St. John Studies

October 18, 2016

My wife asks me not to dwell on that day, to move on, but that day was an extreme defining moment in my life. On that day, I had the first serious injury to my body and following that injury, the most serious surgery I have had to this point.

Surgery and recovery were hard for me because in a split second I went from a very active, healthy man to an invalid. Post-surgery was difficult because my doctor put restrictions on my life, restrictions I did not like. I had to walk with a walker for three months, not putting weight on my right foot. A wheel chair was my rapid means of conveyance and driving was eliminated totally. I spent all my days in bed or in a chair.
I hated this, but one good thing came out of it: I had time to think.

For the first time in my life, I had so much taken away, things that I took for granted could no longer be done. I had seen others who were struggling with injury or disability and I did not even pay attention to them. I guess I felt sorry for them but beyond that, they made little impression on me. I was healthy and had no problems so why would I dwell on their infirmities?

October 18, 2016 gave me a whole new point of view about life.

While I spent my days in bed and in the chair, I wondered about the next chapter of my life. What would I do if the surgeon was right? I would “recover.” My wife really expected great things of me. She believed I would totally recover and be my old self. However, privately the more I lived those days as an invalid, the more I realized I did not want to return to my old self.

I wanted to be something else. Of course I wanted to walk again, drive again, participate in the normal patterns of life.

But I also prayed for a new vision.

My surgeon could repair my body but he could not give me a vision for the rest of my life.

Before my accident, I was living life at a breakneck pace. I was totally absorbed in my concerns. I was active in my church, but I knew I was too active. When I had my accident, I was very tired from doing too much; some people would describe me as “burned out.” I had talked to my pastor about cutting back on my activity. Little did I know that the prayers for doing less would result in me doing almost nothing for three months.

Today I never see a person who is struggling with mobility or immobilized without a deep appreciation for their condition. When I see someone who has been damaged by accident or disease, I don’t tell anyone, but I cry inside for them. I even offer assistance when I sense they really would like it [I know that many want to fight to do what they can do; they don’t want aid]. What amazes me now is the number of people who are hampered by accident or disease. I never saw them before but it now seems they are everywhere.

Maybe I have that new vision and it is born out of gratefulness for what I have, appreciation for my ability to move, and humility. Pastor Labberton cites Micah 6:8 “To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” I feel those things now as I realize God has transformed me through my experience with immobility.

In The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor a lot of attention is given to people who have little in life materially, but to be honest, maybe the people who have lost so much of their mobility need attention too. Pastor Labberton shares his personal story about losing his sight due to a bike accident. This accident gave him time to reflect. He writes about wanting to live a life with more truth, love and justice; he writes “Worship must involve practices of daily life that help us rehearse again and again the open, loving, sacrificial heart of our God who sees and hears the needy” [77].

Psalms 139:14 states that God sees us as “fearfully and wonderfully made,” no matter what we have or don’t have.

Maybe that also applies to what we can do or cannot do. God never gives up on us.

If God never gives up on us, why should we ever give up on others?

We shouldn’t.

The human body is an amazing miracle. When I consider how the body works, I am amazed. It is truly one of God’s miracles.

The human body is so complex that I can point to any number of body parts as wonderful Divine designs, but the eye is my focus today. Matthew 6: 22 says “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.”

It is not much of an exaggeration to state that humans are visual beings. Our eyes take in four million bytes of information every second. When all this data reaches our brains, we immediately start processing it. How we come to understand the world is largely based on how we see the world. Maybe Pastor Labberton is fascinated by the human eye too; it seems so when he writes “As our brain perceives, sorts and analyzes this vast database, so these windows [the eyes] allow a constant stream of information to pour in. From our earliest days, we rely on the flood of information that comes to us through our eyes. The bold and nuanced, the obvious and subtle, present us with stimuli that our eyes receive and send as signals to no less than twenty-four parts of the brain. Our brain processes this information and has the nearly instantaneous capacity to sort and organize, to read warnings and threats, to recognize and stimulate us to a remarkable range of responses” [74].

But here is where things get a bit confusing. Here is where Labberton acknowledges that we don’t all “see” the same way.

Various factors come into play that tampers with how we handle all that information. I remember when I taught interpersonal communications in college. Early in the semester I devoted a unit of the class to helping students understand the very real factors that make for differences in how we “see” the world. I wanted them to learn to hold back on judging others and use interpersonal communication skills to understand how other people can experience the world differently. My point of view was that communication could bridge the gap between people, the gap that naturally exists when some of us are focused on color while others are focused on movement. Some of us are influenced by our knowledge of certain subjects; an auto mechanic can see what is not working in my car while to me it is just a tangle of wires. Tall people view the world differently than short people. Yes [pardon if this sounds sexist] but women experience life differently than men [gender and socialization]. The list can go on and on but you get the point.

None of us is the same.

But how does this relate to the “dangerous act of loving your neighbor”?

Here is the connection. When we see people we can quickly come to conclusions about them. We think we “know” why they are acting the way they are acting when in fact we do not. Labberton states that “sight is not neutral, it is not comprehensive.” Certainly we cannot see or know someone else’s heart. Social psychologists explain that coming to conclusions about people is natural and normal. To really know someone would take an unbelievable amount of time and we don’t have the time so we cut down of “information overload” by categorizing people. Sometimes we stereotype and that is even worse. All people of a particular skin color act a certain way. People with a particular faith cannot be trusted. That really inhibits understanding.

I think what Labberton is trying to express is that we see human behavior and we try to make correlations to a person’s heart and intentions, desires and hopes. He even says “If there were a chest window through which we could see our own and another’s heart, we would be no better off. Because the ‘heart’ we want to see is not visible: The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look at outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” [75].

In trying to help others, their outward appearance can get in the way, making us less likely to help them because we don’t approve of their clothing or their behavior. The fact of the matter is we don’t really know why they are the way they are; only God really knows, yet we are inclined to judge when we really shouldn’t.

When I taught that interpersonal communications class and that unit on “seeing” the world, I used to close the unit with a quote that I would put on a powerpoint slide, designed to get them to think. The quote was from Hugh Prather and it went like this: “You’re wrong means I don’t understand you. I’m not seeing what you’re seeing. But there is nothing wrong with you; you are simply not me and that’s not wrong.”

Even though the human eye is an amazing body part, it is not without flaws. When we see and jump to conclusions we can make serious mistakes, mistakes that can result in misunderstanding when understanding is what is needed the most.

The self-concept is the relatively stable set of perceptions you hold of yourself.* It can change over time but for the most part it does not. It occurs due to a combination of many factors, but to keep this topic reasonably simple for a blog post, let’s just say it is a combination of biology and socialization.

Each of us is born with a genetic makeup. Studies show that biology accounts for as much as half of communication-related traits such as extraversion, shyness, assertiveness, verbal aggression and willingness to communicate. This is a short list of empirical study results but the bottom line is, how we are made has a big impact on how we see ourselves.

Socialization plays a major role in the shaping of our self-concept. We don’t grow up on a deserted island. We are surrounded by others and life is a constant process of interaction from the beginning to the end. Social psychologists place a major emphasis on “significant others.” These are people whose opinions we value. Life is a constant “social comparison” or a process of evaluating how we stack up against significant others. Am I more stupid or more intelligent, am I more attractive or uglier, am I a success or a failure? It is not good that we compare ourselves to people but we do it anyhow; it is a part of life in a socialized environment. As we mature, we tend to associate with people who are like us. These reference group people support our self-concept and may make it seem more stable over time.

The fact is that we may tend to believe our self-concept is accurate but in fact it may be distorted. There are many reasons for this. A few examples are the failures we cling to even though they are outdated. Critical comments from parents, teachers and employers may be horribly outdated but if they have occurred and have made a memorable impression, we may be in a life-long struggle to be free from their negative influence. Too often we fall prey to unbelievable role models in life. Models who are gorgeous, billionaires who have great success and athletes who accomplish great feats; we think we have to have what they have but we don’t. The problem is that their lives are what we strive for and if we can’t achieve their level of accomplishment, it is a big distortion on the value of our lives.

The list goes on and on but you get the point. Pastor Labberton uses a reference from Corinthians that we see ourselves through a glass darkly, but he goes further and says most human beings suffer from a “narcissistic wound” that is inflicted on us as we develop in our world, as our self-concept begins to be constructed. This wound is a deep-seated sense that few of us really get all of the love that we really need to thrive. It would be ideal to have a life of constant acceptance and love but along our life-span, normal people have bad experiences. We can over-emphasize comments from critical parents, cruel friends, uncaring teachers, demanding employers, or even memorable strangers.
Add to this the complications that can come to us from life. Some of us struggle with poverty. Some of us have disease. Others may have hunger. Still others may feel oppressed and of course some have experiences with people who are violent. Too often we think that life is always full of potential. Joel Osteen encourages us to climb higher up the mountain of success or paint a positive picture on the canvas of our lives but for many, that positive advice is just too hard to engineer.

There are just too many forces working against us.

It would be best if we had accurate pictures of ourselves but we don’t. If we had those accurate pictures, that old expression “what you see is what you get” may apply. But in the light of the subjective nature of our self-concept, Pastor Labberton writes “We look at our reflection all of our lives. What we don’t see is that the mirrors we use are distorted. Misperception starts with our self-reflection.”

If we see ourselves through a glass darkly, how could it be otherwise?

*This post contains information from Ron Adler and Russell Proctor’s book Looking Out Looking In

I am going to say something that will elicit very few tears from anyone who reads this blog.

Blogging can be hard.

No one makes me do this. I do it because I like it. Maybe it accomplishes a purpose for some people who read it and if it does, that makes the blog even better.

Now you might think I will list the usual blogger’s laments: it is hard coming up with ideas, sometimes I don’t feel like writing, it is too much pressure to post every day or so, the commitment is killing me.

Those are not problems for me.

Here it is…

Mark Labberton’s book is hard. In the past I have written on books that have positive passages and ideas that are not challenging all the time, but Labberton’s book is a cold, hard look at our failings as Christians. Blogging on Labberton’s book is hard.
Every page screams out “why are you not doing more to help people who have less than you! You know you should as Christians; the Bible tells us to help the poor. Get to work!”

I will be the first to admit that we all sin and fall short of the glory of God, but those sins are sometimes personal and they don’t involve others. The sin of omission is a problem but it can be committed in a way that only impacts the sinner. However, the sin of omission is very evident regarding our help for the poor. In this, we are failing to recognize those around us who are in need and of course if we don’t see them, we are certainly not helping them. We are failing to act. We are omitting something from our behavior that Labberton feels should happen.

My wife is constantly teasing me about my goal-oriented nature. She knows how testy I can get if I have hours and days where I get nothing done. Too often my concerns are personal: I need to get a bedroom painted, I need to rake the back yard, I need to bake a favorite apple pie. Sadly, I don’t have on my list I need to help the poor. I feel bad that I don’t have goals that involve other people.

When I expressed this idea to a friend the other day, the friend tried to console me. She said “some of us just don’t have gifts for helping the poor. Maybe you just don’t have what it takes to aid those less fortunate.” Their words were a good effort but I did not believe them. I know I can do more. They were a “cop out.”

Part two of Labberton’s book is about learning to see and a major part of it is dedicated to how we see ourselves. As I have written in the past, I have always been fascinated by how we come to be the people we are, but when I discuss the self-concept, self-esteem and self-image, I usually think of these ideas in general terms, not how they impact my ability to help others.

Labberton zeros in on how these ideas relate to those in need and how these ideas relate to those who can help those in need—in a word, me.

Ok, maybe the whining needs to come to an end.

I need to recall why I decided to write about this book, this author. This book discussion is dedicated to a friend who died recently, a friend who dedicated his life to helping the poor. He inspired me to write about this book. I watched him spend his time, energy and money to help those less fortunate. I took phone calls from him as he explained the plight of those less fortunate. This person who did not have a bed. This single mother who could not feed her two children. The local homeless mission center that was in desperate need of cleaning supplies; they had nothing to clean it with. The family of four who were so poor that they had no toilet paper. One morning he called to tell me that several families just needed breakfast food, boxes of cereal and milk so they could start their day with something in their stomachs.

I knew he felt a lot of empathy for the poor, but I watched him from a distance. At times, the thought went through my brain that he was a bit crazy in his advocacy for the poor.
Now I am complaining that blogging is hard because the book I am blogging on is hard to write about, the subject is difficult to discuss and I wonder how popular the discussions are. I worry that readers will not want to be confronted with how they need to help the poor?

Then I think about John. Over all the years I knew him, he had his struggles. We all struggle, but I never once heard him say I am too tired to help those who have less than I do.

He could have.

He didn’t.

When I was in graduate school, I had a chance to express my research interests and what I chose to study was a negotiation between me and my dissertation director. He had the things he was interested in and I had mine. I knew that I wanted to study something having to do with examining the role of the self-concept and human communication.

Sounds pretty boring doesn’t it?

I remember my time in Lexington, Ky. in the summers [since I had to do this degree around a full-time teaching job] and an episode that occurred in a public park. My wife, son and I were in the park to have some playtime and I saw something that imprinted on my brain. I observed a distraught mother pick up her child and remove him from the park like he was a sack of potatoes. His head was pointed behind her and he was a very “unhappy camper.” As he squawked, I remember thinking that this was a very uncaring way to transport a two or three year old.

None of us are “perfect parents.” Kids don’t come with instruction manuals and as we make an effort to raise our children, we all make our share of mistakes. Of course, I did not know the woman or the child, nor did I know the circumstances of this child’s removal [indeed, maybe he was such a bad child that he deserved to be handled like potatoes]. But this event, at this time of my life, made me think about the effect that “significant others” have on how we grow to see ourselves.

I knew from my study that parents are the most important factors in a child’s early development. A mother and father can bond with a child and from the very beginning they can begin to construct a child’s sense of self. Over time a child will turn to other significant others like siblings, relatives, teachers, babysitters, principals etc. who can imprint their views on a child. We all can relate to this experience.

Depending on what those interactions are, they can really impact how a child sees the world and most importantly how a child sees himself or herself.

Children with positive interactions may be able to develop a positive self-esteem based on positive communications. This is simplistic but if you are told over and over again that you can do something well, you begin to believe that your behavior is acceptable and you repeat that behavior, to ravishing reviews from your significant others; hence a positive self-esteem.

The opposite effect is the child who is told repeatedly that he or she cannot perform well. Of course their confidence is eroded, they exhibit undesirable behaviors, and their significant others inform them they are failing.

I believe in reality that none of us really knows how we really are. We are “constructed” by our life experiences and the reflected appraisal of others. An adult may be convinced that they cannot draw a straight line because they have been told their artistic renderings are awful. Are they really? Maybe they are or maybe they aren’t. I suspect that if an artist is told over and over their work is junk they may begin to see their work as junk.

Pastor Labberton says as human beings “we are inescapably meaning-makers, and we grow up and mature in an intricate process of engagement, reflection, encounter, testing and trying to see and know ourselves and one another” [71].

Depending on how we develop and where we develop, we begin to see other human beings as our equals, our subordinates or our superiors. Some take their status as superior very seriously and when encountering subordinates they don’t want to associate with them. Instead of learning from their encounter, they judge these less powerful people as inferior, uneducated, and “low class.”

This is a problem when the less fortunate among us need our help. When we may be called on to help others, our positive self-esteem should not get in the way, but sadly it does.

Does this fly in the face of what we are to do as Christians?

“For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ “Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? ‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? ‘When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ “The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’

Yes…

As a communication teacher, I know that one of the most basic lessons has to do with receiving messages. To keep this simple, hearing is the mechanical reception of sound waves. I used to tell my students that if you have ears that work without any impediment [plugs, loud environmental sound], then you are hearing. The internal working of your ears begins to vibrate.

Listening is another matter. Listening depends upon hearing. You certainly can’t listen without the mechanics of hearing but listening means that mental processes get engaged. You hear a message and mentally begin to decode what it means. You make meaning out of messages [listening].

Pastor Labberton talks about our response to suffering in others’ lives. He says we hear but we do not listen.

Let’s take an example from our television viewing. From time to time we all see videos of refugee children who are in bad living conditions. They look hungry, they are dirty and their everyday living environment appears to be a garbage heap. I am sure that some see those ads and call the number and sign up for the monthly credit card payment [it only takes 80 cents a day to save a child’s life].

The rest of us, don’t do anything. We hear but we don’t listen.

Labberton writes about our mental defense mechanisms.

We are momentarily aware of the needs of the children but we get busy with our lives and simply forget.

We think about the dire living conditions and we hope that something can be done but it is just too much to ponder; it is beyond us so we don’t act.

Some may have a much harder response, a “social Darwinistic” response; some of us have fortunate circumstances and benefits in life and others do not. We are glad we are among the ones who are thriving and it is a shame that others are not.

Others may think “I did not put those kids in that situation; I am not responsible, so why should I feel guilty?”

The list can go on and on.

We find ourselves in a stalemate. There are obvious problems but we choose to do nothing to help.

Jesus says in Matthew 15:19 “For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.” Certainly I am not trying to equate murder, adultery and fornication with inaction in the face of horrible circumstances of our neighbors, but our heart is also where inaction starts. Cornel West states “injustice is what shows up when love is absent from the heart.” Edmund Burke said “the only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good [people] to do nothing.” As human beings we are not perpetrating criminal acts by inaction but we are not trying to do our part to help people in need. Instead, we use self-defense, self-justification, blame and rationalization.
Our hearts are not stirred.

Labberton says “God’s heart passionately desires justice, starting with the most vulnerable.” If we hear but not listen, sadly our heart remains unengaged.

I don’t often quote a large amount of Scripture in this blog but one of my favorite books in the Bible has Scripture that fits this topic so well: Isaiah 58: 6-9.
“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the throngs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and He will say, here I am.”

When those who are less fortunate will cry out to you and me, will we listen and not hear?

Or will we say “here I am.”

“I just feel guilty I am not doing more in the world.”

Just last night I led a book club discussion and the book* closely parallels the book we are studying**. That direct quote is from the book, a tale of a woman’s life that was dedicated to helping those in the world who are less fortunate. She felt guilty from time to time but as I read about her life, I wondered why: she spearheaded project after project to help refugees and illiterate people around the world. She spent her whole life doing this.

I read about her life and I feel shame. I feel guilty because I am not doing more in the world.

Labberton’s book is so hard to read because he has such a hard focus on the needs of people who are suffering. The part of the book we are in now is about human trafficking. I talked to my wife about writing on this subject and she said “Skip it; no one will know.” I am tempted, but Pastor Labberton feels he is doing his job, pointing out what we want to skip, what we don’t want to face; selling young women or young men into sex slavery happens. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.

In fact, ignoring it makes it worse.

Labberton states “For one person to enslave another….The slave owners have somehow come to see themselves in terms that make the ownership of another person appropriate, desirable, or tolerable.” Money is involved of course and ownership of a sex slave puts money in the trafficker’s pocket. For some of these people it is all about power over others. For some it is about the thrill of breaking the law. “As long as they escape consequences, and as long as the profit outweighs the cost, as long as there is social, legal or political blindness that turns away from the real horrors of enslaving others, then slave owners can pragmatically, if not smugly, justify their buying and selling other human beings.”

Let’s get even more into this horrible situation. Human trafficking would never exist without customers. Labberton pulls no punches: “Customers are…engaged in[to] turn[ing] persons into pieces of erotic, disposable flesh.” The fact is customers do not care; they just want their sexual needs met and traffickers have what they want: human beings who are available for rent.

We don’t want to think about this practice. When confronted, we turn our backs, we change the channel or we turn to another section of the magazine.

Then Labberton writes “all people are made in the image of God. All people are intended to bring honor to the God of the universe, to give and receive love from others who bear the image, to have the capacity to think, dream, imagine, sing, hope…human life itself is jeopardized, it not extinguished by our mis-seeing.” In other words, sex slaves are people who are made in the image of God just like we all are and ignoring the problem is not appropriate. Human traffickers are made in the image of God also; that’s really hard to admit.

But then again, paying attention to it may not seem enough. Last night I read a passage about people who do so little: “Too many people use the excuse that they don’t think they can do enough, so they decide that they don’t have to do anything. There’s never a good excuse for not doing anything—even if it’s just to sign something or send a small contribution or invite someone who is hurting over for Thanksgiving” [Schwalbe, 255].
Sadly, doing nothing is the preferred option. It is so much simpler. Our lives are so busy, how can we fit something else in? These problems are so far away; why should I care.

Facing up to reality, putting names to something, putting faces on problems; that is what Pastor Labberton is trying to do with his book so let me give you a couple of names: Stan McMeekan, thirty-seven years old and Cecelia Slade, twenty-nine years old. This couple was arrested for human trafficking. In their hotel room was a fifteen year old girl [name withheld because of age]. They were using her for profit.

Of course this problem is far away.

Not really; it happened in a small town just 12.3 miles from my home, fifteen minutes away and it happened on February 9, 2018.

Maybe I should feel guilty that I am not doing more in the world: hurting people are real, they are in real danger and yes folks, they are very, very close.
Close to all of us.

*The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe
**The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor by Mark Labberton

Sometimes we read things and think, “No, not me! I don’t do that!”

We can’t say that about perception or maybe we should use Pastor Labberton’s term “misperception.”*

We all misperceive. It is our nature. We think we know others but we don’t.

As a communications teacher, I sometimes make a great effort at fighting misperception but it is inevitable for two basic reasons: we don’t really know what it is like to be another person and we just can’t spend enough time trying to understand others.
Everyone is a collection of unique experiences. Things happen to us, we react to those things and the events of life become our life. No one lives a life like you do. No one reacts to life like you do. Each person’s collection of memories is different from everyone else’s. Those memories shape the way you respond to future events in your life.

To really get to know other unique human beings it takes spending time with them, time conversing, time working or even time living with them. The problem is that most of us don’t have time to devote to knowing the “others” in our lives and even if we did, we may still “misperceive.” That happens often when someone says something like “I sure did not see them acting that way” or “I did not see any signs of that in their everyday behavior.” Human behavior can be surprising.

The fact of the matter is we categorize people we don’t know using flimsy evidence. We look for signs of their social upbringing. Maybe we don’t look beyond the color of their skin. Sometimes their clothing will cause us to categorize their economic class. In listening to others, we may draw educational conclusions based on their language use, the depth of their knowledge or even the sound of their voice.

We all do this.

Just yesterday, it happened to me. It is hard to admit and my example is going to be fairly harmless but I could use other examples that are more hurtful and just plain shameful. On a trip to Nashville, I left my destination and was driving down the street. To my right walking down the sidewalk was a young woman in pajamas and house shoes. This was in the middle of the day. I commented to my wife that that type of clothing in public was a real “turnoff” for me. The young woman was a “slouch.”

Sounds bad doesn’t it?

Did I know the young woman? Of course not. What did her outfit indicate? I really did not know. Was she a “slouch?” I really had no way of knowing.

And yet I labeled this stranger and worse, I shared my label with my wife.

Labberton begins Chapter 3 with a story of a Bengali Hindu girl who was never picked to play on her school P.E. teams. One day she suffered through the picking process only to be the last one and the captain of the team said “Fine then, I’ll take that ugly, black thing.” You may remember Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent. This solid-bodied Scottish woman was laughed at when she took the stage but she was not laughed at after she sang her song. Then there is a Kenyan boy named David who was shot in the wrist and hand when he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since other black youths were skirmishing with the police, it seemed appropriate to use force on David even though he was not causing trouble. He was just walking through the area. He survived the shooting but his hand did not. No one got too upset because in his society, he is “dispensable.”

People who really know about human social psychology indicate that it just seems to be human nature to have a fear of people we really don’t know so we label them in order to create some safe distance between them and us. Also, humans have a need for dominance. It hurts to admit it, but we like being “better than others” even if it means we have be cruel in our judgements.

I wonder how God sees our unjust and cruel diminishment of others.

We read in Genesis that we are created in God’s image. We know from Ephesians and Colossians that God’s image of us consists of knowledge, righteousness and true holiness. We know from Psalms that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Yet we don’t act like others are wonderfully made, do we?

We “misperceive” others all the time and erect mental roadblocks to really knowing or helping others.

“No, not me! I don’t do that!”

Yes I do…

And God is not happy with me…

What’s inside is outside…

As a society, too often we “pull the trigger” on a conclusion when we see people act. Maybe that is a good thing; maybe it is not. For the past two weeks, many people in our nation have been talking about the shooting that occurred at a Parkland Florida High School. When something like this happens the discussion is all over the place for days.
In the context of Mark Labberton’s book The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor, there is a lot of discussion of the heart; he says that what is on the inside shows up on the outside, essentially a person’s heart directs his/her actions.

In the school shooting incident, a School Resource Officer at Parkland was seen not going into the school while the shooter was killing students. Quickly many national leaders have labeled him a coward. His inaction is a sign that he was afraid to confront the killer.

They can see into his heart, or can they?

I venture to say they cannot.

He may know why he did not enter the school. God certainly knows why. The rest of us are just folks jumping to conclusions [you may recall the old joke that the only exercise some people get is jumping to conclusions].

This example of the School Resource Officer is just that: an example, but let’s flip this around and discuss the heart some more. Let’s look at the inside [the human heart] and see if that matters to the outside [human actions].

If what is inside shows up on the outside, what can we say about people who don’t know God and when they are called upon to act, they don’t know what to do. Can any human heart tuned into God lead a person to act in a Godly manner? Labberton believes that and I do too.

Life is about choices and I firmly believe that God knows every thought I think before I think it and every decision I am going to make before I make it. As an actor in this life, I admit that I am selfish; I do what I want and sometimes what I want is very careless, very egocentric. Yet I believe in Jesus. I know that I do and as I live my life, I hope to have more Jesus in my heart with every passing day, week, month and year. The more I grow in my love for Him, this will result in me making better choices. Choices that reflect my love of God.

In the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke it says “To share in God’s just and merciful heart means acting that out in public.” Self-interest begins to take a back seat to actions that are in line with God’s agenda. Even external law and social norms begin to take a back seat to actions that are in line with God’s agenda. If one sees an opportunity to show a love for God, a Christian who loves The Lord will perform that act of love.
Before I go too far, the effort to transform a heart is difficult. The devil does not want this transformation to happen and he set snares in our way of growth. Labberton writes that we must place “Christian filters into our hearts…we must abide in a different place, in the heart of God…[We must] find this new life by a daily practice of dying to ourselves and being raised for life in Christ, whose life, death and resurrection make this possible” [55].

Our choices are important. A good decision that I make today, however small, may set me on the road to a better decision tomorrow, a bigger decision tomorrow, a more benevolent decision tomorrow. A bad decision can lead to serious failure or loss in the future. Certainly I am not perfect and I fail, but God loves me anyway. There is no condemnation for those who belong to God. God’s heart is so big He can see us make our mistakes and love us with His glorious unfailing love.

As humans, all of us misperceive. Less than perfect hearts can yield evidence of all kinds of misperception: “stereotypes, labels, epithets, curses, categories, hierarchies and inner and outer rings, all of which frame us, our neighbors, and God with a taxonomy of injustice” [Labberton, 54].

Yes, we can “pull the trigger” and say horrible things about someone we don’t know. Our lack of first-hand knowledge does not stop us, we say the hurtful things anyway.
As if we have the omniscience of God.

We don’t have it; we never will, but He does. He knows what is in the heart of the actor and He also knows what is in the heart of the person who jumps to the conclusion.
It would be much better to let God do His work and attend to the transformation of our hearts for Him.

We have plenty of work to do right there.

Lots of us pay attention to words.

We have to use them to convey thoughts from our minds to the minds of others.

As someone who has studied words, I tend to pay attention to words that come and words that go. That is the nature of language. Here are some simple examples. In the past, one would say “I am going to the gymnasium” where today the shortened popular version of that would be “I am going to the gym.” In the past, we would have breakfast or lunch but today we can have something in-between called brunch [a relatively new word]. Language change is driven by new technologies, new products and new experiences. Can you imagine someone a few years ago knowing what this expression means; “She texted me this morning.” Texted?

I am constantly amazed by the new words that seem to pop up every year. Some folks think that when they buy a large dictionary, they have all the words in English defined in that one book. Sorry, it does not work that way. New words get added to the dictionary every year. A few new words added to the 2017 dictionary are “froyo” a short word for frozen yogurt, “troll” meaning to harass someone through social media and “concealed carry” referring to carrying firearms in public.

Pastor Labberton* spends some pages on a simple expression that has invaded our culture: “not a problem.” Think about it. When someone did something for us in the past, we would say “Thank you very much” to which the helping person would say “You’re welcome.” Today it is common to get a “Not a problem” response. Almost ninety-five percent of the time when this happens, I just let the expression happen, unnoticed. I always note it in my mind but I don’t comment. About five percent of the time, I will say something like “It is a problem; you went out of your way to help me” to which I usually get odd looks. Better to let it go and adapt to the times.

Labberton just won’t let it go.

He feels that “you’re welcome” acknowledges the dignity of the person who has helped you. This small expression communicates the exchange of services or hospitality; it is flexible, “serviceable” and most of all, it is respectful.

On the other hand, “not a problem” looks at the cost dimension of the service provided. The person who does the favor or service is saying to someone you have not inconvenienced me too much, it is not a hassle for me or your need has not overly complicated my life. It is “not a problem.”

In the context of helping those less fortunate in our world, it is a problem to help them. Labberton uses the Biblical example of Jesus helping a leper right after He delivered his Sermon on the Mount. Wow, what a time to show people how to walk the walk; this was it. Lepers in the days of Jesus were to shout their malady so people would know they were coming. They had to yell “Unclean! Unclean!” so others would know to stay away. Labberton equates this to someone shouting to others “I am a problem! I am a problem!” To Jesus that day, it did not matter. When the leper said to Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean”, Jesus replied “I do choose. Be made clean.”

Jesus was a person who had a life with purpose. Yet He chose to extend His life into the life of one who was an outcast in His society. What He did for the leper was a problem but He did not act that way to the recipient of His miracle. His miracle was a service that should have been done; it was just another example of Him loving His neighbor.

Today, if you live a life of means, you don’t want to be a problem. In my experience, it is a rare Christian who admits that they personally have a problem and they need help. When my pastor asks for prayers from our congregation, the prayer concerns are almost all for others and when she asks people to hold up their hands for “unspoken concerns”, the church is full of hands [probably personal problems].

Today, if you live a life of means, it is hard to bridge the social gap and extend your life into the life of a poor person. It is a problem. It is a hassle. It does cost us.

Jesus calls us to help those with less. Jesus goes even further than that. He even calls us to love our enemies.

Let’s just be honest about it all.

To help those less fortunate takes a commitment on our part. It takes time and it may even take money. When we assist others, we may encounter lives that are full of problems. Life is messy in the real world and when we aid folks who really need our help, maybe we should say “you are welcome.”

Is it really honest to say “Not a problem”?

I don’t think so.

∗Author of The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor