Guilt and Shame

Driving past a church recently they had posted "no guilt and shame here".

Sure, we get where that is coming from.  Later that week I heard a story from a preacher who said he had a friend who was an alcoholic.  That friend decided one morning, still drunk and smelling like it, to just give church a single try.  He said he sat in the back and felt so much condemnation and judgment that he will never go back into a church.

My favorite way of stopping people from doing something is to use guilt as well.

"HEY JERKS, STOP SHAMING PEOPLE, YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED FOR ACTING LIKE THAT"

In general I agree that shame and guilt are bad when they hang on to people like a shackled lead ball keeping them from living life.  But no shame a guilt is insanity.

If I kill somebody, chop them up and keep them in my freezer and feel no guilt all of society agrees I'm insane.

If I go home and slap my kid because I'm annoyed, nobody is judging me when they say I'm a bad person. I am a bad person and should be ashamed of who I am.

Where shame is bad is when somebody abused you and that shame is shackled to you holding you back from your own life.

Where guilt is bad is if you are found guilty of a crime, you pay your fines and do your time but afterward you choose a life of crime because, hey, once a criminal always a criminal.

Taking medicine is good when you are sick.  Taking medicine when you are not sick is addiction.

sticking it to yourself

See if this doesn't ring true for you.

I decide to do something for a reason.  Then in my doing the thing, I do it in such a way as to ruin the original reason of why I was doing it.

Let's get a little tacky and add some deets.

I decide that I want to have a relaxing day with the family.  So I pick a hike for us to go on.  Then I don't prepare so right before we leave I'm tearing around the house trying to find the cooler, get kids in the right shoes and yelling at everybody.  Then I'm feeling guilty because we left three hours later then we should.  Then I'm hiking in the middle of the day and it's roughly a hundred and fifty degrees.  Then we all get back to the house and in my hustle to get ready I wrecked the place so it's a nightmare walking back in.  The day ends, everybody is exhausted from relaxing and hoping super dad will just have a drink and leave them alone for the remainder of the day.

Then I pay for it all the following day when I have to clean all day just to get back even.

Why do we do that?  Why do we sabotage.  Let me throw another example.

We want a place to escape.  So we buy a cabin in the woods.  Then we feel guilty most of the time because we never go there.  Then when we do go there, we have to work the whole time because we've been neglecting it for months.

How come when we want something we don't ask why?  Then ask why again.  Then again.  Then solve those problems.

I want to escape.  Why?  Because I'm feeling stressed in my life.  Why?  Because we go all the time and it's noisy and hectic.  Why?  Because I can't prioritize my days to fit in things that I need to (quiet meditation time) and want to (making a meal).

Then, instead of buying a $100k cabin and sticking it to myself I buy an $8 day planner and start building in time for each family member to get quiet time and vocalize the things they actually enjoy doing.

And in the end, if we want to spend a weekend in a cabin, we just rent one for $500.  We are then forced to go because we only rented it for that one weekend, and there is no guilt afterward, just the memories.

There is plenty of life that is going to stick it to you.  Don't stick it to yourself.

crossfit and functional fitness

crossfit was formed ostensibly for people to become functionally fit.  The problem is, now it is just a "sport" about working out.  If you look at the athletes, I would argue there is equal functionality to a 6'6" 340 lb lineman in the nfl.  Both are perfectly built for what they do, functionality however is a funny word.

The problem with functional fitness is that almost none of us need to be fit at all.  If somebody weighed four hundred pounds they could still function in my current life.  Possibly less happy, possibly losing some of the mobility of things I enjoy but they would be more or less functional.

The most fit I have ever been was during my sophomore year of college when I was training as an All-American track and field sprinter.  But at that point I weighed 135 pounds at 5'10".

My most muscular was when I ran a construction company, I would stare at myself in the mirror and wonder how I could look so good and feel so bad.  Every day hurt, and work was actually work.

Both times, the goal was not fitness, it was respectively to be as fast as possible and to try to make money by working more.

We have rejected holiness in our religion because if we pursue holiness then we are admitting that there are times when we and others are not holy, and that is judgemental.

I think we love fitness because we are allowed to tell somebody "I'm just trying to be healthier".

Let's say you are out on the town, and you have a drink with a friend.  You are about to order a second and the friend says:

A)  No thanks, I'm trying to be healthier so I'm just going to stop at one.
B)  No thanks, I'm trying to be holier so I'm just going to stop at one.

One of those answers makes you think your friend is trying to be better and one makes you think your friend is a self righteous blowhard .

The reason we feel that way about people trying to holy is because we all have had a friend who was working on being holy and they simply became ridiculous.  They turned judgey and went overboard on a lot of things.

These people took the functional holiness that Jesus offers us and turned it into crossfit.

Jesus did twenty pullups, I can do thirty and then climb a rope.

Weakness and Strength

There is a section of a letter Paul wrote where he quotes God saying to him "..My strength comes into its own in your weakness."  (2 Cor 12:10 MSG).

I've always struggled with that, because it seems that God wants me to be a failure so he can show his forgiveness (at least that is how I always read it).  I've been wrong for so long that when I see that verse I just kind of shrug and move on because I don't like to wrestle in my mind when I disagree with the Bible.

But that is laziness.

So I started to wrestle with it.  And what I found is God is never happy that we are fallen.  He didn't start the story like that and he hopes the story doesn't end like that.

God is happy when he gets be God in a personal way to one individual.

So I've always read weakness as me sinning.  Because when I do something that I don't want to do my response is to try and stop doing it.  But I don't stop.  So then doing the wrong is my weakness.

But that is wrong.  My weakness is not the thing, my weakness is my inability to stop doing the thing.   I'm actually really strong at doing the wrong things. So we get rid of the word weakness and replace it with inability (this holds up under scrutiny when you look at the greek word for weakness).  So God's strength is shown when I have an inability.  But obviously it is not shown in my inability, it is shown when I am now able.

So God's strength is shown when I am strong doing something I was unable to do alone.  It is in the doing God is shown, not in my failing.  God wants to be shown in my success.

God doesn't want me to fail.  God wants me succeed and he want's to give me what I need to succeed and he want's me accept and acknowledge him giving it to me.  That's called a relationship.  And I think I'm finally ready to be in a relationship with God where I'm better for being in that relationship.  God calls my being better holiness.