Wednesday, January 28, 2009

God and Blindspots

Jesus said that we should love our enemies. After all if you love only those who love you how are you any different from those who are far from God?

Seems to me that loving people is a bit like the concentric rings of a target. Where someone comes into our circles could possibly be measured by what we might be willing to do to help them. Those living in our inner most ring are those closest to us who like us and love us and we find it generally easy to love, family and friends. In my case this includes my cats. We might be willing to sacrifice our primary resources for these people. Parents often help sacrificially for their children. Almost as often grown children might sacrifice to help their parents.

The next ring might be those we encounter in our normal circuit of life, i.e. church, work, neighborhood, etc. In contrast to those in the inner circle who "like us", sometimes those in this circle might be classified as people that ARE "like us". We might be willing to dip into our reserves in order to help someone like this.

Further out we might find people not that much like us but who might be in genuine and immediate need. As with the last ring our normal human compassion might draw us to reach into our reserves to help them.

There seems to be another ring out near the perimeter. These are people in our blindspots. Depending on our values and biases these people may be business people, government workers, people on welfare, lazy people, immigrants, atheists, Muslims, liberals, conservatives, criminals. I was taken to the woodshed by God recently on this issue. Ouch. Really, would we be willing to extend our resources to help anyone in our blindspot, if we could figure out what our blindspots are?

I'm not sure whether the ring of people who don't like me and would do me harm if an opportunity presented itself is still further out beyond my blindspot ring or not. I suspect so. Would I be willing to spend any resources here?

The greatness of Jesus' love is that that He didn't love out of His reserves and He didn't love just those closest to Him. He loved sacrificially right out to the last ring of those who did Him great harm. I'm not there yet but if we are to grow into Christlikness, how and where we extend ourselves might be a good metric.

Friday, January 16, 2009

God and Performance

There is alot of material in the community of Jesus' followers about grace and forgiveness for screwing up. Though most of us still struggle with forgiving others and receiving forgiveness ourselves. We have high confidence, dare I say "Faith", that God is big on forgiveness and grace as well. And most of us are pretty well acquainted with our own screw ups, whether from our own discovery or with the help of others. A very good friend of mine kindly pointed out my unkindness toward some airline personnel recently. I sure hope that there is grace for me there (and lessons for the future).

I wonder though how God feels about performance of a job or task or responsibility before we have already delivered poorly? Do we have any information about that? We do have this from Col 3:23,"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men". Does that mean that we need to be doing our best at whatever task we have? Better in our jobs, in our families, in our church and community? Is there any motivation for best over better? Is there any priority for excellence in the community of Jesus' followers? I know a Christian brother who owns a business but does not like to hire other believers because they rely more heavily on grace than performance. Is that where we have come in our faith? Are we truly balanced and working at everything as though we were working for God?

There is alot of material in bookstores on how to do more things and how to do a few things well. The general view is that no one can do many things excellently. And yet the cause for much poor work and poor performance is that we are too busy or 'didn't have time'. This doesn't apply just to work. It also applies at home. How many fathers would score a low performance appraisal for their work at home? How many husbands want to be the very best husband possible?

Do we miss out on empowerment from God in our responsibilities where He provides super-wisdom, or super-endurance or super-? because we didn't bring our best to the situation?

So really, how does God feel about performance? or Excellence in what we do?

Confession: I don't perform excellently in all I do and it's disturbing to me. Due to my background I suffer from hyper-performance-mania. If you find something in my life that I agree with you is performing poorly, I will likely obsess on fixing it. I need to learn to relax "excellently".

Thursday, January 15, 2009

God as Coach

Each year it's fashionable to make resolutions of the things we would like to accomplish in the new year. The most common resolution is to lose weight followed closely by getting out of debt. This year I have both of those and one more, I would like reach some level of proficiency with Spanish. I've had the first two on my resolution list for so many years I've thought of having them tattoo'd to by body. Since more resolutions fail than succeed, many people have paid personal trainers and life coaches to help them accomplish their resolutions. This can be an expensive situation and still can't guarantee success. I wonder if there isn't a better way?

As a follower of Jesus, I have it on good authority that God loves me. He loves everyone of course but not everyone knows it or wants it. I also have this, "being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Ph 1:6. I wonder if God would make a good coach? I know that He is already about transforming me. I know that He will give me wisdom if I ask. (James 1:5) In fact I know that I can cast all of my concerns on Him. I know that if I become ill that He may heal me. What if I ask Him to help me start now to be healthier and wiser? I wonder if I can ask Him to be my coach and help me with my resolutions?

Ok. So that's what I've done. I ask Him each day to help me make good food choices and to motivate me to the gym. What I really need is for Him to help me remember to ask Him each day. I've started the year somewhat imperfectly because I haven't asked the coach each day. But I keep asking. Some days I really don't feel like going to the gym. Am I alone here? Even so, strangely, I've still found myself there.

Interestingly as well, He has pointed out some of my habits that can be counter productive to success. I.e. crashing at the hotel when I get done with work and watching TV. Have you any idea how many food commercials and commercials to get me to buy stuff I don't need there are in an avg eve of TV (2 hours)? Me either but it's alot. As my coach He didn't just show me this but He helps me find other things to do with my discretionary time. BTW, by reducing my TV consumption I also support my other resolution of paying off debt. If I don't see it I may not want it. The jury is still out on that one. Not a perfect formula because I am bombarded by ads every where I go.

2 weeks into the year and I've had some consistency at the gym. Some changes in food selection but this will be harder.

I have a coach now who loves me, is always with me, has my best interests in mind, and has the power to motivate me.

I wonder what His resolutions are for me this year?