How can we know that the life we are living is a truthful life? For too many of us, a truthful life consists in intellectual agreement with a set of statements we believe are true, in many cases absolutely true. Sometimes those truths guide lives. People actually live out the convictions implied by the statements they hold as true.
Others…not so much. For them, agreeing to the right statements is good enough. They seem content to have the right beliefs and then go do whatever it is they do. For them the truths they have signed off on have little to nothing to do with how they live.
I guess we can all be a little guilty of that. Few of us actually live up to what we claim to be true all the time. And, it may not be too much of a stretch to say there are things we hold as true, even as sacred, that never manage to touch our lives. (Or maybe it goes the other way: maybe we always live what we claim to be true and our “religious” convictions are just a smoke screen.)
Several years ago I read a passage in Stanley Hauerwas’ book Why Narrative that suggested a different take on how we determine truth. As I recall, he suggested that we judge the truthfulness of our lives on the basis of what results from the performance of our lives.
While cutting the grass and dodging the yellow jackets who managed to nail me a couple of times yesterday, I came to this conclusion: a person who is marked by blessing is a truthful person because such a person is given to acknowledging and enhancing life.
A person of blessing leaves people feeling more alive.
A person of blessing creates circumstances that sustain life.
You are a manifestation of blessing and blessing flows through you to extend and enhance the lives of others. You are blessing’s way of getting from one person to the next, one generation to the next. Your neighbor is blessing’s way of getting from your neighbor to you.
Now that is what we are but that is not always the vision into which we live. We often live in ways that obstruct blessing.
I rented a carpet cleaner the other day at Lowe’s. I took it home on Wednesday but didn’t start to use it until about three hours before it was due to be returned. I turned it on and it didn’t work. I did what I was supposed to do: I called the Rug Doctor Company.
I ended up talking to Jane in Mumbai. Jane dropped my call. I called back and ended up talking to Todd in Mumbai. He walked me through some steps and nothing. He told me I would have to return it but “not to worry” they would extend me another 24 hours at no cost.
The woman at Lowe’s eyed me with suspicion and gave me the third degree as to why I had not returned it earlier. When I tried to explain she went all prosecutorial on me. “Where were you on the night of October 3rd?”
I felt the anger rising up within me. I leaned across the counter, narrowed the old uni-brow, and said: “What are you implying?” (I am sure she could smell brimstone.)
Blessing was not flowing through me. Cursing was about to- though thankfully it didn’t.
When I returned the cleaner the next day I apologized to her. She laughed and said to her colleagues: “He scared the be-jesus outta me yesterday!”
You can be sure if you are scaring the be-jesus (the “be-jesus” of all things!) out of someone that you are not allowing blessing to flow through you…
In that moment my life had become a lie. However, in the moment of apology and reconciliation- if even over the counter at Lowe’s- my life regained its truth.
Life blooms in the flow of blessing from one to another.
Greg Boyd calls it “believism.” Apparently the message of Christ is to be a good deal more transformative than just giving us a new set of propositions to affirm.
I’m finding the more I “set my eyes on Jesus as the author and finisher” (subject and object) of my faith, the more transformed I am. Like you, though, I’m still working on the every day details.
This week I was called by a member of my church who had a bone to pick with me about something that truly did not matter, and his intent was NOT to bless, but to curse. It was an extremely painful call, perhaps the most hurtful things anyone has said to me in many years. I reflected later that, had he said those things to me five years ago, I might have gone postal on him, but thanks be to Jesus, the Lord is working me into someone else. Instead of returning his violent rage with more violence, I was able to “turn the other cheek” (in the Miroslov Volfian sense of experiencing the abuse and not retaliating as a statement of its wrongness). I said nothing more than, “No, I don’t think so,” and “I see,” (both of which infuriated him).
Of course, I sobbed after the call…I had always sort of thought of him as being “in my corner.”
Thanks for the good word, Jim. The posts have been a blessing to me…
Jason
Sorry to hear of your experience, Jason, but thrilled at the response. In my experience, hurt precedes fear and fear preceds anger. More often than not the angry response- which in my past has been all too often- grows out a deeper awareness that “this person scares me” or at least “threatens me”.
had a guy tell me once that we grow angry when we say to ourselves: “things should not be this way”, which as he pointed out is sort of silly given that things, in the moment, are this way.
Hang in there… Prophets often take a whuppin’
If you don’t mind praying for me today, the caller I told you about left me a message yesterday to call him back. My estimate is that it’s a 50/50 chance he either wants to apologize or scream some more.
You were right on about the intimidation factor. This is a person who already intimidates me. So, I battled with talking to him back when I thought he liked me. Today the absolute last thing that I want to do is call back, but I think I need to.
So…as soon as I get on the road, I call…<>
Will do!