Uncategorized – Christ Centered Spirituality

What is the wise place to be when we start new things?

The wise place to be when we start new things is on our knees.

In Acts 16, we see Paul’s travelogue to Phillipi.

v12 From there we traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days. 13 On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there.

V12 says, for the first few days it does not seem that anything notable happened. But on Sabbath there is a shift. Following the model set by our Lord Jesus (Mark 1:35), they went out of the city to pray by the river. Then something new happens!

v14 One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatiray named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. 15 When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home.

At the river, Lydia a wealthy merchant, who likely was a worshiper of Yahweh opens up to the message of the Gospel as proclaimed by Paul. Text is clear that it is the Lord who opened her heart. Paul and his team stayed at Lydia’s house, which commentators believe likely became the first house church in Phillipi. This new thing happened because Paul and his faithful team were on their knees.

Human nature resists being on our knees before the Lord to yield to the divine. In Hamlet, Shakespeare captures this resistance to prayer, imploring us with the words, “Bow, stubborn knees, and, heart with strings of steel, be soft as sinews of the newborn babe.” If we bow our stubborn knees, and commit to divine leading, new life shall begin.

Prayer is like a gentle rain that awakens the slumbering seedlings into a new life. Prayer is the fuel of new birth and so the wise place to be when we start new things is on our knees.

On Burnout… What to do about our Busyness?

Why are we busy all the time? How does it affect our lives? And what do we do about it?

We live in a world where when we do things fast Then we get valued. But here’s the problem. Anytime we get busy we keep going from one thing to another we get close burnout. What is burnout how do we get to that stage of burnout?

Psychologists say that burnout happens in multiple stages. The first stage is we have this compulsion To prove ourselves at work. You want to do well at work. So we’re trying to work hard to prove that “Hey, I am worthy of this job that I’m doing.” And that causes us to work harder. Sometimes we think, “oh, I need to work harder than other people here.”

And then there was the next stage that we get to, which is neglecting our personal needs because we have this compulsion to prove ourselves at work and we’re working harder. And then we don’t make time to exercise. We don’t make time for friends, we don’t make time to prepare healthy meals. So we are slowly neglecting our personal needs. Our body has some needs. Our mind has some needs. Our mind needs time for sleep. Time for rest. Time for a recreation. Our body needs good nutrition. Our body needs exercise to be able to stay healthy. And then we also have needs as needs to socialize -meet with friends, meet with family.

When those needs are not met then our body goes and do a place of feeling tired, feeling restless. And then we may have some physical sickness of one form or another. And that psychologists call this stage displacement. And what they mean by that is. Our body is telling us, “Hey, The pace at which you’re working being busy while neglecting your personal needs is not good. You need to stop, make a shift, make a change.” but instead of listening to our body, we just say that’s just I’m feeling tired because I didn’t sleep well or I didn’t eat well. Instead of actually facing the fact and saying, ” I’m working too much. I need rest. We blame it on unrelated things in order to avoid facing the real problem, which is overworking to the point of neglecting our personal needs. That’s what they mean by displacement.

And if we keep on doing this, then eventually we reach a stage of inner emptiness. Things that we don’t really feel meaningful. We wonder, okay, why am I doing all these things that I’m doing? And that eventually leads to a sense of anxiety about work or about something else. Which if we don’t pay attention to our anxiety eventually it can lead to a place of depression. Because our body and our mind is just so tired of being the state of busyness that eventually it says, okay, let’s just check out. We can’t take this anymore. And we regress to a place of depression.

Being too busy and not paying attention to our real needs will lead to this place of burnout.

So here’s the thing that Corrie Ten boom says, she says.

“The truth is that both sin and busyness have the same effect. They cut off your connection to God, to other people. And to your own soul.”

The sense of depression that comes as a result of this busyness will cut us off From things that we love, things that we appreciate, Corrie Ten, boom. It says it cuts us from our connection with God, with other people. And if we don’t pay attention and keep on going eventually it’ll cut off our own connection to our own soul. And that’s what psychologist talk about when they’ve mentioned the sense of inner emptiness. Anxiety and depression. That is a us feeling are we are not in touch with our real self.

What do we do about it?

In the scriptures in Psalm 46, God says. Be still and know that I am

god’s invitation to us is to step off this place of staying in compulsive busyness where we say, I need to prove myself at work and I’m trying to do all these things. God is telling us step away from all of the busyness. And step into the space in which you get to be still and know God.

And we see Jesus doing this often matthew 14:23, mark 6, John 6. Talk about how often jesus takes time to be alone. Takes time to be still. Takes time to pray to God. He went out to the mountains to pray and all night he continued in prayer to God.

Taking time off from our busy schedules. Just spend time with God is a very important part of breaking the cycle of busyness.

So what happens? When we take time off from the cycle of busyness to spend time with God.

Oftentimes when we are busy and we’re going about our lives we are so focused on different tasks we need to do. And when we are in that task oriented mode. It is hard for us to pay attention to relationships. Relationships with other people, our relationship with God, our relationship to our own soul. And that is what Corrie ten boom talks about when she says busyness takes away all these connections. Ultimately God is calling us to help the relationship with him. Healthy relationship with people around us and even a healthy relationship. With the kind of person he has created ourselves to be.

To be in the space of healthy relationships. It is important to take time away from the busyness and be still with God. What are things that we can do that will help us to be in the space of being still with God.

Sometimes it is as simple as saying, “I’m going to switch off my phone and just spend some time reading the Bible. Other than other times, it may be saying something like, I’m not going to watch TV. I’m not going to play video games. I’m just going to sit and journal about all the different anxieties that I have.

Pour them out in prayer to God and asking God, “what do you have to say about this?” So it is doing those simple exercises where we get away from the business of life. And pay attention to God’s presence. Pay attention to our relationship with God. It’s what ultimately helps us to get away is what ultimately helps us to be still and know god.

Why We often Fail to Pray? What can We do about it?

“Pray can I not,

Though inclination be as sharp as will:

My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent”

These are the words of King Claudius in the Hamlet as he is struggling to get himself to pray. This is something lots of us struggle with. We feel like we need to get to a good state of mind before we can be ready to pray. It may be because we want our prayer time to be moving or profound in some way. We may be afraid that if our prayer time may not feel moving or profound, it may affect our sense of faith. This dilemma can create a lot of anxiety as is the case with Claudia in Hamlet. He feels his guilt, over the murder of his brother, will get in the way of any peace that prayer could afford. Feeling paralyzed by this kind of inner conflict can lead to avoidance behaviours, causing us to not attempt to pray at all.

How can we prevent this prayer paralysis from happening to us?

The key is to take the pressure off of wanting every time we pray to feel like a deeply moving or profound experience. If we want every prayer time to feel like a deeply moving spiritual experience we may be tempted to want to engender it, which may feel fake. If we keep doing it multiple times, we may be tempted to lose our own confidence in prayer. There is freedom in taking the pressure off. We see an interesting example of this in Andre Agassi.

Andre Agassi was struggling in his tennis career. He was losing to players with less skill. His rankings dropped to below 100. His coach dropped him. Agassi’s manager encouraged him to meet with Brad Gilbert, who was a quirky tennis coach. Gilbert told Agassi that he had the gift of being a top tennis player. But he was getting in the way of his own gift by trying to hit a winner on every ball. Every time he would hit a bit hoping for it to be a winner and it did not win the point, it chipped away at his confidence, taking him on a downward spiral. Agassi took this advice to not try to hit a winner on every ball, and went on to will the US open.

There is freedom in taking the pressure off by not trying to make every time of prayer into a winning experience. If in our mind’s eye we expect our prayer time to be 30 minutes long, we may be putting too much pressure on ourselves. We may think I am too busy today to pray in any meaningful way. May be tomorrow I will make 30 minutes to pray, that way I will have a good experience then. But tomorrow become tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… The pressure we put upon ourselves gets in the way of our own prayer.

How do we take the pressure off our prayers?

Make prayer short and simple!

In the Orthodox Christian tradition monks would pray “Jesus Son of God, Have mercy on me.” They called it the Jesus Prayer, because this put the focus on Jesus as the healer of all our maladies. It is derived from Luke 18:38 where a blind beggar feels lost in the big throng around Jesus so cries out “Jesus, Son of David, have Mercy on me,” as a way of getting Jesus attention in order to be healed. The people around him getting irritated by his loud cries and rebuke him for being a disturbance. But he wouldn’t stop! Jesus then notices him and heals him.

Just like the blind beggar repeated this prayer until he was healed, the Orthodox monks would repeat the Jesus Prayer until it became a part of their breath and being. Repeating this simple Jesus Prayer multiple times helps us enter an internal state of prayerfulness.

Some of us may wonder if this is too simple a form of prayer. The key is to remember that God values our intent, not our words. We see this in Matt 6:7 where Jesus explicitly warns about long babbling prayers with too many words that puts too much pressure on oneself. There is no need to overly complicate prayer. Prayer is not so much about fancy words as much as it is about intention and presence.

If we find ourselves like King Claudius, caught in the horns of dilemma, unable to get ourselves to a state of prayer, just start with the Jesus Prayer. Just keep saying, “Jesus Son of God, have mercy on me,” as many time as you feel you need to keep saying it. And the spirit of God, who knows your deepest intentions, will attend to you in ways we cannot fathom. Under the ministration of the Spirit you will find true rest for our souls.

Do You Find Yourself Cringing When You Read about “Fear of the Lord”?

Proverbs 9:10 “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom.”

Do you find yourself cringing when you read verses like these from the Old Testament? If God is love (1 John 4:16) why so much talk about fear?

Fear is a complex emotion. One might say that there are at least two aspects to fear.

1)Fear as a motivating emotion. For example the fear of failing an exam may motivate someone to study well. One might say that this is good fear that motivates us to do what is in our best interest.

2)Fear can also be a crippling emotion. Overwhelming fear cripples our ability for critical thinking. It short circuits the critical thinking function in the prefrontal cortex of the brain by shifting control to the reptilian part of the human brain. This causes us to go into the fight, flight or freeze reaction.

One might ask what type of fear do these verses talk about? Is it the good kind of fear that motivates us to do the right thing? Or is it the fear that cripples our critical thinking ability?

I suspect most reasonable Christians might say that the fear Bible talks about isn’t the crippling kind of fear that works turns our critical thinking ability offline.

I suspect most reasonable Christians might say that the fear that the Old Testament talks about is the good motivating fear. But I think there is a problem with this position. If one were to assert that the fear of God is the good motivating kind of fear, then this brings up another kind of question. What does this fear have to do with love?

In Star Wars General Tarkin uses fear as a means of getting people to get people to submit to his rules so there is peace in the galaxy. If God were to use similar kind of fear as a way of motivate people to do what is right, how could it be different from Tarkin? In fact Freud touches upon this aspect of authority figures using fear to motivate acquiescence, and that this cause a love-fear relationship between the Father and the children, paving the way for neurosis (internal conflict that creates anxiety). This led Freud to posit that human beings would have a love-fear relationship with all authority figures, which included God too. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that as people living in modernity we find talking about fear of God as something that is cringe worthy. We no longer live in the world were Jonathan Edwards could preach the sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and use people’s fear of hell to motivate them to give their life to God.

Even if someone agrees with Jonathan Edwards that it is good to use fear of hell to motivate people, one still has to ask, even when fear is used to motivate, is it really good to use this motivating fear in the context of a loving relationship? A teacher at school may want to try to motivate a kid to study well by getting the student to fear the prospect of failure of an exam, but would a loving mother want to use fear to get her child to give her a hug? If a loving mother wouldn’t want to use fear to motivate her child, why would a loving God want to use fear of Him in the context of the relationship?

When Bible talks about fear of the Lord is not talking about the motivating kind of fear neither is it talking about the crippling fear that takes the critical thinking function offline. Rather in talking about the fear of the Lord, the Bible talks about humility before the Lord. It is the kind of humility that says – I do not know it all, so I am ready to be curious and listen to what God in His grace would reveal to me. The medieval theologians captured this rather well, they said “humility is the handmaiden of faith.” When we accept that we don’t know it all, we are then open to listen and learn, opening us up to the grace of God’s revelation.

What does it mean to live without this kind of humility towards God’s revelation? The words of Aldous Huxley, the quintessential modern thinker, spiritualist and novelist in his book Means and ends is a great example.

“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption… For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning – the Christian meaning, they insisted – of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.”

Huxley does not want to go about the humble way of exploring to see if there is meaning in the world or not. He has not curiosity about wehter God’s way may offer a meaningful way to live. Rather, he self-assuredly and stridently asserts that there is no meaning at all. This not the way of humility. This is the way of pride. One might say that Frued’s way of approaching the world was just as less humble as Huxley’s. When the Bible talks about fear of God it is not talking about God using fear (as in fear of hell) to motivate us to do the right thing. Rather is it talking about human being approaching the world with a sense of humility and being open to listen and learn from God’s revelation. This kind of humility would lead to true wisdom! This kind of humility is the handmainden of faith.

Now when we read Proverbs 9:10 “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom,” we don’t need to cringe because this fear not as something that cripples our critical thinking, nor is it used as a means to motivated us, but, rather this is about living a way of humility . The emotion of cringe can be replaced by one of humble gratitude. We can be grateful for God creating a world where we can humbly listen to and find wisdom in His revelation in the Scriptures, in the World and in the Person of Jesus.

Why does it make sense to pray if God already knew all our needs?

When I was a kid, one of my perennial questions about prayer was, “Why does it make sense to pray if God already knew all our needs?” Praying to God about what he already knows has 3 reasons.

Prayer is about making God a bigger part of our conscious reality by getting to know more about His character and our relationship with Him. Sometimes making God a bigger part of our consciousness happens through conversations. We could be arguing with God as in Job argued with God about the injustice done to him. Or lament like David. Or please like Hannah. What is unique about these prayers is that at the end of it there is a deepened understanding about God. In the case of Job this understanding comes with God answering Job his own set of paradoxical questions. God did not answer everyone of Jobs questions point by point (as in some of our famous catechisms Heidelberg etc.). But Job was satisfied because God’s presence became a bigger part of Job’s conscious reality!

Secondly, praying to God about seeing ourselves the way God sees us. We see this viscerally with Jacob we see that his wrestling with God helped him to see himself differently. To see himself as God sees him. Jacob the trickster became Israel the father of a nation. When we struggle with God in prayer we become changed people because in the process of wrestling with God we catch a glimpse of how God sees us, and what his invitation for us may be.

Thirdly, prayer is about experiencing Triune joy. We may be tempted to think that Jesus prayed in his human form to model what a prayer filled life could look like. But Jesus prayed because he enjoyed fellowship with His Father and the Spirit. Heb 12:2 talks about Jesus looking forward to the ‘joy that was set before Him,’ as he sat on the right hand of God. When we pray we too are invited to this joyful communion with the Triune God. So the first reason to pray is to enjoy the joyful communion.

Prayer is not some rote recitation to God about what he already knows. It is about knowing God a way in which he is a more conscious part of our reality, it is about seeing ourselves the way God sees us, it is about enjoying God’s presence.

Reflections on Pursuit of God

I have been reading A.W.Tozer’s book Pursuit of God. Below is a combination of my reflections and synopsis of some key ideas in the first 4 chapters of the book.

Pursuit of God

Holy persons are people who are famished for God’s presence and are seeking after God as the highest value of their life. Tozer says, “they want to taste, to touch with their hearts, to see with their inner eyes the wonder that is God.” Holy people pray like Moses, “God, show me thy glory.”

Holy people are not led by, “a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart.” Holy people like are ones who seem to have a deep sense of wonder at God, a wonder that will not be easily quenched by reading a chapter in the bible, or a book. Rather, this holy wonder longs and pants for more and more of God’s affirming presence.

Here is the important question… What keeps us away from the deep longing for God?

Tozer suggest that what keeps us from a deeper longing for God is the “evil habit of seeking God-and.” When we seek God but also want to value our career or the approval we get from people or the possessions we have, then we are seeking God-and something else. This habit of God-and will lead to us loosing our ability to wonder at God.

How to get away from the evil habit of seeking God-and?

There are 3 ways…

1.Finding freedom from Tyranny of things.
When our roots find nourishment in the things we possess, we are fed bad nutrition. It is like eating constantly at McDonalds – so much that our body becomes a slave to those cheap titillating calories. If one were to become a slave to McD food, to find freedom, one has to retrain one’s senses to finding pleasure in healthy green food. Tozer says that a big part of the training that God gave Abraham was to put him in the school of renunciation. God has Abraham give up his home country, the comfort of the familiar and even his own son, so that Abraham would realize that God himself is his reward.

Tozer says “The man who has God for his treasure has all things in one. Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness.”

The way we find freedom from tyranny of thing is to practice the prayer of renunciation, stripping away the unessential and deepening our roots in that which is essential, Christ the Rock.

2.Deepening a Covenental Relationship.
The temptation of the modern man is to see God as an “inferential character,” a character who is a part of a person’s intellectual life. Tozer makes an interesting distinction between the prophet and the scribe. The scribe is one who reads books and has intellectual knowledge. On the other hand, the prophet is one who has an encounter with a living God (as in Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Paul). I was watching the movie Forrest Gump which has a scene in which a disabled Vietnam war veteran, Lieutenant Dan, is screaming at God. For L Dan, God is not merely an intellectual idea, God is a person he is angry with. He is lamenting as David does in the Psalms, thus he encounters God, and finds his peace. God for Lieutenant Dan is not just an intellectual idea in his mind, rather God is a person who he talks to, fights with, finds his peace with. The mark of this covenental relationship is obedience. Tozer points to John 14:21-23 as to clue in the importance of obedience to God as a way of communing deeply with Trinity.

3.Wondering after God.
Our hunger for God grows out of our wonder of God. What keeps us from coming to a place of wonder at God? There is a veil over the human heart, dampening the passion for worship of God. Tozer calls this veil the “self-sin.” What are self-sins? Self-righteousness, self-pity, self-admiration, self-sufficiency. It is a world where the self is at the center. The only antidote to this self being on the throne is the cross. One has to crucify the self-sins. Tozer goes on to say, “there comes a moment when its (cross) work is finished and the suffering victim dies. After that is resurrection glory and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away and we have entered in actual spiritual experience the Presence of the Loving God.” This resurrected self, which has been rid of its selfish agenda wonders after God.

The way to being holy is to value presence of God above all, the way to this place of valuing God is to renounce the habit of seeking after “God-and.” The way to valuing God-alone is to find freedom from the tyranny of things through the prayer of renunciation, developing a covenental relationship with God by encounter and obedience, and, wondering after God by deposing the self from the throne.
Memorable Quotes from Pursuit of God by A.W.Tozer:
We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us.

The world is perishing for lack of knowledge of God, church is famishing for want of his presence.

The evil habit of seeking God-and effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation.

Prayerfulness as Faithfulness

In Deuteronomy 5:32, Moses says, “So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left.” Moses addressed these words to Israel. We know history. We know that they did turn to the right, left, up, down, in every possible direction, variation and combination.

How can we be careful so as to not turn aside to the right and the left?

As always the answer is prayer. But it is not just prayer, rather it is prayerfulness. Prayer is an act, but prayerfulness an attitude. Prayerfulness is a way of being marked by “ceaseless prayer” as Paul says in Thessalonians 5:17.

I was reading about Origen’s thoughts on prayer, “those who give themselves continually to prayer know by experience that through this fervent practice they avoid innumerable sin and are led to perform many good deeds.” Prayerfulness is about filling up our consciousness with ceaseless prayer to God. Such prayerfulness is the mark of the life of a Saint. Such prayerfulness is the source of all virtues.

There are 3 aspects to this way of prayefulness.
1.Prayer places us before God.
2.Prayer reminds us that God is present and looking at us.
3.Prayer changes our disposition.

When we are filling up our mind with ceaseless prayer, then the mind has little space for the seeds of sin to germinate. A mind filled with the sense of ceaseless prayer is focused, it is not distracted to the right or the left.

In the life of Israel, anytime they were stressed they were prone to turn to the left or the right, away from the straight path. When Moses did not come down from Mount Sainai, they decided they would figure out a way to recreate God’s image and made the golden calf to worship it. During times of stress and trail people of Israel channeled their anxiety into things, as in Golden Calf, that took them away from God.

We too do something similar in life – when we are faced with some stressful choices, financial anxiety, fear of rejection, shame about the past. To palliate our negative feelings, we are tempted to turn to the right or the left to distract ourselves using a range of compulsive behaviors from watching TV to giving in to addictions. In these stressful situations, being prayerful means that we channel our energy into praying to God. Stresses an anxieties of life channeled into prayer deepens our identity in God, changing our disposition, making us more faithful to him.

The way to live the Deutronomy 5:32 life of faithfulness is through prayerfulness, practicing ceasless prayer. If we are stressed about something, instead of trying to find relief from the negative emotions by compulsive behavior, we channel this energy into prayerfulness, the cornerstone of our faithfulness.

Motivation towards Freedom

Proverbs 16:12 says, “All a person’s ways seem pure to them but motives are weighed by the Lord.”

In the book Why We Do What We do, Edward L. Deci speaks about an experiment done with moneys. The moneys are given a puzzle to solve, but without any external rewards. He found that moneys kept doing that puzzle over and over again just because they enjoyed the process of solving that puzzle. The monkeys did not need some external reward, they were satisfied with just the process of solving the puzzle. They monkeys had “intrinsic motivation.”

motivation

Intrinsic motivations are one which are not dependent upon external rewards. Intrinsic motivation is about seeing something as being worthy in an off itself, without concern for external personal rewards. In the book Edward L. Deci says goes on to say that little children often display this kind of pure intrinsic motivation. They are motivated by curiosity, and the desire to learn about the world, so they are happy to touch and taste everything, exploring the world.

When Jesus says that to enter the kingdom of God, one has to be like little children. I suppose one could say children have an innocent in as much as they have ‘intrinsic motivations.’ If they become extrinsically motivated – as in wanting to do something to get cookies, then they would be tempted to take short cuts, lie, manipulate to get the desired external outcome. It appears that intrinsic motivation is a kingdom value that is amply evident among little children.

This brings up the question as adults can we ever reach the stage of having pure intrinsic motivations?

Deci says in the book that intrinsic motivation is seen in adults when they engage in leisure activities where it be fishing or reading or gardening – it is enjoying something for the sake of itself. Doing something for the sake of itself is the very of worship. West Minister’s confession says, “The Chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

How can we attain this state of being?

Proverbs 16:13 gives the answer, “commit to the Lord whatever you do.”

To commit whatever we do to the Lord is to commit our efforts to the glory of God and let God handle the outcome.

In stead of committing our efforts to God, if we are driven by a compulsion towards outcome orientation, then that is when we end up with impure motivations. In a spiritual context outcome orientation can mean many different things. For Christians in leadership, outcome orientation takes the form of obsessing over numbers – how many people came to Church this week? For Christians who are lay members, this outcome orientation can take the form of expecting to have some ‘feeling’ as an outcome of worship. To go into worship wanting an outcome that can be qualified merely in terms of feeling is an impure motivations.

As Christians, who follow Proverbs 16:13, we have to relentlessly commit every one of our actions to God. How do we commit every action to God?

I take 10 seconds to quickly pray about whatever I am doing, and commit it to God so that my actions, regardless of my personal outcome, brings glory to God. This sets my intentions aligned towards intrinsic motivation. When I pray to committing all I do to God, I find myself in a place of freedom in Christ.

An example… Even as i am writing this post, if I am outcome oriented then I may be concerned about a whole range of questions from – How many people will read my post? Will people like it? Will people be benefited from this? This is the way of slavery. If on the other hand, my motivations are not related to any personal eternal outcome, if my motivation is intrinsic – that is, my motivation is to write for the sake of glorifying God, then I am freed to express myself to glorify God without care for any external impact/outcome. This is the way of freedom.

Proverbs is a pointer to the way of wisdom God knows our motivations and will reward us for our motivation. Proverbs 16:1,2 tell us that way of wisdom is keep our motivations intrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is achieved by taking 10 seconds out of hour to pray committing our effort to God’s glory, regardless of personal outcomes. Compulsion towards seeking external personal outcomes leads to slavery. Our intrinsic motivation to glorify God leads to freedom in Christ.

Call to Self Transcendence

When I am stuck in a place where I am pre-occupied with my own emotions in a way that is detrimental, then in order to transcend out of it, I listen to say Bach’s Fuges. Being from the Baroque era, Bach saw his music as a reflection of God’s glory. So his music had the multi-faceted majesty of God’s glory. When I listen to Bach’s fuges I am transcend out of my self-absorbtion to a place of apprecation for the majesty of his music.

I have been reading David Brooks new book The Second Mountain. The book’s central thesis is that everyone climbs their first mountain, usually some career goal, driven by personal ambition. Then after they get to achieving their goal, they find that something is still missing, the first mountain wasn’t satisfying after all. Then they have to figure out how to climb the second mountain. This second mountain takes the form of ‘care for the other.’

The first mountain is often one driven by hyper-individualistic motivation and fancy restaurants. People who are the second mountain people give off themseleves freely, they are exhausted, but still they have a sparkle in their eyes. Brooks mentions a lady from Houston, Stephanie Hurek, who teaches kids after school – she thinks of every hour she spends with the kids as creating a better future for them.

Brooks is not a Christian. But the principle of the second mountain had some interesting Christian parallels. The kind of second mountain’s giving of the self for the sake of the ‘other’ is akin to Paul saying that he find himself being poured out as a drink offering 2 Tim 4:6. The call of the Bible is the call to a place of giving off of oneself to the love of neighbor.

Every person, Christian or not, has common grace. So everyone has the ability, up to a point, to give of themselves to serve the weak and the vulnerable around them. But special grace enables Christians to serve others even in the most desperate situations. Etty Hillesum was a Christian jewish person who was in one of the Nazi concentration camps. When she was set to go to take the transportation to the death squads, she had a kind word for everyone on the way out. From the train she threw a postcard that had words written “Christen, The Lord is my high tower.” Brooks gives Etty Hillesum as a second mountain person.

Brooks calls people like Staphanie Hurek and Etty Hillesum ‘weavers.’ They are second mountain people who are have given themselves to caring for people around them. They ‘weave’ the social fabric. In a sense the cross carrying Christian is a ‘weaver’ of God’s kingdom.

Going from the first mountain to the second mountain involves going through a valley. The valley is where the hyper individualistic ambitions die. For Brooks, the valley came when he got divorced and he had to move to an apartment. There he realized though he was very successful in life life, he was drive by selfish ambition. It was his first mountain which was not satisfying for him at all. Then he had to learn what it means to give up his former life and climb his second mountain.

From a theological stand point this valley experience is what Jesus talks about in Luke 9:23 where Jesus say anyone who wants to follow Him has to deny self, then take up their cross daily and follow him.

The cross carrying that Jesus talks about is a call to the second mountain. It is a call to self-transcendence by the way of self-denial. Within the Christian life, the pathway to this place of self denial, aka the valley, is something that one does not have to walk alone. As Christians we have the help of the Holy Spirit to make it through the valley between the first and the second mountain.

The call of the cross is the call to self-transcendence. God sent Jesus to us to forgive our sins, and also, to call us away form our narcissistic self-absorbed first mountain lives, to the world of self-transcendence as ‘weavers’ building God’s kingdom by being the loving presence of Chris to people around us. Then Christians will be people with a “sparkle in our eyes,” as Brooks notes, sparked by the Holy Spirit.

Capitalism VS Communism??? Really!!!!

All of the media propaganda and the progressive economist say that capitalism is the solution to fight against the evils of communism. But that argument goes only until wall street is on its own feet, if at any time it indeed was on its own (it could be argued that it is always standing on the feet of the American tax payer). Once every couple of decades the wall street buckles down and needs infusion of billions upon billions of dollars from the FED to get back on its feet. Depending on FED to get back on its feet is to depend on the tax payer to bail oneself out. This is not capitalism, it is communism.

The basic difference between capitalism and communism is that in capitalism none is entitled to anyone else’s economic well being but in communism each man is responsible for the others economic well being. Capitalism is about catering to self-interest in such a way that everyone caters to their self-interest, communism is about catering to the other’s-interest.

In a recent interview with Bill Gates about the global economic down turn and what impact it would have on his development work in the third world countries, he was asked a question. “Now that the American way of running the economy has failed, wouldn’t the other countries say ‘why do you want to do this the American way, after all it has failed’?” Gates replied “No, I don’t think so, I think the other countries would like to have the kind of problems that America has… (it is better than the kind of problems they have)”.

I was immediately reminded of the late Russian thinker, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s classic Harvard lecture which earned him a boycott from the western elite, where he said

“But the blindness of superiority (of the west) continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which developed out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet’s development is quite different.”

America, though it considers capitalism as the ultimate ideal for economic and social development, has to resort to communism to stabilize itself because of the imbalances created by the capitalistic ideals. Without communism, capitalism will buckle down into an everlasting demise. When communism comes to the rescue, the tax payer takes it upon himself to rescue the mismanaged financial firms whose CEO made millions of dollars for that asset management credentials. The financial firms somehow by a sudden change in the mood become entitled to the tax payer’s money. Capitalism suddenly becomes communism.

And wall street, the paradise of capitalism, gets back on its feet, thanks to the ‘transient’ communistic mood, and it again gets back on its capitalistic ideals of ‘individual self-interest leading to collective good’, only to find itself playing a different ball game of communism a couple of decades when it buckles down. Spat comes the ideal of communism to the rescue.

The problem is that the western world simply fails to understand that greed and self-interest cannot give the right ethos for life in the long term. No matter how many lessons we learn we are never able to unlearn that the ideal of ‘individual self interest leading to collective good’ is simply not right for life.

It is a classic irony of every age that the icons of capitalism of each age whether it is Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, all of them after having reached the pinnacle of capitalism by seeking self-interest and resorting to ruthless business strategies, have to espouse communism to make some sense of their life. This again proves that that ideal of goodness of greed and self-interest does not really make sense in life in the long term, but then this is another of the lessons that will never be learnt.

The bottomline being that for capitalism to be a long term way of life, communism as to be its life-line. Selfishness cannot exist without large doeses of selflessness and in that 700 billion dollar bailout what it is the large dose of selflessnes of the American taxpayer that compensates for the selfishness of the wall street executive who rakes in million of dollars. This capitalism at work, this is capitalism standing on the feet of communism, as against capitalism working against the evils of communism as the media elite would like us to believe.