Nothing Wasted Along the Way

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.

~Charlotte Joko Beck

Nothing Wasted Along the Way

I have three main sayings that I live by. One of them is always at the head of these posts. I’m not sure where I read the second one, but it has stayed with me and I’ve seen it proven true over and over and over during the mystery that is my life.

                Franklin Graham spent his early years rebelling against being the son of Billy Graham. Can you imagine the pressure and especially the expectations of being the son of Billy Graham? It would almost be a curse more than a blessing! Charlotte Joko Beck once wrote that we make martyrs of others with our expectations. I suspect Franklin Graham knows the truth of that saying. So Franklin rebelled, living what the Church calls “a life of sin.” When he came back to The Faith, Franklin said that all those things he did as a rebellious son he found useful as a Christian ministering to others. He knew what they were going through, knew how they felt, could relate to their struggles, and he could help. He’d been there, he’d done that. And he was surprised how God has used all of that in his ministry.

                Nothing is wasted in God’s economy. This is the second great saying in my life that I live by.

                When I was in my second pastorate, I was diagnosed with severe depression. It didn’t surprise me. I had told my District Superintendent that I felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and that I was looking forward to it because I’d be locked away in the psych ward for weeks and wouldn’t have to deal with any of my parishioners. The DS gave me a shocked look and didn’t say anything. Later he sent me a letter telling me that he had no idea how to help me or what to say. That was okay—he wasn’t much of a DS and his letter came as no surprise.

My doctor put me on an anti-depression medication called Buspar. At the time, it was the #1 prescribed medication for depression. As a pastor, I felt no small amount of guilt over this. I mean, I was a pastor, a spiritual leader, a “man of God.”  I felt that I was not only failing as a minister, but I was letting my congregation down. If I was really as spiritual as I should be, I wouldn’t be on a medication for depression. Should I keep it a secret so no one would know? I struggled with this. I decided not to broadcast it on the one hand, but to not keep it a secret on the other.  What happened surprised me. God kept bringing Christians into my life who were wrestling with the spiritual guilt of being on depression medication. They were encouraged that I was a minister who was in the same boat as they were. I was able to relate to them. I mean, who was I to criticize or judge their Christianity when I was in the same fix they were? That made me safe for them to talk to.

I knew a prominent church evangelist who was also safe for Christians to talk to. He actually did have a nervous breakdown, and he would always talk about it in one of his sermons. Christians would come forward afterwards to talk with him about their nervous breakdown experiences—experiences that were not supposed to happen in the church.

One of the things I used to wrestle with as a young adult was why God put me in a dysfunctional family with a Mom who was a prescription drug addict and a step-father who was physically, verbally and emotionally abusive. Did God love me less than He did others? The struggle almost made me believe in reincarnation—had I been a horrible person in a previous life and now Karma was paying me back? (My joke about reincarnation: “I didn’t believe in it the first time.” Ba-dum-bum).  But as I have talked about this, over the past decades I have become a safe person for Christians to talk about how they were physically or sexually abused in their Christian homes growing up. And as a Hospital Chaplain I have an understanding and a heart for prescription drug addicts, people who believe that their addiction is legitimate because they have a prescription—so the doctor believes that they need it. Because of my Mom’s addiction to Darvon, she ended up in the psych ward for six months at the University of Arkansas Medical Center. Even though it is hard for me to call on a parishioner in a mental health lock-up facility, I am still inwardly urged to do so. After listening to my Mom talk about it when I was a teenager, I know what a frightening experience it can be for that person, and how important it is for them to be visited by someone who cares.

Former addicts help addicts. A parent who has lost a child helps a parent who has lost a child. A person who was sexually abused as a child is a help to someone who had the same happen to them. Who were among the first to arrive in Moore, Oklahoma, to help after the devastating tornado? Those who had lost their homes in a tornado. God uses those who have been through it to help those who also have been through it or are going through it.

What we go through is never wasted. God’s economy is built that way. God is not a God of waste. He can and does use anything, often in mysterious, surprising and miraculous ways.

By the way, I came to realize that God did not love me any less, or that I had done something so bad in my childhood to deserve it. I came to realize that a fact of life is that parents who are unhappy and screwed up can’t help but dump their misery into the lives of those closest to them, including their children, just like their parents did to them. Dysfunction is a generational thing, after all. The good news is that victims can choose to break the cycle—“This ends with me!”

And by the way, don’t buy the advice of the World War II Generation that all you have to do is “forget about it and go on.” That’s sounds easy but is unrealistic. “Forget about it” ends up really being repression—shoving it to the back of the fridge, and we all know what happens to stuff that’s shoved to the back of the fridge after time. Mona Lisa Schulz, the neuroscientist and neuropsychologist, points out that the abuse or trauma we suffer is never forgotten—its memory is stored in the very cells of our bodies, and eventually speaks out via various illnesses. We can’t “just forget about it and go on.” We have to face it and end the generational cycle. And God, Who never lets anything go to waste, brings people into our lives to help us, just as people came into their lives to help them.

That God can use anything, that He doesn’t waste anything, does not mean that He “caused” it or even “allowed” it. Like I said, some things just happen. But God can use it for our good. Since Nothing Is Wasted in God’s Economy is one of the major sayings I live by, then Romans 8:28 is one of the major Bible verses I live by: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.

All things. It took me a while to realize the magnitude of “all things.” All means “all.” Even abuse. Even addiction. Even depression. Even the loss and death of a loved one. Humanly, that sounds possibly morbid. But it doesn’t gloss over the tragedy or the pain or the loss or the devastation. It says that in God’s Economy those things don’t have the last word.

God’s Transformational Holy Spirit can have the last word in our hearts, lives and emotions. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. ~Romans 8:27. Holy Spirit touches human spirit, and transformation begins.

And nothing gets wasted in God’s Economy.

Your Fellow Traveler,

~Steve

The Intolerance of TOLERANCE!

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.

~Charlotte Joko Beck

The Intolerance of Tolerance!

Over a year ago I was at a well-known department store to apply for a part-time job, something to help bring in some income while I’m in my current two year educational program. I stopped at the service desk and asked for a job application. The young woman behind the counter said, “Our Team Member Opportunity Applications are on the computer at the kiosk.” I said, “Team Member Opportunity Application?” “Yes,” she replied, “We don’t have job applications. We have Team Member Opportunities.” It was all I could do not to laugh out loud, old man that I apparently am. “So, if I fill out this ‘Team Member Opportunity Application,’” I said, “and I’m approved, will I be hired and given a job?” She said yes. “And will I be paid for my work?” She said yes. I then said, “Then it’s a job application.” The young lady was not impressed with my age-cured wisdom.

Last week I had to take my car to a franchise auto repair garage, a national chain. When I walked into the building, I saw three counters with computers and credit card readers. At each counter was a sign that read, “Your Car Care Advisor.” Several sarcastic replies immediately went through my mind, but I didn’t say anything. When my wheel alignment was finished, my “Car Care Advisor” rang up the bill—but he never advised me on the care of my car. Apparently he really was nothing more than a store clerk after all.

The landscape of my journey has been taken over by the Politically Correct who apparently sit in offices and get paid for the “team member opportunity” to rename virtually everything in the lives of the rest of us. No doubt these new titles “arise organically” during the Team Think Tank sessions. Somewhere along the way it was probably determined that the old titles were offensive—no doubt by the Politically Correct Police. And by the way, who do you know who uses the word, “űber?”

If it was just titles that are being rewritten, it would just be a mix of annoying and amusing. But it is the thinking of an entire society that is being re-written. The worship word of the Politically Correct is Tolerance!  Tolerance is a good word. We needed a great deal more of it back when I was born during the Eisenhower Administration, especially when it came to racial prejudice. Our society and our churches needed a fresh, healthy dose of tolerance.

And in many ways, it is good that tolerance has caught on. Peoples, nations, cultures, ethnic groups and sub-groups, regions of the country, all have a rich diversity and variety that should be enjoyed and celebrated. An idea that I think is great is the culturally eclectic worship in churches that includes musical styles from around the world. But let me tell you, the Conservative Church fought change and tolerance of musical styles with a passion for decades. Fortunately it lost the battle.

Both the Left and the Right are now trying to out-do the other as champions of tolerance. How can that be bad?

But something has happened along the way in this battle for tolerance. Political polarization. The lines of the Left and the Right became polarized, rigid, angry and even hostile. For the Left, “tolerance” became Tolerance!—or else. And Tolerance was given not as a positive and preferable alternative to intolerance, but as a new mandate: tolerance is what we tolerate, and therefore, what you must tolerate as well, or you are labeled intolerant. The guide became rigid and became a doctrine. Different ideas, different views, different ways of thinking, even differences of religious beliefs, are not tolerated if they don’t align with the mandate. When tolerance became Tolerance! it became itself intolerant. Tolerance! means to tolerate what is now mandated, or be condemned.

A new author that has entered my life, Mona Lisa Schulz, writes:

                                The current craze for political correctness, for example, reflects rigidity of

                                thinking, an excess of liberalism and guilt, that can become a kind of

                                liberal fascism.  (Awakening Intuition, page 281)

Rigidity of thinking. An accusation that mostly has been lodged against the Conservative Right (in many cases justifiably) but can now be lodged just as justifiably against the Liberal Left in our politically polarized society. We have entered the age of Liberal Legalism. Just as my generation of Christian Boomers were arrogant enough to believe that our version of Conservative Legalism would actually work (as opposed to the legalism of our World War II generation), apparently the same arrogance infects Liberal Legalism. In the religiously conservative religious tradition I have ministered in the past three decades, I saw whole generations plagued and damaged by the guilt that results from Conservative Legalism. Seems the Liberal side is now going to learn how it feels. It’s an age-old truism that all revolutions eventually become the new status quo. In the instance of Political Correctness it happened very rapidly.

                Mona Lisa Schulz, in her book The Intuitive Advisor, which talks about ways to be healthy, makes the observation that when it comes to health it involves—

                                …having a flexible and adaptable mindset: having the capacity to

                                sometimes hold a more measured view and at times to be more

                                tolerant and broad-minded. Successfully following the sixth rule

                                for intuitive health entails striking a balance between being able

                                to agree for the sake of agreeing and being able to allow

                                yourself to be a mental free agent of change. (page 204)

                When it comes to tolerance (as opposed to Tolerance!) I really have to question when I’m being a wise old sage who is too savvy to be sucked in by current cultural mandates and when I’m just being a cranky old man. I also am finding that even though I am “Neither a Liberal Nor Conservative Yet Both,” some of my biblically held beliefs are now being labeled as being Intolerant! I am beginning to think that true tolerance must include the spirit in which we disagree. It is this which grieves me the most.

                The battle of the Left and the Right is filled with so much anger and hatred towards each other. The spirit of tolerance has become the spirit of intolerance. I really, really anger my Conservative Christian friends when I point out that they hate Liberals—and especially hate Obama. They vehemently deny that they hate anyone, but when I listen to them talk about President Obama (and Pres. Clinton before him), they use words and phrases like, “can’t stand,” “loathe,” “despise,” and “can’t stand the sight of.” Any Thesaurus will tell you that these are actually synonyms for “hate.” But their Conservative Theology does not allow them to admit their hatred, or even recognize that their language is really hate language. The things I hear my Conservative Christians friends say and post are at times so mean-spirited and hateful that it actually angers me! But “being right” apparently justifies mean-spiritedness. Conservative Christians try to justify it with the cliché, “hate the sin but love the sinner,” but I see little love for those who sin by being a part of the Left. Loving their political and ideological enemies and praying for them is also apparently not a part of Conservative Christian Theology anymore.

And the Liberals, the self-proclaimed High Priests of Tolerance, have become just as angry, hateful, and mean-spirited. There is a mean-spirited, “toe the line or else” anger and rage behind the Politically Correct mandate of Tolerance!

The truly sad thing is that the mean-spiritedness of Conservative Christians and “Tolerance! Liberals” makes me so outraged that I myself can become hateful and mean-spirited about it! A friend of mine once pointed out, “Steve, you hate Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter just as much as you accuse Conservative Christians of hating Obama.” <Sigh> Frank Herbert, author of the sci-fi Dune book series once stated that self-truth is the most painful truth of all. Even those of us who pride ourselves on “being above the fray” of political polarization find ourselves having the very same mean-spirited, condemning anger that we condemn in the opposing sides of the Cultural War. They are angry with each other while I’m angry and fed up with them both! The spirit of my disagreement with them can be just as hateful as their hatred for each other.

“High moral ground” is easy to achieve intellectually, philosophically and even theologically, but it is a trap emotionally, just as much for we Political & Ideological Independents as it is for Conservatives and Liberals. My emotional investment in the issue becomes just as intense as theirs, and that leads easily to anger and hatred. To disagree is one thing. The spirit in which we disagree can lead any of us to the dark side.

In the end, just like everyone else, my most difficult job is the spirit in which I disagree. Disagreement must be an essential element of tolerance. If Tolerance! means that we all have to agree on moral and political issues, then tolerance is a pipe dream on one side, or fascism on the other. We will never fully agree, especially when I’m Offended! has become the politically correct way to express our intolerance for anything and everything that violates our Preferences that we want to enforce on the world around us. When a Conservative Christian once informed me that my belief that dinosaurs once existed “offended her,” I knew that we were in just as deep a pile of politically correct manure as we are with Tolerance! And frankly I think that woman is a an idiot living with her self-imposed ignorance that she wants to force on everyone else, and as an Independent Thinker, I am angry and am not going to put up with it!

And here I am again, back into the slippery slope of the spirit in which we disagree.

What a vicious cycle we have created.

I want to be a “mental free agent of change.” And in the end I keep coming back to the mandates of Scripture that reminds us to love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, and to pray for our leaders (rather than bad-mouthing them). Intellectually I love the wisdom of such words.

Emotionally—what a bear to fulfill!

Your Fellow Traveler Through the Changing Landscape,

~Steve