A Person's A Person

Did you ever read Dr Seuss's book, "Horton Hears A Who"?  Perhaps the most memorable line in it is:

"A person's a person, no matter how small"

Dr Seuss was teaching children something profound. In the Bible, God talks about there being

"neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female..." (Galatians 3:28)

According to God, all people are of equal value.  A person's a person no matter... what.

I've just read a book called "Ghost Boy"* written by Martin Pistorius, a man who spent years unable to move or communicate on his own and yet fully alive and aware in the prison of his own body.  His story is a reminder of the truth that God told long before Martin existed: God has put a spirit in man that makes us unique in His creation.  God has given each of us something that makes us people, a completely different creation to animals.

One of my great longings is that we all remember this whenever we see a person with a disability, especially an "intellectual" disability.  The brain is just part of the body that can be broken like a leg or an arm.  The brain can get "sick" just like a heart or liver.  BUT if someone has a broken leg or heart disease or cancer, we don't assume that they are less of a person.  We don't think that they won't mind eating custard every day for the rest of their lives and sit them in front of children's television for days on end.  On the other hand, if a person drools and mumbles apparent nonsense (or doesn't talk at all) or rocks back and forth endlessly - if their brain is "broken" - we tend to treat them as though they're not people at all anymore.  In fact, we often call them "vegetables".

But God said that He is the giver of every good gift.  One of those gifts is the human spirit.  Is God capable of giving us something that is broken?  The brain might be broken, but inside every person, no matter how vacant or weird or scarey they seem, there is a human spirit, and just because the brain is broken doesn't mean the spirit is.  There is neither slave nor free to God - surely being trapped in the prison of a dysfunctional brain is another kind of slavery.  But God sees the person inside the prison.  A person is a person no matter what.

Jesus came so that everyone could have an opportunity for eternal life.  No exceptions.  God sees and values the person inside the prison.  God sees everyone as equally valuable.  Do we?

*While this was an excellent book in many ways, it does include some very disturbing content about the author being horribly abused in a care home.  Sensitive readers may prefer to skip chapters 35 and 36 (titled "Memories" and "Lurking in Plain Sight").  I would have preferred not to read the graphic details myself.

Why Do I Feel Like Such a Failure?

Do you?  I'll bet if you're a woman, especially if you have kids, you feel like a failure a lot.  Am I right?  Every day?  Many times a day?  You may not even be sure what The Standard is that you're trying to achieve, but every day you feel pretty sure - even convicted, perhaps - that you haven't reached it.

Well.  You feel like a failure because you are a failure.  As am I.  You see, the first two people created, Adam and Eve, were created good and put in a beautiful garden.  But then they ate the fruit that God had told them not to eat - the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  By choosing to decide for themselves what was wrong and what was right, Adam and Eve put themselves and their children at war with God Himself.

God is the ultimate expression of all that is Good and Perfect, so, like our first parents, you and I are at war with all that is Good and Perfect.  Only, it can seem mixed-up and confusing because the tree Adam and Eve ate from was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  We've all learned to be socially acceptable as well, so we humans don't completely wipe each other out, so from the outside it looks like there's a lot of good in us... until there's an all-out war, when human nature is seen in the raw, minus a lot of that "social acceptability". (Think the Rwandan civil war, the Holocaust in Europe, or any number of present-day conflicts such as the war in Syria and even the riots in indebted countriesin response to "austerity measures".)

Anyway, so being at war with what is Good and Perfect makes us failures, with some good bits thrown in here and there.

But wait, there's good news!  By ourselves we are failures, but Jesus paid the price for that failure.  In Roman times, the crimes committed by a condemned criminal were nailed to their cross when they were crucified.  Jesus hadn't done anything wrong, so your sins and mine were symbolically nailed to his cross (the "handwriting of requirements against us" - the Bible still talks about sin after Jesus was resurrected, so it wasn't the law that was nailed to the cross, otherwise there would have been no such thing as sin any more! "Sin is the transgression of the law").  By repenting, being baptised and having hands laid on us to receive the Holy Spirit, we start to become something new.  No longer a failure.

Of course, we won't completely shake that "failure" part of ourselves until we are transformed.  We'll still feel like failures often.  But no longer hopeless failures!

In just two days is one of God's appointed Holy Days, known to the Jews and many others as Yom Kippur.  It is a day of recognising our human failure and the depth of our need for Jesus Christ and God our Father.  Physically, it's not an enjoyable day, since it means fasting for a complete 24 hours - no food or water in that time.  But spiritually it is a celebration of the fact that Jesus has paid for our weakness and sin.  It's a celebration that failure is just a temporary state - if we truly accept the price that Jesus paid.

What Is Love? (It Suffers Long)

Today, I'm writing as a tribute to a lady who truly suffered long.  Through years of suffering and pain, she considered others and was truly a shining light.  In the last weeks of her slow and agonising death, she wrote letters of encouragement and gratitude to many people.

And this is what I have just "gotten" recently - "...love suffers long and is kind..." (I Corinthians 13:4)  It's not just the "suffering long", but the kindness at the same time.  We live in a world that tends to make heroes of people just because they suffer.  We call it courage when someone who is suffering goes on doing the things that they enjoy most.  But that's not real courage, it's just common sense.  It makes sense to spend lots of time with your family and friends when you're in agony - it will probably (although not for everyone, admittedly) get your mind off the pain.

Agape (remember that word for the love that God is?) is another whole level.  It's being kind to people who don't necessarily make you feel good (while suffering).  It's being kind to people who are contributing to your suffering (think of Jesus' crucifixion.. remember, God is love, so whatever Jesus did was love).

Agape suffers long and is kind.  That means it's relentlessly kind, not just for a day or two, or even a year or two while the world is watching.  Agape is kind for twenty years of pain and suffering.  Which is what makes Agape so completely different from our human definition of love - it's impossible.  And yet, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13).  Yes, you and I will stumble in this life, but if we have the power of the Holy Spirit, we can do the impossible - including being kind when we suffer... for a very long time.

Want to understand more about the Holy Spirit and how it can change your life?  Try reading The Holy Spirit: God's Power at Work from the free Good News Magazine.

What Is Love? (More Than Self-Sacrifice)

God is love.  That's what the Bible says.  But hang on, let's take a step back.  When I say "love" I don't mean the warm, fuzzy feeling that you feel towards a good friend you can trust.  Nor do I mean the emotional rollercoaster of being "in love".  I don't mean the overwhelming protectiveness we feel for our children.  I mean something much bigger, wider, and deeper than all of those.  I mean something that is outside and beyond feelings.  Sometimes good feelings come with the love I'm talking about, but sometimes it feels absolutely rotten because it means giving up what I want for the good of others.

So I'm going to stop calling this thing "love" and call it by it's Greek name "agape".  Not because it makes me feel all fancy to be using Greek words, but because it's so important to make a distinction between the love that is God (agape), and the pale human shadow of that Great Love.

So, God is agape.  In other words, to fully know agape, we have to fully know God... which we won't in this lifetime, but let's see if we can get a little glimpse of what agape truly means.

In I Corinthians 13 of the Bible there's a whole chapter about love. Early in the chapter it says something really interesting. It goes something like this:

"Even if I give away all my stuff and am willing to be burned to death, if I don't have agape, I'm nothing." 

Wow, right. So being really generous or being willing to die for other people isn't (of and by itself) agape.

That means (among other things) that if we sacrifice our comfort and well-being for others, it isn't really love unless it's for their greater good.  Too often, we try to please our loved ones (especially children) now - because we want to see them "happy" (and that makes us "happy") - at the expense of their future.  It might make my kids "happy" to eat lollies every day of their lives, but, considering the cost to their future health, it's certainly not agape.  Agape wants what is best for people, not what will make them feel good (of course, sometimes what makes people feel good is what's best for them, but we can't assume that making people feel good is agape all by itself).

So sacrifice and generosity aren't agape all by themselves. And that is just barely the beginning... More another time.

Why Not Me?

Have you heard of Job?  He was a rich dude in the Bible who lost all his children and all his wealth in the course of a single day... And then just to top it off he got covered in boils from head to toe.  At first, Job took all this very well - until his three best friends started haranguing him and telling him all the stuff he must be doing wrong to suffer that way. After that he started to feel pretty sorry for himself and asking that universal question: "why me?"

Ever asked that when life got tough?  It's worth reading the book of Job.  In the end he learned some important lessons, but it took a while for God's message to get through, because Job was so busy feeling sorry for himself.

Don't get me wrong, Job was going through a huge trial, and those three best friends of his were insensitive to infinity and beyond.  But.  The book of Job is there for us to learn from.  To learn, in part, what not to do in a trial.  One of the things not to do is to wallow in the "why me?" question.  It's something I've had to learn personally... a number of times.  Really, why not me?  What have I done to earn a life of ease and comfort?  I didn't create myself or my children or husband - so exactly what gives me the right to good health or anything else that I might want or think I need?  Nothing.

The apostle Peter wrote in a letter:

Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you... (1Peter 4:12) 

Those fiery trials are necessary for us to truly grow into children of God (what an incredible opportunity - to become a child of God!)

And in book of Hebrews God told His people:

And have you forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.  If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? (Hebrews 12:5-7)

The bad things that happen to us are not because God stopped paying attention to what was going on in our lives.  Nor are they the arbitrary punishment of an ill-tempered God.  Every challenge, difficulty, crisis, or even tragedy that comes your way and my way is an opportunity to learn something important.  Too often we (speaking for myself, anyway) waste that opportunity by asking God to make the bad stuff go away... and then either waiting or wallowing.

Now please understand, I'm not suggesting that God expects or even wants us to just supress the grief of a tragedy and get straight to pulling our socks up and learning the lessons He has for us.  Ours is an ever-merciful and patient Creator who understands what it is to be human - He doesn't ask us to just shut off grief and pretend it's not there at all.  Nor does God ask us to pretend that pain doesn't hurt and put on a happy face (otherwise a big chunk of the book of Psalms wouldn't exist!).  Jesus Himself felt and expressed anguish in His lifetime as the only perfect human being ever to live.  But - when we get to the point of just wallowing and feeling sorry for ourselves, or when we pause life (and personal growth) to wait for God to fix things so life is just as we think it should be - that is the time to start asking what God has for us to learn. God has promised:

No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful , who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

Did you really read that?  Go on, read it again.  God is faithful.  Did you get that?  He will make the way of escape so that you may be able to bear it.  Have you really got that?  Do you really believe it - right to the core of your being?  Whatever you are suffering right now, however unbearable it feels - there is a way through.  Whatever God is throwing at you (or letting others throw at you), there is a message in it for you - a personal message, written in love, just for you from your great Creator.

Don't (as I have often made the mistake of doing) get so busy wallowing or waiting that you miss the priceless gift of the lessons that God is teaching you.  Is God's message getting through?  Why not you? Why not me?  God has so many things to teach each of us.  Are we listening?

Is This The World We Want?

I had a dream the other night.  I was searching for something or someone in a hospital - I don't remember what.  As I rushed through rooms, I passed through a lab.  On a stainless steel topped bench lay a newborn baby - alone, clearly in pain, gasping for breath, lying in a little pool of blood.  On a nearby bench top lay the severed heads of other newborns.  Even as I rushed past, I comprehended the scene, but I still rushed past, leaving that living, dying baby alone on the bench in the hurry of my unknown errand.

I woke up horrified.  Would I really do that in my waking life?  Would I really think it was none of my business that someone else's baby had been left alone to die in that sterile room?  And this morning, lying awake in bed, I realised that God was telling me that it is time to stop doing just that.  It is time to stop rushing past the grim reality that is so awful I don't even want to talk about it.  I have written about it once before - quietly, where just one or two people would read it, but now I think it's time to go as public as I can.  So I'm asking you what I never ask - wherever you are, whoever you are, please share this with everyone you know, because we all need to ask ourselves if we're really accepting our world the way it is right now.  Go check the facts for yourself to make sure I'm not just being hysterical.  We need to ask if this is really OK with us.

Let me be clear - this is *not* about people power.  There's only one government I would vote for, and that's God's, so I'm not telling you who to vote for or not. I'm just asking YOU - are you OK with this?  Do you accept this?  God wants to know. Now I'll tell you where I stand.

While we want to know which politicians will put the most money in our pockets, and while abattoirs where pigs are mistreated are hastily shut down - while foreign policy walks on a knife edge over the live cattle trade, something much bigger is happening right here in the state of Victoria.

Right now, it is legal to rip a living baby of any age into pieces, provided he or she is a least partly in the womb. The word for this practise is so sanitised, we don't comprehend what it really means anymore.  We call this abortion.  We call it abortion when an unwanted baby is thrown in the bin (sometimes still alive) after being burned inside and out with a salt solution.  We call it abortion when a living baby is vacuumed out of the uterus.

You can read the bill passed in 2008 here.  You will see that, while anaesthetic must be administered to experimental animals (see here), there is no legal requirement for any pain relief for a baby that is being annihilated.  Importantly, in all that "Abortion reform" bill, there is no restriction on how a baby is killed or removed from the mother's womb, except that it must be by a "registered practitioner".  There is no mention of how the baby is disposed of after it leaves the mother's body, whether living or dead.

I AM NOT OK WITH THIS!

I wonder, when our children and children's children grow up - knowing that they were "chosen" to live, while many other babies died because they were sacrificed to the idols of money and convenience - will they make it legal to dispose of elderly people (who are an economic drain on society) by dismemberment? Or perhaps they will be "humanely" disposed of in a purpose-built gas chamber?  Will they make it legal to cut the living heart out of a disabled person (perhaps you or I after a stroke or serious car accident) to replace their own dying heart?  Why not - if we have taught them that a broken baby should be thrown away, just like a broken toy?  Why should a broken adult be any different?

How can we so vocal about animal rights and protecting the environment (for our children, supposedly) when the most vulnerable members of our society can be legally vacuumed out of existence??  Let me make this clear - an abortion (the killing, with no regard for pain or suffering) may be performed on a baby after 24 weeks, right up to the moment of birth if the medical practitioner:

reasonably believes that the abortion is appropriate in all the circumstances; and has consulted at least one other registered medical practitioner who also reasonably believes that the abortion is appropriate in all the circumstances.

Are you OK with this? All it takes (in the Australian state of Victoria) is two registered medical practitioners to decide that it is "appropriate" to kill an unborn baby right up to the point of birth. While there are pages of laws on the treatment of animals, I can't find any information about the protection of unborn children in Australia except statements such as this one on the Queensland government website:

If the unborn child is assessed as being in need of protection after birth, we will offer ongoing help and support to the pregnant women [sic] (emphasis mine).

In other words, unborn children are considered to be of less value than animals (including unborn animals) in Australia. I'm not OK with this, and I will never be OK with this. It is time to stop tiptoeing around abortion as though it's just about choice. Abortion is about the choice to (often brutally) murder the most helpless and innocent of all human beings. If you are reading this and are considering abortion, please write a comment. I will do everything I can to help you not have an abortion. Or contact someone who can help you. Please.
Right now unborn children in Victoria have no legal protection that I know of. This is not the world I want. Is this the world you want? If we continue to ignore, and even mock, the most basic of moral laws, we will pay the price. Are you prepared for what this will cost?

The Question Is...

... What are you going to do?

The world's getting to be a nasty place.  That's a fact.  I know many people don't believe it, but that can only be because of the cosy little bubble they're living in.  There is a serious lack of loving care in this world we live in.

A friend told me about her little girl wandering off in a crowd...  not one person "rescued" the toddler clearly separated from her Mum.  She nearly made it out the door alone.  I've lost a child myself in a shopping centre and not one person even tried to help me find her.

I've heard about teachers eating nut bars in front of a little boy who keeps constant company with an epi-pen because of his severe allergies.

An early childhood teacher shared how other staff members at her centre ignored the regulations meant to protect children with serious allergies under their care.

These are matters of life and death, and we are living in a world so callous that many people don't care if their actions endanger the lives of innocent children.

In one instance that I know of personally (not just something I heard on the news), the lack of care in a person in authority did lead to a death.

These are not isolated incidents.  Elections are won and lost over the economy.  That's how much money I have to look after me. Meanwhile, abused children die in and out of state custody.  It is legal to brutally murder a baby while the mother is in labour. I kid you not.  Why do we care about money when children are dying?  Because we are a nation that doesn't care about children.  That is the stark and horrible truth.

I could go on and on about the lack of care and compassion in the world, evident by everything from the way people drive (ignoring road rules) to (lack of) customer service.  But that's not the point.  I could complain all day... And I would achieve... what?

The question is: what am I going to do?  What are you going to do?  Are we going to be like everyone else (while complaining about everyone else)?  Or are we going to be different?

Sorry, we can't change the world.  That's up to Jesus and God the Father - when they decide that it's time.

But we can choose not to be part of the world.  We can choose to be the person that grabs the runaway toddler (at the risk of being accused of child molestation).  We can choose to be the person who obeys the annoying rules (for the safety of others) that everyone else ignores.  We can stop complaining about the price of milk when there are children chained to carpet looms, paying off their parents "debts".

We can choose to be the people that care about children, and the elderly... and everyone else in between (whether they deserve it or not).  We can choose to be the people that see the people everywhere we go, not the dollar signs.  We can be the weirdos that actually stay home when we're sick - instead of "sharing" our germs because someone else "shared" their germs with us.  We can choose to be good.

There is just one way to be truly "good", and that is through God.

God is Love.

Not the "love" that gets advertised on Valentine's Day as being all about roses and warm and fuzzy feelings.  God is the Love that shows when no one is watching.  He is the Love that comes out in little actions, not just big ones.

It's in our tone of voice when we answer the phone for the 10th time in an hour and it's another survey.  It's in the expression on our face when we get stuck between two elderly ladies taking up the whole aisle while we're trying to zip through the supermarket.  It's in all the little ways we treat our husbands and children and parents and friends day after day, week after week, year after year.

You've seen the world for what it is - ugly and awful.  Now what are you going to do?