“Happy people rarely look for joy.”

This is an excerpt from Larry Crabb’s Shattered Dreams that struck me as I read it this week. I once was the happy person who quietly judged those who weren’t. It took the loss of good things for me to long for better things and see the fallacy of the prosperity gospel of conservative evangelicals that I subtly believed. Crabb says it much better than I could, as I am still in the middle of learning this myself and certainly can’t lecture on it. Here’s the excerpt that stood out to me.

When blessings come, we should of course enjoy them. It’s good when children squeal with delight on Christmas morning; it’s sad when they can’t. Celebrate the good things of life. Enjoy the juicy steak, the unexpected bonus, the beautiful granddaughter.

Happy people, though they’re right to be happy, face a subtle danger. They tend to spiritually gloat, to publicly express gratitude and praise for the good things they enjoy while privately thinking that blessings are their due. They can easily slip into a concern for the less fortunate that carries with it a mood of judgment: If they were more like me, they would be given the blessings I have. We don’t easily recognize that mood within ourselves.

Unhappy folks face their own unique temptation. Publicly they tell the more fortunate how glad they are for all who are so blessed; privately they wish that the happy person’s path would hit a ditch.

Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. No command is more difficult to obey. Beneath the surface, we lament another’s joy (that’s the sin of jealousy) and feel good when a much blessed friend has reason to cry (that’s the sin of smugness a close cousin of jealousy).

Happy people do not love well. Joyful people do. That’s why happiness, the pleasant feelings that pleasant circumstances generate, must be taken away in order to be replaced by joy.

Happy people rarely look for joy. They’re quite content with what they have. The foundation of their life consists of the blessings they enjoy. Although they may genuinely care about those less fortunate and do great things to help, their central concern is to keep what they have. They haven’t been freed to pursue a greater dream. That’s why they cannot love well. In His severe mercy, God takes away the good to create an appetite for the better, and then, eventually, He satisfies the new appetite, liberating them to love.

I haven’t yet finished this book, but I have found what I’ve already read both hard and good.

Do unto your children as you would have them do unto you.

The Lord has been convicting me from this verse for a few weeks. I am long familiar with The Golden Rule, yet it’s only in the last month that I’ve thought of it particularly in terms of my children—not treating them as they ARE but as I would have them TO BE. As often is the case, God used my son's little secular hippie preschool to bring this home for me. At a parent meeting, the speaker asked parents what were their main concerns for their children’s behavior right now. Parents yelled out things like sibling rivalry, angry tantrums, hitting, general snotty attitudes and so forth. Then she asked what character qualities we hoped they’d have when they headed to college. The group suggested empathy, perseverance, and self-confidence, among others. As a believer, I would add grace, service, and love. I really want my boys to have personal confidence in who they are in Christ that equips them to extend grace to others. I want them to love as I Cor. 13 defines it – with patience, with a long fuse, not rude, not keeping a record of wrongs, giving the benefit of the doubt, and so on. I want them to serve like Christ.

Then the speaker led us in an exercise. She said, “Put your feet squarely on the floor.” She did it, and we did too. “Sit up straight.” She modeled, and we did it too. “Touch your thumb and first finger in an OK sign.” We did it with her. “Put the OK sign on your chin.” But she put hers on her cheek. And every last one of us in the room without thinking put ours on our cheek too. She had made her point effectively. We say we want one thing with our kids, but so often we model something else. And they will always pick up what we MODEL over what we SAY.

God got my attention. My son has an anger problem because I have an anger problem that I have well modeled for him. And when I get angry at him because he got angry and threw a toy, I’m not helping anything. Apart from Scripture, my default belief system is that when he sins I need to get really angry in proportion to the seriousness of the offence, that the angrier I get the more effective it will be at deterring him from doing it again. The only problem is that my anger is NOT a deterrent to him doing it again. It just models anger for him and educates him in more sophisticated ways to act on it. That’s not how God transforms me, and it’s not how He intends me to disciple my children.

Here are Jesus’ instructions from Luke 6.

31And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

32"If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

As I wish that my boys would do to me and others, I should do to them. Not do to them in a reactionary response to what they just did. It’s my job to break the cycle of act and react. I should just ACT. Stay on course. Love. Grace. Compassion. Endurance. Act on my vision of what I want them to be and model consistently for them my end goal. My angry little boy sure can make me angry. But my job in Christ is to stop the cycle, correct him, and model for him with my life as well as my words a new and better way through gospel grace to deal with conflict.

Of course, the Golden Rule transcends child-rearing. I had just never thought of it in those specific terms. It applies to my children, my husband, my friends, and my enemies. Do to them not in reaction to what they just did to me, but do to them with a vision of where God is calling them. And THAT is the essence of being salt and light in the places God has called me to function.

Things that undermine a complementarian position

I am not a fan of labels. I’m kind of annoyed that I can’t just call myself a Christian and that have enough meaning to be a sufficient label. For the sake of this discussion, I will label myself a reformed, evangelical complementarian. When I use the term complementarian, I mean that my conviction is that God created both male and female in His image, He gave to each different strengths and obligations to evidence different aspects of His character, and in marriage, He commands husbands to reflect something about His Head and wives His Body, which includes wives submitting to their husbands. God has limited the office of elder to men only (and not just any man, I should add). And women need to stay home and have babies.

Just kidding on that last part.

For some reason, I am not concerned with influencing egalitarians to my position as I am with encouraging complementarians to examine theirs carefully in light of what Scripture does and does not say. Maybe that’s because I have long experience with churches and groups that take a good, true Bible teaching and manage to pervert it by sloppily adding to it their own extra-Biblical notions, subtly influenced by a personal agenda they may not even recognize. If anyone really wants to think of themselves as having a “Biblical” position, they need to CONSTANTLY reevaluate themselves against the Word, because we all are deceived into not recognizing the ways we warp away from the Word left to ourselves.

I love meditating on what God has called me to be as the Helper after His own heart that is suitable for my husband. I have watched the power of laying down my life in submission and speaking in my husband’s love language of respect. And I am moved by thinking of Christ’s profound love for His Bride as I watch the interplay of love and submission in my home. These are precious doctrines to me. But too often, I watch these ideas misused and misapplied by complementarians in ways that make my concerns about egalitarians pale in comparison.

So here, fellow complementarian, are some concerns I have that I think (and it is only my personal, humble opinion) undermine the complementarian position. And if you are reading as an egalitarian, here I admit that the other side does get some things quite wrong , yet I believe there is still value--really beautiful value--to those controversial words to women—help, submit, respect, and so forth.

1) Problem number 1 is calling this debate a gospel issue. Now it’s true that the interplay between husbands and wives in the home is a TESTIMONY of the gospel as it reflects the nature of Christ’s profound love for the church. But being a testimony of the gospel is not the same as being the gospel. I said in another post that the gospel informs everything, but it is not everything. And we start entering dangerous territory quickly when we are not precise in how we talk about the link between the gospel and the complementarian position.

2) Advocating husbands “ruling” over their wives. I gladly call my husband the head of our home. I’m happy when he leads. But “rule” is the terminology of the curse in Gen. 3:16, not the vision presented in Ephesians 5 of what marriage looks like that is in Christ between imitators of God. I talked about it here and enjoyed the follow up discussion.

3) denying women deacons. Complementarians undermine at least half of the arguments against women being elders when we do this. But enough was said in this post about it.

4) denying mutual submission. EVERYONE in Christ is called to submit (Ephesians 5:21). EVERYONE in Christ is called to love (Ephesians 5:2). If I am not called to love my husband, then that means about 50 verses written in general terms (including the Greatest Command) don’t apply to me as a wife. That’s ridiculous! Similarly, the instructions to submit, lay down our lives, and sacrificially serve one another are everywhere in Scripture and clearly transcend gender. In the marriage relationship, husbands are called to give a particular example of love, and wives to give a particular example of submission.

The word for submit in Ephesians 5 means basically arranging yourself in formation under your leader. It’s a willing movement of self in line with another. It cannot be demanded and still be called submission. I willingly lay down my life and rights for my husband. But if he demanded it or attempted to force it, that would not be submission. That’d be oppression -- when submission in the image of Christ ends and the oppressive rule of the man predicted in the curse of Genesis 3:16 begins.

Christ demonstrates this difference for us when He “lay down His life” (I John 3:16) for us. Laying down His life was so very different from having it taken from Him. The Bible makes it clear that Christ willingly gave up the ghost and laid down His life. It was not taken from Him unwillingly. The fact that He had the power and right to do otherwise is what makes His sacrifice so … remarkable? Noteworthy? I can’t think of a big enough word for it. He LAID His life down for us! It’s profound. And when I, wife of Andy, WILLINGLY lay down my rights (and it will always be willingly, for my husband though strong willed and sometimes ornery is definitely NOT oppressive) I am being like CHRIST. Like the church too. But so very much like Christ.

I value the facets of the character of God that I am uniquely equipped to reflect as a woman. I love the doctrines surrounding what I was created to be in perfection. I have gained much wisdom from understanding the curse of Genesis 3:16 and all the ways left to myself that I reflect it. And I treasure deeply God’s calling me back to Himself and reclaiming and restoring His image in me that was marred by the fall. But get it right, complementarians. Handle the Word precisely. Because we undermine so much of great beauty and worth in the Body of Christ when we don’t.


(There are other sub issues where complementarians read into Scripture and impose standards on themselves that Scripture does not. But that’s not so much a complementarian problem as just a universal tendency toward legalism. So I’ll save for another post our often unhelpful projections from silence in Scripture on the topics of working women, childbirth, organic cooking, educational choices, and so forth.)

The Gospel and My Emotions

I was first exposed to Christian counseling during my college years by proponents of a heavy-handed nouthetic counseling approach. I still love Jay Adam’s simple exposition of Romans 12, How To Overcome Evil. It was life changing for me at the time. But over time, I have become less and less comfortable with a methodology that I can figure out no better term right now to describe it than simply heavy-handed. So little grace, which is odd considering the theological background of most of the writers. But I learned (sadly) a good while back that those best able to articulate the doctrines of grace are often the worst at applying it.

I also read Larry Crabb’s Inside Out way back when. That left me uncomfortable too. Too much wiggly wobbly something or other. I’ve since enjoyed a few of his later books. I’m reading Marriage Builder and Shattered Dreams right now and am finding them quite insightful. He doesn’t always follow a clear train of thought, which frustrates my personality type. But he does in the later books reflect a life experience I can relate to--shattered hopes that instead of crushing us point us to the true source of our hope.

But today, I finished up a chapter entitled The Gospel and Our Emotions in Counsel from the Cross by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Dennis Johnson. You can read the chapter here and buy the book here. Good, helpful, balanced, and biblical! I haven’t read that much on a Christian counseling perspective on emotions, but from what I’ve read, this is the best summary I’ve found. I took away some very helpful ideas. First, don’t ignore your emotions. They are important indicators. Our temptations are to sedate them through a variety of coping mechanisms, stamp them down and ignore them, or give in to them. Instead, use them. They are telling you something. Maybe it’s something about your health – your thyroid, for me it’s often low blood sugar associated with diabetes, or perhaps a legitimate chemical imbalance in your brain. More often, they are telling you something about your heart. So often in my own life, my emotions indicate my misplaced hopes. I want my husband or children to provide me with meaning and affirmation in a way that only my Father in heaven was intended to provide. I’m angry, discouraged, or depressed because they don’t do for me what they CAN'T do for me. But there is a hopeful, grace filled answer. I sure don’t need condemnation for my emotions. I need gospel grace enduring with me as I wrestle to see how they point me to my need for Christ and all He has permanently accomplished for me on the cross. Nobody can talk themselves out of their emotions. You can stamp them down for a while. But they will always erupt. You have to face them head on and deal with them. They mean something. They indicate something. And it’s ok to figure out what exactly spiritually that is.

I was actually a little nervous when I first encountered this chapter in Counsel from the Cross. The title scared me—it’s such a tightrope to handle this topic with careful precision from Scripture. But I ended the chapter quite encouraged, glad to hear someone succinctly summarize an approach I could embrace. Even more so, I am encouraged to be honest with myself concerning my own emotions and hopefully ready to be a better comforter to those struggling with their own.

Pride isn’t your real problem.

I often hear people, especially religious leaders, confess pride as their greatest sin or weakness. That's never set particularly well with me, and it has taken me some thinking to figure out why. It’s a circular idea—that pride is someone’s greatest sin. A cop out really. Pride is a sin. A very big one. But pride isn’t your real problem. It’s a symptom of your real problem – which is ignorance of all the ways you break God’s laws. When you confess pride as your greatest sin, it really means that you think well of yourself because you are deluded away from your very real sin. You are proud because you don’t realize that you really are very angry. You are proud because you have deluded yourself from seeing your very real selfishness. You are proud because instead of seeing your control freakish nature as the sin that it is and millstone around the neck of those you love, you think it makes you look disciplined. You worship your own agenda and ability to control those around you. You likely have a lust problem that you’ve deluded yourself into ignoring. Your spouse, kids, and/or coworkers probably resent you because you are harsh and demanding. You’ve got a lot more problems than mere pride. Pride is just the symptom of the fact that you don’t recognize in yourself your own sin tendencies.

Paul says something at the opening of Ephesians 4 that gets my attention every time I read it.

1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility …

The calling to which he refers is the gospel he’s just laid out in Ephesians 1-3—that we were dead in our sins, by nature children deserving of God’s just wrath. But God lavished His grace on us, adopting us into His family by no work of our own, but solely by His own unconditional love and grace. Because we could never have earned it on our own. We were without God and hope in this world until He moved toward us. And humility is the key indicator that you either do or do not fully understand the gospel.

The hard truth from Scripture, which Paul particularly reveals in Ephesians, is that we will never get the gospel until we are profoundly aware of what we deserve and are capable of apart from it. Three times Paul goes through the juxtaposition of what we are by nature and what God gave us instead. God didn’t save you from one day being a bad person. You WERE a bad person. By your very nature, you deserve His wrath. Remove His grace from yourself for just one day, and you’d be horrified by what you are capable of.

I used to think I was pretty good. Then I got married. Then I had kids. One of the best and worst days of my life was when I responded to my children in such anger and ugliness that it left me stunned at myself. Horrified. I HATED how I responded. I finally realized that I was capable of a lot worse than I had ever imagined. And against the most vulnerable of all, my children.

But that actually was a GOOD moment for me. Because I couldn't get the greatness of the gospel and the full worth of God’s final affirmation over me through Christ until I saw it clearly in juxtaposition to what I deserve. If pride is your “biggest problem,” you need to recognize that it is a problem at all because you are oblivious to the really heinous things you have done and are capable still of doing. Chances are others around you aren’t quite as oblivious to it as you are though. And facing it head on isn’t the horrible thing we perceive it to be. For facing it head on becomes the first step in facing the fullness of what God has said over us in response to it. And THAT is beautiful! THAT transforms us.

The Audacity of Lesser Hopes

… having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, Ephesians 1:18

This is not a political commentary. But current political issues are illustrating clearly for me the problem with placing our hopes in lesser hopes than the one to which we are called in Scripture. A lot of people were hopeful after the last election. (A lot of people were also very upset and determined to undermine everything.) But a lot of people were very, very hopeful – earnestly expecting a positive change. And it didn’t happen as they hoped. Two years later, they are disappointed. And there is a massive rebound effect. In my opinion, that rebound does not have nearly as much to do with political ideologies as it does with disappointed hopes and expectations and our attempts to find new hopes after the last one let us down.

In Christ, we have a different hope altogether that political ideologies cannot even begin to touch. It alone is the hope that will not disappoint, that will not put us to shame. Every other lesser hope will fail us, even if it is a good thing. New groups are placing new hopes in new political ideologies, all of which may be very good, but it is still not a safe place to put my HOPE. There should be a difference in good things we pursue and good things in which we HOPE. Do good things. Pursue wise political paths. Obey commands. But don’t place your HOPE in them. I love my husband, train my children, and care for my friends. I steward my money and guard my words. I prayerfully choose the best education methods for my children. I make sacrifices to bring them into this world, feed them, and educate them in light of my convictions. But I can’t HOPE in that.

I am to place my hope in one singular thing – the gospel. Paul prays at the end of Ephesians 1 that our eyes would be opened to the hope of our calling, which he has just outlined in Ephesians 1 as the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places we have in Christ, secured for us for eternity through the deposit of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Our hope is that God will not default on His promises to us. Our hope is that He WANTS us, and we are SECURE in Him.

Just as people get disappointed when their president doesn’t change the course of the country in two years, I get disappointed when my children don’t respond to my carefully thought out discipline. Or when my budget doesn’t rebound after careful planning. Or when conflicts between friends don’t reconcile in a timely manner. Or when the weight doesn’t fall off after denying myself the food that I want. My emotional response to disappointment is a good indicator to me whether I was just being a good steward trying to make wise choices or if I had misplaced my hopes for what will save me and heal me.

Lesser hopes, even when realized, inevitably diminish over time. You get the husband, child, job, or president for which you had hoped. But it doesn’t bring you what you hoped it would bring. At our core, we want rest and peace. We want shalom. We want things that ease our loneliness or stress. We want safety and security. That reality has been secured for us in heaven, and it is breaking even now into our reality on earth. As the writer of Hebrews says, we don’t yet SEE everything subject to Him, but everything IS subject to Him. And that is our hope.

If you are disappointed, I encourage you to look clearly at the object in which you had placed your hope and which then let you down. And free yourself (and them) from that expectation. Be a good steward. Make wise choices. But hope in Christ and those things that are not seen but which are your secure reality in heaven.

And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Rom. 5:5 NIV

Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live,
and let me not be put to shame in my hope! Psalms 119:116

The Gospel Plus Anything Is Not The Gospel At All

The term gospel can be a hopeful balm, a source of unity, or a lightening rod for controversy. At least, it’s used all those ways among evangelicals. However, in Scripture, the gospel is a fairly simple (though deep), straightforward concept. It is the “good news” of all Christ has accomplished for us through His death and resurrection. It is the juxtaposition between the wrath we deserve by our very nature (Ephesians 2:1-10) and the lavish grace we have received in the place of that wrath through Christ. It’s not that He just removed His hand against us, but that now His hand is so very much FOR us. All in, through, and by Christ. By His grace and not any work of our own.

And that’s about it.

The use of the term gospel is something about which I am doing a lot of thinking as I work on a potential study on The Gospel-Centered Woman. I see in myself a tendency to throw the term around in imprecise ways. Yet it is the precision of the gospel in its simplest terms that is the power of God for salvation. While the gospel informs everything else, it is NOT everything else. So I read today a criticism of a group of good conservative evangelicals with whom I agree on MUCH. I didn't agree with everything said in the series of criticisms (I HATE that I need to say that, but someone will inevitably point out some sub issue from the criticism and I don't want to focus on that). The overarching critique is valid. The group in question has chosen to center their title around the term GOSPEL. Yet their basic documents (which one must affirm to be a part of this group) extend way past the gospel. A more accurate title for their group would be along the lines of the “Gospel Plus Some Other Things Group.” I have no qualms with a group organizing themselves around shared doctrinal beliefs that extend past the gospel. Just be precise in how you say it.

I think the group in question does have a good grasp of exactly what the gospel is and is not. I hope that they will prayerfully hear this criticism (not that any of them are reading this blog) and correct the perception that they are including the gospel plus some things in the term gospel. Because the entire point of the gospel is that it is NOT plus some things. It affects all things, but it stands on its own as the good news precisely because it is effective for our total salvation apart from any other work. We who most want to uphold a correct understanding of what Scripture means when it uses the term may most undermine it if we are not precise with what it is and what it is NOT. The somber warning of Scripture is that the gospel plus anything is not the gospel at all.