Spare the rod, spoil the logic

There's an article in yesterdays's New York Times about a pastor in Pleasantville, Tennessee, who has written a book about how to raise children. Apparently the book was hailed by parents who severely abused their adopted daughter until she died. When her body was found she was emaciated, had been beaten, and apparently had been forced to live outside in an unheated barn. The upshot of the article was that the pastor had written a book along the lines of, "People are inherently sinful. Parents need to train their children not to sin. The only way to keep them from sinning is to spank them, or withhold food from them, or give them some other form of punishment until they eventually learn to behave."

What strikes me is the inherent lack of the gospel in this story. At the very end of the article the  pastor is quoted as saying, "To give up the use of the rod is to give up our views of human nature, God, eternity." Where is the gospel in that? Where is grace? He seems to believe that the only way to get to heaven is to beat our human nature into submission, physically, so that God will accept our beaten up submission and allow us into heaven. If the only way to get rid of sin is to beat it out of a person, then why didn't Jesus come down with a big stick and give us all what for?

Isn't the whole point of the gospel that we can't sacrifice enough to ever make ourselves worthy? No amount of beating will ever cleanse us from our sin. Only the atoning death of Jesus can pay that price. And then we don't have to. There's no, "grace plus beating" clause in the gospel. The pastor's comment makes no logical sense in light of what Jesus has already done.

What Am I Afraid Of?

I got to thinking yesterday, " What am I afraid of?" It's a long story on how I came to that question. Suffice it to say that the combination of my sister mentioning a life theory of fear vs. love, combined with a bus ride yesterday with a bunch of rather mean 8th graders got me first to wondering what they fear, which led me to wondering what I fear.  I took some time out to think about that question. I think there are specific fears for various situations, but one overriding fear that seems to dominate over all the rest is the fear of failure. What if I mess up? What if I screw up so bad that someone else has to deal with it?

I thought of death or of being in a situation like Joanne, where she had a debilitating stroke several months ago and is taking slow steps down the long road of recovery. But neither of those things scared me. What scared me was that if I died, someone else would have to come in and go through the piles of stuff I haven't gotten through in my office. (It also makes me very sad to think of what my family would go through. But that's because of my love for them, not for any fear of what they'll experience. I know they'll find a way to carry on without me, even if they miss me a great deal.) I fear messing up when I'm talking to someone - of saying the wrong thing or not saying what I want to say in a way that the other person will comprehend in the way I want it to be comprehended. I guess when I boil it all down, I fear that I'll get it wrong. I fear that I'll do or say something that impacts someone else negatively, in a way that they'll be left cleaning up my mess whether it's physical or emotional or maybe even spiritual.

My fear might seem very silly to you, but it's very poignant to me. It's pretty central to how I think about myself. I am a person who orders things. You might not think that from looking at my house or my back yard. But when I write a newsletter, I'm not only organizing words into a coherent and hopefully interesting portrayal of information, but I'm also organizing the blocks of text and images on the page. When I do the book keeping for the church or for CFHL, I'm ordering numbers - moving them in and out and keeping them all lined up in a row as I do so. I organize my kids schedules. I order the morning routine so that the kids can sleep as late as possible and still get to the bus stop on time. I take in and organize information for the kids school and send it out to the PTO and other parents. I take in, I rearrange and organize and then I send out. I wish I had a more ordered house and yard, but that one gets away from me, which I'm sure is why it comes at me in my fears.

So yesterday, while I was lying on my bed thinking this stuff through, I managed to ironically do what I feared. I messed up. Nathan had a 3:30 doctor's appointment and I entirely forgot about it. I had remembered it yesterday morning. But by afternoon I was exhausted and the appointment wasn't on my radar. When the office called to see what the deal was, I lost it. I broke down. That was it. I'd messed up. My greatest fear came rushing over me to overwhelm me.

It hasn't left me there. I've tried to walk myself through some of the things that I have been encouraging Nathan to do when he hits something that throws him for a loop. I've tried to look at the bigger picture. Sure, this happened and I screwed up, but what will that matter a year from now? Five years from now? It won't. It really wasn't that big of a deal. But it felt like a big deal. I'm still holding on to that feeling of it being a big deal, even if it wasn't.

I'm at Everyday Joe's right now sipping on my new favorite tea, Margaret's Hope Darjeeling, and reading Resident Aliens (Hauerwas and Willimon) and I hit this bit, "True freedom arises, not in our loud assertion of our individual independence, but in our being linked to a true story, which enables us to say yes and no. Our worst sins arise as our response to our innate human fear that we are a nobody." That, combined with several other bits that I'll probably share in another post, helped me to see that looking at the long term regarding my mess up wasn't really looking at the entire big picture. There's more that, if I really want to heal from this, I need to do. I need to allow for grace.

When I missed Nathan's appointment yesterday I was frustrated with Rob because he just didn't seem to get it. He didn't get that this was a major mess up. He wasn't as upset as I thought he should have been about it. He didn't jump in to be my superman, fixing the screw up that I had made. But looking back on it, I see it a different way now. Rob saw the situation with more grace than I did. He knows it's not the end of the world and he treated the situation as it deserves. He didn't get bent out of shape. He shrugged it off and moved on. Granted, it wasn't his mess up. But even though it was mine, that doesn't mean I need to hold on to it.

Jackie, Nathan's doctor, also dealt with me with grace. She talked to me on the phone about how Nathan's doing and she got us set up with an appointment on Wednesday next week. Though I'm sure it was frustrating for her to wait for us and we didn't show, she didn't express any anger with me. She didn't even show her frustration. She dealt with the situation and moved on, according it only what it required and not pouring extra meaning into the event that it didn't have.

And God forgives my screw up. When I stand before him at the end times, he's not going to pull out his notebook and say, "Dang, Meg. What's this about you forgetting that doctor's appointment?" There are much deeper heart issues that he's concerned with, and me messing up isn't a central issue. He knows I'm human. He knows I'm fallen. A central issue is that I let my fear of messing up define me. I let my belief that I can hold it all together, and that if I don't I'm worthless, be a driving force in my life. That's the heart issue. That's what's important. And I can't let go of that belief until I start to see the grace that is being offered to me by those around me and accept that grace from them, most especially God's grace.

God hasn't set me on the planet with some directions and then nudged me out to do it or fail. He has set me on this planet and then he's put himself beside me. We walk together. Even when I forget to let him lead (He's the one that knows the way after all. He should be the one leading.) and I try to take over with my own map and my own agenda, he's still there beside me. He's committed himself to get me through this. Some would say he's covenanted himself. This is one of those footprints in the sand times and I can choose to let it reinforce my fears. Or I can acknowledge that now is when there's only that one set of footprints in the sand and they sure aren't mine. I can't do this on my own, but then again, I don't have to. Thank God.

Grace over Karma

I've seen the term "karma" come up a couple of times lately and it strikes me that karma really is a basic human belief. I've always thought of it as only a Hindu or Buddhist thing. But in reading Jonathan Haidt's recent article, What Tea Partiers Really Want: The passion behind the populist insurgency is less about liberty than a particularly American idea of Karma (WSJ), it dawned on me that he was right. Except that I don't think it's just the Tea Party that believes so strongly in karma. I think Republicans, Democrats and Libertarians are just as likely to subscribe morally to a karmic system of belief. Different groups simply come at it from different angles. Conservatives tend to want justice to be enforced - which is the latter half of karma. Liberals tend to want mercy to be given - which is the former half of karma. These are gross generalizations, but I think it's fair to summarize it this way -- Conservatives believe that if we live wrong then we should be punished. Liberals believe that if we live mercifully then we should be rewarded. Both subscribe to a system of karma, they just focus on different sides of the same coin.

This morning I came across some excerpts of an interview with Bono from the book Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas. He mentions karma also, and in much the same way. (And the fact that he's across the pond means that this isn't just an American way of thinking.) Here's an excerpt from the excerpt:

Bono: Yes, I think that's normal. It's a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.

Assayas: I haven't heard you talk about that.Bono: I really believe we've moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace.Assayas: Well, that doesn't make it clearer for me.

Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics; in physical laws every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that "as you reap, so you will sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff.

Assayas: I'd be interested to hear that.

Bono: That's between me and God. But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep s---. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity.

Assayas: The Son of God who takes away the sins of the world. I wish I could believe in that.

Bono: But I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb. I love the idea that God says: Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there's a mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and, let's face it, you're not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That's the point. It should keep us humbled . It's not our own good works that get us through the gates of heaven.

I think Bono's got it right. Karma is at the heart of all religion, probably because it's at the heart of our understanding of how the world should work. It seems to be something ingrained in us from birth (in the same way that sin and selfishness is ingrained in us from birth). If we are wronged then we want justice. (Of course, when we are the ones doing wrong, then we either choose to ignore it or we see it and hope for mercy. What the other guy did is always worse than what we've done ourselves, right?)

Karma is a harsh mistress. I know very few people who would come back as Brahman or cows. I know a lot of people who would come back as maggots or monkeys or dogs. If left to karma, I think we have no hope of improvement. If history has taught us one thing it's that humans suck. We screw up with a regularity that would impress any GI doc. If karma is our lot, then we really have no hope. Humanity hasn't improved morally. We are no less likely to enslave or murder our fellow man today than we were 5000 years ago. And we have better technology to do it with. It is estimated that there are more slaves in the world today than in all other previous time periods combined. And it goes without saying that WMD beat swords and arrows hands down.

Karma says that you will be rewarded according to what you have done. But grace turns that on its head. Grace runs in the exact opposite direction. It says that you will be rewarded despite what you have done. It doesn't turn a blind eye to my sin. It looks it full in the face, calls it what it is, and then it meets the requirement of karma through the sacrifice of another. The result of my bad karma falls squarely upon the shoulders of one who graciously gives me his good karma in return. That's grace.

Grace and Love and Sabbath Rest

More quotes from John Alexander's book:

"'Don't be anxious' isn't mostly a command. It's mostly a promise. A promise that God is taking care of us. That is at the heart of everything in the Bible. Not that you must gird yourself up to grind through some costly duty, but that God loves you so much that you're free to stop guarding your rights and to start loving extravagantly."

We fail to "grasp experientially the grace and love of God. Gene Edwards illustrates this beautifully. Imagine a man buying a horseless carriage when they first came out without grasping where the power came from. Suppose he knew he wasn't to use horses any more, but the person who sold him the car forgot to tell him about the ignition. So some days he sits in the carriage and goes nowhere, and other days he gets out and sweats and strains to pull the carriage himself. This is the Christian life if we don't grasp that we have died and Christ is the power, Christ the one who lives our life through us. We really can't do it. So we either sit around in our magnificent theology going nowhere, or we strive to be good Christians with tragic failure after tragic failure. We don't quite grasp that our power, the ignition switch, the driving force of our lives, is the love of God in Jesus. But that doesn't mean we do nothing, that we sit in the horseless carriage without moving. No, it means we zip around on the love of God."

"...Sabbath rest is little more than an embodiment of salvation by faith. At least, that's the way it seems to me."

"Sabbath is about God being in control of the whole universe and lovingly holding his people in the palm of his hand."