A Different Kind of Life

Where is Your Brother?

Afterward the Lord asked Cain, “Where is your brother? Where is Abel?” “I don’t know!” Cain retorted. “Am I supposed to keep track of him wherever he goes?”
--Genesis 4:9

When we left off on Saturday, all was well in the garden. Man had been created for relationships with God and other people, and had been placed in the perfect environment to nurture those relationships. However as with most good things, man managed to find a way to mess it up. The story is fairly simple—man was given one rule, and of course, he broke it, leading to his getting kicked out of the garden, suffering and toil, and so on. But what we need to see here is in verse 7, just after they eat the fruit.

“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. 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.”

They eat the fruit, and instantly everything changes—they have broken the communion that they shared with God. What is more, they realize that they are naked and are suddenly ashamed and cover themselves. By breaking the one rule that God gave them—asserting their own will and desires above the instruction of God who made them and cared for them—they have broken that community that they shared with Him. In so doing, they have also broken the community that they shared with one another—they are now covering up—hiding from one another as well as God.

This is a fundamental law of life—as you sever your relationship with God, it severs your relationship with people. And the converse is true as well—as you connect to God, you will naturally begin to connect with people. Your connection to God is demonstrated in your care for people. The Scriptures amply bear out this idea, and it only takes one more chapter to make it plain—Genesis 4. Here we have the story of Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve—one is a rancher and one is a farmer. Abel brings an offering to God, and God is pleased with it. However, Cain brings his offering, and God does not accept it. Look at why, though—God says to Cain, “If you do the right thing, will you not be accepted? Sin is waiting for you Cain, it desires to master you, but you must master it.” Basically God is telling him that the very thing in his soul that drives a wedge between him and God is going to cause him to do things he will regret. And sure enough, in the next verse, Cain goes out to the field with Abel and kills him.

Do you catch the significance of this? Cain had no quarrel with Abel. God didn’t reject Cain because of Abel or anything like that—Cain was mad at God, and took it out on the one that God loved. As Cain separated from his relationship with God, he separated from his relationships with others. We live in a society that is at open war against God—and that separation from the relationship that we were designed to enjoy with Him has caused us to become fragmented in our relationships with one another as well.

Anyone experience this kind of connection?

Not Good to Be Alone

And the Lord God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.”
--Genesis 2:18

I would like to offer some more thoughts on the idea from yesterday—about our utter loneliness in the midst of our ability to fulfill our every physical desire. Our society of indulgence has given us ample opportunity to test this theory firsthand—having everything you want does not fill the emptiness of the soul. Our self-centered culture has yet to understand a basic component of the human condition, namely that we were made to live in community. We were made for relationships, and as we sever those relationships with one another and with God, we reap a fractured society and a broken sense of self.

As any lawyer or counselor will tell you, a crucial part of figuring out what is going on or how to solve a problem is learning the backstory. We have to learn where we have already been in order to understand who we are and where we go from here. If we are going to understand how to relate to one another, then we must understand how the whole thing was originally supposed to work. We see in Genesis 1 the story of creation, and of God creating everything out of nothing (which is a fairly impressive feat, if you’ve never thought about it). Notice that after each thing that he creates, he declares it to be “good”—not just “finished” or “adequate,” but “good.” Then at the end, he creates man “in his own image” and declares him to be “very good.” This is an absolutely crucial distinction to make here—God has made everything to coexist with everything else, and it is all “very good.” In order for us to properly understand what has gone wrong in our world, we must understand that a guiding principle of creation is relationship—nothing was created in a vacuum. God did not make things and simply throw them on the planet or haphazardly toss things together—everything was made to work together and to depend on one another. We see this easily in nature—we are just now beginning to understand the far-ranging interconnectedness of the created world. We understand now that if we dump motor oil in the river, then it will poison the physical world around us, and eventually end up poisoning us as well. The world and everything in it is created in a state of relationship. What is more, we see when we flip over to Genesis 2, that God himself declared as he watched Adam do the work that God had given him, that “it is not good for man to be alone.” God looked at the situation and said that “you need more than relationship to the world around you and relationship to me—you need a helper, a companion who is like you.” So he puts Adam to sleep and makes Eve. (Just as a side note, can you imagine how disorienting it might have been for Adam to wake up from that nap???) Look at Adam’s immediate response in verse 23—“this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh…” He immediately understood that there was a deeper connection than just “hey, you’re pretty cool.” They intuitively understood that they needed one another, that they were made for this kind of community and commitment. The writer even describes the union between them in the most intimate kind of terms—in verse 24, he describes the joined husband and wife as becoming “one flesh.”

There is more to this story (we’ll get to that on Monday), but don’t miss the significance here—from the very beginning, we were designed to live in community. Our insistence on independent and solitary lives is not only counterintuitive to our nature, but it is detrimental to our overall wellbeing.

Where Do You Want to Go Today?

Where do you want to go today?
--Microsoft ad campaign

Think about the advertisements that you see every day—“Get a brand new car with no money down!” “This pill will help you to shed that unsightly bulge and get you ready for the swimsuit season!” “I made $25k last month working from home 3 hours a week!” “The Jack LaLanne Power Juicer will help your family to live healthier, more active lives on only pennies a day!” And so on. It is estimated by some that the average city dweller is exposed to 3000-5000 advertisements per day, a fact that both astounds and scares me. We have at our fingertips access to fulfillment of any conceivable desire, urge, or interest.

Think of the common thread that unites virtually all advertisements—every single one of them appeals to our obsession with ourselves. This product or service will in some way make you happier, more fulfilled, richer, more famous, and so on; in other words "this" product is the golden ticket to the life that you’ve always wanted. Yet as we all well know, such claims are rarely if ever fulfilled. Things just never seem to measure up to all the hype. So we live in a world where we are constantly pressed to acquire the newest gadget, get a better job, lose more weight, become more sexy—and all of this simply leaves us more and more empty—full of disappointment and unfulfilled promises.

Perhaps even more telling is the fact that we have entire websites, television channels, publications, and news segments dedicated to nothing more than celebrity gossip. What is our fascination with the lives of the rich, famous, beautiful, and powerful? I think that it might just be in part due to this deep-seated desire to achieve lasting happiness and fulfillment—I think we identify with them at some level. We may recognize that we lack the ability or resources to achieve this happiness, but if anyone can do it, they can. Deep down, we are rooting for them because we want to believe that our dreams and desires really can come true.

So the question then becomes—why is this the case? Why is it that we are more capable than ever of acquiring anything our heart desires, yet those things once we have them leave us with little more than more desire? How can we be surrounded by more stuff and people than ever, yet still be so lonely?

What's in the Tank?

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
--John 3:16

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario. You win the lottery. (A nice start to any hypothetical story, eh?) You decide you want to do something nice for a friend, so you decide to buy them a gift—a new car. (Hey, you hypothetically won the lottery; so buying a hypothetical car shouldn’t be a big deal, right?) Excited, you take them the new car and tell them that everything is taken care of, and all they have to do to enjoy this fantastic car anytime they want is to put gas in it and go.

You check back with them a few days later to see how they are enjoying it, only to find out that it isn’t working, hasn’t been working, and in fact is now completely broken. Needless to say, you would be a bit stunned and concerned. (Come on, you spent good hypothetical money on this hypothetical car.) You ask them, “What happened?” and they tell you, “I don’t know—I put gas in the thing, and it started making all kinds of funny noises and smells and finally just stopped working altogether.” After a few more questions, you discover that they filled the car with diesel rather than gasoline.

It doesn’t require a whole lot of automotive or mechanical knowledge to deduce that the root of their problem lies in the fact that they tried to power the car with the wrong thing.

Let us now return to the question from yesterday—whether or not the easy explanation for our twisted view of love is the end of the matter. Is it really the case that our selfishness is a sufficient explanation for how we can “fall in love with love?”

I would say no—not because our selfishness isn’t a factor, but rather because the easy explanation doesn’t explain the depth of our insatiable desire. You see, we are all well aware that regardless of how many (good or bad) relationships, friendships, or sexual encounters we have, our desire is never sated—we remain unfulfilled. Yet at the same time, we are unable to abandon the idea of perfect, fulfilling love; whether or not we are willing to admit it, we all search for a “soulmate”—someone to fulfill our every emotional and relational desire.

Put simply, our idea of love doesn’t work because we fill it with the wrong thing.

It is not that our feeling/idea of love is expecting too much, it is that we are expecting it from the wrong source. You and I were made to experience a dynamic, all-encompassing, life-changing, pervasive kind of love. Yet if we don’t seek that love in the right place, then we will be perpetually disappointed (as well as increasingly self-serving and destructive toward the object of our affections).

Thoughts?

Me or the Thought of Me....

Who do you love?
Girl I see through, through your love
Who do you love?
Me or the thought of me, me or the thought of me?
--John Mayer, “I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)”

As I was listening to the radio on the way to work this morning, this song came on. It is now several hours later, and this lyric is still rattling around in my head. (At least I like this song—most of the time when this kind of thing happens, it ends up being a song that I despise.)

All that aside, it’s an interesting thought to consider. Have you ever loved the idea of someone more than you loved the actual person? On the flipside, have you ever been on the receiving end of this, had someone love the thought of you more than they actually loved you? To put it in another common phrase, have you ever seen someone (or been that someone yourself) who was “in love with love?”

Why are we like this? Why are we so addicted to this feeling of “love” that we are able to detach it completely from reality like this?

The easy answer here is that we are selfish creatures; that we twist our idea of love and who that love is to suit our own desires. It is easily proven that we suppress everything else in an effort to achieve our own pleasure and fulfillment. In such a scenario, specific people become little more than tools or opportunities for our own consumption and fulfillment. Yet is that all there is to it?

Is the easy answer the right one in this case?

Greed for the Good

“Watch out! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. When you give to someone in need, don’t do as the hypocrites do—blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity! I tell you the truth, they have received all the reward they will ever get. But when you give to someone in need, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Give your gifts in private, and your Father, who sees everything, will reward you."
--Matthew 6:1-4

Have you ever wondered if doing the right thing can sometimes be the wrong thing? If in an attempt to do good, we actually end up doing a great deal of wrong? I think it just may be possible, and could actually take place more than we think.

In considering the question for yesterday, this warning from Jesus came to mind. Again, it is a kind of greed that I had never really considered before. Generally when I read this passage, I tend to take it as a fairly straightforward warning—don’t make a show of doing good. While I think this is good and worthy warning, have you ever considered why Jesus would have given it? I think there are two reasons.

First, I think he gives this warning because in drawing attention to the good that we do, we inflict a great deal of harm upon ourselves. When we give in to this greed for honor, this desire to be known as kind/generous/merciful/self-sacrificing/etc., we cheapen the beauty and power of the kindness we do. Put simply, we take something that is about others and make it about ourselves. So not only do we lose the ability to truly effect good by our actions, but we lose the reward—the joy, honor, and peace—given by God that comes from such an act.

Second, I think he also gives this warning because when the good that we do becomes a show, a spectacle for the world around us, it does a great deal of harm to those that we are trying to help. By proclaiming our good deed for all to see, we objectify their suffering and rob them of the mercy that we are trying to give, replacing it with nothing more than mere pity. We take their suffering and turn it into nothing more than an opportunity to display our “glory.”

Does your own experience echo these results?

Greedy for a different life...

Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
--Luke 12:15

As I said on Saturday, I have been mulling over this idea for a couple of days now, trying to dig a little deeper into what it says about my own heart and desires. In the last post, I asked the question “How much do I act like my life depends on holding on to my stuff?” It is definitely an important question, and I’m afraid that all too often I am ashamed at the answer I must give. Yet I feel like there is something still deeper here.

I was reading over this passage again, and stumbled on something interesting. The last word in the sentence, here translated as “possessions”, is perhaps not as straightforward as it might seem. You see, the Greek word (uparkonta for those who are curious) here can definitely mean “possessions”—physical, tangible objects which can be bought, sold, kept, given, hoarded, and so on. This is the sense in which I have generally understood it, and as a result, have generally thought of this passage as talking about physical possessions and wealth.

However, I discovered today that this word can also be used to refer to “means”—capability, opportunity, or skill that another possesses. This floored me. I think that I can be fairly honest and say that I do pretty well about being greedy or envious of the physical wealth and possessions of others. Yet there is not a day that goes by that I don’t find myself envying the skills or opportunity of others rather than being thankful for my own. What is more, I all too often find myself thinking that I would be more successful/fulfilled/happy/valuable if I only had the skills or opportunity of another. I find myself greedy for that which they possess—greedy to the point of thinking less of my own life.

Yet what Jesus says here is that even possessions such as these—opportunities and means—do not encapsulate the life of their owner.

Do you ever find yourself in this boat? Find yourself thinking that your life would be better or more valuable if you only had the opportunity of someone else? How do we deal with this?

Greedier Than I Think

Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
--Luke 12:15

Greed. Such a nasty idea. Just the word alone conjures up negative connotations in our minds—thoughts of Ebenezer Scrooge combined with Donald Trump come to mind for me (which is really kind of funny, since my natural reaction when I think of Ebenezer Scrooge is to think of the Disney animated version…that combo gives me Donald Trump in animated duck form…)

Back to the thought at hand—I generally wouldn’t consider myself a greedy person. (Nor would most people, I’m guessing.) In fact, I like to consider myself fairly generous. Yet as I consider things lately, I have been wondering if I am perhaps quite a bit more greedy than I would like to admit, or perhaps quite a bit more greedy than I even consciously realize. So, I’m going to hit on this idea for a couple more days, attempting to dig a little deeper into my own heart each time, and see what comes of it.

We’ll start with what lies at face value. Here we have a guy coming to Jesus and telling him to tell his brother to divide the inheritance with him. Now as was recently pointed out to me, this would not have been the job of Jesus or any other religious teacher of the day. There was a specific class of legal experts that dealt with the division of inheritances (which would have been primarily land)—rabbis like Jesus did not deal with it. So already there is something fishy at work—the guy comes to Jesus basically asking him to endorse his plan. Jesus recognizes it immediately, and tells everyone within earshot to watch out for all kinds of greed—that your life isn’t encapsulated by the stuff you possess.

Now back to me—I readily agree with this. If you asked me if my life was summed up by the stuff I have, my likely answer would be “Man, I hope not.” Yet at the same time, I have to be honest with myself—how tightly do I hold to the little that I do have? (Which is quite a lot, if I look at my pile on a global scale.) How frustrated do I get about bills, or about a dinner tab that doesn’t quite get split right?

More deeply, how much do I act like my life depends on holding on to that stuff?

Maybe I’m greedier than I think.

Self-Deception

Don’t be selfish; don’t live to make a good impression on others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourself. Don’t think only about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and what they are doing.
--Philippians 2:3-4

I read an interesting book today entitled Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute—if you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend it. To summarize briefly, it deals with self-deception and it’s effect on interpersonal relations as well as individual and organizational success. And to summarize even more briefly, I am the problem. Of course, I suspected that I was the problem before I even picked the book up; this just serves to detail a little more clearly of why.

At this point, you may be wondering what this mini-confessional has to do with anything else. You see, the basic concept described in this book is the same one that is illustrated in the above passage. Our deepest and most significant conflict, problems, and interpersonal frustrations come from our tendency to see other people as objects (problems, irritations, inconveniences, whatever word you would like to fill in the blank) rather than as people with hopes, dreams, desires, and goals equally important to them as ours are to us. Yet when we are deceived by ideas of our own importance and “rightness”, we are not only unable to see others accurately, but are also pushed farther into a vicious cycle of self-justification. Put simply, I see others as the problem, so I treat them harshly, which causes them to be frustrated and likely cause more problems, thus justifying my original selfish view.

The Apostle Paul (writing some 2000 years before the Arbinger Institute), hit on this very same idea—that our ability to successfully exist in community with others as God designed us to (whether that be in a workplace, family, friendship or some other setting) is directly linked to our ability to honestly see and care about others.

So with this thought in mind, I ask two questions:

1. How have you treated someone as an object rather than a person in the last week?
2. What did you gain by it? (i.e. Did it make the relationship better or worse?)