Most of us drive our­selves mer­ci­lessly. We are crit­i­cal of our­selves and thus crit­i­cal of oth­ers. “Per­for­mance” is the hall­mark of our times. Only an A+ is accept­able. We praise the Gold but ignore the Sil­ver and Bronze. Flaw­less per­fec­tion has become an unrea­son­able god. No one really attains it, so deep down inside we crawl off in toxic shame.

Sel­dom do we take a kind moment for our­selves. We are a dri­ven peo­ple. At first it feels good, and then we exhaust and give up. The church is for sin­ners — fail­ures — hyp­ocrites that have learned the heav­enly bless­ing of accept­ing grace for all of our flaws. By it we hold our heads up and con­tinue on. We do not self-destruct over impos­si­ble stan­dards. “The meek inherit the earth” because they can live with a B or a C — or even in tak­ing the course all over again.

It is good to have high and wor­thy goals, but if you pun­ish your­self for imper­fec­tion you are in for a lot of unnec­es­sary pain. The gap between aspi­ra­tion and accom­plish­ment exists as part of inspi­ra­tion and desire. Long­ing is good for the soul. The quest for per­fec­tion helps us reach beyond the merely accept­able. It is not designed to be a humil­i­at­ing sign of failure.

Pick your­self up. Be good to your­self. All fac­tors con­sid­ered, you are prob­a­bly doing the best you can. Win­ning means not being your own worst critic. It means being your own best fan.

Left to itself, the human emo­tional sys­tem will dimin­ish into a very few pre­dictable emo­tional pat­terns. Some­times they will con­tinue to dull into an end­less bore­dom. Chem­i­cal mood-management has become a multi-billion dol­lar legal and ille­gal enter­prise. It is by default. No one told us that we could change our moods by chang­ing our actions. You want to find a new feel­ing? Do some­thing novel.

I think Freud was wrong about humans being plea­sure seek­ing beings. We are more likely to pas­sively numb-out by rou­tine and the spir­i­tu­ally cow­ardly choice to live pre­dictably. By the approval of the state, we allow our­selves to drift into work­ing robots instead of find­ing our anger about the need to work too much for too lit­tle finan­cial reward. Worse yet, our reli­gious lives become encour­age­ments to go along with the mad­ness of it all — rather than call­ing all things into question.

You want to feel brave? Do some­thing dar­ing! You want to find love? Do some­thing lov­ing for some­one else! We feel what we do — not what we think. Feel­ings fol­low actions. Get out of town. Make a call. Do what­ever you have to do from a long-unused motive.

Repeat­ing the same day over and over is not liv­ing. Real life car­ries risk. Deep feel­ings require courage. Being fully alive means liv­ing on the edge. “Tak­ing up your cross” is not an invi­ta­tion to merge into a world of pseudo-security.

I have no idea what all I am doing today, but I know for sure I will say and do some things that I have never said or done before…and be totally alive for at least those moments.

“Do not be con­formed to this world, but be trans­formed by the renewal of your mind.” The Apos­tle Paul

I teach courses that include a lot of polit­i­cal sci­ence. Polit­i­cal sci­ence is bor­ing because it only has two themes: power and con­trol. No mat­ter what the the­ory, the end results are the same: power and con­trol. It is all a big yawner but an aca­d­e­mic neces­sity. I am with C.S. Lewis “Chris­tian­ity is the only really inter­est­ing thing in his­tory.” The rest is predictable.

“The world” is one trance. It repeats its nar­row themes end­lessly. The faces change, but the pur­poses remain. Bor­ing! It is all about the pyra­mids of power and con­trol. Whether it hides behind elec­tions or in secret smoke-filled rooms, it is the same game plan.

Spir­i­tual renewal is about turn­ing the pyra­mid upside down. The ser­vant becomes the mas­ter. God is on the side of the mar­gin­al­ized. “The last become first.” (Jesus of Nazareth).

There is good news here. When you grasp the renewal con­cept you come out on top — even if it looks like you are on the bot­tom. It is all about per­spec­tive. The human world and God’s world are not the same. When you catch the vision of the lat­ter, you are free from the former.

The repeated ref­er­ence points from the world never change. They are as pre­dictable and as dilap­i­dated as the pyra­mids of ancient cul­tures. A select group of peo­ple watch in amuse­ment as it is repeated time and again.

Yawn!

The world is at it again, but a few of us are find­ing real life in another perspective.

For­give­ness is the way to keep your­self from becom­ing the vic­tim of your own thoughts. The slights you remem­ber and replay in your head keep you feel­ing bad. What is hard to admit is that you are doing it to your­self. You are feed­ing your­self the echo of a neg­a­tive state­ment. For­give­ness is not just some nice thing to do; it is the ticket to sanity.

Never for­get that it is a fallen world being redeemed. It is between the two par­a­digms of lost and found. Get­ting stuck in the neg­a­tives is pretty mis­er­able. You are not going to bal­ance the scales. There will always be more neg­a­tives than pos­i­tives, so you just remove the neg­a­tives from the scale. Sim­ple. Turn it all loose and let it go. “For­give­ness” is a term that essen­tially means to “toss away.”

Toss it. For­get it. Let it go. Drag­ging what­ever the slight might be is a way of being masochis­tic. Feel­ing bad is a habit of not fill­ing the emo­tional trash can. Carry out the trash. Cleanse the soul. Lighten the load. There is no value in pun­ish­ing your­self via your mem­ory. Drop it.

Healthy reli­gion is about being whole. It is a way of cleans­ing your inner psy­che so that you can be fully human and truly in the image of God. Look around the room. Is the injus­tice still there? No! It is gone. You are the one hang­ing onto it and it strokes the power/ego. Have a bite of hum­ble pie and savor the moment of being free. Mercy trumps justice.

Ther­a­pists talk about a “shadow bag” that peo­ple carry. It is like a trash bag of inequities and injuries that we use to attempt some sort of self-definition. It is filled with all sorts of smelly things. Car­ry­ing it takes work and at least one emotional/spiritual hand. Toss it.

Be free. For­give. Live.