Photo: Josh Plueger

My wife and I hosted an African pastor in our home about two years ago.  He was incredibly funny and intelligent; he was also massive, 6 foot 3 and about 230 lbs.  Not only was he big, he was also fearless.  His life was lived outdoors in a bush country filled with snakes and lions

 He arrived at our house late and went to bed. My wife told him that breakfast would be at 8 AM and that we would see him in the morning.  At 7:59 he came cruising down the staircase for breakfast, but when he got to bottom step he squealed like a little girl and just about broke his own legs trying to run back up the stairs on his hands and feet.

My wife and I were shocked and I had to go up and get him to come down to eat.  He wouldn’t come downstairs because he had seen something in our house that terrified him.

 He saw our beagle lying in front of the fireplace.

We tried to explain to him that beagles aren’t dangerous, but he wouldn’t come downstairs until we took the dog and put her in the garage.

You can probably guess that a dog had bitten him.  Beyond this, he’d seen people killed by packs of dogs.  He lived in the presence of cobras and lions but was petrified of a dog.

We came to understand that this was because he had experience with those other animals and an understanding of what to do to protect himself when he was in situations with them.

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 As a pastor I consistently get asked a question that sounds a lot like this:

 “I’ve been hurt by the church, why should I ever go back?”

There’s an old saying that goes like this; “If a dog bites you once it’s the dog’s fault.  If the dog bites you twice, that’s your fault.

This is the logic and reasoning that people are applying when they say things about not wanting to be involved with church based on observation or past experience.

In fairness, this is a true and logical way of thinking.  While the saying is true, it’s important to remember that “truth” and applicability aren’t always the same thing.

This is because truth, while valid, doesn’t always have universal application.O ne plus one equals two, but that doesn’t have anything to do with how much I love my wife.

Truth isn’t situational, the application of truth is.

So let’s go back to the dog bite analogy and try to apply that truth to other real-life situations.  By this line of logical and truthful reasoning:

-Everyone who’s ever gotten sick at Disneyland should stop going to Theme Parks.

-Everyone who has ever gotten fired should stop working at jobs.

-Everyone who has ever been dumped should stop entering into relationships.

The truth contained in the quote about dog bites isn’t that all dogs are untrustworthy, it’s that people bear some measure of personal responsibility in regards to protecting themselves from danger.

Now this is a truth that is extremely applicable isn’t it?

Each of us has a responsibility to protect ourselves from people and situations that can be potentially harmful.  This is why it wasn’t a bad idea for our to run upstairs, but applying only that truth to his life meant staying upstairs and never coming down again.

My first answer to the question about church is, “You should go back to church because knowing how to protect yourself is a more valuable and practical life skill than knowing how to hide is.”

 Hiding doesn’t guarantee safety and it leads to a life spent in fear and isolation.  Knowing how to live amidst the dangers of life doesn’t guarantee safety, but it leads to a life filled with adventure, growth, and companionship.

Here’s my second answer to the question:

Our Kenyan friend’s problem wasn’t logical; it was emotional.  He was scared of something that had never actually hurt him because he didn’t actually understand it.  No amount of logic was ever going to remove his fear.

In correlation, has any person ever really been hurt by “the Church”?  The answer might be yes, but what are people trying to say to us when they say this?

Are they trying to say that the building hurt them? Are they trying to say that the way the church was organized hurt them? Are they trying to say that every person who attended the church hurt them?

No, they’re saying that some very specific people, people who have names and faces said or did hurtful things to them.

So let’s rephrase our question to be more accurate and fair, “I’ve been hurt by some people who attended church and claimed to be Christians.”

Is this an emotional problem or a logical problem?

It is a very valid and true emotional problem.  Unfortunately, appealing to logical solutions won’t actually solve these emotional problems will it?

What helps with our emotional problems is when people come to you and apologize, including asking for forgiveness, for what they did.  It’s at that point that we offer forgiveness (let go of the hurt) and experience emotional healing and reconciliation.

When we generalize our problem by blaming an institution, and then pour out our wrath on a generalization, we actually lose the ability to work through the actual emotional problem that we have.

So why do we do it?

The simple answer is that we either don’t want, or understand how, to solve our emotional problems.  We just want to punish the people who hurt us.

When we identify the person who hurt us, we find ourselves with personal responsibilities.  For instance, if I say that my wife hurt my feelings, you can very easily point out that I need to go talk to her about my feelings and come to reconciliation.

Personalizing the problem means that there are responsibilities and accountability.

If I don’t want reconciliation I just go around talking that wives are just a pain in the neck.  Generalizing allows me to run from my responsibilities and hide from my pain by blaming.

Many people hop from church to church, eventually withdrawing from them completely because they would prefer not to have the confrontation that could lead to their emotional healing.

Unfortunately it’s too easy, and unfair, for me to say, ”People hurt people so that’s no excuse to stop going to church. “

 While it’s true that Christians aren’t perfect and they hurt do hurt people, the simple fact of the matter is that we aren’t supposed to be hurting people.

II Corinthians chapter 5:15-20 presents us with some applicable truth about church and hurt.

“And he (Christ) died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.   So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

Jesus died to take us from our old life of death into new life.  This new life is a life marked by the presence of God’s Spirit in our lives.  In our new life we no longer live for ourselves, instead we live for Jesus.  In this continuing process of “being made new”, our lives begin to be measured against the truths of God’s word.

This means that we will be faced with truths about our lives that we would rather ignore.  In these circumstances it becomes very easy for us to blame “the church”, or “Christianity”, as the vehicle for presenting us with a truth that causes us personal pain.

I recently took the Disc Assessment profile; it’s a leadership tool that assesses your personality so that you, and your coworkers, better understand how to relate to you.  The first page of the assessment revealed that I am confident, personable, and a good communicator.  Anybody who knows me will recognize right away that they nailed me.  At this point I loved the DISC because it was a validation of who I am.

Page two revealed that I am impatient, have a tendency to overestimate my abilities, and don’t pay attention to details.  Every bit of this information was also true. That applicable truth revealed the areas of my life that need to change.

 How do you think that applicable truth made me feel?

The pain that this truth brings me is the result of my need to grow, not the test being unfair.  I can run from this or I can embrace it and enter into the process of asking for help from God and my faithful friends to become a new creation.

One of the reasons that church hurts is because spiritual growth is a painful process.

When I am willing to do the difficult work of living for Jesus I gain the opportunity of joining him in the process of making others new as well.

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

-2 Corinthians 5:15-20

 Living for Jesus is actually not merely self-denial, it’s self-denial for the purpose of joining him in the process of reconciling people to God.

Which points us back into the issue of hurt in the church.  An applicable truth from the word of God doesn’t simply hurt some people; some people get hurt because someone takes a truth that was not applicable and lays into them.

Churches are filled with people who are faced with the daily decision to live for themselves or live for Jesus.

 Many times we choose to live for ourselves.

In these sinful choices we demonstrate a desire for power, authority, or recognition and praise; choosing to deny truths about ourselves in order to get it.

“Church hurt” is often the result of people who’ve chosen to believe that “living for God” means attending church services and they’ve set down the Ministry of Reconciliation in order to pick up a façade of personal piety.

I’ve worked inside churches since I was 20 years old and I can tell you stories that would curdle milk at the North Pole.  Do you know what each of these situations has in common?

Each of them happened when someone made the fatal error of setting down the Ministry of Reconciliation and picking up something else.

Sometimes they picked up the crusade of being right: They needed to win the argument regardless of kindness or the truth.

Sometimes they fell in love with their own ideas and refused to listen to anyone else.  They believed that methods or styles were more important than results.

Sometimes they were so wounded that they hid behind a position of authority to fend off any new injuries.

Often, they gloried in their mind because their heart was broken.

Most often people were mean because they refused to submit their heart to Christ.  They agreed with Christianity as a philosophy but they wouldn’t submit to Jesus.

When we become hurt or offended we have a choice, will we stop living according to God’s spirit, listening for him to tell us what to do next according to his plan for our world, or will we engage in self-directed behavior and begin working our plan for the world?

The Bible has a great example of this in 2 Kings 5.  It’s a story of a Hebrew slave girl who demonstrates kindness to her foreign master Namaan.  As Namaan’s story unfolds, we see him take a little girl’s advice and become physically healed of leprosy, but more importantly he comes to know and worship the God.

Through the ministry of a wounded little Girl, Namaan is reconciled to God.

This story is a brilliant illustration of what can happen in the world around us as the result of us choosing to join God in the ministry of reconciliation, even when we are the person who has been wounded.

This is ultimately why we go back to church, even after we’ve been hurt.

When we embrace and process the painful growth that truth brings, we become God’s ambassadors to our hurting world.

Don’t miss this: God’s Spirit doesn’t promise that we won’t be hurt, it gives us the power to break the cycle of hurt from the inside.

“So from now on we regard NO ONE from a worldly point of view.  Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

If that little girl had chosen to regard Namaan from a worldly point of view she would have just let him die.  Instead she swallowed her pride, and her right to be angry, and she demonstrated the compassion that God had put in her heart.  She submitted herself to God and was obedient to his vision for the world.

When we are willing to do this, the old creation passes away and the new creation life born in us spreads to the world.  The hurt of our heart is met by the healing power of God, and our healing makes us ambassadors for the God who is looking to reconcile all things to himself.

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Our Kenyan friend melted when he saw an ancient beagle because he was unprepared for the encounter.

So here’s some information to prepare you for the hurt that comes from the people who attend church but aren’t interested in being God’s ambassadors:

People tell us about their ideals with their words, but they tell us about their hearts with their behavior.  Believe what people’s hearts tell you.

If the fruits of the Spirit are not immediately visible in a church, something is wrong.  It shouldn’t take weeks to determine if the majority of the people are joyful, loving, peaceful, faithful people.  If they aren’t, they aren’t working God’s plan.

Some churches claim to be cold and hard because they’re confronting people with cold hard truth.  Don’t buy it.  We aren’t given a choice between grace-givers and truth-tellers.  Jesus never copped out that way.

If you’re part of a church that doesn’t present applicable truths that call for life-change, leave.  Jesus is the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life.  This means that there must be moments when TRUTH reveals to us a path for painful life growth.

If church confrontations aren’t private and restrained, leave.  Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit, so if you are being bullied, it isn’t coming from a spirit-led person.

If you are confronted, check out what the confronters are saying with other people who know you well, and check it against the word of God.  Self-examination is a sign of humility and godliness.

When you want to know who to trust in conflict situations, look for the people who are working for reconciliation.  People who go to great lengths of self-denial to give peace a chance are the people who are being like Jesus.

Finally, there’s a reason I‘ve said, “run” not “fight”.  God very rarely calls us to a church to be a reformer but he’s always calling us to be truth-speakers.

God usually calls someone with the power to be a reformer to be a reformer.  When we walk in off the street and decide that we have the power to change an organization that neither wants to change nor has it given us permission to change it, we’re probably just spoiling for a fight because of an injustice that we’ve experienced someplace else.

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There are snakes and lions in every church.  Some churches are actually run by them.  But the majority of them are just beagles doing their best not to bite anybody.

Not every pain we experience in a church is bad.

The final evaluation in every situation comes down to whether or not you AND the church you are attending is committed to the ministry of reconciliation.

We all enjoy having choices, because of this many successful businesses will allow consumers to have some say over process and product.  This isn’t something that is easy for a company to do, but they’re willing to do it because they know that it produces results:

Burger King offers The Whopper their way because they believe that this is the way that it tastes best.  They are also willing to take the additional time and effort to make it your way because they want you to not only purchase their burger, but also return to purchase more burgers over time.

They’re willing to set some preferences aside in order to develop a long-term relationship with you.

This is true in relationships outside of business as well isn’t it?

If I invite you to a go see a French movie, you have to decide whether or not spending time with me is more or less important than your distaste for foreign cinema.

To live in relationship with other people we will always have to set aside some of our preferences; this is because insisting on having things “our way”  always limits the depth and scope of our relationships.

A person who insists on having their preferences met is naturally limiting the amount of relationships that they will engage in.  This also means that they will also be limited in the amount of influence they will have in the lives of other people:

When we don’t care about people, they don’t seem to care what we want to do, or how think about things.

This means that self-centered people often have a difficult time appealing to the quality of their relationships as a way motivate people to help them or to join them in their endeavors.

They have little ability to demonstrate authority from a relational perspective.

The solution to this relational problem is to develop another kind of authority.  Through the demonstration of a skill or a talent they have to develop an authority that flows from their position in the community.  This is easily illustrated by our American affinity for celebrities.

Celebrities become effective spokespeople for products and politicians, not because of their relationship with us, but because of their status as an “exceptional talent”.  Their authority is not relational, it is positional.

We do the things they ask us to because we believe that they are better than us in some way.

Sometimes they can kick a ball.

Sometimes they can sing a song.

Sometimes they just have nice teeth.

We elevate people to positions of admiration, based on accomplishment, that allow influence regardless of relationship.  This means that selfishness is culturally permissible for people whom we choose to believe are exceptional.

To be fair, this isn’t necessarily something that is wrong with them.

We allow people to influence us based on skill and appearance, largely because they appeal to our sense of “what we wish we could be.”  If we love basketball, basketball players have positional influence over our life.  If we love music, musicians can have this same effect.

This means that people who lead people can actually take shortcuts to quickly attain high levels of influence. If you have an amazing ability, you can demand that people meet your preferences while completely disregarding theirs.

Good athletes can become coaches who don’t know how to teach.

Good singers can become worship leaders who don’t invest in people.

Good speakers can easily become pastors who don’t really care about human need.

The problem with these shortcuts is multifaceted:

1.) When this happens, people get hurt, especially in church ministry.  While there is a lot of physical work involved, ministry ultimately happens at a relational level.  People who love sports, theater, music, or theology, but don’t love people will ALWAYS end up hurting people in the name of sports, theater, music, or theology.

2.) The shortcut never lasts.  Hurting people eventually stop elevating people whose effectiveness is dissipating, regardless of talent, especially when they become a liability to the organization and lack relational capital.

What kind of leader do you want to be? Because the best leaders don’t have relational skills OR people skills, they are lovers of people who have developed great skills in order to serve them.

What skills are you working on?

Are they relational skills or technical skills?

Because it takes both to make a difference in someone’s life.

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In 18 years of ministry the most important skill that I’ve identified is to stop demanding that other people meet my preferences.

It’s also the hardest skill I’ve ever had to begin developing.

It wasn’t really until I began this process of self-denial that the ministry I was attempting started to reflect God’s preferences more than my own.

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To live in relationship with others we always have to set aside some of our preferences; this is because insisting on having things “our way”  always limits the depth and scope of our relationships.

This is ultimately true about our relationship with God  isn’t it?  We can demand to have our way, but when we do, we don’t really have a relationship with him.  There’s only one person who has preferences that must be met and isn’t he the one we’re ultimately serving?

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We really can’t have things our way forever.

Trying to just comes at a terrible price…

…for everyone.

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“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.  Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.  Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit,  speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord,  always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” –  Ephesians 5:15-21

I once worked for a boss who consistently asked the question, “Would you rather be loved or respected by your subordinates?”,  of course the majority of the employees responded that they’d rather be loved.

The boss’ response to his question was that being “loved” meant that people would walk all over you, but being “respected” meant that they would produce results for you.

The next time we were asked this one of my fellow employees suggested to the boss that he might be confusing the word “love” with “approval” and the word “respect” with “intimidation”.

You can probably guess how much longer he continued to work for the organization.

While I completely agreed with my friend’s assessment, I ultimately quit that job over a different issue; I didn’t believe that you can actually make a choice between love and respect.

I don’t believe that you can actually love someone and not respect them.  Conversely, I do believe that disrespectful and dishonorable behavior are the evidence of a complete lack of love for other people, and an extreme desire for selfish results.

Which brings me to Rutgers Basketball coach Mike Rice.

Coach Rice was fired today for verbally and physically abusing the players on his basketball squad.  The coach was fired after video of him shoving, kicking, verbally excoriating, and throwing balls at players was released to ESPN.

When we don’t love people it’s easy to appeal to their fears through intimidation; all for the purpose of coercing them into doing what we want.  When we don’t care about the players on our “team”, it becomes possible to place our desires for achievement above theirs.

This means that we become willing to make appeals to the darkest places in their hearts in order to manipulate them into serving the darkest places in our own.

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Intimidation is only as effective as the fear that it causes.

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For a player, poor performance already means the possibility of losing your place on the team, and the scholarship that accompanies it.  That’s already a fear that players live with, appealing to physical damage and mental derision simply means that there is something else going on in the heart and the mind of the bullying coach.

Coaches who resort to this don’t necessarily want their players to succeed, they wants to control them.  This reflects the belief that  having power over power players gives control over the score.

It’s no secret that bullies crave power.

Gaining positions of authority is the quickest way for bullies to consolidate power and give orders.

Unfortunately for power-hungry, control enthusiasts, none of us actually has the power to “make” other people “do” the things we order them to.  This is where fear comes in.  A bully appeals to the fears of the person they are hoping to intimidate.  When they find the right fear, they often find a very effective motivator.

While that fearful motivation may initially produce the desired results, the lack of love and care demonstrated by a willingness to employ it prevents respect and admiration from growing in the hearts of the people who suffer.  When we remove love from our relational offerings we only guarantee a loss of respect in return.

You can demand, or simply prefer, that people fear disappointing or failing you, but in the end you’ll simply be surrounded by people who don’t respect you.

You can however love people, and by respecting and honoring them coach them on how to respect and honor others.  Guess what return that this investment in others produces for you?

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Love is always as effective as the respect that it inspires.

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We can’t choose between love and respect,

They go hand in hand.

Much like abuse and firing.

“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” – Hebrews 13:7

Photo: ABC News

 “The wicked put up a bold front, but the upright give thought to their ways.” -Proverbs 21:29

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As last year’s child sex abuse scandal tore through Penn State University, many people found themselves in shocked disbelief that someone could have spent years wreaking so much havoc in the lives of young boys.

Jerry Sandusky, a man who ran a foundation aimed at helping under privileged youth, was being accused of using his authority and privilege to take advantage of powerless children.  The evidence was as overwhelming as it was disturbing.

When the Sandusky trial came to its bitter conclusion, people once again found themselves in shocked disbelief when the convicted sex offender used his final opportunity to address the court as a bully pulpit, extolling his own “virtues” while cruelly tormenting his accusers.

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This is part 5 of an examination of how we respond to our sins, and how these responses help determine the trajectory of our lives.

Part 1 covered how sin reveals both who we are, and a refusal to change.

Part 2 looked into how God demands that we examine ourselves against his standard of truth.

Part 3 delved into the choices we make in adversity, and how they shape our relationship with God.

Part 4 investigated of how confession and repentance move us from a path of destruction and point us towards restoration with God and mankind.

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“The proud and arrogant person—“Mocker” is his name—behaves with insolent fury.” -Proverbs 21:24

Scripture provides no better illustration of a prideful and arrogant person than Saul, the first King of Israel.  In his self-centeredness, Saul made mistakes:

Saul disobeyed God by offering a sacrifice on his own terms.

He disobeyed God again, carrying out battle plans of his own.

Because of his sins, Saul lost the ability to pass the kingdom to his sons, his endorsement to rule, and the manifest presence of God in his life.  These were incredibly severe penalties, especially in light of all the good things that Saul accomplished during his reign.

Why was God so severe towards Saul?

After both of his failures Saul was confronted by the prophet Samuel, and in each of these situations Saul’s response to his sin demonstrated the condition of his heart.

In the first confrontation: “Saul said, “When I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines had mustered at Michmash,  I said, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the favor of the Lord.’ So I forced myself, and offered the burnt offering.” -I Samuel 13: 11-12

In response, Saul doesn’t deny what he’s done, but subtly distracts and deflects responsibility for doing it.

To the second confrontation:  “…and Saul said to him, …I have performed the commandment of the Lord.”  And Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?”  Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction.” -1 Samuel 15:13-15

In response, Saul immediately denies what he’s done, and when he can’t live in his denial, he first deflects, then minimizes in an attempt to deny his responsibility and self-justify in the process.

Saul’s sin demonstrated that he was selfish.

His response revealed that he wanted to remain selfish.

The ancient Saul seems like a modern me in confusing “admission” with “confession”.  Admission usually comes when we acknowledge under confrontation, but true confession is the result of offering the truth freely.

Saul’s great desire to give an explanation for “what happened” came at the expense of confessing that he had actually sinned.

It was only after repeated confrontation, and the announcement of punishments, that Saul would confesses to “having sinned”.  His desire to change was only expressed in light of the painful reality that he could not escape the consequences of his sin.

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“Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a harmful spirit from the Lord tormented him.” -1 Samuel 16:14

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Keep in mind that “harmful spirit” doesn’t necessarily mean “demon”.  The Hebrew word we translate as “evil” can refer to the character of the spirit/mood or to the effect that the spirit/mood had upon Saul. Regardless of the interpretation you choose, it’s important to note that the writer of the Scripture saw God’s hand at work in Saul’s tormenting.

Saul’s refusal to confess led to a place of mental, emotional, and spiritual trouble.

This is still true for us today isn’t it?  You see, confession isn’t just essential in our relationship to God, but it also factors into our mental and emotional health. True confession is healthy because it forces us to be honest with ourselves before we interact with God or other people.

A life spent denying responsibility and running from the truth is a life built upon what we “need to believe to live with ourselves” instead of the reality of who God is and who he is calling us to be.

Without the righteous standard of “Godness” to measure ourselves against we will default to inventing our own standards of “goodness”.

When we refuse to capitulate to God through confession and repentance we eventually create a fantasy world where we live as the persecuted hero.

It’s a world of Denial, Distraction, Deflection, and Minimization.

It’s the result of God being willing to give us what we want.

The rest of Saul’s life was a tragic descent into madness.  He concocted his own version of reality, a version in which no one understood him and everyone was out to get him. Unable to determine friend from foe he drove righteous people from his household while making bedfellows of the most despicable sort.

Despite all of the life saving intervention that had God set in front of him,
insanity was the final destination of a trajectory that Saul set for himself.

Paul Wilkes says, “True confession, which demands self-reflection and change, has little to do with the flood of confessional disclosures that characterize our age… In this time of Internet connectivity, amid the din of oversharing, we mistake spasms of self-revelation for honesty. Our inner voice is not so easily found and cannot be parsed into ten-second bursts. That voice needs time to find the right words to say and the right place to say them.”

Try as we may, we will never escape the truth and justice of the God who is still merciful enough to confront us towards an honest confession.

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“When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.” -Proverbs 21:15

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In June, Jerry  Sandusky was convicted of abusing 10 boys over a period of 15 years. In the version of reality he  has invented for himself he is merely a man being punished for “loving people” and “being tragically misunderstood”.  In the reality we live in,  he was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison.

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“We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true or false, the choice is ours. We may wear now one mask and now another, and never, if we so desire, appear with our own true face. But we cannot make these choices with impunity. Causes have effects, and if we lie to ourselves and to others, then we cannot expect to find truth and reality whenever we happen to want them. If we have chosen the way of falsity we must not be surprised that truth eludes us when we finally come to need it!” -Thomas Merton

Continue to Part 6 

Bettman/Corbis

When caught in sin we have a choice about how to handle both the ensuing confrontation and the person who is confronting us.

Will we confess to what we’ve done, or defer to irresponsibility in hope of escape?

It seems that confession, while good for the soul, is very difficult to come by.  Consider the public confession made by President Richard Nixon following the investigation into his role in the Watergate Scandal of 1974:

“I regret deeply any injuries that may have been done in the course of the events that led to this decision. I would say only that if some of my judgments were wrong, and some were wrong, they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interest of the Nation.”

While Nixon’s appeal to nation’s best interest (his re-election) may be the most obvious piece of self-serving manipulation in the statement, the fact that he confesses to virtually nothing is the sign that even though convicted of breaking the law, he still saw himself as guiltless…

…because “Patriotism” made him do it.

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This is part 4 of an examination of how we respond to our sins, and how these responses help determine the trajectory of our lives.

Part 1 covered our desire to escape accountability by denying responsibility.

Part 2 looked into how God defeats these desires by demanding that we examine ourselves against his standard of truth.

Part 3 delved into the choices we make in adversity, both circumstantial and our own making, and how they point us towards relationship with God, or exclusion from his presence.

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The word “patriotism” comes to us from the Greek by way of Latin.  It means “devotion to the domain of our fathers.”  It’s an affection for the place that our fathers come from.

In the truest sense Cain demonstrated an affection for the domain of his father Adam when he followed him in choosing to determine good and evil for himself.

As the story of God unfolds in Scripture we see this type of patriotism continually passed from parent to child.  The desire for sinful, self-service appears in the lives of each of the Patriarchs.  This patriotism masters some, while others are delivered from it.

Which brings us to the disturbing story of Jacob’s son Judah:

As God’s story unfolds, each of Jacob’s sons goes on to father one of the 12 tribes of Israel.  At the end of Jacob’s life he calls his sons together to give them his “Patriarchal Blessing“, it is a little like a prophetic “Reading of the Will”.

As as he gives out the greatest blessing, the blessing of rulership and authority, he passes over Reuben, the eldest.  Reuben has been disqualified because he slept with his father’s concubine.  Reuben is the brother who saved Joseph’s life, and is surely the brother who led the family’s armies to battle, it seems unfair that he would be excluded from the great promise.

Jacob’s blessing passes to another brother, Judah, and it seems odd that Judah should be rewarded… because he’s flat-out terrible.

As the leader of his family clan, Judah was responsible for finding wives for his sons.  For the eldest of his sons he arranged a marriage with a woman named Tamar.

That son died without fathering any children.

It was ancient custom that the brother of the deceased was obliged to marry his brother’s widow, for the purpose of producing a closely related blood heir.

This practice, known as “Levirate Marriage” was an attempt to make certain that property was properly inherited, and that the widow would have a son to care for her in her old age.

Judah gave Tamar another of his sons.

This son was wicked, and though he would sleep with Tamar, he would not impregnate her. Because of this cruelty, the Lord killed him.

Judah knew that he should give Tamar another of his sons.

He didn’t want to.

He sent her away.

He thought he could get away with it.

Some time later, Judah went to visit a cult prostitute, it’s what you do when you are seeking a blessing from a foreign god.  What he didn’t know is that Tamar, intent on receiving the son she was owed by the house of Judah, had dressed the part and was waiting by the road.

How did Tamar know that this scheme would work?

She took advantage of what she knew about Judah.

She presented a bait that she knew he would take.

Judah had left home without cash, so he promised to send the veiled prostitute a goat.  He left behind his staff and his signet as a security deposit.  They both went home happy.

Judah sent a friend to pay the prostitute and collect his staff and seal.  The man came back and reported that not only was the prostitute gone, the people of the area claimed that there wasn’t a regular prostitute in the area.

Judah thought he’d gotten away with it.

Three months had passed when Tamar turned up pregnant.  The people assumed that she had been promiscuous.  Even Judah, who had no idea that the baby was his, ordered that she be killed.

When they came for her she presented Judah with his personal effects.

She asked if he recognized them?

Judah still had a chance to get away with it.

Judah was the leader of the clan.  His word was law.  She was an unmarried, pregnant, woman.  If he insinuated that she’d stolen them, no one would ever know what he’d done.

His dirty secret could die with her.

“Then Judah identified them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not know her again.”

Full confession.

Judah admitted that he was the father.

He also declared that she was in the right.

He confessed to withholding a husband from her.

He didn’t ever sleep with her again.

Full repentance.

Judah freely confessed all he had done wrong and copped to additional sins that he wasn’t being confronted with.  His sins were significantly worse that Reuben’s, but how he responded to them was incredibly better.

We all sin.

We all get confronted.

Some of us confess.

Few of us repent.

–

Our patriotism is truly dependent on who we see as our father.  In those fateful days of 1974, Richard Nixon’s decisions to act in his best interests reveal that he saw himself as his own father.

In the battle of “what we should do” versus “what we can get away with”,  Judah expressed a different kind of patriotism.

When faced with continuing in “the domain of his fathers” he made the courageous and humbling decision to submit to God’s definition of good and evil instead of creating his own.

By submitting to his Heavenly Father, he established a new and enduring patriotism for his household.

This is the blessing that he received from his Father:

   “Judah, your brothers shall praise you;
your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies;
your father’s sons shall bow down before you.
   Judah is a lion’s cub;
from the prey, my son, you have gone up.
    He stooped down; he crouched as a lion
and as a lioness; who dares rouse him?
    The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until tribute comes to him;
and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.”
-Genesis 49:8-10

–

 -Patriotism always makes us do it.-

Continue to Part 5

“Between stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Viktor Frankl

–

Andrew McCutchen is a 26 year-old center fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates.  His abilities as a fielder and a batter have earned him a contract worth more than $50 million over the next 6 years.

Yesterday he tweeted a picture of the double-wide trailer that he was raised in.  Along with the picture were the words, “came a long way since livin here… Thank you God for all youve done n my life #amen”.

McCutchen didn’t get to pick the family that he’d be born into.
He didn’t get to determine where that family would live.
There was no choice about the home he’d be raised in.

He only got to pick the response that he would have to those humble circumstances.

–

This is the 3rd part of a blog series examining how we choose to respond to our failings, and how these responses help determine the trajectory of our lives.

In Part 1  we covered the human desire to escape from accountability by denying responsibility.  We looked at how these behaviors not only reveal who we are, they also demonstrate a desire to maintain this identity by refusing to change.

We desire to sin.
We sin.
We want to keep sinning.

In part 2 we looked into how God defeats our selfish desires by insisting that we stop measuring ourselves against argument, rationale, and other people; instead he demands that we examine ourselves against his standard of truth.  Doing so is the first step away from “who we are”, and into “who we can be.”

“Who we are” is what sin has done to humanity.
“Who we can be” is who God created us to be.

–
He created us to be without sin.
–

God had created Adam and Eve to live without sin.  In their desire “to be like God”, to “know” good and evil, they actively disobeyed the God who had already made good and evil clear to them.  At the heart of their sin was the desire to determine what was good or evil on their own.

This is demonstrated in their “choosing” to eat the fruit; they decided for themselves that eating the fruit was good- even though God had already declared that action evil.  Their sin was as much foolishness as it was open rebellion; they tried to enjoy the goodness of God apart from obedience to him.

This rebellious and foolish desire for self-determination passed from Adam and Eve to their sons with disastrous consequences.

The brothers, Cain and Abel, both worshiped the God who had confronted and restored their parents.  Genesis chapter 4 tells us the story of their own struggle with self-determination and choosing between good and evil:

“In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.  – Verses 3-6

We try to determine why God looked favorably on Abel’s offering while disregarding Cain’s, but to do this we have to guess at what was “wrong” with Cain’s offering.

We have no record of what God had asked them for.
We have no record of why Cain’s produce wasn’t pleasing.

We can only speculate that Abel’s firstborn animal and fat portion was something that pleased God in a way that Cain’s offering didn’t.

It’s as if the author leaves out the back story,

What were the rules of their primitive worship?

and forensic information we desire,

What kind of produce did Cain bring?

to force our focus onto something else.

The focus of the story is on Cain’s response to God’s disregard of both him and his offering. By not including the details we want, the author keeps it from being merely a story about Cain, but allows us to identify with him; finding ourselves in the story… if we are willing.

Who hasn’t experienced unexplained rejection and hardship?
Who hasn’t become angry as a result?

This is when God appeared to confront Cain about his response to God’s decision regarding the sacrifices.  It begins an examination of a human heart that doesn’t get what it wants.

–

We don’t get to pick what happens to us, we only get to choose our response.

–

According to the text, until the murder of his brother, Cain had not yet sinned.  Anger was a reasonable response to the confusion he had experienced.  This is when God says, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen?  If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

God tells Cain that this is his opportunity to master sin.  Sin wants to dominate him, but he has a choice about how he will handle his anger.

In conjunction with this, God is laying out a path for Cain to be restored; even though his sacrifice was disregarded- “If you do well, will you not be accepted?”

In the presence of loving God, Cain is given a choice between
“who he is” and “who he can be.”

Cain allows sin to have its way with him.  He lures his brother into a field and then murders him.

Instead of measuring himself against God’s standard of truth, he continues to measure himself against his brother.  His solution to the failure of “measurement” is to remove his brother from the equation.

The heart of Cain’s sin is that he would not accept God’s judgement about his offering.  God preferred something and, when confronted, Cain was unwilling to change to give it to him.

Like his parents, Cain wanted to determine what was right and what was wrong.

He chose “who he was”, so that he could stay “who he wanted to be.”

Cain spent the rest of his life “away from the presence of the Lord” as a “marked man”.  He was an outsider limited by his failure to submit to the authority of God.

Wicked choices set a terrible trajectory for his life.

–

Andrew McCutchen didn’t get to pick the family that he’d be born into.  He didn’t get to determine where that family would live.  There was no choice about the home he’d be raised in.

He only got to pick the response that he would have to those humble circumstances.

He could’ve chosen to be a victim.
He could’ve chosen a life of crime.
He could’ve chosen to self-medicate.

Instead he chose to work.

He chose to develop what he had been given.
He chose to take mastery over the condition he found himself in.

In success he chose to demonstrate humility and gratefulness to the God who regarded him and blessed his sacrifice.

Righteous choices set righteous trajectories for his life.

Continue to Part 4

Last month Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc across the eastern seaboard of the United States.  Despite days of advance warning and round-the-clock news coverage, the majority of people living in areas that would be afflicted chose to stay in their homes.

When interviewed about “why they stayed”, no one claimed to have been uninformed about the immense hurricane bearing down on them.  Each of them offered their own excuse for refusing to evacuate:

“Newscasters always exaggerate.”

“I’ve been in a hurricane before.”

“I didn’t want anyone to loot my house.”

If these excuses sound eerily familiar, it’s because they are echoes of the statements made by many who stayed in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

It seems as if there’s no way to get people to behave responsibly in the face of impending disaster.

–

This is the second in a series of posts that take a closer look into how we choose to respond to our transgressions, and how these responses help determine the trajectory of our lives.  In Part 1 we examined 4 common ways that humans attempt to escape responsibility:

Denial,
Distraction,
Deflection,
Minimization.

These 4 avoidance techniques aren’t new, in fact we find a record of each of them inside one of our planet’s oldest documents.  In the earliest portions of our Bible we find a record of mankind’s first step away from the God who created and sustained them.

In Genesis chapters 1 and 2, Yahweh creates the place where he will interact with what will be the pinnacle of his creation: human beings.

We know these first people as Adam and Eve.

In placing the couple in the garden he made for them, Yahweh included an instruction that they were to not eat of one specific tree, a tree that promised the “Knowledge of Good and Evil”.

It was a warning that to enjoy God’s goodness, you must submit to him in obedience.

A snake, a conversation, and a light-snack later, both Adam and Eve had disobeyed the God who not only provided the unlimited blessing that they lived in, but with whom they interacted on a daily basis.

Scripture tells us that after eating the fruit of the tree that their eyes were “immediately opened” and that they “knew that they were naked”.  Their desire for knowledge was satisfied, but they immediately became dissatisfied with a situation that God had pronounced “good”.

That’s when God came looking for them.

“And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” -Genesis 3:8

The immediate response to the guilt and embarrassment of their disobedience was to escape from God by hiding.  Their logic was simple, “If we can’t be found, we can’t be confronted.”

This was a passive/aggressive attempt at living in a state of denial.

God’s response was to call them out, confronting them by asking direct questions.  Although he surely knew what they’d done, his approach was not condemnation… He let their own words condemn them:

“Where are you?”

“I hid because I was naked.”

“Who told you that you were naked… did you eat from the tree?”

Adam, unable to escape the confrontation, began working to escape responsibility for his role in the shamed couple’s sin; “If it’s not my fault, I shouldn’t be punished.”

The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”-Genesis 3:12 

Adam’s response to God’s confrontation is a primer in the subtle nuances of blame-shifting.  While he acknowledges that he has eaten from the tree, he places responsibility for the action squarely onto his wife; it’s the perfect illustration of the Deflection technique.

Where Adam truly demonstrates a mastery over his newly acquired aptitude for irresponsibility is in how his Deflection to Eve contains a Distraction aimed back at God:

“The woman you gave me…”

Adam’s implication is that there are other problems in the garden; the problems of a defective gift and a faulty giver.  He asserts Eve’s guilt and then makes Eve out to be God’s problem.  Sin had so broken Adam that he viewed God’s gift as the source of his problems.

In response, God simply continued his questions.

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”  -Genesis 3:13

While Eve’s response is a concise statement of what happened, it’s also an admission that doesn’t attempt to take responsibility for her action.  In her view it’s all the snake’s fault, which is interesting because God didn’t ask Eve a question about who had deceived her, he asked her what SHE had done.

Within her own attempted Deflection Eve invites comparison between serpentine deceit and simple disobedience.  It’s an even more subtle blending of technique than even Adam demonstrates.  By offering the Serpent’s sin as the excuse to cover for her own, she attempts to Minimize her sin.

Our first parents fought to escape confrontation through deception and accountability through irresponsibility.  As their progeny our apple doesn’t fall far from the tree does it?  Aren’t we all guilty of all this today?

It seems as if there’s still no way to get people to behave responsibly in the face of impending disaster.

In their behavior Adam and Eve demonstrated who they had become through sin:

Deceitful,
Mistrustful,
Irresponsible,
and
Guilty.

–

Their punishment should have meant instant destruction, but in his unfailing loving-kindness Yahweh did not annihilate them, or allow them to escape responsibility through deception.

He dealt with their rebellion by allowing the consequence of their sin to land squarely on the responsible parties:

Because he freely ate the fruit, Adam could no longer freely eat of the ground.
- Now only work would bear fruit.

Because Eve misled her husband, her relationships would be strained.
- Even childbirth would be tainted with pain.

They would be expelled from the Garden.
- Desiring to be like God cost them the ability to be with him.

Their physical bodies would now perish.
- Originally taken from the ground, they would now return to it.

–

In his kindness God didn’t withhold consequences, but he also didn’t leave them mired in them.

He took responsibility for restoring their righteousness, offering sacrifice and covering their shame with animal skins.  He also made a promise that their offspring would eventually deliver humanity from sin by crushing death, the just consequence of sin.

He pointed them away from “who they had become” and into “who they could be.”

 –

Ginger Matthews has lived in Long Beach, N.Y. for 59 years.  She defied the evacuation orders.  “I would never have imagined something so devastating… nobody would have convinced me to leave. … I wanted to be here to prevent anything… But that was senseless.”

If there’s ever another evacuation order in New York, there will undoubtedly be some people who decide to stay.

Because of who they are.

After suffering the consequences of her previous decision, left stranded in a ruined laundromat, Ginger Matthews will probably make the decision that could make her a survivor.

Because that’s who she wants to be.

Continue to Part 3

When I was seven I was caught shoplifting

I had been enjoying some unsupervised free-time in the toy department when I decided that I’d help myself to some Star Wars figurines.

This wasn’t the first time I had stolen something.

There wasn’t a high degree of difficulty involved because someone else had already opened the packaging. I simply waited until I was alone in the aisle and then placed three of the toys in pocket of my windbreaker. I walked out the door, got in the car, and headed home to enjoy the results of my inter-galactic crime spree.

I enjoyed them for about 2 hours.

When my mother found me playing with the toys, she asked me where I had gotten them. I knew that I needed to say that I had taken them from the store, but I didn’t tell her that.

I told her that “I found them”.

She didn’t believe me.

I was taken to see my father.

I told him that they were “given to me” by a stranger.

He didn’t believe me.

I was taken to see the retail manager.

I told him that I had stolen them.

He believed me.

If you know me well you’ve heard this story and how it turned me from a life of theft, but I want to point out that it took a significant amount of work by many people to turn the tide of rebelliousness and burglary in my life.

I had a proclivity for theft and no desire to turn from it.

I could explain my inclination to pilfer by describing an early childhood of deprivation and poverty, but at the end of it all I would still have to admit that my parents had instructed me against stealing and that I knew what I was doing was wrong.

Even though I knew better, I still “talked myself”into stealing.  Afterwards I mentally and emotionally justified my actions. I was a child thief, and I didn’t care about the moral implications:

Being a thief got me what I wanted.

I was revealing who I was by what I’d chosen to do.

There was a reason for why I didn’t “fess up” when I got caught, and you might think that it was because I didn’t want to get into trouble. While it’s true that children don’t enjoy being punished, I have to admit that my deviance went above and beyond that of a typical child:

I also didn’t want to stop taking things that didn’t belong to me.

Getting caught meant that I would be more closely supervised. Confessing to my crimes meant a kleptomanic curbing, and that would keep me from “getting what I wanted”.

How I responded to my crimes revealed who I was choosing to become.

–

This blog series will take a deeper look into how we respond to our transgressions, and how these responses help determine the trajectory of our lives.

While each one of us participates in the soul-crushing behaviors of human failure, we also have the opportunity to respond to these moments of self-destruction in ways that participate with God in his resurrection and re-creation of humanity.

We’ll be diving into the failures of six different Biblical characters and examining their response to the correction of a sovereign God; each of them revealing through sin “who they were”, and demonstrating “who they would become” through their responses.

Part 1 will cover our desire to escape accountability by denying responsibility.

Part 2 will look at how God defeats this by demanding we examine ourselves against his standards.

Part 3 delves into the choices we make in adversity and how they point us towards relationship with God, or exclusion from his presence.

Part 4 investigates how confession and repentance move us from a path of destruction and point us towards restoration with God and mankind.

Part 5 examines the connection between spiritual defiance and mental or emotional illness.

Part 6 considers how we “come back” after making a mess of things

–

As we begin, I’d like to illustrate the human propensity to deny the role we play in interpersonal, global, and spiritual corruption.  ”Covering our tracks” is demonstrated in 4 common behaviors meant to escape personal responsibility:

Denial- Refusing to acknowledge our sin or failure.

“I know you’re upset, but I just don’t see it that way.”

Distraction- Pointing out the sin or failure of others.

“Your problem isn’t with me, it’s actually with ‘those people.’”

Deflection- Acknowledging sin but placing the blame on someone or something else.

“Well if I’m angry, it’s your fault for making me angry.”

Minimization- Admitting fault but comparing ourselves favorably to a “larger” problem.

“Ok, so I stole, but it’s not like I murdered somebody.”

These behaviors are demonstrations of a mindset that goes over and above the assertion that “it isn’t cheating if you don’t get caught”; they attempt to satisfy the belief that “if we don’t get punished then we aren’t actually guilty.”

–

While matters of truth do eventually slip out passively over time, history reveals that justice very rarely “happens” without the faithful work of courageous and trustworthy people.

Working to reveal the human responsibility in a matter is often the first step in helping to bring someone to a confession that begins the process of human and divine restoration.

I know because I’ve experienced this myself.

–

My response to the theft of the Star Wars men was not one of personal responsibility. My initial response was to deny that I had broken any rules or laws.

After that I tried to label the items a “gift”.

A faithful investigation into the facts of the situation, by trustworthy and caring individuals, revealed otherwise.

As believers we have some specific responsibilities to God in the areas of honesty, self-examination, submission, and confrontation.  When each of us is willing to go beyond our self-centered desires for preservation and spiritual autonomy we open ourselves to the work of God in our lives.  This work transforms our nature, and that change is demonstrated in our behavior.

The work is often difficult, frustrating and painful.

“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” – Romans 5:2-3

It was the diligence and just behavior of responsible people who “held my feet to the fire” that brought me to the point where I made an honest confession of not only what I had done, but the kind of person that I was.

This was the first step a new movement.
That movement was the first in a new direction.
That new direction became a new trajectory for my life.

–

“My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” -James 5:19-20

Continue to Part 2

AP/Yahoo News

Tonight’s presidential debate is going to debut a new feature:  many media outlets will provide live “fact-checking” during the proceedings.  This means that for the first time in debate history, whether or not a statement is statistically correct will be revealed during the event… as opposed to the days and weeks afterwards.

While this means that percentages and estimates will be difficult to fabricate on the spot (as many conversational statistics are) it also means that both teams will begin preparation for the debates by making sure that their assertions are justifiable and verifiable, not merely anecdotal or opinion.

Their words are likely to be more carefully crafted and their statements less dramatic.

While radio and television brought an immediacy to the fact checking of previous debates, the lack of ability to immediately interact with fact-checkers meant that a person identifying a discrepancy between an assertion and a verifiable statistic also needed access to a national publishing outlet to make the discrepancy known.

With the advent of digital publishing, and interactive media, the day of immediate accountability appears to have arrived.  There is a strong possibility that this could be the most “guarded” debate in history.

–

I’ve been deposed three times in my life.

I’m not using the word deposed in the same way that we talk about dictators, I’m using it in the legal sense.  I’ve been asked to testify as a witness in several lawsuits, and in each case there is a moment where you swear an oath to be honest, and then everyone in the room begins recording your words on paper and audio devices.

Because no word goes un-recorded you gain a deep, personal knowledge that every thing you say not only “counts”, but can be recalled, sifted, and then made to stand against a device of measurement.

The people are being paid to investigate the facts.

They will judge you accordingly.

There are stiff penalties for perjury.

There is very little room for opinion, speculation, or preference.

–

We tend to think that we will be heard for our many words.  We often think that we can sway people to our cause by wearing them down with our volume.  We like to set ourselves up in positions of authority so that our words will carry more weight.

Accountability is truly the only thing that makes us second guess our ambition and vanity.

This is why teachers give tests isn’t it?  Class attendance doesn’t count for much if you cannot demonstrate knowledge when the headmaster call you to justify your responses.  Generally speaking, wisdom is the result of applying our knowledge correctly, and it’s hard to grow wise when no one makes an accounting for how we’ve implemented our knowledge.

–

So who fact-checks you?

Is there a person who dares to push back on your version of events?

Have you given someone permission to be skeptical of your spin?

Do you allow your “position” to promote infallibility?

I’ve learned over the years that unless I invite “fact-checkers” into my life, I will surround ourselves with sycophants and “yes-men”.  I will reward the people and programs who “tell me what I want to hear”, while I punish my critics.

This is humanity’s simplest and easiest way to avoid accountability, and it has to be actively opposed to be defeated.  We defeat this self-centeredness by giving “permission to confront” to the people who love us most, and then responding in humility when it happens.

While we do “get better” with follow-up accountability, we actually “get best” when we begin our daily preparation with the knowledge that our words and behaviors carry weighty consequences.

–

“Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy.” -Proverbs 27:6

–

Author’s note:  Please let this post do what it is intended to do; ask yourself how accountability personally impacts your life.  Please refrain from turning this post about personal accountability into a stump to spew partisan political opinion from.  God is doing a personal work in your life, take a moment to join him in it.

The Spaghetti Factory is one of my guilty pleasures.  I know that it’s not high-quality Italian food, but it’s better, faster, cheaper, and more fun than the majority of its competitors.  I say more fun because for some reason the folks behind Portland’s world-famous purveyor of pasta decided that they needed to build doors big enough to allow Hagrid entrance to their establishment.  Where else can you get to eat spaghetti and feel like you are visiting the set of “The Hobbit”?

I like to order salad with the creamy pesto, an iced tea, the Mizithra cheese or the meat sauce with zesty sausage, and finish it off with a rock hard scoop of spumoni.  For my money there’s only one problem with a visit to the Spaghetti Factory.

The Bread Course.

Now it’s not that the freshly baked loaf they bring to your table isn’t delicious.  It’s just that there’s absolutely no way to eat it.  The Spag Fac’s Achilles heel is delivered alongside your steaming bread and garlic butter.

It’s the world’s dullest knife.

10 minutes before you receive your entrees the wait staff will present you with the world’s hottest loaf of bread and what appears to be a prison shiv.  What they should be bringing you is an Ove Glove and a chainsaw. Anyone who has ever been to a Spaghetti Factory before knows not to volunteer for bread duty.  Unless there is a Spaghetti Factory newbie who volunteers, the table instantly becomes a high stakes game of “Who can eat their nearly frozen salad the slowest”, while not making eye contact with anyone else.

It’s the same routine every time.

It’s a poker match that involves calculating the amount of self-discipline the members of your party posses against the amount of time that it takes blazing bread to become cool enough to touch, but warm enough to still maintain it’s moisture content… because when that sucker gets cold, it becomes a giant crouton.

The first person to reach for the bread is the loser, because after picking up the knife, every other seated person begins “innocently” asking the same question, “Oh can you cut me a piece while you’re at it?”

You don’t want to be the person cutting the bread.

Obviously one of your hands is going to get blistered as you attempt to grip the loaf, but what isn’t obvious is that the bread is actually going to get hotter and hotter from the friction that builds as you begin rubbing the “toothy”, yet blunt, blade of the knife against the crusty outer-shell at blinding speed.

You aren’t sure whether the rising smoke is coming from your hand or the bread.

Things only get worse after penetrating the crust, since the bread no longer provides any support to resist the weight of your hand.  Now you are just mashing the bread into flat, misshapen, nuggets that you must start dealing around the table like poker chips.

Since you have the only “knife” at the table, nobody else can butter their poker chip.

The best part of your experience is yet to come, because before you can sit back to enjoy your frost-bitten salad, you have to use your now bacon-esque hand to to sweep away the bread crumbs from your place setting.  Spaghetti Factory busboys can always spot the seat of the bread cutter; it looks like the seat occupied by a 3 year-old with saltines, multiplied by the table saw station at a construction site.

It’s enough to make you bring your own knife to the table.

Which of course is what you think you’ll do the next time that you go to the Spaghetti Factory.  Whenever I leave those giant doors, I promise myself that I’m going to return with a whetstone or some sharp shears, but the problem is that I very rarely think of smuggling in my own machete when we’re leaving the house.

Which makes me wonder if “not having the right tools to do a job” is still a viable excuse the second time we use it? I know that I like to point out the inadequacy of my equipment when my performance is lacking, but how often do I begin a job knowing that I’m going to need outside help and not call for back-up?

Because back-up is available at the Spaghetti Factory.  There’s no rule against asking for a sharper knife.  You know there’s a sharp knife somewhere in the facility, they are opening boxes and slicing up lasagna in the kitchen.

It’s also possible to ask the server to cut the bread for you.

In fact, I think the fastest way to get sharp knives into the Spaghetti Factory is have the servers burn THEIR hands in the cutting process.  Even if corporate doesn’t want sharp knives in hands of customers, the workmen’s compensation claims alone ought to get some immediate response from upper management.

Truth is, we like to play the victim, because it means someone else will spring into action on our behalf, especially when we can “prove” that we have been wronged.  In reality, we always have something we can do to work through the problems we face regardless of where we believe the fault lies.  Because I don’t actually have to burn my hand off to eat bread.

Even the house key in my pocket is a safer cutting alternative.