But He Never Hit Me

Because of its relevance to women in particular, I have moved this post to my blog, "Claiming Our Selves," written especially for women. I invite you to read it here.

Guilt-Edged Bibles

(No, that’s not a typo!)

There is no shortage of Bibles. What a blessing! We can choose from a score of translations in a number of different languages, and from various bindings in an assortment of colors. We can read the printed page or listen to an audio recording or read an online version.

I searched yesterday for Bibles with gilt edges. One website had 48 different items, another had 86. There were all kinds of Bibles: one a facsimile edition of the Cambridge Geneva Bible of 1591 (the edition carried by the Pilgrims when they came to America) selling for almost $2200. Bound in brown calfskin!! In a presentation box!! With gilt edges!! I also found for sale a Deluxe Gift and Award Bible!! Leather!! Used, showing average wear—but a well-worn Bible is good. For one cent!! And it has gilt edges!!

I was particularly interested in gilt-edged Bibles because of our tendency to make them guilt-edged. Jesus came to proclaim good news. “He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written, ‘God's Spirit is on me; he's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, “This is God's year to act!” ’ He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, ‘You've just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.’ " (Luke 4:16-21 MSG)

Hope, pardon, light, freedom. Good news! Great news! But all too often we see some bearers of the Gospel treat it as merchandise rather than the “good tidings of great joy to all people” that the angel host announced. The Gospel becomes anything but good news whenever it shackles people with guilt, misleads them with partial truths, or ties them to those who wish to control them. The very fact that we live in a free country where all these Bibles abound, means that anyone at all can claim to be an able presenter of the Word.

Jesus did not speak soft words about such teachers. “Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ‘The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden. Everything they do is for show. . . They love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues. . . They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces . . . The greatest among you must be a servant . . . What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either.” (Matthew 23:1-13 NLT) These words of Jesus give us a good standard by which to measure those who would teach/preach from a “guilt-edged” Bible. Be cautious around them, and instead give your love and respect to those who have shared with you the genuine Good News!

MaryMartha
(All rights reserved)

Scripture marked MSG is taken from The Message. Copyright © 2003 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. Scripture quotation marked NLT is taken from The Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. United States of America. All rights reserved

Email: mrymrtha@gmail.com

Things Mama Taught Me: "Tell the Truth"

On Being Honest with Myself

My mother was an honest woman. When I was a youngster, she told me she’d rather die than live a lie, and she maintained that life of integrity into old age. In her declining years, she told the family members who checked in with her regularly, “When you tell me it’s time to move to Sunny Villa (not its real name), I will go without making a fuss.” So inevitably, the time came when she could no longer safely live alone, and we said, “Mom, it’s time.”

“Oh, I’m not ready to leave my home yet!” she told us.

“Mom, you promised us that when the time came, you would go without a fuss. Do you remember?”

“Yes . . . yes. Well, all right then.” And, true to her word, she went without a fuss. It was not easy for her, but there was no fuss.

So I grew up valuing honesty, telling the truth because that was the example lived before me. There is one person, however, to whom I have found it difficult to tell the truth.

Me.

Sometimes I haven’t recognized the truth, even though it was right there. Through many years of my adult life, and without realizing it, I surrounded myself with people who used me. Organizations that deceived and cheated, that took serious advantage of me financially (in the name of God). Strong leaders who used the subtle power of approval to build a personal following, who controlled my time and my job and my money and my friendships, who ordered my life with should’s and must’s while they covered up their own private wrongdoing (in the name of God). “Friends,” a lot of them, who were only takers because I was so ready to give, who laid unfair claims on me by their unending neediness (in the name of God). Because I was absolutely sincere in my intentions, no one shook me and said “Wake up, girl!” But the time came when the pressure became too great and could no longer be contained neatly. A family member intervened. “This is abuse,” she said, and my façade began to crack.

Over a number of months after that, I began to realize that not only was the present situation abusive, but also that I had permitted, again and again, unreasonable and unhealthy demands to be made on my life. I discovered that Christian women—mothers, wives, friends, employees, members of a faith community—can and must establish boundaries to protect themselves from destructive relationships.

It may be hard for some people to reconcile the teachings of Jesus about love and forgiveness and self-sacrifice with the necessity to preserve one’s health and sanity. I know how difficult that can be; I found it so difficult that I missed making the connection for most of my adult life. Our Lord never intended for loving God and others to exclude self-care. He told His followers that the two greatest commandments were to love God with all one’s heart and mind and strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. It is very hard, maybe impossible, to love and care for others appropriately unless we have a proper respect for ourselves.

Jesus Himself did not minister non-stop to needy people. One time He told all His disciples to come with Him to a quiet place to take a break; they hadn’t even had time for lunch. People were constantly coming and going—people with genuine needs, people who apparently thought Jesus and the disciples should be meeting those needs. (Seeing Jesus’ crew leaving in a boat, the people hurried on foot from the surrounding villages, and beat them to their remote resting spot—but that’s another story.) And once, the Scripture tells us, Jesus was tired from a long walk and sat wearily by a well while His disciples went to a nearby city to buy groceries. So Jesus was not at all insensitive to His own needs or those of His followers. May I put it bluntly? Jesus did not teach His followers to be stupid.

The Apostle Paul echoes Jesus’ teaching. He says, “Husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church.” (Ephesians 5:28, 29) Here Paul makes the simple assumption that people (women as well as men) need to care for themselves. It is just expected. Permitting ourselves to be manipulated by others into caring for them, not along with but instead of caring for ourselves, is not Jesus’ way.

So I am learning to tell myself the truth—the hardest person to whom I must tell the truth.. It is a journey not yet complete. I have shared this much of my story, not because I need catharsis, but because I wonder if there is a reader somewhere who will recognize herself in a part of my experience—and begin to tell herself the truth.

MaryMartha
(All rights reserved)

Scripture quotation is taken from The Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. United States of America. All rights reserved.

Email: mrymrtha@gmail.com

Having Authority

Authority, the dictionary tells me, means several things: for one, the power to enforce obedience. In practical affairs, we often think of it as the right to tell others what to do. Wouldn’t you think that if anyone has that right, it would be those who know the law best? One would suppose that interpreters of the law would have, above all others, the understanding of what is expected of those under them. In Jesus’ day, that would be the scribes and/or the Pharisees. And yet, when Jesus taught, people were amazed, not only at what He said, but how He said it: with real authority.

Twice the Gospel writers tell us what happened. “When Jesus had finished saying these things [what we call The Sermon on the Mount], the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” (Matthew 7:28, 29 NIV) In the synagogue at Capernaum, “The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.” (Mark 1:22 NIV)

Those who listened were used to authority, even religious authority. But Jesus spoke with real authority, some versions emphasize, not like the other teachers. What made everyone so amazed at Jesus’ teaching? What’s the difference between real authority and not-real? Jesus did not enforce obedience; he invited obedience by His love and wisdom and hope.

Authority is a bad word to many people, a bad nine-letter word. They have no particular problem with submitting to governmental authority; they pay taxes, they obey traffic laws, they don’t participate in illegal activities. They deal successfully with authority in school or the workplace too. But when confronted with the idea of authority in the home or in the Church, they become confused, afraid, or stubborn. Why is this?

Authority in the places where the heart is drawn in—the home and the Church—where one’s most intimate self is exposed, can be a frightening concept. This is because many misunderstand what authority in these circumstances means. And who is it that most misunderstands? The authority figures themselves. It is perfectly clear to the person—most often a woman or a child in the home but anyone in the Church—who has been wounded by experiences of misuse or abuse what “authority” means. It means to be wary of those who can hurt them again. If the person(s) in authority cannot be trusted to act in one’s best interests, then it makes absolute sense to be watchful, perhaps even fearful of them.

There are indeed some willful women or naughty children and selfish, cranky church members. But far too often, those who say, “My wife won’t submit,” or “My kids better obey or else,” or “That church member is not conforming,” are requiring those who follow them to give up something of their personhood. They are asking that they themselves be lifted up as makers, interpreters, and enforcers of the law—and there is no one more dangerous to others in these situations than the person who presumes to know what is “good” or “right” for everyone and has the power to make them do it.

Jesus drew people, not with fear or threats, but with the force of love. Tax collectors and prostitutes knew He wouldn’t beat them into observing the law. Cowards and big-talkers alike knew there was grace for them. Children knew they would be welcome and they gravitated to Him. The sick and the mentally ill and even a dying thief somehow knew they could ask loving favor from this Man. And this brings us to another definition of authority: the power to influence thought and behavior.

Authority, to a lot of people, is a bad nine-letter word. It can be reduced, though, to a couple of four-letter words: l-o-v-e or f-e-a-r. Only the first carries authority that is real. And that is Jesus’ style.

A note: Do you know who made the statement about “the most dangerous person”? If so, help me give credit.)

MaryMartha
(All rights reserved)

Scripture taken from The New International Bible, used by permission.

Email: mrymrtha@gmail.com

Bruises

Because of its relevance to women in particular, I have moved this post to my blog, "Claiming Our Selves," written especially for women. I invite you to read it here.