The Hot Dish, Self-pity, and the Cross

I should be studying, but had to post something for this resurrection day. We are still trying to fathom what happened that Sunday morning. The blinding sun struck diamond and split into thousands of dancing sparkles. I hope that this short reflection (or should I say refraction) will one more dancing light of gratitude.

During a very hard time, life wasn't working well for me, and it kept my mind and stomach in knots. One day I was carrying a hot dish from the oven to the table where my kids were waiting for dinner. I had snatched the bubbling casserole out of the oven using a nearby dishtowel. Thin spots in the towel passed fiery pain into my fingers. I began to run towards the table hoping to set the dish down before my fingers blistered. I had to run around three sides of our breakfast bar to get there, but I made it. Slamming the dish down hard I danced around waggling my fingers in the air, much to my kids’ delight. I was angry with the dish, the distance to the table, and my life in general.

That display of misapplied tenacity opened my eyes. I saw that my greatest pain was caused by my unwillingness to set the dish down. The breakfast bar had been beside me during the whole race to the table. My fixation on reaching the table blinded me to the relief that was constantly beside me. Then it dawned on me that I carried my psychological pain in much the same way. Pushing for resolution, replaying the agony of my situation, hoping and wishing; it was all a way of pressing ahead with my soul in blisters.

That kind of tenacity is not necessary. There are some burdens we shouldn’t continue to carry. The cross is God’s promise that we can afford to set them down. Anything that sears our souls can be set down so that we can rest and heal. The cross is a reminder that there is One who knows more, cares more, and sees farther than we can. When we set our burden down, whatever it is, our pain subsides and His joy increases.

But we don’t set our burdens down, because we are angry. We have been wronged and we will set things right even if it kills us. “In fact,” we must subconsciously reason, “if this burden crushes or chars us, it will only show them how tragic our life really was. It will show them how unspeakably thoughtless they were to stand by while we so heroically got flattened and incinerated.”

It’s called self-pity, but it is only an adoptee into the family of pity. Its biological parents are anger. We pity ourselves because we are enraged that everyone else is too blind to see, too deaf to hear, and too calloused to lend a hand. So we destroy ourselves as though we were our tormentors, the ones we would wish to punish.

I recently saw the statement that no animal, even at the point of death, seems capable of self-pity. We humans have a corner on that, and it torments us.

The cross reminds us that there is One who cares more than the ones we are venomously trying to punish through our stoic self-abuse. When we understand even the basics of the cross, we see that there is nothing left to prove. No one left to punish. It has all been done. Not only did Jesus take our guilt and pain, He took them because of the worth He sees in us. We need no other audience for our travails. We could hope for no better solace, no better victory, no better Companion.

Our Phobias Mangle Our Vocabulary

My Andrews chums were sharing their personal redefinitions of leadership and I went on the following rant.

I have a personal resistance to rewriting our dictionaries too flippantly. Consider how we have worn out many words for kids who don't learn as quickly as others. "Idiot" was replaced by a kinder word that took attention off their mental capacity and focused more on the slowness of their learning. That word was “retarded,” which has now, by its association with the low IQ we dread, become an insult. That word, once compassionate, is now rude. Then came “learning disabled” then “special ed student” All those words took on the flavor of our phobia and began to feel like insults. So for now the word is “exceptional” which is technically true; they are the exception to whatever norms we expect in the classroom. However, it will only cripple another word. “Bill is an exceptional student” tells me nothing about which end of the bell curve he's on. So you get teachers asking “Really exceptional, or the other way?” (Whatever sense you can make of that question...)

Our problem is that we have an unexamined assumption that having a low IQ is shameful. Therefore, every euphemism used to describe it will become shameful by association. Then we will replace it with a new short-lived euphemism.

I believe a similar problem plagues the word “leadership.” Some people are uncomfortable with it because they distrust leaders (Girl Scout research shows few young people want anything to do with formal leadership roles, because they perceive it to be all about telling others what to do, and who wants to be bossy? You'll lose your friends. So by extension, who wants to be “the boss”?)

However, I think most people over 30 years old hold an unexamined assumption that leaders are superior, so labeling one person as a leader seems non-inclusive. It’s a put down to all the rest of us who are worth something. So now “we are all leaders.” Dandy. We do all have influence to varying degrees, but leadership wasn’t only about influence; it was also about visibility and accountability to the public. It was about being able to see a little further towards the horizon. But now that we’ve made everyone a “leader” of one sort or another, we've had to invent longer terms to designate the phenomenon of people in positions of authority, power, and public visibility. We still want to study that so we need a word or more likely an awkward, gangly phrase for it.

Incidentally, the same thing has happened to the word “hero” I'm sure you’ve noticed. We are all “heroes” if we return somebody’s wallet, brighten someone’s day with a smile, volunteer with a local charity, or sign a pledge not to bully.

Maybe someday we’ll lose our fixation on intelligence and we won’t have to conscript ill-fitted euphemisms to describe those who are not highly intelligent. “Retarded” then may again feel like a kind term. Only our current fear and loathing make it ugly.

Just so, maybe someday we’ll actually internalize the worth of people who are not commanding ships, boardrooms, and businesses, and we won’t have to tell ourselves that we’re all leaders and heroes. In that great day when we all “get” that all of us really matter, we can let the word “leader” return to its earlier work of describing a person in a visible role of responsibility and to whom we look for facilitating new ways around problems.

In the meantime, our shared and unchallenged phobias will continue to sour our attempts at inclusive language. Until we truly are inclusive (clear down to our bones), our language will repeatedly fail to be.

God as Dog

Bible writers have employed many metaphors for God: a mother hen, a rushing wind, a pillar of cloud, a burning bush, a light, a door, a path, even, oddly enough, an old man with long white hair. Of all the metaphors I discovered, I’m pretty sure a dog is not one of them. But as I ponder the shift in my thinking about the character of God a vivid dog metaphor comes to mind. 

As a child I was told that God could not forgive us for a sin we hadn’t confessed. This meant that each night I had to think over the day and name each wrong I had done, confessing it and asking for His forgiveness. I was terrified that I would forget one of the sins on one of the days (as though I was even capable of recognizing and naming them all, let alone never missing one night’s session of confession.) One time I heard someone suggest that I could end the confession with “and any other sin I may have forgotten.” From then on that’s how the list of confessed sins ended, with one personalized twist: “… and any other sin I may have forgotten on any day or night since my very first.”) 

This, of course, let me gain the upper hand since I could knowingly sin, confident that this evening’s or next week’s confession session would obligate God to let me off the hook. In my simplistic and crafty mind, God was a careful guardian keeping riffraff out of heaven. He didn’t actually see me, His only job was to see through me like an x-ray machine looking for that speck of cancerous sin. But, boy!, if He did see that speck, then “x-ray” became “ray gun” and zap! I was a goner… unless I was gibbering out a confession just in the nick of time. I was pretty confident of my timing since God seemed to swing by mostly at bedtime. 

But that’s the problem with essentially human solutions to sin. It’s the “pagan problem.” It way underestimates the depth and complexity of sin, and I has no concept of the depth and compassion of God. 

Anyway, the study I’ve just completed on the evangelical views of hell left me with a similar picture: God is a snarling Rottweiler wandering freely around the castle walls of heaven. We’re hiding in the bushes hoping his great sense of smell doesn’t detect us. Maybe if we can sneak past the vicious dog, we can be “home free” in heaven. 

But my study of Colossians and Romans 8 tells me that God is more like a noble Saint Bernard roaming far and wide. He has His little flask of brandy and we are perishing in a snowdrift hoping against hope that His great sense of smell will lead Him to us. If this Hound of Heaven finds His way into our hearts we will already be “home free.” And whatever comes next will be gloriously up to the One with whom we can trust our very lives.

The Holocaust: A Reflection Rather Than a Result?

As I pondered the Book of Esther, I was gripped with a new realization of how horrible, demoralizing, and devastating the holocaust was, not only nationally, but also spiritually. Imagine standing in the shooting pit on the unstable surface of warm, freshly-fallen bodies. You see the men with the rifles and you hope, you wonder, “Could there be deliverance even now?” The story of Esther, the story of Elijah, the story of the Hebrew Worthies, those and many more would give you a sliver of hope. Some Jews in the pit were reciting the Great Shema: “Shema Yisroel Adonoi Eloheinu Adonoi Echad.” Which is translated several ways including “Hear O Israel! The LORD is our God; the LORD alone.” But then, the silence of heaven and the roar of guns.

I know some people have been calloused to the sufferings of the Jews because they were “Christ killers.” That has been a cruel excuse for hideous Christian behavior. Instead, what if the holocaust and the many other sorrows of the Jews were not a punishment for, but a reflection of Christ’s suffering? Some modern Jews, weary of waiting for Messiah have begun to wonder if Isaiah’s Messianic prophesies might have been about them as a people. Could the rest of the world be healed by their stripes, their afflictions and chastisements?

As a Christian, I don’t believe that anything can take the place of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, but what if the horrors of the holocaust were providing what was still lacking in the sufferings of Jesus? Paul used that phrase in Colossians 1:24; I didn’t make it up. Is it possible that the world, especially the Christian world, has not fully understood even the human side of the suffering of Christ on the cross? Is it possible that God must continue to let us see the depravity of humankind’s self-centered, self-justifying ways? Is it possible that the suffering of the Jews is yet another wake-up call? Can it awaken deep sympathy in us and a desire to understand and prevent beastly evil in humans… at least in ourselves? Many in the world today are seething with the fear and hatred that make holocausts possible. Can the rest of us rally and work to quell the anxieties that are likely to erupt into self-righteous violence?

We could see the Jewish people’s despair in those dark historical hours as a solidarity with the Messiah, a reflection of His suffering rather than a punishment for the actions of the political bullies in Jesus’ day. Could we, and possibly even the Jews, join the likes of Mother Teresa who came to accept her despair and sense of alienation from God as an answered prayer to know the heart of Jesus? Maybe the suffering of the Jews is only one more reflection of the evil and the agony of the cross. How many more “crosses” will we have to see before our eyes have had enough? How many more holocausts before we own and surrender the violence that lives within?

Haman and Mordecai, Not So Opposite

This post could offend the Jews that I know and respect, but I hope it doesn’t. I do not wish to steal any good thing from the Jewish people. I hope they, and others, can read the deeper message. Jews delight in the story of Esther celebrated each year at Purim. They have made it fun for their kids to delight in the name of Esther and to despise the name of Haman. I would too; he was a monster who sought to annihilate them all. It’s understandable that Esther is the symbol of nationalistic pride and their power to prevail. And it is on just that point that Haman and Mordecai may yet have a message for them… and for everyone else. So please read this to the end.

The Book of Esther is an enigma. Few stories can match its tight plotline and split-second timing. It tells an important story with precision, paradox, and punch. The amazing turns of events could only be the work of God. He hovers in the background through the rapid-fire twists and turns. Yet, He is never mentioned. Not once. You may already know that Esther is the only book of the Bible that does not contain the name of God. But it’s weirder than that. Consider this: Religious thought is humanity’s effort to make sense of a complex and ironic world. The human mind is naturally drawn upward in times of grave threat. So as the Jew’s death decree goes out to the known world, the Jews pull out all the stops! Throughout the Hebrew settlements everyone fasts and… There it is. No mention of prayer, either.

The writer of Esther didn’t just fail to mention God, he or she seems to have excised any reference to requesting His help or acknowledging His deliverance. Fasting, in the Book of Esther, is not for the purpose of petitioning God, but it does seem to be an attempt to find remedy for the extreme danger they faced. And in the end they do make it through. Lesson: the Jews live a charmed life. The absence of the name and practice of God allows all Jews, from ultra-conservatives to merely cultural Jews, to celebrate a “Yea! We win!” moment. They need some of those. I’m not trying to take that away, but now let’s look at a dark and prophetic theme.

Haman is a proud man, whatever “proud” means. Like many psychological terms, pride is a complex thing. Haman’s pride, it becomes clear, is not simple. It would be more accurately described as a desperate wish to prove himself in the eyes of others, over and over and over. There is no honor great enough to satisfy Haman’s thirst for acclaim. He is desperate to make sure that people see his greatness; and he wants to see people seeing that. He is an approval addict. In the beginning of the third chapter, King Xerxes makes Haman the number one leader under the king. Haman is the most honored of the noblemen. You can’t go any higher without taking the place of the king, and in a story without God the king becomes a type for God.

Rather than being satisfied with nearly limitless power, Haman struts around looking for any who might not notice his exalted status. Hence, we say that he was proud. Haman finds a major irritant in Mordecai, the Jew, who will not bow to Haman. Haman could have decided to ignore this grumpy man at the gate, but it so eats at Haman’s insecurities that he plans the destruction of Mordecai and the genocide of his entire race! Haman wants to be sure there will be no refusal on the part of anyone to notice Haman’s glory. Haman probably did not feel proud; he felt threatened. This ultimate, over-the-top, murderous bully, was on the defense. He was defending and protecting his desperate, insatiable longing to be admired.

So Haman’s first fatal error was to take such drastic offense at Mordecai’s refusal to honor him. His second error was his outrageous genocidal response. His third error—the one that really moves the story along—is his designing his own “awards ceremony.” Believing there could be no other man the king would wish to honor, Haman describes exactly the excess to which he wanted the king to go in honoring Haman. He will be given all the king’s stuff, even the king’s clothing, and paraded around the capitol like a king in the king’s name. From that position all Haman would have to do to fulfill his lust for ascendancy would be to remove the king (who is like God in this story.)

Of course, the delicious twist is that the king doesn’t have Haman in mind, but Mordecai. And what a perfectly delivered punch line! After Haman makes the super-best “trophy” package of kingly honor, the king says, “Go at once. Get the robe and the horse and do just as you have suggested for… Mordecai… the Jew.” It must have made Haman’s head spin! A sickening slap of reality on a face formerly flushed with fantasies of favor. How innocently the king delivers this most painful and appropriate retribution.

So Haman’s lust for honor results in precisely the most dishonoring thing he could have designed: Mordecia, the most despised, for a day appearing as higher than Haman. Here’s where the tide really turns. Haman is blind to his true status. His desperate need for acclaim keeps him from seeing the permanence of his position in world superpower Persia. Mordecai is on a one-day pony ride and tomorrow will have nothing again. But Haman, tormented by his own demon, can’t see reality. He can’t let this go, so he sobs out his story to his wife and his advisors. From each he hears what had already been ricocheting through his brain: the death sentence. Already, Mordecai’s little flash of a party had thrown Haman into an inner tailspin of despair, but now the people closest to Haman say, “Because Haman is a Jew and you’ve treated him badly, you’re toast!”

This statement should cause the Jews, and the rest of us, to tremble rather than celebrate. Who really said Haman would die because Mordecai was a Jew? These proud Persians who owned the world including the lowly Jews? Would Persians have seen their captives as somehow magically charmed? Would Haman’s wife and advisors really have said that? Or is a nationalistic writer simply saying “Nobody messes with the Jews and gets away with it!” Or… is it God Himself inspiring the faithful recording of a perfect parable? I vote for the parable.

Haman owes the king nothing, he thinks, even though everything he has is from the king. In a parallel, the Jews very lives depended on the One they didn’t name, didn’t seek, and didn’t thank. Haman passes a tipping point and from that time on there is much bad news. The Jews, many years later, displayed the same arrogance under Rome, despising their invaders, trampling their own poor, yet negotiating for all the power and status they could get. They, too, pass a tipping point.

Where was Mordecai in the time of Herod’s great restoration of the Jewish temple? Jesus pointed him out: Mordecai was, and is, where he has always been… in “the least of these.” There are always people to despise, people to make us feel better about our lot in life. The Jews were treating their least the same way Haman had treated his. Which is the same way we treat ours. That’s why this story is not only prophetic for the Jews, but for all of us who feel we deserve something more, and that we can get it through the abuse of someone less powerful. And the Jews traveled the rest of Haman’s road: After a time of arrogance and crafty negotiation, their nation was totally demolished, “not one stone left upon another.”

But the Jewish similarity to Haman was actually recorded way back in Esther. Not satisfied with the right to defend themselves they sought, and were granted, the same heartless crime against the Persians. Why? Because all the Persians had committed a massacre against them? No. Because one man, Haman, had threatened their existence just as one man, Mordecai, had threatened Haman’s political life. The parallels are too tight to miss.

Though nearly exterminated, there are still Jews today, and they have been rebuilding their nation for the past 60 years. Have they learned anything about pride going before destruction? Have they learned that no one can afford to despise another? Have they learned that all people are capable of bloodthirsty aggression? That all people condemn aggression in others and justify it in themselves? If they have learned these things, so clearly taught in the enigmatic Book of Esther, then they still have a vital lesson to teach many, many Christians. They have a lesson to teach many, many Arabs. They have a lesson for all the people of the world.