Purveyors of Shame

I was watching some Olymics coverage at lunch today, and during a commercial break I flipped around the stations. Landed on the Steve Wilkos show, which I had never seen before. It was shameful. Literally, full of shame. The point of the show was to get a lot of closeups of some guy who had been bad in his past and was lying about some stuff. So Steve had all the ammo--testimonials, police reports, pictures, videos--and he let this poor guy have it. There in front of a live audience.

It was a show literally built around producing shame. Making money on someone's shame. Reliving evil. Put a guy on stage, show how rotten he's been, prod him into a corner, and see what happens.

Never really watched one of these shows until today, and it only took about ten minutes for my stomach to turn sour. But it made me think...

What if someone built a show like this on glory. Bring some guy up on stage who feels the weight of the world on his shoulders. Who doesn't believe he's ever achieved anything of any consequence in his life. Who already thinks the least of himself.

And let him have it with both barrels. Bring up his third grade teacher. Bring up his youngest daughter. Bring up the boys' little league team. Bring up his sister. Speak of his good deeds, his kindness, his humility, his strength.

Bring out his glory. My, that would be voyeuristic, wouldn't it?

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Now that I think of it, that's why I love watching "Extreme Makeover Home Edition." Lots of times they do exactly what I'm suggesting Steve Wilkos ought to be doing. Tell the stories of the unsung heroes, or those who have suffered long, or who have been waiting for just one chance in a lifetime.

Unveilings are such fun, aren't they?

GTD - Life isn't about Productivity

Recently I spent a few weeks trying to "implement" a system to help me be more productive at work and at home. There's a guy named David Allen who seems to have cracked the secret of helping people live with a "mind like water." His system is called "Getting Things Done" (GTD). Google it and you'll find something nearly like a cult following for GTD. (Computer geeks seem to love it.)

The "mind like water" thing comes from having gotten everything out of your head and into a system, thereby allowing you to think clearly about one thing at a time. You don't have to keep trying to remember everything that you need to do--you have a handy system in place and you relate to it with something like trust.

I'm all for having a mind as smooth as calm water, but it nearly killed me to try and put this thing together. It's all about identifying the "inboxes" of my life (email, desktop, stacking trays, workbenches, etc.), putting everything into them, identifying the next step required for each item, and then doing those steps, top to bottom. Virtually no regard for priority--simply boil everything down into its basic tasks (things that require multiple steps are called "projects") and do them one at a time.

I've never really been a "task list" kind of guy, so this was going to require a Herculean effort to simply get all my "open loops" (stuff that needed action) into my "inboxes." He suggested that to kick off this GTD it may take three full days to simply gather everything and put it all into my inboxes and then identify the next tasks (and create projects for things that require multiple tasks)--never mind actually getting down to doing some of the tasks.

Once you set up your life with inboxes, then you do it every moment of every day. Everything that comes at you is dealt with immediately.

Everything gets identified, gets acted upon or delegated or filed.

The net effect is that every aspect of your life gets broken into and dealt with in its smallest fraction--a task. Allen says that "you must start at the very bottom--with the smallest unit--to truly maintain a high level of productivity." Productivity systems based upon "priorities" (top-down) fail, he says, because your mind still gets cluttered and foggy with all the little tasks that you have to remember.

So, I tried it. Read half of the book. Read a bunch of people's blogs and forums about it. I even bought a label making machine and a whole bunch of file folders.

And I heard the sound of class five rapids ahead.

I tried, and I failed. Achieved a mind like whitewater. Ok, I succeeded in getting a few things filed and organized a couple rooms. I even learned a few things about mentally identifying things as they come to me. But I simply could never imagine actually practicing this system every day, every week, month after month, year after year.

And frankly, if I can't imagine it, I can't do it.

It suddenly occurred to me that I was more curious as to why I couldn't imagine it than I was in actually Getting Things Done. Typical, eh.

According to Myers Briggs, I'm an INTJ (if you know what that stuff is about), so I wondered what other INTJ's felt like about it. Of course, I googled INTJ and GTD. And I found a lady who, like me, forgot who she was while trying to do GTD. Her explanation schooled me--

"GTD boils all of life down into tasks, and disconnects me from the story of my life."

Holy smokes. "Life is a story." Suddenly, my mind was like water again. How could I have forgotten?

Life isn't measured by productivity. Life isn't the sum of all the tasks in my life. Life isn't projects. Praise God that my value isn't determined by how much I get done or how effective I am. There's no job review in the kindgom of Heaven.

Life is knowing what's going on and knowing my role within it. A mythic cannot live without context--because the story is what gives meaning to every task I put my mind to.

And meaning is what it's all about.

Trust the Meaning of the Images

A fantastic quote from CS Lewis:

I suggest two rules for exegetics: (1) Never take the images literally. (2) When the purport of the images--what they say to our fear and hope and will and affections--seems to conflict with the theological abstractions, trust the purport of the image every time. For our abstract thinking is itself a tissue of analogies: a continual modelling of spiritual reality in legal or chemical or mechanical terms. Are these likely to be more adequate than the sensuous, organic, and personal images of Scripture--light and darkness, river and well, seed and harvest, master and servant, hen and chickens, father and child? The footprints of the Divine are more visible in that rich soil than across rocks or slag-heaps. Hence what they now call "demythologising" Christianity can easily be "re-mythologising" it--and substituting a poorer mythology for a richer.

--Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer

This lands right on the "Mythic" of "Mythic Reality," my friends.

First some terms...

Exegetics: the interpretation of scripture. Sounds to me like he's referring those who would try to interpret scripture for us, rather than the activity itself.

Purport: the meaning or sense of a thing.

Examples of "legal or chemical or mechanical terms": Forgiveness, judgment, debt, reconciliation, punishment, condemnation, regeneration, sanctification, purity.

Examples of sensuous, organic, and personal images: light, darkness, rivers, wells, seeds, harvest, master, servant, hens and chicks, fathers and children, compasses, trees, flowers, back porches, mothers, moonshine, wrinkles, etc. On and on the list goes.

This is what we spend our time doing here. Adding to the list of sensual, organic and personal images that Lewis names in his own list--the list God started long, long ago. Funny, but He's been using this imagery since He imagined and then spoke light into existence.

These kinds of images are all around us, and, I believe God is still speaking to us through them today.

I heard a quote by an African leader this week that struck me in the terms he used to express his thought. Here's what he said, "...some people...are content to curse the darkness, while making absolutely no effort to light the candle!" He could have chosen to explain himself in political terms, but he chose (like many from African cultures tend to do) a picture, an analogy, to do his explaining.

Exactly like Jesus did. Exactly like Jehovah did...

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: "Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message." So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel...

This is still happening, my friends.

May we learn again to speak to one another in this language of the heart. May we remember that the Truth is alive.

The Voice of God -- Reprise

I've written on this a little before, and now it's time to revisit the whole mysterious notion of hearing the voice of God. It seems to be pretty critical for those of us who claim to "follow" Christ and who want to believe that this means more than simply memorizing the Bible and "doing what it says."

I want to follow his voice today, right now, as I'm typing, when I get up to get another cup of coffee, when I doubt myself, when I am wondering what to do next. And just as much, I want to walk with those who experience the same.

Without the voice, my faith is nothing at all. My faith is nothing but pure imagination, and "I am of all men most miserable."

I do not believe I've ever heard God speak to me with his own voice in an audible way. That is, my eardrum has never vibrated with the sound of his words. I won't discount anyone who claims that he's vibrated their eardrums with his own voice, but it's never happened to me.

I do believe that I hear sentences in my head and heart that do not originate with me. They sound remarkably like my own sentences, the ones I "hear" just now as I type. But the sentences from the world of the spirits are not simply my own humdrum thoughts and preferences and observations and random statements. The voices from the spirit world have a different flavor, a different purpose and tone. Here's what I hear daily:

Condemnation. The voice of condemnation says things to me about me, like "you idiot," "you blew it now," "you have no idea what you're talking about," "they can see right through you, you know," "who do you think you're fooling?" "you are living a lie," "you #$*@$%!" "you can't possibly make it right," "they'll never believe you," "you're too fat," etc.

Accusation. The voice of accusation speaks to me about others, with statements like "she will never change," "he's a moron," "ha ha! what an idiot he is," "God is off doing important things, he doesn't have time for you," "she's not listening to you," "why can't they understand," "he doesn't like you at all," "look at how stupid he is," "don’t waste your time on him," etc.

Sometimes there's a double whammy, sort of a double dip of condemnation and accusation. "You don't have anything worth saying, and even if you did, he wouldn't listen."

I believe today that a large percentage of these kinds of statements in my head originate with the agents of darkness who have sold themselves out against the human race and are out for my ruin. The rest of the time it is me simply mimicking what they (and other human voices) have told me all my life. The net effect of these voices is to reinforce my perception of isolation from God and from those who are around me. These voices work on me every day, and I confess they have some degree of success each day.

They would have me believe that every human is less than he or she really is. That we are somehow disgustingly and unalterably flawed and unlikeable and unacceptable. But, as I have embraced the realities that I speak of in this blog, the evil intent of such simple statements has become very transparent to me.

They are the continual drip of poison that drains us of our energy and our love, and, worst of all, our very identity as children of the God of the universe.

If we are to be followers of Truth, we need the voice. To hear the voice of God, we must on the one hand stand against the voices that would shame us, and on the other hand, we must fight for silence.

We must recognize the false messages for what they are and stand against them in every form in which they come. Resist them we must, for to believe them is to doubt God. I cannot stand against what I believe is simply me, nor can I stand against what I believe is actually true.

Awareness and practice is required.

It's not enough for the agents of darkness to maintain their own poison drip of condemnation and accusation. They have recruited. Every commercial on TV tells us we are not thin enough, chiseled enough, beautiful enough, buxom enough, thin enough, clever enough, cool enough. Dr. Phil reminds us that we are not sensitive enough, or candid enough, or loving enough, or whatever.

Even the pulpit reminds us that we are "deceitful and desperately wicked." Most subtle of all is their caution against pride. This one hurts us softly but very deeply, because we who would believe are now conditioned to deflect (think about this for a while) the words of affirmation that God himself whispers to us. At least this has been my own experience.

The voice of God: Affirmation. Can you truly imagine words like these landing on your heart, shaping you, answering your question, knowing that God himself is uttering them:

"I like the way you live your life."

"I am proud of you."

"When I see you, you remind me of Jesus."

"I'm glad I made you--I have no regrets of calling you my child."

"You just did the right thing."

"I like hanging out with you."

Seriously, how would you receive these words, if they came to you in sentences that don't originate with you? My guess is you would deflect them too.

Not only are the false messages systematically reinforced, not only do I deflect the words of affirmation that God might whisper to me, but I hardly have a moment of silence in my life—the kind of silence that allows me to actively listen and maybe even have a conversation.

Just try to find a couple hours to get away and be quiet and listen.

For each of us, this "getaway" place will be different. But it must be fought for. Otherwise, the noise of life and the echoes of accusation will never fade, and we will not learn to recognize the voice of the one who wants to find us and rescue us over and over.

May we remember how bad the poison of accusation and condemnation are.

May we hunger for affirmation and receive it when it comes.

May we remember to fight for silence.

What the World Eats

Remember the post about what people eat around the world? I found out today that it originates from a book called Hungry Planet.

TIME Magazine pulled some of the pictures from the book, too. There are a few more families in there than what came in the email I initially received.

Just want to give credit where credit is due...

Jon

Knows and Knows Not

He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool; avoid him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a student; teach him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep; wake him.
He who knows and knows that he knows is a wise man; follow him.

Persian Saying

The Gods Aren't Angry

Following up on my previous post, this just came in my email:

The link takes you to Rob's website called The Gods Aren't Angry. I haven't had time to check it out yet, but the teaser image caught my eye.

(I'm not trying to get you to buy Rob Bell stuff...)