Peace in the Pieces

Life has pieces. Sometimes the pieces are all over the place, and sometimes the pieces are in fairly decent order. Sometimes the pieces seem to form a recognizable pattern, and sometimes they look totally random. Some pieces have rounded, harmless edges, and some pieces are dangerously sharp without mercy. But always pieces.

The humanist goal, then, would be to hold your pieces together. It's your job and yours alone to hold them together. Whoever does the best job of holding them together wins. Those who hold the pieces together well are the examples to follow, the inspiring stories, the stuff of legends. We particularly love the stories of those who had the most jagged pieces and then figured out how to hold them together with excellence. Indeed, there is much to commend, here, but one way to look at humanism is in terms of it's goal of holding the pieces together well.

The goal of religion, then, is to hold your sanctified pieces together. Religion is a baptized humanism, because it's your job and yours alone to hold those religious pieces together. Whoever does the best job of holding them together wins a golden crown, or something. The religious folks love to hold up such people as the examples and the inspiring stories, especially those who started with the most jagged pieces.

One slice of the religious community is the word-faith folks, otherwise known as the "prosperity gospel" or "name it and claim it." Their goal is for God to hold your pieces together so that you will win the same game as the humanists. As humble and righteous as it may sound that God is the one holding those pieces together, it still comes down to the same goal: to win by having your pieces held together well.

Jesus doesn't play these games. Jesus doesn't exist to hold these pieces together for you. He didn't come to earth to pick up your pieces, rearrange them, and then give you something prettier than what you started with. Rather, He says, "Your pieces are broken. I will dwell among them with you. Dwell with me among them, too. Eventually, I will replace them." Yes, he does clean some of them up and hold them together for us. Yes, we are more able to hold some of them together because of Him. But it's not the goal to hold those pieces together. That's the difference.

We dwell among broken pieces, and denying that truth leads to all kinds of false plans to reach false goals. His goal in our lives is not better management of the pieces, but rescue from them and full restoration. His method is to dwell in the broken pieces with us (for now), using those pieces as props in order to renew us. His goal for us is not better pieces, but to be a renewed people. In fact, He chose to take on broken pieces when He took on a fully human nature in the Incarnation to rescue us.

Since we will always have the pieces in this world, we can either deny the pieces or dwell in them with the One who chose brokenness with us. We will be renewed only by dwelling with Him there (for now).

Your pieces right now may seem overwhelming, and I have no intention of minimizing the anguish they cause. Quite the contrary - I'm embracing that anguish. The anguish is the intensity from which Jesus can rescue, restore, and renew. There is peace in the pieces.

"Stay in the Shade!"

Drinking a shake at McDonald's in the urban core, not a common habit of mine, became a vivid reminder for me last week about our posture before those around us.

My goal was to read. I had time between appointments, which I intended to spend by catching up on a reading assignment for an upcoming conference. Successful reading for me requires either silence or a steady background of noise. Instead, I got alternating waves of the shouts and whispers commonly heard in the core - bursts of laughter, exchanges across the dining room, advice, criticism, and all manners of life lived out loud, interrupted by pockets of nothingness.

The woman at the counter trying to get the attention of the worker, whose back was turned, because she needed a tray for the drinks since she was walking home to her son and her mother. The job applicant's boyfriend jawing about when he used to work in this restaurant years ago and the people he used to know. The older couple, he in suspenders and she in a wheelchair, in loud whispers recollecting faceless names. The lady with the wide hat three tables away talking to me about the weather.

People's lives lived out loud, louder than I'm accustomed to. Details of their lives I didn't ask for, and didn't really want to know. "I don't care!" I wanted to shout. I didn't. Not really. "I. Don't. Care!!! So stop telling me, and everyone, about the details of your life that we have no business knowing."

The lady in the wide hat told me it was warm outside. Actually, it was cooler than it had been, and was quite pleasant. So I said something stupid: "Actually, it's not that bad out there today, for August." She insisted it was hot, and I kind of blew it off. I could have proved her wrong with the temperature and humidity data if I wanted to.

Here's what I missed: She had been walking all morning because her daughter failed to pick her up, and she was about to walk a couple miles at two in the afternoon to her son's job so that he could drive her home. She was right, and I was wrong - it was hot that day ... for anyone who had to walk for miles during the hottest part of the day. That yesterday was a more typical August day was irrelevant. It was easy for me to say it wasn't that hot because I had so bravely walked from my air conditioned car for the ten seconds it took to get into the air conditioned McDonald's so that I could buy myself a cold shake.

I was wrong because I didn't listen. I had the data to prove my argument, sure, but I never listened. I didn't want to because I. Didn't. Care. She had told me earlier about walking, about her life in that moment, just like everyone else in the restaurant had been doing so loudly. Unlike what I'm accustomed to, people were freely and loudly sharing their lives. And I wasn't listening or caring.

The woman told me something about her life: she had to walk because her daughter continually runs late, she has a son, he has a job (I even know which furniture store) and a car, he's kind enough to give her rides, and she had a warm walk ahead of her because she wants to get home. Her hat is wide because she regularly walks for miles in the sun. The cup tray lady has a son and a mother living in her home, which obviously is nearby enough to be within walking distance, and she was bringing them something cool to drink. Suspenders man gently cares for his wheelchair-bound wife. Job applicant boyfriend remembers his coworkers and is doing what he can so his girlfriend can find work, too. He had spent the last two years in Arizona and just came back to KC in May in order to work.

I was right on the statistics, but wrong on a person's real, daily life because I didn't listen. I was in a place where life's details are shared freely, people telling me about themselves, and I acted like I was in the quiet, "polite" place where you talk softly about coffee flavors or how good your seats were last night at the game or you don't say anything at all.

I'm not suggesting that everyone should share their lives more openly and with more volume. I am suggesting that we tune our ears off of our own frequencies and onto the frequency of those who are speaking. I could argue the effects of relative humidity (listening to her, but tuned to my frequency) or I could be part of this woman's distress (listening to her, tuned to her frequency). How hot I thought it was didn't change the walk she had ahead of her, and it sure didn't help her get home.

As if to salvage myself, I did muster a "stay in the shade" as she collected herself to leave. I had heard her, a least a little, and I entered into her experience, at least a little.

We're Fixers Because We're Pharisees

In the church, we love to "fix" things. A problem comes up, we immediately try to fix it. Someone expresses a spiritual doubt, we immediately try to fix it. A couple gets into a spat, we try to fix it ... and especially right away. A child does something disrespectful, and we try to fix it, no matter whose kid he or she is. Our elders often talk about their own tendency to want to, and in some cases attempt to, fix almost every situation that comes our way.

Part of this tendency is well-motivated. We have a vision for how things ought to be, we see things that aren't as they ought to be, we don't want to be callous and ignore the problem as if we didn't care, and so we get right on the task of fixing. On rare occasions, we have what it takes to "fix" something, but in many cases, we don't really. We can't really fix a child's misbehavior. We can regulate it. We can induce guilt or shame because of it. But most of the time we can't get to the core issue that manifested itself in a behavior we deemed inappropriate. But we want to fix it! We're fixers!

I was talking this over with our Lifestyle Discipleship Coach, Jimmy. As we talked this out, another strain of conversation we'd been having collided with this one. We are Pharisees. We are Pharisees because we judge others on our righteousness scale. We often ignore the idea that we're Pharisees because we don't hold to same outrageous rules the Pharisees in the Bible had. We don't have rules like that, so we must not be like them. But we are.

We constantly judge people. I'm not just talking about discernment, where we rightly and soberly assess sin as sin. I'm talking about judging. We see what people do, and we go far beyond discernment right into internally declaring them unrighteous. What they did was wrong and that determines how I should respond to them. I will criticize them, think less of them, and mentally categorize them as people "who need help." Often, my help. They need fixin'! And so, I try to fix them.

That's what Pharisees did. They tried to fix people with their rules. We try to fix them with rules, correction, "advice," arguments, and meddling. Their behavior is distasteful to us, and in order to get distasteful things away from us, we fix. We become very self-centered in fixing others - trying to manipulate their lives so that we don't have to endure something we don't like. We are far more like Pharisees than we care to admit. And we're fixers because we're Pharisees.

The alternative is not that we should pull away and be uninvolved. Rather, we should commit to not fix them, but be with them in the mess and draw them to the only One who can fix anything about any one of us. The behavior is only a manifestation of something far deeper, and although man can help with many issues, ultimately only God can fulfill the deepest needs of the human soul. We can offer counsel and share what we've learned from experience. We can educate and encourage. We can do things that actually do help. But we can't "fix," and to try to fix is to point them away from the only One who can.

Now, when I read what Jesus said about removing the plank from our own eye before removing the speck from our brother's eye, I realize how brilliant Jesus is. Removing that speck is fixing, and you have plenty of fixing you need done before you ever think about fixing someone else.

There. I hope I fixed this situation.

And I would be guilty of my own rant if I stopped here.

Our tendency to fix, our Pharisaism, is itself something I can't fix in you or you fix in me. The Pharisee's rules and our tendency to fix are both rooted in unbelief that God actually does transform those who come to Him. Because we don't trust Him to do so, we make rules or try to fix. Our first step is to trust that He will. If anything needs fixin', it's our tendency to disbelieve that God transforms people in Christ.

That's Just Nuts!

Last week, the Washington Post published an article about a woman named Harriet Glickman, who in 1968 was so taken by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that she was compelled to do something about it. You can read the full article here: http://tinyurl.com/o2qnx5h .

But what could she do about a nation in a crisis of race relations? She was "just a schoolteacher." She decided to write some of the nationally syndicated cartoonists, such as Charles Schulz, who wrote about Snoopy and the gang in Peanuts. Her request to the cartoonists was simple - it would be a great step forward if they included African-American characters in their strips (the common term of respect in that day was "Negro"). There was some initial pushback (not because of bigotry of the cartoonists but because of the trouble it would cause from the intolerant crowd), and yet she persisted.

And that is how the character of "Franklin" was introduced into the Peanuts gang. It caused some trouble for Schulz, but he stayed with it. We cannot measure the impact of such a move, but certainly the way Schulz treated Franklin was a demonstration of normalized friendships between people of different ethnicity.

Two angles on this story fascinate me. First is that a person without a national platform developed a terrific idea and persisted through the barriers in order to make positive change at the national level. She was logical, persuasive, and respectful. She didn't try to shame or manipulate anyone. She was undeterred by difficulty. As a result, the entire country was introduced to a positive and popular display of good race relations, and this was an influence that was before an entire nation day after day. She was a schoolteacher who used the persuasive power of the pen.

The other angle is how Schulz used his work and his giftedness to address a problem that had nothing to do with his job, so to speak. He was not a policymaker or the leader of a movement. He drew cartoons because he was a cartoonist. He didn't use his platform to trash anyone, foment anger, protest, or judge anyone. He drew cartoons because he was a cartoonist. He just used his ability to draw cartoons to contribute to the positive change of his culture.

We are all gifted with talents and abilities. We all do something with some skill. Whatever those abilities may be, I can almost guarantee there's a way to use those abilities to contribute to positive change in your neighborhood, city, state, nation, or world. It doesn't have to be through grabbing a loudspeaker (although there are times for that). It can be through what you choose to do with your abilities, and the manner you choose to use them.

How can your giftedness be used like Glickman's and Schulz's to bring change through the work you are skilled to do?