Introspection: God Help Me, I Can't Help You!

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

God Help Me, I Can't Help You!

So I find that, as a rule, when I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me.  I gladly agree with the Law on the inside, but I see a different law at work in my body.  It wages a war against the law of my mind and takes me prisoner with the law of sin that is in my body.  I'm a miserable human being.  Who will deliver me from this dead corpse?

Romans 7:21-24 (CEB)

And how far will I let you slip

In this bottomless pit?

I cannot rest my thoughts on you

So I'll leave you this way

Forever and anon torn

I've lost my passion and my soul

Still rain pours from the darkened sky

From "Empathy" by Mortal Love

On one Saturday morning a few months ago, I was walking to a coffee shop downtown when a man approached me, apparently mistaking me for someone he knew from his church.  Seeing that I was not the person he thought I was, he went on strike up a conversation with me.  He asked me where I attend church, so I told him.  He then told me that his daughter was being bullied at school and asked me to pray for her with him.  He prayed, and then I prayed.

After I said Amen, the man noted that I used the word bless a lot in my prayer.  (I sometimes ask God to bless people without asking for anything specific for them because I realize that God knows what people need better than I.)  The man then told me that I could be a blessing to him.  He told me that he was going through a difficult time financially and that his employer was not helping him whatsoever.  He told me that he was recently visited by someone from the department of social services who told him that if his kitchen wasn't fully stocked within the next few days, they would take his children from him.  He then asked me to give him some money for groceries.

A request for prayer had segued into a request for money.  I started to wonder if the man really had a daughter who was being bullied at school.

I informed the man that I didn't have any cash with me - which was true - but he just smiled and told me that he could show me to an ATM.  This man was persistent: he was not going to let me go on my way until he got what he wanted from me.  He said that he wouldn't blame me if I didn't give him any money, but he would wonder why a brother in Christ would not help him.  This man really knew what he was doing.  He had taken the time to find out that I was a Christian and then used the fact to emotionally blackmail me.  He knew what strings to pull.

I was faced with a decision between being heartless and being stupid.  Suddenly, I saw a third way, and I flipped the script on the man.  I remembered that there was a grocery store just a few blocks away, so I offered to go to the store with him and to pay for his groceries.  That was, after all, what he said he needed.  He was reluctant to go to the store with me at first, but I kept urging him to go with me.

As we walked toward the grocery store, the man suddenly seemed less interested in my help and more eager to get away from me.  He started making excuses regarding why he couldn't go to the store with me.  He said that he needed to get back to his children and suggested that I go ahead and buy the groceries for him and then meet up with him later, but I refused to go to the store without him.  Then he suggested that I wait for him while he went to pick up his children so that we could all go to the store together.  I told him that I didn't have time to wait for him, and we parted ways.

I really hate giving money to people who approach me on the street.  I never really know if they really need it for the reasons they offer.  I don't always make the same choice, but I know it's a no-win situation.  If I give the person money, I walk away feeling like I've just been scammed.  If I don't give the person money, I walk away feeling like crap for turning my back on someone who might have actually needed help.  In either case, I know what money I give will actually do very little to improve the person's situation.  I prefer to help people in need by supporting organizations that actually know how to effectively help people while weeding out scammers.

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I shared the preceding story with you because I think it illustrates an internal conflict I've been experiencing lately.  I've been wanting to write this introspection for a while now, but I've struggled to sort through all my thoughts and feelings on the matter.

Perhaps I should start with a couple of confessions.

First, I find it difficult to say no to people, and, when I do say no to someone, I beat myself up for it.

Second, I've become somewhat hesitant to help people.

There was a time when I wanted to be helpful, but, as I've noted previously, I've gone through some pain over the last few years.  I've agreed to do things I never really wanted to do; I've been manipulated by people with agendas; I've ended up in some very difficult situations; and I've reached out to people only to leave them worse than I found them.  Now, I'm a bit less eager to be helpful, and I like myself a lot less than I did several years ago.

The truth, if you haven't already figured it out, is that I'm a very insecure person.  Sometimes I struggle to see the good in myself.  I think that, at some point in the past, perhaps unconsciously, I resorted to people-pleasing in order to prove that I wasn't lazy, selfish, heartless, or useless.  To be honest, I'm not quite sure if I was trying to prove my worth to other people or just to myself.  Sometimes, I have trouble telling the difference between what I think of myself and what I'm afraid other people think of me.

My pattern of people-pleasing became too costly for me, as I began to break beneath the weight of what I thought people expected of me.  I felt like everybody wanted something from me.  I felt a sense of obligation to anyone who found a way to pull at my heartstrings, and I felt used and abused.

I realized that my preoccupation with what people thought of me was ruining my life.  I realized that if I cared about what everyone thought of me, I would become enslaved to every person I met, and I would never get to live my own life.  I knew I had to start saying no to people and allowing people to not be happy with me.  As I've struggled to stop people-pleasing, my self-esteem has taken a hit.  I realize that I cannot say no without disappointing someone, and, when I disappoint someone, I'm not particularly happy with myself.  Not only do I feel like I've failed someone who needed me, the old insecurities rear their ugly heads, telling me that I'm useless and heartless.

For some reason, I got it into my head that, if somebody wants me to do something, no matter how much I don't want to do it, it is unkind or selfish of me to say no, unless it is absolutely necessary that I refuse.  I might have the right to say no, but I feel that it would be wrong of me to use it.  Often I look for excuses to not do what people want me to do, so that I have a somewhat legitimate reason to say no.  In my worst moments, I become angry with people who want something from me, since I feel like I don't even have a choice in the matter.

I'm prone to loneliness, yet I think that sometimes I actually seek isolation in order to shield myself from people's expectations.  I avoid people I've disappointed so that I don't have to face my shame for failing them, and I avoid people I think might want something from me so that I won't have to say no or do something I don't want to do.  If I keep everybody at a nice, safe distance, then nobody wants anything from me, and I cannot hurt or disappoint anyone.

Lately, I've been struggling to figure out when I should do things for people.  The old tapes that keep playing in my head are not helping.  One keeps telling me that I'm not doing enough for people.  Another reminds me that, if I can do something, then I should do it, even if I don't want to do it.  Yet another tells me that, if I really cared about someone, I would give him or her the proverbial shirt off my back.  One warns me that, if I don't help someone, nobody else will.  Another tells me that other people's happiness or well-being depends on me.  One suggests that, if I don't want to do something, it's probably God's will.  One reminds me that I had better not turn my back on someone in need, because "goats" go to hell.¹

Sometimes I wonder if I might have some codependent tendencies.  A codependent person feels that other people are utterly dependent on him, yet, at the same time, he is utterly dependent on the very same people for his own sense of self-worth.  I use the word tendencies because I don't think I actually do enough for people to rightly call myself codependent.  Still, I feel that people need me, and my self-esteem seems to depend on whether or not I help them.

Henri Nouwen suggested that there are three lies that people commonly tell themselves about who they are: I am what I have, I am what I do, and I am what other people say or think about me.²  I think it's evident that I've bought some of these lies.

I still have a lot to sort out, but I've come to the conclusion that I have some internal work to do that goes beyond figuring out when I should help people.  First, I need to finally take it to heart that ultimately I am not responsible for everybody else's health, happiness, and well-being.  Though we all need each other's help from time to time, we are all responsible for our own lives, generally speaking.  Second, I must not derive my self-worth from what I do for people.  I am not quite sure how to cultivate a sense of self-worth, but I suspect it must have something to do with being a beloved child of God.  Third, my decision to help someone must not be based on whether or not it makes me feel like a good person.  Otherwise, I'm really just doing for myself what I'm supposedly doing for someone else.

Unfortunately, I don't have many conclusions to share about the matters at hand, because I'm still working things out in my own life.  If you, the reader, have trouble saying no to people, find it hard to like yourself at times, or are not quite sure when you should help people, take comfort in knowing that you are not alone in your struggles.


Notes:

1. See Matthew 25:41-46.
2. Henri Nouwen referenced by Christopher Heuertz in The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth.  2017, Zondervan.  p. 20

The photograph featured in this introspection has been released to the public domain.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.

Perspective: Lessons from a Family Vineyard

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Lessons from a Family Vineyard

Hypocrites!  Isaiah really knew what he was talking about when he prophesied about you, This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far away from me.

Matthew 15:7-8 (CEB)

To live the way that you believe
This is your opportunity
To let your life be one that lights the way

From "It's Your Life" by Francesca Battistelli

My personal Scripture reading plan tends to be rather repetitive.  Sometimes, when I look back in my journals, having encountered a particular passage or story numerous times over the years, I find that I have collected a number of different lessons from it.

One day, amid a rather heated argument with some religious leaders, Jesus told a story about a vineyard owner who had two sons.  He asked one of his sons to go out and work in the vineyard, but the son refused.  The son later had a change of heart, and he went out to work in the vineyard, despite what he had said to his father earlier.  The father also asked his other son to go out and work in the vineyard.  This son said, "Yes, sir," but he never actually did what he told his father he would do.¹

Jesus asked the religious leaders which of the two sons was obedient to his father.  They replied that the first son, the one who initially refused but later changed his mind, was the obedient one.

There are number of lessons we can glean from this relatively short parable.

One surface-level lesson we can learn from this parable is that it is better for a person to say no and then change her mind than to say yes and then fail to follow through with what she agreed to do.  We should always adequately think through commitments before we make them.  Perhaps sometimes we need to start at no in order to arrive at yes.

I think this parable is also a reminder that we need to be true to our word and to actually do what we say we will do.  Jesus once said, "Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no."²  In other words, we should strive to be people whose words can be trusted without our having to swear on a proverbial "stack of Bibles."  If we want to be people whose words are trustworthy, then we must take care that we only agree to do something if we actually intend to do it.  A sincere no is always better than an insincere or halfhearted yes.

Jesus, after telling His parable, said to the religious leaders, "I assure you that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering God's kingdom ahead of you."  In the parable, the vineyard owner represents God, and working in the vineyard represents doing God's will.  The son who said that he would work in the vineyard but failed to do so represents the religious leaders to whom Jesus was speaking.  The son who initially refused to work in the vineyard but later changed his mind represents the so-called "sinners" who were apparently entering the Kingdom of God ahead the religious leaders.

When the vineyard owner asked the second son to work in the vineyard, the son answered, "Yes, sir."  This son might have given the right answer, but his actions did not match his words, rendering his answer meaningless.  Saying yes with one's words is not the same as saying yes with one's actions.  Religious types love to have all the right answers, but far too often our words amount to little more than lip service.  This parable reminds us that having the right words to say ultimately amounts nothing unless we follow them up with the right actions.  In the words of St. James, "faith is dead when it doesn't result in faithful activity."³

On another occasion, Jesus borrowed a saying from one of the ancient prophets of God to describe a group of religious people: "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far away from me."  Hypocrisy is one of the most common criticisms lobbed at modern-day Christians, and sadly this criticism is not unfounded.  Far too often one's religious beliefs get stuck in one's head, never making the journey to one's heart.

Jesus said that people who were typically labeled as "sinners" were entering the Kingdom of God ahead of the religious leaders.  The religious leaders put up a godly facade before the masses, but they did not listen to prophets of their day like Jesus and his predecessor John.  What would such crackpots have to say to people like them?  On the other hand, the tax collectors and prostitutes of whom Jesus spoke had no pretensions since everyone had already written them off as the scum of the earth.  For some reason they were drawn to Jesus and John, and because they listened to them and took their words to heart, a change had begun within them - a change that had brought them closer to God than even the religious leaders.

Probably the most important lesson this parable teaches us is that God values repentance over pretense.  Perhaps what is most insidious about pretending to be something we're not is that we actually start believing we are who we claim we are, regardless of whether or not anyone else is buying what we're selling.  Taking on holier-than-thou attitudes, we forget that we too need to repent and receive God's transforming grace.

Saying the right thing is no substitute for doing the right thing, and acting like we're close to God is no substitute for actually drawing close to God.  May God give us the courage to drop the act and face ourselves, and may God give us the strength to do what God is calling us to do.


Notes:

1. This perspective is based primarily on Matthew 21:28-32.  Quotations are taken from the Common English Bible.
2. Matthew 5:37a (CEB)
3. James 2:17 (CEB)

The photograph of the grapes was taken by Wikimedia Commons user Dragonflyir and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.

Perspective: The Elephant in the Prayer Room

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

The Elephant in the Prayer Room

Don't be anxious about anything; rather, bring up all of your requests to God in your prayers and petitions, along with giving thanks.  Then the peace of God that exceeds all understanding will keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7 (CEB)

When You don't move the mountains I'm needing You to move

When You don't part the waters I wish I could walk through

When You don't give the answers as I cry out to You

I will trust, I will trust, I will trust in You!

From "Trust in You" by Lauren Daigle

While teaching the Disciples about prayer, Jesus said, "Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.  For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened."¹  For me, when it comes to Jesus' invitation to ask, search, and knock, there is always a proverbial elephant in the room, namely the reality of unanswered prayer.  We have all asked for things we never received, searched for things we never found, and knocked on doors that never opened.

I do not think that Jesus is actually promising that God will give us everything we request of God, for there are far too many people who do not have everything they've ever wanted.  That said, I have tried to figure out if there is a way to approach Jesus' exhortation that makes room for the frustration, disappointment, and heartache of unanswered prayer.

I think that maybe the point of what Jesus says is not that we can get whatever we want but rather that we are invited to ask, to search, and to knock.

Maybe Jesus is calling us to take action.  Note that He does not encourage us to simply ask, but also to search and to knock.  We are indeed invited to make requests of God, but there could still be some legwork on our part.  We are responsible to go out and search and to knock on doors.  I've recently come to realize that some people, myself included, are a lot more comfortable with wishing for something or longing for something than with actually pursuing it.²  Wishing and longing can get in the way of asking, searching, and knocking.  We must ask, or else we will not receive; we must search, or else we will not find; and we must knock, or else the door will not be opened for us.

Maybe Jesus is calling us to be persistent.  Maybe we need to keep banging on the proverbial door until it is finally opened for us.³  Maybe we need to pray like Jacob who once literally grappled with God all night and proclaimed, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me."⁴  If we aren't praying persistently for what we claim we want, then can we say that we really want it?⁵  Perhaps we must ask until we receive, search until we find, and knock until the door is opened for us.

Maybe Jesus is calling us to be open to the unexpected.  It is pointless to pray if we do not expect God to act,⁶ but we must realize that God might not act in the way we expect.  Maybe what God wants to give us is different from what we want for ourselves or even better that what we want.  All that said, we still need to ask, search, and knock with expectancy.  Maybe we need to ask until we receive what we did not know we needed, to search until we find what we were not expecting, and to knock until a door we did not previously notice opens for us.

Maybe Jesus is calling us to reconsider our own desires.  Maybe arriving at the place where we realize that what we want is not what we actually need requires some asking, some searching, and some knocking.  Maybe we need to ask until we no longer need to receive, to search until we no longer need to find, and to knock until we no longer need the door opened for us.

The feeling that our prayers have gone unheard or unanswered is painful, but it is a pain understood by the One who invites us to ask, search, and knock.  Probably the greatest biblical example of an unanswered prayer is the prayer Jesus prayed before He was betrayed by one of His disciples and arrested: "Remove this cup from me."⁷  God did not take away the cup of suffering Jesus would have to drink: on the very next day, He was crucified.⁸

I do not know why some prayers seemingly go unanswered, but I hope that I have given you some things to consider as you wrestle with what it means to ask, search, and knock.

A few years ago, I wrote a prayer based on Jesus' invitation.  I offer it to you now.

Most gracious and loving God,
You are the Giver of all good gifts,
and You know all things.
You know my frustration that there are
blessings I have not yet received,
things I have not yet found,
and doors that have not yet been opened for me.
Grant me patience, wisdom, and boldness
as I continue to ask, search, and knock.
In Jesus' name I pray.  Amen.

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For more thoughts on asking, searching, and knocking check out my 2016 sermon on the subject.


Notes:

1. Matthew 7:7-8 and Luke 11:9-10 (NRSV)
2. Suzanne Stabile and Joel Stabile.  "Episode 30: Questions and Answers."  The Enneagram Journey, 06/26/18.
3. Luke 11:5-8
4. Genesis 32:22-32 (NRSV)
5. William Barclay.  The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Matthew, Volume One.  2001, Saint Andrew Press.  p. 314
6. James 1:5-8
7. Mark 14:36 and Luke 22:42 (NRSV)
8. Adam Hamilton.  Why?: Making Sense of God's Will.  2011, Abingdon Press.  ch. 2

Christ in Gethsemane was painted by Heinrich Hoffman in 1886.

Perspective: Life as the Body

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Life as the Body

(A Synopsis of the Letter to the Ephesians)

God revealed his hidden design to us, which is according to his goodwill and the plan that he intended to accomplish through his Son.  This is what God planned for the climax of all times: to bring all things together in Christ, the things in heaven along with the things on earth.

Ephesians 1:9-10 (CEB)

We are one in the Spirit; we are one in the Lord

We are one in the Spirit; we are one in the Lord

And we pray that our unity will one day be restored

And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love

Yeah they'll know we are Christians by our love

From "They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love" by Peter Scholtes

Not long after I started this blog, I considered blogging through St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians.  I started making plans for a series of posts, but they never materialized.  My studies of the letter back then only yielded one blog post.  My personal Bible studies have recently brought me back to this epistle, and I have decided to write not a series of posts on parts of the letter but rather a single, relatively short post on the entire letter.

What follows is my synopsis of St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians.

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St. Paul writes his letter to the church in Ephesus because he wants to make sure that his readers understand what God has done for all of humanity and what it means for our lives together.

God has raised Jesus Christ, the Son of God who was crucified, from the dead and has lifted Him up to His rightful place at God's right hand.  God's intention is that we, who were dead in our sin, may be raised with Christ, become like Him as adopted children of God, and become co-heirs with Him.  What God has done for us through Christ and what God is doing in us through the Holy Spirit are not things we have earned; they are gifts that we receive through faith.

God's plan is not only to reconcile us to God but also to reconcile us to each other.  In Christ, God has broken down the walls that divide us and has made us one.  Together we are built into a single structure of which Christ is the cornerstone, and together we are formed into a single body of which Christ is the head.

Being united together as the Body of Christ has numerous implications for our lives together.

Life as the Body means living according to a higher standard.  If together we make up the Body of Christ, then we must strive to live as Christ lived, following His example of self-sacrificial love.

Life as the Body means being equipped to carry out the ministry of Christ.  Each of us is entrusted with spiritual gifts that are meant to build up the Body as a whole.  We are given different spiritual gifts so that we may carry out different roles in the community of faith.

Life as the Body means trading our old destructive patterns for new ways of life.  We are to take off our old selves, like a worn-out garment, and to put on our new selves.  This means trading lying for honesty, trading destructive wrath for anger channeled constructively, trading fraudulence for productivity and generosity, trading ungracious talk for encouragement, trading bitterness and malice for forgiveness and kindness, and so forth.

Life as the Body is a life lived in the light.  We have been liberated from darkness, so we must not return to it but must rather continue to walk in the light.  Whether we are walking in light or in darkness will be made evident by the "fruit" produced by our lives.

Life as the Body means living in mutual submission to each other.  Those who make up the Body of Christ are to "submit to one another in love."  Even those who are given privilege and power by society are to submit to those who would normally be expected to submit to them.  In fact, their privilege and power give them special responsibilities to other people.

Life as the Body is a battle against the forces of evil.  This battle is not against flesh-and-blood human beings, but against "principalities and powers" - those invisible, insidious forces that oppress humanity.  Again, our enemies are not people but rather demonic forces of injustice.  Spiritual battles require spiritual armaments like truth, righteousness, a readiness to share the Gospel, faith, salvation, and the revelations of God.

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Here ends my synopsis of the Epistle to the Ephesians.  I do not claim that it a definitive synopsis or even a complete one.  I do hope that it inspires you to read the letter for yourself, and I hope that it serves as a helpful introduction to the letter.

The Preaching of St. Paul at Ephesus was painted by Eustache Le Sueur in 1649.