Sympathy for the Pharisee

    

I once told my mom she might go to jail for using her emergency flashers without a reason. In our Volkswagen Bus, hazard light knob was so tempting that I pulled it out once while she was driving down our back alleyway. My mom pushed it back in and told me that she could get a ticket for misusing them. I had no idea that was illegal and I realized that she had gotten a speeding ticket some time back. I thought perhaps the law was draconian enough that any second violation of the law would not result in a ticket, but incarceration. So, jail for having the hazard lights on.

     Back then I had a strict sense of right and wrong. You were not supposed to do wrong, or bad things would be done to you and you deserved it. So one day I was looking at our bathroom scale and asked my dad what the words: NOT LEGAL FOR TRADE meant. My dad explained it meant that the scale was only for people. He did not tell me it meant the scale wasn’t intended to weigh items for sale. But I knew what the word “legal” meant; it meant the law. So months later when my aunt was getting ready for an airplane flight and she put her suitcases on her bathroom scale, I nearly lost my mind. My aunt was breaking the law, how could she do that? All the way to the airport I expected to be pulled over by a scowling policeman to whom I would try to explain that I knew better.

     Growing up like that made me always root for the good guy. I never wanted to be the robber in cops and robbers and I did not particularly like to break the rules, ever. One might think this made me the kind of student teachers like. But I was judgmental. I could not abide others breaking the rules, so I was a tattletale.

     Why couldn’t everyone just follow the rules and be nice to each other? I didn’t get it. There’s a word for people like I was. Reluctant to extend grace, stick fast to the rules, even if it meant sending their own mother to jail for driving down an alley with hazard lights on. You could call us Pharisees.

     I understand how those religious leaders and teachers of the law might have felt. Their identity was fixed into the laws they followed so well. That feeling of security that you’re right and everyone else is wrong helps one sleep at night. No wonder they got so terribly upset when that man from a backwards town came along. People liked him even though he broke the rules. And he seemed to think that all those rules that made them feel so good and secure were a hindrance. Look what he did on the Sabbath, right in front of them sometimes. But worst of all, that right feeling they loved, the identity they found in their rules, that might have begin to feel weak against everything this man did and said.

     So would they give up the old ways, which it turned out were nothing more than a perversion of the original plan? And would they adapt to the new ways, which were in fact, the simple plan God had all along? Sadly for them, they tried to get rid of the usurper to their ways. The source of their discomfort had to go. And three days after they thought they had succeeded, not only had their plans been thwarted, but sin and death had been conquered too.

If I have been living back then, I might have been a nice, law-abiding guy who followed the rules and thought his place was secure. I might have prayed in the temple, thanking God I wasn’t like those others, those luggage-weighing sinners. I don’t know if I would have felt the need for forgiveness or grace. I could have been a Pharisee.   

     Thank God my sin hurt me enough that I recognized my need for Him. Thank God I am broken enough now to know I am right there with every other sinner.

     There are still times where I feel so very comfortable in my life of regulation and control. Which means when the inevitable upset comes along, I become pretty bent out of shape. And I stay that way until I let go of my intense desire for order and replace it with submission to God. Most of the time I can’t do that on my own and I have to coast to the side of the road with my hazard lights flashing. Against such thing there is no law.

    

The Shattered Bottle of Wishes

The twist on the old story goes like this: A man is walking down a beach when he spies an old looking bottle. The moment he picks it up, a djinn appears is a puff of blue smoke, bows and speaks:

“And what is your third wish?”

The man is startled, but has enough about him to question what became of his first two wishes. The djinn says that the man already wished his first wish, his second one was to undo it and make it all as before. Now his third and final wish remains. The man thinks for a moment, then tells the djinn his final wish.

The djinn’s face curls into a smile as he brings his hands together.

“Yes,” he says. “That was also your first wish.”

Little stories like that can provoke deep thought. I can’t help always wondering what I would wish for if I had three, or just one wish. A shoebox full of 100 dollar bills would be a good start I think. I would love to have my truck fixed. And while I am at it, have it never break again. And why not have it so that the tank never runs out of gasoline again? Could I fit that into one wish?

That’s pretty selfish to wish for that when there is so much need in the world. Three wishes could include clean water for the world’s population, and end to human trafficking and no more natural disasters ever. That would improve on a lot. I don’t know how something like that could be pulled off though. If I was a djinn I would just clap my hands and make the world disappear. No more want for anyone.

How about wishing just to make people nicer? I could wish for that. Is it ethical to transform people and just make them nicer? I don’t think it is or God would do it.

And then I bring God into this. I used to think that God was like the djinn in the bottle with unlimited wishes. Maybe it’s easy for a kid to think that God is like Santa Claus with a big bag of cool stuff for everyone who’s good. Prayer seemed like wishing for what you want. And this mindset didn’t end when I grew up.

I don’t have a grudge against the spirit-filled church that I went to when I first got back with God. But it fostered a mindset where God would answer all prayers according to my will. But here is where the djinn in the bottle vanished. Because if my prayers were not answered, then I wasn’t praying hard enough or needed to examine my own life somehow. It was encouraging to feel myself a prayer warrior and actually see prayers answered. The real tricky thing was this: Wishes were not free at all. I still had to be worthy and work for them.

But then Naomi got sick. Of course I didn’t panic when she got cancer. I thought that if enough prayer was lifted up for her, she would be well. For three and a half years I kept believing that she would be healed through the power of prayer to God. Over those years I did something else, every time I saw a falling star, I wished on it.

So then when Naomi died, I got pretty mad at God, the stars and just about everything else, including myself, big time. The magic bottle fell to the ground and burst into slicing fragments of broken hope. It took years to overcome the hurt and anguish that came from thinking that I had somehow failed. It’s still something that can drag me down once in a while. It is taking a lot of un-learning and re-learning to understand some key truths.

First, it is the human condition to believe that there must be something that one can do. That was the flaw in the wishing machine, being good enough to get a stocking full of shiny stuff. I had to work and perhaps even suffer for it. I held tight to that belief. And I have only recently come to realize that thinking that way is idolatrous. Only one person truly had to suffer. All I have to do is accept that. But it’s not for shiny stuff.

On the subject of the wishing machine, God has never been that. God put laws into place like gravity and motion. He did not create cancer. That imperfection grew out of the fall of man. And God doesn’t just clap his hands and make all cancer vanish. Just like changing bad people into good, that would violate His laws. Not to say He doesn’t. A miracle is when God does indeed by-pass the laws He made. That didn’t happen with Naomi. Was it then God’s will that she die? When God was drafting up His master plan for creation for all eternity, did he have her life cut short of her 7^th birthday, regardless of any prayer I lifted up?

And while we’re at it, was it God’s will that monstrous tornados would rip through cities and kill children? How many people prayed for their lives before they died? Did God hear them, and shrug and say: “Sorry, that’s not in the plan”?

There is a stand out word there. Shrug. People shrug when they are confused or at a loss. God cannot be portrayed like a person who doesn’t know what He’s doing. I think one of my problems with faith is that I tend to anthropomorphize God. Picture him as a djinn, Santa Claus, a wishing star or a detached force of nature, or anything like an imperfect person and I’ve got an inaccurate look at God. And when I read about who God really is, he never shrugs and says “oh well”.

Part of my unlearning and relearning is admitting I’m powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing. And I personally have to admit that I’m powerless about forces beyond my control. If I admit that, then I need to believe that God is powerful to control what does. As soon as I do that, I start to become disillusioned and wonder how a loving God can allow all of this.

But I want to believe that God is a loving God. And that is what I will pray for. Because another step in this healing process is surrendering to His will. This isn’t an empty wish made in a fairy tale. This is my passionate desire to align myself with God and understand His will for me. Against such thing there is no law.

The last wish for the man on the beach was probably something self-serving. But maybe not. Would anyone take back a wish to have God’s will done in their life? Maybe. The renewing of the mind should come first.

Here is what hints to me that this is indeed a prayer that will be answered. Denial is easy. If I could just deny all my doubts about the goodness of God and live in ignorance then it would be easy. I know how easy it is to deny things. But this is not easy. These doubts I have are hurdles that I have to overcome. But I’m praying for something now that isn’t a wish for more convenience or shiny stuff. I’m asking God to take me away from what I want and help me to do what He wants. In spite of my doubts, God will take me as I am and start that renewing.

The Hurt Club

     A rat trap is humane, but it still hurts. I don’t know if something was wrong with me not being able to set it properly or the trap was just faulty. I kept pulling the bar back and trying to set the rod in place. My fingers were getting greasy with peanut butter and I was having trouble focusing on the close-up view. I raised my head to look under my glasses and kept trying. I heard the crack and saw my right thumb beneath the bar. Then I felt the pain. The rat trap had closed on my thumbnail. I had just been considering that this trap would break someone’s finger. I didn’t think mine was broken.  I could still move it.

I took a break from work and soaked my thumb in some ice water. Yes, it hurt. But I reflected back to three other times I hurt my fingers and tentatively placed this at number four. When I got back to work I tried to set the trap again, but my dexterity as well as my nerve was completely gone. The next time the trap snapped shut I sprang backwards leaving my eyeglasses on the floor. I left it there on the floor and tried to go back to my normal work.

I couldn’t turn keys and my thumb was beginning to hurt more and more. I did something I had not done in years. I took the rest of the evening off as a sick day. Prajna fussed over my injury. She helped me bandage it and borrowed some miracle ointment that really did improve it. Nathaniel made me a get well sign. I spent evening watching classic Star Trek on Netflix and slept reasonably well. I wore the splint Prajna bought for me to work the next day and assured people that it didn’t hurt that much. And really, compared to the time I mashed two fingers with a sledgehammer head six years back, this was pretty minor.

Two days later I was vacuuming at work when I felt my phone vibrate. Prajna told me that Nathaniel had seriously cut his thumb. He had been cutting himself an orange and sliced his left thumb. We conferred over the best course of action. She was still a little jittery and Nathaniel was wrapped in a blanket. I asked to talk to him and she put him on.

I told Nathaniel that I was sorry that he cut himself. He didn’t seem to upset anymore. Then I told him that he and I were both in the hurt thumb club. He seemed to enjoy that realization. I asked him if maybe he could make a sign and membership cards and he liked the idea. He has not made anything yet, but we have a special handshake where we gently touch sore thumbs and make a little ding.

This morning Yucaipa and parts of southern California are reeling from a tragic bus crash just north of town. The fatality count is still growing. That in addition to the senseless violence in the news is heartbreaking. And sometimes my theology is shaken. I become confused as to if God allows bad things to happen and I think that I used to know the answer to this question and felt solid in my belief. But just like how the trauma of watching a rat trap snap on my finger killed my nerve, I lose my nerve sometimes in believing that God is in control.

I do however stand firm on this belief: God never wastes a hurt. When my youngest son was sitting on the couch, I don’t know how traumatized he was from seeing his thumb bleeding all over the place. But he was able to talk to someone who said, I know how that feels and you and I have a special kinship. I don’t think that God had Nathaniel’s injury in mind when the trap closed on my finger. I don’t know how His plans work. I was just grateful that I could be there for my son.

I just wanted to share what I am convinced of. God will never waste a hurt. And if that is true, God is indeed in control.

Nathaniel's get-well sign

Brokenness and making things Right

     I was sitting here at my writing desk less than a week ago.  I would like to say that I was writing but that wouldn’t be the truth.  It was mid-morning.  The family was awake.  Other than this blog I had not written anything in weeks.  I’m at a dull spot in the novel I started in November for National Novel Writing Month.  I have not been thrilled lately to go to work on it.  And the only time I really will write is early in the morning; early meaning before six.  Once the kids are up I imagine the mojo is gone.  This may be all in my head, but whatever is in my head controls my writing so it tends to make the rules.  And the simple reason I’ve not written is that I have been too lazy to get up early.  My internal clock will still get me up around 5 am.  There will be an argument in my head urging, reminding of how much better I will feel all day if I get up and write.  The laziness wins, I sleep another hour or so and I end up feeling cross all day.  I get more depressed the more days I fail to write.  As much as I enjoy my job and love my wife and family, writing is a little thing I do that I like to define myself as.  When I don’t write I feel like a failure.  When I do, I just feel better all day.

     So that morning I was sitting at my writing desk.  I like to call it my writing desk, but I could just as well call it my Yahoo!/Facebook desk for what I do most at it.  From the boy’s room came a dull thud, then the voice of Harrison telling his two youngest brothers to stop throwing things.  They will most of the time obey him, but I felt like I wanted to re-assure them that what he said was a good thing.  I went in and found them playing a game where they were throwing stuffed friends from the floor to the top bunk.  I told them to go outside if they wanted to throw things.  I did not notice what had made the noise I’d heard.

     Later in the morning I had finally showered and was dressed.  Prajna and Jamie were sitting in the living room and she told me Jamie had something to tell me.  Jamie quietly told me that when he had thrown his toy mountain lion (it was hard plastic) it had struck the window in their room and cracked it.  When I had a look I saw it was actually broken, just no pieces had fallen out.  I told Jamie I was very disappointed in him and went off to make some calls about fixing it.

     Nathaniel had been the one to discover the break.      He had emotionally apologized to Prajna right away.  Characteristic of Nathaniel, he felt terrible and repentant and apologized right away.  Jamie, however had not apologized, even though he had thrown the toy.  I was off the phone later when Sarah came inside and asked what was wrong with Jamie.  He was outside crying.  I called him in and tried to talk to him but he didn’t want to talk.  His face was red and puffy. 

Jamie is someone who does not hide his feelings.  He is also someone who, if he feels a particular way, will imagine that he has always felt like that and will continue to feel that way forever.  That morning, the guilt and shame of breaking a window was all he could feel.  He may not have even been thinking about the window, just the raw, painful feelings weighing on him then.  I told him to come in my room at we lay down on the bed together.  I pulled him close.  I realized that what I told him next would have to be significant.  Being a dad can mean times for gas jokes, books read in funny voices, angry words about disobedience and admiration at creations on paper or from Legos®.  All of those are words that don’t need considerable thought.  This was not one of those times.  And it didn’t matter that I liked to think I was a writer either.  When I write, no matter how fast I’m going, I try to write good sentences.  This was not a time for the perfect verb.  I needed to reach out to Jamie through this despair that was shrouding him from everything good that surrounded him. 

I said a little prayer in my head and started.  I realized that this whole window was an object lesson in God’s forgiveness.  We walk in darkness from our sins.  I didn’t go into all the ways most people try to deal with that though denial, self medication and other habits and hang-ups.  I just told him that asking for forgiveness means that you can feel better because you really are forgiven and the sin is erased.  Jamie understood all of this.  He seemed unimpressed.  And then I remembered some words from a video series I heard at church.  In the video a dad was talking about a similar talk with his son.  It didn’t matter if I had not composed the next thing I said to Jaime.  Even if I had not made up the words, I still meant them. 

“Jamie,” I told him.  “There is nothing you can do, nothing, that will ever make me stop loving you.”

We stayed there for a little while, but our talk was done.  I don’t know if the time had calmed Jamie down, or the words I spoke to him.  What I do hope is that he never forgets them.

The window got fixed the same day.  We had a little money set aside from some extra work I had done the previous weekend.  I had worked pretty hard and was kind of hoping to use that money to maybe fix some stuff on my truck so one day I can take it camping again.  At least fixing the window did not set us back.  And it allowed for a priceless object lesson.

I was sharing the story with my friend and realized that it would be a good blog topic.  This might be the only writing I do for another week.  But I am not a full time writer.  Writing just makes me feel good.  Even though I put 40 hours or so in a week at work, that isn’t full time compared to the real full time job of being a dad.  And that morning trying to reach Jamie through is despair didn’t take fancy words.  It just took truth and love.  That’s something everyone can do.