Beauty Even in Destruction

This photo is in the rotation of images that I use for my computer’s screen saver, so sometimes when I walk into my office this image is on my large computer screen. That happened this morning. 

I found myself first-of-all appreciating the beauty in the image, and commenting that my Father even makes destruction into beauty. I so admire him! 

After a second, I observed that part of my mind felt obligated to feel guilty for appreciating the beauty in such a destructive event. At that point, I examined that guilty feeling: some of it is a conditioned response based on my culture. I knew folks whose lives were dramatically changed (or ended) by that event. 

And that led me to this thought: “I describe this as a destructive event because of the humans and human construction and human convenience that were disrupted. But this is just how the mechanical systems of this playground of ours called Earth functions.” 

 There certainly was no malice in the event, no intent to disrupt or cause harm. This is just how the planet functions. 

And I realized how much I tend to define what goes on around me by how it inconveniences me or entertains me or impresses me with beauty. I will continue to admire beauty wherever I find it, but maybe inappropriate to evaluate the world by how it impacts me. 

Do y’all have some suggestions for other standards for defining the world around us? 

God Works Within Our Worldview

I'm sure you're aware that none, not a single one, of God's followers is perfect in everything we say, think and do? Amazingly, that includes you and me.

Did you realize that this didn't actually get in the way of God working with us and through us? Surprisingly, God does not expect absolute perfection from us the day that we first meet him.

It's not that God doesn't care about our shortcomings; he's just not disillusioned by the fact that we have them. He loves us anyway. He works with us anyway.

And while he works with us in our shortcomings, he doesn't leave us with those failures, doomed to eternal imperfection and unwitting brokenness. He relates to us in the broken, imperfect place, and he works through the broken imperfection to refine us, to make us more complete, to make us more like himself.

Take Abraham, for example. Abe grew up in Ur, an ancient Sumerian city-state in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day southern Iraq); he spent his first 75 years there [Genesis 12:4], so he was well and truly a child of the Sumerian polytheistic culture. Sacrifices were regularly performed to honor, appease, or seek favor from the gods, ensuring divine protection, fertility, and prosperity for the city and its people. The system included offerings of food, animals, and sometimes humans.

It was in the midst of that cacophony of deities that God speaks to Abe and tells him to leave the city. The problem is that Abe took 75 years of his history in the city with him when he left. He took the Sumerian culture with him.

So when God tells Abraham to head up the  mountain and sacrifice his son [Genesis 22:2], he didn't hesitate. In his experience, this is what gods did, so he assumed that the God that called him to leave the city demanded the same kind of sacrifice that the other gods demanded. Who was he to expect something different?

His adult son Isaac had not grown up in polytheistic Sumeria, but he'd grown up with polytheistic Abraham, so he didn't hesitate either. This is what gods demanded. Who are we to cross the gods?

And in the midst of both Abe and Zac complying with the call for a human sacrifice, God breaks in and interrupts the process. He provided a ram for the sacrifice and introduces himself as "Jehovah Jireh," The-LORD-Will-Provide (well, technically as "YHWH Yireh"). God was saying, "Abe, this is how you do things, but this is not how I do things. Let me show you how I do things: when I require something of you, I will be the provision for it. This is the God you're working with now."

The principle I take away from this is that God doesn't sweat the details: he works with us in whatever condition we're in, even while he restores our misshapen condition to a healthy place in him.

God and Abe had already been through this once before. In Genesis 15, God cut a covenant with Abe. He told him, "Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old." So Abe the Sumerian does what Sumerians do: he chops the animals in half. God didn't ask for that, but he rolled with Abe's traditions [H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis, The Wartburg Press, 1972, p. 480].

I work with the assumption that none of us is perfect yet. And yet, I observe that God uses us to do his stuff in the Earth. Ergo, God works with imperfect people in our imperfect state, not offended by the imperfection, not even offended by the stupid things we believe about him.

Someone smart once said that "now I know in part, but then I will know fully [when the perfect has come]." Not a one of us "knows fully" yet. So God works with what we've got.

In other words, while we learn God's heart, his values, in the Bible, we would do best if we did not make the things that his people do in the Bible our standard. Not even the heroes (like Abe).

Apparently we do not need to chop animals in half or sacrifice our children in order to receive a promise from God. That's just they way Abe did it, largely because of his polytheistic Sumerian roots.

We probably don't need to seduce our friend's wife (and then put out a hit on our friend) like King David did in order to raise an heir to carry on the work God had given him. We probably don't need to kill church folk with our words like Peter did with Ananias and Sapphira when they lie about their generosity.  We could go on.

But wait, I can hear some folks say, won't that undermine the "Authority of the Word of God" in people's lives? Actually, no, though it probably will undermine the imagined authority of the religious leaders who control people with their Bible teachings. And that's not such a bad thing, is it?

You see, we were never designed to follow a written book as our guide for life, not even some leader's teachings about what the book says. The book was for the purpose of drawing us into relationship with a living God; we follow the living God. We continue to learn things from the Book that was written by earlier followers. And we can continue to learn from leaders whose goal is to serve the people of God rather than control them, assuming that they're following the living God and not just the teachings of other leaders who came before them.

Over the years, I've been teaching that unless we question our beliefs, we can never know if they're our beliefs, or if they're someone else's beliefs living in our head. This article is part of my questioning some of my historic beliefs, only to find that they were my denomination's beliefs, not mine.

It's hard to discover this, but it gives me the opportunity to get rid of my own false beliefs and learn more of what's actually true about my very real and very loving Father, who is not ashamed of my brokenness and ignorance.

Assumptions Kill

OPINION: Assumptions kill relationships.

It's really rude to assume I know what someone else is thinking or feeling, unless they’ve already told me what they’re thinking or feeling.  Or you.

I’d say go so far as to say that it’s disempowering them, and it diminishes their right to be in charge of their own thoughts and feelings.

And “But I know them well” is not actually a good excuse. If I know someone well (for example, I’ve known my bride for many decades), I may have a better guess, a less-ignorant assumption, but I’m still taking away their agency, damaging their responsibility for their own heart. I’ve made that mistake enough times to be gun-shy. (She has paid dearly for my assumptions over the years.)

Assumptions damage and can kill relationships, sometimes slowly and painfully, other times quickly and messily.

I watch folks pretty regularly make an assumption about someone else, then relate to them, or discuss them, as if those uninformed (or misinformed) assumptions were actually true. The assumptions prevent us from learning what is actually true about that person, and in conversation, they prejudice other people’s thoughts and expectations about them.

I was part of a social experiment one time. Six or eight of us were assigned to the task of figuring out the answer to a pretty complex problem. But as we worked on it, the researcher stuck labels (like “prideful” or “wise one” or “hair-brained”) on our foreheads and instructed us to assume that this is who each person really was as we worked on our problem.  

The exercise continued for another 10 or 15 minutes. The curious thing was that at the end of the exercise, we all knew what the label on our foreheads said, and we had all begun to live up to (or down to) those assumptions.

Lesson: in a relationship, my assumptions about you will help to shape who you are and how you relate to me and to others around you.

On the other hand, if I’m making assumptions about a public figure I’ll never have an actual relationship with, for example Taylor Swift or Donald Trump, then there’s no actual relationship to damage. But our assumptions still prevent us from understanding what’s actually true. If I believe that Taylor Swift is this way, then that’s what I’ll see, that’s what I’ll expect from her. More dangerously, that’s also going to shape (to limit) how I pray for her. Same with Donald Trump, or any other person I might pray for. (And I always recommend praying for both thought-leaders and political leaders.)

Personally, I’m working on (and I confess I have a long way to go) replacing assumptions with possibilities. I’m trying to eliminate “They think this” with “I allow for the possibility that they might think this,” and then ask enough questions to find out. Provided I really want to (and deserve to) know what they think. It seems to me that people made in the image of God are deserving of that level of respect.