More from the Duggar News

I preached this morning and the start came from my post on Friday about the Duggar Family scandal. Here's the manuscript....


The super Christian Duggar Family of the reality show 19 Kids and Counting was in the news again last week. Josh, the eldest son who was outed a few months ago for molesting his sister when they were younger, has now been revealed as having an affair and being addicted to pornography. He has admitted to this latest sinfulness.

My first reaction was Well, welcome to the club, Josh. The club of being human.

Being human of course includes the innate ability to be a sinner and do things we don't want to do- on a regular, if not daily- basis. This human ability also reared its ugly head when he acted as if he was "holier than thou," parading his faith and pointing fingers at others. Call it self-righteousness or grandiosity or even narcissism, it’s still the failing of human sinfulness.

When one sets oneself up as a judge and jury of others because one is better than others- more perfect, less sinful, etc.- the sinfulness is already active. I am serious when I say that even in his admission of sin, Josh Duggar continued his grandiosity- now he said of himself that he is "the biggest hypocrite ever.” St Paul in 1 Timothy claims the same for himself- the greatest of sinners.

One of the most important quotes I retain from my Seminary days was the one from the Hebrew Bible professor. The professor was liberal and progressive, but he got our attention when he said early in the course that

the longer you are in ministry the more you will be convinced that original sin is the only provable Biblical doctrine.

Yep.

I know I have seen that tendency toward sin- as much in myself as in others. Yet the self-righteousness that denies this reality can easily be found in any ideological approach to faith. It ignores our human failings, believes that all we have to do is believe the right way, worship in the right way, act the right way, have the right politics (conservative or liberal) and we will be fine.

That ignores that ever present human reality of sinfulness that is at the heart of both the Hebrew and Christian Testaments. Sadly, it also ignores something just as real- that we are not sinners in the hands of an angry God, regardless of what some people have said and still say. Both these testaments are filled with the work of grace. Grace: free and unearned forgiveness and acceptance. Grace is the reality that in the midst of who we are, there is also a God who is far greater. Yet, in spite of this free gift, it is in our innate humanness that we find ourselves in a seemingly constant struggle. It’s like we have these two voices sitting on either shoulder.

No- don’t. Sure- go ahead.

Back and forth they go.

In today’s epistle lesson from Ephesians Paul puts this in the context of a struggle- even more- a war.

There are of course different ways to describe war. The theologian-novelist Fredrick Buechner has commented that one way to look at it is a war of conquest. One way or another we all fight to conquer the world, for our place in the world. With that kind of war, Buechner says, there are adversaries of flesh and blood. They are human beings like ourselves, each of whom is fighting the same war toward the same end and under a banner emblazoned with the same word that our banners bear, and that word is of course Myself, or Myself and my Family, or Myself and my Country, Myself and my Race, which are all really MYSELF writ large.


In this type of war we wear the whole armor of man, because this is a man's war against other men. Buechner says these are things like:

• The breastplate of self-confidence because if you have no faith in yourself, if you cannot trust to your own wits, then you will never get anywhere.
• Maybe there’s the gospel of success-the good news that you can get just about anything in this world if you want it badly enough and are willing to fight for it.
• Don’t forget, adds Buechner, the shield of security because in a perilous world where anything can happen, security is perhaps what you need more than anything else - the security of money in the bank, or a college degree, or some basic skill that you can always fall back on.
• Maybe there’s the helmet of attractiveness or personality"

But there is another way to look at this struggle that we all face- and ignore at our peril.

This says Buechner is the war to become whole and at peace inside our skins. It is a war not of conquest now but a movement of liberation because the object of this other war is to liberate that part of ourselves which has somehow become lost, that dimension of selfhood that involves the capacity to forgive and to will the good not only of the self but of all other selves. This other war is the war to become a human being. This is the goal that we are really after and that God is really after. This is the goal Buechner reminds us, that power, success, and security are only forlorn substitutes for. This is the victory that not all our human armory of self-confidence and wisdom and personality can win for us- to become at last truly human.”

This is where Paul talks about the belt of truth (and perhaps we might add, honesty) a breastplate of righteousness- living right. There’s the shield of faith, the shoes of the Gospel of peace.

What this boils down to is that we need to become real and honest about who we are- sinners. Then, and this is as important as admitting our human nature- we look, as Christians, to God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ. There we will discover the storehouse of those pieces of the armor of God. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says we will live because of him, that the spirit gives life and that his words are spirit and life.

That promise is renewed every time we come here and come to the Lord's Table. We confess our sinfulness and are reminded of the presence of forgiveness. Then, in the Eucharist Jesus words in John are made new week in and week out: Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.

Here we discover all the many ways that Jesus living Spirit is available. We may have looked in other places and in many ways, but in the moment of that discovery- and every time- we can join with Simon Peter: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Lent Picture A Day (34): Forgive

The Last Freedom

I love to surf and find these places on the Internet that give life meaning and purpose. Sean Burcaw's story that I have highlighted before is one. Joshua Prager is another. Several years ago I read his amazing book on Bobby Thompson, Ralph Branca, the Dodgers and Giants in a fateful baseball game, The Echoing Green. I knew nothing about him. Last week I moseyed over to TED Talks on You Tube and came across a talk he gave at TED this year. I was immediately entranced. At age 19 he was severely injured in an accident in Jerusalem. Twenty years later he returns to meet the truck driver that changed his life.

I was mesmerized by his story and his telling of it.

I realized that this is what I have been reading and thinking about in some of the Attention Interpretation Therapy program I have been in. All the themes from gratitude to acceptance, forgiveness to meaning are right here.

The TED blog website has this to say:

“This,” Prager quotes, “is the last of the human freedoms: to choose our attitude in any human circumstance.” The aging and the anxious, the divorced and balding and bankrupt … everyone can choose to rise above bad fortune, to enjoy community, study, work, adventure, friendship, love. The good.

Take the 18 minutes to watch this. Put it in full-screen and watch Joshua's face and story grow. Be amazed. Be changed.

Meditation on Forgiveness

Forgiveness

                A difficult word; hard to define and

                Harder to live.

Forgiveness, like acceptance is not

                Condoning actions or

                Being a doormat.

It is a freedom word, a liberation from the

                After-effects of actions that the other may

                Have no idea they did or that they

                Need to be forgiven for.

So I look in the mirror when I start to think about

                Forgiveness.

It doesn’t hurt.

I look in the mirror and

                Remember

                The times I needed to be

Forgiven and didn’t even know it.

                Events,

                                Actions,

                                                A sly smirk

                Or smart word that hurt someone.

I don’t easily remember those.

                My memory becomes selective remembering instead

When those happened to me. 

When I was hurt.

But behind me, more reflections

                Of others- friends and acquaintances,

                Strangers and family.

I realize they have often forgiven me.

                I hope they have, anyway.

Maybe I will know only when I find it

                Possible to forgive others-

                So I am not consumed by

                Fear, hate or resentment.

As a Christian I wonder then if we Christians really believe that

                God truly forgives and

                Wipes us white as snow?

  

                Or, worse, that we don’t believe WE are

Forgiven. Scared to come into a holy God’s presence since

                We are not worthy. We are NOT worthy.

We are unforgiven.

Then perhaps if we do not believe OUR forgiveness is possible,

                How can we even think about

                Forgiving others?

                So, we are willing to let God do ALL the

Forgiving of others

While we go on holding tight to the

                Grudges and resentments and judgments of others

Waiting for THEM to get their come-uppance.

Yet forgiveness is at the soul-filled center of my faith.

                Without it the central doctrines make

                No sense.

To forgive is to affirm life as more

Than a mere possibility-

It is to affirm life as

Reality.

The Prisoner Freed

Contemporary Christian musician Matthew West expresses a great deal on forgiveness.

It's the hardest thing to give away
And the last thing on your mind today
It always goes to those that don't deserve

It's the opposite of how you feel
When the pain they caused is just too real
It takes everything you have to say the word...

Forgiveness
Forgiveness

It flies in the face of all your pride
It moves away the mad inside
It's always anger's own worst enemy
Even when the jury and the judge
Say you gotta right to hold a grudge
It's the whisper in your ear saying 'set it free'

Forgiveness, Forgiveness
Forgiveness, Forgiveness

Show me how to love the unlovable
Show me how to reach the unreachable
Help me now to do the impossible
Forgiveness, Forgiveness
Help me now to do the impossible
Forgiveness

It'll clear the bitterness away
It can even set a prisoner free
There is no end to what its power can do
So let it go and be amazed
By what you see through eyes of grace
The prisoner that it really frees is you

Forgiveness, Forgiveness
Forgiveness, Forgiveness

Show me how to love the unlovable
Show me how to reach the unreachable
Help me now to do the impossible
Forgiveness

I want to finally set it free
So show me how to see what Your mercy sees
Help me now to give what You gave to me
Forgiveness, Forgiveness
Forgiveness, Forgiveness
Forgiveness

It's Not About the Past

Three quotes on forgiveness for today. Three people saying the same.

When you forgive, you in no way change the past - but you sure do change the future.
--Bernard Meltzer

It is so easy to get caught up in the past and what has happened, how it shouldn't have happened, why we can't forget, why life has to be stuck back there. Bishop Tutu of South Africa, like his country's great iconic leader, Nelson Mandela, knew that the only way their country would survive was forgiveness. Letting the past be the past and not allowing it to infect the future.

Without forgiveness, there's no future.
--Desmond Tutu

And third from a late UN Secretary General, the hope that forgiveness can fulfill.

Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.
--Dag Hammarskjold

Connected Through Forgiveness

Henri Nouwen was one of the more remarkable theologians of the late-20th Century. Most famous for his seminal work, The Wounded Healer,

[a]fter nearly two decades of teaching at the Menninger Foundation Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, and at the University of Notre Dame, Yale University and Harvard University, he went to work with mentally challenged people at the L'Arche community of Daybreak in Toronto, Canada. (Wikipedia)

His understanding of spirituality and life has impacted over a generation of pilgrims into faith and relationships within faith. Nouwen is one of my heroes, mentors on paper, and a light to greater understanding. It does not surprise me that he has this to say about forgiveness:

“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

Without forgiveness, love may not be possible. Without love, forgiveness may not be possible. The connections among the daily themes of Attention and Interpretation Therapy begin to fall into place. They are not separate compartments. (What in life is?) They are pieces of a greater whole, a greater way of living than we are used to experiencing.'

We humans are truly the fellowship of the weak. But we at least have the possibility of each other.

A Week Looking At Forgiveness

This is week, #5 in looking at the daily themes from my Attention and Interpretation Therapy course with Dr. Amit Sood of the Mayo Clinic. We have worked through gratitude, compassion, acceptance, and deeper meaning. This week we come to what may be in many ways the most difficult.

Forgiveness.

I cannot promise much insight this week. I wrestle with this one a great deal. I have already done so around the Newtown, CT, shootings. I am open to listening this week to what others have said via the quotes. That may be as far as I get- or, it may open a whole new set of directions and hopes for my life.

No more rambling. The starting point of the week. The first quote from the challenging Henry Ward Beecher, prominent Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, abolitionist, and speaker in the mid to late 19th century.

Simply let it sink in.

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.
--Henry Ward Beecher

Reflections on Newtown - part 3

Finding Forgiveness

Seems like an odd thought as we continue to reflect on the tragedy in Newtown, CT. Yet it is connected in my mind by a stroke of fate. Let me explain.

Two weeks ago I began a six-month course/training in Attention and Interpretation Therapy as developed at Mayo Clinic by Dr. Amit Sood. He has written an excellent book (link) on how mindfulness and developing certain core principles can make a huge difference in one's life. As part of the 6-month training the participants are to cultivate a different aspect of the principles each day of the week. Monday is gratitude; Tuesday is compassion; Wednesday is acceptance; Thursday is meaning; Friday is... yes, forgiveness.

The instructions are basically to become mindful of the world around you as you move through each day and bring the principle of the day to all you do. Last Friday was the first Friday to be practicing these principles. Gratitude and compassion were easy as the week began. Acceptance has been a core of my life in recovery for over two decades. Meaning- hey, I have been searching for that on a regular basis for most of six decades.

As I got up last Friday morning and did my morning gratitude list and lifted people into the sphere of compassion, I paused and wondered how I would ever bring the concept of forgiveness into life. At noon my wife called all distraught by the news that I hadn't even heard yet. It shook my world as it did for many. I went back to my office and looked up the news. I began to feel the anger of others watching this horror unfold. The early stages of the thoughts I would write last Saturday (posted Tuesday) began to form.

Forgiveness wasn't one of them. About mid-afternoon I stopped long enough to think of the AIT training course.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Today's about forgiveness.

Not now. No way.

In any case, forgiveness isn't mine to give in this setting. That belongs to the victims; young, hopeful angels cut down in a moment of terror and God knows what. Forgiveness belongs to them and their families; and the first responders still reeling, I am sure, from the sight they had to witness. Forgiveness? No, that's not for me to give. In the end it may only be for God to give, whatever that may mean in this terrible context.

Or is it?

A week has passed. Again I have given gratitude on Monday and compassion on Tuesday. Much of that came as a result of last Friday. I am grateful for so much and my compassion went flowing out to the victims and their families in waves of sadness. Acceptance- well, I have no choice. It has happened and cannot be changed. It is now indelibly etched in the American psyche, mine included. It is the way it is, like it or not. In the midst of that has to be a meaning to be learned. Maybe we as a nation will finally make a long-delayed move to keep these from happening as frequently as they do. Maybe that will give meaning to a meaningless act.

I come again to get ready for Friday with its core principle of forgiveness. Part of me wants to cry out to God: "Instead of forgiveness, how about fairness and justice and healing?" Many have cried, "How can Adam Lanza be forgiven? Let him burn in hell!" Great parts of me agree.

Yet, as the course I am doing reminds me, forgiveness from me isn't for Adam Lanza or anyone else. It is for me. My health and the health of my soul demands my participation in forgiveness.

Forgiveness does not:

• condone
• justify
• excuse or
• deny

Rather it

• sets me free
• to live by my own core values and spiritual principles. 

 It sets me free from the

• prison of 
• hatred and 
• anger and 
• fear.

It sets me free to

• envision hope and 
• a future where these unspeakable atrocities are part of a past evil.

Easier said than done.

That is my goal for tomorrow as it unfolds, though. I need it. The people I will meet need it. Not my forgiveness but their own. Not my condoning Adam Lanza's insanity or excusing it away; but putting it in its proper place- an act of a lone, sick, perhaps even evil young man trapped in his own hell that was far beyond his meager ability to control. As he planned and plotted he was making, perhaps, some last ditch effort to feel pain or loss or to get rid of it. Only in his own mind, twisted and unbalanced, it meant visiting more pain on others.

My forgiveness is so I do not get trapped in his sickness and continue to live his pain in my soul. I will not allow that to happen. I cannot allow that to happen or I will be another of his victims as my soul dies under his evil and hatred.

"Adam Lanza," I now want to cry, "Enough. Be gone! I am through with your works and scary eyes gazing from  over-pixeled pictures. I leave you to God and grace or forgiveness or whatever the Creator has for you."

This does not mean that any of those devastated parents or clergy or neighbors of Newtown need to do this. I cannot - I must not - pretend to even know the tiniest bit of their pain. But if I am to be part of a solution to this nightmare, if I am to be here to help them and our nation, I need to do this for me.

Forgiveness now has a new meaning as this Friday, a week later, dawns. May I have the grace and strength to find ways to live it as the day unfolds.


As if that wasn't enough for my tired soul, my Higher Power, my God, was not finished with me as I wrote those lines. My iPhone music shuffle worked its mystical ways one more time as what may be my most meaningful hymn came through the headphones.

Reminding me that we each are called to find that peace in our soul. It is the only way we can life it.

When peace like a river attendeth my way When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot you have taught me to say
It is well with my soul.

Though the devil will ruin Though trials will come
Let this blest assurance control That Christ has regarded my helpless estate
And shed his own blood for my soul.

It is well with my soul...

Lord haste the day when my faith shall be sight The clouds be rolled back like a scroll
The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend

Even so
It is well
With my soul

Third Sunday in Lent: Real Temptations

This morning I thought about temptation and forgiveness. Well, actually mostly about temptation. I was listening to the radio on the way to church and an author was talking about one the characters in her novel. He was the father in the family and he did things which caused problems. But, the author mentioned, he thought he was doing the right thing. Sometimes temptations are in the small things.

I have said before that if we really wanted to be honest about the problem of sins and temptation it is not the BIG ones that we should be railing against. I think, in reality, the overwhelming focus we place on these BIGGIES gets in the way of most of us dealing with the real presence of sin in our world and our lives. Just listen to any preacher when he or she begins to rail against sin and you will often be able to sit back in relief that they are not talking about you.

But take a step back and think of the "tradition" of the Seven Deadly Sins. Here they are:

• wrath (inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger, including denial of truth)
• greed (a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of wealth, status, and power)
• sloth (failure to utilize one's talents and gifts, seen as laziness and indifference)
• pride (desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to acknowledge the good work of others, and excessive love of self; often seen as the original sin
• lust (excessive thoughts or desires of a sexual nature)
• envy (insatiable desire and resentment that another person has something they perceive themselves as lacking, and wish the other person to be deprived of it)
• gluttony (over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste) (See Wikipedia.)
  

All of a sudden the definitions of sin have changed. Suddenly my life is filled with sin. I am not blameless. When I look at that list I see that it is more than just a list of some things I might fall into someday. In reality they are things that I can- and often do- fall into just about every day. (Okay- EVERY day.)

What is the way to handle all this? Honest self-inventory. Searching moral inventory. The founders of the 12-Step movements were onto something important when they wrote Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory. In fact when they wrote their second text, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, they talked about the Seven Deadly Sins as the list to use to think about those things. They are universal.

All this means that my life needs to be self-honest and not judgmental of other people. To use the Seven Deadly Sins reminds how easy it can be to move from good to bad, from hope to sin. I do it daily. So daily I need to remind myself that there is hope and forgiveness. That is what my faith is all about. I don't have to be a prisoner to these. I can be freed.

Thanks be to God who gives me the victory in Jesus Christ.

Are You Ready for Church Tomorrow?

Ben Myers linked to a great post from Byron at Nothing New Under the Sun. As we Christians get ready for church tomorrow, it is worth considering:

Does church terrify you? Do you get shivers down your spine when you arrive each week? Do you wake up early on a Sunday morning in a cold sweat? You should. Maybe you should. We do some scary things each week. It might seem harmless enough, but we’re playing with holy fire.... [E]ach week we ask God to forgive us our sins in the same manner that we forgive those who sin against us - a scary prayer.

Makes me stop and think twice about what might happen tomorrow morning- if I am open to the possibility of God at work in the worship.

A Sunday Thought

Luke 7:47 - Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little."

The depth of that comment is almost limitless. The power of its truth is probably inffinite. The success of its change to a person's life is the other side of miraculous.

Listen to the words of Amazing Grace without your own sentimental attachment. Then remember the former slavetrader writing those words in incredible gratitude.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now I'm found
Was blind but now I see.

Listen to the words of It Is Well With My Soul. Hear the deep cry of pain relieved by love.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

Listen to the words of Just As I Am. Then know the joy of these words of a person who was an invalid from age 30 through the rest of her life?

Just as I am, Thy love unknown
Hath broken every barrier down;
Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Simply put, that's what Jesus is talking about. What a thought!

And I wonder if we have lost too much of that awareness. All the things that have been part of who we are as followers of Jesus can get lost in our modern world. Especially for those of us in the mainline tradition. Have we gotten lost in our frantic efforts to stay alive, to make a difference, to feel relevant and important? And in that lostness have we forgotten what it is we are always all about? Love, and meaning, and hope, and an honest and exciting challenge to come up with the wisdom of life?

The following came across the computer on Thursday and I thought it would be a good way to end this. I have a hunch that underneath what Diana Butler Bass is saying, is that by losing so much of what makes us who we are, we have also lost the power of love. At least, that's one of my takes on it.

What Makes a Thriving Mainline Church When Many are Dying?

At a time when most mainline denominations are continuing to experience consecutive drops in membership, a critically acclaimed author presented what actually makes a mainline church thrive, The Christian Post reports. Diana Butler Bass, scholar and author of Christianity for the Rest of Us, presented some of her findings on thriving churches. Successful congregations: cultivate spiritual practices in daily life, promote tradition without using it as a fence to keep people out, and offer a quest for wisdom as opposed to pat answers. Butler Bass studied thriving congregations in the Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), Disciples of Christ and United Church of Christ. "[M]illions of people would choose mainline denominations if we gave them something worth choosing," she opined.

--Crosswalk Religion Today Summary, 6/14/07