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These Ten Things

Posted on July 19, 2024July 22, 2024 by Hilarey

There was once a woman who perfectly copied her mother’s treasured pot roast recipe. First, she took the roast and cut off both ends. Then she put it in the pan, measuring water carefully… leveling each teaspoon of seasoning with a knife. She always set a precise timer. One day, while teaching the recipe to her daughter, her daughter asked why they needed to cut off the ends of the meat. So she went back to her mother.

“Oh,” her mother replied. “Because a roast doesn’t fit in my small pan.”

Tradition and Ritual

This story came from a pastor who was a product of the 60s Jesus Revolution. He thought traditions were often pointless.

Being a good-western-orthodox Protestant, I grew up scared of ritual and repetition. I also had a healthy distaste for tradition—being so close on the heels of the Jesus-freak movement. Liturgy was not in my vocabulary until my adult son defined it a few years ago.

But I remember the first time I watched a simulcast teacher and during worship they announced how many thousands of people were singing the same praises at that second. Tears flooded my eyes at the unity, the connection, even across culture.

If you consider the number of people who have said the Apostle’s Creed over the years, you realize it binds us with a linking thread, tethering us through wars and renaissance to a faith much older than our country.

Who doesn’t long for things that bring unity and stand the test of time?

I don’t believe God has ceased doing “new” in us or our world systems. I know he is infinite and we have truths still to discover along our trajectory of sanctification. I think he is still over-correcting some of human’s tangents and continually realigning culturally embedded preconceptions.

But I have found a place for tradition and ritual. And I regret dismissing it for so long.

Repetition

Since OCD was diagnosed in my family, I’ve better understood some of my own repetitive tendencies. I’ve learned why counting crochet stitches distracts a troubled mind… or listening to repetitive breath in lap swimming or meditation can clear it. I’ve discovered why the sound of rhythmic footfalls in walking or running soothes even before the endorphins kick in.

I think religious rituals can satisfy this part of the brain through repetition and redirection. Without being given a purpose, the can mind loop negative thoughts. The fears don’t even have to be real—although I’m sure you have plenty of genuine distress to choose from.

I found myself stuck last fall. So, around December, I decided to focus on what good God had put into my literal hands. I used my hands and the sensation of touch to ground myself. It was also symbolic to pull my attention away from the things I could not control. The things outside of my hands.

The idea might have originated from the verse that God inhabits the praises of his people. I assumed that fear would not fit in the same space as his habitation. Not to say there isn’t room for your pain with him—but thankfulness does a good job of organizing your mind. I have a friend who says that you cannot worry and be thankful at the same time.

Ten Things

Start by drawing the pointer finger of your right hand from the base of your left thumb at the palm. Drag it down the length to the end. Consider the tingling sensation of the touch. This counts as one, and say something you are thankful for. Then, move to the first finger, and so on. Five on one hand, five on the other.

Night after night, sometimes trying to go as fast as I could by memorizing them and sometimes reaching, searching for things to be thankful for. I have a friend who starts with her pillow.

I do it while tucked into bed, instead of praying (listing and counting) out my fears and worries. I decided there was plenty of time during the day to beseech God’s intervention and mercy. Looping all day, I wanted a break at night.

I tried not to think of anything except what I considered a blessing. And I typically picked five things I was thankful for about my husband, then five about my day. I did it because he’s my safest person, and during seasons where I need him most—I focus more intensely on driving him away.

When life is comfortable, and I slip into sleep easier, I tend to forget this rhythmic, tactile bedtime ritual. But a friend of mine suggested you need the routine of something already present in the rhythm of your life to remember to go to it when you are under stress.

Recently, this same friend made Protestant Prayer Beads for our writer’s group board members. It was part of a one day retreat she designed based on the book Sacred Pathways.

I’d never even heard of safe, sanctioned, my orthodoxy, non-catholic prayer beads. But maybe that is because even though prayer beads are ancient, the idea of American evangelicals using them is newer. However, I discovered something beautiful about them, similar to my praise-counting ritual.

You cannot get (as) stuck on any prayer because there is another bead to move onto. You’re forced out of the negative, repetitive loop. It surprised me how I was able, in a tactile way, to leave it in God’s hand by moving mine.

We can fortify entire cities on top of one prayer request, thought, sin, or trial… More than getting stuck, it becomes our identity.

Do you want to be healed?

Isn’t it strange in John 5:6 that Jesus asked the man who had “spent a long time in his condition”, “Do you want to be healed?”

I wonder if waiting at the edge of healing is not the same as pursuing it.

I went to Israel with my Mom in 2018 and at the edge of the pool, her pastor reminded us that Jesus asked the paralytic that question before he healed him.

What ten things are you thankful for?

You Missed the Boat

Posted on July 10, 2024July 10, 2024 by Hilarey

A re-post since I’m cranky that I have covid again. Also, we lost the little guy in this video about a month ago. If sarcasm (the lowest form of wit) annoys you, skip this one.

Originally Posted on April 18, 2022

Who doesn’t miss the good old days? I mean, 1950s ironically upbeat television totally proved how fabulous life was. In the old days, a man could legally punish his wife, women couldn’t own property, and a dad could trade his daughter for a field, or whatever else benefited the clan. Back in the day, there wasn’t a disease a little bloodletting couldn’t cure.

But that’s not exclusively why we miss them. It’s because God was present in the old days.

Right now we don’t know if he’ll come through like in the past. He may have parted the Red Sea, but he could have brought us here into the desert to die. We’ve always seen him faithful before, but he might not be this time…

Nothing is like it used to be. It isn’t a subconscious justification to prove cessation theology when we say the Bible is inerrant and perfect. We just know there can’t be growth in translation philosophies. We could only expect God to help that one time in Latin and we needed the Holy Spirit to change to prevent confusion since we’re devolving.

That’s also because we’ve lost our language and ability to see beauty in words. There’s no hope for our grandchildren to communicate. Instead of “nothing new under the sun,” we should fear because “it’s all new,” and a slightly downgraded version of a changing God who used to move his people but is pretty much done now.

Your parents were better than your children, so you were born too late. He spoke to previous generations, but he’s going to drop this next one because their pants are too tight. We tried to make America great again, but the glory days are over.

And also, you should just be sad because the world is going to end. The promise of life more abundant was a promise with a shelf life. The only promise left is the great apostasy, so stop looking for God’s miracles in your sphere. Lament, not over your sin, of course, but over the way it used to be!

Actually, be careful of romanticizing the past—you can turn it into something it never was.

God has so much good in store for us. It’s just going to look different. So different, so good, no humankind can comprehend it.

You may be “Two steps behind the rest, one fingertip too long…” but you didn’t miss the boat. God is still moving and has good plans.

Your Villain… a Caricature

Posted on June 14, 2024June 12, 2024 by Hilarey

Is the enemy chaotic-evil and unredeemable?

I learned in a writing class that no one is a hundred percent evil, so, writing your novel’s villain that way will actually make him less threatening. That kind of antagonist is comical—a caricature like Snidely Whiplash.

If you aren’t old enough to remember the cartoon that made me fear handlebar mustaches, Wikipedia says of him, “Whiplash is obsessed with tying young women to railroad tracks; he has no reason to do so and realizes no gain, profit or advantage, but is simply compelled to do it.”

The writing class suggestion was to show your villain do something kind. The instructor mentioned a scene where a bad guy stops on the way into the house where he planned evil, to pet a kitten. (I think the example came from a book or movie, but I can’t remember where.)

Even better, give the killer something he loves. Or a complicated emotion, like a desire to protect something in the midst of his mayhem. This makes him more realistic, and therefore, scarier.

I’ll tell you, I have met abusive people who were overly dramatic and affectionate to their dog in public. “Animals trust me, you should too…” as though dogs don’t lick an abusive hand. So, making the antagonist more realistic this way rang true for me when crafting fictional characters.

Relatable

Besides the realism, another reason a complicated villain becomes scarier is that you can see yourself in them. But isn’t it unnerving if they’re too redeemable? It’s hard to cheer at their destruction if you see yourself in them.

We want God to take us as a package and hope the redeemable outweighs the rest. He wouldn’t annihilate me if there is something redeemable, right? (Part of coming to faith is realizing that the only thing redeemable is Christ’s covering, and any good you’ve done was a work he created you to do.)

But what if that measurement of being redeemable tipped in favor of someone you hated? Could you still call them an enemy or go to war with them? Could you desire their destruction?

Un-relatable

I think it would be too hard to justify war if you thought of the people as redeemable. You need to view them as evil with nothing salvageable. And I think one way we do this is to disregard individual faces, to see them as a whole. They are collectively unredeemable.

And the first step to seeing them as a collective is to name them.

Us and them

I think of conversations I heard when I was a child regarding people we’d gone to war against. Pejoratives serve the purpose of naming, grouping, and defacing. They enable the speaker and the listener to disassociate the humanity of the one being discussed. It tips the scales. It lowers them from your status of being made in the image of God, a divine image bearer.

You might never use a slur but still say the nationality, religion, sexuality or politics of your “enemy” like it is a cuss word and mean the same thing.

You make them a caricature of a villain.

But maybe even Russians love their kids, too

I remember my grandma’s fear when she mentioned The Bataan Death March by the Japanese during World War II. It’s a story that loses some of its shock, though, when you look at the United States’ inhumanity during the Trail of Tears. For several summers we hosted Japanese exchange students, and they were no longer some less-than-human group from a foreign place. They were kids. With faces. If you want to see this working for Israeli and Palestinian teens, check out Friends of Roots.

Governments plan and execute war. Unless we are the government, our responsibility is different. Psalm 131:1 says, My heart is not proud, LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.

The matters I should be concerning myself with are how I think of and speak of other humans. Both those in my sphere, and those on the other side of the world. Even if the other group wants to destroy my country, take my money and my freedom. Even if they are my enemy. If I only love those who love me, what good is that to me? Just because salvation is free, why do we think everything after is easy?

Made in the image of God

I can speak from experience what it feels like to be less than. A false doctrine I had to put into words to unearth was that God made man for himself, and woman was a trinket that he made for his beloved (man). I really stumbled over 1 Corinthians 11:9 when I was a young mom coming back to Christ. Learning that woman is made in the image of God, not just created for man, gave me identity and joy. And when man does not value woman as equal, he is not acting out the hand of God. It elevated me, and I’ll never let that identity go. We’re a tool of the enemy if we ever let anyone believe they are less than a divine image bearer, with equal worth and status.

A fool

I used to be confused why Proverbs spent so much ink on defining and calling out who is a fool—but Jesus said if you called someone a fool; you were in danger of hell-fire. It felt like a contradiction since I could see so many fools by Proverb’s standards.

Partly from the Bible Project’s Sermon on the Mount series, I’ve come to understand Christ’s intent as: don’t even start down that path of lowering someone in status. Declaring someone unworthy is the first step to murder. How you speak of your antagonist is one way to live out the call to love your enemy, as we’re told to do in Matthew 5:43-48. And the names you use to describe your enemy can either deface them or remind you of their God-given status.

We’ve been told to judge people’s fruit and actions because there is demonic evil in the world. Still, discerning evil does not excuse you from loving your enemy. If we have the law written in our hearts, we have different expectations, regardless of how the world operates.

My point is to tread carefully anytime you use labels for yourself and others. Because that path leads to disassociating their humanity, their status as image of God.

All humanity is capable of evil

No villain is a caricature. We are each capable of atrocity by starting down the path of looking at someone as less than ourself. We should remember Christ’s warning wherever we think, “They’re an idiot.”

We should think of the danger of hell-fire when we use a slur or dehumanize a group either for their political agenda, nationality, or religion. Yep, even their religion.

Well, unless you are not a bondservant of the Lord’s. Then you can do whatever you want with your body, mind and money.

Your Redemption Draws Near

Posted on May 31, 2024May 30, 2024 by Hilarey

I once said to my grandma, “I wish Jesus would come back.” It wasn’t during a trial. I think I was just feeling the irritation of living. I had a bill due, or something equally inconsequential.

She said, “Yes, I hope so too. But, not yet.”

I was shocked. Maybe even a little worried that she didn’t want Christ to return at that very moment. I mean, you get a crown just for longing for his return! Why wouldn’t she want him to come immediately?

I hadn’t yet known the pain of a lost loved one. The pain of longing for someone you love more than yourself to be reconciled to God before it’s too late.

It isn’t easy to balance these two longings (Christ’s return and the salvation of loved ones) inside the same heart space. When I spoke that to my grandma, I was being selfish. The Lord tarries, desiring none would perish.

During that season, we attended a church that gave regular prophecy updates. Jesus’s return occupied much of our attention, maybe more focus than bringing God’s kingdom here to earth through actions and stewardship.

Conversation about The End Times was casual—albeit with a heightened sense of macabre excitement. “God is going to come back and punish everyone but me! The earth will be filled with the blood of evil unbelievers and those who vote Democrat.”

Our blind anticipation about eternity did a little damage. Like someone who gives up living, preparing to plan their funeral, rather than do anything to bolster their life. Although, in some seasons of pain—selfish is all you can muster.

But focusing solely on eternity means sacrificing his gift of abundant life now. Both for yourself and what you have to give others.

It is selfish to wag your head at an earth “headed to hell in a handbasket.” And to harden your heart against those leaving the faith—drawing comfort that it’s just predestination. I read something recently that said, “a salvation that requires someone else’s destruction is too small a salvation since ‘everyone belongs to God.’”

It is the Kindness of God that Draws to Repentance

You could speak like Paul if you loved like Paul. But if we aren’t willing to give up our salvation for someone else—we should be careful how we instruct, exhort and justify “the end” in our minds.

Always question doctrine and interpretation that causes you to turn your heart away from humanity.

Long for his return, for the reconciliation to the lover of your soul… but not at the expense of bringing his kingdom here to earth in the meantime. I often think about an ending scene in Schindler’s List. While people thank him for their lives, Schindler can only stare at his watch and lament that he could have sold it to save more.

A Thief in the Night

If you think it’s hard to live now, in a fallen world, fearing the future loss of your freedoms… read scripture about the end. You might not be so eager to usher it in, other than the glorious result of reconciliation. Christ’s analogy to birth pangs is perfect. For most of pregnancy, there is still so much left to do to prepare for the arrival. You don’t want birth to happen until you’re finished getting ready. You’re eventually willing to go through labor to have the baby in arm, but you never wake up and think, “Today is a good day for hours and hours of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced and possible death.”

There’s an interpretation about the destruction of the temple in 70 AD and the Parousia, or second coming of Christ, being the same event. But I favor the “already and not yet” duality of scripture. It shows up in too many places and correlates to our entire faith-walk. For example, we are already redeemed, but sanctification is still happening in our sinful bodies until we will be changed in heaven. We are already, and not yet, justified.

So, even though Christ was teaching in the temple in Luke 21, I believe the passage has use as instruction for us.

Verses 34-36: But watch yourselves, or your hearts will be weighed down by dissipation, drunkenness, and the worries of life—and that day will spring upon you suddenly like a snare. For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of all the earth. So keep watch at all times, and pray that you may have the strength to escape all that is about to happen and to stand before the Son of Man.

Pray to Escape

When you read Revelations, Matthew 24, and Luke 21, there are common threads to pray that you will escape or you will endure. Certainly, God does not give us a spirit of fear, so fear is not an appropriate response to the discussion. We are safe, we cannot be snatched from God’s hand. We should lift our eyes and watch for redemption, but we shouldn’t disregard the warnings either. There is tension here—just like the tension of balancing a longing for Christ’s return and longing for the salvation of loved ones, first.

Sometimes it seems like the easiest answer is for the end to arrive, but instead of looking forward to your enemies being crushed under God’s feet, spend your energy on the concept that those who endure to the end shall be saved.

Pray to Endure

Most Jews didn’t recognize Jesus because they had purposed in their minds what the coming Messiah would look like. Don’t become so fixated on how you expect the end to play out that you’re unprepared.

Luke 21 verse 19 says, “by your patient endurance you will gain your souls.” Make sure you really believe what you believe, memorize and take his word into the deep inner parts. Prepare for labor before victory.

Dismantling Human Tradition

Posted on May 17, 2024April 18, 2025 by Hilarey

When I was young, I told my mom a name I wanted to give to a future child. Her quick response was that if my future husband had ever known someone by that name—and didn’t like the person—he wouldn’t want the memory of them in his home.

The same name, the same word, can have different connotations.

The term “Deconstruction” has taken on a definition all its own in Christendom. It is basic etymology. As words popularize and morph meaning, they assume new preconceptions and sometimes baggage.

Maybe you know someone who deconstructed and ran screaming from the faith, destroying others. So, you hate the concept. It is scarier to watch someone else do it, but this is where westerners get to experience “Though none go with me, I still will follow.”

When God reveals a lie that I’ve believed, it’s usually painful. But it is an exhilarating process and increases my faith. The writers in my critique group who wrote for Love Inspired Suspense always incorporated a lie that their heroes and heroines believed: to be overcome before the end of the novel.

But what happens when it isn’t just a lie about your worthiness or purpose, but a lie about your faith? And what if it’s a dozen at once, more confusion than you can handle, so you are not sure if you can trust what is truth from your entire foundation?

I feel like continuing to build upon lies because you don’t want to lose your faith is more dangerous than realizing that you have something weak in the foundation and then inspecting or tearing it down.

A few years ago, some of my foundational bricks eroded.

An existential crisis of faith can become a spring cleaning if you don’t fear what you’ll find. Be more afraid of ignoring it. Deconstruction for me was merely inspecting which bricks were made of hay and stubble, fingering them out of the foundation, and replacing them with something worthy.

I guess that’s more like dismantling. When you want to keep all the good parts of a machine but pull every piece out and line them up to find the broken cog and replace it.

When terms take on baggage, we can try renaming them. But that’s just semantics. If everyone started using the new term, replacing deconstruction with dismantling or something else, it would just morph in definition and still offend some and not others.

Dismantling Human Tradition

For me, deconstruction was not questioning the Bible. But it has involved not fixating on single word inerrancy and literalism. Because it’s a simplistic translation that says Eve was created from Adam’s rib. Man doesn’t have one missing rib and, metaphorically, the word could mean side. As in, a side of man that is no longer in him is now embodied in woman.

But more than multiple translations of a single word—I’ve had to wrestle with the way the Bible was deciphered in our country and era. It was through the lens of human tradition that made me assume what certain things in the Bible meant.

As I’ve altered my view on eternal conscious torment I realized my belief can reinforce my understanding of scripture when I’m reading.

Some form of deconstruction has to happen to every believer. At least everyone who comes to faith as a child or is raised under someone else’s faith. That’s how to make what you’ve heard your own faith.

We also need to dissect things we’ve heard that were just a tangent of someone else’s faith journey. A situation where you never heard the resolution, only the plaguing question. “Why did he have to die?”

Or maybe we only heard the answer to something, but not the process. This is frequent in the New Testament. We’re often given a specific answer to a specific question in a context that is not explained, because everyone knew it. “Women cover your heads.”

Misunderstood

Premarital sex in the church comes with a lot of shame, so I remember someone quoting to me, “The marriage bed is sacred.” It was lovely… very redeeming… and good in the moment I first heard it. But it was also quoted to imply that “everything goes” in the marriage bed. If you’re married, it’s kosher…

Without the whole-Bible framework, this example of misquoting scripture can become license for anything. Because the verse is actually a command to, “Keep the marriage bed sacred.” Imagine my surprise when I found it written very different than free-license. Keep the marriage bed sacred is a lot more congruent with the whole of scripture which says God will judge fornicators and adulterers.

The Letter of the Law But Not the Heart

Scripture does not need to be misquoted to be taken out of the whole-heart of the gospel. If you read that someone cannot deny their spouse intimacy without also applying God’s design for equality, consent, and selfless love, it allows marital rape and oppression.

Or the popularly quoted OT scripture that a girl must marry her rapist. At the time, and still in some current cultures, a rape victim was utterly destroyed. She became ineligible for marriage, and since children were the only way to provide for her future, she would be completely destitute. So, giving her “raised status” as a wife, in a home, and then not being allowed to divorce her actually redeemed her living needs.

This is why I bristle when someone wants to look up a scripture to prove a point.

Be careful when you accept thoughts and statements that sound biblical. Be careful when you quote a portion of the text without the whole-heart, or use it as a weapon against yourself or others. You might lay a brick of stubble in someone’s foundation.

Also, be wary of taking your interpretation or personal directive as prescriptive law. Just because God revealed to you that you should not masturbate, it doesn’t mean you should tell the whole high school youth group that masturbation is sin. Rather, share how God can speak individually through the heart of scripture for a specific need in the moment.

Acts 18:24-26 says Apollos was mighty in scripture and knew many things but a husband and wife team, Priscilla and Aquila, took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

More Accurately

Some many people have used the verse “God hates divorce” as a weapon. God hates me, or God hates that a person got divorced. It’s quoted with disregard that God is speaking about hating the violence of divorce against the vulnerable, inside of a covenant which should protect them. Doesn’t it make more sense that he hated the blood on the garments of men who abused women by treating them like objects and divorcing them?

Yet, my grandma couldn’t teach Sunday school because she’d been divorced. That’s human tradition.

The Bible Project App has a great series right now about the Sermon on the Mount. You listen to a pleasant reading of scripture, a snippet of a discussion, and a short video commentary each week while working through the passage.

Week 20 speaks to divorce, and it helped me wrestle with some of the misquoted verses and lies I’ve always had. (Week 18 also validated why looking at someone with lust dehumanizes them.)

The Bible Project unpacks the specific question surrounding that cultural debate of divorce. It speaks to a situation which doesn’t align perfectly today, since men can’t cast aside their wives without income and protection because she ruins dinner. But when we take this reply from Jesus and repeat the Bible literally word for word, we think the only legit reason for divorce is infidelity.

Human tradition uses the Bible to justify social power. Dismantling and deconstruction can remove the barbs of weaponized, incomplete thoughts from scripture to see the larger context of God’s provision for humanity. Dismantling human tradition has been beautiful. I am meeting a good God.

Deconstruction isn’t just pulling the entire structure down because of tragedy or tough things you don’t understand. It’s testing all the bricks with fire. And even if most of them burn up—can’t God build from the ground anew? All we need is the cornerstone. Hold on to Christ and wrestle with everything else.

You don’t need a brick that says “7 day creation with dinosaurs.” You don’t need a brick that says “musical instruments and dim lighting followed by a 35 minute, three-point sermon.”

I mean… wasn’t the Jesus freak movement just removing the bricks that said, “men can’t have long hair” and, “you must wear shoes to church?”

Don’t fear the wilderness if your worthless structure is burning down. Let human traditions turn to ash, keep only the cornerstone.