I don’t know what you think about when you hear the word Confession. Maybe you picture something that happens in church with a priest. Maybe it’s just a tough conversation with your friend. Maybe you write it down. Confession though … Continue reading
I was listening to a podcast recently and was struck by this one comment (well, I was struck by the whole thing, but this one comment really stood out to me). If you have never experienced pain, you have not … Continue reading
I miss my student identity. Well, I miss the learning and the studying. I don’t miss the deadlines. I don’t miss paying for school. I don’t miss studying and researching with expectations. I don’t miss the drive up to the … Continue reading
I heard this line yesterday. If you are an American, we might be predisposed to The Dissatisfaction Gene. You can take a look at our history and see that at almost every turn, things happened because someone was dissatisfied. The … Continue reading
Every technology from the cotton gin to the macbook pro that I’m typing this blog post on – has given us a tremendous amount of freedom and ability. Before the cotton gin, a man could separate a pound of the … Continue reading
You know what they say about opinions right? I love the ability and the freedom that we have when we blog. We can express ideas that we might be working on. We can share our opinions with our readers. We … Continue reading
You can circumvent the identity formation process of someone else by not allowing them to freely explore and express their own identity. When you superimpose your standards or tell someone who to be and how to act, you condition them and teach them to perform. It is not identity forming. It is identity performing, and this leads to a shallow experience of identity because they have not learned it and experienced it themselves.
Tell them what to do. Don’t let them learn it on their own. Standardize. Make them do what you want rather than what they want. Govern. These all circumvent identity formation.
You will pay the price – discomfort for you now by letting them explore or discomfort for you and them and everyone else because you’ve stunted growth – that’s a much higher price.
Living in a culture of shame means to live in secret. It means hiding and showing a facade to everyone. It means faking it through most of life and even through most of your relationships. It’s putting on a good face and honestly lying to everyone.
Living in a culture of freedom means being honest in everything – in everything. It means you don’t have to lie. You can be mad when you’re mad. You can be honest and never have to remember the story that you made up. You can live and walk in freedom because this culture demands it of you. You can freely be yourself and explore identity and your soul.
I live in both. I have to be honest, but when you’re living in shame-it’s hard to know that you’re there. But when you live in freedom and honesty – then you can just be yourself. The thing is – this culture demands that you find people of like ilk. You can only live in this when the people around love you for the inconsistent and imperfect person that you are. I know-not the most normal thing in the world, or even the easiest thing to find.
The ideas in the title has nothing to do with each other, but I want to share with you the subtext of the story that a friend was sharing tonight about Mediocrity ergo Subtext and Mediocrity. He did not share … Continue reading
What are your thoughts on Freedom? We just celebrated our Freedom and the Freedoms that we enjoy in this country – and wow we celebrate in an interesting way.
The focus of the service in church yesterday was also Freedom. It was really interesting for me as a worship leader, I was setting up the next song. As I was saying my planned speech to set up a song, an idea hit me. We had just spent the day before celebrating the freedoms that we have in our country, and as I was setting up the freedom that we have in the Spirit, I realized that sometimes the church is not the safest place to share your stuff. It was a challenge to the congregation and myself to be a community that experiences that freedom where mercy and grace flows – where freedom reigns. The church is not always the safest place to be free.
But one other thought hit me. Almighty, Creator God has come down to be involved in a relationship with me. In that relationship, I have the freedom – to be who He has created me to be. In that relationship, I have the freedom to be ME. It’s freeing when we live out our calling. It’s freeing to live in the mercy and grace that is available for us in our time of need.
One last thing, we in our western, industrialized comfortable worldviews are pretty good at celebrating these things – in one day. So today I celebrate Christmas, Easter, and Independence Day. I’m sure there are other things to celebrate as well. How did you celebrate Freedom this weekend? Are you done celebrating? Celebrate with me.
