Openness and ObedienceSeptember 26, 2013
I’m learning more about the concepts of openness and obedience these days. Someone recently cautioned me about the dangers of taking on too many of the world’s problems. Isn’t that a recipe for being crushed by the weight of the world? Aren’t there so many problems that this would result in you giving and giving until you’ve been picked clean? Yourself in poverty?
Along these lines, I have been increasingly sensing that no, of course God doesn’t want to harm us. Far from it. We need not take on the weight of the world, in the sense of it being our responsibility, because that’s God job. If we’re carrying the weight of the world like a burden, that’s probably not God’s will. We should release it back to God. Instead, what God asks from us is pretty “simple”. God wants us to be open, and obedient.
Openness comes from a willingness to hear. It’s so easy for us to plug our ears and turn away. It absolutely takes energy and focus to remain open to what God might be saying to us. We live in a world of many shiny distractions that consume our attention… food, entertainment, sex, money, success, etc.
The other thing God asks of us is obedience. Once we feel like we understand what God is asking of us, we need to obey.
This cycle of listening and obeying is where it’s at. If we’re willing to do that, then we don’t need to be crushed by the weight of the world, because God is holding all things together. All we’re doing is saying “Use me Lord” and delighting in the work that we are given to do.
There are two other facets of this that I want to touch on: lament, and sin.
Compassion and Lament: Even though we are not responsible to carry the weight of the world, I do feel that God wants us to be connected to and share the suffering of others. This seems like a contradiction, but I don’t think it is. It’s simply that sometimes when we listen to God, we are told to come along side hurting people and to feel their pain. To listen to them. To cry with them. To share with them. These tears are not us being crushed by the weight of the world. They are us being used by and transformed by God. And before we know it, we can smile and laugh, because we are not being weighed down in a chronic way.
Sin: Not a popular word these days, but one of the most profound effects of sin is to close us off from God. We can go right back to the garden of Eden to see what affect sin had on Adam and Eve’s relationship with God: They went and hid. In hiding from God, we shut off our listening, and we cower in fear. This isn’t rocket science, but it’s good to be reminded that sin, while it can have fairly direct negative consequences, also shuts down our openness and listening, which are key to God using us for good.
Something else that comes to mind in terms of our openness or closed off-ness to God is that we have different voices in our heads. Different natures. We have our human flesh, which can be so animalistic. Dog eat dog. Me first. Pleasure. Greed. We also have our divine selves. We are made in the image of God, we have a spirit, a conscience. When we are closed off to God, our flesh is able to exert more control over us, and we succumb to selfishness, greed. We fall in line with the animal kingdom where we live for ourselves and our own survival, even if at the expense of others. On the flip side, when we are open to the divine, when we are in “open and listening” mode, God’s spirit can take root in us, and we become increasingly capable of “loving others as self” even “loving our enemies”. And this is so much what the Kingdom of God is about: Communities of people who are poised -- open and listening -- loving others as self -- not fighting evil with evil.
My closing thought that dovetails with openness and obedience is “enough”. Most commonly we talk about “enough” in the sense that we don’t want to always be striving for “more”. A cousin of never having enough is being trapped by a worldview that only sees death and destruction, and a sense that there will never be enough. We know this is wrong, because we serve a God of overflowing abundance. If we are willing to be open and obedient, then we will find that there is not only enough, but more than we could ever imagine. Conversely, if we live by our flesh, we will constantly be depressed about our need for more. Our openness and obedience to God is enough. God will do the rest. In that, I have faith.
On Living Organ DonationSeptember 26, 2013
Many of us will be familiar with the concept of organ donation that happens after someone passes away, but more recently I have been learning about the need for living organ donation. In January 2013, I read the story of Craig Dunbar from Ottawa. He is a 41 year old man who was afflicted with kidney failure in 2007. Four years ago, he was given the opportunity to have a kidney transplant, but the transplanted kidney went septic (not rejected), and had to be removed. This event was especially tragic because it caused Craig’s antibody sensitivity to skyrocket from a more typical 30% all the way to 98%. What this means is that while he would have previously been compatible with 70% of potential kidneys of matching blood type, he is now compatible with only 2% of potential kidneys. This makes finding a kidney extremely difficult. If that wasn’t bad enough, Craig’s access points for receiving dialysis are rapidly failing, and it is very likely that he will die within a year if he can’t find a kidney. Canada has something called the Living Donor Paired Exchange, which increases the odds greatly, but currently only 2 people have been successful at joined the exchange program on Craig’s behalf. A few dozen people were tested, but Craig has had bad luck with the proportion of people who have been rejected. Unless more people are willing to join on his behalf, the odds aren’t looking good.
This situation strikes me as being a very rich one for Christians to discern about. As I have personally reflected on the greatest commandment Jesus gave us, to love God with our whole being, and to love others as we love ourselves, I ask myself the question: If the roles were reversed, would I want Craig to donate a kidney to me. The answer is yes, and I suspect the answer would be “yes” for most of us. But in talking with other Christians, it quickly becomes apparent that most of us aren’t willing to donate a kidney to someone like Craig, especially since he isn’t someone that we have a strong personal connection with.
The second Biblical reference that comes to mind is the story of the good Samaritan. In this story, the Samaritan was willing to act even though the person in trouble wasn’t a beloved family member or acquaintance. How do we understand this? I think it goes back to Jesus’ commandment to love others as self. Each human life is uniquely valuable to God, regardless of whether they are our family of friends. If we are to surrender our selfish perspective on the world, then we must recognize God’s perspective, and in desiring to love God with our whole selves, me must be willing to act in a way that celebrates all human life as beloved by God. Craig’s life is as valuable to God as my life, and as valuable as your life.
There are many other ways in which living organ donation is relevant to our Christian dialogue:
Stewardship: We often acknowledge that stewardship is more than money -- that we are also privileged to manage the time and talents that God has entrusted to us, and that Jesus is to be Lord of all. Can we consider it good stewardship that hundreds of millions of Christians keep an extra kidney while people are dying or have very compromised health for lack of one? Looked at from a different angle, 20 years of dialysis for a person costs around $1.2 million dollars of taxpayer money. It's quite possible that kidney donation is also good stewardship of a country's medical resources.
Witness: As we endeavour to demonstrate to the world the beauty of loving others as self, situations like Craig’s are a wonderful opportunity -- an opportunity to demonstrate who God has called us to be. But if we turn away, we send a confounding message to the world. As Shane Claiborne often reminds us, we don’t want the church to be known for what it’s against, but rather what it’s for.
Christian Formation: As we sit around tables and talk about how to form faith in our youth, considering this curriculum or that, we must remember that it is actually how we choose the live, and the hard decisions that we make, that are most formative for our children.
Peace: As we have read in previous months about the imminent threat of war with Syria, we sometimes wonder in what helpful ways we as a non-violent people can respond. Although humanitarian aid is a good and right response, it is only treating the surface problem. As followers of Jesus we know that the seeds of peace are best sown long before conflict erupts. Sacrificial love for one another is one of the most beautiful seeds of peace that I know of.
These are a few areas that come to mind, but I’m convinced that there are many more rich ways in which this topic intersects our faith.
When we get to heaven and God asks us how we responded to the hungry, the thirsty, and the naked, we should also be prepared to account for how we responded to those who needed a kidney. Were we like the priests who saw the robbed and beaten man and walked to the other side of the road, or were we like the Samaritan who stopped and helped? Certainly this topic evokes much fear and emotion, and this is something we do need to be careful and wise about. Donating a kidney won’t be a good choice for everyone. But if it is fear and uncertainty that is holding us back, we need not be afraid, because what we’re about is love, and love drives out all fear.
It is not infrequent that we raise our eyes to heaven and ask for a miracle. As we do so, we must remember that God has also placed miracles within us that are ready to blossom if we are willing.
My hope is not only that Craig’s life will be spared, but that this article may be a seed that encourages Christians and whole churches to think seriously and deliberately about the wider issue of living organ donation.
For more information on Craig Dunbar, or to communicate with him, please see:
www.facebook.com/groups/Kidney4Craig/A great resource is Carol Penner’s blog, where she writes of her experience donating a kidney:
http://anundesignateddonor.blogspot.ca/2011/12/making-call.htmlI am also very happy to answer any questions that I can, and to continue the discussion:
[mailto: daniel.bigham@gmail.com]
Troubling DreamsSeptember 26, 2013
I don’t have bad dreams too often, at least that I can remember. Among the worst dreams I’ve had are ones where I accidentally hurt someone I love. I think in one case my dream was that I was home alone at night, when suddenly I heard someone walking up the darkened staircase from our basement. Thinking it was an intruder, I struck out at them with a weapon at an opportune moment as they reached the top of the staircase, only to realize it was a loved one. The most visceral version of this dream involved a loved one who was in pain. In the dream, I had a strong impulse that the loving and right thing to do was to knock them out so that they wouldn’t be suffering. In the dream, I was straddling them on the ground, holding them down, repeatedly striking them on the head with my fist to knock them out. But to my horror, with each blow the person simply become more badly hurt, and fully conscious. And the more hurt they become, the stronger the impulse to knock them out, which compelled me to continue striking them. On and on it went. Truly a nightmare. Terrible.
On my bike ride today this dream popped back into my head, but I saw it from a new light. The two actors in the dream were countries, or perhaps religions. The one country felt that the good and right thing to do was to act out in violence against the other country -- that somehow a violent act could be used to neutralize pain and suffering. There would be losses, but it was the greater good that was being sought. Tragically, we know that all too often wars leave both countries badly harmed.
The second layer to my thought was an analogy to the victim being a loved one. Perhaps there are deeper truths to the concept of loving one’s enemy than we realize -- that at some spiritual level, it is like we are murdering our own children. That maybe some day, when all is revealed, we will see that our enemies were actually as our own children to us, and we will have to account for how we savagely beat them. A perspective on peace.
older >>
