Photo: The (b)log in my eye.
I’m going to be very judgmental here.
I’m going to be judgmental of the one person I am qualified to judge –me.
When the same verse of scripture and the same concept arises in diverse places several times in a few days it’s time to pay attention.
Something irks me, really irks me. Stepping on this trip wire brings down a cascade of feelings I would rather avoid. Like most trip wires this one is anchored to an old hurt. How do I describe it?
I was enjoying a YouTube musical smorgasbord concert last night, listening to favourite songs and rabbit trailing to new discoveries, when I foolishly read some of the comments.
(On some of the world’s greatest singers) “His voice is very tense and somewhat forced at 1:02 and again at 1:49. I hope he fixes this soon… She hesitated at 2:01. Listen for it… F____ has such a flat affect in this performance. Where’s the passion? Good try, but I like A_____’s performance in 2009 at Covent better…”
I liked the commenter who said, “I’m glad I’m not a music major. I can just enjoy the music.”
One of the reasons I dislike music competitions (including popular TV talent shows with judges and elimination-type formats) is because the audience comes away with a critical, judgmental, elimination-type spirit. Everyone is a judge. Alas, it is the nasty, witty judge who builds his own ego at the expense of the performer who people love to emulate. The joy of music chokes in the dust up.
A good music festival or competition adjudicator will always say more supportive encouraging words than critical. They will gently choose one or two areas that can be improved with very practical steps demonstrated on the spot. They will close their remarks with more acknowledgment of that which was done well. They will not compete with advanced students by becoming extremely, ridiculously picky. They will retain the love of music for music’s sake.
There are very few good adjudicators. Most either suggest nothing practically helpful or undermine the participant’s confidence by pointing out far too many imperfections or worse, try to one-up the outstanding ones by flaunting their knowledge.
When I read comments online that publicly criticize anyone, whatever their field, I want to lash back with my own nasty comments. The issue I struggle with is knowing where to perch myself on the worship/helpful critique/criticism/judgment/condemnation spectrum. I want to publicly criticize people for being publicly critical of other people. How crazy is that? It’s like being intolerant of the intolerant.
This week I read a book by Frank Viola called, Revise Us Again. (The title appealed to me.)
In one chapter he identified a trend I have long noticed myself. It’s the tendency for people who vociferously oppose the teachings or acts of others to start to eventually exhibit the same type of problem. Sometimes they recoil to the opposite extreme of the expressed idea, but their actions begin to look similar after a while. Viola calls this being “captured by the spirit you oppose.”
Church history is full of examples of those who broke away from established groups over an issue only to go off the rails in the same area within a generation or two. The persecuted became the persecutors.
A harassed medieval band of believers who were opposed to the lavish lifestyle of the clergy took vows of poverty, yet years later the order agreed to hawk indulgences and supervise inquisitions –as fund-raising projects, because the living by faith thing was too hard.
Over a century ago, a group left an old mainline denomination stuck in apathy and tradition to start an interdenominational parachurch organization intending to pool efforts to reach the poor and seek the deeper life. Within three generations many of the descendants of earlier converts of the movement, now just like the first shallow, well-to-do pew-warmers with insider status, could be found hunkering down in yet another denomination with its own traditions and frustrating unwritten rules.
Another group was so concerned about unity that it ditched the serious, but sometimes uncomfortable discussion of Biblical theology. Now they are so tolerant they no longer even have the unifying belief in Jesus Christ in common.
It happens over and over, and even now the hundreds of new denominations forming every year continue to suffer from recoil, captured by the spirit they opposed.
Viola’s premise is that when something about another believer’s choices upsets us so much that we want to go on the warpath, we are often projecting our own unacknowledged weaknesses on them –and it’s easier to fix them than fix ourselves. We have blind spots. Our self-righteous rejection of them leaves an open door for this spirit.
We’ve all met people who are constantly afraid of being cheated only to discover they’ve got a little fraud thing going themselves, or those who preach vehemently against certain sins who later appear in tabloid photos in remarkably familiar compromises.
Jesus said, “How can you think of saying, ‘Friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.” (Luke 6:42)
In all probability the speck is just a chip off our own log.
This week I am very aware of the Lord bringing my attention to the need for purity of the church –the Bride of Christ.
I want to pray, “Yes, Lord! It’s about time. Fix them!”
When my prayers are met with silence on the other end I am instead humbled by my own tendency to write people off for not studying scripture more, (or on the other hand, letting unloving, blatantly bad teaching slip through unchallenged for fear of rocking the boat), for lacking a compassionate heart and instead avoiding feelings by intellectualizing, for being so pedantic about proper technique I miss beauty, for depending on my own resources and not seeking the Lord enough.
When I look at what irks me about other people’s specks I can follow the trail back to my own logs.
Holy Spirit is capable of purifying his church. He doesn’t need my meddling.
He can employ servants who have dealt with their own stuff first though. Apollos needed Priscilla and Aquilla to quietly take him aside and correct his theology –but first they had to get straight with God themselves or pride would have led them to discount his ministry, discourage him, or compete with him rather than raise him up to become greater than his teachers. They honoured him. Godly leadership enters as a platform to raise up, not a ceiling to clamp down.
Help, Lord.
Photo:Mt. Fisher from Bethesda Pool
“God is not a man, that He should lie,
Nor a son of man, that He should repent.
Has He said, and will He not do?
Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
Behold, I have received a command to bless;
He has blessed, and I cannot reverse it.”
(Numbers 23:19, 20)
Ben Heppner
El Cid by Massenet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpM5HK1sN5M
An English translation, from the Tenorissimo! site:
Ah! It’s all over.
My sweet dream of glory,
my dreams of happiness
have gone forever!
You have taken my love from me,
you take victory from me,
Lord, I bow to your will!
Oh Lord, oh Judge, oh Father,
always indistinct, yet always present,
I have adored You in happy times,
and blessed You in the dark days.
I go wherever your law calls me,
free of all human regrets.
Oh Lord, oh Judge, oh Father,
Your image alone is in my soul
which I submit into Your hands.
Oh heavens blue and shining,
spirits on high, descend upon me,
it is the soldier who despairs,
but the believer maintains his faith.
You can come, you can appear,
dawn of the eternal day.
Oh Lord, oh Judge, oh Father!
The servant of a just master
answers Your call without fear,
Oh Lord, oh Judge, oh Father!
Ah! tout est bien fini.
Mon beau rêve de gloire,
mes rêves de bonheur
s’envolent à jamais!
Tu m’as pris mon amour,
tu me prends la victoire,
Seigneur, je me soumets!
O souverain, ô juge, ô père,
toujours voilé, présent toujours,
je t’adorais au temps prospère,
et te bénis aux sombres jour.
Je vais où ta loi me réclame,
libre de tous regrets humains.
O souverain, ô juge, ô père,
ta seule image est dans mon âme
que je remets entre tes mains.
O firmament azur, lumière,
esprits d’en haut, penchés sur moi,
c’est le soldat que désespère,
mais le chrétien garde sa foi.
Tu peux venir, tu peux paraître,
aurore du jour éternel.
O souverain, ô juge, ô père!
Le serviteur d’un juste maître
répond sans crainte à ton appel,
ô souverain, ô juge, ô père!
Painting: Consuming Fire, acrylic on canvas 
“When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not harm thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.
The soul that on Jesus doth lean for repose,
I will not, I will not, desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.”
(from “How Firm a Foundation” by John Keene)
Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:28,29)
Kootenay River
You visit the earth and water it; you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water.
(Psalm 65:9)
Kootenay Lake
Bluer than Blue
The artist leading the workshop in the desert city looked at my paintings and asked, perhaps facetiously, “You use a lot of blue. Are you depressed?”
I looked around at the other participants’ work mostly done in earth tones –beiges, browns, greys –with occasional splashes of red and yellow. Desert colours.
“No,” I said, “Not anymore. I just come from a place that is mostly blue.”
When I arrived home in the Rocky Mountains of Canada a few months later, deep lavender blue skies, shifting azure-blue lakes, paler and paler layers of blue mountains and sparkling blue snow shadows seemed even bluer than the paintings.
Bluer than blue.
I come from a place that is mostly blue.
To some blue communicates serenity. To some blue communicates depression. I come from a place that was mostly depression.
A while ago I was told in a dream, “Look to the area of your greatest failure, for therein lies your greatest success.”
There was that night.
That night I bowed on a stage before a large audience jumping up to shout “Brava” and throw flowers. Most of them didn’t know that underneath a gorgeous costume I was balancing on one leg the whole time. I had broken the other one only a few days before.
Then there was that night.
That night, I cowered in a locked ward where a silhouetted person behind a flashlight peered in my room every fifteen minutes to make sure I was still alive.
That night on the stage, the night of “my greatest success,” was actually my greatest failure. That was the night when I identified myself as a strong-willed, disciplined overcomer. That’s when I was foolish enough to think that if I just worked hard enough I could earn love, respect, and adulation.
The night on the ward, the night of “my greatest failure,” was actually the night of my greatest success. That was the night when I admitted it took more courage to live than to die. I was fresh out of courage. That was the night when my tank hit empty, when I had no will power, no self-discipline, no hope. That was the night when grace pulled me deep down into those depths of blue and began to show me that freedom means nothing left to lose. Freedom means letting go of self-sufficiency, self-righteousness, and self-promotion. That was the night when Jesus Christ took me by the hand and lifted me up toward the light. Drowning in emptiness and being lifted up to a new life of hope was a kind of baptism.
It took a while to get on my feet. I had a lot of forgiving to do. Forgiving myself was the hardest test of wrestling pride, reputation, and the albatross of potential to the ground. I still have to remember to punch it in the beak regularly.
Blue means freedom, revelation, and serenity now. I understand better what Paul meant when he wrote:
Yet every advantage that I had gained I considered lost for Christ’s sake. Yes, and I look upon everything as loss compared with the overwhelming gain of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. For his sake I did in actual fact suffer the loss of everything, but I considered it useless rubbish compared with being able to win Christ. For now my place is in him, and I am not dependent upon any of the self-achieved righteousness of the Law. God has given me that genuine righteousness which comes from faith in Christ. How changed are my ambitions! Now I long to know Christ and the power shown by his resurrection: now I long to share his sufferings, even to die as he died, so that I may perhaps attain as he did, the resurrection from the dead.
Yet, my brothers, I do not consider myself to have “arrived”, spiritually, nor do I consider myself already perfect. But I keep going on, grasping ever more firmly that purpose for which Christ grasped me. My brothers, I do not consider myself to have fully grasped it even now. But I do concentrate on this: I leave the past behind and with hands outstretched to whatever lies ahead I go straight for the goal—my reward the honour of being called by God in Christ.
(Philippians 3)
Only Someone who knows the plans He has for us has the courage it takes to show us how to die so that we might live.
A Light in the Dark
You light a lamp for me.
The Lord, my God, lights up my darkness.
(Psalms 18:28)
Photo: Tam O’ Shanter Creek
So much of art, music, and poetry
is learning to leave spaces,
observe rests,
and reserve words.
So much of maturity
is learning to leave spaces,
observe rests,
and reserve words.
So much of faith is learning
abundance is
not needing to eat the whole feast
today.
In the Kingdom of God
there is time
to savour his goodness.
His loving kindness endures forever.
Charis: Subject to Change 