Facebook Love and Hate

Yes, I've been sucked in to reading just a few more posts on Facebook. It takes willpower to click away. Of course the younger folks have long ago abandoned FB. When old people like me got on board, well, FB became passé. They like Instagram, Snapchat, and other platforms that I don't even know about.

But back to Facebook. I have this deep ambivalence about using it. I feel somewhat accomplished when I go a whole day or more without checking my feed. I feel like I'm more hip, like all the young people. (But I almost never check my Instagram account because, frankly, I just don't get it. It seems much more like a waste of time to me than FB.)

I feel like I have conquered the addiction when I close out that FB tab. Ha ha! I escaped!

But then, I like to know what's happening with friends. I like to see if they have kids or grandkids to be proud of. I like to see when young folks graduate or get engaged. I like to keep up with the news, even sad news, and often follow up when I learn something on FB. I do try to scroll on by the cute kitten videos. Way too many of those.

When it comes to my own posts, of COURSE I like to be liked. I like to be noticed. I like for people to make the extraordinary effort of clicking a button below my picture. Talk about affirmation! But I feel guilty for checking up on my likes. Why do I care so much about other people's approval? Shouldn't I be above all that?

And how engaged should I really be here? Do I want to saturate FB with pictures of every bite of every meal? Or do I want to be a stalker who never posts, rarely likes others' posts?

And then there's the threat of FB (and all the other FAANG firms) knowing soooo much about me. They think they know all about my buying habits. Sometimes they actually get it right. But I like to keep them guessing. Take that you vicious algorithm!

So, for me, there is both love and hate of Facebook. I just don't want to be controlled by some computer. My New Year's resolution about Facebook? Don't really have one. I'll just keep on loving and hating.

Old School Obedience

Reading Dallas Willard's book, The Great Omission, I was struck by his observation about obedience. While Jesus clearly teaches the importance of obedience ("teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you..."), Christians rarely emphasize it today.

Somehow we want the depths of spirituality without the tedium of obedience. Wouldn't that be easier? Obedience seems so oppressive. Can't we just call it cooperation with God? We do hear occasionally about repentance. But repentance must come back to obedience.

Maybe we think of obedience primarily with outward requirements: do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal. And many of us may believe that we have long ago mastered that kind of obedience. Please don't nag us with reminders about such elementary matters.

But Jesus calls his followers to make some more difficult choices: love your enemies, bless those who curse you, don't lust, deny yourself. These are less visible, but still important matters of obedience.

Being required to "obey" Jesus seems like oppression. Obedience is such a harsh word to twenty-first century ears.

We have somehow lost the connection between love and obedience. Jesus loves us, so he calls us to obedience. If we love him, we will obey his commands.

Good at Being a Person

Life is not easy. There are all kinds of ways we can mess up life. And we all do. Personhood is harder than it looks.

Who is really good at being a person? And is that the same thing as being a good person?

Personhood entails a wide range of skills: walking, talking, listening, loving, eating, serving, creating, working, sharing, confessing, confronting, exploring, explaining... The list is endless. So personhood is about doing life. Some people are better at personhood than others.

I'm still learning how to be a person: how to navigate through life, how to keep (gain?) my sanity, how to develop my strengths, how to love others, how to worship.

It's not easy, but it is rewarding.

Sports, Winning, and Love

Congratulations to the Clemson Tigers for winning the National Championship last night. It was a game for the ages! And is was worth staying up for (since I was pulling for the Tigers). After the game, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said something powerful. He said that the key ingredient in his program was love. He made similar remarks after his team beat Ohio State on New Year's Eve.


I've been watching football all my life, and I've never heard a coach claim love as his winning formula before. It just sounds hokey... until you win a national title, especially against the Crimson Tide. Love and football seem so incompatible. But love and teamwork are very compatible.

Some teams may be motivated by fear--of failure, of letting down teammates, of disappointing coaches, of showing weakness. And fear is a powerful motivator. Fear has kept the masses in check in every oppressive regime. Fear often keeps dysfunctional systems functioning. Fear does work. That's why it is used so often. It seems like an obvious tool to use. The external motivation of negative consequences shapes our behavior all the time. Why else obey the speed limit? But fear is driven by self-interest.

Love, on the other hand, has an entirely different kind of motivation. It springs from the heart. It is driven by concern for others and it is fueled by others' concern for us. Love is reciprocal, and it spirals upward. When someone fails in a loving relationship, he or she is picked up and restored. When someone fails in a system based on fear, the offending party is castigated and punished. That person may even be rejected entirely. There are others to step in and take that role.

Now I'm probably reading way too much into the program of Coach Swinney. I know nothing about the team's graduation rate or even the success of his players at the professional level. And I know even less about the Alabama program. I'm not implying that their team is fear-driven.

But I do know that love is more powerful than fear. It is much more difficult to operate with love, because love demands selflessness and humility. It demands listening and understanding. It demands sacrifice. Love is more difficult than fear, but it builds people up internally for all the right reasons.

Would I have been writing this blog if Clemson had lost? Who knows? But I would rather be on a team like Swinney's and lose than be on any team with less heart.

After all, the ultimate winning really has nothing to do with football.

Enemy Love

A Vietnam veteran spoke to me on Sunday after I had preached about loving one's enemy. He had seen real enemies who wanted to take his life. This "love your enemy" talk seemed to require the impossible. How can one love a person who would kill them?

As I spoke on Sunday about that passage in Matthew 5, I failed to make an important clarification.

When we think of loving someone, we think of having a warm spirit of affection for them. Because of that spirit of affection, we express love through action.

Jesus is calling us to express love through action toward our enemies, but not calling us to generate warm feelings of affection toward them. Because of love, we should cooperate with the person making unreasonable requests, Jesus says. We refuse to retaliate when harmed. We freely lend to those who want to borrow.

Rather than treating people with hatred, we treat them with love. Clearly Jesus is not expecting us to love enemies as we love our own families.  While we may not have affection for our enemies, we can behave toward them in a loving way. This is love through action without a spirit of cursing toward them.

In Luke 6:28, Jesus puts it like this: "Bless those who curse you." Loving enemies is never easy. Jesus calls us to live and love through his power. Only through his power can we experience the kind of life he wants for us.

Pain in the Process

As time marches on, and good things happen, there is pain, good pain, in the process.  The pain is good because it takes me deeper in relationship all around.  I love my wife more, I love my children more, I love my Lord more.  I could never get there without the pain.  I am getting there, learning, growing, coping, stretching.

God's tag line

Of course God is too great to be summed up in a single word or phrase.  But in Psalm 136, the writer clearly highlights one of God's primary characteristics.  This seems to be one quality that God wants us to notice and remember.

His love endures forever.

All 26 verses in this Psalm end with this refrain.  When we thank him, when we see his creation, when we experience his protection, when we witness his justice--in all these circumstances we need to remember that his love endures forever.

God has many other attributes, but we must keep on remembering that his love endures forever.  Not his justice, his power, his might, or even his glory--his enduring LOVE we must remember.  Obviously other places in the scripture highlight God's other attributes.  But here the psalmist drives home God's love.

This word for love also means loving-kindness or covenant love.  We must never forget God's love for us.  I need to remember that every day.  That helps me experience his love and live his love.

The Valentine Question

It's just a couple of weeks before Valentine's Day now, so I want to make a suggestion to husbands, who probably need to get a clue.  Yeah, everybody knows that men need to get a clue.  The worst of us are those who don't even know it.

Last week at our Ephesians Bible study, led by Keith Street, someone brought up a quotation from Bill McCartney of Promise Keepers fame.  The Coach said, "You can tell the depth of a man's walk with God by the countenance of his wife's face."

It is the husband's job to love his wife.  To cherish, honor, bless, and encourage her.  To make her feel like the most special woman in the world.  As all men know, women are difficult to figure out.  In fact, they are nearly impossible to figure out.  It's like we need divine intervention.  In fact, we do.

So, the most important Valentine question may be the question you ask God: 
What is the key to my wife's heart? 

I encourage you to ask that question, and listen to God's answer.  It may surprise you.  It may catch you off guard.  It may remind you of something long forgotten.  Once God reveals the key, you have to act upon it.  Get creative, get serious, get humorous, get real.  Stop taking her for granted.  Unlock all of that feminine mystery you can fathom, with the key to her heart.

The key won't be material treasure or anything grand.  It will be simple, honest, thoughtful, from the humble depths of your heart.  It won't be a one-time gesture either.  It has to represent an awakening of your own heart to the beautiful privilege of belonging to your bride.

Ask the question, change your heart, pour yourself out for your love.  It may bring a sweet smile to her face like you haven't seen in years.

Love and Suffering

I just finished Richard Rohr's book, The Naked Now.  Every time I read one of his books, I think, "This must be his magnum opus."  Again, I am blown away. 

I have discovered that my pattern of thinking, my perspective, the lenses through which I look at life are flawed.  Like everyone, I have inherited a mind tainted by the Fall in the Garden of Eden.  It takes, Rohr says, a lot to break through this flawed pattern thinking and feeling.  Normally we rock along in life, taking our cues from the world around us.

Generally only two kinds of life experiences can get people to step back and evaluate their lenses of life.  Those two experiences are deep love and great suffering.  Virtually anyone after a near-death experience gains a new, deeper appreciation for life.  Similarly, anyone deeply in love sees all of life differently.

If I want to see life more deeply, I need to suffer or love deeply.  Now it is foolish to court suffering.  Life naturally brings suffering anyway.  But I can choose to love.  I can love with abandon.  I can love with creativity.  I can love unconditionally.  I can love on purpose.

That's how I want to take my heart and mind to a new level.  The suffering will come too.  And that as well will take me deeper.

ISIS vs. Nazis

Militant Islamists want to take over the world, and they brutally slaughter any who stand in the way.  In the 1930s and 1940s Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan joined ranks to take over the world.  Reluctantly, the U.S. entered WWII after Japan bombed the U.S. military base in Pearl Harbor.  The U.S. rightly stood against the powers of evil sweeping the world.

There are some similarities between ISIS and the Nazis:  brutality, totalitarianism, quest for world domination, indoctrination of young children.  Many believe that we should fight ISIS just as we fought the Nazis.

But ISIS is not exactly like Nazi Germany.  The Germans worked through their existing national government, which Hitler cleverly took charge of.  They conscripted young men to serve in the armed forces and used the power of the government to spread propaganda.  Religion was used by the Nazis only as a tool for the nationalist agenda.  Many religious voices were silenced.  The Nazi quest was a top-down approach, as Der Fuhrer worked his plan.

ISIS is different because it has no single charismatic leader.  A quick Google search of ISIS leaders pulls up no names familiar to me.  There are leaders, but there are many leaders.  The ISIS movement has no formal means of conscription.  This means that their forces are chiefly volunteers.  Which means that their soldiers are true believers.  Unlike Nazi soldiers who merely followed orders, ISIS militants put into action what they truly believe.  ISIS grows from the grassroots.  Pockets of believers may be found in any nation around the globe.  They can be called upon in a moment's notice to work along with the larger evil agenda.  The Nazis had nothing like this.

Militant Islam is much more insidious, and consequently much more dangerous.  Bombs and bullets can stop massive military movements like the current surge in Iraq.  But a more important battle is the the battle for the hearts of people.  So many believe the lie that non-Muslims must be slaughtered, in the name of Allah.  They serve their god by murdering entire villages.

It will take more than the sword to win this growing global conflict.  It will take truth.  It will take bold proclamation of the Lordship of Jesus.  It will take the power of the Spirit of God changing hearts.  It will
take the gospel.  It will take a movement of people who are sold out to the truth, reconciled to God through the cross, and ready to love in the face of hate.

Blessed

Peter Lord was our special guest at Crossroads last weekend.  Whenever he comes, he teaches us to say, “I am blessed and very much so.”  I never really got that until I read his book, Bless and Be Blessed.  There he explains that we don’t understand blessing until we receive the blessing of God. 

 

I am learning what blessing is.  Typically when I think of blessing, I think of health, friends, material provisions, and pleasant circumstances.  But Peter explains that to bless means to eulogize.  God speaks good words over me.  The blessing is always there in Christ; I’m learning to receive it moment by moment.  He speaks his love, his mercy, his hope, his pleasure over me.  God speaks to me and about me.  He blesses me.  I am learning to receive it. 

I am blessed and very much so.

Knowing that God speaks well of me lifts me to a higher plane of living.  Knowing that God is blessing me as I breathe, lets that blessing overflow from me to others.  Living in his blessing saves me from being critical, judgmental, hurried and defensive.  It takes the focus off myself, and puts it on Jesus and others.

Sounds familiar:  Love God, love your neighbor.

I am blessed!