Reflections on 2020: Perspectives

Hey friends, welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
It is a pleasure to have you joining us for another one of these conversations as we reflect
on 2020, a little bit of what that experience has been like.
And we seek to look at that through a faith perspective to see what we might learn,
how it might transform our imaginations and how it might call us forward as people of faith.
And today,
I’ve got to confess,
I think our topic today is a little squishy.
I think it’s a little hard for me to pin down exactly the through line.
We chose the word perspectives.
And what we have in mind there is this idea that in this time we’ve seen the world turn
very heavily, lean into this idea of personal vantage.
I think we’ve seen that in opinion.
We’ve seen that in the places where we go to read,
the communities that we go to have conversation.
There’s just been this hyper-individualistic focus that’s happened in this time.
And perspective is an important sort of lens by which we can look at our world.
And we can ask some questions about how we as people of faith should navigate.
Is that fair, Clint?
Yeah, I think there’s a sense in which this conversation is a little bit of a catch-all
of things that you and I have had a lot of conversation about in the last 12 months.
And trying to assign a label to them was not easy.
And so this word perspective is one that we think sort of reaches into the various places
that we will cover today or the various places we’ll visit today as we talk about what it
means to be people of faith.
In other words, what do the people of Christ bring to some of our larger conversations?
What changes when you undertake the kind of discussions that have been taking place in
our world and in our culture,
when you enter them from a faith perspective?
And one of the frustrations historically,
and I’m not pointing this at anybody in the current world,
but one of the places that the church has historically struggled is that
when it has not separated itself with a different way of thinking and acting,
in other words, when it has looked and acted like the world around it,
it has historically not been a
productive time for the church.
It’s been a time of struggle.
The church is to stand out as different and other in the way that we have difficult conversations,
in the way that we treat people we disagree with.
We have a different mandate because of Jesus Christ,
and when we have failed to do that,
it has not been a productive time for us.
Yeah, I think that’s a very helpful frame.
In fact, as I have really engaged with people in this season,
Clint, I think I have begun to feel
more and more that one of the universal maladies of our time is that people fundamentally at a very
deep substantial level feel misunderstood.
People don’t feel like others listen or care about their life or experience,
and so there’s this kind of militant self-protection happening where we throw ourselves out into the world and
say, “Here’s my truth.
Here’s who I am.
Please hear me, understand me, validate me.
Whatever
I’m doing,
whatever I’m saying, whatever I’m thinking, I want other people to reflect back
to me that I’m okay,
that that’s right, that that’s a good opinion.”
It’s good for us to try to engage with people in meaningful ways,
but I feel like we’ve been doing
that in a far more stather shot and not very thoughtful way.
Clint, to your point,
I think as people of faith,
we start from a very different starting place.
Our starting block is that we will be misunderstood.
Why?
Because of the mystery of the gospel,
the fact that we believe that this man,
Jesus Christ, came, died, and rose again.
That is from its very starting place,
a reorientation of the world that we should
expect other people will not understand.
So the Christian doesn’t walk into the world thinking,
“I need everyone to know exactly why I believe what I believe.” Now, Christians are thoughtful,
faith-filled people.
That doesn’t mean that we turn off our minds or we don’t engage
in meaningful conversations with others.
It means that we don’t have an inner need for others to
validate the truth of who Jesus Christ is.
And that is a subtle,
but I think game-changing
difference between those who live in the faith and those who live outside the faith.
I think this sense of being understood or not is something that we kind of leave at the door
when we walk into this faith life.
Yeah, and we want to say on the front end,
it is perfectly acceptable.
In fact, I think it’s even a positive that Christians would have strong opinions about things.
I think it is perfectly fine for Christians to attach to ideas,
to even be connected strongly
to organizations or to political parties or to whatever.
But what is not okay is when those
things and the way that others in those circles act become normative or definitive for Christians,
as Christians,
those things are always secondary to the cross of Jesus Christ,
how I vote, what I think about an issue.
And in fact, because they’re secondary, they should always be informed
and affected by my faith in Christ.
How I believe,
how I follow Jesus should impact
the ways in which those other things play out in my life.
So if I disagree strongly with someone about an issue,
that disagreement isn’t the whole story because that disagreement stands under the gospel.
And I know that in the gospel,
I am called,
I am compelled,
I am commanded
to treat that person as a beloved child of God.
And therefore,
even though I disagree with them,
that mandate is going to set the framework of what that disagreement looks like.
And we have in these moments, I think,
Michael,
and I don’t want to sound judgmental here,
but we have had no shortage of examples of Christians acting out in ways that on the surface, at least,
do not seem to point back toward the origin of our faith.
Yeah, I don’t want to sound over critical.
I certainly don’t want to be judgmental.
I include myself in this, but it has been disappointing to see as the church has in so many cases
aligned with the opposing forces of our culture and times,
instead of finding more creative and
under the gospel sort of orientations to those issues.
And what I mean is that ultimately,
in the moment which we live,
people have allowed themselves,
and I think many Christians have
allowed themselves to fall into the cultural sorting boxes of our time.
Well, are you wearing a mask or not?
Do you go to the Black Lives Matter rally or not?
Do you watch this news network or not?
Will you get that medicine or that treatment plan or not?
The list is almost endless.
And we have allowed ourselves,
in some cases,
to fall into some of these sorting
mechanisms.
And when that happens,
and it no longer stands under Christ,
when we no longer allow
Christian to define the rest,
we do lose connection to our conversation partners.
And this is where I think largely,
as best as we could in this time,
our first Presbyterian church has done pretty well,
though even we would have to admit that we’ve had slippages in this time.
The current is so strong
to become hyper-focused on my tribe,
on the things that we’re rallied around,
the things that we’re
afraid of, these are all topics we’ve had already,
that in that place,
those perspectives become normative,
as opposed to positions that we now stand under the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And that is the rich history of the faith that we now only inherit.
But we on some level are responsible to
continue this idea that where we stand now must stand under, with humility,
the grace,
good news, and even judgment of Jesus Christ.
And that’s this vantage of faith that I think is substantially
different than the one that we inherit from our culture.
And it hasn’t been necessarily a cohesive
argument, but over the last few weeks,
we have looked at the trends through social media and
through public conversation to kind of minimize things into simple ideas that are opposed to one another.
And the opportunity for Christians in that is that the world,
perhaps as much as ever,
needs people who push back on that and say, “No,
I’m not going to be put in A or B because there’s
this ground in the middle in which we talk to and learn from people we don’t agree with.
We seek out people with other experience so we can more fully understand the world in which we live
and what our faith calls us to do and be in that world.” It is a much more complex,
it is a much
more nuanced, it is a much more difficult way to seek a path forward.
And the world needs Christians,
the world needs people of faith who are willing to stand in those gaps and say, “Let’s not
demonize one another.
Let’s not just cast insults at one another.
Let’s not hold up whatever we
agree with on our side.
Let’s talk about the whole of it.
Let’s get all of it on the table and see if
we can find a way to value one another and move forward in productive ways in spite of our
disagreements.” And there’s not, I mean,
I’ll only speak for myself,
I do not see very much of that
happening in the broader context of the world in which I live and we desperately need it.
And I think Christians are uniquely poised to help in that regard.
Yeah, let us not forget that Christians
have navigated differences and nuance and perspectives from day one.
If you went back
and listened to our faith fights series,
you’re going to find some of those fights seem ancient.
I mean, they seem lifeless.
They seem like they don’t even matter anymore.
And yet some of those
seem very current and they’re fraught and they fill our cultural imagination.
What’s interesting, if you look at our history,
we’ve always been people navigating different perspectives,
different opinions, different understandings of the truth.
And in many ways,
the faith has showed us that Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit is able to lead the church through those
perspectives and with them that the diversity and the nuance that is inherent in them is actually
the tool that God uses to drive the church forward.
We live in a moment in which we collectively seem
to be afraid.
We seem to be allergic of that kind of nuanced perspective.
And I’ve got to be honest
with you that the two words in sequence that I’ve heard so often in the year 2020,
which to me has
has been incredibly disappointing.
Other words, yes,
but whenever a conversation happens and say,
well, you know, this person said this or they did this,
that wasn’t probably a good thing or that
wasn’t very reflective of the faith or that seemed like a factual falsehood.
People say,
yeah, but you’ll never believe what the other people do or yeah,
but you haven’t read this or
yeah, but this and the but has been an out for all of us to say,
well, if we flatten it to this or that
and you talk about something that may be slightly true,
I’m going to discount it and completely
dismiss it because of this other thing that I think is equal to or worse.
And as Christians,
we can’t operate in the level of discourse and interpretation and discernment at that kind of
binary level.
The spirit of God works in far more mysterious and connective ways than that.
And so what I think we are tempted to do right now is to look at the things that the data that supports
what we want to view and then point to others as evidence that that is true.
Whereas instead,
our goal as Christians should always be to hear the voice of another,
to discern in it the voice
of God and then to humbly allow that to transform our imagination and or inform our action.
Maybe we hear another’s perspective and say,
you know, I feel that my original understanding of it maybe
was true, but it’s going to drive me in the world to serve and love them in a new and more energized
way.
For Christians, we can’t give in to yes but kind of thinking.
That’s not the way that we do
discernment and that we allow the spirit to move us forward.
I think one of the temptations we’ve
all struggled with in this period is to allow physical isolation to reinforce mental isolation
and what I mean by that is that in a time that we maybe weren’t able to go out and do the things we
wanted, that we didn’t feel maybe necessarily the freedom or the ability to go out and pursue
everything we’d like to do,
we hunker down into our mental positions and we do so with those who agree with us.
So we get on Facebook and we gravitate toward the things that resonate with
us, that we agree with.
We do that in our news programming.
We do that in our reading online
and as we’ve done that,
we’ve built sort of isolation around ideas that this is where I
live mentally and I’m not letting anyone else in.
Nothing’s going to change my mind and as we do
that, I mean the result is we become closed.
We become closed to new ideas and to whatever extent
that we may be not fully in step with truth,
we become closed to new truth and as Christians,
this is important, we say that none of us have all the truth.
All the truth is a property of God.
All the truth is found in Jesus Christ and so anytime I think my small quantity of it is
true,
all that is true for everyone,
I have fallen into idolatry.
I have fallen into the
misconception that I am capable of something that is only found in Christ and when we do that,
we again make it so much more difficult to live out the gospel in a productive way,
not only in our church but in our society and again,
not to beat the drum too much but
boy,
society could use a picture of what it looks like to have a better system.
Yeah and it’s natural and I think it just makes sense that while we are physically isolated and
we’re tempted by that even mental isolation you speak of, Clint,
that the conversation surrounding
freedom is going to come up,
the conversation about what are we free to do and not free to do and man,
you could track this entire,
you could write a timeline of the stages of this year based
upon what part of the freedom conversation was active at the time from can the government tell
us to stay home to are we free or not free to wear masks,
are we free or not free
to go gather in public spaces in protest.
I mean this list goes on and we could dial it in.
What’s interesting when you look at this from a Christian perspective and I want to be clear
that I do think Christians should have a sustained and substantive conversation about what it means to be citizens,
what it means to have freedom from over restriction.
I mean those are conversations
that Christians can and should enter but what I want to point out is I do think our vantage as
followers of Jesus Christ transforms how we enter that conversation because Christians are convicted
that as Christ came and gave himself for us the very core of the gospel is that God takes on flesh
which is a going from perfection to a messy creation and then God goes even further beyond
that to take on death to accept into God’s own life the cessation of life that in this movement
from the heavenly heights even to burial we see this movement where God gives up freedom
for the creative sake of offering that freedom to others in other words Christians believe that
freedom is never ultimately something that we’re given to be freed from something but rather that
we see in God and Jesus Christ how freedom is a gift that we are given to someone else so so
freedom moves us to responsibility and that is I think a substantial reframing of these conversations
that have been happening in the public sphere and once again I want to make it clear those
conversations are important but the Christian I think has a higher level conversation of freedom
to entertain what are we as Christians going to do that leverages the freedom we’ve been given
for the sake of our neighbor how do we live as people who are responsible to love our neighbor
as we’ve been called as followers of Jesus Christ that’s the way of the gospel and those conversations
claim I think they have been happening but they’ve been far muted in comparison to this larger
cultural conversation surrounding freedom yeah I think societally we tend to think of freedom as a
can I question and biblically freedom is often presented as a should I question so Paul for
instance when there are some people in a church who said hey some there are some people here who
don’t eat meat because that meat may have been sacrificed to an idol what should we or shouldn’t
we are we free to eat the meat and and Paul says yeah you can eat the meat but that’s not really
the question the question is should you and if you know that you’re doing damage to your neighbor’s
conscience then you shouldn’t you could but you shouldn’t you are free to but you are restrained
by your relationship with others in Christ and that also has to be considered as you answer the
question and and when we flatten that question down to can I can I do a or can I do b or can I
do c without asking the gospel question should I and understanding that answering that question
is not about the thing itself but about our relationship with other people that’s a much
more difficult that’s a much more nuanced that’s a much more frankly important conversation and
and for Christians to live in a world where just the the volume of voices yelling can I can I can
I and be able to step back and say that’s not an unimportant question but for us because of Jesus
it’s also not the whole question so we have to step back and think this through a little bit more
before we join the side that is shouting whatever we think the best answer is it interestingly
enough Paul goes on to say I’m free to eat anything I want but if I know it will hurt my brother or
sister I’ll never eat it again I mean this is the nature when Christians talk about freedom we are
talking about a concept with a depth and a complexity to it that is not present in the other
discussion and we don’t get to just leave that behind because the the world is talking about
it this way as Christians we have to bring all of that with us to the conversation and it’s more
difficult well it’s absolutely more difficult and it also requires a kind of honesty and introspection
that I think is uniquely difficult in this time and let me explain what I mean by that because
ultimately I think it’s a human temptation to assign ill motivation against another people
another person but to be gracious with our own motivation and to say that more simply
we just give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and when other people make a mistake when they
cut us off in traffic or they get caught doing a thing we think well I’m glad you got caught
because you were doing a bad thing but if that was us we’d say man I was late I was trying to get
to the thing right we can craft a narrative that gets us off the hook and we’re quick and easy and
in some cases if we’re honest a little happy when other people get called to account for the things
that they do wrong and and so ultimately the motivation of our intention is actually a
substantive issue in this moment in other words as Paul’s reflecting upon which action to take
Paul looks not to the immediate implication of whether you should or shouldn’t do the thing
what’s the evidence related to what’s right or wrong in his case are idols real Paul says no
idols aren’t real that’s not the point the point is how are you motivated when you’re seeking to
make that choice and ultimately that calls us to question are we looking outward as we’re making
decisions in our life are we reflecting upon how our exercise of our freedom to use that language
that we’ve been having in the sustained conversation it is am I using that freedom
for the sake of others or am I using that freedom for a different cause and and that I don’t think
is a open shut solved it thing either Clint I think there is nuance and sometimes the right
decision as Christian may be to make that decision that that benefits self or family or whatever it is
but we have to ask those questions and we live in a moment in which that kind of nuanced
honest challenging self introspection I think has been hard for most of us to find yeah I think
that can easily devolve into my own opinion my own desire what do I want to do what is right
quote unquote for me and again that’s very natural and it’s not unimportant but it’s not
the full picture for Christians Christians have to bring a larger conversation that has to do with
Jesus and others we can never simply turn our focus inward and think that’s the whole story
because Christ compels us to look outward and to consider our relationship our impact
our example on those around us and that is the opportunity that we have as we seek to live out
the faith I I laugh because you know as we have conversations in the office our conversations
if you’ve been following these podcasts or you join us for worship you know that’s uh
Clinton I have a good rapport but we do sometimes see things from different perspectives and what I
always value is when we come into a conversation and I make a statement Clint will get this look
in his eye like okay how did you get to that statement and inevitably there’s going to be
a pushback and it’s going to be okay can you really stand on that ground is that firm ground
Michael or are you just sort of making this up and what I love about challenging conversations
is there sometimes when I realize I’ve been pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed
and ultimately I realized yeah I was standing on the cloud that that wasn’t a really firm foundation
I had an opinion about a thing and you know what I like my opinion better than your opinion
but ultimately it’s an opinion and and I’ve learned that the real benefit of being challenged
by someone who who really asks yeah but Ken is that firm is that true is that a fact really if
you see it from this perspective would you still believe that and if you’re honest enough to say
man maybe not maybe I I stood on what I thought was firm and it wasn’t there’s actually a freeing
opportunity in that because it gives you the opportunity to land on yeah that’s my opinion
and I think I just like that opinion that I don’t think it’s hurt by having other perspectives or
other times and this has happened you just have a moment when you say yeah I think I need to leave
that behind I don’t think that’s helpful anymore when I see it from another vantage that’s a better
way to understand the world and and I want to make this clear this isn’t some sort of philosophical
how to navigate difficult oppositions that I think this is deeply embedded in the faith
that as we engage in Christian community God has a way of letting the things that are erroneous
fall and letting the things that are substantive and true rise and and that’s historically how
the church has dealt with very challenging differences of perspective that we believe
that God who is the the only truth truth of the capital T will make truth rise in the life of the
church it’s messy it’s often very hard but we we by faith trust that God is working the church
towards that ultimate reflection that closer reflection of what is true and that has to happen
in challenge and discourse and and and really at some level the humble recognition that our
perspective isn’t the perspective yeah I suspect I have been wrong more often in my life than I’ve
been right and in those instances I look back with gratitude on the people who helped me see that
the people who in relationship now they didn’t argue me to a new position they didn’t you know
ridicule me to change my mind what they did is they connected with me and they said what about
this and oh that’s interesting here’s what it looks like from my perspective and and in the
midst of those exchanges and and interactions growth happens and sometimes as growth happens
you find yourself saying oh well my idea wasn’t actually big enough it may have been big enough
for my life and what I thought I knew of the world but it turns out it wasn’t big enough for the
actual reality that I now think I I see more of and as we do that we should not be intimidated
by that that’s what growth looks like in order to live more fully into truth we will always be called
to let go of some falsehood the only way forward is to at some point sacrifice the things that
hold us back that that’s true morally it’s true ethically it’s true philosophically it’s true
intellectually and as we grow we should celebrate that and that growth is a hard one and when we
dig in in a place and just say I’m not going to listen I’m going to assume that anything that
disagrees with my perspective is wrong and therefore I can dismiss it or I can accuse those
who have that perspective that idea of of bad motivation they’re trying to trap me or trick me
or do something I’m not and when I do that when I can find those mechanisms by which to just
dismiss an idea without actually wrestling with it without listening to it without trying to
understand it and be challenged by it then I’m very likely not to grow and if I have a good idea
that good idea will stand up to challenge that’s the nature of how things work that’s the history
of growth in every segment of human life but when I close myself off and say I do not have to listen
to you because you have a different idea then I I rob myself of the chance to have that growth in
my life and frankly in my faith and I want to be clear at this point in the conversation that it is
natural when we think about perspectives to think about other people’s perspectives that’s often
the place where we do find conflict that’s where that rub happens where people make us uncomfortable
because of their perspective or we we just see others and they’re operating in the world as a
possible threat to our own at its most extreme I want to point out that our understanding reception
and engagement with people of other perspectives is deeply shaped by our perspective of ourselves
by by the narrative of that we spin around who we are as people in the world and this is deeply
connected when we think of ourselves as the misunderstood hero maybe even we in some cases
think of ourselves as a victim what we do is we shape the narrative in such a way
that no one else could be right that they don’t understand my perspective and my struggles and my
experience and so therefore whenever they say something it’s not true because they don’t
understand me when we frame our perspective of ourself that way as a powerful way of reshaping
our ability to engage with others perspectives in meaningful ways and clint that that idea that you
share about the fragility of of our reality the idea that if if someone learned that thing about
me my entire life would come crashing down that’s not the kind of stability that people of faith
should have we should be firmly rooted in the confidence of the gift given to us that’s this
whole idea around grace the idea that we’ve been given something substantial that can’t be taken
from us it’s rooted in the truth of who god is if we believe that then we don’t need to root
ourself narrative in such a way that it devalues those who see things from a different vantage in
other words just because someone sees the world differently doesn’t make me a victim of their
perspective we have agency in jesus christ so in fact i will argue we have the ultimate form of
freedom to live a life that is wrapped up in the grace and giftings of jesus christ for the world
in our sacrifice in service we’re enjoying a kind of freedom that others don’t have
and that’s the very not intuitive reversal of the gospel that in the service of others in the
motivation out of ourselves into the lives of others for the for the honest desire to serve
and love them in the name of jesus christ that kind of what may to the world seem like a giving
up of freedom is a claiming of a new kind of freedom and that is deeply rooted in how we
view ourselves the perspective we have about who we are as children of god and sometimes though it
is very messy dirty difficult business we need to return to that perspective and ask it is my
understanding of who i’ve been created to be is it one as a child of god or have i allowed it to be
shaped by different things it would be i think the only word that applies is arrogance to imagine
that i don’t have within my collection of ideas and opinions some that are misguided some that
are wrong some that are too directly tied to my own individual experience and not accurate and
in a broader sense it would be crazy for any of us to claim that we had everything we think right
and there were no exceptions and so the the christian prayer really with humility ought to be
lord show me where i’m in air show me the places in which my life both its practices and its
conceptions its ideas aren’t in line with jesus christ teach me that and when when we can start
there when we can start with that kind of humility that acknowledges i know there are things in me
that are not in keeping with who i’m called to be in jesus christ i i know that there are ideas i
hold on to that are selfish and not therefore true in the idea that they reflect jesus instead
of me and i need to be open to the possibility of being challenged in those areas and as we
do that you know we we refuse this worldly narrative that there’s only ever a and b as if
we can care about vulnerable immigrants or we can have a safe country we can care about the police
or we can care about racism christians have to reject that kind of binary thinking christians
can never settle for okay i guess i’ll be on team a and i it’s too bad we can’t do anything about
that you know christians have to be the people who say no it is possible to be compassionate
and just it is possible to be secure and aware of inequality we we have to be willing to see
that there is more to the story than a versus b and and when we are able to do that we find that
that not only do our ideas get shaped but more importantly we as people get shaped and we have
a better entrance to bring the light of the gospel into the world around us and and how we talk to
people you know imagine that the people who disagree so strongly on any issue there’s a
different opinions on a subject and they could sit down and at the end they could go well we
may not agree but i wish you well i care about you i’m glad and appreciate you sharing your
opinion with me and you’ve given me a lot to think about and they could stay connected in a way
that was bigger than their ideas that’s the cross of jesus christ that’s what we seek
as we look to be faithful to him and it’s uncomfortable it’s uncomfortable to find
ourselves in those circumstances where we by definition have to be a little vulnerable we
have to open ourselves up to the possibility individually personally introspectively that
i might be wrong and then maybe even harder than that we have to allow that possibility with
another person as we engage in real conversation with them this is messy dirty difficult business
and the reason why we can’t fall into these binary traps of us and them is ultimately because those
are ideas and ideas though they can be helpful in us navigating the world god does not interact with
us chiefly through ideas the idea of incarnation that jesus christ came as a person is ultimately
that god’s love for us is relational the mistake when we think that perspectives is all propositional
or or to say that more simply the the idea that your perspective is only your opinion about the
thing is to devalue the person who is a loved child of god and that’s the mistake that we make
in social media or when we objectivize people on 2d screens on whatever news network we watch or
whatever newspaper we read friends ideas are good and they help us as we seek to try to be
more christianly in our lives and in the world but let us not misorder them right perspectives
only come from a person and it is the person who is created god’s image it’s the person who we’re
called to love as our neighbor and it’s the person who we may identify as our enemy yet that’s the
person we’re called to pray for right so we can’t think of perspectives and we can’t think of
relating to other people who are different than us simply from this vantage of well i have to hear
what they say no no it requires us reframing them so that we see them as god sees them as beloved
as children who were made in the image of the almighty right and if we can let that reshape
our perspective then we find our ability to engage their perspectives very substantially change
so let let’s try as we get toward the finish here let’s try to be practical for a moment and
and identify some of the red lights or some of the warning signs that we might encounter in our life
when we are tempted to go down this road in other words as we exchange ideas as we live in a world
with our opinions and other opinions what are the signs that we may be falling into these unhealthy
patterns and as we’re aware of them how do we react to them so in other words the first moment
that we begin to insult people rather than listen to their ideas so when we are doing a lot of name
calling when we’re labeling when we think that we can dismiss a person’s idea if we can belittle or
minimize them as a person we should find ourselves thinking oh i i must be challenged by that why am
i defensive why am i angry why am i lashing out in this way when we see that happening that is never
a sign of helpful kind of conversation it we get it modeled in front of us all the time in the media
that we watch it is a regular factor it is is a regular occurrence in our in our world but when
we participate in that as christians it should be a sign to us i’m not on a helpful path here i think
another i would add to that conversation would be when we start looking at our world through the
lens of what we and what others deserve we’ve now crossed into very dangerous territory as
christians ultimately we believe that we’ve received what we did not deserve that the grace
of jesus christ grants us new life that we have no reason to believe that we should have expected
or that that we should have coming to us and yet that’s our temptation when we look at the world
around us we say well they deserve what they have coming to them or i deserve better than this i
deserve to have this or that and whenever we frame either us or them through that lens
we’re beginning to stray from that core path of the gospel that ultimately the grace of jesus
christ reframes our lives from what we deserve to what we’ve been gifted that we’re called to give
to others i would add to that michael you mentioned it earlier motivation when we listen to a person’s
ideas and we question their motivation so we don’t have to deal with the idea i think it is
a warning signal so when i say well my motivation is just the good of everybody and to do things
well but you know they don’t really believe that they’re trying to get control they’re trying to
take over they’re trying to do this that or the other thing when i look past their idea and
assign to them a negative motivation it is very likely that i am not going to be able to engage
in some sort of healthy and real relational moment with this person that i may disagree with
and and i think that’s a dangerous sign i think we also see a lot of that but we should not seek to
minimize a person’s idea by assuming that they’re trying to to do something um they’re trying to
lead us in some direction that is wrong from the start now the thing i would add would be we need
to take honest self-assessments and if we’ve not been challenged in substantial ways then we are
likely not on the path of growth and and this is really really practical the the truth is many of
us have gotten to pick we’ve had the privilege and freedom to pick what we like to read and the
people we want to listen to we we get to pick who’s in our facebook groups we get to pick the
newspaper get to pick the tv channel the list goes on and on we have so many freedoms of who we
engage with and who we give our time to and if you do not read or encounter or have conversations
with people that make you think wait is that true wait what i can’t i’ve not heard that before or
i can’t believe that that could possibly have played out that way if you’re not challenged
and you find yourself always in moments in which people say things that largely encourage you
and lead you down the path that you’ve always been on i always become suspicious that we are
walking a path away from the gospel because a thing that has been consistent in my entire life
of faith has been that when i have moments in which i encounter god i’m like peter i end up
trying to build a house when god just wants to have a moment of transformation because it’s
easier for me to do the stuff i want to do than for me to encounter a god who often has some
challenging things that i need to be aware of and need to change and so ultimately if we are going
through life and we are not being challenged that would be a moment in which i would also begin to
think that my ability to see others perspectives is waning yeah and then and finally and and i
realized that in an age of information this is a tricky one but christians are to be people of
truth in the capital t meaning of god but we are also called to pursue truth with a small t meaning
factual and correct information when we participate in falsehood even accidentally by
shooting off emails and and passing on facebook stories that we haven’t verified or that we haven’t
examined when we don’t stop to ask whether something is accurate then we’re participating
in the in disinformation which is not a helpful scenario and and the problem with this is
culturally with the internet we have access to something that will say whatever we want
but when we hold that thing up and and we’re not really honest about okay this probably isn’t the
most reliable source or where did i get this information when we do that we are not engaging
in real conversation with people we’re simply picking facts that we like or things that we
want to attribute as facts and we’re using those to further our opinion rather than be challenged
by what may be a more accurate assessment that we get from somewhere else so it it matters that
christians deal in reality and factuality we have to do that if you’re made it this far in
the conversation you may think oh my goodness that is a weight that’s heavy how in the world
is that possible and here i think we’ve now come to the crux of what we mean when we talk about
our faith transforming our perspective because we don’t believe that we can do it that’s the point
the point is we understand the gravity of how hard it is to live in this kind of vulnerable
relationship with other people that we might even dare to love our enemies we cannot do it
but by the power of the holy spirit god working in us transformation of the heart salvation
this is what we as people of faith have been given and this is what makes us different from
the culture that surrounds us we have nothing to protect because the gift that we have been given
is given to us by the creator redeemer sustainer justifier of all so so ultimately our trust and
hope is in god and it’s god working this in us so ultimately while these are signs on the dashboard
the work that we seek to encourage is rather than trying to do this all ourselves is invite god
prayerfully to do this within us to call upon the god who is able to work through us unimaginable
unimaginably more than what we can imagine ourselves doing and that’s the truth and hope
and good news of the gospel is that yes this is beyond our ability to do by ourselves
by the grace of god we don’t have to yeah and we certainly we hope and probably should have
said this on the front end we hope that nobody feels criticized that nobody feels you know kind
of um beat up by this there have certainly been moments over the past year where michael and i
have been frustrated by broader conversations in some of these area and maybe some of that passion
comes out in this presentation but this isn’t something that we’re labeling others or trying
to accuse anyone this is a standard to which we all aspire we are all led by the cross of jesus
christ in front of us and as we seek to be faithful we have to wrestle with the reality
that the patterns and what is normal in the world cannot be then applied to the church we are of a
different world we are of a different substance we have a different mandate and a different set of
ideals and ideals and motivations and goals then does the world around us sometimes they overlap
but when they don’t we are called to fix our eyes on christ and keep him as our primary motivation
so we speak of perspectives we’re glad that you’ve been with us and we hope that as you’ve
been part of this conversation with us that maybe things that spurred you might be willing to share
with us you reach out by email or maybe you make a post on youtube or facebook or wherever you’re
enjoying this conversation or maybe you share it with someone else so that you might engage in
conversation with them that’s meaningful but friends ultimately our hope is that by the grace
of jesus christ we might be connected with one another in new and more substantial ways and that
in that we might experience the goodness and love of god that has always been intended as people of
faith thanks for listening guys