Sunday, July 22, 2018

Let go of the darkness: thoughts on forgiveness

Sometimes a certain topic keeps repeating itself in our lives.  To me that means that I need to stop and pay attention. Recently one of those topics for me was forgiveness.  This is a hard concept for many people, myself included.


In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tell his disciples to forgive "not seven times, but seventy times seven times" (Matthew 18:21-22).  This is one of the first verses I think of when I think of forgiveness.  Seven is the number of completion and perfection in the Old Testament.  When Jesus says to forgive seventy times seven times, he is not saying to literally count 490 times and then quit forgiving.  Instead, he is emphasizing that we are to forgive because it is the right thing to do.  We are to keep on forgiving because it is something God commands of us.  It is something God has done for us and then we are to do for others.  It helps us to live at peace with one another (Romans 12:18, Hebrews 12, Ephesians 4).

Christians are bad at forgiveness.  This goes to our human nature.  Our longing to hold resentment against others.  To judge others and have jealousy.  Our nature to seek revenge and long to get even with others.  We see this within churches.  I see this within myself.  Sometimes we get confused between what it means to seek justice and what it means to forgive.

So much of Christian culture talks about forgiving and forgetting.  That in forgiving we allow ourselves to go back to those who have hurt us and to possibly be hurt again.  That those who hurt people just need to be forgiven and do not need to be held responsible for their actions.  Sometimes it is a good friend who hurt our feelings and we figure that it is safe to go back.  But sometimes the pain is something that may seem unforgivable.  It may be abuse of power or sexual assault / rape or repeated hurtful words beyond comprehension.

This is the stream of thought that tells folks who have been victims of crimes to forgive their oppressors and to keep giving them their power.  It is the stream of thought that tells women and men to stay in their abusive relationships.  It is the stream of thought that tells sexual assault survivors that they need to forgive their assaulter, who they most likely know, and to pretend that the assault did not happen.  This is the idea that forgiveness means starting completely over and pretending that what was wrong did not happen.

This was posted today in one of the Facebook groups I'm in.  Thought it was fitting to put here given this topic.
Not only does that allow for people to do hateful and sinful actions without consequence, but I can't help but think that forgiveness is more complicated than that.  I can't help but feel that there is more meaning than forgiving something and ignoring that it ever happened.  Because I don't think that's how forgiveness works.  That doesn't pay into consideration a major peace of the puzzle that is missing -- self-love and self-care.  Sometimes these mechanisms churches have used to cover up abuse and sin shame people who are victims and are not respectful of their self-care and esteem.

I have come to realize that boundaries are an essential part of living life.  We need to have boundaries in our relationships with others, with ourselves, with work, and with our time (as a few examples).  This can mean giving yourself permission to say no to a volunteer task.  This could mean saying no to someone who continually takes advantage of you.  This could mean saying "I'm busy" to going out when you've had a hard week and your only real plans are drinking wine and watching Netflix.  It could mean deciding not to be friends any longer with a long-time friend because they repeatedly say mean things to you.  It can mean forgiving someone in your heart and still setting boundaries around your interaction with that person.

It is okay to set boundaries.

In a recent video, Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber describes forgiveness as not letting a person have power over you.  She talks about how sometimes when someone hurts us we carry around pain in the form of a darkness.  This darkness can hurt our well being and get in the way of us being our most real and authentic selves.  It can get in the way of us living out our callings and in treating all people with love.  It can be damaging to us and our mental and emotional energy.

Bolz-Weber describes forgiveness as not allowing that person to have control over you anymore.  It is to let go of the resentment.  To choose to let it go -- to not let the other person to have power over you.  It does not mean going back and necessarily choosing to engage in that relationship with them again, but simply choosing to let go of the darkness.

It can be choosing to not let the person who has wronged you have control over you and at the same time setting up boundaries around their interaction with you in the future.  After all reconciliation and forgiveness are different things.  And while both are important as Christians, so is knowing our hearts and our limits.

The book of Proverbs tells us to protect our hearts because it is the wellspring of life (4:23).  Protecting my heart for me means placing boundaries around my relationships with certain people because I feel some darkness toward them.  For me to love this person in a Christ-filled way, I need to set up boundaries in my life.  I may need to not see them, restrict the time I spend with them, or even cut them out of my life, at least for the time being.  I know I have to continue to work on my feelings towards them, but I also know that at least for the time being, these are the boundaries I need to set.

Forgiveness is a heart issue first and foremost.  Just because you forgive someone does not mean their action are going to change.  It does not mean that their heart is changed.  Recognizing that, sometimes we are able to set up boundaries and know that even though we have forgiven someone in our hearts, reconciliation may not need to happen now.  Maybe it will happen eventually, as I have seen happen in my life.  You can't force others to change and the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

I am not the best at forgiveness.  There are certain people I see and the darkness returns inside of me.  This is a good indicator that I haven't actually forgiven this person.  I struggle with this.  I think we all do. Thank goodness God forgives me and knows my heart.  Thank goodness God is teaching me these lessons.

I think forgiveness is a continuous this that God seeks for us to do.  You may need to forgive a single person seventy times seven times, as Jesus describes (anyone who's ever been married or in a long relationship knows this).  It is a decision to not let others have control over my inner peace and to continuously forgive.


Sunday, July 15, 2018

Clean your plate: thoughts on food waste at non-profits

I love food. 

This is very evident in my life.  I love eating food.  But I also love studying food.  I like to learn what different cultures eat and why.  What different religions eat and why and how that plays out on a larger scale.  I love the theology behind what we eat and what it says about what we believe.  And I love feeding people.  I believe that hunger is something all people can understand on some level.  Even if you have never been food insecure and not known where your next meal is coming from, you may know what it is like to be hungry before your next meal or to be sitting in school hungry.

It is something that is universal.  It is also something that impacts all areas of life.  Studies have shown that those who do not have food do not do as well in school or in the work place.  It can be hard to focus on school when your stomach is in knots.  Food insecurity and hunger also impacts health, obesity, healthcare, and anything and everything in between.  If the only store in your area doesn't have fresh produce or nutritional options, and the cheaper options are soda, candy, and chips, guess what you're going to get? All these things work together.

The concept of food waste has been getting a lot of traction lately.  I have seen multiple posts on facebook about how grocery stores are giving their waste to non-profits.  I even follow one organization on Instagram that takes "ugly" produce that stores can't sell and sells it at a discounted rate.

If you google food waste, you'll see a variety of articles, both scholarly and not, about how food waste is ruining the environment.  These articles also talk about how we should have enough food to feed all the people, it's all up to distribution.  According to Feeding America, in the United States, $218 billion in food is thrown away each year and 21% of landfills are filled with food waste.  This is a serious problem.

At Baylor University in Waco (where I went to school... I will talk about Baylor a lot throughout my blogging), a program was started a number of years ago called Campus Kitchens.  This program takes unused food from the dining halls to local non-profits.  It is a great program that has helped decrease the amount of food waste at Baylor.

However, what I had never thought about until recently is, what happens to the food when it makes it's way to the non-profit? 

One of my goals professionally has been at some point to work at a food pantry.  This happened faster than I would have anticipated.  For 5 months this spring I served as assistant manager for a pantry in a North Dallas suburb.

One of the first things I was struck by when working there is how each store that we receive grocery rescue from gives us hundreds of freshly made bread and baked items each week.  Each grocery store has a baked goods section and rarely are all the items taken.  So food pantries get those items and if pantries aren't careful, can end up throwing away thousands of pounds of bread each month.

Lately some of the stores have greatly increased their donations to include lots of produce.  As I was filling in for our food pantry manager this week, we had pallets (that is plural) of produce come each day.  This produce was on its last leg.  Sometimes it would be a full pallet of one crop and it would all be bad.  Our poor volunteers went through all of it looking for stuff that was salvageable.  We ended up not having space for a lot of it because of how much was given and how much of it was bad to begin with.  Even with 100+ clients entering our doors each week, there is no way we could give away 10 boxes of spinach on Monday, 12 boxes of broccoli on Tuesday, etc.  Twice this week our dumpsters have been full of food waste, waiting for the garbage people to come, and smelling up the area behind our buildings as it sits in the heat.  We're going to change this and work with our regional food bank to help redistribute this food better so that less of it is wasted.

What does this say about our society?

I've been thinking that one of the faults of a free and competitive market is that each store produces an over abundance that they will sell and often times it can be difficult to estimate the actual amount of each product you receive.  Competition is a real thing -- supply and demand.  So we gets tons of breads and produce and other items that do not sell.  Which is a good thing, don't get me wrong.  We are able to feed people with the donations, which is wonderful!  But you also have to wonder what causes the over abundance and how does that get solved.

There are people who work to reduce food waste as part of their jobs everyday.  The Feeding America Network does a lot of this, which includes most of your major food banks around the country.  They work with grocery stores to help keep them on track as far as their donations and help with distribution of items. 

I don't have answers.  I wish I did, but obviously this is a giant problem and I'm just seeing one piece of the puzzle.  Some of it starts at home and being cautious about what we are buying.  It starts with using what is in our pantries and being aware of the impact what we buy makes.  Reducing waste on a smaller scale. 

Now when I go grocery shopping in any of the stores where we get food, I wonder if I will be seeing some of this food soon in the food pantry.  I wonder about what happens to the food that isn't bought.  I wonder how we can best feed all people, because people are still hungry when we have an overabundance of food.




Sunday, July 8, 2018

Somewhere between

I've been feeling the urge to write and preach again.  Somewhere in time I stopped my regular blogging.  This happened somewhere in graduate school, which is ironic because that time was deeply ingrained with deep thinking and a variety of kinds of theology.  I probably lost my urge to write for fun somewhere between the dense theology books, papers I had to write for school, Genesis and Revelation, the many presentations and community meetings, and having major surgery.  And the Netflix.  Don't forgot about the apathy of my last year of graduate school, almost not graduating, and the Netflix.  And then the struggle to find full time employment that ended only recently.

Perhaps most striking, somewhere along the way I lost my confidence in my opinion and my voice in writing (Yes, I'm an enneagram 6).

This is sometimes what happens in higher education -- as you learn more about the way the world works, about Scripture and about God, you become more sure of the things you're sure of and you learn how much you do not know.  The gap between what you know and what God can only know becomes greater.  That can either be scary or affirming that God has it all in God's hands.

And I think culture has shifted too.  Well, I don't think.  I know it has.

For eight years I was in higher education learning about theology and social work under the Obama administration.  I mean, think about it.  President Obama was elected my senior year of high school and I watched the inauguration in my government class my last semester before I graduated.  President Trump was elected and inaugurated my last year of graduate school, right before I was thrust out into the world as a blossoming minister and social worker.  Talk about learning about social policy and servitude under one way of thinking about the world and having to navigate a new world without the comforts of the classroom.

The world has shifted.  People feel more free to be open with their hatred.  People on both sides of the political spectrum feel the need to ostracize others.  People align their politics and their religious beliefs.  People learn theology from politicians and politics from preachers.  And identity gets tied to all of it, which makes this way more complicated.

I want to be able to be well balanced and to not be too one sided.  I want my thoughts and words and actions to be guided by Christ, though I know they are not always.  I know that I get too caught up in the nitty gritty of politics and theological debates, and that sometimes I should remember more so that the greatest commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Thank God for grace.

So here I am wanting to come back to writing.  Please give me grace and understanding as I seek to find my voice amongst the crazy and give you my thoughts on whatever I feel led to write.  I hope that eventually I can start a new blog that won't have embarrassing blog posts that I wrote when I was a Freshman in college and 19 years old.  I want to find more of my voice and where God is leading me first.

So here you go.  Reopening of my blog and to where God is leading me.  Opening my next chapter and being open to what God is teaching me.  Because God is leading me somewhere... he (or she? See, mind and theology opening) leads us all somewhere.  But lately I've been feeling this pull to something new.  To preach God's truths in leadership.  Let's see where God takes me.

My story isn't done yet.  This chapter is just opening.