The Christian Sin of Disrespect

One of my previous employers set aside one day a year for “sensitivity training.”  It was designed, in part, to help people to learn to accept and respect the beliefs of others in the workplace.  Toward the end of one of these sessions I asked the facilitator, “What should I do if I don’t accept and respect someone’s beliefs?”  She responded, “Well, why wouldn’t you accept and respect another person’s beliefs?”  I replied, “Because some people’s beliefs are wrong.”

After she regained her composure she continued, “But what if a person sincerely believes that something is true and you believe that it is untrue.  Can’t you just respect the person’s position on the matter and ignore your differences?”  My reply, “In some cases I can do so, but in others I can’t. For example, I am a Christian.  I believe that people who reject Jesus Christ as their Savior are destined for eternal separation from God and the suffering that separation entails.  As a Christian I am required to love all other humans, which means I am required to seek the best for each one of them. As a consequence, I am required to notify others when I believe that they are in danger of rejecting Jesus’ salvation. If I truly believe that they are in danger, and I don’t tell them, my silence shows extreme disrespect for them personally. It is a disrespect that is far worse than just believing that they are wrong.

Here is an analogy:  When my son was about eleven years old he stated that he was going to go outside and play on a newly frozen pond.  I had just heard an announcement on the radio him that the new winter ice was not sturdy enough to support someone walking on it yet.  I relayed that information to my son who retorted, “Those people at the radio station don’t know anything about the ice.  I looked at the ice when I was coming home from school.  I’ve been playing on ice since I was a kid and I know safe ice when I see it.” I responded by forbidding him to go onto the ice and informing him that, because I cared about him, I would do whatever I could to prevent him from doing so. His parting response was, “You treat me like a little kid.”

The fact is that I was not disrespecting his belief that the ice was safe to walk on. I was willing to believe that he thought that the ice was safe. On the other hand, the potential outcomes were too dangerous for me to ignore. In the same way, if someone tells me that the notion of an eternal afterlife is uninteresting or stupid, my own beliefs and love for that person require me to try to explain why I believe s/he is wrong.

I am aware that it is important to understand how, when and where to challenge another person’s beliefs.  Ephesians 4:1-2 tells Christians: “…to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” Christians are admonished to behave with humility, compassion and love in order to create a context that nurtures credibility for their beliefs.

The Christian Sin of Silence

North Americans live in a strange society.  We often lie (or fail to tell the truth) to one another in the name of respect and harmony.  In fact, this fake harmony deprives us of information that we need to make ourselves better people.  Sadly, many churches are no better.  Christians claim to look to the Bible for their model for relationships, but they pick and choose among Biblical principles in order to avoid confrontation and accountability.  Peter and Paul were unquestionably two of the major leaders of the early church and were champions for the truth about God and Jesus.  Nevertheless, hear Paul describe an encounter with Peter:

When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? (Galatians 2:11-14, NIV)

Imagine this happening in a Christian church in North America today.  Nevertheless, this particular confrontation led to a clarification of church doctrine that has persisted to this day, and has prevented many later disputes among Christians.

There is a difference between someone standing up for truth when motivated by love for the other person, and someone who knows that he is right and just wants to win an argument. God’s wish for the body of Christ is stated in Ephesians 4:13: “[That] we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”  Unity in faith and knowledge don’t happen as a result of respecting and accepting important disagreements in any society, especially a church. Unity of faith and knowledge arise out of respectful and thoughtful reflection and discussion.

Sadly, many of us know people who claim to be Christians but leave out the “respectful and thoughtful reflection and discussion” step.  They feel compelled to talk about the failures of others. When other people react negatively to them they say, “Well, I’m just telling the truth.” They need to understand the meaning of the biblical concept of speaking the truth in love. This principle tells us that the truth is important, but that we should withhold it until we are satisfied that our own motives are not mean or selfish.

The Christian Sin of Speaking up

Revealing negative information about another person to others is just plain wrong unless biblical principles are followed. (Matthew 18:15-20) The Bible calls it  “gossip.” When someone starts to tell me something negative about another person, I generally respond by asking whether he has confronted the other person face-to-face about the matter.  My purpose is to get the accuser plugged in to the Biblical guidelines for accountability; all confrontation about possible wrong-doing in the church should begin with a private discussion.

In conclusion, the Bible clearly calls for both harmony and truth telling in the Christian community. However, the mediation of Christian love is an essential component for harmonizing them. It is unacceptable to disregard either harmony or confrontation. We are required by our principles to live with the discomfort of balancing the two.  Obviously, human beings are always going to be tempted to respond to their differences through fight or flight.  In this context, that means that they are going to use the truth as a weapon or avoid confrontation completely.  Both responses are Biblically wrong.

Related posts:

1. A Biblical Definition of “Hope”
2. Political Correctness: The Enemy of Respect

Over the years I have absorbed a lot of teaching about the “inerrancy” of the Bible.  I have served as the principal of several Christian day schools and as an administrator and faculty member at two Christian colleges. These positions have provided many opportunities to read, listen to and talk about biblical inerrancy locations from lecture halls to coffee shops.  Inerrancy of scripture is one of those topics that you know is going to be hard to deal with because almost everyone (in my circles, anyway) agrees with the concept but almost everyone has a different idea about what it means. Nevertheless If I am going to use the Bible as evidence for Christian hope, I owe it to you to explain how and why I trust it as an authoritative source.

I will start with a widely-accepted definition of Biblical inerrancy:

The inerrancy of the Bible means simply that the Bible tells the truth. (Charles C. Ryrie, What You Should Know About Inerrancy, Moody Press:Chicago, 1981, p. 16).

There are many other definitions, most of them significantly more thorough and complicated than this one.  However, I believe that the short definition above is adequate for my purposes.

Even so, I need to explain what I mean when I say that “the Bible tells the truth.”  I believe that the Bible tells the truth because I believe that God informed and motivated human individuals to write it so that humankind could be aware of and understand certain things.  I believe that God is incapable of making mistakes or lying.  Since God informed and motivated the authorship of the Bible, it must be true.

There are many ways to communicate truth through writing.  For example, we can speak scientifically, metaphorically, allegorically, and poetically. Western thinkers tend to believe that scientific communication is the best way to tell the truth. However, many literary traditions throughout history would disagree. It may be accurate to say that scientific communication is the best way to communicate truth about science, but the world is made up of many dimensions other than science. Some of them are subjective, emotional and perhaps even transcendent.  If it is true to say that scientific language is the best way to communicate scientific principles then certainly it may be true that nonscientific languages are the best way to communicate nonscientific principles.

The Bible was written over a significant period of time. The book of Job was probably started around 1657 BC and John’s letters were completed in about 98 AD, a period of 1755 years. When God began to communicate with humankind about the origins of His creation, they were living in a largely pre-scientific age. Even if God had chosen to dictate the creation narrative to the author of Genesis in modern scientific terms, the people of 1657 BC would not have understood it. It is only in relatively recent time that some humans started to use scientific language to describe the universe.  The Genesis story of creation has served humanity well and continues to convey the same truths it always did. God understands perfectly the language that will convey the exact and complete ideas that He wants us to understand.

Charles Ryrie continues the quote above by observing:

Truth can and does include approximations, free quotations, language of appearances, and different accounts of the same event as long as those do not contradict. (Ryrie, ibid)

A communication can be true even if it is not understood.  It takes a large human ego to believe that a statement is not true simply because the owner of that ego does not understand what the statement means or how it can be true. During the period of my life when I conversed frequently with theology professors and students, I heard lots of arguments about the contents of the Bible. I rarely heard anyone conclude, “Well, I don’t understand what that means and I doubt that I ever will.” Nevertheless, sometimes an honest person simply must conclude that there are concepts and ideas that he or she cannot figure it out.

Finally, listening is an important part of understanding. Jesus often taught by using “parables.” According to one popular definition, a parable is “a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson.” On at least one occasion, He followed a parable with these words: “He who has ears, let him hear.” (Matthew 13:9). His close followers responded by asking him why he used stories to teach people such significant truths. He responded by saying (my paraphrase), “Those who want to understand what they hear will understand what my stories mean. Those who do not want to understand the truth will not understand.” In the same way, those who refuse to understand the Bible because linguistic style is more important than truth will simply fail to understand.

I believe it is important to try to understand the Bible. However, my ability to interpret it is limited by the constraints of my personal experiences and style. I happen to be one of those people who prefers scientific language. For this reason, it is important for me to seek different perspectives in order to expand my own view. It also means that I sometimes have to say, “I’m not sure what the Bible means on this particular point, but whatever it means, I believe that it is true.”

Click here if you want to read more about Christian Hope.

Related posts:

1. A Biblical Definition of “Hope”

Several years ago I attended a day of “diversity training” sponsored by my employer. As I anticipated, we were told that we should respect beliefs that were contrary to our own. I responded with a question: “How can I respect a belief that is wrong and potentially dangerous?”

As you might imagine, I was immediately accused of being “arrogant” for thinking that my belief is right and opposing beliefs are wrong. I responded with a follow-up question: “are you sure that my attitude toward incorrect beliefs is arrogant?” My challenger answered quickly: “yes.”

It seems to me that the person who challenged me had committed exactly the same sin of which he accused me. That is, I think that it is okay to believe that certain ways of thinking or living are wrong. Ironically, the people who claim to be advocates for “respect” for all beliefs are willing to state that I am wrong for believing that.

My goal here is not to promote a point of view about the rightness or wrongness of one belief or another. I simply want to make the point that disagreement about the nature of things is a normal part of living in human society. In fact, such disagreements are necessary for human progress. There would be no new ideas or discoveries unless curious or adventurous people challenge the status quo.

In college I studied a topic called “systems design.” I learned that all systems have three basic components. They are often illustrated like this:

However, systems that can improve themselves have an additional component, called the “feedback loop.” Those systems look like this:

he feedback loop is the part of a system that examines the outputs to determine whether the process is meeting its objectives. It is sometimes called “quality control.” In its simplest form it provides yes or no answers to questions that we ask ourselves before we invest time and effort in constructing the system. For example, we ask ourselves, “What do I need?” We might respond, “I need 10 blue boxes every day. They need to be 5 inches wide, 10 inches long and 2 inches deep. They need to weigh between 10 and 15 ounces each. I can spend $11 a day to produce the 10 boxes.”

At the end of each day I will count, measure and weigh the boxes that the process has produced, and calculate how much money I spent to produce them. At that point, I will ask myself, “Did I get what I needed today?” If the answer is yes, I will conclude that my system works satisfactorily. If the answer is no, I will assume that my process does not work satisfactorily.

If I am rational, a “No” answer will be valuable to me, because I can modify my system in whatever way seems most likely to produce a “Yes” answer the next time I run it. Of course, if I have an aversion to negative feedback, or if negative feedback is prohibited by the context in which I work, I will either eliminate or evaluate the feedback loop so that it always tells me that the system is okay. It seems to me that this is what my employer’s diversity training was intended to provoke; all employees were supposed to tell each other that they were okay.

Common sense tells me that this will not work in manufacturing or society. If teachers are not permitted to tell students that their answers are wrong, their knowledge about truth will not improve, at least until they run into some other context that does correct them. If parents feel that they cannot tell their children that their behaviors are inappropriate, those children will have no reason to improve their behavior, until someone else tells them. If members of our society cannot tell one another that they think that certain beliefs held by others are wrong, those others will have no reason to continue to refine those beliefs.

There are significant forces in our society that are dedicated to promoting the idea that it is everyone’s responsibility to reinforce and nurture the beliefs of all other members of the society. On the contrary, it is our responsibility to attempt to provide an accurate feedback mechanism for the beliefs of others. It is their responsibility to provide feedback to us, as well. If we fail to do so, our social systems will fail, just like a manufacturing system with no quality control will fail.

Certainly, the interaction of individuals with other individuals will provide inconsistent and even contradictory feedback.This is simply a result of the limitations of human nature and observation. The same thing is true of manufacturing processes. Quality control measurements in manufacturing systems rarely produce perfect results, and manufacturing experts do not expect them to do so. Quality control in manufacturing is referred to as a “statistical process.” That just means that you keep measuring the outputs of a system and adjusting the system based on those measurements because you know that, over time and on the average, the process you are measuring will improve.

The Bible says “Iron sharpens iron, and in the same way one man sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17) This wisdom is telling us that the interaction of diverse beliefs make people stronger. For most of the time since the death of Jesus, Christian expectations were that they would be reviled and persecuted for their beliefs.  We, however,  live in a culture of “political correctness.” What we fear most is the possibility of being perceived as negative. We dislike conflict, so we accept dullness. Let me give you some illustrations:

• I once visited a home where I was invited to help prepare a meal. My job was to cut some vegetables. My host had a beautiful butcher block full of expensive knives. As soon as I began to cut, I realize that the knife I had removed from the block was very dull. I noted that there was a steel in the knife block, so I proceeded to use it to sharpen the knife.  The hostess immediately shrieked and covered her ears. When I ask what was wrong she replied, “I can’t stand the sound of the edge of the knife blade scraping on that sharpener. It sounds so violent and I can’t get rid of the idea that you are ruining the knife when you do that. I never sharpen those knives, but I know they are dull and I guess I will have to buy a new set.”
• I taught courses in Learning Psychology to college students who were training to be elementary school teachers for several years. I was instructed several times to advocate the implementation of noncompetitive games in classrooms and on playgrounds so that there would be no winners or losers. I steadfastly ignored those instructions because I believe that learning about your strengths and weaknesses and learning how to deal with losing are two primary success principles in our society. I refused to advocate non-graded coursework for the same reasons. Later in my career, as a university administrator, I learned firsthand about the disdain that prospective employers have for educational systems that do not impart these principles.
• When Jesus was preparing His disciples for His departure, He told them, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”  (John 13:35)  One might suspect that this admonition would have eliminated any arguing or disagreement among them later on.  I feel sure that Christian expectations were consistent with this idea.  On the contrary, agreement about Jesus’ teachings was often forged in the crucible of rather public debate among Jesus’ followers.  In Galatians 2:11-13 Paul publicly confronted Peter “to his face” about his behavior and accused him of not being “straightforward about the truth of the gospel.”  Later, Paul carried his issue with Peter to a council of leading Christians in Jerusalem, who debated the matter before coming to a conclusion which has established Christian doctrine to this day. (Acts 15:1-31)

The concept of “respecting diversity” is a huge problem for orthodox Christians, because it is so difficult to figure out what it means.  I can honestly say that I personally like diversity.  I enjoy diversity in race, national origin, customs, culture and thought.  I live in a very diverse city and its diversity is the thing I like most about it.  It provides me with lots of opportunity to sharpen myself by interacting with and observing people who are different than me.  On the other hand, I don’t feel any obligation to agree with people of other races, origins, customs, cultures or beliefs when I think that they are wrong.  In fact, when it comes to matters that affect their well-being, either temporal or eternal, my own Christian beliefs compel me to disagree with them “to their faces” if necessary in order to expose them to what I believe is the truth.  This is not arrogance; it is respect for their importance to society and to God.  My understanding of truth is not the result of my superiority to other people, it is the result of the grace of God and people in my life who cared enough about me to tell me that my own immature and selfish understanding of the truth was wrong.

Does respect for people’s beliefs require us to allow them to suffer and die eternally in order to prevent possible conflict or discomfort for a tiny period of time?  If I scream at and grab a man in order to pull him from the path of a  fast-moving bus will he be angry with me because I frightened him?  Perhaps, but I don’t think that relieves me from the responsibility toward him that my respect for his life imposes on me. Nevertheless, we live in a society that increasingly shepherds us into a kind of conflict- and risk-free life that is not really living at all.  It is a society in which good relationships are measured by the absence of conflict and risk.  It is a society in which we have learned to avoid speaking truthfully to one another.

In view of these observations, I urge us to beware that there are people who are not drinking from the communal cup of “Everything is beautiful in its own way,” and who are waiting to take control of the masses of people who have never learned to think, fight or disagree; that is, people who love their own false peace and safety more than they love one another.  Christian expectations related to the end of the Christian era will certainly come to pass.  Those who are adept at political correctness may think of themselves as “good” people because they never hurt anyone’s feelings. In response I will close with a quotation that is sometimes thought to be the most common quotation on the Internet: “ All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (Edmund Burke, English philosopher)

Related posts:

1. Great Expectations: The Source of Frustration in Human Nature

I have to admit that I have asked this question many times.  As I grow older I think I have begun to see the answer clearly.  I have mixed feelings about it, though.

Here are some things that I accept as true:

1. God loves people.  Actually, the truth is stronger than that:  God is love .  His very nature is love.  It isn’t just that love is in God, or that God is in love, or that God chooses to love; He is love. There is nothing in Him that is not love.  As a result, He loves continuously and without exception.
2. God is omnisicent, omnipresent and omnipotent.  Those are big Latin words that philosophers and theologians use to describe the nature of God.  To explain briefly…

• Omniscient.  God knows everything.  He knows about all events.  He knows what causes everything.
• Omnipresent.  God is present everywhere at all times.
• Omnipotent.  God has unlimited power.  He can do anything.

Now, here is the critical unescapable implication of these facts:  God cannot fail to do what is in our best interests.  I used to say that God will not do anything contrary to our best interests.  However, that is not strong enough. He cannot do anything that is contrary to our best interests.  Let me say it another way: God’s nature is love.  That means that by nature He wants the best for us.  He cannot want otherwise.

Some may object that this limits God, and that limiting God is inappropriate.  However, to say that God’s nature is love is merely to say about Him what He says about Himself.  God tells us in many ways, including His written Word (1 John 4:8), that He is love, that everything He does is loving and that He is incapable of doing evil.

“Love” can be defined on many levels.  It has some abstract meanings, as when we ask, “What is love?”  In this context, however, I am defining it on a practical level.  I want to talk about what love means in terms of what love does in our relationships, specifically our relationship with God.  In other words, “What does God do to us and for us as a result of His loving nature?”

Many authorities follow the definition of “love” used by C.S. Lewis in his book, Problem of Pain. Describing the relational love that comes from God, he says ”Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” From that idea we get “unconditional love,” love your enemies” and so forth.  By this definition it is possible to love someone without endorsing his/her behavior, or even liking her/him at all.  It is possible to give someone over to the consequences of his/her actions when doing so will lead to his/her “ultimate good.”(1 Corinthians 5:5)  It is even possible for God to love individuals without giving them everything they want or expect.

So here is the simple principle we take away from these facts:  God wishes the best for us and He has the complete ability to do what is best for us.  If, through God’s loving actions or inactions towards us, we do not receive what we wish for or expect, we must accept the truth that God is doing what is best for us because He cannot do otherwise. That is a blessing!

If God wants to bless us. then why does it sometimes seem otherwise?  Because…

1. God allows natural law to control much of what happens in the world.  Some people conclude that because God can control every detail of the universe He must, in fact, do so.  This is not true.  The Bible tells us that the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. (Matthew 4:45) This just means that the rain falls wherever nature dictates that it falls.  God could use the rain to reward and punish people and at times probably has done so.  Most of the time, however, He just leaves the rain up to the natural laws that He has put into place.  We cannot make assumptions about how God feels about us based on whether it rains on our picnic or not.
2. We are not omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent.  Our circumstances are far more complex than we can understand.  We even have a popular expression for it… “God only knows.”  He, as the expression implies, knows everything that affects our welfare.  We do not.
3. We don’t have the same values that God has.  Our ideas about “blessing” come from our circumstances and our flesh. (Galatians 5:16)  Look at the picture that accompanies this article.  When I first saw it I thought, “Why would I want to illustrate the concept of blessing with a handful of acorns?  They are very common and I don’t even like to eat them.”  Then I realized that a handful of acorns would indeed be a blessing to a squirrel, or even to a starving man.  Would you pay a days wages for a loaf of bread?  The Bible tells us that the day will come when that will be considered a great deal. (Revelation 6:6)  Which person will be blessed then; the one who has a wallet full of cash or the one who has a bag of flour and the ability to bake bread?  Our values are largely controlled by the influences with which we live, and the primary goal of of many of those influences (advertising and marketing) is to create feelings of need and inadequacy in us.
4. We are trying to control what we get and what we have.  Almost everything in our flesh and in the world around us tells us that we need to acquire and accumulate as much material goods as possible.  The Bible tells us that God isn’t too concerned about our material possessions but that He will completely care for our actual needs. (Philippians 4:19)  However, God’s loving relationship with us requires Him to allow us to choose between His provision and the provision of the world.  He understands that we will be more blessed if He is in charge of taking care of us, but He will allow us to try to take care of ourselves, if we insist.  When you feel that God is withholding His blessings from you, ask this question:  Would you rather have some of what you think you want or everything you actually need?

If we accept the truth of these propositions, we have to accept their implications.  When we ask, “Why isn’t God blessing me?” we are making one of three possible errors:

1. We misunderstand what God is doing.
2. We misunderstand what blessing is.
3. We prevent God from blessing us by refusing to allow Him to have control of meeting our needs.

Since I started by telling you that I sometimes ask the question myself, you will now understand why I have mixed feelings about this conclusion.  When I feel that there is something inadequate in my “blessing formula,” I may be right.  When I conclude that the inadequacy is on God’s side of the equation, I am desperately wrong.  He is totally willing and able to bless me abundantly.  I am often unwilling or unable to trust Him to do so.

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Big Bang

In my previous post I wrote about the relationship between expectations and reality.  That relationship can create frustration, so I provided a few suggestions about how we can adapt the relationship to minimize frustration.  Today I want to elaborate a little more about “reality.”  Bear with me through the first part of the discussion.  It may start to look too technical, but it will get better.  Believe me, I am not capable of any technical discussions that are too complicated for the average person!

Science puts forward a principle of the universe called “entropy.”  In common words, entropy indicates that the universe inevitably tends to move from a state of order to a state of disorder.  In some ways this seems like common sense:  Things wear out, people get old and civilizations decline.  However, a bit more thought reveals an enigma:  ”moving to a state of disorder” implies that at some point order existed and, most likely, perfect order.  If that is true, then entropy has not always been a universal principle.  Scientists rationalize this by pointing out that order can be introduced into localized systems for a while.  This, they explain, is how we can have evolution.  Evolution is just a temporary, local phenomenon in certain places.

However, science hedges this explanation by telling us that increasing order in one time and place must come at the cost of even greater disorder in some other time and place.  In other words, they insist that physics and mathematics require entropy to be a universal principle when viewed in a universal context.  Actually, that is fine with me.  I have been told that is it unChristian to believe in entropy, I see no reason to disagree with the idea, at least at this point in time.

The Bible tells us that God created the heavens and the earth and everything that is in them, and that they were good. (Genesis 1:1-31)  We learn that He created the first humans to live forever, apparently without sickness or death.  The Bible reveals that humanity’s first environment was perfect.  It did not even have weeds!  Nothing was wrong with it so humans did not have to work to maintain it.  (Genesis 3:1-24) They were able to be profoundly aware of their relationship with God because they were not constantly distracted by the need to survive in a broken world.  I like to think of it as “no entropy.”  It sounds to me like perfect order, with no disorder.

Enter sin.  Apparently, God gave only one rule in this perfect world and the first humans chose to violate it. (Genesis 3:6)  The Bible tells us that this changed not only their relationship with God, but the fundamental nature of the universe.  Enter entropy.  Everything that had previously been perfect in the universe now begins to slide toward disorder, physically and morally.(Genesis 3:17-24)  Oh sure, humans are smart enough to create some temporary, local systems that appear to be physically and morally in order, but they are created at the expense of the universe as a whole, and they always deteriorate eventually.  Of course, the local laws of nature, including mutation, still produce some isolated cases of evolution, but they are outweighed by the overall tendency in the other direction.

What does this have to do with frustration?  Everything!  I will briefly discuss two facts that can help put frustration into perspective for Christians:

1. Entropy is normal.  At this time and place in human history, it is normal for cars to wear out and people to get old.  It is currently normal for economies to crash and for innocent people to be harmed.  All systems, from human beings to automobiles, exist on a continuum between perfect and non-existent (entropy).  Carefully note that there is no continuum from “perfect” to “imperfect.”  Everything that is not perfect is imperfect.  There are no degrees of imperfect.  A lot of frustration stems from the fact that we are taught to “strive for perfection” in everything.  When we see ourselves, we immediately compare ourselves to some younger, healthier version of us.  We have trouble optimizing ourselves because we are optimizing against in image that is abnormal for anyone – perfection.  We have trouble appreciating our automobiles because the idea we have about them is the idea we got the day we saw them on the showroom floor.  When our expectations are based on a realistic concept about how things “should be” our frustrations will be reduced.
2. We are currently living in an abnormal universe, but we will not be here for long.  When Satan persuaded humans to make their own desires more important than God’s will, he not only stole our souls, he stole our world.  God has already provided for the redemption of our souls through his Son.  He will at some point redeem the physical universe, as well.  Until that point everyone who is living in a human body will be continually tempted to make the same choices that the first humans made, to become obsessed with survival and pleasure in the current world.  Even this is normal, at least for the “flesh,” and, by the way, God knows it. (Galatians 5:16-26)  For the present, we have to deliberately practice living like people who are unfathomably healthy, wealthy and wise rather than people who are trying to hide their sins from God.  Living in this spoiled universe is abnormal for Christians but, for now, we have to accept it.  Accepting it now and living for the promises of the new world is a quick exit from frustration.

I am sometimes asked, “Does that mean that I’m supposed to be happy that I’m getting old, feeling sick and my car is broken. Is it unChristian to be displeased?  The answer is clearly “No.”  However, frustration does not arise from being displeased about your circumstances.  Frustration arises from your expectations about your circumstances.  It is possible to be displeased about something without being frustrated about it.  I often think about my aches and pains, and I don’t react by telling myself that it doesn’t matter.  The truth is that when I was younger I thought I would be dead by now.  Now I realize how futile it has been to fear or covet any future minute.  I am glad that I got this article finished, though!

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l am going to write about expectations in this post but it won’t have anything to do with a Charles Dickens novel.  Forgive me if you got here by means of a search engine because you may, in fact, have been looking for Dickens.

I have always been fascinated by “frustration” as an observer, a sufferer, and a source of it.  In my study of Psychology I learned that frustration involves three elements:  our expectations, our beliefs about reality and our responses.  Psychologists define “frustration” as our response to the difference between what we expect and our perception of reality.  For example, if we expect our supervisors to compliment us about our work, and they say something sarcastic about it instead, we respond negatively.  Our response may be physical, mental or emotional, or a combination of the three.  That response is called “frustration.”

The degree of our frustration is directly proportional to the difference between the intensity of our expectation and the extent of the failure of reality to correspond to the expectation. Here is a graphic illustration of the situation I suggested above:

As you can see, if you can avoid having expectations you can avoid frustration.  It is important to understand this principle because in many cases, as in this illustration, we have no control over the outcomes of the situation.  On the other hand, it is impossible to avoid expectations, because expectations are a result of our need to understand how the world works. We  need to be able to exercise some control over our environment and knowing what to expect is a requirement for that task.  Our environment is not always benevolent, and our expectations enable us to react appropriately to protect ourselves.  As an illustration, we might hear someone say, “I survived that situation because I knew what to expect.”

We are faced with a dilemma: we need to have expectations in order to deal with our environment, but those expectations often produce frustration.  Two simple principles can help us minimize frustration in the face of this dilemma of human nature:

My next several posts will break down this concept in more detail.  In the meantime, please use the comment form below to send me your questions and feedback on this important topic.

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Christian Hope

When the King James translation of the Bible was published in 1611, it rendered the Greek word elpis as “hope.” (Colossians 1:5 for example)   The King James Version became the most widely published English Bible translation in history.  As the English language has evolved in the 400 years since that publication, the word “hope” has taken on a primary meaning that is somewhat different than the meaning of elpis.  When we use the word “hope” today we commonly mean “grounds for believing that something good may happen.”  We also tend to attach the idea of possibility to the word “hope.”  For example, we may ask, “Do you think there is any hope for our survival?”  This question implies that survival may or may not happen.

When used in the Bible the Greek word elpis has the connotation of “expectation” or even “confidence.”  In fact, the word is often used to describe the belief in something that, although not seen, is real. (Hebrews 11:1)  In other contexts it refers to events that have not occurred but which are confidently expected.

These differences in interpretation can lead modern Bible readers to believe that the Greek scripture writers possessed less than full confidence in the events that they hoped for.  In fact, when they used the word elpis they were expressing the full expectation of their occurrence.

It is not my intent to set out a proof of this hypothesis here.  In fact, it is by no means original with me.  A quick internet search of the phrase “Christian hope” will reveal hundreds of articles and sermons that support it.  My intent is to provide a foundation for a Christian discussion of hope and expectations that distinguishes the general modern linguistic understanding of these terms from the Biblical usage.  I think that this foundation is important because our current culture views very few ideas as settled, or determined.  The modern usage of the word “hope” tends to take on this view.  When we “hope” something we want it to be true, or to happen, but we don’t view it as settled.

Natural science reinforces the idea of an unsettled universe, as well.  It speaks in terms of probability, chaos, entropy and uncertainty when describing the behavior of the universe and social systems.  Ethics follows with “relativism,” and “situation morality.”  I am convinced that it is precisely at this point that we make an irrational jump.  Natural science is appropriately described in the terms mentioned above, but ethics and morality are not.  Unfortunately, we are so immersed in relativism that the notion that scientific knowledge is relative while morals are not seems completely backward to most of us.

“Political correctness” plays the role of deceiver in our culture, as well.  We are told that we should respect all beliefs and lifestyles, as if they are all equally valuable, or true, or correct.  That is absurd because:  1) It isn’t true and, 2) No rational person actually believes it.  It cannot be respectful to tell someone that you believe that they are right when you believe that they are wrong.

So… this is your introduction to My Piece of Pi.  I hope you have been a little bit stirred up to talk more about hopes and expectations.  More is sure to follow!  I want to respond to your interests and feedback.  Please use the comment form to send them to me!

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