- Spiritual Fodder
- Cultic, Aberrant, or Abusive?
- Role of Women in Ministry
- Then What's a Good Church?
- Why So Quiet?
- Becky's UBF Roots
- The Letter
- Dissecting Ed's Brain
- Shepherding/Discipleship Movement
- Exit Strategy
- Moving On
...fine for one dollar per person who walks in from now on from their MYT instructor. [congregation murmurs] So, alright. Sophia, what class were you in? [congregation laughs] Alright, no she was...there is nothing wrong with her instructor. She was fine--okay um--because it was me. We ended at eight twenty.
Okay, so let's look at the passages. Well before we look at the passages let's review a little bit what we covered last week. We covered "Seeking Truth About Ourselves", right, and we had that little technical problem where I didn't have this nifty tablet and we had the chalkboard and so I just wanted to do that diagram again. I remember the Truth Project...it's about truth or reality...you know, that pernicious lie verses God's Truth, that we've been covering in the Truth Project and then it's either lies or illusion, right, and so here we are and there's this pull towards truth or there's a pull towards the lies and the truth is that I'm a sinner, that I'm broken, that I'm not all that, whatever that means, just trying to connect with the youth here. And then this is different versions of "I'm okay," "I'm not bad," "I'm pretty cool," "I'm pretty smart," "I'm pretty good," and it's pride that leads us down this path and it's humility that leads us toward embracing the truth about ourselves and there is a tremendous pull towards pride and towards lies because of course we like to feel good about ourselves and if that desire, that feeling, that NEED almost, to have a positive self regard, to feel good about ourselves, starts to take over then we will resist evidence because you know from our world and from our experience, if we're fair and if we adopt the evidence that comes it will lead us to this conclusion, but in order to get to this conclusion we need to close off our access to this evidence. People could be telling us things, setbacks can happen, and when we don't get a good grade, it's not our problem; it's the professor's fault or because I've procrastinated or it's because I had a bad week; it's when we've treated someone, when we look back at our life and there's just a string of stormy and broken relationships, or we feel hurt, or anger, or bitter about a bunch of people. We don't say that it's my problem it's because it's that person that person that person and so we need to go this way through all the things we've talked about in this message series: blame, victim posturing, rationalization, all ways to deflect reality, all ways to not seek the truth about ourselves, but to deflect and resist and reject truth from reality and when we do this we miss a lot of reality, we grow disconnected with reality, and we keep living in this cloudy, illusory world and increasingly people are not going to be able to relate to us, we're not going to be able to relate to people, we're going to float in isolation.
Well, if you...through the wonderful grace of humility, if you say, "Forget the need to feel special about myself, who am I really?" and you seek truth, you're going to have to get humble. And you move toward the truth about yourself through honesty. Because if you reject the prideful notions, if you reject the ideas to feel prideful about yourselves, no matter what the cost, then you will become honest and you will engage in this wonderful thing that the Bible calls "confession" and then you will be open to reality and you will be open to feedback and you won't run away from life, you won't run away from the world b/c it gives you valuable feedback. And you start to look at what all of this testifies about you and it's not a pretty picture--what is a true picture--which then drives us to the Cross and God gives us the Grace and a whole new way of thinking about ourselves b/c if we cannot think about ourselves in this way then that's Death. But no, through the Cross of Jesus, we can think about ourselves, we can embrace the truth about ourselves, and yet it's not devastating b/c we have the Good News that God loves us, that we are His child[ren], that the blood of Jesus covers us from all of our sinsb and further that He commissions us to a wonderful work of spreading His love and embodying the beautiful Gospel in our lives, so that we can be a blessing to other people. and it's a really thrilling way to live and think about ourselves.
So that was last week when we're thinking about seeking the truth about ourselves. Now I want to talk about seeking truth ABOUT others and seeking truth FROM others. Big part of our source, huge source of truth, is through other people. The truth about your weight--you don't need other people--you just need a scale. The other day I weighed in at 190. [murmur congregation laughs] And that was not far from my response. I should have been horrified but I wasn't at all. I thought, "Wow, that's a lot more of me than I thought." [congregation laughs] So if we are to be a people who seek truth about really the profound or the more interesting things about ourselves, not things about our weight or our height or things like that, you can just look at that on your own, but what sort of person am I, am I a kind person, am I a patient person, am I a compassion person, am I a loyal person, what sort of person am I? A big part of that is through other people. Big part of that is by bouncing off of other people through series of relationships that are reliable relationships. In other words, they're not fake relationships. Remember the movie "Truman"...was that the name of the movie, "Truman?"..."The Truman Show," I felt that wasn't quite right, "The Truman Show," now that makes sense. If you guys seen "The Truman Show" the whole thing I mean he's got a lot of relationships right and his wife is supposed to be like this loving wife and she constantly holds up these cans of soup and saying "I'm serving you this soup today!" and it's product placement and the whole thing strikes him as a little bit odd. Well, Truman cannot gain reliable information about himself through people like that. He can gain reliable information about himself through FAITHFUL relationships. If people are hired actors to act like your wife, to act like your college buddy, to act like your frat friend, whatever, then of course the kind of picture you get becomes grotesquely distorted. So we need to seek those kinds of relationships.
So now let's look at our text. 2 Timothy 4: 1-5. This will be the DT text for next week. So let's read this together in unison. The brothers and sisters will take turns, and next time let's kind of try to mix it up. This is kind of odd that 80% of the brothers are here and 80% of the sisters are here so, I think it will really be pronounced when we start reading this, like a stereo effect. [congregation lightly laughs] The brothers start. Ready, begin:
1In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
Okay, Apostle Paul, with a sudden seriousness, he says "In the presence of God..I give you this charge: preach the Word...in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction." Now these are the words that describe how these "others" are to relate to you in your quest to seek truth about yourself. It's the truth about yourself...I put "tooth" *chuckle*...how do they deliver this truth? Is it through compliments and cheering you on? Is it through telling you how cute and special and wonderful you are? Is it going to be through that kind of speech, that kind of relating with you? [addressing back door] I'm sorry, can we close that door? Because you don't see it but I keep seeing people pass by, people violating traffic laws out there...it's really distracting. The side doors can remain open, because I can't see out through those doors. [returning to sermon] It's not gonna be except on rare occasions. On rare occasions you are something really special. Most likely there's going to be a whole array of feedback that you're going to get that tells you about yourself.
Now we already know something, as Biblical people, that we are sinners. Are we sinners? Shall we sing "Amazing Grace" just to remind ourselves? "...saved a WRETCH like me?" Right, let's not have rhetoric at one level and then in our feelings feel something entirely differently. We are sinners. What do sinners do, everybody? Sinners...SIN! Well if you are a sinner and you sin and you seek reality about yourself through other people, often if those other people are gonna actually tell you the truth, it's gonna sound like this...it's gonna sound like correction, rebuking, encouraging. Two out of three is going to be negative stuff; unpleasant stuff: "You're not doing that right." "No no don't do it this way; do it this way." " Why do you treat people this way. That was rude. Did you know that you completely disregarded what that person said during that time?" "No, I didn't know I did that." "Yeah well you did; you acted like that person wasn't there; did you know you interrupted him and you just went on and on; did you know that?" "No I didn't know that." "Well you did and that was very embarrassing when someone tells you something like that." And then you might said, "Gosh well I'm sorry" and then the person may further say, "I want to say this as gently as I can, but you know, you do that..QUITE A LOT." "*gasp* What, I do?" "Yeah, you do." That's what a correction feels like.
Now what a rebuke feels like is, at this point you go, "I don't and so what if I do...what about you?!" And then the person you're talking to goes, "You have a bad attitude. Now listen because what I'm telling you truth. You need to change. Look at your wrecked relationships. How long are you going to go like this?" That's what a rebuke feels like, just in case you haven't been rebuked. [congregation laughs] And then you come to your senses and you say, *mumble*.
So okay: correct, rebuke, and encourage. "...with great patience and careful instruction, for the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine, but instead suit their own..." What? "...to suit their own DESIRES." "To suit their own desires." "They will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear." Now what do I want to hear? You know I'm very clear what I want to hear. I want to hear "Pastor Ed, you're the best! You are the best pastor in the world! In fact, your teaching is so profound I think it should be published! In fact overall I think you're the swellest human being I've ever met." That's what I want to hear, it's just that it would grate on my ears because I know you would be lying to me and I would have to rebuke you for your lack of truthfulness. [congregation laughter] But what is our ultimate desire...our desire is just ??? our desires is just childish. Our desire is to be in that infantile position quite regardless of what the truth of the matter is we're constantly being told that we're cute and so smart and so much better than our siblings and our friends and that's just not reality. so they're not seeking reality. They are seeking what? They are seeking to fulfill their desires. their desires for what? Their desires for ego satisfaction. and so what will they do? Apostle Paul says a time will come when they're not gonna put up with instruction, they're not gonna put up with correction, they're not gonna put up with truth, they won't seek truth, they won't welcome truth, they'll reject reality, and they'll relativize reality, and they'll say, "Whose reality?" and it'll all become an issue of power, your reality versus my reality, and everybody will be in their privatized reality and they will seek co-conspirators, they will seek people who will agree with them about their reality, and those would be their friends, and they will gather around themselves people who will basically tell them what they want to hear, and that will be utterly tragic for that to happen to any of us. And yet inside of our hearts, in our desire structures, and in the subtle way in which we open our ears to certain voices, we fall prey to this all the time. We need to cultivate a hunger for truth. We need to cultivate a hatred for fakeness, toward things that will make me feel good but are not true because ultimately if they are not true, they are going to harm you. You're swallowing poison that's going to be time-release poison. And it will get you five years, ten years later. And your life will be demolished. You want truth. You want to seek truth.
Lot of truth about you, it's going to come from other people. What kind of other people? Prophetic people. People like Timothy that Apostle Paul is encouraging him to be. Do you seek people like that? Do you welcome people like that? Do you seek feedback about yourself, or do you just want to be told what you want to hear? Why bother, just tell yourself that. Well yeah that doesn't feel as good, so you want to manipulate other people. And you feel so bad because "Somebody told me I was dumb," just so you can hear your roommate say, "You're not dumb...you're stupid--" No... [congregation laughs] "You're not dumb--who says you're dumb? You're smart." "Oh gee, you really think so?" I just did a really tacky version of that, but you're all much better than that of getting people to say what you want to hear. What do you do when you're in trouble? You go seek counsel from people who are hand selected to verify and affirm what you want to hear. So many of you...how many of you, you're one of these people, you would agree with this statement, either somewhat agree or strongly agree with this statement: I am one of the people my friends come to when they want counsel, when they want advice? How many of you would agree that you're that person? Just be honest. None of you? You have no influence among your friends? Oh my gosh, I'm aghast. I used to be that guy. People would always come to me. How many of you, you're one of these people who, you just don't feel safe enough to answer this question you feel I'm going to pounce on you okay fair enough b/c I WAS going to pounce on you. You need to think about, "Is what I'm telling them true or am I telling them what they want to hear b/c I have high EQ I can sense what they want me to say so that I can provide them soothing?" What motivates you? Think about it.
Jesus talked about how the blind leading the blind; they both fall into a ditch. It is a thing that you should take much care if you are going to advice somebody and let me just be very straight with you, if somebody comes straight to you b/c their spiritual leader scolded them about something, challenged them about something, and you go, "Nah, you're not like that, they don't know you," or you don't say he doesn't know you b/c that might be a directly confrontational so you say "Oh really? I don't know why he said that, b/c you're not like that," and deep down inside you kind of feel like, "He IS like that." You have just classically acted the part of the false prophet. Don't do that. Have moral fiber to say, "Well, I don't know, you should just think about it," *chuckle* AT LEAST say that. Do not undermine the work of God in someone's life. Do not undermine the truth causing someone a little bit of beneficial hurt. Don't be a bleeding heart person who simply cares about emotional comfort. God's Word is eloquent about that. Go to Jeremiah 6. All of you counselors, let's read this together, verse 13 and 14:
13 "From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit.
14 They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace.
They dress the wound of my, they put a Band-Aid on a wound and say, "Peace peace, it's okay." when there is no peace, and God is really frustrated by that. Do not, please, I know how easy it is. I know how tempting it is, I know how instinctive it is to do that. But as Christian brothers and as Christian sisters, this kind of false comfort and false peace is something we must not offer to our friends. Teenagers! Listen carefully because this is what teens do. You undermine people who try to shape your friends. Don't do that. Don't do that. If you can't be the source of truth, don't come in there and try to undermine the truth from landing on a heart that's gonna have a hard time receiving truth anyways, b/c we resist truth. So we need all the help we can get from our friends. 'kay, be very careful about that.
Now, going back to, "...number of teachers say what their itching ears want to hear." This next story is really funny so I wanted to just read it together. It's going to come up this Sunday too in our worship service time. I just excerpted it in order to get the passages all fit on one page but you can read the whole chapter if you'd like (1 Kings 22):
1 For three years there was no war between Aram and Israel. 2 But in the third year Jehoshaphat king of Judah went down to see the king of Israel. 3 The king of Israel had said to his officials, "Don't you know that Ramoth Gilead belongs to us and yet we are doing nothing to retake it from the king of Aram?" 4 So he asked Jehoshaphat, "Will you go with me to fight against Ramoth Gilead?" Jehoshaphat replied to the king of Israel, "I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses." 5 But Jehoshaphat also said to the king of Israel, "First seek the counsel of the LORD." 6 So the king of Israel brought together the prophets—about four hundred men—and asked them, "Shall I go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain?" "Go," they answered, "for the Lord will give it into the king's hand." 7 But Jehoshaphat asked, "Is there not a prophet of the LORD here whom we can inquire of?"
In other words, Ahab had 400 prophets, 400 non-genuine prophets. Jehoshaphat recognized they were not, and so he's saying, "Okay come on is there a real prophet?" And the King of Israel's response is so funny:
8 The king of Israel answered Jehoshaphat, "There is still one man through whom we can inquire of the LORD, but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but always bad. He is Micaiah son of Imlah." "The king should not say that," Jehoshaphat replied. 9 So the king of Israel called one of his officials and said, "Bring Micaiah son of Imlah at once." 10 Dressed in their royal robes, the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat king of Judah were sitting on their thrones at the threshing floor by the entrance of the gate of Samaria, with all the prophets prophesying before them. 11 Now Zedekiah son of Kenaanah had made iron horns and he declared, "This is what the LORD says: 'With these you will gore the Arameans until they are destroyed.' " 12 All the other prophets were prophesying the same thing. "Attack Ramoth Gilead and be victorious," they said, "for the LORD will give it into the king's hand."
And then we skip five verses.
17 Then Micaiah answered, "I saw all Israel scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd, and the LORD said, 'These people have no master. Let each one go home in peace.' " 18 The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, "Didn't I tell you that he never prophesies anything good about me, but only bad?"
And if you read the whole chapter, Ahab now has Micaiah imprisoned and says, "I'll deal with you when I come back," but he never comes back because he dies in battle. This picture of Ahab the King of Israel surrounding himself with 400 prophets and he makes them prophesy, "Shall I go, fellas?" And these guys know, they have high EQ, these guys know that he wants to go and take back Ramoth Gilead. So they go, "Go, you go king!" And then he listens to them and goes, "That's right, God is predicting success." It's like madness, right? It's folly. Isn't that foolish? You choose people because you know what they're going to say to go for what you already want to go for and then you pretend that you're actually listening to them at the edge of your seat, and they say, "You go do it, what's wrong with it? There's nothing wrong with it--go for it." And then you say, "Really? You really think so?" And they go, "Yeah." And you say, "Alright then if you say so." Like that's crazy, right? We're all crazy, aren't we? Haven't we done stuff like that?
Are we not truth haters? Are we truth seekers? And then when somebody says something, and says, "No, don't do that; you can't have that. You can't do that." God has given you boundaries, and you say, "Arrest that man. Put him in prison. False prophet." What's governing? Not the truth. It's not truth, it's desires. It's your desires. And every prophet needs to go through the filter of your desires before you'll accept what they say.
I want to show you a very powerful video that I saw today and then we'll resume the message. Let's play that video.
[video plays]
That's a powerful song, powerful video, about which much can be said, but b/c I saw it today I thought maybe we should save this for another time then I thought "No, because one thing I was thinking about this guy is, how alone he is dealing with all of this. And you know...how many steps it takes, how many days it takes...it's a slow fade. People don't crumble in a day. So be careful what you say, be careful what you hear. Thoughts become choices, which becomes actions. People don't crumble in a day. It's a slow fade; and in that slow fade, if they're people that can shake him up, who he's talking to, who he's sharing with, who he's confessing to, if they're people, when the Word of God, when you're reading it on your own, you're so clouded by your desires and your lusts that nothing comes through and then somebody looks at you in the eye and rebukes you. Then he could be arrested.
I was talking to somebody last Sunday, who was telling me about a very very gifted, very very accomplished, scholarly pastor who was working for a mega-church and started his own church and he's frustrated that people don't seem to change. He said, "Good preaching doesn't seem to change people." This guy has two Ph.D's...one in clinical psychology and one in theology. "People don't seem to change." And so how will your church be different? And his idea was...it was an odd idea, that he was going to have people meditate deeply on passages of Scripture, boil it down to one word and share that one word with other people in a prayerful, meditative kind of way. It's part of medieval monastic spirituality called "Lexio Divina" and it's a tool for reflection and maybe it works for some people, and my friend told him, "That seems very elitist because for you to read a bunch of Scripture and to be able to sense your way toward one word and to be able to share that one word that doesn't seem practical," and then he said, "No no no it transforms people's lives." And I thought, "You know what, what transforms people's lives is the Word of God applied in relationships and community in a context of authority and fellowship. In a context of authority and fellowship." Ahab had that chance, he had fellowship with Jehosephat. "Hey man, let's listen to a prophet." You know two buddies, two fellow kings about to go to war. And then Micaiah comes and gives an authoritative and prophetic word.
To have people speaking the truth in your life is the greatest blessing to have people, unafraid to shake you up, unafraid to lose the relationship, to put everything on the line, people who have built credibility with you because of the exemplary nature of their Christian commitment and who will come at you, not with a personal whim, not with personal grievance against you, but who'll come at you with the authority of God's Word and say, "As far as I know God's Word, here's where you're going wrong. Here's where you need to repent. Here's what you're like and I want you to grow up." To have people like that in your life is a HUGE blessing. Pity the man who needs to go through all of that all by himself, who's only got a really good song and a music video to help him.
So I want to talk about these "others." Who are these "others" for you? Who are these people who are able to speak truth in your life, and give you honest feedback, proper doctrine, patient instruction, and if the need arises, correction and rebuke? Who are these people; do you have them in your life? And if you have them and God has placed these kinds of people in your life, do you regard them as such? Do you regard them as such? Because nobody has authority over you unless you grant them that authority. Nobody has authority over you. You are totally free. You GRANT that authority to that person. Do you have people in your life to whom you've given that authority. Sometimes that authority could be your peers. You say, "You guys, if I ever act in a way that's unspiritual, that's not God honoring, you confront me." That's how I define a good friend. To me a good friend is not somebody who affirms me in my sin. So you confront me so you can confer that authority on your friends. And in so doing elevate your friendship. And of course you could confer that kind of authority on your leaders instead of playing "us versus them" kind of games, and if you do so you can be a blessed person.
I thought about who these "others" are, whether we have them or not, and these others are the many many sources of truth that, whether we recognize them as reliable sources or not, they're shouting into our ears and they're flooding our minds. I'm talking about TV, movies, Internet, your friends' faces, Facebooks, AND their faces, friends, you know the real profound things they say on their Facebooks, professors, your extended family, who all say, "We all live like this, what's the matter with you, what's the matter w/ the people at your church you guys are strange." All of these people together, and you might not grant authority to many of them but BOY do they outnumber the voices that lead you to holiness and to God honoring truthful doctrine and instruction. I mean we're grossly outnumbered. So you need to be very intentional, very focused.
On granting the word of God authority and granting prophetic people in your life authoritative position to speak into your life so that the pull towards illusion, pull towards the lies, can be arrested.
[omission of reference to Sandra Tsing Loh's article, "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," found here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/divorce]
I don't necessarily recommend that you get the whole article and read it. The substance of it is here actually, in case you're curious about the entire article, it's much longer. I don't recommend it but just in case you think I recommend the article.
I just wanted to show you the operation of what our verse about "...to suit their own desires they'll gather around themselves any number of teachers who'll tell them what their itching ears want to hear." She's doing this to herself obviously. But what kind of teacher is she? Whether you would read something like this, to pick up a magazine called "The Week," which is a very very well known magazine; it's an excellent excellent publication, whether or not you do so, you better believe it, she is one of the culture makers and opinion shapers of our society. And her tone and her thinking process and her use of rhetoric it really is quite typical of people who do this sort of thing. And I just want to point out if these "others" that speak truth to you, these are people like...or other non-Christians, you're in serious trouble. You are not going to get valid truth from these people. Non-Christians start on a HUGE fallacy, that there is no God. And as far as the Bible is concerned, they are simply wrong. It's like adding up all these numbers there's like this gigantic number and they say "It's not there" and then they draw the line they give you the answer, well that's wrong. That's not going to be the right answer. If you consult non-Christian sources about important decisions about right and wrong, about values and choices, you're King Ahab. You're described in 2 Timothy 4. I mean if you are a Christian, at least let's have enough respect to seek Christian advice.
And I say this because I heard something disturbing this week about somebody who is talking to their non-Christian GSI about stuff, about our church, and then we ended up meeting that GSI and said, "Hey I have an undergrad who told me this and this and that about your church," and I thought, "Oh my." Anyway, we're reaching out that GSI so...So [Loh] she's really clever, right? Good writer, yes? Ability to talk to you as a writer with a voice of intimacy so you feel like you're kind of getting into her confidence; you almost feel like you're chummy chummy with her? This is the artistry of a good writer. She gives you just enough self deprecating things so you feel like she's an old friend confiding what's going on and yet there's a serpent's hiss in this piece of writing.
She said, "Sadly, and to my horror, I am divorcing." So now we feel sympathetic. "This was a 20-year partnership my husband is a good man but he did travel 20 weeks a year for work. I am a 47 year old woman whose commitment to monogamy at the very end came unglued." "It came unglued." You read later she dissolved it. She had an affair, and at her counselor's office she decided she wasn't going to try to mend the relationship. Her husband was good enough, it seems like, to try it, to try counseling; she said no, she said she couldn't.
And yet in the first paragraph she speaks of it in an entirely passive voice: "My commitment to monogamy came unglued." It's sort of like saying, "You know my commitment to capitalism became disoriented as I saw the ravages of environmental damage that our corporations are doing." It's almost like that kind of sentence. "My commitment to monogamy..." it's like this institution. You know she should have said, "My promise to my husband and my children became unglued." No, "I broke my promise, I trashed my covenant, I chose to act utterly selfishly...for my flesh." No it's a very understandable, "My commitment to monogamy at the very end became unglued." It's sort of like, "Boy let's see how long in the end you know what there's this thing called monogamy and there's this thing called 'my commitment' to it, and in the end, oh my commitment to it became unglued. It's such a sinisterly false way to characterize this but if you just swallow this then you're like "Oh dear, how did your commitment become unglued? Tell me more." Well she says she's "cataclysmically changed" by her affair and disclosed everything. "We cried and rent our hair, bewailed the fate of our children." So it seems like, something happened. Something happened to me. and so we cry. Suddenly she's not the perpetrator. She and her husband together bemoaning the fate of our children, it almost seems like some third party did something to them, something happened, an earthquake happened, the house burnt down. Something happened so we together cried and bemoaned the fate of our children. The whole time she is not confronting the fact that she's doing this. that she has done it. That she's the one dissolving the marriage. Do you see that? Do you see how subtly she's doing this, through the use of passive voice and talking about "we"?
And then after gaining our sympathy like that she slips in the fact that "5 o'clock counseling appointment as the golden late-afternoon sunlight spilled over the wall of Balinese masks--when given the final choice by our long time family therapist who stands in as our shaman, mother, or priest, I realized...no. Heart-shattering as this moment was--a gravestone sunk down on two decades of history--I would not be able to replace the romantic memory of my fellow transgessor with a more suitable image of my husband, which is what it would take in modern therapy terms to knit our domestic family construct back together. In woman's magazine parlance, I did not have the strength to "work on" falling in love again in my marriage."
I underline the expression "I realized...no." It's a realization, she says, that in the counseling office at 5 o'clock w/ the afternoon sun, she realized something. Well realization is a great thing when you realize something. Oh gosh I didn't realize well now I realize. She realized, "No." It's like she doesn't have a choice in the matter. She didn't choose no, she just needed to understand what the answer was. And as she's trying to understand it through her shaman, her mother and priest--this counselor--she REALIZED what the answer was. She realized the answer was no. Do you see how she's shirking responsibility something that is squarely her choice. She didn't "realize" no, she "decided" no. But, I "realized" no. And then she says, "Heart shattering this moment was"--yeah right, to convince us--"a gravestone sunk down on two decades of history, I would not be able to replace the romantic memory of my fellow transgessor with a more suitable image of..." well she's putting "romantic" versus "suitable" it would be a more suitable thing, my husband's a good man and it's a more suitable image to him being my target of romance but I just couldn't do it. "The romantic image of my fellow transgressor"-- that means the person she had the affair with. My counselor told me I needed to replace that my feelings for my fellow transgressor with a more suitable image, so it's an image trick. If i could just get the face to change in my fantasies, to the face of my suitable husband but I would not be able to do it. HOW DOES SHE KNOW she would not be able to do it? It just happens that she spilled the beans and told all, they're in counseling, and she says I would not be able to do it. It's not an issue of ability, is it? it's an issue of her choice. She's unwilling to do it. How do you know you're not willing to. But she just says it like that, I would not be able to. No, you chose not to and ultimately you got the divorce. And now she's reporting from her U-Haul trailer, which is another publicity stunt of hers, so that she could...anyways...so she moved out and she's reporting from her old trailer so she can kind of...this exhibitionist, voyeuristic world in which we live in, she's reporting every little thing about her conversations with her friends and everything about her divorce. Anyway...
And so and then she says, "I'm not against work because during that counseling session what else came up is that I'm willing to do all the work, I'm willing to do everything I'm doing right now as a mother. I can do all of that. "What I cannot AUTHENTICALLY," she says, in that paragraph which is to say "work" at a career, child care, and joint home ownership, "however in this cluttered forest of my forties"--whatever that's supposed to mean but it's supposed to justify what she's going to say next is--"what I cannot authentically reconjure is the ancient dreams of brides." You know all she needs to do is be not so selfish and commit to her marriage. She puts it as I could not authentically. so now it's a quest for authenticity. Since I care about authenticity I could not authentically rekindle--what did she say--"reconjure the ancient dream of brides." Well I mean she calls this basic marital covenant that brides do "until death do us part," she dismissively calls it "the ancient dream of brides" and those are silly people, idealistic people. And in my cluttered forties, eh, I know I couldn't do that b/c I'm an authentic person. What's going on here? Let's look at this diagram again.
She's committed to this: "I'm not bad," "I'm okay," "I'm smart," "I'm good." Because she's proud. So she rationalizes, she victim postures, in "the cluttered forest of my forties." She does all of these mental gymnastics to justify that she's pretty good, she's normal. Hey, just couldn't do it, b/c all that stuff is the "ancient dream of brides."
And then she says, "Given my staggering working mother's to-do list, I cannot take on yet another arduous home and self improvement project that are rekindling of our romance." So again, blame. "Given my STAGGERING working mother's to-do list you can't expect me to take on ANOTHER self improvement project that are rekindling of our romance," blaming her busy schedule and so forth. And then she says, "Sobered by this failure as a mother--which is to say my failure as a wife--I've since began a journey of reading thinking and listening of what's going on in other 21st century families. And along the way I began to wonder with all the abject and swallowed misery: Why do we still insist on marriage? Sure it made sense in agrarian families before 1900 in order to farm the land you needed two spouses, grandparents, and a raft of children. But now that we have white collar work and washing machines and our life expectancy shot up from 47 to 77, isn't the idea of lifelong marriage obsolete?" Now this is astounding. When a people have lost the ability to feel ashamed, they have lost the last shreds of human dignity. This woman should be ashamed. Her children attend school in San Francisco. Her very unique name is known. Shouldn't she ought to just shut up? Shouldn't she just write about the Dalai Lama? Why is she writing about this? And she says "sobered by my failure," Well if you're sobered by your failure then try to undo the consequences of that failure. Try to reflect on that failure, try to repent for that failure. But no. For exhibitionistic people like this, the failure itself is to be shared w/ everybody, except on HER terms. Now she's sobered by her failure instead of learning where she went wrong, what don't I understand about lifelong covenant? What don't I understand about lifelong promises? What is wrong w/ my waywardliness that I commited an affair in secret obviously and finally I had to spill the beans and break the hearts of my children? She says "sobered by my affair," she started to read and look at how miserable other people were. And then she says, based on her experience, the whole world needs to morph based on HER experience she rejects all of this and everyone needs to believe this lie. "B/c I failed in my marriage, marriage must be obsolete. Why do we hold on to it?" She's like a person addicted to drugs who wants everyone else addicted so she can feel less shameful. And yet she doesn't come across that way. she comes across as smart and funny, sophisticated. And then she goes, "I sense you picking up the first stone to hurl," which is a very very shrewd rhetorical move b/c the people who would say "What?" are people just like me who would know the Bible. And suddenly she has casted me in the role of the Pharisees ready to cast the stone and she's the innocent one. And then she looks at this reaction in a mocking way, "...you know western Europeans aren't like this. Americans are the only weirdos who still believe in monogamy like we do."
And then I skipped a whole bunch of things where she talks about her friends, and Rachel since her own home fires seem to roar so warmly Rachel now wants to get a divorce as Rachel's husband Ian is this shelf builder and a cook and everything, always complaining how she's doing everything wrong. And then she closes with this book, "Why Him? Why Her?" This marriage researcher [Helen] Fisher gets an unsubstantiated idea of certain hormonal things and through that characterizes personality traits: Explorer, Builder, Director, and Negotiator. And after reading the book and discussing it, Ellen, one of her friends, slapping the book last paragraph saying, "This is why my marriage has been dead for 15 years. I'm an 'explorer' married to a 'builder'!" Ron, Ellen's husband, literally is a builder, like Ian, crafts wonderful shelves and also of course cooks. But what can Ellen do? Explorer/explorer tends to become the most unstable combinations whereas Fisher suspects most of the world's 50 year marriages are made by builders who marry other builders. so the problem is that she's an "explorer" and her friend Ellen the problem that their marriage has been "dead" for 15 years is not b/c they're immature people or any of these characters she goes "No, it's a personality type don't you know it traces back to when you are a fetus when you're in your mother's womb where you're bathed with either dopamine or serotonin whatever hormone it was or neurotransmitter it was." And so THAT'S the problem. and then most insulting of all, all the 50 year marriages in the world, it's not their virtue, it's not their patience, it's not the maturity of the parties involved, it's not the Grace of God, it's none of those things. It's just that boring builders marry other boring builders.
This is how the world beautifies sin, justifies transgression, and paints virtuous people as bores. And I can go on and on critiquing this piece w/ you, but if you've got someone this clever talking to you about your life, there is a serious problem. A serious problem.
Notice the warning about false teachers. In today's DT's, it says "weak willed women" yesterday's "control over weak willed women who are loaded down with sin and swayed by all kinds of evil desires always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth." These false teachers they say they kind of worm their way into people's homes and "gain control over weak willed women who are loaded down with sin and swayed by all kinds of evil desires," and I thought, "Man, weak willed, loaded down with sin, swayed by all kinds of evil desires, why is Apostle Paul picking on women?" I mean, guys are just like this too: "Weak willed, loaded down with all sorts of evil desires, always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth, loaded down with sins, always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth." The truth, the truth. B/c to acknowlege the truth means to take ownership, it would mean she couldn't write something like that. It would mean a lot of hard work which she says quite frankly in "the cluttered forest of my forties I'm just not able to do it." Not able to acknowledge the truth.
So Apostle Paul goes on these men who oppose the truth these men of depraved mind and then against all that his exhortation to Timothy is, "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and become convinced of, b/c you know those from whom you learned it." "Continue in what you have learned and become convinced of, b/c you know those from whom you have learned it." Spiritual truths are not disembodied truths like chemistry, it doesn't matter from whom you've learned it as long as you learn good chemistry, you can use it in the lab. Christian truth, it always comes through people. REMEMBER those people. Remember my chains, Apostle Paul says. And then continue in. And he talks about scripture verse 16: "God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the Man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." So what kind of voices are you listening to, what kind of people are you listening to? Do you read cheap novels, do you watch romantic comedies, and giggle away and think how funny and nice it would be if you ran into some dashing guy b/c your luggage got mixed up at Heathrow Airport and he's nice enough to bring it to your hotel and you have significant glances exchanging and you end up at the same conference don't you know and you just...stop it. [congregation laughs] Get a hold of yourself. Don't feed yourself that kind of stuff.
Truth is precious. We need to hunger for it. We need to seek it. And we need to guard our minds and hearts against these types of subtle lies that come at us. Well, we're supposed to do it through God's word, as we just read in 2 Timothy 3. We're supposed to do it with fellowship w/ one another. Hebrews 3: this is the beauty and power of the church. "See to it brothers..." This is the second to the last in the handout. "See to it brothers that none of you have a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, but encourage one another daily as long as it is called today so that none of you will be hardened by sin's deceitfulness." Sin lies. Sin is deceitful. It says, "Do it daily." But encourage one another DAILY. Encourage one another daily...for what? So that none of you have a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. This is the standard for Christian fellowship. Keep watch over one another.
James 5: "My brothers, if one of you wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: whoever turns a sinner from the errors of his ways will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins." What a wonderful ministry this is. This is what we're supposed to be about. For one another. B/c we're sinners, living in a sinful world, full of high class, sophisticated, clever deceit like this. but w/ the Word of God, and when we watch over one another, we can break through the illusion, we can break through the lies, affirm God's truth, cling to the Cross, and experience genuine authenticity, and genuine strength that comes from an authentic, humble life.
Okay, let's pray:
why don't you think about the message a little bit. Consider what kind of counselor you've been, what kind of friend you've been, what kind of source of truth to others you've been. Consider also your habitual sources that you seek out when you want some truth in your life. Consider the issue of authority in whom you've given authority to speak it to your life. Consider the role of God's word in your life. And as you think about these things, let's just pray that we become people who HUNGER for the truth, people who know how to speak truth to other people's lives, and people who know HOW to find the right voices to speak truth into our lives. Let's pray along those lines.
Father, in this whole cosmic battle between truth and lies, a battle which goes through our own hearts, oh Lord help us to treasure the truth, seek reality, to have a keen discernment, toward lies above all the subtle ways in which we lie to ourselves, and Lord help us to be people who treasure your Word and treasure the prophets in our lives. Oh Lord help us to watch over one another, so that we would be equipped as a group of Christian brothers and sisters that we would be equipped to be a community of authenticity that the world so longs for. In Jesus's name we pray, Amen.
