Romans 8:26-39
July 24, 2011
Presbyterians are often associated with the doctrine of predestination – and not always in a good way. The doctrine of predestination has been based, in part, on this passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans. The idea is that God has already selected those who will be saved and there’s nothing we can do about it. Either I’ve been chosen for heaven or chosen for hell, and no amount of belief or good works will change that. Admittedly, I’m not a big fan of this doctrine either.
But there is a way that predestination does make sense to me – but only in light of the whole bible. When we begin with creation – begin with the idea that we are created in God’s image – and end with revelation – with the idea that history is bending toward justice and a new world order – and then read this passage about predestination, we hear something more than just that we are predestined for heaven or hell. I think Paul is talking about what we are predestined for in this lifetime – while we are here on earth. I think he’s talking about the very nature of what it means to be humans – to be children of God – living in this world that God has created.
With creation and a new world order as book ends, Paul is saying we are predestined to change and to grow over our life time to be more and more like the one who created us. All of us; because all of us, we are told in Genesis, are made in the image of God. All of us are meant to reveal that divine image in the world, just as all of creation is destined to reflect the realm of God. All of us have built in to who we are an impulse toward growth and goodness. Our task is to tap into this impulse – to find it and go with it.
For the last few weeks we’ve been talking about how change happens. The story of faith is, in part, the story of change. We want to always make our lives conform more and more to our beliefs and what we know about God’s intention for our lives. This often means change. Sometimes big, sometimes small, but growing in faith means change.
For Paul, we know that change starts with Grace – being freed from our guilt and shame that has accumulated over the course of our lives from all the times we weren’t able to “do the good we wanted to do,” to use Paul’s phrase. And partly that grace can be found when we understand why it is so hard to change. Our brains are wired for habit not change – at least not self-initiated change. Our brains make it difficult to start and cultivate new behaviors, even when we know they are good and we want to change with all our heart, soul, and mind. Accepting this means letting go of the idea that it’s easy to tell ourselves to change and then to do it. We can’t be so hard on ourselves…and we can accept that God doesn’t judge us for this or expect perfection. We’re just being human.
Once we admit our lack of a certain kind of power to change ourselves, we can open up to the idea that we need to look outside of ourselves for the power to change. We are creatures built to be in relationships – our brains are changed by others’ brains. Good, healthy, loving relationships can bring about change we could never accomplish on our own. However, as we saw last week, there are limitations to human love. We can love to the best of our ability and someone might still suffer. We might ourselves be impervious to the love of others for all sorts of reasons outside our control.
This week, Paul brings it home. We are limited, yes. Our brains make it hard to start new habits, to make big changes. But, Paul says, we are predestined to change. It’s who we are. It’s in our fabric, our nature, our identity. We are destined to change because part of what it means to be created in the image of God is that we are created to be in relationships, and as we learned, relationships change us. And most importantly we are destined to change in positive, life-giving ways because our primary relationship is with the life-giving spirit of God.
Paul couples the idea of being predestined to grow more and more into the likeness of Christ with this odd little passage about the spirit; this spirit who swoops in and intercedes for us. The spirit itself longs for us to change, it longs for renewal and for the birth of something new in our lives. When we feel hopeless, when we are stuck, when we suffer because a loved one is stuck, Paul believes that the spirit comes to our rescue. The spirit is what changes us.
How? Not by offering shortcuts or quick fixes, not by waving a magic wand, but by being in relationship with us, by praying for us…or the other way Paul so poetically puts it, by sighing for us. In our suffering, in our limitations, in the uphill battle, the spirit comes with sighs too deep for words.
This is the connection for Paul for how our lives change and grow – the spirit comes and sighs with us. Because the spirit yearns for our suffering to end, because the spirit yearns for our lives to reflect that divine imprint we have within, we are predestined to change. The fundamental relationship in our lives – our relationship with the divine – is based on caring…on compassion and empathy. And that’s the root of transformation.
In the same way, this is how we are to relate to one another – this becomes the basis for human relationships that bring about life-giving change and transformation. Stan Greenwald sent me a great blog entry this week written by the physician who is the president of the Minnesota Medical Association. He is writing about how to be better physicians - how to help patients change and heal. He talks about something he calls, “generous listening.”
He says in generous listening, “we’re to listen completely and mindfully to each person without interjecting any comments or questions.” Generous listening is being completely and totally present with someone. Not worrying about the past or rushing to figure out the future. Just present. It is the secular equivalent of praying with and sighing with another person. When we do that, we participate in the spirit’s work. When someone does that for us, we are moved by the spirit through that other person.
In general, I think we’re not always so good at generous listening. It’s hard. We want to fix things – now. We want to see change. We want results, and we want to help get those results – in ourselves and others. But, if we want to change – if we want to grow in the way the divine one yearns for us to grow - we need to move away from our normal mode of trying to fix things – trying to fix ourselves and others – to focusing on being with each other. Focus on just listening and feeling what the other person feels. Paul calls this “a sigh too deep for words.” It takes us beyond anything we might be able to say – and advice we might offer. Relationships that imitate the divine spirit look less like a session with Dr. Phil and more like an afternoon with a Buddhist monk. We are to sigh with one another.
My close friends and I have an agreement. When we want to talk about something going on in our lives – something hard or upsetting, even something we are dying to change about our lives but feel helpless to do so – the other person asks whether we are seeking feedback and advice, or whether we just want someone to listen…to be there…to sigh with us.
For me, this is one of the most important aspects in my friendships. The fact that my friends have the capacity to do either – to give advice or just provide generous listening – and the willingness to be so intentional about it, is of infinite value to me. And in my experience, the generous listening is usually more helpful in moving me to grow and change and deal with hard things than any advice they give – and let me tell you, they’re extremely good advice givers.
Rarely, however, is the change born of generous listening immediate change, or even linear change, which admittedly can be frustrating beyond belief at times. It’s part of what makes it so hard to practice this generous listening. We rarely get to see something change immediately. It’s also why it’s hard to not want someone to tell us what to do. It’s why we are always looking for the magic fix.
But it’s worth it – this kind of change is the kind that moves us closer to the divine, that brings our lives more and more into alignment with our beliefs and values, that deepens our faith. Change born out of relationships of empathy and compassion is about more than just changing behaviors – though it is that as well. It’s about forming us into empathetic and compassionate people ourselves. It’s about tapping into that divine nature at the heart and soul of who we are and having that be the place from which we live, move and act.
Change is hard – it can feel like a constant uphill battle. And trying to do it alone, or trying to motivate ourselves with guilt and shame, is a perfect recipe for failure and suffering. This is why we should put as much energy into building a community of people who care for each other as we do into reading self help books and beating ourselves up for not being as perfect as we wish we were. This is why we should make as much effort to listen generously to others as to trying to change ourselves. We can create an incubator of change and growth right here just by learning to better listen to and be present with one another.
If we learned to be generous listeners and if we learned to share our stories with each other – if we let people share our suffering and our hopes, and if we walked with others in their joy and pain – if we build a community that gives shape and voice to the sighing spirit of God, then the divine imprint in each of us will be ignited.
One final thing I want to tell you about that scientists have stumbled upon in their experiments relating to human nature and change: Our ability to change is affected by the stories we tell about who we are at our core. If the story we keep telling about ourselves is that we are bad or lazy or weak, change becomes much harder. If, instead, we tell ourselves that we are someone capable of change, we are more likely to change. The story we tell matters.
Which means we have a decision to make – we have one of those big life questions to answer: What is the story we believe? What do we believe about who we are, who God is and what the impulse of creation is? Paul was unequivocal: His entire world view and life are built on the story of a good God who is for us always. Paul tells us that all things work together for good…and that’s not just a polly-anna platitude of his. Nor is it meant as a feel good tag-on to every situation. We all know that not everything is good…not every situation has hope. When a child dies, when genocide happens, it is cruel to just answer that with God all thing work together for good.
What Paul means is that even in the midst of our suffering, and a suffering world, we can affirm a larger story – the larger truth: We are God’s children, we have the divine imprint, and nothing, no matter how devastating, can change that fundamental story. God is good. Paul Tillich, one of the most profound and practical theologians of the 20th century, wrote a beautiful sermon on this passage. He knew how real suffering is – he knew about human limitations – and he knew…he believed…in the potential for change.
He wrote, “There is a creative and saving possibility implied in every situation, which cannot be destroyed by any event. The daemonic and destructive forces within ourselves and our world can never have an unbreakable grasp upon us, and that the bond which connects us with the fulfilling love can never be disrupted.
The only thing that can destroy our faith in [the fact that we are predestined for new life] is our disbelief in the love of God, our distrust of God, our fear of God’s wrath, our hatred of God’s Presence, our conception of God as a tyrant who condemns us, and our feeling of sin and guilt. It is not the depth of our suffering, but the depth of our separation from God, which destroys our faith in possibility.
This is our story – it’s our sacred story. Nothing can separate us from the love of God.
But of course, it’s not enough to tell ourselves that story – we need to build a community based on that assumption. We tell each other that story over and over. We recognize that the divine impulse is to yearn for our growth and new life, and because of that the divine comes to walk with us, sigh with us, and through that presence, we do change. If this is part of our story, then we must build communities that participate in this divine work.
The arc of history bends toward justice. The arc of our lives bends toward growth and deepening of faith. It’s built into creation. The divine impulse to goodness is woven into the fabric of creation and into the neurons and synapses of our bodies. And the love of one another helps us join that divine impulse more than any effort to force change in our lives. It won’t be linear, it won’t happen immediately – but we can participate in this divine movement in many ways. And as we do, we will become more and more like Christ – more and more like the divine – more and more like who we hope to be. Amen.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Change: The Limitations of Love
Romans 8:12-25
July 17, 2011
In my experience, this is a faithful group of people – this congregation. You all ask yourselves regularly in your daily life what the faithful thing to do is. Should I drive someone to the hospital, should I take food to a family in grief, should I organize or help with a rummage sale to benefit mission, should I give of my resources to support the ministries of the church. And you all do this not just as it relates to the church. Should I be compassionate to this person most have rejected, should I seek to simplify my life, should I lessen my environmental footprint, should I love someone even when it’s hard, should I care for someone in my family as they age. I have the privilege of watching you all make faithful choices all the time.
But we probably have to admit that there are always ways we could do better. Being faithful means continuing to be changed by God throughout our lives, working to conform more and more what we do to what we believe. Faith is, in part, about change. I’m sure each of us could name at least one example of something we want to change because we believe it is the faithful thing to do. Personally, I can name many.
So, for the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about change. Specifically, we’ve been talking about how hard it can be to change things about our life – even when we have decided we need to.
What we’ve been finding is that the path to change often lies in the opposite direction of how we usually go about things. It’s counter-intuitive. To start with, we usually begin the process of changing by beating up on ourselves for not changing. “Kirsten, why have you not changed when you know it would be better…when you want to do it…why don’t you just do it? You are lazy; you are weak; you are pathetic.” At least that’s the conversation that sometimes goes on inside my head. It’s as if I believe that if I get mad enough at myself for something, that will motivate me to change.
Paul suggests that is a particularly unhelpful place to start. It does not free us up to change, it binds us even more to what we do that we don’t like. Guilt and shame are the anti-motivators. The only place to start, Paul says, is with God’s grace.
How do we experience this grace, though? By realizing what keeps us from changing. Our biology is such that change is in fact hard – physiologically hard. Habits are habits for a reason – and not because we are lazy or pathetic. Our brains form pathways – roads down which we travel – when we act a certain way. And what happens is those roads eventually become the only road our brain will take. It’s as if there’s a giant magnet at the other end that pulls us down the same path even when we try to switch course.
This is how the brain works. And it does this all without us knowing it, consciously. Thinking about changing – wanting it – telling ourselves to do it – that all happens in the conscious part of the brain and, frustratingly, has relatively little effect on the subconscious. Grace comes when we let ourselves off the hook. When we realize that in a certain way we are powerless over these things. We’re not lazy or weak or pathetic. We’re human.
So even though we often try to start the process of change with a heavy dose of self loathing, both science and Paul tell us to start with self acceptance – with Grace. In the same way, we often begin the process of trying to change with ourselves … yet again the path to change lies in the opposite direction. We think it is completely up to us – we are responsible for our own actions – pull yourselves up by the bootstraps. Yet again science and Paul tell us the way to change is to look outside ourselves. The path lies in looking to others – specifically in being in loving, healthy relationships. Love, scientists find, does have the ability to change our neural pathways even when we can’t. Our culture values self reliance, but our brain prefers dependence on others if it is going to make new roads for us to travel down.
And so it all sounds so nice, so simple. The formula for change: Love one another. Sermon series over, right?
The passage this morning is Paul’s way of saying, “well…it’s not so simple.” We all know that sometimes we can love someone as much as we want, and they can still suffer. Sometimes people can love us, and yet we still don’t change. We see this all the time in families where the child gets tons of love and nurturing, but still grows up and suffers from all manner of things. Like I said last week, we are a mix of nurture and nature – a very mysterious mix.
I can relate to this personally, as I’m sure many of you can as well. The love of our parents when we are children is not enough to ward off all suffering as adults. It does not inoculate us from engaging in unhealthy behaviors that we can’t seem to change. I have good, loving parents, and my life has not been all picnics and roses. And I’m sure, no matter how much I love Lydia, she will suffer in some way as an adult. This is really for two reasons. First, none of us loves perfectly. I’m doing things probably every day that aren’t perfectly loving in a healthy way. I love Lydia deeply, but I make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes have consequences.
But even good, healthy love seems to have its limitations. Some things are truly outside our control. We can be born with a brain already wired a certain way, and it can be impervious to love. Some people are born with a predilection to addiction, depression, or aggression. Even if that person is surrounded by love, the brain chemistry just won’t change. Other interventions – like medication – are required. Yet that’s no silver bullet. There is not a perfect medication for every affliction.
Paul calls this reality suffering. And he realizes it’s suffering on two levels. First, obviously, is the suffering we feel when we, ourselves, are stuck in destructive patterns and no amount of outside intervention is helping. “The whole creation is groaning in labor pains,” writes Paul. We groan in pain. We are addicted to something, and we just can’t kick the habit. We keep hurting those we love, even when we desire the opposite. We behave in ways that are self-destructive and defeating. We are controlled by a mental illness that we can’t change on our own. If this has ever been true for you – you know that groaning. You know that pain and suffering. You know the darkness that comes from this.
But there is a second kind of suffering as well – a suffering I encounter often. We suffer when we love someone who is stuck groaning in pain. Paul says, “And not only creation but we ourselves [suffer], while we wait.” People are groaning – and we can feel their pain. Maybe it is our child, maybe it is our spouse or partner, maybe it is a parent or beloved friend. To not be able to help when a loved one is suffering is to experience suffering as well. Paul says we suffer “while we wait.” While we wait for things to change, while we watch someone on a downward spiral, while violence persists, while someone stays in an abusive relationship, while we wait. No matter what we do, no matter what others do, sometimes change is out of reach. Love just isn’t enough. Many of you have experienced such things, I know. And it is excruciating.
And it’s hard not to ask yourself the question at some point: If love has limitations, are some situations hopeless?
Definitely not, according to Paul. Paul’s hope is in the community of people who come together to create a space that offers new life – new life to those who come together and new life that can draw people in. As I said last week, Paul believed the church, when gathered in love, when engaged in spiritual disciplines, when practicing what they preach, can become a new reality right in the midst of the old one. It becomes a place driven by the divine imprint we all have in us. God’s love is alive, accessible, transforming. It changes us and any who walk through our doors. This is the community Paul yearned for.
Now, we have to be clear: He didn’t mean we withdraw and create our own little world apart from the rest. The new reality a community can create is not only for the sake of the members – it is for the sake of the world. If we are a part of a community that brings new life to us, we can take that to others. If we create a space and a place that is an alternative to the destructive patterns of the world, we have something to offer those who are most hurting because of those patterns. And sometimes, we simply become a haven for those who can’t change, who continue to hurt themselves and others, but who we love nonetheless.
I know many people who suffer because they have family members or close friends, who they love deeply, that are “groaning in pain.” They are forced to watch while their loved one hurts themselves and others through destructive behaviors. And no matter how hard they try, they can’t fix the situation. What Paul knows is that both are in need of a community that is a new reality. The person who suffers “while they wait” for their loved one to change is just as in need of transformation and new life as the one who can’t change.
You don’t stop trying to help someone you love – as many of you know, you can’t help but try. But you can’t lose your life in the process. If you suffer with them without finding your own support, without letting people in to walk the journey with you, the price is much too high. Your soul suffers, your spirit withers, your heart begins to deaden. While you wait, while you suffer, find people who will share your suffering and bring you new life in the midst of the old. Maybe this is people with similar experiences. Maybe it’s a trusted friend. Maybe it’s a therapist. Find someone to love you as you seek to love others. This benefits not just you, but your loved one as well. If you have been dragged down, if you are not sustained in love, it’s harder to hold out the possibility of new life for someone else.
No one is beyond hope. Even in a world of suffering, we can build loving communities that bring some transformation. And those communities – that new reality – never close their doors. They are always inviting.
We know, much to our dismay, there are people who don’t ever change. We know people die from addiction or suicide, for example. But the hope means we never give up. No one is beyond hope. We might have to wait, and it may never happen, but we hold out hope anyway because it is that kind of hope that keeps the new reality going. It’s that hope that ensures we, as a community, are here, ready, inviting, waiting when someone walks into our lives who is in need of a new life. It’s that kind of hope that is contagious. And it is that kind of hope that sustains us when we are suffering because we can’t always make things better.
Love is powerful – our love for others is powerful, but we have to look beyond our own, individual capacities to love for our hope when things seem beyond our reach. Paul knew he could have hope because God’s love has no limits. We need each other, we need to come together as a community to help one another tap into that divine love. We need to create a space, a place, that reveals as best we can divine love to others. It won’t completely change the world – it won’t fix every problem – but it will be a haven of hope for us and for anyone touched by God’s love. Amen.
July 17, 2011
In my experience, this is a faithful group of people – this congregation. You all ask yourselves regularly in your daily life what the faithful thing to do is. Should I drive someone to the hospital, should I take food to a family in grief, should I organize or help with a rummage sale to benefit mission, should I give of my resources to support the ministries of the church. And you all do this not just as it relates to the church. Should I be compassionate to this person most have rejected, should I seek to simplify my life, should I lessen my environmental footprint, should I love someone even when it’s hard, should I care for someone in my family as they age. I have the privilege of watching you all make faithful choices all the time.
But we probably have to admit that there are always ways we could do better. Being faithful means continuing to be changed by God throughout our lives, working to conform more and more what we do to what we believe. Faith is, in part, about change. I’m sure each of us could name at least one example of something we want to change because we believe it is the faithful thing to do. Personally, I can name many.
So, for the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about change. Specifically, we’ve been talking about how hard it can be to change things about our life – even when we have decided we need to.
What we’ve been finding is that the path to change often lies in the opposite direction of how we usually go about things. It’s counter-intuitive. To start with, we usually begin the process of changing by beating up on ourselves for not changing. “Kirsten, why have you not changed when you know it would be better…when you want to do it…why don’t you just do it? You are lazy; you are weak; you are pathetic.” At least that’s the conversation that sometimes goes on inside my head. It’s as if I believe that if I get mad enough at myself for something, that will motivate me to change.
Paul suggests that is a particularly unhelpful place to start. It does not free us up to change, it binds us even more to what we do that we don’t like. Guilt and shame are the anti-motivators. The only place to start, Paul says, is with God’s grace.
How do we experience this grace, though? By realizing what keeps us from changing. Our biology is such that change is in fact hard – physiologically hard. Habits are habits for a reason – and not because we are lazy or pathetic. Our brains form pathways – roads down which we travel – when we act a certain way. And what happens is those roads eventually become the only road our brain will take. It’s as if there’s a giant magnet at the other end that pulls us down the same path even when we try to switch course.
This is how the brain works. And it does this all without us knowing it, consciously. Thinking about changing – wanting it – telling ourselves to do it – that all happens in the conscious part of the brain and, frustratingly, has relatively little effect on the subconscious. Grace comes when we let ourselves off the hook. When we realize that in a certain way we are powerless over these things. We’re not lazy or weak or pathetic. We’re human.
So even though we often try to start the process of change with a heavy dose of self loathing, both science and Paul tell us to start with self acceptance – with Grace. In the same way, we often begin the process of trying to change with ourselves … yet again the path to change lies in the opposite direction. We think it is completely up to us – we are responsible for our own actions – pull yourselves up by the bootstraps. Yet again science and Paul tell us the way to change is to look outside ourselves. The path lies in looking to others – specifically in being in loving, healthy relationships. Love, scientists find, does have the ability to change our neural pathways even when we can’t. Our culture values self reliance, but our brain prefers dependence on others if it is going to make new roads for us to travel down.
And so it all sounds so nice, so simple. The formula for change: Love one another. Sermon series over, right?
The passage this morning is Paul’s way of saying, “well…it’s not so simple.” We all know that sometimes we can love someone as much as we want, and they can still suffer. Sometimes people can love us, and yet we still don’t change. We see this all the time in families where the child gets tons of love and nurturing, but still grows up and suffers from all manner of things. Like I said last week, we are a mix of nurture and nature – a very mysterious mix.
I can relate to this personally, as I’m sure many of you can as well. The love of our parents when we are children is not enough to ward off all suffering as adults. It does not inoculate us from engaging in unhealthy behaviors that we can’t seem to change. I have good, loving parents, and my life has not been all picnics and roses. And I’m sure, no matter how much I love Lydia, she will suffer in some way as an adult. This is really for two reasons. First, none of us loves perfectly. I’m doing things probably every day that aren’t perfectly loving in a healthy way. I love Lydia deeply, but I make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes have consequences.
But even good, healthy love seems to have its limitations. Some things are truly outside our control. We can be born with a brain already wired a certain way, and it can be impervious to love. Some people are born with a predilection to addiction, depression, or aggression. Even if that person is surrounded by love, the brain chemistry just won’t change. Other interventions – like medication – are required. Yet that’s no silver bullet. There is not a perfect medication for every affliction.
Paul calls this reality suffering. And he realizes it’s suffering on two levels. First, obviously, is the suffering we feel when we, ourselves, are stuck in destructive patterns and no amount of outside intervention is helping. “The whole creation is groaning in labor pains,” writes Paul. We groan in pain. We are addicted to something, and we just can’t kick the habit. We keep hurting those we love, even when we desire the opposite. We behave in ways that are self-destructive and defeating. We are controlled by a mental illness that we can’t change on our own. If this has ever been true for you – you know that groaning. You know that pain and suffering. You know the darkness that comes from this.
But there is a second kind of suffering as well – a suffering I encounter often. We suffer when we love someone who is stuck groaning in pain. Paul says, “And not only creation but we ourselves [suffer], while we wait.” People are groaning – and we can feel their pain. Maybe it is our child, maybe it is our spouse or partner, maybe it is a parent or beloved friend. To not be able to help when a loved one is suffering is to experience suffering as well. Paul says we suffer “while we wait.” While we wait for things to change, while we watch someone on a downward spiral, while violence persists, while someone stays in an abusive relationship, while we wait. No matter what we do, no matter what others do, sometimes change is out of reach. Love just isn’t enough. Many of you have experienced such things, I know. And it is excruciating.
And it’s hard not to ask yourself the question at some point: If love has limitations, are some situations hopeless?
Definitely not, according to Paul. Paul’s hope is in the community of people who come together to create a space that offers new life – new life to those who come together and new life that can draw people in. As I said last week, Paul believed the church, when gathered in love, when engaged in spiritual disciplines, when practicing what they preach, can become a new reality right in the midst of the old one. It becomes a place driven by the divine imprint we all have in us. God’s love is alive, accessible, transforming. It changes us and any who walk through our doors. This is the community Paul yearned for.
Now, we have to be clear: He didn’t mean we withdraw and create our own little world apart from the rest. The new reality a community can create is not only for the sake of the members – it is for the sake of the world. If we are a part of a community that brings new life to us, we can take that to others. If we create a space and a place that is an alternative to the destructive patterns of the world, we have something to offer those who are most hurting because of those patterns. And sometimes, we simply become a haven for those who can’t change, who continue to hurt themselves and others, but who we love nonetheless.
I know many people who suffer because they have family members or close friends, who they love deeply, that are “groaning in pain.” They are forced to watch while their loved one hurts themselves and others through destructive behaviors. And no matter how hard they try, they can’t fix the situation. What Paul knows is that both are in need of a community that is a new reality. The person who suffers “while they wait” for their loved one to change is just as in need of transformation and new life as the one who can’t change.
You don’t stop trying to help someone you love – as many of you know, you can’t help but try. But you can’t lose your life in the process. If you suffer with them without finding your own support, without letting people in to walk the journey with you, the price is much too high. Your soul suffers, your spirit withers, your heart begins to deaden. While you wait, while you suffer, find people who will share your suffering and bring you new life in the midst of the old. Maybe this is people with similar experiences. Maybe it’s a trusted friend. Maybe it’s a therapist. Find someone to love you as you seek to love others. This benefits not just you, but your loved one as well. If you have been dragged down, if you are not sustained in love, it’s harder to hold out the possibility of new life for someone else.
No one is beyond hope. Even in a world of suffering, we can build loving communities that bring some transformation. And those communities – that new reality – never close their doors. They are always inviting.
We know, much to our dismay, there are people who don’t ever change. We know people die from addiction or suicide, for example. But the hope means we never give up. No one is beyond hope. We might have to wait, and it may never happen, but we hold out hope anyway because it is that kind of hope that keeps the new reality going. It’s that hope that ensures we, as a community, are here, ready, inviting, waiting when someone walks into our lives who is in need of a new life. It’s that kind of hope that is contagious. And it is that kind of hope that sustains us when we are suffering because we can’t always make things better.
Love is powerful – our love for others is powerful, but we have to look beyond our own, individual capacities to love for our hope when things seem beyond our reach. Paul knew he could have hope because God’s love has no limits. We need each other, we need to come together as a community to help one another tap into that divine love. We need to create a space, a place, that reveals as best we can divine love to others. It won’t completely change the world – it won’t fix every problem – but it will be a haven of hope for us and for anyone touched by God’s love. Amen.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Change: The Power of Love
Romans 8:1-11
July 10, 2011
This morning, we continue our series of reading a portion of Paul’s letter to the Christian church in Rome. This is a deeply pastoral letter…Paul is writing on very personal level to a community he loves dearly. He wants to guide them in how to shape their lives and their community in such a way that they can live a new reality – a reality different from the ones they were trapped in. They lived surrounded by war, oppression, and persecution. Paul believed the call of God is to create a whole new world right in the middle of the old one.
In other words, Christians are called to live lives completely transformed from old ways of doing things. But, as we all know, breaking free of the old ways of doing things is not always a trivial matter. We try and try to change our lives, in both small and significant ways, and our inability to do this at times can become the bane of our existence. Our failures tend to produce feelings of guilt and shame, and in turn these feelings make it even more difficult to change.
This is why, as we saw two weeks ago, Paul insists that creating a new life and a new reality in the world must always begin with being steeped in God’s grace. The only way forward is to release ourselves from the limiting forces of guilt and shame.
Last week, we saw that in order to understand and experience this freeing grace, we do, paradoxically, need to understand and own the limitations we face. Paul laments his complete inability to change his own destructive habits and behaviors: “I do not do the good I wish to do in this world,” he says…echoing a sentiment most of us have shared at one time or another. But it is his confession that opens him to God’s grace. Grace comes when we admit we are powerless over many of our human limitations.
Part of admitting this powerlessness lies in understanding why these limitations exist. As I said last week, scientists tell us that we form neural pathways in our brains every time we engage in a behavior, and the more we repeat a behavior, the more ingrained that pathway becomes and the harder it is to change. More than that, all of this happens largely apart from our being conscious of it. These ingrained neural pathways drive our behavior, but they do so from within our subconscious, so we can’t see them. If we can’t see them, if we don’t even know they are affecting our behavior, chances are we can’t change them on our own. If these pathways happen to lead to destructive behavior, we become trapped in behaviors and habits we would so love to change, but just can’t no matter how much we try to will it to happen.
This is where grace enters in. When we understand our limited ability to reroute our lives, we can accept that reality and let go of blaming ourselves. This opens us up to other ways of finding transformation – to forces outside of ourselves. The question we left hanging last week was what are these forces outside of ourselves that can influence us, change us, carry us to new life and new behaviors.
Again, science is helpful here. Recent studies are providing us with incredible information about the human condition and human possibilities.
What researchers have found is that we are not the only ones who affect our neural pathways. Our nervous systems are designed to intertwine with and support each other…and so we are, in some pretty radical ways, vulnerable to others. Other people’s neural pathways can influence and shape our pathways. Another person, if we are close enough to them, can impact where those pathways go and how embedded they become. Another person can even help us out of those deeply tread pathways into new possibilities simply by being close to us. Sometimes just physical proximity has that effect.
Think about what that means: my neural pathways exert influence on yours when we spend time together. And yours on mine. The specific people to whom we are attached control a portion of our everyday neural activity. “Long-standing togetherness,” writes one scientist, “writes permanent changes into the brain’s open book. In a relationship, one mind revises another; one heart changes its partner. We have the power to remodel the emotional parts of the people we love. Who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love.”
The downside, of course, is that we can be affected negatively as well as positively. We see this far too often in how children develop when they are not nurtured and cared for in healthy ways. Let me say quickly, that we also know from studying the brain that how we end up as adults is a mix of nature and nurture. We come with the DNA we come with…and that DNA affects our behavior and our ability to change regardless of the love we receive. Children can be raised in healthy, loving, nurturing households and still find themselves stuck in destructive patterns and behaviors as adults. Not to mention there are other formative relationships in our lives as children and young adults that have nothing to do with family. Peers, other authority figures and even the media have a powerful affect on who we become as adults.
Nonetheless, parents or guardians who themselves have been formed in unhealthy ways almost can’t help but pass that on to a child. These children often grow up and choose unhealthy relationships – because that is what their brain knows and demands – and then the unhealthiness is merely reinforced…and of course passed on to their children.
The combination of our children’s DNA and outside influences can help form an adult that is well adapted or sometimes maladjusted to this world. And if it’s a destructive pattern, it’s a cycle that needs intervention at some point if it is to stop.
Now, I’m going to do something very odd here. I’m going to talk for a moment about therapy. In part because what we see happening in therapy can teach us about how we can change and facilitate change in others. It also has the added secondary benefit of being a little plug for therapy for those who need it. There can often be a stigma attached to seeking help from a professional, but I truly believe sometimes a professional is helpful, even needed – it’s an outside intervention that has the potential to break through cycles we are stuck in – cycles our brains are programmed to be stuck in.
If we lose the DNA lottery – if we come biologically predisposed to things like depression, aggression, addiction – nurture can only do so much. Sometimes drug therapy is called for to offset these biological factors so that, added with nurture, we have a better shot at a healthy life. Medication is not the magical solution drug companies make it out to be, but it can be a life preserver that at least gets someone back in the boat.
In the same way, if we had a rough time as a child, talk therapy can be invaluable in helping us change patterns and behaviors that are harmful. Why? Because it puts us in contact with someone who, if they do their job well, can reset some of our neural pathways. Doing the job well is the key, of course. Which is why study after study shows that the things that determines how effective therapy is are not the techniques used by the therapist – cognitive behavioral therapy fairs no better than psycho dynamic therapy in studies. Neither proves to be successful more often than the other. The two things that most predict good outcomes are the emotional health of the therapist, and the quality of the relationship between the therapist and the client.
Loving, healthy relationships can help change us. We probably know this instinctively, but amazingly this is usually not the first thing we think of when we think about trying to change ourselves. We try to figure out how to do it on our own. We try to convince ourselves we can do it, we can change if we just want it enough, try hard enough. We don’t make the connection between the quality of the relationships in our lives and our ability to change.
So this is helpful. But, where does the ability to love others in healthy ways come from? Paul adds something to all this that is important, maybe essential, for those of us who claim to be children of God. He adds an earlier cause – something that allows us to even love in the first place. He talks about “Christ in us” being the thing that sets us free to love others. This is the source of love – it is the source that can make us feel loved, and the source that helps us love others to change.
I imagine Christ in us as a divine stamp in our subconscious. If our subconscious makes up a large part of who we are, then a large part of that is our identity as God’s children…meaning we have the DNA of God. We are made in the divine image, and that can be as significant a determinant to our behavior as our DNA from our parents or our early experiences of love and trauma.
Now, if our subconscious is a mix of influencers on our behavior – some producing helpful, life-giving behaviors, and some producing hurtful behaviors - how do we learn to let the Christ in us – the divine imprint – be the driving force for our behavior more than anything else.
There was an experiment done by researchers named John Bargh and Paula Pietromonaco. Subjects were told to say whether flashes on a computer monitor occurred on the left or right side of a screen. Unbeknown to them, the flashes were words shown for very brief durations and followed immediately by a line of X’s. Because the words were flashed so quickly and were effectively masked by the X’s, people were unaware that words had been presented. For one group of people, the words that were subliminally flashed had to do with hostility: “hostile,” “insult,” “unkind,” etc. For another group, the words were neutral: wall, pencil, chair, and the like.
Next, people took part in what they thought was an unrelated experiment on how we form impressions of others. They read a paragraph describing a man named Donald, who acted in somewhat ambiguous ways that might be construed as hostile, like “A salesman knocked at the door, but Donald refused to let him enter.” Those who had seen flashes of hostile words, even though they didn’t know they had seen the words, judged Donald to be more hostile and unfriendly than did people who had not seen flashes of hostile words. It was completely unconscious.
This experiment shows the concept of “accessibility”. Parts of our subconscious can be stimulated or energized by something and the more energized it is, the more likely it is to influence our judgments and behaviors – it is more “accessible”. The concept of hostility was accessible in people’s minds because of the words that had been flashed a few minutes earlier.
As you can imagine, one determinate of accessibility, in addition to how recently something has been stimulated, is how often the concept has been used in the past. People are creatures of habit, and the more they have used a particular way of judging the world in the past, the more energized that concept will be. When we think about this in terms of that part of our unconscious that is the imprint of the divine, the question becomes: How can we make that more accessible? How can we stimulate that so that it becomes the thing through which all things are filtered? How can we make it the main thing that influences how we see the world and therefore how we act in this world?
We can stimulate this part of who we are by “reminding” ourselves that we are made in the image of God…by reminding ourselves that Christ is in us. Just like the words flashed on the computer monitor, these reminders are our not-so-subliminal stimulators of that part of who we are. And these reminders can come from a number of different sources. reading scripture, coming to church, praying, meditating, or, as Paul so beautifully writes, “setting our mind on the spirit, which leads to life and peace.”
These are spiritual disciplines. These are the things we do over and over that shape our life, our thoughts, our behaviors. These are the habits we cultivate that produce life-giving behaviors without our even consciously trying or willing to in the moment.
Now, you might be sensing that I have built a gigantic circular argument. Sometimes the very things we wish we could do, but find ourselves unable to will ourselves to do, are these spiritual disciplines. I vow to spend time every day in meditation or study of the bible, but I break my vow over and over. And so, ultimately, my other behaviors remain unchanged as well, because the divine in me is not as accessible as other things I “activate” all the time.
But rather than this all circling in on itself, this is where we circle back to the power of love. We love one another into these disciplines…into a life that keeps the divine accessible within us.
When Paul writes, he writes not just to individuals…he writes to the church as a whole. He is suggesting how they might form themselves as a community of people who engage in regular practices that nurture the divine within, and thus produce loving actions. They come together to do these practices, because – even though Paul wasn’t aware of neural pathways and the workings of the subconscious – he knew that attempting a life of faith on your own was completely fruitless…a fool’s errand.
We do it together. We remind each other over and over, through words, actions, ritual, song, of our true identity…of the most important part of our subconscious…that of a creature created in God’s image. We love one another into more and more loving behaviors. Instead of being caught in a never ending loop of old, destructive behaviors and habits that become more and more ingrained and harder and harder to change, we are caught up in a never ending, self feeding loop of love. The more we are loved, the more loving we are. And the more loving we are, the more loving we become.
We do need to recognize that we carry in us both life giving and life destroying impulses. We can easily lose focus and, as Paul would put it, surrender ourselves to the sin cycle. The ruts and routines don’t magically disappear…some have deep roots. The way to liberation is to let go of focusing only on ourselves and of making ourselves self sufficient, even what that means trying to help ourselves do what is right and good. Liberation lies in opening ourselves to being loved. Liberation lies in supporting one another in spiritual disciplines that tell our brains over and over that we are God’s children, divine at our core, loving and good. It’s the power circle of love. Amen.
July 10, 2011
This morning, we continue our series of reading a portion of Paul’s letter to the Christian church in Rome. This is a deeply pastoral letter…Paul is writing on very personal level to a community he loves dearly. He wants to guide them in how to shape their lives and their community in such a way that they can live a new reality – a reality different from the ones they were trapped in. They lived surrounded by war, oppression, and persecution. Paul believed the call of God is to create a whole new world right in the middle of the old one.
In other words, Christians are called to live lives completely transformed from old ways of doing things. But, as we all know, breaking free of the old ways of doing things is not always a trivial matter. We try and try to change our lives, in both small and significant ways, and our inability to do this at times can become the bane of our existence. Our failures tend to produce feelings of guilt and shame, and in turn these feelings make it even more difficult to change.
This is why, as we saw two weeks ago, Paul insists that creating a new life and a new reality in the world must always begin with being steeped in God’s grace. The only way forward is to release ourselves from the limiting forces of guilt and shame.
Last week, we saw that in order to understand and experience this freeing grace, we do, paradoxically, need to understand and own the limitations we face. Paul laments his complete inability to change his own destructive habits and behaviors: “I do not do the good I wish to do in this world,” he says…echoing a sentiment most of us have shared at one time or another. But it is his confession that opens him to God’s grace. Grace comes when we admit we are powerless over many of our human limitations.
Part of admitting this powerlessness lies in understanding why these limitations exist. As I said last week, scientists tell us that we form neural pathways in our brains every time we engage in a behavior, and the more we repeat a behavior, the more ingrained that pathway becomes and the harder it is to change. More than that, all of this happens largely apart from our being conscious of it. These ingrained neural pathways drive our behavior, but they do so from within our subconscious, so we can’t see them. If we can’t see them, if we don’t even know they are affecting our behavior, chances are we can’t change them on our own. If these pathways happen to lead to destructive behavior, we become trapped in behaviors and habits we would so love to change, but just can’t no matter how much we try to will it to happen.
This is where grace enters in. When we understand our limited ability to reroute our lives, we can accept that reality and let go of blaming ourselves. This opens us up to other ways of finding transformation – to forces outside of ourselves. The question we left hanging last week was what are these forces outside of ourselves that can influence us, change us, carry us to new life and new behaviors.
Again, science is helpful here. Recent studies are providing us with incredible information about the human condition and human possibilities.
What researchers have found is that we are not the only ones who affect our neural pathways. Our nervous systems are designed to intertwine with and support each other…and so we are, in some pretty radical ways, vulnerable to others. Other people’s neural pathways can influence and shape our pathways. Another person, if we are close enough to them, can impact where those pathways go and how embedded they become. Another person can even help us out of those deeply tread pathways into new possibilities simply by being close to us. Sometimes just physical proximity has that effect.
Think about what that means: my neural pathways exert influence on yours when we spend time together. And yours on mine. The specific people to whom we are attached control a portion of our everyday neural activity. “Long-standing togetherness,” writes one scientist, “writes permanent changes into the brain’s open book. In a relationship, one mind revises another; one heart changes its partner. We have the power to remodel the emotional parts of the people we love. Who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love.”
The downside, of course, is that we can be affected negatively as well as positively. We see this far too often in how children develop when they are not nurtured and cared for in healthy ways. Let me say quickly, that we also know from studying the brain that how we end up as adults is a mix of nature and nurture. We come with the DNA we come with…and that DNA affects our behavior and our ability to change regardless of the love we receive. Children can be raised in healthy, loving, nurturing households and still find themselves stuck in destructive patterns and behaviors as adults. Not to mention there are other formative relationships in our lives as children and young adults that have nothing to do with family. Peers, other authority figures and even the media have a powerful affect on who we become as adults.
Nonetheless, parents or guardians who themselves have been formed in unhealthy ways almost can’t help but pass that on to a child. These children often grow up and choose unhealthy relationships – because that is what their brain knows and demands – and then the unhealthiness is merely reinforced…and of course passed on to their children.
The combination of our children’s DNA and outside influences can help form an adult that is well adapted or sometimes maladjusted to this world. And if it’s a destructive pattern, it’s a cycle that needs intervention at some point if it is to stop.
Now, I’m going to do something very odd here. I’m going to talk for a moment about therapy. In part because what we see happening in therapy can teach us about how we can change and facilitate change in others. It also has the added secondary benefit of being a little plug for therapy for those who need it. There can often be a stigma attached to seeking help from a professional, but I truly believe sometimes a professional is helpful, even needed – it’s an outside intervention that has the potential to break through cycles we are stuck in – cycles our brains are programmed to be stuck in.
If we lose the DNA lottery – if we come biologically predisposed to things like depression, aggression, addiction – nurture can only do so much. Sometimes drug therapy is called for to offset these biological factors so that, added with nurture, we have a better shot at a healthy life. Medication is not the magical solution drug companies make it out to be, but it can be a life preserver that at least gets someone back in the boat.
In the same way, if we had a rough time as a child, talk therapy can be invaluable in helping us change patterns and behaviors that are harmful. Why? Because it puts us in contact with someone who, if they do their job well, can reset some of our neural pathways. Doing the job well is the key, of course. Which is why study after study shows that the things that determines how effective therapy is are not the techniques used by the therapist – cognitive behavioral therapy fairs no better than psycho dynamic therapy in studies. Neither proves to be successful more often than the other. The two things that most predict good outcomes are the emotional health of the therapist, and the quality of the relationship between the therapist and the client.
Loving, healthy relationships can help change us. We probably know this instinctively, but amazingly this is usually not the first thing we think of when we think about trying to change ourselves. We try to figure out how to do it on our own. We try to convince ourselves we can do it, we can change if we just want it enough, try hard enough. We don’t make the connection between the quality of the relationships in our lives and our ability to change.
So this is helpful. But, where does the ability to love others in healthy ways come from? Paul adds something to all this that is important, maybe essential, for those of us who claim to be children of God. He adds an earlier cause – something that allows us to even love in the first place. He talks about “Christ in us” being the thing that sets us free to love others. This is the source of love – it is the source that can make us feel loved, and the source that helps us love others to change.
I imagine Christ in us as a divine stamp in our subconscious. If our subconscious makes up a large part of who we are, then a large part of that is our identity as God’s children…meaning we have the DNA of God. We are made in the divine image, and that can be as significant a determinant to our behavior as our DNA from our parents or our early experiences of love and trauma.
Now, if our subconscious is a mix of influencers on our behavior – some producing helpful, life-giving behaviors, and some producing hurtful behaviors - how do we learn to let the Christ in us – the divine imprint – be the driving force for our behavior more than anything else.
There was an experiment done by researchers named John Bargh and Paula Pietromonaco. Subjects were told to say whether flashes on a computer monitor occurred on the left or right side of a screen. Unbeknown to them, the flashes were words shown for very brief durations and followed immediately by a line of X’s. Because the words were flashed so quickly and were effectively masked by the X’s, people were unaware that words had been presented. For one group of people, the words that were subliminally flashed had to do with hostility: “hostile,” “insult,” “unkind,” etc. For another group, the words were neutral: wall, pencil, chair, and the like.
Next, people took part in what they thought was an unrelated experiment on how we form impressions of others. They read a paragraph describing a man named Donald, who acted in somewhat ambiguous ways that might be construed as hostile, like “A salesman knocked at the door, but Donald refused to let him enter.” Those who had seen flashes of hostile words, even though they didn’t know they had seen the words, judged Donald to be more hostile and unfriendly than did people who had not seen flashes of hostile words. It was completely unconscious.
This experiment shows the concept of “accessibility”. Parts of our subconscious can be stimulated or energized by something and the more energized it is, the more likely it is to influence our judgments and behaviors – it is more “accessible”. The concept of hostility was accessible in people’s minds because of the words that had been flashed a few minutes earlier.
As you can imagine, one determinate of accessibility, in addition to how recently something has been stimulated, is how often the concept has been used in the past. People are creatures of habit, and the more they have used a particular way of judging the world in the past, the more energized that concept will be. When we think about this in terms of that part of our unconscious that is the imprint of the divine, the question becomes: How can we make that more accessible? How can we stimulate that so that it becomes the thing through which all things are filtered? How can we make it the main thing that influences how we see the world and therefore how we act in this world?
We can stimulate this part of who we are by “reminding” ourselves that we are made in the image of God…by reminding ourselves that Christ is in us. Just like the words flashed on the computer monitor, these reminders are our not-so-subliminal stimulators of that part of who we are. And these reminders can come from a number of different sources. reading scripture, coming to church, praying, meditating, or, as Paul so beautifully writes, “setting our mind on the spirit, which leads to life and peace.”
These are spiritual disciplines. These are the things we do over and over that shape our life, our thoughts, our behaviors. These are the habits we cultivate that produce life-giving behaviors without our even consciously trying or willing to in the moment.
Now, you might be sensing that I have built a gigantic circular argument. Sometimes the very things we wish we could do, but find ourselves unable to will ourselves to do, are these spiritual disciplines. I vow to spend time every day in meditation or study of the bible, but I break my vow over and over. And so, ultimately, my other behaviors remain unchanged as well, because the divine in me is not as accessible as other things I “activate” all the time.
But rather than this all circling in on itself, this is where we circle back to the power of love. We love one another into these disciplines…into a life that keeps the divine accessible within us.
When Paul writes, he writes not just to individuals…he writes to the church as a whole. He is suggesting how they might form themselves as a community of people who engage in regular practices that nurture the divine within, and thus produce loving actions. They come together to do these practices, because – even though Paul wasn’t aware of neural pathways and the workings of the subconscious – he knew that attempting a life of faith on your own was completely fruitless…a fool’s errand.
We do it together. We remind each other over and over, through words, actions, ritual, song, of our true identity…of the most important part of our subconscious…that of a creature created in God’s image. We love one another into more and more loving behaviors. Instead of being caught in a never ending loop of old, destructive behaviors and habits that become more and more ingrained and harder and harder to change, we are caught up in a never ending, self feeding loop of love. The more we are loved, the more loving we are. And the more loving we are, the more loving we become.
We do need to recognize that we carry in us both life giving and life destroying impulses. We can easily lose focus and, as Paul would put it, surrender ourselves to the sin cycle. The ruts and routines don’t magically disappear…some have deep roots. The way to liberation is to let go of focusing only on ourselves and of making ourselves self sufficient, even what that means trying to help ourselves do what is right and good. Liberation lies in opening ourselves to being loved. Liberation lies in supporting one another in spiritual disciplines that tell our brains over and over that we are God’s children, divine at our core, loving and good. It’s the power circle of love. Amen.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Change: Ugh!
Romans 7:13-25a
July 3, 2011
We’re in week 2 of 5 weeks working our way through a portion of the letter Paul wrote to the Christians living in Rome. Paul, in these passages, is struggling with how to respond to the world he and the early churches faced, especially because that world included so much suffering and pain. And a big part of that struggle for Paul had to do with the tension between his belief that with God all things are possible and his awareness of his own significant, human limitations that make some things feel impossible.
Last week we asked what Christians should be doing in this world – what should our lives look like if we claim to follow Jesus – a question shared by the early Christians living in Rome. And we found out that Paul answered this question a bit oddly with one basic word: Grace. He talked about how there was no shortage of instruction manuals telling people what to do – including the list of 613 commandments found in the first five books of our sacred scriptures - but he knew these instruction manuals weren’t enough. We can’t live up to them, so we find ourselves awash in guilt for our shortcomings. And the tragic irony is that this guilt becomes a barrier to doing the very things we wish we could do. Given this set up, Paul reminded us that the only place we can start is with God’s unconditional Grace.
But, we left a question hanging last week. If we must start with Grace, what if we don’t know how to feel or find that grace?
Again, just like last week, Paul starts in an unlikely, even counter intuitive place…to experience this freeing grace – that which unbinds us and releases us to new life, new behaviors, new ways of being in the world – we must first become more aware of the realities of human limitations. We have to understand why it’s hard to change the dynamics that keep our lives from looking how we’d like them to if we are to find grace at the center of it all.
In this passage Char read, Paul brings the problem of human limitation into sharp relief, and he talks so honestly and personally about how painful it is. If last week was somewhat comforting as we face this issue of how to change our lives, this week is the uncomfortable part. But, I would argue, the discomfort is important, because, the problem Paul so clearly articulates is as serious and as painful today as it was then.
It’s tempting to read this passage and make Paul into a caricature, imagining him kneeling on the ground with a long whip in hand, flogging himself over and over saying, “I am wretched.” We distance ourselves from his talk of sin and evil, wretchedness, thinking he was a fairly over-the-top guy that either exaggerated or was an extremist religious zealot.
But, it’s possible that the words and the images Paul uses don’t point to someone who sees things totally different from us, but rather to someone who was deeply in touch with things we live with day in and day out. He looked around at the world and saw suffering, pain, sorrow, bloodiness, war, oppression; and he knew that faith – that following Jesus – meant changing our lives and actions in this world so that we might alleviate that suffering. That’s what Jesus did, and Jesus gave us the gifts we need to be faithful – to change our lives completely. But Paul felt how small he was in the face of all this, he realized that change was hard and suffering continued unabated.
This led Paul to ask those deep questions of life and faith…the questions, in our most honest moments, we ask ourselves…What difference does Jesus make to my life? How can a good God be worshipped in a world so full of pain and darkness? What hope is there for humankind if this is the best we seem able to do?
We cannot simply will ourselves to do what we want to do all the time. Paul knows this; “I can will what is right,” he says, “but I cannot do it.” And though I admit it’s not there in the text that’s been handed down to us, I’m just sure Paul must have ended that sentence with some Greek equivalent of “ugh!”.
Paul’s not just talking about wishing he could choose the apple instead of the chocolate covered raisins. This is a cry of pain because he keeps doing things that contribute to his own suffering and the suffering of the world. This reality of human nature and the world we produce does drive him to his knees and causes him to call out, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?!” But it’s not the cry of a lunatic – it’s the cry of a human being just like us. In the depths of his heart he wishes he could change his life, his actions and behaviors so that he and others might suffer less. But, he has found, as so many of us have, that just wishing doesn’t make it so.
So why is this true? Maybe if we can figure out why this is true, why it’s so hard to do what we know is right, we could fix the problem, move on to living lives exactly as we want to, and the world would be a better place. We have some advantages Paul didn’t in understanding why we are limited as human beings. We are learning more and more every day, it seems, about the human brain, which controls behavior, through science, technology, studies, and experiments. And to Paul’s credit, when we look at what we’re learning, his description of human nature is pretty darn close to many conclusions being drawn today…he just uses different words to describe the same reality.
For Paul, the cause of the problem was what he called, “the sin inside of him…working death in him.” “It is the evil that lies close at hand.” Paul talks about the sin that dwells in him that impacts how he behaves and says that he can’t do away with that sin – no matter how hard he tries. We don’t always like to call it sin, but we do think humans have a subconscious – or unconscious – that dictates much of our behavior day in and day out, and some of that behavior is less than desirable. And we’re learning that this subconscious is basically unknowable, inaccessible to us no matter how hard we try to see it. This subconscious was built largely by early experiences in our lives, and its deeply imbedded in who we are and how we act in the world, yet no amount of navel gazing, no amount of trying to remember these early experiences and piece it all together will reveal what’s in there and how it works on us. Worse, no amount of thoughtful reflection will change the basic workings of this subconscious.
Paul talks about being captive to his sin – we are learning that in significant ways we are captive to our unconscious. This is because with every action we take, every decision we make – already informed by something out of our conscious control – we are wearing a neural pathway in our brain. And every time we repeat an action, a response, or a thought pattern, that path grows more and more ingrained – we are less and less able to forge new paths – new behaviors – no matter how much we want to. These pathways are deep – and there seems to be a magnet at the other end pulling us down that path over and over, making it nearly impossible to start building a new road. This happens no matter how much we detest the final destination of this path we know so well.
One example I think illustrates this well isn’t directly about actions we take – rather it’s about beliefs we have: Study after study is now revealing something about ourselves that we can’t afford to, but pretty much always do, ignore. When people believe something strongly they are incredibly unlikely to change their minds. Now, that might be obvious. After all, we craft our beliefs based on what we know, our experiences and our values. They are rational – these beliefs – so it would be irrational to change them, unless there was a very compelling, logical reason to do so.
But therein lies the problem: these studies show that all people, or at least a statistically startling number of them – don’t change their minds when presented with incontrovertible contradicting evidence – in other words, a very compelling, logical reason to change our beliefs. Our subconscious is are programmed by years of asserting our beliefs over and over again to either ignore or bend the evidence and information that it receives so we don’t have to change our beliefs, or the actions that have flowed from these beliefs day after day, year after year.
We tend to be happy to point this out in others. How can they not believe X, Y, or Z, when the science so overwhelmingly disproves what they believe and cling on to? But we don’t see it in ourselves. We just don’t. When our subconscious does this editing of hard information, we’re not aware that it’s happening. We won’t let go of our beliefs. This is an equal opportunity problem – none of us are immune. We think we are, because we don’t see how our unconscious is acting – how it’s distorting and editing incoming information behind the scenes to fit our deeply ingrained beliefs – but statistically we might as well all assume we are as guilty as the next person. We are not wired to change, and if we are not wired to change beliefs, nor are we wired to change actions, behaviors, and long standing habits.
Paul says he is captive to the law of sin that dwells in him. That’s the unconscious, the maladaptive neural pathways in us. There is “stuff” in us that affects us, controls us, makes us behave in ways we don’t want, and given the tenacity and complete inaccessibility of this stuff, we can feel captive to these forces…trapped in habits we wonder if we will ever break free of.
We all contribute to our own and others suffering in some way. Some neural pathways in our brains are programmed to produce unhealthy, even hurtful, behaviors…over and over. And the persistence of those pathways is what leads us to exactly where Paul was. Because, as long as those pathways persist…no matter how hard we seem to try to change them with our wills…people suffer. This can at times bring us to our knees where we call out, “what kind of set up is this…how, oh how can I change this reality?! UGH!”
We come to church, we read the bible and listen to sermons, because we’re trying to figure out what we are supposed to do as Christians. We want to be faithful, and there are times that being faithful means significant changes – means making hard decisions…changing beliefs and worldviews. Living the life of faith is about transformation – transformation of who we are, and transformation of the world as we know it. But, if the neural pathways are set and resilient, if many of our actions are dictated by forces outside our conscious, what is the hope? And where is the Grace in the middle of it all?
Paul is not a defeatist – we know this if we know nothing else about Paul. He believes a new world is possible – that we are not just capable of transformation, we are destined for it! But, to feel the grace of God, so that we can move forward when it seems no matter how hard we try we just can’t – the odd suggestion of Paul is that we start by admitting the painful reality, and fully admit our lack of control.
People I’ve known who have struggled with addiction seem to understand this well. It’s why the first step of the twelve step program in AA is to admit one’s powerlessness over the addiction. They believe that you will never change your behaviors, you will never move beyond the destructive habits, until you admit you can’t do it alone by sheer force of will.
“Step 1,” someone in the program writes, “is the first step to freedom. I admit to myself that something is seriously wrong in my life. I do things that I later regret doing and tell myself that I will not do them again. But I do. I keep on doing them, in spite of my regrets, my denials, my vows, my cover-ups and my facades. The first step is to admit the truth of where I am. Step 1 calls us to do less, not more - to yield, to surrender, to let go.”
There is incredible grace in that, because in the end, the solution to how to change something we can’t change isn’t in our head, in our trying harder, or thinking better, so we can give up the ghost – yield…surrender…and let something else take over.
Paul knew it, science is proving it, real change happens only when we find something outside ourselves that can break in and start us down new paths. What that something is and how it works? – well there are lots of opinions about that. Come next week to find out what Paul thinks that something is. Amen.
July 3, 2011
We’re in week 2 of 5 weeks working our way through a portion of the letter Paul wrote to the Christians living in Rome. Paul, in these passages, is struggling with how to respond to the world he and the early churches faced, especially because that world included so much suffering and pain. And a big part of that struggle for Paul had to do with the tension between his belief that with God all things are possible and his awareness of his own significant, human limitations that make some things feel impossible.
Last week we asked what Christians should be doing in this world – what should our lives look like if we claim to follow Jesus – a question shared by the early Christians living in Rome. And we found out that Paul answered this question a bit oddly with one basic word: Grace. He talked about how there was no shortage of instruction manuals telling people what to do – including the list of 613 commandments found in the first five books of our sacred scriptures - but he knew these instruction manuals weren’t enough. We can’t live up to them, so we find ourselves awash in guilt for our shortcomings. And the tragic irony is that this guilt becomes a barrier to doing the very things we wish we could do. Given this set up, Paul reminded us that the only place we can start is with God’s unconditional Grace.
But, we left a question hanging last week. If we must start with Grace, what if we don’t know how to feel or find that grace?
Again, just like last week, Paul starts in an unlikely, even counter intuitive place…to experience this freeing grace – that which unbinds us and releases us to new life, new behaviors, new ways of being in the world – we must first become more aware of the realities of human limitations. We have to understand why it’s hard to change the dynamics that keep our lives from looking how we’d like them to if we are to find grace at the center of it all.
In this passage Char read, Paul brings the problem of human limitation into sharp relief, and he talks so honestly and personally about how painful it is. If last week was somewhat comforting as we face this issue of how to change our lives, this week is the uncomfortable part. But, I would argue, the discomfort is important, because, the problem Paul so clearly articulates is as serious and as painful today as it was then.
It’s tempting to read this passage and make Paul into a caricature, imagining him kneeling on the ground with a long whip in hand, flogging himself over and over saying, “I am wretched.” We distance ourselves from his talk of sin and evil, wretchedness, thinking he was a fairly over-the-top guy that either exaggerated or was an extremist religious zealot.
But, it’s possible that the words and the images Paul uses don’t point to someone who sees things totally different from us, but rather to someone who was deeply in touch with things we live with day in and day out. He looked around at the world and saw suffering, pain, sorrow, bloodiness, war, oppression; and he knew that faith – that following Jesus – meant changing our lives and actions in this world so that we might alleviate that suffering. That’s what Jesus did, and Jesus gave us the gifts we need to be faithful – to change our lives completely. But Paul felt how small he was in the face of all this, he realized that change was hard and suffering continued unabated.
This led Paul to ask those deep questions of life and faith…the questions, in our most honest moments, we ask ourselves…What difference does Jesus make to my life? How can a good God be worshipped in a world so full of pain and darkness? What hope is there for humankind if this is the best we seem able to do?
We cannot simply will ourselves to do what we want to do all the time. Paul knows this; “I can will what is right,” he says, “but I cannot do it.” And though I admit it’s not there in the text that’s been handed down to us, I’m just sure Paul must have ended that sentence with some Greek equivalent of “ugh!”.
Paul’s not just talking about wishing he could choose the apple instead of the chocolate covered raisins. This is a cry of pain because he keeps doing things that contribute to his own suffering and the suffering of the world. This reality of human nature and the world we produce does drive him to his knees and causes him to call out, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?!” But it’s not the cry of a lunatic – it’s the cry of a human being just like us. In the depths of his heart he wishes he could change his life, his actions and behaviors so that he and others might suffer less. But, he has found, as so many of us have, that just wishing doesn’t make it so.
So why is this true? Maybe if we can figure out why this is true, why it’s so hard to do what we know is right, we could fix the problem, move on to living lives exactly as we want to, and the world would be a better place. We have some advantages Paul didn’t in understanding why we are limited as human beings. We are learning more and more every day, it seems, about the human brain, which controls behavior, through science, technology, studies, and experiments. And to Paul’s credit, when we look at what we’re learning, his description of human nature is pretty darn close to many conclusions being drawn today…he just uses different words to describe the same reality.
For Paul, the cause of the problem was what he called, “the sin inside of him…working death in him.” “It is the evil that lies close at hand.” Paul talks about the sin that dwells in him that impacts how he behaves and says that he can’t do away with that sin – no matter how hard he tries. We don’t always like to call it sin, but we do think humans have a subconscious – or unconscious – that dictates much of our behavior day in and day out, and some of that behavior is less than desirable. And we’re learning that this subconscious is basically unknowable, inaccessible to us no matter how hard we try to see it. This subconscious was built largely by early experiences in our lives, and its deeply imbedded in who we are and how we act in the world, yet no amount of navel gazing, no amount of trying to remember these early experiences and piece it all together will reveal what’s in there and how it works on us. Worse, no amount of thoughtful reflection will change the basic workings of this subconscious.
Paul talks about being captive to his sin – we are learning that in significant ways we are captive to our unconscious. This is because with every action we take, every decision we make – already informed by something out of our conscious control – we are wearing a neural pathway in our brain. And every time we repeat an action, a response, or a thought pattern, that path grows more and more ingrained – we are less and less able to forge new paths – new behaviors – no matter how much we want to. These pathways are deep – and there seems to be a magnet at the other end pulling us down that path over and over, making it nearly impossible to start building a new road. This happens no matter how much we detest the final destination of this path we know so well.
One example I think illustrates this well isn’t directly about actions we take – rather it’s about beliefs we have: Study after study is now revealing something about ourselves that we can’t afford to, but pretty much always do, ignore. When people believe something strongly they are incredibly unlikely to change their minds. Now, that might be obvious. After all, we craft our beliefs based on what we know, our experiences and our values. They are rational – these beliefs – so it would be irrational to change them, unless there was a very compelling, logical reason to do so.
But therein lies the problem: these studies show that all people, or at least a statistically startling number of them – don’t change their minds when presented with incontrovertible contradicting evidence – in other words, a very compelling, logical reason to change our beliefs. Our subconscious is are programmed by years of asserting our beliefs over and over again to either ignore or bend the evidence and information that it receives so we don’t have to change our beliefs, or the actions that have flowed from these beliefs day after day, year after year.
We tend to be happy to point this out in others. How can they not believe X, Y, or Z, when the science so overwhelmingly disproves what they believe and cling on to? But we don’t see it in ourselves. We just don’t. When our subconscious does this editing of hard information, we’re not aware that it’s happening. We won’t let go of our beliefs. This is an equal opportunity problem – none of us are immune. We think we are, because we don’t see how our unconscious is acting – how it’s distorting and editing incoming information behind the scenes to fit our deeply ingrained beliefs – but statistically we might as well all assume we are as guilty as the next person. We are not wired to change, and if we are not wired to change beliefs, nor are we wired to change actions, behaviors, and long standing habits.
Paul says he is captive to the law of sin that dwells in him. That’s the unconscious, the maladaptive neural pathways in us. There is “stuff” in us that affects us, controls us, makes us behave in ways we don’t want, and given the tenacity and complete inaccessibility of this stuff, we can feel captive to these forces…trapped in habits we wonder if we will ever break free of.
We all contribute to our own and others suffering in some way. Some neural pathways in our brains are programmed to produce unhealthy, even hurtful, behaviors…over and over. And the persistence of those pathways is what leads us to exactly where Paul was. Because, as long as those pathways persist…no matter how hard we seem to try to change them with our wills…people suffer. This can at times bring us to our knees where we call out, “what kind of set up is this…how, oh how can I change this reality?! UGH!”
We come to church, we read the bible and listen to sermons, because we’re trying to figure out what we are supposed to do as Christians. We want to be faithful, and there are times that being faithful means significant changes – means making hard decisions…changing beliefs and worldviews. Living the life of faith is about transformation – transformation of who we are, and transformation of the world as we know it. But, if the neural pathways are set and resilient, if many of our actions are dictated by forces outside our conscious, what is the hope? And where is the Grace in the middle of it all?
Paul is not a defeatist – we know this if we know nothing else about Paul. He believes a new world is possible – that we are not just capable of transformation, we are destined for it! But, to feel the grace of God, so that we can move forward when it seems no matter how hard we try we just can’t – the odd suggestion of Paul is that we start by admitting the painful reality, and fully admit our lack of control.
People I’ve known who have struggled with addiction seem to understand this well. It’s why the first step of the twelve step program in AA is to admit one’s powerlessness over the addiction. They believe that you will never change your behaviors, you will never move beyond the destructive habits, until you admit you can’t do it alone by sheer force of will.
“Step 1,” someone in the program writes, “is the first step to freedom. I admit to myself that something is seriously wrong in my life. I do things that I later regret doing and tell myself that I will not do them again. But I do. I keep on doing them, in spite of my regrets, my denials, my vows, my cover-ups and my facades. The first step is to admit the truth of where I am. Step 1 calls us to do less, not more - to yield, to surrender, to let go.”
There is incredible grace in that, because in the end, the solution to how to change something we can’t change isn’t in our head, in our trying harder, or thinking better, so we can give up the ghost – yield…surrender…and let something else take over.
Paul knew it, science is proving it, real change happens only when we find something outside ourselves that can break in and start us down new paths. What that something is and how it works? – well there are lots of opinions about that. Come next week to find out what Paul thinks that something is. Amen.
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