Life Is More Than A Sound Bite!

Friendships are very difficult to maintain when life is based on the speed of trust.  Relationships take time, commitment, face time, and being able to discuss important relational matters.  Too often, people are making assumptions, holding unexplained expectations on others, and holding differing values without those values being articulated to those we assume are on the same page as we are.  This is the age of sound bites.  You can use 140 words a tweet.  You can use a facebook paragraph.  You can text a thought but none of these technologies really present to you who a person is.  These days you can create any identity you want to portray to others.  Most relationships take time.  Intimacy takes deep conversations.  It also takes trust.  When a person opens up, becomes vulnerable, shares the deepest part of their lives - trust is imperative.  Your personal boundaries can only be opened when "trust" is present.  Can I trust You?  Are you really a friend that can know the other and protect them from those who want to use and exploit you for "business."  I have worked hard to build relationships that are authentic.  I have tried to be a trustful person.  I have worked hard to be an example of friendship to others who don't know how to be a friend... and most of the time I've gotten hurt.  But I haven't quit.

I need my friends.  I have great networking skills.  I have developed an ability to listen to differing points of view without taking sides.  Some may think that's hard to do... but not when you are a kid who grew up in a home with divorced parents.  You don't take sides when your mom and dad divorce each other. You have to learn to relate to them without choosing sides.  One of the major problems that emerge in a friendship and having a learned behavior like mine is when a friend asks you to choose them over another friend you love too.  I don't like choosing sides when someone asks me to choose them over another.  I have republican and democrat friends.  I have conservative and liberal friends. I have Christian and non-Christian friends.  When people push me to agree with them and then threaten me I just move on because I will not take sides.  I love people too much to be limited by partisan positions.  I love my Calvinist friends. I love my Quaker friends! I love my Pentecostal Friends! I love my friends no matter what label you put on them.  I am a lover!  Not a hater. 

Twenty years ago, I lost who I thought was my best friend. We had a great friendship but I always knew that this friendship would be hard to maintain because of the conflicts he had in himself. I did everything I could to protect this relationship but finally realized he was never going to be on the same page with where I felt God calling me to.  He was making some life choices and going in a direction I could not follow.  He sat in an office and asked me to choose what he valued and expected over what I thought what we both had valued.  We had a values conflict.  He left and hasn't spoken to me for the last 20 years.  I have never once exposed him.  I have never struck out to hurt him.  I have forgiven him and protected the friendship we once had... because the scripture teaches that a true friend loves at all times. I am still his friend... but his choices in life have resulted in him building with other people who know nothing about him because he has recreated a new world... and if that's what he needs that's okay with me. Our differing values brought an end to our relationship. For me... I need authenticity.  Friendship has categories.  You have marriage and family, neighbors, workmates, acquaintances, brothers, those within a faith community, partners, business leaders, all who have some sort of relationship with you that you call friends.  However, there is one kind of friend that sticks closer than a brother.  Covenantal friends.  Heart to Heart. Spirit to Spirit.  Friendships that move you beyond words.  The problem with most of us is that we do not know how to handle the relationships God gives us.  Don't assume that everybody that comes into your life has been sent by God. Some relationships are totally inappropriate and to engage in them will lead to failure.  The Bible is filled with such stories. Proverbs describes the type of people to avoid. However, every relationship given to us by God is a sacred trust. Too often, when we do not follow the guidelines of friendship laid out in scripture we get blindsided by people who the scripture warns us about.  When God gives me the people he sends into my life - it's important I recognize the gift of "them" that God has given me.  Likewise, the other party needs to understand the same.  It's also important to understand what role we play in each others lives so that we do not get confused with our understanding of the other's values and expectations.  Don't assume you understand anything - even if you had relationship for 20 years.  If it is not a covenant relationship then don't expect the benefits of the covenant.  If it is another category then don't set yourself up for failure by trying to be something the other person has not asked you to be a part of.  People don't fight over scripture, over worship practices, or styles, goals, or their relationship.  They fight over values... and end relationships because of them.

I often wonder, with all the infighting, mishandling of relationships, and broken trust that have resulted over those unspoken expectations and differing values found in relationship what we are all going to say in front of Jesus about our broken relationships with one another.  Do you think Jesus will choose between me and you?  Is he caught in the middle of the disputes?  Will he let both of us in heaven?  Or will he choose you over me and send me to hell because I didn't live up to your expectations, share your values, agreed with Fox News or MSNBC political blood sporting, or held to your wrapping your interpretation of scripture around your values, or having different sins than you.  Obviously,  Jesus will choose  between our views, and has aligned himself with our opinions, and is wrapped in our disputes and will send me to Hell because I'm don't agree with you. Your facebook comments, tweets, and all your instagram photo opts are the are the right perspectives only if I agree with them. The moment I show any disagreement - I get deleted.   I wonder what Jesus has to say about the new communities we carry in our pocket and how easily our sound bites determine the future of relationships.  FB, Tweeting, and Instagram can become the new living Hell when all the rules, protocols, and respect of boundaries is redefined by those daily sound bites we receive in the texts...  Do you really want to offer yourself as a friend or not?  Do you really want to be a friend or not?  The only thing you need to carry forward in any relationship is "loving others" the best you know how?  Jesus had to ask Peter three times "DO YOU LOVE ME?"  Why did it take him so long to answer Jesus back "Jesus, you know that I love you?"  Is it because He Knew Jesus would give him the final proof of love?  Peter, If you love me then take care of those relationships I have given you.  True friendship is demonstrated in how you love the others around you.

Proverbs 18:24

There are “friends” who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother.

Immigration Reform

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Most countries around the world are struggling with issue of dispossessed refuges - resaulting from war, famine, climate change, or poverty.  Every parent is looking to give their children a better shot at life than they have had.  My country is struggling with this same issue.  Over the last month, the national news media has focused on the 50,000 children coming across the Texas and Arizona borders from Central America.  This has provoked further discussion about the growing problems of immigration control and what has been a major discussion about the problem of illegal immigrants.  I am somewhat amused that the focus has always been on Central America when we have huge populations of Asians, Africans, Haitians, Cubans, Middle Easterners, and others coming into our country illegally the same way.  However, I want to state right out the gate that I believe we do have a problem controlling our borders.  This problem needs to be fixed. However, before we just make rash decisions and have knee jerk reactions, we need to examine what our calling as a nation is and then work together to follow that purpose assigned by God to us in our time and in our generation. 

Our nation was built on immigration.  People who had fled other lands because of extreme persecution built it.  English Puritans, Quakers, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, Irish Catholics, French Huguenots, and others all fled Western Europe seeking relief from the tyranny of violence, persecution and intolerance they faced and came to shores of North America seeking refuge, religious freedom and recipical liberty.  Those movements of immigration were illegal entries and violations from a Native American perspective based on the Roman Catholic Church’s edict known as “The Doctrine Of Discovery.”  But the European immigrants didn’t care if they were violating and stealing the land of the American people.  As far as they were concerned America’s resources were available to enrich their lives.  These European refugees also didn’t think it was a problem to import African people to provide them a labor force to support their aristocratic European lifestyles. This is the history that no one wants to talk about.  But it’s this history that should provide a foundation for all our discussion on our country’s immigration policy before we undertake immigration reform.  What do we do about the stranger seeking refuge in our land?  For people of biblical faith, the scripture is clear: "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). The question is, "Who is my neighbor?"

The answer is found a few verses later. "The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.” The command to love the "stranger," however, is not open ended. The Hebrew language of the Old Testament uses three words to describe strangers, aliens, or immigrants. Two words basically mean the same thing: nekhar and zar refer to foreigners whose allegiance remained with their native country. These people were denied the benefits of citizenship in Israel, and are not in view in Leviticus 19:34. On the other hand, the Hebrew word ger, often translated "sojourner" or "stranger," as in Leviticus 19:34, is a person who had immigrated to Israel legally with the intention of becoming a citizen. Israel was to treat these immigrants as if "native" born, granting them benefits of citizenship, including the right to glean fields (Leviticus 19:10; Deuteronomy 24:19–22), to receive a portion of the special tithe collected every three years for the poor (14:28–29; 26:12–13), to be paid in a timely manner (24:15), allowed to rest on the Sabbath (5:14), and to receive fair treatment in legal cases, without discrimination (1:16–17) or being taken advantage of (24:17–18; 27:19). But when applying biblical truth to immigration reform today we need to keep in mind that America is not Israel.  America, as we know it today, was birthed by a God-given vision given to William Penn.  He is the architect of the “Holy Experiment,” which has been translated now into the American Experiment and experience for more than 333 years.  But we need to be careful to how we interpret scripture, history and our current cultural perspectives in light of our current immigration crisis.  Israel’s history is littered with “Doctrine Of Discovery” like history, William Penn was granted a charter on the basis of the “Doctrine Of Discovery” and owned African Slaves.

Likewise, our own family heritages emerge from our own American Immigrant histories – good and bad.  I guess what I’m trying to say is, “we need to be thoughtful about our immigration reform.  On the one hand there are those who argue that illegal immigrants take away American jobs, tax our health care and educational systems. On the other hand, our current millennial generation is NOT going to pick our vegetables, construct our brick laid houses, cut our grass or cook our Chinese or Mexican food?  So who’s doing the work they don’t want to do?  Illegal Immigrants… that’s who!  And that maybe this is the root of our immigration problem.  But hasn’t that been the role of all immigrants when they came to America over the last 238 years?  As a part of our journey forward as Christians, I hope we see the opportunities God is giving us.  I believe that the major reason God brings the immigrants to this land is to present the nations represented with the Gospel.  There is no other nation where the Gospel can be heard without the threat of being beheaded, persecuted, or protected as a believer than what America offers as an opportunity to the illegal immigrant.  The system is broken but the calling remains sure… American is called to be a City of Refuge – and a land of opportunity.