Here is where you will find some past transcripts of podcasts, as well as daily thoughts and practices associated with the weekly theme.
#BlackLivesMatter and Accompaniment - 06/06/20
Take positive action by supporting Black-owned businesses:
https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/support-black-owned-businesses/
https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/support-black-owned-businesses/
Visit www.blacklivesmatter.com for more information.
The videos below help express, with some honest humor, the significance of "Black Lives Matter" and "White Privilege". The attached file is useful if you want to understand something more about how to do accompaniment. You don't have to be religious or believe in God or a higher power to find useful information in the attachment. You will still find valuable information in respect to practicing accompaniment.
The videos below help express, with some honest humor, the significance of "Black Lives Matter" and "White Privilege". The attached file is useful if you want to understand something more about how to do accompaniment. You don't have to be religious or believe in God or a higher power to find useful information in the attachment. You will still find valuable information in respect to practicing accompaniment.
| accompaniment__full_.pdf |
To err is human, to forgive divine - 05/22/20
On 5/21 it was the birthday of the great poet Alexander Pope (1688), who said among other things "To err is human, to forgive divine."
Where have we arrived today, in the midst of a pandemic, tensions and anxiety running high? Have we learned how to adopt this old proverb or do we look about the same as folks did in 1688? Everyday is an opportunity to draw closer to one another in the midst of challenging times, or we can drift apart. Are we willing to stop blaming, start listening, and begin to understand one another? These videos from the PBS Newshour I've been holding onto since June 2018 make me wonder. Hang in there everyone!
Where have we arrived today, in the midst of a pandemic, tensions and anxiety running high? Have we learned how to adopt this old proverb or do we look about the same as folks did in 1688? Everyday is an opportunity to draw closer to one another in the midst of challenging times, or we can drift apart. Are we willing to stop blaming, start listening, and begin to understand one another? These videos from the PBS Newshour I've been holding onto since June 2018 make me wonder. Hang in there everyone!
The Light Gets In - 04/07/20
From "Pop's Poet Laureate", Leonard Cohen (Anthem)
The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be
Yeah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free
Ring the bells (ring the bells) that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
We asked for signs
The signs were sent
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see
I can't run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
A thundercloud
And they're going to hear from me
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
You can add up the parts
You won't have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart to love will come
But like a refugee
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
Ring the bells that still can ring (ring the bells that still can ring)
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in
The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be
Yeah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free
Ring the bells (ring the bells) that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
We asked for signs
The signs were sent
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see
I can't run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
A thundercloud
And they're going to hear from me
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
You can add up the parts
You won't have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart to love will come
But like a refugee
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
Ring the bells that still can ring (ring the bells that still can ring)
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in
Rilke as Medicine for COVID-19 - 03/26/20
Ah, not to be cut off,
not by such slight partition
to be excluded from the stars' measure.
What is inwardness?
What if not sky intensified,
flung through with birds and deep
with winds of homecoming.
----- ----- -----
God talks to each of us as he creates us,
then walks with us silently out of night.
But the words, spoken to us before we start,
those cloudy words, are these:
Sent forth by your senses,
go to the very edge of your desire;
invest me.
Back behind the things grow as fire,
so that their shadows , lengthened,
will always and completely cover me.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Only press on: no feeling is final.
Don't let yourself be cut off from me.
Nearby is that country
known as Life.
You will recognize it
by its seriousness.
Give me your name.
not by such slight partition
to be excluded from the stars' measure.
What is inwardness?
What if not sky intensified,
flung through with birds and deep
with winds of homecoming.
----- ----- -----
God talks to each of us as he creates us,
then walks with us silently out of night.
But the words, spoken to us before we start,
those cloudy words, are these:
Sent forth by your senses,
go to the very edge of your desire;
invest me.
Back behind the things grow as fire,
so that their shadows , lengthened,
will always and completely cover me.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Only press on: no feeling is final.
Don't let yourself be cut off from me.
Nearby is that country
known as Life.
You will recognize it
by its seriousness.
Give me your name.
Unconditional Love? - 12/14/19
Is there really such a thing as unconditional love?
What does it look and feel like? Or why doesn't it exist?
Click on CONTACT and SUPPORT on this page and share your thoughts through email.
What does it look and feel like? Or why doesn't it exist?
Click on CONTACT and SUPPORT on this page and share your thoughts through email.
Faith, Self Care, Human Contact - 10/03/19
Apologies for any delay in the video loading. Please bear with it. It's more than worth it. You may need a box of tissue to be kept nearby. I did. If you watch the upper right corner of the video you'll see that even the judge did.
For the many times we get to see things go poorly in courtrooms this video displays an amazing level of humanity in the midst of great pain. People may debate whether legal justice was rendered, but a profound sense of divine justice that everyone involved in this case will need moving forward in life was certainly rendered. The brother of the victim displays a face for people of faith we desperately need to see. This is what it means to believe and this is what it means to take on the process of forgiveness. It's never a "one and done" scenario. It will be a perpetual process for the rest of his life but he shows us a better, healthier way forward from trauma.
Yes, faith is evident. Yes, self care in the work of forgiveness is evident. The only piece the video or pundits failed to highlight (though the brother of the victim knew well) was the need for human touch. In addition to the value of forgiveness I have also previously touched (no pun intended) on the increase of social isolation and the significance of human contact. Everyone involved in this ordeal deeply benefited from the physical contact of a simple act of hugging. Where words fail us, a touch (in this case a hug) gives voice to something transcendent, profound, and divine.
For the many times we get to see things go poorly in courtrooms this video displays an amazing level of humanity in the midst of great pain. People may debate whether legal justice was rendered, but a profound sense of divine justice that everyone involved in this case will need moving forward in life was certainly rendered. The brother of the victim displays a face for people of faith we desperately need to see. This is what it means to believe and this is what it means to take on the process of forgiveness. It's never a "one and done" scenario. It will be a perpetual process for the rest of his life but he shows us a better, healthier way forward from trauma.
Yes, faith is evident. Yes, self care in the work of forgiveness is evident. The only piece the video or pundits failed to highlight (though the brother of the victim knew well) was the need for human touch. In addition to the value of forgiveness I have also previously touched (no pun intended) on the increase of social isolation and the significance of human contact. Everyone involved in this ordeal deeply benefited from the physical contact of a simple act of hugging. Where words fail us, a touch (in this case a hug) gives voice to something transcendent, profound, and divine.
Worth Keeping - 5/27/19
As a long-time traveler, I perpetually live with the question "What's worth keeping?" I'm still working on the answer, but with each move I let go of a little more. Today, what's worth keeping in your life and what's time to let go?
Love is still the answer - 5/27/19
Seriously, is there a question (especially where your life or relationships are concerned) where love is not the answer?
Breakfast with Jesus - 5/27/19
How do you perceive people and the world around you? Every encounter, like the video below, can be an opportunity for "breakfast with Jesus".
Be Inspired - 3/15/19
Where do you find inspiration in life? Where can you identify inspiration today?
I recently visited the sacred baseball grounds in Cooperstown, NY. I was particularly inspired as I gazed upon Jackie Robinson's plaque. I noticed places, especially around his face, where people have obviously rubbed. They sought to touch the face of someone who deeply inspired and affected them. How beautiful! He's but one example among many, but what an example he serves to remind us to be resilient and press on in the face of adversity. Be inspired...
I recently visited the sacred baseball grounds in Cooperstown, NY. I was particularly inspired as I gazed upon Jackie Robinson's plaque. I noticed places, especially around his face, where people have obviously rubbed. They sought to touch the face of someone who deeply inspired and affected them. How beautiful! He's but one example among many, but what an example he serves to remind us to be resilient and press on in the face of adversity. Be inspired...
You Are Your Own Valentine - 2/14/19
"I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:13 NRSV). Say to self. Repeat. And again...
Be kind to yourself. It's good for you.
Be kind to yourself. It's good for you.
Long-suffering - 1/27/19
We are not accustomed to waiting. It's hard to do.
Divine forbearance imposes a demand for human forbearance too. Forbearance, of course, is not renunciation but postponement with a view to repentance (cf. Nah. 1:2ff.). In this light God’s makrothymía is a gift. Nor is it confined to Israel or the righteous; this is why it can arouse complaints in, e.g., Jeremiah (15:15) and Jonah (4:2).
God’s forbearance pledges Christians to a similar forbearance (1 Th. 5:14) which, as a fruit of the Spirit controlled by love (Gal. 5:22), issues in mutual correction. Love itself is forbearing (1 Cor. 13:4). Forbearance is a necessary quality in the service of God (2 Cor. 6:6), linking knowledge and kindness. It is a spiritual force that has its origin in the divine glory and works itself out in joyful endurance (Col. 1:11).
Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theol. Dictionary of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 550-551.
----------------------------
2 Ptr. 3:9
The Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
"There are two ways of looking at things: God’s way and the way of the world. Thus this life and the life to come are of two kinds. This life cannot be the same as the life to come, since no one can enter the life to come except through death, that is, through the cessation of this life. Now this life amounts to eating, drinking, sleeping, digesting, begetting children, etc. Here everything goes by number: hours, days, and years in succession. Now when you want to look at the life to come, you must erase the course of this life from your mind. You dare not think that you can measure it as this life is measured. There everything will be one day, one hour, one moment." (LW 30:196)
Waiting for us is all too often passive.
Long-suffering brings with it the implication of doing the very thing you perhaps don’t want to do.
While you wait, love the person you don’t want to love.
While you wait, forgive the person you don’t want to forgive.
While you wait, serve the person you don’t want to serve.
That’s forbearance. That’s long suffering. That’s fruit worthy of repentance (change).
Divine forbearance imposes a demand for human forbearance too. Forbearance, of course, is not renunciation but postponement with a view to repentance (cf. Nah. 1:2ff.). In this light God’s makrothymía is a gift. Nor is it confined to Israel or the righteous; this is why it can arouse complaints in, e.g., Jeremiah (15:15) and Jonah (4:2).
God’s forbearance pledges Christians to a similar forbearance (1 Th. 5:14) which, as a fruit of the Spirit controlled by love (Gal. 5:22), issues in mutual correction. Love itself is forbearing (1 Cor. 13:4). Forbearance is a necessary quality in the service of God (2 Cor. 6:6), linking knowledge and kindness. It is a spiritual force that has its origin in the divine glory and works itself out in joyful endurance (Col. 1:11).
Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theol. Dictionary of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 550-551.
----------------------------
2 Ptr. 3:9
The Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
"There are two ways of looking at things: God’s way and the way of the world. Thus this life and the life to come are of two kinds. This life cannot be the same as the life to come, since no one can enter the life to come except through death, that is, through the cessation of this life. Now this life amounts to eating, drinking, sleeping, digesting, begetting children, etc. Here everything goes by number: hours, days, and years in succession. Now when you want to look at the life to come, you must erase the course of this life from your mind. You dare not think that you can measure it as this life is measured. There everything will be one day, one hour, one moment." (LW 30:196)
Waiting for us is all too often passive.
Long-suffering brings with it the implication of doing the very thing you perhaps don’t want to do.
While you wait, love the person you don’t want to love.
While you wait, forgive the person you don’t want to forgive.
While you wait, serve the person you don’t want to serve.
That’s forbearance. That’s long suffering. That’s fruit worthy of repentance (change).
Are you weak? - 1/20/19
2 Corinthians 12:7-10, NRSV
Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.
Paul wanted another way too. He asked for the thorn to be taken away, for his circumstances to change. It wasn't and it didn't.
When circumstances don't change to our way, what then?
What does strength, weakness, and grace look like then?
Watch this:
Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.
Paul wanted another way too. He asked for the thorn to be taken away, for his circumstances to change. It wasn't and it didn't.
When circumstances don't change to our way, what then?
What does strength, weakness, and grace look like then?
Watch this:
The Other Jesus - 1/13/19
Martin Luther, reflecting on 1 Peter 1:14 writes:
As obedient children.
That is, conduct yourselves as obedient children. In Scripture faith is called obedience*. The pope, with his schools of higher learning and his cloisters, has also mangled this little word for us and has applied to their silly lies what Scripture says about obedience, as, for example, the statement in 1 Sam. 15:22, where we read: “To obey is better than sacrifice.” For since they see clearly that obedience is greatly praised in Scripture, they have appropriated this in order to blind the people and to give the impression that the obedience of which Scripture speaks is their affair. In that way they bring us away from God’s Word to their lies and to the obedience of the devil. He who hears the Gospel and God’s Word, and believes in it, is an obedient child of God. Therefore tread underfoot and care nothing about what is not God’s Word (LW 30:30).
*Luther is referencing Romans 1:5, 16:19
1:5: through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name.
16:19: For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I want you to be wise in what is good and guileless in what is evil.
Obedience = Faith (belief)
Any time you encounter the word "obey" insert "believe".
Example: To believe is better than sacrifice (1 Sam. 15:22).
As obedient children.
That is, conduct yourselves as obedient children. In Scripture faith is called obedience*. The pope, with his schools of higher learning and his cloisters, has also mangled this little word for us and has applied to their silly lies what Scripture says about obedience, as, for example, the statement in 1 Sam. 15:22, where we read: “To obey is better than sacrifice.” For since they see clearly that obedience is greatly praised in Scripture, they have appropriated this in order to blind the people and to give the impression that the obedience of which Scripture speaks is their affair. In that way they bring us away from God’s Word to their lies and to the obedience of the devil. He who hears the Gospel and God’s Word, and believes in it, is an obedient child of God. Therefore tread underfoot and care nothing about what is not God’s Word (LW 30:30).
*Luther is referencing Romans 1:5, 16:19
1:5: through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name.
16:19: For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I want you to be wise in what is good and guileless in what is evil.
Obedience = Faith (belief)
Any time you encounter the word "obey" insert "believe".
Example: To believe is better than sacrifice (1 Sam. 15:22).
The Shit We Let In - 1/6/19
In the previous podcast we talked about what we allow to consume our energy. We look close at our own spiritual condition using Matthew 6:22-23, NRSV (with some added help from Seinfeld).
Jesus said, "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!"
What will you let in? What will you allow to consume your energy?
Jesus said, "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!"
What will you let in? What will you allow to consume your energy?
REMINDER: We are all doing the best we can in each moment, with the tools we were given and the tools we've acquired.
This is not an excuse for bad behavior but an explanation to help make sense of behavior that makes no sense. The phrase relieves some pressure so that the individual can be re-humanized enough to not hate them or be baited into a greater argument.
This is not an excuse for bad behavior but an explanation to help make sense of behavior that makes no sense. The phrase relieves some pressure so that the individual can be re-humanized enough to not hate them or be baited into a greater argument.
2019 Energy - 12/31/18
As we reflect on the old, old story of Jesus' birth and what this good news of the Word made flesh means in our daily life think about these words: Anything that consumes our energy can be a story, even if we don't always call it a story (J. Loehr, The Power of Story). In 2019 what will you allow you consume your energy?
Salt(y) Relationships - 12/23/18
When Jesus talks about salt losing its saltiness (Mark 9:50) it's a rhetorical idea. Salt CAN't lose its saltiness. It can however, be diluted. We have been salted (infused with God's unconditional [AGAPE] love and forgiveness). We can't lose it. But love, or our recognition or consciousness of it, can be so diluted that we struggle with believing we're loved at all. Love can be diluted by anger, negativity, hopelessness, despair, and a multitude of other things. Self-awareness is about practicing the ability to recognize when we're becoming diluted and then beginning to let go of those emotions that have diluted us. You're always salted. Have you become diluted in any way?
Forgiveness - 8/3/18
The attached article examines the validity of forgiveness as an intervention to trauma. While the research utilizes bullying as the traumatic experience, the results of the research are relevant in respect to any trauma or transgression. The results indicate that both forgiveness and avoidance lead to more positive cognitive and emotional coping responses than revenge. Skin conductance data suggested that forgiveness is the more immediately stressful process, providing insight into why people may choose avoidance strategies, which are associated with negative impacts in the longer term. A combination of short-term avoidance and longer term forgiveness may provide the most promising balance between positive short-term and long-term benefits for victims.
| imagery_rescripting_of_revenge_avoidance_and_forgiveness_for_past_bullying_experiences_in_young_adults.pdf |
Forgiveness - 8/2/18
It is my opinion that genuine forgiveness includes forgetting. I’m not talking about amnesia or no memory of the pain or trauma. If you look at the biblical examples from the podcast, particularly Micah 7.17 and Matthew 9.13 we see an expression of what God’s forgiveness looks like and we have a request from Jesus. We established in the episode on Sin that we and all creation are the glory of God. As the glory of God we hold no record of wrongs against the other who is also the glory God. In our humanness we recognize we mutually hurt one another. The 4-R’s of forgiveness are critical to our process: Responsibility; Remorse; Restoration; Renewal. Ultimately Jesus calls us to practice mercy (sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it). We can’t actually do that if we are retaining the sins of another.
Forgiveness - 8/1/18
David Hamilton, PhD, writes:
Forgiveness, too, is beneficial to our health. Studies now show that it significantly reduces hurt, anger, stress, anxiety and depression and gives us hope for the future. It is also good for the heart, as it reduces blood pressure and improves blood flow.
”Why Kindness is Good for You”
Forgiveness, too, is beneficial to our health. Studies now show that it significantly reduces hurt, anger, stress, anxiety and depression and gives us hope for the future. It is also good for the heart, as it reduces blood pressure and improves blood flow.
”Why Kindness is Good for You”
Forgiveness - 7/31/18
Another way to approach forgiveness:
Ask yourself, what is the worst thing that could happen if I forgive this individual?
Now ask yourself, what is the best thing that could happen if I forgive this individual?
Arguably in every instance, the "best" outcome exceeds and surpasses the "worst" outcome.
Ask yourself, what is the worst thing that could happen if I forgive this individual?
Now ask yourself, what is the best thing that could happen if I forgive this individual?
Arguably in every instance, the "best" outcome exceeds and surpasses the "worst" outcome.
Forgiveness - 7/30/18
If you missed this from yesterday’s podcast, it’s significant in taking a conscious step toward forgiveness:
Be willing to find a new way to think about the person who wronged you. What was his or her life like growing up? What was his or her life like at the time of the offence? What were this person's good points up to the time of the event that hurt?
Be willing to find a new way to think about the person who wronged you. What was his or her life like growing up? What was his or her life like at the time of the offence? What were this person's good points up to the time of the event that hurt?
Forgiveness - 7/29/18
Hello again. Welcome back to Prep the Day. I'm Scott Adams. Today we are continuing the conversation started last session as we considered sin. I'll remind you that we simplified the definition of sin. We defined sin this way: Sin is any break in relationship. Sin is any break in relationship.
There's more that we can say about that but I'll direct you back to the previous session if you want to get into that topic more. But where that conversation ended, today we pick up with the idea of forgiveness. Ultimately any sin can be overcome or reconciled, restored. The only way that that takes place is through forgiveness. We recognize the fact that we, as we discussed previously from Romans 3:23, that all have sinned (broken relationships) and fallen short of the glory of God. All of us have. But not all of us have, at least in our humanness or in our earthly life, (let's say) not all of us have experienced real forgiveness. So we want to get into that today and the value of forgiveness here and now in this life.
There are multiple studies some of which are spiritual or psychological in their scope but others are not. Other are looking actually, to be honest if we look at some of the best research along the lines of forgiveness right now or at least the most interesting it’s being done by organizations and businesses. Those who are trying to discern how they can acquire and retain quality individuals for their businesses and other organizational work. So you can begin to conceive of how forgiveness in that context would be valuable. Some of the research that they are producing for best practices are in organizational life. It’s actually interesting and very useful. Like most of the sessions I've got an audio, not visual this time, but an audio clip we’ll be using to get into our conversation. We're going to break away. You’ll listen to this this audio clip and then will come back and get further into the conversation.
There's more that we can say about that but I'll direct you back to the previous session if you want to get into that topic more. But where that conversation ended, today we pick up with the idea of forgiveness. Ultimately any sin can be overcome or reconciled, restored. The only way that that takes place is through forgiveness. We recognize the fact that we, as we discussed previously from Romans 3:23, that all have sinned (broken relationships) and fallen short of the glory of God. All of us have. But not all of us have, at least in our humanness or in our earthly life, (let's say) not all of us have experienced real forgiveness. So we want to get into that today and the value of forgiveness here and now in this life.
There are multiple studies some of which are spiritual or psychological in their scope but others are not. Other are looking actually, to be honest if we look at some of the best research along the lines of forgiveness right now or at least the most interesting it’s being done by organizations and businesses. Those who are trying to discern how they can acquire and retain quality individuals for their businesses and other organizational work. So you can begin to conceive of how forgiveness in that context would be valuable. Some of the research that they are producing for best practices are in organizational life. It’s actually interesting and very useful. Like most of the sessions I've got an audio, not visual this time, but an audio clip we’ll be using to get into our conversation. We're going to break away. You’ll listen to this this audio clip and then will come back and get further into the conversation.
FORGIVENESS IS GOOD FOR YOU; HOLDING ONTO ANGER ONLY HURTS YOU: FORGIVING OTHERS MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER
Story Type: NEWS
Section: LIFE & FAMILY, Pg. B1
GUELPH
It was a stupid adolescent caper that happened more than 20 years ago, but for Kathy Klipwick the memory is as haunting as ever.
The 39-year-old Guelph woman was inadvertently caught in a web of thievery that left her feeling angry, ashamed and fearful she might be duped again.
"I don't know how I could have been so stupid to think these people were my friends," Klipwick said, decades after the incident.
It was Christmas 1982 and Klipwick received a gift, from a group of friends, that included two shirts and a pair of earrings. Not liking the style, she decided to exchange them at the store a few weeks later for something that suited her tastes -- without telling her friends.
While examining the shirts, the cashier went to get the store manager and it was then Klipwick knew there was something horribly wrong.
The gift, she later found out, had been stolen.
"I was mortified," she remembered. "I felt set up, cheated and I didn't know why my friends would do that."
Klipwick said she never spoke to those friends again but carried the anger and resentment around with her for years.
"Eventually I recognized that the only one affected by the situation was me," she said. "I felt terrible, I held onto the negative feelings and I was the only one who cared anymore."
Working through the event in her journal -- which she said seemed futile at times because of the years that had gone by -- she forgave her friends. She realized they were just kids at the time and likely didn't mean to hurt her. They probably never thought she would return to the store with the items.
Kelvin Mutter, a couple and family therapist with Family Counselling and Support Services in Guelph, said releasing the injury is the first step to forgiveness.
That involves first identifying it and then understanding the impact of hanging onto the injury.
"I need to understand that as long as I hang onto that event it is still controlling me, which means the other person is still defining who I am," he said. "My life becomes governed by the other person."
Mutter said the majority of his clients are willing to let go of an injury once they realize hanging onto it only keeps them attached to the person they don't want to be bound to.
Michelle Green is a University of Guelph graduate studying forgiveness, as it relates to physical health, at Brock University in St. Catharines.
"A lot of research is finding that forgiveness has good physical health effects," said Green.
"The more you forgive, the better your health."
Green expects her study will find that people with a strong network of social support are better able to forgive, and feel better as a result.
How to go about forgiving someone is the big question, though. How do you do it?
Many people believe it's a matter of saying it out loud or telling someone. Or just simply forgetting.
"The process of letting go needs to be ritualized for each individual," Mutter said. "They have to find their own formula."
How long that takes and the way in which it's done, depends on a number of things, including the amount of support someone receives following the incident and the nature of the injury.
Klipwick said it probably shouldn't have taken her so long to forgive her friends -- but she always believed forgiveness meant she wouldn't be angry anymore and that her offenders wouldn't have to be accountable.
Not so, according to David Williams, pastor at Priory Park Baptist Church in Guelph.
"Forgiveness is different from pardoned," he said, adding forgiveness, in its simplest terms, is giving up one's right to retribution. "You can forgive someone but it doesn't necessarily let them off the hook."
It's one the myths people have about forgiveness. They often believe forgiveness equates to an easy out for the offender -- or that the person who hurt you must be part of your life again somehow.
But sometimes that isn't possible -- because of death, a move or other factors --- or it simply doesn't work to let that person back in your life.
It's possible to forgive without redeveloping the relationship.
From Williams' Christian perspective, however, forgiveness is paramount to building and maintaining relationships with people and with God.
"There's a different theological level to forgiveness," he said. "One of the keys to Christianity is that people were made to be in relationship with each other and with God.
"When people sin it puts up barriers. Forgiveness is one of the ways to break down the barriers."
Williams wasn't yet 10 years old when he saw Ted Bundy on TV shortly before he was executed.
He remembers hearing that the notorious serial killer had become a Christian before his death in 1989.
As the son of a pastor, Williams was outraged by this. "That made me so mad, at the thought of sharing heaven with a guy like Ted Bundy," he said.
After a conversation with his father, Williams said he realized that "if not for the grace of God we would all be in a bad way."
Williams said that sentiment is portrayed beautifully in Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ.
"There's a deeper reason we have to forgive other than it does something good for us," he said. "God forgave us but not because it was good for him."
Father Dennis Noon, priest at Church of Our Lady in Guelph, said forgiveness involves believing there is good in people and not holding their past against them.
"To forgive is fundamentally to act out of a confidence in the ultimate goodness of people," he said."When we show mercy to another we place ourselves beside the person. We are all drawn to people who are willing to see us in our weakness and in our need, yet still care for us.
"Condemnation leads nowhere while mercy can take us down many new and life-giving roads."
kelliott@guelphmercury.com
STEPS TO FORGIVENESS
Ran with "STEPS TO FORGIVENESS" which has been appended to the end of this story
Copyright (c) 2004 Guelph Mercury. All Rights Reserved.
Story Type: NEWS
Section: LIFE & FAMILY, Pg. B1
GUELPH
It was a stupid adolescent caper that happened more than 20 years ago, but for Kathy Klipwick the memory is as haunting as ever.
The 39-year-old Guelph woman was inadvertently caught in a web of thievery that left her feeling angry, ashamed and fearful she might be duped again.
"I don't know how I could have been so stupid to think these people were my friends," Klipwick said, decades after the incident.
It was Christmas 1982 and Klipwick received a gift, from a group of friends, that included two shirts and a pair of earrings. Not liking the style, she decided to exchange them at the store a few weeks later for something that suited her tastes -- without telling her friends.
While examining the shirts, the cashier went to get the store manager and it was then Klipwick knew there was something horribly wrong.
The gift, she later found out, had been stolen.
"I was mortified," she remembered. "I felt set up, cheated and I didn't know why my friends would do that."
Klipwick said she never spoke to those friends again but carried the anger and resentment around with her for years.
"Eventually I recognized that the only one affected by the situation was me," she said. "I felt terrible, I held onto the negative feelings and I was the only one who cared anymore."
Working through the event in her journal -- which she said seemed futile at times because of the years that had gone by -- she forgave her friends. She realized they were just kids at the time and likely didn't mean to hurt her. They probably never thought she would return to the store with the items.
Kelvin Mutter, a couple and family therapist with Family Counselling and Support Services in Guelph, said releasing the injury is the first step to forgiveness.
That involves first identifying it and then understanding the impact of hanging onto the injury.
"I need to understand that as long as I hang onto that event it is still controlling me, which means the other person is still defining who I am," he said. "My life becomes governed by the other person."
Mutter said the majority of his clients are willing to let go of an injury once they realize hanging onto it only keeps them attached to the person they don't want to be bound to.
Michelle Green is a University of Guelph graduate studying forgiveness, as it relates to physical health, at Brock University in St. Catharines.
"A lot of research is finding that forgiveness has good physical health effects," said Green.
"The more you forgive, the better your health."
Green expects her study will find that people with a strong network of social support are better able to forgive, and feel better as a result.
How to go about forgiving someone is the big question, though. How do you do it?
Many people believe it's a matter of saying it out loud or telling someone. Or just simply forgetting.
"The process of letting go needs to be ritualized for each individual," Mutter said. "They have to find their own formula."
How long that takes and the way in which it's done, depends on a number of things, including the amount of support someone receives following the incident and the nature of the injury.
Klipwick said it probably shouldn't have taken her so long to forgive her friends -- but she always believed forgiveness meant she wouldn't be angry anymore and that her offenders wouldn't have to be accountable.
Not so, according to David Williams, pastor at Priory Park Baptist Church in Guelph.
"Forgiveness is different from pardoned," he said, adding forgiveness, in its simplest terms, is giving up one's right to retribution. "You can forgive someone but it doesn't necessarily let them off the hook."
It's one the myths people have about forgiveness. They often believe forgiveness equates to an easy out for the offender -- or that the person who hurt you must be part of your life again somehow.
But sometimes that isn't possible -- because of death, a move or other factors --- or it simply doesn't work to let that person back in your life.
It's possible to forgive without redeveloping the relationship.
From Williams' Christian perspective, however, forgiveness is paramount to building and maintaining relationships with people and with God.
"There's a different theological level to forgiveness," he said. "One of the keys to Christianity is that people were made to be in relationship with each other and with God.
"When people sin it puts up barriers. Forgiveness is one of the ways to break down the barriers."
Williams wasn't yet 10 years old when he saw Ted Bundy on TV shortly before he was executed.
He remembers hearing that the notorious serial killer had become a Christian before his death in 1989.
As the son of a pastor, Williams was outraged by this. "That made me so mad, at the thought of sharing heaven with a guy like Ted Bundy," he said.
After a conversation with his father, Williams said he realized that "if not for the grace of God we would all be in a bad way."
Williams said that sentiment is portrayed beautifully in Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ.
"There's a deeper reason we have to forgive other than it does something good for us," he said. "God forgave us but not because it was good for him."
Father Dennis Noon, priest at Church of Our Lady in Guelph, said forgiveness involves believing there is good in people and not holding their past against them.
"To forgive is fundamentally to act out of a confidence in the ultimate goodness of people," he said."When we show mercy to another we place ourselves beside the person. We are all drawn to people who are willing to see us in our weakness and in our need, yet still care for us.
"Condemnation leads nowhere while mercy can take us down many new and life-giving roads."
kelliott@guelphmercury.com
STEPS TO FORGIVENESS
- Confront your emotional pain -- your shock, fear, anger, and grief. Recognize that the hurt that has occurred may have been very unfair and that these steps are not meant to minimize the injury involved.
- Realize that forgiveness can only be appropriate after you have processed out your fear, anger, and grief.
- Understand that forgiveness does not condone or approve or forget the harmful acts; forgiveness does not allow you to be abused. We forgive the doer, not the doing. Remembering this helps us to break harmful cycles of behaviour.
- Start releasing anger, sadness, grief, and fear through the many processes, therapies and therapists available. Have a person to work with who can truly empathize with you, yet who can be objective and help you shift your perception from blame to healing.
- Decide to forgive. Even if this decision is half-hearted at first, it will probably lessen your hurt and anger immediately.
- Be willing to find a new way to think about the person who wronged you. What was his or her life like growing up? What was his or her life like at the time of the offence? What were this person's good points up to the time of the event that hurt?
- Be aware that forgiving is a courageous act on your part. It has nothing to do with whether the other person can admit they are wrong.
- You are forgiving to liberate yourself no matter what the other person decides to do.
- If you believe in a higher power, be willing to pray on this problem and to turn to this higher power for guidance and assistance in the forgiveness process.
Ran with "STEPS TO FORGIVENESS" which has been appended to the end of this story
Copyright (c) 2004 Guelph Mercury. All Rights Reserved.
So welcome back. We continue a conversation about forgiveness. To do that, I'd like to at least offer us some basic definitions so when we think about forgiveness it's connected. So we're going to just work through the Dictionary. So let's—let's say that. In looking at Webster's dictionary: Forgiveness is defined as the act of forgiving; well that's not terribly helpful. We look at the word forgiving. That definition is as follows: Willing or able to forgive; so not terribly helpful. A supplementary definition does begin to open up some possibilities in understanding this idea of forgiving: Allowing room for error or weakness. Allowing room for error or weakness. Interesting. That's forgiving. We're going to go out one step beyond and just go to the word forgive. Here is how Webster’s defines it: To give up resentment or claim to requital (to forgive an insult); to grant relief from payment of (to forgive a debt). Or to cease to feel resentment against; A synonym they offer is: Pardon (to forgive one’s enemies). Those definitions begin to help us appreciate the word forgive or forgiving or forgiveness.
As I mentioned before we went to the audio clip some of the most interesting work in forgiveness research is coming out of businesses and organizations. Some of these things I will have linked on the website in addition to the transcripts as you hopefully by now are growing accustomed to. This comes from one article (again it'll be posted online but hear this excerpt from the article):
As errors might lead to misunderstandings or even breaking of commitments, individuals may have acquired sophisticated strategies to ensure that mistakes are not repeated or that profitable relationships may continue. Revenge and forgiveness may have evolved exactly to cope with those situations.
We're going to pause for just a minute. In the article, it's linking revenge and forgiveness as potential evolutionary traits. Now we can think about the negative effects of revenge on human relationships, that revenge isn't generally the best way to resolve conflicts or hurt. Yet when we think about it from an evolutionary perspective we can at least take some of the tension away from the word revenge and understand that again through the process of evolution that human beings who would feel threatened (as hunter gatherers with an impending threat) we can conceive of how revenge would be a natural human evolutionary process. The definition (again from Webster’s) on revenge: The act or an instance of responding to an injury with an injury. Again injuring another because you are injured, not the healthiest response. Yet we can think about our ancestors and the process of human evolution and where again even if it's not the healthiest of course of action, how (especially if you’re a caveman and not the most rational of beings, the most thoughtful or conscious of beings) that “well you hurt me so of course I'm going to hurt you back”. We even see this right in adolescents in childhood development that in many cases children feel the need to react back to another child when they feel hurt. So you end up with two hurt people. In our adult lives we’d like to think we've evolved beyond that. In some cases we have. There are plenty of examples where we haven't. It's an interesting idea to at least account for the place of revenge in the process of forgiveness and human relationships. Again, not the healthiest option but it has a place.
So the quote continues:
The threat of revenge, through some punishment of withholding of a benefit, may discourage interpersonal harm. Yet often one cannot distinguish with enough certainty if the other’s behavior is intentional or just accidental. Again in our humanness we recognize that we hurt people but sometimes it's not deliberate. It's not intentional. It is actually an accident. That doesn't excuse what we did or the pain that we caused but it tempers or balances the emotion at least theoretically when we discern whether or not it was with deliberate intent or just an accident. My emotions or the situation or circumstances got the better of me, or it was just a natural slip and you got hurt as a result of the slip. We understand why people would feel the need to act out in revenge.
“In the latter case, forgiveness provides a restorative mechanism that ensures that beneficial relationships can still continue, notwithstanding the initial harm. An essential ingredient for forgiveness, analysed in this work, seems to be (costly) apology. The importance of apology and forgiveness for sustaining long term relationships has been shown in different experiments. Apology and forgiveness are of interest as they remove the interference of external institutions, which can be quite costly to all parties involved, in order to ensure cooperation. Evidence shows that there is a much higher chance that customers stay with a company (they hence forgive) that apologises for mistakes. Apology leads to fewer lawsuits with lower settlements in medical error situations. Apology even enters the law as an effective mechanism of resolving conflicts. Hence, it is important to know how apology and forgiveness can help coping with misunderstanding, on either side, in an internal way, without jeopardising the ongoing commitment.”
The authors showed apologies work because they can help reveal the intention behind the wrongdoers preceding offense. In compliance with this observation in their model, an apology is mostly made by those who intended to cooperate but defect by mistake. In conclusion their results demonstrate that even when “to err is human” behaviors like revenge and forgiveness can evolve to cope with mistakes even when they occur at high rates. Evolve. Through common practice our behavior can begin to change, evolve from simply reacting (eye for an eye—you hurt me, I hurt you) to something higher, something better, something different.
Now this article I’m going to quote from, I’m not necessarily going to post to the website because I've got a hardcopy. Again from the business world, he's writing about evolution in a similar manner to what I just quoted. So hear this:
For 99% of our history, people have been tribal hunters and gatherers with a collective worldview and a sense of holism. We worked together and saw ourselves as an integral part of the world in which we lived. About 7000 years ago the agrarian age began and our worldview started to shift from holism towards fragmentation as we learned to control and separate ourselves from nature. About 400 years ago (a heartbeat in the time of history) our worldview changed again. It started with the understanding that the world was not flat and that we were not to the center of the universe. We were merely a speck of dust – small, insignificant and powerless. All this was reinforced in the 1600s when Newton showed us that the world moved according to simple and predictable rules, almost like clockwork. This lead to the industrial age, characterized by a shift from a collective to an individual focus. This is the place where most of our organizations still reside and it is the reason why our organizations are failing and good people are leaving (both physically and mentally). This is a frightening place to be. Human beings are hard wired through evolution to be connected. Indeed, the threat of separation or exclusion is the basis of all human fear. Because we are no longer connected we see the world as a ‘small pie’: if you win, I lose. It’s why we put people down. It's why our leaders focus on the bad within each of us rather than the good. [Article linked below]
As I mentioned before we went to the audio clip some of the most interesting work in forgiveness research is coming out of businesses and organizations. Some of these things I will have linked on the website in addition to the transcripts as you hopefully by now are growing accustomed to. This comes from one article (again it'll be posted online but hear this excerpt from the article):
As errors might lead to misunderstandings or even breaking of commitments, individuals may have acquired sophisticated strategies to ensure that mistakes are not repeated or that profitable relationships may continue. Revenge and forgiveness may have evolved exactly to cope with those situations.
We're going to pause for just a minute. In the article, it's linking revenge and forgiveness as potential evolutionary traits. Now we can think about the negative effects of revenge on human relationships, that revenge isn't generally the best way to resolve conflicts or hurt. Yet when we think about it from an evolutionary perspective we can at least take some of the tension away from the word revenge and understand that again through the process of evolution that human beings who would feel threatened (as hunter gatherers with an impending threat) we can conceive of how revenge would be a natural human evolutionary process. The definition (again from Webster’s) on revenge: The act or an instance of responding to an injury with an injury. Again injuring another because you are injured, not the healthiest response. Yet we can think about our ancestors and the process of human evolution and where again even if it's not the healthiest of course of action, how (especially if you’re a caveman and not the most rational of beings, the most thoughtful or conscious of beings) that “well you hurt me so of course I'm going to hurt you back”. We even see this right in adolescents in childhood development that in many cases children feel the need to react back to another child when they feel hurt. So you end up with two hurt people. In our adult lives we’d like to think we've evolved beyond that. In some cases we have. There are plenty of examples where we haven't. It's an interesting idea to at least account for the place of revenge in the process of forgiveness and human relationships. Again, not the healthiest option but it has a place.
So the quote continues:
The threat of revenge, through some punishment of withholding of a benefit, may discourage interpersonal harm. Yet often one cannot distinguish with enough certainty if the other’s behavior is intentional or just accidental. Again in our humanness we recognize that we hurt people but sometimes it's not deliberate. It's not intentional. It is actually an accident. That doesn't excuse what we did or the pain that we caused but it tempers or balances the emotion at least theoretically when we discern whether or not it was with deliberate intent or just an accident. My emotions or the situation or circumstances got the better of me, or it was just a natural slip and you got hurt as a result of the slip. We understand why people would feel the need to act out in revenge.
“In the latter case, forgiveness provides a restorative mechanism that ensures that beneficial relationships can still continue, notwithstanding the initial harm. An essential ingredient for forgiveness, analysed in this work, seems to be (costly) apology. The importance of apology and forgiveness for sustaining long term relationships has been shown in different experiments. Apology and forgiveness are of interest as they remove the interference of external institutions, which can be quite costly to all parties involved, in order to ensure cooperation. Evidence shows that there is a much higher chance that customers stay with a company (they hence forgive) that apologises for mistakes. Apology leads to fewer lawsuits with lower settlements in medical error situations. Apology even enters the law as an effective mechanism of resolving conflicts. Hence, it is important to know how apology and forgiveness can help coping with misunderstanding, on either side, in an internal way, without jeopardising the ongoing commitment.”
The authors showed apologies work because they can help reveal the intention behind the wrongdoers preceding offense. In compliance with this observation in their model, an apology is mostly made by those who intended to cooperate but defect by mistake. In conclusion their results demonstrate that even when “to err is human” behaviors like revenge and forgiveness can evolve to cope with mistakes even when they occur at high rates. Evolve. Through common practice our behavior can begin to change, evolve from simply reacting (eye for an eye—you hurt me, I hurt you) to something higher, something better, something different.
Now this article I’m going to quote from, I’m not necessarily going to post to the website because I've got a hardcopy. Again from the business world, he's writing about evolution in a similar manner to what I just quoted. So hear this:
For 99% of our history, people have been tribal hunters and gatherers with a collective worldview and a sense of holism. We worked together and saw ourselves as an integral part of the world in which we lived. About 7000 years ago the agrarian age began and our worldview started to shift from holism towards fragmentation as we learned to control and separate ourselves from nature. About 400 years ago (a heartbeat in the time of history) our worldview changed again. It started with the understanding that the world was not flat and that we were not to the center of the universe. We were merely a speck of dust – small, insignificant and powerless. All this was reinforced in the 1600s when Newton showed us that the world moved according to simple and predictable rules, almost like clockwork. This lead to the industrial age, characterized by a shift from a collective to an individual focus. This is the place where most of our organizations still reside and it is the reason why our organizations are failing and good people are leaving (both physically and mentally). This is a frightening place to be. Human beings are hard wired through evolution to be connected. Indeed, the threat of separation or exclusion is the basis of all human fear. Because we are no longer connected we see the world as a ‘small pie’: if you win, I lose. It’s why we put people down. It's why our leaders focus on the bad within each of us rather than the good. [Article linked below]
Now, I'm going to step back from the quotes and identify, so if we've already identified where revenge is an evolved trait. If you think about what I just read from this other article especially within this individualized focus and within this “pie mentality” (small pie: if you win, I must thereby lose) we can begin to understand how in our humanness our propensity to blame has grown (evolved) if you will. We've lost our ability to remain connected to one another. Remember how did we define sin? Sin is any break in relationship. Of course that can take place in our intimate relationships with one another, but it can also take place in the organizations we work and find ourselves and spend so much of our time week in and week out. Deep down we still long for connection. It's in who we were fundamentally created to be. Remembered from last week’s session we were created for relationship. God looks at creation and said, “It is not good that man or woman or anyone would be alone”. We know that we sin. We know that we all sin, that we all step on relationships and break them. The only way to heal the brokenness is in the act of forgiveness.
Dr. Stephen Marmer, a psychiatrist at the UCLA medical school, and I will be including the video link on the website for this—but he has identified three expressions or experiences of forgiveness. The first that he identifies is exoneration. That is when, if there is a metaphorical chalkboard in the process of exoneration, the board is completely erased. Nothing is left behind; a clean slate so to speak. The second that he identifies is forbearance. In forbearance, that essentially means that you find way to live with the offender in some form. It's connected to the idea of tolerance. Then the final expression that he identifies is release. That is when you individually decide to no longer carry the weight of the transgression. That could work either way for the person who was offended or for the offender themselves. In only out of those three is exoneration the only expression where total forgiveness is experienced in the sense that (perhaps you've heard people say this before [I know I have] I can forgive but I cannot forget) and so exoneration is actually forgiving and forgetting. Nothing is retained. Clean slate moving forward. Almost as if it never happened. Of course you test that if you continue to practice the behaviors or even the settings or circumstances that led up especially if it was an accidental offense. Nevertheless there is a way to learn from our mistakes, accidental or intentional, and exoneration is the highest expression in the sense of forgiveness. Not to discount forbearance or release. Both valid and valuable. I'm not convinced myself that forgiveness is genuine if the individual offender or the offended hold on to the offense, the memory of it. I'm not convinced that trust, real trust is possible if the offense is somehow retained.
In addition to Marmer and the video that you can consider online, the audio clip that you listened to and again this will be spelled out specifically in the transcript lists the steps to forgiveness which can be useful. I want to touch on for a moment before we look at Scripture the significance of self-forgiveness. This particular article will also be linked on the website. In the article it identifies the four R’s of genuine self-forgiveness. If we're honest these four R’s could equally be applied to just the exercise of forgiveness. If Marmer has his three, these are four. The first component of self-forgiveness is responsibility. To move toward genuine self-forgiveness the offending person takes responsibility for one's actions and the effects of those actions. Blame shifting is minimized. Second R, remorse. As a result of responsibility the offending person may experience a wide range of emotions. Shame-based responses should be worked through and reduced leaving behind more appropriate remorse based responses such as guilt and regret. Restoration. Restoration is an action-oriented step that follows from responsibility and remorse in genuine self-forgiveness. The offending person seeks to make amends and repair that which was damaged to the extent possible. Behavior patterns that led to the offense are also addressed and the values violated by the offense are reaffirmed.
Now restoration, I get that it's four R’s and restoration is challenging and problematic because there again, in this life Scripture will address the ultimate expression and experience of forgiveness and that's grace. That's good news. In this life we recognize that restoration/reconciliation does not always and I would probably even argue does not often occur between individuals. I can leave it there but I think you understand what I'm saying. Restoration, if you're hinging your ability to forgive yourself on restoration not that there aren't some valid points in what I read, in their discussion of restoration, but if your ability to forgive yourself hinges on restoration you may be stuck on the third R indefinitely. The fourth R is renewal. Finally in renewal the offending person obtains the emotional state of self-forgiveness involving renewed compassion and acceptance and respect for one's self. Moral growth has occurred from the process of working toward self-forgiveness. So Responsibility, Remorse, and Renewal; those are totally possible. Restoration is, especially if you desire a reconciled relationship with the individual that you hurt, I think that restoration is arguably the most powerful of the four R’s. I think that can lead to a level of healing and well-being for both individuals, the offender and the offended. Yet it's a real challenge in this life, not an impossible one but a challenge nonetheless.
So we're going to close our time by looking at Scripture and where our ultimate hope lays. We recognize in this life people can set their hearts and minds against the will of God. It doesn't mean that ultimately God's will will not be realized but it does mean that in this life, in this field of existence, God's will can be thwarted by human beings. We can stand opposed to the will of God and it happens every day. So that even though we may long for, desperately long for forgiveness, and we may have done everything within our human power to practice exoneration, forbearance, and release or responsibility, remorse, restoration, and renewal. We can do all those things and yet at the end not have our desired result. Some people choose to live in anger. Some people choose to live in pain. Some people choose to hold on to the transgression and to never allow the individual to live it down. That's a painful truth to hear and that's why we’re going to close with this promise.
So we’ll go to the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament first, in Micah 7, the subtitle begins with this and it's a good word: God's Compassion and Steadfast Love. Beginning in Micah 7:17: Who is a god like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? God does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency. God will again have compassion upon us; God will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.
As you hear that word and you think about it, that means at least where God is concerned. Whatever sin, whatever broken relationship we have committed and created, God holds no memory of it. God has compassion on us. God casts the brokenness out into the depths of the sea never to be considered, witnessed, experienced again. So from there we're going to go to Matthew 9. At the beginning of Matthew 9 there's the story of Jesus healing the paralytic. So in verse two:
Just then some people were carrying a paralyzed man lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith he said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.’ Then some of the scribes said to themselves, ‘This man is blaspheming.’ But Jesus, perceiving their thoughts, said, ‘Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk?’ But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he then said to the paralytic—‘Stand up, take your bed and go to your home.’
So Jesus asks the question, “Which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven or stand up and walk?” Part of what Jesus is saying is, “What do people need to hear more? I have a physical healing for you,” or “I have something that even goes deeper than a physical healing. Your sins, your broken relationships, your separateness, your isolation, your loneliness, it's all forgiven. You are restored. You are reconciled. No longer will you live alone.” So moving forward through the chapter not far from the healing of the paralytic in verse 13, Jesus, let’s pick it up in verse 12 actually, Jesus says this:
Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.
Jesus has come to call not the good people, whoever they think they are. Because we remember that Paul says, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” I've come to call not the righteous but sinners, relationship breakers. I've come for them. I've come for the ones who have not experienced restoration in their lifetime. Jesus has come for the ones who have been cast out and left alone, the unforgiven.
But at the same time that there is that idea of good news, Jesus also teaches that all God is really looking for is mercy. That we would practice mercy in respect to one another. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. So once again we're going to wrap things up with Paul. We were in Romans chapter 8 last week and we're going to use it once again because in verse one Paul says this:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Well then the question becomes, “Well who is in Christ?” The point is that we all are. Because if we think about who and what Christ is the question then becomes, “Is there any place in all of creation where we can go where Christ is not?” So if this helps you in understanding really what is being said in verse one of chapter 8 of Romans, Christ is the energy that blankets creation, covers all of creation or Christ is the underpinning reality of creation. That is to say Christ is the foundation upon which all reality is based. Well reality, so let me say this about reality just as all do not know or immediately recognize the oxygen they breathe that sustains them so it is with Christ. Our reality may not mirror the truth. We may feel or perceive that we are alone, forgotten, cast off because of mistakes, because of our humanness, because of a lack of mercy and understanding, because of our own foolishness, and so on and so on. But the ultimate reality is that there is no condemnation for us because of who Jesus Christ is because the fabric of creation is about the opposite of condemnation. The fabric of creation is about forgiveness. As you think about that and you hold on to that idea, I’ll remind you that in Romans 8 Paul ends the chapter with a long list of things. It's meant to be exhaustive in the sense that there really is nothing that can ultimately separate us from the love of God, not even ourselves. Not our mistakes. Not our anger. Not our inability or unwillingness to practice forgiveness and mercy in this life, even those things and everything else that you can imagine. Not one of them can separate us from the love of God in Christ. But also remember this, as Jesus says in Matthew 9, “I desire mercy.” May this day and this week find you entertaining mercy in a new way in your own life. May you know the power of self-forgiveness. May you know the power and liberation of being forgiven by someone that you care for.
Prep the Day!
Dr. Stephen Marmer, a psychiatrist at the UCLA medical school, and I will be including the video link on the website for this—but he has identified three expressions or experiences of forgiveness. The first that he identifies is exoneration. That is when, if there is a metaphorical chalkboard in the process of exoneration, the board is completely erased. Nothing is left behind; a clean slate so to speak. The second that he identifies is forbearance. In forbearance, that essentially means that you find way to live with the offender in some form. It's connected to the idea of tolerance. Then the final expression that he identifies is release. That is when you individually decide to no longer carry the weight of the transgression. That could work either way for the person who was offended or for the offender themselves. In only out of those three is exoneration the only expression where total forgiveness is experienced in the sense that (perhaps you've heard people say this before [I know I have] I can forgive but I cannot forget) and so exoneration is actually forgiving and forgetting. Nothing is retained. Clean slate moving forward. Almost as if it never happened. Of course you test that if you continue to practice the behaviors or even the settings or circumstances that led up especially if it was an accidental offense. Nevertheless there is a way to learn from our mistakes, accidental or intentional, and exoneration is the highest expression in the sense of forgiveness. Not to discount forbearance or release. Both valid and valuable. I'm not convinced myself that forgiveness is genuine if the individual offender or the offended hold on to the offense, the memory of it. I'm not convinced that trust, real trust is possible if the offense is somehow retained.
In addition to Marmer and the video that you can consider online, the audio clip that you listened to and again this will be spelled out specifically in the transcript lists the steps to forgiveness which can be useful. I want to touch on for a moment before we look at Scripture the significance of self-forgiveness. This particular article will also be linked on the website. In the article it identifies the four R’s of genuine self-forgiveness. If we're honest these four R’s could equally be applied to just the exercise of forgiveness. If Marmer has his three, these are four. The first component of self-forgiveness is responsibility. To move toward genuine self-forgiveness the offending person takes responsibility for one's actions and the effects of those actions. Blame shifting is minimized. Second R, remorse. As a result of responsibility the offending person may experience a wide range of emotions. Shame-based responses should be worked through and reduced leaving behind more appropriate remorse based responses such as guilt and regret. Restoration. Restoration is an action-oriented step that follows from responsibility and remorse in genuine self-forgiveness. The offending person seeks to make amends and repair that which was damaged to the extent possible. Behavior patterns that led to the offense are also addressed and the values violated by the offense are reaffirmed.
Now restoration, I get that it's four R’s and restoration is challenging and problematic because there again, in this life Scripture will address the ultimate expression and experience of forgiveness and that's grace. That's good news. In this life we recognize that restoration/reconciliation does not always and I would probably even argue does not often occur between individuals. I can leave it there but I think you understand what I'm saying. Restoration, if you're hinging your ability to forgive yourself on restoration not that there aren't some valid points in what I read, in their discussion of restoration, but if your ability to forgive yourself hinges on restoration you may be stuck on the third R indefinitely. The fourth R is renewal. Finally in renewal the offending person obtains the emotional state of self-forgiveness involving renewed compassion and acceptance and respect for one's self. Moral growth has occurred from the process of working toward self-forgiveness. So Responsibility, Remorse, and Renewal; those are totally possible. Restoration is, especially if you desire a reconciled relationship with the individual that you hurt, I think that restoration is arguably the most powerful of the four R’s. I think that can lead to a level of healing and well-being for both individuals, the offender and the offended. Yet it's a real challenge in this life, not an impossible one but a challenge nonetheless.
So we're going to close our time by looking at Scripture and where our ultimate hope lays. We recognize in this life people can set their hearts and minds against the will of God. It doesn't mean that ultimately God's will will not be realized but it does mean that in this life, in this field of existence, God's will can be thwarted by human beings. We can stand opposed to the will of God and it happens every day. So that even though we may long for, desperately long for forgiveness, and we may have done everything within our human power to practice exoneration, forbearance, and release or responsibility, remorse, restoration, and renewal. We can do all those things and yet at the end not have our desired result. Some people choose to live in anger. Some people choose to live in pain. Some people choose to hold on to the transgression and to never allow the individual to live it down. That's a painful truth to hear and that's why we’re going to close with this promise.
So we’ll go to the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament first, in Micah 7, the subtitle begins with this and it's a good word: God's Compassion and Steadfast Love. Beginning in Micah 7:17: Who is a god like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? God does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency. God will again have compassion upon us; God will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.
As you hear that word and you think about it, that means at least where God is concerned. Whatever sin, whatever broken relationship we have committed and created, God holds no memory of it. God has compassion on us. God casts the brokenness out into the depths of the sea never to be considered, witnessed, experienced again. So from there we're going to go to Matthew 9. At the beginning of Matthew 9 there's the story of Jesus healing the paralytic. So in verse two:
Just then some people were carrying a paralyzed man lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith he said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.’ Then some of the scribes said to themselves, ‘This man is blaspheming.’ But Jesus, perceiving their thoughts, said, ‘Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk?’ But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he then said to the paralytic—‘Stand up, take your bed and go to your home.’
So Jesus asks the question, “Which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven or stand up and walk?” Part of what Jesus is saying is, “What do people need to hear more? I have a physical healing for you,” or “I have something that even goes deeper than a physical healing. Your sins, your broken relationships, your separateness, your isolation, your loneliness, it's all forgiven. You are restored. You are reconciled. No longer will you live alone.” So moving forward through the chapter not far from the healing of the paralytic in verse 13, Jesus, let’s pick it up in verse 12 actually, Jesus says this:
Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.
Jesus has come to call not the good people, whoever they think they are. Because we remember that Paul says, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” I've come to call not the righteous but sinners, relationship breakers. I've come for them. I've come for the ones who have not experienced restoration in their lifetime. Jesus has come for the ones who have been cast out and left alone, the unforgiven.
But at the same time that there is that idea of good news, Jesus also teaches that all God is really looking for is mercy. That we would practice mercy in respect to one another. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. So once again we're going to wrap things up with Paul. We were in Romans chapter 8 last week and we're going to use it once again because in verse one Paul says this:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Well then the question becomes, “Well who is in Christ?” The point is that we all are. Because if we think about who and what Christ is the question then becomes, “Is there any place in all of creation where we can go where Christ is not?” So if this helps you in understanding really what is being said in verse one of chapter 8 of Romans, Christ is the energy that blankets creation, covers all of creation or Christ is the underpinning reality of creation. That is to say Christ is the foundation upon which all reality is based. Well reality, so let me say this about reality just as all do not know or immediately recognize the oxygen they breathe that sustains them so it is with Christ. Our reality may not mirror the truth. We may feel or perceive that we are alone, forgotten, cast off because of mistakes, because of our humanness, because of a lack of mercy and understanding, because of our own foolishness, and so on and so on. But the ultimate reality is that there is no condemnation for us because of who Jesus Christ is because the fabric of creation is about the opposite of condemnation. The fabric of creation is about forgiveness. As you think about that and you hold on to that idea, I’ll remind you that in Romans 8 Paul ends the chapter with a long list of things. It's meant to be exhaustive in the sense that there really is nothing that can ultimately separate us from the love of God, not even ourselves. Not our mistakes. Not our anger. Not our inability or unwillingness to practice forgiveness and mercy in this life, even those things and everything else that you can imagine. Not one of them can separate us from the love of God in Christ. But also remember this, as Jesus says in Matthew 9, “I desire mercy.” May this day and this week find you entertaining mercy in a new way in your own life. May you know the power of self-forgiveness. May you know the power and liberation of being forgiven by someone that you care for.
Prep the Day!
| tribal_managers-why_people_leave.pdf |
| a_therapeutic_model_of__self-forgiveness_with_intervention_strategies_for_counselors.pdf |
| apology_and_forgiveness_evolve_to_resolve_failures_in_cooperative_agreements.pdf |
| embrace_forgiveness.pdf |
Sin - 7/27/18
As you’ve thought about sin (broken relationships) this week, and contemplated the idea of the glory of God, how has your perception changed? How will you go about life and relationships now?
Sin - 7/26/18
If we, they, all creation represents the glory of God then how shall we live in the midst of it all? How will we allow sin (broken relationships) to affect our lives?
Sin - 7/25/18
Do you recognize yourself as the glory of God? Do you recognize others as the glory of God? Do you recognize all creation as the glory of God?
Sin - 7/24/18
If yesterday you began thinking about a relationship you might be able to help heal, today you are invited to trust in the ultimate relationship God has already healed. The grace of God promises reconciliation between God and all creation. In faith we trust that Jesus Christ has already completed the process of reconciliation. There is no sin keeping you from God. God has seen to it.
Sin - 7/23/18
Is there a sin (broken relationship) you long to reconcile? What would it take for that to happen? Where could you begin as a first step toward reconciliation?
Sin - 7/22/18
Hello and welcome to another edition of Prep the Day. Once again I’m your host Scott Adams, coming to you on the road. Actually staying this week at the Norbertine Center for Spirituality at Saint Norbert Abbey in DePere, Wisconsin. I’m here to do some quiet reflection and writing but wanted to continue our conversation. Today we will be considering sin. What is it? How does it affect our lives? To do that there's an interesting video that we’ll use to get into the conversation. I looked at a number of videos and I guess what I'll say is this: Be careful when seeking to define sin and the sources you will go to. I think I'll leave it there. That speaks for itself. But we will pause and going to this video. This will open up a conversation. When we come back I'm going to give you a very simple definition that I've come to over 24 years in ministry and am working with people and what I've learned about myself and human nature in general along with what I believe Scripture is driving at when talking about the word and the nature of sin. We’ll be right back.
OK, welcome back from our break. You watched the video or you heard the video narrative. Now I'm going to give you even a simpler-still definition of sin and as you hear it and you read in or impose this new definition as you read the Bible any place that sin appears you see that this definition I am about to give you pretty much rings true and stands on its own. So here it is: Sin is any break in relationship. Sin is any break in relationship.
Of course ultimately that can represent at least from our perspective looking up to God a break in a relationship with God. We're going to talk about what we believe Jesus Christ does to address that ultimate break. At the same time we're living a human life on earth within all of creation. So we recognize that not only do we break our relationship with God but all the time in relationship to one another and even if you look at the environment, or the world of animals, trees, all creation. We break that relationship all the time. We hurt creation. We hurt one another. That is sin. We struggle with that.
In this life we will always struggle with that but that would be kind of depressing if that was sort of the final word, but that is not the final word. To get deeper and closer to the final word we're going to look at Scripture and what better place to begin than the beginning. So Genesis is about the origins of creation. There are a couple different narrative accounts that are intertwined at the beginning of Genesis. It's not important which narrative you prefer or what all of it ultimately means. One of the challenges for the Bible is that when people read it, they try to read in so many things. Symbolism and otherwise to come at secret meanings or hidden truths. It doesn't always need to be that complicated.
In looking at Genesis and looking at Genesis 2:18 God has finished creating. It doesn't matter ultimately whether it was a literal seven or figurative seven days. That's not the point. The point is that God has created. What are we created for? Why are we created at all? In 2:18, at the end of it all God looks around and God says this: It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper as his partner.
A simple phrase, a simple idea. The point is that we were created for relationship. It's not good for us to be alone. What follows after verse 18, there's animals created. Man tries to have relations with them in various forms. It just doesn't quite fit, not to say that there isn’t a relationship. It's not ultimately the kind a relationship human beings were created for. Then comes the creation of Eve. It's not about a subordinate relationship; man is the head, women as subjugated. It's just humanity was not created to be alone. Focus on that. Hear that truth and try to live your life from that truth.
It doesn't mean that there aren’t times when it's good to be alone, but to perpetually and consistently be alone (and we talked about that in other episodes particularly as it relates to the psychological effects of social isolation and chronic loneliness and look back a few thousand years to the Hebrew Bible and the Genesis account and it's another one of those big duh kind of moments) we were not created to be alone. It's not good.
That's the beginning. God creates and gives us one another. We know that we are created (in the Genesis account) we were created in the image of God. When we talk about the glory of God we really don't need to look any further than one another. When we are doing our best to love and support one another that is the glory of God. When we look into the face of another human being especially, but all of creation. We look at creation and value it and treasure it. We witness and behold and experience the glory of God. We are the glory of God. That’s part of the point.
If we truly honored the idea that we are the glory of God we would at least try to treat one another better. We would try to care for one another better. Doesn't mean we're ever going to do it because we’ll talk about Paul in a little bit. Human relationships are hard. Staying in a relationship, in any relationship is hard. It takes a whole lot of work. Any relationship is ultimately going to come, especially human relationship, is ultimately going to come down to one fundamental word. We’ll get to that word in little bit. Right now we're talking about human relationships, that we were created for relationship. Relationship with one another and even relationship with God.
Where does it all go wrong? In just a couple chapters later (it doesn't matter how suddenly Adam and Eve have these children and we know that there's other societies out in creation. Where did they come from?) People get caught up in that stuff and they miss the greater truth. It's staring them right in the face. It's in the story of Cain and Abel, Genesis 4:6. We know that Cain and Abel have been making offerings to God. We don't immediately know why. We know that they are and we know that something about the spirit in which Able’s is given somehow is more pleasing or more acceptable, more something to God than Cain’s. There's a problem. So Cain gets irritated. Already we see that sin is creeping in. The idea of breaking a relationship. It's already creeping in.
It begins in verse six with God recognizing something isn't right and God questions Cain: Why are you angry? Why is your countenance fallen? If you do well will you not be accepted and if you do not do well sin (broken relationships) is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you but you must master it.
It makes it sound like sin is this external force. It's not. It's innate in us. Innate that we would get grumpy with one another. That we would get frustrated, angry even with one another. In previous episodes we already talked about the nature of anger and what we are learning in respect to the brain and how anger affects it or any strong emotion. The point I’m bringing up right now is that this stuff has been around from the very beginning of creation. It is something that all humanity struggles with, always has, always will. We can piece this stuff together now and begin to understand it maybe in a healthier, more effective way. This is good. That we might learn lessons even from these stories and from our own mistakes in human relationship that we would do better or at least try to do better.
As the story continues and it’s the famous line because ultimately Cain gets so angry (his anger, his emotions are so intense that he actually kills his brother) and God is looking for him as if God doesn't know what’s happened or where Able is. It's the classic line. Cain looks to God in 4:9. God questions him: Where is your brother Able? Cain says, I don't know. Am I my brother’s keeper?
Am I my brother or my sister’s keeper? Responsible for them? Why would I be responsible for them? Why? Because it is not good for us to be alone. So God gave us one another. We are responsible for one another. In taking responsibility for one another we honor the glory of God all around us.
As we move into the New Testament and Paul, one of the most familiar verses where sin is concerned is Romans 3:23. Paul says: For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
There are people in the world that believe, “Well I haven't really sinned. I've taken the 10 Commandments and I certainly haven’t killed or committed adultery or…” If you really want to take the 10 Commandments or any form of the Hebraic law well Jesus takes that and puts it on its ear in the Sermon on the Mount. If you really want to try to justify yourself by your keeping of the 10 Commandments, read the Sermon on the Mount and see what Jesus has to say about the spirit within us, the heart in which we approach one another. It's those inner thoughts that do away with us. God knows our heart. Maybe we haven’t acted on some of these passions or these negative emotions. Maybe we haven’t. That is a good thing. Let's appreciate that but it doesn't mean that we are without sin. It doesn't mean that we haven’t broken relationships. We have. We do. We will.
Moving past chapter three, in Romans 8. As I was mentioning before let's insert “broken relationships” for the word “sin” and just hear what that sounds like. Now we're getting at the heart of what Jesus Christ was all about and what grace is and the love of God is fundamentally all about. In 8:1 Paul writes: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin (set you free from the law of broken relationships) and of death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own Son in the likeness of (broken relationship) flesh and to deal with broken relationships he condemned broken relationships in the flash so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
If you read all of chapter 8 by the time you get to the end (taking it all in context) it's picking up in 8:31 to the end of the chapter, the popular set of verses to read at funerals among other things: So then what are we to say about all these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
Who is against us? If God is for us and if we confess that God is somehow involved in the lives of all creation, in the presence of all creation, what's against us? Why do we stand in the way? Why can we not recognize the glory of God in one another and try to honor one another out of God's glory? When we look into the face of an “other,” especially someone that were particularly angry with what if we saw the glory of God? What would that do in that moment?
Let's not stop there. In John 8:36: So if the Son makes you free (the Son being Jesus Christ) so if Jesus Christ makes you free, you will be free indeed.
The point is that Jesus Christ is about creating freedom from broken relationships that we would no longer feel as though we live in a broken relationship to God and a broken relationship to one another. Jesus Christ is about setting us free from that type of brokenness. When you think about that, it’s an interesting idea as we move to the end of John's Gospel. We consider the crucifixion. In most other Gospels, not John's, but in the others during the crucifixion narrative from the cross Jesus speaks a word of forgiveness. To all those who have broken themselves off from relationship with him because they just didn't know what they were doing. It's innate, it's in our nature to break relationships. But it doesn't have to be.
If we believe--so here's the role of faith—if we believe the Spirit of God is alive in us setting us free to try and try and keep trying for our entire life to be in relationship with one another. That's the point. It doesn't mean we will necessarily ever spike the football in the end zone because we did so well but that we have the ability to get up every day and try again, to get up every day and try again. Think about that, this idea of relationship, because there comes instead of Jesus speaking a word of forgiveness from the cross in John's Gospel, there's what for many people has been this puzzling account, 19:26: When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son” and he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother” and from that hour the disciple took her into his own house.
A lot of people read that and think well that's kind of weird, what's that all about? Go back to Genesis 2:18, God looks at creation up until that moment and says it is not good that my human creation would be alone. It’s not good. Now you begin to understand exactly why Jesus Christ does and says what he does from the cross. It would not be good for his mother or the beloved disciple to be alone. We were created for relationship. Sin is a breaking of any relationship but we believe that Jesus Christ has set us free. Not just us though, it's not proprietary. Going back to even the very first episode talking about judgment. Jesus Christ did this for all creation. We get so angry. We get so frustrated. We get so lonely that we fail to see and appreciate and recognize the glory of God is around us every moment of every day. In the face of those we know and love and in the face of a stranger. In the beauty of God's creation. We are part of that creation.
We were created for relationship. Next week we're going to talk about forgiveness because in the end the only way we get to keep coming back to these broken relationships and trying and getting up every day and trying again and trying again and trying again is the through the act of forgiveness. Today we know what sin is and what it looks like. Next session we’ll talk about forgiveness.
Prep the day!
Of course ultimately that can represent at least from our perspective looking up to God a break in a relationship with God. We're going to talk about what we believe Jesus Christ does to address that ultimate break. At the same time we're living a human life on earth within all of creation. So we recognize that not only do we break our relationship with God but all the time in relationship to one another and even if you look at the environment, or the world of animals, trees, all creation. We break that relationship all the time. We hurt creation. We hurt one another. That is sin. We struggle with that.
In this life we will always struggle with that but that would be kind of depressing if that was sort of the final word, but that is not the final word. To get deeper and closer to the final word we're going to look at Scripture and what better place to begin than the beginning. So Genesis is about the origins of creation. There are a couple different narrative accounts that are intertwined at the beginning of Genesis. It's not important which narrative you prefer or what all of it ultimately means. One of the challenges for the Bible is that when people read it, they try to read in so many things. Symbolism and otherwise to come at secret meanings or hidden truths. It doesn't always need to be that complicated.
In looking at Genesis and looking at Genesis 2:18 God has finished creating. It doesn't matter ultimately whether it was a literal seven or figurative seven days. That's not the point. The point is that God has created. What are we created for? Why are we created at all? In 2:18, at the end of it all God looks around and God says this: It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper as his partner.
A simple phrase, a simple idea. The point is that we were created for relationship. It's not good for us to be alone. What follows after verse 18, there's animals created. Man tries to have relations with them in various forms. It just doesn't quite fit, not to say that there isn’t a relationship. It's not ultimately the kind a relationship human beings were created for. Then comes the creation of Eve. It's not about a subordinate relationship; man is the head, women as subjugated. It's just humanity was not created to be alone. Focus on that. Hear that truth and try to live your life from that truth.
It doesn't mean that there aren’t times when it's good to be alone, but to perpetually and consistently be alone (and we talked about that in other episodes particularly as it relates to the psychological effects of social isolation and chronic loneliness and look back a few thousand years to the Hebrew Bible and the Genesis account and it's another one of those big duh kind of moments) we were not created to be alone. It's not good.
That's the beginning. God creates and gives us one another. We know that we are created (in the Genesis account) we were created in the image of God. When we talk about the glory of God we really don't need to look any further than one another. When we are doing our best to love and support one another that is the glory of God. When we look into the face of another human being especially, but all of creation. We look at creation and value it and treasure it. We witness and behold and experience the glory of God. We are the glory of God. That’s part of the point.
If we truly honored the idea that we are the glory of God we would at least try to treat one another better. We would try to care for one another better. Doesn't mean we're ever going to do it because we’ll talk about Paul in a little bit. Human relationships are hard. Staying in a relationship, in any relationship is hard. It takes a whole lot of work. Any relationship is ultimately going to come, especially human relationship, is ultimately going to come down to one fundamental word. We’ll get to that word in little bit. Right now we're talking about human relationships, that we were created for relationship. Relationship with one another and even relationship with God.
Where does it all go wrong? In just a couple chapters later (it doesn't matter how suddenly Adam and Eve have these children and we know that there's other societies out in creation. Where did they come from?) People get caught up in that stuff and they miss the greater truth. It's staring them right in the face. It's in the story of Cain and Abel, Genesis 4:6. We know that Cain and Abel have been making offerings to God. We don't immediately know why. We know that they are and we know that something about the spirit in which Able’s is given somehow is more pleasing or more acceptable, more something to God than Cain’s. There's a problem. So Cain gets irritated. Already we see that sin is creeping in. The idea of breaking a relationship. It's already creeping in.
It begins in verse six with God recognizing something isn't right and God questions Cain: Why are you angry? Why is your countenance fallen? If you do well will you not be accepted and if you do not do well sin (broken relationships) is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you but you must master it.
It makes it sound like sin is this external force. It's not. It's innate in us. Innate that we would get grumpy with one another. That we would get frustrated, angry even with one another. In previous episodes we already talked about the nature of anger and what we are learning in respect to the brain and how anger affects it or any strong emotion. The point I’m bringing up right now is that this stuff has been around from the very beginning of creation. It is something that all humanity struggles with, always has, always will. We can piece this stuff together now and begin to understand it maybe in a healthier, more effective way. This is good. That we might learn lessons even from these stories and from our own mistakes in human relationship that we would do better or at least try to do better.
As the story continues and it’s the famous line because ultimately Cain gets so angry (his anger, his emotions are so intense that he actually kills his brother) and God is looking for him as if God doesn't know what’s happened or where Able is. It's the classic line. Cain looks to God in 4:9. God questions him: Where is your brother Able? Cain says, I don't know. Am I my brother’s keeper?
Am I my brother or my sister’s keeper? Responsible for them? Why would I be responsible for them? Why? Because it is not good for us to be alone. So God gave us one another. We are responsible for one another. In taking responsibility for one another we honor the glory of God all around us.
As we move into the New Testament and Paul, one of the most familiar verses where sin is concerned is Romans 3:23. Paul says: For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
There are people in the world that believe, “Well I haven't really sinned. I've taken the 10 Commandments and I certainly haven’t killed or committed adultery or…” If you really want to take the 10 Commandments or any form of the Hebraic law well Jesus takes that and puts it on its ear in the Sermon on the Mount. If you really want to try to justify yourself by your keeping of the 10 Commandments, read the Sermon on the Mount and see what Jesus has to say about the spirit within us, the heart in which we approach one another. It's those inner thoughts that do away with us. God knows our heart. Maybe we haven’t acted on some of these passions or these negative emotions. Maybe we haven’t. That is a good thing. Let's appreciate that but it doesn't mean that we are without sin. It doesn't mean that we haven’t broken relationships. We have. We do. We will.
Moving past chapter three, in Romans 8. As I was mentioning before let's insert “broken relationships” for the word “sin” and just hear what that sounds like. Now we're getting at the heart of what Jesus Christ was all about and what grace is and the love of God is fundamentally all about. In 8:1 Paul writes: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin (set you free from the law of broken relationships) and of death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own Son in the likeness of (broken relationship) flesh and to deal with broken relationships he condemned broken relationships in the flash so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
If you read all of chapter 8 by the time you get to the end (taking it all in context) it's picking up in 8:31 to the end of the chapter, the popular set of verses to read at funerals among other things: So then what are we to say about all these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
Who is against us? If God is for us and if we confess that God is somehow involved in the lives of all creation, in the presence of all creation, what's against us? Why do we stand in the way? Why can we not recognize the glory of God in one another and try to honor one another out of God's glory? When we look into the face of an “other,” especially someone that were particularly angry with what if we saw the glory of God? What would that do in that moment?
Let's not stop there. In John 8:36: So if the Son makes you free (the Son being Jesus Christ) so if Jesus Christ makes you free, you will be free indeed.
The point is that Jesus Christ is about creating freedom from broken relationships that we would no longer feel as though we live in a broken relationship to God and a broken relationship to one another. Jesus Christ is about setting us free from that type of brokenness. When you think about that, it’s an interesting idea as we move to the end of John's Gospel. We consider the crucifixion. In most other Gospels, not John's, but in the others during the crucifixion narrative from the cross Jesus speaks a word of forgiveness. To all those who have broken themselves off from relationship with him because they just didn't know what they were doing. It's innate, it's in our nature to break relationships. But it doesn't have to be.
If we believe--so here's the role of faith—if we believe the Spirit of God is alive in us setting us free to try and try and keep trying for our entire life to be in relationship with one another. That's the point. It doesn't mean we will necessarily ever spike the football in the end zone because we did so well but that we have the ability to get up every day and try again, to get up every day and try again. Think about that, this idea of relationship, because there comes instead of Jesus speaking a word of forgiveness from the cross in John's Gospel, there's what for many people has been this puzzling account, 19:26: When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son” and he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother” and from that hour the disciple took her into his own house.
A lot of people read that and think well that's kind of weird, what's that all about? Go back to Genesis 2:18, God looks at creation up until that moment and says it is not good that my human creation would be alone. It’s not good. Now you begin to understand exactly why Jesus Christ does and says what he does from the cross. It would not be good for his mother or the beloved disciple to be alone. We were created for relationship. Sin is a breaking of any relationship but we believe that Jesus Christ has set us free. Not just us though, it's not proprietary. Going back to even the very first episode talking about judgment. Jesus Christ did this for all creation. We get so angry. We get so frustrated. We get so lonely that we fail to see and appreciate and recognize the glory of God is around us every moment of every day. In the face of those we know and love and in the face of a stranger. In the beauty of God's creation. We are part of that creation.
We were created for relationship. Next week we're going to talk about forgiveness because in the end the only way we get to keep coming back to these broken relationships and trying and getting up every day and trying again and trying again and trying again is the through the act of forgiveness. Today we know what sin is and what it looks like. Next session we’ll talk about forgiveness.
Prep the day!
Anger - 7/13/18
Meditation is an excellent practice to manage and regulate emotions so that they don’t take over or consume you. It doesn’t need to be fancy to be meaningful. Try slow deep breathing in your nose then out your mouth. In your mind, count 1 on the in breath and 2 on the out breath, or say to yourself “I breathe in.” then “I breath out.” Try it for 2, 5, or 10 minutes and see how you feel.
Anger - 7/12/18
How often are you able to catch yourself before an accident happens, or saying/doing something foolish? How often are you able to be preemptive when strong emotions are on the increase? Self-awareness and humility go a long way in thoughtfully avoiding these pitfalls. Check in with yourself as often as possible.
Anger - 7/11/18
Back to distraction when you’re feeling anger increasing or stressed, try creating a short list (1-5) of things you enjoyed or appreciated during the day. A list of gratitude can manage strong emotions.
Anger - 7/10/18
Anger - 7/9/18
From previous episodes, we discussed the usefulness of distraction to help manage strong feelings. Distraction can be equally useful in managing anger, helping you regain your ability to think and act clearly and in a healthy manner. What distractions have you or could you use when you feel anger growing?
Anger - 7/8/18
Hello and welcome back to another edition of Prep the Day. Once again I am your host Scott Adams. Today we’ll be considering anger and its place in our lives. To do that, we’ll consider some of what brain theory or neuroscience has in mind when it comes to studying strong emotions. We’re also going to use a video and in addition to that we're going to spend some time considering my favorite prophet from the Bible, particularly from the Hebrew Bible (what Christians generally refer to as the Old Testament) and that is the prophet Jonah. Some of you will remember the story about Jonah at least in respect to being in the belly of a whale or great fish. His story is a great story about the power of human anger and the effects and lasting results of what our anger can mean in our own lives but also in the lives of others.
So you may recall from the very first episode of Prep the Day I referenced a Buddhist which I have used over the years and the quote was this: You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger. You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger. So as you reflect on those words once again, if you recall the story of Jonah one of the Minor Prophets. God comes to Jonah and requests that Jonah go to Nineveh. Now Jonah’s people were not fans or even friendly with the Ninevites. So Jonah is immediately in opposition to the call of God because Jonah’s people and the Ninevites were effectively enemies. The Ninevites were a great people, powerful. Nineveh was a great city.
We've all experienced people in our own lives that we have strong negative emotions toward or about. We can imagine what it would be like to receive a specific word from God that we're supposed to go that person or to those people and call them to change their ways that God might have mercy on them. That's sort of the basis for the story. Jonah’s response is strong. He runs away. It's in his first encounter and sort of running away from God's call that he finds himself on the boat and in the end a storm comes up over the boat and he’s cast into the sea as he admits his story and what brought him to the boat to the crew. Eventually he survives the fish and God calls him once again to go to Nineveh and it's in chapter 3 where is that second word of the Lord comes to Jonah. This time, the second time God comes to him Jonah relents and decides to go. We’re told that Nineveh was such a large city it was a three day walk across. So one day in, Jonah cries out (we don't know whether it was a passionate cry, or a half-hearted cry, or sarcastic cry) but however he sort of shares this news the people immediately responded. Even the king responded. They all put on sack cloth, a sign of repentance and grief and solemnity. The king himself sits in ashes and makes a proclamation for a fast, not just a fast from food but fast from water, a total fast hoping that God may relent and change God's mind and turn from fierce anger so that they do not perish.
When God saw what they did, how they turned out from their evil ways we’re told in Jonah 3:10 how God changed God's mind and didn't do it, didn’t do the calamity that God was otherwise threatening. This in 4:1 was very displeasing to Jonah and he became angry. Why? It's not only or simply that Jonah didn't like these people. That's only part of it. If you read the passage and Jonah 4:1, Jonah is actually angry at God, basically saying to God “I told you. I told you you’d do this. I told you you'd be like this when I was in my own country before I even left because I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and ready to relent from punishing.”
Jonah is angry about that. He's angry that God is gracious and merciful. He's angry that God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. We can think about a child throwing a tantrum at this point. Jonah 4:3 says take my life from me for it is better for me to die than live. God asks this simple question, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Is it right for you to be angry? You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger. Think about that. We're going to segue to a video and when we come back we will wrap up our conversation for the day.
So you may recall from the very first episode of Prep the Day I referenced a Buddhist which I have used over the years and the quote was this: You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger. You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger. So as you reflect on those words once again, if you recall the story of Jonah one of the Minor Prophets. God comes to Jonah and requests that Jonah go to Nineveh. Now Jonah’s people were not fans or even friendly with the Ninevites. So Jonah is immediately in opposition to the call of God because Jonah’s people and the Ninevites were effectively enemies. The Ninevites were a great people, powerful. Nineveh was a great city.
We've all experienced people in our own lives that we have strong negative emotions toward or about. We can imagine what it would be like to receive a specific word from God that we're supposed to go that person or to those people and call them to change their ways that God might have mercy on them. That's sort of the basis for the story. Jonah’s response is strong. He runs away. It's in his first encounter and sort of running away from God's call that he finds himself on the boat and in the end a storm comes up over the boat and he’s cast into the sea as he admits his story and what brought him to the boat to the crew. Eventually he survives the fish and God calls him once again to go to Nineveh and it's in chapter 3 where is that second word of the Lord comes to Jonah. This time, the second time God comes to him Jonah relents and decides to go. We’re told that Nineveh was such a large city it was a three day walk across. So one day in, Jonah cries out (we don't know whether it was a passionate cry, or a half-hearted cry, or sarcastic cry) but however he sort of shares this news the people immediately responded. Even the king responded. They all put on sack cloth, a sign of repentance and grief and solemnity. The king himself sits in ashes and makes a proclamation for a fast, not just a fast from food but fast from water, a total fast hoping that God may relent and change God's mind and turn from fierce anger so that they do not perish.
When God saw what they did, how they turned out from their evil ways we’re told in Jonah 3:10 how God changed God's mind and didn't do it, didn’t do the calamity that God was otherwise threatening. This in 4:1 was very displeasing to Jonah and he became angry. Why? It's not only or simply that Jonah didn't like these people. That's only part of it. If you read the passage and Jonah 4:1, Jonah is actually angry at God, basically saying to God “I told you. I told you you’d do this. I told you you'd be like this when I was in my own country before I even left because I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and ready to relent from punishing.”
Jonah is angry about that. He's angry that God is gracious and merciful. He's angry that God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. We can think about a child throwing a tantrum at this point. Jonah 4:3 says take my life from me for it is better for me to die than live. God asks this simple question, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Is it right for you to be angry? You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger. Think about that. We're going to segue to a video and when we come back we will wrap up our conversation for the day.
All right, we are back from the video. I'll preface this by saying that I am by no means an expert in brain theory nor am I or do I claim to be a neuroscientist. I'm only fascinated by these disciplines and what I am in the process of learning. I'm going to try to simply an briefly explain just enough information about the evolutionary layers of the human brain to help inform our conversation today. In the 1960s, Paul MacLean gets the majority the credit for developing the triune brain theory. When we talk about the evolutionary history of the brain this triune brain theory emphasizes the idea that within our evolutionary history our brains evolved first starting with the reptilian brain. It’s the oldest of the three. There again simplifying, if there are layers to our brain, the reptile brain is at the core. The reptilian brain includes the brain stem, the cerebellum. The reptilian brain is reliable but tends to be somewhat rigid and compulsive. Through the process of evolution, we developed the limbic brain emerging first in mammals. It can record memories of behaviors that produce agreeable and disagreeable experiences. So it is fundamentally responsible for what we know as emotions. The main structure of the limbic brain or structures (plural) of the limbic brain are the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the hypothalamus. The limbic brain is the seat of value judgments that we make, often unconsciously, that exert a strong influence on our behavior. The newest--in the scheme of things, in the evolutionary scheme of things--the newest portion of our brain is the neo cortex. Evolving in primates, culminating in the human brain with two large cerebral hemispheres. These hemispheres have been responsible for the development of human language, abstract thought, imagination, and our consciousness. The neo cortex is flexible and has almost infinite learning abilities. The neo cortex is also what has enabled human cultures to develop.
The reptilian brain. The limbic brain. The neo cortex. That sort of marks the process of evolution within what we understand is the human brain. It's within the limbic brain as you heard from the video that in the amygdala, triggering the release of dopamine and adrenaline, when emotions are running high particularly as a pertains to anger to the extent that what we are now recognizing, what science is beginning to recognize and you may have heard this before, is that when an emotion is or an emotional response or reaction is particularly strong, like anger, we are no longer in a position to immediately think or process in a rational manner. What we’re fundamentally saying in this moment is that when the amygdala is triggering a reaction and this is also through the course of evolution thinking about the limbic brain system this is where the fight, flight, or freeze response is sort of seated. You can think about animals living in the wild and how through evolutionary history and through the process of human survival or animal survival for that matter, that a reaction, an emotional response, becomes critical to survival in a moment. Whether it's fear or anger or any strong emotion, it's the limbic system that fundamentally triggers the reaction that will follow.
In the case of anger our brain, through the amygdala, is triggered to release in neurochemical response that includes dopamine and adrenaline. Adrenaline helps to prepare muscles for exertion, increases blood circulation, increases breathing and metabolism. It's getting you physically ready to respond particularly if you need to respond to defend and keep yourself safe or fight off an attack or predator. Dopamine helps to regulate movement and emotional responses. If the adrenaline is triggering or working toward a physical reaction then the dopamine is generating, I want to say appropriate, but we can tell from the video example and you can think of countless examples from your own life where theoretically it would be an appropriate emotional response but we know it's often not appropriate. As a matter fact, if we’re functioning out of the limbic brain only then our emotions are running riot. We get into lots of trouble that way.
It's the neo cortex that we briefly discussed that gives us the ability to think in abstract terms, to think creatively, to appreciate, to consciously appreciate who we are, where we are, how we are. Even for those who are struggling with strong emotional responses, it is possible through among other things, meditation, practicing self-awareness (sort of taking your own--just like during exercise, physical exercise or running--you'll take your physical heart rate) test and see where you're at if you've reached your desired beats per minute. The same idea can be addressed in practicing self-awareness to monitor your emotional heart rate, so to speak, to monitor where you are in respect to reacting to an emotional stressor. These are often called triggers. Only if you're self-aware will you even know it's a trigger or know it's a stressor. Otherwise through the process of evolution we are just hardwired to react and often without even realizing until it's already too late. We've already inflicted harm. We've already said the hurtful thing that we can’t immediately take back.
As we think about that and we think about Jonah and we think about the place of anger in our lives, think about the question that comes from God. It's understandable in our humanness that we would not like everybody. It doesn't mean we can't through--if we recognize honestly the potential in our neo cortex, the potential that that part of our brain holds, that we can't learn to tolerate and understand and maybe even ultimately appreciate those who maybe today challenge us the most. Ultimately perhaps even learn to love those who challenge us the most. There's real potential for that, but only if we practice self-awareness.
Imagine how Jonah’s story might have played out if he had been self-aware and if he had actually engaged in a conversation with God about what God was calling him to do and who God was calling him to be. God was calling him to reach out to another part of his creation, a whole population of society had written off because they're bad, they're evil, they’re this. Right? In the end we see what Jonah’s anger gets him and how it leads to a number of emotional, even comical experiences in the narrative. Is it right for you to be angry?
Maybe that's a legitimate question for us to even ask ourselves as we try practice self-awareness. Is it right for me to be angry right now? Is it right? You will not be judged for your anger. You will be judged by your anger. You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger. Anger really, especially through our evolutionary history to a place that we have arrived, anger has done more to separate us from one another in relationship that it has done to bring us together. I’m not saying there isn’t a time and a place for anger or that it isn't humanly understandable for us to reach points of anger but again maybe it's time to come back to the question that God asked Jonah and to pause when we feel a strong emotional reaction coming, to ask ourselves: Is it right? Is this something that is going to lead to a healthy outcome, to a positive outcome? Or is this something that has the potential to take me from those whom I love or to break down community or to tear apart relationships?
Prep the Day.
The reptilian brain. The limbic brain. The neo cortex. That sort of marks the process of evolution within what we understand is the human brain. It's within the limbic brain as you heard from the video that in the amygdala, triggering the release of dopamine and adrenaline, when emotions are running high particularly as a pertains to anger to the extent that what we are now recognizing, what science is beginning to recognize and you may have heard this before, is that when an emotion is or an emotional response or reaction is particularly strong, like anger, we are no longer in a position to immediately think or process in a rational manner. What we’re fundamentally saying in this moment is that when the amygdala is triggering a reaction and this is also through the course of evolution thinking about the limbic brain system this is where the fight, flight, or freeze response is sort of seated. You can think about animals living in the wild and how through evolutionary history and through the process of human survival or animal survival for that matter, that a reaction, an emotional response, becomes critical to survival in a moment. Whether it's fear or anger or any strong emotion, it's the limbic system that fundamentally triggers the reaction that will follow.
In the case of anger our brain, through the amygdala, is triggered to release in neurochemical response that includes dopamine and adrenaline. Adrenaline helps to prepare muscles for exertion, increases blood circulation, increases breathing and metabolism. It's getting you physically ready to respond particularly if you need to respond to defend and keep yourself safe or fight off an attack or predator. Dopamine helps to regulate movement and emotional responses. If the adrenaline is triggering or working toward a physical reaction then the dopamine is generating, I want to say appropriate, but we can tell from the video example and you can think of countless examples from your own life where theoretically it would be an appropriate emotional response but we know it's often not appropriate. As a matter fact, if we’re functioning out of the limbic brain only then our emotions are running riot. We get into lots of trouble that way.
It's the neo cortex that we briefly discussed that gives us the ability to think in abstract terms, to think creatively, to appreciate, to consciously appreciate who we are, where we are, how we are. Even for those who are struggling with strong emotional responses, it is possible through among other things, meditation, practicing self-awareness (sort of taking your own--just like during exercise, physical exercise or running--you'll take your physical heart rate) test and see where you're at if you've reached your desired beats per minute. The same idea can be addressed in practicing self-awareness to monitor your emotional heart rate, so to speak, to monitor where you are in respect to reacting to an emotional stressor. These are often called triggers. Only if you're self-aware will you even know it's a trigger or know it's a stressor. Otherwise through the process of evolution we are just hardwired to react and often without even realizing until it's already too late. We've already inflicted harm. We've already said the hurtful thing that we can’t immediately take back.
As we think about that and we think about Jonah and we think about the place of anger in our lives, think about the question that comes from God. It's understandable in our humanness that we would not like everybody. It doesn't mean we can't through--if we recognize honestly the potential in our neo cortex, the potential that that part of our brain holds, that we can't learn to tolerate and understand and maybe even ultimately appreciate those who maybe today challenge us the most. Ultimately perhaps even learn to love those who challenge us the most. There's real potential for that, but only if we practice self-awareness.
Imagine how Jonah’s story might have played out if he had been self-aware and if he had actually engaged in a conversation with God about what God was calling him to do and who God was calling him to be. God was calling him to reach out to another part of his creation, a whole population of society had written off because they're bad, they're evil, they’re this. Right? In the end we see what Jonah’s anger gets him and how it leads to a number of emotional, even comical experiences in the narrative. Is it right for you to be angry?
Maybe that's a legitimate question for us to even ask ourselves as we try practice self-awareness. Is it right for me to be angry right now? Is it right? You will not be judged for your anger. You will be judged by your anger. You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger. Anger really, especially through our evolutionary history to a place that we have arrived, anger has done more to separate us from one another in relationship that it has done to bring us together. I’m not saying there isn’t a time and a place for anger or that it isn't humanly understandable for us to reach points of anger but again maybe it's time to come back to the question that God asked Jonah and to pause when we feel a strong emotional reaction coming, to ask ourselves: Is it right? Is this something that is going to lead to a healthy outcome, to a positive outcome? Or is this something that has the potential to take me from those whom I love or to break down community or to tear apart relationships?
Prep the Day.
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ACEs (trauma) - 7/6/18
When we look at some of the history of philosophies surrounding trauma, the medieval church believed traumatic experiences were examples of God and the devil battling over an individual, testing faith in the tradition of Job. In other scenarios the church believed the experience was designed by God to direct the traumatized back to God. In either case I’m not convinced. I don’t believe a traumatic experience or God for that matter, is that manipulative. What do you believe?
ACEs (trauma) - 7/5/18
Do you have a song that motivates or inspires you? If so, what is it? If not, can you think of one? Music fosters resilience. What is your go-to song?
ACEs (trauma) - 7/4/18
Have you accessed your own trauma through the questionnaires or through self-analysis? How does this inform what you know about yourself? Others? Are you being more compassionate to self and others?
ACEs (trauma) - 7/3/18
It is thought that Ian Maclaren was the original source of the quotation “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle,” now widely misattributed to Plato or Philo of Alexandria.
ACEs (trauma) - 7/2/18
Consider exploring the Trauma Resource Institute website. If you have a smartphone, test out the iChill app:
https://www.traumaresourceinstitute.com/ichill-app/ichill-app-1
https://www.traumaresourceinstitute.com/ichill-app/ichill-app-1
ACEs (trauma) - 7/1/18
Hello and welcome to another edition of Prep the Day. Once again I'm your host, Scott Adams. Introducing you to what undoubtedly for a number of you will be a new conversation, I am trusting and hoping that this won’t be a new topic for everyone. The topic is trauma. As we begin to understand the nature of trauma in our lives we will use a landmark study that took place in the mid-1990s. Out of that study in 1995, a paper was produced dealing with adverse childhood experiences or ACEs.
I am currently 47 years old. I spent specifically eight years even after I’d already started college studying Music and Theatre, when I felt a call to ministry I ended up going back to college essentially starting over, so eight years of preparing for the ministry. I bring that up because as a 47 year old man who has been in the church working professionally since 1994, so a year before this study was published. It was only honestly in the last year that I became acquainted with ACEs or this study. I am somewhat humiliated and humbled to share that with you. Really, the main reason I have a familiarity or understanding of it and appreciation for it now comes as a result of my studies in psychology.
If you’ve listened to previous episodes you know that I am working on finishing up my PhD currently writing my dissertation. Trauma and the ACEs study ties into my research. The point is that there will be some attachments to the website again (www.preptheday.com) this so hopefully you will spend some time exploring the website. If you haven't looked at the ACEs questionnaire before, there's an additional Childhood Trauma questionnaire similar but a little bit more thorough then the ACEs questionnaire. Nevertheless as you spend some time with that looking at it for your own knowledge or to appreciate the role of trauma in your own life (and this is where are my heart begins to break and the ignorance that I operated out of for so many years as a pastor in the church). There's nothing more that I can say other than I am truly humbled and again I've shared in the past that a lot of the nature of the work I've done along with additional research to do that specific work is focused on conflict resolution and mediation in organizations specifically faith communities. To understand something new about the nature of trauma in our society, I am grateful to have knowledge of it now but I feel like I'm coming to a conversation so late that I begin to wonder how this knowledge would have served me better in ministry earlier on, how this knowledge would've served me better in my failed marriage, how this knowledge would've served me better as a father to three children who have by virtue of my own ignorance, good intentions, and deep, deep love for them and yet nevertheless due to my own ignorance have experienced trauma that I would've never hoped that they would know or experience.
This is a very intimate and personal topic. I’m going to take a step back. I've got a couple of videos to share with you today. The first video is going to give you some of the background and history about what ACEs is, how it came about, and what it means to us particularly as we think about trauma. We're going pause and you'll watch the first video and we’ll come back.
I am currently 47 years old. I spent specifically eight years even after I’d already started college studying Music and Theatre, when I felt a call to ministry I ended up going back to college essentially starting over, so eight years of preparing for the ministry. I bring that up because as a 47 year old man who has been in the church working professionally since 1994, so a year before this study was published. It was only honestly in the last year that I became acquainted with ACEs or this study. I am somewhat humiliated and humbled to share that with you. Really, the main reason I have a familiarity or understanding of it and appreciation for it now comes as a result of my studies in psychology.
If you’ve listened to previous episodes you know that I am working on finishing up my PhD currently writing my dissertation. Trauma and the ACEs study ties into my research. The point is that there will be some attachments to the website again (www.preptheday.com) this so hopefully you will spend some time exploring the website. If you haven't looked at the ACEs questionnaire before, there's an additional Childhood Trauma questionnaire similar but a little bit more thorough then the ACEs questionnaire. Nevertheless as you spend some time with that looking at it for your own knowledge or to appreciate the role of trauma in your own life (and this is where are my heart begins to break and the ignorance that I operated out of for so many years as a pastor in the church). There's nothing more that I can say other than I am truly humbled and again I've shared in the past that a lot of the nature of the work I've done along with additional research to do that specific work is focused on conflict resolution and mediation in organizations specifically faith communities. To understand something new about the nature of trauma in our society, I am grateful to have knowledge of it now but I feel like I'm coming to a conversation so late that I begin to wonder how this knowledge would have served me better in ministry earlier on, how this knowledge would've served me better in my failed marriage, how this knowledge would've served me better as a father to three children who have by virtue of my own ignorance, good intentions, and deep, deep love for them and yet nevertheless due to my own ignorance have experienced trauma that I would've never hoped that they would know or experience.
This is a very intimate and personal topic. I’m going to take a step back. I've got a couple of videos to share with you today. The first video is going to give you some of the background and history about what ACEs is, how it came about, and what it means to us particularly as we think about trauma. We're going pause and you'll watch the first video and we’ll come back.
OK, so you watched the first video. There will be another one coming up shortly. Again, if you take a look at the questionnaire, if you just do some rough math on your own you will be reminded that anywhere from 1-4 to 1-5 individuals has experienced childhood trauma along the lines of what was detailed in the video. If we think more specifically about the nature of trauma regardless of age, at this point when we talk about ACEs obviously we’re talking about childhood trauma anywhere from 0 to 18 (ages) essentially. Basically adolescence, depending upon the research that you are looking at, but adolescence can actually go, and in my opinion, looking at research adolescence does go into the early to mid-20s (late adolescence nevertheless) but still a stage of adolescence. That is fairly critical as we think about our adult lives and what development looks like and what traumatic experiences, the effect that they can have on adolescence even if they are in late adolescence.
That doesn't mean that traumatic experiences don't effect adults. They do obviously. Any trauma or stressful or severe emotional experience leaves a mark. With some of the attachments (website), some of the articles, some will be more academic, some will be less, they’ll give you some of the background (if you explore the website). ACEs is divided to three general categories: 1) abuse (emotional, physical, or sexual abuse); 2) neglect (emotional and physical neglect); 3) household dysfunction (the mother, but it can be any spouse, is treated violently, household substance abuse, household mental illness, parental separation or divorce, and incarcerated household member. Abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction.
I want to speak for a moment to the third category, household dysfunction. On average in our society today essentially half of all marriages end in divorce. I am a part of that statistic and it's painful and humiliating and comes with shame. It does for anyone. Particularly as a man of God, as a pastor, the shame is more acute. The point is that I know something about trauma in this specific area. It is something that I grieve daily particularly its effects on my three children, one of which is in little late adolescence, the other two are in middle of adolescence.
The point is that earlier we were talking about the statistic that anywhere from 1-4, 1-5, have experienced as a child a traumatic experience. When you do the math on marriages in our society (it doesn't mean that every marriage has children because they don't, right) I have a pretty strong idea that if we're honest, especially just in the area of divorce or parental separation or household dysfunction in relationships we are talking about a higher percentage than just 1-4 or 1-5.
I bring this up because I'm very familiar with spiritual life, life in the church, and the dysfunction and the abuse that I've experienced as a pastor trying to help communities through transition especially when conflict is part of the identity of that community. That's in the house of God.
We foolishly thought we were somehow better, wiser, just something better than the rest of society. What human existence and human experience has shown me is that this is not true. As Paul says, rightfully so, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23, NRSV). There's just no exception, whether you're embedded in the church or haven’t been in a church in years or ever, we just all struggle with human relationships. We all struggle with trauma.
There's a quote that talks about (I don't know who it’s immediately attributed to) but it talks about how everyone, be careful how you treat them because everyone is fighting a private battle. When you think about this ACEs study and you think about the need for resilience in our society, resilience begins by people looking at others—the very first episode of Prep the Day was about judgment and trying to diffuse some of our propensity towards judging one another up because it's just too easy to do. It discounts the nature of trauma in our lives so that we treat one another more harshly than we deserve because each of us on any given day, at any given moment is fighting a battle. It could be internal. It could be external. It could be both, or going home to a place that is supposed to be safe and isn't.
What would our relationships look like if we looked at this person that we want to judge and that we would otherwise choose to hate? What would those relationships look like if we recognized this could be another one of those people, like myself, who have experienced a serious trauma? Maybe I need to recognize more humility in myself? Maybe I need to offer more compassion? Maybe I can offer an element of love to a person who maybe hasn't experienced much in life?
So we’re going to go to another video. We’ll end with this today. It's young man doing a localized Ted Talk and sharing some of his own story of abuse but also about the potential to choose a better way forward. That ties back into resilience. Wherever you find yourself at today, whatever you've experienced in your life, whatever trauma—anybody who is actively engaged in living this life, you're not going to get out of it without experiencing trauma. Just because 1-4, 1-5, have experienced childhood trauma, we will ALL sooner or later experience trauma. That's the point. Childhood trauma is something specific and has a particular outcome where health and wellness is concerned. However we will ALL be traumatized in our lives sooner or later.
If we recognize in the heat of the moment, that this person who is hurting us, angering us, infuriating us, if we look at them and recognize a fellow human being who maybe is dealing with trauma that we don't understand or immediately recognize. Maybe it creates potential for healing, for mutual understanding, and by God we hope, we hope and pray, peace.
Prep the Day.
That doesn't mean that traumatic experiences don't effect adults. They do obviously. Any trauma or stressful or severe emotional experience leaves a mark. With some of the attachments (website), some of the articles, some will be more academic, some will be less, they’ll give you some of the background (if you explore the website). ACEs is divided to three general categories: 1) abuse (emotional, physical, or sexual abuse); 2) neglect (emotional and physical neglect); 3) household dysfunction (the mother, but it can be any spouse, is treated violently, household substance abuse, household mental illness, parental separation or divorce, and incarcerated household member. Abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction.
I want to speak for a moment to the third category, household dysfunction. On average in our society today essentially half of all marriages end in divorce. I am a part of that statistic and it's painful and humiliating and comes with shame. It does for anyone. Particularly as a man of God, as a pastor, the shame is more acute. The point is that I know something about trauma in this specific area. It is something that I grieve daily particularly its effects on my three children, one of which is in little late adolescence, the other two are in middle of adolescence.
The point is that earlier we were talking about the statistic that anywhere from 1-4, 1-5, have experienced as a child a traumatic experience. When you do the math on marriages in our society (it doesn't mean that every marriage has children because they don't, right) I have a pretty strong idea that if we're honest, especially just in the area of divorce or parental separation or household dysfunction in relationships we are talking about a higher percentage than just 1-4 or 1-5.
I bring this up because I'm very familiar with spiritual life, life in the church, and the dysfunction and the abuse that I've experienced as a pastor trying to help communities through transition especially when conflict is part of the identity of that community. That's in the house of God.
We foolishly thought we were somehow better, wiser, just something better than the rest of society. What human existence and human experience has shown me is that this is not true. As Paul says, rightfully so, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23, NRSV). There's just no exception, whether you're embedded in the church or haven’t been in a church in years or ever, we just all struggle with human relationships. We all struggle with trauma.
There's a quote that talks about (I don't know who it’s immediately attributed to) but it talks about how everyone, be careful how you treat them because everyone is fighting a private battle. When you think about this ACEs study and you think about the need for resilience in our society, resilience begins by people looking at others—the very first episode of Prep the Day was about judgment and trying to diffuse some of our propensity towards judging one another up because it's just too easy to do. It discounts the nature of trauma in our lives so that we treat one another more harshly than we deserve because each of us on any given day, at any given moment is fighting a battle. It could be internal. It could be external. It could be both, or going home to a place that is supposed to be safe and isn't.
What would our relationships look like if we looked at this person that we want to judge and that we would otherwise choose to hate? What would those relationships look like if we recognized this could be another one of those people, like myself, who have experienced a serious trauma? Maybe I need to recognize more humility in myself? Maybe I need to offer more compassion? Maybe I can offer an element of love to a person who maybe hasn't experienced much in life?
So we’re going to go to another video. We’ll end with this today. It's young man doing a localized Ted Talk and sharing some of his own story of abuse but also about the potential to choose a better way forward. That ties back into resilience. Wherever you find yourself at today, whatever you've experienced in your life, whatever trauma—anybody who is actively engaged in living this life, you're not going to get out of it without experiencing trauma. Just because 1-4, 1-5, have experienced childhood trauma, we will ALL sooner or later experience trauma. That's the point. Childhood trauma is something specific and has a particular outcome where health and wellness is concerned. However we will ALL be traumatized in our lives sooner or later.
If we recognize in the heat of the moment, that this person who is hurting us, angering us, infuriating us, if we look at them and recognize a fellow human being who maybe is dealing with trauma that we don't understand or immediately recognize. Maybe it creates potential for healing, for mutual understanding, and by God we hope, we hope and pray, peace.
Prep the Day.
| finding_your_ace_score.pdf |
| childhood_trauma_questionnaire.pdf |
| adverse_childhood_experiences_affect_later_life_well_being.pdf |
| all_unhappy_childhoods_are_unhappy_in_their_own_way-differential_impact_of_dimensions_of_adverse_childhood_experiences_on_adult_mental_health_and_health_behavior.pdf |
| what_new_counselors_need_to_know_about_adverse_childhood_experiences.pdf |
Eudaimonia - 6/29/18
Follow the link for more inspirational quotes on fulfillment:
http://awakenthegreatnesswithin.com/35-inspirational-quotes-on-fulfillment/
http://awakenthegreatnesswithin.com/35-inspirational-quotes-on-fulfillment/
Eudaimonia - 6/28/18
Everyone has their own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein they cannot be replaced, nor can their life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as their specific opportunity to implement it.
-Viktor Frankl
-Viktor Frankl
Eudaimonia - 6/27/18
Examine your life today. Are you able to identify areas where you feel fulfilled? Whether it’s one or more write it down and post it somewhere to remind you.
Eudaimonia - 6/26/18
It is a misconception that people living with a mental disorder do not experience fulfillment. We think they’re just sad, or “just” anything. It’s just not true. Witness eudaimonia:
Eudaimonia - 6/25/18
Social media and pretending to be happy... think it over. Watch these interesting clips and decide for yourself what this day means for you.
Eudaimonia - 6/24/18
Hello again and welcome to Prep the Day. I am your host Scott Adams. In preparing for this week’s episode I was thinking about how we could spend some time together focusing on happiness or joy utilizing some stories and images that would otherwise evoke those feelings. As I started to do that it was interesting to come across some resources and contemporary research considering the idea of happiness and actually identifying fault with the word or the theories of the come along with happiness. One the things we're going to do as we start out of the episode today is our we're going to utilize a video so this week especially you’ll maybe want to spend a little bit of extra time with the website if you haven't done so previously, but we’ll utilize a video. As we prepare to do that I want to introduce you if you don't already know about “The School of Life” and there's an app actually that you can download for your phone for “The School of Life” and participate in weekly conversations, discussion points, as well as watch a number of the videos, short films that they have produced. You can find a lot of the past videos on YouTube just search “The School of Life” and you can subscribe to their site. I am a member of “The School of Life” which sounds kind of funny because I think in a sense we all, right? Specifically this organization was founded at least in part by Alain De Botton. He is a philosopher. He's written a couple of really good books that I happen to have in my library. I'd already liked him but when I learned about “The School of Life” he created and the work that they were doing I was particularly interested in staying connected to what they're trying to do and the conversations they are trying to create. So props to them. It's a great referral for you to investigate on your own. It's definitely something that can partner with what we're trying to do at Prep the Day. There's definitely some corollaries, some connection points between some of these conversations and then there's a wealth of resources that they've already produced so I obviously don’t need to. So we’re going to take a break as you listen to this video or go to the website and watch it and then we’ll come back and talk about a new word probably for a lot of you maybe not for all of that we could perhaps start using or contemplating instead of the word happiness. Be right back.
So welcome back. Hope you enjoyed the video from School of Life. So as you learned it's an ancient Greek word but you also learned that it's not synonymous with the word, the English word happiness. As a matter fact Eudaimonia is a concept that is according to the video and School of Life and to a number of other social and positive psychologists just a better concept to seek or entertain than the traditional idea of happiness particularly as the concept of happiness has been taught and handed down to us over the generations. Let's talk a little bit more specifically about what Eudaimonia implies. There are two, again both of these words I'm going to mention are Greek. They'll be familiar by virtue of just the sound Hedonia and Eudaimonia both Greek words both dealing with well-being. Hedonia is where we get the other word hedonism. So traditionally speaking Hedonia or hedonism, they’re fundamentally about pleasure seeking but Hedonia is not only about pleasure. There's other dimensions to it. It’s about experiencing a high level of positive affect and a low level of negative affect and a high degree of satisfaction with one's life. So doesn't sound so bad or so negative.
A more precise interpretation of hedonic well-being would use just positive affect and negative affect to index happiness because life satisfaction is not strictly a hedonic concept. It involves a cognitive evaluation of the conditions of one’s life. That's a great scientific definition to hedonic well-being. I'm not sure that it’s immediately understandable or useful to the listener. As I try to simplify this and just make it a little bit more contemporary and a little bit more understandable what's basically being discussed is that when we talk about affect it's dealing with the feeling, the individual feeling or the individual idea of well-being. With that mind hedonic well-being would typically elevate positive experiences, positive feelings over and against negative feelings, negative experiences to index (in their words index) or otherwise quantify or evaluate happiness. So cognitive (you know that definition I share) they mention cognitive evaluation of the conditions of one's life… that just means you're thinking about these experiences, thinking about these feelings and if at the end of your thinking and evaluating if you feel or are able to notice happiness. That's essentially what Hedonic well-being is concerned with. That sounds a lot more and I'm not saying there's anything ultimately wrong with that—that sounds an awful lot as you think about the definition and some of the phrases and so forth that are associated with hedonic well-being sounds a lot like our contemporary understanding of happiness. Traditionally to promote happiness we try to stay close to those experiences or people that make us feel good (positive affect) and we try to avoid and stay away from those people or experiences that make us feel bad (negative affect). It's not that, it's not as complex as their making it sound but if you're writing a research paper it needs to sound more scientific. But hopefully that description helps and makes sense.
So in thinking about the second view of well-being Eudaimonia, it consist of more than just happiness suggesting that people's reports of being happy or of being positively affected and satisfied does not necessarily mean that they are psychologically well. Already scientific dialogue again but what they're saying is that just because people are reporting feeling happy doesn't mean that deep down psychologically, mentally that they are in fact well. So the second perspective is referred to as Eudaimonia and is concerned with living well or actualizing one’s human potentials. This conceptualization maintains that well-being is not so much an outcome or end state as it is a process of fulfilling or realizing one’s daimon or true nature, that is of fulfilling one's a virtuous potentials and living as one was inherently intended to live. So expanded definition of Eudaimonia, talking about true nature and the process of fulfilling or realizing one's true nature. For any of us that have entertained that idea or process seriously we know that it comes with a multitude of ups and downs, of hits and misses, of bumps and scrapes, and that means that the process itself will include not only negative experiences but more specifically and just even more honestly painful experiences. When we recognize these painful experiences have the potential to be valuable teachers for us on the journey toward fulfillment and realizing our true nature then that means that even these challenging or otherwise negative experiences have value.
Part of what we're trying to do in these conversations at Prep the Day is to begin to recognize that everything and everyone has value. When we begin to do that we recognize that life isn't simply a matter of finding the good people and avoiding the bad people, or even speaking or thinking in these cut and dry terms of “good and bad”, “right and wrong”. But better understood life and the process of living out Eudaimonia becomes about recognition, daily, moment to moment, recognition that there is something valuable here to be gleaned, to be learned, I just have not recognized what it is yet.
Think about that and try to remember that the next time you're confronted by something or someone that just totally pisses you off or totally sucks the life force out of you, depresses you, upsets you, irritates you, infuriates you, and so on and so forth. Use your imagination. These are things and people not to be avoided but to somehow be valued as teachers. Maybe in the process of being taught it just reinforces some of what you already knew about yourself but creates or evokes a greater passion to be about social justice. That's a good thing. If you're looking at an injustice in the world or people that are practicing injustice and they're bothering you, if that becomes the catalyst to motivate you toward your ultimate fulfillment, toward your ultimate true being, then they are actually useful and valuable to you because they help set you on your path toward fulfillment. That's a good thing. Suddenly these people or these experiences look less threatening and look more beneficial, not to say that they don't include pain or frustration or challenges in the process, but they're valuable. They're useful and not just a waste of life or time or energy or experience and that's the point.
So obviously we are three episodes in to Prep the Day. I want to just take this opportunity to thank you for tuning. I recognize the first two episodes, I asked a lot of you intellectually and just timewise. So today we're going to keep the session a briefer. Perhaps I'll look at doing the same for future episodes. This continues to evolve and take shape so obviously it's new and again I want to express my gratitude to you and for you for participating. So as we are prepare to wind down the conversation today, Viktor Frankl and if you recall from last week’s session on Human Value (you can revisit the podcast—it is later in the second half of the podcast if you're trying to find it and similarly further down in the transcripts of the website) but we spoke about using some of logotherapy as a means to distraction. To do that we talked about three specific logotherapeutic ideas to enable us to practice distraction. That carries over to this episode and just fundamentally life as well, that if you are looking for meaning or fulfillment that in Viktor Frankl's understanding you can do that, you can discern meaning and even experience meaning in those three specific ways: 1) create; if you recall, again if you go back to last weeks of podcast to find more information about what that means but number one is create. 2) experience/encounter. 3) and highest form of a fulfillment or meaning in human existence is how we bear unavoidable suffering.
Again more information in last week’s (podcast) but as we as we think about Viktor Frankl, as we close our time after this week, Viktor would be very much in keeping with this conversation about Eudaimonia and fulfillment and discerning one's true being. He would say this, and he actually does say this in his writings, that happiness cannot be pursued. Happiness ensues from a life of meaning. So that if you in your own life today are trying to create happiness for yourself, we recognize that that maybe there's a better word we can use instead of happiness, or if you’re going to hold onto the word happiness then let's not make it just about positive versus negative experiences but that there would be more depth and values and even the attainment and seeking of value as a part of the process.
Where can happiness ensue? If I'm not pursuing happiness, if I'm living with meaning—again you can find or discern meaning as you 1) create; 2) experience/encounter; 3) as you ultimately bear unavoidable suffering. Viktor would say if you were doing any one, if not even all three of these things, undoubtedly happiness will ensue. Going back to today's terminology, today's concepts, if you do any of these three things or all of these three things Eudaimonia will be reached. Fulfillment, you’re true being will be realized.
So no mantra for today. Just meditate on the idea of Eudaimonia. Ask yourself if you feel fulfilled today? If you do, celebrate that. If you do not, entertain the idea of creating, of experiencing or encountering, or choosing to bear a form of suffering that you at this stage in your life cannot escape.
Prep the Day!
A more precise interpretation of hedonic well-being would use just positive affect and negative affect to index happiness because life satisfaction is not strictly a hedonic concept. It involves a cognitive evaluation of the conditions of one’s life. That's a great scientific definition to hedonic well-being. I'm not sure that it’s immediately understandable or useful to the listener. As I try to simplify this and just make it a little bit more contemporary and a little bit more understandable what's basically being discussed is that when we talk about affect it's dealing with the feeling, the individual feeling or the individual idea of well-being. With that mind hedonic well-being would typically elevate positive experiences, positive feelings over and against negative feelings, negative experiences to index (in their words index) or otherwise quantify or evaluate happiness. So cognitive (you know that definition I share) they mention cognitive evaluation of the conditions of one's life… that just means you're thinking about these experiences, thinking about these feelings and if at the end of your thinking and evaluating if you feel or are able to notice happiness. That's essentially what Hedonic well-being is concerned with. That sounds a lot more and I'm not saying there's anything ultimately wrong with that—that sounds an awful lot as you think about the definition and some of the phrases and so forth that are associated with hedonic well-being sounds a lot like our contemporary understanding of happiness. Traditionally to promote happiness we try to stay close to those experiences or people that make us feel good (positive affect) and we try to avoid and stay away from those people or experiences that make us feel bad (negative affect). It's not that, it's not as complex as their making it sound but if you're writing a research paper it needs to sound more scientific. But hopefully that description helps and makes sense.
So in thinking about the second view of well-being Eudaimonia, it consist of more than just happiness suggesting that people's reports of being happy or of being positively affected and satisfied does not necessarily mean that they are psychologically well. Already scientific dialogue again but what they're saying is that just because people are reporting feeling happy doesn't mean that deep down psychologically, mentally that they are in fact well. So the second perspective is referred to as Eudaimonia and is concerned with living well or actualizing one’s human potentials. This conceptualization maintains that well-being is not so much an outcome or end state as it is a process of fulfilling or realizing one’s daimon or true nature, that is of fulfilling one's a virtuous potentials and living as one was inherently intended to live. So expanded definition of Eudaimonia, talking about true nature and the process of fulfilling or realizing one's true nature. For any of us that have entertained that idea or process seriously we know that it comes with a multitude of ups and downs, of hits and misses, of bumps and scrapes, and that means that the process itself will include not only negative experiences but more specifically and just even more honestly painful experiences. When we recognize these painful experiences have the potential to be valuable teachers for us on the journey toward fulfillment and realizing our true nature then that means that even these challenging or otherwise negative experiences have value.
Part of what we're trying to do in these conversations at Prep the Day is to begin to recognize that everything and everyone has value. When we begin to do that we recognize that life isn't simply a matter of finding the good people and avoiding the bad people, or even speaking or thinking in these cut and dry terms of “good and bad”, “right and wrong”. But better understood life and the process of living out Eudaimonia becomes about recognition, daily, moment to moment, recognition that there is something valuable here to be gleaned, to be learned, I just have not recognized what it is yet.
Think about that and try to remember that the next time you're confronted by something or someone that just totally pisses you off or totally sucks the life force out of you, depresses you, upsets you, irritates you, infuriates you, and so on and so forth. Use your imagination. These are things and people not to be avoided but to somehow be valued as teachers. Maybe in the process of being taught it just reinforces some of what you already knew about yourself but creates or evokes a greater passion to be about social justice. That's a good thing. If you're looking at an injustice in the world or people that are practicing injustice and they're bothering you, if that becomes the catalyst to motivate you toward your ultimate fulfillment, toward your ultimate true being, then they are actually useful and valuable to you because they help set you on your path toward fulfillment. That's a good thing. Suddenly these people or these experiences look less threatening and look more beneficial, not to say that they don't include pain or frustration or challenges in the process, but they're valuable. They're useful and not just a waste of life or time or energy or experience and that's the point.
So obviously we are three episodes in to Prep the Day. I want to just take this opportunity to thank you for tuning. I recognize the first two episodes, I asked a lot of you intellectually and just timewise. So today we're going to keep the session a briefer. Perhaps I'll look at doing the same for future episodes. This continues to evolve and take shape so obviously it's new and again I want to express my gratitude to you and for you for participating. So as we are prepare to wind down the conversation today, Viktor Frankl and if you recall from last week’s session on Human Value (you can revisit the podcast—it is later in the second half of the podcast if you're trying to find it and similarly further down in the transcripts of the website) but we spoke about using some of logotherapy as a means to distraction. To do that we talked about three specific logotherapeutic ideas to enable us to practice distraction. That carries over to this episode and just fundamentally life as well, that if you are looking for meaning or fulfillment that in Viktor Frankl's understanding you can do that, you can discern meaning and even experience meaning in those three specific ways: 1) create; if you recall, again if you go back to last weeks of podcast to find more information about what that means but number one is create. 2) experience/encounter. 3) and highest form of a fulfillment or meaning in human existence is how we bear unavoidable suffering.
Again more information in last week’s (podcast) but as we as we think about Viktor Frankl, as we close our time after this week, Viktor would be very much in keeping with this conversation about Eudaimonia and fulfillment and discerning one's true being. He would say this, and he actually does say this in his writings, that happiness cannot be pursued. Happiness ensues from a life of meaning. So that if you in your own life today are trying to create happiness for yourself, we recognize that that maybe there's a better word we can use instead of happiness, or if you’re going to hold onto the word happiness then let's not make it just about positive versus negative experiences but that there would be more depth and values and even the attainment and seeking of value as a part of the process.
Where can happiness ensue? If I'm not pursuing happiness, if I'm living with meaning—again you can find or discern meaning as you 1) create; 2) experience/encounter; 3) as you ultimately bear unavoidable suffering. Viktor would say if you were doing any one, if not even all three of these things, undoubtedly happiness will ensue. Going back to today's terminology, today's concepts, if you do any of these three things or all of these three things Eudaimonia will be reached. Fulfillment, you’re true being will be realized.
So no mantra for today. Just meditate on the idea of Eudaimonia. Ask yourself if you feel fulfilled today? If you do, celebrate that. If you do not, entertain the idea of creating, of experiencing or encountering, or choosing to bear a form of suffering that you at this stage in your life cannot escape.
Prep the Day!
| hedonia_eudaimonia_and_well-being.pdf |
| happiness_eudaimonia_and_the_principle_of_descriptive_adequacy.pdf |
| understanding_our_best-eudaimonia’s_growing_influence_in_psychology.pdf |
Human Value - 6/22/18
What have you noticed and what have you learned concerning value this week? Have you mindfully practiced the 5:1 ratio? Have you found any value in people who frustrate you? Have you valued yourself?
Human Value - 6/21/18
Part of living with depression or any mental disorder goes beyond loneliness or isolation. Loving someone living with a disorder doesn’t mean the condition can be solved or fixed no matter how much you love them and how present you are for them. People will still succumb to the illness. I’m not saying don’t try. I’m not saying give up. I am saying understand that our moments together no matter how challenging or painful are precious. Part of human value is valuing the moments we share recognizing no one lives forever. How will we value the time we do have and the people we have it with, especially when it is exhausting, even infuriating?
Human Value - 6/20/18
What do you value about yourself? List the top five or ten (more?) things that come to mind. This could be a regular exercise for you. It’s hard to value others if you don’t value yourself.
Human Value - 6/19/18
The ideal average ratio for positive to negative comments is between 6:1 or 5:1. See the links below on 6/17/18 for more information.
Spend the week beginning to notice how you experience the ratio in giving and receiving positive or negative comments. Notice how you feel. Notice how others around you seem to feel.
Spend the week beginning to notice how you experience the ratio in giving and receiving positive or negative comments. Notice how you feel. Notice how others around you seem to feel.
Human Value - 6/18/18
You are not alone. Talk to someone. Know these resources:
In the USA, 24/7
Online
Or text HOME to 741741
Or call 800-273-8255
International Resources
In the USA, 24/7
Online
Or text HOME to 741741
Or call 800-273-8255
International Resources
Human Value - 6/17/18
The Loneliness And The Scream
Can you hear the road from this place?
Can you hear footsteps, voices?
Can you see the blood on my sleeve?
I have fallen in the forest, did you hear me?
In the loneliness
oh, the loneliness
and the scream to prove to everyone that I exist
In the loneliness
Oh, the loneliness
and the scream to bring
the blood to the front of my face again
Am I here? of course I am, yes
All I need is your hand to drag me out again
It wasn't me, I didn't dig this ditch
I was walking for weeks before I fell in
to the loneliness
Oh, the loneliness
and the scream to prove to everyone that I exist
in the loneliness
Oh, the loneliness
and the scream to fill a thousand black balloons with air
We fall down, find God just to lose it again
Glue the community together we were hammering it
I fell down, found love, I can lose it again
but now our communal heart beats miles from here
Can you hear the road from this place?
Can you hear footsteps, voices?
Can you see the blood on my sleeve?
I have fallen in the forest, did you hear me?
In the loneliness
oh, the loneliness
and the scream to prove to everyone that I exist
In the loneliness
Oh, the loneliness
and the scream to bring
the blood to the front of my face again
Am I here? of course I am, yes
All I need is your hand to drag me out again
It wasn't me, I didn't dig this ditch
I was walking for weeks before I fell in
to the loneliness
Oh, the loneliness
and the scream to prove to everyone that I exist
in the loneliness
Oh, the loneliness
and the scream to fill a thousand black balloons with air
We fall down, find God just to lose it again
Glue the community together we were hammering it
I fell down, found love, I can lose it again
but now our communal heart beats miles from here
Hello and welcome to another edition of Prep the Day. I'm your host Scott Adams. We're going to get right into this episode. Today's theme is Human Value.
We're going to talk specifically about how we in society might do a better job of valuing one another. But to get to that I want to spend a little bit of time today talking about what in the media recently has been referred to as a national epidemic and that epidemic pertains to suicide. Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade—and we used a different song this morning to enter into the episode by a band a friend recently turned me onto called Frightened Rabbit—the lead singer of that band and primary song writer Scott Hutchison can be added to the list. Sadly in early May he too committed suicide. In addition to that you may remember in the past year Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington and the list goes on and on.
I'm going to be citing some statistics today a lot of those you will be able to find on the website (www.preptheday.com). There’ll also be additional links. Earlier this week the Washington Post hosted an open forum online on the state of mental health and there's some really useful resources from that conversation that you'll find on the website as well.
So let's get into it right away. According to one article in the New Yorker magazine by Andrew Solomon from June 8, 2018, there is a wealth of information in it. It's a great article you'll find it online at the website. There were close to 45,000 deaths from suicide in the United States in 2016 alone. It's now one of the top 10 causes of death in the country, one of the top three for adolescents. Rates of teen depression have risen since 2011. Those are pretty strong figures. The highest rates of suicide are among white men in their 50s or 60s. The Huffington Post recently published an article that cites the increase in suicide among women roughly around the same age group that I just cited. In their article, it includes 45 to 60, the ages are 45 to 60 among women. In the conversation from the Washington Post, suicide is a leading cause of death among adolescents aged 10 to 14. These are surprising figures.
Suicide now claims more lives each year in our country than automobile accidents. So the statistics are troubling and disconcerting. When we think about depression, what comes to mind? Well, generally sadness. Sometimes irritability. Sometimes loneliness or isolation. Perhaps there are other things that you think of, but what I want to emphasize today and what needs to begin to change in our collective thinking as a people is that when we talk about depression as well as a host of other mental disorders, for the overwhelming majority of people who experience depression it's a disease. When we think about physical illness, anything from cancer to the common cold we generally don't question the source or why somebody has it or how they got it. We immediately or generally speaking relatively quickly began to think about treatment and compassion and support because we don't want the individual to suffer, especially if we genuinely care about them. Right?
The point is that when we talk about physical illness we don't immediately question it we just try to support it. Even on commercials on television that will be advertising cancer treatment centers, often the individuals that are being interviewed or the actors in the commercials are talking about fighting this [disease]. “I'm going to beat this.” There's general agreement and acceptance along those lines. We don't talk the same way about mental illness.
That's the point. Why is that? As whole or complete human beings we are physical beings but we are not only physical beings. Right? We are more complicated, more complex systems and organisms than just a physical being. I talked before about studying logotherapy and the psychotherapy of Victor Frankl. From his perspective and I agree with him, we are (and he doesn't necessarily mean this in religious terms, just in human terms) we are of course physical beings but we are also mental beings and we are also spiritual beings. If you want to simplify the human experience it at least, at least includes these three realms or domains: Physical, Mental and Spiritual. That means that if the physical part can experience illness why would we be so surprised and so reluctant to talk about the reality that the mental part of us, the spiritual part of us wouldn't or couldn't experience similar forms of chronic illness? It makes no sense. Yet we rarely have ever, as a society, accounted for these differing dimensions all part of the same whole, right but nevertheless appreciated them to the extent that we recognize as complex organisms, as complex systems, we’re not only physical. If the physical is subject to illness, as whole beings that would also be part of our existence, part of the challenge of being human. Sooner or later regardless of how hard we try to take care of ourselves, we're going to get sick. It isn’t just a physical sickness or just a mental sickness or just a spiritual sickness but sooner or later all of us are going to experience sickness in any or all of these areas. What makes it even more challenging is when all of these areas are experiencing illness simultaneously. In the same way that we practiced compassion or understanding for individuals struggling with physical diseases, terminal diseases it's about time we bring that same thinking that same behavior to these other dimensions.
In 90% of the cases of depression it is linked to a disease which means that because we are whole and multi-dimensional beings this mental illness is very much also a physical illness in the sense that it may be rooted in the brain in the way neurons are firing or misfiring, or connected or disconnected. The point is that the brain is also part of the body. Right? It's the physical part of the body and so a mental illness is very much connected to physical illness which can also therefore be connected to spiritual illness. It's all interconnected. Why do we distinguish or compartmentalize? We've seen in numerous cases where someone again struggling with cancer gets depressed because the physical illness has an impact on the mental state or mental wellness of the individual or the spiritual state and wellness of the individual. Again, all connected.
This isn't overly complicated and yet we create the stigmas and attach them to this state over and against that state or condition. Instead of opening doors and channels of communication and establishing safety so that individuals who are struggling feel safe enough to come forward the stigma and the shame associated with mental illness, mental disorders, and mental imbalances the stigma associated with these things compels people to remain quiet and suffer in silence.
Another statistic, 54% of the suicides reviewed by the CDC over the past decade, 54% of the suicides they reviewed didn't have a previously known mental health issue. If 90% of the cases are connected to the idea, the reality of a disease it stands to reason that we have people living with a condition that they're not seeking or being treated for. We've already in this conversation so far established at least some of the reasons why this isn't taking place. We are in a position to begin to change that.
There are obstacles to healthcare as well. Since 2011 funding in the area of mental health is down. In a number of examples, and not only that, part of what complicates the matter is clinicians who are trained in suicide and how to address it or a combat it, we are short-staffed in that area. There's a shortage of psychologists. There's a shortage of diversity within these fields as well which can stand as another obstacle to people seeking treatment. If I don't feel like you are like me or that you—if I don’t trust you right now, that is ultimately what it comes down to, why am I going to come and talk to you?
It's a very different thing to talk to your doctor about a pain in the stomach compared and contrasted with--you know we've already established the reasons why and there are even more behind them, but it's a different thing to talk to your doctor about a pain in the stomach over and against thoughts in your mind that lead you to believe you are unvalued, unworthy of life itself. That you are sad and alone and you don't know what to do about it. We've established with statistics and some supporting research the problem which we didn't even need all of that data to know that there's a problem. But now that we know there's a problem, what are we going to do about it?
If you need a Bible verse, there are many that we could cite but let's just cite Matthew 7:12. To many it's known as the Golden Rule:
"In everything do to others as you would have them do to you. For this is the law and the prophets." (NRSV)
Do to others as you would have them do to you. An underlying challenge within that is if you don't love yourself, genuinely love and appreciate yourself, how are you going to genuinely love and appreciate somebody else? So maybe before we can be emotionally accessible to other people we need to do some processing with ourselves. That's one consideration right?
I want to give you some more information here about where we can go, what we can do to try to improve our relationships, relationship with yourself and relationships with others—so I want to before I get too deeply into what we can do I want to finish emphasizing an increasing challenge in society. That is social isolation.
It's always been there but it's only now beginning to get increased acknowledgment or research. A conversation concerning social wealth versus social poverty, which is connected to social isolation recently was discussed in the New York Times in an article by David Brooks. You'll find this on the website. The article was entitled “The Blindness of Social Wealth”. Here's what David wrote:
There's a mountain of evidence suggesting that the quality of our relationships has been in a steady state of decline for decades. In the 1980s 20% of American said they were often lonely. Now it's 40%. Suicide rates are now at a 30 year high. Depression rates have increased tenfold since 1960, which is not only a result of greater reporting. Most children born to mothers under 30 are born outside of marriage. There's been a steady 30 year decline in American satisfaction with peer to peer relationships at work.
Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy summarized his experience as a doctor in an article in September in the Harvard Business Review saying “During my years caring for patients the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes, it was loneliness. Patients came to see him partly because they were lonely, partly because loneliness made them sick. Weak social connections have health effects similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and a greater negative affect then obesity he said. Over the past five years such trends have gotten worse. In 2012, 5.9% of young people suffered from severe mental health issues, 5.9% in 20 12. By 2015 it was 8.2%. Last year Jean Twenge wrote a much discussed article for The Atlantic, “Have Smart Phones Destroyed a Generation”. Charting the accelerating social collapse, teenagers are suddenly less likely to date, less likely to leave the home without their parents, more likely to put off the activities of adulthood. They are spending more time alone with their digital screens and the greater the screen time the greater the unhappiness. 8th graders who are heavy users of social media are 27% more likely to be depressed.
And the article continues, but the point there and even this came up in the forum hosted by the Washington Post earlier this week, the thing to understand or appreciate in all of this is that we are right now in a new generation of technological advances. We've been in it for some time. The point is that the technology continues to advance really rapidly but to do the research and to appreciate the psychological let alone physical or even spiritual affects, research is slow technology evolves quickly and we won't know the full results of what's taking place so quickly for a long time to come.
I don't want to just bash on social media or the digital world or screen time. Sometimes any connection, however small it may be is better than absolutely no connection. Certainly we can begin to conceive of some value that these things present to people regardless of their age adolescents or otherwise. We shouldn't also coexist with these things without some amount of skepticism or at least a willingness to question is this OK, are we OK, are our children OK? One of the things that came out of that forum from the Washington Post was that for those who have been—in the case of Facebook—for those who have friends, an inordinate, a significant number of friends negative experiences on social media have been concretely linked to depression however positive experiences on social media are not necessarily linked to less depression. For now where we are with the research, it shows that social media has the potential to make depression worse especially negative experiences on social media but positive experiences on social media are not immediately connected to lessening depression. We don't immediately know why that is, but the point is that while you may experience some sense of connection it's not going to be enough. Something about our human course of evolution is still dependent on human contact, human connection. A digital connection, an electronic connection, is something. But it's not enough.
So we’ve established the problem, we’ve identified some of the deficiencies, awareness has been raised out of this conversation but now what will we do? To get at that I want to pick up with another article from 2013 from the Harvard Business Review. In this case the study was looking at businesses, organizations, and the ideal praise to criticism ratio. They're looking at organizations and essentially employment and best business practices but as you'll see in when I'm about to share, what they're looking at transcends businesses and just fundamentally comes down to human relationships. Listen. So they examined the effectiveness of 60 strategic business unit leadership teams at large information processing companies. Effectiveness was measured according to financial performance, customer satisfaction, and 360° feedback ratings of the team members. The average ratio for the highest performing teams was 5.6 that is, what we're getting at is nearly six positive comments for every negative one. The median performance teams averaged 1.9 or almost twice as many positive comments than negative ones. The average for the low performing teams at .36 : 1 was almost 3 negative comments for every positive . Low performance is connected to more negativity versus positivity and moving up the spectrum from that to average to high functioning is the shift from negative comments to positive comments with the ratio that is at the highest level in their study six positive comments to one negative (6:1).
Carry that forward to Dr. John Gottman who has studied married couples and assessed the likelihood of staying married versus divorce. In this case we’re talking, we’ve moved from looking at businesses and management teams and now we're looking at marriages and relationships. But the results fundamentally come out the same. The optimal ratio for remaining married or having a healthy marriage, five positive comments for every one (5:1). For those who ended up divorced the ratio was .77 to 1 or something like three positive comments for every four negative ones. The point is that performance or relationships and their success rates or viability are very much influenced by how we treat one another. What we say and do to one another in the ratio of positive to negative. Obviously it isn’t just connected to verbal behavior or statements being made but it's very much connected to actions as well and how we treat one another with success being measured on average five or six positive statements to one negative. When that ratio is skewed in the other direction three positive comments for every four (negative) or three negative comments for every one (positive), performance and relationships break down.
Think about that as you begin to think what we've already discussed concerning depression, loneliness, social isolation, how we value ourselves, how we value other people. Turn on the nightly news or pay perhaps closer attention to your social media streams and the information that you are digesting. What kind of social sphere have you created for yourself? How is it affecting you? As you sit in management meetings or council meetings, what kind of conversations are taking place and what is the ratio positive to negative that you're experiencing?
The point is that you know, 90% of the time, I'll imagine probably even more than that. Probably pretty darn close to 100% of the time all of this is washing over us so quickly that we’re not even aware of what's happening until we walk out of the meeting or we walk out of the conversation or we log off of whatever application we were just connected to you and we feel anxious or frustrated or upset. The question becomes, when's the last time you left one of these places and felt good? When’s the last meeting you had and you left it feeling like something valuable was accomplished and that you contributed something to what that valuable accomplishment was or is or that you logged off of whatever the application was and felt good about what you just experienced? I'm not saying that any of these things are bad I'm saying or asking what is our awareness level? How do we change that? How do we practice greater awareness? Until we practice greater awareness and acknowledgment of what that positive to negative ratio is our relationships are going to continue to struggle and be challenged. Minimum 5 to 1 for healthy relationships, for successful relationships, for people that feel less criticize the last alone and more valued. 5:1.
If the ratio doesn't immediately help you then Dr. Donald Clifton created the theory of “The Dipper and the Bucket”. There's a book out called “How Full is Your Bucket?” The theory is simply this:
We all have a metaphorical bucket. The bucket is filled with positive interactions and emptied by negative ones. We feel great when our buckets are full, rotten when they are not. We also have a metaphorical dipper that we can use to empty or fill other people's buckets. When we fill other buckets we also fill our own.
If the metaphor helps you out instead of this ratio 5:1, if it helps you to envision the bucket and having a dipper and to recognize when somebody's emptying but then also recognize when you are emptying or when you have the potential or the opportunity to fill another person's bucket. Yet with that filling of another person's bucket suddenly you discover that yours is also being filled at the same time. That basically means that when we actually care for other people, take care of, value other people, suddenly our bucket feels a little bit more full.
So while it takes some work and investment to do that for other people we actually get something out of it and it's a good thing. Think about that as you think about people struggling with depression or some other mental health issue. Think about that for someone that's on the edge of suicide and what this ratio, what this bucket metaphor could mean for you and for them.
OK, Scott has talked a lot about these statistics and figures. We’ve identified the problem. We started to emphasize a potential solution. The thing I'm going to leave you with today as far as solution goes—there are many more but let's start with—Distraction. Even if we were practicing logotherapy Viktor Frankl's meaning therapy, he emphasizes three primary ways in which (he doesn't use the language of distraction but I do) and so these three ways that he emphasizes that in the end you will be either personally or if you're trying to support someone who struggling with depression or suicidal ideation, you can help them be distracted and it comes down in these three ways for him.
One is creating. So anything connected to creation, something artistic, painting, sculpting, writing. Use your imagination. Something connected to the idea of creating, woodworking building, planting, gardening. Creating.
Now the next step above creating is connected to experience or encounter. So you can see how some of these things are very similar especially if we left with gardening or something like that. That becomes a concrete experience. It can be an individual experience that you're doing yourself. It can also be a shared experience, which leads to an encounter. So an experience or an encounter. Travel is good for that. Watching television can be good for that. Going to a movie or the theater can be good for that. Use your imagination. You can begin to come up with innumerable ideas, innumerable possibilities for relatively immediate self-distraction or mutual, shared distraction.
What we're really driving out when somebody is dealing with suicidal ideation or long-term chronic depression it means that this is a condition that they have been living with for a long period of time. It's not a simple, it's a not a simple situation to just look at somebody and say well you know if you kill yourself it's just a permanent solution to a temporary problem. For these individuals, and again 90% of the cases it's a disease and that means these people in most cases been living with it for a really long time, it's not just a temporary problem, a temporary challenge. For some it is. For many it is not. It's been going on for years and years and years and they're exhausted. When you add in the current tenor in our society and how we value or devalue one another it's not a far-fetched idea that people would lose hope and ultimately see for themselves a better reality beyond this life or at least that in ending a life my suffering will stop. What they ultimately want is the suffering to stop.
In the heat of the moment death can look like a really good option in the absence of any other possibilities. Distraction becomes really critical. Then the third piece beyond creating (1) or experience and encounter (2) is how ultimately a person chooses to bear unavoidable suffering (3). Now this is the hardest and most challenging and in Frankl's terms this is sort of the pinnacle of self-transcendence. How we choose to bear unavoidable suffering comes down to this idea, that if you have a terminal disease, nothing can be done to cure it. We're managing it as best we can but it's not going to end ultimately the way that we otherwise hoped. In that realization Viktor would say that now you have the opportunity to decide how you allow this experience of your suffering, how you recognize that you're suffering is actually saving or has the potential cognitively to save someone else from suffering.
The way he gets at this is that he would often look at terminal patients and ask them this question so see if this makes sense for you. He would have them envision someone that they loved and would you “patient” take this terminal disease and give it to them so that you would be free of it? Oh no! Well what if they had it (disease) and you could willingly take it from them to save them the pain and suffering, would you do that? In so many cases the people of course respond with yes. In that moment, that's when Viktor would lift up the idea that is exactly what you were doing.
It doesn't end there then he stretches it to also include the idea that now that you are doing that, you have the opportunity to allow your experience of unavoidable suffering to be a teacher to leave a final message about how people can self-transcend as well. You get to teach people about a healthy way to suffer, a valuable way to suffer when all other efforts have been exhausted. You get to teach and model and inspire hope.
It's a great leap to get to that third one. For most people it's easier to live within the realm of creating (1) or experience/encounter (2) but those are the three primary vehicles in logotherapy to access a form of distraction that could very well be the way in which a person manages the heavy wave of emotions that compelling them to think about suicide or ending their life.
The last thing I'm going leave you with today to get at distraction and I'll try to upload this to the website, but these are 50 Calm-Down techniques because again what we're talking about when somebody is on the edge and thinking about suicide, living with depression for a long period of time or another mental health issue, another disorder. Those emotions are strong and they’re swelling and you can feel overwhelmed by them. How do we manage these overwhelming emotions? How can we begin to calm down? How can we begin to distract ourselves to the extent that the tide rolls over us and the emotion begins to ebb to the extent that I can breathe again and think a little bit more rationally then I was able to a moment ago. Here’s 50 Calm-Down techniques:
50 Calm-Down Techniques
(These techniques can be useful for any age group.)
So as we end the conversation for today here is the mantra for this week:
I value myself. I value the other.
I value myself. I value the other.
I value myself. I value the other.
Prep the Day!
NY Times: The Blindness of Social Wealth
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/preventable-tragedies
The Ideal Praise-to-Criticism Ratio
Be Nice: It's Good for Business
Washington Post Forum on Mental Health (6/13/18)
We're going to talk specifically about how we in society might do a better job of valuing one another. But to get to that I want to spend a little bit of time today talking about what in the media recently has been referred to as a national epidemic and that epidemic pertains to suicide. Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade—and we used a different song this morning to enter into the episode by a band a friend recently turned me onto called Frightened Rabbit—the lead singer of that band and primary song writer Scott Hutchison can be added to the list. Sadly in early May he too committed suicide. In addition to that you may remember in the past year Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington and the list goes on and on.
I'm going to be citing some statistics today a lot of those you will be able to find on the website (www.preptheday.com). There’ll also be additional links. Earlier this week the Washington Post hosted an open forum online on the state of mental health and there's some really useful resources from that conversation that you'll find on the website as well.
So let's get into it right away. According to one article in the New Yorker magazine by Andrew Solomon from June 8, 2018, there is a wealth of information in it. It's a great article you'll find it online at the website. There were close to 45,000 deaths from suicide in the United States in 2016 alone. It's now one of the top 10 causes of death in the country, one of the top three for adolescents. Rates of teen depression have risen since 2011. Those are pretty strong figures. The highest rates of suicide are among white men in their 50s or 60s. The Huffington Post recently published an article that cites the increase in suicide among women roughly around the same age group that I just cited. In their article, it includes 45 to 60, the ages are 45 to 60 among women. In the conversation from the Washington Post, suicide is a leading cause of death among adolescents aged 10 to 14. These are surprising figures.
Suicide now claims more lives each year in our country than automobile accidents. So the statistics are troubling and disconcerting. When we think about depression, what comes to mind? Well, generally sadness. Sometimes irritability. Sometimes loneliness or isolation. Perhaps there are other things that you think of, but what I want to emphasize today and what needs to begin to change in our collective thinking as a people is that when we talk about depression as well as a host of other mental disorders, for the overwhelming majority of people who experience depression it's a disease. When we think about physical illness, anything from cancer to the common cold we generally don't question the source or why somebody has it or how they got it. We immediately or generally speaking relatively quickly began to think about treatment and compassion and support because we don't want the individual to suffer, especially if we genuinely care about them. Right?
The point is that when we talk about physical illness we don't immediately question it we just try to support it. Even on commercials on television that will be advertising cancer treatment centers, often the individuals that are being interviewed or the actors in the commercials are talking about fighting this [disease]. “I'm going to beat this.” There's general agreement and acceptance along those lines. We don't talk the same way about mental illness.
That's the point. Why is that? As whole or complete human beings we are physical beings but we are not only physical beings. Right? We are more complicated, more complex systems and organisms than just a physical being. I talked before about studying logotherapy and the psychotherapy of Victor Frankl. From his perspective and I agree with him, we are (and he doesn't necessarily mean this in religious terms, just in human terms) we are of course physical beings but we are also mental beings and we are also spiritual beings. If you want to simplify the human experience it at least, at least includes these three realms or domains: Physical, Mental and Spiritual. That means that if the physical part can experience illness why would we be so surprised and so reluctant to talk about the reality that the mental part of us, the spiritual part of us wouldn't or couldn't experience similar forms of chronic illness? It makes no sense. Yet we rarely have ever, as a society, accounted for these differing dimensions all part of the same whole, right but nevertheless appreciated them to the extent that we recognize as complex organisms, as complex systems, we’re not only physical. If the physical is subject to illness, as whole beings that would also be part of our existence, part of the challenge of being human. Sooner or later regardless of how hard we try to take care of ourselves, we're going to get sick. It isn’t just a physical sickness or just a mental sickness or just a spiritual sickness but sooner or later all of us are going to experience sickness in any or all of these areas. What makes it even more challenging is when all of these areas are experiencing illness simultaneously. In the same way that we practiced compassion or understanding for individuals struggling with physical diseases, terminal diseases it's about time we bring that same thinking that same behavior to these other dimensions.
In 90% of the cases of depression it is linked to a disease which means that because we are whole and multi-dimensional beings this mental illness is very much also a physical illness in the sense that it may be rooted in the brain in the way neurons are firing or misfiring, or connected or disconnected. The point is that the brain is also part of the body. Right? It's the physical part of the body and so a mental illness is very much connected to physical illness which can also therefore be connected to spiritual illness. It's all interconnected. Why do we distinguish or compartmentalize? We've seen in numerous cases where someone again struggling with cancer gets depressed because the physical illness has an impact on the mental state or mental wellness of the individual or the spiritual state and wellness of the individual. Again, all connected.
This isn't overly complicated and yet we create the stigmas and attach them to this state over and against that state or condition. Instead of opening doors and channels of communication and establishing safety so that individuals who are struggling feel safe enough to come forward the stigma and the shame associated with mental illness, mental disorders, and mental imbalances the stigma associated with these things compels people to remain quiet and suffer in silence.
Another statistic, 54% of the suicides reviewed by the CDC over the past decade, 54% of the suicides they reviewed didn't have a previously known mental health issue. If 90% of the cases are connected to the idea, the reality of a disease it stands to reason that we have people living with a condition that they're not seeking or being treated for. We've already in this conversation so far established at least some of the reasons why this isn't taking place. We are in a position to begin to change that.
There are obstacles to healthcare as well. Since 2011 funding in the area of mental health is down. In a number of examples, and not only that, part of what complicates the matter is clinicians who are trained in suicide and how to address it or a combat it, we are short-staffed in that area. There's a shortage of psychologists. There's a shortage of diversity within these fields as well which can stand as another obstacle to people seeking treatment. If I don't feel like you are like me or that you—if I don’t trust you right now, that is ultimately what it comes down to, why am I going to come and talk to you?
It's a very different thing to talk to your doctor about a pain in the stomach compared and contrasted with--you know we've already established the reasons why and there are even more behind them, but it's a different thing to talk to your doctor about a pain in the stomach over and against thoughts in your mind that lead you to believe you are unvalued, unworthy of life itself. That you are sad and alone and you don't know what to do about it. We've established with statistics and some supporting research the problem which we didn't even need all of that data to know that there's a problem. But now that we know there's a problem, what are we going to do about it?
If you need a Bible verse, there are many that we could cite but let's just cite Matthew 7:12. To many it's known as the Golden Rule:
"In everything do to others as you would have them do to you. For this is the law and the prophets." (NRSV)
Do to others as you would have them do to you. An underlying challenge within that is if you don't love yourself, genuinely love and appreciate yourself, how are you going to genuinely love and appreciate somebody else? So maybe before we can be emotionally accessible to other people we need to do some processing with ourselves. That's one consideration right?
I want to give you some more information here about where we can go, what we can do to try to improve our relationships, relationship with yourself and relationships with others—so I want to before I get too deeply into what we can do I want to finish emphasizing an increasing challenge in society. That is social isolation.
It's always been there but it's only now beginning to get increased acknowledgment or research. A conversation concerning social wealth versus social poverty, which is connected to social isolation recently was discussed in the New York Times in an article by David Brooks. You'll find this on the website. The article was entitled “The Blindness of Social Wealth”. Here's what David wrote:
There's a mountain of evidence suggesting that the quality of our relationships has been in a steady state of decline for decades. In the 1980s 20% of American said they were often lonely. Now it's 40%. Suicide rates are now at a 30 year high. Depression rates have increased tenfold since 1960, which is not only a result of greater reporting. Most children born to mothers under 30 are born outside of marriage. There's been a steady 30 year decline in American satisfaction with peer to peer relationships at work.
Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy summarized his experience as a doctor in an article in September in the Harvard Business Review saying “During my years caring for patients the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes, it was loneliness. Patients came to see him partly because they were lonely, partly because loneliness made them sick. Weak social connections have health effects similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and a greater negative affect then obesity he said. Over the past five years such trends have gotten worse. In 2012, 5.9% of young people suffered from severe mental health issues, 5.9% in 20 12. By 2015 it was 8.2%. Last year Jean Twenge wrote a much discussed article for The Atlantic, “Have Smart Phones Destroyed a Generation”. Charting the accelerating social collapse, teenagers are suddenly less likely to date, less likely to leave the home without their parents, more likely to put off the activities of adulthood. They are spending more time alone with their digital screens and the greater the screen time the greater the unhappiness. 8th graders who are heavy users of social media are 27% more likely to be depressed.
And the article continues, but the point there and even this came up in the forum hosted by the Washington Post earlier this week, the thing to understand or appreciate in all of this is that we are right now in a new generation of technological advances. We've been in it for some time. The point is that the technology continues to advance really rapidly but to do the research and to appreciate the psychological let alone physical or even spiritual affects, research is slow technology evolves quickly and we won't know the full results of what's taking place so quickly for a long time to come.
I don't want to just bash on social media or the digital world or screen time. Sometimes any connection, however small it may be is better than absolutely no connection. Certainly we can begin to conceive of some value that these things present to people regardless of their age adolescents or otherwise. We shouldn't also coexist with these things without some amount of skepticism or at least a willingness to question is this OK, are we OK, are our children OK? One of the things that came out of that forum from the Washington Post was that for those who have been—in the case of Facebook—for those who have friends, an inordinate, a significant number of friends negative experiences on social media have been concretely linked to depression however positive experiences on social media are not necessarily linked to less depression. For now where we are with the research, it shows that social media has the potential to make depression worse especially negative experiences on social media but positive experiences on social media are not immediately connected to lessening depression. We don't immediately know why that is, but the point is that while you may experience some sense of connection it's not going to be enough. Something about our human course of evolution is still dependent on human contact, human connection. A digital connection, an electronic connection, is something. But it's not enough.
So we’ve established the problem, we’ve identified some of the deficiencies, awareness has been raised out of this conversation but now what will we do? To get at that I want to pick up with another article from 2013 from the Harvard Business Review. In this case the study was looking at businesses, organizations, and the ideal praise to criticism ratio. They're looking at organizations and essentially employment and best business practices but as you'll see in when I'm about to share, what they're looking at transcends businesses and just fundamentally comes down to human relationships. Listen. So they examined the effectiveness of 60 strategic business unit leadership teams at large information processing companies. Effectiveness was measured according to financial performance, customer satisfaction, and 360° feedback ratings of the team members. The average ratio for the highest performing teams was 5.6 that is, what we're getting at is nearly six positive comments for every negative one. The median performance teams averaged 1.9 or almost twice as many positive comments than negative ones. The average for the low performing teams at .36 : 1 was almost 3 negative comments for every positive . Low performance is connected to more negativity versus positivity and moving up the spectrum from that to average to high functioning is the shift from negative comments to positive comments with the ratio that is at the highest level in their study six positive comments to one negative (6:1).
Carry that forward to Dr. John Gottman who has studied married couples and assessed the likelihood of staying married versus divorce. In this case we’re talking, we’ve moved from looking at businesses and management teams and now we're looking at marriages and relationships. But the results fundamentally come out the same. The optimal ratio for remaining married or having a healthy marriage, five positive comments for every one (5:1). For those who ended up divorced the ratio was .77 to 1 or something like three positive comments for every four negative ones. The point is that performance or relationships and their success rates or viability are very much influenced by how we treat one another. What we say and do to one another in the ratio of positive to negative. Obviously it isn’t just connected to verbal behavior or statements being made but it's very much connected to actions as well and how we treat one another with success being measured on average five or six positive statements to one negative. When that ratio is skewed in the other direction three positive comments for every four (negative) or three negative comments for every one (positive), performance and relationships break down.
Think about that as you begin to think what we've already discussed concerning depression, loneliness, social isolation, how we value ourselves, how we value other people. Turn on the nightly news or pay perhaps closer attention to your social media streams and the information that you are digesting. What kind of social sphere have you created for yourself? How is it affecting you? As you sit in management meetings or council meetings, what kind of conversations are taking place and what is the ratio positive to negative that you're experiencing?
The point is that you know, 90% of the time, I'll imagine probably even more than that. Probably pretty darn close to 100% of the time all of this is washing over us so quickly that we’re not even aware of what's happening until we walk out of the meeting or we walk out of the conversation or we log off of whatever application we were just connected to you and we feel anxious or frustrated or upset. The question becomes, when's the last time you left one of these places and felt good? When’s the last meeting you had and you left it feeling like something valuable was accomplished and that you contributed something to what that valuable accomplishment was or is or that you logged off of whatever the application was and felt good about what you just experienced? I'm not saying that any of these things are bad I'm saying or asking what is our awareness level? How do we change that? How do we practice greater awareness? Until we practice greater awareness and acknowledgment of what that positive to negative ratio is our relationships are going to continue to struggle and be challenged. Minimum 5 to 1 for healthy relationships, for successful relationships, for people that feel less criticize the last alone and more valued. 5:1.
If the ratio doesn't immediately help you then Dr. Donald Clifton created the theory of “The Dipper and the Bucket”. There's a book out called “How Full is Your Bucket?” The theory is simply this:
We all have a metaphorical bucket. The bucket is filled with positive interactions and emptied by negative ones. We feel great when our buckets are full, rotten when they are not. We also have a metaphorical dipper that we can use to empty or fill other people's buckets. When we fill other buckets we also fill our own.
If the metaphor helps you out instead of this ratio 5:1, if it helps you to envision the bucket and having a dipper and to recognize when somebody's emptying but then also recognize when you are emptying or when you have the potential or the opportunity to fill another person's bucket. Yet with that filling of another person's bucket suddenly you discover that yours is also being filled at the same time. That basically means that when we actually care for other people, take care of, value other people, suddenly our bucket feels a little bit more full.
So while it takes some work and investment to do that for other people we actually get something out of it and it's a good thing. Think about that as you think about people struggling with depression or some other mental health issue. Think about that for someone that's on the edge of suicide and what this ratio, what this bucket metaphor could mean for you and for them.
OK, Scott has talked a lot about these statistics and figures. We’ve identified the problem. We started to emphasize a potential solution. The thing I'm going to leave you with today as far as solution goes—there are many more but let's start with—Distraction. Even if we were practicing logotherapy Viktor Frankl's meaning therapy, he emphasizes three primary ways in which (he doesn't use the language of distraction but I do) and so these three ways that he emphasizes that in the end you will be either personally or if you're trying to support someone who struggling with depression or suicidal ideation, you can help them be distracted and it comes down in these three ways for him.
One is creating. So anything connected to creation, something artistic, painting, sculpting, writing. Use your imagination. Something connected to the idea of creating, woodworking building, planting, gardening. Creating.
Now the next step above creating is connected to experience or encounter. So you can see how some of these things are very similar especially if we left with gardening or something like that. That becomes a concrete experience. It can be an individual experience that you're doing yourself. It can also be a shared experience, which leads to an encounter. So an experience or an encounter. Travel is good for that. Watching television can be good for that. Going to a movie or the theater can be good for that. Use your imagination. You can begin to come up with innumerable ideas, innumerable possibilities for relatively immediate self-distraction or mutual, shared distraction.
What we're really driving out when somebody is dealing with suicidal ideation or long-term chronic depression it means that this is a condition that they have been living with for a long period of time. It's not a simple, it's a not a simple situation to just look at somebody and say well you know if you kill yourself it's just a permanent solution to a temporary problem. For these individuals, and again 90% of the cases it's a disease and that means these people in most cases been living with it for a really long time, it's not just a temporary problem, a temporary challenge. For some it is. For many it is not. It's been going on for years and years and years and they're exhausted. When you add in the current tenor in our society and how we value or devalue one another it's not a far-fetched idea that people would lose hope and ultimately see for themselves a better reality beyond this life or at least that in ending a life my suffering will stop. What they ultimately want is the suffering to stop.
In the heat of the moment death can look like a really good option in the absence of any other possibilities. Distraction becomes really critical. Then the third piece beyond creating (1) or experience and encounter (2) is how ultimately a person chooses to bear unavoidable suffering (3). Now this is the hardest and most challenging and in Frankl's terms this is sort of the pinnacle of self-transcendence. How we choose to bear unavoidable suffering comes down to this idea, that if you have a terminal disease, nothing can be done to cure it. We're managing it as best we can but it's not going to end ultimately the way that we otherwise hoped. In that realization Viktor would say that now you have the opportunity to decide how you allow this experience of your suffering, how you recognize that you're suffering is actually saving or has the potential cognitively to save someone else from suffering.
The way he gets at this is that he would often look at terminal patients and ask them this question so see if this makes sense for you. He would have them envision someone that they loved and would you “patient” take this terminal disease and give it to them so that you would be free of it? Oh no! Well what if they had it (disease) and you could willingly take it from them to save them the pain and suffering, would you do that? In so many cases the people of course respond with yes. In that moment, that's when Viktor would lift up the idea that is exactly what you were doing.
It doesn't end there then he stretches it to also include the idea that now that you are doing that, you have the opportunity to allow your experience of unavoidable suffering to be a teacher to leave a final message about how people can self-transcend as well. You get to teach people about a healthy way to suffer, a valuable way to suffer when all other efforts have been exhausted. You get to teach and model and inspire hope.
It's a great leap to get to that third one. For most people it's easier to live within the realm of creating (1) or experience/encounter (2) but those are the three primary vehicles in logotherapy to access a form of distraction that could very well be the way in which a person manages the heavy wave of emotions that compelling them to think about suicide or ending their life.
The last thing I'm going leave you with today to get at distraction and I'll try to upload this to the website, but these are 50 Calm-Down techniques because again what we're talking about when somebody is on the edge and thinking about suicide, living with depression for a long period of time or another mental health issue, another disorder. Those emotions are strong and they’re swelling and you can feel overwhelmed by them. How do we manage these overwhelming emotions? How can we begin to calm down? How can we begin to distract ourselves to the extent that the tide rolls over us and the emotion begins to ebb to the extent that I can breathe again and think a little bit more rationally then I was able to a moment ago. Here’s 50 Calm-Down techniques:
50 Calm-Down Techniques
(These techniques can be useful for any age group.)
So as we end the conversation for today here is the mantra for this week:
I value myself. I value the other.
I value myself. I value the other.
I value myself. I value the other.
Prep the Day!
NY Times: The Blindness of Social Wealth
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/preventable-tragedies
The Ideal Praise-to-Criticism Ratio
Be Nice: It's Good for Business
Washington Post Forum on Mental Health (6/13/18)
Judgment - 6/15/2018
When you understand the other you re-humanize what you might otherwise dehumanize.
Judgment - 6/14/18
What does it mean to simply be, to look outside or at the world around you and accept it? I’m not saying that if you witness injustice to ignore it. I am asking you to consider what your life might feel like if you react less and begin by accepting with an eye toward understanding.
Judgment - 6/13/18
Have you practiced the mantra this week?
”I will stop judging, that I might begin understanding.”
Three days into the practice, are you noticing anything? If so, what are you noticing? If not, why do you suppose that is?
”I will stop judging, that I might begin understanding.”
Three days into the practice, are you noticing anything? If so, what are you noticing? If not, why do you suppose that is?
Judgment - 6/12/18
Where do you feel most judged in your life? Who or what is the source? Recognize it as a thought and nothing more. Let it go.
Judgment - 6/11/18
Thank you to a friend for recommending this book. Read the excerpt below.
Today, instead of judging look for specific examples of connectedness.
If it feels worthwhile, write down or journal about your findings.
Today, instead of judging look for specific examples of connectedness.
If it feels worthwhile, write down or journal about your findings.
Judgment - 6/10/18
Hello and welcome to Prep the Day. This is the beginning of something new. My name is Scott Adams. I am by vocation and ordained Lutheran--for those that are in the know ELCA (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America)--pastor. I've been an ordained pastor in the ELCA for 17 years. Prior to that I worked for eight years in youth and family ministry. I am currently writing my PhD dissertation focusing on psychology and counseling and beyond that focused more specifically on the writings and psychotherapy of Victor Frankl. His school of thought is called logotherapy. It sounds a little odd at first when you hear it. What it's fundamentally about is the pursuit of meaning and so perhaps an easier way of saying or understanding his therapy is just referring to it also as meaning therapy; helping people discern meaning in the midst of life particularly when the individual is dealing with serious and ultimately even unalterable challenges. So that's a little bit about me.
I can tell you a little bit more about my personal story in respect to my life in the church, the majority of what I've done for 17 years is working with congregations in conflict. Anywhere two or more are gathered in anyone's name inevitably there will be a disagreement. I can also tell you in all honesty that I have met caring and compassionate people anywhere I have traveled regardless of faith or religious background or any of those things. At the same time I will tell you that the angriest people I have ever encountered have been in the church. So with that in mind Prep the Day is about working with anyone who wants to take life more seriously and anyone who wants to live each day with a sense of purpose and value for themselves but then also carry that forward to the extent that they are also able to entertain value in other people most notably those who would otherwise seem to be in opposition to themselves.
It means we're going to be talking about how do we get along with one another? How do we understand one another? How do we support one another? Ultimately above and beyond all these things, how will we choose to love one another? At the bottom of it all or the base of it off, I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ is about love. I also know that from my own life in the church let alone my own professional life in the church we often have a really hard time loving one another and that's in a community that holds as it's bedrock the love of God. Yet there is always the nature of sin and sin is lived out and practiced in all kinds of ways every day. What Prep the Day is about is practicing the idea that even though we recognize we will always struggle as human beings and fall short that we can, with practice, day in and day out, moment by moment, begin to live in such a way that our lives and the lives of others are somehow better then they might otherwise be at the current moment. I see that for myself. I hope that for you. And so let the journey begin.
In working in conflict and not necessarily being prepared for that particularly in my seminary training, I thought I knew what I was stepping into as a pastor in the church. I believed that I could ultimately help create a healthier body, healthier communities. I certainly have examples I could cite of where that is true. At the same time I can equally quote or cite any number of examples that almost contradict that idea to the extent that every church I've served, and I have also served in campus ministry too, so whether it's a college campus or a congregational setting there have always been people or individuals that understand I'm trying to operate from a spiritual Hippocratic oath that basically says I'm not here to do any harm or threaten you or antagonize you or raise your anxiety. Fundamentally I am here to help. With that said there's always people that I have, for any number of different reasons and the reasons don't immediately matter, but they're just angry. They're stuck. They're anxious or frustrated. They're all these things and more.
Much of my life professionally became about taking the abuse that comes from these types of people. I thought I was prepared for that. In the end I have learned that I wasn't prepared. It affected my family. It affected my relationship with others. It even ultimately affected my relationship with myself and to some extent maybe even my relationship with God. So again maybe more then you need to know or want to know about some of my backstory. Some of this will keep coming up in the days that follow but it gives us a starting place for now.
I've seen the best and the worst of human beings, a lot of the worst. Yet I'm still here and I am still standing and I'm still committed to the idea that whether or not you view yourself as a person of faith or a religious person or you fill-in-the-blank, I'm really not concerned with that. I'm concerned with a relationship with you however that might be lived out; a relationship in the sense that we would somehow create connection, that we would somehow be mindful particularly in the area of practicing self-awareness. Out of that we would be able to discern meaning in each of our lives and live it. Part of that will always be connected to how we choose to treat other people especially those people who are maybe even arguably the most hurtful to us.
It wasn't terribly long ago... since 1994 I've been with working professional in the church in one form or another. Out of that I've been a student of the Bible for a long time. I grew up in the church. So depending on where I was at different stages of my life, geographically speaking, in the congregations that I participated in at those times, some of them would even force us for better or worse to memorize scripture... so what I'm getting at is that one way or another I've been interacting with the word of God for a long, long time. A lot of people know John 3:16, "For God so loved the world" and you can finish the thought yourself. A lot of people know Psalm 23 ,"Yay though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" and you can finish the thought yourself. There are lots of different passages from the Bible that people have lifted up and emphasized.
It was probably two or three years ago, that, I was as a pastor helping a congregation through a transition, that I came cross John 12 and read these words beginning in verse 44 in a way that maybe I had never considered before. I can say from my own experience in the church that there certainly was never a time where I can recall anybody, pastor or a professor or otherwise, taking this particular passage from the Gospel of John and lifting it up and saying this is something worthy of our further consideration. In the English Bible depending upon your translation you'll often find subheadings within these books of the Bible. I'm reading from the NRSV, that's the New Revised Standard Version, it's kind of the standard translation for the ELCA. I'm beginning in verse 44 of John, the subheading is "Summary of Jesus' Teaching". In the narrative we've got a ways to go before Jesus will be crucified, die, and be raised again. And again depending upon your faith tradition I'm certainly not forcing any of this on or toward anyone. I'm certainly not saying that you need to agree with whether or not Jesus Christ was the Son of God or raised from the dead.
I will say for myself and my own faith that I find value in all religious traditions. I've been spending a lot of time over the last couple of years with my own challenges that I've experienced more recently in life that have drawn me towards the writings of the Buddha and Thich Nhat Hahn particularly. As I've gotten into practicing meditation more and mindfulness itself and trying to practice self awareness and detachment, in this case Buddhism has a really resonated with me. At the same time I have served in settings where I worked closely with Muslim students, particularly at a college that I helped her a transition in Canada. The point is that I have I find a lot of value in other spiritual expressions. I certainly am of the mind that I am not the final word on anything. I am open to the extent that I value other voices, other ideas, and that they and you specifically deserve and have a place at the table.
Back to my own faith, I still believe at the core of my being that Jesus Christ is the greatest expression of the love of God. Instead of battling over what that love really looks like and who it should or should not include, we should've, as church let alone as human beings, just emphasized, and lived with, and sat with, and meditated on the love of God in Jesus Christ. Period.
Whole wars have been fought over this. The disagreements and so forth that have plagued the church forever are part of the reasons why the church is in decline today. I will save that for a conversational bit later. All of that is background to just say here it is, what I believe in John 12 beginning in verse 44 is the nuts and bolts, the "Cliffs Notes" if you will, for Jesus' teachings:
John 12:44-50 (NRSV)
44 Then Jesus cried aloud: "Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. 45 And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. 46 I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. 47 I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, 49 for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me."
There it is verses 44 to the end of the chapter in verse 50. Then what follows in context is Jesus' "Washing of the Disciples' Feet" which is kind of a beautiful story unto itself. It's all taken in context, Jesus is summarizing his teaching. His teaching is: He is not about judgment. He is about eternal life. God has given him a commandment, to speak a word of eternal life for all people. If you don't keep his word, if that word about eternal life is meaningless to you, it doesn't matter because at the end of it all God gets the final word. What is God's final word? Eternal life!
Now in my tradition, Lutherans get pretty testy, pretty touchy, when it comes to this idea that we are circling around right now. Because we're desperately afraid of universalism. We're desperately afraid, historically speaking at least, that even though we lift up the idea of the grace of God--that we would have faith and that we are justified by faith--still will creep in without being really honest about it, this little idea that well yeah, but you still have to believe. You still have to DO something. We've struggled with making peace with that idea, well forever. The point is that, here it is, the summary of what Jesus would have us know about who is God for us or what the love of God for us actually looks like. It's eternal life.
What does it mean to begin to take seriously this idea that maybe everyone, everyone, gets the gift of eternal life? We'll immediately begin to think in our humanness about people that we don't want to get that gift. Because there are great historical examples about really dark or evil people that we don't want to share heaven or paradise or Nirvana or enlightenment or whatever the ultimate reality is with. There are people we don't want to be there. But that says more about us, then about God.
Whether people have focused on John 3:16 or any of the other teachings of Jesus, for some reason we have not landed as firmly as I otherwise believe we should have with John 12:44-50. There will be a judge in this context, in this narrative. But the judge and the judgment is always a favorable one. What does that mean? Is there anything hopeful or optimistic in that idea? The commandment of God is for eternal life.
So we're gonna take a break because I want to talk when we come back from this break--you're gonna hear a video excerpt from June 5, 2018 on the morning show "CBS This Morning". It's unusual and rare even that television become something genuinely extraordinary, so listen. When we come back we will connect the dots on what this has to do with this idea of judgment.
I can tell you a little bit more about my personal story in respect to my life in the church, the majority of what I've done for 17 years is working with congregations in conflict. Anywhere two or more are gathered in anyone's name inevitably there will be a disagreement. I can also tell you in all honesty that I have met caring and compassionate people anywhere I have traveled regardless of faith or religious background or any of those things. At the same time I will tell you that the angriest people I have ever encountered have been in the church. So with that in mind Prep the Day is about working with anyone who wants to take life more seriously and anyone who wants to live each day with a sense of purpose and value for themselves but then also carry that forward to the extent that they are also able to entertain value in other people most notably those who would otherwise seem to be in opposition to themselves.
It means we're going to be talking about how do we get along with one another? How do we understand one another? How do we support one another? Ultimately above and beyond all these things, how will we choose to love one another? At the bottom of it all or the base of it off, I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ is about love. I also know that from my own life in the church let alone my own professional life in the church we often have a really hard time loving one another and that's in a community that holds as it's bedrock the love of God. Yet there is always the nature of sin and sin is lived out and practiced in all kinds of ways every day. What Prep the Day is about is practicing the idea that even though we recognize we will always struggle as human beings and fall short that we can, with practice, day in and day out, moment by moment, begin to live in such a way that our lives and the lives of others are somehow better then they might otherwise be at the current moment. I see that for myself. I hope that for you. And so let the journey begin.
In working in conflict and not necessarily being prepared for that particularly in my seminary training, I thought I knew what I was stepping into as a pastor in the church. I believed that I could ultimately help create a healthier body, healthier communities. I certainly have examples I could cite of where that is true. At the same time I can equally quote or cite any number of examples that almost contradict that idea to the extent that every church I've served, and I have also served in campus ministry too, so whether it's a college campus or a congregational setting there have always been people or individuals that understand I'm trying to operate from a spiritual Hippocratic oath that basically says I'm not here to do any harm or threaten you or antagonize you or raise your anxiety. Fundamentally I am here to help. With that said there's always people that I have, for any number of different reasons and the reasons don't immediately matter, but they're just angry. They're stuck. They're anxious or frustrated. They're all these things and more.
Much of my life professionally became about taking the abuse that comes from these types of people. I thought I was prepared for that. In the end I have learned that I wasn't prepared. It affected my family. It affected my relationship with others. It even ultimately affected my relationship with myself and to some extent maybe even my relationship with God. So again maybe more then you need to know or want to know about some of my backstory. Some of this will keep coming up in the days that follow but it gives us a starting place for now.
I've seen the best and the worst of human beings, a lot of the worst. Yet I'm still here and I am still standing and I'm still committed to the idea that whether or not you view yourself as a person of faith or a religious person or you fill-in-the-blank, I'm really not concerned with that. I'm concerned with a relationship with you however that might be lived out; a relationship in the sense that we would somehow create connection, that we would somehow be mindful particularly in the area of practicing self-awareness. Out of that we would be able to discern meaning in each of our lives and live it. Part of that will always be connected to how we choose to treat other people especially those people who are maybe even arguably the most hurtful to us.
It wasn't terribly long ago... since 1994 I've been with working professional in the church in one form or another. Out of that I've been a student of the Bible for a long time. I grew up in the church. So depending on where I was at different stages of my life, geographically speaking, in the congregations that I participated in at those times, some of them would even force us for better or worse to memorize scripture... so what I'm getting at is that one way or another I've been interacting with the word of God for a long, long time. A lot of people know John 3:16, "For God so loved the world" and you can finish the thought yourself. A lot of people know Psalm 23 ,"Yay though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" and you can finish the thought yourself. There are lots of different passages from the Bible that people have lifted up and emphasized.
It was probably two or three years ago, that, I was as a pastor helping a congregation through a transition, that I came cross John 12 and read these words beginning in verse 44 in a way that maybe I had never considered before. I can say from my own experience in the church that there certainly was never a time where I can recall anybody, pastor or a professor or otherwise, taking this particular passage from the Gospel of John and lifting it up and saying this is something worthy of our further consideration. In the English Bible depending upon your translation you'll often find subheadings within these books of the Bible. I'm reading from the NRSV, that's the New Revised Standard Version, it's kind of the standard translation for the ELCA. I'm beginning in verse 44 of John, the subheading is "Summary of Jesus' Teaching". In the narrative we've got a ways to go before Jesus will be crucified, die, and be raised again. And again depending upon your faith tradition I'm certainly not forcing any of this on or toward anyone. I'm certainly not saying that you need to agree with whether or not Jesus Christ was the Son of God or raised from the dead.
I will say for myself and my own faith that I find value in all religious traditions. I've been spending a lot of time over the last couple of years with my own challenges that I've experienced more recently in life that have drawn me towards the writings of the Buddha and Thich Nhat Hahn particularly. As I've gotten into practicing meditation more and mindfulness itself and trying to practice self awareness and detachment, in this case Buddhism has a really resonated with me. At the same time I have served in settings where I worked closely with Muslim students, particularly at a college that I helped her a transition in Canada. The point is that I have I find a lot of value in other spiritual expressions. I certainly am of the mind that I am not the final word on anything. I am open to the extent that I value other voices, other ideas, and that they and you specifically deserve and have a place at the table.
Back to my own faith, I still believe at the core of my being that Jesus Christ is the greatest expression of the love of God. Instead of battling over what that love really looks like and who it should or should not include, we should've, as church let alone as human beings, just emphasized, and lived with, and sat with, and meditated on the love of God in Jesus Christ. Period.
Whole wars have been fought over this. The disagreements and so forth that have plagued the church forever are part of the reasons why the church is in decline today. I will save that for a conversational bit later. All of that is background to just say here it is, what I believe in John 12 beginning in verse 44 is the nuts and bolts, the "Cliffs Notes" if you will, for Jesus' teachings:
John 12:44-50 (NRSV)
44 Then Jesus cried aloud: "Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. 45 And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. 46 I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. 47 I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, 49 for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me."
There it is verses 44 to the end of the chapter in verse 50. Then what follows in context is Jesus' "Washing of the Disciples' Feet" which is kind of a beautiful story unto itself. It's all taken in context, Jesus is summarizing his teaching. His teaching is: He is not about judgment. He is about eternal life. God has given him a commandment, to speak a word of eternal life for all people. If you don't keep his word, if that word about eternal life is meaningless to you, it doesn't matter because at the end of it all God gets the final word. What is God's final word? Eternal life!
Now in my tradition, Lutherans get pretty testy, pretty touchy, when it comes to this idea that we are circling around right now. Because we're desperately afraid of universalism. We're desperately afraid, historically speaking at least, that even though we lift up the idea of the grace of God--that we would have faith and that we are justified by faith--still will creep in without being really honest about it, this little idea that well yeah, but you still have to believe. You still have to DO something. We've struggled with making peace with that idea, well forever. The point is that, here it is, the summary of what Jesus would have us know about who is God for us or what the love of God for us actually looks like. It's eternal life.
What does it mean to begin to take seriously this idea that maybe everyone, everyone, gets the gift of eternal life? We'll immediately begin to think in our humanness about people that we don't want to get that gift. Because there are great historical examples about really dark or evil people that we don't want to share heaven or paradise or Nirvana or enlightenment or whatever the ultimate reality is with. There are people we don't want to be there. But that says more about us, then about God.
Whether people have focused on John 3:16 or any of the other teachings of Jesus, for some reason we have not landed as firmly as I otherwise believe we should have with John 12:44-50. There will be a judge in this context, in this narrative. But the judge and the judgment is always a favorable one. What does that mean? Is there anything hopeful or optimistic in that idea? The commandment of God is for eternal life.
So we're gonna take a break because I want to talk when we come back from this break--you're gonna hear a video excerpt from June 5, 2018 on the morning show "CBS This Morning". It's unusual and rare even that television become something genuinely extraordinary, so listen. When we come back we will connect the dots on what this has to do with this idea of judgment.
OK, welcome back.
What did you think? What an amazing opportunity it was to witness this and as you heard at the end of the clip--I would speculate that originally the morning show hosts would I do this interview with Anthony ray Hinton and Oprah and then cutaway come back and move on to some other story or parting thoughts for the day--but we all, those were watching and they obviously in the studio, everyone could appreciate the fact that something unusual and remarkable was taking place. There were so many elements of beauty in this exchange but one of them was the fact that as Gayle King said, "we can a kill everything else and come back and continue the conversation". How wonderful it was. The rest of the conversation I will work on uploading.
I'll take this moment to mention www.preptheday.com.
I will be launching the site. If all goes well on the site you will find other video links as well as a complete transcript of what you are now listening to so that your practice can continue, that it would be something that you can come back to whether through audio form or online. In addition to that, there will be a daily reminders daily practices him that come out of the weekly theme. If you've forgotten or if it hasn't become apparent to you, today's theme, the inaugural theme for Prep the Day is "judgment". What have we done and how have we practiced judgment in our lives?
We used the Gospel of John and the teachings of Jesus beginning of chapter 12:44-50 to emphasize the fact that Jesus Christ himself and even God, in however you choose to understand that, is not about judgment. If you want to argue and uplift the idea that God is about judgment then let's be very clear and specific about what that judgment looks like and whether you want to use one word and call it "love" or you want to use a couple of different words stemming back from that text from John's Gospel chapter 12 and call it "eternal life". One way or the other it's good news. It is fundamentally, historically, all the way down to this very moment good news. Eternal life. That's what God has in mind.
Where does this, where does all this negativity and this hostility, this infighting, this external fighting; where does all of this prejudice and hatred and darkness come from? It comes from us. It comes from us. Yet at the same time, one of the most beautiful narratives in the Bible is this idea of the body of Christ that Paul lifts up. That'll be a conversation for other days but for now let's just say it means that everybody has value and purpose. Because you, yourself, when you think about your own body, it only takes one part, one member of the body to somehow be out of whack or not functioning fully or as effectively as it was designed to and it affects everything else. We just don't feel right. I will submit that that's an underlying problem in our society today. We are struggling with the ability to find value in one another.
I get it. You'll look at me and you'll say "OK Scott, if you're a liberal guy (you sound more liberal than conservative), what about those conservatives because their policies or their politics or their social ideas? They are hurtful and bad. Those ideas, don't those ideas make them bad? They must be bad."
[This is an analogy. I'm not saying conservatives are bad, only emphasizing a point and problem in our thinking. "Conservatives" could be replaced with anyone or anything you can dream up to judge.]
Judgment. Judgment. Judgment. If that was the solution on its own, then I guess everything would be fine. Look around. You don't have to look too long or too hard to realize everything is not fine. Maybe it is that judgment has not served us well? Living in judgment on one another and all the forms that we have done so, maybe it just isn't serving us well? So the question then becomes if that isn't working what else might?
Back to Anthony Ray Hinton, I immediately had to start reading his book. I did. On page 14, "The Sun Does Shine", Anthony writes:
The court room was impressive and intimidating. I felt like an uninvited guest in a rich man's library. It's hard to explain exactly what it feels like to be judged. There's a shame to it. Even when you know you are innocent it still feels like you are coated in something dirty and evil. It made me feel guilty. It made me feel like my very soul was put on trial and found lacking.When it seems like the whole world thinks you are bad it's hard to hang onto your goodness.
What a great and powerful quote, very intimately connected to the power, the negative power of judgment and how it ultimately affected 30 years of his life. On the same day as this story on CBS This Morning was ending I got a news update (I'm a subscriber to the New York Times) and the update seemingly disparate and not connected from Miss America. On the same day that this interview and this conversation is formulating about the place of judgment in our lives, according to the New York Times and their article published on 5 June 2018, the swimsuit competition for the first time in the history of the Miss America scholarship pageant is being removed. Gretchen Carlson who beyond making a name for herself with the Miss America pageant, also with FOXNews (that means something different to different people-FoxNews) and then obviously the sexual discrimination and so forth that she experienced while with Fox and all of that--big story--and yet at the same time I know she is now the equivalent of the head of the organization's board of trustees. The point is that here's the quote from that article on the same day:
We're not going to judge you on your appearance because we are interested in what makes you you.
What a great quote and what an unusual place to find a connection in two stories representing two different segments of society and yet no less meaningful and effective in reminding us that what would our lives look like if instead of putting so much energy and anger into negative outcomes and negative judgments, what if we looked at human beings as human beings and said I'm interested and knowing what makes you you? Think about that.
I mentioned earlier in our podcast that the church is in decline. That's no secret. The Pew Research Study from 2012 emphasized the fact that on average globally one and six people have no religious affiliation. Yet for people disconnecting from religious institutions, an overwhelming majority of individuals around the planet still count themselves as spiritual beings. They just see the fault in the form and shape institutional life and are looking for something different. Part of what Prep the Day is about is discerning what that something different might look and feel like.
For those who are a part of congregational life, I am absolutely not saying leave it, give up on it. I'm not saying that in any terms. At the same time I am creating a venue, a forum where if you just feel like the institution of church or religion doesn't suit you anymore. This is a place where we can continue to discern what it means to be a spiritual being living day to day. With that, we will begin to think about, especially for the coming week, what it means to judge less and understand more. Instead of lamenting the state of the world, the state of the church, the state of our lives, hear this idea, this powerful and life-changing idea that somehow organized religion or religious institutions in general lost sight of.
The creator of the universe, that his or her or their, will for you and for me and for all of creation is eternal life. We were created to be connected, connected to the ultimate source, and by extension connected to one another. None of this is easy to practice. At the same time, I don't believe that we are excused from practicing it. We have seen the results of anger in our own lives.
There is a great Buddhist quote and it goes like this:
You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger.
We could basically take out the word anger and insert judgment in its place.
You will not be punished for your judgment. You will be punished by your judgment.
Could it be that it's time for us to stop judging ourselves and one another so harshly and begin the difficult practice of understanding ourselves as individuals and understanding ourselves as community, as connected beings valued, worthy, loved?
As we end our time on this inaugural addition of Prep the Day I leave you with this mantra to test through the week especially in the moments when you feel yourself judging yourself too harshly, judging your neighbors too harshly, judging the world too harshly. Say this:
I will stop judging, that I might begin understanding.
I will stop judging, that I might begin understanding.
I will stop judging, that I might begin understanding.
Prep the Day
What did you think? What an amazing opportunity it was to witness this and as you heard at the end of the clip--I would speculate that originally the morning show hosts would I do this interview with Anthony ray Hinton and Oprah and then cutaway come back and move on to some other story or parting thoughts for the day--but we all, those were watching and they obviously in the studio, everyone could appreciate the fact that something unusual and remarkable was taking place. There were so many elements of beauty in this exchange but one of them was the fact that as Gayle King said, "we can a kill everything else and come back and continue the conversation". How wonderful it was. The rest of the conversation I will work on uploading.
I'll take this moment to mention www.preptheday.com.
I will be launching the site. If all goes well on the site you will find other video links as well as a complete transcript of what you are now listening to so that your practice can continue, that it would be something that you can come back to whether through audio form or online. In addition to that, there will be a daily reminders daily practices him that come out of the weekly theme. If you've forgotten or if it hasn't become apparent to you, today's theme, the inaugural theme for Prep the Day is "judgment". What have we done and how have we practiced judgment in our lives?
We used the Gospel of John and the teachings of Jesus beginning of chapter 12:44-50 to emphasize the fact that Jesus Christ himself and even God, in however you choose to understand that, is not about judgment. If you want to argue and uplift the idea that God is about judgment then let's be very clear and specific about what that judgment looks like and whether you want to use one word and call it "love" or you want to use a couple of different words stemming back from that text from John's Gospel chapter 12 and call it "eternal life". One way or the other it's good news. It is fundamentally, historically, all the way down to this very moment good news. Eternal life. That's what God has in mind.
Where does this, where does all this negativity and this hostility, this infighting, this external fighting; where does all of this prejudice and hatred and darkness come from? It comes from us. It comes from us. Yet at the same time, one of the most beautiful narratives in the Bible is this idea of the body of Christ that Paul lifts up. That'll be a conversation for other days but for now let's just say it means that everybody has value and purpose. Because you, yourself, when you think about your own body, it only takes one part, one member of the body to somehow be out of whack or not functioning fully or as effectively as it was designed to and it affects everything else. We just don't feel right. I will submit that that's an underlying problem in our society today. We are struggling with the ability to find value in one another.
I get it. You'll look at me and you'll say "OK Scott, if you're a liberal guy (you sound more liberal than conservative), what about those conservatives because their policies or their politics or their social ideas? They are hurtful and bad. Those ideas, don't those ideas make them bad? They must be bad."
[This is an analogy. I'm not saying conservatives are bad, only emphasizing a point and problem in our thinking. "Conservatives" could be replaced with anyone or anything you can dream up to judge.]
Judgment. Judgment. Judgment. If that was the solution on its own, then I guess everything would be fine. Look around. You don't have to look too long or too hard to realize everything is not fine. Maybe it is that judgment has not served us well? Living in judgment on one another and all the forms that we have done so, maybe it just isn't serving us well? So the question then becomes if that isn't working what else might?
Back to Anthony Ray Hinton, I immediately had to start reading his book. I did. On page 14, "The Sun Does Shine", Anthony writes:
The court room was impressive and intimidating. I felt like an uninvited guest in a rich man's library. It's hard to explain exactly what it feels like to be judged. There's a shame to it. Even when you know you are innocent it still feels like you are coated in something dirty and evil. It made me feel guilty. It made me feel like my very soul was put on trial and found lacking.When it seems like the whole world thinks you are bad it's hard to hang onto your goodness.
What a great and powerful quote, very intimately connected to the power, the negative power of judgment and how it ultimately affected 30 years of his life. On the same day as this story on CBS This Morning was ending I got a news update (I'm a subscriber to the New York Times) and the update seemingly disparate and not connected from Miss America. On the same day that this interview and this conversation is formulating about the place of judgment in our lives, according to the New York Times and their article published on 5 June 2018, the swimsuit competition for the first time in the history of the Miss America scholarship pageant is being removed. Gretchen Carlson who beyond making a name for herself with the Miss America pageant, also with FOXNews (that means something different to different people-FoxNews) and then obviously the sexual discrimination and so forth that she experienced while with Fox and all of that--big story--and yet at the same time I know she is now the equivalent of the head of the organization's board of trustees. The point is that here's the quote from that article on the same day:
We're not going to judge you on your appearance because we are interested in what makes you you.
What a great quote and what an unusual place to find a connection in two stories representing two different segments of society and yet no less meaningful and effective in reminding us that what would our lives look like if instead of putting so much energy and anger into negative outcomes and negative judgments, what if we looked at human beings as human beings and said I'm interested and knowing what makes you you? Think about that.
I mentioned earlier in our podcast that the church is in decline. That's no secret. The Pew Research Study from 2012 emphasized the fact that on average globally one and six people have no religious affiliation. Yet for people disconnecting from religious institutions, an overwhelming majority of individuals around the planet still count themselves as spiritual beings. They just see the fault in the form and shape institutional life and are looking for something different. Part of what Prep the Day is about is discerning what that something different might look and feel like.
For those who are a part of congregational life, I am absolutely not saying leave it, give up on it. I'm not saying that in any terms. At the same time I am creating a venue, a forum where if you just feel like the institution of church or religion doesn't suit you anymore. This is a place where we can continue to discern what it means to be a spiritual being living day to day. With that, we will begin to think about, especially for the coming week, what it means to judge less and understand more. Instead of lamenting the state of the world, the state of the church, the state of our lives, hear this idea, this powerful and life-changing idea that somehow organized religion or religious institutions in general lost sight of.
The creator of the universe, that his or her or their, will for you and for me and for all of creation is eternal life. We were created to be connected, connected to the ultimate source, and by extension connected to one another. None of this is easy to practice. At the same time, I don't believe that we are excused from practicing it. We have seen the results of anger in our own lives.
There is a great Buddhist quote and it goes like this:
You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger.
We could basically take out the word anger and insert judgment in its place.
You will not be punished for your judgment. You will be punished by your judgment.
Could it be that it's time for us to stop judging ourselves and one another so harshly and begin the difficult practice of understanding ourselves as individuals and understanding ourselves as community, as connected beings valued, worthy, loved?
As we end our time on this inaugural addition of Prep the Day I leave you with this mantra to test through the week especially in the moments when you feel yourself judging yourself too harshly, judging your neighbors too harshly, judging the world too harshly. Say this:
I will stop judging, that I might begin understanding.
I will stop judging, that I might begin understanding.
I will stop judging, that I might begin understanding.
Prep the Day