Fear of Intimacy

Here is another excerpt from Donald Millers's book "Searching for God Knows What" that I find particularly powerful.

"I have sometimes wondered if the greatest desire fo man is to be known and loved anyway. It is no secret we are terribly protective of our hearts, as though this tender space is a kind of receptor for our validation as humans. The closer we are to another person, the more vulnerable we are and the more we feel a sense of risk. Lovers can take years to finally trust each other, and many of us will close ourselves off at the slightest hint of danger. Introductory conversations are almost always shallow. "Where did you go to school?" and "How old are your children?" are safe places to begin. Start an initial meeting with "What addictions do you struggle with?" or "When do you feel least loved by your wife?" and we are going to have a tough time making new friends. It seems that we feel we must trust people before we let them know anything remotely vulnerable about us, and to ask for more before trust has been built is to contravene a social etiquette dating back to the fall of man. All this, I suppose, is connected to the fact that our validation seems to always be in question.
And yet it is through this system of defense Christ walks with ease, never seeming to fear that He would do damage by rummaging around in the tender complexity of a person's identity. Instead, He goes nearly immediately to our greatest fears, our most injured spaces, and speaks into those places with authority."

Thoughts from Donald Miller

Excerpts from Donald Miller's book "Searching for God Knows What":

"It makes you feel that as a parent the most important thing you can do is love your kids, hold them and tell them you love them because, until we get to heaven, all we can do is hold our palms over the wounds. I mean, if a kid doesn't feel he is loved, he is going to go looking for it in all kinds of ways. He is going to want to feel powerful or important or tough, and she is going to want to feel beautiful and wanted and needed. Give a kid the feeling of being loved early, and they will be better at negotiating that other stuff when they get older. They won't fall for anything stupid, and they won't feel a kind of desperation all the time in their souls. It is no coincidence that Jesus talks endlessly about love. Free love. Unconditional love." (pg 113)

"I started thinking about the idea my friend at the Bible college suggested about how, if God is a perfect and loving Being, the most selfless thing he could do would be to create other beings to enjoy Him. And then I started thinking that if those creatures fell away from Him, the most selfless thing a perfect and loving Being could do would be to go and get them, to try to save them from the death that would take place in His absence." (pg 122)

"I have sometimes wondered if the greatest desire of man is to be known and loved anyway. It is no secret we are terribly protective of our hearts, as though this tender space is a kind of receptor for our validation as humans. The closer we are to another person, the more vulnerable we are and the more we feel a sense of risk. Lovers can take years to finally trust each other, and many of us will close ourselves off at the slightest hint of danger. Introductory conversations are almost always shallow. "Where did you go to school?" and "How old are your children?" are safe places to begin. Start an initial meeting with "What addictions do you struggle with?" or "When do you feel least loved by your wife?" and we are going to have a tough time making friends. It seems that we feel we must trust people before we let them know anything remotely vulnerable about us, and to ask for more before trust has been built is to contravene a social etiquette dating back to the fall of man. All this, I suppose, is connected to the fact that our validation seems to always be in question.
And yet it is through this system of defense Christ walks with ease, never seeming to fear that He would do damage by rummaging around in the tender complexity of a person's identity. Instead, He goes nearly immediately to our greatest fears, our most injured spaces,and speaks into those places with authority." (pg 133)

Berit

"But what God does in Christ is not essentially unlike what God was already doing in creation and in covenant- emptying himself, sharing His love, creating partnership."

What is covenant? By this quote it is the act of servanthood, love, and community. What else could it be? I see it as a promise, a commitment, and a responsibility as well. Throughout the Old Testament, God established covenants with great men who's stories are told in Sunday School every year. God made a promise, or a covenant, with Noah that he would never again use the waters to flood the earth and rid it of life. He symbolized this promise with a dove and an olive branch. He made a covenant with Abraham that he would be a father to many, and established that through the birth of his son, Isaac. The stories go on... all stories that we know. So what do we see in these stories?

I think the covenant that God establishes in these instances creates a back bone or a cornerstone to the whole story. The story that has captured us and is lived out in our lives every day. Needless to say, the idea of covenant is an important one.

The Hebrew word "berit" translates into a couple of things. Translated into English it means "covenant" (hence it's relevance to this topic). Even closer to the translation it means promise, or pledge. In the Hebrew culture, "berit" is a promise made by a lord to his servant that he will protect and provide for his servants. This is a promise that is not required, but voluntary. However, this type of covenant is one that must go both ways. The servant must reciprocate and uphold his end of the promise. God's "berit" doesn't require the participation of the servants. In Abraham's situation, he was simply selected.

We, like Abraham, are simply selected. But where do we go from there? Michael Lodahl, the author of the book "The Story of God" states, "To say that God is a covenantal God is to suggest a divine interest in our cooperation, a divine commitment to partnership, a divine power that is empowering and affirming of the other." The relationship we have with God must be one that involves us committing to Him. I think this applies to our relationships with others. We need commitment and partnership with those who's lives are a part of our own. In Samuel I, Jonathan and David made a covenant under God to each other in their friendship.
What can we do to establish "berit" in our relationship with our Father as well as our friends?

following the patience mustang

I’m at Caribou Coffee in Gahanna right now in an attempt to clear my head and get some work done. So far it has worked. It was really interesting because on the way here I was behind a Mustang Shelby, one of my absolute favorite cars. I looked down at the license plate and read, “PATENCE.” In my opinion it was missing the “i,” but whether that was intended or not, I read it as “patience.” (I just looked “patence” up on dictionary.com just to make sure, and it’s not a word). God sure has a good sense of humor. I’m thinking He wanted to remind me to have patience, that things will get better. That while things might be tough and my feet are gunna get tired and sore from all the rough roads ahead, it will be rewarding if I put my trust in Him and let him guide me. So I think I’m gunna follow that Mustang’s instructions. Patience.

Dribbling

What am I even doing? I feel like I have those blinders on…. The ones we used in basketball during the early years. I can see, but at the same time I can’t. I’m aimlessly wandering around, thinking I’m doing the right thing, that I’m dribbling the ball, but really I’m missing the ball and dribbling air.

Thoughts

So I just signed on to the whole Twitter phenomenon. First of all, I just don't get it. I can't figure it out. Anyways...

I follow John Mayer on Twitter (how weird is that?!), and I noticed one of his "tweets" from today. It read:

"Living by the power of other people's suggestion will slowly kill you. Genuine self esteem isn't a roller coaster. It comes from within."

So, to me, this takes a while to unpack. I get the first sentence... you have to make your decisions your own. Taking others' suggestions into consideration might help, but living by them will squelch your ability to make decisions for yourself.

It's the second half of the quote that gets me thinking. What do you think?

a new look on love

I'm reading the book "Blue Like Jazz," by reccomendation of many people.  At first I thought of it as a fad, as something that yes, had good insight, but something people read because it was the "cool Christian" thing to do.  I just finished the third to last chapter, and it finally hit me.  I agree with the masses, this book is great.

The chapter I just finished was about love.  Recently this has been something I've been struggling with, loving everyone I come in contact with.  Not just surface love, but genuine, God-breathed love.  Do you know how hard that is?  I've realized how easy it is to hold grudges (just a side note).  Anyways, the author began to talk about the idea of relationships through metaphors.  Some listed were that we "value" people, we "invest" in people, relationships have the possibility to be "bankrupt," and that people are "priceless."  Do you see any commonalities in those metaphors? How about economics?  From our viewpoints, we see relationships as being economically based without even knowing we do this.  In the words of Donald Miller, "With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did."  It is so incredibly wrong to treat people, relationships, and love as banks. Miller also says "When the church does not love its enemies, it fules their rage. It makes them hate us more." How true is that? The church today is hated, for the most part.  Ask anyone on the streets what they think of Christians and I can almost guarantee you that 8 times out of 10, you're going to hear a negative answer.  The book explains that when a person feels that you don't like him or her, they won't listen to you.  So what are we doing to show people that we love them, that we do like them?  

I'm not writing all of this claiming that this is where I'm coming from and that I've thought this all along... far from it.  It was such a revalation to me.  My eyes were opened to the way that I treat people, the fact that I am obvious with who I care about and who I don't.  And this needs to change.

When talking to someone, there are always two conversations going on.  There is the conversation on the surface, the one that highlights the words actually being spoken, the topic being discussed.  Then there is the deeper conversation, the one coming from the heart, addressing whether or not we like the person we are conversing with.  If both of these levels of conversation are not coming from God, they are not true.  In the Bible (and if anyone knows where this comes from pleases let me know), it says that if you're talking to someone with your mouth and your heart does not love them, that you are like a person standing there smashing two symbals together.

I will strive to not be a one man band, slamming cymbals and creating horrible noise.  I cannot promise anything but to do my best to have God work through me, and love each person come in contact with.  Maybe you could call me a modern-day hippie.

Thanks to Donald Miller for the thoughts presented in this blog.