Ever been questioned that your view or thoughts somehow are not supported by scripture? Not fun. My first reaction is usually shock for my pride tells me "I'm always right" and then shock is replaced with some degree of irritation or anger. I usually think "how dare you question me or who do you think you are?"
If I talk with others it's amazing how angry they get almost right away. They don't even ask me what the issue is about they just seem to jump right to anger. They defend me aggressively and yet often they have no idea what I stated...that troubles me. It seems we live in a time where no one is support to "judge" someone else and it seems it doesn't matter what was said or even if it indeed violates scripture.
This reflects the attitude of our day. Truth doesn't matter. It's "your truth" and "my truth" after all. The big taboo is "don't judge" just accept that others are different than you and have different opinions...or different truths.
I still don't like be questioned. I don't like that someone might think that my view on an issue isn't scriptural. It bugs me. But questioning someone's beliefs isn't unscriptural. Paul commended the Bereans for doing just that. Accepting anyone's truth as "truth" is what is unbiblical.
But when you question my beliefs, do it with gentleness & respect...I'll listen more. I promise.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Sigh...the cycle of shame continues...
He is a young man, probably 22 or 23 years old. I met him about a month ago. He seemed reserved and quiet yet I could tell he had a good mind. Later he was assigned a mentor who is a friend of mine and he began the long journey of sexual addiction recovery.
My friend called me up with a question "Kelly", he began, "I have an interesting case. Our young friend has never formally cheated on his wife but he is addicted to pornography. He is also an active youth pastor. He promised his church and his wife that he would never mess up with this issue again and even signed an agreement stating that. The church leadership also agreed that if he did mess up he would have to confess to his wife, the pastor and then get up in front of the whole church and confess and then resign. The problem was that he did indeed mess up. He accessed porn and was tore up inside on what to do....what do you think" He asked me?
My advise was to confess. He made a promise as unwise as that is, he made a promise and agreed to face the consequences. So my young friend confessed. What was the response of the senior pastor? "Shame & cover-up" The senior pastor was angry and exasperated. Expressions such as "I can't believe you would do this again" or "why can't you just say no?" were bantered about. Then he told my friend to not say anything to anyone. "The church board is dealing with a building program and is stressed I don't want to burden them with this issue" he even told him to hide it from his wife at least for now.
What is the message there? The message is that the building program is more important than the spiritual health of his youth pastor. The message is that the senior pastor is probably embarassed and knows that this might reflect badly on his ability to attract and bring on "good" youth pastors. The message is not grace & forgiveness but guilt, shame and cover up.
Not surprisingly my young friend somewhat is relieved. He doesn't have to face the consequences of his sin. He can put it off for a while and enjoy the fantasy that God is ok with this arrangement and the fantasy that his wife will be ok when she ultimately finds out. What will happen when that wife hears that a senior pastor helped hide sin from her? What will happen when she figures out that the pastor cared more about a building than her family?
What I suspect is that there is coming a day when this senior pastor will quietly fire this man to avoid embarrassment and get him out of town so he can look for another youth minister. My friend will learn a hard lesson that sometimes church folk are not very wise, not very safe and not very understanding when it comes to sexual sin. My hope is that as long as he is with our ministry, he can continue to learn healing, learn honesty, and learn forgiveness something that he is not...at his local church.
So I sound angry? Perhaps. I just have little patience for what seems so obvious to me. You don't hide & cover up sin, you confess and deal with it. There is a ticking time bomb now. Can you hear it? Tick, tick, tick...some day it will explode and this senior pastor will have a bigger mess to deal with than he thought.
-Kelly
My friend called me up with a question "Kelly", he began, "I have an interesting case. Our young friend has never formally cheated on his wife but he is addicted to pornography. He is also an active youth pastor. He promised his church and his wife that he would never mess up with this issue again and even signed an agreement stating that. The church leadership also agreed that if he did mess up he would have to confess to his wife, the pastor and then get up in front of the whole church and confess and then resign. The problem was that he did indeed mess up. He accessed porn and was tore up inside on what to do....what do you think" He asked me?
My advise was to confess. He made a promise as unwise as that is, he made a promise and agreed to face the consequences. So my young friend confessed. What was the response of the senior pastor? "Shame & cover-up" The senior pastor was angry and exasperated. Expressions such as "I can't believe you would do this again" or "why can't you just say no?" were bantered about. Then he told my friend to not say anything to anyone. "The church board is dealing with a building program and is stressed I don't want to burden them with this issue" he even told him to hide it from his wife at least for now.
What is the message there? The message is that the building program is more important than the spiritual health of his youth pastor. The message is that the senior pastor is probably embarassed and knows that this might reflect badly on his ability to attract and bring on "good" youth pastors. The message is not grace & forgiveness but guilt, shame and cover up.
Not surprisingly my young friend somewhat is relieved. He doesn't have to face the consequences of his sin. He can put it off for a while and enjoy the fantasy that God is ok with this arrangement and the fantasy that his wife will be ok when she ultimately finds out. What will happen when that wife hears that a senior pastor helped hide sin from her? What will happen when she figures out that the pastor cared more about a building than her family?
What I suspect is that there is coming a day when this senior pastor will quietly fire this man to avoid embarrassment and get him out of town so he can look for another youth minister. My friend will learn a hard lesson that sometimes church folk are not very wise, not very safe and not very understanding when it comes to sexual sin. My hope is that as long as he is with our ministry, he can continue to learn healing, learn honesty, and learn forgiveness something that he is not...at his local church.
So I sound angry? Perhaps. I just have little patience for what seems so obvious to me. You don't hide & cover up sin, you confess and deal with it. There is a ticking time bomb now. Can you hear it? Tick, tick, tick...some day it will explode and this senior pastor will have a bigger mess to deal with than he thought.
-Kelly
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Smart & Worthalot
Her name is Maddy. She was the last mutt in the litter, just a common blackish dog. I had picked out a nice brown & black sister of hers and we named her Muffen because she looked like a chocolate muffen that I loved. Maddy was named "maddy" for no apparently reason other than in her silent look way she seemed like a "maddy".
At one year old, Maddy got knocked up my almost every horny dog in our neighborhood before I could get her fixed and my irritation with her grew. One rainy night we heard whimpering on the front porch and I peered outside to see a wet puppy in the rain with a wide-eyed Maddy looking her it like it was some strange piece of poop that was alive or something. Nothing had come out of her before that made such strange noises and Maddy looked confused. She was a crummy mother, within a month she was done with those puppies and we had to make sure they were getting enough milk from her. I had never seen a dog be so careless with their offspring and around that time I started calling her "a dumb worthless dog".
Soon that adjective seemed to associate her name whenever I had to deal with her. When I stepped in her poop I proclaimed "Maddy, you dumb worthless dog, quit pooping in my front yard!" When Muffen disappeared one day I sadly commented "great my favorite dog disappeared and I'm stuck with this "dumb and worthless dog". It seemed every time I was irritated with Maddy I would state "dumb and worthless" along with her name.
One day Maddy actually ate our roast beef dinner, I mean she climbed up on the table and ate the meat. I must confess I lost my temper grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and the base of her tail and flung her out the front door into our yard she spun like a frizzbie and rolled across the yard no doubt scared but otherwise unhurt...with the words "dumb and worthless dog" ringing loudly across the front lawn.
Arielle, my daughter who was probably around 9 years old looked at me horrified and ran out the door to make sure the dog was OK. For the first time in my life I saw the look of disappointment on my little girl's face concerning me. Arielle gave me a tongue lashing that went on for several minutes...I didn't feel like I could yell back for I had lost my temper after all...and I didn't like that disappointed look she was giving me. Arielle ended her speech with some sort of statement "and she is not a dumb and worthless dog" and proceeded to hug Maddy as if my insulting words would be squeezed out of her black coat.
I decided after that to change the adjective associated with Maddyf from "dumb and worthless" to "smart and worth a lot" which then would eventually be proclaimed rather quickly to "smart and worthalot" to which my daughter would grin at me approvingly. As the years went by Maddy began to change. She accepted me as the "alpha male" and didn't seem so moody. One day when we were camping I had to leave a day early. My wife reported back to me that as soon as I drove off the camp site Maddy changed. If anyone she didn't know came near the camp site she would growl and bark warning my wife that a stranger was near. "Wow" I thought to myself "she really isn't dumb and worthless after all".
The change continued...she became this sweet loving dog...guarding our home when I'm not there and sticking her nose under my arm when I'm watching TV so I'll pet her. She flops over to have her belly scratched when anyone comes near her and makes those funny noises when she is sleeping and apparently dreaming of chasing squirrels. She is over ten years old now and slowly is showing some grey around her muzzle. She still anoys me especially when she has gas and chases us all from the living room. But she is a great dog. Some time between her flying out the door and a rebuke of truth from my daughter and a decision to change from "dumb worthless dog" to "smart and worthalot" my dog did change. I will not shed a few tears when she finally is done with this life, I will bawl quite a bit for I would have lost a good friend.
She went from "dumb worthless dog" to "smart andworthalot"...I wonder how many people I have labeled in such a fashion that simply need someone to change their label? Worthless addict to troubled child of God. Cheating wife to desperate woman? Smart ass jerk to a lonely man? Am I simply trying to overlook faults & sins, white washing guilt? No. Truth is not always pleasant but always useful. What I am saying is that it takes very little effort to see the wrong in people but it takes God to look deep in the eyes of a person and see what could be.
A label can start that process. A comment of worth and be the first blow against years of neglect and even abuse. I try to watch the labels that go out from my life. One of them can end up biting me or becoming a dear friend.
At one year old, Maddy got knocked up my almost every horny dog in our neighborhood before I could get her fixed and my irritation with her grew. One rainy night we heard whimpering on the front porch and I peered outside to see a wet puppy in the rain with a wide-eyed Maddy looking her it like it was some strange piece of poop that was alive or something. Nothing had come out of her before that made such strange noises and Maddy looked confused. She was a crummy mother, within a month she was done with those puppies and we had to make sure they were getting enough milk from her. I had never seen a dog be so careless with their offspring and around that time I started calling her "a dumb worthless dog".
Soon that adjective seemed to associate her name whenever I had to deal with her. When I stepped in her poop I proclaimed "Maddy, you dumb worthless dog, quit pooping in my front yard!" When Muffen disappeared one day I sadly commented "great my favorite dog disappeared and I'm stuck with this "dumb and worthless dog". It seemed every time I was irritated with Maddy I would state "dumb and worthless" along with her name.
One day Maddy actually ate our roast beef dinner, I mean she climbed up on the table and ate the meat. I must confess I lost my temper grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and the base of her tail and flung her out the front door into our yard she spun like a frizzbie and rolled across the yard no doubt scared but otherwise unhurt...with the words "dumb and worthless dog" ringing loudly across the front lawn.
Arielle, my daughter who was probably around 9 years old looked at me horrified and ran out the door to make sure the dog was OK. For the first time in my life I saw the look of disappointment on my little girl's face concerning me. Arielle gave me a tongue lashing that went on for several minutes...I didn't feel like I could yell back for I had lost my temper after all...and I didn't like that disappointed look she was giving me. Arielle ended her speech with some sort of statement "and she is not a dumb and worthless dog" and proceeded to hug Maddy as if my insulting words would be squeezed out of her black coat.
I decided after that to change the adjective associated with Maddyf from "dumb and worthless" to "smart and worth a lot" which then would eventually be proclaimed rather quickly to "smart and worthalot" to which my daughter would grin at me approvingly. As the years went by Maddy began to change. She accepted me as the "alpha male" and didn't seem so moody. One day when we were camping I had to leave a day early. My wife reported back to me that as soon as I drove off the camp site Maddy changed. If anyone she didn't know came near the camp site she would growl and bark warning my wife that a stranger was near. "Wow" I thought to myself "she really isn't dumb and worthless after all".
The change continued...she became this sweet loving dog...guarding our home when I'm not there and sticking her nose under my arm when I'm watching TV so I'll pet her. She flops over to have her belly scratched when anyone comes near her and makes those funny noises when she is sleeping and apparently dreaming of chasing squirrels. She is over ten years old now and slowly is showing some grey around her muzzle. She still anoys me especially when she has gas and chases us all from the living room. But she is a great dog. Some time between her flying out the door and a rebuke of truth from my daughter and a decision to change from "dumb worthless dog" to "smart and worthalot" my dog did change. I will not shed a few tears when she finally is done with this life, I will bawl quite a bit for I would have lost a good friend.
She went from "dumb worthless dog" to "smart andworthalot"...I wonder how many people I have labeled in such a fashion that simply need someone to change their label? Worthless addict to troubled child of God. Cheating wife to desperate woman? Smart ass jerk to a lonely man? Am I simply trying to overlook faults & sins, white washing guilt? No. Truth is not always pleasant but always useful. What I am saying is that it takes very little effort to see the wrong in people but it takes God to look deep in the eyes of a person and see what could be.
A label can start that process. A comment of worth and be the first blow against years of neglect and even abuse. I try to watch the labels that go out from my life. One of them can end up biting me or becoming a dear friend.
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