isn’t wisdom. It’s the furthest thing from wisdom—it’s animal cunning, devilish conniving. Whenever you’re trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the others’ throats.

James 3: 12-14, The Message

30-33“If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.

Mt 6:30-33

46-48They started arguing over which of them would be most famous. When Jesus realized how much this mattered to them, he brought a child to his side. “Whoever accepts this child as if the child were me, accepts me,” he said. “And whoever accepts me, accepts the One who sent me. You become great by accepting, not asserting. Your spirit, not your size, makes the difference.”

Luke 9:46-48, The Message


Moving Beyond Circumstances that Block Us

Over the years many serious, committed Christians have asked me questions about how to come to grips with such painful topics as sickness, handicaps, accidents leading to permanent injury or death, and other such matters.  Devastated parents, husbands, young adults, when faced with the loss of someone on whom they depend, and whom they love deeply, begin to wonder what part God has in it all.

“Why was our child born with birth defects?”

“Why did my wife get cancer at 34 with four young children to raise?”

“Why was my father killed in a head-on collision by a drunk driver?”

“How could God let these things happen?”

These questions from the drawn, haunted faces of grieving, frustrated Christians keep coming back to me in the quiet of my study.  Why indeed?

I have faced questions like these in my own life before and after trying to make a serious commitment of my life to Christ.  I have cried, prayed, read, asked, and thought about the meaning of sickness and death.

When I was eighteen, I walked through the grief of a war telegram announcing the death of my only brother in a plane crash and saw what this did to my parent’s lives.  I saw my mother have a nervous breakdown and then sat by her as she died of cancer in a few years.  My father had ulcers and then a heart condition which combined to kill him when I was twenty-three.  And in the midst of these sicknesses I broke my neck in a car wreck, and the doctor thought I might be paralyzed.

As each member of my family died I planned funerals and tried to console the ones who remained.  As each one “disappeared,” I spent a lot of time as a young man thinking about sickness and death.  I watched how they affected us all—the bad things and the good.  And I remember looking up at the stars late the night we heard of my brother’s death and crying out, “Why?”

Since I have become a Christian I have seen that this scream is a way of asking probably the deepest and most perplexing question that faces a person who believes in the God of Jesus Christ: “If God is all powerful and also good, why does he allow evil and pain to plague his people?”

This was one of the first questions my mind went to after my conversion.  Out of their uncertainty, people have come up with three basic notions about sickness—with dozens of variations.  Some say, “Sickness is God’s will; therefore we must bear it patiently.”  Others say, “Sickness is of Satan.  And if we pray and have faith, God will root it out and heal us.”  Still others believe that “out of sickness can come understanding, noble character and achievements which would never have been.”  But having studied the Scriptures and having read many books on sickness and the whole problem of “undeserved” evil, I have not found any theoretical solution which satisfies the pain of the human soul in its agony and tells us “why.”

How then do we Christians face sickness when it strikes us or the people we love, or deal with the death of someone we love?

In God’s Good News—expressed in the drama of the life choices and experiences of a Person (not a reasoned theory about those choices and experiences), Jesus gives us something which is more valuable than intellectual answers to the deepest problems of human life.  With his unique self-limiting love (he chose not to use his power to save himself or even to save his cause) he provides a paradoxical offer of freedom for all of us self-centered humans to transcend even our fear of death, to risk all of our lives in order to find the blessedness of God.   Since our imaginations can absorb and be transformed by a love of us that does not demand a price in return, God gives us a choice of whether we want His gift of life in our experience that allows us to transcend and even utilize the circumstances that have us blocked.  But to incorporate Jesus’ “answers” in our lives, we must move beyond the question of “why illness?” to “what can I learn from this illness?” and “How can I love others better in the midst of sickness and failure.

One person learns patience, understanding, and almost unimaginable compassion for others; another becomes an unbearable, complaining, hyper-sensitive and self-centered block to the healing power of love in the culture he or she inhabits.  The choice can be ours.  The question is, “will we choose to be wedded to Life and Love or to move into and be carriers of death’s darkness while still alive?”

But if the losses and tragedies of life can be valuable, then is sickness a good thing?  The Gospels and the Church answer a resounding, “No!”

Here we have another of the many paradoxes of life and faith. Although disease, accidents and undeserved tragedies can bring great transformation of character, including the Christ-like qualities of compassion and the love of seemingly unlovable enemies to some, these horrible experiences of unexpected illness and early death can also destroy all a person’s values.

Christian physicians are right, I think, in giving their lives trying to snatch people from sickness and death, as Jesus did.  For it certainly seems obvious that Jesus entirely rejected the idea that sickness was sent by God as a punishment.  And as Louis Cassels (in The Real Jesus, page 26) points out, Jesus did not encourage the belief that the sufferer ought to remain ill in order to acquire courage or learn patience.  In fact, the Gospels report nineteen specific instances, and allude to hundreds of others in which Jesus healed sick people by a word or gesture.

So Christ anticipated modern medical science by recognizing that all illness is to some degree psychosomatic—involving the mind as well as the body.  And his conversations with the sick always show a concern for the mind and the spirit as well as the body.

But Jesus did not give those being healed, or his disciples, rational closure or a theory of sickness.  He gave them a way to do what they could to help love those who were sick or lost.  And today, by surrendering our lives to the Father and walking with those in pain we can be part of the love God offers to those at the end of their own ropes so that they can be open to experience God’s love and a way of life that can transform their sickness and even death into renewing life with the Father and his family.

God, forgive me when I blame you for allowing evil and pain, sickness and death, into our lives.  Show me how to learn from suffering, and help me to let you show me a way through the suffering and pain, a way that leads me closer to you and toward becoming more like the loving person I now see that you always wanted me to become.  In Jesus’ name, amen.

“God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us.”

1 John 4:17

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