Fighting Reactivity

I hope you had fun yesterday, because today’s Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the forty days of fasting and repentance that we call Lent. I’m a bit of a killjoy during Lent—I’m all about the self-reflection and self-denial. Which is why I thought it'd be fun to listen to the words and stories of some ancient Christian monks in these devotionals for the next few weeks. Okay, maybe “fun” is too strong a word, but I think it'd be appropriate and good.

These monks are known as the Desert Fathers. They’re believers who literally left everything to follow Jesus in the desert (mostly in Egypt), living lives of humility, simplicity, and solitude. Their sayings and episodes from their lives have been studied by Christians for over 1500 years, because they led lives of extraordinary spirituality and commitment to Christ. To me, their discipline and devotion are beautiful examples to ponder during this season in particular, and their insights into faithful living can guide us any time of the year.

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Once, a monk asked another brother named Poemen about Paul’s words to the Thessalonians: “See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.” (1 Thess 5:15) In the King James Version, it’s “See that none render evil for evil…” So Poemen started to tell this monk about “the passions,” meaning some of our sinful inclinations and reactivity:

The passions work in four stages: first in the heart, then in the face, third in words, fourth in deeds – and it is in deeds that it is essential not to render evil for evil. If you purify your heart, passion will not show in your expression, but if it does, take care not to speak about it; if you do speak, cut the conversation short in case you render evil for evil.

Have you ever noticed that progression in yourself? A person wrongs you or someone you care about – maybe they said something hurtful or humiliating – and immediately you feel indignant and prickly.

Then your face shows it: your eyes tighten, or your jaw clenches.

Then you open your mouth and let your reactivity tell them exactly what you thought about what they did.

And if it escalates beyond words, then you’re really getting into trouble.

I’d say that repaying someone evil for evil begins even before deeds, with our words. After all, “the words of the reckless pierce like swords” (Prov 12:18).

Poemen’s real wisdom, though, is his strategy for combating our passions. He’s mapped out the terrain, and now you know where to engage. Make your reactivity fight for every inch of ground! First, try to smother it in your heart, maybe with some self-awareness or perspective. But if that doesn’t work, keep your face impassive. Don’t give any ground to the anger welling up in you. If you face betrays your feelings, you can still bite your tongue. If that doesn’t work, if you hear yourself telling them, “You know what?...”—it’s not too late! You can still zip those lips again, spit out a “Nevermind,” and walk away.

The payback we can easily dole out isn’t inevitable. There are points along the way where we can fight those sinful inclinations and stem the flow.

But it all starts with the heart. Like Jesus said, it’s from within, from the heart, that all kinds of evil thoughts come: murder, adultery, coveting, deceit, pride, and more. (Mark 7:21-23) What kinds of thoughts and feelings are you making room for in your heart? And what kinds of deeds have those led to?

If we want to become people who don’t “repay anyone evil for evil,” change has to start there. Your heart is where that holy rebellion really begins.

Which Spirit?

Did you know there are some disagreements about what should and shouldn’t be in your Bible?

That’s often because, if you look back at the oldest copies of scripture that we have, all of the crumbly, ancient scrolls and fragments, there are disagreements there about what should and shouldn’t be in your Bible.

These are usually small differences—a word or two changes, or maybe some spelling. That’s not surprising, since people wrote all of it by hand! On a rare occasion, though, there’ll be a much bigger discrepancy.

Take Luke 9:55-56, for instance. In the NIV, it reads: “But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went to another village.” Most Bibles will have something similar.

But sometimes you also get a footnote between verses 55 and 56, like in the English Standard Version:

Some manuscripts add And he said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of; ⁵⁶for the Son of Man came not to destroy people's lives but to save them”

If you read an older translation, say, the King James Version, those extra lines are included. When the KJV was written, people were unaware that many old copies of Luke don’t contain that portion.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Well, for one thing, I think it’s helpful to understand why there are some differences like that in different versions of the Bible.

But I also told you that because, recently I was reading Luke 9 in a translation that includes those words, and I thought I don’t remember Jesus ever saying this! A couple disciples had just floated the idea of calling down fire from heaven to incinerate some people who’d refused to listen to Jesus. Christ, not surprisingly, vetoed that. In this translation, Jesus “spoke sharply to them, ‘You do not know what spirit you are listening to, for the True Human Being came to help people, not hurt them.’” (9:55-56 FNV) 

“You do not know what spirit you are listening to.”

The disciples assumed that their suggestion came from the Spirit of God. Jesus had to explain to them that their plan sprang from a very different spirit, the one Paul warned the Ephesians about: “the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” (Eph 2:2)

In my mind, this should have been obvious to them. Jesus, Mr. Love-your-neighbor-as-yourself, the notorious friend of sinners, didn’t want James and John to fry anyone. Yet, these men who walked with Christ and learned from him every day couldn’t see that.

I wonder what I’m not seeing.

I wonder what impulses or convictions of mine are, to someone else’s mind, obviously not from Jesus.

Because I don’t always stop to consider what spirit I’m listening to. I might assume it’s the Spirit of God, when, really, it’s just the preference of Nance, the opinion of the culture, the comfortable compromise, or the path of least resistance.

What about you?

Do you know what spirit you’re listening to?

You can listen to this week's devotional right here!

God's Farmers, God's Field

Did you know you’re one of God’s farmers?

This comes up in 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Paul’s talking about the different leaders who’ve impacted the church in Corinth, and who’ve unwittingly become the mascots for factions in that congregation. He writes, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” (3:6-7) He’s trying to redirect the Corinthians’ focus to the one Lord they all share.

Farming also comes up in Jesus’s parables, like in Matthew 13:24-30 and 36-43. A man plants wheat in a field, but while everyone’s sleeping his enemy sows weeds among the wheat. When everything starts to grow, the servants ask the master if they should pull up the enemy’s weeds. But he says, ‘No. If you did that, you’d uproot the wheat, too. Let them grow together until harvest time, then I’ll have the reapers separate it all out’. The farmer, Jesus tells the disciples, is God. The field is the world. The good and bad seed are children of the kingdom and of the evil one.

There’s a lot that you can say about these two passages, but what hit me recently is that both want to make clear what our role is as God’s farmers and what God’s role is.

In Paul’s picture, a Christian’s role is to plant seeds and water. In other words, you can create opportunities for the gospel to take root in someone’s life. You can tell a person something about Jesus they never knew or show them something about Christians they’ve never seen. Whereas God is the one who somehow takes your efforts and makes something new and lush and fruitful grow from that. The Lord takes your conversations and acts of love and brings about new beginnings and changed lives.

In Jesus’s parable, we actually learn what our role is not. It’s not your job to weed the field, to “cleanse” the church of people who haven’t got it all right in their minds or all together in their lives. (If that was the standard, you’d have to toss me out of the church, too!) It’s not your job to play the ethical or theological bouncer who refuses certain people entry and enforces the rules. It’s God’s job to decide who’s in and who’s out, who belongs or who doesn’t—and the Lord’s not in any rush to sort that out. That, as they say, will all come out in the wash.

The parable doesn’t get into what your and my jobs are, only what they aren’t. Earlier in the same chapter, though, Jesus gives us the parable of the sower, which ends with a farmer scattering seed that “fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (13:8) This, Jesus explains, represents “someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (13:23) You're a farmer, but you're also the field, the place where, if you hear and understand, the gospel can produce an incredible crop.

According to Jesus, then, your job isn’t to worry about “weeds” in your church but fruit in your own life.

What are your heart, your words, your actions, your relationships producing for God’s Kingdom? Paul reminds us that you can't cause growth in someone else’s life, but what are you doing to make the soil of your own life more fertile and more receptive to what Jesus wants to grow in you?

Plant seeds in others’ lives. Prepare the soil in your own. That is your job.

You can listen to this week's devotional right here!

Pursue Peace

In 1 Peter chapter 3, in the middle of some guidance for Christians facing situations of conflict, we get a quotation from Psalm 34: "let them turn away from evil and do good; let them seek peace and pursue it." (1 Pet 3:11/Ps 34:14)

He doesn't say "welcome peace whenever it happens to come along." 

He doesn't say "live in peace once the fighting is over, or in between fights." 

He says to pursue peace. Seek it. 

I've been deeply involved in the lives of several churches over the last 20 years. I've seen conflicts. I've seen peace. I've also seen that Christians often don't prioritize peace the way 1 Peter and Psalm 34 do. What these verses describe (and command) is an active pursuit. Peace is something we're called to work at and strive for. 

Peace is not something that's nice while it lasts or something that we should encourage and enjoy—until we have a good reason to dispense with it. That's how we begin to see peace when we're prioritizing other things. That's how I see peace when I'm busy seeking to be right, to get my way, to make them understand, to enforce conformity to my perspective. But Peter doesn't tell us to seek any of those things. He tells us to seek peace. To pursue it.

A couple weeks back, I said that if your "faithfulness" leads you to be quarrelsome, then it's not faithfulness at all. That's because there's a difference between being in agreement with scripture on principles or beliefs, and prioritizing the things that scripture prioritizes in practice. If you're willing to sacrifice peace on the altar of being faithful to scripture, what you've actually sacrificed is the faithfulness you professed. Attacking others, maligning them, encouraging divisions, bursting out in anger, these are the acts of the flesh (Gal 5:20), not the fruit of the Spirit. They're not indications that God is at work—just the opposite.

But so often, we don't care if we're bearing the fruit of the Spirit, or if we're fighting for the Bible in ways that are biblical. We only care about winning. Whether or not Jesus would consider that a "win" isn't a question we ask.

If we want to handle conflicts in a way that is faithful to scripture, we have to navigate them as people who are pursuing peace. Key to that are the things 1 Peter 3:8-9 mention: unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, tender hearts, humble minds, and a refusal to return fire or to try to get even.

What if, in situations of conflict in our churches, workplaces, or homes, we continually, deliberately sought to cultivate habits and attitudes like those? What if we championed what is true and what is right only and always in ways that pursue peace? I believe a commitment like that would revolutionize the way conflicts are addressed and radically transform the aftermath of our conflicts in churches and other areas of life. 

If we're willing to give it a try.

Listen to this week's devotional!