The limits of Hope

The idolatry of hope can take at least two forms.   The first is to provide a false promise of escaping our struggles without pain or effort, by the promotion of baseless dreams, or fantasies.  

We need to be careful with dreams.   Dreams that are not rooted in realism on one side and in faith on the other become stumbling blocks to achievement.  If we fantasize about getting in shape, anticipating the pleasures that would be ours, our fake pleasures may become substitutes for real pleasures that come only after months of painful effort.   Hope that does not include effort is not hope at all, but life-denying fantasy. 

Here is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of our modern civilization.   We live in a society where fantasy is fast becoming our main commodity.   Movies, video games, music, fashion industries are all about selling fantasy.     We dream of being thin while becoming fatter, of being richer while becoming poorer, of being popular while becoming more isolated from others.   Marx once called religion the “opiate of the masses.” Today, it is fantasy.  

Fantasy produces a feeling of success while we fail, of strength while we become weak, and of knowledge when we know nothing.   Our dream based society has become the destroyer of real hope.

The other danger hope creates in us is confusing conditional, temporary hopes with unconditional, permanent ones.   In this case, the methods for achieving hopes may be confused with the hopes themselves.   Then, we the achievement of our conditional hopes leads us away from the realization of permanent, lasting ones. 

Security is a promise from God.  It comes because He is over all things.  God does not tell us, though how He will fulfill His promise.   He may do it by providing us with enough finances to save for the future, or He may use other means.  

Jesus told this parable.  

"The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop.  He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.'

"Then he said, 'This is what I'll do.  I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.  And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years.  Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." ' 

"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.  Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'

"This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God." 

Luke 12:16-21

Idols are often hard to recognize, since we often rationalize them by saying we are only trusting in God.   We would be better off with no security in this world than to confuse our temporal sources of security with real protection from God.  

Financial savings can confuse us into thinking that we are more secure than we are. Even if our finances are more secure, the hope we have is not leading us to trust in God, but could really lead us away from God.  

All human hopes are conditional on circumstances which lie always in the hands of God.  We can build walls to protect us against enemies, but the can not stop the plague. For every earthly precaution there is something that can and will in time overcome it. 

The turtle is a remarkable animal, which has survived on earth for millions of years. They move slowly because they can.  There are few natural enemies it needs to fear.  But millions of years of successful defense could not prepare the unfortunate turtle crossing a road on a summer evening for an eighteen-wheeler traveling sixty miles an hour. 

When our hope is in our own cleverness or strength, there is no certainty of success. But when our hope is in Christ, and our hope is aligned with His will, hope gives us strength and confidence facing forward.

With this blog, we have finally finished the eight facets of the matrix. But this is not the end of the blog.  I have a few more “rants” I will be putting up soon.  I will also be looking for other bloggers and material to fill this blog.

Soon, I will be launching a faith matrix website, and will be offering materials for sharing there.

If you have enjoyed this series, let me know, and share the posts that are meaningful. 

Thanks for reading. 

The Virtues of Self-Awareness

We get self-knowledge the same we acquire any other knowledge--by applying ourselves to study the subject. We do this by setting aside time alone to meditate on our own history,  goals, and basic nature.  

But self-study is considerably harder than studying mathematics, astronomy, or psychology. It is hard to see ourselves objectively. We need God’s help, along with the help of of people close to us. But once we have come to understand who we truly are in God’s eyes, then that self-awareness can help us overcome anything the world throws at us.

Joseph the Patriarch was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, and unjustly imprisoned.  But after he was released and promoted to a position of great power, he told his brothers “you meant it for evil, but God intended it for good.” (Gen. 50:20) It was his self-awareness of his own place before God that enabled him to survive and thrive.

Paul was beaten, imprisoned, stoned, shipwrecked, and left for dead, but in reflecting on his life story said.  “I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.”  (2 Cor. 12:20) His confidence in the face of suffering came from His awareness of himself before God.  He interpreted his life story through the lenses of God’s love, and His confidence before Him.

This kind of confidence only comes by daily struggling to establish daily practices of self-awareness.  These practices are based upon the developing certain basic virtues of self-awareness.  These include:  honesty, introspection, expression, remembering, and forgetting. 

1. Honesty.  Before we can know ourselves, we must be honest about our thoughts, feelings and actions.  This honesty means not only recognizing them to ourselves but acknowledging them to others.  John calls this “walking in the light” in 1 John 1: 5-7:

 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.  If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin

To walk in the light is to live honestly and transparently. We must reject the old adage “fake it till you make it.”  We cannot present one side to the world and another side to God. We must show our true--not without fear of what others will do, but trusting God to defend us.    

2, Introspection.  Self-awareness also requires self-examination. This means we must have a regular habit of self-appraisal on an ongoing basis. Only by practicing regular self-examination can the Spirit make us aware of our personal shortcomings as well as our personal assets, so we can improve the former while maximizing the latter.    

We all put on masks in front of others.  The biggest masks we wear, though, are the ones we wear when we look in the mirror.  We refuse self-examination and so we lack self-awareness.  We have reasons for this neglect.  We tell ourselves we don’t have time to look inside, and dismiss introspection as pointless navel-gazing. Sometimes this might be true, but more often we just don’t want to be bothered by a need for change. We often whitewash our real motives and conduct and make excuses for behavior for which we ought to be ashamed. 

But if we are ashamed of the past, it is only because we do not yet have the mind of Christ.  God has forgiven our past sins through Him.  We no longer stand condemned by God. We do not look back in shame, but to learn how to live in the future.

 Confession and recollection of our sins is like doing an autopsy on a dead animal. It nat be unpleasant but it can be helpful. Our past sins are dead, they can no longer harm us, but they can show us what to avoid in the future. We are free.  We can honestly assess our past, since we are no longer bound by it.   To hide sin is to give power to it.  Nor do we need to pretend to any kind of perfection, since in acknowledging and confessing sin, we have already acknowledged our imperfection.

3. Self-expression.  Have you ever had the experience of speaking and suddenly becoming aware that you were saying too much?  You find yourself expressing irritation at something you thought was already over.  Later, you say to yourself “Why did I ever talk like that?”   We do this because speaking is like turning on a spigot to our inner thoughts and emotions.  We may think we know what is us, but we are often surprised at feelings that rush out. 

Learning to express ourselves, both through journaling and speaking is necessary to really know ourselves.

Counselors call it “the talking cure.”  By getting a client to tell their story over and over, they process it in their mind. Each time we say or write what we have thought or done, we learn something new. We are not only speaking to others, but to ourselves.    

Sometimes words are not enough.  Art is a means of self-expression that reveals ourselves to ourselves. Any activity kind of creative activity opens up a window to our own soul. 

4.  Remembering.  Rabbi Joshua Heschel once wrote “Much of what the Bible demands can be compressed into one word—remember.”[1]  We need to remember events of ancient times, but we also need to remember where we came from, where we are going, and what God has done for us along the way. Telling the story of our faith journey helps us understand who we are, and to become aware of what God is doing in our lives. 

There are two kinds of memory—long term and short-term. One is the long story of where we were and where we are headed, of  answered prayers and moments of joy.  These memories sustain us through hard times. 

Short term memory is important when we get lost in the big tragedies of life.  They focus our attention down, like the lens of a microscope, on the daily blessings of today.  Remember the little blessings of this morning or last night helps us give thanks for the daily things when life seems long and hard.

One of my daily prayers each morning goes like this “Holy Father, maker of all things, thank your for Your universe.” It reminds me that God made all things to be enjoyed. When I fail to notice the beauty of my surroundings, I remember that the One who made all things for a good purpose.

5.  Forgetting.  Forgetting is just as important as remembering.  We should be aware of all things, but we do not dwell on all things.  I can choose lay aside those memories that are not profitable to me.  Intentional forgetting is not a denial but a choice to not allow those negative parts of my story to become important to the overall ending.  I choose to forget sins against me--not because they didn’t occur, but because I simply do not dwell upon them. 

Christian self-awareness comes from examining and interpreting our lives in the light of Christ. We put aside the elements of our past that we lead away from Him, while remembering what lead us to Him.  In this way, we surrender our story to the grace and mercy of Christ.

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[1][1] Quoted from Trevor Hudson’s Discovering our Spiritual Identity,  IVP press, 2010, p. 35.

The Limits of Passion

see the video on passion here.

While emotions are good and necessary in our Spiritual walk, emotionalism--the worship of emotions--is a danger for anyone who would seek God.  Emotionalism is not the pursuit of God through passion, but the pursuit of passion through God.  It is an addiction to a feeling. 

There is nothing wrong with letting our emotions loose in the worship of God, but feelings can become overpowering.  When emotions rule, they can be cruel masters. 

In chapel in a school where I teach, a preacher preached a stirring, passionate sermon. The congregation responded emotionally, shouting and lifting their hands.  It was a powerful moment.  Afterwards, I asked my preaching class.  “Did you enjoy chapel?”

They responded with an enthusiastic “Absolutely!” 

“How many of you ever got that kind of response to one of your sermons? Is it a good feeling?”  Many said they had, and that they loved it.

Then I went on.  “What would you do for that feeling? Would you lie to get that feeling? Would you push others aside to get into the chance at that feeling again?  Would you pretend to hear from God, just to get that feeling?”

This time, no hands went up.  But they all said they knew preachers who did.  There are very few things quite so addicting at the attention of others, especially in church.  The feeling of pride and power which comes from being in front of a crowd is just as addictive as cocaine or heroin. Passionate desire is wonderful, but seeking it for its own sake cuts us off from God.

Emotions are not constant. Sometimes they come with great power. Other times, they may to dry up altogether. This does not mean God abandons us. Our relationship with God does not depend upon how we feel today. 

Passions can be divided into three classes:

·       unconscious passions that we do not recognize,

·       ordinate passions that we both recognize and master,

·       and inordinate passions, which master us.  

Unconscious passions are our prejudices and preferences. If we prefer chocolate ice cream over vanilla, a red dress over green one, or rock over jazz, we we may not even know why-we just feel it.  Superficial preferences make little or no difference spiritually--they are simply the byproducts of our upbringing, conditioning and heredity.  They do not cause a problem spiritually unless we mistake our feelings for what discernment from God. If we think that God is for chocolate over vanilla, red over black or one kind of music over another, then we have confused our unconscious feelings for God.

When applied to people, the preferences become prejudices.  We may feel that fat people are lazy, rappers are not real musicians, or tall people make good leaders—without any true rational basis for such assumptions.  We may try to rationalize these feelings, when there is really no rational basis. Our attempts to justify our prejudices are the result of emotional suppression. We may react to someone positively or negatively because of some past experiences with someone similar. If we recognize our prejudices for what they are—echoes of past feelings, we can laugh them off and go on. But if we do not recognize them, they cloud our perception of the truth.

The best way to overcome unconscious feelings is to make them conscious. Acknowledge that we—like everyone else in the world—is prejudice to some degree, due to our previous emotional training.  If we recognize this, we can make allowances for it, like a marksman adjusting for the wind direction when he takes aim. But if we deny our feelings of bias we miss the truth every time.

Ordinate passions are feelings that are recognized but under controlled. Every passion has its proper time and place.  “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” (Eccl 3:1)    Knowing our feelings and when to express them is essential to wisdom. 

Passions must be expressed sometime.  They cannot be suppressed forever.  Ignoring our feelings is like ignoring a fire alarm.  If we do not pay attention to our feelings, they will consume us. Learning to express our feelings in controlled, non-harmful ways prevents them from exploding into destructive behavior. 

All passions are linked. If we deny our negative feelings such as fear, lust, and anger, we will usually find that our positive feelings—love, joy, and happiness, will become harder to express.  To deny one passion is to deny them all. 

Inordinate passions are the loud, insistent and demanding passions that are out of control-- anger so strong that we strike out in violence, lust so strong that it leads to pornography and adultery, appetites so strong that we cannot stop eating, or fear so strong that we panic and run from a fight. They cannot be ignored or allowed to run wild, any more than we can ignore a mad dog in our yard. They ruin lives and destroy relationships.

Philip St. Romain offers these warning signs of an inordinate passion:

·       When every decision in life centers around it.

·       When the thought of not having it causes us to be anxious and afraid.

·       When our desire for it eclipses all other desires

·       When cannot imagine any circumstance that would completely satisfy our desire.

·       When we compare ourselves with other people’s so-called fulfilled desires.

·       When we lose our passion for everything else. [1]

If we fall victim to inordinate passions, we must confess them to God and to others. Pray for help from God, confess the hurts we have caused, and seek professional help if necessary to learn how to manage our inordinate passions. 

Inordinate passions are serious; but equally serious and dangerous are passions which are not high enough.  We cannot adequately serve God and others unless we feel love or help without feeling empathy. Bridling our emotions is not enough. They are the engines which will power our faith.  

We must say something, too about guidance and passions.  God has spoken to us subjectively through dreams, metaphors, visions and feelings. But we must remember that our capacity to receive God’s guidance through such means has been seriously affected by our own inordinate and unconscious emotions, and by our sinful nature in general.  Do not trust subjective feelings alone, but test them against what God has given us for objective guidance.  Test them through the Word of God and through seeking the guidance of others who are not as emotionally involved as you.  Do not trust temporary feelings to make permanent changes in your life.  Long term changes comes from changing daily habits. Habits will be the subject of our next article.

Have you discovered any unconscious prejudices or inordinate desires in your life? What do you find is the best way of dealing with them when you find them?  Write and let us know. 

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[1] Philip St. Roman A Handbook for Spiritual ho Directees;  a book of Spiritual Exercises, (Kindle Edition)

Three Kinds of Faith

All people everywhere have some system of faith, whether it based on the truth or not.  Without faith in something,  life would be impossible.  Not all faiths lead to heaven, nor do all people believe in heaven. We can build our lives around all kinds of things. 
 It is not always obvious what category a person’s true faith lies, not even to the person themselves.  Many people who profess a religious belief,  do not hold that religious belief very strongly.  The center or their being is not located in religion, but in the pursuit of something else. This is what the Bible calls idolatry—worshipping a false god rather than a true one, or worshipping a true God without sincerity. God is merely a means to serving something else, though what we serve may be unclear. Their spiritual selves are double-minded and confused, and moral choices or necessarily belief becomes difficult.
Generally, we can divide these faith systems into three broad categories—self-based, community-based, and God-based. 
Self-based faith
Self-based faith finds its meaning in a person’s inner being, not in outer relationships.   No exterior standard or truth is necessary.  The poet William Ernest Henley in this kind of faith in his poem Invictus:
            “Out of the depths that cover me

Black as the pit from pole to pole

I thank whatever gods may be

For my own unconquerable soul.”

Or as Frank Sinatra put it,
         “For what is a man what has he got? If not himself then he has not.
            The record shows I took the blows and did it my way.”
In self-based faith, doing it our way is all important. Self-fulfillment or self-actualization is our ultimate concern.
This kind of spirituality goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. Hedonists and Epicureans taught that the ultimate goal of life was personal pleasure—not the passing desires of the flesh, but the higher pursuits of the human spirit, which included personal self-discovery, self-expression and well-being.  This is not necessarily a selfish faith since love is usually considered one of the highest personal pleasures. A person can be loving and generous to others, but they do it to make themselves feel good. 
Another variant of self-spirituality is the modern “self-esteem” movement, which puts our own personal growth above everything else.  Getting in touch with our “inner selves”  is the same as getting in touch with God.  Relationships and activities that do not bring us self-fulfillment are considered detrimental to our spirits. 
 C. K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy.
That Jones shall worship the "god within him" turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon - anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners."
Self-based faith is its lack of outside checks on morals or behavior. The only true discipline is self discipline. The only true morality is being true to ourselves.
 In anxious times, self-based faith easily becomes sheer selfishness. If we are on a sinking ship, why should we obey the cry “women and children first” if self is our own ultimate good?
The other problem with self-spirituality is that it has no real mirror.  Other people give us a measuring stick that helps us see ourselves. If we are absorbed totally pursuing our own self-esteem, we cannot discover our true selves.  We are like a person, living in a room without a mirror, who cannot see our own faults, or even our own beauty. We need other people to help us realize our own best interests.   
Community-based faith
Community-based faith finds its meaning in relationship to a community.  This community can be very large or very small--It can be all of humanity, our family, country, ethnic group, circle of friends, or even one other person.  Being part of any other set of individuals, losing our identity in a group, is the essence of community spirituality. Nationalism, patriotism, regionalism, racism, family values, and school spirit are all expressions of this kind of faith.

One of the most striking expressions of community-based spirituality I ever saw was while I was traveling in a van from Moscow to Bryansk, Russia.  Along the road was a monument to a battle fought in World War II. A woman in a wedding dress was there, stopping traffic. She spoke to our driver and we drove on.  The driver explained that in this province, brides on their wedding day stop cars at war monuments to remind people of the men who died, who never had a chance to marry.  

 It’s hard to imagine American brides spending their wedding day doing something patriotic. But in her mind patriotism came before marriage. Personal lives are secondary in Russian culture to the welfare of the whole, even on your wedding day.  

Conservative talk-show hosts talk about “family values,” as if family and God are the same.  Liberals talk about community values in the same way. We put American flags in our sanctuaries and national anthems in our hymnbooks without ever thinking that patriotism and godliness are the same thing.  Holy days like Christmas seem more about family and the universal kinship of humanity than the incarnation of a transcendent God.  Christmas stories like The Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life that are more about loving others than meeting Christ. 

Community-based faith produces altruism and self-sacrifice more easily than self-based faith.  But it creates problems. What happens when the many different communities of which we are a part do not agree with each other? When we have to choose communities which one comes first?

Another problem with community-based faith is how we treat those not in our community.

 In the Godfather movies, Michael Corleone chooses loyalty to his family (the Mafia) over life as a law-abiding citizen, and destroys his family in the process.  Soldiers like Irwin Rommel fought for the Third Reich because they believed that their country came first. Marxism, which claims to stand for uplifting of the common person, has produced more bloody dictatorships than any ideology in history.  Community-based faith can deny the value of those outside our community, even when it claims to serve all. Those who do not go along with community values are usually treated as enemies to be crushed. Morality is situational, absolute, based on what one community views as “the greater good.”

In the end, community-based faith has no outside source of morality, patriotism devolves to nationalism, creedalism become oppression, families become clans, and churches become cults. 

 God-based faith

God-based faith finds meaning beyond self and community in an all-wise Creator Who is the source of all truth and goodness.   God judges the actions of all countries, communities, races, and families.    

God based faith does not have all the answers, but it at least acknowledges the fact, which community and self-based faiths do not. When our ultimate concern is something in this world, we can only make moral choices based on what we see around us and the needs of the moment. But God-based faith looks for truth beyond ourselves, which keeps us humble.

One drawback to God-based faith, is that in order to have it, you must actually believe there is a God. Not only that, but you must believe He has spoken. Not only that, you also have to believe He is still speaking.   If we are not sure, or if we believe He is not speaking, there is no   lreason to make Him the central concern of our existence.  Deism, which believes God started the universe but is now has nothing to do with it, rarely produces anything like real faith.  If God is absent from the world, then there is no reason to base our lives around Him.  God may be our Creator,  but He is an absent one, and or no real value in our daily living.  Without faith in God,  we necessarily fall back on self-satisfaction or community life as the reason for existence.

Here are some questions to get you thinking:

Is your ultimate concern in life God, some community, or yourself?  Which one  do you serve on a day-by-day basis? If you had to live without self-fulfillment or family connections, could you find fulfillment in life?    If you believe in God, do you serve Him so you can be a better person or have a better community, or do you seek to be a better person or have a better community so you can serve God? 

Write a comment and share what you think.