pride

CBG: Pride

June 8, 2020 — Leave a comment

Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; “and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.” As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

Romans 11:25-33
A letter to my Queer Eye Loving Christians or Christians in general

Prayer: God shake our knowledge and remove our grip on knowing so we can expand our faith in you.

What part of your identity is attacked when your ideology is challenged?

Sh*t Christians Don’t Say: Egos

July 9, 2019 — Leave a comment

We all LOVE preaching at the pulpit pride is bad. Pride comes before the fall. Those who are proud will be humbled. We will preach our lungs out about being humble and to set aside yourself, for Jesus… and maybe for others.

Yet do we do that when we engage with someone who challenges our theology, our thought process, our framework? Do we really hold an openness to engage humbly with those who present a different way of thinking?

I am very guilty of wanting immediately to write someone off if they love Trump or say something so overtly racist that my heart aches and I fume. And for many people, they would find no error in my ways. But I really don’t want to be that person. Jesus hung out with people who disdained him, who believed and said very contrary things to him. Yet he managed to hold space. I am not Jesus and I probably could not withhold the pain and harm as well as he did, (well I guess he didn’t either — he died.) But I really want to try. I don’t want my circles to be of people who all think like me. Diversity is so buzzy nowadays, and to that, how broad is our landscape of diversity. Do we have diversity in color, gender, socioeconomics, faith, career, thought and so forth? Look around, do the people you hang with all look, think and act like you?

This is not to say that you should let ANYONE into your inner temple. Nah people need to earn your trust for those inner courts. What does trust entail? Love and safety. Commitment and faithfulness. Forgive the and humility. Vulnerability and an ability to listen. Hopefully a sense of humor and no judgy eyes when I kill a bag of Hot Fries. The last few I added for my specific courts.

But I really do try and it is hard and ever increasingly impossible. It requires breaths and filters and thinking the best of another. It’s hard but thus is life. I’m friends with Christians and heathens alike. But why is it that so many of my Christian friends can not handle conversations where their frameworks are being challenged? It’s as if their faith is in their framework, not in their God. God is rooted. God is unchangeable, but our frameworks can. How does Jesus talk to people? Differently depending on who he is talking to? He’s the same. He has integrity. When I challenge especially white Christians on race, gentrification, and god, white male Christians, on being a woman, I honestly am often met with skepticism and defensiveness. They meet me as if I’m an anomaly and I must prove every point I make. Again that feeds into the fact that YOU ARE IN THE DOMINANCE AND REVERSE RACISM & SEXISM DO NOT EXIST.

Please for the love of God trust that I am not demolishing your worth and your God when we have uncomfortable complicated complex conversations. I am trying to bring us closer, to find a common ground. Stop equating your worth with your mind and thoughts and your life here. That’s your ego. Your EGO should be killed because then you will all the more know your worth and God are still immovable.

Day 50: Gratitude upwards

February 4, 2019 — Leave a comment

Numbers 31-32; Psalm 50

To offer our thanksgiving as sacrifice is to give gratitude away freely. Are there times we withhold thanks? What is sacrifice? Sacrifice is to give something up that could benefit another while subtracting from you. When can giving gratitude and thanksgiving benefit another while taking from yourself? How does it benefit God while lessening ourselves?

In offering thanks, we acknowledge the reason for the good or blessing isn’t us, it’s God. He is the reason for our provision. He is the reason we are alive. He is the reason we have hope and joy in this world. It is not our own doing. We cannot take credit. That humbles us. That puts us in our place. That helps us to stay low and not get a big head. God doesn’t need our material sacrifices or meaningless thanks; he wants us to acknowledge that he is the originator of our lives and our wellbeing.

Day 49: What goes up must come down!

February 3, 2019 — Leave a comment

Numbers 28-30; Psalm 49

Man in his pomp but without understanding will perish like beasts…

How true! Pride will be the death of us all. Pride separates us from our fellow earthlings. Pride makes us think we are floating above ground. Pride acts like protection but makes us irritably defensive. Pride makes us invulnerable.

Where does pride come from? Pride in my work and my country, etc aren’t inherently bad. It’s an appreciation and a love. It’s when that love gets possessive…How does it evolve? Entitlement? Being used to good things and having a grip too tight on it? Thinking that you deserve or should have control of how everything should go? How can we prevent a love from devolving into entitlement?

We must try to love without finding your worth in the thing you love. Because when our worth is dependent on something that can change, if that thing changes, we start to freak out, grip harder and work to make sure that something remains the same. But if we can separate our worth from what we love and what we have, even if those things were to disappear, our reaction would be different. We might go to sadness, anger and grief before pride. And if you can be present with those former emotions, they can move. So yes, be proud of what you are and what you have, but hold those with understanding. Then if they go away, you also won’t go away like a beast.

The only thing we can love that will never never change is God. So that is the one thing we can find our true worth in, without it crushing us!