Content To Be Frustrated?

I've been struggling to manage a tension lately between contentment and my constant (and perhaps idealistic) desire for improvement. I seem to always want things to be better. Call it perfectionism or whatever you want, I just always seem to see ways to improve and desire to implement those ways. I remember getting my ACT scores back when I was in high school and paying the extra money to get back my answers. I wanted to see where I'd fallen short, and when I realized the silliness of the mistakes I'd made, I knew I could do better. I even thought about taking the test again to improve my score, to reach that perfect 36, even though doing so would have had absolutely no bearing on my college choices or scholarship options, my upcoming marriage (yes, I was processing wedding bells and Pomp & Circumstance at the same time), or any other aspect of my life. It was just a desire to do better.

I've carried that penchant for improvement with me throughout my life and work, which has mostly been helpful, but is sometimes really frustrating. (Maybe even more frustrating for those that get stuck working and living with me... sorry.) People sometimes get annoyed with my tendency to expect better, because in the church, contentment is held as one of the highest of virtues. Paul, himself, hoisted the banner of contentment several times in his writings to the Christians in Philippi and to Timothy. 

I've asked friends to be praying for how I handle the frustrations that have come up in the current struggle, but lately have come to a conclusion: Contentment with anything less than what God wants is not a virtue. It's sin and I don't want to go there.

Doesn't God deserve our best? Not just settling for our "best efforts", but working diligently and intelligently for the best results possible. I know I don't earn anything from Him with my incremental improvements in ministry techniques or tactics. I'm not trying to get a better score on some Kingdom entrance exam - in Christ, my score is already a 36. I'm in! But in light of what that has cost Him, doesn't He deserve me doing my best AND working to gain the capacity to do better?

It's one thing to be satisfied with a job well done, but it's something else to think we're finished with the work. When does contentment creep its way into that dank and squalid hole of complacency?

3 Responses to Sin

It really sucks when we've ignored sin in our lives so long that we don't really notice it anymore. It just sits there, festering and corroding our lives from the inside out. It sucks even more when we spend our lives in church, yet no one has the guts and compassion to point to our sin and call it what it is. (There is a healthy way to do that by the way.)

But how do we respond when that sin is pointed out to us? John was a pretty confrontational person - maybe it was spending too much time in the desert, maybe it was simply a function of his unique role in God's story... but he didn't seem to worry about too much tact when it came to pointing out the sin in God's people. He went around "preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins." His message was that it was time to get the sin out of the nation because the time had come for the Messiah to be revealed to them. The people then responded in some of the same ways people today respond:

Question the authority of the one calling us out.

The Pharisees in John 1 seemed to want to know what qualified John to be so brash in calling for repentance. "Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?" Who are you to tell us how to live our lives? We study the Law, we know every little nuance of Moses' rules inside and out, what right do you have to tell us to repent? Today we may fall back on our Sunday morning attendance, church membership placement, or participation in a small group... activities we may think insulate us from accusation. It's almost as if we say, "I go to church more than you, so who are you to tell me I'm doing something wrong?" Or there's always the old standby: "Don't judge me."

Cover it up.

Herod didn't even bother to hack away at the foundation of support for John's rebuke. I think he knew how wrong he was, but in Luke 3, he just kept piling it on: "When John rebuked Herod because of his marriage to his brother's wife, and all the other evil things he had done, Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison." He didn't just attack John's credibility or question his authority, he threw him in prison! We may not be afforded that same capacity to shut up someone who's found fault in some area of our lives, but we may still try to cover up the cracks. "Oh, it's not really a big deal... That was a long time ago... Let me explain..." We use our circumstances to excuse our behavior, or to rationize our sin. "I only did that because..." Often, instead of dealing with our own sin, we'll turn and attack the person who's pointed it out to us like a petulant 6 year old, "Oh yeah, well I saw you when..."

Repent and find a better way to live.

There were some in John's crowds who took his message to heart. Realizing their sin was kiling them, they repented and were baptized by John to be forgiven. From Luke 3 it sounds like some of them were only going through the motions though and he warned them further to "produce fruit in keeping with repentance." Being forgiven should cause us to live differently - more generously, more honestly, more contently.

-----------------

I should probably note, that there is a healthy way to point out the error of a brother and some very unhealthy ways as well. Perhaps a topic for another post... It's one thing to come alongside someone who's injured themselves and help them back to health - and quite another to join the Accuser in his mission to steal, kill, and destroy everything he can... be careful.

At the Crossroads 1.2

Last night at youth group, a ping pong ball got broken. I know, right... Huge traumatic deal! Ok, maybe not such a big deal. The thing is, a girl came asking me for a ball because they couldn't find one. I asked the kids who I knew had been playing ping pong last if they remembered where they put the ball when they were done. "We don't have it."

"I know you don't have it, but do you know where it is."

"No."

"Where did you leave it?" (Knowing that ping pong balls don't generally go biped and walk off, I thought this was a pretty good question.)

"We didn't do anything."

"I didn't accuse you of doing anything."

....silence

...more silence

"We broke it."

Actually the confession was more like "We were hitting it and it broke all by itself." but the bottom line is the ping pong ball was toast.

Having no emotional attachment to the ping pong ball, I went to my office and got out a new one. No big deal. What is a big deal though is the way we try to cover up our secrets with lies. As soon as I asked about the ball, the boy got defensive and lied to me. Over a ping pong ball!

This is nothing new. Adam hid from God in the garden. Cain claimed ignorance of his brother's location even as he knew Abel's body lay right where he took the life from it. David covered up the theft of his neighbor's wife with a sneaky plan. When that didn't work, he made sure Urriah wouldn't live to know the truth. Ananias and Saphira lied to the apostles to cover up previous dishonesty.

At the crossroads, there is no room for hiding. Here, you must stand out in the open before God and bare your soul to Him. If there is any hope of finding your way (and there is), it requires you to show yourself. To openly place yourself in the hands that have so wonderfully made you. Hands that already know you.

Check out Psalm 39. Go ahead, read what you find at that link, then come back and answer these questions.

What are you trying to hide from God? How is that affecting your relationship with Him?

"Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it..."

See you at the crossroads.

Struggling...

A note was found that had been inadvertently left behind by some students the other day. Scribbles back and forth - made to pass the time during a time of worship on Sunday morning. But the content was not just some innocuous bantering back and forth to fend off the boredom. It was sexually explicit declaration of mutual intent between a couple kids.

At this point, I'm not sure exactly who wrote what, but every student in that section has grown up in church. Something is very wrong when someone can spend every week in church for 15 years and be so far from Christ... I know that attendance is not an indicator of any depth whatsoever to relationship with God, but you'd think that somewhere along the way something would have sunk in.

I'm tired of seeing people play the game. Tired of the shiny, happy faces hiding very dark hearts. I am sick of seeing kids and parents keeping up appearances while they trash their own lives. And yet, I know these kids are only pawns in Satan's attempt to derail the church from God's mission. They may be casualties or prisoners, but they are not the enemy. May God illuminate the corners of our lives that have stayed in darkness. May he continue to use me to bring life to dead students...
-----------------
An interesting article has popped up on several youth ministry blogs that I've read recently. Learning to Lie shares some interesting sociologic insight gained from recent study into understanding why kids lie. It's interesting to think about this article in the context of the church. Are we inadvertently teaching kids to hide sin by never really exposing our own?