Posts

Posted on

Thanksgiving: A Balm for a Disappointing Year

In 2020, I wrote on Thanksgiving Day, “There’s no question that this has been a challenging year.” 2020 was tough. But, then, like every year, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s came around. I realized in a new and powerful way how helpful these days are to help us reset and find new hope and purpose for the year to come.

The first event of this triad is Thanksgiving. I will talk more about it in a moment, but note that this holiday helps us see the good without ignoring the bad. The second is Christmas. My sermon series in 2020 was “The Weary World Rejoices.” Christmas tells us that there is a source of joy that transcends our circumstances. The third event is New Year’s. The New Year gives us a fresh start. How good it was to get 2020 behind us and move into 2021 Continue reading “Thanksgiving: A Balm for a Disappointing Year”

Posted on

What All Self-Help Books Have in Common

Summary: what all self-help books have in common is the view that we can change by taking control of our interactions with the world. In this article, I flesh out what this means and how to do it.

Caring for ourselves is one of our highest priorities. What you are is what you offer to the world. What you are is what you have to live with. What you are is what will enable you to accomplish anything and enjoy anything. Because of this, there are millions of books on the subject of caring for yourself. That is a good thing. We have the most direct responsibility for ourselves, and what we make of ourselves is one of the most important gifts we give to the world.

I have read many of these books through the years from Aristotle to Cicero to Seneca to Carnegie to Covey to Ramsey to Ferriss. Each has its own angle, but there is one thing that they have in common. There is one thing that they all agree will help us be the best we can be and do the most we can do.

What is it? Take control of how we interact with the world. Taking control of how we interact with the world is the one thing that we can do for ourselves that no one can do for us. In our relationship systems, we can’t make others take control of their reactions and interactions, but we can work on taking control of our own.

Most of us do not take control of many things that we could take control of. We assume that our emotions are what they are. We assume that money and time will go where they go. We assume that the things that hurt have to hurt. We assume that relationship interactions just are the way they are. The self-help books counter this narrative and offer an alternative path. They suggest that things can be different and have been different. People can take control of the way they interact with the world.

Let me suggest five areas where we can take control of our interaction with the world. Then, I will explain the model they use for taking control of these interactions.

Five Interactions to Control
1. Our emotional reactions to the world. Our emotions are loud and feel like they are completely natural. But they are not. They are based to a significant degree on the stories we tell ourselves and the way we think about the world. Emotions are often based on false stories and impressions. We should not assume that what we are mad about is really an injustice, that what we fear is a real threat, that what we are sad about is a real loss, or that what we are happy about is really good. It may be, but it may not be. We should analyze it. Aristotle explained how fear could be a virtue or a vice, “The man who fears what, nor when, nor as he ought is foolhardy; the man who fears what he ought not, and on the wrong occasions, and in the wrong manner is cowardly” (Eudemian Ethics,2.3). Analyze your fears and your other emotions to see if you are feeling them in accord with reality and in the time and in the way that you should.

2. Our reaction to hurt and disappointment. This is really not that different from #1, but it is important because the hurts and disappointments of the past can easily debilitate us in the present and keep us from productive work in the future. Hurts hurt, but they can be put to productive uses. The things we suffer can build in us a passion for the good. The Bible says that these tests produce character, so we can actually look at suffering with a sort of joy, even while suffering. “We glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope . . .” (Romans 5:3–4). We can work through our sufferings in such a way that they actually bring us hope. That is a powerful motivation to rethink our reactions to hurt and disappointment.

3. Our reactions to other people. Our reactions to other people are deeply ingrained and powerful. So, they are difficult to change. In addition, part of the equation is what other people do. We have little power to change that. Fortunately, we are also part of the relationship equation. We can change that. We can learn how we interact and begin to interact differently. Consider one simple example from Dale Carnegie: smile. It makes a huge difference. Greet people warmly, like a dog, he said. This is the most surface of examples to a complex and deep problem. However, it illustrates that we can control our interactions with people.

4. Our interaction with time and money. Retired people find that they are just as busy as when they were not retired. The reason is that time has a way of filling up. Money is the same way. Without a plan, money will flow out the door. However, if you take control of your time and money, you can use them effectively. This is especially true of your non-work time. It’s easy to just putter it away. You’ve got to take control it, if you really want it to be effective for what you want to accomplish. Dave Ramsey’s Money Makeover is an example. What he is saying is that you don’t just handle your money randomly. You take control of it, and you decide what you will do with it. He has one specific plan, but it is just one of many.

5. Our interaction with the future. What are our goals? We want to move beyond just managing our lives day to day. In addition, what we do today will be based on a vision for the future. What is that vision? What are we trying to be and accomplish? In many ways, this is the key to all of the above. This is the idea behind Jordan Peterson’s program Self-Authoring. He encourages people to gain motivation by getting a vision for how things could go really well in the future and how they could really go badly. His plan is about thinking about the future and taking control of how we interact with it.

These are five areas where we can take control of our interactions with the world. We don’t have control of everything, but we have control of how we interact with the world. All of these authors indicate that we don’t have to think and interact in the way we have done so in the past. We can think differently now and in the future. So, how do we do it?

How to Do It
1. Work on it. We start by recognizing that we can work on our relationships, emotions, time management, etc. We don’t have to do it the way we have done it before. We can ask, how have we done it? How could we do it differently? What would be a better way to think about it? What would be a better way to approach things?

2. Implement it. When we know the better way to interact with the world, we can implement it. For example, when we see our bank account dwindling, we may have one way of reacting. We can start to think differently about losing savings. This gets harder the more emotional intensity is in the mix. We are not going to change things overnight.

3. Evaluate it. We should ask ourselves, especially in difficult circumstances, how did we do interacting with the world? Did we follow our time management plan? Did we interact well with our children? How was our emotional response? What went wrong and when? How could we have done it differently? We can evaluate what we have done and practice mentally doing it differently.

4. Repeat it. We keep doing it. We keep thinking about it. We keep growing. We gain new insight. We keep implementing it. We keep working on our interactions with the world.

All of these self-help books also give us hope. These things can make a difference. Humans don’t have to stay the way they are. They can change. It’s not easy, but it can happen. As American essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times” (The Conduct of Life, cited in Essays and Lectures [Library of America], 943 ). We can’t change a lot of things about our world, but we can change how we live. That’s what all self-help books, ancient and modern, agree on.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope that it was helpful to you. If you liked it, please consider sharing it on social media or subscribing below. I hope to see you here again!

________

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

Posted on

Joining and Loving Specific Communities (Study of Romans, Part 8: Romans 14–16)

Key Thought: We grow in joy, peace, and hope by joining and loving specific communities.

Note: How do we find joy, hope, and peace in our lives? The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans is all about that. He teaches that we do it by having more faith, hope, and love. In the 8th part of this study, we consider how Paul wrote to a specific community of Christians who had a lot of differences. How would they come together in love? This is the 8th of an 8 part study of Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians. You can read part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, part 5 here, part 6 here, and part 7 here.

Paul, as a Christian missionary, took it for granted that when people accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior they would join specific communities in which they would praise and worship God, help each other grow, and serve one another. This is what we often call church, which simply means a gathering. Remember that the whole goal of this letter is that people would glorify God together (Romans 15:5–6). How would they learn to do this? They would gather in specific communities and build relationships based on the practices of worshiping God, personal growth, and serving Him.

As we noted in the last post, this can be hard. Human relationships are our greatest source of joy and pain. Love is a risk. It is worth it, but it often hurts.

Loving is also hard because people are different. They do things differently than we do. They come from a different place than we do. They come from different cultures than we do. They have different opinions than we do.

In spite of this, Paul was successful in building communities consisting of people of vastly different cultures, backgrounds, and social status. It’s really an amazing accomplishment. Over the past few years, I have built many relationships with both Latino and white Americans. I have tried to bring them together. I have been surprised at how hard it was to do so. The whites would arrive at 5 for a party and would leave at 8. The Latinos would not even arrive until 8. It was a simple difference, they both did what was natural to them, and this made it harder for them to come together. This is just one minor example of many differences people can have. My small efforts have made me appreciate what Paul did in bringing Jews and Gentiles together in one community.

What Paul accomplished was not easy. Paul and other leaders in the church had to constantly remind the people what it meant to love a community well. I want us to consider here five principles for loving a community well that Paul explains in Romans 14–16.

How to Love and Bless a Specific Community
1. Start with acceptance. “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Romans 15:7). Community begins with acceptance. We ought to have a basic stance of welcoming and accepting people. How we greet each other matters. Notice that in Romans 16, Paul lists all sorts of people that he greets. This is not a minor point. These are the people who are on his heart. We should have a list like that, and it should be long. We should care about as many people as we can.

This is rooted, Paul says, in the basic truth that we already considered. God accepts us in Christ. “Accept others . . . as Christ accepted you . . .” This is the basis for community. God starts the process. He says to you, “I accept you.” How, then, can we not say that to others? We should show others in our words, acts, and face that we accept them.

2. We should think of how to please others, not ourselves. Paul says, “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up” (Romans 15:1–2). We should develop the habit of thinking of what is good for everybody and not just ourselves. Note: this also does not mean simply pleasing the loudest, angriest, or richest. It means everybody. We should look for the interests of the community as a whole, what will be good for everybody.

That’s what Jesus did. He came to earth not to please Himself but to please others. “Christ did not please himself . . .” (Romans 15:3). The irony is that in not pleasing Himself, He reached the highest state of blessedness. As Jesus said elsewhere, “He who desires to save His life will lose it, and whoever loses His life for my sake will gain it.” This ability to please others is rooted in a deep trust that God accepts us and is making us whole and that He will do us good. If we find ourselves not able to please others, then we should go back to what we studied in the previous lessons.

3. We should tolerate differences of personality, custom, and secondary doctrines. When we join a community, we will find all sorts of differences. This is not a bad thing. It is part of the process. It will help us grow, and it will help our neighbors grow. Paul begins this discourse by saying, “Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters” (Rom. 14:1). There are many things that can be done differently. There are many things that are important but not central. Paul talks here about foods. He had an opinion about what the Bible teaches. However, he says that there should be tolerance for these differences, even though he says it is a matter of truth. He recognized that this was not something that was of first importance (see 1 Cor. 15:1–11).

4. We should not become a stumbling-block for others. We should be careful not do those things that will harm others. This means that we avoid putting burdens on people that they are not ready to bear. It may also mean that we don’t flaunt our freedom in a way that some people are not ready for. When we make a big deal out of a minor issue, then we can be a stumbling-block. When we don’t take care of major issues, then we can also be a stumbling-block. The point is to think of others as well as ourselves. As Paul puts it, “Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister” (Rom. 14:13).

5. We should aim at helping people grow. We do not want people to stay where they are. We want to help them grow. Growth is a process. You can help a plant grow by watering it, fertilizing it, and pruning it, but growth has to occur through its own internal processes. You can’t rush that. So it is with people. That should be our aim, and we should recognize that it will take time. We should always be thinking about how we can help people grow in faith, hope, and love because that is the most important thing for people to grown in. “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification” (Rom. 14:19). Edification means building them up. We should engage in all measures that will help people grow.

Conclusion
When I was serving in Spearfish, South Dakota, we put a strong emphasis on the secondary doctrines of Scripture. When new people came to the church, we emphasized these points strongly. Before they became members, they would have to know a lot about the details of the teaching of Scripture, as we conceived of it.

Eventually, the church as a whole came to a recognition that this approach was wrong. We were putting a stumbling-block in the way of the weak and the seeker. We needed to focus on the simplicity of the Gospel and help people grow from there. We repented. It was amazing to see new people come, departed children return, and current members feel more welcome. When we did this, we were thinking about the community as a whole. It did lead to greater joy and peace. We were aligning ourselves with Christ’s mission.

We are made to live in community. We will have to work at it and continually challenge ourselves but loving a community well is a way to greater joy, peace, and hope in our lives.

Questions for Building Your Own Lesson

  1. How did Paul build and envision the community that believers would be a part of?
  2. What dangers did Paul see that would inhibit the building of community?
  3. What characteristics and actions did people need to develop in order to love the community well?
  4. What were the motivations that Paul gave to encourage people to love well?

Questions for Application

  1. Are you a part of a specific community? What has that been like for you?
  2. Where do you need to adjust your way of participating in a community?
  3. Do you have a list of people you love and care about like the Apostle Paul did in Rom. 16?

Thank you for taking the time to read this study. I hope that it was a blessing to you. If you enjoyed it, consider sharing it on social media or subscribing to this blog in the box below. I would also love to hear your feedback and experiences about being in community in the comment section below. I hope I will see you here again.

________

Photo by Kylie Lugo on Unsplash

Posted on

Ramses the Great

“Whose statue is that?” I asked Ahmed, our guide.

“That is Ramses.” He answered.

“What about that one?” I asked.

“That also is Ramses.” He answered again.

This is a scene that would repeat itself all over Egypt. You can find statues of other Pharaohs, if you look for them, but wherever you will go, you will find a statue of Ramses the Great (1303–1213).

Far in the south of Egypt (Upper Egypt, as they call it, because the Nile flows north toward the Mediterranean Sea), about 15 miles from the Sudanese border, you come to Abu Simbel. This placed used to mark the end of Egyptian rule. People would come from the south and enter Egyptian land at this place.

In order to show upstart Kushites and Nubians who was boss, Ramses the Great built a temple. He carved this temple into a mountain. At the front of the temple, there are four 70 foot stone carved figures of Pharaohs. “Who are these?” I asked our guide, also named Ahmed, but a different Ahmed than the first.

“They are all Ramses.” He said.

When you enter the temple, you find smaller but still tall statues of Pharaohs. “And who are these?” I asked.

“All of them are Ramses.” Said Ahmed. It’s as if Theodore Roosevelt had overseen the construction of Mount Rushmore and commissioned four carvings of himself. Definitely would give you a different feeling, wouldn’t it? Continue reading “Ramses the Great”

Posted on

Understanding the Grieving Process

A depiction of an ancient Egyptian funeral procession

The Apostle Paul calls God “the God of all comfort” (2 Cor. 1:3).

One way that we see God as the God of all comfort is the fact that His Word, the Bible, has so many descriptions of grieving people and funerals.

This shows us that God comes alongside us at these times and is with us.

Ultimately, it points us to Jesus who is “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Is. 53:1). He knows what it is to grieve. We see Him standing at the tomb of Lazarus: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).

In the many funerals of the Bible, God teaches us what it means to grieve. He teaches us about the grieving process. This is a process that He has created in order for human beings to recover from loss.

A funeral for a loved one isn’t the only time we enter into the grieving process. We may need the grieving process for all sorts of losses: when loved ones move away, when we lose a job or a dream is shattered, when opportunities are lost, or when we experience trauma. However, funerals represent one of the strongest forms of grief, so they are particularly helpful in teaching us about grieving in all types of loss. Continue reading “Understanding the Grieving Process”

Proudly powered by WordPress