Avoiding Toxic People

People we know have made a family commitment to stay away from toxic people.  I got a reaffirmation of that on Christmas Eve.  Yeah, they believe they are Christians.  Weird, huh?

Christmas is the time when we celebrate God making Godself vulnerable, living among toxic beings calling humans as a human with all the weakness inherent in being human.  The Christian New Testament says "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth."

Among us?  You mean, not avoiding toxic people?

Yup.

Some of the folks he rubbed shoulders with did their best to avoid toxic people.  Essenes lived out in the desert.  Pharisees barricaded themselves behind laws, rules and ostentatious piety.  Jesus, on the other hand, "ate with tax-collectors and sinners".

How, I muse, can you claim to follow Jesus and go out of your way to avoid toxic people?

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Keeping Folks Awake -- It's No Secret

When I got moved into my first parsonage (it didn't take long, I had everything I owned in an old Ford station wagon) I set out to visit every home in that town of 900 or so.  After all, I was pastor of the Baptist Community Church.  At first, no one was home.  Then a wise lady in the church told me a story.  The only people, she said, who wore neckties and knocked on doors were either tax collectors or bill collectors.
  I got it.
  I lost the necktie and white shirt my seminary professors thought so highly of, and amazingly most people were home when I knocked on their doors.  I heard an appropriate story, and I didn't fall asleep.  Over the next few years I heard lots of stories.  People in that community loved to "visit".

When I preached about outreach, I didn't tell people  to reach out.  I spoke from my experiences with real people I was meeting, without breaching any confidences.  I told stories.  I only fell asleep during my sermon that one time when I had been up all night helping search for a hunter we couldn't find.  He didn't reckon he was lost.  We thought he was lost.  But that's a different story. . .
Preachers who want to keep folks awake do the stuff they preach about, and tell stories about it (without breaching confidences or embarrassing folks).  It's not, "You should reach out to your neighbor" (prescriptive) but, "I stopped by the Jones family last week and we talked about the kinds of fish he used to catch back in Iowa.  Who might you stop by and visit with next week?" (Descriptive, a mini-story).  Or, "Harold was telling me how he stopped at the Smiths a couple of weeks ago, and they told him some interesting stories from their childhood."

OMG!  Those are such short stories! Do you suppose they would lead to short sermons?

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Suspicious Behavior

It's not a matter of "What are you?" so much as "How are you?" in my opinion.  Let me share what I mean.

How are you?  Are you a trusting person?  a person of faith in God, Allah, or Adonai/Yahweh?
How are you?  Are you a trusting person?  a person who trusts the other human to listen, learn and grow in her or his own time?

When Jesus told the good news he didn't evoke guilt for failure to believe him (although he was occasionally disappointed in others slowness).  He trusted God.  He trusted the message.  He trusted other human beings.  That's how he was.

Not so Mohammed.  He trusted the sword.  He pressured, he slaughtered, his news was not that good.
That's how he was.  Some of his later followers became more trusting.  These days there seems to be a division between trusting followers of Mohammed and suspicious, untrusting fellow Muslims.

But wait!  That is equally true for Christians.  The "evangelical" wing of the Christian church doesn't trust God and doesn't trust the message to be good news and for sure cannot trust other humans to see it their way.  These folks and institutions use pressure, gimmicks, and threats to "evangelize".  They pervert the nature of God and the Good News in God's message.  That's how they are.  At the other end of the spectrum are the folks who think any old message will do.  Believe something and join us .  They don't trust the message although they may trust the God who grasped them in their time.

Most of us, I think, exhibit suspicious behavior.  We are suspicious that God cannot do it without our gimmicks, we are very suspicious that others won't 'get it'.  Maybe it would help if we were more suspicious of our own gaps in faith and trust.

We can do something loving with our selves.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

God Told Me. . .

For more than fifty-five years I have had people tell me (from time to time):  "God told me."
It happened recently, and I have been reflecting on what that means.

God told me, because I was asking for direction. . .
God told me, and I took a step in a direction that makes sense now that I look back at it. . .
God told me, and told me to tell you because you aren't paying attention any more. . .
God told me, and now I get to be the "boss" of all you other people . . .
God told me, and I am checking myself in to a psychiatric hospital. . .
God told me, and you'd better do what I say . . .

I admit I initially cringe when I hear this phrase, because it is usually used to justify controlling or nasty behavior.  I try to listen with an open mind.  Sometimes I reflect on what a person says, because people are important.
Usually, however, "God told me" turns out to be nonsense.  Often a 'reason' to justify behavior that really cannot be justified in a person of faith.

One story:  a lady told a young woman that God told her to divorce her husband, leave her child with him, and go marry a prominent sports figure (who was also married).  Obviously either the lady giving this counsel was delusional, evil, or had very sick needs to control others.  Fortunately the young woman sought counsel elsewhere, and ended her relationship with the "God told me to tell you" lady.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.