St. John Studies

We all go through difficult times in our lives, times when we struggle to learn new ways, when we realize we have it all wrong, when we have to find a way to adjust our behavior or lose something dear. Such a time occurred to me many years ago. I was seeking counsel and the counselor told me the story of the caged bird. She was trying to explain the idea of true love, and I needed a clear explanation. Her story went like this: it is so easy to keep a bird in a cage; you can always see it and you always know where it is. However, birds want to be free. The best thing would be to let the bird out of the cage, let it fly away, and let it have its freedom. What a joy you have when you open the cage, let the bird go free, then it returns to you because it wants to be with you? That is true love.

This little story fits well with Pastor Labberton’s chapter entitled “Free to Act.” “God made human beings free to act….If I were God, I am quite sure I wouldn’t take this risk, unleash this danger. I would prefer tighter management.”

That is not the way God works. From the beginning of time, God has given us freedom. We have the freedom to make the world a better place or we have the freedom to destroy the world.

What does God want? He wants us to live and love in freedom and to choose to use our freedom wisely; He wants us to choose to love Him.

And then we have Jesus…

The New Testament is full of passages where Jesus urges us to act: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because its foundation was on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.…” [Matthew 7: 24-26]. Actions are the “pay dirt” according to Jesus. They are an overt indication of what resides in our hearts. What we do speaks volumes about what we believe, what we hold dear, what is truly important to us. What we don’t do speaks volumes too.

You see in His Son Jesus, God is telling us that not only should we love Him, but we should also love each other. In the book The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor, the key scripture is Matthew 22: 38 “Jesus declared, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

I suspect God’s intent for us is to work against the acts of injustice we see in the news every day. These acts are so obvious because people hurting each other are in the news all the time. People cheating and lying make the headlines on a daily basis. Cruelty sells papers and increases viewership on the television networks. It seems we are fascinated with the opposite of the second part of the Greatest Commandment.

As a believer, I refuse to give in to the steady drumbeat of bad actions. I believe there are overwhelming numbers of wonderful human beings doing loving acts for other humans. They care about injustice. They are committed to doing what is right. Their acts go unnoticed but they are making sure that neighbors in need get care and attention.

Maybe this is part of God’s plan. Many daily acts of love go unnoticed but are signs that human hearts have been transformed. Too many followers have this notion that following Jesus Christ is a way out of loving the world. Labberton says following Jesus is a way into loving the world.

God truly gives us freedom… freedom to act.

At times when I hear another story of human cruelty, injustice or inhumanity, I agree with Pastor Labberton: I wish God had tighter management on us human beings.

Then I just imagine that God would have a smile on His face…when He looks down and sees overwhelming numbers of people helping other people with no need for recognition, choosing to love their fellow human beings.

Choosing to love Him.

From the beginning of The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor, author Mark Labberton has written about perceiving, naming and now he will address the final step of loving our neighbors: acting.

It is the part of life where there is visible evidence of love: the ACT of love.

He has written about perceiving. Perceiving is essential to acting. We see things that need our attention, people who need our help, wrong conditions that need to be put right. If we did not perceive, nothing would happen.

He has written about naming. Naming is essential to acting. We have to put a label on a problem. We know we can put labels on problems that draw us closer to action or we can put labels on problems that push us further away from action.

But perceiving is a mental activity, requiring no physical response. Naming is a mental activity that helps us communicate to others what we perceive. Again, no physical response needed, no real ACT of love.

Acting is a whole other ballgame. To use a common phrase, it is “putting skin in the game” or the process of committing to doing something. It is assuming a risk.

One of the most common things I do on a weekly basis is attend a prayer session at church. I tell you this not to make you that I am a righteous person. I just fell into this job accidently. When I was working on gathering material for our church website, I was researching all of the ministry areas of the church and I thought we had intercessors who met on a weekly basis to pray for people. As it turns out, our weekly prayer group no longer met. I told my pastor and she said “That’s not going to work!”

I contacted a long-time prayer group member and found that he had been meeting for prayer by himself in the library. No one knew.

I suggested he and I start inviting people to prayer group via church-wide-email and maybe we could get it going again. Our numbers are few but for the past three years, three to five of us have been meeting to pray for our church and our church members.

I have fallen into the job of intercessor.

It has not been easy. The prayer part has not been particularly difficult. Knowing the many serious needs of people in my church and community has been hard. In fact I have had problems with depression due to the news of people who are seriously ill, in dire material need or having familial relationship issues. I guess I have taken on their troubles “mentally”.

Note that I said mentally not physically.

I have perceived their problems, I have named their problems but I have not acted to relieve their difficulties.

Since blogging on The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor I have suffered some hopeless feelings due to my lack of action. Labberton says “saying ‘Lord Lord’ but failing to show it is easy. Our God knows us thoroughly and knows that any real commitment to helping those with trouble in the world shows a true transformation of the heart.” He says “We are free to act justly, but we just don’t.”

I found a free verse poem in some papers a relative left me and it fits right here. As Pastor Labberton calls for action, so does this short poem entitled “Does It Matter?”.

“I was hungry and you formed a humanities club to discuss my hunger. . . THANK YOU.
I was imprisoned and you crept off quietly to your chapel to pray for my release. . .NICE.
I was naked and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance . . . WHAT GOOD DID THAT DO?
I was sick and you knelt and gave thanks God for your health . . . BUT I NEEDED YOU.
I was homeless and you preached to me of the shelter of the love of God . . . I WISH YOU’D TAKEN ME HOME.
I was lonely and you left me alone to pray for me . . . WHY DIDN’T YOU STAY?
You seem so holy, so close to God; but I’m still very hungry, lonely, cold and in pain . . .”

As we discuss the last section of Pastor Labberton’s book entitled “Acting” it will become even harder to write, harder to encourage others to act when I feel I just don’t do enough.

I pray and feel so close to God.

Maybe God wants me to pray and feel close to people in need…

In The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor, Pastor Mark Labberton devotes many pages to the “neighbors” we could be helping. He cites Scripture after Scripture to support the fact that Christians should devote their efforts to helping those in need. Of course the Greatest Commandment in Matthew 22 and Mark 12 bolsters his claim as Jesus says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Love thy neighbor as thyself.

What gets in the way of loving your neighbor? Labberton says over and over it is the words we use to describe our neighbor. Those words can really get in the way. Labels we place on people create distance between them and us; refugee for example is so far away from our culture in America, not so far away if you encounter Syrians fleeing their war-torn country for Turkey and Iraq. Refugees could use our help. Destitute and impoverished people can be seen in our community but you may not feel that comfortable working with them. Maybe the best you can do is writing a check to the mission center. They could use your help but you feel too distant from them for direct contact.

All this brings me to the question: have you ever had a label applied to you, a label that made you very unhappy, a label you wanted to change, maybe a label that shamed you?

I am going to get personal. This has happened to me.

As a result of a serious accident requiring me to put my life on pause for several months, I felt the effect of being labelled. My doctor said that I had to sit or walk with a walker for about three and a half months as my body healed. I was not allowed to drive a car. My wife had to take care of me most of the time, until my doctor said I was healed and could start taking steps again. Essentially, I was disabled.

The day I felt the label “disabled” most was when my family went to the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky. They wanted to get around at “normal speed” and I could not keep up with them on a walker. I also knew I did not have the strength to put my weight on my arms and use a walker all day. I had to be wheeled around in a wheelchair. It just made sense.

What was difficult is the fact that I wanted to be with my family but I did not want to be a burden. What was also difficult was the reaction I got from people who felt compelled to help me. I was used to being mobile with no encumbrances but here I was, unable to live my life without aid.

The whole day, I had to depend on the kindness of strangers, whether I wanted to our not. The chief wheel chair pusher was my son and he was so pleasant but getting down the street was a challenge, getting into restaurants was a challenge, getting into and out of the car was a challenge. More than once I felt people looking at me, maybe having pity for me.

I took it in stride but I was not used to this type of sympathy and I did not crave it. I was jealous of all the people I saw who could take steps unaided.
What was I feeling? I was that “disabled guy” in the wheelchair.

I was a problem.

Why did I not stay at home, so everyone else could have fun unimpeded?

I wanted to be normal. I wanted a normal life. Normal was not my label. Disabled was my label.

Life can provide very interesting circumstances. A couple of days ago a man crashed his antique motor scooter into my mailbox. I saw him coming down the road and then walked away from the window. For some reason, I returned to the window to see him sprawled on the ground, his motor scooter on the ground and my mailbox flattened. My first thought was to go and help him. He was disoriented, very shaky, a bit embarrassed and bleeding badly from both hands. He was so apologetic but I did not care about the mailbox. I truly found myself wanting to help him get his scooter upright and get him somewhere to take care of his hands. I think he assumed that I would be irritated but that was not in my heart at the moment. He did not want my first-aid, but I did help get the scooter upright and I got him back home. I called our neighbor to have him watch the scooter since I knew it was valuable.

After retrieving the scooter in the night, the man returned to our home the next day with his wife. My wife and I had a good conversation with them and in the conversation he said “I knew when I met you that you were a Christian.” My wife said, “Yes, he is a good Christian man.”

I tell you this story not to be self-righteous or to brag, but Christian was a label. It made me feel good to have it applied to me. I truly hope I deserve it. It was a very different label than disabled but it was a label nevertheless.

Pastor Labberton has penned a book that suggests that we need to earn the label “Christian” by our actions.

We need to earn that label by helping our neighbors; loving them as we would love ourselves.

“The lifestyle of waking up to God, to the work of God in the world and living that way—holds out hope that the love and justice of our hearts can come to mirror the love and justice of God’s heart”. [Labberton, 121]*

There it was…for the second time…uncontrollable…it just popped up.

There they were. I guess it had been forty-five or fifty years since I had felt them but they suddenly returned.

My hand popped up and the chills returned.

Is my heart being transformed? Pastor Labberton writes that the transformation of our hearts occurs through personal and public worship. Worship “recalibrates” how we live. Worship can “rewrite” what is in our hearts with a message different “from the one imprinted by our nurture and experience.”

I have been a church-goer for many years but I have had precious few experiences in what I would call a charismatic worship environment, where emotion can be expressed as part of the worship experience. Thoughtful and reverent would be the words I would use to describe most of my times in the house of the Lord. I have been moved several times due to my worship but I never really expressed what I was feeling, keeping my feelings to myself and if I did respond, I would wipe tears and suppress what was going on because all those around me were suppressing.

Then I joined the choir at my church and after a while, we hired a new choir director who wants to bring feeling into the musical worship experience. She described the music we sing so well: “Older hymns often sing about God; we want to sing to God.”

Her music selections are quite a departure from what we used to sing and I think something is happening to me.

My wife will tell you that I am a “closet” musician. I have had a keyboard for many years, an acoustic guitar, an electric guitar, even a harmonica and a couple of tin whistles. At my core, I want to make music but I won’t let myself. I won’t cut loose and just try.

When I was in high-school, I experienced the greatest ebb of my “musical career” in band. I was a trumpet player who was good enough to be first chair in our small marching and concert band.

That is where the first chills came from. I recall when the notes all sounded “perfect;” the strangest sensation would happen to my body. The best way to describe it was chills running up and down my spine. It was the result of our instruments working together to create something beautiful. I knew it. I did not have to say it. I felt it.

I felt like a musician…at the core of my being, I knew I loved making beautiful music.

Then came the long hiatus. I did not pursue music in college. My college band sent me a letter trying to recruit me but I tossed it in the garbage.

Now things are happening to me. We are singing choir music that is touching my heart, reaching down into the very core of who I am, who I want to be…dragging the closet musician out of the closet. I have never really seen myself as a singer but now I find myself wanting to sing to The Lord.

Some selections that our director has picked just touch me so much and I can’t get them out of my mind. At our Christmas program we sang a song which was so beautiful that my hand lifted toward God as we sang it. It was not a plan. In fact, in our church it is hard to do this because it is so rare for anyone to lift their hands in praise. I did not think about my environment…my hand just went up. It had to. I lost control. This past Sunday, we were singing the very beautiful praise song “Good, Good Father.” I love the song so much that I was singing it in my mind for days before Sunday worship service. When our choir got to the lyrics “Because you are perfect in all of your ways…You are perfect in all of your ways…You are perfect in all of your ways to us” my hand lifted skyward and the chills returned.

What is happening?

Pastor Labberton writes about “being rightly named means being truly known. It changes our lives…Embedded in our words and actions are the names we give and receive from others.”

What is personal and public worship but our efforts to try to grow closer to God? Labberton writes every time we gather in worship, we bring our names into the service: “Inadequate, failure, bad parent, fat, sinner through commission or sinner through omission.” Are these names accurate or are they misnames? What can we do to combat the name we carry around, the misname?

Worship… “A lifestyle of worship is God’s antidote.” [123].

Is God giving me a new name?

Singer….

From Mark Labberton, The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor

What does it mean to claim the name “Christian?”

Does it mean saved? Does it mean sanctified? Does it mean redeemed? Does it mean that you have repented from your sin?

Well it could mean all of those…

It certainly does not mean the word perfect.

It does mean that you are making the effort to live a life that is consistent with the “name.”

It is not easy. We all “fall short of the glory of God.” Even though that is a reality, it does mean that you should never lose hope. Pastor Labberton says it is hope that “hangs on an unlikely promise. The hope is that God’s word and God’s act will be the same. The birth of Jesus renews the idea that the messianic promise will be fulfilled in the birth of a baby to be named Jesus Christ.” He came to save us from our sins.

Because we are not perfect.

What does God expect? He expects us to try. When we say one thing and do another, when we practice religion and have severe character flaws, when we are all form and no substance, when we take the name and we are Christian in name only and when we judge others and don’t examine ourselves…

We are not making a strong enough effort.

God commands a life where we do what we say. We know we are supposed to be transformed. Fellow sinners become our brothers and sisters, not outcasts. Harlots are our sisters. Tax collectors are our friends. Gentile dogs are all our brothers and sisters. Drunkards are friends and neighbors. Lepers may be disciples. Beggars are our fellow human beings, who just happen to need a hand up.

Matthew 2:5 tells us that those who actually feed, clothe and serve their brother and sister rightly, as Jesus did, are a serious contrast to those who don’t see Jesus in those brothers and sisters. Those who are acting as Jesus are reflecting the love and character of God. Matthew 15:11 says “It is not what goes into a man, but what comes out.” That tells what type of Christian a person really is.

Don’t get me wrong, there is no condemnation for those who cannot be consistent; they take the name but they don’t act the part. Maybe they will grow in their Christianity in the future. That is God’s hope. Labberton writes that there is “a multiplying effect of the inward change, when a Christian is saved and all things are made new, in which we take every thought captive to Christ, in which we are transformed by the renewing of our minds out of true worship, leading to a new way of seeing, naming and living in the world.”

This past Sunday, I taught a lesson in my adult Sunday school class on John 1. We spent the whole time discussing the Holy Spirit. We talked about the Christian who is baptized as a child. This happens with the anticipation that the child will grow into an identity that will be labeled “Christian”. The adult who is baptized accepts the idea that The Father and the Holy Spirit will begin to act on their life and they will be transformed from death to life.

Sadly, the child baptism is no guarantee that the child will really take the name Christian and live the Christian life. Sadly, the adult may be baptized and saved but that is it. Too many have the attitude that I have professed my faith. That is enough. I don’t have to do any more. They take the name Christian but they live any way they want.

What Pastor Labberton is looking for [and if I may be so bold], what I think God is looking for is for people who say they are Christian trying to act like Christians. Again, that does not mean that we are perfect. We all have that penchant to sin. That is part of our makeup. But sincere repentance of our sins can help us grow closer to God.
When we take the name Christian, are we saved?

Of course we are.

When we take the name Christian, are we sanctified?

We have that chance if we respond to the Holy Spirit who is drawing us closer to God.

When we take the name Christian are we redeemed?

You bet we are. That is what Jesus did for us. We don’t deserve it but He came to save us.

When we take the name Christian, do we need to repent?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I have a ways to go and my road to The Lord is paved with my repentance. He knows me, He knows my weaknesses, He knows my strengths. I am bound to mess up. He knows I am not perfect.

He loves me anyway.

Praise God…

When you have been married to someone for forty-three years, it is an amazing thing to experience seeing your spouse change. Of course you change too. However in most marriages, some things don’t change, feelings about personal important ideas, positions you take regarding society, you know, big ideas that reflect a person’s core values. I have long ago discovered that it is not my job to try to influence my spouse into becoming more like me, adopting my core values. The position I have adopted is to appreciate her as she is and enjoy the great good she offers and forget miniscule disagreements and learn to live with larger differences.∗

We don’t spend a lot of time talking about this, but we know we both have different ideas about freedom. Her contention is that people in our society have too much freedom, that this just leads us to abuse our rights. In essence, people can’t handle that much freedom; she feels the news every day is full of people who don’t know how to stop before they damage themselves or others. I, on the other hand, have an opinion that freedom is a necessity in our society. We all have a right to exercise our will and if we overstep, individuals who overstep will face consequences. I would not curb freedom; I just [naively she thinks] feel it is our right to make our mistakes in life even though our errors may make life difficult for others.

I begin this post with this personal revelation for a reason. The book that I comment on** has an attitude that God’s promises to make and bless Israel should make Israel accountable to God. If Israel is not accountable, they are subject to God’s judgement. It is a clear cut case. Pastor Labberton says it is all about that Covenant made with Abraham, you will have a son, your offspring will be as numerous as the stars, and your descendants will be given the Promised Land.

If…[and here is the catch]…

We live God’s way, meaning living under God’s law, enacting the character of God. The more man can do that, the more man can live the life that God intended all of us to live. It all hinges on putting God first.

Does my wife’s view on freedom fit well into God’s Old Testament plan?

Let’s explore…

What were the Ten Commandments but statements designed to get us to put God first, avoid the worship of other God’s and consider our neighbors. Labberton says The Commandments instructed the Israelites to avoid overreaching, pointing to “covetousness, adultery, murder as putting the sinner’s name above God and others”. Yahweh seeks a people who reflect His name in how they act in the world. Over and over, God’s people broke the commandments and they suffered at God’s hand.

King David is an Old Testament example of a man who tries to be consistent; after all, he is a “man after God’s own heart.” Yet what does he do? He commits adultery with Bathsheba, arranges the killing of Uriah and fails to own up to both acts. What happens to Israel is decay and dissolution before David confesses his sin before God.

The prophets in the Old Testament are charged with telling the Israelites about their sin, yet they fail in their practice of righteousness; they have Sabbath festivals [that God hates] and they can’t keep their people from intermingling with other cultures.

The Old Testament is full of man’s failure to honor God. In fact, Labberton states “When Israel’s words and acts were inconsistent as those of the alien and stranger, Israel always faced a crisis.” The inability to follow God got so bad that God’s people were sent into exile, they were given a new language, a new culture, a new pressure to assimilate.

What was God trying to tell them? Show Me you belong to Me…

Ok, you knew it was coming.

Maybe my wife may be right, human beings do need some guard rails. Maybe freedom does not need to be taken away totally, but we need parameters. Total freedom is an ideal but is it practical? I have to admit that when one goes to the Old Testament, the Israelites don’t handle their freedom very successfully.

When God took away their freedom as they endured captivity, they should have learned something and they did. The Babylonian captivity had one very significant impact on the nation of Israel when they returned to their land—they would never again be corrupted by the idolatry and false gods of the surrounding nations.

Did they learn this by having unlimited freedom or did they learn this due to less freedom.

I leave it for you to decide.

I think you know…

*My wife is my editor. I never post anything without her careful reading. Just one example of the great good she does for me all the time.
**Mark Labberton The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor

“Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field” [Genesis 2: 19-20].

In the book, The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor, Pastor Mark Labberton spends many pages describing the power of words. In Genesis [as we see in the opening quote], God gives Adam the power to create words as he names the livestock, birds and beasts of the earth. Labberton makes a good case that in everyday life, naming is important. What we call things can draw us closer or repel us. What we call things can help us to take action or walk away. What we call things can build bridges between people or create barriers between people.

Then he continues commenting on the Old Testament and develops his thesis that God has always taken naming [or use of words] very seriously. “The faithfulness of God (hesed) means that what God says and what God does are one. The reliability between God’s word and deed, between God’s promise and action, forms the origin and potential for being human in speech as well as action” [Labberton, 113].

God intends us to “say what we mean and mean what we say” but do we?

You know the answer: oftentimes we don’t.

With the entrance of sin into life [of course via Adam and Eve], the breakdown of a close connection between word and deed began to happen. We have the freedom to sin, the freedom to choose, the freedom to misname, the freedom to misuse our words. How we use our words reveals how much of a separation there is between man and God. Early in the Bible [in Genesis 4], the word “brother” becomes a mere label. Man destroys the Godly meaning of the word through the behavior of Cain and Abel. In their brotherly relationship, love was not of utmost concern and certainly the idea of being my brother’s keeper did not apply to their situation.

Turning to the Tower of Babel, Labberton points to the fact that man was overreaching. Man wanted to make a name for himself. But his pride got the best of him. “Come let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we can make a name for ourselves” [Genesis 11: 4]. God’s response to this effort was to cause the people to stop building the city and tower and He confused the language of the whole world. In one fell swoop, God erected barriers to understanding throughout the world [and we still suffer from those language barriers today].

God explained to Abram that the hope of the world hangs on the covenant. You will have a son, your offspring will be as numerous as the stars, your descendants will be given the Promised Land. What God said, He did. However, Abraham and Sarah scheme with Hagar because they doubted God’s word, but God was faithful. God said what He meant and meant what He said. Not trusting Abram, God tested him with his only son. How far would Abram go in obeying God’s commands? The way Abram responds results in a name change and the beginning of the nation of Israel.

After Abraham, man still did not get it so God has to help man understand. With Moses, God remembers His promise to His people. When they are in bondage, He states “I am the One who is and who will be there for you.” Moses had a ministry only because he lived and served in the name of the Lord. When he uttered the words “let my people go” he did so under the authority of God. Those words from God [via Moses] were so powerful that Pharaoh’s hold over the Israelites was moot. God’s desire for their freedom overpowered the mighty Egyptians and swallowed the power of mighty Pharaoh’s army .

Living God’s way means living under God’s law, enacting the character of God. The more man can do that, the more man can live the life that God intended all of us to live.

The trick [if I may be so bold to use such words] is that God intends all Christians to put Him first. If we do that, all the other aspects of life will fall into place [ourselves, our neighbors, our world]. The problem is that too often we don’t put God first. Our desires take center stage. Our need to sin overwhelms our need to obey God. Our weakness leads us astray and we moan like the Israelites.

We fail to mean what we say and say what we mean. And when we have a chance to get the power of God to help us, we forget to ask the One who says “I am the One who is and who will be there for you”…

We just don’t use the right words; we just don’t say: “Please help me Lord.”

Growing up, I listened to a lot of different music: rock, pop, jazz, classical etc. I remember a quirky piece of music that caught my attention, a song that I thought was out of character for the artist, “A Boy Named Sue” by Johnny Cash. The song was popular in 1969; it was written by the poet Shel Silverstein and debuted by Cash in a concert at San Quentin State Prison.

It was a long song that told a story of a tortured young man who was “misnamed” and the effect the name had on his life. After naming his son Sue, Sue’s father leaves home, leaving the boy to grow up getting teased about his name and having countless fights over the years to defend his honor. To avenge this injustice, the young man decides to track down his father, eventually finding him in a bar in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Upon greeting one another, they have a tremendous fight which ends with father and son pulling guns on each other. The son beats his father to the draw and then the father explains why he called his son Sue: “if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough, and I knew I wouldn’t be there to help ya along, so I give ya that name and I said goodbye, I knew you’d have to get tough or die, and it’s the name that helped to make you strong.” The son accepts the explanation and does not kill his father but he is still not happy about being Sue, and vows that if he ever has a son he will call him “Bill or George! Anything but Sue! I still hate that name!”

Describing this song makes me think about the effect that labels can have on people. Pastor Labberton* writes that labels help us “manage the world around us. We name what we see in terms that reflect value, meaning, position, relationship, affinity” [112]. Sue’s father may have had a plan in mind when he gave his son a female name but the father’s label shaped the way others saw the son. Communication research on labels states that names not only shape the way others see us, but they also impact how we act. Adler and Procter** write that people with unusual names “suffer everything from psychological and emotions disturbance to failure in college….Names are one way to shape and reinforce a child’s personal identity.”

Of course names are usually bestowed on children by parents but it doesn’t stop there. All of us “name” people in our world; we have to find words to share experiences so we are all in the business of labeling people, places and things in our world. Problems arise in misnaming or the use of negative labels. We should be very careful about the words we use but often we are not.

Pastor Labberton points to the labels we use as a chief reason that Christians don’t get involved with issues that really need our attention. For example, we hear endless statistics about children being sold into sex trafficking each year. These words don’t seem to be getting a reaction from the Christian community.

Maybe we should hear the words “commodity”, “transaction” or “slave” applied to the children who are trafficked. Would that elicit a response? Maybe not if you don’t have any way to relate to the people who are being trafficked.

How about Mitali?

Mitali is a thirteen year-old who now belongs to her pimp. She has a mother but she hated living with her. One day she felt she could not stand her life anymore so she ran away and started trying to live on the street. With no marketable skill to earn a living and absolutely no support from any family member, a sex trafficker was her only way to stay alive. She became a commodity, a transaction, a slave.

Of course in the opening story about “Sue,” his life is made more difficult because of a label but Labberton thinks the labels we use spur us on to learn more about a problem that needs to be fixed or they repel us and we create distance between us and a serious need. Are the words we use bridges or barriers?

We have to use words; they contain our thoughts. They convey our messages. Yes, they can inspire us to do what needs to be done to change the world or maybe words can be used to distance us from problems that need our serious attention.

Think about it. When we hear words about people who need our help…

Are the words that you hear bridges to action; do we want to get to know the people with problems and do we want to know what we can do to help them?

Or are the words barriers to action; we distance ourselves from people with needs by using vague language? We shrink from their presence and their problems. The words allow us to be apathetic. Here is how it works. We use words so that responsibility is passed on to nameless others.

“Someone should do something for them.”

That someone is not me…

*Author of The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor
**Authors of Looking Out, Looking In

What is worship?

For many years I spent an hour in church on Sunday and if I had a good Sunday school teacher, maybe two hours. That was it. Honestly, at times it seemed like it was a duty. Like many kids, for many years I went to church out of this need to satisfy my parents. Then after I left their home to start a family of my own, I was very sporadic in attendance. After having a child, I started attending worship services more regularly for the child, to give him a good “upbringing.” Most of the time I spent in worship, my heart was not in it, much less my mind. I was not really sure why I was there, other than to fulfill some need to please others.

Then I found Jesus.

In the midst of a world-shaking crisis [for me], I quit just knowing about Jesus; I began to know Jesus. I needed Him and He became my Savior. It became a personal relationship.

Worship service then took on a new meaning. I was in love with the Son of God and I had a hunger to find out all I could about Him. I thought about Him constantly; He was the key to dealing with my problems. He was there to help me. Church was where I found information about Him; it was there where I found much needed aid.

I was beginning to transform. Transformation comes in many forms. Sometimes it comes due to a traumatic event, but that is not always the case. God is in the business of changing us one heart at a time and even though God sees us and all that we do, we never really see Him. First Corinthians 13:12 says “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” I stated that I began to know Jesus. I saw evidence of His power in my life as things began to turn around, as I felt His peace in the midst of the storm, as I saw hope for the future when I thought at the time that all hope was lost.

For me life became hope, hope that one day I would see Him face to face. We all have “to resist the presumption that to name what we think we see when we ought to be clear that to do so requires wisdom we do not have” [Labberton, 102]. It is humbling to admit how dim our vision of God really is but it is part of staying open to what God would have us do in our lives. We need to “look again, to see anew, to pay attention, and to name the truth”[Labberton, 102].

The effort to see what we cannot see may begin with more meaningful worship, but it continues with faith.

A good friend of mine told me that he wakes up in bed every morning and asks God the same question every day: “What would you have me do today Lord?” This is a very open-ended approach to life because one never knows what God has in store for the day. Another friend goes even further; he told me he prays several times throughout his day the simple prayer “God just use me.”

About a mile from my home is a church that sits on a hill. Church-goers have to drive up the hill to get to the parking lot. When worship service is over, they drive back down the hill where they are confronted by a large sign. “You are now entering the mission field.” The point I am trying to make is that corporate worship serves a purpose, but as Labberton says, it welcomes us, forgives and heals us, calls us and then sends us to love out our worship in our lives throughout the week. We live in a world that needs work, lots of work, and to think that sitting in a pew is all that worship calls us to do is robbing you of the full effect of God’s transforming power.

Pastor Labberton’s book* is all about helping our neighbors and part of growing in Christ is seeing the need in the world, the great pain that is in the world. After beginning to see that, the next step is feeling an urgency to do something about it. If we say we cannot see God, it may be more relaxing because we can kid ourselves that work does not have to be done. There is no impetus to make our world a better place. “To see better, even if it is still dimly, is essential to changing the way I live….Especially if I want to live [by] loving God and my neighbor” [Labberton, 103].

What is real worship?

One word answer…

Transformation…

Commenting on a group discussion he and other pastors had with African-American men and women, “We saw that night how little and how shallowly we see. Deep pain can be caused by our shallow vision of others.” Pastor Labberton writes about how we don’t often see the “real” person.* When you don’t see the “real” person, you are not likely to understand them and therefore help them. Many times he writes about how we as humans lack empathy. Often times lack of empathy is the root of a lot of misunderstanding and inaction. He says empathy is “our capacity to perceive and at least partially enter into someone else’s reality”[97].

Since my trade is human communication, I want to offer some keys to developing empathy. Maybe this post will shine some light on what can be done to connect people. Maybe in the middle of Labberton’s discussion about what we lack, we can explore what we can have, if we try.

You have to see value in knowing another’s perspective. Certainly people who study communication place a premium value on empathy. Ron Adler and Russell Proctor report that researchers label empathy as the most important aspect of communication competence.**

But what are the foundations of empathy?

Believe it or not, sharing your ideas with others is a basic foundation. To understand someone else, you have to exchange ideas. Someone who is introverted will find it harder to develop relationships with others. Maybe for them sharing is too hard; they don’t think there is value in their thoughts and feelings or they just lack confidence that they can express themselves. But communication researchers have found that sharing begets sharing.

We have found that if information is appropriate [not too personal or private] others will receive it and respond back with information of their own. If the person you are sharing with is someone you admire or desire to have a friendship or relationship with, the sharing you have with them will bond you, a so called unwritten pact will develop between you and them. The information you share could be more private as you continue your relationship. Certainly if you receive personal information from another, it is essential to not share that information if you want to have a continuing relationship. How you handle shared private information is a key to building trust between you and others and we know that trust is a cornerstone to a healthy relationship. Over time, a close relationship will yield more private information as people feel free to put down some of their public façade. The more you bond with someone else, the more you will get to know them on a deeper level.

A second foundational idea is the communication skill of listening. This means giving careful and thoughtful attention to the messages we receive. It is the act of decoding the meaning of others using our minds. The focus is often on the words we hear but that will only get you partial meaning. How a person delivers their message is important too, the tone of voice and their body language.

Too often people get confused about listening; they think that hearing a message is good enough, it is not. It is an old communication adage that people can hear without listening; they do it all the time. To really communicate with someone, you have to put all your mental faculties into the process of understanding another’s message.

This means that a good listener has to fight the tendency to be distracted by internal or external factors. We all have concerns or worries and if we are trying to listen, those thoughts can overpower the message coming from someone else. Sometimes we have messages we want to say back and we practice those messages while we are listening to others. This can interfere with comprehending what another person is saying to us. Environmental distractions can easily take us away from attending to a message, a colorful sight, a powerful smell or a loud sound can interrupt listening. Too often people who don’t know much about communication will say that listening is no big deal; anyone can do it. That is not the case. Many people are horrible listeners, only getting parts of a message, or maybe not any of it at all. One of my feelings about listening is that really trying to listen to someone’s message is one of the best gifts you can give them.

Earlier I wrote you have to see value in knowing another’s perspective. I would go further than that. To have empathy you have to value other people. If you don’t value other people you won’t have empathy because you don’t care about them. Too often in our world we see someone who has no money and dresses in a shabby manner and we discount their value. For some it is skin color. We can’t get past the fact that there are people who have different skin tones. Some devalue certain people based on race. Ethnocentrism is common in our world, the idea that our culture is much better than others. This is a major negative factor as people from other cultures have ideas to express but they are worth little; they are not from “here.”

Certainly, sharing ideas and feelings is essential to getting to know others. Listening means so much to the communication process because the act of listening means messages are being decoded and ideas are being exchanged.

But the real cornerstone of empathy may be the value you place on your fellow human beings. If you value others, you will share your ideas and you will allow others to share their ideas with you. If you value others, you will listen to them, valuing their message enough to work at understanding it.

Pastor Labberton spends so many pages writing about our need to help the poor and indeed the scripture to support his thesis is there.

“He who oppresses the poor taunts his Maker, but he who is gracious to the needy honors Him.”

Certainly getting to know the poor will help you fill their needs. It can be done with sharing, listening, valuing and respecting, all leading to empathy.

*The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor
**Looking Out Looking In