Posts Tagged ‘randy hasper’

Smuzzle Stick!

Posted: May 21, 2016 in restraint, thriving
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Most of us are afflicted — at least somewhat — with amassitude, anothery and an acute strain of likewiseness.

Last night, for a snack, I took seconds and thirds and a small fourth on some yummy Frosted Mini-Wheats. I added honey and almond milk.  Sweet on sweet, or double sweet.  Yum!

Then I got a yearning to see my Padres hit another home run against the Dodgers so I stayed up late to watch. They did, and again. Watching them play so hard made me tired, so I went to bed happy, and I got double-sleep by rolling over twice this morning and sleeping in.

“Ah and oh,” I love my firsts — and my seconds, sometimes my thirds. But I don’t like it when my waist line increases because of too much sweet cereal, or my sleep cycles are interrupted by too much coffee. I sometimes tend toward a little too much.

Thus and so, mostly and consistently, we are all, at times extendawonkers, increasaboys, supplementicators, expandimongers.

We indulge, then ask politely — sometimes not — for more, more cereal, condiments, compliments, constaments, cashiments, communications, curiosa,

A bit of this is normal, and good, but there is one unpleasant side effect to dipping in again and again and again — insatiably. It’s discontent. And its dissatisfaction. We may feed a human penchant for never-enough. We may become addicted to an incessant always-a-little-more.

What to do?

Don’t push it. Don’t feed, grow and propagate addiction. Be very happy with your one portion, perhaps a small second; be good with good that isn’t jumboed, big-gulped, value-added, honeyed, home-runned or supersized.

I think of Solomon and his erotic poem in the Bible, his sage, “Do not stir up love until it pleases,” smack in the middle of his well-kindled romantic ardor.

Pleasures will come to us when they will come to us, but if we force them we risk ruining them. To be puke-drunken, gorge-mucked, sex-smuckered or gagged-guzzled — it may be fun for some,  kind of, sort of at first (do you think so?), but it’s not that much fun, especially in the end.

Surfeit and its consequences — this is suffered willingly by fools, but the wise moderate, and enjoy life, and contentment. They partake, then they stop and they are happy holding back until the just-right-once-again-moment.

I had one latte this morning, brewed with my favorite, smooth Best Friends blend of Dark Horse coffee and 2% milk. So good!

Nothing in excess; some things not at all.

Smuzzle-stick!

Arks

Posted: May 9, 2016 in beautiful
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We are all arks. We all carry something through the desert, up the mountain, to the summit, back down into the behavioral ditch.

We carry pain, we carry healing, we carry anger, we carry love, and the people around us feel it, it effects them, they can tell.  The arctic chill — or apricity.

The manna, Aaron’s budding staff, a universal morality   — precious cargo rides in every ark.

Last week I told the clerk who sells me paint, “I love you.”  All the women around her exclaimed, “He said he loves you!” I told my teller at the bank that she was “my favorite.”I told my neighbor I missed him when he was gone.

What do we carry along with us, and what are we giving away? These are choices, what we put in our arks, things of remembrance, things of refinement. These are choices,  what we hand out on the streets, in offices, at home — kinditudes,  affirmisms, gentlements.

Such powerful ark gifts, our sacred haut monde — they are lovely copies and gorgeous shadows of things above.

Think-Act!

Posted: May 3, 2016 in difficulty
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Do we think, feel or act our way to practical solutions?

All of the above. We do well to throw the whole armamentarium of solutions at any problems we encounter, but lately I’ve noticed that you can’t much beat thinking, then taking action.

This morning I set about moving a couple of electrical plug a few inches — out of our bathroom backsplash and onto the wall — to make way for a new backsplash and countertop. It was harder than I expected. Working inside the drywall with very little room to navigate, I ran into a problem.

In both of the new electrical boxes that I was anchoring in, the ground wires were too short to reach the new location. They hovered stubbornly at the back of the boxes.  I tried wire nuts to create extensions, but they didn’t hold the three wires firmly enough to inspire my confidence. I imagined someone getting fried years from now — my ineptitude, my fault!

Momentarily confuzzled, I did some thinking; I needed a better way to extend the ground wires, a better way to protect the future, so I went to Lowe’s for something to crimp them together — or whatever.

I was helped by a knowledgable staff person and with his advice bought some plug-in wire connectors — very snazzy, little high-techy things you just push the wires into. Using them to connect the ground wires and add length, I was able to finish the job perfectly. No chance these wires will pull apart.

Neuroplastic solutions, discoverable solutions, good solutions — these are almost always at hand for those who think, take action, perhaps go for help, figure it out.

Touché!

Hooray!

Within that ever-expanding ambit that rounds the temples of the indefatigable head-scratcher, lies the gorgeously available soluble.

My Talking Family

Posted: April 26, 2016 in family
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I really like talking with my family.

I like the way our talking tastes, savory, like pizza;  I like the way our communication smells, strong, like night blooming jasmine.

Tonight my younger daughter and I Facetimed on our iPads. We like to see each other when we talk.  I reassured her about a concern. She comforted me about a stress. Her cat sat on the screen. We laughed. We are totally open with each other. We adore each other and tell each other so.

I like the way open family communication feels, soft like my fluffy cat Megan — but from time-to-time sharp, like a surgeon’s knife, the good knife that heals.

I like one-on-one conversations with my people — the safety and honesty. I like my wife, a lot, and this is partly because we are able to be very honest with each other, everyday. She is safe to me. This morning we sat with our coffee — as we often do — and shared ideas about the future. We had the same ideas. We are like-minded about our plans.

We agree on most things: politics, religion, the uses of money, the value of morality, kids, cats, green vegetables, exercise, traveling, books and dark chocolate (all the important things) and thus the relationship is so easy and super fun. She is my best friend. I completely adore her. We almost think as one — except about avocados, French roast and my behavior.

Tomorrow I’ll drive my oldest daughter to her program. In the car we’ll talk. Although she has learning difficulties, she is exquisitely  verbal. She says the most fascinating things. Our whole family quotes her — her neologisms, syntaxtoblemes and her occasional charmitudes.

After dropping off my daughter,  I am going to drive on to Los Angles to have coffee with with my dad and spend some time with my older brother. My dad told me on the phone tonight — in anticipation of seeing me tomorrow — that he wrote out about 20 questions on 3×5 cards that he wants to ask me.  I can tell from this that he cares about me. He always asks me lots of questions. I come by talking genetically.

Tomorrow I’ll see my older brother. He has cancer. I care deeply for him. We are close. We talk a lot on the phone. I think the cancer has brought us closer. We share the same career, and we support each other by candidly discussing our career challenges.

I love my family. We are a talking family. We are an honest and safe talking family.

I feel so fortunate to have a family who talks — openly, emotionally, lovingly; it has made me who I am.

I am one of the talking beasts.

 

Does God Have a Sense of Humor?

Posted: April 25, 2016 in god
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Recently, my office manger, Tasia, and I were chatting in my office when we looked over at the couch and saw a giant cockroach sitting there, watching us.

Apparently he had come in for counseling. We have said the door of REFINERY Church is open to everyone.

What to do with this expectant cockroach?

Tasia went to the supply closet, got out a can of the aerosol spray used to dust off computer keyboards, turned it upside down so that only the cold aerosol would come up and fired it off at our en-couched counselee.

He turned white; he was literally white, with frost — frozen. We put his little frozen body in the trash.

Tasia  — or as I now think of now, Elsa, the ice queen — retell the story and just laugh.Why did God make cockroaches anyway, in such numbers? It has been noted that he seems to have an “inordinate fondness for beetles.”

Maybe he gets a laugh out of watching our reaction to them.

Which brings up the question: Is God funny? Does God have a sense of humor? Did he laugh,  when he made cockroaches, when he made us?

Alfred North Whitehead, the esteemed British mathematician, logician and philosopher once wrote, “the total absence of humour in the Bible is one of the most singular things in all of literature”

Alfred was wrong. The Bible is full of humor.

Maybe it was Alfred who wasn’t funny.

Humor is fundamental to God’s character.

In the Bible we see God engaging in an abundance of wit, sarcasm and irony. The Old Testament is full of funny stories and crazy situations.

A woman who has gets pregnant at 90, a country overrun by frogs, a donkey that talks, a prophet barfed up by a whale — the Bible is funny

Ecclesiastes 3:4 confirms humor’s esteemed place in God’s design saying, There is a “a time to laugh …”

The Bible weeps; it also laughs. God takes time to laugh.

To see God’s humor, begin at the beginning. Creatures are the first proof that God laughs.

The Pygmy Seahorse, the Blob fish, the Aye-Aye, us — you can’t look at some of the faces of creation, and not think God has a sense of humor.

Think of how he must chuckle, guffaw, even howl over you and me.

Secondly, God’s humor shows surprising enough, shows up in his discipline of us, his designer corrections to get us back on track.

The great theme of the Bible is that God loves people, and that after they are lost from him, he will do anything to get them back.

So God engages in ironic correction. We may be corrected in the same way we sinned.

At the command of the Pharaoh, the Egyptians drown the Hebrew children in the Nile, but Moses is spared and then God drowns the Egyptians in the Red sea.

Take that.

Haman, the villain in the book of Esther, builds a gallows for a good man name Mordecai, and then when Haman’s evil is exposed, he is hung on his own execution machine.

God corrects with ironic solutions, he defeats with mocking punishments, and He leads his sweet ones back to himself with wry tactics.

The Israelites whine in the desert that the manna he gave them was not enough. They demand meat from God, and so he gives them meat until it is coming out of their noses. They get so much meat it makes them sick.

Beware what you want. God might give you that, and that ironically will be your correction.

Psalm 37 reports,  “The wicked plot against the righteous, and gnash their teeth at them; but the Lord laughs … for he sees that their day [the day of the ironic lesson) is coming.”

The divine sardonic chuckle — you want to live in such a way that you don’t hear that.

Take for instance, the day I shot my older brother Steve. It was his divinely ordained correction.

I aimed the gun, squeezed the trigger, and fired.

Now what you need to know is that he  asked for it. Literally. He said: ” I wonder what it feels like to be shot with a BB gun.”

“Let’s find out,” I said. “I’ll shoot.”

So by plan, I aimed at his blue-jeaned butt. But the shot carried high, guided, I’d say, by the hand of God, and hit him square in the middle of the back — which was to me divine punishment for all the times he had hit me and tortured me.

So there you have it. The ironic wrath of God on my brother. I myself witnesses it, and then I started running.

I heard his footsteps behind me. I believe he wanted to thank me. But I was humble, and wanted no credit, and I kept running.

So,  we see God’s humor in the creation (the blob fish; we see his humor in his discipline, (my brother) and thirdly we see God’s humor in his delight in us.

Zephaniah 3:17, “He will take great delight in you … he will rejoice over you with singing.”

God laughs in a happy, appreciative, celebratory way over us.

Consider Genesis 18:10, where God informs Abraham (who is about 100 years old) and Sarah (who is about 90) that they will have a son by “this time next year.”

God must have gotten a kick out of that announcement.

And they sure did. When Sarah is told, she openly laughs. Hebrews says at this point, Abraham was “as good as dead.”

Sarah was thinking, if we do it, at this age, the old guy will probably have a heart attack, and she laughs, and God’s laughs with her, because this is ridiculous and delightful and crazy  and good.

Sex, at 100, and a baby — they all laugh and God with them.

Zephaniah 3:17. He will take great delight in you.

God is not a far off, uptight, angry, he is not a humorless tyrant. God is funny, he is clever, he is wry, he has tricks up his sleeve.

His humor draws us close to him.

How could we ever relate to a stern, humorless patrician-God who never jokes around?

But a funny God who tells his man Abraham to name his soon-to-be-born son, Isaac, or in Hebrew, Yit-zhak — because that Hebrew word means laughed, that we can relate to.

Laughter — it is divine, it is so good for us.

Poking fun, is a way of dealing with brokenness, normalizing difficulty, a way of coping.

What are you upset about? Try laughing at it.

The Bible says a merry heart is good like a medicine. Humor is the antidote of life. It is God’s survival medicine.

Ever wonder what heaven will be like? The disciples wanted to sit by Jesus, at his right hand. That would scare the heck out of me. What would I say? What if Iused the wrong fork, or language, at dinner.

Besides, sitting around the throne, listening to harp music, I prefer electric guitars. I think Jesus might too.

In heaven I think, I’ll be down at the river with the other people who barely got in, partying and telling jokes and laughing hilariously and whooping it up.

And perhaps the serious ones, around the throne, will cast an envious eye toward us, that wild bunch, down at the river and want to come down.

It is a great mystery. It is a great mystery of the OT.

We live within the mystery of a God who laughs and sings and hoots and hollers over us, and when we too laugh, this brings us closer to God.

 

Holy Exhaustion

Posted: April 19, 2016 in beautiful
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There are fewer flaneur days when you are on a mission that’s when you’re not. When you are ramped up and on the approach march to the big mountain, you should expect a few days marked by holy exhaustion. Yesterday was one of those for me — lots of holy, a bit of exhaustion.

That is because yesterday my team and I hosted around 325 people at the REFINERY Church for the opening of our new courtyard venue. We celebrated together with some rocking worship music, told stories of mighty deeds of generosity, then ate — carne asada, beans, rice, toasted peppers, green onions and radishes. That was some fun and tasty work.

Afterwards I was exhausted, so I went home and took a nap — in extremis; in excelsis; requiescat in pace. 

I’ve been noticing largely that not much good is accomplished by a group without a big effort  — and lots of good will. At the REFINERY we have had the good will, and we always do the necessary work, then it seems that we get more good will.  A few weeks ago, just when we were in need of some wood chips for a large area of landscape, just when I was about to order them from a local nursery for a good bit of money — 23 cubic yards! — a tree trimming company called me.

“Do you want some wood chips,” the voice on the phone asked. I was confused. Who was this and why were they calling me. Then it came out. Six months ago I had registered online for chips from this company and today they were in the area —  which they seldom were —  and they wanted to get rid of about 30 cubic yards of chips, “very clean, not many leaves or branches.”

I got my head around it, then said, “Yeah, bring  ’em over!” They were free! Then the work began, to wheel barrow them into place and rake them out. And it was like that, right up to the opening of the courtyard — favor and flavor, work and more work — no shirk. We worked hard and made final preparations: wood chips, white roses, green passion vines, jasmine, orange marmalade bushes, blue lobelia. It was our inspired effort at a garden of Eden pastiche.  We splashed on the color, then we added the chairs, the shade canopies, then the most beautiful thing of all — the people! And ah, how they graced the holy courtyard.

Toward the end of the preparation process, when I was running on fumes, a friend in the church approached me and said, ” I saw you didn’t get all the chips in the yard; would you like for me to come finish that?” I love people like that! The hardy ones, the willing grunts,  the glad-to-be-exhausted ones — they shine!

I’ve sometimes thought of how much work it takes to put on a play at a theater — writing the play, rewriting it , memorizing the lines, practicing, building the set, props, costumes, putting together the  music, the lighting. And yet, people do it, they put on plays, they overwork, push themselves, and produce amazing and inspiring performances.

I like that. I’m not good with sitting around. I want to put on the play, turn on the lights, set out the signs and celebrate the beauty and the goodness of life.

Monday morning, the day after our event, post-worn out, I received a text from someone who was at the REFINERY celebration but doesn’t usually go to church. It said, “My wife and I left feeling lighthearted and optimistic. When is your usual weekend celebration?”

Cool!

One person’s holy exhaustion —  it can give another person a light heart.

That makes it all worth it!

 

 

Precarity

Posted: April 5, 2016 in clarity
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This morning I sat with my latte, and my shredded wheat, clover honey and almond milk and discussed plans with my black-coffee-sipping wonder-wife.

We do that, musify in the morning, about what’s ahead. We are good at the back-and-forthification — which is fun — but reality keeps getting tossed into the mix, and it doesn’t always cooperate — thus there is precarity, amidst the plenty.

We get up, the sun comes up, our plans go up, the stock market goes up, our moods go up after drinking dark, rich forms of caffeine, and then the turn. Life-stuff eventually leaks, and floats back to the floor like helium balloons the day after the party — precarity.

Thus and so, we are precarious — all of us — even the wise choosers and the impressively prescient. As the scripture says, we live move and have our being within the precariat.

Did you think it said something else?

Hatreds, hopes, happenstances; genetics, genies, jerks; accidents, illnesses, taxes — all these and more, the various and sundry vagaries and variances of any given era — these insure membership in the precariat.

Oh, life!

And yet, and yet, ah — the persistent goodness. I am struck always by the astonishing plenty and loveliness of life amidst the persistent shocking, pandemic poverties. The ghastly demons shirk at the edges of exuberant gardens full of white roses.

Last week we put up an beautiful, rod iron, arched trellis at the church. And below it, we planted a passion vine. Thus there is hope, for vine, passion, flowers, butterflies, tendrils, the reach upward, the stunning beauty, the inspired community.

I am shock-smitten but such improvements, everyday, the preciosities of nature, love, babies, brains, branches of community, of friends, finials, finitude, of God.

Thank you God that the precosities keep gobbling up the precarities.

Cinemuck

Posted: March 18, 2016 in difficulty
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“I severed its head off! Dead as a door nail,” she texted me.

I wasn’t surprised. It goes like that.

I’m a perfectionist, but I keep being faced with the fact that reality is never perfect.  My gardener friend was letting me know that she had cut the electrical cord with the electric lawn mower. That’s one disadvantage of electric lawn mowers; they tend to cut off their own umbilical cords. I know; I too have used an electric lawn mower to chop up several cords. On the other hand, the electric’s don’t belch nasty gas and oil.

Noting is perfect. I’ve been noticing lately that life isn’t perfect — cinemuck.

Last night at home my family got into a nice row over the accommodations for an upcoming family vacation. Wonderful! What is supposed to be fun suddenly wasn’t fun. And yet, no big deal. I believe that it will turn out to be a wonderful time together — with perhaps one day of it not. That’s how family vacations go. You always have one day that you just have to write off. The Greek’s might have had a penchant for aponia, much like our pharmaceutical companies and the general public, but I’m learning to be good with a bit of pain now and again. It’s normal.

This week I screwed some freshly painted master bathroom cabinet doors back on, one step in a beautiful bathroom remodel at home. But in doing so, I chipped the edge of one of the doors with the tip of my elctric drill.

There it is again — the flaw, the chip, the ding, the family spat, the cut cord. But here is the deal: I’m good with it. I’m good with not perfect. I even like it. It is equiprobable that things will go well or not. I’m not perfect, my work isn’t perfect, my family isn’t perfect and that’s okay with me.

I am finding that accepting mistakes, expecting flaws, embracing conflict, being good with not perfect — this actually makes life so much easier, and it sets me free to enjoy my imperfect self, enjoy my flawed relationships and to enjoy my sometimes sketchy efforts to make the world better.

It comes to this: Don’t look down at the floor when you are at the cinema; enjoy the movie.

The Wise Uses of Money

Posted: March 8, 2016 in money
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On Wednesday of this week, I stopped by a friend’s house who is a professional cabinet maker.

He has helped my church, the REFINERY, so much. In the last few years, he has put beautiful cabinets in our upstairs kitchen, a kitchen in our youth center, cabinets in our offices – and they have all been free materials, free labor, no cost — his gifts.

So on Wednesday, after my friend and I greeted each other warmly, he began to apologize to me.

I’m like, “What?”

He kept saying he was sorry. He was sorry he hadn’t come by lately and done more. He talked about how he remembered we wanted to add some cabinet doors to our office, but he hadn’t gotten to it.

Then he told me that he had some new cabinets he wanted to give us — free.

When I left I was struck by the fact that even though he has done so much, he was apologetic for not having done more.

And I thought about how, when we get to a point of maturity, then giving time, goods, money to others — it’s normal, it’s fun, it’s just how we treat our friends.

Luke 16:1

“Jesus told his disciples: ‘There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. [2] So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’

[3] “The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg— [4] I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’

[5] “So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ [6] “ ‘Nine hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied. “The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.’ [7] “Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’ “ ‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied. “He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’

[8] “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.

[9] I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”

Wow, what an odd, and fascinating story Jesus tells.

A business manager is getting fired. So he goes to people who owe his boss, and he reduces their debt. Apparently he has this power, even though he doesn’t have his bosses approval for this.

Why does the shrewd manger do this? So he will have friends, later, when he doesn’t have a job.

The people, whose debts he reduced, will welcome him into their homes.

It’s a quid pro quo, a this for that.

When the business owner finds out about the scheme, he congratulates the dishonest manager for being smart, savvy, shrewd.

We don’t know if he went ahead and fired him or not. Probably.

But we do know this: The shrewd manager was set up — with friends.

Use money, Jesus tells us, to make permanent friends. Set yourself up by means of generosity, (not dishonesty for that was never something Jesus condoned in his teaching) with God and others forever.

What? Jesus said, “What?”

Jesus said we should see wealth, just like my cabinet maker sees it, as a means to good relationships.

I have a $20 bill. If I go buy lunch for myself with this, does that use of it make any friends for me?

Well, it might, if while I am buying lunch I talk to and have fun with the person taking my money. And, I am paying that employee’s wages. And I am benefiting the owner of the restaurant. So such exchanges are intrinsically transactional, and relational.

But can I, in some way, load this $20 bill with even more relational value than buying something for myself?

Yes, if I just give it to someone, asking nothing back, then I weight it with even more relational value.

Hobart Brown once said, “Money doesn’t always bring happiness. People with ten million dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars.”

It is the use of the million dollars … for others …that brings happiness.

There are two ways to view money and things. One is that money and things are objective, they have a value in themselves, that they are cold, impersonal objects to be used for ourselves alone.

Then our relationship with them is very limited. These isolated things are weak and they have no connective, far-reaching, relational value.

Or we can see money and goods as primarily relational. They exist to connect us to each other.

Wealth exists to make good relationships. Then these things are warmed up, they become personal — bridges to connect us — hands reaching out and taking hold of each other. They become full of love.

Consider my iPhone 6.

With this phone, I can do stuff for myself, I can take selfies, check my bank account, make a shopping list, pay for a sandwich for lunch. If I do only these things with the phone, then it exists only for me. Then it is disappointingly non-relational, unsocial, small and limited.

But if on my phone, I write a text, if I post a picture on Facebook, if I use my phone to make a donation to a charity, if I make a list of gifts I am going to buy for my wife, (vacuum cleaner, broom, laundry soap), if I use this to pay for someones lunch, then this phone transforms into something relational, full of social good.

How do we view our money, and our stuff?

Jack Handey once said about money, “I hope that when I die, people say about me, ‘Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.’

Better yet, I hope they say about me, “Wow that guy sure helped a lot of people with his money.”

How do we view our money, as personal or relational?

Why did God give us what he has given us?

Perhaps God has given us what we have so that we might do good, connect with others, share, make friends.

According to Jesus, To be shrewd with wealth is to use it to connect, to bond and to befriend.

Money and things — they were made for love.

Violence

Posted: February 29, 2016 in Evil, restoration
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I have two sweet, passive, house casts. The cats recently got to licking each other, which resulted in some biting, then some hissing and scratching, finally we had to separate them.

We did this by moving between them. It’s called splitting behavior.

We live in a violent world — cat fights, family fights, the San Bernardino shootings, the Paris bombing, the civil war in Syria.

An unholy violence touches all our lives. A friend of mine was murdered by her husband.

The Bible is no strangers to this.

Listen to Jesus.

From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it. (Matthew 11:12)

The Bible is not all happy sheep, gentle doves and precious rainbows. It includes terrors, violence, mayhem — lots of death.

Cain murders Able, the world drowns in a flood, Abraham travels to sacrifice his son Isaac, the Egyptian’s are devastated by the plagues. Paul murders Christians, Jesus dies like a criminal nailed on a cross of wood.

The Bible verifies that life is rough and tough, dangerous, and we are vulnerable and the violent bear us away.

But the Bible also helps us know how to live in such a world, wisely.

What did Jesus say?

Matthew 15:17-19

Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18 But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.

Jesus said what?

Jesus said that violence — physical, sexual, verbal violence — does not begin with standing armies, tanks, guns and bombs.

It rises out of the pathology of our own souls.

Violence begins my heart and yours. It is not far off.

It is as close to us as our own hearts. Because of this, we must be careful to no let anger and hate rule us or we too might say or do terrible things.

Jesus warned us saying, “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.” (Matt. 5.21-22).

Yesterday out driving, a slow car in front of me so irritated me, was taking so much time, so timid, so slow that I grew very impatient. It’s in me too.

When I went around them, in my fast sports car, I didn’t make a hand jester. I was so glad. I think it was one of the elders of my church.

Violence lurks in us all. Perhaps we are too strong with our family. Perhaps we are raging about someone at our work. Perhaps we are verbally abusive at home.

We must pray: “God remove hate and anger and violence from my heart.”

Let’s now get clear on this.

Jesus instructs us not to use violence to attempt to bring about his kingdom.

When Jesus was arrested, one of his companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

But Jesus said, “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. (Matthew 26:51-52)

We must beware of reaching into our hearts and dredging up violence against non-Christians or anyone. It will come back to bite us.

At his trial Jesus said to Pontius Pilate: John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place”

This ” my servants won’t fight” was and is a statement of Christian principle.

It is a principle Jesus is very clear on. He says it unambiguously.

Luke 5:29. “If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also.”

This teaching is very powerful. We all must grapple with it.

No cheek slapping. Restraint can save us — save Christians and the church — from abuse, from harming others, from crusades, from taking up arms to bring about faith.

Is someone slapping you? Are you slapping back?

“What, ” you are thinking, “do I just stand by, and let harm happen to my self, my family, my people?”

No, we apply the violence cure.

The Bible and Jesus teaches us to bravely stand up against violence.

Just because Jesus doesn’t employ violence, he does not model or encourage us to act like helpless sheep, to give in, to give up.

One way the Bible teaches us to stand against violence is to respect and work with the police and military in their efforts to protect us.

Romans 13:4 says, “For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”

Police officers, government leaders, military, then it their duty to defend, to sometimes use force to stop violence. They must be brave, do their jobs, but they should never use force — unless necessary.

We stand with them in their role.

In my career as a pastor I have worked along side of the police, Child Protective Services and the courts. I have reported sexual abuse and physical abuse to helpful authorities. I have comforted and counseled women who have been abused and I have worked with soldiers suffering from PTSD.

I have cried with victims and stood in court with them. I have walked out afraid of being beat up on the street.

As a church, my church holds Church Has Left the Building Sundays,. On these we have fixed up a local domestic violence shelter, our staff has reported abuse, we have set up a counseling center, we have paid for professional counseling for victims.

In the last few years, our church has the become the REFINERY, a place where people get better, are protected, can recover.

We are all about, healing hearts, wounded by violence.

Our staff MFT’s increasingly busy. We will report the bully at the school or in the office or on the ship, call the police on the law breaker, report the threat.

We are not helpless sheep!

When one of my daughters was in middle school, she was harassed, inappropriately touched by another student. I went straight to the principal and advocated for my daughter. I stood up and protected her.

I yelled at the principal. I shouldn’t have. But I would not be put off, until something was done. We must protect our kids and stand with them in trouble.

Secondly, Jesus instructs us to stand up to violence with words.

When a woman, caught in adultery, was brought to Jesus, Jesus verbally defended her and stopped her accusers from stoning her.

Jesus did this with intelligent thinking. He used words.

It is recorded in John 8:7 that he confronted her accusers by saying,” “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Her accusers snuck away. This was so powerful that the phrase “throw the first stone” is now a conventional, protective part of our everyday speech.

Go create words; defend women from double standards, defend children from abuse, defend us all, from violence, from a culture of violence.

For as long as we have strength to stand up to bullies, it is both our nature and our privilege to do so.

Following Jesus we should stand against verbal abuse, sexual abuse, sex trafficking, rape, domestic violence, spousal abuse, child abuse, abortion, bullying and racially motivated violence.

My church is the home of the Grossmont College’s Southbay classes to train adoptive and foster parents. We give away space for free for this to happen.

We are The REFINERY that empowers.

We are mending the ravages of family violence right here, right now.

Thirdly, we stop violence by becoming peacemakers.

We Christians should always be growing in learning peacemaking, in learning to conflict negotiation, in finding non-violent ways to stop violence.

Matthew 5:9 says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, [taught Jesus] for they will be called children of God.”

Peacemaking uses the leverage of language, the force of negotiations to find solutions.

Jesus called each one of us to peacemaking.

When I was in South Africa a few years ago the Christians there totally inspired me as to what Christians can do.

When we were in Johannesburg, some of the pastors told us that during the Soweto riots of 1976, the church gathered and prayed.

South Africa was at the brink of civil war, racial war, but the church prayed and white President F.W. DeKlerk unbanned the ANC and unbanned the South African Communist party and of all affiliated organizations, and released Nelson Mandela from 26 years in prison then sat down at the table and negotiated the country away from Apartheid and war and hate.

It worked. God worked a miracle. It was and is still messy, but it worked.

We can take a lesson from this. God hates it when the strong prey on the weak, when innocent ones are harmed, and God helps those who resist this.

We can oppose even our own government when we see that it unjustly uses violence against it’s own citizens or when it uses violence to wrongly dominate people’s of the world.

Christians can stop violence by not voting for haters and war mongers.

It is not unpatriotic to vote for laws and leaders that protect, those who will protect all races and religions and peoples.

We are the people of the first amendment. We stand for protection of speech and religion and safety for all.

Black lives matter. Brown lives matter. And red lives matter. And white lives too.

The lives of our young people matter, the lives of police officers matter too. Christian lives matter; Muslim lives matter too.

All lives matter — the unborn, the sick, the disabled, the old, and the church should work for the protection all precious, God loved lives. We are to protect the lives of those Christ died for.

If we have ever been bullied or beaten or raped or verbally abused, God hates that and he suffers with us and want to protect and help us.

What to do? Report abuse. Get help. Pray. Move away from it. Protect ourselves, protect our friend, protect our children.

Christians need to shelter victims. When it comes to sexual abuse or sexual harm, we need to engage in splitting behaviors.

When I was in South Africa, on church we visited had renovated a whole housing complex that was formerly a Dutch, Afrikaner compound, and the homes were given to people in the congregation if they would take in a baby or child who had lost their parents to AIDS. We saw those homes, we held those babies.

The church can redeem a broken culture.

If a woman tells you she has been raped, believe her, get her to safety, help prosecute the rapist, take her in, keep her away from the abuser.

We need to work with law enforcement, criminal justice, educators, mental health professionals, and many others to stop sex trafficking, to stop sexual abuse.

Too often the church has been too silent and too soft on sexual abuse. No more.

Lastly, Jesus taught and modeled an internal response to violence, “Be not afraid!”

Jesus said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body [said Jesus] but cannot kill the soul”

And Jesus said: “I have told you all this so that you may find peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but be brave: I have conquered the world” (John 16.33).

We Christians are on the side of the winner.

In the end God wins. His peacemaking wins.

God will redeem our evil, violent hearts, and in the end, peace and peace making will rule the day.

This is our certainty.

The Lion will one day lie down with the lamb and yet the peacemaking Lion will yet remain the conquering Lion.

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