These People Don't Fit. Can I Get a Refund?

Somehow we ended up with a society that has convinced every one of us that our needs and desires are paramount.  Our hearts ought to be followed.  Our instincts should be trusted.  Our judgements are infallible.

Millions of dollars of research go into finding out how I shop, what I like and don't like, where I go.

My movements are tracked on the web and at the grocery store.  I am begged for my opinion in phone surveys and at the end of every online purchase.

At the bottom of my restaurant receipts, there is a number I can call--sometimes even attached to a cash prize--to express my pleasure or displeasure with my dining experience.  Billboards and pop-ups, television ads and movie trailers are all screaming, "Pick me!  Pick me!" you big, beautiful Consumer, you!

 Everybody wants me!  I get to have endless needs.  YOU get to meet them.  What a great arrangement!

Food, books, clothes, television shows, cars, movies, lines of credit, gizmos and gadgets, friends, politicians, lovers, all on my terms and for my benefit.  Even churches are putting a finger to the wind in an effort to discover MY felt needs and meet them.  Programs, and parties, and praise bands, Oh my!

We have permissive parenting, no-fault divorce, birth control, and nursing homes to manage the messy human elements in our relationships.  We buy on credit and live beyond our means.  We pick our friends based on the way they make us look and the number of warm fuzzies they give us.

It's easy, really.   People who affirm all my decisions and tell me I deserve everything all the time = friends.

People who take too much effort or get all "Judge Judy" on me =  target practice.

You all exist to meet my felt needs.  Makes me want to give myself a giant hug!  Sing it with me!  "Learning to love MYSELF is the greatest love of all."

"But wait," says the child to the under-dressed emperor, "we can't all be the most important person in the universe, can we?"

"No!"  we all answer in unison, "only I am."

Hmmm.  Someone's not thinking this through.  Someone's being lied to.  And I think it is me.

And you.

And everyone else.

And here is where I start talking to Christians only.

For shame, people!  Stop looking at the world like a giant chocolate chip cookie!  Have you ever noticed that there is no end to our felt needs, and thus, no way to meet them?  They show up looking all innocent, with their big, teary eyes, but beware!  They are like a terrible cross between aliens and rabbits.  Once you let them in, they start having babies.  And they WILL take you over.

Our biggest needs are the ones we don't want to feel.

Like, "Dear Sandra, You are dead in your sins.  You haven't had a decent impulse since the day you were born and you NEED a Savior to deliver you from your hopeless condition."

"Dear Sandra, you are a new creature in Christ, but lately you have been laying down a pattern of selfishness in your marriage.  Die to yourself a little more."

"Dear Sandra, you are speaking unkindly to your children when they interrupt your agenda.  Die to yourself a little more."

Dear Sandra, you are being critical of people in your church instead of laying down your life for them.  Die to yourself a little more."

Dear Sandra, you have been filling up your time with an avalanche of fluff and twaddle.  You need to put down the gardening magazine, turn off the Jane Austen movie, and pick up your Bible."

Get the picture?  My felt needs are usually the ones that get in the way of me noticing my actual needs. 

Fellow Christians, your best friends are the ones who love you enough to urge you to listen to the voice of the Spirit in your lives.  They are the ones who are close enough to irritate you with their honesty and goodness, and sometimes, with their tough love.

Yes, we ought to encourage one another and build each other up, but when you see me leaving the track and heading for Arby's in the middle of my race, I want you to call me out.  Don't affirm me in my choice of the Jamocha shake or clap when I super-size my curly fries.  That is not friendship!  That is sabotage, and should make me wonder whose team you are really on.

We are bought with a price.   We are not our own, and we need to remember Whom we represent.  If an Olympic swimmer starts heading sideways across the pool, you can bet his team isn't going to cheer him over the lane lines.  In the same way, as soldiers for Christ, if we buy into the "all affirmation, all the time" mindset, then we are cheering for defeat, and we become useless.

So, come on teammates, grab me by the shoulders and remind me that I'm supposed to be running.  Show me where the line is.  I'll do the same for you!  We can run together!

Don't let me leave my marriage when it gets tough!  Push your nose up against the window of my conscience until I wither under your gaze.  Whisper Scripture in my ear even as I turn away.  Love me home.

Don't let me loiter in a cesspool of selfishness--anywhere.  Ask me about my finances, about the way I spend my time, about my parenting.  Challenge my thinking with the Word of God.  Share what you are learning in your own studies!

 Don't let me abandon my church family because they didn't live up to my standards in programming, presentation, polish, or puffery.  Call me to serve, dare me to demonstrate commitment that runs deeper than a disagreement over carpet color or a perceived snub in the foyer on the second Sunday of last April.

None of us is really that lovable, and especially in a smallish body, there are many opportunities for me to cause offense, chances to misunderstand and be misunderstood, public failures, squabbles, and open imperfections.

In fact, I promise right now, fellow A. B. Church Members, that I will ask too much of you.  I will fail to meet your expectations at times. We will disagree on how things should be done.

Praise the Lord!  Your ability to love me through THAT mess (and my ability to love you) will show the world the power of Christ!

I'm going to give you the chance to put Colossians 3:13-14 in action.  "Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."

 And over a long life of shared experiences, you will probably test me in that as well.

Yes, I could pick up my ball and go to a different court--maybe a gym with five courts playing at once so I can avoid the players that irritate me.

I could commit with 70% of my heart and one toe out the door, so that when The Church of the More Perfect Fit comes along, I'll be ready to jump.

I could attend with my clip board, a set of scorecards, and my spiritual gift of criticism, so that you will always know how you are measuring up.  

Tempting sometimes...but, I am not a consumer, and you, my beloved church family, are not a brand of cereal.

And you, sweet husband, precious children, priceless friends, are not disposable or replaceable.  I am supposed to be painting a picture of covenantal love in my relationships for all the world to see.  We are a body.  As much as might like to sometimes, I am not free to go out and shop for a new set of knees or eyeballs when mine don't suit. 

Consider the famous "love passage" in 1 Corinthians 13.  " Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and it not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)  It shouldn't just be a chapter you pull out when your bride is skinny and her skin is flawless.  Anyone can love Barbie! 

Wait until your wife has a week of carping and weeping, or a bout of depression, or when she starts to look like a raisin with hair.  You will listen to her slurping her coffee across the table and get the sudden urge to move to Ecuador.  But instead you will respond with tenderness and shine your eyes at her, because you have heard the voice of the Spirit, and you have died to YOU so that you can live for HER.  What a picture!  There's some power there!

If we are leading with our felt needs, taking our own pulse every 14 seconds, making sure that our desires and our reality line up perfectly, what time will there be for, "Love one another as I have loved you"?

Without daily dying to yourself, daily practice listening to the Spirit as He reveals your true needs, how will you find the strength to "...love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins"?  1 Peter 4:8

How will the world not scoff at our ragged band if we act just like they do in their dealings with one another--if we lead with our emotions, bail on our relationships when things get tough, and shop for people like we do for produce?

We need to take stock, because we are starting to look like everybody else.

How about the way we bury our elderly parents in living tombs...er, nursing homes,  instead of caring for them ourselves?

 How about our view of children?  God calls them a gift, but His people have largely adopted the world's "new and improved" view and they have become just another commodity--something to be tolerated in sharply limited numbers, at our convenience, on our timetable, and then sent off to be raised by paid strangers so we can fulfill our full potential in the workforce.   Where is the difference, people of God?  Why do we keep drinking the cultural Kool-Aid?  (A great blog on this topic can be found at http://getalonghome.com/2013/01/children/ )

If you don't have anyone in your life who will lovingly drag you away from your obsession with your felt needs, you are poor indeed.  And I don't mean someone you get together with so you can cluck over the way everyone else is failing in their Christian duty.  We all like to nod our heads until the fire gets close to our tail-feathers.  But honestly, it is that heat of conviction that should move us to make painful changes in our lives.  Changes which will refine us into something more like Christ--something different and beautiful and useful.

Our love should be on a level above the ordinary.  Not consumer-oriented, not self-seeking, not mere emotion. This was the express desire of our Lord.  He prayed for it for us as he was about to give His life. 

 “My prayer is not for them [the disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." John 17:20-23

I've been thinking about this a lot since my dear Grammi passed away two weeks ago. 

For most of the last eight years of her life, she lived in the house next door to us,  lovingly cared for by my parents, her daughter and son-in-law.  She was the sweetest of ladies for much of that time, even as her memory slipped.  But she required a lot of care.  

I watched my parents say no to activities and events they would have loved as Grammi grew too weak to attend.  I saw how they willingly made their world smaller as hers diminished.  In the last year, she was bed-ridden, forgetful of who she had been and who we all were, sometimes combative, sometimes non-responsive, always needy.  She was fed bite by bite.  She drank spoon by spoon.  It took an hour every time Mom got her up, and an hour every time she put her to bed, three times a day.  
  
Mom and Dad kept her surrounded by gentleness, familiar things, beloved people, sweet music, kind hands, and good food long after Grammi even noticed or remembered.  Her hair was always done and her outfits always had a touch of her favorite blue.  Every call in the night was answered.  Every whim was indulged.  

Willing help came from Grammi's daughters and from her great-grandchildren, some of whom have not yet reached double digits!

People from our church came to help at different times during those years, although they were not related in any way.  An 18 year old girl stayed and gave Grammi exquisite care for weeks on end so that Dad could work the farm.  Another young girl traveled up to the farm to help Grammi, Mom, and Dad there.  A couple with grown children lived with Grammi for a month, again so Mom could help on the farm. 

I am not trying to embarrass anyone with praise.  Only to say that there is no natural explanation for such a phenomenon.  There was no benefit to the people who cared for Grammi.  To be blunt, her evolutionary value for most of those years was in the negative numbers. 

So why would people sacrifice like that?  

It comes from a covenant of love, first made by God to us, and then flowing by His power through us to proclaim hope to a groaning world.  "We love because He first loved us."  

"Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

 Imagine what would happen if  we professing Christians were all shining unveiled faces together more of the time!

It would be utterly arresting.  And ray after ray of  pure love would light up the picture of the cross to a dying world. 

And that, after all, is why we are here.   

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"By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35).