I've been flamed!

After a recent speaking engagement I received a flaming email. It is not terribly uncommon for me to receive criticism from time to time, but it is mostly good natured. This was a torch. It used phrases like "intellectual recklessness," "ungraceful and unjustified,""overgeneralization to suit your agenda," and "demagoguery."I would go one but it is a bit embarrasing. I was deeply disturbed by this email, not because I was flamed (that is to be expected when one is in the public eye and speaks with passion and deliberate desire to shake loose some cob-webs of complacency). Nor was I disturbed because my detractor happened to be right on at least one issue (I'm vigorously fighting the urge to tell you that the particular issue was a minor point in the presentation . . . that would be self-seeking in such a way that would demonstrate a clear struggle to appropriate John 3:30). What bothered me was (a) my first response to the email and (b) my second response to the email. My first response was to scour through his letter looking for ways of proving him wrong and writing back a flaming email in respose. I'll show him who he's messing with! My second response was to use him as an illustration in class (as a straw-man, of course) for those who ungraciously create straw-men in pseudo-intellectual battle. That would sequester the appropriate sympathy, not to mention some degree of derisive laughter that would prove I'm right and he's wrong. But neither seemed spiritually or ecclesiastically profitable. I wish I could tell you that it was water off a duck's back and I quickly moved on to more productive matters. The truth is I laid awake last night trying to put it out of my mind but unwillingling formulating appropriate responses. I could no more get it out of my mind than a pink elephant when someone forbids you to picture a pink elephant. Why was I so fixated on this? Why did it rob my sleep and welcome me before the dawn? Well it's obvious isn't it? Someone called me wrong and in a way that I preceived as unkind. But if my Father's love was unfailing, why did I need so badly to justify myself in my own mind? Why did I want to prove him wrong? Why was it so difficult to admit that I made a mistake or misspoke? Why? Because I have not yet fully assimilated John 3:30. It is still important for me to promote myself and the frailty of my faith in God's approval can tolerate precious little detraction! God help me. P.S. I have no plans of replying to the email though I have read it again and asked the Holy Spirit to speak truth to me through it. I will now file it away and speak of it no more.

"Father God, Holy One,
I believe, thy will be done.
Great or small my portion be,
Still I know you fill the sea,
YOU fill the sea."

-- Randall Goodgame

Brian McLaren on

I would like to commend to you this link to Brian McLaren's lecture on the Emerging Church given at Princeton. It is Intellectually stimulating and Ecclesiastically challenging. I'm eager to hear your responses.

Click here to listen.

On the Grace of Being God's

Andy:

When I teach from Matthew 5 and come to "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth," you might remember that meekness (gentleness, NASB) does not mean a condition in which one defames himself, but rather a relational position where one is willing to be controlled.

If one agrees with God's statements about His Son, then it follows that all that this person is -- the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful-- is reconciled and therefore for good use to our Lord. I dare not subdue who I am with the purpose of hoping to be better accepted by God (or whom ever fills that need in our life). All that I am is received by God through Christ. My mind and will are set upon the Spirit and therefore the whole of me walks according to the Spirit. If I am willing to have God be in control of all of me, the good and the bad, then it is through His life that He finds pleasure in me (Phil 2: 13).

Therefore, if God comes to you and in a quiet moment and reveals what a blessing you are to Him in all of your gifts, talents, and just plain great personality, instead of convicting you of something (which most of us believe to be the Spirit's only job) then I think we need to receive it as part of his life in us and enjoy the fact that in this space and time you are his person doing just what he intends for you to be doing. Enjoy the glow...Heck, celebrate it!

A Call to Humility

I want to publicly thank John Kehrer for his chapel sermon today and offer two caveats in the process (no this is not a back-handed compliment). Pride is the central sin of humanity and the root of all other sins. Of this I am thoroughly convinced. Caveat #1: We must define pride as positional, not attitudinal. In other words, Jesus would not have had in mind some post-Freudian concept of self-perception. Humility, rather, was one's willingness to condescend to those of lower rank in order to meet their needs. In short, humility is your treatment of the other not your perception of yourself. (Though arrogance is still unbecoming of one redeemed by the Christ). Caveat #2: I am cautious of a general accusation of pride on our campus. First, I'm not sure I am in a position to judge the hearts of so many, especially when our Christian service is so widespread. If humility is, indeed, in service then there are multiple stellar examples of that going on. Moreover the endemic problem of pride (especially ego-centrism) is manifest here in no greater degree than other campuses I've had the privilege of serving--this is, no doubt, a structural danger of the American Collegiate experience. Even so, John's eloquent warning still stands: Pride is cancerous and must never be underestimated or justified. Hence, He must increase and I must decrease.

Steps to self-abnegation

Now this is dangerous--giving suggestions (particularly from personal experience) about how to live a life of self-abnegation. Do you sense the great hypocrisy? And yet, would a person who has abandoned self be afraid to talk about self in order to protect self from the perception of being pompous? I sincerely pray that what I'm about to say will come from a sense of complete disregard for myself and a desire to help other pilgrims in this quest for total self-surrender.

Arod, I am responding to you. I have lived your dilemma for years. That says something about how bereft we are of cultural heros that others would think so much of us. I also tells of how easy it is to sustain myth of personal importance. Ok, so enough rambling. Here are two things that have been helpful to me.

First, I watched as J. K. Jones left OCC for Lincoln Christian College and Seminary. He was like a god on our campus. Literally, every fall he would come back to campus with a new hair style or clothing style and within weeks about 30 or 40 students had changed styles. (BTW I have yet to see a bunch of Buddist monks on our campus trying to look like me). JK wasn't gone for two years when all my illustrations about him in class fell on deaf ears. The same thing happend when Wilbur Fields retired. It struck my just what a short shelf-life we all enjoy in the public eye. People's opinions are usually poorly informed and fickle. I no longer trust any of the praise I get, which also liberates me from trusting inately the criticism. Don't underestimate the power of this freedom.

The second helpful contribution to my life is this silly idea of the audience of one. I have, in fact, tried that and found it impossible for me to achieve. This doesn't make it any less noble, but simply impossible for me. But what I have been able to do is create an audience of 3. There are three people in any given crowd that I will seek to please. Ultimately I would like to cut one or two of them out, but let's face it, God created us gregarious for a reason. I'm not interested in total autonomy, but perhaps selective sucking up would be a step in the right direction.

He must become greater. But I'm pretty awesome too.

Let me start out this blog with some self-disclosure. Most of you are my freinds, and I think that many of you have struggled with the same things I have been struggling with recently. In a way, it relates to Mark's dissertation. Maybe you can help me out.

Pretty much, it goes like this. This semester I have come to realize that Ozark Christian College is awful lucky to have me as a student. To tell you the truth, once I leave OCC will be at a serious loss. I will probably get an honor chapel. Obviously I am exaggerating, but I have had so many people blow wind up my skirt recently I am starting to believe them.

These thoughts are incredibly sinful and antithetical to Jesus' model of "self-aggrandizement." I will be reading a paper in the learning center and think, "Wow. Has anyone taught this guy what a sentence is? Don't they understand exegesis? I could write this much better." I will be sitting in chapel and think, "This senior sermon is okay I guess, but if I were preaching it I could do much better." I work in the "I'm supposed to be really smart" learning center. I was asked to give a testimony at PTC. I have been R.A. since my sophmore year, and on it goes.

I have never really thought this way before, and it is scaring me. Genuinely I want God to be the famous one, but gosh it feels good to be important as well. I don't want to neglect the gifts God has given me. But the one's he has given me are easily noticed by others.

I see the names on this blog. Many of you are not oblivious to the fact that people think or have thought you are hot stuff. What do you do? I know the right answers to say. I am currently writing a paper on on how living in the Kingdom of God requires abolishing worldly status and being his vicegerents to the world. I have heard Mark's sermons on this. I guess what I am looking for is help/suggestions from you who have had similar experiences. What do you think?