05.22.21 - week 105
____ is the New Cynicism
the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” -1 timothy 1:5
cynicism leads to destruction.
one of the great battles that we must fight as we hit our 30’s + 40’s + beyond is the battle to continue to see good out ahead and not falling into endless negativity.
i have had good friends get divorced this year. had people who i thought i could count on let me down. struggled in ways i didn’t think i would. felt my own humanity + weakness more deeply than ever during the long tricky days of quarantine repetition in late march - late may 2020. all of that stuff can lead us down a path toward assuming that more friends will fall apart and more people will let us down and i will keep struggling. negativity breeds negativity. it’s easier to assume bad things about the future than to be surprised by them, we protect ourselves that way.
one of the dynamics at play in Jesus assertion that you must ‘become like little children’ to find Him, is that kids believe in stuff. they put their whole weight on the new chicago bears qb or a new friend they made at school because they haven’t been beat up enough by life yet not to. they live life from a place of optimistic trust.
adults tend to move towards their perceived high ground of never being let down because we never fully lean in. the verse above calls us to something different. with love set as the highest goal, paul unveils a triad of HOW we live out this love:
pure heart — a life unfettered by hidden struggle + sin.
good conscience - alignment between your public + private perception in community
sincere faith - a genuine belief that is ahead is good.
the way out of cynicism is doing the hard work internally to stay soft to the things of God.
if we simply follow the news, consume the facebook feed, are carried along by the stories of today, we will inevitably slide into long term frustration and misery.
the way to be happy is to work on the (wo)man in the mirror.
as we move forward into the summer of re-opening, i wonder how many of us are holding back because of that pesky cynicism? avoiding making plans because of the disappointment of things getting canceled? avoiding a date with a new person because COVID has been a good excuse to avoid the vulnerability of trying?
the true moral high ground is love. and love can’t co-exist with cynicism. the naïveté of trying again and risking being hurt is a necessary part of following Jesus in a significant way.
KG Korner
(a few wise words from lady kristen macdonald)
This week the windows were open so the breeze could flow through our house and I was struck by my neighbor’s lilac bush that had recently bloomed. The sweet smell kept rushing into our bedroom and drew my senses over and over again.
It got me thinking of 2 Corinthians 2:15-16, which says, “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?”
I am preaching to myself as I write because I find it extremely convicting that an aroma is something you leave whether you know it or not. And most certainly as Paul states at the end of the passage, ‘who is sufficient for these things?’ It leads me to believe that the man that God put in place to lead the church expressed difficulty at just the thought of this.
When I was in high school I worked as a shampoo girl at a salon. I was pretty naive but had recently been saved and was trying to live a life that represented Christ. Sometimes I would walk into the backroom and they would all stop talking because they would say they didn’t want to ruin my ‘virgin ears.’ I remember being slightly offended by this because in some ways I didn’t want to be the outcast in the group. But I couldn’t help but stand out because of the choices and statements my life made. Now looking back I realize that no matter how ‘nice’ I was, they sensed the aroma of Christ and that felt uncomfortable to them. Maybe you had a similar experience as a new christian as well and found it as did I extremely formative. The biggest challenge is to be a continual fragrance that doesn’t fade or change.
Have you ever known someone who wears a certain cologne or perfume and if you hug them you smell like them for the rest of the day? Or have you been in a room with a lot of jr. high boys that have body odor and don’t even realize it? The contrast is mind blowing because they are both strong to your senses but you will always be drawn to the attractive smell rather than the rank one.
Whether it’s at work or home or in your relationships, what aroma are you leaving? And is it consistent or a completely different fragrance from work to home? We don’t have the ability to change hearts; only God can do that. But we do have the ability to leave an aroma in the places God allows us. The truth is that we aren’t sufficient for these things; you will fail and you will say or do something that does the exact opposite of what you hoped. But, leave that outlier to the side and look at the opportunity to be the aroma of Christ right where he has placed you. I am confident it will grow and challenge you and I both!
a thing on leadership
i was at a funeral for someone people might consider a celebrity this week, and i was struck by how badly the eulogizers want us to see past the notoriety to the person underneath.
people are made in God’s image and need friends. and need forgiveness. and need acceptance. people are sinners and are fragile and we often perceive that celebrities have enough money + enough fame that they don’t need those things, when in reality they often need them more.
i wonder if the reason our society has become so mean is because we treat each other the way we treat celebrities. i remember hearing the comedian louis ck (long before his cancellation) say that until a certain amount of success, every person who knows about you, likes you. then as you rise, each new fan you add requires you to add a detractor.
when we stop seeing people of a certain level of fame or success as human we start to see them as some combination of super human + sub-human that only allows worship or derision, but not normal interaction.
i have spent some time around famous people in my life and i can tell you that once you get past the top layer of vibe they give off, they have the same needs as the rest of us, often with less access.
this seems like such a simple thing, but i’m convicted about how easy it is to watch the friends reunion trailer and judge their appearance 20 years later or make fun of bill gates for getting divorced or harshly critique a former professional athlete who goes broke … in ways we never would if they were present.
that same mentality invades our minds + hearts an allows us to be harsh + brutal to other people. once we normalize verbal brutality to successful people, it becomes easier to do the same to normal people.
book review
fault lines: the social justice movement + evangelicalisms coming collapse — by: voddie baucham
this book has a very different vision of racial justice than most of what is popular today. the author sees Black Lives Matter and other associated movements + worldview as some type of trojan horse for evil ideologies that undercut the gospel. rather than parsing helpful + unhelpful ideas that may bring understanding about our world + the experiences of people different than us, dr. baucham sees only full scale acceptance or rejection of this worldview as legitimate options.
i appreciated the willingness to dig past headlines to sort through facts. i appreciated the commitment to guarding the gospel. the desire to combat injustice + racism was clearly communicated throughout. however the ideas in this book do not reflect my best understanding of how to solve the problems our nation is facing.
i re-wrote this paragraph about 8 times lol. nuance is our friend in the justice conversation. this book paints people like my friends charlie dates + bryan loritts + eric mason as soft in a way i know they aren’t. they see helpful observations in the culture about the problems with our countries system. i wish this book didn’t make that inherently wrong.
stuff to click on
i found this song really encouraging the last few days …
if you or someone you know is involved in the hyper-charged world of stock trading through the app ‘robinnhood’ i found this new yorker profile of the company + the culture surrounding it useful