Ways I Am Better Than You

Admittedly that is a bad blog title but it got you to click and it ties in with what I am writing about. Plus I have been thinking about some of the ways that I am probably better than you. Please withhold judgment on that horribly self-righteous sounding statement for a few minutes and continue reading.

The ongoing posts I have written about Philippians 2 have been very fruitful for me. Paul is always laying down challenges for my head and heart that leave me little room for argument with him. He is a master of logic and persuasion and this passage lays down the gauntlet for how believers ought to live out the faith.

However, this week I think I found a weakness in Paul's argument. You can see it in the second half of verse 3: "in humility consider others better than yourselves." The chink in the armor of Paul's statement here is that I can think of plenty of ways that I am better than others. For example I am very likely better than you at the following:

• Eating donuts. I ate 33 Krispy Creme donuts the first 24 hours after they opened in Minnesota. While my volume has decreased through the years I promise that few people eat donuts with as much flourish or enjoy them as thoroughly as me.
• Stumbling, tripping, and almost falling only to save myself at the last moment thereby avoiding injury. Ask my wife about it if you haven't witnessed it yourself. No one can come closer to major wipeouts than me.
• Zoning out in the middle of a conversation. I can be right in the middle of making a point and forget to
• Making seemingly insensitive comments about my wife and kids. I love them dearly and part of that love is expressed through some honest, irreverent comments about their large heads, clumsiness, and lack of punctuality. We don't have a doghouse so I don't need to worry about ending up in it!

In light of my many obvious exceptional giftings it is pretty ludicrous for Paul to suggest that I need to consider others better than myself. It just doesn't make sense when it is clear there are ways in which all of us actually are better than others. My wife is better than me at a lot of things (she doesn't read this blog so its ok for me to admit it here). So are my brothers. And co-workers. And pretty much everyone else in the world could find ways that they are better than me.

Hopefully it is apparent that I am being facetious but I still wonder what is with Paul's "consider others better than yourselves" statement.  Aren't there ways that everyone is better than at least a few other people?

The problem in answering this question is one of categories. As much as my rebellious, self-exalting, self-righteous heart would love to be able to say that it is better than others, Paul isn't really looking at the same kind of categories that we typically use to judge "better: or "worse" between people. 

Our hearts are so determined to be "better" than others that we assign value and dignity to all sorts of categories.  Apart from the fact that these categories are often manufactured, many of them are of no value apart from a cultural familiarity. Often when we judge between people we can look at talents, skills, and abilities. Or we differentiate and assign value to difference in capacity. Or to difference in intellect. Or, God forbid, to difference in race or ethnicity. 

Our hearts secretly love difference because it allows us to set ourselves up as being "better." Ironically this hidden heart condition usually comes out most in those who most vocally lament and lambast difference. The difference becomes a category that we can use to judge others.

In this passage Paul has an entirely different sort of category for assessing "better" and "worse". Whereas the above categories are based on  various capacities or cultural qualities, Paul is calling to mind a category of character. He is asking us to make an assessment of our righteousness, purity, and holiness when looking at others. AND, he is asking us to make this assessment in comparison with Jesus and not with others.

On our status within this moral category scripture is quite clear:

• Romans 3:10- There is none righteous, not even one.
• Psalm 14:1- The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. (Also Psalm 53:1)
• Psalm 143:2- Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no one living is righteous before you.
• 1 John 1:8- If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
• Romans 3:23- For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

The list of verses could go on. It is this universal sense of moral failure that Paul is getting at in this passage when he implores us to consider others better than ourselves. The truth that Paul wants us to see is that all people are equally guilty before an infinitely perfect and holy God and so there is no better or worse. 

On a scale for moral purity there are no gradations for humans. We are all together. Thats right. Aaron Robertson, Adolf Hitler, Mother Theresa, Osama Bin Laden, and you all have the exact same standing. 

Realizing this is the beginning of true faith in Christ as Savior.  Without this realization, when our hearts begin to say "I'm better, they're worse", we fall into the fatal trap of legalism and self-righteousness. Our comparison point and benchmark is not others but God, and in that comparison we don't stand a chance of narrowing the infinite difference.

The Good News is that all who believe can give up that fruitless struggle to pay off an infinite debt. A moral purity entirely not our own is given to us in Christ so that we no longer need to self-righteously strive under a legalism that will always and only ever fall short. 

It is easy for my heart to play games with this idea. The comparisons come so quickly to mind. The quick judgment of character. The haughty spirit that says "at least I don't ......... like so and so." When we truly understand what Paul tells us about how knowing Jesus changes our hearts we can begin to see that it is possible to view others as better than ourselves. 

If you know your sin and you know your Savior it becomes far easier to see others as better than yourself. If this passage doesn't reflect your inner thought life or how you think about others pray that you would fully know the extent of your sin AND fully know the power and mercy and grace of your Savior. Knowing those things produces humility, cures vanity, and demands sacrifice for others so don't pray for that without a willingness to give yourself up.

When Sin Seems Close

Last week was one of those weeks for me where nothing quite went right. I didn't have any major calamities or personal meltdowns. It was just a long slow build of discussions that I didn't engage with properly, parenting decisions made in frustration or anger, meetings that didn't go as planned, and some personal issues that took a sudden and sad turn. I was left with a strong sense of just how pervasive sin is in this world.

Nothing devastating happened last week. It was just a week where I can look back and not really find much about which I can say "that went well." Those kind of weeks can scream "we live in a broken and fallen world" as much as the harder things in life. If things are generally well and nothing in particular is wrong but things still end up wrong what is it if not sin that creates such a week?

A holiday weekend spent in heaven (my family's cabin) has't really helped me regain perspective so I spent yesterday and today brooding. Over how to fix things. Over how to get a project to turn the corner. Over ways to not bring work emotion home to my family. And on and on.

It turns out brooding isn't a helpful or healthy thing. After a week where sin and disfunction and brokenness, both my own and the world's, seem all too close and ubiquitious what my heart really needed was a sense of God's goodness.

So I am waiting for that today. I need some perspective.

On mercy.

On patience.

On God's goodness.

On healing and hope.

Last week wasn't full of woe of the tragic kind. Just the stuck-in-sin-and-in-a-sinful-world sort of woe. This song is helping me today so I thought I'd share.

Don't Be Normal

The 7 year old son of some good friends recently paid me the compliment of being "super funny and kinda weird." I don't know that I have ever been given a better compliment. I am very glad that it was 'super funny and kinda weird' and not 'kinda funny and super weird.' I was told by his parents that he loves "weird" whatever that might mean.

As a lifelong fan of weirdness in a variety of forms I felt encouraged to see a young person not drawn to what is 'normal.'. Too many people spend too much time and energy trying to be 'normal.'  There is nothing particularly wrong or bad about 'normal' but generally speaking 'normal' doesn't challenge, inspire, and provoke in the same way.

• Normal doesn't risk. It sticks to what is known.
• Normal doesn't pursue big dreams if it dreams at all.
• Normal doesn't create beauty. It only imitates.
• Normal can't bring change. It is about conformity and the status quo.
• Normal won't bring out people's best. Uniqueness is not appreciated by normal.
• Normal is not in fact real. Whatever your 'normal' might be it is really only a projection of some of your assumptions.
• Normal stifles questions. New possibilities and unexplored horizons don't interest 'normal."
• Normal is boring. It's fine for a while but real life is far more adventurous and irregular.

Sometimes 'weird' and 'not normal' are bad, wrong, immoral, or indecent and it should be avoided. But far more often 'weird' and 'not normal' are creative, inventive, hilarious and beautiful gifts to those who experience them. So today, indulge yourself in a bit of weirdness. I'll get you started:

I Screwed That One Up

Do you ever find yourself in situations where you think: "I'm not going to come out of this one looking good"?  Maybe I'm the only one but I regularly find myself in situations where managing my 'image' isn't easy. For me it is usually in situations where my less-than-perfect character is brought to the surface or where my usually well-managed flaws become exposed. Most often it is stress or struggling through relational issues with others that bring out my worst. Life keeps reminding me that I am not as good, righteous, or virtuous as I would like to think.

As much as other people and circumstances can expose these things in my heart, scripture has often been more precise in exposing these things. Philippians 2 is one of those passages that always helps me see my true self. The first five words of Philippians 2:3 are some of the hardest for me to read: "do nothing from selfish ambition."

Perhaps like me you can read through stretches of scripture and think "I'm doing alright with that." It is really easy to do with the "do not murder" and "do not steal" passages. As an introvert, when I am feeling like a curmudgeon it is easy to say "I don't really like talking or people so I don't need to worry about gossip!"  But when I read "do nothing from selfish ambition" all I can think is "oh crap...I screwed that one up."

If marriage and parenting have taught me anything it is that I am extremely selfish. I thought that many of my vain, narcissistic patterns had already been dealt with when I was younger. However, when my wife and children started messing with my habits and hobbies I found I still have a long way to go.

The truth is that I'd really only learned to minimize the frequency of my selfish moments and I never addressed the selfishness in my heart. The irony is that my minimization of "selfish moments" was only accomplished by living a self-absorbed life ordered around my needs and desires!

Paul could have been so much softer in this Philippians passage. My sinful heart wishes he had been.

He could have said "try not to be selfish" or "as much as possible think about others first." Paul didn't take that soft, left-up-to-interpretation approach.  He couldn't leave wiggle room on this because he knows the human heart too well. Paul knows that any grounds left for self-involved thinking will be clung to with fierce desperation.  So Paul tells us "do NOTHING from selfish ambition."

If you are asking "when can I think of myself first?" let me clarify:

• when pigs fly
• when hell freezes over
• under no circumstances
• never ever ever

Those five words, "do nothing from selfish ambition," are enough to condemn every human heart.I think if we are honest we realize that we all screw this one up every day. The truth isn't just that we screw up occasionally but that we are screw ups through and through. Selfish ambition is often our M.O.

Paul knows that about us and so this passage is for us. While this is tough to read and impossible to live out, it is precisely because it leaves no wiggle room for interpretation that we should love this verse. There is nothing like seeing our failures to help us see our need for some help.

If Paul had phrased things in a way that left us feeling like we could figure it out on our own we would be fighting endlessly to do just that. Instead, because there is no escaping Paul on this one, we are left in a position of desperation and helplessness. This is precisely where God wants us because it points us to Christ. 

We are screw ups. Every last one of us. There is no figuring it out, no try-a-little-harder, and no chance of leaving behind our selfishness under our own power. We simply don't measure up.

For you it might not be selfishness. It might be anger. Or lust. Or envy. Whatever it may be for you, when you dig into those issues you end up realizing they all come from a heart of selfishness, just with different symptoms showing up in our lives. Anyway you cut it, we are all living for ourselves and we all fall short of what God asks of us.

God knows this about us and knew that it would take someone besides us to live that out. Selfish ambition can be a path to hell or a flashing neon arrow pointing to Jesus. The Father sent the Son so that we don't have to live eternity in judgment for our selfish ambition. Instead we can live eternally in Him who forgives and fixes us up.

We rejoice in serving a God who truly does nothing out of selfish ambition. For us, seeing God in all of His glory, power, and magnificence goes a long way towards pulling us out of our own selfishness. The next time you really "screw that one up," look to the cross. God's grace is sufficient.

The great news isn't just that Jesus lived selflessly on our behalf but also that he is actually able to help us live that way ourselves. In Christ and with the power of the Holy Spirit we can die to ourselves and live for others. Just a few words after the challenge to "do nothing from selfish ambition" we learn are encouraged to take on a humble mindset "which is yours in Christ Jesus".

Humility and selflessness are already ours in Christ Jesus. With His example and the power of the Holy Spirit we too can live that out more and more fully as we become like Him. What great "good news" that we are forgiven for our failings and empowered to be like God.

Repentance and forgiveness are so incredibly powerful for us when we see our sin and learn to go directly to our Savior. We can crucify our selfishness in the flesh and live in Christ. The next time you screw up, don't beat yourself up. Go seek forgiveness from the one who was beaten up on your behalf.

Catharsis: Spring in Minnesota

Catharsis: the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions. Minnesotans are more familiar with this process than most because each and every year we endure unimaginable struggle in winter in order to be rewarded with a few short and glorious months of spring/summer/fall. 

When you think about it, Minnesota is a peculiar place to willfully decide to live. For several months of the year the weather is literally trying to kill you. Animal migrations exist only because a place like Minnesota exists. If the animals, who are perfectly suited to life outdoors, know to move away you would think that humans would be able to figure it out. We have brain parts specifically devoted to planning and making informed decisions and we can't figure out that Minnesota winters are not worth dealing with.

As spring sets in each year I find the need for serious catharsis from the emotions stored up during long winter months. The depth of my bitterness towards my chosen home usually parallels the bitter temps from the previous winter. Each spring I look forward to that moment when my heart begins to thaw and I feel a more normal range of emotions.

If you've never experienced such a release from a long captivity consider going to jail for a 4-5 months. Every year. Instead of guards and walls and someone else's rules governing your life you will be ruled by thermometers, windchill and snowdrifts. You won't shuffle around in leg irons but you will quickly learn a hands-in-your-pockets, stiff-legged shuffle that braces you against the cold and keeps your feet solidly beneath your body as you travail across the ice.

When that freedom finally comes it is glorious. You wouldn't mind looking silly after serving a long time in jail and we Minnesotans don't mind either. For me and so many Minnesotans there is great catharsis in once again exposing our skin to light and air. The same temperatures in other parts of the country would bring out sweaters and boots but for Minnesotans those first sunny days of 50's and 60's bring out flip-flops, tank tops, and shorts.

This past weekend I had my annual purge of the toxic frustration that winter had built up within me. Each dandelion pulled was celebrated in defiance of winter's broken grip on our lives. Each hole dug for new tomatoes, peppers, flowers, and seeds was done in mockery of months of frozen ground. I have a strange love of yardwork that primarily comes from this annual need to purge months of inactivity and over-thinking that accumulate each winter. I finished the weekend sore, dirty, with unfinished projects littering the yard, and with great joy and comfort in knowing that Father Winter couldn't get his frosty grip on me for several more months.

If you are a Minnesotan I would love to know what your cathartic springtime experiences are. What do watch for to know that we are truly and finally released from winter? Are there some activities and adventures that you anticipate all winter long?

Philippians 2: Have One Purpose

This is the second in a series of posts on Philippians 2. The first can be read here.

"Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose."

Paul is making a very strong plea for unity in the first few verses of Philippians 2. The concept of unity is tied directly to what follows in the passage so it is important to consider what this unity might look like.  The phrase about having "one purpose" struck me as something unique to reflect on. While most of us can probably trace out what "same love"  and "same mind" are getting at "one purpose" is probably a bit more difficult.

What does it mean to be have one purpose? How do we achieve that?  What is that purpose?

To talk about our purpose is to talk about our will. It is to talk about those things which we intend to do and which we give ourselves over to in order to pursue. Having one purpose goes beyond simply engaging in the same activities as others. I think this passage pushes us beyond some simple conformity or the appearance of similar behaviors. Purpose lies deeper in our hearts and souls and touches on the very way we are wired and those things which we live for.

One difficulty in trying to think through purpose comes when we realize that even if people are engaged in the same activity they don't necessarily have the same purpose. For example, a sports team can have people filling numerous roles: coach, star player, bench warmer, manager, trainer, and so on and so on. Even though they may all say they are there for the same purpose of winning, digging a little deeper in to people's motivations often reveals a different story:

• The coach is really there for the joy of seeing players grow as people.
• The star player is vainglorious and seeks great reputation.
• The bench warmer loves camaraderie and the team environment.

You could go on through a team and reveal that purpose and motivation vary with every individual. Appearance says that they are all there for the same reason but in reality no one is perfectly aligned to that purpose of winning.

To have "one purpose" is exceptionally difficult because none of our motivations and purposes are ever as singular, pure, and focused as we make them out to be. Once we start digging into our own hearts we find that pride, sinfulness, distractions, and so many other things creep in and interfere with our purpose.

If you have walked with God for a while you have probably had those "come to Jesus" moments where you just feel laid bare before God. At those times we are often ready to do whatever God asks us to do. We imagine ourselves saying, like Isaiah, "Here am I, send me!" This is such a powerful purpose statement! We are sincere in saying it and we mean it but then we get hungry, or tired, or bills come, or marriage and family happen. All of sudden our purpose becomes a little complicated and cloudy. 

Before you condemn yourself for having had those "here am I" moments and failing to live them out, take a breath. I think this is how God intends us to wrestle with our faith. Our walk with God becomes more robust and vibrant when we have to wrestle with keeping that "here am I" purpose in front of our hearts and minds. It is too easy to have mountain top moments and far more difficult to live that moment out down in the valley but I believe that God gets so much more glory when we do.

So how do we go about finding that one purpose that Paul is talking about in Philippians 2?

He is speaking of a collective purpose for a group of people. In other words, whatever purpose we come up with better fit everyone. If you were to ask people where they find purpose or what their purpose in life is, it is very likely that you would get a ton of different answers. However, if we read Paul correctly we should expect every single follower of Christ to give the same answer. For those who follow God the answer should always be the same. The fact that this is hardly the case doesn't change that it ought to be true that all believers have the same purpose.

Perhaps somewhere there exists an exhaustive study of scripture and theology that asks questions about purpose. Perhaps if I had ever read " The Purpose Driven Life" I would have known how to answer questions about believers having "one purpose." But, I have seen no such study and have not read said book, so I am going to share what my head and heart lead me to.

The purpose that I imagine Paul speaking to can be found most directly in two well known passages: Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22: 37: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." This is known as the first and greatest commandment and as such it brings much clarity to the purpose that unites believers.

There is one noticeable condition to pay attention to here, namely that our love for God includes ALL of our self. Our purpose is to give our whole selves entirely over to love for God. There is no part of our lives that we can point to and say "that is mine to do with as I please." Elsewhere Paul talks about God in a way that shows that our love for God is one of sacrificial, even slavish, devotion to a benevolent Lord and Savior and not anything like more popular conceptions of love.

I believe that this complete surrender to the will and ways of our loving God is the purpose that Paul is getting at in Philippians 2:2. We are to be united in purpose in our loving pursuit of God. There is no wiggle room for followers of Christ on this one. Paul is masterful in exploring the human heart. He knows we are fickle and finite, not to mention moral failures. And still he implores us to find unity in our purpose. If you've truly tasted and seen that the Lord is good that purpose should be pretty clear and compelling.

Whatever else we may disagree on, Paul gives us this litmus test of unity of love, mind, and purpose for knowing how well our Christian communities are experiencing and living out the grace, mercy, love, and joy found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no better way that I can think of for finding unity in purpose than in loving God with our whole heart, soul, and mind and helping others to do the same.

Getting ourselves to live with singular purpose, as individuals and especially in groups, is not easy. The best way that I know to keep that focus is to keep the gospel ever before our eyes. Understanding the power of the cross, the magnitude of God's mercy and forgiveness, and our desperate need for a Savior who would die in our place goes a long way in helping us love God with our whole selves.

One way that I give myself a heart check and try to take inventory of how clearly I am living out this godly purpose is to ask myself the following: when is the last time I was undone by God's mercy? Have you recently had an Isaiah 6 "here am I, send me" moment where your love for God overtakes all competitors for our attention and motives?  If you can't place the last such moment for yourself on a timeline I encourage you to spend some time reflecting on the beautiful, scandalous cross.

Things I Didn't Know Before Having Kids

The list of things I wish I knew before becoming a parent grows longer by the day. I am by no means the brightest bulb, but going into parenting I figured that it can't be too hard to figure things out along the way. Naive perhaps, but it had already worked in marriage for me at that point.

Generally I am a pretty level-headed and rationale guy and I thought that would serve me well in parenting. The thing that I didn't know that someone, anyone (hello mom and dad!) could have warned me of was how babies and children take on personal missions to exhaust their parents. I've only got two right now, but working in tandem they have figured out how to exasperate and exhaust in ways I never thought possible! I never knew how 2 little girls whose cumulative weight is less than half of my own could ever prove to be such formidable foes to my energy and stamina.

All of my parenting has involved what-not-to-do and I-wish-knew-that-earlier moments. Learning how absolutely exhausting kids are is only one little example from a litany of things learned as a parent. Some of the lessons I've learned were predictable, some were surprising, and some belong in a category of their own: things that if I knew beforehand would have made me reconsider our choice to have children.

Not wanting other parents-to-be to go into things similarly uninformed I've collected some of the lessons that belong in the "I wish I knew this sooner" category.

• Kids are incapable of controlling the amount of noise they make. Pleas for quiet are met with vacuous blank stares because children literally have no category for quiet. It doesn't exist in their universe.
• Kids steal your sanity. In what world does it make sense for a responsible adult to be engaged in negotiations with a 3 year old over appropriate behavior? It happens all the time though. Kids take in-utero courses on how to get their own way all the time and it takes significant re-training to help them not be self absorbed, narcissistic, megalomaniacs. Good luck!
• Parenting requires more gear and apparatus' than camping ever does. Pumps, pack n plays, strollers, baby carriers, seats, bottles toys, and diapers are just the beginning. 
• Poop becomes a normal and accepted part of conversations with many friends. It's a weird and unavoidable thing. 
• Kids leak lots of disgusting things out of their bodies. Diapers have about a 90% success rate on containment. Eyes, ears, nose, and mouth are all in various states of seepage most of the time as well. Just plan on buying a new wardrobe after your kids are potty trained.
• Once you have kids you no longer matter to your parents. It's as if you were raised for the singular purpose of producing grandchildren after which you are a bit of a vestigial remnant of the family tree.
• Chaos and messiness are the natural state of things when children are around. I don't know how long or how much work it takes to get kids to change on this and despair is starting to set in for my wife and I. 
• As much as you don't want to turn in to your parents, you will once you have kids. Embrace it early so that your realization of that fact doesn't come upon you later in a crushing moment of clarity. 
• One positive thing I didn't know before kids was that they make excellent scapegoats for messes, noise, smells, things being lost and all manner of other minor household calamities. 

For anyone not familiar with my wife or me, these are all said tongue in cheek with great sarcasm and hyperbole. We wouldn't actually reconsider having our girls and are currently considering adding to their number. There is no need to call child protection services.

If you are a parent you probably have your own list of things that would have been  helpful to know before having kids. I'd love to hear what things you've learned.