Positive Faith & Sin Part V

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Romans 3:23-24, NIV

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Yesterday we talked about the fact that, in faith circles, it’s common to think that it’s really important to be confrontational with people about their sin patterns. We know from research done in the substance use field, however, that being confrontation with people about their foibles is more likely to make people defensive rather than contrite and deferential.

This is important information for pastors (in my opinion) and I think it should shape how we pastor. And, I should say, I wish I had known this when I began my journey as a pastor- I would have been a better one.

What I know belief is that it isn’t confrontation that helps us grow into people of God- it’s acceptance. In this case- I’m talking about the experience of being accepted by others (and by God). Being accepted allows us to feel safe and, when we feel safe, we don’t need to be defensive and we can tolerate conversations about areas where we would like to see growth and change.

This is actually the very logic of Romans 1-3 which people quite frequently get completely backwards. Here’s a rough summary:

• We all fall short of the person we’d like to be

• Therefore we have no right to judge each other

• God accepts all

• Therefore, we shouldn’t condemn each other

This section of scripture is probably responsible for more spiritual abuse than any other (I can think of a couple close competitors but we’re not going for statistical accuracy here). And yet, it’s because we miss the point.

God does accept us as we are. He draws us into his family. He offers us the opportunity to shape our lives in the pattern of his love.

That’s pretty good. And, pretty different from what we often experience.

Make Life Less Hard

I am totally opposed to this belief that we should celebrate doing hard things as if hard things are awesome gifts. Hard things are stressful and can be traumatic. This is why my blood pressure goes up when somebody posts on Facebook, "Hey, I think kids who got spanked turned out better than those who were put in time out." This is utter bullshit - pardon my language. This kind of misinformation drives me nuts! Do you know how many grown ups slink into my office and recount the trauma and humiliation associated with being parented by an adult who took out their rage on a little kid and called in discipline? Again, I've said this before, do you notice how many high functioning adults we have dependent on alcohol to get through their day? Is anyone else curious as to the high rate of addiction and mental health disorders? Where do we think these problems originate? Trauma. Genetics. Deprivation - a belief that the world is not a place that cares or supports us when we are struggling.

However, I am thrilled with this concept that when faced with hard things, we will be less stressed and perhaps less traumatized if we recognize that life is hard. We are not being picked on, life is not treating us unfairly, we are not more stupid or especially cursed. We are living life. Life is hard.

Given that, I am on a personal mission to try to NOT make life harder than it has to be for myself or others. This requires me to learn and grow and accept responsibility for my life - every little piece of it. It requires us to go out and find the support we need heal and grow SO THAT we learn what support looks like - and we can support others as we have been supported.

The goal is not to make life easy; the work is to figure out how to mitigate the damage caused when life is hard and we do not have the resources we need to survive and eventually thrive as a result of what we are learning.

Today, try not to make life harder for yourself or those you love. Life is hard enough without us making it harder.

Mirror, Mirror

If our brain, limited as it is, jumps to conclusions and makes some assumptions early in life, it is pretty darn hard to get those pesky and wrong-headed beliefs and thoughts to vacate the premises. Honestly, I liken it to a Christmas miracle.

How does it happen? I do not know, but I can share a bit about what happened to me.

I had some really, really gentle and great mirroring. The mirror effect is a reflection of one's self through the gaze of others. Gentle mirroring can build rapport and trust, if done with discernment and wisdom. Here is the trick. We all have "mirror neurons" in the parietal lobe region of the brain. It is located at the upper back area in the skull. It processes sensory information and is really quite good at picking up cues like anxiety (which is why anxiety is catching) and whatnot.

Some people, due to the way their own brain is built with its own set of preconceived notions, are like fun house mirrors. They PROJECT their image of themselves on you. For example, if I am feeling anxious, I might project on Pete by saying, "Are you ok? How are you feeling? Is something bothering you?" I'm the one having all the feelings, but I am projecting my feelings on him, maybe even my thoughts and beliefs.

Another fun house mirror distortion is INTROJECTION. A person walks into a room and notices someone who is feeling uncomfortable, agitated, sad. And the person who walked into the room feeling happy and excited for the dinner party all of a sudden thinks, "Wow. Something is wrong with me. I'm feeling uncomfortable, agitated and sad." No, they are not. They just picked up someone else's vibes and confused them with their own.

So here's what I learned that is really important. Your mirrors matter. Once I did not have so much exposure to fun house mirrors, the voices in my life began to sing a song, in sync and perfect rhythm that kept reflecting back to me, "You can make mistakes. You do not have to be responsible for making everyone happy or solving their problems. Get some new problems. Your problems. What problems do you want to solve that are yours?"

So, if no one has ever said this to you before, let me channel my inner Mary Oliver and paraphrase her - each of us only has one wild and precious life - what do you want to do with yours? What problems do you have to solve to live it? Do you need to go back to school? Do you need therapy? Do you want to do some Enneagram work with me or someone else who guides you through the growth path most suited for you? Do you want to change jobs? Do you want to change houses? Do you want to play a bit better tennis or golf or tiddlywinks? Solve those problems.

Responsibility vs Fault

My mom's death was...complicated and it left me completely bereft. I desperately wanted to understand the circumstances surrounding it. But there was no way that would ever happen because the parties involved all had their own experiences that colored their interpretation of said events...including me. But it was a great lesson in learning that problems can be powerful, and less painful, when we take full responsibility for the issue at hand. Problems can be powerful in that they provide us an opportunity to self-examine, reflect, and notice our failures, blindspots and even innocent-ish mistakes.

One of the issues that slowed my own recovery from this traumatic event was my confusion over responsibility versus fault. My therapist kept telling me, "This is not your fault" and she was right but it was hard for me to agree with her.

Over time, I came to realize that I resisted her determined attempts to draw a distinction between responsibility and fault because if I could find a way I was at fault, I unconsciously believed I could find a way to control and change the outcome. Which, when I think about it, is really silly. But it is true. I also had the opposite problem. There were parts of this family drama that I absolutely did not want to claim any fault for - no way! I did not know how to believe that I could be responsible without being at fault. And, I struggled to think about how to be responsible in areas where I was at fault.

Here is what was helpful for me. Fault is past tense. We find someone at "fault" as a result of the decisions they already made. Responsibility is what we choose to do in the present moment. Responsibility is claimed as we make choices in the here and now.

There are people whose decisions and their outcomes can result in fault being found and named. But no one is responsible for my situation because my situation is always my responsibility. The guy who hit us head on was at fault for speeding, driving on worn out tires and trying to change his radio while smoking a cigarette and navigating a turn on a rainy day. But only I am be responsible for how I follow up after the accident. I had to choose how to treat my medical conditions; our family had to choose the next vehicle. He is not responsible for that even though his faulty driving resulted in us needing to take on some additional responsibilities.

If you were able to separate fault from responsibility, would any of your nagging problems become more clear? Would solutions present themselves? Would life feel a bit more free from the burden of complicated grief?

Fail Better

When I was a little kid we lived in Virginia Beach. On the weekends we would often go through the tunnel and head back to Portsmouth, where my father's people lived, for family visits. For the length of the tunnel ride, my dad would yell, "Don't open those windows kids, if you do the water will come in!" I was terrified. I thought we were driving through water and our life depended on quickly plowing through it in our Chevy before our oxygen ran our or we sprung a leak. It turns out, I was also wrong about that tunnel. It was keeping the water out, not providing a mysterious passage via underwater travel in a Chevy.

Much of my life has been spent searching for the "right" belief system, the "correct" way to behave, the "best practice" for whatever project I undertook. I was wrong. I had it all backwards.

Growth, change, transformation - none of that stuff that I value so very much - is achieved through getting stuff right. I have fired myself from my endless search for the right answers in favor of what is turning out to be a ton more fun - wading through all the ways I am wrong, acknowledge it, embrace it and learn from it. If we can find a way to use our mistakes to make a few less mistakes tomorrow - we are growing!

Where is your tunnel-full-of-water leading you astray? Where is your endless search for improvement really taking you? What about if we all could get a bit more excited about noticing what we don't know, what we've gotten wrong, what we've failed at....and how that can help us learn something new, do something a little less wrong tomorrow, fail better?