Curing Boxes and Baggage

At first read, this is a heavy and complex piece of writing from artist Anne Truitt. Take a moment and ponder it.

Unless we are very, very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves. This indifference can be, in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon. We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be. By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them. I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be. The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself. The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.
--Brain Pickings

Here's the title of the piece on Brain Pickings that includes this phrase:

Compassion, Humility, and How to Cure Our Chronic Self-Righteousness

That leads me to see something very important in the passage that could easily be missed. It is about how each one of us can overcome the tendency to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, a tendency caused by an unwillingness to let go of the past and all the imperfect insights, self-centered interpretations, and putting other people into boxes that limit them while allowing us to be "different from" them.

Okay, that too is more complex than it has to be.

Each of us can tend to maintain our feelings about ourselves by not allowing others to grow and change. We hold on to the old ideas and keep our view of them based on the past.

Last weekend I visited a close high school friend that I haven't been with in person for nearly 45 years. While we have been friends on Facebook for several years, I am sure the images we had of each other were more than colored by our high school relationship. Most likely they were almost totally defined by that 50-year old experience.

We spent the weekend "catching up." It was a combination of reminiscing and letting each other know how we each became the people we are today over these last 50 years. By the end of the weekend the past was more truly the past. I can no longer see him through the eyes of an 18-year old looking at another 18-year old. Neither of us is the person we were then (Thanks be to God, at least as far as my life is concerned!)

Those old images that Truitt mentions above truly do doom us. They doom us to miss the great wonders of growing and changing as well as having the new experiences that keep us stuck in what we like to call "the good, old days," which they were not. They simply were.

This seems to be a time for me to make some of these old connections into new experiences. Tomorrow I will be preaching at the church I served from 1977 - 1984. I have not been there in 30 years. Many people are gone who were part of the church then. The "young people" are no longer young and their children are no longer the age of children. I will be an interesting experience to see the church and my experiences there from a new perspective.

Truitt called this other way of handling the past love. It is the opposite of the inattention that keeps stereotypes, old memories, and our own baggage from stunting our growth and relationships. We are far deeper, wider, and richer than the boxes we put ourselves and others in. I am looking forward to seeing what that means at the church and for me.

Last weekend helped set the tone for me to be able to do that.

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.”

Welcome to Humanity

News: The super Christian Duggar Family is still in the news. Josh, the one who has been outed as a child molester of his sister when he was younger, has now been outed as having an affair and being addicted to pornography. He has admitted to this latest sinfulness and said of himself that he is "the biggest hypocrite ever."

Well, welcome to the club, Josh. The club of being human.

Which 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 earlier reared its ugly head when he acted as if he was "holier that thou." Call it self-righteousness or grandiosity or even narcissism, you still have 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 has already started.

I am sure I have said before that one of the most important quotes I retain from my Seminary days was the one from the Hebrew Bible professor. He 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- as much  in myself as in others. The self-righteousness of any ideological approach to faith is ripe with that possibility.

Let's get over it. Let's be real and honest about who we are- sinners.

Fortunately, we are not sinners in the hands of an angry God.

But more on that another day.