For This Reason 16

[HKHaugan]

One of the truly bipolar realities that test our faith is the uniqueness/conformity issue. It is the heart of the individual/group control problem. Each of us has a uniqueness which we have mentioned frequently before mainly to keep the subject in front of us. It is a uniqueness that separates us from every other person that has ever lived or will ever live. It makes an internal demand on us especially when we are in the midst of others. The pressure then is based on how we act when we know we are being measured by group conformity. We’ve talked about the law vs. freedom problem and how everywhere you go there is law both written and unwritten for every group from gang, to neighborhood to church to school and work. There’s nothing more obvious in human activity than the tension between the individual and the group. But how individuals think and act is unique to them. It makes groups unique.

Since each of us thinks and acts uniquely how do we arrive at getting the most out of our uniqueness and yet are able to live in a world that tries to ‘same’ us? You know, same trendy clothes, slang talk, the whole ‘fitting in’ thing. The world is ‘sameing’ lots of things. Technology, fast food franchises, clothing chains and the moral shaping that the media foist on us day after day. You can see the effects in teen behavior, adult morality and the confusion in political movements. Technological man is outdistancing his moral ability to adjust. Talk about a bipolar world look at the technology/morality gap. One recent study indicates that Facebook and phone texting is actually isolating and alienating people not only from one another but within resulting in depression due to loss of face to face contact.

Waylon Jennings had a song out in the ‘80’s anticipating this kind of breakdown and his answer was going to Luckenbach, Texas with “Willy and Waylon and the boys, the successful life we’re livin’ got us feudin’ like the Hatfields and McCoys. Between Hank Williams’ pain songs, and Newberry’s train songs and blue eyes cryin’ in the rain. Out in Luckenback, Texas, ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain.” For Waylon it was the small town feeling where everyone knows everyone else face to face. The way things were is always a lure but what it’s saying is the way things were was far more personal. Obviously we know that real face to face living is found in Jesus alone.

The more alienated we become the more immoral the culture becomes. The problem is not the technology but how it's used, by whom and for what purpose. Technology can never duplicate face to face encounter. We’ve lost the appreciation of our uniqueness which can only happen face to face. On Facebook (talk about a misnomer) we are only microdots and actors no different than movies, TV shows and magazine blurbs. After a message what is the result? Are we fuller, friendlier, more loving and compassionate? What have we really gleaned from a message on a phone that is abbreviated and hastily slapped together? How much time is consumed, wasted, shred of real personal interchange?

Yesterday, here in the mountains, we sat next to a couple outside at a local winery built on a hill beside a roaring stream and shared lives for about two hours. It was a cool 60 degrees, a few clouds and yet no feeling cold or uncomfortable. What a different experience from another day here watching a family of five at a local restaurant sitting near us, each one texting with little real conversation except for a ‘thank you’ to the waiter when the meal was served. Get what I mean?

Think for a moment about the soldier next to his buddy where a grenade has landed and without hesitation falls on it to save his buddy and the others around him. What made him do that as opposed to diving as far away as possible? Extreme? No doubt. In his uniqueness he sacrificed himself. Somewhere that momentary response was conditioned in him from someplace, a personal place, an interpersonal place. Everyone recognizes that act as heroic, praiseworthy and everyone hopes, if they are called upon, could do the same. I know most of us won’t have that demand, but mull this question;

How do we react when emotional or spiritual grenades are tossed around us?

Do we dive for cover, stand frozen, remain apathetic, pondering, or jump on them? What is our reaction? As I look back I’m guilty of all of them especially of pondering instead of spiritual responding. Just the other day we were with a group eating in a restaurant and I noticed a not particularly well-liked local man sitting alone at a nearby table. The thought came to mind to invite him to sit with us. I sat and thought about it while I continued talking with the others there. I glanced again and never did more than think about it. Later I shared that reaction with someone and they had the same idea but like me did nothing about it. He is a unique image of God we both ‘un-Samaritanly’ left by the side of the road.

Then there are our emotional responses when as parents we go to a teacher who has sent a note home that our child was disruptive in class. The emotions we have while we are on the way to talk to her, the planned ‘this-couldn’t-be-my-child’s-fault’ defensive speech which is really more about defending me than the child.

This is where we are every day and when we face honestly where we are, only we as individuals can answer what could have been done in the past but wasn’t. It is for these moments that we are defined within and know that within is where we need a Savior. This is the area of the ‘what if?’ ‘What if’ this or that were to happen? “What if’ is the devil’s playground where he tempts us to consider all the negative possibilities and emphasizes the possibilities of what others could do to us. This really is literally where pride goes before a fall, where risk means rejection, the emotional death that ends up in aloneness which, unlike physical death, doesn’t stop. It is in this aloneness that we are most vulnerable and again, as we have noted before, where God’s wisdom penetrates when He says in Gen.2:18, “It is not good for the man to be alone.”

Into this aloneness is where Jesus came to give us real life, to give us awareness. The kind of awareness that reaches into the loneliness of others, identifies with it and shares the Lord for it. These were the moments we were created for, to find, recognize and encourage the uniqueness of others. This is the message of the parables of Jesus as in the Good Samaritan, The Rich Young Man and Finding the Pearl in the Field. The pearl is the unique gifts and talents that lie waiting to be resurrected in every person who has yet to meet Jesus and find his or herself as God intended.