anger

So I was reading an article for class. It was on anger and how to deal with people who are angry. This pulled me up short . . .

"Look at your worst relationships and you will see your relationship with Jesus. Am I having warm, fuzzy relationships with all kinds of folks, but there is one person out there I can't stand and want to avoid at all costs? If you only hate one person, you hate God."

Wow! Its such a strong statement. So strong that we want to revolt against. Why? Because I think, if we are honest with ourselves we probably have one or two people in our lives that we struggle to get along with. Maybe we think if the co-worker would get assigned to another location, or if I just don't pick up my phone they'll stop calling, or why can't so-and-so just be quiet. Maybe we just think that's normal. Of course we aren't going to get along with everyone but are we letting those thoughts escalate? Are we wishing them ill, talking bad about them, avoiding them, cursing them? Sometimes it helps me to think about what I'm not doing.

If I'm harboring anger towards someone I am usually not praying for them, I usually can't find any good in them, and I forget that they are a child of God too. The moment I do that I am no longer in a right relationship with them because I have only seen their sin and I am sitting in judgment over them, which makes me God. Having made myself God, I can no longer be friends with the one and only true God. So while it might seem radical to say if I only hate one person than I hate God, it's the closest thing to the truth that there can be. Where is my right to judge someone else, who am I to be angry with another person, what right do I have to justify myself? None. I am not God. I am his child. I bear his image and my goal is to be like Christ, not actually Christ.

The reality check:

It's far too easy to let anger and judgement creep in without noticing I am slowly dethroning God.

full story

Leslie Newbigin said this . . .

'To be human is to be part of a story, and to be fully human as God intends is to be part of the true story and to understand its beginning and its ending.'

We all love stories, especially sharing our own stories. I think there is a real desire to be known. To have someone know our full story because if they knew our story they would understand us better. And there is much to be said in helping someone share their story, to walk in their shoes and to really understand them. It is an act of love to walk with someone in their story.

Likewise as believers we spend a good amount of time learning God's story. We read details, piece together themes and try to understand the cosmic story of God. We know this is often difficult because we like certain parts of God's story more than others. Some love the stories of the Old Testament, others the life of Christ and other still look to the future. Yet we know that by understanding it better, our love for God increases all the more.

In my counseling classes we talk about how to not only hear someone's story but also to reinterpret it into God's story. And I wonder if you've ever thought about your story inside the greater story of God? I am not just talking about isolated incidents where we see God working personally or believing that we are some thread in a tapestry. But what about connecting those personal experiences of God into the greater working of God? Expanding our understanding of suffering, faith and relationships so that our life lived out temporally is a reflection of God's eternal story.

To help direct us Newbigin suggests . . .

'Christians are those people whose rationality is shaped by their indwelling of the story of the Bible as it is lived out in contemporary society in the life of the Church.'

The full story is connecting our life story into God's story by our life lived out in the church.

extended suffering

I wonder what you think about Dan McCartney's thoughts on suffering and our relationship with God . . .

'our life with God is a struggle because we are still sinners, but it only compounds the sin if we try to avoid struggling honestly with God. There is no need for us to justify God, but we absolutely must encounter him.'

or the role of faith and suffering . . .

'In the silence and the darkness, such passionate pleading and beating on the gate of heaven is precisely what faith must do.'

or why Job's suffering is such an example . . .

'Even in the midst of his agonies and unceasing complaints against God, Job remained faithful, according to God's declaration at the end, because he never stopped struggling with God.'

Today there is much suffering- illness, loneliness, financial hardship, death, loss, depression and the list goes on. And I keep thinking about how we respond when suffering comes our way but mostly these thoughts by McCartney get me thinking about extended suffering.

What to do we do when the suffering goes longer than a month, a year, three years or a lifetime? How do we respond? Maybe you, like me, first cry out to God. Our suffering consumes our thoughts and prayers. We get our friends to rally round and pray with us. We remain hopeful and we seem to always be crying out to the Lord for his mercy.

But what about when it doesn't let up? Or when one suffering lets up only to make way for another? Do we keep crying out to God? Are we still wrestling with God as the months and even years drag on? And this is what I think McCartney is trying to wake us up to. When suffering becomes unrelenting and extended, faith must keep driving us to cry out to God. Crying out in pain, anger, even unbelief is better than not talking to God at all.

We must not let pride, exhaustion, apathy, or hopelessness keep us from begging on God's mercy. Extended suffering is synonymous with extended humility. Its humiliating being on your knees before God, crying out for his mercy but that is exactly the expression faith. It is not enough to keep going to church or surrounding ourselves with Christians hoping that God's silence in suffering will somehow resolve itself without any action on our part.

Being in process means:

Extended suffering must drive us to God's word and crying out for His mercy, we must not stop with struggling God.

work in process

Martin Luther said this in defense of all his articles . . .

‘This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness,
not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise.
We are not what we shall be, but we are growing toward it.

The process is not yet finished but it is going on.

This is not the end but it is the road.
All does not gleam in glory but all is being purified.’

I love the reminder that we are all in process. Not even really progress but process. We seem to get so caught up in progressing and somehow thinking that we will attain it in this lifetime.

Yet as image-bearers of Christ, the point that Luther makes is that is a process, only Christ will complete and finish the work began in us. And I am comforted because sometimes it doesn't seem like I am getting anywhere and I am so far from being like Christ but it is about being on the right road, in being purified, in becoming, not about attaining righteousness, wealth, health, or even glory.

Read it again slowly- my favourite is that line that says not health but healing.

The point is:
Christ is in us, at work, transforming us, by the same power he saves us by!