Destination Discipline

“From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” – Matthew 11:12

The bike was a gift to my son for his birthday; a Jamis Trail XR 13. He previously found delight in riding a yellow dirt bike that was given to us by a friend, but outgrew it. I wanted him to have something that would last.

I took him to The Ferguson Bike Shop and talked to my friend, Gerry. I had purchased a pretty white and blue Jamis Allegro from him a few years prior and I wanted to give him my business. Gerry is a good man who retired from Emerson Electric and hopped into the bike business. I loved that he gave back to the community. I became friends with him when he invited me to participate in one of his free cycling events for people who were learning how to live a healthy lifestyle. In fact, it was Gerry who encouraged me to write my story for The Ferguson Times to give people hope. That story turned into a monthly column I’ve been writing for 8 years.

All of that to say, I don’t think I’ve ever been so proud of a purchase. The purchase of the black Jamis was to be the beginning of many bike rides with my son. I wanted him to enjoy exercise and spending time with his mom.

So, when the thief stole my son’s bike, he took more than just an old bike I picked up at Wal-Mart for a few bucks. He stole a dream. The morning we woke up to realize my son forgot to bring it in and it was gone, there was loud wailing in my home. As we drove around the neighborhood, hoping to find it ditched on a corner, I prayed for God to bring it back. I prayed for justice. And we wept.

In the weeks since that event, we have struggled to come to terms with our identity as victims. I have encouraged my child to forgive the thief and to pray for his salvation. But even this is messy. We still don’t have the bike. Something of value was taken from us. Something we can’t replace.

I was scrolling through Facebook Marketplace looking for our bike recently when it occurred to me how much this loss has affected me. I realized that while people are sympathetic, they don’t really care about our loss. The general response has been to blame the victim, “Well, Kid, why did you leave it out?” and then to tell me, “Hey, Margaret, just buy a new one.” In the case of violent crimes, we have support groups where people can process their grief and recover. But there is no support group for the loss of something as insubstantial as a bike. But candidly, it matters to us. We too want justice. We even filed a police report.

And while I don’t want to attach too great a value on possessions, I would like to suggest something. When victimization is trivialized, it’s easy to lose our emotional equilibrium. We quickly become cynical. Cynicism morphs into anger. Anger builds to rage and hatred. But if we are not careful, rage will quickly transform into violence.

But those who follow Jesus practice a different way.

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy! But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. – Matthew 5:43-45

The Apostle Luke recorded it this way:

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” – Luke 6:27-31

Our identities have deep ties to our emotions, therefore when our passions are stirred, we seek out comfort in those who share our experiences. Ideological divisions often form between victims, perpetrators, and any range of people on a broad spectrum in the human gene pool. But those who follow Christ have specific unifying guidelines.

“Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” – Romans 12: 17-21

I have been wondering lately if I have the strength to do that. If I were to determine who stole my son’s bike, would I ask the police not to prosecute them? Would I invite them into my home? Would I feed them? Or would I join a club of other victims of bike theft and find ways to punish people that looked like my thief? I suppose this reads rather ridiculous. After all, it was just a bike. I should just get over it. But the logic remains the same whether someone is a bike thief, a rapist, a murderer or an adulterer. Come to think of it, I wonder if there are any Bernie Madoff victims who—in the Name of Jesus—refused to be refunded for their losses?

Or, put a different way, would I be able to forgive the people in my church who want to force me into an identity that does not belong to me? How should I respond to someone who is asking me to repent for something I don’t feel convicted of doing? Can I still claim the centrality of the gospel to heal divisions brought about by current social events? Or better put, can I extend grace to someone who says they follow Jesus but does not appear to obey His teachings? I don’t ask this with any sense of superiority, but rather with a goal of unity. If the gospel of Jesus doesn’t unify the church, we have a serious problem.

I write this as I look out over a very fine evening. There is a blue sky and a gentle breeze wafting in at the end of a sunny, humidity free day. My son has been out playing with his friends and we are preparing to go to bed. As I watch the neighborhood children riding their bikes up and down the street, I find myself wondering… if I saw one of them riding my son’s bike, would I run out and pull it out from underneath him, or have the compassion to let him ride away with it in peace?

I was riding my bicycle down the street. Minding my own business. When low and behold I saw a live animal on the side of the road. It is a rare occurrence to see a living creature so near the murderous pavement. I assumed he would scurry away as I rode closer. Instead, he reared up on his hind legs, opened his mouth and bared his very long teeth. The next thing I knew, there was a chomp on my (thankfully!) sturdy leather cycling shoes and a thwump in the spokes of my bike. I stopped abruptly to ensure the ferocious young groundhog was not injured, but all I got for my tender loving care was a nasty look and some raucous chatter. He then scurried into the long grass and infamy.

Have you ever felt threatened? Did you bite first and ask questions later?

Emotions are powerful little animals that fill us with all manner of feelings and refuse to be ignored. They appear cute and cuddly one moment, but are able transform into violent monsters the next. In such moments we have little composure because our gut response overtakes our better judgement to practice self-control.

The art of discipline

“But I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” – Galatians 5:16

I’ve spent the past ten years trying to master my food obsessions with some measure of success. One important lesson I learned early on was to plan ahead. “Fail to plan or plan to fail.” I purchased vegetables and fruit, and was thoughtful about my meals for the week. I avoided junk foods in the grocery store anything with processed sugar. The elimination of sugar helped me learn what true hunger was (by eliminating blood sugar spikes and crashes!). Needless to say, I put a lot of thought and energy into what I planned to eat so that I would lose weight.

This did not come naturally to me. I am an emotional, impulse driven girl. See food. Eat it. Crave food. Eat it. Even with the rhythm of repetition, I struggled to make healthy choices. I especially hated to exercise. It was a means to an end. It hurt. It chaffed. It bothered me! Because I was so miserable, I learned how to pray and ask God for help. I listened to scriptures that reassured me of God’s love and care for me. And to be really vulnerable, I fell in love with God in a way I never would have otherwise. He walked with weak, dejected, obese Margaret and never rejected me. More importantly, he answered my cries for help. Why do I write all of that? (Regular readers are yawning with boredom right now and thinking me braggadocious. But I promise that is not my intent.)

I bit my husband on Wednesday when he rode his bike too close.

There. I said it. Well, not actually with my teeth, but I’m sure it hurt just as much. And well, he wasn’t actually on a bicycle. I was in the middle of an emotional moment while exercising on my yoga mat when he tersely asked, “What did you do with my clean towels?” I could tell by his tone of voice that I was about to get a lecture. So I let him have it. Four letter words and all. And he did not take it kindly so he cursed back. I then cried for the next 30 minutes–not because I felt guilty–but because I was finally able to express all of the emotions I’ve been bottling up since Coronavirus swallowed my hope, and George Floyd was killed.

People lash out when they are afraid or about to be injured. It is a natural human response. But I believe there is a better way. Just as people say to me, “Margaret, it is impossible to lose weight” they will say, “Margaret, it is impossible to restrain my emotions.” So today I am going to make a case for doing just that.

Our culture has glorified the emotional outburst. We even have fluffy words for it, “all the feels”. We seem to have forgotten the virtue of restraint. Or we simply aren’t interested. The problem is, civil discourse is a very real casualty and I believe that is partly the cause for the division in our country. I realize we all have different value systems, but if we can’t find a way to communicate and compromise in order to achieve unity, we are doomed.

What is the Solution?

We must learn to walk by the Spirit. Much the same way I learned to plan ahead to eat, we can learn to plan ahead to prevent emotional outbursts. How does this work, you ask?

Prayer

Why prayer?  Because we need to ask God for help. Now maybe you are thinking that’s ridiculous and we have it within our capacity to just be nicer, calmer and generally more genial. Several friends of mine will even insert the practice of meditation and other soul-soothing exercises. But I would (civilly) rebut that idea because I believe what the bible says about people being “dead in our trespasses.” We simply can’t sustain “good” behavior because of our depraved nature. We are consumers and when threatened, well, we bite. We need to ask for the power of God to help us overcome our sinful nature before we get emotionally perturbed. It is only by His power that we can manifest the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I have learned that when I properly prepare for uncivil situations, I have the peace of God that enables me to remain calm. This peace is rooted in the knowledge that Jesus purchased my pardon (cause Heaven knows I’m guilty of sin!) so that I might extend that grace to others. I know of no other means by which to bless those who persecute me and not to curse them.

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” – Romans 12: 20-21

In conclusion, my dear Ground Hogs, we are all guilty of biting first and asking questions later. Shoot. Some of us don’t even ask questions. We just go around biting and devouring one another. But I have good news! There is another way. The way of peace is a real path we can choose to walk. And even better, we do not walk it alone. Jesus himself will be our companion and He will give us the strength to obey His commands. We simply have to surrender our emotions to Him and let him replace our pain with His peace.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

I heard metal twist and scrape in a cacaphony of sound from inside the safety of my home. It was 5:50 am, long before I meant to be awake. The evil machinations of an 11-year-old munchkin had awakened me, but more sinister events were in play. A young man had been speeding when he lost control of his vehicle and crashed head on into my neighbor’s car. When I walked outside I saw him running down the street and away from accountability. I dialed 911 and waited for police as I considered my friends and their reaction to their totaled vehicle. I grieved and thought, it could just as easily have been my car.

Have you ever caused a wreck and run away? Did you speed and hide? Did you hope no one saw you? Did you care little about the carnage you caused? Or on the flip side, were you the victim of a “hit and run”? Were you left standing in the rubble of the careless actions of a stranger? Did you weep over the destruction of your property and pray for justice? 

Britney Spears once sang, “I’m not that innocent”. She made light of toying with the affections of a young man, as if teasing and pretending to love someone was casual entertainment. The song was in the top 10 Pop charts in the US and went to number one in more than a dozen countries, which is a good indication of how much people liked it. But the lyrics point to a more serious question.

Britney Spears is “not that innocent.”

I have a lot of questions for my friend, Britney, but first and foremost I would ask, “why do you rationalize your search for a ‘hero’ as an excuse to abuse someone?”

Now maybe you are reading this and thinking, “Margaret, why would you even bother to philosophize a pop song? It’s supposed to be catchy and make me want to dance in my living room.”

Dear Reader, don’t you know our thought patterns are governed by the information we choose to consume?

The videos began circulating a few weeks ago and everyone was quick to pick a side. Each person formed an opinion based on their own life experience and began “speeding down the wet road.” Before you could say “hydroplane” the verbal fireworks began. All the social justice warriors began trying to convince everyone their opinion was the correct one. We suspended reason, grabbed our cymbals, and started clanging.

We say, “We’re all in this together” but the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. When I go to the grocery store, I see people shaking with fear and with rage. People back away when approached, and if one person is not wearing a mask, the mask-wearer glares daggers through one with a naked face. I’ve seen beltless-boys with their pants around their knees receive kinder looks than my mask-less friends. I want to wave a white flag. I want to call a truce. I want to invite people to think past their feelings. But I’m too busy running away from the swirl of negative emotions and back to my house where we can beat each other up in peace.

Meanwhile, relatives are unfriending each other on Facebook. People from church are arguing about conspiracy theories, and everyone has a “justified” opinion on the best path out of this horror movie. Why do we feel comfortable verbally bludgeoning everyone who doesn’t agree with our perspective. When did America turn into The Hunger Games? And when did we all begin emulating President Snow?

“Why Margaret, that’s pretty harsh. Don’t you realize we need to get to the truth? This is serious. And besides, I am Katniss! I am trying to protect my neighbor. They just need to get “woke” to my way of thinking. Then, I can love them.”

Polite discourse is dead. It was burned at the stake with the fuel of our mistrust. Fake news is the red flag flying high at the top of the pole and our neighbors are the kindling. Meanwhile we scream, “Throw another body on the fire and see how bright it burns!”

It feels like we violate neighbor love for our own amusement–and more prevalently than we might realize. The memes say, “if you don’t post to defend “fill-in-the-blank”, I can’t be your friend, while somehow suggesting that by doing so, everything will be okay. 

In our haste to protect ourselves and those we love, we have forgotten something important: we all die. We are all terminal. And there is no vaccine that will cure us. In the meantime, we are drowning in a sea of despair and our ideology is not proving to be an effective floatation device. Do we really think groping around the shoulders of our neighbors is going to help anything?

We are all in the same boat as Britney–dreaming and wishing that heroes truly exist.

“And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” – Luke 4:16-21

Jesus made an audacious claim; He was the Son of God.

“Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” Luke 24:45-49

The “power” He promised was the Holy Spirit for those who believe. It is the ‘good deposit’, the guarantee of what is to come. It is not a wishful hope. The Holy Spirit is God choosing to dwell in us until Jesus returns and take us to live with him in paradise.

This is the only hill I am willing to die on. I may be wrong about everything else, but I have staked my life on the blood of Jesus.

My husband says I like to fight; namely, to disagree. It’s true. I have perfected the art of hydroplaning and crashing into my neighbors car, both literally and philosophically. And it is only by the grace of God that I have managed to evade jail, or worse; scorn. Today, if you are behind the wheel and careening down the road, slow down! But if it’s too late and you have already crashed into your neighbor, take heart! “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” – 1 John 1:9

It is true that loves covers a multitude of sins, so from my heart to yours: Grace and peace be yours in abundance today!