Mercy - Part 2: Extending Mercy to Ourselves

So when you make a mess of things, how do you treat yourself?

In your own experience of weakness, how do you respond?

Do you punish yourself? Do you view yourself with contempt? Does shame take over?

If you notice that you turn away quickly and try to sweep it under the rug, you're probably reacting to shame about your weakness - you just might be so good and fast at sweeping that you don't even get a chance to feel it anymore.

I think the difficulty we have in extending mercy to others, is primarily rooted in our difficulty extending mercy towards ourselves.

My contempt for other people's weakness is because I have contempt for my own. Yuck. What an awful thing for a psychologist to admit. The truth is, in my professional work I rarely feel contempt for other people because mercy and compassion are an integral part of my role. I've always loved that the therapy context allows my better self to shine through because of the expectation both patient and therapist have that I will be gentle and kind. But as a regular guy, I can be so hard on people. Ask my wife and kids.

Who gets angry at a 5 year-old for still needing help putting their jacket on? This guy. Yep. I can even recognize in the back of my mind that my kids ask for help at times not because they actually can't do it themselves, but because they want physical and emotional closeness with me. But still, I'm pissed off that I have to stop what I'm doing and help them. I'm disgusted by their weakness...sometimes even when it is age appropriate. But why do I do this? Because I'm disgusted by my own weakness.

And there's a real temptation in the midst of this honesty about my own lack of extending mercy to call myself some terrible names and apply labels...to categorize myself as some kind of monster. There's a temptation to make myself out to be less than human because I fail to live up to my expectations that I should somehow be more than human.

But God doesn't view me with these same unrealistic expectations. Nor does God degrade me below my humanity by calling me the awful names I call myself either. God sees me, and you, for what we are: human. Repeatedly, in the Hebrew and Christian and even Muslim scriptures God's character is described as inherently "merciful", or literally: full of mercy.

So a life filled with expressions of mercy begins with a heartfelt knowledge that God, however you understand Him/Her/It, is first and foremost merciful towards you. In recognizing God's mercy towards us, we can begin to be merciful towards ourselves, and eventually merciful towards others.

1 John 4:19 says that, "we love because He first loved us". If mercy is a form of love, than it's also true that we are merciful, because He is first merciful to us.

When I being to deal with my weakness in the way that God deals with weakness -mercy- I am free to move past my contempt for myself. When I stop encountering my failures with contempt, I will begin to bring mercy rather than anger or dismissal or retribution to the way I deal with the weaknesses of my children and wife. And it's not just an intellectual exercise, although I think it could be helpful to have an explicit understanding of mercy. But primarily our capacity to extend mercy to ourselves and others grows out of experience - that deeper kind of "knowing" that humans have when we have been shaped by experiencing something in our own lives. When I experience the mercy of others towards me, I am able to give mercy to myself and to others.

Perhaps nowhere else in literature is this so clearly illustrated as in Victor Hugo's: Les Miserables. The story centres around Jean Val-Jean, a man who steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving family and endures the "justice" of 30 years in jail as a result. When he is finally released the merciful act of a priest allows him to start a new life, in which he devotes himself to acting mercifully to others, even those who were unmerciful to him, and particularly the ruthless inspector Javert.

In this exploration of mercy, one of the points Hugo seems to be making is that mercy that is given, largely grows as a response to mercy that has been received. The priest (a symbol of God's presence on earth) extends mercy to Jean Val-Jean, who in turn extends mercy to others. Not because mercy is some form of cosmic chain-letter, but because mercy transforms us at the core of our being.

So if we need to experience mercy in order to give it well to others, how do we get there?

Do we wait for something to happen in which other's can show us mercy? Do we intentionally do something terrible as a way of creating opportunities for others to be merciful?

I think mercy is woven into the fabric of the universe, and is ours to discover and experience if we are open to it. I think God and others are constantly expressing mercy towards us if we learn to pay attention to all the ways it is occurring but that so often we overlook in our chronic state of mindlessness. A friend of mine talks about the "flow of forgiveness" that is present in the universe. I think there's a flow of mercy too. It's a flow that contradicts survival of the fittest. It's a dynamic we can see everywhere that people are responding to each other with kindness and love rather than dominance and force.

I see mercy in the way my wife responds when I crash our car into an "invisible" post in a parking lot

I see mercy in the response of thousands of aid workers meeting the physical needs of a flood of refugees coming from Syria.

I see mercy from a neighborhood church that opens it's building to recovery groups.

I see mercy in a justice system when it recognizes that imprisoning people for minor drug related offences is futile and overly punitive.

I see mercy in a dad who is gentle with himself for failing to be always patient with his young children.

Where do you see it?

There's a reason why we cry when we watch Les Miserables, why our hearts are warmed by that story, and why it's the greatest selling musical of all time. It's because deep down we resonate with mercy. Our hearts recognize that it is an expression of the mystical force in the universe that changes people. The force that rescues all of us who are prisoners to something, and sets us free to become people of mercy ourselves.

Even today as we choose how to respond to ourselves in the midst of weakness, can we adopt God's merciful perspective in the way we think and feel about our failures?

May you find ways to tune-in to God's expressions of mercy towards you. May you sense the flow of mercy in the world and be changed by it.  May you join the flow of this force that sets you free from the prison of your own self-loathing and hatred and makes you into an instrument of mercy in this world.

Mercy - Part 1: Never saw it coming

Sometimes life flashes before our eyes and we realize how in an instant everything could be changed.

It happened to me last week when a neighbour of mine was backing out of his driveway and didn't see my daughters walking to school. Fortunately I saw him...and a tragedy was averted.

He was mortified. And somehow in my state of relief, I found the capacity to be merciful.

I don't tend to think about mercy very often, do you?

I've mostly assumed mercy was something a person in authority or power gave to another when they treated that person better than they deserved to be treated. Like a judge giving a lesser sentence than the crime deserves.  Or perhaps a teacher being lenient with a late assignment. To me, through most of my life mercy was reserved primarily for God forgiving our sins, and in the metaphor of penal substitutionary atonement: allowing wicked humans to escape from punishment.

And it may mean those things, but this week I've been experiencing a richer understanding of what it means to be merciful.

Mercy is the response of kindness and gentleness we extend to others in the midst of their weakness and failings. 

Where it seems so reasonable and natural to respond with anger, vindictiveness, retaliation, indifference, or a demand for justice - mercy chooses a different path. It chooses to be kind and gentle.

We can extend mercy to all kinds of people.

Sometimes to the stranger - how might we show mercy to the refugees of Syria?

Sometimes to our spouse - how do we respond when they hurt us?

Sometimes to our children - how do we respond when they do their own thing instead of accepting our loving guidance?

Sometimes to our religious leaders and institutions - how do we care for them in the midst of their failings to accomplish what we expect of them?

Mercy may not be so difficult when the infraction is small. But when we've been hurt or harmed by another person, it becomes so hard, maybe even seemingly impossible.

Part of my ignorance of mercy is a lack of conceptual precision. I always lumped it in that heap with ideas like forgiveness and grace and compassion. And likely this is so because they all do overlap. To me, forgiveness is the act of relinquishing the debt of another. Grace is any form of unmerited favour. And compassion is the concern we have for another.

But mercy is slightly specific in being an action of kindness towards another in their state of weakness. Mercy may be an expression of grace, it may involve forgiveness, and we may feel compassion in the midst of it. But it may involve none of those either. It is possible to be kind and gentle in the midst of weakness to those who fully deserve it, owe us nothing, and evoke little feeling of personal care or concern. You might even argue that mercy sounds a lot like love when you break it down, and I would agree. But love takes many forms of expression, and I think mercy is just one of the ways we love others.

Fundamentally mercy is a decision about how we will respond to the weakness of others. 

We are confronted with the weakness of others all the time. And those who are close to us bring expressions of their weaknesses most clearly and regularly, and they affect us most deeply with them.

Mercy is not easy, nor is it something we should expect ourselves to able to do in every circumstance. God's character is merciful - ours is not. We are becoming, but not yet like God. As humans we will find it very difficult at times to be merciful because most of us are relatively inexperienced in expressions of mercy. Like most things of value and character in life, mercy must be practiced. We must engage in an intentional practice of relating to others with mercy, learning to see the opportunities we have for it each day.

We talk in church about joining God in his mission of redeeming all creation. It seems such a grand and distant scheme at times. We struggle with the gap between our aspirations to be people engaged in mission compared to the reality of our corporate lives. We are frustrated with ourselves and each other about failures we have in accomplishing what we aspire to. But mercy is one of those specific and practical ways we can "be missional" without being fooled into believing that we must do "bigger" things to embody the kingdom of God. We can participate in God's saving of the world by being merciful in the small and the big of each day.

When our spouses live out their weakness.
When our friends seem to have abandoned us.
When our children don't listen or do what they're asked.
When our neighbours are selfish.
When our rights are trampled by the inconsiderateness of others.
When people we care about hurt us.
When the recklessness of others changes our lives in a tragic accident.
When leaders fail us.
When our values are attacked or violated.
When things that are sacred to us are scorned or ridiculed.
When we are betrayed.

We may not immediately recognize all of these things as signs of others' weakness...but almost always they are. They are expressions of failings and selfishness that are inherent in our human frailty. How we respond to them is an opportunity to choose mercy.

Most of us don't live lives where mercy is expressed in visible or dramatic ways. Few of us have opportunities like the bishop in Les Miserables who extends mercy to Jean Val-Jean by giving him a chance to restart his life with gift of those candlesticks instead of turning him over to Inspector Javert. (Did you know that the title "Les Miserables" can be translated: "the ones in need of mercy"?)

But the daily mercy we can give comes in those small moments of interaction when we choose to be kind rather than attack. It involves our tendencies towards "soft vengeance":  mocking,  criticizing, shaming, ridiculing, dismissing, or any of the things we do to place ourselves above those whose weakness we can so easily see. Instead of demanding "justice" as we define it, we take on God's perspective and meet people at their worst with an unexpected kindness.

My neighbour instantly learned his lesson about backing out without looking both ways- he has two small daughters of his own and I could tell by the look of realization on his face. But the other thing he didn't see coming was mercy. None of us do. Mercy is a shocking, life changing, better-than-you-would-ever-dare-hope-is-possible, gift from God. It allows us to be so much better than we could be on our own...and it might just save the world.

I think mercy is complicated and I want to unpack it further in my next post. But for now I invite you to rediscover mercy. Beyond our doctrinal notions of the place of mercy in the universe, I invite you to find and give mercy in your everyday mess. When weakness and its consequences invade your space, may you be open to trying on mercy as a practice, to yourself and to others.

“It is mercy, not justice or courage or even heroism, that alone can defeat evil.” 
― Peter Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind the Lord of the Rings

Anxiety Part X - Doesn't the Bible tell us not to be anxious?

There's some thinking and writing hanging around Christian circles these days on the topic of anxiety that I have significant concerns about. It would be easy to ignore if it wasn't being presented under the banner of a movement that refers to itself as "biblical counselling", which implies a sort of indisputable authority and truthfulness. But the work coming out of this school of thought is not just bad psychology, it's bad exegesis.

When looking to the bible for wisdom on anxiety the most frequently cited passages are: Philipians 4:6 ("...don't be anxious about anything...") and Matthew 6:25 ("...don't be anxious about your life, what you will wear or what you will eat...").

In both, the greek word being translated to "anxious" is merimna. This word has been translated to "anxiety" in these two passages but often translated to mean "worry" or  "care", as in 1 Peter 5:7 (..."cast all your cares upon him..."). But merimna really derives from the Greek merimnaō, which is about being separated from the whole. Some scholars suggest that this usage of the word is inferring a dividing and fracturing a person's being into parts. Perhaps a caring about something so much that it divides your soul rather than being a fully whole person. Interestingly, Jesus' words in the Matthew 6 passage are immediately following his teaching on not being able to serve two masters - that a house divided against itself can't stand.

It's a huge leap to assume that what Jesus or Paul, or the authors of the biblical texts meant by the word "anxious" was exactly the same as how we mean it today.

What do we mean exactly by the word "anxiety" today anyhow? This is another problem - we don't even have consistent or precise definitions of anxiety in our popular culture, or even in clinical usage. 

So before you go reading these passages and assuming God is against or displeased with your particular experience of anxiety, we need to slow down a little and admit to a lack of textual clarity.

Moreover, these passages in Phil 4 and Matt 6 are not the giving of commandments. Notice how when Jesus summarizes the law He says: "love the Lord your God and love your neighbour as yourself"....he doesn't add, "and don't be anxious, either". Obviously not all passages of scripture are commandments, some are instructive but within a particular context. When Jesus tell this group not to be anxious about clothing or food, he's talking to a specific context, not necessarily laying down a universally applicable principle. 

The sad thing is, by throwing these verses at people, we've often made them feel like failures for having anxiety, as if to experience this part of humanity is to have sinned. 

John McArthur suggests exactly this in his book: Anxious for Nothing. McArthur comes to the conclusion that anxiety is simply a failure to trust God, no ifs, ands, or buts. If you're anxious, you're sinning, because you're telling God He isn't enough, isn't worthy of your trust, isn't really going to take care of you.

Perhaps this works for McArthur in dealing with his own life, but from where I sit, this is not only terrible theology, it's useless psychology. It only makes people feel worse and keeps them stuck in their anxiousness. Now they're not just anxious, they're also feeling like depraved failures who are spitting in God's face when they worry.

I'm going to avoid a long rant here about so-called "biblical counselling", but this is exactly the kind of dangerous and misguided "advice" that movement is producing. It's dangerous because it pretends to have the authority of the Scriptures to give bad and even damaging answers to people who are in mental anguish. Even worse, its advocates openly state that health care providers not under this banner are giving untrue and ungodly counsel. The largest Christian domination in the United States publicly supports and funds this approach.

But let's not forget, friends of so called "biblical counselling" that Jesus sweats drops of blood the night before He's crucified. A bizarre physiological reaction indeed - but for sure sweating when not exercising is a classic symptom of anxiety. He also calls out to his Father to spare Him from being crucified. This seems like avoidance to me, which as most people know, is associated with....anxiety.  He can't sleep. Well, insomnia does tend to hound the anxious. So if anxiety is a sin, you're going to have to tie yourself in some pretty tight theological knots to explain away how the sinless Son of God is visibly anxious the night before his death. 

And just because you read the bible and quote it doesn't mean you're teaching God's truth. Jesus makes it plenty clear to the Pharisees of his day that they have a perverse way of using the scriptures to impose an agenda on people and that very often they've completely missed the ways God works in the world. So let's get off our Christian high horses and approach this with some humility and honesty about the complex ambiguity of scripture, especially when it comes to many things psychological.

What if we were to accept that anxiety is a natural human experience? An emotion, accompanied by certain kinds of physiological manifestations and certain characteristic ways of thinking?

Remember how years ago the church used to teach that sexual desire was a bad thing? In more recent  years some people of faith kind of came to their senses and realized that sex is a gift, that the desire for it is also a gift, but that the real problem is how we relate to that gift, or what we do with it?

It's time for anxiety to get a similar sort of re-understanding. Anxiety is a gift. It keeps us safe. Unlike almost any other species on earth humans can think ahead and anticipate the terrible things that could happen and plan for how we might reduce the likelihood occurrence. We wear our seat belts in our cars because we have the capacity to be anxious about being mortally wounded in a collision. And if the building you worked in today didn't collapse in a heap of rubble, you can thank human anxiety. Someone else lost sleep trying to anticipate the loads the walls could safely hold up without having a string of collapsed buildings to prove what was safe. We have building codes that require structures to be built in a manner consistent with what our thinking ahead has taught us..."thanks anxiety!"...because we don't have to experience every tragedy before we can plan ahead to avert others. 

Really, when you get down to it, anxiety, as the human experience to anticipate negative outcomes and to be motivated to avoid them, is one of God's great gifts to us as a species. To call the gift of anxiety a sin is absurd. 

What's broken, is our relationship to anxiety, our way of interacting with it.

Which really shouldn't seem so strange when you think about it, because most of our sin is about broken ways of relating to God's creation. The way we relate to each other - broken. The way we treat natural life and our environments - broken. The way we relate to God - broken. The way relate to our sexuality, our vulnerability, power,....broken, broken, and broken. (The attempt to use the Bible as a literal textbook for counselling complex psychological phenomena - also broken by the way) Why should our relationship to anxiety be any different?

So if the sin in this situation is not anxiety but the way we relate to anxiety, what else might these biblical passages have to teach us?

If the greek marimnao is pointing to the kind of experience of anxiety that involves being divided from self, overtaken, preoccupied, or drawn off course, we might have a little better idea as to what kind of relationship we should be trying not to have with our anxiety. It's the kind of relationship in which anxiety takes us away from ourselves: from being fully human and yet formed in the image of the Divine. It's the kind of relationship to anxiety that draws us away from being loving because we are allowing our fear to guide our decisions. It's the kind of relationship in which anxiety is our master, and we answer to it. The kind of relationship in which the gift of anxiety, has actually become something that enslaves rather protects us and leads us to flourishing.

Jesus corrects the Pharisees when they criticize him for healing on the Sabbath. He reminds them that the Sabbath is gift designed to help humankind, and the humans were not made to serve the Sabbath or be enslaved by it observance. The same is true for anxiety. Anxiety has been gifted to us for our flourishing, not to be our master or run our lives.