Biographical Humility

Biographical humility speaks to a person’s journey story – how a person is where he is. One of the issues at hand here is the poison that assumption is to restoration. Because how a person sees another determines how a person responds to another, it matters what a person assumes about another. In fact, great attempts should be made to avoid assuming anything onto a person’s story and how she arrived in the reality where she is presently living.

For example, it is very common to have a person drive up in an expensive vehicle (i.e. – Lexus, Cadillac, Suburban) to a food pantry that provides free food to people in need. The immediate assumption easily made is, "There is irresponsible behavior here. Get less expensive transportation and buy food for your family.” However, biographical humility would pursue the story of the client being served. How did he end up in this place of need? Has it been a journey of bad decisions or was it a recent job loss that has him in a decision-making process about where to go from here and how to get there? That food pantry’s service could be a very new and humbling experience for a client on a hard road.

Maybe it is generational poverty and that car represents a lot of unhealthy life choices. But when those unhealthy choices have been part of a person’s entire life history, it is what is known. Sociologists say that once a family has reached the third generation of poverty it typically becomes impossible for that family to immerge to self-sustainability because they know no other life road.

One year I was serving a local middle school by providing one hour of weekly character training for a class of students with ongoing behavioral issues. One day the character trait to be discussed was self-control. It just so happens there was a fight at lunch that day and two of the boys from this class were involved. When asked in the class discussion later that day, “Why would you not choose to walk away from a potential fight when you know what the negative consequences will be?” One of the students unhesitatingly answered, “Cause my mamma tells me, ‘You were born in the hood, you ain’t never gettin’ out of the hood, so you might as well learn how to survive in the hood.’” If that is a youth’s life story told to him by his mother because it has been her story, how is he to think any differently? For that student, the negative consequences were survival based – his story told him so.

Copyright, Chuck Coward, 2010

Restorative Humility

People like to fix people and when the successes of repair efforts are limited, patience and compassion run out. Restorative humility always remembers “but by the grace of God.” A broken fallen world is the dwelling place and reality for humanity. Physical and mental disabilities are a fact. The complexities and extended, mountainous challenges of generational poverty are unbelievably and deeply real. Does God have the power to heal it all? Sure He does. Will He heal it all for all people? It doesn’t seem so. Where does that leave the church and the rest of the responding world? Restorative humility stays the journey, whatever the perceived successes and failures. The humble motivation is ushered out of love that is patient, kind, is not arrogant, does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things – it does not fail, end or dry up. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8) Even a broken world becomes a better and different world when restorative humility is at the core of the church’s presence and global expression.

Copyright Chuck Coward, 2010

Love with Gusto, Act with Vision

I'm reading Ronald Rolheiser's Holy Longing for, I don't know, the 4th time maybe. I have been stimulated and refreshed by his writing on the detriment of divorcing moral piety and social justice. As I pondered his thoughts I realized the negative impact of personal faith and rugged individualism. There is a need for the integrated thinking and view of the east to infect the disintegrated world of the west. Is it possible to experience individual piety or "moraless" justice?

There is a lot of busy movement in the world deemed to be helpful, but in the end really is not. Haste, more often than not does lead to waste - of resources and life. The need for thoughtful response to world issues via integrated thinking is quite significant.  However, lack of or half-hearted engagement in the world's brokenness is equally detrimental.

Response to human needs should be with gusto anchored in and guided by a vision of life restored. I picture a kite with a string and tail or a hot air balloon with a controlled fire. Love with gusto, act with vision. When giving into generational poverty is with no questions, accountability or coaching it is life-detrimental and selfish - guilt relief is what I tend to call it. When there is a lack of giving out of cynicism or a childish attitude of "mine," it is life-destroying and selfish - arrogance.

Action must also avoid avenues that are simply paved by what I can do. I alone can do very little. We together can accomplish much. When strengths, knowledge, resources, relationships, etc. are pulled together into intentional and collaborative action, driven by selfless love and a vision for life-restoration, we all become better people in community.

If you claim to be a follower of Jesus, his way is to love with gusto and act with vision in and through you. Take a look. What do you see?

Envisioning with Humble Excitement

This morning I read James 4:13-15:

"Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'"

Be careful of believing your own press. Arrogance can take you to a place that does not lead to life, health and peace. Remember who and whose you are. You are not Creator and Sustainer, God is. This is the Father's world and you are but a small part of it.

With that said, you are also part of God's special creation bearing His image. As a follower of Jesus, God dwells within my being - He IS my being and my life!! I am to be a visionary, creative, life restoring force in this world of brokenness. It is not to be ushered from arrogance and pride, however. It is service from a place of humble excitement for what the day, month, year, lifetime may hold.

God is good and He wills to live that goodness through you. Don't taint it with pride.

See Him NOW?

My thoughts this morning are on how locked in people become on what God has done in the past without it driving them to consider what God is doing or is going to do. God's past activity should press us forward. We should always be attentive and anticipatory of God's activity. For those who do pay attention, a further danger is that we think He will duplicate past activity. However, it should be our desire that we experience God acting in present context with a knowledge of future realities as only He can. Then the question becomes one of what our role is within the developing story and whether or not we are faithful in it.

How is God at work in your world right now? How are you to be an expression of His life-restoring heart amidst human brokenness that exists in the now?