by Doug Hammack
Lemmings by Surrealism
The third critical elements we’re looking at that carves out interior space and peace for our souls, is how we think about ourselves. In this message we consider “the descriptive self” and how it drives us into less and less inner tranquility.
1 Peter 2:9-10 (REPEAT FROM LAST WEEK)
But you…
You are a generation I have chosen.
You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
You’re a peculiar people; set apart with a mission…
To show forth the day and night difference God has made in you
We said last week that Christian spirituality has been ill for a while and we pointed to several key indicators of that sickness
We also said last week, that this tends to be cyclical through history
• Several generations will enjoy a vibrant and alive spirituality
• But don’t pass it along to succeeding generations
• These subsequent generations miss the essence, and settle for following some kind of codified, proscribed religious ritual
“Say these things, do those things, follow these rules”
• And the vibrancy is sucked out of spiritual practice
• And some future generation is charged w/ rediscovering the vibrant origins of following Jesus
And I’ve said I believe this is the charge we have received as a generation
• Rediscovering a healthy, vibrant, authentic way of Christian spirituality
Last week is said that a primary characteristic of sickened spirituality, is that people of faith, people of the spiritual journey…
• Begin to think and feel and act…
• Just like everybody else in the society
Absent an interior compass to guide them…
• They are swept along by the prevailing current of their society
• So what looks good to society, looks good to them
• What feels good to society, feels good to them
• The dreams their society chases, they chase too
• The fears of their society, dominate them too
And when a generation like ours, finds themselves in this weakened state…
• The thing to do is not follow the religious and spiritual practices that we’ve always known
• Instead, it makes sense at times like these, to go back and reexamine the fundamentals of the spiritual life
• To question the givens we think were at the core of our faith
• To challenge the assumptions that usually go unchallenged
And above all, to listen carefully for the Inner Voice of the Divine
And to obey tenaciously the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit
And when we do this…
• When we begin to dance to different music
• We begin to resonate w/ a different rhythm
• We begin to think different kinds of thoughts
• We begin to value different priorities
• We begin to cherish different things
We really become different kinds of people
• We do different things
• We have different instincts
• We say different words
• We think different things are important
What Peter says, from a time when Christian spirituality was very healthy…
• He says we become a peculiar people
• Made peculiar by a priestly role we play in society
• ministering to God on behalf of people
• ministering to people in behalf of God
• this makes us dance to a different beat
• live a different life
• being altogether peculiar to the eyes of the world around us
What is with those people?
Why do they do things that way?
Now, Robin brought up a point in the 2nd service last week
• The words “peculiar” “weird” and “strange” are very strong words
• Elicit images: ineptitude, incompetence, clumsiness, awkwardness
The term “social misfits” could have come to mind
• People w/ out-of-date clothing and bad breath
• People who don’t know how to hold their lives together
• Don’t know how to behave in public
• Can’t seem to get it together
When we use these words, we run the risk of thinking of followers of Jesus as being synonymous w/ a slight mental unbalance
• Social retardation
• Unable to cope w/ the demands of adult life
And I can’t imagine this is what Peter is talking about here
But the risk on the other side, is that in our desire to prove how well-adjusted we are, and how well we fit in…
• That we would not weigh sufficiently, the peculiarness of people on the spiritual journey
• When our orientation to life is completely different…
• When our values and priorities are completely different…
• When we are pursuing a life that is stark in its otherness from most people’s lives…
• We are strange to the eyes to those in the mainstream
If we resist the extraordinary pressure to conform to society’s values…
• If we buck the norm, and find a road less traveled…
• If we refuse to accept the diminished life of chasing the American dream…
• We will be considered strange and peculiar
And if we don’t consider the intrinsic differentness about us as Jesus-followers
• we run an even greater risk of become complacent and accepting of a weakened, sick, spirituality
• If our expectation is that we should fit right in w/ the world around us
• That we should be just like everybody else
• Then we settle for a version of spirituality that allows us to be so
• And the life and light that following Jesus offers us
Languishes in unused, unclaimed compartment of our souls
So last week, I laid this out as a backdrop for us as we look at a third element in pursuing an internal state of Sabbath Consciousness
If we would be people who resist the enormous pressure to conform to society’s norms
• If we would be people who can find peace and joy whether we are abased, or abound (Paul’s words)
• If we would be people whose dreams compel us toward this less traveled road…
• People who live out of the fruit of God’s Spirit…
• And who function with Divine empowerment…
• And who see other people through the lens of Divine love…
…then we must be people whose spirituality draws us in a different direction
• We need a spirituality that leads us away from the dominant expectations, norms, and beliefs of our society
• A spirituality that opens to us, new horizons, different vistas
• A spirituality that awakens slumbering elements in our souls
• And calls out of us, the deeper, realer, truer nature of the indwelling Divine presence
And it appears that the dominant spiritual practices of the last several Christian generations have not done this for us
• I believe in reading the Bible, but reading the Bible the way we have read it doesn’t seem to be working for us
• Preaching sermons the way we have preached them; not working
• Attending church the way we have attended it; not doing it
• Following the Biblical principles the way we have followed them
• Praying prayers, the way we have prayed them
…in the broad strokes, our familiar spiritual practices are not awakening us to the peculiarness that is our heritage as Jesus-followers
And I suggested in our lesson on Sabbath-consciousness last fall…
• That critical to a healthy Christian spirituality
• Critical to a spirituality that awakens us to a vibrant spiritual life…
• Is the appropriation of inner leisure, inner quiet
• And an internal place of restfulness
In that lesson we talked about two important elements of living in Sabbath-consciousness…
• Not fixating on the lower rungs of human need
• And remaining alert and present to this moment
• Not borrowing troubles from the future, or regrets from past
• We looked at how Jesus’ teachings call us to both of these
And then we had the holidays
• And we had some family business critical to our future together
• And we began to enact Sabbath-consciousness in practical way; three weeks introducing our 2009 Meditation Practicum
And now I want to return to a 3rd important element in being able to live with an interior state of Sabbath consciousness
• A third way, we carve out the interior space necessary to a healthy Christian spirituality
• A third way we strengthen our connection to the indwelling Divine that transforms us
And this 3rd element has to do w/ redefining how we think of ourselves
• Today I’ll introduce this idea, and develop it next week
Being anything less than our truest selves costs us
• Costs us bandwidth, energy
• It drains us, it uses us up, time, and exhausts system resources
And when we are used up, spent, bled dry…
• The default mechanism, is to go along w/ the prevailing winds
• To follow the mainstream
• To succumb to the pressure of our conformist society
• There’s nothing left inside of us able to stand against the tide
Without interior leisure…
If we do not carve out a place of internal rest…
If our Christian spirituality just fills up space, fills up time, uses up energy…
And we never create the place for an interior Sabbath…
We will never experience the transformative power of Christian spirituality
• We will always be drawn along by the loudest voice, the most demanding pressure
• We will never be able to chart a Divine course, a true course
• We will always be spent, tired, drained
• Always be cogs in a social machine
You will recall several weeks ago, I used the term “descriptive selves”
• I defined this term as all those categories we use to define the quality and the quantity of our beings
• These are the categories we use when we introduce ourselves
• This is the self we present for public scrutiny
• This is the self we use to imagine ourselves in this world
And typically, these categories include things like…
• Our occupation, our marital status, our parental status, our nationality, our gender, our religion, our race
• We include our accomplishments, things that distinguish us from others, our zip code, our socio-economic strata
• Maybe some special feature distinguishes us, physical attribute, particular beauty, or particular plainness
• Some mental distinctive, some point of brilliance, or perhaps a handicap of some sort
• Some life-altering failure or success, some big mistake we made
• Some event that changed the course of our lives
• Drug dependency, a sexual aberration, a prison record
And we frame our understanding of ourselves around these descriptors
• Together, these elements become our “descriptive selves”
And once we frame our understanding of ourselves in these categories
• We begin to extend the favor to one another
• The categories with which I define myself become the categories with which I define you
• You are the sum total of your descriptors just like I am
And once we have framed ourselves and one another in these descriptive categories, the struggle of life is set out for us
• The rest of our lives, ours becomes a life of struggle to attain, or to maintain, our descriptions
• And to achieve a description of myself that is valued by society
• My sense of worth and value is framed in these terms
• If I attain what society says is valuable, I am valuable
• If I miss out on what society says is valuable, I am not
And the energies of our days…
The bandwidth of our lives…
The focus of our time…
…is spent trying to attain a description of myself
…a category of myself
…that the world reflects back to me is valuable, important, worthwhile
so I can say… phew!!! I’m ok after all
and given the way our society works, only some of us can successfully navigate our way to the top of the heap
• Me being on top demands that there be some on the bottom
• Consequently, some will never get what society, or their families, or their friends, or their co-workers value
So if we cannot attain the descriptive self that is already valued by society, we try to get the descriptive self we already have to be valued
• In a microcosm of adult life, high schoolers do this all the time
• When the awkward high-schooler is rejected, they form a nerd brigade and seek out revenge
• When the angry outcast high-schoolers are rejected, they become the Goths or the metal-heads
• I will define who I am as just as good as you
Our tendency when we cannot attain society’s approval, is to declare that the way we are is just as good…
• Just as beautiful, just as natural, just as proper…
• As the way they are
But in either case, the core assumption remains the same…
• I am, the descriptor I have of myself
• My self, is the sum total of these categories
• I am my descriptive self
It never occurs to us that our value does not lie in our descriptors
• It never occurs to us that we don’t have to spend our life’s energies fighting to attain a favorable comparison
• It never occurs to us that there is a Christian spirituality designed to free us from the tyranny of our descriptive selves
• The tyranny that makes us just like everybody else
• The tyranny that sucks up our lives and times in the pursuit of something that in the end turns out to be quite empty
• That in end turns out to be toxic for the haves and the have nots
You see, in the world of our descriptive selves, value comes from scarcity and envy
• That’s the engine that drives value in this world
(a world, BTW, that Jesus came to dismantle)
I have heard this, I don’t know if it’s true…
• I read somewhere: enough diamonds have been mined in the world to make them as inexpensive as semi-precious stones
• But some corporation is hoarding and carefully managing the rate of release to the market, and so, they remain expensive
True or not, that’s the way things work…
• Oil prices drop too low, OPEC slows down production, price up
• Too many houses on the market, the value drops
• Scarcity and envy drive value in the marketplace
• And scarcity and envy drive value in the world of descriptive self
If I have the only Lexus on the block, I’m an important person
• If everybody on the block has a Lexus, it doesn’t count any more
• It’s the comparison and contrast that makes me value who I am
• My sense of self is dependent upon comparing favorably to others
The same is true of my accomplishments
• Accomplishments in descriptive self world are made valuable or mundane by comparing them to other people’s accomplishments
I had a dream the other night: I was my 50-year old self
• I went out on the track, and ran a 4:40 mile, just like I did when I was my 16-year old self
• In my dream, I thought to myself, hmmm I must be wiser now
• I bet I could do what I wanted to do then, break 4:00
Now if I broke a 4:00 mile, it would be a huge accomplishment
• Unless, as in my dream, every fat 50 year old guy could break 4:00
• Then, there would be no sense of accomplishment at all
• In our world, value is created by scarcity and envy
My son is on a swim team of extraordinary athletes
• Top 2 teams, top 3 states in nation
• Four of his teammates incredibly talented by national standards
• And he’s friends w/ these guys
• He missed a very big cut to a national meet (1/100th of a second)
• His pals all made the cut
• He thought he was a bad swimmer, thought he should quit and stop wasting his time
• His coach who pulled him aside to encourage him
• You are in the top 5% of all swimmers in the nation
• You missed this national meet by a fingernail
• Shut up, and get a perspective
Now I love this coach, I think he’s a great guy
• And I’m really glad he gave my son the perspective he did
• He really motivated him
• And this season, he made all the cuts and he’s going to FL
But notice the framework the coach worked in
Notice the framework that my son worked
• In comparison to these guys, you did not shine
• But look over here, in comparison to these guys, you did
On your team, your talent in not rare or scarce or valuable
In the whole swimming community, your talent is rare and scarce
…and valuable
Now, that’s how my son was trained to think about his self and value
• That’s how I was trained to think about myself and value
• And that’s how you’ve been trained to think about yourself/value
• It’s the drumbeat of our world
• It’s the dance of our society
• It’s the river that courses through our daily lives
But Jesus introduced a different value set
• Jesus introduced a spirituality that awakens us to a different world
• And it is a very upside-down world to the one we were trained in
• A world where value is not tied to scarcity and envy
But the words of Jesus are quiet
• The Voice of the HS inside us is a whisper
• And the society is a blaring megaphone going and going and going
• The economy of scarcity and envy blasts on every street corner
• In every social interaction
• In every one-up contact w/ have w/ people
• The systems of scarcity and envy infect every corner of life
So how could we but define our own sense of self in this context
• And once we do, how could we but spend our lives chasing after the elusive attainments of our descriptive selves
• And as a result, how could we but use up our precious moments, our precious energies, the precious few days we get on earth…
…chasing after an elusive sense of value for our descriptive selves
• And how could we but come to our deathbeds with regrets
…realizing too late we followed the same drumbeat as society
…like lemmings rushing headlong into a sea of regret and waste
And how could we but, follow an artificial spirituality that keeps us from the peculiarness that is our heritage in Jesus
• How could we but follow this anemic spirituality into the suffocating clutches of normalness
Christian spirituality in our western world is sick
• But when it gets healthy, we discover a place of inner rest
• A place carved out for inner leisure and peace
• A place that is not driven and driven and driven, to secure a place of note for our descriptive selves
• A place of Sabbath rest
• A different, peculiar kind of place
• A different, peculiar kind of life
• A different, peculiar way of being human
And this is our heritage as Jesus-followers
I’ll pick up here next week and continue
I’ll talk about how our self-definition drives a cycle that exhausts us
And how this exhaustion sucks up our time an energy
And how depleted, we succumb to the normalness of our world
And how, in carving out a place of Sabbath consciousness, we begin on the road to soul-healing
We begin to find our true home, our place of peculiarness in Jesus