Storyline Gathering - 02.07.21 FROM CONTEMPT TO COMPASSION Mike Gathright
Say what you will about this last year, one good thing we are seeing of a lot of is conviction. People are extremely motivated, super passionate, and really inspired. There is no shortage of conviction today.
The problem is that way too often this conviction is leading not just to action but tragically, to contempt. The nightly news and daily headlines are a constant reminder of the contempt that our politicians, pundits and preachers have for each other and anyone or cause with different convictions.
I was talking to a friend of mine who is a marriage counselor and she was telling me, marriages can bounce back from all kinds of incredibly difficult circumstances, deep divisions, horribly painful betrayal even, but one sign that a marriage may be beyond all hope is when one partner or both holds the other in contempt.
I was describing the outline for this talk to a friend, he cautioned me that as destructive and harmful as contempt is, apathy may be worse. It is an interesting point. Apathy is difficult to work with, to grow from, because by definition it is a disengagement from the world around us. In some ways it is a type of contempt for any action at all...apathy is a thinly veiled attempt to get through a life of, what Thoreau described as - “quiet desperation.”
So, we may think apathy is a step above or beyond the hatred and chaos of contempt, but it is not…it is the tacit admission that all conviction inevitably leads to doing more harm than good - all conviction is the slippery slope to contempt.
This morning I want to challenge that - both our temptation toward apathy and the slippery slope that too much conviction inevitably leads to contempt…And I’d like to invite us to consider the life of Jesus as an incredible example of how deep conviction can lead us from contempt to compassion
Dear Hate - Maren Morris
To avoid apathy and contempt, we need to see how love conquers all. And the best example of this is the life of Jesus and his conviction to live by faith in the Grace of God...which makes our question, How does living BY faith in the Grace of God - how does that conviction - lead us from contempt to compassion?
We have to begin by acknowledging that Jesus, at times, seemed to display contempt: he called the religious establishment and its leaders, blind guides, serpents, a brood of vipers, empty vessels filled with dead men’s bones; among other things - none of which were very nice. In one translation he berates the religious elites as hypocrites saying, “you strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.” Once he said of people exploiting children, it would be better had they not been born! Another time entered the temple and by force kicked out dishonest merchants taking advantage of vulnerable people.
But in fairness we do need to see two things about the indignation of Jesus, first, it was reserved, not for those who got it wrong, messed up, were broke, broken or believed in accurately...but strictly for people who held other people in contempt…through exclusion, shame and exploitation... and before we too quickly use that as permission to “go and do likewise” whenever we see fit - we should remember that Jesus has full and accurate knowledge of exactly what was going on in every situation and in every human heart - we... do not.
The second thing we need to see about Jesus’s intense frustration with some people was ultimately, when we look at the full story of his life, the bible makes it clear, “he died for the sins of the whole world”, and that means everyone, not just the good guys and the nice people. On the cross he even asks God to forgive those who were the most contemptible of all – the people in the process of killing him and enjoying it while they did.
That is not contempt...that is compassion. In the end Jesus’s life can only be fairly described as one “full of compassion” even for the most despicable villains. With that being said, I think one of the reasons we can struggle, I know one of the reasons that I struggle, with conviction breeding contempt instead of compassion is when I get STUCK in a certain place or stage of the life of faith; that elevates certain convictions over and above LOVE.
We are all familiar with the framework of “stages of development”. Psychology majors will recall Piaget’s four stages of child development and Erickson’s 8 stages of psycho-social development.
Many of us might be familiar with Kohlberg’s stages of moral development and Elisabeth Kuhbler-Ross’s five stages of grief
When something is described in “stages” we too often think - linear progression and while there is some truth to that, I’ve always found it more helpful to think of stages of development as descriptions of the process we move through (even cycle through) when we are growing. The problem arises when we get STUCK in a stage.
For millennia spiritual thinkers of every tradition, have used the framework of stages to describe a healthy engagement with the life of faith and where it is leading us. One framework that I’ve found to be helpful, lays out the stages of faith development with their corresponding core conviction, like this: STAGE CONVICTION 1. Simplicity – Correctness 2. Complexity – Effectiveness 3. Perplexity – Honesty, justice
As a young life leader, in my role at Storyline, as a parent and certainly personally, I have seen how a growing faith often moves through these stages. I have also seen, and experienced personally, what happens when we get stuck in a stage. For example, the stage of simplicity is often experienced as a light switching on, we come to faith and suddenly “we can see” and it is easy to tell the difference between good and bad, right and wrong. In this stage it is not uncommon to fall in love with correctness, to be enamored with answers. We are hard to be around in this stage. We’ve all been around people in this stage, it’s not fun.
When we come to believe THIS simplicity is not the path but the destination, our core conviction gets stuck on “correctness” - in politics, this is the stage of ideology - when someone believes not just what they believe is right, but every other view is stupid or evil. The core conviction of correctness breeds contempt for the incorrect. Entire traditions and movements, communities and religions, ideologies and movements can get stuck in this stage.
The same is true for the next two stages. As we grow older and hopefully grow up, simplicity is often smothered under the fertilizer of real life and blooms into complexity. In this stage, we begin to realize, much to the dismay of the ideologues, the politicians, pundits and preachers, that life isn’t that simple. In this stage, we begin to love effectiveness, how to “get things done” on a practical level, solving problems, fixing things, achieving goals in a complex world?!? Effectiveness is the core conviction. To be honest, I struggle with getting stuck in this stage, and sure enough, when someone pushes back, when they don’t share my complex yet effective view of life, work, family, theology it isn’t compassion rising up in me, it is contempt. This exasperated eyeroll of “how can they be so ______?” dumb, selfish, shallow, greedy, evil...
The next stage of faith can do the same in us if, when we get stuck there, when we try to live our complex and effective view of life - OUT, into the world, suddenly, life and faith becomes “perplexing”, like “what does this look like in the real world? What should our culture be like? How is this applied to society?” It shouldn’t be surprising, stuck in the stage of perplexity, that we come to love our version of justice, it can become our core conviction. And maybe you’ve noticed, when our core conviction is justice and it is opposed, compassion is not the response, it is almost always white, hot contempt.
A few Sundays ago, for our Gathering we remembered and celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King; this was a man with profound convictions about justice...his life begs the question - HOW when this conviction of justice was opposed did he respond with compassion and not contempt? I believe it is because he was not stuck in this stage of faith, he was living the life of faith, animated by a higher core conviction, moving through these stages toward the ultimate Goal.
The stages of Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity and their convictions aren’t bad, but they are only a means to an end and if we get stuck, when we mistake the path for the destination, stuck in these lesser convictions when they are opposed we are doomed to contempt. But, as we see in Martin Luther King, and as he discovered it in the life of Jesus, a healthy engagement in the life of faith ultimately leads us toward the goal of Harmony, with the core conviction of LOVE. LOVE is the only conviction that, in the end, even when it is opposed, leads to compassion not contempt.
One of Jesus’ first followers, a man named Paul, described living BY faith in the grace of God in many ways, none more compelling than this soaring passage. I think you’ll find the stages of faith and their convictions in this passage AND where God is telling us they all lead, IF we’ll let them. This is what the bible says...
Now I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Love, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end. Love never dies....
We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete...When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good. We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. 1 Cor. 12:21-13:13
Paul makes it clear that nearly everything we strive for, all of our lesser convictions, will be swallowed up in something greater. Even faith and hope don’t have the last word. Only love remains… What a powerful reminder of where a healthy engagement with life and faith is headed, and the dangers of getting stuck in any stage along the way, of allowing our core convictions to be correctness, effectiveness or even justice as we see it. That doesn’t mean these convictions are bad or wrong, it only means they are the means not the end, they are scaffolding not the building, the aroma not the feast.
The life of faith is simple at times, complex at others and often perplexing, but ultimately all of these stages are leading us toward harmony; a deep, abiding and extravagant love for everyone, everywhere, every day. A love that when it is opposed, doesn’t respond with contempt, but compassion.
It is this love and compassion, the Love of God, that led Jesus to the Cross where he laid down correctness, set aside effectiveness and absorbed injustice for the sake of me and you and the entire world which held God in contempt. It is because of the Cross that we can let go of these convictions as our core and move forward into harmony and love. The Cross of Jesus is where conviction leads to compassion. And the life of faith in His Gospel of Grace is the invitation to pick up our Cross and do likewise, follow Jesus beyond faith, past hope and into the most excellent way of love, the only conviction that leads from contempt to compassion.