Who wants some trauma?

Sorry, that’s not for the faint of heart I guess.  Don’t get whoozy.  I don’t have a clue what this guy’s hand went through, and no, it’s not mine.  But it’s the closest thing I could find to what happened to the pointer finger on my right hand a couple of years ago now.  It all started one Friday afternoon, I try to consistently take Fridays off and it’s become tradition to get up a game of touch football at Winthrop.  So I was defending my man one play, and the quarterback drilled it in to him, so I stuck a hand in real quick to break up the pass.

Next thing I know my hand is numb and I can’t move my finger, so I look down and things look not too different from that picture above — my right pointer finger was jacked up at the knuckle, sticking almost straight up, yarrrgh.  The guys run over, and we’ve always been taught to try to “pull out” a dislocated finger, so one dude grabbed my arm and another the finger and yanked on it some.  No good.  I’m feeling pretty funky by then, so another guy drove me to the doctor’s office.

You can imagine the different feelings at that point.  I’m getting the whole red-face, hot flashes, “every time I look at my finger I feel like puking” deal.  The pain comes in waves.  Weird.  So the doctor proceeds to stick several needles into the knuckle (real weird to watch), and to try to jerk the finger back into place.  No good.  So we head to the orthopedic surgeon.  And this guy knows that if he can’t pull the finger back right, he’ll be the one to do the surgery, so he’s pretty motivated to yank it straight.  And he wasn’t a small guy.  And my dad was there by then and said it looked like somebody trying to snap a chicken bone.  When he gets done wailing on the finger, it’s still no good, and about 45 minutes later the surgery has been done and all is well.

Good happy ending.  But that’s one of my better personal physical trauma stories.  And some of you have been through physical trauma that blows that away, car crashes and military combat and injury and disease, and more.  Still deeper, yes, many of us know other mental, emotional, spiritual trauma that blows some of that away.  But I tell the story, and invite you to carefully consider your own, because I wonder if there’s not a common message through all those experiences.  There was a clear message from my body to me during the finger thing:  whatever you do, if you can, you must try to avoid ever experiencing this again.

The nausea and all the rest made that clear.  And it’s just the way our bodies work, eh?  I’m talking about that instinct that we all have towards self-preservation, keeping ourselves alive and well.  Even in more minor ways, you see that force at work, when our bodies communicate to us to take care.

One huge example is just pain.  Pain isn’t something we generally enjoy.  We don’t want to repeat it.  And it’s a tool for our bodies to tell us things.  Our workout/athletic people know that muscle soreness indicates progress, and it also signals time to rest; or deeper pain signals injury so that we have to let things heal up.  Stomach aches, cramps, headaches often let us know something is up in our bodies that needs to be addressed.  Sunburn screams, “Get me some aloe and 60 SPF!”  Kids learn not to touch the live stove-top because it freakin’ hurts.

Pain has its purpose.  If we ignore it over and over, then some of those issues blow up into life-and-death situations.  Pain is key to self-preservation.  And it’s a good instinct.

But can we agree that at some point the instinct can do us harm?  At some point, I bet our desire to avoid trauma and preserve ourselves can limit our fullness of life.  And by all means it can become a hindrance to our connection to God.

I think Jesus makes it clear in Matthew 6:24-34 this time.  We have a passage that focuses on one big aspect of self-preservation — worry.  For those of us who, whether we say it out loud or not, hope that we can avoid all sorts of bad things and protect ourselves if we just cover all our bases, and make enough plans, and crank our brains every hour of the day.  Worrying.

We can hear a challenge in Jesus’ words.  He challenges one of the biggest traumas we all spend time fretting over, death, pretty much saying that for all our worry over our basic life needs (food, shelter, clothing, etc.), do we add any time to our lives?  Negative.  And he challenges the next big “trauma” for most of us.  Not just if we’re going to stay alive, but how we are.  Not just will I have enough to eat, but what am I going to eat.  He talks like many of us treat discomfort like a great trauma.  Like life just isn’t living if we don’t experience it just right.  Those ideas aren’t new for us, Americans spend a great deal of time confessing our love for comfort and all the ways we ought to do something about it.  It’s a common topic for Jesus, who goes as far as to say we can be like the wealthy who have so much in abundance they build huge barns, while their neighbors starve to death.  That’s strong language.

And it’s strong here, too.  Remember how Jesus started out?  He said:

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”

To frame things up, even with something as everyday as worrying, Jesus talks in terms of being mastered.  And he compares it to the choice between masters.  God and Money.  What does that choice look like?  Well, it’s easier to see for me when we consider why the NIV capitalizes the word “Money” and why other translations use the word from the Greek, mammon.  Because Mammon, translated as wealth or money, was often treated more like a person unto himself in those days.  People could actually worship little idols and gods called “Mammon” in hopes their fortunes would change.  And those who ran after wealth/security and held it above all else were said to bow to the altar of Mammon.  To get a feel for this character, I did a Google image search, and here’s some of how artists make it out (not for the faint of heart):

 

There’s a theme in the pictures with Mammon.  Yes, there’s dollars and gold and Euros.  There’s excess, he’s a swollen, disgusting thing.  And there’s also the sense that he is worshipped or exalted.  Either he’s lounging on a throne, or we even have images of people fawning all over him.  Bowing at his feet, coming to him asking for security, safety, success, and above all the avoiding of trauma, even just the trauma of discomfort.  Now these are just some artists’ ideas, but Jesus talks in similar language.  Strong language.  As if this is the reality of the choice in front of us.  That something as simple as worrying, something that we all deal with, that can seem a little harmless, is connected to choosing a master.  Because Mammon will promise to ease our fears, satisfy our comforts, and help us avoid trauma, if we just let him rule our hearts.

We don’t usually think of our choices that way, a choosing of masters.  Most of us don’t like thinking that way, many don’t want to be mastered at all and insist we are the masters of our domain.  Jesus paints the picture as a choice between something like that above, and the one, true, living God.  Because we are going to set up systems in our lives to deal with discomfort, and fear, and the unknown.  Which will it be?

And for those of us who already want to turn our backs on worry, the question might be, how?  How do we turn it off?  Seriously?  Is it as simple as a choice?  How do we override the underlying instinct that drives our worry?  How do we become less obsessed with avoiding trauma and making sure we stay safe and comfortable?

I’d say every one of us already knows how.  We do it all the time, we’re good at it.  Because when our bodies start to tell us to slow down, or take a break, or heal, do we all listen and stop immediately?  At the first sign of pain or soreness or, heck, even sunburn, do we all do a very good job taking care of ourselves right away?  NO.  When we want something bad enough, we work on in spite of discomfort.  When our bodies are saying, “Stop, you fool,”  we sometimes march right on and make them submit.  We hear more drastic stories of mothers lifting cars off of babies, and people charging into burning buildings.  Human beings are notorious for disregarding themselves when something more important is at stake.

So I hear Jesus putting that kind of choice to us.  And not only putting it to us, but we see him take it up himself.

After all, this is God in the flesh.  And is there any good reason that God should have ever had to know the trauma of pain?  Any good reason God, the God of All Things, should have ever had to experience the trauma of death?  No!  Except that God saw our lives at stake, and his love moved him.  Because some of us might believe that there are things worth enduring some trauma for.  And all of us get a chance to choose, even to choose our master.

Seagal is so cheeky

That’s right, Steven Seagal.  He brings something to what Jesus is talking about this week in Matthew 5:38-48.  Jesus is tackling a rule that most of us are pretty familiar with:  “an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth.”  Seagal knows all about that.  A majority of his films deal with some sort of vengeance, or the losing of teeth by his enemies, but that’s not what I want him for here.

Because the point of Jesus’ teaching is clearly that the old rule of retribution isn’t good enough, isn’t fitting for his kingdom.  So he says famous things here like, “turn the other cheek” and “love your enemies.”  He tells us to “go the extra mile” when somebody asks us to go one, and so on.  But it’s a hard idea to deal with for different reasons.  When it sounds like Jesus just wants us to give in to everybody, all the time, no matter how evil, most of just don’t want to do it.  Then, some of us want to but don’t think we can, we don’t know how to love those who harm us.  And then, plenty of us want to, and maybe even can do it, but we’re not sure if it’s right or not.  After all, elsewhere Jesus seems like he’s good at drawing boundaries, and not being walked over…and he seems to teach us likewise.  But, here, not so much.

What’s Jesus after?  Some will say he’s really just teaching his followers a silent defiance.  We turn the other cheek as if to say, “Is that all you got?”  We go the extra mile to say, “Puh, I can do a marathon, you can’t hurt me.”  As if the goal is to “kill with kindness,” to be passive-aggressive almost, to get our revenge by putting up with people’s junk.  It’s a style of Christian jujitsu, I’ve heard.  Jujitsu being the martial arts that focus on turning your opponent’s speed, strength, and momentum against him/her.  The worse the attack, the better you can turn the tables and get the upper hand.  Much like Mr. Seagal, with his arms flying around and kicks and hip-tosses.  Take a look:

I’m down with that a little bit, because it seems nearer to the silent strength that Jesus exuded.  His way to defy evil and oppression without lifting a finger, and to turn people’s accusations on their heads.  But “killing with kindness” just for the sake of getting the upperhand or stealthily besting our opponents still seems vengeful, and might still overwhelm the ultimate goal of loving the persecutor, right?

I mean, think about it and to me the “eye for an eye” idea is pretty innate to most of us.  Somebody knocks you down, you knock them down (or maybe you don’t but you want to).  It’s the most natural thing in the world.  And why is that?  A friend of mine says maybe it’s just been a long-standing guideline for humanity since near the beginning.  At some point very early on, somebody decided this would be a ground-rule:  you hurt me, I hurt you.  And not in a malicious way, but as a teaching tool.  After all, how do you teach a kid who bites all the other kids not to bite anymore?  Usually somebody bites that kid good to say, “hey, this is what biting feels like,” in hopes it sinks in and the kid learns.  So, if someone steals or kills, they would receive it right back to experience things firsthand and maybe learn to empathize and stop doing it.  Or where empathy didn’t work, an eye for an eye provided a consequence, the threat of punishment to prevent the behavior out of fear or retribution.  It makes some sense, I guess.

Because think what the world would look like without empathy or the fear of retribution.  How would humans fare?  Lives would be on the line.  That sounds scary to some of us, and it’s probably part of why Jesus’ words against “an eye for an eye” can be freaky.  Because if we followed Jesus’ teaching far enough here, it becomes a life-and-death thing:  if we let everybody who ever just felt like slapping us in the face get away with it, anytime they wanted, eventually we’ll be beaten to death; if we let people take from us whatever they want whenever they want, even our basic necessities, we’re putting ourselves in harm’s way; if we let others order our lives for us any way they want, and we bend to their every whim, we risk mortal danger.  Jesus’ teaching flies in the face of “an eye for an eye” because it contradicts self-preservation, that instinct for us to try to stay alive and well.

And rightly so, since an eye for an eye falls so short of actually preserving us or keeping us safe.  It gives us retribution, but can we ever get back some things that have been taken from us?  Can we on our own ever heal some hurts, or undo some experiences?  By no means!  An eye for an eye doesn’t begin to deal with the heart-damage that comes with the evil that befalls us.  And it doesn’t satisfy, we know that when we see the cycles of violence around the world, and the escalation that usually comes with conflict.  Like, “You took my eye?  Well it was so valuable to me, I’m taking your two arms.”  And so the story goes.  No wonder Jesus teaches another way, one that is totally contrary to simple retribution.

So what exactly does Jesus teach, and how are we to be about it?  He says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect.”  Now, does perfect here mean be perfectionists?  Like we should constantly fret over whether or not we’re doing everything right?  Negative.  In the Greek, this perfect gives us a sense of a goal, an endpoint, an ultimate wholeness or fulfillment.  Like the way Eugene Peterson translates Jesus (v. 48):  “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up.  You’re kingdom subjects.  Now live like it.  Live out your God-created identity.  Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

It sounds to me that what enables our ability to forgive and love those who strike us is realizing that our deep value and perspective should be shaped by the kingdom of heaven, and Christ Jesus’ love for us — a love that cannot be broken or unmade or assailed by any force, ever.  We can pipe up and say, “Okay, Jesus, but that’s easier said than done…sure, I’ll just be perfect all of a sudden.”  To that I say, don’t forget that it’s God himself in person, in front of the people, saying this to them.  And he journeyed with the people to show them what that perfection looked like.  And he entered into death, and rendered sin powerless, to lead them and us through to the other side safely.

It’s like Jesus giving the invitation, “Be like me, follow me where I go, I’ll show you how.  Come on.  Into your deepest, fullest self.”

Operation: Red Fox

Ever taken something too far?  Yep.  For me one of the best examples is with pranks.  My motto for many a year was that if somebody pranked me, they better know I’d respond swiftly and terribly, the idea being that then they’d learn never to do it again.  In college fellowship at Clemson Wesley we got into quite a prank war over the course of time, in traditional “boys vs. girls” fashion.  There were several retreats a year, and it started innocent enough, little jokes and gags to pick at each other and flirt or whatever else.  But things escalated like they always do, I don’t even know who took it too far to start with, but it came to a head at our year-end retreat to a local camp.

A friend, Ryan, and I were making our way into the middle of nowhere to the camp, and we realized the ball was in our court on the pranks, but we’d forgotten to plan or buy anything.  Lo and behold we came upon the only retailer for some 30 miles, a corner country store in the hamlet of Cleveland, SC.  There wasn’t much in the way of prank supplies, until we came to the hunting/fishing section where there were aerosol spray cans of catfish stink bait.  *Ka-ching*  And then we spotted a product that I didn’t know existed:  bottled fox urine (for deer luring or something).  So we had our supplies, and a code-name for the prank mission:  Red Fox.

That night when everybody headed to dinner, we doubled back and ransacked the girls’ cabin, spraying these substances everywhere, even into the heating unit on the wall.  To give you an idea of the power of the stuff, the trigger-finger that I used on the catfish spray stunk for about 10 days (it’s pretty waterproof).  It was heinous.  We were ecstatic.

Until later that night when our fellowship/worship time really sunk in.  It was a spiritual retreat, and the speaker was solid, we shared Communion, and things were going really well.  So well that Ryan and I were feeling ridiculous because we didn’t want the excellent tone of the retreat to be overwhelmed by our pranking.  So before we headed back up to the cabins, we let the girls know we’d done something, went ahead and apologized, and vowed not to prank again.

All of that is to say that what started innocent enough, and was meant to be playful and fun anyway, turned pretty sour in the hands of the two of us because we took it way too far.  Don’t knock us for what we did.  You’ve done it, too.  In some context.  Geez, think about sports fans and how warped that kind of devotion can be.  How about the recent story of the poisoning of hundred-year oaks at Toomer’s Corner?  A 62-year-old Alabama football fan came and sprayed plant killer on the roots of these two majestic oaks where Auburn fans celebrate victories.  Because Auburn beat Alabama this year.  Egad.

And, speaking of devotees that go way too far, how about the religious ones that get such a bad wrap?  Well that’s a part of who we’re dealing with today.  In Matthew 5, we’ve heard Jesus preaching from the mountainside to the crowds.  For the past few weeks it’s been pretty good news, the blessings for the common folk, calling the people the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world.”  Jesus, speaking with the authority of Heaven, is building up these folks, one and all.  We might say, where’s the down side?  Why’s Jesus just buttering them up?

Well we gotta remember the landscape of religious belief in that day.  Then we’ll see that he’s not buttering them up, he’s just offering them some relief.  In a lot of ways, to be one of God’s average, everyday followers at the time was horrendous.  For decades, a fistful of elites and the intensely-educated claimed to be the only gate-keepers to God.  The Pharisees, teachers of the Law, chief priests — they were often the few skilled to read or interpret Scripture, they ruled over the Temple and worship, and their words were pretty binding.  If we’re among the people, our access to God comes through them.

And to give you an idea of their attitude, they prized the Law of Moses above all.  They’d had it for thousands of years before Jesus lived, so they had plenty of time to dig into what they thought it meant.  Some of us are familiar with parts of the Law, particularly, say, the Ten Commandments, right?  To take one as an example, think about #4:  “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.”  I’ve asked folks today what that means to us, and we interpret it differently.  For some it means we have a special time of worship on the Sabbath, on Sunday mornings.  For others it means you’re not allowed to mow the yard or do the laundry on Sunday, because it’s Sabbath and you’re supposed to “rest.”

That’s exactly what the Pharisees and rulers and teachers of the Law had done with Scripture for, again, thousands of years.  There were huge traditions built around the simplest lines.  For example, with commandment #4, resting on the Sabbath:

Somebody once said, “Well, if we’re going to rest on the Sabbath…how do we define rest?”  And it was decided that rest meant not working, duh.
But somebody else asked, “So what counts as work?”  Ugh.  It was decided that all sorts of things counted as work like, for instance, carrying a burden.
Somebody else asked, “What actually counts as a burden?”  So others came up with extensive lists to define different burdens.
For instance, how much milk can be carried on the Sabbath before it is a burden, and work, and breaking the Sabbath?  It was decided.  A gallon?  No.  A mouthful.  Yikes.  And how much wine would be considered a burden (it didn’t come in boxes back then)?  A gobletful.  And so on.
How much writing could I do before it was considered work and breaking the Sabbath?  A couple of emails?  Negative.  No more than two letters of the alphabet.  I wouldn’t be able to write my name.

Volumes and volumes of this stuff was recorded and enforced.  Breaking Sabbath meant separation from God, and worship, and the people.  If anybody ever took anything too far, the Pharisees and other Law-rulers did.  They lost a view for the heart of things.

So Jesus’ word to the whole crowd, not just those special leaders, was blowing the hinges off of things.  He was telling the meek, humble, poor, and beat-down that they were blessed in the kingdom of God, that they were made with purpose and value.  And he wasn’t using any Pharisee middle-man to transmit the message.  The good news was offering them some relief.  And with it was a warning to all others against polluting true devotion into religious nonsense.  Plenty of us struggle with taking things to that extreme.  We emphasize what our faith looks like.  We think it’s enough to have perfect attendance on Sunday, smuggle Bibles into dangerous countries, sing choir solos, protest civil war abroad, protest domestic injustice, preach every Sunday, etc. etc., fill-in-the-blank.  But all those things without a heart attuned to God turns our devotion into manipulation, control, self-glory, and utter selfishness.

Continuing in Matthew 5:17-20, Jesus draws us away from just what we do towards what goes on in our hearts.

And in doing so he warns everybody not to go too far to the other extreme of faith:  not being devoted at all.  He makes clear that all this standing up to the teachers of the Law isn’t to destroy the Law.  It isn’t to say, do nothing.  But do it right.  Live into the Law as it was meant to be lived, which is to do far better than the Pharisees who call themselves so holy.

Plenty of us struggle with that opposite extreme.  Have we ever been so scared that we might turn into a Pharisee, or zealot, or crusader (or our parents), that we choose a devotion to nothing?  Have we feared choosing the wrong devotion, or a devotion that excludes too many others?  Whatever the case, Jesus dares us to consider that there could be a true way somewhere in there, a deeper, truer, right devotion.  And that, however rare it might be, is what God desires.  And that is what we were made for.  And that is by far the most difficult option.

It is just easier to be an extremist and twist faith into whatever self-glorifying thing we want.  It is just easier to choose no faith at all.  It is drastically more difficultto pursue true obedience, daily.  Jesus seems to say that our connection to the kingdom of heaven is what’s at stake.

Un-bricked

So my laptop is a pretty excellent machine, and it’s become pretty vital to a lot of what I do.  Starting maybe eight months ago the screen would flicker from time to time, like every other week at first, but gradually it got worse until most recently any tiny vibration would set it off — every step somebody took through the house or office, every time I started typing, etc.  It was unusable.  It was also out of warranty by like two months (thank you, HP), and Best Buy told me that replacing the screen would cost more than the machine overall.  What to do but take it apart and have a look (mind you, I have no experience with such).

But I did what my brother always says, I “asked the internet” what to do and found some ideas on fixing it.  Pretty soon, this is what I had:

Not a real sterile or professional work environment, but it would do.  I followed the directions, kept track of 37 tiny screws, jiggled and wiggled a couple of plugs that went to the screen, and hoped that did something to help.  In another half hour it was back together, and by gah it powered back on (success number one).  And, what’s more (success number two), the screen didn’t flicker anymore.

I was on top of the world, ready to start my own laptop business, super glad not to have to spend the money to replace this thing.  But then I went on to read some of the tiny print at the bottom of the internet repair instructions:  “Static electricity can kill your laptop. I recommend wearing an anti-static wrist strap while working with internal parts of your laptop.“  I looked into this and, apparently, professionals use special wristbands or floor-mats to stay electrically grounded because even a tiny static charge, the kind you don’t even see or feel, can zap the computer.  And then it’d be worth as much as one of these:

Yes.  A brick.  Because static charge “bricks” laptops.  As in, for all its complexity, value, usefulness, etc., the computer would be no better than a paper-weight, a several-hundred-dollar brick, a waste of space.

That’s a more current illustration to go with the idea Jesus gives us in Matthew 5:13-20.  He compares the people to salt and light.  He gets into the idea that when salt isn’t real salty, it isn’t treated as salt but as gravel-dirt for the road; he points out how silly it is to cover a light up so that it doesn’t shine.  Jesus uses images of something that is intended for a specific purpose, and holds certain value, because of its very essence; and also something that, when it no longer holds its essence, really ceases to be itself at all.  Salt.  Light.  Us.

Now, right away, let’s take a break to realize what Jesus is most definitely not saying.  Be careful.  He does not look on the crowd and say, “Y’all are a bunch of bricks, wastes of space, aren’t you?  Have you been living up to your potential?  No.  Where’s your worth, your value?  You’re tasteless.  Gravel for the road.  Lightless.”

We can hear that, yes.  We can certainly agree that most of us don’t always feel like we fulfill God’s purpose/potential for us.  We know what it is to feel far from any kind of personal meaning.  Or satisfaction.  Far from any feeling of being salty, vibrant, or alive.  We’ve felt hints of that brick kind of life.  And here is certainly a warning that things can go that way with us.  But Jesus does not call us those names, or conclude our worthlessness.  Listen carefully to his words, let me quote:

“You are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.”

Present tense, “You ARE,” the truth from the One who knows more clearly than anyone.  We have a warning that we can live bricked if we so choose, but it’s not truly who we are or what we’re intended for.  And just like last week, Jesus doesn’t speak like one exactly trying to persuade us one way or another.  He speaks out of what he knows as reality, and ultimate reality, and leaves us to do the reckoning.

So maybe parting questions are:  why do we choose bricked life sometimes, and in what ways?  Why choose tastelessness as opposed to flavor?  Darkness instead of light?  How does that play out in us?