Tag: circumstances
The “Praying for Enemies” Misconception
Remember the Sermon on the Mount?
It’s the 4 chapters ( Click to read Matthew Chapters 4-7 ) where Jesus lays out this upside down, counter-intuitive foundation for the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. He shows how God’s ways don’t look like our ways. It’s a recapitulation of the law of Moses that was warped by God’s people over time and needed to be righted.
Disciples of Christ try to get this passage into their DNA and live it out. While many claim to be Christians few really follow or even grasp the framework Jesus lays out for the Kingdom. Maybe it’s too challenging.
In Matthew 5 Jesus covers the very unpopular idea of not hating our enemies.
• We like to side with people we agree with.
• We like to make sure people know where we stand and what we oppose.
• We love our own
(Much like today, the prevailing thought at the time was that your kin, tribe, or people group are your neighbors and you should love them. Everyone else? They could be treated like enemies. Jesus stresses that our enemies are our neighbors too and later he uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to make his point about what love and following God really looks like.)
But, back to hating our enemies…
(quote blocks cover Mathew 5:43-48)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbori and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
Loving our enemies means blessing them. Blessing our enemies means we enrich their lives.
But, what about the prayer part?
There’s a common misunderstanding that this verse implies that we should pray for blessing for our enemies, or pray that good things happen to our enemies, or perhaps the most common…we should pray that they will change.
(That’s one I’ve done quite a bit!)
Jesus’ point is different.
He’s not suggesting that we pray for circumstances to change or for our enemy to change, but that’s just what we do, isn’t it?
No. The point is that our enemies and the persecution works to change us into children of God, when we do as Jesus would do.
What praying “for them” means is that we are praying for them to be our teachers. We are praying for us. The trying experience shows us the potential to take on the nature of God. A nature that is so radically different than ours.
God’s ways are the ways of love.
• What does that mean?
It becomes more obvious as Jesus continues the thought and tells us something about God and his character.
How good is God? Thoroughly. Or we could say “perfectly good”.
In fact, he is so unsparingly generous in his goodness that…
He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Huh? That seems odd. He does good to bad people. . .
We think of justice as righting wrongs usually by giving someone a form of evil or payback for their evil, and rewarding good with more good. We like liking those who like us and we like punishing or casting out those we don’t like.
For instance, in two minutes on Facebook and you’ll see demarcation lines drawn. Outsiders and insiders. Good and bad. Idiots and smart.
We assume that praying for them (to change) is the godly option …
(because we are actually tempted to do something really nasty and let them have it…but, gosh, we are holding our selves back, you know, because of trying to be godly and such).
The godly thing to do is to think and act through the framework of love as our heavenly Father would.
This has nothing to do with feeling warm fuzzies or giving out hugs. It’s about fundamental fairness, as God defines it.
It’s about a shift is perspective.
Jesus tackles that next:
If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?
So what should we do instead? Jesus says…
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Don’t trip over the perfection part.
The point of the statement is to show how God is thoroughly good and also quite different in his ways than you and me. Be like God.
Being like the good Father from heaven is the true aim. This portion of Matthew 5 isn’t truly centered on what to do about our enemies. Weird, right?
It’s about transforming our thinking and our ways into Kingdom ways.
(That’s what all of the Sermon on the Mount to geared toward.)
The more good and loving we are, (even to those who are unlike us, or who hate and mistreat us), the more we are like children of God and children of his kingdom (dominion).
The contention Jesus makes is that God doesn’t play favorites.
Most people don’t like this part and don’t truly go along with it. We do gymnastics to find some useable loopholes or other verses to avoid the this part, because we define ourself by who our favorites are.
Why doesn’t God play favorites?
Because he really loves us. It is the very nature of God, as defined and modeled by Jesus.
Evil is redeemed through generosity, forgiveness, and love.
Sounds crazy, of course, but we see this happen all the time.
• Remember the story of Officer Jeremy Henwood who bought a child a happy meal just a few minutes before he was violently gunned down in a random attack (and his good deed was caught on video)?
• Or the woman from Rwanda who’s only son was violently murdered. She not only visited the young man who killed him and visited him in prison, but later adopted him and became his mother when he had no place to go.
This stories make us want to be better people through just hearing the story!
• Think of Jesus dying for his enemies.
• Think about how true forgiveness makes things new.
Because we let the person off?
No.
It’s because we have transformed.
We stopped letting the offense trap and define us.
The next time you think about “praying for your enemies” remember:
• You are praying for you.
• You are praying for your mindset to change about what is happening.
• You are practicing being a child of God.
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2nd Sunday of Advent-Peace
A short Advent reflection today!
At my church we light Advent candles during the four Sundays before Christmas. It’s a tradition I’ve embraced and enjoy.
The first week stands for Hope, the second stands for Peace, the third for Love, and the fourth for Joy. (Various places do it in different ways.)
I’ve been thinking about peace. How to get it. How to keep it. Does it exist in a way that matters?
Advent is literally about a pregnant pause. We think about what is not yet here, like the girl Mary waited for many things expecting the Christ baby. Waiting.
It’s amazing how un-peaceful this time of year can be. There’s a lot to do, there’s bad weather to get around, there’s extra cooking, baking, and wrapping. And plenty more. The blitz from media alone is enough to get you ornery and want to opt out.
We’re are watching various Christmas themed family movies lately on the ABC Family Channel and the 8 minutes bombardment of commercialism propaganda in the commercials after every ten minutes of movie time gets me pretty frustrated!
So what about PEACE?
The peace that comes from the Spirit of peace really is inclusive of many others words, isn’t it?
The word peace is closer to Shalom which is a full-bodied concept. It included a fullness, a well-being, an “all will be well” over-arching attitude and sense. Provision. Rescue. Comfort.
Shalom is not contingent on circumstances but endures and carries an abiding joy (sturdy happiness).
It’s a lack of discord too.
There is a generosity to the word. There is a mercy there.
When Jesus offers peace to his followers in troubling times, he says the words, “Peace be with you”. It’s to bring comfort and stillness–ease of breath. Relief and placidity. Peace feels like coming home to a home you somehow remember but have never quite found.
“Peace on earth, goodwill to [humankind].”
It’s something you buy into. It’s something you put on and do things with.
Carry a bit of that with you today. Better yet, do something with it, and spread it, too!
(Start by spreading this article)
A Blessed Advent to you.
Now a question to ponder or reply to here: What else is peace (to you)?
10 Misconceptions Christians have about non believers-part II
This is continued from this 1-5 article.
It’s REALLY helpful to read that part first for context, I assure you!
Now on to the next half:
6. Non believers live in fear and doubt.
It’s interesting that many from inside the Christian bubble will ascribe these attributes to non believers when a simple gaze across the church goers on any Sunday morning will show the very same thing to be true of Christians too. I don’t know anyone who does not live in fear and doubt at least from time-to-time. What some Christians won’t tell you is that the local pharmacists know a lot about their fear and doubt even if those in their small group aren’t privy to the matter. And some people just drink, shop, or puke their fattening meal to cope. What is more true? To be human is to fear and doubt. We may call it worry or concern, or a prayer request, but it’s there for Christians and non believers alike.
7. Non believers are afraid of death.
Some are not. Some Christians are not. Not everyone braves their impending physical demise well. This is not so strange, because imagining not needing or using your body anymore is really odd. Really really odd.
Even a Christian who will tell you they know for absolute sure that they will be in heaven with Jesus at the moment of death, as you probe them further and they get into specifics their ideas about all that there is a shift. Either they will often become full of fantasy (sourced in the poetic and figurative descriptions of the afterlife from the Bible which they have illogically decided to take literally [sic.] Pearly gates, streets of gold, or Jesus riding a gigantic purple horse) or that may dissolve into what becomes rather unsettling admission of mystery. Can you really know the particulars? Of course not.
It’s thoughtful to be challenged by the unknown–which is what death is. It’s important to come to your end of surety. It keeps us humble and growing. For everyone, that portion of life and death is a matter of faith, no matter what we believe will happen once our heart stops and we will soon be lowered underground. It is creepy because we are used to being alive, breathing and such. We hate it when others we love die, and leave us, and the whole thing is strange, if we are going to be honest. But, are we?
8. When they behave properly, non believers unconsciously borrow ethics from Christians.
Oaky, on this one, perhaps I’ll say “Yes and No”. In the U.S. the influence of Christianity in our common society is thick and unavoidable. Yet, unbeknownst to Christians, behaviors we (Christians) consider good Christian values and ethics are also part of a meta ethic known the world over and through the whole span of human history. (Following through and getting it right is a whole different business, of course.) This meta-ethic, which many secular anthropologists downplay, or quickly chalk up to darwinian processes, (ad hoc mind you) actually seem to point toward the transcendent. The philosophers get into this quite a bit. So, the part of us that is involved with consciousness is ever-present and point to a place off our seen “map” if you will. Call it the “Devine Spark”, “God”, Yahweh, the Universe (if something impersonal could somehow also be personal, by whatever), the “higher self” (a la Alcoholics Anonymous), or what-have-you…we are essentially speaking of the same big thing… that incidentally is no thing. The Other, the great I AM, the life force, and really when we split hair on that big point, we miss the forrest for the trees.
9. Non believers discredit the unseen world.
This is hardly ever true. Yes, there are a few full blown materialists, but like the unicorn, they are rarely seen and then, only for a few fleeting moments in the perfect circumstances like when painted on velvet or when Harry Potter is nearby.
The desire to discover the mysteries of life are ever-present. Media is a great barometer for this. For instance, witness the many horror genre movies (ghosts, zombies, paranormal stuff, aliens, etc) and all the tv shows groping for answers from the spooky and paranormal night-vision scenes from the many television shows on cable, to the mediums, psychics, and spiritual celebrity gurus and even mega-church personalities (Yes. I’m including everyone from Joel Osteen, (Joyce) Myers, Oprah, Deepak Chopra, and Rick Warren, to Billy Graham, and the Dali Lama). Our gurus and guides are plentiful and that’s because the demand for them is so high. Plus, the prophecy folks of all stripes continue their empires as the masses feeling around in the murkiness for answers.
10. Non believers are going to hell one day.
Okay, this is the one that may get me the hate mail. Just hang on! The reason that this is a misconception is because we can’t know how Grace will or won’t affect a person once they die. We trust in Grace. In the idea of it existing; in the Being that doles it. Can we know another person’s heart that well? I doubt it when our own heart is so unfathomable and fickle for us. Grace is big. As big as you think it is, you are wrong. It’s bigger. I’m always wrong about grace because I cannot fathom it for too long.
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