Dis-appointed

John Ortberg - The Life You've Always Wanted

...I am disappointed that I still love God so little and sin so much. I always had the idea as a child that adults were pretty much the people they wanted to be. Yet the truth is, I am embarrassingly sinful. I am capable of dismaying amounts of jealousy if someone succeeds more visibly than I do. I am disappointed at my capacity to be small and petty. I cannot pray for very long without my mind drifting into a fantasy of angry revenge over some past slight I thought I had long since forgiven or some grandiose fantasy of achievement. I can convince people I'm busy and productive and yet waste large amounts of time watching television.

Does that sound familiar? If so, who else knows you well enough to know that about you?

...These are just some of the disappointments. I have other ones, darker ones, that I'm not ready to commit to paper. The truth is, even to write these words is a little misleading, because it makes me sound more sensitive to my falleness that I really am. Sometimes, although I am aware of how far I fall short, it doesn't even bother me very much. And I am disappointed at my lack of disappointment.

In that last sentence John Ortberg describes one of the most clever and destructive aspects of me and plenty of other Christians I know; to not care enough to fight.

Not caring actually takes a lot of energy. It's amazing how well we can do it really, but the cracks soon show. Stone is not the natural state of our hearts and they will feel something, or we will find some stimulation that makes us feel at least something, be it bad relationships, drugs or maybe fetishes, to name but a few.

So how do we challenge that? What can we do to help us care?

Well, the reality is God wants us to care. He wants us to care about all sorts of things; Love, Justice, Mercy to name a few. And because God is good, He will help us to care.

Practically, I like the Jesus Analysis...

Anger; Secondary Emotion

Anger is good. Anger is a good thing. Anger is a God thing. This is why it's OK that Jesus got angry in the temple.

It's what happens with the anger that can be a problem, and it's that that our society confuses with anger and then lables as bad.

John Ortberg - Everybodys Normal Till You Get To Know Them

Remember how you learned in grade school that red, blue and yellow are primary colours and that other colours can be made from a mixture of other of them? In a similar way, anger is not a primary emotion. It is virtually always the result of a mixture of other emotions, such as hurt, frustration or fear. If we want to manage anger constructively, we need to step back and ask what is underneath the anger. Otherwise we are not dealing with the root cause

Anger is a warning. It tells us when something is wrong. It is, however a secondary emotion and we have to look deeper to what's underneath.

I was talking to a young guy recently, who has a real anger problem and what's worse, he feels that that is just the way he is.

I seriously disagree with him. However, 'Anger Management' techniques are not enough. They can be helpful, but only in reducing the negative impact of our mis-directed anger. The best ones are the ones that help us re-direct our anger in the same moment it arrives; sucessfully challenging the cause of the anger, be it a person or action or situation.

Thank God, then, that the Holy Spirit can transform our Hearts, so that we, especially young males in our day, can avoid being trapped by this emotion. Instead God can change our very understanding of how we feel, and 're-wire' our reactions; if we let Him.