I'm Retiring

At church today, the Pastor started a new series on the book of John.  Being a big fan of the Gospels, I appreciate that book.  However, I can honestly say that I have never done an in depth study on John.  I know that it is the "weirdest" of the Gospel books.  The first three are very straightforward narratives; John is more of a poetic emotional journey.  Pastor James pointed out some of the curious differences between John and the other Gospels: John has no exorcism stories, John has no parables, John never mentions the Apostle John by name.  This last point is one of the more interesting elements of the book.  Whenever it comes to a point in the story where John should appear, the author instead mentions "the Disciple who Jesus loved."

I have always found that strange.  Not strange like inappropriate or anything.  Just strange.  We know from the other Gospels that John was one of the closest circle of Jesus' Disciples.  There were several instances where Jesus took just Peter, James, and John with Him.  Jesus entrusted His mother to John at the crucifixion.  So John was closer to Jesus than most people, even more than the average Disciple.  But, still, it seemed like a weird way to identify yourself.  If John didn't want to call himself John, why didn't he say "me" or "I" instead.  (I doubt it was because he wasn't sure which pronoun case to use.  He did, after all, get the tricky who/whom thing figured out.)  Why go with a phrase like "the Disciple who Jesus loved?"  And wasn't that insulting to the other Disciples?  I mean, if I was Bartholomew, wouldn't it get tiresome to be constantly reminded that John was more special than me?  And don't give me that whole line of reasoning that these guys were the Disciples and they didn't have immature thoughts like that.  I think there are more than enough stories in the Gospels that refute that.  They get busted for arguing over who will be the greatest in Heaven.  James and John had their mom go and ask Jesus to put them in a special place in Heaven.  They chase kids away from spending time with Jesus.  They don't believe Jesus rose again.  They make a ton of boneheaded decisions.

So Pastor James addressed that very issue today.  And his explanation (cobbled together from his own thoughts and other sources I don't remember) follows thusly.  When we look in the other Gospels, we see John identified with a different nickname.  He and his brother, James, were tagged with "Sons of Thunder."  Now, if you were a wrestling tag team, that may not be so bad.  But if you are supposed to be a follower of a rabbi who is claiming to be the Messiah, that probably isn't the cred you hoped to attain.  What do you think of if someone is called a "Son of Thunder?"  What comes to my mind first of all is Thor, naturally.  At least in his early incarnations, Thor is brash and loud and impetuous and arrogant.  In the movie, he gets thrown down to Earth because of his hardheadedness.  He can be fun and he certainly is loyal.  But he doesn't think before he acts.  We see this even in the new line of comic books by Marvel where Thor gets stripped of his title and is basically left as some big dude wandering the Earth, trying to figure out what to do now.

So that's John.  Loud, temperamental, arrogant.  Is that an uncomfortable picture to paint of good ole St. John?  I mean, he's the guy lounging next to Jesus in The Last Supper.  He is all sissified and emasculated.  Hardly the kind of guy who would be labelled a troublemaker.  Again, how quickly we forget.  This is the same guy who wanted to rain down fire on an unbelieving community.  He wanted to get the choicest spot in Heaven so badly he had his mom ask Jesus for it.  And, later on in church history, he gets imprisoned, beaten up, and exiled to a deserted island.  (If you want to believe extra-biblical history, he may also have been burned with boiling oil.)  He may not have always been a boisterous talker.  Maybe he was quiet a lot, but when he got pushed to the limits he exploded like thunder.  Either way, his reputation was that he was not someone to be trifled with.

So, how did this person become the same guy who wrote John and the beautiful passages about love in 1 John?  That's exactly the reason that John chooses to identify himself the way he does in his book.  It is like he is constantly amazed at the transformation he underwent.  Instead of being known as a "son of thunder," he was now known as "the Disciple who Jesus loved."  He retired the former name and took on the new one.  He wanted everyone to understand that he was no longer the man he used to be.  That brash, explosive, angry young man was now completely changed by the love of Jesus.  When you look at it that way, it is not nearly so weird.  It isn't bragging.  It isn't boasting.  John was relating a similar opinion to that of Paul.  "If someone like this can change, then anyone can change."

All of this hit me in a profound way this morning because of a conversation I was having with my wife last night.  Heather had two days off back to back.  This rarely happens, mind you.  Rather than lounging around all day and taking a break, she spent most of the day organizing and purging our kitchen pantry.  When 10:30pm rolled around, she didn't feel like doing anything else and was sitting on the couch.  But she was still feeling a bit guilty about being lazy.  I disagreed with her assessment.  I said to her, "As a lazy person, I can definitely tell you that you are not lazy."  But then I took a pause.

For much of my life, I have been saddled with the label "lazy."  Sometimes other people would say it.  Many times I would say it.  I can honestly say that I have battled a lazy streak for much of my life.  I saw it manifest itself in my academics, where I did the least amount of work possible to get the grade I wanted.  It surfaced in my piano playing, where I played as long as it was easy and quit when it got hard.  I've seen it in jobs, in house upkeep, in tasks, in relationships, in diet.  Laziness has been a major struggle for me.  In much the same way, I have been labelled an "angry" person for much of my life.  Again, others would say this of me.  And I would say it of myself.  Another label I got tagged with was negative.  I was a human Eeyore.  I had several people (including a youth pastor) tell me I was the most negative person they had ever known.  All of those things were so accurate, I felt, that I pretty much saw myself that way.  I was an angry, lazy, negative person.  Those were not the only words I attributed to my life, but they certainly were ones that stood out the most.

I have spent a lot of time working on these things.  I know for a fact that for two years now, I have been making a concentrated effort on all of those struggles.  When we still lived in Orlando, I went to counseling with a wonderful man named Cary who helped me a great deal with those issues.  I remember talking to him one day and sharing a story.  In the middle of the story I said something like, "I'm an angry guy."  He stopped me right there and said, "Wait.  I want to dealt with what you just said."  He went on to say that he had counseled a lot of angry men.  And he never once thought of me as an angry man.  He said I was a guy that when I was pushed to my limits or was backed into a corner, I would explode to try to gain control of the situation.  (Sounds like the Sons of Thunder.)  But I was hardly an "angry man."  He pointed out that in all of our sessions, I had never raised my voice to him - even when I was upset with him.  He said that he actually thought of me as kind of quiet.  I had never heard anyone say that to me.

So, last night, I caught myself calling myself lazy.  Then I thought about it for a minute.  Let me share a series of numbers with you.  36.25, 36, 74.75, 71.50, 21, 50, 45.  Those are the hours I have worked over the last seven weeks at my "part time" job with Kaplan.  That doesn't count all of the hours I have to drive to get to tutoring clients.  It averages out to 47.7 hours a week.  That isn't lazy.  I am doing that while also trying to be the at-home parent, keep up with laundry, clean the house, cook dinner for my family and any other people who wander into our house.  I am training through three different curricula for Kaplan.  I have six tutoring clients.  At one point I had 46 classroom students between two classes.  That isn't lazy.  I barely watch television any more.  I have video games that haven't been touched in months.  I read books, but mostly while I am proctoring tests or waiting to pick up the kids.  That isn't lazy.

Lazy had become such a familiar label that I didn't even think about the fact it didn't even apply any more.  Then I looked at "angry."  Cary already had put a giant crack in that belief.  But assessing myself now, I know that I have largely shook that label.  I may still get upset or heated up at things.  But I don't explode anymore.  I don't yell.  In fact, today my daughter actually accused me of whispering to her during a disciplinary moment.  She was getting louder and louder.  I told her to stop yelling and she said, "I'm not going to whisper like you're doing."  Are you kidding me?  As this argument revved up, my kid actually thought I was being TOO QUIET.  That's not angry.

How about negative?  I am a melancholy personality.  I'm never going to be a super-outgoing guy.  But I know for a fact that I have a pretty positive outlook on life.  I don't look for the worst.  I don't expect the other shoe to drop all the time.  In fact, I try to encourage others as best I can.  My students have pointed this out time and again.  They are worried about their eventual test score and I keep on trying to lift them up. My evaluations reflect this.  The classes think I'm funny and fun.  That's not negative.  My wife gave me a super cool anniversary present.  She had fourteen individually wrapped presents (one for each year).  They each had a card saying why I got that item.  Several of them talked about how hard I worked (not lazy), how I made everyone laugh (not negative), how I encouraged her (not negative), and how I kept everyone's stress low (not angry, not negative).

Basically, between all of that stuff and the sermon today, I realized that I needed to retire some things.  Like the Apostle John, I need to hang up those terms that used to define me.  Through the transforming restorative power of Jesus Christ, I am not those things any more.  I am no longer Lazy.  I am no longer Angry.  I am no longer Negative.  I will not refer to myself that way.  And I will not accept it if anyone chooses to lay those charges on me.  I am a different man now.  I work hard, serve my family, love the people around me, and try each day to do better than the day before.  Those names are no longer accurate.  I am now "the man who Jesus loves."  And that is a name I will forever cherish.

St. Anger

It is one of the most universal of emotions. Every person can relate to it. The burning around your neck and up into your face. The elevated heartbeat. The clenched fists, locked jaw, grinding teeth, furrowed brow. It is like a volcano has been unleashed inside your body. It actually takes every ounce of strength to keep the vitriol from spewing out over everything in the blast radius. I, of course, am talking about anger.

Anger. What a rotten thing. I have battled with anger my whole life. I come by it honestly, as some might say. My dad was one of the angriest people I ever met. He blew up about everything. And that anger, when it was unleashed, was a frightening, powerful explosion. I have seen and heard some horrible things that were generated by the anger of that man - some things no child should ever be in the vicinity of. And I probably had the easiest time of all of us. With all of those memories haunting me, you would assume that I would strive to become the opposite. But, when I look at my life, one of the biggest battles - and failures - has always been my anger problem.

As a Christian from an early age, I always heard how anger was wrong. So, I always battled another of anger's running buddies as well - guilt. Anger feeds guilt and guilt feeds anger. They are quite a parasitic tag team. You blow up at someone, immediately you feel guilty. Feeling guilty makes you angry at yourself, which then trims your fuse for the next unsuspecting doofus who crosses your path. So I would fight my anger - which naturally meant burying it. Act like it isn't there. If it isn't there, and no one sees it - then no one thinks you are angry. Or so I would believe. Obviously, that is not true. People know. For all of ninth grade my mom told me I walked around with a black cloud over my head. I was trying to push all those nasty, sinful emotions deep down inside - ignoring them instead of giving in to them.

Turns out that is just as damaging. And, it makes the explosions even worse. I know that for a large portion of my life that I would do this - and then one day finally the dome would blow off the volcano and burning napalm would toast everything around me. Many times, the target of the explosion had no clue what was even going on. They didn't know I was angry at them. So when the vicious attack finally came, it was like shock and awe. They were shocked at the magnitude of the blast and awed by the transformation that took place.

• In college, my poor roommate Matt got blindsided one night. I was battling insomnia, a case of inflamed rib cage cartilage, and coping with the new status of being on my own. He was listening to Leno (with his headphones on no less), and he was chuckling to himself. I was already upset about some other stuff, so this just got on my nerves. I laid there and just got madder and madder. I whipped myself into such a frenzy that after about 30 minutes, I finally blew up. "WOULD YOU JUST SHUT UP!!!!" He was just staring, stunned. I ended up taking over an hour just to calm down enough to go to sleep.
• My good friend Greg made the mistake of trying to teach me golf. We were at the driving range and I was getting more angry with each lousy hit. He would try to give me tips, but I was just getting embarrassed and very very mad. Finally, he came over again and I said, "Unless you want me to stick this golf club in your forehead, don't come over here again." He didn't. We are great friends. We just don't play golf. (Just like I have a list of friends I will not play Monopoly with.)
• A couple of years ago, after my brother moved back to Florida, we all were going to drive to Tampa to see my mom. I was already harboring some stuff - and from the morning we got in the car, more stuff got added on. By the afternoon, I was in a state. He finally made some remark about how I disciplined my kids. I launched into a hateful and insulting tirade. The best part was it was in front of my wife, my kids, my sister, my mom, my aunt. I lost a lot of respect with a lot of people that day.
• My mom got the same treatment about a month later. I was upset about how she had handled some things with my kids. Rather than ever talk to her, I just tried to ignore it - avoiding the inevitable fight. When "the final straw" happened, I blew up at her. I ended up loading up our van and driving back to Orlando. I don't think I talked to her for a week, and it took about two months before things got back to normal.
• One night at a Defender event - a week long conference at a church - I got really upset at the rude behavior that the kids were exhibiting. So when I finally got done with my talk, I took a few minutes to "pull a Moses" and rip into the kids for their behavior. It was like throwing a bag of Chinese stars into the crowd. The minister actually came up after me and tried to settle the kids down. I even came up and apologized at the end for it. One of the high points in my ministry.

I've knocked over piles of laundry, chucked a smoothie against a wall, punched a cheeseburger, threw my keys against the sidewalk, jammed a pair of scissors into the wall, and - naturally - had many many verbal explosions. I have never hit anyone, thankfully. I have been "working on my anger" for about thirty years. And I can see my ugly streak in my kids - from throwing game controllers to shoving a sibling to stomping on the floor to growling. I absolutely detest that this has carried through - and here comes the guilt train to pour kerosene on that fire.

So recently, I started reading a book by Dr. Gary Chapman. I think the dude is straight up brilliant. His Five Love Languages series has done wonders for thousands of couples and families. His Five Languages of Apology made a HUGE difference in my marriage, and it is something I make anyone I am doing premarital counseling for read. So, I was scoring big sale items at Lifeway Store the other day and I caught this one out of the corner of my eye. Anger: Handling a Powerful Emotion in a Healthy Way. $6. Bought it. And I found inside something startling. Anger is not bad.

Now, before you go flaming Dr. Gary Chapman's email with hateful angry comments, let me explain. We have for so long linked the emotion of anger with the effects of anger, that we just think of them as the same thing. But they aren't. Anger is an emotion - just like happiness, sadness, fear. There are natural biological responses to those emotions. But that is different than the actions that follow. If you were to do a scientific study of emotions, you would see how a body responds to each. "Happiness: smile comes to face, eyes sparkle, posture straightens." "Sadness: tears from eyes, mouth drops, shoulders slump." "Fear: cowering stature, dilated pupils, racing breathing and heart rate." But when it comes to anger, it's like, "Subject entered room in a neutral state. I made him angry by commenting on his receding hairline and large gut. Subject hit me in the face with a chair."

But that comes after the initial response by the body - the racing heart, the increased temperature, the narrowed eyes, the scowl. THAT is the response. After that, it is what we do with it. Chapman makes the point that anger is actually designed to get people to rise up against injustice and wrong behavior. We should be angry when people are mistreated and hurt. Anger should come when we hear some of the travesties that are going on around us. And then, the absolute clincher, anger is always supposed to push us to lovingly try to bring about change in that situation. That is what Jesus did in the examples in Scripture when He was angry (and there are several BESIDES the moneychangers at the Temple).

I remember after Grandpa Blann died, his kids found a bunch of his old letters. I read a few of them from when he started his ministry in Africa. It was astounding - the forceful assessment of the situation, the urging the churches in America to do SOMETHING. As I read them, I realized that he was angry. I only remembered one time that I ever saw Grandpa angry - and it was when he was talking to me about a book I gave him that he gave back due to theological errors he saw in it (which I realized thanks to him). And another thing that hit me as I read those letters was how much he sounded like, well, me. His crying out sounded like me when I talk about battles we at Defender have with churches and their members.

That anger that is in me is why I even do what I do. It is why, in many ways, I am a good minister and a good teacher. See, whenever I found myself preaching or teaching with power, I would write that off as passion. But it was a passion that was a correct implementation of how I should respond to that initial anger. I think that was why Grandpa was willing to raise his family in Africa for all those years. It made me realize that he was an angry man - but he used it right. He used it as a impetus for action - and that action was always housed in love. My father was not just an angry man, he was an out-of-control man. He misdirected his anger. I don't remember him ever getting angry and then lovingly trying to fix something due to it.

I will never be able to squelch the anger - to make it go away. And I'm not really supposed to any more than I am supposed to eliminate happiness or sadness. My challenge now is to find out to harness that anger. How do I pause after the initial emotional hit? How do I look to see if it is valid or not - and then let it go or try to do something about it. It was a freeing discovery for me. My natural anger is not bad. It is part of who I am - it is what makes me want to educate and challenge and confront. What is bad is when I selfishly respond to perceived slights to my person in a volatile way instead of taking a moment to deal with it rationally. When I get cut off in traffic, or get the wrong sandwich at Mickey D's, or when my kids act rude, or when my wife doesn't say what I want her to. Those are the moments when I need to recognize the anger and decide how to handle it in a healthy way. It won't be easy, but I already am finding myself being more aware of my behaviors. I actually am catching myself before the train hurtles down the track into my family. It is a long battle, to be sure. I'm sure this is not the last you will hear on this topic.