Making Heaven Suck

While in twelfth grade, a friend of mine told me something that changed my life forever.  He told me that I should drink coffee.  This friend of mine was a rugged dude; the kind of guy who would be featured in a Carhartt jacket ad.  When my friend told me this, it clicked.  I had been a fool up til then.  If Carhartt ad guy thought that I should drink coffee, who else held this belief?  My conclusion was probably everyone.  From then it was sealed; I would become a coffee drinker.  And here I sit, writing this as I sip a latte.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people say that they are sick.  It wouldn't be that big of a deal if they weren't so sure of themselves.  I hear some people tell me that they are sick so often that it's hard to remember anything else about them.  I look at them and I can't help but think, "Oh yeah, she's sick."

The sad thing is that they're right.  Sickness is a role, and if one constantly puts himself in that role, well then by golly, he's there.  No one would ever admit to desiring sickness, but if one thinks about it, sickness is kind of attractive.  The sick role get lots of attention, it gives an excuse for bad performance, and an excuse to lavish blessings upon oneself.  You know, to heal.  But being in this role has the obvious downside of "you're going to feel terrible."  And you will.  Because you're sick.

This works with anything.  It certainly did with me and coffee.  I put myself in the role of coffee drinker, and it became true.  When we tell ourselves who we are over and over, we're going to act that way because it's the truth we know.  But when we listen to who we tell ourselves we are, we're bound to get it wrong.  Because we have a horrible perception of what is true.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus tells His disciples that He will give them the keys of heaven, and whatever they "bind" on earth will also be "bound" in heaven.  When we declare truth on earth, heaven follows suit.  So when we say to ourselves that we are a certain way, and we believe with absolute certainty that it's true (whether we realize we're doing this or not), it's true.  We're making heaven suck.

This is why I believe the Bible also calls us to speak the truth in love to one another.  Because we are bad at perceiving the truth, God calls our brothers and sisters to help us establish it.  This should frighten you.  Because it means when you speak truth to someone else, it affects their eternity.  For better or for worse.

You are not sick.  Sickness may visit you, but you are not sick.  If you're choosing to form a union with sickness, you may want to stop.  It's going to make you feel terrible.  What else are you telling yourself that is not representative of reality?  Since there are those of us who claim that God is reality, maybe we should speak the truth that He sees.  Anything less makes heaven suck.  And a sucky heaven is just hell.          

The Essay Question

The essence of an essay test is that you write everything you know about the subject at hand.  This is true of our lives as well.  We live out a way of life that represents everything we know about doing life well.  That's why life has no multiple choice.  Because the way we live is our best answer to life.

Recently, I tried to Google "how many self help books are there?," and I couldn't really get a solid number after looking for about 5 minutes (which is all the time I care to spend on trying to find out how many self help books there are out there).  Regardless, there are many.  It seems we are culturally obsessed with becoming better than we currently are.

I have read none of these books, so writing a blog post on this subject is probably a bad idea.

The first few days of a new year probably means thinking of how to better answer life's essay question.  We all want to make our lives better.  The problem is that whatever your idea of better is, it wasn't your idea.  The idea of a "good life" is just the general consensus of what a "good life" is.  Self help books will help you become the self that someone else thinks is best.

Throughout history, many people have said that being "good" is what God wants you to be.  But this idea of good didn't necessarily come from God.  It came from people's ideas of the best way to answer life's essay question.

In the book of Habakkuk, the prophet asks God why He is acting against His own people.  God responds by saying that His people are acting in ways that are unjust, or unrighteous.  Since this is the case, God is going to make things right, or just again.

It has nothing to do with who is "good" or who is "bad."  All people seem to have a tendency to make things wrong.  We live in a world full of injustice; a world of unrighteousness.  The Psalms say that God's hands are full of justice.  So when God acts, things become right.  Things become just.  It only makes sense that those who are called God's people would be made right by Him.  To be made just, God needs to take away the parts of people that were steeped in injustice.  That's a pretty painful process.

In 2012, lots of people will try to write a good answer to life's question.  Maybe a better idea is to resolve to answer the question rightly.  Maybe a better idea than living well in 2012 is dying well.  

Games

At this coffee shop/church in Indiana I like to hang out in, there are some kids who like to run around playing some game that I don't understand.  It mainly involves hiding behind a couch and running up and down the stairs.  The reason I don't understand it is because the whole game is a series of unspoken and partially understood rules.  Maybe to them, the game doesn't even exist at all.  To them, maybe they're just living the life; running around just because they can.

Alfred Adler is the most under appreciated genius of the world of therapy.  Freud may be the father of psychotherapy, but Adler's theory helped pave the way for every modern psychotherapy after its advent.  Seriously, read up on Adler.  One of Adler's ideas was that people play "games" that they use to get through life.  What this means is that as people go on, they come up with conditions for "winning" and conditions for "losing."  

"If I could get that job my life would be good."

"If I was skinnier I'd be pretty."

"If I say that, this guy will think I'm crazy."

The thing about these games is that if you lose, you've defeated yourself, and if you win you've set yourself up to be defeated later.  That's why Adler said that when clients seek therapy, the therapist must get them to play the "therapy game," which tries to give back what clients have taken from themselves.  Because when you compete with yourself, even if you win you still lose.

In the book of Luke, Jesus sat in on a dinner party for some big shot religious people.  It was a pretty big deal to sit as close as you could to the head of the table; it meant that you were important; that you were someone.  Everyone wanted those seats because if you got one then you were a winner.  But Jesus said to the host, "When you have a dinner party, put those who can't repay you in the best seats, that way you'll be repaid in the resurrection."  When you pass up the good seat, it'll be given to you later.

The problem with the games we play is that when we lose, it only makes us want to win next time.  But when we win these games, nothing is gained.  The whole game is invalid.  But what if, instead of winning, the victory was given to you?  Then the games we play wouldn't cause us anxiety.  They would only bring us life.

There's something holy about a kid who's hiding behind a couch, playing a game that only he can understand.  He's not trying to win.  He's only playing because that's the way he's making sense of his life right then.  He's lost in laughter and anticipation of the kid who's coming up the steps.  I don't know how the game is played, but it doesn't matter.  Win or lose, there is only joy. 

The Story Life

When you think of who you are, what do you think of?

To answer that question, you have to do a few things.  First, you have to think.  This may seem obvious, but it's important to know that each time you establish your own identity, you (and not anyone else) have to come to these conclusions yourself.  Next, you have to bring to mind certain personality traits like; "I'm kind," "I'm generous," or "I'm lazy."

What's tricky about this is that behind each of those personality traits is a story.  It's impossible for someone to just derive from nothing that they are kind or generous or lazy.  We get these ideas from somewhere, and that somewhere is our experience in life.  Essentially, the only reason I know that I'm Matt Culler is because that fact has been reinforced over and over and over and over, etc.  Your life is a story about what you know to be true about you.

If this is true, then we run the risk of problems in our lives when we misunderstand the truth.  Say I've gone for a long time getting A's in all of my classes, but at one point I take a class and fail it.  I see this and feel bad, but understand that this failure is not an intrinsic part of my identity; it's more of the exception than the rule.  But I start telling my friends that I failed a class.  And some other friends see that I got an F, not knowing that I was an A student before.  And my parents start holding that F over my head.  And throughout all this time, it is never mentioned that i got A's in all of my other classes.  Suddenly I care more about that F than those A's; suddenly my idea of myself is that I'm a failure.  Knowing that I am a failure, I start acting like a failure, because that's all I know to be true.  

This happens to us everyday.  Parts of who we are are reinforced by others and ourselves, while other parts of who we are get ignored and eventually forgotten.  If you start saying that you're sick, acting like you're sick, and telling people that you're sick, it's likely that people are going to start treating you like a sick person. 

The important question here is who does God think that you are?  Does this factor into your story at all?  Maybe it does, but the person you think God sees you as is pretty terrible.  Maybe you think God's ashamed of you.  But what if the person who's ashamed of you is you?  What if the idea of yourself as terrible has come from a source other than God?  What if your story life got hijacked midway through?

When you come to conclusions about who you are, whether negative or positive, you're right.  You're constantly constructing this story about you.  While we include information in this story from a bunch of different sources, who you are is up to you in the end.

When you think of who you are, what do you think of?