Archives for February 2014

Yesterday one of my sons pitched a fit and threw a cup in the sink and yelled at his mom in angst.

Last weekend another one of them kicked a friend out of our house because they were “being mean”.

I recently had a conversation with a parent who was upset that their teen was choosing to ditch “good friends” for troubled ones.

Surely we all know what we want to tell them.  We know how to fix their choices and get them set straight. I get it.  In fact, the truth is, I’m not upset with my kids who didn’t throw cups, showed grace and forgiveness to their friends, and have essentially chosen to make some solid choices.  So it makes sense that the dominant response, especially when we’re dealing with children making bad choices, is to tell them to “change your behavior.”

However, as I met with my cup throwing son in our one-on-one today, our conversation was not about “not throwing cups”.  Yes, we talked about it.  But no, my ultimate goal was not to get him to stop doing it.  I mean if I get my kid to find a different outlet for his anger, that’s great.  But not throwing cups is not what i’m after.  I’m not trying to raise a “good kid”, I’m trying to raise a “Godly one” and they’re not the same thing.

In fact, just last week I met a parent who told me that their kid loves the 5th and 6th grade ministry at our church, but they often can’t make it because they go to the early service and their kid is too tired from sports to go.  I promise you, the reason it’s not a big deal to them is because their kid is “making good choices”.  But if and when the tide ever turns, they’ll be wishing the foundation was deeper than “good kid”.  

On a similar note, I once had a parent tell me their daughter didn’t need to be in our “dating series” in youth group because “she wasn’t allowed to date anyway”.   In other words, she can’t date now so she doesn’t need it.  She’s not making bad choices with a boyfriend so the issue is null and void.  The only problem is, when she eventually is out of the house and chooses to date- regardless of the rules set up for her at home- the real question will be, “Upon what foundation will she make her choices and at what point will ‘because my parents said so’ no longer cut it?”

If our goal is merely “behavior modification”, then good choices is what we’re after.  However, if our goal is raising kids who reflect the Image of their Creator, then good behavior is a response, not an end in and of itself.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m pro good behavior and I’m not happy when I or my kids make bad choices.  However it’s a subtle lie that if someone’s life “looks good” that all is well.  My experience says that, “It is totally possible to be morally right and spiritually dead.”  In fact, Jesus famously said that you can even be used by God to perform miracles, and still not be in connection with God.  If that doesn’t freak you out, I don’t know what will.

If you want to know the bottom line for me, it is this:  More important than making good choices, is knowing why their choice was good in the first place. I want my kids to own why they make the choices they do, more than know what they should be doing.  That is why my one-on-one today was not about what my son should do different, but about why it matters in the first place.  Once we understand that our goal is honoring God, then our behavior can be applied accordingly.

To that end, I want to model a life that asks this question at ever turn: “How can I honor God in that?”   My prayer is my own kids and the students I work with in youth ministry will learn to filter everything they do through that one question.  I’m not trying to raise up “good kids”, I want to raise Godly ones and that is less about the choices they make, and more about their heart that motivates them.

Oh that God might grant me the grace and wisdom to know how to do that.

If you want the main thing to be the main thing, then you’re going to have to say no to a lot of minor things that all have an inferiority complex.  Those things are the ones that fight and beg and push and demand to matter most.  If your main thing, like it is for me, is following Jesus, then there’s a lot of things that try and edge Jesus out.

• As an American citizen: this means I must say no to consumerism as the essence of happy life as the definition of success.
• As a parent: this means I say no to raising good kids in favor of Godly young adults.
• As a spouse:  this means I say no to raising kids and paying bills as the primary subject of my marriage.
• As a pastor: this means I refuse to accept short term victories in exchange for long term fruit.

More recently, I’ve been reminded through a variety of venues that this is no sideline issue in life. Regardless of what you want to be the center of your life, there is always something there to compete for that position. In the case of my life as a youth pastor and more recently as a father of teens, I’ve learned the hard way that there are some very specific things that are on the goal I’m aiming for because quite simply, they do not last.

1. The goal is not behavior modification because its possible to be morally right and spiritually dead.
2. The goal is not increased involvement in the church and “spiritual” things because a life that looks good does not equal a heart that is devoted.
3. The goal is not to get a covenant signed a a commitment made because talk is cheap and transformation is hard.

I decided while writing this that each of those is worth a post, so I’ll flush each one out next week on 3 separate posts on this blog.  But the truth is, these 3 do not create the legacy I yearn for and the ownership I’m praying will develop in my own kids and the teens i’m pouring my life into.  They are not bad, they are just not ultimate and when I settle for them as the goal, they always disappoint.

katie, jd, jill, me, max & kevin

The goal is however a faith that lasts a lifetime.  It’s the kind of thing I was reminded of as I shared a weekend with some former students who are now youth workers in their own churches as a adults.   I had the privilege of performing several of their marriages, doing tons of life together in high school, and walking with them through literally years of highs and lows of life and ministry.  It was such a joy to do life with them in the context of a winter snow retreat again with several churches. What a joy.  As I snapped this pic this last weekend I was reminded that while I cannot always control the paths people go on to get to where they are… I can be clear… this is the goal.  I’m aiming for ministry that lasts a lifetime.

May God grant us all the wisdom, discernment, grace, endurance and patience that it takes to keep the main thing the main thing.

Straight up, formulas don’t work in real life.

If you’re baking a cake, you can use a formula.

If you’re mixing chemicals, I’d recommend you get a formula.

If you want to know how big to make the beams on your floor so the second story won’t collapse onto the first, by all means, please use a formula.

But once you start planning for college entrance, trying to win a sporting event, thinking about getting married, finding a job, or anything else involving the variables called “real people and real life”, then go ahead and dump your formula, it won’t work.   You just entered the world of probabilities and formulas are now all qualified with words like usually, often, and most.

When we assume we can use a formula to make the future what we want it to be, we end up with a bucket full of regret and a feeling of being betrayed by the system.   I wish I could list the number of formulas I thought would work that did not.  I was all but promised a set of things would happen when I blogged consistently, when I did xyz as a dad or husband, when I wrote a book, when I graduated from high school got a bachelors degree and again when I got my Mdiv…and a whole lot more.  You name it, all of them had promises of what they would lead to.  But they rarely and sometimes never did.

But this truth doesn’t seem to stop people from trying to sell me on their formula.  The other day someone did it with the “key” to writing.  Another guy told me the “key” to getting volunteers.  A lot of times, people try and turn the Bible into a formula too.  They see it almost exclusively as an “If you do this, then this will happen… either for good or bad” kind of resource.  While there are certainly some “if, then” truths in the Scriptures, it is also equally true that the Bible is not a book of formulas.  The most famous of these being the entire book of Proverbs.  It’s filled with “if, then” statements that are “wisdom” for living, not formulas you can plug and chug through.

The one that bugs me the most is Proverbs 22:6ish.  “Train a child up by [insert your own list of good behavior, ideas, and a litany of christian ideas here] and when they grow old, they will not depart from it.”   Right.  So every kid that goes astray can be traced back to a failed ingredient in the formula.  Mom didn’t read enough scripture to them, dad didn’t come home from work early enough, their church wasn’t ______ enough…. and on and on it goes.

But if you have ever taken a seminary class on the book of Proverbs, then you know that all good scholars will tell you “proverbs are not promises”, they are “wisdom literature filled with probabilities”.   Yes, if you hang out with people who do “x”, you’re more likely than not to do “y” with them.  Maybe A LOT more likely to do that.  But, we all can give evidence of the exceptions, cuz for better or worse, people are always screwing up the formulas.

Knowing this, there are a few options from here:

IGNORE IT AND DESPERATELY SEARCH TO PROVE THE FORMULA WORKS.  These people will do anything and everything to try and convince you that the reason your business didn’t work, that you didn’t get into that college, or that your marriage failed was because you didn’t play the formula right.  They know what’s wrong and they are out to prove the formula. They will use the formula to get you to change your behavior, buy their product, or invest in some service.  All of it based on statistics and facts that “prove” the formula works.  It’s the tongue-in-cheek truth behind all the Direct TV commercials these days.

GIVE UP AND DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, IGNORING BOTH THE FORMULA RULES AND THE WISDOM BEHIND THEM.   These people are the embodiment of the proverbial “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”  They agree that formulas don’t work and live by the wisdom of whatever feels right to them. They often site examples of those exemptions to the rules who managed to find extreme financial success without formal training, make their marriage work for 50 happy years even though they got married 3 weeks after meeting each other, and do all kinds of stuff in the face of the “proverbs”.   They essentially play the lottery of life every day saying, “Someone’s gotta win against all odds.  Might as well be me.”

LIVE WITH WISDOM, BUT KEEP FAITH IN GOD’S WILL, NOT THE FORMULA EVERYONE MAKES IT INTO.   There is a third option.  In this case, these people refuse to buy the formula but also refuse to bet the farm on foolishness. They walk a daily dance between what is wise and what is living by faith, at times living in the face of conventional wisdom for sure.  These are people who know the formulas are about likelihood, not guarantees.  If they go to college, they don’t believe the lies of what it will surely produce in 4 years.  Instead, they enjoy the journey, invest their life as wisely as they can, and leave some mystery in the process.

So BE WARNED: a lot of lies masquerade as a wisdom formula.  The wise learn to discern the difference.

The other day I was looking across the yard and noticed a hummingbird going from flower to flower.  It immediately reminded me of my grandma’s hummingbird feeder when I was a kid.  She loved watching those birds.  I also remember that she had to label the pitcher of red feeder liquid she kept in the fridge in order to keep my sister and I from thinking it was fruit punch for us, not feeder for the birds.

Anyway, no sooner did the hummingbird leave, that a butterfly showed up doing the same thing, bouncing from flower to flower.  This didn’t send a rush of memories to me like the hummingbird, but it did cause a rather odd observation to pop in my brain: “I’ve never seen a butterfly land on something nasty.”  The more I thought about, the more true this became for me. I’ve never seen one light on something at the dump, a piece of dog crap, or a rotten piece of fruit under a citrus tree.  They simply don’t do that.  Evidently, at least in my experience, they avoid all the nasty they possibly can.

Contrast this with the common fly and the difference is radical and obvious.  In fact, if there is something nasty lying around, it tends to not only be a place you’ll find a fly, but it even attracts them too.  Sweaty people, smelly animals, dying stuff, poop, and all kinds of other grossness are like a dream come true for a fly.  It seems that the nastier the smell, the more likely the fly’s to gather around it.

Since I’m a visual thinker…. I found this to be a profound reminder and a bit convicting myself.  The truth is, I’m not very butterfly like and neither is the culture I live in.   In fact, it’s rare that I meet people who bounce from beauty to beauty, enjoying the best life has to offer and always seeking the good in the midst of difficulty.   Most of us are not like that.  We tend to be more like the fly, traveling from crap pile to crap pile instead of fresh flower to fresh flower.

Think about it:

• News stations often goes from tragedy to tragedy as their program teaser to get us to tune in.
• Even those who overcome addiction tend to replace them with another unhealthy habit
• How many people live life in America primarily traveling from one financial debt to another?
• Most of us tend to migrate from critical comment to critical comment, not from encouragement to encouragement
• We describe daily life as the “rat race”, not the “marvelous marathon”.
• etc…

Something has to give.  Despite the overwhelming pull toward pointless living, I don’t think this is God’s design.  In fact, Jesus put it like this in a verse that is probably overused and often only half-quoted:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

It’s the devil’s plan to steal and kill and destroy, not God’s.  I don’t see anywhere in the Scriptures were we are promised a painless existence by following Jesus through happy skippy days all the time.  No, on the contrary tragedy was part of Jesus’ story and it strikes us all.   So if I want to live my life going from God-sighting to God-sighting not just regret to regret, I have to be really intentional about my focus.

Sadly, I actually have to refuse the patterns of my fly-like soul and travel over the stuff of life that promises to provide but is only a chocolate covered turd.  Really, how gross is that?  I don’t want to waste my life on that which is of no eternal value, regardless of what it masquerades as first.

I’ve decided that I want to be a butterfly landing on the great things of God all around me, not the nasty things constantly calling for my devotion that I have landed on all too often in my past.  It’s time I took my cues from the right insect.  It’s time to be a butterfly.

______________

Oh… and I just remembered…  if you want a bonus example of this in cinematography… watch the film “I am legend” with Will Smith and look for the butterfly theme in the movie.  It’s the director’s clue to where beauty is found in the hopeless midst of misery and despair that the movie takes place within.  Even in the final scenes, as the lead Zombie thing is trying to kill Robert Neville (Will Smith), the glass between them shatters into the image of a butterfly.   You have to look fast, but it’s there.  Here you go:

BE A BUTTERFLY.