It occurs to me…

A friend sent me, and I read with interest, a transcript of a talk that recently appeared in the New York Times – The Dying Art of Disagreement by Brett Stephens.  In it, Stephens notes:

“In other words, to disagree well you must first understand well.  You have to read deeply, listen carefully, watch closely.  You need to grant your adversary moral respect; give him the intellectual benefit of the doubt; have sympathy for his motives and participate emphatically with his line of reasoning.  And you need to allow for the possibility that you might yet be persuaded of what he has to say.”

Wow, that disagreeing well sounds like hard work!  And I thought all I had to do when someone took a position different than mine was: 1) quit listening; 2) start formulating an eloquent statement of MY position.  But for those of us who are “disagreement challenged” Stephens later boils it down to its essence, and though not easy, somehow makes it sound easier when he lists the “crucial prerequisites” of “intelligent disagreement,” namely: 1) shut up; 2) listen up; 3) pause; and 4) reconsider.  Then, and only then, can I, in an “intelligent disagreement; 5) speak up.

There was much that stuck with me in the speech, but this question rose to the surface – In any given disagreement is my goal “intelligent disagreement” or to “win?”   It occurred to me that the response to that threshold question would control the remainder of the process, and whether I engaged under Stephens’ guidelines, or mine.  Or more simply stated, do I see “intelligent disagreement” as a possibility or as an oxymoron?

Yesterday at church we had the reading of the parable of the workers in the field.  The owner of the vineyards hires a group to work “early in the morning,” then hires other groups at 9:00, noon, 3:00, and 5:00.  When the day is done, he pays them all a full day’s wages.  This is a complex parable with many facets that can be endlessly interpreted.  Did those who worked all day got screwed?  Were those who only worked an hour or two unjustly enriched?  (Isn’t that a funny term – “unjustly enriched?”  I suspect it exclusively applies to “the other guy” and never to the one who uses it.)  Why did the owner pay the short-timer’s first and make the day-long laborers wait to get their pay last?  The questions are endless.  Perhaps I just didn’t want to do the heavy lifting yesterday, but it occurred to me that the takeaway was rather simple.  Who got what aside, the certainty in the story is that you don’t get anything unless you show up and make yourself available.  Here, the only folks who lost out were those who didn’t.

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  Mark 10:25

Anthony DeMello, in The Way to Love, comes as close as anyone can to making sense of this troubling passage.  “The rich man cannot enter the kingdom of joy not because he wants to be bad but because he chooses to be blind.”  He explains that what the rich man fails to see is that his possessions are not, per se, the issue.  Rather the issue is his clinging to them, or in DeMello’s terms, his “attachment” to them – “attachment” being defined as “an emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy.”

By way of example, mine, not his, the thought that I can’t be happy unless “my team” wins that big game this week is simply foolishness.  If one thinks on it, the reality is there are likely an equal number of people on the other side thinking the same thing about the opponent, and and many, many more whose emotional well being will not be altered one bit regardless of the game’s outcome.  In this I am reminded of one of my work mentors who, as the pressure rose over the resolution of a given issue, would note: “There are millions of people in China who aren’t even aware of this problem and who care not one iota about its resolution.”  He, of course, was and is correct.

Hope – “a feeling of expectaton and desire for a certain thing to happen”

Faith – “complete trust or confidence in someone or something”

The distinction between these two words popped into my mind today.  They are often used interchangably, considered synomyms.  One look at the definitions makes it clear that is not correct.  I hope I win the lottery – oh, what the hell, I hope I win the Powerball lottery.  Recently, when the Powerball jackpot hit $300,000,000, I read an article that said that my chance of winning the Powerball lottery if I bought one ticket was 1 : 75000,000,000,000,000  — one in 75 quadrillion.  I guess it would be possible to have faith that I was going to win at those odds, but it seems more like hope to me, a “desire for a certain thing to happen.”  My cynical self could not possibly muster “complete trust or confidnence” at those odds.  As evidence of that, I offer that I did not even go buy a ticket.

But all of that is an aside to a question that occurred to me: In my life, what do I have “hope” for and what/who do I have “faith” in?

That may take a while to answer, and I may not like the answer.

I found myself listening to an old hymn this morning.  The song was written in 1923, though it seems timeless – perhaps because it is a spinoff from Lamentations 3:22-23: “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed.  Because his compassions they fail not.  They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.”

“Great is Thy faithfulness.  Great is Thy faithfulness.  Morning by morning new mercies I see.  All that I needed Thy hand hath provided.  Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.”

Indeed.  Here we are, 16 years from 9/11.  “[H]is compassions they fail not.  They are new every morning.”

Photo taken in Galveston earlier this year.

So Moses comes upon a burning bush that is not consumed by fire, then has a conversation with God – I mean a real conversation.  At the conclusion of the conversation he gets some orders from God.  It has been all good to that point.  But from this point forward, through the rest of Exodus, Moses becomes the most reluctant of Biblical characters.  It is almost as if his remainder of Exodus, at least the Moses role, was written by Mel Brooks to be used 2000 years later in a farcical movie.

“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11)  God replies: “I will be with you,” (3:12) but that is not good enough.

What if they ask me who sent me?  (3:13)

Tell them it is Me, and if that doesn’t work I’ll “stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with the wonders that I will perform among them.”  (3:20)

“What if they do not believe or listen to me….”  (4:1)

Oh, okay, take along that staff, and when you throw it on the ground it will become a snake, like that.  And if that doesn’t work, try they “now you see it, now you don’t” leprous hand trick.  (4:6-7)  At this point, even God is in on the shtick – “If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first miraculous sign, they may believe the second.   But if they do not believe those two signs or listen to you…” (4:8) then try the Nile water into blood” bit.

Running out of options, and seeing there this is going, Moses them focuses directly on his inadequacies (apparently realizing, finally, God has none): “I have never been eloquent….”  (3:10)

(Cue the slap on the forehead and the “Oy vey!”)  Okay, if you must, take your brother, Aaron, with you – but don’t forget the staff.

I could, of course, go on, just as Exodus does.  Through the trips to Pharaoh, through the doubting, through the whining, through the plagues of blood, frogs, gnats, flies, livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, Moses is still playing the doubting, reluctant hero.  I mean, look what Thomas got for one single act of doubt – and Moses makes a career of it.

But of course, am I any better?

“If we believe in Jesus, it is not what we gain, but what he pours through us that counts.  It is not that God makes us beautifully rounded grapes, but that He squeezes the sweetness out of us.”  Oswald Chambers – My Utmost for His Highest

This caught my eye today because of the “rounded grape” reference.  I was in the store recently, in the produce section looking for some green grapes.  The only problem was that the ones that had available were oddly shaped.  They were not the “rounded grapes” Chambers writes of.  Rather, they had a very odd, oblong shape, a shape difficult to describe because I can’t think of anything quite like it.  The best I can do is to say that it was as if someone took each round grape and elongated it so that it looked something like a peanut.  Being the only grapes available, reluctantly because they did not meet my idea of a grape, I bought some, took them home, washed them, and stuck them in the refrigerator.  When I got around to eating them, they tasted just fine – like  grapes, but really good grapes.

As Chambers notes: “It is not that God makes us beautifully rounded grapes….”  No, we come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.  But really, those distinctions don’t matter.  Let’s face it, it was just plain silly for me to judge a grape by its shape.  Same with people.  Which brings to mind the Bo Diddley tune that has little bearing on this, but is a great listen:

You can’t judge an apple by looking at a tree,
You can’t judge honey by looking at the bee,
You can’t judge a daughter by looking at the mother,
You can’t judge a book by looking at the cover.

Oh can’t you see,
Oh you misjudge me,
I look like a farmer,
But I’m a lover,
You can’t judge a book by looking at the cover.

“And he was angry, and would not go in….”  Luke 15:28

Listening to Garrison Keillor read the story of the Prodigal Son this morning, these words jumped out at me – “And he was angry, and would not go in….”  We know the context.  The younger brother, the prodigal, has returned home after “wasting his substance with riotous living (v. 13), and the brother returns from a day in the field to find that, at the father’s urging, a party is underway to celebrate the prodigal’s return.

I think the best way to describe the older brother’s mindset and reaction is with a word I am partial to – “snit.”  My on-line dictionary defines “snit” as “a fit of irritation; a sulk,” and that is a fine definition, but it ignores the complexity and maturing of the “snit.”  What starts out as crying, with a few years, turns into “I’ll take my toys and go home.”  A few more years down the road brings the sulk, and before you know it your “snit” had progressed into (a personal favorite) “I’ll just do it myself.”  Indeed, “snit” is a multi-faceted word, one that takes on many forms and can be defined in many ways, but I often think that one would do just as well defining the word by replacing the “n” with an “h,” as in “being a ___.  In any event, and no matter how one choses to define it, “snit” is a word I am intimately familiar with, and the older son is certainly in one when the father (after, in my mind’s eye, rolling his eyes and sighing) walks out to intreat the older brother to join the party.

The snit removes the older son from the festivities and places a wall between him and them.  How can one eat, drink, and be merry when one refuses to eat, drink, or be merry?  Sadly, we don’t know how the story ends.  When we leave the story, the father has given it his best shot.  “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.  It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad; for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and is found.”  Yes, that verse puts a lump in my throat each time I read it, or Keillor does, but it is easy to underestimate the power of the snit, and its ability to prompt irrational action.  This is true (so I’ve heard) because ultimately, the snit takes all the power to change the situation away from God and others and puts it into the snit-for-brains mind in which the snit (some might call it “pride”) is its own reward.  Ultimately, we are left with questions, not answers.  Does the older brother join the festivities?  Do I?