Who Made YOU Mad? or “3 Questions for the Offended”

This is not the post I meant to write today. I meant to get back to blogging through the Articles of Religion, but I had an online exchange with my friend Tony Ares that forced me to do some real self-examination. 

Tony posted something about the debate over the Washington Redskins mascot debate. In our back and forth, Tony referred to the “ 'loud professionally offended' making decisions for all of us.”*  

The comment stopped me.

I started thinking about all the things that bother me today that didn’t bother me a year or two years ago.  I tried to mentally divide my offendednesses** into stuff I didn’t understand enough about to be angry and times when I jumped on the indignation bandwagon.

I couldn’t discern the difference. Not immediately. 

Can you?

Think about the political and social issues and activities that you think need to be outlawed or legalized after all the decades they’ve been whatever they are.

Think about them.

Did you read the book?  Did you then read an equally well researched and written book supporting the opposite viewpoint?

Or did you hear about it on Twitter or Facebook?

If the overwhelming majority of your friends and online followers believed the exact opposite and if you had heard the opposite opinion from all of them FIRST, would you still have the same opinion?  Would you still be offended?

This is important.  How much of your opinion is really YOUR opinion?

For who-knows-how-long, Adam and Eve walked around Eden buck naked and nobody had a problem with it.

And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2: 25)

Then one afternoon, they did something they’d never done: they put on clothes and hid from God. 

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.  (Genesis 3: 7, 8)

When God confronted them about this shift in their view of what was socially appropriate in a Pre-Fall society, Adam explained that he and his wife were now offended by their traditional state of primordial nudity. (Genesis 3: 10)

Why? 

“Who in crap’,”  (My paraphrase. You won’t find that phrase in the NIV.)  God asked “Who in crap told you that you were naked? I didn’t say anything was wrong with you being naked.  Why do you suddenly find it ‘offensive’?”

Adam’s response was evasive and embarrassing.  The gist though was that he did not arrive at his new opinion independently.  He had consumed opinion-based media in the form of fruit from the Tree of “Knowledge.”   And this new source of information had him and his wife looking at themselves and each other differently.

Adam and Eve had stopped seeing themselves the way God saw them and started seeing themselves the way a certain serpent saw them. 

Solomon once said, “Do not take to heart everything people say, Lest you hear your servant cursing you.”  (Ecclesiastes 7: 21)   In other words, “If you listen to everything everybody says you’ll find reasons to be mad.”

But some of you think, “Well, if that’s how they feel, then I wanna know.”  (Try to imagine me rolling my neck when I say that.  Better yet, don’t.)

To you who wanna know EVERYbody’s opinion, Solomon points out “Many times, also, your own heart has known that even you have cursed others.” (Ecclesiastes 7: 22) 

Is what they did/ said out loud really so much more offensive than what’s happened in your own heart? (Matthew 5: 20-22)

Who told you to be offended?

Now pause for a minute, because right now you might be absorbing what you think is my opinion instead of examining your opinions.  I am not trying to unoffend*** you.  I’m trying to get you to consider WHY this pisses you off and that doesn’t.  You may have good reasons.

But what if you don't have any reasons?

Christians especially have to be extra conscious and careful about simply copying and pasting the prevailing cultural opinion onto our minds.

Sometimes, popular opinion is right. 

And sometimes it’s not. 

The prevailing opinion during Jesus’ public ministry was that Jesus was either a new prophet or a reincarnated one (Matthew 16: 13, 14) .

The correct answer was something totally outside the mainstream. 

Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16: 16)

How did Peter find the courage to speak such a fringe opinion? 

He faced the 3 questions I have to face and you need to face as well.  They are the 3 questions Tony got me thinking about.  They’re the 3 questions God has been asking His children since the beginning.

The 3 questions come from the Father’s examination of Adam in the Garden and the Son’s examination of the disciples in the gospels.

Who told you that you were naked? (Genesis 3: 11)

Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? (Matthew 16: 13)

But who do you say that I am? (Matthew 16: 15)

The 3 Questions are:
 Who told you?
 What do they say?
 But what do you say?

I’m re-examining what offends  (and doesn’t offend) me by asking myself the 3 Questions.  I pray you’ll do the same. 

 Who told you to be offended?
What do they say to make you feel that way?
But what do you say for yourself?

May your final answer come from the right place.

“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 16: 17)

And may you be convicted if your answer comes from the wrong place.

But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”  (Matthew 16: 23) 

*(If you’re on Facebook, you can read the post and our exchange here. )

** Yes, “offendedness.” Well, it’s a word now.

*** “Unoffend” is also a word now.  It’s a verb.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

 Fairfield, Al 35064

NO. ACTUALLY, YOU DON'T KNOW

It’s popular say, “You don’t know my story.  You don’t know my struggle.”

Well sometimes we do.

For example, we all know the professional and personal life of actor and comedian Robin Williams.  You and I know the story of his life.  We can download a list of his struggles.

We know his story and struggles so well that when he committed suicide, we assumed that it had to do with his past struggles with drugs, or the past story of depression off-setting his manic stage presence, or the old story of an ego crushed by waning popularity.  We knew that these were problems he’d faced repeatedly in the past.   So people speculated and pontificated based on what they knew of his story and his struggles.

But we didn’t know until days after he died that Robin Williams had Parkinson’s disease.  This incurable, degenerative disease of the central nervous system gradually robs its victims of control of their body, their voice, and their mind. Advanced Parkinson’s brings dementia, but every stage of the disease causes depression.

So maybe Robin Williams wasn’t too “weak” to stay off drugs.  Maybe he wasn’t too much of a “coward” to deal with being less popular on camera.  Maybe he was, in the most basic, literal, physically observable sense of the word, just SICK.

Maybe Robin Williams wasn’t looking back at the stories and struggles we commonly knew of his past, but ahead at the new struggles and the impending story we didn’t suspect were in his future.

Robin Williams lead a very, very public life.  We knew his story.  We knew his struggles.

But we really didn’t know.

We didn’t know his whole story, and the struggles we knew weren’t the toughest struggles he had to face.

Which is true for EVERYone. 

No matter how well you know someone either publicly or personally, you never really know their whole story.    You may know what they HAVE struggled with; but until (and unless) they tell you, you don’t know what they ARE struggling with.

But we assume we know, don’t we?  At a certain point, we have so much information about them already that we stop listening. 

 

They start a sentence and you finish it for them----- but do you see the look in their eyes, a pained look that says, ”No.  That’s not what I’m feeling”?

They tell you what they feel and you waive it off because you’re certain it’ll pass like all the other times, but do you see the hurt in their eyes that says, “It’s not going to pass this time,” and maybe, “It’s NEVER passed.  You just stopped paying attention”?

Jesus’ disciples knew His story.   They’d been to His hometown of Nazareth.  They’d met His mom and siblings.  They’d heard the stories of His birth and early years in Bethlehem and Egypt.  Some of them were there,\ the day John baptized Him.  They witnessed the Pharisees' attacks.  They sat with Him at night and reviewed each long day of healing and preaching.  They asked Jesus about what he did in the years not recorded in the gospels.  They watched His every move for 3 ½ years.  The disciples knew Jesus’ story.  They knew Jesus’ struggle. 

But they really didn’t.

When Jesus said, “I’m going to be killed.”  They said, “No, you ain’t.” (Matthew 16: 21-23)

Jesus told them and showed them who He was.  They affirmed, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” but they didn’t really see Him for Who He is. (John 6: 69; 14: 1-12)

Jesus told His disciples what He needed from them as followers and as friends, but they assumed that it wasn’t that big a deal or that it would pass like every other previous storm had passed.

 And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.”…

Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping. (Matthew 26: 37-38, 40)

They didn’t see; they didn’t understand.    This wasn’t just a passing request.  This was it.  This was what it has always been, but you think you know me so well that you don’t take me seriously anymore.

“What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?”(Matthew 26: 40)

The night Jesus was taken away to be killed, He was alone.  He was in a garden with his 11 closest friends just a stone’s throw away, but He was alone because His friends didn’t really know His story.  They didn’t really know His struggle.

The disciples only really learned Jesus after His death and resurrection.

The public is learning Robin Williams after his death.

So sad, that we wait that long to really know someone’s story and struggle.

We don’t have to. 

Listen to the ones you love. Hear them for who they are not just for who you already automatically know they have been.

Give them the space to tell you what their story IS, what their struggles ARE.

You never know when morning will come and they won’t be there to tell you.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church (5220 Myron Massey Boulevard) in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to  

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

WHO TOLD YOU THAT WAS A GOOD EXCUSE?

            

Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”

So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” (Genesis 3: 9-11)

In Genesis chapter 3, God came down for His usual evening meeting in the cool of the day with Adam, but Adam wasn’t there.

The Lord called, “Adam, where are you?”

God didn’t ask because He couldn’t find Adam.  We wish that was why God asked.  We wish that we could hide from God when we sin, but that’s not the case.

God was really asking, “Adam, why aren’t you where you were supposed to be?  Why aren’t you in the place where I told you to meet Me?”

When the Lord shows up in worship, at your church, on Sunday morning----- Where are YOU?

Since the very first time, mankind’s sin has caused us to miss worship, to skip his time of fellowship with God, and then to make excuses.

“Lord,” said Adam, “I just couldn’t make it.  See, I’m naked, Lord.   I didn’t have a thing to wear.  And I couldn’t show up like that.”

And God said, “Who told you you were naked?”

Again, it’s not that God didn’t know.  God wasn’t requesting information.  God was saying, “Who told you that you were naked because I never brought up the fact that you were naked?”

You say you can’t serve because you’re not educated.  Well, who told you that you weren’t educated?  Who brought it up? Because God never brought up the fact that you don’t have a degree.

You say you can’t give because you’re not out of debt.  Who told you that you’re not out of debt?  God didn’t bring that up when He invited you to test Him with tithes and offerings and see won’t He open up the windows of Heaven and pour out a blessing that you don’t have room enough to receive. (Malachi 3: 10)

You say you can’t lead or help in ministry because you’re not comfortable with the responsibility.

Well, who told you that you’re not comfortable enough?  God didn’t bring up comfort when He called Moses to go back to Egypt and lead Israel out of bondage.

God never brought up comfort when He called a prophet, or a king, or an apostle, or a poor Jewish girl from Nazareth to go and walk out a great calling before His people.

 Adam wanted his lack of clothing to excuse him from showing up where God called him to be to do what God had called him to do.    What excuse are you using?  And who told you that that’s a good excuse? 

Cause God didn’t.

And by the way, when Adam said that he’d skipped the meeting with God because he was naked----- Adam wasn’t naked anymore.

Before God showed up in the Garden, Genesis 3: 7 says Then the eyes of both of [Adam and Eve] were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.  

YOU, like Adam, need to stop bringing up old stuff as an excuse for not walking in your calling now.

O.K., you messed up a marriage.  Where are you supposed to meet and serve God now?

O.K., you used to be an addict.  Where are you supposed to meet and serve God now?

O.K., you were a fool in college.  Where are you supposed to meet and serve God now?

O.K., you have been shirking and shaking your responsibilities in the church for a long time.  We get that.  Come back.  Meet God where He placed you and serve Him NOW!

But I have to warn you:  When you come back and face God, He is going to skip right past your excuses and force you to deal with the REAL PROBLEM.

Naked wasn’t Adam’s problem.  He had been naked and serving God just fine for the first 2 chapters of Genesis.

Naked wasn’t the problem.  Naked was a circumstance.  SIN was the problem.

So God called on Adam to deal with the real problem. 

“Ain’t nobody worried about you and naked,” God said.  “But tell me this Adam: Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” (Genesis 3: 11)

(This is where God cocks His lip, fold his arms, and taps His foot)

See, all that other stuff---about how you grew up, and how folks mistreated you, and what you didn’t used to have----- that’s all just circumstantial.

Stop putting the blame on your parents, or your boss, or White people, or immigrants, or the media, or your ex, or the woman whom You gave to be with me, Lord (Genesis 3: 12).

What did YOU eat that you weren’t supposed to?

What is YOUR SIN?   

What is YOUR role in your failures?

What did God tell YOU to do that you ain’t doing?

What (or whom) did God tell you to leave alone that you’re still messing with?

Adam never dealt with that.  And so, God stopped asking.   God stopped asking Adam to meet Him and serve in His garden.  But, Adam’s PURPOSE in the garden was to serve. So, since He couldn’t fulfill his purpose, he had to go.

Oh, wait.  You might be thinking that Adam’s purpose in the garden was to be fruitful, multiply, and have dominion.    I see where you’re coming from.

That’s was Adam’s purpose in the larger world, but to fulfill that purpose in a state of perfection and favor, Adam had to fulfill His purpose in the place where He was to meet God and serve.

When Adam lost Eden, he lost God’s favor.  Adam and Eve still went out to multiply and pursue dominion, but now they had to pursue it on cursed ground, through thorns and thistles, by sweat of his brow, with the ever-present oppressive possibility and inevitability of death dogging his every move.

Only grace kept Adam and Eve alive.  But grace doesn’t stop bad from happening.  Grace makes it possible for you to carry on despite the bad that happens.

Grace gave Adam and Eve a 3^rd son named Seth.  But Grace did not stop the curse from manifesting in Cain and making him the murderer of his own brother.

Our lives are a constant cycle of frustrations and failures.  We survive.  We persevere.  We find happiness because of grace.

But if we would meet God where He wants to meet us, deal with our own sin, and submit to His plan and calling, then we would experience something even better than grace.

We would experience FAVOR.

Now don’t get too crazy over terminology.  Grace and Favor are overlapping and sometimes indistinguishable concepts.  The point is that things can be better.

We can do better than just kinda, sorta, barely survive.

We can live and live life more abundantly.  We can.  You can.

But you have to stop making excuses.  You have to get up and show up where God called you to meet Him, experience His presence, and walk out the holiest, most spiritually intimate part of the God’s great calling on your life.

See you, Sunday.

  

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama, executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO) and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To listen to sermons and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme.blogspot.com .

You can help support this ministry by clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to

Hall Memorial CME Church

541 Seibles Road

Montgomery, AL 36116

A WORD TO THE WISE: Proverbs 29: 11, "Venting"

Proverbs 29: 11     A fool vents all his feelings, but a wise manholds them back.

Proverbs 29: 11.  Sometimes you just need to vent.

Sometimes you don’t need advice or a solution.  Sometimes there’s no solution to advise.  You’re just hurting and you need to vent some of the pain and pressure before you implode.

That’s O.K. 

When Jesus faced the grave of His friend Lazarus, He wept and groaned (John 11).  Eventually, Jesus prayed and changed the situation, but initially Jesus just needed to vent.

It’s O.K. to vent sometimes.

Sometimes, but not all the time.  And not to everybody.

Job vented his anguish to 4 friends and they spent the next 30 something chapters making him feel worse.

Eleven disciples went with Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemane, but when the time came for Jesus to pour out His heart about His passion, Jesus only took 3 disciples with Him, and He kept those 3 a stone’s throw away while He vented to His father (Matt. 26:36-39; Mark 14:32-36; Luke 22: 41).

Mary carefully observed young Jesus, how people responded to Him and how He answered people; but Mary didn’t tell everybody everything she saw or was told.  A lot of things she kept to herself and pondered them in her heart.   (Luke 2:19; Luke 2: 51)

Practice thinking before you vent.  Consider whom you’re about to tell and what you’re about to tell them.  Are they likely to help or to make matters worse?  Can you trust everybody in the room with your pain or do you need to pull a few people aside and vent alone?  

Think before you vent the most intimate details of the ongoing argument between you and your husband/ wife/ boss/ parent/ child/ whomever.  Will telling the entire planet by posting your business online help or harm the ultimate goal of solving the problem and healing the relationship?

Emotion can compel you to react immediately, but remember that the root of the word emotion is motion, which refers to movement.  In other words, feeling come and feeling go.   Emotion is temporary, but venting emotion has permanent consequences.

Once you’ve spoken, you can apologize; you can explain.  But, you cannot un-speak what you’ve said.  And your audience cannot un-hear what you’ve told them.

Once that rant or that pic is posted, one share, one copy/paste later and it’s out there---- forever, for the entire planet to relive and repost at will.

It’s O.K., to vent sometimes; but sometimes, probably most of the time, you need to hold back and be thoughtful about how you share your emotions.

Now, don’t share false emotions.  Don’t say you’re happy when you’re really broken-hearted.  Don’t say that you don’t care if they leave when you really want them to stay.  Speak truth or be silent.

Wisdom  means knowing when to do which.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a pastor, writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Call me at 334-288-0577
Email me at atgravestwo2@aol.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To hear sermons, read devotions, and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme@blogspotcom.