Monthly Archives: August 2017

"Let your forbearance be made known to all." Philippians 4:5

When was the last time you used the word "forbearance?" Have you ever used the word? It's not in the typical vocabulary. It sounds a little old. Perhaps a little churchy. Have you ever said to your spouse during a vigorous discussion "I am forbearing you?" Probably not. Trust me. It doesn't help anything.

One of my all-time favorite passages of scripture is Philippians 4:4-8. In fact, the whole book is one of my favorites and has been for a very long time. I remember Bob Justus, the associate pastor of the church I grew up in, saying that if you're ever feeling down, just read the book of Philippians a few times. I was probably 12 or thirteen when I heard him say that. It stuck with me. And yes, this letter really does help lift your spirits.

Now back to forbearance and also a little lesson in Greek and translation. Greek is a wonderfully complex language with layers and layers of nuance and verb tenses that make it beautifully fitting for scripture and ancient philosophy but often difficult to translate into English. Any translation is more art than science, and the challenge for any translator is to understand deeply the language of origin AND the language into which it is translated. In other words, it's often not an exact correspondence where this Greek word always means this English word. That's where the art comes in.

In this rich passage Paul used a word that the venerable RSV scribes translated as "forbearance." KJV translates it as moderation. Others translate it as gentleness, considerate, kindness, and gracious kindness. Whenever you see this kind of range of translation you know that the underlying Greek word is a bit thorny.

All of these translations help. It's a very positive word, full of good spiritual depth. If you move through the day with gentleness, kindness, grace, and consideration then you're very likely to have a very good day. And if you cultivate these wonderful spiritual emotions then the people around you are likely to have a very good day also. And that brings us to my translation of the word: show grace to everyone.

Show grace to everyone. That's surely what Jesus had in mind when He said we are to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, go the extra mile, turn the other cheek, and all those other irritating teachings that at times we either ignore or wish He hadn't said.

The Christian faith has a universality to it that simply cannot be ignored. I have no problem whatsoever loving people that love me or agree with me. In fact, I generally admire their wisdom!

However, I have a real problem loving the white supremacist, for example. To conceive of yourself as superior to another human being, let alone an entire race, is a concept so anti-Christian that we're stunned when we see it. Yet it's real, active, and it's very hard for me to love the people that embrace it.

But if I'm to take seriously the meaning of this Greek word, then I must show grace to the white supremacist.

That's what Daryl Davis decided to do. A black man from Chicago, Daryl has decided to talk to members of the KKK. To date some 200 or so have left the klan because of Daryl Davis. He never set out to convert anyone from the klan, he just wanted to talk to them and ask them a simple question: "How can you hate me when you don't even know me?" Wonder of wonders, when they got to know Daryl, they liked him.

Why? He showed grace. He didn't respond to their hatred with hatred. He didn't try to shout them down. He didn't attack them. He didn't do the things that tend to create a dozen rebels for every convert. When you meet anger with anger you just multiply anger.I just read a clever idea last week. Grace overcomes racism. So what we need is gracism.

Grace changes us in ways that laws, public policies, protests, and even preaching never will. Each of these has its place of course, but our main problem is always spiritual in nature. Always. So grace is the answer. Always.

So here's where forbearance can get really irritating. I'll wager most of my reading audience has applauded what I've written so far. I doubt I have too many white supremacists among my subscribers. We can all energetically agree that we should be against racism. They should apply grace, note hate. But applying grace cuts both ways. If you hate the white supremacist, what good is that?

Show grace to everyone. It begins within. Unclench your fists. Open your hands. Receive grace and begin living in peace. It's absolutely futile to tell someone to be loving when they're filled with loathing, especially self-loathing. So let God's grace work deeply into your soul. You're forgiven. Accepted. Celebrated. Loved. Let that sink in.

Then look at the people around you. Think of how different the world would be if we simply stopped hating. That's a good place to start. Just stop hating. Those raw emotions you feel when someone says or does something you disagree with, you may not call that hate, but that's what I'm aiming at.

Personally, it's enormously difficult for me not to feel something, but I can choose not to embrace it. I can choose to consider how to let gentleness, kindness, consideration, and forbearance be made known. I firmly believe that's how I move away from hate and toward love.

So here's how forbearance might look like: Does the racist make your blood boil? Show them grace. Are you angry with someone whose politics are different from yours? Show them grace. Do you hate someone who is tearing down a statue? Or someone who wants the statue to remain? Show them grace. Does someone have a different point of view from you on the unrest in our country? Show them grace.
Are you more likely to point out the splinter or log in another person's eye before you look in the mirror? Show grace.

Translation is difficult. That word forbearance is linguistically slippery. But I think I know what it looks like. I'm going to try to do better in showing grace to all people. Especially the ones who are different from me.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis
August 21, 2017

"Do everything without grumbling." Philippians 2:14

Grumble. It's onomatopoetic. The first two letters sound like a growl. Grrrr. Many people grumble their way through life, always growling about this or that, or this AND that. You know the kind of person I'm talking about. You might be the kind of person I'm talking about. Grumblers are everywhere.

In one of my churches many years ago was an elderly fellow I'll call Sam. Sam had been in that church since its founding I believe. He had served it faithfully in many, many ways. But he was a grumbler. That man could pick out the gnat of a complaint and grumble about it to anyone who would listen and to a lot of people that didn't care to listen. He was a walking incarnation of a chronic growl.

One time Sam was driving with a good friend of mine and carrying on about the general decline of the world, one of those "going to hell in a hand-basket" kind of talks. So engrossed was he in the constellation of gripes that he passed up the exit they were to take. When my friend could get in a word, he said "Mr. Sam, where are we going?" Sam, completely oblivious to the real problem at hand energetically replied "We're going down! That's where we're going! We're going down!"

Now eventually Sam turned around and got to where he was supposed to be, and I'm quite sure he's arrived at his heavenly home where he's supposed to be. And he could have gotten to both places without all the useless complaining along the way.

All of us can get to the place we're supposed to be in life without grumbling, and grumbling usually keeps us or delays us from getting there. That's why the Bible so often warns us against grumbling, complaining, and arguing.

The people of Israel grumbled when Moses was leading them out of bondage. It got on his nerves too. He called them a stiff-necked people, and in Deuteronomy Moses himself sounds a little bit cranky, no doubt due to all the grumbling he had to put up with.

The New Testament presents many warnings against grumbling. Jesus told His disciples to stop it (John 6:43). Peter and James included a prohibition against it in their letters. Perhaps most memorably, Paul, when listing various sins, noted especially the grumbling Israelites and that some of them were "destroyed by the destroyer" (1 Cor. 10:10). All grumblers should be grateful that God has modified His methods.

Grumbling is such a way of life for many people that books have been written about it. Robert Hughes in The Culture of Complaint was one of the first authors to address the problem. He noted our cultural tendency to fix our dissatisfaction on someone else or something else. We have a penchant for making ourselves victims. We decide that our happiness or joy is someone's responsibility. "We have met the enemy, and it is someone else," is our mantra. The problem could not possibly be with us. So we complain, convinced that if everyone played their role according to our expectations then we would be happy. "Just do what I want, and you won't hear me complain." Ugh.

We have a real uphill battle here. Grumbling is a mental habit that becomes fixed over time so that our default setting becomes complaint. Neurologists, especially those who are interested in behavior modification, have a principle that goes like this: "Neurons that fire together, wire together." Every thought, every mental habit is the result of a series of synaptic responses, a mental construct. It's literally a neuronal pathway that fires again and again in your brain.

Think of a field of tall grass. You walk across it the first time and you bend the blades in such a way that you make something of a pathway. The next time you cross that same field you're likely to follow the same path. Eventually the grass gets worn down so that the pathway is obvious, and in fact you wouldn't consider taking a different path because it would mean going through tall grass again.

Your brain is like that field of tall grass. Your mental habits, good and bad, are well-worn pathways through your gazillion neurons. If you're a complainer, then you have a neural habit that will be very hard to break. The same is true if you're a worrier, or if you struggle with fear, or resentment, etc. etc. The stakes are huge. One recent article I read noted unsurprisingly that grumbling wires your brain to be anxious and depressed.

Which brings us to the solution. Prayer and meditation also form neural pathways. A quiet time forces us to walk through the grass field in a different way. Practiced daily, even for only about 10 minutes a day, we'll develop new ways of thinking that divert us from the well-worn path of grumbling and help us to find genuine serenity. Try it and in as little as two weeks you'll notice a change in your outlook.

Now this is absolutely a classic case of a battle that will not stay won. It's going to be a daily fight. Those pathways of complaint never go away. We have to engage consciously, daily, even moment by moment in the kind of spiritual practices that keep us from becoming grumblers.

THE chief spiritual antidote to grumbling is gratitude. Gratitude lists are pure spiritual gold. If you find yourself grumbling, try listing three gratitudes for every grumble. Pretty soon your complaints will diminish and you will absolutely find yourself to be more at peace with yourself and this world that just won't cooperate with you. You'll discover that life isn't an endless series of problems to be solved, endured, or complained about. It's truly amazing how much better your life will be when you unclench your fists and just open your hands to receive God's grace.

I had to speak to Mr. Sam about his grumbling one time, and to his lasting credit he came back to me and told me a story about how he was going to try to change. He said he kept a folder of newspaper and magazine stories that outraged him (I'm not making this up). He said he realized that folder was just giving him ammunition to grumble, so he decided to throw it away. He did, though his pathways were pretty well-worn and he still tended to default to complaint. It was life-long habit.

Do you have a folder (real or mental) that you need to throw away? Has grumbling taken up too much of your life? Take seriously the scriptural prohibition against it. Understand that modern neuroscience has literally demonstrated the wisdom of ancient scripture. Stop growling. Keep praying. Learn to be quiet and still. Your grumbles will turn to gratitude.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

August 13, 2017