Accepting the Hope

The woman in the IGA parking lot, turned away, with disappointment. It happened to Jesus, too. Someone wanted something very important, but the price seemed too high. He wanted a magic answer. This is told in the gospel story of the rich young man who encountered Jesus.

Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?"

"Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."

"Which ones?" the man inquired.

Jesus replied, " `Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and `love your neighbor as yourself.' "

"All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?"

Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.¹

He turned away, sorrowing. He wanted an easy answer. He wanted an easy restoration in his relationship with God. He wanted magic. It wasn’t going to be easy. His money, rather than being the indication of a right relationship with God was an impediment.

I just couldn’t help but think of this story as the woman walked away from me. She needed help, power and hope. But she wanted it on her terms, and that just wasn’t going to work.

The power and hope is in God’s power and willingness to change us.

We may want an easy answer. It will never be easy. We can go away, sorrowing, or we can trust in the power of God and his willingness to change us. This is the key to getting off the spiral.

There actually are things we can do to get off the comfort spiral. It usually isn’t all that easy. We have had lifetime patterns of behavior that we go back to, because we have always gone back to them. We may do well for a time. Then we fall back into old patterns. And I can tell you, it is harder to get off the spiral the second time, than it is the first time.

The rich young man had a lifetime pattern of relying on his wealth as the blessing from God that indicated God’s favor toward him. The idea that he had to give up the one thing that brought him his comfort was just too much. He wanted it easy, and Jesus seemed to make it hard. Most of us cannot relate to him in this regard. We don’t see ourselves as wealthy. We (hopefully) see salvation as something so incredibly worth everything that we would be willing to give away everything we have for eternal life.

Would I give up my calories? If Jesus told me that I could inherit eternal life if I successfully lost one hundred pounds and kept it off, would I be like the lady in the IGA parking lot? Would I turn away, disappointed? Would the alcoholic easily give up the bottle? The smoker her cigarettes? It sounds so easy. But if we don’t truly believe that God can provide more comfort than we have ever known, what will we do?

There is hope. There is power. It is in God’s power and willingness to change us. God can lift us out of the spiral. It’s not a magic pill, but it is powerful.

¹ Matthew 19:16-22

Good as New! (Or Heading That Way, Anyway)

Factory refurbished or restored. I’ll admit, I’m pretty slow to buy an electronic doo-dad that is sold at a bargain price when it is listed as factory restored. Already it didn’t work for one person. What makes me believe that it will work the second time around? But that is based more on my lack of confidence in the restorer, who in all likelihood is responsible for the original problems.

God is in the restoration business. The good news is that he is not responsible for the original flawed product! We have messed up, and God is restoring. Once again, we are back at 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

I’ve talked about the problem of discomfort, and traps we fall into, in trying to seek comfort. Now I want to start looking at how we can cooperate with God’s grace and move toward wholeness, accepting God’s comfort. For comfort to truly overcome the brokenness that is the source of our discomfort, it must move us toward restoration.

Restoration is taking whatever is broken, and repairing the breach. In the Divine-human relationship, God has already taken the initiative. Jesus was born among us. He taught us. He died for us, and rose again. Now we must respond. If the breach is between two people, someone must follow God’s example and take the initiative. If the breach is with the environment, then perhaps applied wisdom in living is needed.

Sometimes, acceptance is needed. God accepts us as we are, even as he longs to restore us. How often do we expect someone else to pull it together, before we will deal with them? The problem is that they may be powerless to pull it together. Perhaps I need to pull it together enough to accept the other with all his problems.

Restoration is not easy. There is no magic pill. Dieters want a weight-loss pill that allows them to eat and not exercise. The patent-medicine snake-oil salesmen on radio and television are busy battling it out, claiming that their unique pill will help you lose weight, and the other is a sham. Heroin addicts shift their addiction from heroin to methadone rather than going cold turkey and quitting.

One day I was walking through the parking lot at the IGA (our local grocery store). A woman I didn’t know, came up to me and asked, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“How did you lose all that weight?”

I gave her the Reader’s Digest condensed version “I count calories, and I started walking every day.” (In fact, I was on my daily walk when I met her.)

She turned away without a comment, but also with a clear expression of disappointment. She wanted an easy answer. She wanted a magic pill.

There is no magic. But there is power and there is hope.

Power for Good

Guilt can lead to paralysis. But it can also be a powerful force of motivation for repentance and renewal. Earlier I said that guilt was a gift from God that draws our attention to something that we should stop doing. In this sense, guilt properly applied is a comfort mechanism that is God’s gift to us. If we are walking outside of God’s ways, we will feel guilty. The stress that this brings to our lives can be eliminated very simply by returning to God’s ways!

If you’re cheating on your spouse, you should feel guilty. You are guilty, and you should feel it, and you should stop. If you are a shoplifter, you should feel guilty. If you are contentious, always bringing strife into the lives around you, you should feel guilty. If you are a gossip, you should feel guilty. If, in all these things, you do not feel guilty, you have deeper problems than just the behavior.

On the comfort spiral, when we are at the point of feeling guilty for our behavior, that isn’t a false accusation. If I am overeating, feeling guilty can be a strong signal to stop! When a sense of guilt and the behavior that engendered it are brought to God’s throne of grace, then the very power of God has been released into your life. And now we are moving into the power of hope.

Each of us is affected by brokenness. Sin is a breakdown in relationship. Whether the relationship is with God or another human being, discontinuity is created when we seek our own needs, wants or desires, without regard to God or others. Sin is a failure to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, or to love our neighbor as ourselves. All brokenness comes from sin, whether it is our own sin, or the sin of others. God did not create a broken world. He looked upon his creation, and saw that it was good.¹ Brokenness came about with the fall, as Adam and Eve decided to ignore what God told them, and went their own way.

Immediately there was a breach in the relationship with each other, and with God. The relationship between man and woman changed as they suddenly felt shame, looking upon one another. They covered themselves up, to hide their shame. But there was more shame, and they also covered themselves up to be invisible to God. “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.”²

The best reaction to such shame, though, is not to run and hide. God is seeking to build relationships, not destroy them. God’s work is one of restoration, not ruin. When guilt drives us into God’s loving embrace, then we are cooperating with grace, and open ourselves to God’s restoration work. Restoration is what God is about. Guilt has the power to move us toward restoration, if we respond appropriately.

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¹ Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31
² Genesis 3:8

Paralyzed!

To be paralyzed is to be rendered completely powerless, ineffective or inert. As I said in the previous post, some allow their sense of guilt to paralyze them. They are so burdened by the sense of guilt that they do not take advantage of the full power that God gives us to move forward in our lives.

Paul expresses the lead-up to possible paralysis in Romans 7. “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.”¹

Paul is writing about the struggle to do good, even while sinful nature fights against us. That sinful nature can seem so powerful, that sometimes we are moved to despair. We stop believing that there is any hope. It almost seems as if that’s where Paul is heading here, especially when we get to this phrase, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”²

In our spiritual lives we might be tempted to stop here. “I just can’t beat it! I give up! There’s just no power over this!” Paralysis sets in. Guilt can lead us here. If we have allowed thought patterns to develop that say, “you are weak, you are incapable, you are the loser you have always believed yourself to be,” we lose all power to fight on. All our efforts seem completely ineffective, and our spiritual lives are inert. There is no growth, there is no joy, there is no peace, there is no excitement. There’s just no power to move further up and further into the glorious kingdom, into the joy of the Father that has been prepared for us.

Guilt leads us to paralysis because we fail to see ourselves as truly forgiven, truly set free, truly beloved, truly clothed with the righteousness of Jesus. Guilt can keep us from exercising the power that is available, because we are so focused on what used to be, instead of what God is doing now. We’re still seeing the old, dead self, instead of the new creation in Christ. We fall into despair, and cry out, “Who will rescue me?!”

Who indeed? Paul did not forget who. He did not stop with a cry of despair. He always remembered who rescued him. “Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!”³ The rescue is done. Don’t let the memory of sin keep you from moving forward. You may not be sprinting, but you can take one step deeper into the joy of the Master.

This is true of our spiritual life. I believe this is true of other aspects of our lives as well. In many, many ways the ways we deal with discomfort and stress parallel the struggles with sin and righteousness that we experience. As I said earlier, if God is the God of all comfort, then comfort and discomfort in all aspects of our lives has some spiritual component. That’s probably something to explore a little later on.

When we get to the point in the spiral where our comfort seeking behavior leads us into guilt, we can allow ourselves to become paralyzed. We feel guilty about smoking another cigarette, overeating again, getting drunk again, getting into the wrong bed again. We begin believing that there just isn’t any hope for change. Here’s even another layer. On top of the guilt lies hopelessness. That’s where the paralysis really sets in. If we are without hope, we just stop trying.

Maybe now we start the jokes. You’ve heard them, maybe you’re making them. “Sure, I can quit smoking! I’ve already done it a hundred times!” “Just don’t tempt me, I can resist anything but temptation.” “I’m not overweight, I’m undertall.” We use laughter to mask our hopelessness and our paralysis. We’re using it to divert attention away from our own culpability and responsibility. We have to divert away from our responsibility, because it is just that sense of responsibility that has moved us into the sense of guilt.

But just as there is hope for us in our struggle with sin, there is hope for us in our struggle against stress and discomfort. We may be at the guilt/hopelessness point of the spiral, but hopelessness is always a lie. There is always hope, and interestingly enough, I have found that the hope begins at the same place that Paul found it. Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!

All hope is found in Jesus. If we are feeling hopeless and powerless over our eating, smoking, drinking, or whatever spiral we are on, there is hope, and it begins with Jesus. Go back again, and learn again what God has done for you. Remember the story of his birth, his death and especially his resurrection. Allow yourself to be told again that all this love poured out was for you. Listen to the truth, and make it personal to you. There is power in that hope. We do not need to be paralyzed. We can move further up and further in, and we can get off the comfort spiral.

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¹ Romans 7:18-19
² Romans 7:24
³ Romans 8:25a

The Power of Guilt

Stress or discomfort leads to comfort seeking behavior. Comfort seeking behavior can lead to frustration and increased stress and discomfort. Increased comfort seeking behavior can lead to destructive levels. This destructive behavior induces guilt which increases the discomfort to even greater intensity. Now you see how the spiral is built.

Have no doubt, guilt is very powerful. Guilt is also a gift from God. We are meant to feel guilty for doing something we shouldn’t, in order to draw attention to the fact that we should stop doing something! When guilt is operating correctly in our lives, the discomfort from our guilt will drive us to stop doing the behavior that induces the guilt. That would be an example of appropriate comfort seeking behavior. I am uncomfortable because of the guilt I feel, so I stop doing the things that make me feel guilty. Now I am more comfortable and I am no longer doing that which I should not.

Guilt is powerful. It can operate in our lives positively or negatively. First the negative power of guilt.

Guilt is a problem when we are no longer responsible (and possibly never were responsible) for the actions that have induced the guilt. What do I mean? Now I am going to be a little more directly theological than I have been to date.

As Christians, we live under the grace of God’s forgiveness for our sins. We have done wicked things in the past, we have turned from God’s ways and pursued our own. That is the clear and consistent testimony of Scripture. It begins with the story of the fall in Genesis. Adam and Eve turn from God’s instructions, and choose their own way. They eat the forbidden fruit.

Isaiah universalizes the fall to everyone: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”¹ Any honest person can look at himself and see how much he has chosen to go his own way, rather than God’s ways. Isaiah compares us to sheep, an animal that easily goes astray.

The Apostle Paul really boils it down: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”² These statements both individualize and universalize the reality of sin. I have sinned. I have gone astray and gone my own way. That’s the individual aspect. Since this is true of everyone, it is a universal problem.

Christians are those who acknowledge their guilt, and accept their dependence on the gift of God’s forgiveness, given to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. The hope of the Christian faith is that God offers us a new life through his forgiveness. That new life is expressed as a new creation. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”³ Understanding this is so important. Too many are paralyzed by negative guilt. They do not actively accept that God has set their guilt aside, and that they are now sharing in the righteousness of Jesus. They still beat themselves up for their past deeds and willfulness and allow that sense of guilt to paralyze themselves from enjoying the fullness of a rich relationship of passionate love with God. They keep themselves from moving further up and further into God’s kingdom.

It is not God that is the originator of this guilt. It comes from somewhere else. The Bible says that God is not condemning us.

“What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died--more than that, who was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.”⁴

Who has the ultimate right to criticize us, find fault with us, accuse us and condemn us? Jesus is our creator, Jesus is the one who has lived life on this earth completely without ever failing God. He has authority as our creator. He has moral authority as the sinless one. As the preceding passage points out, he is doing the exact opposite of condemning us. He pleads our cause before God. He’s on our side.

So if the guilt some still feel isn’t from God, then where? There are other possibilities. The chapter in Romans goes on to describe those who may be out there accusing us. Verse 38 speaks of angels and demons, past and future, powers, heights and depths. The enemies of God are also our enemies. They seek to keep us separated from experiencing God and his love and grace. Leading us to discount the complete forgiveness God has for us will accomplish that goal. So one source for inappropriate or negative guilt is the full array of the enemies of God.

There can be other sources as well. Our own patterns of thought can be deep ruts that keep us from breaking free into newer more healthful ways of thinking. Some have had the misfortune of having a parent berate them continually through their lives. From early on they accepted that they were useless, that they would always be failures, that they were irredeemably bad. These early beliefs and negative self-images make it easy to feel guilty over past, forgiven deeds and attitudes, in spite of the clear proclamation of forgiveness.

Next, the usual result of the negative side of guilt.

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¹ Isaiah 53:6
² Romans 3:23
³ 2 Corinthians 5:17
⁴ Romans 8:31-34

Trouble upon Trouble

So, we’ve got problems and struggles in life. That’s a fact of life here in a fallen world. We manage our struggles in a variety of ways, some appropriate, some not. We can know that our management techniques have moved into inappropriate methods when they become destructive. They may be destructive to ourselves, others, or frequently both.

Getting back to the spiral we started with a little bit of stress, and a little bit of stress relief. But if the stress relief didn’t really address the causes of the stress, it’s a temporary patch at best. Sometimes that’s all we need, a temporary patch. Then a good night’s sleep, and we’re ready to face the next day’s stresses. But what if that patch isn’t enough?

If using comfort mechanisms that do not directly address the real problem are relied upon, then it is likely that those mechanisms will become problems in and of themselves. If the original problem is not resolved in some other manner, then you have taken one level of problem, and added another layer atop it, to compound the troubles of your life. Finally, at some point (getting back to the spiral illustration) you have moved along your spiral from non-destructive behavior into destructive behavior.

Here it is important to see that the actual behavior hasn’t changed in substance, but in intensity or volume. My comfort behavior is eating. For a while, those midnight trips to the hamburger place during the college years didn’t really do any damage. They couldn’t. I couldn’t afford enough Twin Burgers at Bunks to cause weight gain. Then too, at that point I was operating at a more youthful metabolism where the calories were more easily burned. What those trips did do was establish a pattern of how I would end up dealing with stress and discomfort.

As time went on, the relatively harmless behavior of “relaxing” through food intensified. I hadn’t really developed appropriate methods of dealing with my stresses. The stresses piled up, and the eating increased. It was the same behavior, just more of it.

Something new is added on when the behavior moves from non-destructive levels to destructive levels. Before we had stress type discomfort. Then we added frustration onto the stress discomfort. Now we add on yet another layer of discomfort: guilt.

At some point, we realize that the behavior is destructive. It may be a very mild realization, but it is there. The trousers are a little tight. We have to loosen the belt a notch. We wake up with a hang-over. We realize the wife is right after nagging that the kids never see their dad, he’s always at work. Whatever our comfort behavior is, by using it too much, we have moved into a destructive phase, and we become aware, at some level of that destruction. That awareness is transformed into an appropriate experience of guilt. If we are doing something we shouldn’t, we should feel guilty about it.

So, for now I will leave it with this new layer. We have the original stress or discomfort. We have frustration that we haven’t gotten rid of that discomfort. And now we have guilt that our reaction to that discomfort has led us into destructive behavior.

Also note, we may not be aware that our guilt over our destructive behavior is in any way tied to the original discomfort. We feel guilty over the behavior. But it is quite possible to still be completely unaware that our comfort behaviors are just that–comfort behaviors. We may not be making the connection of original discomfort to our comfort behavior.

Getting Destructive

So far, I've tried to stay in the area of non-destructive behavior. That is, so what if I have a couple of Oreos? In the illustration, non-destructive behavior is represented by the gray circle. Eventually, if we persist in using a genuinly unhelpful pleasure mechanism to deal with our daily discomforts, that pleasure mechanism will turn into a destructive behavior.

The quick illustration is: 2 Oreos = 150 calories, no problem. 1 package of Oreos = 30 Oreos (more or less) = 2250 calories. Now there is a problem. When our comfort behavior starts doing damage to our body through weight gain, for example, we are compounding our problems with interest.

I have been using food as my example. That's because that's my pleasure mechanism. Therefore it is also my struggle. But food and eating is certainly not the only way people deal with their discomforts. The list can be very long, and the most obvious examples might include:

Alcohol
Sex
Drugs
Work
Exercise
Thrill-seeking
Hobbies
Entertainment

None of these things are necessarily bad in themselves. How they are used is the issue. All of them are devoid of spiritual content by themselves. They might be used spiritually, but that must be in relationship with God.

If the discomforts we deal with are spiritual in nature, relying on any of these is doomed from the start, and even more likely to lead to destructive behavior. If the discomforts are emotional in nature, the most common pleasure mechanisms are unlikly to be of any long-term help.

I tend to believe that since God is the god of all comfort (Remember that verse back in 2 Corinthians?) that discomfort always has a spiritual component. So leaving God out of our comfort behaviors is risky business.

Some of our comfort mechanisms are more obviously destructive than others. Obesity is destructive to the body. It can be destructive to others, as our failing health can adversely affect those in our families.

Alcoholism is an obvious destruction. Adultery destroys a marriage, pre-marital sex is emotionally and spiritually destructive. Constantly overworking can be very destructive to the health of a marriage, or to one's own spiritual and emotional balance, for we were not made to work 24-7. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy" is a reflection of our spiritual and physical nature. We were created to rest one day out of seven.

Next time, back to the spiral . . .

Spiraling Out of Control

Some things just won't satisfy. But they make a pretty good imitation, for a while. And that can lead us into trouble.

When we are faced with a discomfort of one kind or another, we usually seek to alleviate the discomfort. We might do this consciously, or without being particularly aware of what we are doing. We may be using perfectly acceptable activities to lighten our load, without being aware that's what's going on in our lives.

This can easily lead to what I call the Comfort Spiral. It begins with some kind of struggle, hardship, disapointment, discomfort. It might simply be the tiredness of a long, hard day at work. Those come by most of us fairly often. Nothing really bad happened, it was just long and hard. There is the discomfort.

We go home, maybe after an hour of commuting on the highways and biways. Again, this is nothing terribly unusual. But there is just a little more discomfort. When we arrive home, there is the package of Oreo Cookies on the counter. That looks good. We grab a couple cookies, and go on to change out of the career clothes and into something a little less formal to do the work around the house.

Okay, so far, no problem. But the cookies don't really address the problem of a long hard day at work, and a long commute. We grab the cookies because, well, because we like Oreos. And that's it. That's the comfort mechanism. We engage in something we like (eating a couple Oreos) to counteract the discomfort that comes from the workday and commute.

If we never proceed beyond a couple of Oreos, maybe that's not a big deal. But far too many of us go well beyond the two cookies. That's because our comfort mechanism doesn't really deal with the source of our discomfort. The only discomfort that food truly cures is physical hunger. But many of us use food to try to cure all the discomforts of our lives.

So we start with a discomfort, and we respond with a non-destructive and seemingly helpful behavior. So far, so good. What happens though, if we develop a pattern of this behavior? Things can spiral out of control.

We had the long hard day at work, and enjoyed a couple of cookies. Action - Reaction. But the reaction did not deal with the root causes of the discomfort. After the pleasure of the cookies has worn off, it may still be a long hard day. Maybe things at home aren't all that great, either. So some might grab a couple more cookies. After all, there is real pleasure in eating those little devils. And during the consumption of them, the pleasure is outweighing the discomfort.

Eventually, however, something new might creep into the equation. Because the cookies don't actually fix the problem, because the problem continues, an unidentified frustration can creep into the whole situation. That frustration is that, doggone it, eating this stuff isn't actually helping anything! So now a new discomfort has crept into the equation. We originally had the long hard day at work and the long commute. Now we have added in a frustration. Frustration is uncomfortable. And we know how to deal with discomfort--grab a couple Oreos!

Eventually, a completely appropriate behavior, eating an Oreo, becomes a problem. We are trying to use something we enjoy to overwhelm our feelings of discomfort. Over time, we can let that get completely out of control.



The illustration shows how the process grows. We start in the center with some kind of discomfort. We respond to the discomfort with something we like, something that makes us feel good, a pleasure mechanism. Maybe that works for a while, but the discomfort is still there, so we repeat the pleasure mechanism. If we begin to feel the frustration or discouragement because the pleasure mechanism didn't actually fix the problem, we have added to our discomfort level.

Unfortunately, we are most likely to continue to use the pleasure mechanisms we are accustomed to using. That means that increased discomfort is likely to result in more Oreos.

More soon . . .

Lookin' in all the wrong places

Okay, so way back in January, I quoted 2 Corinthians 1:3, where the Bible says: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort . . .”

From this I get the idea that comfort is a good thing. Preacher types are often fond of saying that Jesus came to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. I think that is defensible, but it isn't a bible verse, by any means. Clearly, the bible intends to be telling us that comfort is a part of what God is about in this world.

The problem begins when we seek our comfort inappropriately. There are many places to go, but it can be summed up as, we often seek our comfort in whatever we find our pleasure.

For some of us, that can be food. That surely became my struggle, and I have spent many, many hours in self-examination to see where the problems lie. I know that there is power over this (that's a subject or two for the future), but part of the power is learning what is making me feel the need for the comfort. Naming the problem increases our power over the problem. At the very least, it gives us something specific to go to the throne of grace with.

As the Proverbial Wife pointed out recently, food as a comfort mechanism can be an obviously besetting problem. Some of us wear it around the waist. Others are a little trickier, and starve themselves, or purge themselves to hide their need for comfort, and their mechanism for seeking comfort. Others have comfort mechanisms that aren't quite as obvious, at least not immediately.

I would suggest that pretty much any addictive behavior probably started out as a comfort mechanism. Drug taking may have started out from peer pressure, but isn't that the reaction to an uncomfortable situation? Someone with a very strong self-image would have walked away from the friends that were pushing him to try a bit of pot, or another drug. Then, while under the drug's influence, they felt good.

That's a comfort mechanism. Something that makes us feel good. It can be eating. It can be meth-amphetines. It can be pot. It can be alcohol, work, sex, exercise . . . you get the picture. Everyone has one thing or another that they particularly enjoy, that makes them feel better. Some have built in physical reinforcements -- sex comes to mind here -- others are more tied to an emotional satisfaction.

The problem is, all these things will not satisfy. They are temporary at best. They will quite likely lead to misuse of perfectly good things, through what I call the Comfort Spiral. The Comfort Spiral will be the next post.

Getting Comfortable

OK, I forgot about item 3. That is simply that I have been reading through the book of Job for the last several days. Now there was an unhappy guy! Job had some friends. And with friends like these . . .

These friends have been the origin of a term, “Job’s Comforters.” That’s not something warm and thick and cozy on a bed. May heaven keep us from ever being a Job’s comforter. That is someone who manages to say all the wrong things at just the wrong times in just such a way as to add to the sufferer’s woe, rather than supporting and strengthening them.

Now, where am I going with all this? In 2 Corinthians 1:3, the Bible says: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort . . .” God is the God of all comfort. That seems to fit with the idea that God wants us to be happy. When we are unhappy, we seek comfort. Does that move us toward happiness? So I want to look first at a definition of comfort, then look at the ways some of us seek comfort.

A Definition of Comfort.

Here are a few words I usually use in my wedding sermons, when I talk about the vows that a couple makes as they marry.

Comfort - The promise to comfort implies that there will be some hard times ahead. That is the nature of life, that there are difficulties as well as joys. To comfort another person does not mean to make them feel good, but to be with them when they hurt. It means to acknowledge the things important to your spouse, and make them important to you as well. Comfort can be a caring embrace, it can be a listening ear. Comfort can be gentle words of affirmation when an ego has been bent and bruised. Comfort can be a blanket and aspirin when someone is ill. It can be that hot bowl of soup when someone is cold. To comfort someone is to remind them that they are precious in your eyes, and in the eyes of God. Rarely are we able to take away another's pain. Often we can be with them in their pain. This is comfort.

I get this from the origins of the word, comfort. The two syllables come from Latin, com, an intensifier syllable, and fortis, meaning strength. Comfort means “to strengthen completely.” I believe that this happens through the presence of another. The wondrous promise in scripture is that God is with us. That very presence is what gives us strength. Notice that the original meaning doesn’t seem to have much to say about feeling better. Yet, that still seems to happen.

I remember when I was a little kid and would get the stomach flu. That was no fun! What a lousy way to get out of school! I would be lying sick in bed, absolutely miserable. Then my mom would come in to check up on me, perhaps laying her hand on my forehead to check the progress of my fever. Somehow, the cool of her hand, the presence of my mom helped me. I was still sick. I still had a fever. My stomach was still in violent revolt. But I was helped. I was strengthened. I was comforted.

The ultimate comfort is what preachers like to talk about at Christmas time, Emmanuel. God with us. God promises his presence to his people in Joshua 1:9, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” Jesus repeats the promise at the ascension, “. . . And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 19:20b)

So, comfort has more to do with strength to endure than it does our ease. We gain that strength, when others are with us during our struggles. Next, I will look at ways many of us seek comfort, and what the results can end up being. (It’s not good . . .)

Getting Comfortable

Recently, Rev. Mark D. Roberts completed a series on Happiness. It should be read, it is excellent, as is everything I have read on his blog site. In fact, this blog has begun because he has been encouraging pastors to be blogging pastors.

In summary, Rev. Roberts asserts and defends the proposition that God does want us to be happy. What exactly happiness consists of is a part of his series. I do not disagree with him, but his series has coordinated in my life with a few other items that lead me to go into an investigation of my own.

Item 1.

Just this morning, Cinemax replayed the movie, Shadowlands, starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. This movie is the story of C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham who meet, marry and then fall in love. Gresham, it turns out has cancer which takes her life. At another level, this story is about a Christian intellectual who becomes a Christian human being.

Lewis was a popular lecturer and writer, particularly in the post WWII era. Early in the movie, Lewis is portrayed as giving a lecture, talking about the place and value of suffering. He is passionate and firm, yet strangely uncaring. As the movie progresses, his lecture changes bit by bit, until, at the end of the film he understands suffering in a new way. Suffering is no longer a philosophical or theological abstract notion. It is now part of his life. Interestingly, he understands suffering as being a part of happiness. This is a lesson that he has learned from Joy Gresham. “The pain then is part of the happiness now,” is the phrase used to explain the relationship between happiness and suffering.

Item 2.

Once upon a time, several years ago, I had reached a peak weight in excess of 430 lbs. OUCH! I wasn’t fat as a kid. I just added on a pound or so a month for over 20 years, and boy, does it add up! Where did it come from? Why was weight such a struggle for me, and for so many? And of course, does my faith have anything to say about this, and if so, what?

Now I weigh a fair bit less. I am genuinely struggling now. My true weight problem before was that I wasn’t struggling, I was just growing. I have lost a lot of weight. I’m not where I want to be. I have lost some ground over the last year, but now am beginning to move back in the correct direction.

So what have these two completely unrelated things have to do with each other? Well, one thing I learned about myself is that I eat for comfort. I don’t need comfort foods, food is comfort. But then, some foods are more comforting than others. For me, that is part of the problem. In learning this, I have been doing some studying about comfort. That is the direction I want to go in this blog until I decide to go in some other direction. What is comfort about? Why is it important? Where does it come from? Why can it sometimes backfire?

It seems obvious to me that comfort is related to happiness. That is why Rev. Roberts’ blog has moved me to look at comfort more closely. I invite any and all who wish to follow along on my little pilgrimage!

Just Getting Started

What's this blog about? Like any other blog, it's about whatever strikes me as worth sharing a thought about. It will not be completely thought out, and I reserve the right to change my mind at any time.

Hopefully, over time, it will reflect thoughts and ideas regarding life as a Christian in this modern world. I am forever challenged by C. S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia," where in the final book, The Last Battle, Aslan invites everyone to come further up and further into the new kingdom. I believe the Christian should always be seeking to move further up and further into the Kingdom of Jesus.

I doubt that this blog will be updated daily. Even if no one else ever sees it, at least it will help me think through things and try to communicate more effectively, whether in the pulpit, in individual conversations, or here, on the web.

I am calling this The Plodding Pilgrim, because like so many others, I am just plodding along in my Christian life. I am not where I think I should be, but I am sure trying to move a little further up and further in each day. There are a lot of preachers out there that seem so much more spiritual than I feel. I just have to rely on the idea that feelings aren't everything, and seek to move as best as I can, with God as my help. I suspect that I am not the only Christian or pastor that feels this way. Perhaps this blog will be a help to those who are plodding along . . .