Preached · October 13, 2013
Series · Emotionally Healthy Spirituality
Text · Genesis 50
Introduction
Like I said, we're in the middle of a three-week series, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. Two weeks ago, Pastor John introduced us to this, and we've talked about one truth and three lies. Today we're going to talk about a challenge.
The first truth Pastor John presented was: "I cannot be spiritually healthy if I am not emotionally healthy." To show this, he used the example of the barrel. Barrels have staves, and our lives, our maturity, our growth are a lot like a barrel, in which the lowest stave is going to be as far as we can grow. So many of us who have grown up in the church — or maybe outside the church — have heard all sorts of growth strategies: how to grow socially, or educationally, or even spiritually. But so few of us have talked about how to grow emotionally. That's what we're doing over these eight weeks: talking about our emotional health, hoping to build up that lowest stave at the bottom of our barrels, so we can grow, so we can hold more water in our proverbial barrels.
The three lies we talked about last week are: I am what I do, I am what I have, and I am what others think of me. These are three lies we tell ourselves, or that we've been told throughout our lives. To show this, Ryan used the example of the Dutch facade. In his romantic way, he had taken his now-wife to what was then a taco joint — but it had this Dutch facade on it. It doesn't matter how nice the outside is if the inside is just greasy tacos. It doesn't matter how nice the Dutch facade is if it's just "eat fresh" Subway stuff on the inside. So we talked about the truth that it doesn't matter how prettied up you get; it's the inside that matters. First Samuel chapter 16 says:
The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
So I want you to say this with me — these are the truth versions. Say them out loud with me: I am not what I do. I am not what I have. I am not what others think of me.
One Dare: Go Back to Go Forward
Now this week, we're going to talk about a dare, a challenge. And it is: I must go back in order to go forward. What this means is that in order for us to move forward in our emotional and spiritual health, I need — and you need — to go back to our past, particularly our family origins, to understand who we are today.
To illustrate what this looks like, we're going to take a look at the book of Genesis chapter 50. If you have your Bibles, iPads, Kindles, other reading devices, turn to Genesis chapter 50, verses 14 and forward.
First, let me give you some context and background. Joseph is the eleventh son out of twelve brothers. He is the son of Jacob, also known as Israel. And he has had a rough go of it in his life. His brothers hated him so much that they sold him into slavery — which, I'm sure, many of us, if we'd had the opportunity, would have done to our own family members. They sold him into slavery, presumed or hoped him to be dead; but he wasn't dead. He was made a servant in Egypt, but his master had a wife who accused him of rape, which wasn't true, but it didn't matter, so his master threw him into prison. Eventually he gets the opportunity to predict a famine coming. This famine is devastating, terrible. But because he was able, by the power of God, to predict this famine, he is promoted out of prison to second-in-charge of the land of Egypt — which basically meant he was over the entire economy of the Middle East.
So the brothers who sold him and passed him off as dead unwittingly come to him for aid. He reveals himself to them. He offers them forgiveness. And years later, their father — the father of these twelve brothers — dies. To which the surviving family members say, "Uh-oh. Dad's dead. This brother that we sold into slavery has every right and every opportunity now to do whatever he wants to do with us."
So this is where we pick up the story, verse 14:
After burying Jacob, Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had accompanied him to his father's burial. But now that their father was dead, Joseph's brothers became fearful. "Now Joseph will show his anger and pay us back for all the wrong we did to him," they said. So they sent this message to Joseph: "Before your father died, he instructed us to say to you: 'Please forgive your brothers for the great wrong they did to you, for their sin in treating you so cruelly.' So we, the servants of the God of your father, beg you to forgive our sin." When Joseph received the message, he broke down and wept. Then his brothers came and threw themselves down before Joseph. "Look, we are your slaves," they said. But Joseph replied, "Don't be afraid of me. Am I God, that I can punish you? You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people. No, don't be afraid. I will continue to take care of you and your children." So he reassured them by speaking kindly to them.
Now, when the brothers say, "Before your father died, he instructed us to say to you," you kind of wonder — is this true, or did they just make it up? And there's some poetry going on here: "Look, we are your slaves."
Recognize Reality
Here we see the story of a family broken by sin, deceit, dysfunction, and fear. As soon as the dad dies, the brothers begin to fear for their lives. This family needs some serious Dr. Phil in their lives; they could be poster children for the Jerry Springer Show. But Joseph, the now de facto leader of this clan — the one they are rightfully afraid of — has done three things in order to bring health back to his family. He has recognized reality, he has combated compartmentalization, and he has accepted adoption. So buckle in; we're going to take a look at these three ideas together this morning.
First of all, Joseph recognized reality. In Joseph's story, we can note that he did not avoid the facts of what had happened to him. Multiple times in Joseph's section of the book of Genesis, he's seen crying about broken relationships, making amends for what has happened, and ultimately forgiving his family. This doesn't happen by avoiding the past. It happens by confronting it head-on. In order to live into the fullness of the emotional and spiritual health and maturity that God desires for us, we have to cease living in denial and illusion about our lives and ourselves, and instead embrace reality.
This is not easy; it is not fun. For most of us, it is not a gentle stroll down memory lane when we think of our past. Because we live and abide in a sin-infested, broken-down world, our past is riddled with mistakes done to us and done by us, riddled with the pain we've caused or pain we felt, riddled with relationships that are broken or that broke us. But the fact of the matter is, if we truly desire growth and health, we can't ignore wounds that fester. We must go back in order to go forward.
Excuses and Realities
Now, many of us resist this, and we think we have some pretty good excuses as to why. So allow me to assist you in wrestling those supposedly pretty good excuses down to the ground.
Excuse number one: "I don't want to dwell on the past; it will just make me bitter and angry." However, recognizing your past is the essential part of understanding who you are today. None of us spontaneously arrived. We are the culmination of an infinite amount of moments leading up to today. To ignore those moments is to ignore the God who created them, crafted them, and redeemed them. So yes, dwelling on your past in a broken and harmful way could make you bitter and angry. But to dwell on your past seeking out the God who created your past could lead to redemption.
Excuse number two: "I'm a new creation in Christ, according to 2 Corinthians 5; my past doesn't matter anymore." But the reality is, in order to put on the new self, it requires taking off the old self. Take a look at Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians 4 says this: […]. In order to do this, we must have a high amount of self-awareness — a high amount of awareness of what our old self is and where it came from. And this is a process. You are indeed already a new creation in Christ; I am not denying that. But the reality is that there is a process that transforms you in your entirety. Yes, you already are a new creation in Christ, but there is a process that transforms you. And that process includes looking back at your old self, figuring out why you are the way you are, and casting it off.
The third excuse we might use is, "It wasn't that bad. When I look back at my past, at my family, my origins, it wasn't that bad; I don't need to think about it." But the reality is — bad news — you were raised by depraved people. All of us were. We were all raised by sin-stained individuals: parents and grandparents and guardians and siblings. It was that bad. Now, it wasn't irredeemably bad. And yes, there are others who may have had it worse than you, so don't try to outdo someone else's bad-growing-up story. But the fact of the matter is, whatever family you were raised in, or whatever family you're raising now, or whatever family you raised, it included mistakes and issues and problems and sin — all of which you absorbed, soaked in, marinated in, and therefore all of which you're going to continue to live out and repeat and recycle into your own family and relationships. That is, unless you recognize those mistakes, those issues, those problems, those sins for what they are, and call upon God to put them to a permanent end. But you can't do that until you admit it was that bad.
Our fear of bringing secrets and sin into the light drives us to the illusion that if we don't think about our past, it will just go away. But it doesn't. Unhealed wounds open us up to habitual sin against God and against others.
What's Wrong with Me?
Now, think about this from the perspective of a child. A child doesn't ask, "What's wrong with my environment?" but, "What's wrong with me?"
For instance, many of you are aware of my story, aware that I was adopted. Before I was adopted, I was raised for the first seven years of my life by my biological mother, who suffered from a mental condition called paranoid schizophrenia. This mental disorder caused her to believe in elaborate delusions about reality. Perhaps one of the most dramatic delusions she had, that I can remember, was her belief that her mother — who had just died of liver disease due to alcoholism — was not in fact dead; that the doctors had somehow pulled the wool over her eyes and had faked her death. Because she believed this delusion so fiercely, it led to a bunch of irrational actions, including putting supplies in the casket, like water and food, and eventually trying to get to the graveyard to dig her up — all these kinds of weird things.
But what was most impactful on me — what shapes me as an adult today — was being at the graveside as they began to cover up the casket with dirt. I'm six, seven years old, just sitting on the ground crying and crying and crying. But I was told to shut up, to stop making a scene, that she wasn't really dead, and that my emotions were invalid. Well, you don't need four years of counseling to figure out what that did to my opinion about emotions. Well — I needed four years of counseling. But anyway, you can easily see what that does to someone's view about the importance of emotions.
Now, my point is that when Toni — my biological mom — said things like that, I wasn't capable of pausing the situation and pondering in my little six-year-old mind, "Hmm, I wonder how this ill-crafted environment will shape my ability to process emotions as an adult." No, instead, all I could do was ask, "What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me?"
But today, what I want to do is give you the permission to ask about your past — your childhood, your family, your relationships, your marriages, your parents, your past marriages, their past marriages. I want to give you the permission to ask: What was wrong with my environment?
The Family Ten Commandments
For an example of this, I want to walk you through, really quickly, some of these family Ten Commandments. These are lies we may have been told — not all of them, maybe some of them, some more than others — lies we've been told by our families.
Number one: Money is the best source of security. Number two: Avoid conflict at all costs. Number three: Sex is not to be spoken about openly. Number four: Sadness is a sign of weakness, therefore get over your losses quickly and move on. Number five: Anger is dangerous and bad, and therefore you should let it out with sarcasm, or in rare but violent bursts. Number six: You owe your parents for all that they've done for you, therefore duty to your family comes before everything, and you must not speak of your family's dirty laundry in public. Number seven: Don't show vulnerability, don't trust people, and don't let anyone hurt you ever again. Number eight: Other cultures and races are not as good as yours, therefore only be friends with and marry people who are like you. Number nine: Success is getting into the best school, making lots of money, getting married, having children. Number ten: You are not allowed to have certain feelings, and/or your feelings aren't important.
Many — most, probably all — of us can relate to one, two, or three of these family Ten Commandments. Or, if all ten, that's okay too. These were taught — maybe not explicitly, maybe we weren't sat down and had a talking-to about it — but taught, modeled to us in our families. In short: it was that bad.
Combat Compartmentalization
So what do we do? Well, we must combat compartmentalization. The unfortunate thing is that so few of us are willing to go back, to turn away from the old self as well as put on the new self. Therefore we end up trying to put tuxes over muddy bib overalls. Or, as Jesus put it, we try to put new wine into old wineskins. Do you know why you don't put new wine into old wineskins? Because new wine needs to ferment — especially if you're making wine two thousand years ago, which I suggest you all try (I don't know if you can). If you're making wine two thousand years ago, you're putting it in these pigskins, and they're releasing carbon dioxide, and there's no way for that air to escape very well. The wineskins are inflexible, so when you put new, bubbly wine in there, they explode, they burst.
In the same way, when we recognize the turmoil of our inner lives, and instead of allowing God to dig deep inside our past to bring healing, we attempt to cover up the pain of our inner lives by just adding more stuff and activities. And where we get so confused is that the stuff and activities we add are good stuff. We add in the Bible studies, and prayer routines, and worship music CDs, and concerts, and accountability groups, and missional communities, and, and, and. Obviously, I'm not trying to say these things are bad things. They're not. But when we compartmentalize our lives into "the spiritual things I do" and "everything else," then of course we're going to end up feeling like an old wineskin, ready to explode from the pressure any second.
And unfortunately, this is exactly how salvation can be presented to us by churches and religious institutions. Instead of a process of recreating you into the healthy and whole and vibrant human being God intended you to be, religion just turns into another life accessory — an at-times convenient add-on to life that can just as easily be ignored as it can be utilized. So no wonder so many of us get frustrated at this whole Christianity thing. We're like a car that needs a whole new engine, but all we got was more GPS units, and five-disc CD players, and TVs in the back seats. Sure, these are all great, but they don't help the engine; in fact, they just drag it down.
And the good news is this: God, in his grace, wants to give you a whole new engine. In fact, he already has; it's bought and paid for. It's yours, and no one can take it away from you. When Paul wrote to the utterly sinful and mistake-ridden church in Corinth, he wrote, "To the saints." Do you see it? To the saints! The holy ones! In God's eyes, even the most depraved sitting here today who call Jesus Lord are already saints. But then Paul keeps writing: "To the saints who are called to be saints." Wait, what? I thought we were already saints. Yes — but in order to put on the new self, you have to turn away from the old. In order to accept the new wine, you need a new wineskin. In order to get the new engine, you have to get rid of the old. All that work is greasy and messy and grimy and grungy. But you wouldn't expect your mechanic to put a new engine on top of the old one. Or to put a tux over bib overalls. Or your surgeon to put your heart transplant next to your old heart. Have I used enough metaphors today? All right.
In short, what I'm trying so ineloquently to say is this: stop accessorizing your life with Jesus. He wants to be the core of who you are, the center of our lives — not just a gadget we look at when we're bored, or that we have time for on Sunday mornings because nothing else was scheduled for today. In order for him to be the proper and actual center of our lives, that means we declare Jesus Lord of our past, not just our present; Lord of our previous pain, not just our current happiness; Lord of broken and messed-up families and relationships and emotions. We must go back, and we must allow Jesus to come back with us, in order to go forward.
Archaeological Tells
Let me give you an example. In archaeology, most of the discovery work is done on things called a tell — T-E-L-L, not like a tell in poker. It's a type of mound where, over the centuries, civilizations keep building over and on top of each other. Here's an example of a tell out in the Middle East. It basically looks like a modern-day landfill, but there are actually cities buried underneath, layer by layer by layer. And they're huge. If you can see right in the middle of the picture, there's a guy standing with his arms stretched out. See, there he is — big guy. He's like, "Man, I hope nobody takes pictures of me and shows them to a big church." But that's exactly what happened. Poor guy.
So basically, centuries and millennia ago, you have this civilization. They build a city. And then eventually that civilization burns down, dies, gets defeated by the rebels, the Germans, who knows. And then somebody else comes along and builds another city right on top of that. And then the same thing happens. Rome builds their city, and then they really did get defeated by German barbarians, who come and build on top of that. And then somebody else, and somebody else, until you get to the present day, and you get these massive cities.
If you've ever been to Rome — I know this is a really particular example — if you've ever noticed their subways, there's no rhyme or reason or logic to it. It's not just a simple L or V or anything like that. The reason is, they keep building these subways, and then they come across another artifact or building or civilization, so they have to go over this way, and then they find another and go over this way. Basically the entire city of Rome is a giant tell — a big mound of civilization built on top of civilization built on civilization.
Now, the way you work around this is that you start at the top, and you work your way in spirals around the mound, around the tell. And you do this in order; you don't just dig straight down, because that would be destructive. You don't know what you're going to hit.
I think God wants to work with us in much the same way. He's wise enough to realize that you can't just start at the beginning of our lives and sort out all the psychological problems and issues we have in an instant. It takes time, and delicate digging, and a bit of circling around to get to the root. But for all of us, it requires excavation — not just more building, not just putting more stuff on top.
In other words, we are who we are because of our families and our upbringing and our background. And this can't be helped by just putting more practices on top of old practices. The old habits, informed by our past, need to be seriously looked at and studied and scrutinized. And then — painfully, yes; agonizingly, sure — then we need those old habits removed and replaced by the rhythms of grace that God desires for us. We don't have a spiritual life and everything else. We just have our lives. Every moment of them. This is why Joseph was able to truthfully say to his brothers, "You intended evil, but God intended good." He didn't try to shut out his personal life from his relationship with God. It was his relationship with God that gave him the faith to know that his absurdly horrible life had meaning and purpose. In order to move forward, we must go back.
Accept Adoption
But we don't go back to stay back. Our desire is to move forward into health and maturity. We want our barrels to be whole. We want our Dutch facades to reflect what's actually on the inside. We want our archaeological tells to be fruitful, not just cave-digging. In other words, your family of origin doesn't have to define your future. God defines your future when you surrender the whole of your past to him. This is essentially what Joseph did when he told his family, "Don't be afraid. I will continue to take care of you and your children." In short, he adopted them, to provide them with care, and certainly not for any kindness they did for him. He had worked through his past with his family, accepted the fact that God had used it for a greater purpose, and chose to love and care for his family through it all.
About once a month, I visit with a spiritual director. A relationship with a spiritual director is much different than a relationship with a counselor, or a mentor, or a coach, or an accountability group. Essentially, a spiritual director's main purpose is to ask two questions: one, "What's going on in your life?" and two, "What do you think God is trying to say to you through that?" In a recent meeting with my spiritual director, after about a half hour or so of prayerfully asking these two questions, he gently asked me, "So, are you saying you feel like you must achieve to be loved?" To which I had to be honest and say, "Yes. I am an achievement-based person." To be fair, I think some of it's ingrained in my personality, but I think some of it has been exacerbated by family experiences. But for the most part, if I'm not accomplishing something, I feel less than worthwhile as a person.
Now, my spiritual director gently pushed against this, and he asked the question, "What do you think God is saying to you about that?" Now, let's be honest: I'm a paid staff member at a church. I lead worship. I preach. I have a bachelor's in philosophy and biblical studies. I'm currently in grad school for a master's in theology and biblical studies. If anyone was to know the right answers about what God thinks about me finding my identity and my worth in achievements, it would be me, right? And the fact of the matter is, I do know the right answers. But when it came right down to it, all I could tell my spiritual director was, "I don't know any other way to live. If I'm not achieving something, I don't know what else to do."
And that's how it is with many of us, right? We've so successfully compartmentalized what we know to be true about God and Jesus and salvation and the cross, and yet, when it comes right down to it, we feel utterly powerless and impotent to live any other way than the way we've always lived. We're still addicted to achievement, or success, or approval, or pleasure, or relationships, or hoarding our time and our money and our resources.
Closing: Words from Ephesians
But I want to close with you listening to these words from Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. I'm going to read this from The Message paraphrase, because I think it gets the tone so right. Just listen:
How blessed is God, and what a blessing he is. He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth's foundation, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago, he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. What pleasure he took in planning this. He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son. Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we're a free people — free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free. He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth. It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone. It's in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it — this message of your salvation — found yourselves home free, signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what's coming, a reminder that we'll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.
Do you hear words of achievement? They're not there. Do you hear words of trying to be successful, or get more, or prove yourself? They don't exist. It's in this passage, this piece of Scripture, that we can be confident in the gospel, the message, the good news: that there was nothing you did, no virtue of your own, that caused you to be adopted into the family of God. He chose you and loved you and saved you long before there even was a "you" to begin with.
So your past is not something to be afraid of, or to ignore, or to avoid. Your past was the very thing that God saw and planned to redeem when he said, "I love you." It is in these verses that we hear that there was nothing we did to deserve God's love, and there's nothing we can do to diminish it. This is grace, supreme and absolute — gentle and caring enough to not let you just ignore the past you have, but excellent enough to take that past and redeem it and restore it. We believe that God is the God not only of our present and our tomorrows, but also of our yesterdays. And we desire to know all of God and each of his wonderful deeds — which means when we ignore our past, we ignore the God who is working in our past. But in order to go forward, we must go back, and see that what the world or our families or relationships intended for evil, God intended for good.
Response and Prayer
I'm going to invite the ushers to come forward, and we're going to move into a time of response. We're going to respond in a couple of different ways. As is usual for us, we have the opportunity to respond by giving our tithes and our offerings and our gifts. And we also want to give you the opportunity to respond to some questions we're going to put up on the screen — some application questions. I'm not going to read these; I'm going to let you read them yourself. But basically they're asking: What are you going to do? How are you going to respond? What do you think about all this? You have a past — I know each and every one of you does. How will you respond to God's working in it?
Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We bless you. We glorify you, because we know you're good — abundantly good, not just kind of, but supremely good. And you were good even in our past. You were there with us, walking beside us. And so we don't want to ignore any part of you, any action of yours. So help us. Give us the courage and the boldness to journey with you back — understanding where you were, what you were doing — so that we may journey together forward into growth and health and maturity as the people of God. We thank you for your love, supreme and absolute. Through Jesus we pray. Amen.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
