Take a Second Look

Here’s another old saying that deserves a second look: ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ Is that going to get us anywhere? Here’s what I propose: ‘Don’t hit back at all.’ If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, gift wrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.  

~ Matthew 5:38-42 The Message

In the first few chapters of Matthew a series of teachings by Jesus are laid out for us to consider.  In each of them we find a surprise. He is asking us, it seems, to take a second look at what we think it means to be holy. He is challenging folks to give serious consideration to choosing a different version of life for themselves.  In this passage, he is offering them a new way to reclaim their previously held beliefs about power. He is suggesting them to take revenge off the table. This is a conscious choice.

People are uncomfortable with this message and I understand why.  It could easily be misconstrued to suggest that people in positions of power can abuse us without any repercussions.  I have had occasion of late to deal with this in my own life. No one has been thwacking me a glove and asking to duel but I have had opportunity to learn the pain and suffering of bullying behavior.  As a person who does not want to have revenge as part of my life I have had to navigate the rough waters of when to stay silent and when to speak up and out; when to hold them and when to fold them; what to do and what to reject doing as my feelings overwhelmed my core beliefs. It’s been a challenging situation.  I have not always handled it well. The only way I have handled it at all was to ask for help from others to guide me AND to spend a significant amount of time examining and re-examining my core values, choosing, from my many (sometimes competing) values, which ones were applicable in this particular situation. It required silence, stillness and solitude as well as a tribe to find my way.

The one truth that I return to over and over is God’s word (although even that can be confusing) that teaches us to trust that justice is God’s department not mine.  So often I want to protest what feels like the injustices that seem to run unchecked in the world today. But that is not my job. My job is to give and receive love.  Sometimes that means defending the weak and the vulnerable, other times it means returning to silence, stillness and solitude.

Broken relationships are terribly grievous things but they are also inevitable.  The primary comfort I have found as I navigate the ending of a relationship with someone I love is this:  maybe it is no longer appropriate for me to be the one that gives and receives love in this relationship - but I can pray that others will take up the mantle and continue their giving and receiving to that person!

Forgiveness

I once knew a person who sexually abused a family member.  Years later he felt that he was rehabilitated from this prior offense and should be forgiven by the family, including the child he molested, and granted re-entry into the family with no conditions.  His family was willing to have some limited, well-boundaried relationship but they were not comfortable having him around the children. They found ways to specifically address these issues with a clearly spelled out relationship plan.  This infuriated him. He began a letter writing campaign to instruct them about forgiveness; threats were made. Eventually orders of protection were issued. He was outraged. All contact was lost.

From my way of thinking about this, the guy was at a minimum presumptuous.  I am not sure about what the family members were thinking during all of this but from a distance it seemed like they were very decent people who acted in a spirit of forgiveness.  They did not shun him or try to hurt him in any way.

However, they also safe-guarded the family.  This to me seemed wise. Some offenses are so egregious that the consequences for these offenses last a lifetime.  This is difficult to accept but it is true and I think on occasion appropriate.

Although we had a few conversations on the subject, he never grasped the concept that relationships were conditional AND these conditions do not violate God’s command to love.  When we learn that someone is willing to harm us or another person, we become responsible for making wise decisions about future contact. If we teach someone that we are willing to be hurtful, we cannot expect them to ignore this action no matter how many times we say we are sorry.

Again, these are difficult issues and I have certainly chosen an extreme example.  We have countless lesser offenses that are even more confusing to parse out. Are we too sensitive?  Is this really as inappropriate as I feel it is? What does forgiveness look like in this situation? Does it also mean the relationship can return to “normal” or does it require some shifting and a “new normal”?

What kind of difficulties have you run into when trying to love as God loves?

Crushing Disappointment

When the Bible talks about love there are some passages that have been misused and created a situation where people can take advantage of others.  The verse I referred to almost two weeks ago, you remember, the one that says, “Greater love hath no man than this - to lay down his life for a friend?” is one of them.

I once heard a Christian counselor use that as justification for why a wife should NOT leave her abusive spouse.  His theory was that marriage is a sacred bond (yes) and you can never divorce your spouse even if he has broken your bones and battered your spirit (Lord no).

I am reminded of I Peter 3:7 (Message translation):  

The same goes for you husbands: Be good husbands to your wives. Honor them, delight in them. As women they lack some of your advantages. But in the new life of God’s grace, you’re equals. Treat your wives, then, as equals so your prayers don’t run aground. 

Once a man lays a hand on his wife, the covenant is broken.  By him. He has failed to be good to her. When this happens, the family needs to address this issue and sometimes divorce is the appropriate conclusion.  The Bible makes provision for divorce even though divorce clearly grieves God (Spousal abuse, too, grieves God- let's not forget).

As sacred as marriage is, it is not sacrosanct.  I think this principle applies to all relationships.  Giving and receiving love is a sacred act; relationships are important, vital, in many ways the breath of life. But relationships have limits and sometimes the boundaries of respect and mutual care are so violated that we have to release people from our circle of love. This does not necessarily make them bad people - although let’s be clear, it is very very BAD to abuse anyone.  Sometimes relationships end because our core values are incompatible. This requires a ton of discernment. We do not need to have shared core values in all relationships. The folks who make my coffee do not have to share my core values! However, the affinity I do share with certain baristas in our community has created a lovely relationship bond to such an extent that I mostly only get my java from two very special places.  

This is all very tricky and difficult to tease out.  But the bottom line is this: sometimes someone teaches us (or we teach them) that we are fundamentally incompatible in a relationship and need to readjust our relationship boundaries.  Are there any relationships that you are holding onto too tightly?

Great Expectations

I started this blog series talking about love gone wrong and ended up on a side trip remembering about how love had gone wrong over and over again for the Israelites.  False strategies (looking for love and purpose in the wrong venues), delusion (not seeing ourselves, others and even God accurately), and confusion (we just simply don’t know how to love in all situations) are three common problems that mess up our love connections.

But that’s not all.

Expectations can really get us in trouble too. No expectations you ask?  Should we have NO expectations in a relationship? Well of course not. It’s not that extreme.  But my position is this: we have misplaced expectations onto others that rightfully belong within ourselves.

I once knew a gal who was always telling a small group I was in about the ways her husband disappointed her.  He didn’t send flowers enough (only twice a week) or to the appropriate location (she preferred them delivered to her office, not at home) or the “right” shade of pink.  Sheesh. The guy was a constant disappointment in her eyes but to the rest of us? He sounded like a guy who didn’t have a chance of living up to his wife’s harlequin romance perspective of marriage.

I knew a guy who went through a series of wives and families because, and I quote him here, “I expect my wife and children to obey me and for there to be no conflict in the home.”  His idea of conflict resolution? Get rid of the old family and find a new one.

Both examples are of folks who had expectations of how another person was SUPPOSED to make them feel.  The wife expected her husband to make her feel desirable; the husband (of many) expected his family to make him king of the castle.

At the end of the day, we are expecting too much of others if we make someone else responsible for our sense of self-worth.  This is our work. Want to feel respected? Live a respectable life. Along the way we invite others to join us in this life.  People can get to know us and we can get to know them and THEN we make an honest assessment: do our lives fit well together? Do we have affinity?  Good questions. But it is not a sustainable relationship model to ask someone else to make us “feel” a certain, consistent way about ourselves. Self-assessment, self-awareness, self-respect - those are all inside jobs.

How have you perhaps pressured others to do for you that which you are responsible to work out for yourself?

Reflections

Before I opened my computer this morning I chugged a cup of hot decaf (I know, big sigh, oh for the days of caffeine rushes with no consequences), and layered up for a long walk before the sun woke and began to warm the day.  I walked for two hours with my head full of the cares and troubles of my people. I knew that today I would go to an ICU and pray over a young man whose brain they say is dead. I figured that I might have time to check on a friend who is depressed.  I hoped I might get a chance to hug one of my grandchildren but the schedule did not look promising. I was kind of down in the dumps to tell you the truth.

The sun began to peek out at me about 20 minutes in to my walk.  I began peeling off layers of clothing. First the gloves, then the hat, and soon the first of three sweatshirts.  My body began to warm and my sleepy brain began to wake to the sacred privilege of being capable and free to walk for two hours in the morning just because I wanted to.  Were there issues that would need addressing? Yes. But they would come after this sacred, quiet time of silence and solitude and even stillness, for today there was no wind to nip my nose, only the promise of Spring in the air.

As I hit my stride on the last hill before heading home I glanced up and saw a herd of deer munching on tender green leaves, signs of spring that I had previously been too distracted to notice.  I stopped. I grabbed my camera. I walked slowly toward them. One small step and then a pause. I forgot that there was laundry waiting to be transferred into the dryer before my mad dash to the hospital.  I failed to notice any of the chattering dialogue that had occupied my brain at the beginning of my walk. I knew I had all the time in the world to look at these curious, big-eared babies with their “deer” Mama.  I managed to get some good close-ups and I will treasure the photos for sure. But nothing will compare to that peaceful, wide-awake awareness that God is near and he has us all in his hand. Discontentment may be symptomatic of a need to reassess and reawaken to the possibility of living life large AND on life’s terms.  Or, it might be a sign that we are pursuing false strategies, delusions and are confused. Maybe a fourth way of seeing discontentment exists or even a fifth. This I know: we can be thoroughly discontent one minute and wide awake to the presence of Holy God the next. This is how crazy in love God is with us - pursuing us in love even as we forget to rest in him.  When I can remember God’s love in and around me, I show up in a better space for an ICU visit or a walk with my grandbabies. I can show up for love.

I am not a particularly wise person, but I do understand that taking a long walk every day means more than just the numbers rolling by on a pedometer.  What do you do to get still, find silence, and embrace solitude? Do. What. It. Takes. Today.