Faith – Page 2 – Ted LaFemina

An open letter to those struggling to find their place in America

This is an open letter to any who are struggling to find their place in America today.

Many people struggle with issues of race, culture, and identify, because they have this feeling like they don’t quite know where they fit in. I started thinking about race, culture, and identity in that last few years, with the coverage of African American men being shot by police, and the ensuing black lives matter movement. My motivations for grappling with this were actually twofold: first, I was startled (to put it mildly) by the vastly different reactions to these news events by my African American co-workers and my white co-workers. This disparity of viewpoints made me realize that I had a huge gap in my perceptions of life in America. Second, I’m a Christian author, and I’ve felt compelled to find a way of understanding the issues, and then writing about them, in the hopes of being a small part of the peacemaking process that is so clearly needed in our country right now.

I thought I’d share a few things that I uncovered in my research, because I believe that they will help you find a sense of comfort in your own identity.

The first thing I found, is that race, ethnicity, and culture are very different things and it helps to distinguish them. Race is the DNA that you were born with, culture is the set of social norms that make up the fabric of life, which include food, fashion, and music preferences, as well as communication styles, walking styles, and relational expectations. The concept of ethnicity isn’t consistently defined, but is generally understood to be a combination of race and culture as tied to a specific geographic region. In parts of the world where people have lived and stayed in the same villages for thousands of years, the ethnicity concept makes sense. For America, and much of the mobile western world, thinking about ethnicity hardly makes sense anymore.

This feeling of losing our ethnic identity is difficult for many. You can see it on the ads for Ancestry.com; their whole business model is helping people understand who they are, and it sounds like they have become quite successful at it, even though who a person is has nothing to do with where their ancestors came from.

Since the dawn of man, we have depended on each other for survival: we needed our tribe, and they needed us. It only makes sense that our DNA would be wired for us to have this driving need to belong to our group. The problem is that the heuristic patterns in our brain that caused us to defend our own and distrust any other tribe, are still at work in us today. Understanding that these biases exist in everyone is the first step in bringing about peace, because they help us to understand ourselves, and they also help us to realize that when other people act in biased ways, it isn’t because they are evil, it is because they are following their wiring.

One of my African American co-workers, an older gentlemen who marched with Martin Luther King, told me that the prejudice he sees in America today isn’t racial, it’s cultural. He said that when he’s in his suit and tie, he can come to work, eat in a nice restaurant, stay in a hotel, and buy a car, without issue. But if he puts on a hoodie, then the walls of prejudice go up in a hurry. To me, this was a significant insight, because race is something that cannot be changed, but culture can be changed, so the question is: are we willing to change our personal culture, in order to “fit into the tribe”.

I’ve considered two aspects of this question. The first, is that although most people rebel against the notion of having to change their culture to fit in, we all do it all the time. We tend to think of our culture as a well-defined, inherent aspect of our identity, but most of us do more cultural shape-shifting then we realize. I’m quite different at work, than I am at home, and I’m different when I’m doing ministry with friends, than I am even in church.

Where I’ve seen cultural differences most clearly defined, is actually within family units. The environment in my in-laws house was quite different than it is in my own parent’s house. Many have a yearning to feel like they belong to the larger tribe, but in today’s world, this is a myth. With our wealth, mobility, education, and technology, we are no longer members of any one tribe, we are members of many. We are in our family tribes, our friend-circle tribes, our work tribes, our ministry tribes, and even our political tribes. How comfortable you feel in any of these environments is really more defined by the love you exchange with the other people in these environments, than anything else.

The second aspect of the “am I willing to change my culture to fit in” question that I considered, is the notion that every culture has inherent, and equal, value. Americans are so stuck on equality, that we sometimes lose site of the fact that not everything is equal. When we step back and honestly assess the individual attributes and aspects of different cultures, we’ll usually find some aspects that are good, and some aspects that we want nothing to do with. In fact, the reason that many people leave their homelands and come to America is to escape aspects of their culture that they found hard to live with. In parts of African, forced female circumcision is part of the culture. In parts of the middle-east, chopping off the hands of criminals is a cultural norm, in much of the world, educating girls is unacceptable, in parts of Asia, making a mistake is cause for suicide, and in India, the caste system still has roots.

In parts of the world that still operate under the tribe-model, conformance to the culture–all aspects of it–isn’t optional, it is mandated on pain of death or ostracization. In our country, we have this wild freedom to pick and choose the aspects of the cultures around us we wish to adopt, and ignore those that we don’t. And if we find that we just aren’t feeling welcomed by the other people, or given the opportunities that we want, then we can just hang out with other people (in fact, how many of us ignore our physical neighbors and drive miles to visit a friend we actually want to be with). Although this brings me to one critical side-note on culture that I picked up from a Gary Collins book, Christian Counseling.

In the book, Gary talked about a notion of locus of control, which is a defining attribute of many cultures. People with in internal locus of control believe that they can shape their own individual destinies, and so they will do whatever it takes to achieve their goals: go to school, move neighborhoods, change jobs, whatever. People with an external locus of control, believe that they have no control over their personal destinies, therefore, they tend to protest to the government, or to whoever it is that they think is in control. I’d agree that there is justification for both outlooks, but in western society especially, the internal locus of control strategy works, and according to Christian Counseling, people who hold this view tend to be happier.

I mention this, in particular, because if you feel left out in America, it may be worth doing a self-examination to see if there is any hint of the external locus viewpoint. Because while there is always a strange attraction to feeling like an underdog, and an illusory feeling of comfort when bonding with others that feel the same way, the external locus of control viewpoint will more likely lead you to frustration, depression, or anger, than to the happiness that you seek. From a societal point of view, it is far more productive to use an internal locus of control attitude to secure your own success, and then use that success to influence society towards change, than it is to wait for society to change before making the reach for success, however it is that you define it.

The final point I’d like to share, is that members of a majority culture, aren’t aware of their own culture. In America, people from my demographic don’t think that we have any defining cultural attributes: how we are, is simply what is normal in the world. People in a minority culture, are usually keenly aware of the differences between their customs and those of the majority around them. I was talking to a relative of mine, recently, and they asked “Why do black people have to have their own music? Why do they have to have rap? Why don’t they just list to regular music?” This relative has a gentle, loving spirit, but it simply never occurred to her that the music she called regular, others might call white–she was clueless, and then repentant when I expanded her view on the topic.

I point this out to you, because if you have been here for any length of time then you are, in fact, a deeply entrenched member of our American tribe, and are so immersed in our American culture that you don’t see it. If you are reading the news, listening to others, sharing your frustrations and views, all while struggling to find a way to work and support yourself and your family, then it may be time to stop thinking that you’re not one of us. Many of us feel, at one time or another, that we are very different than those around us: that we don’t quite fit into the American mainstream. However, I suspect that if we went oversees–particularly to non-western countries, most people would spot us as an American fairly quickly, and we would suddenly feel very much like an American, with all the ignorance, guilt, shame, and pride that comes along with it.

One of the biggest challenges I face, when sharing Christianity, is helping people to grapple with the notion of freedom. Freedom is hard: it doesn’t have a clearly defined checklist and there are no rules. You have to figure it out. You need to learn how to love, and learn how to accept love. When your focus begins to shift from figuring out how you can feel like you belong, to figuring out how to make others feel like they belong, then suddenly, you will realize that you belong right where you are.

A Christian Response to Error

Concepts drawn from electrical engineering and psychology are used to gain a deeper understanding of how to go about fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission to: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

This post contains the full text of a talk I gave recently on how to use concepts drawn from electrical engineering and psychology, to gain a deeper understanding of how to go about fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20): Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

I’d like to begin tonight, by talking about the Nyquist–Shannon theorem, also known as the Digital Sampling Theorem, which states that:

In order to accurately reproduce a sound wave-form, digital samples must be taken at a rate that is at least twice the frequency of the sound being sampled.

The graph below shows the wave-form of the words Love your Neighbor. (In the graph, the green bars indicate the points where this waveform has been digitally sampled). If sampled at the rate shown (which is twice the frequency), then you will always be able to accurately reconstruct the message Love your Neighbor using the samples taken.

However, if you don’t have enough sample points (note there are fewer green samples in the graph below), and you attempt to reconstruct the wave-form, you might get Love your Neighbor,

but you might also get, as shown in this last graph, Love your Neighbor if he loves you first, or even Love your neighbor, as long he keeps his dog off your yard.

Note that the sampled information (green bars) in this graph, and the one above it are the same, but the reconstructed message is different.

I’m going to jump topics here, so bear with me.

A study was done recently on first impressions. The researchers wanted to know how long it took us to size up someone’s competence, likeability, aggressiveness, and trustworthiness, and so they did some experiments. How long do you think it takes for us to get that impression?

60 seconds
30 seconds
7 seconds
1/10 second

Yes – the researchers found that it takes about 1/10 of a second. And they also found that our initial impression doesn’t change much, when given more time.

Do you think 1/10 of a second gives us a lot of sample points? Let me ask you:

How many sample points do you think it would take to fully understand who a person is?
How many sample points do you think it takes to fully understand God?

Do we have enough?

I’ve been reading a few books and articles on recent psychology research and what they’ve found is that the human brain has an incredible ability to fill in the gaps. In order to survive, we need to make decisions, and in order to make decisions, we need facts. So our brain does us a favor. When it doesn’t have enough sample points, it simply makes up the missing facts. This is helpful if we are alone in a dark alley: our eyes may see the slight shift of a shadow, and our brain will start screaming Bad guy–run! Where it doesn’t help us, is when we see someone drop one dollar into the collection basket and our brain starts telling us: that guy’s cheap.

As Christians, we need to be aware of the implications of our brain’s behavior. We need to understand that:

These artificial inferences are pervasive: our brain is doing it all the time.
We don’t realize that we are doing it.
We believe the facts that our brain synthesizes.
This one is key: Some percentage of the time, these “facts” will be wrong. Just as we saw with the sampling theorem–multiple possible explanations can fit a limited set of data points. That guy who dropped one dollar into the basket? He had emptied his wallet into a Salvation Army bucket less than 20 minutes ago, and the basket reminded him that he had one more dollar in his left pocket. But forevermore, my brain knows him as the cheap guy.

The whole collection of beliefs that we have, defines what is known as our worldview. And if we now understand that each of our individual beliefs may be flawed, can we conclude that, to some degree, our worldview is always going to be flawed?

What do you think about the worldview of the white population of Mississippi up through the 1960’s? They went to church and listened to nice talks too.

Here’s a harder question. How will history judge your set of beliefs?

So what I wanted to talk about tonight is not actually the sampling theorem (interesting, as it is). What I wanted to talk about is what the Bible has to say about error.

When I started to think about this, what came to mind is some of the side-stories in the Gospels. Stories about the Pharisees–who spent their whole life trying to figure out how to be right with God by dissecting and regulating The Law. They were wrong. Stories about James and John, who were raised in a prominent, status-oriented family and who brought that same thinking to their relationship with Christ. They were wrong. Martha–who thought that hostessing and hospitality was the most important thing to do when Jesus came to visit. She was wrong. Levi–who thought it was OK to gain wealth, as long as he stayed within the confines of the Law, even though he was extorting his fellow countrymen. Levi was wrong. Judas–as a Zealot, he thought that bringing God’s kingdom required the use of force. Judas was wrong.

What I find disturbing about these stories, is that when I think about how I live my life, it seems clear to me that I have little bits of each of the Apostles’ world views in my own. So I know that there is a problem. Why, after being a Christian for more than 26 years, do I still have a flawed worldview?

To answer that, I’m going to share two more tidbits from the psychology books I’ve read.

Before I do, though, I know that some Christians don’t believe in psychology. So I’ll give you something to think about: As I’ve been reading through, it has dawned on me that recent psychological research might provide some of the best worldly proof of the Bible, because what the researchers seem to be proving is that everything that the Bible says about how to live your life, is true.

Getting back to the tidbit–when evaluating new information, like what I may be giving here, our brain has an incredibly strong tendency to accept, as true, anything that supports our existing beliefs, and reject, as false, anything that contradicts what we already think.

What does this mean? If I’ve been raised in a church that believes that we must do good works to be saved, then I’ll accept any sermon and any verse that supports this view, and I’ll either not pay attention to, or find fault with, any that contradict this view.

Let me give you another, more socially relevant example.

In August of 2014, a white police officer shot a black man in Ferguson, Missouri, and in the hours and days after it happened, a variety of mixed news accounts spread across the nation. Now both my sister and her husband are police officers, and I had heard a number of tales about the challenges of patrolling bad neighborhoods. It was clear to me from the news stories I heard, that this heroic officer was put in the terrible position of having to shoot a violent, and drug-crazed criminal. At the time, though, I was working with two African Americans and I asked them about it. Their response was immediate: that policeman just shot that innocent kid and he’s going to get away with it. In talking further, I found that growing up, they had lots of experience with unjust harassment by police, and they implicitly believed the news story that the police shot the boy as he was trying to surrender.

I, on the other hand, realized that I had implicitly dismissed those accounts. Why? Not because I had any more evidence than my co-workers. It was simply because it didn’t jive with my previously existing ideas of police behavior.

We each accepted the information that strengthened our existing views, and dismissed any that contradicted them.

Think about the implications of this, given that we now realize that, to some degree, our existing views are flawed and incomplete.

The third and final tidbit is this: humans tend to synchronize their beliefs with those around them.

This election season, I’ve seen a couple of articles on this. Pollsters have found that political views can be very cohesive on a state and even a county level. This synchronizing of beliefs also happens within companies, communities, churches, and families. I suspect that this happens because we tend to accept information and ideas from people with whom we have a close relationship.

[This tendency to synchronize beliefs is why, in 1 Samuel 15, God ordered the Israelites to kill all the Amalekites, including the women, and children: He knew that, otherwise, their beliefs would corrupt Israel’s. Jesus’ admonition to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees (Matthew 16:6), was also intended to guard against belief corruption.]

A big part of what we call culture, is that set of synchronized beliefs that a particular group of people have.

So the big question I’m raising tonight is: How should we go about living, as a Christian, knowing that some percentage of our culture, and our worldview is wrong?

When I started to think about this, the first thing that came to mind was my need for a deeper sense of humility. [As a side-note, did you know that up until Christ’s crucifixion, humility was considered a weakness?]

I’ve found that by constantly keeping myself aware that I might be wrong in fundamental ways has helped me to become a much better listener. For example, when I heard people talk about white privilege, my initial reaction was negative, but then I stepped back, and decided to do some in-depth research on the topic, which helped me to see things from a different point of view.

Another aspect of this awareness of error, is that I don’t judge others so harshly when I know that they are wrong. I realize that everyone is trying to make it, the best they can, in a challenging world. Just like I’m wrong sometimes, they will be too.

OK–Here is a bonus tidbit from psychology. Our comprehensive set of beliefs is at the core of our very identity, and our sense of identity is what brings us stability in the world. This is true, even if we don’t like who we are.

The reason that this is important to know, is that when we introduce conflicting ideas to people, we run the risk of threatening their sense of who they are, and when this stability is shaken, there is going to be a reaction.

Let me put that another way: When you try to prove to someone that they are wrong, you’re likely to provoke an obstinate or violent response–and the reason may not be that they don’t like your idea, the reason may be that you are shaking their sense of identity and stability.

Given this difficulty, should we, as Christians, be interacting with people having different belief systems? With different cultures?

The Great Commission says yes. So how?

To get an idea, we can look at the two greatest influences in the Bible: Jesus and Paul.

Have you ever thought about the fact that both Jesus and Paul were raised in multicultural environments? Jesus was raised in Egypt, then moved to a region of Galilee with heavy Herodian influences, and at the same time, was steeped in traditional Jewish culture.

Paul was raised and educated in a Greek town that was controlled by the Romans, and when he was older, he moved to Jerusalem.

Today, our western culture is a mix of Greek, Roman, and Israelite influences, but in Paul’s day, the cultures where more distinct. The Greeks where big into competition and valued personal excellence. When writing to the Greeks, Paul spoke to them from their own cultural perspective: Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way as to take the prize (1 Cor. 9:24).

Rome, on the other hand, had two driving cultural influences. Like America, they were big believers in law and order, and at the same time, they were a slave society, with half the population of Rome, and many in the early Roman church, being slave. Many have commented that Paul’s letter to the Romans reads like a legal textbook, and when Paul talks about becoming slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:15-23), we can see that he is connecting to his audience in a culturally relevant way.

In Acts, when Paul addresses the Jews after he was captured, we again see him connecting in a culturally relevant way, speaking in Aramaic and describing his zealousness of God and the scriptures (Acts 21:40-22:3).

What Paul shows us, is that it is possible to set aside the supremacy of our own cultural norms and ideas, and learn, and even adopt, thoughts and ideas from other cultures and other people so that we can connect and serve them, as Christ’s representatives.

I picked up a related thought on this, from a book on Christian Counseling I’ve been reading. In it, the author emphasizes that Christians need to take a broader view of what we call multi-cultural.

Old people and young people have different cultures. There’s blue collar and white collar, inner-city and suburbanite, Apple® users and Android® users.

So again, when we go out into the world, we need to constantly be aware that our assumptions about everything from social norms, to clothing styles, and even to theology, may be faulty and incomplete. Keeping this in mind will help us to be more humble, help us to listen better, drive us to study and learn more, and help us to be less judgmental of those around us. So for Christians, this isn’t really a new message, but hopefully, I’ve given you a new way to look at it.

I should end right here, but I’d like to squish in one additional insight.

I’ve been talking about how an awareness of our brain’s misleading thinking can affect us as we go out into the world. The same awareness can help us when we go inward–when we think about ourselves.

Many of us suffer from depression, shame, and anxiety, and the root of much of this is erroneous thinking. We put two and two together, and come up with the idea that we are valueless or flawed, and because of our broken thinking, we have a hard time hearing any ideas or encouragement to correct us in these beliefs.

If any of you are struggling with these, and we all do from time to time, please be aware, that your brain’s fooling you, and to break free of it, you need to do the same thing I talked about earlier. You need to listen to people with a different perspective. You need to talk with someone.

Again, Christians sharing their lives with each other shouldn’t be a new thought for any of us. Hopefully this will give you a little encouragement to do it.

For those interested in these topics, the following resources may be helpful:

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error – Although this book (in my opinion) has a subtle anti-Christian bias, it provides a good overview of how error enters our cognitive thought processes.

On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits – Explains how hardwired shortcuts, within our brain, affect our thinking and decision making processes.

The Great Courses: The Foundations of Western Civilization – Describes the distinct nature of Greek, Roman, and Jewish cultures at the time of Christ.

The What and Why of Shame

Feelings of shame are painful and often, unwarrented. At the same time, appropriate shame is vital to the health of any society.

Guilt arises from a sense of remorse about hurting someone else, and it is only possible to feel guilt when we have a sense of empathy for others.

Shame, on the other hand, arises from a sense of inadequacy, dishonor, and valuelessness brought about by non-conformity with a social standard. If our sense of identity encompasses our home or our family, then we can feel shame not only when we, ourselves, are out of conformity, but when our home or family members are out of conformity.

A common response to feelings of shame is hate. We may hate ourselves, and sink into a sense of despair or misery, or we may hate those that have projected the standards that we are unable to meet. Since despair drives an inward focus that causes us to lose all caring for others, then whether our response to shame is self-loathing, or others loathing, it inhibits our ability to empathize with those around us, and thereby inhibits our ability to feel guilt.

On the surface, therefore, shame appears to be a valueless and destructive emotion. Why then, is it a persistent component of our human experience? Because, from the earliest of times, humans have been interdependent. We depend on each other to survive and, therefore, the health of every member of our community is important to our own health. Further, since young adults have a propensity for making high-risk, health-altering decisions, it is clear that in order for a society to survive, it needs mechanisms to deter harmful behavior, and community pressure in the form of shame does exactly that. To understand this, think what it would take to raise a child in a subsistence culture. In that environment, if there wasn’t both a mother and father working every day to hunt and gather food, the burden would fall to the tribe, putting a strain on the community resources. It is easy to see how social standards against inappropriate sexual behavior serve to protect the whole community.

Shame has two components. The first, is the creation of community standards, or norms of behavior. As they evolve, these standards become an integral part of the culture of a community and serve as foundational components of the sense of identity of the individuals in that community. The second, is the acceptance of this standard, by the individuals in the community and, more importantly, an awareness when they do not meet it.

In the third chapter of Genesis, Adam and Eve felt shame once they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil because they had suddenly become aware of God’s standards and their failure to meet them. Shame, as derived from a standard of God’s righteousness, is a painful, yet positive emotion that can serve to drive us to conform to the wisdom and loving nature of God. Like all other things on this Earth, shame can be corrupted. For example, in Luke 1:25, we learn that women felt shame if they were childless–probably from a misguided notion that God was punishing them for some unrealized sin. In our current society, people often feel shame if they cannot sustain a high-wage job, if they suffer from any form of addiction, or if they feel unattractive, ill-educated, or inarticulate.

Because of the evil and unwarranted pain caused by ungodly shame, we, as members of a community, have a responsibility to be aware of, and influence, the standards and social pressure put on those around us. As Christians, we also have a responsibility to give comfort to those suffering under the burden of shame.

As individuals, when we begin to feel a sense of shame, we have a responsibility to evaluate the standards being forced upon us and to reject those that do not conform to God’s standards, as revealed through the Bible and the Holy Spirit. While to some degree it is foolish to set aside the collective wisdom and standards of our society, outright; we must be aware that all human societies and cultures have a tremendous propensity for piling burden upon burden on us. In Mathew 23:4, Jesus accused the local religious leaders of this very thing when he said: They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. Lifting this burden off our shoulders, though, is not easily done.

The reason why it is so difficult to let go of feelings of shame, is because while guilt derives itself from our past actions, shame derives itself from our very identity, from who we are as a person. A man might identify himself as unattractive because he is bald. A women might identify herself as weak, if she didn’t feel that she fought back hard enough, when raped. A key to fighting off this unwarranted shame, is to realize that our sense of identity is defined by the patterns of our thoughts. If, in our minds, we continually cycle through society’s notions of acceptable looks and strength, we are doing ourselves no favors; but for most of us, this is what we do all day long, and the constant stream of media that we expose ourselves to, doesn’t help. Healing comes, when we accept Christ’s advice to repent which, in the original Greek, was metanoia, meaning to change your mind. In Romans 12:2 the Apostle Paul shared the same advice, urging us to not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect and again in Ephesians 4:22-23 put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

With a short read of the Gospels, it is hard to miss the overriding message that God loves us, and went so far as to give the life of His only son to free us from the painful burden of sin. But having this sense of love work its way into our soul usually takes a more deliberate effort. If you are suffering from feelings of shame, the best thing to do is take a long-term holiday from the friends and media influences that twist your thinking, and spend time reading the Bible, praying to God, sharing your life with a Christian friend or mentor you can trust, and yes, occasionally reaching out to share the love of Christ with others. This is how you renew your mind, and it is how you shift your pattern of thinking away from the destructive values of society and towards the joy-generating values of Christ. As you do this, the feelings of shame will slowly dissolve away, along with the despair that goes with it.

As painful as shame can be, there is one thing worse than a culture of shame, and that is a culture that has no shame. In societies that promote values of independence and rebelliousness, where support for a person in need comes anonymously in the form of government checks and taxes, we are far less aware of the impact that our own behaviors have on others, and therefore, this type of culture loses its sense of shame. With the loss of shame, comes the loss of age-old wisdom, and with the loss of wisdom, comes an increasing cycle of pain, blame, more bad decisions, and finally, a sense of helplessness.

Life with no shame, is no life at all. If we refuse to accept the shame, and the pain of the shame, like Adam and Eve, then we lose our guidepost to the truth. The amazing thing about God, is that as soon as we acknowledge him, and acknowledge our sin and shame, He will reach out to us in tender love, and cover over our shame, just as he did with Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:21).

The Value of Hate

Overcoming personal hatred, by humbling ourselves and recognizing the value of others, draws us closer to Christ.

It’s funny how we never feel unjustified in our hatred–whether it be a collective hatred for some segment of society, or the personal hatred we feel from someone who’s “done us wrong”. What is most fascinating about this emotion is how it creates, within us, an aversion to any sort of self-evaluation. Other emotions, like sadness and depression, draw us towards deep self-reflection, but hatred seems to emanate an attitude of don’t talk to me.

As a survival mechanism, hatred blinds us to empathy, thereby enabling us to attack, fight, and destroy those who threaten us. From a Darwinian point of view, the ability to hate may have been an advantage, but from a spiritual point of view, can anything be gained by it? Does our propensity towards hatred have any value?

I believe the answer to these questions is yes, but yes only when we muster the discipline to overcome it–and discipline is what it will take because overcoming hatred requires us to admit our fears, recognize our own inadequacies, recognize the value of those we hate, re-think our own sense of identity, and change our understanding of society and our place in it. But why would anyone want to do this? Well–because Jesus told us to. In Mathew 5:44, Jesus says You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

When we take this advice of Christ’s as a command and attempt to follow it out of obedience, we will never taste the full fruit of what His words have to offer. However, when we simply trust that Jesus knows what He is talking about, and in our yearning for spiritual maturity, put our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength into the cause, then we will find the fruit we desire (and not the genetically engineered stuff, but the good stuff, ripe, sweet, juicy, and fresh from the vine.)

Step one, in working through hatred, is understanding it–understanding that it is a passionate response, not a reasoned response, and since passion is bound to our strongest and deepest desires, we can see that hatred arises out of a threat to those desires. But what do we desire most? Acceptance, appreciation, and stability–the three things we lost when Adam and Eve left God’s presence.

In order to understand what it means to feel accepted, appreciated, and have stability, it helps to understand how we construct our identity. Kathryn Schultz, in her book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, shares how we each construct beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world, through vast extrapolations from comparatively small amounts of factual information collected over the course of our life (e.g. who’s actually read the Obama Care act, the full text of the latest supreme court decisions, or the plethora of climate study reports? Yet we have our firm opinions don’t we?). Further, Kathryn uncovers our inclination to reject ideas or information that contradict notions that we have already constructed for ourselves. Within the New Testament, this propensity is evident within the response many had to both Christ and, later, the apostles. The Jews of the day had constructed a notion of religion that was heavy on law and tradition, but deficient in compassion and mercy. Through affectionate love, reason, and miracles, Jesus and his disciples shared a different message–a message that few, at the time, would accept. Within the Christian community today, the same problem exists. Most of us will not openly consider the value of the traditions or theological arguments of another denomination, even while being dumbfounded as to why the other doesn’t see the obvious supremacy of our own. Of course, the same principal holds for other components of our belief system: political, environmental, & societal.

When asked to identify ourselves, notice how we couch our response in terms of a belief system? I’m a republican, I’m an environmentalist, I’m a Methodist, I’m a family man, I’m a true blooded American! As Kathryn Shultz’s book title implies, because most of our beliefs are constructed from relatively scant information, and because we weigh new information based on how well it agrees with our existing beliefs, we end up traversing our lives in a blissfully ignorant and comfortably happy state of error. Therefore, when we want someone to accept and appreciate us, what is it that we are wanting? Usually, our desire is to feel glorified through the affirmation of our views; we want others to agree with our opinions and, even more, we want them to benefit from our wisdom. What this necessarily implies, though, is that we are asking others, who may have different viewpoints, to set aside their own belief structures, and accept the superiority (or at least equality) of our imperfect beliefs. In affect, we are asking others to change their identity–something that we, ourselves, rarely do unless instigated by particularly traumatic events.

How often did Christ caution against pride and extol humility? Many are willing to accept His advice on inconsequential matters, but it is an altogether different story when it necessitates the acceptance of the faulty foundations of our own identity or the cooperation with those whom we perceive as being in error.

In the introduction, I made a distinction between a collective hatred towards some societal group and a personal hatred towards one or more individuals. Both have similar roots and both are worthy of introspection, but for the remainder of this post, I’ll focus the discussion on the type of personal hatred that arises when diverse people are called upon to live or work together.

The local church is primed for such rivalries, particularly when it is time for discussions on church direction, fund-raising strategies, music selection and, at times, basic theology. Any business or company with more than two workers will face similar challenges. Hatred can erupt within us, the moment someone else makes a decision that thwarts a vision, goal, or strategy we’ve had for the organization and our place in it. At that moment, we feel devalued, and we know who is to blame.

Over time, most good Christians muster the compassion to forgive the offender, our willingness to do so serving to affirm, to ourselves, our own good nature, thereby restoring much needed stability to our own identities. But how often are we willing to accept the validity of the other’s actions? To accept that, given their personality style, cultural belief system, experience, educational background, faults and foibles, their decision may have been reasonable? How often are we willing to accept that we may no longer be a fit for an organization? A paradox of the church (and any other organization), is that success comes through the unified efforts of the members, but success implies growth, and growth implies ever more people and ever more diversity of views which, over time, will create contention over what those unified efforts should be. How can we avoid bitter hatred when the inevitable happens? When we find that our vision is no longer a valued component of this unity?

The answer comes from the mouth of Christ. Love your enemies. Teenagers think of love as a feeling, maturity leads us to realize that love has a verb component, implying the service and caring for others. Agape love, implies even more. Is it possible to love something that you don’t know? In order to extend full agape love to another, we need to do the impossible and that is to recognize the imperfect nature of our own worldview and take time to understand the worldview of our enemy. Moreover, we need to seek value in their contributions, and through that, develop acceptance, as we finally understand that we all have value in spite of our imperfection. The empathetic HR manager needs to learn to see the value in the calculating visionary leader, the football coach needs to see value in the homosexual artist, and the rock musician needs to see value in the pipe organist. This is the essence of the point the Apostle Paul made in 1 Corinthians 12, God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.

But how can we do this? How can we humble ourselves and admit the frailty of our constructed belief system? How can we accept the decisions that harm us, made by people suffering from their own sinful nature and poorly constructed worldviews? How can we sidestep that inclination to push away all sense of compassion and lounge in that comfortable recliner of loathing? We can do this as we do all things, through Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13).

As we trust in Christ and lean on his strength as we struggle through the exercise of overcoming our hatred, we will find that our eyes will open to the splendor of His love, and to the splendor within those that He created. We will learn to marvel at the beauty that is contained within all of us, and marvel with sadness, that we hadn’t noticed it so fully before. We cannot overcome our hatred without undergoing some level of transformation; our identities will no longer be what they were before, but will instead be a little closer to Christ’s. And of course, this is the catch. Christ was willing to sacrifice everything, except our free will. He has left us with choice and letting go of our old identities has always been the choice that must be made for salvation. Will you make the choice?

If God told Moses the Truth about Creation

A look at how the conversation between God and Moses might go if God told Moses the truth about creation.

Occasionally people ask me about my faith. In particular, how I can believe in God because, after all, the Bible says that God created the world in six days and, in fact, says all kinds of things that most scientists today say are completely untrue. They then reason with me that if the scientists have proven that what was written in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is wrong, then how can I have faith in the Lord? In my book, Essence of Wisdom for Parents, I share the value of faith in a family context. But how can we depend on Christian faith to help guide us as a parent, and still believe what we learned in science class?

Formulating an answer to this question got me to thinking about what it would be like if God explained to Moses how he really created everything – the way the scientists now know to be true?

The second book of the Bible, Exodus, records how God shared with Moses, face to face, His story of creation. Exodus records that Moses met with God in a special tent, called the Tent of Meeting, and Moses recorded the first five books of the Bible based on what he learned in these meetings with God.

Below, I’ve had a little fun, envisioning how this might have played out.

Moses arose early one morning, and came into the Tent of Meeting to ask the Lord a question that he had been thinking about all night. He asked: “Lord, will you tell us who we are and where we came from? And Lord, can you tell me all about, you know, life, the universe, and everything?” The Lord replied, “It is right that you want to know these things so that you can understand who I am, what I have done for you and what our relationship was meant to be. I will share this with you and you will share it with all of Israel through my words which you will record.” The Lord continued on, “Moses, grab yourself a stack of parchment, a ballpoint and something soft to put your tuckus on, I will answer these questions for you, but it will take a while.”

“Uhhh…okee…dokey – Lord” replied Moses, beginning to feel quite unsure as to what he was getting himself into. He didn’t quite know what God meant by a ballpoint, but thought it best not to ask. He would just have to wing it.

Once Moses was settled, the Lord Himself reclined back on some pillows that had been laid in the tent, took a long energizing breath and asked “Moses, are you ready?”

Moses dipped a quill into the inkwell, and looked up. “Ready Lord!”

God began His work 13.7 billion years ago. Out of nothingness God created a multi-dimensional space consisting of 26 orthogonal dimensions, all perfect and pure, then, in a mighty stroke, God created a great perturbation in this space. The dimensions rippled and began to break apart into trillions upon trillions of bound up min-whirlpools, each a wondrous binding of n-dimensional space. These whirlpools of space pushed each other causing, what was now an immense ball of chaos, to expand rapidly. The expansion rolled out like the crest of a wave rolls across water. In fact, the crest of this wave defined, for the first time, the experience of time elapsing. With the creation of elapsing time, energy was also created, a few nano-seconds later, quantums of energy began to bind themselves into mass, and thus, God created the first building blocks of what you know as the universe. In the next few nano-seconds after that, …

“Moses?”

“Moses, you look a bit confused? Ahhh, you want me to explain to you how I transformed the energy into mass, right?”

“Uh, yes Lord, yes, how you transformed, that uh, energy, into um, what do you call it, mass.”

“But, before you do that, if I may so humbly ask my Lord, what exactly is a billon, and what is a multi-dimensional…uh…thingy?”

“Dimensions, Moses, you know, like the dimensions in a standard x-y Cartesian coordinate system, except I created a space of 26 dimensions, instead of 2. Life wouldn’t have much depth to it with just two dimensions would it Moses?” God chuckled.

Moses, however, failed to chuckle back as expected.

“Moses, just curious here, but how are your math skills?”

“Well,” replied Moses, “Pharaoh did put me in charge of counting the grain.”

“Counting the grain.” The Lord responded with a tone that had that same inexplicable mix of depression and listlessness that Moses had heard in his father-in-law’s voice so many times.

Moses shook off some past memories that started to pop into his head, and replied: “Counting the grain, yes, that’s right.” And the pride began to re-crystallize in his voice, “I put a bead in a barrel for each bushel of wheat that the farmers brought into the storehouse. This way I was able to keep a clear record of how much was harvested! Tracking the food supply was one of my most important duties.”

The Lord inhaled deeply, paused for a few moments, and then said, with great gentleness, “Moses why don’t you go out to the tribes and grab a mathematician to help you out. Your brother Aaron helped you by doing the speaking for you and that worked out well, I think it not bad to let a mathematician help you out here as well. How’s that sound to you?”

“Well Lord,” said Moses, “I did appreciate having the help before, but if you recall, I was the only Israelite that was educated in the Pharaoh’s house, remember the basket and the river? The rest of these guys mostly mixed straw and mud to make bricks.”

“Lord,…Lord, are you OK? You want me to have someone fetch you some water?”

“No Moses, no, I’m fine, just thinking a bit here.”

After a moment, the Lord looked up and again spoke: “Tell you what Moses, let’s take a different tack, we’ll try sailing at this from a different direction, shall we?”

The Lord looked at Moses, waiting for Moses to appreciate this bit of Godly wit meant to set Moses at ease. Disappointingly, Moses did not reflect a countenance of appreciation for the wit, nor did his countenance change to that of someone at ease.

Nevertheless, God continued, “Moses set aside what you have written so far, and grab yourself another sheet of parchment. In fact, send that last bit out and have someone just burn it will you?”

“We are starting over Moses, take this down…”

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light “; and there was light.

God paused, as Moses scribbled hastily, his quill whipping back and forth. As he finished writing the last few words he looked back up at God and blurted, more hastily then he ought, “formless and void? Nothing but darkness and light? Where’d someone find some shade? What was it, just flat desert over the whole world? Deserts get pretty old after a while,” as Moses was speaking these words, his eyes finally wandered up toward God’s face, but the signals that his brain began to send, upon seeing God’s face, did not reach his mouth in time to stop Moses from continuing “that just sounds awful …” Finally, and thankfully, the signals did reach their destination and his words trailed off.

It was during this exchange, that God began to think that He will probably, at some time in the future, need to implement a plan B for the salvation of his people, but I digress.

The Lord answered, with a bit of tightness in his voice, “Moses, it was fine, in fact it was more than fine, it was good! Now if you are finished,” the Lord continued,” I will continue.”

God saw that the light was good ; and…

The Lord and Moses spent many more days together as the Lord shared with Moses all that He, and the generations of God’s people for the next 3300 years, would need to know about our relationship with Him and the love that He has for us. As the days wore on, Moses finally did attain that countenance of ease that the Lord desired for him because Moses was His child and he loved him. (Really, He did.)

In fact, history records that after spending this loving time with the Lord in the tent of meeting Moses’ face actually began to glow. Much like Rudolph’s nose, I’ve always imagined. (But more golden-like than red.)

In appreciation of Douglas Adams who struggled with the same deep questions as Moses in the most realistic science fiction book I’ve read, the four-book trilogy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.