Healing Virtues of the Soul: Humility

In one of Charles Schultz’s “Peanuts” cartoons Lucy is playing her role as psychiatrist. She sits in her booth with the sign that reads: "Psychiatric Help - 5 cents."    The sign below says, "The Doctor Is In."   Lucy says to Charlie Brown, "Your life is like a house."    

In the next frame, she says reflectively, "You want your house to have a solid foundation, don't you?" Charlie Brown has a kind of blank look on his face. Lucy says, "Of course you do."

Charlie Brown is still silent - saying nothing. Then in the fourth frame, psychiatrist Lucy says, "So don't build your house on the sand, Charlie Brown." About that time, a huge wind comes up and blows the booth down. Lucy, sitting in the rubble says, "Or use cheap nails."

In these past weeks, I’ve been talking about some “good nails” that can help to hold our soul together when the contrary winds of life blow hard against us.   These Healing Virtues of the Soul: honesty, hope, faith, courage, integrity and willingness are some of the “good nails” that help us stay strong and sound so we can withstand life’s storms.  They are virtues which work their healing both in preventative and curative ways, but the most important thing to remember is this:  Their healing powers work from the inside out. 

THE INNER CONNECTION TO HEALING

There is no better biblical picture of the inner soul connection to outward physical healing than the powerful miracle story of the healing of the Syrian general found in 2 Kings, chapter 5.  The drama going on here is a classic, in theology and also in psychology, as in life.  Before Naaman, who has leprosy, can receive the healing his body so desperately needs, there is a certain new path his soul must be willing to take.  Though the healing story is enacted through these “outward” things he must do, that is, the most obvious “hoops” he is required to jump though by the prophet Elisha, from the inside, in his heart.  But before we look closer into this ancient biblical story, let’s consider the need for this virtue of healing with an image much closer to us in our own times.

Harold Warlick, Dean of the Chapel at High Point University, tells two children walking opposite directions down a typical crowded hallway at school.  Neither of the two pay close attention to what they are doing.  They bump into each other with force.  One child reacts by pushing back against the other making a fist, crying out: “You bumped me.  You bumped me.”  He is ready to fight.  The other child realizes the incident was only an accident and simply wants to move on his way and get to class.  But the first child is still screaming threats: “You hit me!” and wanting to stay and fight.

What do you think is going on with the first child who over-reacts?  Is he ill-tempered, hyperactive (ADHD), and incorrigible?  Is this upset child bad and the other good?  Warlick suggests the first child does have an attention deficiency, while the second child does not.    The attention is deficient, not because the child can’t focus, but the attention is deficient because the child can’t focus beyond the moment.  The angry, upset child is only able to focus on the moment and stays and gets stuck with the pain saying: “You hit me! You hit me!” It is not that the child is still hurting on the outside, but the pain is on the inside.  With this deficiency within his soul, the child gets stuck having to defend his own ego.  He can’t get beyond himself because he can’t see beyond himself.   He can’t see beyond himself because he can’t see through some unresolved emotional pain.   (Incident from Harold C. Warlick’s sermon: “A Bad Temperament Can Kill You”, in Light in the Land of Shadows, CSS Publishing, Lima, Ohio, 1996).

We adults can have similar deficiencies in our attention, can’t we?  Perhaps you know someone who reacts in a similar way to the pains and hurts in life.   They have bumped some a sudden discomfort or pain and their attention gets stuck on one thing they can’t let go of it, or get around it.   It may be yet undiscovered, but the real problem is not what just hit them, but it’s something else they haven’t gotten around.  It’s something they need to deal with and resolve on the inside of themselves, not on the outside.

Let me tell you a little story of some very normal “attention deficiency”, which any of us can bump up against when we encounter life’s challenges.  When Teresa and I first moved to Germany to live in a different culture and in a big city, it was an adventure in dealing with challenges.   One challenge came as we walked on the streets in Germany or went in the stores, and we discovered how much more crowded it was.  You could not walk very far until you bumped into someone or someone bumped into you.  As a person from a small town, the thing we did was, stop acknowledge the incident, and politely say, “Excuse me.”  It was one of the first German words we ever learned: “Entschuldigen.”

During the first couple of months, we used this all the time.  We almost wore it out, saying “Entschuldigen” to everyone we bump into or who bumped into us.  But after a while, we realize something.  Nobody was saying it back.  When we bumped into each other we were the only ones saying anything and it left you thinking that the German people must really be a bunch or rude, crude, impolite people.  All kinds of thoughts went through my head, like “these people really do need Jesus”, or worse, “no wonder we had to go to war against this land where all the barbarians” came from.  I was really hard on these people.   I was being polite and they seemed to be down-right ugly.

Then was reading a book entitled “These Strange German Ways” about the differences in the customs in Germany and America.   I read through all kinds of ways that people were supposed to be polite in Germany.  When you go visit someone, you take them a gift.  When you enter a room, you don’t set down until you personally shake hands with everyone.  As I kept on reading, then it hit me, there is indeed some etiquette here.  In fact, because I didn’t follow these customs I could have been perceived as being rude and crude.  Then I came upon the next words which hit be like a ton of bricks: It is not rude in German culture to bump into somebody.  You don’t have to say “excuse me”, unless you knock somebody down.  In fact, in German culture, people live close together in large cities and are not only used to pushing up against each other, it is normal, and to be expected.  People will look rather strangely at you if you say ‘excuse me’ every time to simply make contact.  To a German, if you did this, it would be like counting cracks in the sidewalk.  You don’t need to be excused from something you didn’t mean to do.  If you bump into somebody, it’s o.k.  Only use the word when you do something you could have helped or if you hurt someone.  

I almost laughed when I read that.  Here I was, walking around trying to be polite, but I must have real looked stupid and over sensitive.  But more than that, I had all these negative feelings growing in me about Germans that weren’t true at all.  It was not a personal issue, but a cultural one.  What was really going wrong was inside of me, not outside in them.  I was still stuck living in America, and I now had to get myself “unstuck” by learning to live in Germany.     

Sometimes we have to choose which “land” we are going to live in.    When life bumps into us, or we bump into it (and it will, sometimes really hard), we have work through our pain now, so we don’t have it taking control over us later.   To find the healing we need, we have to find a way to get unstuck and to keep moving ahead.    Because so many times,  the real obstacle in our way of healing, is not what is going on outside, but what is going on inside, in our own mind, heart, soul, or our ego---which ever you want to call it. 

This is why the Healing story of Naaman the leper is so perceptive, long before any physical or psychological science is developed.   Even Jesus used Naaman as an example.   Jesus said, “Many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, except Naaman the Syrian (Luke 4: 27).  Why was Naaman healed and others weren’t?  That is the question we want to answer and I can already tell you, the key to his healing was found within his own heart, which unlocked God’s healing power in his life.

NAAMAN’S OTHER NEED FOR HEALING

What we see first about this story is that Naaman was a man who was used to getting things his own way.   He was a successful general in Syria’s army; and a favorite of the king.  He not only had a high social position, but he was held in the greatest esteem by his people, and feared by all of Israel.   He was a man who got results and because of this life and all its treasures seemed to have fallen into his lap.  But now, before our eyes, two great problems arise:  One is obvious and on the outside:  Naaman was afflicted by an incurable disease called leprosy, which was eating away at his body.   The other is on the inside and inconspicuous:  As the story unfolds, through the prophet’s very shrewd and revealing prescription, Naaman’s bad temper and hidden anger is also revealed.   What we see clearly is that Naaman wants healing and he wants his life back, but he wants it on his own terms.

I wonder what it would have been like to live in Naaman’s home?  He was a wealthy, powerful man, who was used to getting his way and getting whatever he wanted, when he wanted it.   Now, he’s a man who suddenly has a disease that he can’t control and can’t conquer.  That new reality for him must have been more painful than the leprosy itself.   Do you think Naaman was the kind of guy who kept all this pain inside?   He didn’t.  We will see it come out with a lot of anger.  Now, if add Naaman’s bad temper to his loss of health, you’ve got more hurt.   When people like Naaman, who seem to have everything are at risk of losing everything, well, you could say, they don’t normally choose to hurt alone or go quietly into the dark night. 

Sickness has a way of taking over and possessing one’s life.  Anyone who’s been sick will tell you that losing control of your life can just as painful as having the hurt itself.   That’s why a lot of people don’t want to go to the doctor or into the hospital when they get sick.   It’s not just all the stuff they have to go through---the examinations, the tests, the shots, the medicine and the loss of all kinds of privacy and pride, but it’s also the stuff you have to let others do for you because you can’t do it for yourself.   And just as it’s painful to be a sick person, it can be painful and hard to help and live with a person in pain.  This was especially true of Naaman, because as we are about to see, he wanted healing, but he wanted only on his own terms.   

With all that is going with Naaman, both in public and probably behind the scenes, is there any wonder that the hurt goes down to the wife, maybe one to the children, all the way down to the little Israelite servant girl.  She’s the one who made the suggestion that there is a “prophet in Israel” who could “cure his leprosy”. (vs. 3).   Now things are really going to get interesting.  Not only is Naaman debilitated by the disease, he now must be humiliated as he finds himself taking advice from his servant, and from a girl, and he must consider getting help from a lesser country and from a strange religion he knows nothing about nor does he even believe in.   Oh, yes, one other thing.  As far as we know, Elisha has never even healed anybody either, though he has been given permission to kill (1 Kings 19:17).  

And if all this isn’t enough to humble him, there’s one more thing.  Now the King, who usually seeks the advice of his generals is joining in to tell this sick man what he must do: “Go, then, and I will send along a letter…” (vs.).  Along with the letter of recommendation Naaman takes gold and silver with him.  You might say he takes it in the form of an ancient insurance check made out in the sum of about $125 thousand in today’s currency.  So, everything is ready for Naaman to get his healing, right?

Not so fast.  This is where it gets ugly.   What happens next puts Naaman into a complete rage and he just about walks away from everything.    First Naaman has to go through customs, so to speak and makes the King of Israel know of his presence in the country.   This literally puts the fear of God into the King, because he’s thinking that it’s nothing but a political trap: Naaman gets sick, comes to get help from one of Israel’s prophets, doesn’t get what he wants or doesn’t like what he gets, then goes on a killing rampage.  He’s seen this kind of trick before.   So the King of Israel nervously sends a message to Elisha asking him what to do next.   “Let him come to me so that he may learn there is a prophet in Israel,” Elisha recommends to which the King of Israel nervously obliges. 

When Naaman finally arrives at the prophet’s house, “with his chariots and horses” (v. 9), you’d think the prophet should have come out to greet him with the red carpet treatment---especially since this guy is a “mighty warrior”, making two kings very nervous, and is a very sick and desperate man.  But what Elisha does next is undoubtedly one of most daring feats ever attempted by a prophet in the Hebrew Bible.  Instead of going out to greet him, Elisha sends his messenger boy out to him with detailed instructions:  “Go wash in the Jordan, seven times and your flesh will be restored and you will be made clean” (vs. 10).

That’s it.  With this seemingly “cheap” medical prescription and impersonal approach Naaman loses it.   But let the text speak for itself.  Read verses 11 and 12:  “But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!   Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage.”  

What in the world is Elisha up to?   Everybody knows when somebody’s got the money you’ve got the time.  Even today’s fundraisers know the contributing ones  want to be met personally.  But Elisha didn’t do that.  And Naaman grew madder and madder.  “He didn’t even come to visit me.”  “He sent his associate, instead of coming himself”.  “He didn’t act like a preacher”.   He didn’t come out, wave his arms, call on God or nothing!   (I once heard of a church that fired its pastor because he didn’t wear a neck tie when he serviced his car.  Seriously).

Naaman was hot!  He had all these preconceived ideas in his mind how it was all supposed to happen, but it didn’t.  He got even hotter.  Then came the most humiliating thing of all.  The insult of insult is when you’re in a foreign country and strangers start cutting down your homeland.  “Go, take a dip in the Jordan! And you’ll be cured”.   That’s it?  Why aren’t our own rivers beautiful enough?  I mean the Jordan, if you’ve ever seen it, it can ‘t decide whether it’s a creek or a river and it’s muddy most of the time.  “You call this guy a preacher!  Man, I can stay home and do much better that this watching church on T.V.!

There you have it.  Naaman leaves in a rage.  If everything were left up to Naaman getting his way, the healing would have never taken place.   He would surrender a lot of things to be healed, but he would not surrender his heart.  If he could not have healing on his own terms, then he would not have it at all.  Better go home and rot with your pride in tack than be humbled and then completely humiliated.  Now, as Harold Warlick says, Naaman is so much like that boy in the school hallway.  He’s not only got a temper, he’s got a real deficiency in his attention.  He can’t see beyond his own stuff.   He’s like me having to learn a different set of rules in a new country, but instead of learning, he’s fighting mad.  And this bad disposition nearly killed him. He’d rather had been a non-insulted leper, than person humbled who got over the insult and found the healing and grace of God.

Namaan’s ego and pride would have killed him, if it hadn’t been for his servants.  They saw his short-sighted, ego-driven, emotionally charged, attention deficiency.

“Sir,” they said.  “If the prophet had demanded something more difficult wouldn’t you have done it (v. 13)?”  Didn’t Namaan take $125 thousand in gold and silver with him and was prepared to give it all.  What if he ask Namaan to crawl back home on his hands and knees, wouldn’t he have done it? 

This word of intervention brought Namaan back to his senses.  He was able to see the big picture.  He decided to go down to the Jordan, just as the prophet demanded. Can’t you just see him dipping a few times, thinking to himself: Embarrassing, crazy, humiliating, what a cruddy little river?  He looked at his hand and said: “I’ve still got leprosy.”   “Keep going.  Keep dipping,” the servants yelled.  Finally he came up the seventh time, taking the final plunge, and he stood unable to take his eyes off his hand.  It was just like the prophet said.   His flesh was as smooth as the flesh of a child.

HEALING FOR THE HUMBLED SOUL

What a great miracle story of healing, isn’t it?  But what can this ancient story about humility and healing say to us?

First of all ask yourself:  Who really wants to be a humbled?  Remember that old country song by Mac Davis, “O Lord It’s Hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way.”   It can seem easier to be a non-insulted, physically sick person than to be a humiliated soul?   Our response to hurt is to fight, become defensive, rather than working to get past the bump or the bruise in our lives.  As human beings, our attention deficiencies can get in the way. 

·         How many people do you know who bit the hand of the very person who was trying to help them?  

·         How many times been learning something new from a teacher, but walked out of class saying “that teacher is stupid?”  

·         How many have a doctor give them advice to what they need to start or stop doing, and walk out shaking their head or knowing better to go right back to doing the same destructive things. 

·         How many go through some shaky times in a relationship and throw their arms up in disgust and walk away too soon?  

·         How many were in a church going through growing pains, but instead of hanging in, rising above it and growing through it, walked out the door never to come back? 

·         How many have gone through some hard, very unfair, and unwelcomed event in life,  blamed God for everything, loss faith and would rather stay home and rot, nursing their bruised ego, letting it kill them day by day, rather than find a way hope and healing.  

·         Finally, how many times do we prefer to protect our prideful egos, when being humbled is the only way to come out of or come through our pain?

Since it should be rather clear to us now what kind of dangerous position our own egos can be to us, what about humility?  What healing good is there in it? 

Look again at the biblical narrative once again.  Consider the little slave girl who first told Naaman about Elisha (vs. 2-3).  It is clear in the text that she was a casualty of war.  The Syrians, we are told, on a raid had carried her away into a strange land.  They had probably killed her family.  Whatever happened, in one fell swoop, she had lost her mother, father, her home, all her possessions, and of course, her freedom.  The only thing left to lose was her life.  The man who was to blame for all her problems and her slavery was deathly ill.

What would you do in that situation?  Would you suggest to him a way he could be healed?  Or would you wish him every pain he was about to experience?  Would you be glad he is getting pay-back, thinking to yourself: “He hurt me, my family, my people, not let him hurt?  This is God’s vengeance on him, who am I to interfere or intervene?”   

That could have been her thinking and her rationale for not saying anything to Namaan, but it wasn’t.   In some way, this little servant girl, this woman with so much pain in her life, this woman had been robbed of everything, had something that this great general did not possess.  He had a heart.  She had a soul.  She still possessed the faith and the desire to be a “light to the nations”.  She reached out to help a person she had every reason to hate.

Why did she do it?  Why did she humble herself in this way?  We don’t know exactly, except that people who serve seem to have a perspective on life that people who rule have the most difficulty having.  What we know better than why she did what she did is what happened because she took the role of the servant, the cross.   When she took this role, when she took the pain upon herself and wished nothing but healing for the other, healing took place.   And my best guess is that not only did healing come to Namaan, but healing also came more fully in her heart.  Somehow, long before Christianity and long before Psychology, she knew how unhealthy it was to hold on to hate and selfish pride in her heart.  She knew that holding on to pains in your heart was a sickness even worse than leprosy.

But is still so hard to do, isn’t it?  It is so rare and so hard to see what we do to our hearts when we hold on to selfish pride, we refuse to be humbled, and we don’t work to resist a bad disposition in our soul.   When you have been wronged by someone, especially someone stronger than you, it is so easy to hold on to the pain.  It is so easy, for women, who have been wronged by men, to hold on to their anger and hurt.  It is so easy, for children who’ve been wronged by parents take the pain with them all their lives.  It is easier, when we’ve been betrayed, never to forget or to let it go in our hearts.  We tend to want to meet hate with hate and to let evil be returned for evil, and to try to help God work out his vengeance.   It can even better, at least for a while, to go through life focusing on something you won’t let go, even when it sounds a lot like “he hit me” or “she bumped me” or “they hurt me!”  It can be a hard decision to make, whether to be a non-humiliated and proud sick person, or a humiliated, humbled, surrendered, well person.   It would take more than seven dips in the Jordan to wash all that hurt away.

Yet, this little, Jewish, slave girl--and I can’t seem to get my mind of her, was able to move on.  What was it in her that caused her to come forward?  What was it in her that enabled her to let go of all the pain, and to wish that her enemy might find hope and healing?   I can’t help but believe part of her healing came from her position.  She took the role of a humble servant, just like Namaan also had to do if he wanted the healing grace of God in his life.  And if you think, this humble way was just a stupid move of ignorance, and even if you don’t think her humility brought healing to her soul, I wonder what it did for her status, her position and her future as Naaman returned.  Wonder what Namaan might have done for her, when he returned home with his health fully restored? 

What about us?  What can humility do for our own health and healing? 

The book of James in the New Testament suggests that “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”   It goes on to call upon believers to “submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee”, and recommends, “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you, cleanse your hands you sinners and purify your hearts you double-minded…”  All this ends with these even stranger, even more humbling words, “Lament and mourn and weep.  Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into dejection. Humble yourself before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (4:7-10) and then finally, we get these next words which remind us again what this Jewish servant girl did her own great jester of humility: “Do not speak evil of one another…” (4:11).

What can dipping yourself in the river of humbleness and humiliation do for healing the pains that persist in your life?  You’ll never know until you get in the humble water yourself and wash.  You can’t be made clean, whole or healed, until you bow down in the humble waters.  It’s not just Elisha, but also Yeshua, (Jesus) who magnified the humble waters as the way of healing.  When Jesus humbled himself on the cross, he invited us all to the river of healing that still flows to those who will come and wash.  

What about you?  What do you need to bring to wash in the humble waters?  What part of yourself, what pain, what obstacle of character, what defect, what disposition in your life needs to be dipped in the healing waters?  The river of healing still flows, but who is willing, like Namaan, to humbly step away from their pain, away from their hurt, away from the deficiency in their soul, toward the healing, toward cleansing, toward wholeness and toward hope?  The healing waters wait on your next move.  Amen.     

The Healing Virtues of the Soul: Willingness

Bungee jumping is not a difficult sport. In fact it may be the easiest sport there is. All one has to do is take the first step, and the rest comes easy. But that one step is a doozy.


We may be dressed to jump. We may have all the facts about the security of the bungee cord. We may even have complete confidence in the operators. But we won't jump until we are ready and willing, entirely ready and completely willing.

THE OBVIOUS BUT NECESSARY QUESTION

For the past 6 weeks we’ve been talking about the healing virtues of the soul.   Our major premise of has been that in order to find healing for life’s hurts in your soul, you’ve got to have or develop certain dispositions or virtues; honesty, hope, faith, courage, and integrity.  There are more to come than these,  but today, right in the middle of this ongoing discussion on healing, I’m about to ask what could appear to be the most stupid question.  Are you willing to do what it takes to receive God’s healing in your life?

I wouldn’t ask this question it raises at all (because I don’t like to look stupid), unless it wasn’t one of most important questions Jesus ever asked anybody. Let’s look straight into it from our text in John 5 and discover this obvious but necessary question of healing at the pool of Bethesda.

What we find at this legendary pool of healing is a man who has been sick for 38 years.   All this time, he’s been hanging out at a place people believed to have healing properties, which was something like a healing mineral springs that used to be in many areas of the world.  Our text says that when Jesus saw him and realized he had been waiting there for a long, long time, he asked him this very obvious question: “Do you want to be made well?”

Well, who wouldn’t want to get well?   Is there anybody in this world who likes being sick?

When I was doing clinical care studies at Baptist hospital, part of the hard part of the work was working as a chaplain with critically ill patients, many who would die right when you were getting to know them.  The other challenge of the work was being in a small group with other chaplains who all had different styles of care than you did and also came from different backgrounds.  In those small group meetings we would have to share our various discussions with patients, as we made reports and shared evaluations.  The hard part was having your peers not only take apart how you worked with others, but sometimes they would take you apart, piece by piece, analyzing, questioning or even being critical of your approach.  It was a humbling, but also a growing experience, which I cherish to this day.  


What I remember most however, was the final evaluation I received from my supervisor, who in making his final words of encouragement to me in my ministry, told me that one thing he appreciated about my reaction to the very difficult process of pastoral training was that he never saw me play the psychological game, “wooden-leg”.

When he first told me that, I didn’t fully know what he meant.   I knew I did have a leg injury which didn’t really limit me, but what he was talking about was more than simply dealing with a leg injury.  “Wooden leg” is a psychological game which some people learn to play as a way to deal with their hurts, pains, illnesses or limitations.   Instead of making recognition of their limits and accepting them, what people sometimes do is use their weaknesses, hurts or illnesses as excuses for all kinds of things they say they can’t do.  

When I realized what ‘wooden leg’ was, I knew exactly why I never played that game.  One of my mother’s sisters, who I loved very much, used to play “wooden leg” and sometimes it drove me crazy.  When, as a little boy, after my grandfather died and we visited her home every other Sunday, I sometimes dreaded it because her life was made mostly of what she couldn’t do, didn’t have, or the pains she did have.   In reality, I thought my aunt was very resourceful in many ways.  As an unmarried female, with my mother’s help, she had taken care of my bed-ridden grandfather after his stroke.  She also was very good at cooking, chopping wood, gardening and doing farm work.  She made the best stewed apples in the world.  There were many things she could do, but she seemed locked in the game of acting sickly, complaining, needing a doctor, staying at home, never getting out, having a social life, learning a job, even when you really couldn’t see much wrong with her.   What I learned later was that her “complaining” about this or that ailment and her excuses for what she didn’t know or couldn’t do was her way coping and dealing, that is, even “gaming” with some “hard” parts of her life that she believed she could not change.  Rather than try to change or accept the challenge of getting better, or taking steps to try to make things better, it had become easier for her to express the pain, expect sympathy and accept the pity.

I remember one time, hearing her talk about how lonely things were for her at Christmas—since she had no husband and no children.   Hearing this every year as far back as I could remember, I decided to invite her to come and stay with us over Christmas.  Of course she first refused to come.   It took me weeks and weeks of begging, until finally she was willing to come at least for one night and one day.  But no sooner did Christmas morning come, she was ready to go back home.  To me it seemed she loved her loneliness better than the company and attention we tried to give her.  Her being alone and not feeling well enough to go much of anywhere, except the grocery store or the doctor, was her “wooden leg”. 

Do you have a “wooden leg” or do you know somebody, like this poor fellow by the pool of Bethesda, who finds themselves in the same predictable situation, ending up the same predictable way over and over again---going nowhere in their life very fast?   Illness and debilitation can sometimes work on us this way.  It can make us feel as if we have no real choices or options left.  Grief can also make a person feel this way.  Poverty too can cause person to develop such a defeatist attitude; so can lack of a certain opportunity or lack of education.  An unresolved problem, a sense of failure, low self-esteem, guilt and some kinds of depression,  can give occasion to people living their lives in the same predictable way, as if they are frozen in time, fear, dread, defeat or sorrow.  

Someone has rightly described “sanity” as doing different things and expecting different results, but “insanity” is described at doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  This guy at the pool was one step worse than this; he didn’t do anything, didn’t expect any results, and had gotten used to it this way.   He sees no other possibilities.  He sees nothing but obstacles.  Instead of a person with hope with optimism, he has become a person filled with utter hopelessness and complete pessimism.  He answers Jesus’ question, “Do you want to get well” (which proves not to be so stupid after all) "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me"  (5.7).  What we also see in this man’s answer, is not only his total spirit of defeatism and pessimism, but we also see what we might call “the blame game” rising up in his complaint as he says he has “no one to put (him) into the poor” and that  there is always “someone else steps down ahead of (him).”  


Carl Rogers, one of the most innovative therapists in the past century, once said that he considered only one kind of counselee relatively hopeless: namely that person who blames other people for his or her problems. Writes Rogers: "If you take ownership of the mess you are in, help is available for you. But to the degree you continue to blame others, you will be a victim for the rest of your life."  For this man “the blame game” had gone on just about that long…38 years.

This “blame game”  people get locked  can sometimes get dirty, so the attempt is not just to get people to see into our own pain, but to make someone have and share the same pain so we don’t have to be accountable, responsible or so we don’t have to be in pain all alone.  This blame game goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, where Adam blamed the woman, the woman blamed the snake, and where the devil is the only one left who has no one to blame and he simply has to eat dirt.  Because the devil’s has been the easiest and most obvious to blame, comedian Flip Wilson used to say, “The Devil Made me Do it!”  


Today, people don’t blame the devil as much, but have gone further back, blaming Adam through their genes---or blaming their parents because of a fatal flaw in their upbringing.  Since parents can blame their parents, and we call can blame Adam, maybe it is, after all, ultimately God’s fault because he made Adam in the first place?   I’m convinced that the reason some negative people say they believe in God, though their sickly behavior points otherwise, is because as long as they’ve got God, the devil, and the evil world, they’ve still got someone to blame besides themselves. 

Whose fault is it ultimately, that we don’t get to live in paradise on this earth--- that your life or my life has to face challenges, troubles, weakness, illness, disease and eventually death?  It is not until Jesus appears on the scene that we find someone who doesn’t take part in the blame game, but takes the all the blame on himself, saying “Father Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  Because Jesus doesn’t place blame, even as he dies unjustly, and even though he had every right to blame, you and I can be given a new power, just like this man at the pool of Bethesdia was given power to find healing.   We can start to heal, even from the worst hurts, because there is sense, that through Jesus Christ, God has said to the world: “Stop all this blaming: I’ll take all the blame and all the sin upon myself.   


So, now, the only question left, since there’s no one left to blame, do you want to be healed?   Are you willing to stop the blame game, and take up your cross and be responsible for your life?  Whether your life is fair or not, whether there is a reason or not, the most obvious question---in my pain---in your pain---in the world’s pain---is do you want to get well?   Do you want to be part of the solution or part of the problem?   Do you want to be on the side of the healer or on the side of the sick maker?   Are you willing to take up your cross of personal responsiblity, just like he took up his cross?  If you are willing, then you need to do, what I told one person, “you need to decide to stop standing by the river of pain and starting ‘building a bridge to get over it, rise above it, and get on with your life and do something with the life you’ve been given.   One thing for sure, there will be no health, no opportunity for healing, no overcoming any negative in our lives, until you and I, want to be better and rise above the ‘wooden leg’ and get beyond and move away from our own pool of brokenness and pain.   

 LIVING ABOVE YOUR POOL OF PAIN

While any of us can be shaken by illness, adversity or grief, the promise of the gospel is we can have be given power to move beyond the shame game, the lame game or the blame game.   What is most amazing, and even inspiring, is to see how some people do conquer what is going on around them to rise above their lives, their situations and difficulties from within the disposition of their own soul. 

Have you heard the popular story about parent who had a child who was an eternal optimist and a child who was an eternal pessimist and he wanted desperately to help become a little more balanced in their perspective?  At Christmas he got the pessimist a new bicycle, but when the boy saw it, he immediately thought of how easily he could get hurt.  To the optimist child he brought only a bag of horse manure.  When the boy opened it up, he started smiling and looking around, saying I know there’s got to be a horse around here somewhere.

One person who found a horse in his “manure pile” was Martha Mason.  According to the Shelby Star Newspaper, Martha Mason was Cleveland County’s most unusual world record setter.   When she was 11 years old, Martha contracted polio, and was told she wouldn't live to see her teen years.   On May 4^th, 2009, she died at her home in the little town of Lattimore, one month shy of 72 years of age.  She had "lived above" her disease flat on her back for more than 61 years, and 60 of those years in an “iron lung” which did her breathing for her. 

Mason had always said that she would not let polio beat her. Martha wrote in 2002, "As a youngster, in pre-polio days, I enjoyed sports and considered myself an athlete .... proud of my physical strength ... unusually self-reliant. Suddenly, I was a 11-year-old quadriplegic, I was not strong and I was completely reliant on others .... I would not be a whiner, but what would I be? ..."  

What Martha Mason became, instead of a whiner, was a person who never met a stranger, someone who overcame any obstacle set in front of her, and she was the “kind of person you wanted everyone to meet."   This amazing woman and her iron lung completed high school and attended Gardner-Webb College. She came to Wake Forest University the same way.  She graduated first in her class and earned Phi Beta Kappa honors.  Most of her life she was a member of the Rotary Club, which has as its international goal to eradicate Polio in the world.  Using a voice-activated computer at home in Lattimore, she wrote her memoir, "Breath, Life in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung."

Just before her 71st birthday, about a year ago, Martha wrote: "My story's been one of joy, one of wonderful experiences. It has not been perfect. But that's what people need to understand - that I have had a good life."

Martha Mason was 12 and in an Asheville hospital when she was told, "You'll never walk again. You'll never bathe or feed yourself again. You're basically an excellent mind and an exuberant spirit locked in an inert body - a prison. Can you live with that?"  "No," came the answer, "but I can live above it." And she did.     (http://www.shelbystar.com/news/lung-38872-iron-mason.html)

What is the difference?  Does it have to do with how we are born, what resources we have, or what have to live with?  Does only what is on going on the outside determine our disposition?  Or can our inner disposition, even our soul, be strong enough to bring shape to how we experience and interpret our lives and our situation, even our pain and sadness?  Can we learn to live---not from the outside in, but from the inside out?   By the way, what kind of power do you think Jesus was pointing to when he asked the sick man, Do you want to get well?   Could he have been also asking us in our own situations we face: What do you really want?  Does your willingness to be part of solution also have part in the outcome?

WILL THE REAL SICKNESS PLEASE STAND UP?

Jesus believed that our “willinginess”, our desire, and our “want to” get better has much to do with the ability to heal, get better and even overcome our weaknesses, our hurts, and our pains in life.  That’s why, when Holman Hunt painted that famous picture of Jesus standing at the door knocking, depicted the Scripture Revelation 3: 20, “Behold I stand at the door and knock…”, he did not paint a door knob on the outside.  Jesus would only knock until the person was ready to open the door.  Nothing happens until we are willing.

In the end, Jesus gives this man at the pool the hope of a power to heal that he cannot find within himself.  But instead of picking him up and putting him in the water, Jesus heals him by telling him, to “stand up (on his own two feet) and “take up his mat and walk”  (5:8).  The Scripture then tells us that “at once the man was made well.”  Well, not so fast, there is one problem that still remained.   Do you see it in the text? 

 It was the Sabbath.  The Sabbath was called the day of rest, but Jesus never got to rest and Jewish leaders made sure he couldn’t rest.  Right after the man gets up and starts walking around those who oppose Jesus come to question him and tell him there is a problem, “It is the Sabbath, it’s not lawful for you to be carrying your mat.”  Being put on the point, what does this man do, but he immediately falls back to his old way of seeing and doing things, and probably without thinking, he returns to the real illness---his soul weakness---not his body weakness and starts making excuses and he places blame---(or gives credit, it all depends on you viewpoint) and he tells the Jewish leaders what he’s doing is somebody else’s fault.  He says it’s that guy over there who told me to “take up my mat and walk!”  

As they look to see who “that man” is, Jesus is already gone, having disappeared in the crowd.  But you are left seeing what still isn’t gone?  There’s a different kind of sickness in this man’s heart and mind left lingering in his soul that even Jesus hasn’t cured:  His unwillingness to take responsibility for himself.   Jesus has “left the building” so to speak, and has left final result of healing up to him, just like he leaves it up to us.

 The word “salvation” comes from the word “wholeness.”   This word “wholeness” basically means salvation works best from the inside out rather than from the outside in.  You might put the surprising, lingering issue, this way: Jesus can heal us.  He has healing power.  But his power doesn’t really help us fully, completely, unless we really want to be helped. 

Are you willing to give Jesus your heart as well as your body for his healing?  So, now the healing question doesn’t get smaller, but it gets larger.  Healing is never simply a matter of getting better in your body.  Sometimes we get better, but one day we won’t.  That’s why the greatest healing question is not what does your body need, but what does your soul want?   Amen.  


    © 2009 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, BA; MDiv; DMin.

What I Learned from the Religious Liberty Discussion

Recently, when the two churches where I pastor came together for Bible Study one Wednesday evening, we had a passionate discussion about the Baptist faith and the issue of religious liberty.  As anticipated, the discussion was not only passionate, there were distinct, conflicting opinions about what religious liberty has meant in American history and what it should mean today.  

One voice took issue immediately with Thomas Jefferson’s words about “a wall of separation” between church and state, suggesting that no absolute separation was ever really intended in the first amendment and believing that the absence of religion in our public schools and government has led to the moral decay of American society.  

The other voice felt that the moral decay of American society was not so much due to the absence of religion in the public square, but that the fault lay with the churches that have failed to have a transforming influence upon the culture.   This voice also felt that the very intentional “wall of separation” between church and state has been a good thing, because mixing religion with government could have made matters even worse, as it once did in old Europe and still does in other religiously dominated countries, like the Middle East.

While these differing opinions and viewpoints were anticipated and are common among the faithful, the discussion prompted three new insights in my own thinking, which I think are critically important for shaping the future of the discussion and for helping our churches be faithful to their calling to bear a faithful witness to the gospel.

First, all there is a common understanding that something has gone wrong in American culture.   All sides of the discussion about religious liberty believe that moral decay is taking place in our society.   While there is still much good about America, America seems to have lost her moral compass, which is evident with the increase of crime and incivility, especially crimes against children and by children.   We could all remember in our own childhoods (40 plus years ago) leaving doors unlocked and living in communities where neighbor helped neighbor and when there was a high level of trust in business, religion and even politics.  But that time is no more.  The moral climate of our land is changing for the worse.  The liberal view of probable human progress through newly discovered political means is laughable.  The conservative view that society can be saved through conserving certain political processes has never worked and isn’t working.  The children’s poem rightly says “All the kings horses and all the kings men can’t put “Humpty” together again”---and our children will find out soon enough that neither liberal politicians nor conservative ones have been able to fix all that is broken in American culture and that they, our children will be left holding the bag.

Second, we all understood in some way that religious liberty is under increasing threat and the Christian faith has lost its privileged position in the public square.  Even if the wall of separation Thomas Jefferson referred to was intentional, it was never intended to be an absolute bolting of the doors.   When the wall of separation was going up in early America, there were many doors between each side that could be opened or locked when needed, much like those doors in motels which might join rooms together to allow access when family or friends were traveling together. 

 Not so long ago, church and state were more like family than strangers and the doors in the wall of separation were often opened to each other.   Our discussion caused us to remember times when principals weep tears as they shard spiritual truth, moral truth, and intellectual truth with students.  We also recalled learning Bible verses in early grades, having strong Bible clubs in schools and being taught to respect each other.  We remembered prayers at formal convocations, balls games and visits by respected ministers in the schools.  We remembered times when politicians seemed to be moral leaders as well and we remembered that faith did not have any kind of seat of power nor was the state ever attempting to establish religion (like some believe or desire to do today).  However, what the Christian religion did have in that time, especially in its main protestant forms, was a seat of privilege and a place in the public heart of a majority of Americans.  And because religion held that position, there was also widespread sense of self-respect, reverence, and self-confidence that is serious decline in our culture today. 

What this loss of a “privileged position” for Christianity will mean for American society is only beginning to take shape.   But it is already becoming clear is that the implications will go in at least two primary directions:   There will be a continuing decay of morality and civility in the culture because there is no longer a generally accepted or celebrated moral foundation which once was the Judeo-Christian God.   Even those who want to bolt the door for a more secure “separation of church and state” must admit that the name of God on money, government buildings, and the landscape dotted with church buildings across America, both large and small, old and new, reveal a former special status for religion in every village.   But this “privileged” status is much less the case today and we are already seeing the implications which will become even more obvious in the years to come. 

Also this loss of “privileged” status of religion is giving rise to new dangers and more serious threats to religious liberty in our country.   Out of the stirring pot of moral decline, loss of civility, and religious confusion, new voices both anti- and pro-religious are either attacking or replacing the more humble, servant-oriented, religious reverence of the past.   This may have freedom-limiting results.  Fueled by a sense of power and opportunity, or maybe even out of vengeance for past failures or current flaws in religion, anti-religious sentiment is gaining strength in American life and the doors in the walls between church and state are being bolted more surely and securely allowing less access either way and making both strangers to each other. 

Fueled by fear, confusion, and loss of privilege, some Christian groups, which were once freedom-loving and politically shy, now believe that by developing an organized type of political battering ram they can break the doors of separation down and gain re-entrance back into the soul of American life.  The truth is, however, that this organized political attempt to “re-instate” religion assumes that religion once had something more than a privileged status in America.   This is not true, as least since the signing of the Constitution and making of the first Amendment. 

The status which the Christian religion once had in the American public square was often formalized, state-friendly and sometimes even state-prompted or directed, but the privilege given was humble and tentative, not official nor established.  This polite allowance is what gave the Christian churches such favored status and real political clout.  Faith groups entered into the soul of American life through her heart and not by legislation or establishment.   Thus any newly organized power plays or formal attempts to regain what is lost by other means other than through the heart and soul of the people is not only introducing a very different kind of religious agenda than what has been known and acceptable (the servant-oriented Christian presence), it could be taken by the state or by the people as something threatening and could result in more anti-religious sentiment and it might work against the Christian religious agenda and mission. 

Third, the final lesson that I gained from the discussion on religious liberty is that the Christian church has a responsibility and an opportunity to respond to the new political situation taking shape in America, but the churches must be careful that her approach is humble, non-coerced, servant oriented and not for selfish political gain or seen as gaining political advantage over others, even those who are anti-religious.   Nothing turns people against religion quicker than religious people saying they preach love and compassion, while appearing to have others hidden agendas to spread fear and hate.

Christians, and especially Baptists, have all kinds of differing ideas on what should be done to bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ in the morally declining, religiously diverse, and increasingly anti-religious American situation.   What should guide our witness must not be the liberal agenda, the conservative resurgence, or the suggestive, misleading, anxiety producing media personalities who make their money and careers out of crying wolf and telling us that the sky is falling.  Although the moral, political and religious situation is changing around us, and there may be increasing threats to religious liberty, America is still the most religiously free country on earth.   The privileged status of American Christianity has been lost and its influence in the public square has shifted, but this does not mean that religious liberty is about to crumble.  The acceptable plurality of religion in America almost guarantees some form of religious freedom, but the influence of one particular religion, even Christianity, will continue to be less dominating and may lose all of its special privileges in the future.    

What should guide future Christian thinking and action in a political landscape, where as Christians we have less political clout?  Shouldn’t it be Jesus’ own teachings?  In dealing with questions the religious and political situation of his day, which was in many was worse than our own, Jesus offered this unforgettable word: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God.”    But the question is: what are Caesar’s things and what are the things that are God’s?   We know that Caesar will take care of his part.  It was Jesus who took care of helping us know God’s true political agenda and he did it in the model prayer we all know by heart.

First, Jesus did not tell his followers to pray for their country, but to pray for the coming of God’s kingdom.  That could be a surprise for some Americans to realize we are not the only country God wants to bless.   I don’t think this should mean that we shouldn’t pray for America, but certainly, as Christians, we shouldn’t put any personal political agenda at a higher place than our prayer for God’s rule in the hearts and lives of people all over the world.  This is a “rule” that we must pray for and it is a rule that comes through the heart, it is not a rule we can make happen by any kind of political manipulation.  

Second, Jesus told his followers to make bread and forgiveness their major political and prayer priorities.  This means that in the political arena we are called to work as a voice for the most basic physical and spiritual needs people have in this world.  These two priorities of caring and forgiving do not forbid Christians from getting involved in other political matters on their own time, but they clarify what political agenda we churches should have and can call truly Christian and God-directed. 

Many of the religious and moral agendas churches promote in the world go too far beyond these most basic and most urgent physical and spiritual needs.   Often we see caring and forgiveness set aside, while other agendas are pursued.  But while there are other matters which are very important and deserve Christian involvement, no agenda should take precedence over being Christ to others.   In other words, you can’t practice hate of a person you think is wrong and say you are still a follower of Jesus’ rule of love and forgiveness.   That’s why it is absurd to kill an abortion Doctor or to hurt anyone whom you oppose, and think you are still Christian.  The political “hard ball” of the Christian is of the caring, loving, and forgiving heart and to fall to bear witness in this way is to miss the servant- oriented politic of Jesus.   We must stick to God’s priorities, even when we Christians take part in the sometimes ruthless political process.   I wonder what the watching word might see as the true heart of God, if we were to stay with God’s agenda, keeping Jesus’ prayer priority in view even while we work in the political process?  

Finally, the last political agenda we should have and should pray for as churches is “not to be lead into temptation, but to be delivered from evil.”  Beyond doubt, the greatest temptation Jesus faced and the greatest evil the church has ever succumbed to in the past is the wrong use of power.   Remember Jesus’ temptation by the devil in the wilderness to misuse his power and to short cut God’s calling?  Jesus overcame the devil’s compromise by staying on course with God’s true agenda—the cross.  Today, our greatest threat as the church, is not the world against us but it the church against itself, when it forsakes God’s priorities.  When the church trades the way of the cross, humility, compassion and service, for the world’s way of manipulation, division, power-politics and success, we have sold our own divine birthright for a mess of dirty political porridge and we have failed to bear witness to the real power of God to work in the hearts and lives of people in the world. 

To be reminded where our real power lies, we must look no further than how the Lord’s Prayer ends.  It ends with these very sobering words of warning for any church or Christian who thinks they can bring God’s kingdom through earthly, human politics.   Remember how the prayer ends? It goes: “For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and glory, forever.  Amen.”  Do you see this dramatic difference from most religious political agendas?  Many think they can bring God’s kingdom for God through politics, but Jesus said it is God who will bring the Kingdom in his own way, by his own power, and for his own glory. 

What happens to our Christian witness when we forsake God’s agenda and pick up our own?   Is this not what is happening in some churches?  The Christian right or the Christian left are not biblical agendas.  Righteousness is God’s agenda, and this righteousness is to begin at the house of God.   That is how the Bible states it because the greatest threat to religious freedom is failing to stay true to God’s agenda, not falling out of privileged places in the culture.  

If we could learn this and if we could practice God’s priorities in our politic, I believe we could help more hurting hearts.  When we do this, there will not only be a greater witness to God’s agenda, people will also see our hearts and there will hopefully be more, not less liberty for religion in America’s future. 

 

This is what I learned last Wednesday evening.  What did you learn?