We Will Remember Them...(a not so ordinary memorial)

Today in NZ it is the 12th of September but in Americaland it is the 11th. September 11. Will that day ever mean anything else except death and fear?

I remember being at school on this day 12 years ago (has it really been that long) and hearing, incorrectly, that America had been bombed. The rest of the day went out the window as we sat in our classes glued to the tv watching repeats of the crashes, then people jumping out of windows to escape the fire. The images are burned into my memory and still make me feel physically ill.

Years on now and my view on this historic event has changed. 

It is still disgusting, barbaric and gut wrenching.

It is still a day that is worth remembering.

But as my understanding of world politics has grown so has my compassion for people that I never thought I would have compassion for.

So today I would like to add my own memorial.

"WE WILL REMEMBER THEM"

Today as we remember the planes crashing into buildings I choose to remember the plane hijackers who chose to kill innocent people. I choose to remember all those who have been subjected to brainwashing and have hurt themselves and others in a deluded attempt to do the right thing. I choose to remember their hate, and I chosoe to forgive it as Christ forgave those who nailed him to a tree and then jeered at him as he died.

As we remember the flames that burned with enough force to melt a building I choose to remember those in every country who have burned in the fires of war and terror. I choose to remember Americans, Afghani's, Iraqians, Iranian, Syrians, Pakistanis, African and South American Nations, and every other people, person, mother, child, father, brother, sister, wife, husband who has instigated or been the victim of war and hatred. I choose to pray for those who kill and those who are killed that the justice of God might be known throughout the world and God's peace may reign over all.

As we remember those that were crushed in buildings that came down on top of them, I choose to remember those that see their way of life destroyed in front of them and have no money to rebuild. I choose to remember those that are poor and helpless and do not have an economy or a government that will help them with medical costs and welfare. I choose to remember the parents who watch their children starve because they have been forgotten by the people with money and power. I pray that they may know that God is with them in their suffering, that Jesus suffered as they suffered, that he had no home or income and that he loves them and will wipe their tears from their eyes.

As we remember the nationalism that swept America after the fateful events of September 11 I choose to remember those that are in nations that use nationalism to wage wars and incite the people to hatred. I choose to remember the conditions and environments that breed young people and teach them to hate those from other countries and different religions. I remember those that have never heard of the gospel of peace and instead chose revenge and murder. I pray that God will forgive them, and that they will learn to turn from what they do.

I will remember them.

All of them.

Family, Brokenness, and Acceptance

Wow, I just checked out my blog stats and I am nearly on 8000 views of this blog! A MASSIVE thank you to you, yes YOU, who is reading this and who keeps me writing. I am honoured by your presence here and the fact that you find me interesting enough to keep reading.

If you are new here I recommend reading my blog post 'My Story' in order to understand where I am coming from on various issues. I make a lot more sense with a little background knowledge going on. 

I have been pretty slack at these blog posts recently as I am currently writing my Masters thesis and that tends to take up a lot of my time. As well as that I run a small group for young adults (hence the various blogs with flowcharts) so the planning for that can (or should) take up some of my time too. But enough excuses, let's get on with the show.

I have up until today refrained from talking at length about my relationship with my family. This has been for several reasons.

1) I have felt that it is unfair to share my issues without them having a proper chance to respond.

2) Talking to a bunch of strangers (no offence guys) is perhaps not the best way to deal with some issues.

Yesterday however, I watched a Dr. Phil show that really hit a nerve. It was portraying a family of three children who were desperate to make contact with their dad but he kept making excuses. Though they all proclaimed love for their father they were furious at him and he couldn't understand why they kept yelling at him if they wanted a relationship.

That's not what struck me.

There was a young girl, 17yo, who said that if she could have anything it would be to be able to call her dad, talk about her problems, do fun things with him, and have him as her confidant. 

It was a heartfelt plea.

It was also a major cause of the problem.

I say this because I truly believe that the world has told us what a 'perfect' family should look like. I am not talking about a mum, a dad, and 2.5 kids. What I am talking about is the 'Simpsons' idea. 

Family is dysfunctional, the Simpsons tells us, but ultimately everyone will get along. By the end of the half hour dad will have realised his mistake and apologised, mum would've realised she loves the silly man after all, the kids will realise they are being little terrors and stop, and everyone will live happily ever after...well at least until the next episode. 

This is pretty much how every family works on TV sitcoms. It is what I grew up on, what most of my generation grew up on, and it has, I believe, warped our understanding of the nature of humanity.

See, people can suck. I mean really suck. The number of solo parent families out there would suggest that mum and dad, or partner, or whatever, don't always figure it out. The number of abused kids would suggest that parents don't always like their children. The number of runaways would suggest that kids don't always like their parents.

Because we are broken. Though we all yearn for the love of our family, we live a world where people are broken, where we are broken, and it isn't so easy to reconcile our differences. 

I love my family. Not a day goes by when I don't think about my parents. But I haven't seen or talked to them for two years. We have issues. My brokenness has affected them and their brokenness has affected me. My parents weren't perfect, but neither were they awful and neglectful. We just found that some of our difficulties were too big for us to be able to work through in a way that we both agreed on.

It breaks my heart that things ended up this way between us. I can't tell you how much I would love to pick up the phone and have a nice, happy conversation with my dad.

But that isn't our reality.

Our reality is that things are broken. There are no credits that will role after a family hug. There is no canned laughter that will play when we all realise that we misunderstood each other. There is no being able to run into each others arms in slow motion when we see each other again.

There is love, but it is a love tainted by our issues.

And that is what hit me about the young girls story on Dr. Phil. She had in her head this idea of what she believed was the perfect father-daughter relationship. But it was clear from the program that the father had no intention, or ability, to be this father. She wanted a fantasy instead of accepting the reality, no matter how painful that might be.

My mother-in-law once told me that relationships only work when we lower our expectations of people. We need to stop imagining what we want in someone and accept the reality of what our relationship with them really is. Sometimes it means walking away and letting the relationship go. Sometimes it means having to work damn hard at ourselves and at a relationship, but this is only possible if both parties are willing to try and work at it. And sometimes, in those wonderful moments, it means accepting what is and living in the love that is offered and accepted.

But let me get one thing straight: acceptance and forgiveness are NOT the same as reconciliation. We can accept the reality of a broken relationship. We can even learn to forgive the hurts and the pain that are caused within that relationship. But that does not mean that reconciliation will, or can, happen.

I have forgiven my parents for any hurt, real or imagined, that they caused me. I know this because I am not angry at them any more. For years I was. I was bitter and twisted about every little thing that I remembered them doing (or not doing). It ate me up inside. I would rant and rage against them for hours at a time. We would have screaming matches and things were said that I regret. Things were heard that I have now let go of. I learnt to forgive them and love them as human beings who did their very best to love me as they knew how. I pray for the all the time and hold them very dear in my heart.

But we do not have a relationship. The reasons for that I am choosing not to go into in this forum but I will say that it is because we have been unable to agree upon a 'safe zone' for us to work out our issues. Sometimes relationships need outside help, sometimes it is not emotionally (or even physically) safe to step back into the same situation without boundaries and safety being established first. Sometimes reconciliation doesn't happen. And that is ok.

Forgiveness does also not demand forgetting. The old adage 'forgive and forget' has done so much harm to people in relationships that are toxic. We CANNOT forget. It is impossible to forget. So what we are told to do is sweep our issues under the carpet and pretend they never happened. This leads to cycles of destruction in relationships. Ever wonder why an abused woman goes back to her abuser? Because she chose to ignore past behavior instead of letting it help her determine what will happen in the future. Sometimes the only way to find healing is to leave the environment that perpetuates old behaviors. And sometimes forgiveness cannot happen until we choose to NOT forget what has happened before and instead face it, address it, and, if need be, walk away from it until it changes.

It is ok to learn to forgive and not be reconciled. In a perfect world we could do that, but this isn't a perfect world and we are far from perfect people. We do what we can, we try as hard as possible, and then we have to learn to accept what is. And sometimes what exists is a relationship broken beyond repair. Or one that needs more time to heal.

You can forgive and learn to love without relationship being reestablished.

If you have a difficult relationship with your family members, you are not alone! There are so many of us out there who are longing for the love of parent/sibling/spouse/child. There are so many of us who weep for what we dreamed could have been and for the reality of what is.

We understand. You are not alone. 

My prayers are with all families. They are with every broken person who prays for a miracle and yet despairs that it will never come. They are with every person who misses someone they love because of the brokenness of their relationship.

May God give you peace and may you know God as your parent who loves you and comforts you. May you know Joy.

Someone to Hold, Someone to Blame

I was talking to some friends on the way home from church today and an interesting comment was made. It went something along these lines:

"It seems that the people who are suffering have more hope in God than the family members and loved ones that watch them suffer. It is the watchers that tend to blame God."

This comment came out of all of us recollecting various stories of people who had suffered and those that had blamed God. This is a generalisation but one that seems to hold true to various people in various circumstances.

For example, one friend of ours has a sister that is in serious pain and illness. She clings to God. He is angry at God for what she is going through.

So we came up with a hypothesis of why this is.

For anyone who has been in suffering for a long period of time, there tends to be a point when you know that it may never change. With long term illness or mental disorders, divorce, death etc, there is a point when you either accept that the pain will be there for a long time, perhaps forever, or you give up.  If you give up then this tends to lead to isolation from others, depression, and suicide or, in faith terms, ditching your faith and hating the world around you. Acceptance of the pain doesn't mean that you are ok with what is happening, but it tends to pull you outward, draws you into acknowledging that you won't survive this on your own strength. In faith terms, this tends to mean a deepening of faith.

This is because in times of weaknesses we need someone to cling to. When we are children and we are hurting we don't blame our parents for it, we cling to them because they are the biggest, strongest people they know and they may be able to fix it.

It is similar to faith at times. God is the biggest thing we know and so in times of struggle when our pain is too much for us to bear we cling to our faith, hoping that it will give us strength. 

The people who are not directly involved in the suffering but are affected by it (our friends and family) may not understand our need to cling to God. Because for them all they see is someone they love in pain. And they need someone to blame. They need to be able to get angry and yell at someone for the hurt they see us going through. It is often through witnessing pain that people lose faith in God and God's goodness.

Now the complete opposite can be true in both cases. The sufferer can lose faith because they reject what is happening to them and need to blame someone, and the watcher can have faith because it is the only thing they have left to lean on.

But, and here is my point, in times of suffering we all need someone to hold or someone to blame.

I find that really profound.

It speaks of a deep-seated need within us all for love and comfort.

It speaks of a desire for justice.

It speaks of God.

See, if we are all just random atoms that came together and started an evolutionary chain, why would we need justice in a situation that is outside of anyone's control? Wouldn't we just write it off as survival of the fittest and grieve, but not get angry?

I would argue that it is because at the very core of who we are we know that there is something wrong with our world. Children are not meant to die. People are not meant to suffer. Mental illness should not exist. And we know that, everyone of us, we feel it deep inside. So when we do watch a loved one in pain we get angry and the wrongness of it and need something to blame. 

We tend to blame God.

And yet we are pointing in the wrong direction.

It is not God's fault that this happens. It is because there is something really wrong with the world. It is called sin. We are broken. Creation is broken. I don't mean that because a child lies to their parents they then get cancer! That's ridiculous. Illness is not a punishment. 

What I mean by sin is that we as humanity, not just as individuals, have decided to not love God and not love other people and not respect creation. We have pushed God out of the picture and wanted to make ourselves God for millennia. We haven't loved other people and so rape, prostitution, porn, child abuse, theft...you name it... happens because humanity has no love for each other. We haven't respected creation so we have used and abused resources, so some kids die of obesity related illness while others starve. Carcinogenic are our fault, as is skin cancer from a depleted ozone.

Our desire to run this world our way, instead of God's way, has meant that creation has broken to the point where our own cells are in rebellion against us. Death is a part of everything, sickness invades our lives. And because it is all consuming, because it affects everything, because it is so huge, we point to the biggest thing we know and blame them. We blame God.

And yet it is NOT God's fault. God didn't want my friend's baby to die of cot death at only a few months old. God didn't want me to have schizophrenia. God doesn't want our friends sister to be in constant pain. God hates sin and death and proved it by showing us that it is defeated! God showed us that there is life after all the crap by dying first and coming back to life. God showed us by example.

In our times of deepest struggle God is there. God is breathing live and love. God is giving strength and hope. God is speaking a message of salvation and redemption that means even though we go through crap now it will not be forever. We will be renewed. We will live without pain.

So to all of those that are struggling...there is hope. 

And to all of those watching...there is hope.

And to all of us who get angry and confused and cry for justice...there is hope!

Don't give up, don't walk away from faith, don't lose hope. God was there, God is here, God will always be there.

Act of Murder

I just walked out of a movie.

I don't do this often, as I usually am interested in what a movie has to say, even if I don't agree with it.

The one I walked out of however made me so angry that I couldn't stand to watch it anymore.

The movie is called "Act of Valor" and is about real life situations that the Navy Seals have found themselves in. Though I respect the fact that the Seals are the elite of the elite and they have fine tuned their craft until it is an artwork, the fact that their artwork is that of death is something that I find hard to swallow.

In the movie one of the situations is an extraction of a CIA agent that has been captured and is being tortured. The agent is a young woman and will no doubt be tortured until death. The Seals have to infiltrate and extract the woman.

They efficiently get the woman out but in doing so kill many of the workers on the other side. Do I agree with the fact that they were torturing a woman? No at all! But do I think that somehow the Seals are justified in killing people for one of their own people? No!

I find war, or violence between countries, the height of hypocrisy. We tell someone that they are not right in hurting our people so we spy on them. They say we have no right to spy on them so they capture the spy. We say they have no right to capture our spy so we kill untold numbers of their people to get our spy back. They retaliate to the killing of their people...and so it goes on.

Martin Luther King Jnr said once that you cannot murder murder, you cannot stop violence with violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness, only light can do that. 

Too often the ideas of 'an eye for an eye' are taken to the extreme on a world stage to the point where even Christians think that it is noble and right to fight and kill others for the sake of the ones they love and protect?

What about the family of the person you are killing? What about the fear/anger/passion they are fighting with/for? How can you justify their death if it means saving your own?

Jesus taught us to forgive our enemies. If we take that from not just in our own lives but to a global stage, then forgiveness and love cannot lead to violence! They cannot co-exist! How can you shoot someone whom you love and whom you have forgiven? Even if it means the death of those you love? Even if it means your own life?

No one life is better than another, even if that life has been used to hurt and manipulate and destroy. Even if that person's actions are evil, who are we to judge whether or not they should die? Is that not for God to decide? Is it not good enough to live out of Jesus' words to love and to forgive?

As I watched the movie I was struck by the amount of money and effort that is put into making machines that sole purpose is to seek and kill people. It made me think about how that money could be used to support countries where most terrorists are made. If there was nutrition, schooling, safety then maybe less children would grow up with so much hate that they needed to kill. Maybe their parents would teach them to hate others but to love those that helped them.

I see no justification for money and people to be used to kill others. I see no justification for war of any kind. I see no correlation between the story of the Bible and violence. I would give my life to stop others being hurt, but I would never take another's or kid myself that by doing so somehow I would achieve peace through violence.

This is a brilliant read that I couldn't articulate better myself. If you want more of this guy's stuff then follow this link: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/philosophicalfragments/2012/08/24/i-am-a-hate-filled-christian/?LLM=christine.welten@gmail.com

I am a Hate-Filled Christian

August 24, 2012 By Timothy Dalrymple 129 Comments

Being an evangelical Christian, of course, I grew up with vicious hatreds implanted deep within my heart.  Hatred (I refuse to use “hate” when the proper word is “hatred”) for women who obtain abortions.  Hatred for gays.  Hatred for criminals and illegal aliens.  Hatred for people of other faiths.  Hatred, basically, for anyone unlike myself and my cru.

I am a Christian, therefore I must be a hater.  I eat hatred for breakfast — and yes, it takes like hate.  So, at least, I’m told.

For a long time, I resisted this argument.  I spent time with people who had abortions, and with friends who were openly gay, and with people whose faiths were diametrically opposed to my own — but I never felt hatred toward any of them.  Love, yes.  Compassion, to be sure.  Concern, sometimes.  But not hatred.  Someone must have spiked my haterade, because I couldn’t seem to find within myself all these hatreds that, I was told, seethed and festered deep within me.

The curious thing was, I didn’t find this burning hatred in the evangelical Christians around me, either.  They were good-hearted people.  They took women in crisis into their homes.  They worked with troubled youth and delivered food to the homeless.  They started tutoring programs for children in East Palo Alto.  Many (though not all) of them supported Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2 and John McCain — which, I guess, means that they hated science, rationality, the environment, and evolution.  But if they were filled with hatred for actual people groups, it must have been buried down deep.  Most of these men and women in the churches I attended felt, as I do, that abortion is wrong and that marriage was ordained by God for the joining of male and female.  Many of them were strongly opposed to illegal immigration.  Still, try though I might, I couldn’t peel back all the layers of kindness and sincere conviction to find the trembling, bigoted, hate-filled hater underneath it all.

Now, I no longer resist the argument.  I’m willing to confess.  I am a Christian — a conservative evangelical Christian to boot — and there are many things I hate.  I am hate-filled.

I hate that I fall short of the imitation of Christ.  I hate the sin that threatens to consume me, and hate that I so often take for granted the grace that refuses to allow me to be consumed.  I hate my pride and I hate the fact that I have hurt people.

I hate that when some people hear that I’m an evangelical Christian, they assume that I must hate them.  I hate that I and other Christians have sometimes done or said things that contributed to that assumption.  I hate that not only I, but other Christians around the world and throughout history, have sullied the name of Christ and marred the image of the Bride of Christ.  But I hate too that we live in an inverted world where love is sometimes mistaken as hatred, where the truth is sometimes painful and offensive.  So I hate the caricature but I also hate that we have helped to create it.

I hate that unborn children are exterminated before they have had a chance to enjoy the gift of life.  I hate that hundreds of millions of men and women, boys and girls are not alive today because of abortion worldwide, and the world has lost a treasure trove of creativity and joy and ingenuity.  I hate that women are sometimes pressured by men or by parents into abortions they mourn and regret; I hate that women are sometimes misled into believing that abortion for the sake of convenience is okay; as a father of two beautiful girls, I hate that unborn baby girls in particular are aborted in a twisted consequence of the “women’s rights” crusade for abortion.  But I also hate that so many women find themselves in terrible circumstances (I hate too that so many men are deadbeats) where they feel like abortion is their only hope.

Although I don’t believe the female vagina functions as a kind of venus fly trap to capture and kill rapist sperm (a view that has apparently been around in some circles, though this is the first time I’ve heard it), I must admit that I hate the thought of any unborn child, even one conceived by rape or incest, being killed.  I hate that some people cannot contemplate the innocence of that child without remembering the guilt the person (we cannot call him a “father”) who forced himself upon the child’s mother.  But I hate the fact that women are raped in the first place, I hate that they are placed in that situation through no responsibility of their own, and I hate that we in the church (though we have done much) have not done more to prevent domestic violence, child abuse and violent and demeaning attitudes against women.

I hate that my gay friends find my views offensive.  I hate that my convictions on this issue come between us.  And, I confess, I hate that it’s not up to me.  I hate that I’ve never found the arguments in favor of the view that the Bible does not really condemn homosexuality convincing.  I hate that the meaning of the covenant of marriage is not mine to define.  I hate that Christians have often failed to show love and reconciliation and forgiveness toward gays.  I hate that Christians have not always made it clear that God loves them and seeks them just as passionately as God seeks everyone else.  I hate that we have sometimes made it seem as though God will have nothing to do with gays until they leave their homosexual behavior behind, as though God redeems us after we are no longer sinners.

I hate that Christians have often fallen short of the example of Jesus Christ and been unkind and ungracious toward those whom society rejects and maligns.  I hate that gays are bullied.  I hate that some backwards church in Bigotville, USA, cheers at the notion of “homos” going to hell.  I hate that children who feel same-sex attractions get mockery and judgment instead of compassion and care.  I hate that many gays feel that, without access to marriage, they are second-class citizens.  But I hate too that the homosexual debate has been defined in such a way that there is no space for loving disagreement.  I hate that I’m told that my view, that marriage is a sacrament and a covenant defined by God for the union of male and female, is hateful by virtue of the fact that it oppresses a people group.  I don’t believe that’s true, but I hate that the traditional Christian standpoint has been framed as hateful, and I hate that there are gays who hate the “hateful” Christians.  Because I don’t hate gay people, and I certainly don’t hate my gay friends, but I hate that I’m told that I must hate them, and I hate that some part of those friends will never accept me because I’m trying to be faithful to what I believe God has made known.  I hate that this debate has pitted us against each other, because I love them and respect them and want to enjoy our friendship.

I hate that none of this will change anyone’s mind.  I hate that I will still be thought to hate gays even though the truth is that I hate the fact (even though I understand it, from their perspective) that this whole issue comes between me and the gay people I love.

I really hate that my Christian faith, which is so much richer and deeper and more beautiful than these issues on hot-button topics, is so often understood through their prism.  I am tempted to say that these are vanishingly small parts of my faith, but the truth is that they are not parts of my faith at all.  They are consequences of my faith, applications of the truths and the values that I profess, but they are nowhere near the heart of my faith.

I still can’t think of any people groups I hate.  But that’s it.  I’ve confessed.  I’m a hater.  Hate-filled.  And I hate that too.

My Story (part 2)

After sharing my story on this blog the other month I have been overwhelmed by the comments that I have received here, on facebook and in person. Thank you for your kind words, your stories and your expressed pride in me.

One question that I find repeated again and again is "how are you so happy after everything you have been through?"

I find this question difficult to answer.

In some ways it feels like my life before is a dream or a story I read. It doesn't hit me a lot of the time what I have survived and so it doesn't impact me. I think in some ways that this is a blessing and a coping mechanism; to feel all of it all the time would defeat the purpose of God freeing me from it in the first place.

It is also such a complex multi-layered thing that it is hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that made me happy.

Let me just say that two years ago I was still angry and miserable and wondering when I would feel joy.

Now I am not and I do.

All I can say is that the peace of God surpasses all understanding.

Even in the last year I have faced major struggles within my family and have spent a lot of time crying out to God for wisdom, for comfort and for healing in a situation that I can't control.

But even that hasn't broken me.

God gives you the strength that you need to face what you need to. My struggles are no more difficult than yours; the things that you are going through are just as painful, just as changing as these things were for me. God meets us where we are at and gives us what we need to get through, including the people around us who help us stand.

There is also the fact that my shame is gone.

I may feel shame when I recount some of the things I have done, but I do not carry it with me. I am free! Freed by the death that Jesus died for our guilt and shame. Carrying around my sins like a penance is pointless when they are already forgiven. Who am I to continually remind myself of what I have done when not even God does that to me?!

If you do not know God then this is what he offers. No strings attached. Freedom is a wonderful thing, a beautiful, amazing, life changing thing that lets you breathe and sing in a world that does all it can to crush you.

There is no other reason for my joy. It is all I have as an answer.

I hope one day you may experience it too.