Some Good News about Some Bad News

Some Good News about Some Bad News

Keith, just before Christmas this year I had my annual physical (which I’ve always passed with flying colors).  This time my Internist went over a shockingly long list of borderline results that indicated I need to watch everything I eat, get regular exercise and get some sleep. 

That evening I was stunned to realize that with no medical training at all my wife and my college football player son have been telling me—no pleading with me—for years to do virtually the same things.  The doctor’s conclusions have confirmed that they were not nagging but trying to save my life.  But I have just gotten angry with them, especially when my wife uses as her discouraged exit line, “You’re just like your father!” 

It’s true that I was very angry with my father for not taking care of himself and dying young.  Maybe I am like him!  But how can knowing that help me through this paralysis?  Help!

Grapeleaves 

Horribly good question!  Look, I’m an old man and I’m realizing that a lot of “answers” and advice people give me just don’t work for me.  Even though I’m almost as old as dirt, I have noticed recently that my glasses are not as good as they used to be, I’m taking a fist full of vitamins and prescription drugs, the names of which I can’t pronounce, and in my gym suit I look to be about seven months pregnant—only I’m a man. 

On top of that, to find out what’s really going on with me I have to pay attention to the people who love me most in my family.  So I am familiar with people urging me to change.  All I can do that may or may not help you is to tell you how a memory about my father came to me in the office of a specialist my Internist sent me to because I was noticing that my family has been shouting at me.  This recent experience with the specialist reminds me of your situation because he gave me some pretty bad news about my future.

The doctor was being kind and yet direct, as good doctors often are when giving bad news to eighty-two year old patients.  “We don’t really know what happened but it’s apparent that you have lost almost a third of your hearing during the last few weeks.”

For a man who does a lot of counseling and consulting, that was not good news.

“What do you think is the cause,” I asked, “and, more important to me, what’s the prognosis?”

He wrinkled his brow and thought about that.  Then he said, “I don’t know.  There’s no tumor or the usual physical road signs that give us specific medical direction.  It may just be hereditary.  Were any of the old people in your family of origin deaf?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “They all died when I was very young.  But I do remember that neither my mother and or my father was hard of hearing.”

As I said these words, however, a scene popped into my mind as I recalled how many times when I was a little boy I tried to talk to my father quietly when he was reading the paper or listening to the radio after office hours.  I saw again how he often didn’t even look up at me, and I concluded that he obviously just wasn’t interested in talking to me.  He kept his head buried in the newspaper as I’d walk away hurt and angry.  This is a very painful memory.

Then from the mists of that world long gone, I saw and heard another often-recalled scene: my mother was pleading with my father, “Earle, you are not even listening to me!”  And I saw again my father look up with that ambiguous questioning expression—neither acknowledging or denying what my mother had said.  I was about to get back into my childhood feelings of anger at my father’s “not caring for my mother enough” to answer her question or even acknowledge her having spoken to him.  Although I could still feel my own tight-chested feelings of shame at being ignored by that stony, silent man, I had repressed my own feelings and focused on the (more acceptable) anger at him for ignoring my mother, who did so much to make his life better.

Then without warning or reason in the doctor’s office seven decades later I had a clear and life-changing insight that had never even occurred to me before:  MY FATHER COULDN’T HEAR US!  He must have been going deaf and was too proud to let anyone know!  If that were true, maybe his not responding to my quiet attempts to interrupt his newspaper reading was not rejection as I had always thought at all.  And maybe his silent unsmiling  expression when he did realize someone was talking to him was a defensive move to give him time to try to figure out what had been said to him.  AND WE HAD ALL FELT REJECTED BY HIM!  (Except my older brother who had Dad’s total attention any time his oldest son was on the premises—because they were soul mates.)

The doctor was kind as he concluded his explanation of hereditary deafness.  “Keith, if it’s hereditary, there is nothing you can do except get good hearing aids, pay close attention when people speak to you, and put up with the irritation people sometimes have when an older family member doesn’t hear them.  It’s sad, but some of them may think you just aren’t interested enough to care what they are saying.”

But I could hardly hear what the doctor was saying because I was elated, smiling from ear to ear.  The doctor looked puzzled.  When I saw the doctor’s expression at my elated reaction to the possible death sentence of my hearing (which he knew was especially valuable to me in my life and work), I shook my head to let him know I wasn’t laughing at him.  And my joy was certainly not because I’m going deaf.

I was laughing because after seventy-five years of painful childhood memories of thinking my father ignored me and didn’t want to answer my personal daddy questions when we were alone—I’d finally just realized that my father’s problem was not disdain!  He just couldn’t hear my shy little boy questions—and when he did notice I was pleading with him, he was ashamed to admit that he was going deaf.

Suddenly my wife and kids didn’t seem so “nagging.”  In fact the Lord seemed to have been giving them injections of higher I.Q.  Although I can still hear many things with my wonderful hearing aids, I have gone public to my family and people I see regularly thanking them for their patience and perseverance in urging me to get help.  Also, I’ve admitted that I still miss a lot that is being said to me, and ask for patience.

As I’m writing this I am very grateful that whatever happens to my hearing—or my sight—at the heart of Jesus’ good news about God  the Father is that he will always be listening to and reaching out to love me—even if I wind up alone with Him in a soundless world.

I don’t know if this experience will help you, but it caused me to adjust my whole life and my exercise and sleeping habits to get in shape.

Dear Lord, thank you that you have promised that you will never leave me or forsake me if I call upon you from my heart.  Help me to learn to listen more carefully, and pay close attention to the people close to me so that they will know that I am listening and that I love them deeply and really want to change, and to hear them and whatever it is they are saying to me—even if they have to say it more than once.  Amen.

When troubles come and all these awful things happen to you, in future days you will come back to God, your God, and listen obediently to what he says.  God, your God, is above all a compassionate God.  In the end he will not abandon you, he won’t bring you to ruin, he won’t forget the covenant with your ancestors which he swore to them.

Deuteronomy 4:30-31, The Message

 

Some Good News about Some Bad News

What was God Trying to Say?

Keith, the stores have been full of Christmas decorations and the radio has been playing Christmas carols, songs and ads for it seems like forever.  Addressing Christmas cards, shopping for gifts for my family and friends—somehow I’m getting worn out with it all.  Do you have any ideas that could help me keep my focus on the real meaning of Christmas while inundated with wall to wall sound bite advertising?

Grapeleaves

As I began to reflect on your question about the almost urgent need to recover the real meaning of Christmas in terms that can break through the noise of the commercials, I let my mind slip into an imaginative memory world of midnight masses, children’s Christmas Eve services, the music of open-mouthed choirs mingled with deep resonant voices reading Christmas scriptures.

In my imagination, I saw again Scrooge, Christmas Past, and the transforming power of Tiny Tim on crutches. I saw tired, irritated parents wrapping presents.  Dancing in their heads were not sugar plums, but doubts about “Did we do enough?” or “Did we do too much?” And last, fathers alone at 2:00 a.m., trying to put together complicated toys or doll houses by sparkling Christmas trees, surrounded by layers of brightly-colored presents of all sizes and shapes.

And finally, near dawn in the blinking darkness of the tree lights, the small wooden figurines of the manger scene on the mantle seemed to come to life.

What had God really been trying to say on that first Christmas night?  Had the cultural acid rain of our anxious holiday energy-storm dissolved God’s purposes?

As I recalled the familiar biblical passages, I began to see that the story didn’t look “religious” at all.  It was a wonderful love story about a lovely, still teenaged young woman and a vigorous young man, who were engaged to be married.  But their romance was interrupted when Mary was visited by an angel named Gabriel.  His message—totally incredible to Mary—was that God Himself was going to make an extended personal appearance as a human being.  That would have been startling enough—since it had never happened before—but Gabriel went on to say, “Mary, you have been chosen by God to be the mother of a baby that is somehow going to be conceived in your womb by God!  And the baby’s name will be Jesus.”

This baby would grow up to deliver a remarkable, loving message—a personal introduction to God, an offer of intimacy with God.  In some strange trans-rational way, Jesus would be the Love, the Introduction, and the Intimacy—in a living person.  The Truth about Life was to be conveyed through a multiple progression of living, healing actions from Jesus to people, and from those whom He touched to others.

In a mysterious way, the Christmas story of this young couple seems to have been God’s way of saying that He Himself—as well as His Message—will come most fully into the human scene in the context of loving family, of intimate community.

From this unknown young family, God would send Himself forth in Jesus as a message of love and an invitation to all people everywhere to invite the people in the whole world into an intimate relationship with Himself as Father and with them as His children.  God sent Jesus to make sure that down the ages we would both hear His unique message and offer of caring, and in an unprecedented way, actually meet God personally in the behavior, the teaching, the personal sacrifice, and most of all in the character and personality and self-limiting love of Jesus.

And finally, as this reflection/waking dream is ending, I realize that something has happened to me while I pondered the story of Jesus’ birth and let it come close to my heart.  As I listened to and saw the Christmas story through the magnifying lens of prayerful imagining, it felt very different:  less like an olivewood manger scene, more down-to-earth, personal and interactive—yet paradoxically, more holy somehow.  I am seeing in a new way that God’s gift of His healing, restoring power is available to you and to me, now, through Jesus.

The question of Christmas for me is:  Even with His help can I dare to risk being really authentic and loving and to walk confidently in God’s way—as Mary and Joseph did that first Christmas—not knowing the outcome?

So my own response to your question of what you can do to help keep your focus on the real meaning of Christmas is this:  as you and I realize that God may really love us, we can look for people who are not feeling loved, and who may not be able to “afford” Christmas.  We can then find some personal way to help them in whatever way we can to have a better Christmas day than they would have had you not asked your question.

Jesus, thank you for showing me in living color how I can reflect God’s authentic, loving way of life.  Life’s stresses pressure me toward taking control, hiding from reality, and medicating my pain with purchases, food, and competitive present buying.  Thank you, thank you, that your healing power can restore us all to the authentic, loving way of living for which we were made.  As we think about the story of your entry into humanity that we will celebrate in a few days, help us to dare to risk reaching out and being more authentic and loving—even in our own families—even though we don’t know the outcome—if we take a step out of ourselves for You.  In Jesus’ Name, amen.

…God sent the angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth to a virgin engaged to be married to a man descended from David. His name was Joseph, and the virgin’s name, Mary. Upon entering, Gabriel greeted her:
Good morning! You’re beautiful with God’s beauty, beautiful inside and out! God be with you.

She was thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting like that. But the angel assured her, “Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you: You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call his name Jesus.”
Mary said to the angel, “But how? I’ve never slept with a man.”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you.  The power of the Highest hover over you; Therefore, the child you bring to birth will be called Holy, Son of God.”

Luke 1:26-32, 33-35, The Message

Some Good News about Some Bad News

People Experiencing Reorientation May Seem “Out of It”

Keith, our teenaged son went to a summer camp a normal, interesting kid who was only interested in football (and, I assume, sex).  But when he got home last week he was a religious freak, spouting Bible verses out of context with his eyes shining like his team had just won state.  I’m a church going Christian and we’ve prayed he’d do the same.  But as you once said to me, about another matter, we must have “over-prayed.”  What can we do?

Grapeleaves

A funny thing happened years ago at our house.  One of my daughters (as a teen) was learning to drive.  She had always been aware of where we were and where we are going when we are out driving.  I am not.  I often drive for blocks past a turn-off, with my mind a thousand miles away.  This daughter was the one who often sat beside me and whispered, “This next block is our turn, Daddy.”  She knew our town with her eyes closed.

But when she got behind the wheel for the first time in traffic, it was as if we were in a new city:  “Do I turn here, Daddy . . . Is this the right street?”

I was amazed and thought at first she was teasing me.  But then I saw that she was not.  A town that she had known like the back of her hand as a passenger became a strange and foreign place when she became responsible for the minute-by-minute decisions of driving.  She had to look for a whole new set of objects and distances—cars backing out of driveways, dogs and children starting for the street, vehicles at intersections, all kinds of street signs, in addition to everything behind her in the rearview mirror.   With all of these new things on which to focus—which had heretofore been only a part of the background—she felt as if she were in a different world.

I started to tell her to “Pay attention to what you are doing!”  Then I realized that she was very serious and was paying attention.  But she was experiencing a reorientation in the same situation because of trying to focus on different elements of her environment.  So I said nothing and kept telling myself it was the end result of her training which was important.

As we drove along, I began to understand why it may be that newly committed Christians appear to be sort of “out of it.”  For a while, they seem to be like new drivers behind the wheel—in a kind of daze in which the world they have known appears to be totally different.  Because of accepting the responsibility of a new relationship with God and focusing on loving Him and his people, they seem to be unaware of things and people to whom they once paid attention quite naturally.  Many ministers or relatives are hurt and surprised when a church member gets “turned on” at some sort of lay renewal meeting and begins paying less attention to them while focusing on new Christian friends.  They often suspect that the new commitment might have been to a cult of some sort of self-centered pietists.  The temptation is to be very judgmental of people experiencing this reorientation[1].

I do not know how one really ought to handle this situation.  But by the end of the week (in our car) I noticed that my daughter knew where she was again.  And now she can include both the old things she used to see . . . and the new things she needed to see to grow up and get on down the road.

When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is. When we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.

Goethe[2]

as quoted in Psychological Foundations of Education

In training a horse, it is important not to break his spirit because it is his spirit, during and after the training period, which will determine his style and endurance.  Does education, we may ask, allow for the ex­pression of the wildness of vitality during the educational process, or does it repress vitality in the interest of form and conformity?

Reuel Howe

The Miracle of Dialogue[3]

Lord, help us to be patient with new Christians who seem to have lost their perspective as they have entered a new relationship with you.  If they become temporarily blinded to the ordinary responsibilities and the old friends around them, help us to provide an atmosphere in which this new relationship with You can be tested and translated into deeper relationships with people.  Help us in the church to let new Christians enjoy the excitement of discovery without our hypercritical judgment—even though there may be some anxious moments about their soundness and responsibility.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”  But others, mocking, said, “They are filled with new wine.”

Acts 2:12, 13

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.

2 Corinthians 5:17


[1] This same kind of turned on excitement that makes people appear to have become weird  and distant and act as if they “know” and their families and friends “don’t” can take place when people first get into a 12 Step program, or even a comprehensive diet and/or exercise plan.

[2] Morris E. Eson, Psychological Foundations of Education (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), 39.

[3] Reuel Howe, The Miracle of Dialogue, (Greenwich, CT: Seabury Press, 1963), 124.

Some Good News about Some Bad News

A Living Library of Wisdom from God

Keith, how can I help people in trouble if I don’t know many Christian answers?

Grapeleaves

In the early years after I made a commitment to Christ I got the idea that I was supposed to have “Christian answers” to people’s problems.  So I repeated a few answers I’d learned from “old-timers” to people in trouble who came to me.  I was surprised to discover most people didn’t respond well to these “answers.”  It took me a while to realize that in the first place I can’t really help people as Jesus did until I at least listen to them and find out a little about who they are, where they came from before I met them and they shared their problem with me. I began to understand that God is almost the only one who is always ready to listen.  Many of us who are His followers are too busy talking to listen to people with the calm accepting love that God does. So now I try to listen longer and more carefully before I say anything about their “presenting” problem, even though it’s not easy to keep listening when someone says something that triggers one of my old “answers.”

I was surprised to learn that often the problem someone presents is not what is really bothering him or her, but more of a decoy—to see how I respond.  Will I be accepting or just spout pat answers? The real problem is usually something the person feels he or she should not have (as a grown-up or as a long-term Christian) and is afraid of being rejected because of having it. 

Sometimes by listening I discover whether the individual really wants to be healed.  Sometimes people unconsciously keep God’s kind of healing at a distance by enjoying always being the sick one, the abused one, the deserted one who has been wronged. 

But either way, as I listen I try to recognize how the person is feeling and to remember how I’ve felt when I have experienced that problem, or known about it.  I respond by briefly telling my own personal experience and how painful it felt or ashamed I was when I experienced it.  And when I do that, often something happens that changes the atmosphere that the person wanting help and I share.

The person may realize that he or she is not alone with this problem—and that what he or she is feeling is totally “normal” (though possibly very painful and guilt producing).  This realization may calm fears and anxiety enough so that we can discover together steps to take to resolve or accept the situation. Often it is the feelings of anger, shame or guilt about having the problem that blind one to possible new approaches to solving or accepting the problem.  

The simple idea (of listening first) led to a change of perspective that was very freeing to me.  I’m convinced that sometimes people want just to be heard, known and understood.  When they feel that they are known and accepted they may be able to set aside even painful feelings and experience the relief of a resolution or acceptance. If someone else notices the person’s improved mood and asks about it, my experience indicates that the person usually doesn’t say, “I’ve found someone with great answers.” Instead the newly relieved person is more likely to be thankful and tell his or her friends “Here’s someone who helped me see who I really am.” 

Lord, help us to learn to surrender our lives to you and pay attention to what is happening to us, so that we can learn from the painful experiences in our lives.  Help us to accept painful rejection and failure as a future drawbridge across which we can bring others into our lives to be introduced to Your kind of love and attention that transforms even the more devastating pain, loss and despair into Your kind of wisdom and healing love—that can become the most creative “solution” to life’s most difficult problems.  Thank you that these lessons can become parts of the living library of wisdom from You that we’ll need in order to let people know there is hope for them beyond the pain and fear they are now experiencing.

And thank You, Lord, that You waited for me to get through with all my rejection of You and then the superficial play-like commitments that I made early in my life.  Help me to keep listening to those other hurting, lonely and marginalized people in whom You said we’d meet You and find the Life You brought to share with us.  In Jesus’ name, amen.

Back in the village she told the people, “Come see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out.  Do you think he could be the Messiah?  And they went out to see for themselves.”

John 4:28-30, The Message

 

Some Good News about Some Bad News

The War of the Inner Voices

I am a grown person, and I have tried to commit my whole life to God and really want to do God’s will. Whenever I am tempted to do something immoral or dishonest my head is filled with difficult inner voices debating inside my mind. There are rigid, fearful, and righteous voices on one side, and smooth seductive, rationalizing, shaming voices on the other.

I’m feeling like a real failure as a Christian. Whatever the Saints I’ve read about did to remain so peaceful, I just ain’t got it. Do you have any suggestions about how to get rid of those inner voices (or at least get control of the outcome of their inner debates)?

Grapeleaves

Wow! That’s a mouthful of difficult (but very real) questions. I have certainly had a lot of time with some very similar sounding and convincing voices, and from what I’ve heard so have many other people.

When I first became a Christian, I was amazed at how hard it was for me to give up certain habits of thinking or acting on certain impulses (everything from exaggerating expenses on my income tax forms to lustful fantasies). Contemporary Christian leaders I’d met didn’t seem to have such grubby problems after they had made serious commitments of their lives to Christ. So I began to read about the lives of the people the church has designated as Saints, figuring that they might be honest about the real stuff.

Fortunately, a wise older Christian mentor told me that he’d also wrestled with temptations, experiencing almost despair until his mentor told him that there are apparently at least two kinds of Christians. Some seem to be blessed with a simple, clear cut way to deal with temptation: when a temptation comes to act against principles that are God’s will, they apparently just pray about the decision and decide to do God’s will.

The second kind of Christian experience is like yours—and mine. We seem to have all kinds of inner voices trying to seduce us away from God and his will. My old friend said, “I try to convince all of my “good” voices to join forces and support me in doing the right thing. I try to get them to the polls early to give me a quick, and overwhelming “No” vote victory to stop the rationalizing, seductive voices from luring me into a decision to move toward the temptation or back into indecision.”

Even using this approach there were some temptations about which it was very hard to get a big majority vote, much less a one hundred percent vote for God’s way—which I thought should be the normal outcome for a really committed Christian. But when I asked about that, my old mentor smiled broadly and said, “I discovered that all you need is a bare majority of one vote. Just enough to make the decision to do God’s will.” He added, “Keith, if you struggled and won the decision to do God’s will by only one vote every day for 20 years, you’d be a real flesh and blood Saint!

“Sainthood,” he continued, “is not achieved by killing off all the tempting voices, but by growing through the struggles in the midst of a world of temptations, realizing that each victory is basically a result of continuing to live life in Christ the best we can. Each attempt adds a kind of spiritual muscle to handle more and more important problems and decisions in God’s Kingdom. And over the years,” he said, “I feel calmer and have more and more confidence that God will give me the strength I need to live for Him one decision at a time.”

He reminded me that in the garden, the night before his trial, Jesus tried three times to get out of doing God’s will, the most loving act in history—and his struggle was so difficult the text says, “he sweated blood.”

Leaving there, he went, as he so often did, to Mount Olives. The disciples followed him. When they arrived at the place, he said, “Pray that you don’t give in to temptation.”

He pulled away from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, “Father, remove this cup from me. But please, not what I want. What do you want?” At once an angel from heaven was at his side, strengthening him. He prayed on all the harder. Sweat, wrung from him like drops of blood, poured off his face. Luke 22:39-44

Paul describes his experience of this struggle in Romans as follows:

But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. … The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. Romans 7:17-19, 25. THE MESSAGE

I guess it’s really the Spirit of living our entire life in Christ that finally lets us relax and enjoy the game.

Lord, thank you that you give us enough strength for each day and we don’t have to worry about having strength for our whole future right now. I am grateful that you have let us see through your honest servants like Paul that building your kind of character is sometimes more like playing baseball than being so focused on perfection. They tell me that the greatest batter in baseball’s history struck out about half the time at bat. Help me to take it easy and just learn the fundamentals of loving and showing up for the practice where you can teach us to love the other person as well as the game—instead of spending so much time fretting about the score. In Jesus’ name, amen.

With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny….. Romans 8:1-2, THE MESSAGE

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