Weep

Walking through grief with a friend is a tricky thing. How much do you try to help? To what extent do you try to lessen the pain with encouraging words? When do you just shut up, allow them to feel sorrow and be sad with them? How long can you do that before you’re just enabling negative thought processes? My experience has been that it’s even trickier in the often-weird subculture of Christianity. Add to those questions further complications like that Christians are supposed to have joy, God has a plan for you, all things work for good and other theological clichés that always sound better to the one giving advice than the one receiving it. This cocktail of awkwardness, good intentions, bad judgment and theological muddiness is one of the thinnest and most frequently walked tightropes I have experienced. I’m walking it right now. A very close friend of mine got devastatingly bad news yesterday.

 

I certainly don’t consider myself an expert on grieving, counseling, or anything else other than Little Debbie snacks and breaking bones. However, walking through grief with others seems to be something that gets sent my way with more than average frequency and, therefore, it’s something I’ve studied and taught on often. So I thought I’d offer some of my thoughts of the subject.

 

The most common and dangerous misconception here is that believers aren’t allowed to be sad. The joy of the Lord is our strength and everything…sooo….having faith “looks like” being super happy. All the time. Everyday. No matter what. This bad thinking often results in people saying and doing things that they think are “God’s work”, but in reality are insulting and harmful. Let me cut to the chase. When someone is devastated due to a genuinely crappy situation hearing things like, “God has something better around the corner”, “there are lots of people worse off than you”,  “don’t worry, everything happens for a reason”, or “God works in mysterious ways” is far more damaging than helpful. What you may not realize is that you are implicitly telling that person, “You don’t have the right to be sad, and if you are sad you don’t trust God.”

 

We take the verses about joy and faith and create impossible expectations of uber-happiness, which are fueled by self-help slogans and acronyms on bracelets but never touch reality. Let go and let God. What does that even mean, and how is it helpful to my friend who just got the short end of the stick while life beat him mercilessly with the long end?

 

I’m not saying “joy” verses aren’t there. I believe my joy brings God more glory than does my misery and, therefore, God desires me to have joy. But to only quote the happy verses during times of suffering is unfair and doesn’t really reflect the whole teaching of scripture. My view these days is a lot less “live your best life now, by smiling and thinking positive thoughts” and a lot more “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens…a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance…” (Ecc 3:1,4). Here are some other things to think about.

 

• When Elijah was depressed God did not rebuke him or say his faith was crappy. God’s response was to have Elijah take a nap and eat something (1 Kings 19). Sympathy.
• Jeremiah expressed so much grief in his book that he became known as the weeping prophet (see especially Jer 9:1).
• Job’s three friends gave a lot of horrible advice to their suffering buddy. But they got one thing right. When they first arrived and saw how distraught Job was, they silently sat with him for seven days while he cried (Job 2:13).
• Jesus sat in the road with Mary and Martha and cried with them even though he knew Lazarus would be fine (John 11:17-35).
• Jesus himself got emotional in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was so stressed his blood pressure was near stroke level. He repeatedly asked God to change directions and was disappointed that his friends weren’t there for him the way he wanted (Matthew 26:36-46, Luke 22:43-44)
• Paul did not instruct the Romans to cheer up sad people with pithy sayings and jokes. He told them to weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15).

 

To deny someone the right to feel emotions other than happiness is to deny them the full extent of their humanity. We are emotional beings. And while I hope to see a reality someday in which there are no more tears or pain (Revelation 21:4), that is not this reality. That is not this world. Now, let’s be clear. I’m not saying, “Let’s all get emo together, sit in a kumbaya circle and watch chick flicks till we have a good old fashion cry party.” There is a point when moving on needs to happen and healing should begin. But I think we often want to rush to that at the expense of the person suffering. Let them feel it for a while. That’s being human. This world has a wide range of emotions and the Bible seems to indicate God is ok with that. We should be too.

Jump

The town I live in is very health conscience. Very. I would say Bloomington is the Portland, Oregon of the Midwest. Bloomington is older, however. So maybe Portland is the Bloomington of the Northwest. I’m sure people in Portland would agree with me. We have bicycle lanes on many of our roads. We have enough health food stores to feed a small army the blandest, gluten free, organic, high antioxidant, soy based meal they’ve ever had. We have trails throughout the city for running and biking. I frequent the running trails a little more often than the health food store. By a little I mean at all.

 

The other night I was running on a trail through town that has rest/workout stations every half mile or so. These areas off to the side of the trail have benches; various exercise stations, and sometimes a water fountain. I stopped at one of these areas and noticed this sign explaining a workout in which you jump up and touch a bar at various heights.

 

This picture cracks me up for two reasons. First, they got the names of the exercises all wrong. These are obviously the Cliffhanger, the Disco Cliffhanger, and the If You Sit Down Really Fast Your Soul Can’t Leave And You’ll Live Forever.

 

The other thing that made me laugh is the drastic, unfathomable gap between the beginner and advanced work out. Really? Beginner, 4 reps. Advanced, 5 reps. Expecting a bit much from the advanced guys don’t you think? I mean, 5 jumps?!? I bet this workout regimen would be even more awesome to hear from a trainer than to read on a board. “Ok, I want you weak beginners to only jump 4 times. I don’t want you to hurt yourselves. Now, you advanced athletes, you specimens of physical prowess, I want you to dig deep and give it everything you’ve got and jump one more time.”  I’m just saying that it seems like the difference between beginner and advanced is a little…pathetic. Don’t you think? One extra jump is the bar they’ve set to make you “advanced”? I think if 4 jumps is beginner status, then 5 jumps should be called “beginner plus 1”.

 

I know this is fairly unimportant in this context. This is just a quick workout station on a trail in town. Who cares what they say is the difference between beginner and advanced. But this picture got me asking a similar question in a different context. I think until recently the difference I had in mind between my life being mediocre and my life reaching greatness was pretty small. For example, a few months ago I would have said my “dream” was to do well at my job in college ministry and to love my family well. Those are obviously great things to want, but they feel relatively safe to say. Of course I want to love my family well and do well at my job. There’s no risk in saying I want to achieve those things because it’s expected.

 

It’s only been in the last few months as I’ve had many conversations with my best friend (and other half of werdguys) that I’ve solidified in myself a higher bar to jump for; things that are scary to say out loud because I may not achieve them. Yet there they are, in my head, separating beginner from advanced by about 100 extra jumps. I know what these things are for me; things like becoming a published author and obtaining a PhD. What are they for you? Don’t bring your idea of “the best it gets” down to just one more jump. Separate average and advanced a little more and give yourself something to sweat for. Set some high, seemingly unreachable goals and then disco cliffhanger the time out of them. 

Kidols

 

 

A friend of mine recently emailed a question pertaining to the parenting-faith dynamic. I thought I’d share her question and the response my wife and I gave. Below is a just a slightly modified copy of the email conversation we had.

I was reading a devotional today about idols. It was more focused on what idols are and what constitutes an idol in our daily lives. I started to think it sounded an awful lot like being a good parent. Example: putting something as the most important thing in your life, what you live for, what gets your time and energy, etc…

Now, I know that God SHOULD be the most important thing in my life, be what I live for, and get my time and energy but realistically…I think [my son] and [my husband] seem to fit that description more (yikes).

I guess here are my questions:

Is this idolatry?

Is there some portion of this that IS worship to God by serving my husband and son or am I just justifying making my family an idol?

How do I keep God first in a very child centered world?

Wow. We really are going big here.

Ok, I’ll write down some thoughts, and then have Merry add some thoughts.

There are definitely some similarities between a description of idols and of good parenting. I think it is impossible to be a good parent without making your kid(s) more important that your own life. I suppose there are some semantic/hair splitting/distinctions to be made. My children are infinitely more important to me than my own life. In actuality, Merry and the kids are more important to me than anything on this earth. So in the context of this temporal life, they are the most important things. That does not mean they are the absolute most important thing to me. It is possible for me to distinguish between the most important thing to me in this life (family) and the most important thing to me (Jesus). Being a good husband/wife/parent absolutely requires placing your family above yourself, loving their well being above your own well being, delighting in their joy, etc. There is nothing antibiblical about this. Paul himself commands husbands to love their wives like Christ loved the church (Eph 5:25). And how did Jesus love the church? In a way that valued the church above his own life so that “he gave himself up for her”. That is the biblical command for us to follow: to love in such a way that the other is more important than me. That is not idol worship. It is biblical family life. This brings glory to God.

Here is the key to distinguishing between this God-glorifying selfless love and idolatry. It becomes idolatry when the love of family becomes more important than obeying God. Here’s an example. As stated, I love my family more than my own life. I would take bullet to the face for any of them. Yet if I sincerely felt God calling my family to a hostile mission field in which they have a higher likelihood or suffering, I would go. They are more important to me than anything on earth, but not more important than God. Yes you invest more time in them than anything else. That can, but does not necessarily indicate idolatry. The average person spends 8 hours a day sleeping, that doesn’t necessarily mean the bed is their idol. The simple, practical reality is that parenting takes more hours of the day than we can devote to praying. This does not mean God is not important. It’s simply a practical reality. I think the level to which you agree with these statements may help differentiate between godly family service and idolatry:

1. I’m confident I would follow God’s leading in my family, even if it took us somewhere I wouldn’t choose.

2. If the things I treasure on this earth were to be taken from me, devastated as I may be, I could still call God my good King.

3. My identity is rooted more in Jesus than in being the spouse of , and the parent of .

From Merry. Fsheew! Good question and great response! I can remember my mom telling me about when she was first married going through a time of great fear that my dad would die. I don’t know if this period of time went on for weeks or months. She told me that she had to really work on giving my dad to God and determining that she would trust God with his life and trust God if He took his life. I have never been much of a worrier, but I have had moments when paralyzing terror has tried to creep in about Nick or one of my kids dying. In those moments I have to rededicate my family to Him. I say, “God, I don’t know how I could survive losing one of them, but I trust that if you choose to have me walk that path that you will give me the strength and grace to handle it. But please don’t make me!”

For me the daily parenting becoming an idol isn’t as much of an issue because I’m past the stage of them being itty bitty. I’m in the stage where if I’m not asking for God’s patience and help I find myself getting too frustrated by them and irritable. I have to ask God to give me wisdom and patience constantly! I think that by God being my source of ability to parent it is putting Him first. I don’t get to spend much time in solitude with Him so I take as many moments as I can while I am alone driving or in the shower or whatever to pray. I also try to take as many opportunities as I can to bring the kids into my relationship with God. I ask them to help me pray for things or we talk about what we are thankful to God for. We talk about telling others about Jesus. Nick and I try to find opportunities in daily life to explain life with God to our kids.

Ooh! One last thought. The parents I see whose kids have become their idol have spoiled their kids more often than not. It is very hard to discipline and limit them when they are on a pedestal.

We hope this helps.