When Failure Isn’t Your Fault Part 2: Why I Still Have Faith

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In my previous post I related some of the feelings and frustrations related to not having achieved any version of “success” in my life. In this post I will continue that discussion into how my faith has been affected by those failures.

I think the largest and most significant emotion that I have felt during the past 2 years has been betrayal. Some of this betrayal has come from others, but their betrayal doesn’t really bother me a whole lot anymore. What bothers me a whole lot more is feeling betrayed by God. I can handle people betraying me. It doesn’t feel good, but I can handle it. But what do you do when it seems like God has betrayed you? What do you do when you believe in an all-sovereign God who loves you and wants the best for you, but in reality your life feels like nothing more than a series of crushed hopes and dreams?

I don’t believe that anything that happened to me during seminary was beyond God’s ability to prevent or redeem. From my health issues to the actions of others to whatever. All of it was within His power to prevent. And if He wasn’t willing to prevent it I believe it was within His power to redeem and use for good. Well it has been 1 year since I graduated and 2 years since everything started crashing and burning for me and I’m still waiting for this entire mess to be redeemed. I’m still waiting for the smallest semblance of “success.” Still waiting to not feel ashamed about my lack of accomplishment in my life. To not feel ashamed about being 33 (almost 34) and living with my parents. To not be in an area that feels suffocating to me and seems to hold no future (like seriously, I do not like SWFL). To not feel like I wasted 6 good years of my life and a hefty chunk of change on an endeavor that so far has turned out to be mostly a waste of both time and money.

So why go on believing? Why not just curse God and die? Well, because everything I’ve described so far are just feelings and I do not believe that feelings determine reality. Just because you feel like God has abandoned you doesn’t mean that He has. One of the more useful experiences I had in seminary was being chronically exhausted. I was able to experience just how much different reality felt when I was I exhausted compared to when I was well rested. I learned and experience just how fickle feelings are and how quickly they can change from one moment to the next.

God is not a feeling for me. God is a reality for me. Just because I feel like God has abandoned me doesn’t mean that He has. Reality is independent of our feelings. Furthermore, Jesus Himself, literally God incarnate, also felt the same way:

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Matthew 27.46 (quoting Psalm 22.1; also cited in Mark 15.34)

For me it is a comfort to read these words. To know that Jesus felt abandoned by God, and that I as a follower of Christ feel the same way tells me that I am doing something right. It tells me that what I need to do is endure and persevere. If God can redeem someone from death then He is certainly capable of redeeming my situation also. But waiting for that redemption is hard. Very hard.

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When Failure Is Not Your Fault

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It seems popular these days to advise people that if they fail it is all their fault and that they need to take ownership of their failure and learn and grow from it. While I think this is certainly the case most of the time, as Captain Picard reminds us above, it is not the only scenario for failure. Sometimes we do everything correct and we still fail. Or sometimes the circumstances of our situation are such that no matter what we do we will never succeed. Perhaps we are aware of these circumstances, but perhaps we are not. It doesn’t really matter in the end because we will not be able to overcome them.

I believe that it is better for failure to be your fault rather than to fail because success was impossible. If your failure was because of something you did or didn’t do, then that means success was likely within your control. You can analyze and reflect on your failure, correct your mistakes, and succeed (or at least improve) the next time. It might not feel good to admit that you failed, but long term it is better to have failed and learned and grown from it.

It is far worse though, I think, to fail simply because the circumstances would not allow you to succeed. To be sure you can still reflect on such failures and learn what you could have done better. But knowing that success was ultimately impossible and that there was nothing that you could do to change that is a different kind of hurt. It’s a hurt that leaves you feeling helpless and hopeless. Whatever things you might realize in hindsight that you could have done better are overshadowed by the feelings of despondency that come with realizing success was never an option.

I feel like my life has been a series of this 2nd type of failure. I feel that even though I have reflected on and learned what I could have done better or improved, that ultimately success was impossible.

Now before I go any further, allow me to explain what “success” in life is for me. At different points in my life I have had different versions of success. At one point success for me was having a family and being wealthy enough so that money wasn’t a limiting factor in pursuing opportunities. Then as time progressed I stopped caring about wealth and just wanted sufficient income to support my family. Then some more time passed and I stopped caring about having kids. Then still more time passed I stopped caring about having a wife. Now I am at the point where for me success is simply being able to support myself and move out of my parent’s house. While the devolution of my vision of success is likely significant it really doesn’t matter for the purposes of this article because at no point in my life have I achieved any of these versions. And furthermore, being able to support myself is a fundamental requirement for all these versions anyway.

So is it possible for someone to try for 15 years and not even achieve the most basic level of success of any version of success he has ever had? Oh yes. It is quite possible.

I graduated High School in 2004. I decided that I wanted to do computer network management, so I enrolled in a program for training in that. I graduated that program with an Associate’s at the end of 2007. Oh yes. Do you remember what happened in 2008? I do. I remember quite well. It was The Recession. Now Florida, where I was living at the time, was one of the hardest hit states by The Recession. In fact we were competing with California and Michigan for the highest unemployment rate. Not exactly something that you want to win. So the economy that I graduated into was one of the worst in U.S. history. And as you might expect I wasn’t able to really even get this career off the ground because there were literally no jobs around, not even in the tech industry in my area.

So with my first attempt at success having failed because of something I could do nothing about I figured I would get a Bachelor’s degree. The only job I had found was at a call center, which I hated but it was money, and since I was considering seminary and needed a Bachelor’s for that anyway I figured it was a good next move. So I enrolled in a web development program at a local University. Unfortunately that program ended up being completely worthless, but between grants and scholarships I didn’t spend any money on tuition there anyway. Not to mention that it really failed to instill any passion for web development in me because it made the practice so convoluted and unclear.

So having failed a 2nd time because of a University’s terrible curriculum I decided to make a 3rd attempt at success. After all, 3rd time’s a charm right?

No. No it isn’t.

Initially I was very excited to have been accepted to DTS. At this point I am 8 years or so out of high school and I still have yet to really start a career due to so many things going wrong. So when I got in it felt like something finally went right and I was for once excited and optimistic about the future. In hindsight though it seems I only got in so that I could fail again. Some of you are aware of the many health related issues that I dealt in seminary (if not they are documented on this site elsewhere) and how no matter what I tried or did I simply could not get things under control. Ultimately these issues cost me most, if not every, opportunity I had post-seminary.

So now I feel like I have failed a 3rd time for reasons that I ultimately had no control over.

And now I am just tired. Tired of failing for reasons I can’t control. And quite honestly I don’t feel like trying anymore. Even when I do get the motivation and the energy to start working towards “success” again it isn’t long before the ghost of past failures shows up and starts whispering to me, “this attempt will also end in failure and there is nothing you can do to change that outcome.”

Now I don’t think that my situation is typical, but I think it does happen. And maybe someone reading this is in a similar situation and needs to know that sometimes failure isn’t your fault. Sometimes the circumstances of your situation are such that you were never going to succeed no matter what you did. Unfortunately though I have no advice or “solution” for when you when run out of motivation and just want to give up. All I can say is that I am right there with you. But if you figure something out, please let me know.

Questions Do Not Indicate Doubt

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PC: Joel Overbeck | Unsplash

The story of Lisa (and Michael) Gungor recently came to my attention (I’ve been kind of busy the past 6 years or so with seminary). There’s a lot that I suppose could be commented on regarding her story, but there was one aspect in particular that stood out to me: the shutting down of her questions: 

 
“We went to this very wild, charismatic church, and the church was exciting and the way of Jesus was revolutionary to me. And I had little questions, but you weren’t really allowed to ask them.”

Here’s the deal: questions don’t indicate doubt, they indicate curiosity and engagement. Questions, assuming they’re honest, come about as a result of being engaged in thinking about something. If you are teaching a topic and someone asks a question regarding it it means that they are engaged and care about what you are saying! It means that they have been following and processing what you are saying and are trying to understand it better. Perhaps something is completely new to them. Perhaps it conflicts (or seems to conflict) with what they already know. Perhaps they find the topic interesting or intriguing and want to know more about it. So for a child, who is growing up in church, to be asking questions about the faith is a good thing and something that should be welcomed!

Unfortunately though that’s not what happened in Lisa’s case. Questions were apparently viewed as doubt and doubt “was the opposition of faith.” The problem with this logic is, as I’ve tried to show above, that questions do not indicate doubt, but engagement and curiosity! When you are apathetic and not engaged by a topic is when you fail to be curious about it and do not ask questions regarding it. Questions are good, and should be asked. 

The results of their curiosity being shutdown were not good. The questions didn’t go away. They kept gnawing away at both of them until they found answers to them. That is after all the only way to get rid of a question: answer it.

I don’t know what their exact questions were since they don’t mention them specifically in the article. However, the “problem” of evil seems to have been one of them given the mentioning of their experience from their visit at Auschwitz and Lisa’s problem with reading the Old Testament. This is a very good question! In fact, this question is only a “problem” within the Judaeo-Christian worldview. After all, if God is good and created everything, then why does evil exist? Why the horrors of Auschwitz? Why modern day genocides? Why senseless murders? 

These are not new questions. Christianity has been around for 2,000 years and so have these questions. The ultimate answer (because there is quite a bit to discuss regarding this issue) to the “problem” of evil is that God allows it and uses it to accomplish His purposes, one of which is to bring glory to Himself. Yes, I am quite sure that God could have accomplished His purposes and glorified Himself through some other means, but He didn’t and in the end we have to discuss what God actually did, not what He might have done or could have done.

Issues with the Old Testament are also not new. In fact they are so old that the New Testament even deals with some of them! Specifically, that Christians are not under the Mosaic Law because through their union with Christ they died to the Law because Christ did what the Law could not: free us from sin! (see Romans 6). In Galatians 3 also Paul argues that people have always been justified by faith, not by doing the Law. He goes on to say that the Law was just a tutor whose purpose was to lead us to Christ, but now that Christ has come there is no longer any need for a tutor.

Obviously there is much more that can (and should) be discussed regarding these two questions. My point here is simply to show that questions are not evidence of doubt or a lack of faith. Questions are evidence of curiosity. They are evidence that someone is thinking about the faith and wanting to learn more about it, or reconcile things that don’t make sense. Honest questions should be engaged with honesty and compassion. The goal of engaging these questions is not to win an argument or convince someone of our view of things, but to win the person. To communicate to them that we understand where the question is coming from and why it is an issue for them. To communicate to them that we love them and are concerned about them. They could be motivated by genuine curiosity, or they could be motivated by pain, but we will never know until we engage them.

But whatever you do, don’t shut questions down or consider them to be a lack of faith. Especially if they’re coming from children. The questions aren’t going to go away. The person asking them will eventually answer them, and part of that answer will be: “God doesn’t love me.” And nothing could be further from the truth. 

Being Taught by Trees

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PC: Imat Bagja Gumilar | Unsplash

I believe that God has created the world in such a way that we are constantly being taught about Him by it. Unfortunately these days we live in forests of concrete and steel, rather than of trees and plants and so I think we miss many of these opportunities for creation to teach us.

Ancient people however were very much in contact with the natural world that God created and were thus able to be taught by it. I suspect then that the reason agrarian imagery is used frequently in the Bible is not only because society at the time was agrarian and such images would have been easily understood, but also because it is accurate.

Think about it for a minute. When you plant something either it prospers and grows and produces something good, or it doesn’t grow or produces something rotten; there is no intermediate state. This is really the truth illustrated by the parable of the four soils: in the first three the seed, the word of God, doesn’t really produce anything, but it does in the fourth because they understood and believed the word of God. So, either we are growing spiritually, or we are dying spiritually; there is no intermediate state.

Another agrarian image frequently used to illustrate the spiritual condition of people are trees. If a tree is producing good fruit, or leaves or flowers you know that the tree is healthy and growing. But if a tree is producing bad fruit, or no leaves or no flowers you know that the tree is unhealthy and dying. So I don’t think it is surprising then that Jesus used tree imagery to describe people:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

— Matthew 7:15–20 (ESV)

But what is good fruit? And what is bad fruit? In Paul’s letter to the Galatians we find out that what is good fruit and what is bad fruit are the types of actions and attitudes in our lives. The bad fruit produced by someone who is spiritually diseased or unhealthy is:

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

— Galatians 5:19–21 (ESV)

But the good fruit produced by someone who is spiritually healthy is:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

— Galatians 5:22–23 (ESV)

The good fruit comes because:

And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

— Galatians 5:24 (ESV)

Regardless of where someone is spiritually, whether they are healthy and producing good fruit or diseased and producing bad fruit, both need to be nourished by the living waters found in Christ:

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

— John 7:37–39 (ESV)

The spiritually diseased person becomes healthy and begins to grow and produce good fruit. And the spiritually healthy person continues to be healthy and grow and produce good fruit. Those who are nourished by the living waters in Christ will endure whatever trials or hardships come their way:

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose trust is the LORD.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

— Jeremiah 17:7–8 (ESV)

So next time you see a healthy tree (the bigger the better) perhaps take the time to say a quick prayer and ask God to make you like it, rather than simply passing on by. Just as many animals benefit from a healthy tree, either by finding food, shelter, or whatever, so will many people benefit from you being spiritually healthy. They will benefit from your love for others; your peace in the midst of hardships; your patience with their faults. We need to produce this sort of fruit in our lives. Not for our own personal benefit, but for the benefit of others.

The City of the Soul

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PC: Aniket Deole | Unsplash

I think we are all afraid of God. Whether we are the most devout Christian on the planet, or the most hardened atheist, I think we are all afraid God. The difference I think is in to what extent we have gone to insulate ourselves from our fear.

Some of us have built massive sprawling metropolises in our souls to deafen them to the voice of God. We have used concrete and steel to construct buildings and skyscrapers in order to feel safe and secure in our pleasures, whatever they may be. Whether it’s in fine food. Or sex. Or athletic ability. Or professional accomplishments. Or money. Whatever they are we don’t want to hear the conclusion of The Preacher:

I did not restrain myself from getting whatever I wanted;
I did not deny myself anything that would bring me pleasure.
So all my accomplishments gave me joy;
this was my reward for all my effort.
Yet when I reflected on everything I had accomplished
and on all the effort that I had expended to accomplish it,
I concluded: “All these achievements and possessions are ultimately profitless—
like chasing the wind!
There is nothing gained from them on earth.”

Ecclesiastes 2.10-11 (NET)

The roads in our cities are paved. The reasoning, we tell ourselves, is so that we don’t have to walk in dust and get dirty. The real reason though is that we don’t want to be reminded that we came from dust and will one day return to it. We don’t want to be reminded of our death. Our death that comes about because we rebelled against God:

But to Adam he said,
“Because you obeyed your wife
and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,
‘You must not eat from it,’
cursed is the ground thanks to you;
in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
but you will eat the grain of the field.
By the sweat of your brow you will eat food
until you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust, and to dust you will return.”

Genesis 3.17-19 (NET)

Finally, we artificially light up the darkness of our souls with false hopes. Political parties. Technology. Economics. Sciences. Philosophies. Whatever we think will set the world right we put our hope in and light up our souls with. However by doing so we blind ourselves to Jesus, the true light:

The true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was created by him, but the world did not recognize him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not receive him. But to all who have received him—those who believe in his name—he has given the right to become God’s children —children not born by human parents or by human desire or a husband’s decision, but by God.

John 1.9-13 (NET)

And so we insulate ourselves, whether consciously or not, from the voice of God. We don’t hear or see what He is telling us. We don’t see the stars at night. We don’t see the animals during the day. We don’t see the crops we get our food from. We’ve closed ourselves off from any and all reminders that we made neither ourselves nor the world we’re living in. We don’t hear what creation is telling us:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the sky displays his handiwork.
Day after day it speaks out;
night after night it reveals his greatness.
There is no actual speech or word,
nor is its voice literally heard.
Yet its voice echoes throughout the earth;
its words carry to the distant horizon.

Ps. 19.1-4 (NET)

I don’t like cities. I don’t like what happens to my soul when I don’t hear the voice of God because other concerns are crowding it out. For all the loneliness and isolation that may come from being in the desert it is a far more profitable place spiritually. In the desert there is no concrete or steel or artificial light to distract you from the voice of God. And I think this is why we don’t like being in spiritual deserts: because when we are in such a place we cannot get away from God even though we want to.

Give me the desert over the city.

 

Seminary: Looking Back

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Note: This is post is really therapy for me. It’s something that I need to write and say before it starts eating away at me.My time in seminary is coming to an end. As I look back over the 6 years I’ve spent earning this degree I’m not sure how to describe them. Would I describe them as good? Well that depends how you define good. If you mean “pleasant,” then my answer would be a resounding NO. I don’t think I’ll ever find myself looking back on these years and think, “Man, that was so much fun, I wish I had the opportunity to do it over again. Sure there were some tough times, but overall it was an enjoyable experience.”

However, I wouldn’t describe them as bad either; I did finish after all. No I think I would describe them as somewhere in between good and bad, if such a middle ground exists. This verse is a good description I think:

The LORD has disciplined me severely,
but he has not given me over to death.
— Ps 118:18

The imagery in Psalm 118 is the psalmist being surrounded by many nations, and even though he was almost was defeated God saved him from them; even though he was disciplined severely God did not allow him to be killed by them.

I’d say seminary for me has been a battle similar to the one the psalmist describes. I felt I was constantly fighting the whole time and every time I tried to gain the upper hand whatever move I did was immediately countered. It was unreal. And also very frustrating. I survived, so it wasn’t bad, but it definitely wasn’t good constantly being under a perfectly evil combination of low testosterone and chronic stress for 3 years.

Or perhaps it would be better to describe it with a little metaphor…

One day I embarked on a journey in a boat. I didn’t know where I was headed exactly, but I was certain that God had led me to that boat and wanted me to get on it. So I got on it. At first everything was going smoothly. The skies were clear. The sea was calm. Everything looked good. But after a short while a storm came along. Not unexpected. For as long of a journey that I was on storms were to be expected.

However, this storm never left. It stayed and kept raging and raging and never let up. As the boat was tossed by the storm I watched as one by one my hopes, dreams, and expectations were thrown overboard and drowned in the dark, watery, chaotic abyss below. Then despair begins to take hold of me. I begin to wonder if I am the next thing to be tossed overboard. Sometimes I begin to hope that I am next. What good is my life without dreams? Without expectations? Without hopes?

Then finally the storm begins to break. I look around and find that some of my hopes and dreams are still on board! Not everything is lost! I begin to recover some optimism. But it is quickly dashed because before the storm clears completely it smashes the ship into a reef. Now whatever little did remain of my hopes and dreams is lost, gone and drowned in the sea forever. Despair regains its grip on me and I begin to consider just giving up and drowning. But I am able to break out of its hold long enough to notice that there is land a swimmable distance away. So I grab a life jacket and start swimming for shore.

When I get to shore I find cliffs there. So I find a cleft and sit there and wait for the storm to pass. At some point while waiting for the storm to blow over I pass out. When I wake up I find the storm gone. The sun is shining. The Gulls are calling. I can smell the salty sea air. For the first time in I don’t know how long things are calm and pleasant.

I begin to walk along the beach to see if I can find anyone. Eventually I see a man sitting by a fire cooking something. He sees me and says to me, “Come over and eat.” But I don’t go over. I freeze. I know who he is. He’s not a man. He’s the God-man. It’s Jesus. I feel the adrenaline start coursing through my veins. I feel the anger start rising in me. I think to myself: “Oh, I’ll come over there alright. I’ll come over there and beat you with that frying pan.”

Before I am able to move though something — or someone, perhaps the Spirit, perhaps my own reasoning, some combination of the two, I don’t know — says to me, “Is this attitude of yours good? You are weak and need food and he has it. Go and eat.” As I begin to consider this statement I only get more angry — or perhaps I get angry in a different sort of way — because I know it’s true. My dreams weren’t the only the thing to get tossed overboard in the storm; my food went also. I had somehow by some miracle managed to save the water, but the food was lost. I don’t remember when I ate last because I lost track of time in the storm; when you don’t see the sun or moon or stars the days all blend into one another.

As I continue standing I feel the anger subside a bit and I grudgingly drag my feet over to the fire and sit down and eat. I don’t say anything. There’s no point. He already knows and I’ve already said it a million times before. So I just sit. And wait. I still feel the anger, but it is not as great as it once was. So I just sit and wait.

And that’s what my experience in seminary has been like.

Forgotten Elements in American Christianity: Ecclesiastes

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American Christianity is unbalanced, I believe. This is not a uniquely American problem though; no culture will ever have a perfectly balanced expression of Christianity. Cultures have a certain set of values and those values inevitably help shape their expression of Christianity, for good and bad.

In America we tend to value practicality. We focus on making things productive and efficient. We focus on things that get results; that help us accomplish our goals. We are a goal-oriented society. This naturally leads to an emphasis on work, which is good because God created us to work:

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. — Genesis 2.15

God expects us to work:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. — Exodus 20:8–10a

The Apostle Paul also expects us to work:

For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. — 2 Thessalonians 3:10–12

We also tend to value idealism. We’re eternal optimists. We’re always envisioning and imagining a better life, a better country, a better world. We differ quite vastly over what that ideal world looks like, but we are always imagining it. When we combine this with our emphasis on work it naturally leads to the conclusion that we can make our ideal world a reality. And this also is not a bad thing. The single mother, for example, who wants to get out of her minimum wage job and earn more money so she can work less and spend more time with her children should try to make that ideal a reality; it’s a good thing.

What isn’t good is when a healthy dose of the futility of life is not injected into the marriage of these two values. I think this injection is missing in American Christianity and I think it is missing because we have neglected the perspective of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes. I suspect if I surveyed 100 American Christians and asked them what their favorite book of the Bible is that Ecclesiastes would have less than 5 votes, in fact it might not get any. It is a sad thing to think about, and I think also indicative of why American Christianity is the way it is.

It requires us to think and reflect on some of the cold hard truths about life, and we don’t like to do this. It isn’t productive. It doesn’t produce results. It doesn’t help us reach our goals. So why bother with it? Not only this, but it also undermines our idealism with fatalism. Consider the following:

I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. — Ecclesiastes 1.14

Why would we want to acknowledge this? If this is true we reason, then why bother doing anything? Why bother standing up for the rights of the unborn? Why bother trying to eliminate racism? If it’s all useless then why bother? And so our thoughts stop there and we move on to the nice friendly passages that make us feel warm and fuzzy inside.

However once we come to grips with the perspective of the Preacher we can conclude along with him:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. — Ecclesiastes 12.13-14

When we recognize that all our striving after the actualization of our ideals is useless and in the end doesn’t matter it frees us from carrying that unnecessary burden and allows us to focus on what does matter: keeping the commandments of God. We recognize that God will judge each of us individually. Were we covetous and never content with what we had? Were we adulterous and consistently involved in sexual promiscuity? Did we spread false lies about others for our own advantage? Did we love something more than God? How well we loved God and loved others is what we will be judged on.

The reason why I write this is because I have noticed a tendency over the past couple of years within the church to think that we need to solve the social injustices in our country and world. I think this is dangerous because it is placing an unnecessary burden on the church and I think it will eventually be too much for us to carry and will crush us. We are not called to solve all the problems and injustices of the world. We are called to be salt and light. Living testimonies of the love of God to all humanity. If we first look at the state of our own soul and work to purify and cleanse it, then the societal change we want to see will naturally flow from it. It does not work the other way around. This is what Christ taught us:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. — Matthew 23.25-28

 

 

 

Personality and Discipleship

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A perennial struggle in Christianity is the struggle between preserving the old and adapting to the new. On the one hand we have a faith that we must preserve and hand on to future generations, but on the other new discoveries and advances are constantly being made, especially in the areas of science and technology. How much of the old do we change or reformulate in light of the new?

One of the fields that has been part of this debate is psychology. While there is a lot in this field that has been rejected by Christians [and rightfully so], not everything has. One area that seems to have gained at least some acceptance is personality theory, and more specifically the MBTI.

Essentially the MBTI builds on some of Carl Jung’s work to arrive at 16 different types of human cognition [thinking patterns]. It is important to note that these are indeed just different types and that one is not inherently better than the others; each type has its own gifts and blind spots. It is a good description of what we see in reality and in our everyday interactions with others since it is quite obvious that not everyone thinks the same or cares about the same things. Its widespread acceptance then is not surprising.

Where I think the MBTI can make the best impact is as a supplement to discipleship. Note the emphasis on supplement. Whatever your cognitive wiring happens to be it isn’t going to change when you become a Christian, but your heart will. An example of this is the Apostle Paul. Prior to his conversion we read of someone with a zealous personality:

“But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.”  — Acts 8.3

“But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.” — Acts 9.1-2

After his conversion Paul didn’t lose his zeal as he went on several missionary journeys establishing and strengthening the churches [mostly Gentile] throughout the Roman Empire. He was beaten numerous times, imprisoned, and eventually executed for his work in spreading the Gospel. God didn’t change his wiring, He changed his heart.

When we become Christians, whenever that might be, our cognitive wiring does not change, our hearts do. Like Paul’s our hearts change from being hostile towards God to loving Him; we desire to serve Him rather than persecute Him. If someone was an artist before their conversion, they will still be an artist afterwards; their personality won’t change. What will change is their heart, a change that will likely be reflected in their art.

Discipleship essentially continues the heart change that happened at conversion. The regular spiritual disciplines of prayer, Scripture study, meditation, fasting, etc are of far more value in this process than the MBTI, and also offer better opportunities for growth. If you are in a discipleship or mentoring relationship with someone the main focus of your discussions should be on spiritual matters and spiritual growth, not personality theory. Living the Christian life and following Christ, learning to deny yourself, putting to death your own selfish ambitions, and being submissive to where the Spirit is leading you and the work He is doing in you will result in far more growth than anything any psychologist will ever come up with, including the MBTI.

However, I think the MBTI can be a useful supplement to this process by providing a framework that shows us that not everybody processes information the same, nor do they need to, nor should they. It can help show us how to craft a discipleship process that helps a person become the best version of who God made them to be, rather than who the pastor, mentor, or whoever thinks they should be. Or as a resource I recently saw put it: we can become like Jesus while being ourselves.

It can also help us avoid some of the conflicts and miscommunication that can arise in such relationships as a result of our different wiring.

There’s always a little truth in sarcasm…

I’ll use myself as an example. My MBTI type is INTP. A basic description of this style of thinking is that it is a never ending quest for truth, subjective truth in this case. In the end it doesn’t matter what the experts say, or what social convention or niceties dictate, if something is true it is true and it should be accepted. There is really no emotional attachment to any particular idea or theory and everything is subject to modification or rejection as new information becomes available; there are no sacred cows. As such there is a certain type of inherent rebellion with us. We generally do not readily “drink the kool-aid” we are served by society or a particular organization; we will not defend something [at least not readily or easily] that we believe is wrong just because we have a societal obligation to, or because a superior tells us to. We’re not trying to be rebellious on principle or cause disruption; we are not anarchists. We are just loyal to the truth and believe everyone else should be as well. At best we are something similar to Albert Einstein, whose ideas helped move physics forward. At worst we are along the lines of Sheldon Cooper, who is not open to modifying his ideas in light of new information, is constantly defending himself and his ideas, and does not realize the impact and effect that he has on others.

So if you are discipling me recognizing that this is my thought process would be a great supplement to our relationship. It isn’t going to change what we talk about, but it will change your understanding of my actions and responses. So for instance, if you happen to be a firm believer in eternal security and one week I say something that attacks that doctrine, knowing that what I am actually after is the truth concerning the question: “Can a Christian lose their salvation?” and not attacking eternal security, will [hopefully] keep you from condemning me. It can help you realize that my priority is on truth and it matters to me that I am able to be loyal to this, whatever it might happen to be. It would be better in this case to point me in the direction of resources that discuss this issue without misrepresenting the views of either side so that I can weigh the best arguments from each side and come to an answer on this question. The truth is after all what I care about. And for all you know I just may end up supporting eternal security, though perhaps not on the same basis you do.

It can also help you realize what my blind spot is, so that you can improve me in this area. For me my biggest blind spot is that I don’t realize the impact that my words and ideas have on others. Let’s stick with the eternal security example. You might say to me regarding this issue: “You know, there are a lot of people who come from a background which created in them a lot of doubt concerning their salvation; they never knew for sure if they were saved or not. So for them the doctrine of eternal security is a great comfort because it assuaged their doubts. Repudiating this doctrine would likely have a negative effect on such people and bring back all their old doubts.” It won’t have any effect on my answer to the question, but it will help me realize that if I do find the doctrine of eternal security false I will need to plan for and expect this reaction. I basically need help packaging the truth in a way that others can accept it, especially those who are going to react negatively to it.

With this strategy I get to use the natural gifts and abilities God gave me, and the Church gets to benefit from these gifts and abilities; I become a better version of who God made me to be. But if you try to force me to be something I’m not the only thing you’re really going to succeed in is driving me away from the Church.

God made us all different, and I think the MBTI can help us recognize those differences and craft better discipleship and mentoring strategies in light of them. I think failing to recognize these differences will only impoverish the Church and deprive her of the necessary gifts that everyone brings.

 

Recovery

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Sometimes things do not always happen as planned.

At the beginning of last summer I knew I had been overextending myself for too long and needed a break, which I planned to take over that summer. My expectation was that I would be ready and back to 100% by the time the Fall semester started, but this expectation was not realized and I had to drop to part-time [6 hours]. I was a little discouraged, but I knew I had made the right decision and expected that I would be ready and back to 100% in time to begin the Spring semester. Well, I felt much better in the Spring compared to the Fall, not 100%, but vastly improved and continuing to improve. So I decided to take a full load [12 hours] with the expectation that I would be back to 100% within the first few weeks. However, this expectation was also not realized.

I realized a couple of weeks in that I had made a mistake in taking a full load, but by that point I was already financially committed, and since I didn’t have a spare $5,000 laying around my only option was to move forward and do the best I could running on the little I had left.

At about the midway point I had to preach my first sermon for class. As I was preparing before class that day I noticed that my body started to shake, and then I realized that I was chronically stressed [preaching is stressful, but not that stressful]. On the one hand this was good news because it meant that I finally knew what was going on, and that I could starting treating it. But on the other hand you’re not going to de-stress in the middle of graduate level semester, no matter what you do. I did however manage to sneak in a break of about a month which got me rested just enough to finish out the semester.

One thing I have come to appreciate over the course of my health struggles these past few years has been the union of body and soul in humanity; what happens to one affects the other. There were long stretches of time where I could not concentrate on what I was reading or praying, and thus it was hard for me to benefit from doing many spiritual exercises. So I eventually stopped doing them. This of course had negative consequences spiritually and led to a lot of anger and resentment towards God on my part. It can go the other way too where a spiritual disease affects the body, such as acedia or gluttony, but that wasn’t the case here.

One tendency I’ve noticed in myself, which I think holds true for American culture as well, is the tendency to think in extremism and false dichotomies. When this type of thinking is applied to the nature of humanity it leads to either putting so much emphasis on the soul that we live and think as if we don’t have a body, or to putting so much emphasis on the body that we live and think as if we don’t have a soul.

Many Christians I think tend towards the former [too much emphasis on the soul]. While we are right to pay attention to our soul and care and nourish it, we cannot do so to the extent that we forget we have a body as well that needs to be nourished and cared for. Knowing what we know about human biology we cannot automatically assume that everything has a spiritual cause, and that if we just pray more, or increase our devotion to God, or confess some sin that we are unrepentant of, that we will be able to overcome whatever is ailing us. Sometimes the dust of which our bodies are made just breaks down. My body broke down last year.

As my body has finally been able to recover in the month or so since the semester ended my spiritual life has improved as well, but not fully nor automatically. I have been surprised by the amount of work and discipline that has been required of me to recover spiritually. I didn’t use to have to discipline myself to do things like pray, or read Scripture because I looked forward to them and wanted to do them. In some ways I feel like I am back to square one spiritually and now must find some way to recover the love and zeal that I had before this whole ordeal.

I am not out of the woods yet either physically or spiritually, but I am better than I was a month or so ago, and I continue to get better. If everything goes as planned [hopefully] I should be in good shape physically and spiritually to tackle my last semester of seminary, and hopefully gain some hindsight on the events of the past 12 months.

 

Empty Spaces

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Christ is the light of the world, whoever follows him will not walk in darkness, but have the light of life

“I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

I was offered a free desk yesterday afternoon while I was walking into my building after arriving home from church. I noticed the desk was an L-desk, something I had been looking for for a while, and so I quickly agreed to take it. When I moved my old desk out to make space for my new desk it occurred to me that I had a lot of space to play with. The question before me was, “What will I put in this empty space?”

The season of Trinity in the liturgical year poses the same question to us: “What will we put in this empty space?”  Will we put Christ in it? Will we allow Him to purge from us our sinful and evil ways? Will we do the things He commands us to do? Will we love Him more than the world?

Trinitytide is a season of growth, so let us allow Christ to grow in us, so that everyone may see His glory in us and be drawn into His kingdom. Amen.