Yanked By Her Braid

A mutual friend, who knows parts of my testimony, called me after my family returned from Church yesterday. They asked me to visit a struggling father and maybe offer some encouragement. And so I spent yesterday afternoon with a new acquaintence who is desperately trying to kick a narcotic addiction so that he can be a better parent and a better human. I always go into these situations with nervous reverence for the opportunities these situations may or may not present to guide someone to a God who loves them more than they can fathom and wants their best life more than they do. I prayerfully approach these circumstances with a profound gratitude that God met me when I stood literally with the shirt on my back, angrily challenging God to redeem me if His arm was long enough, and humbly (yes, anger and humility, the two can go together in the right circumstances) repenting for the things I knew I had chosen to do wrong which led to my state of shambles that day. Without acknowledging our sin and admitting our need for Christ's restoring sacrifice, there can be no Salvation. There can certainly be no second work of Sanctification if we never reach a crisis point where we recognize our utter dependence on a God of Mercy. And healing of our deepest wounds is not likely to ever take place without those first two steps.

My story gave me an entrance ticket into this man's life yesterday.  And we had nine hours of fellowship, talking about mutual acquaintences and professional experiences, our desires to be a good parent, our terrors of being miserable failures at parenting, our disappointments and anger with God (which we both agreed come from twisted thinking and unrealistic expectations on our part), abiding places of anger which were hard to let go given some of their righteous roots.  We talked extensively about horrible experiences of abuse we both survived.  We spilled our guts with each other.  And I bathed the man's cuts and scratches and deep wounds with cleansing Water found only in the Word of God, not in a holier than thou attitude of "get yourself straightened up or go to Hell," but with a genuine understanding of the paths sin takes us down and the beating our enemy gives us along the way.  Ironically, near the end of our time together he said "you'd make a good preacher, really able to meet people at those cross roads of life where they struggle the most."  I confessed to him that he had me pegged.

I originally wrote this piece as a note on Facebook about a year ago. I was looking for something else I wrote which seems to have disappeared, but I find my time with my new friend yesterday actually fits quite well with this piece.  He's certainly being yanked by his proverbial braid.  I have great hope it will work out right, but that's his choice at the end of the day. 

Yanked By Her Braid

by Blaze Wahlert on Friday, July 1, 2011 at 6:38pm ·

When my youngest daughter was approximately seven years old I recall a time when she and I traveled to one of our local pizza parlors to pick up the food I had ordered for our supper that evening.  This particular pizza shop was in a strip mall just down from a busy convenience store/gas station.  Upon exiting the vehicle my daughter darted out with the pizza store in her sights.  I just narrowly managed to get a firm hold on her long braid in time to stop her at the end of our parking spot, which caused a painful yank on her head and immediately caused her to spin around to face me with a justifiable anger, tears in her eyes, and to take fighting stance as she has been trained to do in Tae Kwon Do.  She seemingly had every right to be quite upset with me.  All that was changed by me gently turning her around to face the bumper and wheel of the car which had nearly run her over; and seeing the face of the terrified driver who was completely unable to stop the car in time to prevent what was almost a tragedy.

        I remembered that story today as I was surfing political websites and reading articles.  It seemed most authors represented a group who was willfully angry at not getting their way.  Other articles represented groups who had gotten their way and were spitefully judging their nay sayers.  Still other pieces were addressing hot button moral issues and legislative fall out from legalizing formerly unacceptable behaviors.  Nowhere was their any sense of charity in the sense of leniency in judgment of others or that most traditional sense of Christian love, agape.

        The worst part of the experience for me today wasn’t just the articles and their positions though – it was also the comments made by ‘we the readers.’  A modern capability to immediately speak our minds in public response to an article is something that too often shows our lacking wit and critical thinking abilities.  Henry David Thoreau said it most succinctly near the beginning of Walden: “There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers.  Yet it is admirable to profess because it once was admirable to live.”

        In former times philosophers were those who had a ‘love of truth’ and sought both to discern it and then live it.  Philo: love  soph: truth.  Today we have philodoxy which means 'love of opinion.'  In times now mostly gone if a philosopher expressed an opinion they had thought beyond the immediate selfish surface results, back to the overall foundations which made it applicable for the mutual benefit of society as a whole.  They could give you concrete examples and reason clearly even with their detractors.  The sound reasoning became actionable behavior we today call prejudice.  Through unreasonable and abusive behavior over the centuries that word has now become irretrievably tainted.  Edmund Burke said: “Prejudice is of ready application in an emergency.  It previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, skeptical and unresolved."

        If your eyes haven’t already glazed over, let me tie this up.  My daughter didn’t have my perspective that evening…all she saw was the goal of getting her pizza.  Her selfishly motivated hunger for pizza nearly cost her life.  My loving response, though painfully unpleasant, saved her life because in truth I see her God instilled dignity and value her as God’s creation, and am unwilling to just let her run toward whatever it is she fancies at the moment. 

        That is what bothered me today, no one was able to genuinely able to speak the truth, in love, into these situations.  They failed to express the heart rending desire of salvation, not just religious ‘S’alvation, but the overall well being of our fellow humanity rendered in Jude verses 22 and 23: “Have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; have mercy on others but with fear, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh” (HCSB).  Whatever the issues behind whatever political hot button, you can bet your life that it is rooted in a lack of perspective at what sin will cost when it is fully revealed.  Sin will always take us farther than we wanted to go, cost us more than we were willing to pay, and leave us stranded on a dead end street having to walk back the way we came.  Those of us who call ourselves Jesus disciples must continually seek to find a way of “speaking the truth in love (Eph 4:15)” publicly without falling into a political camp.  We must live out loving the sinner, while openly revealing our dislike (and the reasons therefore) of the sin when asked for our position.  Unfortunately this technique eventually landed Jesus on the cross, but truly, I can’t think of any other way to live. 

       Call me ‘prejudiced’ but my daughter disobeyed my previously communicated standing rule to wait next to the vehicle, and it nearly killed her. 

____________________________________________

These are most of the Scriptures we spent time talking about throughout our time together, introduced into the conversation at appropriate points to provide a gentle washing of our wounds and with that perhaps healing balm (bold emphasis added to ones we dwelt on extensively):

Job 34:10-12, 21-22  - Job 36:5-16 - 2Cor1:3-4 (ESV)

Therefore, hear me, you men of understanding:  far be it from God that He should do wickedness, and from the Almighty that He should do wrong.  For according to the work of a man He will repay him, and according to his ways He will make it befall him.  Of a truth, God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice.

For His eyes are on the ways of a man, and He sees all his steps.  There is no gloom or deep darkness where evildoers may hide themselves.

Behold God is mighty, and does not despise any; He is mighty in strength of understanding.  He does not keep the wicked alive, but gives the afflicted their right.  He does not withdraw His eyes from the righteous, but with kings on the throne He sets them forever, and they are exalted.  And if they are bound in chains and caught in the cords of affliction, then He declares to them their work and their transgressions, that they are behaving arrogantly.  He opens their ears to instruction and commands that they return from iniquity.  If they listen and serve Him, they complete their days in prosperity, and their years in pleasantness.  But if they do not listen, they perish by the sword and die without knowledge. 

The godless in heart cherish anger; they do not cry for help when He binds them.  They die in youth, and their life ends among the cult prostitutes. 

He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity.

He also allured you out of distress into a broad place where there was no cramping, and what was set on your table was full of fatness.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.