A few weeks ago a dear friend confronted me about some unhealthy patterns of emotion she saw in me. She is, sadly, correct. The unhealthy patterns exist, have had a long history, and so far have been easier to cover up than actually face and address. That too, is unhealthy, and by God’s grace is undergoing change, though the process will be, I am assured by people who know such things, neither easy nor quick. So be it. One thing is certain: I don’t want to be the sort of person who exhibits such unhealthy patterns.

            I’d be more specific but am not comfortable doing that right now—maybe someday.

            Alas. The brokenness we must own as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.

            In the weeks since our conversation I’ve thought and reflected, and prayed a lot about all this. Some things have become clearer and other things seem to need more clarity. The fact that patterns of emotion—of responses that seem so automatic as to be instinctual or reflexive—can remain below my threshold of consciousness is troubling. So much for thinking I was living an examined life.

            But then good friends willing to have hard conversations that initiate a period of hard learning, growth, and hopefully healing: this too is a form of examination, and a necessary if painful one. I am after all, finite as well as fallen.

            As I’ve wrestled with all this, some ideas about hardship caught my attention:

            “From repeated research studies, [Russ] Moxley [former senior fellow at the Center for Creative Leadership] became convinced that the most important element of marketplace leadership training concerns how persons learn through hardships. The center’s research summarizes the lessons learned from hardships in four categories: self-knowledge with a clarifying of values, sensitivity and compassion toward others, limits of personal control over circumstances, and flexibility…

            “Moxley… made another striking observation. He said that hardships are only useful when persons experiencing them have support systems that sustain them emotionally and that encourage them to reflect on the experience. ‘Hardships often evoke powerful and painful emotions, and an inability or unwillingness to face and reflect on this pain prevents learning.’ Vulnerability in safe relationships makes learning possible.” [p. 44-47]

            That seems so very correct. I do want to be known for those four things: self-knowledge with a clarifying of values, sensitivity and compassion toward others, limits of personal control over circumstances, and flexibility. And I am grateful for the safe relationships that envelop me that will, by grace, make growth possible.

Source: Resilient Ministry: What Pastors Told us about Surviving and Thriving by Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman & Donald C. Guthrie (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press; 2013).

As I write this we are entering the final week of Lent, and the promise of new life seems to be all around me.

The pair of mourning doves that in some summers nest in the tree outside my office window have reappeared. At least I assume it is the same pair—they act, to my eyes, like they’ve been here before. They poked through the rain gutter on the roof of the porch, pausing to look around cautiously, all the while making the gentle, low, drawn-out sound that seems like a gentle lament (which you can hear here). I think of them as “my mourning doves,” but nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.

Then this afternoon I walked into our back yard and a tiny bird, the size of a chickadee was hopping in the grass. It was a species I have never seen before in all the years we have lived here, a lovely pale green tinge to its feathers, and remarkably a dot of bright red on the crown of its head. It was not easily frightened, and when I quietly approached to look closer it continued on pecking at the ground, staying just out of reach. We had to look it up: a ruby crowned kinglet, apparently on its way to its summer breeding grounds further north. It has a lovely song (which you can hear here).

Hopeful, lovely signs of goodness—but why should I be able to enjoy them when so many in Japan are simply missing, and when so many others have lost everything in the wake of the tsunami?

The puzzle deepens—as Lent is deigned to foster—when I pause to look within. Each morning I awaken newly convinced I am the center of the universe. “Our fallen human nature is incurably self-centered,” John Stott says, “and pride is the elemental human sin, whether the form it takes is self-importance, self-confidence, self-assertion or self-righteousness.” I tried to honestly assess which form it takes in my case, but was stymied—apparently all of them apply equally.

Even my faith is drawn into the vile mess, I’ve discovered. “If we human beings were left to our own self-absorption,” Stott continues, “even our religion would be pressed into the service of ourselves. Instead of being the vehicle for the selfless adoration of God, our piety would become the base on which we would presume to approach God and to attempt to establish a claim on him. The ethnic religions all seem to degenerate thus, and so does Christianity.” If you doubt the truth of that, get to know me better.

Last night I gave a lecture in St Paul, and as I was talking I found myself inwardly wrestling. On the one hand I really did want to commend the faith creatively. I really did want to be faithful so that God would be glorified, so that his truth was honored and his reality demonstrated. On the other hand I found myself yearning to look good, wanting to appear thoughtful and cultured, well read and eloquent, creative, imaginative, a spokesman for the gospel that stands out from the braying masses… and that’s only part of the list.

Repentance would be more satisfying if it didn’t need to be repeated so often.

Someday we will repent for the last time. That will be a fine day to break to break our fast, and feast like there was no tomorrow. Which there will be, world without end.

Holy Father.

Help us to show kindness and unrivaled hospitality as the natural extension of our commitment to you. Use us to bring hope and comfort to the abandoned and forsaken corners of your creation.

Amen.

Source: The Message of Romans by John Stott (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), p. 29. Prayer from Common Prayer: A liturgy for ordinary radicals by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, & Enuma Okoro (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan; 2010) p. 413.

Lent begins in two days, a period each year in which Christians are encouraged to take seriously the need to intentionally step away from being self-centered.

I grew up in a tradition that was dismissive of Lent. “Show me a verse that commands us to give up chocolate for Lent,” someone would say. And all those in the know would snicker, since there are none, of course.

The church mothers and fathers that bequeathed us Lent thought in different categories. They knew Scripture to be God’s revelation in Christ, not a list of rules detailing the minutia of life. Proof-texting would be appropriate, I suppose, if the Bible was given as a software manual, but it is not, so proof-texting must be seen for what it is: a misuse of God’s word. Our spiritual ancestors also knew that repentance is not a once-for-all experience, and that if we didn’t intentionally focus on it periodically we probably would fail to increasingly mature into lives characterized by repentance. Judging by my own experience, they were correct. I could give lots of reasons, but they all boil down to pride.

“Probably at no point,” John Stott writes in Issues Facing Christians Today, “does the Christian mind clash more violently with the secular mind than in its insistence on humility and its implacable hostility to pride” [p 37]. That’s not what would have come to mind if I were asked where the Christian mind differed most violently from a secular worldview, but I think Stott may be correct. “It would be hard to improve,” Stott adds in Life in Christ, “on Luther’s description of fallen man as homo in se incurvatus, ‘man curved in on himself.’ Human fallenness is human selfishness” [p 86].

The more I write this blog the less comfortable I am about this topic. Which is precisely the reason I need to take Lent seriously this year.