Category: Keeping Sane & Productive in an Insane World

The world conspires to make us crazy, stuck, and unproductive. How do we keep sane and productive?

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Talk About Death

“Talk About Death” says chapter heading 41 in Irvin D. Yalom’s The Gift of Therapy.

Why does Yalom say this? Consideration of death provides us an opportunity for growth.

This conclusion arises from two observations. First, he says that behind many of our problems is the subconscious awareness of death. Concerns about the transitions of life are often about the shortness of life. Instead of letting it be an undercurrent, we can make it explicit and gain wisdom by considering the shortness of our lives.

Second, he observed that those who were facing death often made the greatest progress in therapy. He did therapy with cancer patients who were facing death, and he was amazed at how quickly insights about life would come to them in contrast to other patients who took so much longer to really confront key issues in their lives.

One explanation for why this is the case is what the philosopher Martin Heidegger called two modes of existence: the everyday mode and the ontological mode. In the every day mode, we consider the events of our everyday life. In the ontological mode, we ask questions about being itself. Growth occurs when we step into the ontological mode.

I might re-phrase it this way: our normal way of thinking is to look at the small picture. In order to grow, we need to look at the big picture and ask questions like: why am I here? What is my purpose? What really matters? What is my relationship to God?

The specter of death has a way of helping us move into the ontological or big picture mode. This is where growth occurs.

So, do we need to wait until we are dying to ask big picture questions? Of course, we do not, but it’s hard for us to move out of the small picture, every day mode. So, how can we move into the big picture mode? How do we help others do the same?

Yalom notes that there are many events in our lives that present opportunities for considering the bigger picture: the death of a spouse, children leaving home, retirement, a move to another place. These things have a way of stripping away temporary things that we rely on and opening the possibility for deeper questions. Though these events can be sad or challenging, we can also see them as opportunities.

Yalom did a study that illustrates this point. He studied a number of spouses who had lost a spouse to death. He found that many of them went beyond returning to their pre-loss emotional levels. A fourth to a third of them went on to greater levels of maturity and growth.

This reminds me of the advice of King Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes: “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart” (7:2).

Not only the therapist, but the minister, the Christian, and anyone trying to make their way through the world should not avoid the subject but talk about death.

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How to Grow — Working on What Matters

The Preacher asked, “For who knows what is good for a person in life, during the few and meaningless days they pass through like a shadow?” (Ecclesiastes 6:12).

It is a question that we should ask ourselves again and again. What is good, and what is to be done? What will make the most impact? In terms of growth, what should we concentrate on? There are so many things that could take our attention. What really matters?

In my first post on growth, I suggested that God created us to do primarily four things: live in relationship with Him and other human beings; do significant things that bless ourselves and others and bring glory to Him; and to enjoy His glory as reflected in creation.

These are four priorities that give us a framework for thinking about how to work on what matters most, the things that will be most beneficial for our growth, for our joy and peace, and for impact on the world. I will explain what each of the four things are and then propose ideas for implementing them in your life.

Relationship with God
Our relationship with God consists first and foremost in learning to receive the love that He wants to give us. I discussed this at length in my last post, so I won’t dwell on it here except to say this: our relationship with God, like any other relationship, takes time to develop. We have to be deliberate in setting aside time for it, or our relationship with God will not deepen.

The more we receive from God, the more we will learn to love Him in return. This is the greatest commandment, and the ability to love flows out of faith.

In addition to faith and love, we need to learn obedience. Even though we enjoy a relationship with God, it is not a relationship of equals. He is the Lord. We are His servants. We need to deliberately be asking what the Lord would have us to do and how we are to apply His commands and then do what He says! This is how our relationship with our Lord grows and we learn to trust Him.

Relationship with People
We are made for relationships. It is not good for a person to be alone.

In the last post, I spoke of people as being a support for us. We need people like that. However, we are also created and made to be a blessing to other people. We are made to love, and, once the hindrances to love are removed (i.e., sinful ones, see post 3 on how to grow), love is completely natural. The second greatest command is to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Who should we love? Anyone God brings into our lives. So, who are the people that God has put in our lives? Consider extended family, neighbors, co-workers, those who are in recreational organizations with us, those who go to the same places we do, and those in our church or other civic organizations. If we think about it, there are more opportunities for us to love than we tend to think.

How should we love? In my view, most of our problems in relationships come from seeking to make people more than they are. They are just people. People are good, and love is good. However, it’s easy to become too dependent on that love or a particular person’s love or a particular pattern of receiving love.

So, here is my advice on how to love: give what you want to give, accept what others want to give you, and let others give what they want to give. See love as a gift. If you feel you should give that gift, do so. Let others decide what they want to give. If they do not give the love you want, you have an everlasting fountain of love in what God gives, so you do not need to get upset. If they do give you love, accept it as a gift and evidence of the love that God has for you.

There are many more things that could be said about this, but this has consistently been the most helpful thought to me.

Work
Work involves two things: the development of ourselves so we can work better and the doing of the work itself.

Development includes general health such as exercise, right eating, and proper rest. Development also involves things that generally help us become well-rounded people such as developing a variety of relationships, a liberal arts education, and experience in doing a variety of activities. Finally, it involves the specific development of our gifts and the skills needed to accomplish particular things, e.g., an electrician, a lawyer, a preacher.

There are two realms of works: creation and redemption. The works of creation include family, building up civilization, government, and anything conducive to human prosperity and dominion. The works of redemption involve the restoration of man to fellowship with God and a life that is in accord with what He has made us to be. This includes service in the church, counseling, sharing with others outside the church, Bible study, etc.

In determining what work we should do, we should ask three things. What are God’s commands? What are our opportunities? What are our gifts? For example, God commands us to provide for our families, and most us of need an influx of money in order to sustain our lives. So, this limits us in some extent in the types of work we can do. Most of us need to do something that someone will pay us to do.

We should always seek to do what is good and be better stewards of what God has given us. At the same time, we should recognize that all labor is valuable to God. God told humans to develop the earth after the fall and the works of creation are everywhere praised and recommended by God. At the same time, we all should also in some ways seek to contribute to God’s work of redemption.

Enjoyment of Creation
Often, this is viewed as a restorative act rather than a duty. It is a restorative act, but it is also a duty.

It is important for us to emphasize this because our natural tendency is to focus on the bad and let the good slip by. We focus on getting things done and do not take time to celebrate. Our fast paced life moves us from one thing to another. Our focus on phones keeps us looking down and missing the beauty that is all around us.

The Apostle Paul says, “God created [foods] to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:3–5).

Thanksgiving is a duty. Thanksgiving involves seeing the good that is around us, taking it in, and giving God praise and thanks for all that He has made and all the good ways in which humans have used creation for good. Enjoying creation can include human works such as buildings, plays, or television shows.

It is important to note, though, that many of the good things that God has for us are the simple things that God has created–touching, feeling, seeing, and tasting the things He has made and enjoying the blessing of people in our lives.

Diagnostic Question
1. How do you take time to develop your relationship with God?
2. Do you ever ask of God, “What do you want me to do?” If you do, do you do it?
3. Who are some of the people in your life with whom you could connect with?
4. Are there people around you who could really use a contact from you?
5. Are there broken relationships that you need to work on?
6. What are your gifts?
7. What are the best opportunities you have to use your gifts?
8. What’s something you really enjoy that you haven’t done in a long time?
9. How are you doing at enjoying the good things around you? Do you take them in or mostly pass them by?
10. Do you take time to enjoy the people in your life?

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This is part 6 of a 7 part series on how to grow. Read part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, and part 5 here.

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Rest for Your Soul

Where do you go to find rest for your soul?

Is it in fellowship with a person? Getting everything done so you can relax? Some sort of pleasure?

Most things that we think will provide rest for our souls will not do so. In fact, a little reflection on our experience would show us how elusive our quest for rest has been.

Why do we continually pursue possessions, entertainment, vacations, and people as if they would provide the real rest for our souls that we are looking for?

Part of the reason is the messages we are bombarded every day: Live más! If you really want to live, get Taco Bell! You haven’t moved across the earth unless you’ve gotten the latest car! You aren’t significant unless your clothes have the Nike symbol on them (amazing how Nike has convinced almost every teenage boy to believe this. Congratulations, Nike!). You haven’t really lived unless you’ve gone to Australia or Sandals or . . . Message after message tells us the same thing, and we probably don’t even realize that this is shaping our view of the world.

The amazing thing is that all the great teachers of the world, Christian or not, agree on this: the things that commercials promise will make us happy won’t make us happy, won’t make us better, and won’t bring us lasting joy.

These teachers agree. Instead of joy and happiness being found in circumstances and things, joy is found in a state of soul that can be content whatever the situation.

Marcus Aurelius wrote his book Meditations on this very topic. How can a person find true happiness amid the shocks of life? He wrote this book to help himself find contentment even while in the midst of battle defending the borders of the Roman Empire. Here is just one example of his analysis:

Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, seashores, and mountains; and you, too, are wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in your power whenever you choose to retire into yourself. . . . tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind (4.3).

Happiness is a matter of character not of place or possessions.

The Christian faith takes this one step further. According to the Christian faith, it is the state of our soul that is most important. However, it is not primarily something we achieve but a gift we receive that makes the difference. The gift is a relationship with God in which we find joy and contentment because God gives us what we need, and we receive it by faith.

According to the Bible, in a relationship with God, we have joy, peace, acceptance, security, and purpose. Our struggle comes from lacking these things. Our restoration is when we can enjoy these things, and each of us can enjoy them at any time, if we will accept the fellowship with God that He offers us.

Enjoyment of this relationship is available to anyone at any time in any place in any condition.

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How to Grow — Seeing the God Who Pursues Us

In my previous posts on the subject of how to grow, I explained that the human predicament involves our neediness and anxiety and our wrong and sinful way of dealing with it. The Gospel tells us that the God who meets our needs pursues us and wants to have a relationship with us through Jesus Christ. This relationship meets our needs in the way we were designed to function.

So, the largest part of our growth is seeing the God who meets all our needs.

We need to remember that us having a relationship with our Creator is not necessarily a foregone conclusion. If the Creator of the universe who is all-sufficient in Himself said, “I want you to be my son or daughter,” that would be an astonishing thing. For the Creator to say to those who had sinned and rejected Him and turned away from Him to find their own way, “I want you to be my son or daughter,” is almost inexplicable.

But God has done more than that. He pursued us. He went after us. He sought us out. That’s what Christmas is all about. God pursuing man to the point of becoming a human being so that we might reconnect with Him; God bearing our sin on the cross so that all the impediments to the reconnecting might be removed; and God overcoming sin in the resurrection to heal us and make us new.

Jewish Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel explains that this is what the Bible is all about. He writes, “Most theories of religion start out with defining the religious situation as man’s search for God . . . [but, a]ll of human history as described in the Bible may be summarized in one phrase: God is in search of man (emphasis his, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, p. 136).

Our central problem is thinking that our needs won’t be met or finding them met somewhere else. Our restoration is seeing that all our needs are met in the God who pursues us.

The key thing, then, is to think about what God has done. There are many ways in which you can do this. You could take a passage of Scripture such as John 3:16 and meditate on it. You could memorize a larger passage such as Ephesians 1:1–14. You may have a different way. The key thing is to remember what God has done and how it benefits us. Let me suggest a few ways we can use to think more about what God has done for us.

Categories of Needs
One of the most helpful ways that I have found, for myself and those whom I have taught, is to explain what God does for us is by considering categories of needs.

  1. Acceptance – we need love more than anything, and we are accepted in the beloved (Jesus, see Eph. 1:7). Our sin would make us unacceptable, but God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21).
  2. Security – we are worried about our future, but God will turn everything to our good and take care of us. He will also keep us from falling and lead us to His eternal kingdom.
  3. Power – we have limited strength and often inability to do good. The Lord Jesus has risen from the dead and conquered sin. He empowers us by His grace to live a new life.
  4. Guidance – we often do not know what to do, but Jesus is our teacher who shows us the right way to live and think.

You can slice this up different ways, but I suspect that most people’s lists will come down to something like this.

The Trinity
One way to think of salvation is in terms of the particular blessings that are ascribed to us in the Bible as pertaining especially to one of the three persons of the Holy Trinity.

  1. The Father – The Father loved us so much that He sent His Son into the world to save us. He governs all things by His power for our sake. He cares for us so much that not a hair can fall from our Head without His permission.
  2. The Son – The Son willingly came into this world to suffer the terrible death on the cross, the just suffering for the unjust, to bring us back to God. United to Him, our sin is atoned for and our shame is covered. In Him, we have life, wisdom, strength, and communion with God.
  3. The Holy Spirit – The Holy Spirit dwells in each believer and is our companion every single day. He provides for us comfort, hope, guidance, direction, purpose, and love, applying to us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ (Eph. 1:3).

We are baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and have all these benefits. We live out our baptism by appropriating and meditating on the love the Triune God has for us.

The Work of Christ
One of the most ancient statements of faith of the Christian church is the Apostle’s Creed. It describes Jesus who became a human being, suffered, died, rose again, and is ascended into heaven. The Heidelberg Catechism (see Q/A 29–52) and Westminster Larger Catechism (see Q/A 46–56) describe in detail what each aspect of Jesus’ life means for us. Here is a brief summary:

  1. Incarnation – God identifies with us, wants to connect with us, and covers our imperfection with His perfection.
  2. Death – He suffers the penalty of sin in our place so all that separates us from God can be eliminated.
  3. Resurrection – He rises to a new life that becomes ours in connection with Him, a life that recreates us in the way we were intended to be.
  4. Ascension – Christ intercedes for us with the Father and continually secures our access to and connection with the Father.
  5. Return – Christ brings the hope that all things will be restored. What He begins in this life will come to full fruition in the new heavens and new earth.

The whole life of Christ is for our benefit and contains the sum of the blessings of God for us. Meditating on this helps us see that in Christ we have all we need.

The Order of Salvation
The Holy Spirit applies to us the benefits of salvation in our lives that Christ has won for us when He came to earth. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (see Q/A 29 38) gives a succinct discussion of this. Here is another summary:

  1. Calling – the Lord comes to us and call us back to Himself. By His Spirit He enables us to respond to that call and be restored to relationship with Him.
  2. Justification – God declares us righteous and acquitted of our sins because of what Jesus has done for us.
  3. Adoption – we are not only forgiven but given the status of sons and daughters of God, heirs of all things with Christ.
  4. Sanctification – God not only forgives and adopts us but changes us and restores us to what He originally intended us to be.
  5. Perseverance – God keeps us in faith by His grace so that we can continue to grow and remain secure in the blessings He won for us.
  6. Glorification – At our death, our souls are made perfectly cleansed of all sin and brought into His presence. At the resurrection, our bodies are restored to live in perfect harmony with Him, one another, and with creation for all eternity.

This is the way that the Holy Spirit enables us to experience the blessings of a relationship with God.

Biblical Theology
Systematic theology looks at what Scriptures says about particular topics such as forgiveness, the Trinity, Christ, etc. Biblical theology consider God’s revelation as a story. One way to think of what God has done for us is to think in terms of the history of revelation in the Old Testament and to think of how it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. There are many different ways to do this, but let me suggest one way here.

  1. Abraham – God calls us to be sons and daughters of Abraham through faith and to experience blessing instead of curse in the seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ.
  2. Exodus – God frees us from the dominion and tyranny of sin and the devil and leads us out of the darkness into a glorious inheritance of life and hope.
  3. Moses – God sends Jesus to be a prophet like Moses and to teach us the way of salvation and guide us into a life that is pleasing to Him.
  4. David – God sends a King to rule us and deliver us from all His enemies and ours and to establish a reign of blessing in our lives.
  5. Exile – God calls us out of our exile and slavery to experience a restored life, forgiveness, and blessing with His people.

You could flesh these things out further in order to think more on the details of what God has done. Here you can definitely use your imagination to see what God is doing in the Old Testament and how it is fulfilled in the New.

These are just a few ways for thinking about how God pursues us. The key thing is that we have some ways to think about what God is doing and to see it in our mind’s eye more constantly and more clearly. We will talk about how to do that in the next installment.

Discussion Questions
1. Do you think more of you pursuing God or God pursuing you?
2. What way of describing God’s pursuit of us resonated with you the most and why?
3. What ways have you found helpful in the past for thinking about God’s love and pursuit of you?
4. What specific benefits of fellowship with God do you think would answer your current challenges, neediness, and sin?

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This is part of a 7 part series on how to grow. Read part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.

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How to Grow — Recognizing Our Sin

The anxiety in sin calls for compassion. The pride in sin calls for condemnation.

Sin is not a simple phenomenon. It is complex. In my last post on growth, I talked about the challenge of the human situation. We can see big, but we are small. This creates a gap between the problems we see and what we can do about it. Therein lies our anxiety.

In the face of these problems, we have two options. We can trust the Lord, or we can seek our own solution. When we seek our own solution, we not only turn from the Lord, we seek a solution at the expense of others. From seeking our own solution arises all the injustices we commit against other people: seeking our own welfare at their expense and attacking them when they don’t cooperate with our project.

When the Apostle Paul spoke about sin, he said that it began with knowing God but suppressing that knowledge (Rom. 1:18–20). He explained that people don’t stop seeking an ultimate hope. They just create a new god in their own image, an idol (Rom. 1:25). This leads them to seek their happiness and satisfaction in created things, even in a debasing way (1:28–29). This in turn leads to all the injustices people commit against one another (1:29–31).

Sin is complex not simple. Sin leads to sin. It creates a way of looking at the world that has consequences that involve more sin.

Richard Lovelace in his book Dynamics of Spiritual Life notes that this way of looking at sin was common in Christian history. When the Enlightenment came, Christians tended to downplay the depth and complexity of sin and to view it primarily as “conscious, voluntary acts of transgression against known laws” (88).

However, the idea of an unconscious motivation for sin did not disappear entirely. “Sigmund Freud rediscovered this factor and recast it in an elaborate and profound secular mythology” (88). We could also add to this Karl Marx’s communist mythology that did point out the way sin gets systematically entrenched in society.

Ironically, the secular world became more aware of the depths of sin than the church. The sad result: “in the twentieth century pastors have often been reduced to the status of legalistic moralists, while the deeper aspects of the cure of souls are generally relegated to psychotherapy, even among Evangelical Christians” (88).

In recent years, there has been a recovery of the complex nature of sin. Books like Lovelace’s and like Tim Keller’s Counterfeit Gods explain sin in this more complex way.

One way I have taught about the complexity of sin is through the concept of idolatry. We begin with the idea that God is our highest good and the One in whom we are to find ultimate satisfaction. Then, we ask, where are we looking for that ultimate satisfaction in things and people rather than God?

How can we answer that question. I suggest five steps.

First, identify a problem behavior. Things in our life that we find problematic such as destructive emotions, habits, or relationships are not themselves the root problem, but they can point us to the problem.

Second, ask why to discern the idol. Our first answer to the why question is usually superficial or based on obligating others. Keep pushing. Don’t rest with a superficial answer. For example, why does it bother you so much that this specific person treats you this way? You may say, “people shouldn’t do that,” but it doesn’t burn you up when other people are treated this way. Why this person and the way they treat you?

Third, identify the idol. We can think of idols from three perspectives: gods of self such as “your god is your belly”; gods of objects such as food, money, or sex; or gods of needs or wants such as desire for security, acceptance, or comfort.

Fourth, repent of your idol. Acknowledge that seeking your ultimate acceptance in a person rather than God, for example, is idolatrous.

Fifth, replace the promise of the idol with the promise of the Gospel. For example, recognize that the acceptance you are looking for in a child, friend, or husband can only be found ultimately in God.

This is just one way of looking at the complexity of sin. The major payoff for our growth is that we not only need to address our will but the way we think about life in order to be transformed. If sin is a complex problem, it requires a complex solution. God’s grace is needed to renew our will and our thinking and our emotions.

Diagnostic Questions
1. What are some problem areas that you continually struggle with? Have you ever seriously probed your thinking behind these issues?
2. What idols do you struggle with most?
3. What do you tend to look for most in circumstances, things, and people: comfort, security, acceptance, or control?
4. What is a time you get the most upset when things don’t go your way or when you don’t get what you want?
5. What promise of the Gospel do you think you need to apply most readily?
6. When you don’t get what you want, what is your pattern in dealing with other people?
7. How do you tend to skew things your own way in your own life?
8. Who are the people you struggle with the most in your life? What do you think you do that contributes to that struggle?
9. Do you make confession of sin to God and to others a regular practice in your life?

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This is part of a 7 part series on how to grow. Read part 1 here and part 2 here.

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