NorthPark Presbyterian Church

How do we become fully human?

That is the question we are asking during Advent this year in our church, as we wait for God to become fully human in Jesus Christ.

One of the ways we try and become fully human, as Jesus was fully human, is by giving up our life apart from each other and deciding to live as a part of each other.

We begin to live interdependently with all of creation by asking questions like "how will what I eat affect those who have nothing to eat?" or "how is this action affecting God's creation called the environment?"

This "reclaiming of fully human" is currently taking place California with veterans who have lost the capacity to relate to others. Veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have had only marginal success with traditional methods of treatment, but this new technique is called "compassion cultivation training."

In the training, the veterans are told to think of a person they care about and to "allow yourself to feel the presence of this person."

There's a phrase the veterans are asked to repeat, like a mantra: "This person is just like me."

The veterans are then told to "consider that, just like me, this person has had ups and downs in his or her life. Just like me, this person has had goals and dreams."

The idea is that in combat the way to stay safe is to think of everyone as a potential threat. Fear and distrust are default. But with PTSD, it stays that way, even after combat is over.

The soldier with PTSD has lost part of their own humanity and consequently lost touch with the humanity of others. Compassion meditation is about reclaiming that humanity, learning to see oneself in others.

During this season when we are tempted to put our to do list in front of human need, our agenda in front of our sanity, and our anxieties in front of our prayer life, maybe we should rename Advent as "compassion cultivation training." A time to prepare for the most compassionate One of all.

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
– Philippians 4:8

I like Paul’s words to the Philippians in theory, but truth be told these are not always the things I think of. A few weeks ago when I was waiting at the car wash, and someone pulled around and ahead of me in line, I thought how unfair that was, what the driver should have done and what a *^&%$#@! he was. I had an enraged, angry feeling because of what I was thinking. For a few minutes there, I did not have the awareness to realize that this situation was not awful. It was simply unpleasant. It was only a car wash for goodness sake!

Based on the writings of Aaron Beck and David Burns, there are at least ten thought distortions that lead to unrealistic thoughts and exaggerated feelings like the one I experienced at the car wash.

1. All-or-Nothing Thinking
All or nothing thinking is when we see things in black and white, right and wrong, good and bad, with no choices in between. If our performance falls short of perfect, we see ourselves as failures. If we eat one cookie, we are bad, so might as well eat the whole plate of cookies! But how do you feel after eating the plate of cookies? How do you feel when you focus on the one small mistake instead of the overall good performance?

This thinking in absolute terms often leads to perfectionism. It is interesting that while Jesus' words in Matthew 5:48 are often translated as "Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect," the word translated as perfect is "telios" in Greek. "Telios" is much closer translated as "whole or complete."

Our goal then is wholeness or completeness – not perfection. We need to see the whole picture. Just because I eat one cookie, I am not awful. Just because of one mistake, I am not worthless. I need to consider the whole performance and who God created me to be, rather than just one thing I did.

2. Overgeneralization
Linda is lonely and often spends most of her time at home. Her friends regularly ask her to come out for dinner and go to church. Linda feels that that is it useless to try to meet people. No one really could like her. People are mean and Christians are hypocrites.

When one overgeneralizes, one takes an isolated case or cases and assumes that all others are the same. Are people really all mean? Are all Christians hypocrites? What about her friends who are trying to get her to go out? Obviously she does have someone who cares about her. The next time you catch yourself overgeneralizing, remind yourself that even though a group of people may share something in common, they are also separate and unique individuals. No two people are exactly the same. In Linda's case, there may be mean and hypocritical people in this world. But, not every person will fit this description. By assuming that everyone is a certain way, you are building a wall that will prevent you from having what you crave the most – community.

3. Mental Filter
Mary is having a bad day. As she drives home, another driver cuts her off on Central. She grumbles to herself that there are nothing but rude and insensitive people in Dallas. Later, a kind person waves her go ahead of him. She continues on her way still angry at how rude all the people in her city are.

When a person falls victim to mental filters they are singling out only the bad events in their lives and overlooking the positive. Learn to look for the hope in every situation. It's all about how you choose to let events affect you. Mary could have turned her whole day around if she had paid attention to that nice man who went out of his way to help her.

4. Disqualifying the Positive
Rhonda writes a powerful article for the church blog. Her church friends compliment her on it. She brushed those compliments aside and experiences no joy over the article. She tells herself she got lucky and becomes paralyzed with the thought that she can never do that well again.

Sometimes we are masters at taking the good in a situation and turning it into a negative. We sometimes feel like we just don't deserve good things. How can you turn this around? Simple. The next time someone compliments you, resist the little voice inside that says "you don't deserve it." Remember that you are a child of the Lord of the Universe. Just say "thank you" and smile. The more you do this, the easier it will become.

5. Jumping to Conclusions
Jackie is trying to talk to Sheila before Sunday School. Sheila appears aloof and unapproachable. Jackie begins to obsess over what she could have done to hurt Sheila. Was it something she said at the Christmas party? Was it her husband's strong political opinions? What did she do? In reality, Sheila had just had a crazy morning getting her family ready for church and needed a few minutes to gather her thoughts.

Once again, we fall victim to our own insecurities. We expect the worst and begin preparing early for the disappointment. Many times we engage in mind-reading attempts. By the time we find out that all our fears were unfounded, we've worked ourselves into a frenzy and for what? Next time do this: Give the person the benefit of the doubt. You'll save yourself a lot of unnecessary worry.

6. Magnification & Minimization
Scott is playing football. He bungles a play that he's been practicing for weeks. He later scores the winning touchdown. His teammates compliment him. He tells them he should have played better; the touchdown was just dumb luck.

Have you ever looked through a telescope from the wrong direction? Everything looks tinier than it really is. When you look through the other end, everything looks larger. People who fall into the magnification/minimization trap look at all their successes through the wrong end of the telescope and their failures through the other end.

What can you do to avoid this error and stop your negative thoughts? Remember the old saying, "He can't see the forest for the trees?" When one mistake bogs us down, we forget to look at the overall picture. Step back and look at the forest now and then. Overall, Scott played a good game. So what if he made a mistake?

7. Emotional Reasoning
Laura is having a bad day. She feels like nothing she does makes a difference for her family. None of the volunteer work is making a difference for homelessness or poverty.

Laura has based her assessment of the situation on how it makes her feel, not how it really is. She may feel like nothing she does makes a difference, but is it all so meaningless? In reality, she is a great mother and doing an important job helping feed the homeless of Dallas.
When a situation feels meaningless or overwhelming try look at the facts instead of your feelings.

8. Should Statements
David is sitting in his doctor's waiting room. His doctor is running late. David sits stewing, thinking, "With how much I'm paying him, he should be on time. He ought to have more consideration." He ends up feeling bitter and resentful.

Sarah leaves a church committee meeting. She goes home and can't sleep. All she can think about is what she should have done, what she should have said, and how she should have said it.

We all think things should be a certain way, but let's face it, they aren't. Concentrate on what you can change in the present and if you can't change it, accept it as part of life and go on. Reinhold Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer is a good one here. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference."

9. Labeling and Mislabeling
Donna just cheated on her diet. "I'm a fat, lazy pig," she thinks.

What Donna has done is label herself as lazy and hopeless. She most likely will reason that since she can't lose weight, she may as well eat. She has now effectively trapped herself by living up to the label she placed on herself. She has allowed a feeling to define her rather than be defined by God as a lovable human being. When we label ourselves, we set ourselves up to become whatever that label entails. This can just as easily work to our advantage.

Here's what Donna could have done to make labeling work in her favor: She could have considered the fact that up until now she has been strong. She could then forgive herself for only being human and acknowledge that she has been working hard to lose weight and been succeeding. This is a temporary setback that she can overcome. Overall, she is a strong person and has proven it by her successful weight loss. With this type of thinking, Donna will feel better and be back to work on her weight loss goals in no time.

10. Personalization
Jean's son is doing poorly in school. She feels that she must be a bad mother. It's all her fault that he isn't studying.

Jean is taking all the responsibility for how her son is doing in school. She is failing to take into consideration that her son is an individual who is ultimately responsible for himself. She can do her best to guide him, but in the end he controls his own actions. Next time you find yourself doing this, ask yourself, "Would I take credit if this person were doing something praiseworthy? Chances are you'd say, "No, he accomplished that by himself." So why blame yourself when he does something not so praiseworthy? Beating yourself up is not going to change his behavior. Only he can do that.

If we ever begin experiencing these thought distortions in our church life, family, or work place my prayer is that we will counter them with some new, more helpful thoughts like the ones I have outlined. And if I ever get bypassed at a car wash again, maybe even I will be able to think about things differently.

I love the Bible.

I teach it and preach it every chance I get.

I read anything I can find about the culture surrounding it and about the history of its interpretation. I keep up with Hebrew and Greek (the Biblical languages ) the best I can.

I make it a practice to read it with people who know it well and people who don’t know it all. I read it at Starbucks wondering what the Bible sounds like to those people, and I read it in front of a group of day-laborers wondering what it sounds like to them.

I love the Bible.

What I don't love is when people turn the Bible into an idol and apply it literally.

I believe in taking the Bible seriously, and that is why I do not take it literally. Read literally, scripture has been used against medicine, science and minorities seeking equality.

When Christians finally stopped claiming the sun rotates around the earth, it wasn't because they found Bible verses that convinced them otherwise.

It was because that they realized that the Bible is a lousy guide to astronomy.

They continued to gain insights about nature, but the insights were no longer confused with science.

When Christians finally stopped defending slavery and stoning disobedient children, it wasn't because they found new biblical passages that refuted those practices, it was because they realized that the Bible is a lousy substitute for a human heart.

Literalism is to biblical understanding what painting by numbers is to art.

Taking the Bible literally is like reading sheet music with no ability to hear the music.

Read with love, scripture can be the most wonderful book in the world.

Read literally, without love, any scripture can be used for the most tragic of causes.

I love the 4th of July. The parades and picnics, the swimming and baseball (as long as the Rangers are winning), the fireworks carefully synchronized to the 1812 Overture. Of course it is a little strange that we would choose to celebrate our independence listening to an overture written to celebrate the victory of the Russians over the French, but I still love to listen to it.

Another thing I love to do right around the 4th, and I will do again this week, is reread the Declaration that Thomas Jefferson wrote and Benjamin Franklin edited 237 years ago. A minister named John Buchanan inspired me to re-read it as a way of loving America on July 4th, for it is an amazing document. It announces to the world that the thirteen British Colonies in the New World are now independent, and it eloquently expresses the reasons why.

It is signed by the delegates elected by the 13 colonial assemblies and sent to Philadelphia to meet as a Continental Congress. John Adams signature is there in his neat, legible style; John Hancock signed boldly, of course; Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, the Presbyterian physician, are there. And if you look carefully in the next-to-last column, about two-thirds of the way down, you will see the signature of John Witherspoon. Witherspoon is one of my favorites because he was a Presbyterian minister, the president of the College of New Jersey, which became Princeton University.

He was the only clergy to sign the Declaration, and when he did, he said something about it being better to sign that document and be hanged as a traitor than to die of old age.

I imagine one of the reasons he believed so fervently in that declaration was because the values imbedded within it sound very Presbyterian: human liberty, the notion of the dignity of the individual and the sanctity of the human conscience. In fact, the document says that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights among them, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

It goes on to say that governments, which are instituted to secure these rights, derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." Not from any divine right, but from the consent of the people. In other words, not from the top down but from the bottom up. It was the beginning of the world’s great experiment with democracy.

The founding principles of this new way of being a nation were embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights which were adopted a a few years after the Declaration. The first amendment of the Bill of Rights begins: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The amendment states that the government will not establish any one religion over all the others, and the government will not prevent its citizens from practicing whatever religion they choose. This is freedom of and for religion, which is possible only if the government remains neutral on matters of religious policy and practice, neither establishing some religions nor prohibiting others.

But there have always been some Americans, and there are some now, who would like to make their particular religious beliefs the law of the land. There are some on both the left and right who assume there’s only one way to be religious, or un-religous for that matter — and that’s their way.

We have both liberals and conservatives in our own faith tradition who assume they can legislate their particular vision of the Christian faith and life and compel all citizens to live by that one version. They assume the courts and judges should agree with them and will enforce their own personal understanding of right and wrong. We have heard these voices this week with the Supreme Court voting on some very important issues and the Texas legislature’s vote on abortion.

Folks who think this way cannot imagine that Christians might come to different conclusion about the great issues of our day — and yet still be Christians. But it happens all the time, doesn’t it? We come out at different places. We hold different views.

Believe it or not there’s at least some evidence now that the reason for those differences may run deeper than either our religious convictions or our political preferences. They may actually be influenced to some degree by our genetic inheritance.

Now nobody is claiming that our ideas and opinions are encoded in our DNA, but a report just a couple of years ago in the American Political Science Review suggested that our genetic make-up prompts us to respond instinctively to the changes and challenges around us. For some the instinct is to respond cautiously and traditionally; for others to respond openly and progressively. It’s almost as though we can’t help being conservatives or liberals!

Still, we’d like it if everybody else thought the way we do. But if I tell you that, because I hold certain views, I am on God’s side, and because you hold certain other views you are not on God’s side — I’m not being religious. I’m just being arrogant. I’m using religion to drive a wedge between us, not build a bridge.

If I tell you that, because I go to a certain kind of church, I’m in a position to know what God’s will is, and because you go to some other church, you cannot possibly know God’s will, I’m not being more righteous than you are. I’m simply being self-righteous.

And if I tell you I intend to use the power of the federal government to enforce my understandings of God’s will on you, I’m not advancing God’s kingdom. I’m violating the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

On the other hand if we can heed the advice of the prophet who said that the Lord requires us to do justice but also love kindness and walk humbly with God, if as Ben Franklin warned the framers of the Constitution, "I doubt a little of my own infallibility," if I openly acknowledge that I do not know the mind of God on every question facing us today, and if I concede that my truth is only partial at best, and that your truth might have something to add to mine — then maybe we can look for the truth together. And as we do, maybe we can overcome some of the meanness that’s so prevalent in our moral discourse in this country.

The Bill of Rights was written by people who believed that government has no business trying to answer religious questions — not because those questions are unimportant, but because they are too important for government to try to control.

I think those of us who value our religious commitments have a moral obligation not to claim sacred authority for secular matters. That’s rendering unto God what belongs to Ceasar. When we use religion to justify partisan politics on transient political questions, matters about which good and reasonable people can and will differ, we do not elevate our politics; rather we devalue our religion. That’s rendering unto Ceasar what belongs to God. Arrogance and self-righteousness are self-defeating in any cause, and particularly so in most worthy causes.

President Abraham Lincoln understood this well and spoke of it in his Second Inaugural Address in 1865. By that point, the Civil War has been raging for almost four years and the nation was weary, same as we are weary of the cultural war that has gone on far too long these days. In his speech, Lincoln invoked God several times, but each time in a spirit of humility.

He did not declare he knew exactly what purpose the war served in God’s providence. "Fondly we hope" Lincoln said, "fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away."

President Lincoln did not claim that God was on the side of the Union, nor did he say the Confederacy was on the side of the devil. Instead he said, "both read the same Bible, both pray to the same God, and each invokes God’s aid against the other." He goes on — "but the prayers of both could not be answered. And that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes" said Lincoln, yet he still did not claim what those purposes were.

The one thing Lincoln was sure about was what it would take for the nation to go forward after the war. He said "with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves."

Isn’t that the America we all want to see?

"With malice toward none"— not even toward those who disagree with us.

With firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right — not just assuming we are always right.

To bind up the nation's wounds — not continuing in an ideological battle that no one can really win.

To achieve peace — not unanimity, not uniformity, but peace.

Isn’t that the kind of America we long for?

America has always existed in the tension between what we set out to be and what we have turned out to be so far. The fact that we keep striving toward the principles on which our nation was founded is what makes America great. The face that we have never finally or fully achieved these principles is what keeps America humble.

But these principles are only abstraction until they are embodied in the American people. We embody them by the choices we make about how we will live our lives. It is up to us to give flesh to this most amazing experiment of ideas ever attempted and to make this democracy work.