Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

assumptions

How to Open Your Eyes and Really See

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As a kid my sister thought the priest was God. It was his ornate robes that misled her – his “uniform” gave him such an aura of authority and power, she assumed he was the Big Man himself.

I wasn’t much better off. While I knew enough to realize the priest wasn’t God, I still acted like he was. I was so focused on following the rules to perfection, I missed the point of faith entirely. I worshipped the law and the man in the fancy robes, and missed God.

Early on in the Book of Mark, the Pharisees — who were the ultra-religious rule-followers of the day — criticized Jesus for forgiving the sins of a paralyzed man who had come to hear him preach.

“‘Only God can forgive sins!’” the Pharisees claimed, appalled by Jesus’ bold proclamation and his gall. (Mark 2:7)

They missed the irony in their own statement, of course. They couldn’t see that it was God himself standing right before their very eyes.

The Pharisees had a very clear expectation of what God should look like and how he should act. The fact that Jesus was born in a barn in Nazareth, dressed like a wandering shepherd and kept company with the lowlifes of society simply did not jibe with their definition of God. They expected a mighty ruler, someone who established authority instead of subverting it.

The Pharisees didn’t recognize God because they expected him to look like someone else. They expected him to look more like them.

I get that. Sometimes I mock the Pharisees for their obvious flaws, but the truth is, I am a Pharisee. I miss God when he’s standing right before my very eyes. I miss God because he doesn’t look like I think he should.

I don’t see God in the man on the corner, holding a tattered cardboard sign in the sweltering heat.  But I see him easily in the people I admire and the people I want to emulate. I see God in the people I want to like me.

I don’t always see God in the person who practices faith differently than I do. But I recognize him easily in the people who sit next to me in the pew each week.

I don’t see God in the people who live by standards I consider less-than or flawed. But I recognize him in the people who seem to live exactly like I do.

Turns out, I see God in the pretty places, where everything and everyone look good and wholesome and right; where the rules are followed and standards are upheld.

I see God where I am comfortable and in the people who put me at ease.

I see God where you might expect to find him — in stained glass, in blossoms and birds and spectacular sunsets, in people who look and think just like me.

Like a Pharisee, I see God where I want to see him, not where he really is.

The beautiful truth is that God is in every place and in every person. And what the crowd exclaimed the day the paralyzed man stood up and walked home with his mat in hand is true for me and many others, too:

“We’ve never seen anything like this before!” (Mark 2:12) we exclaim in awe. Because we’ve never really opened our eyes to see.

{This post originally ran in the Lincoln Journal Star.}

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Assumptions Alienate

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We’re gathered at Kristen’s house, three of us sprawled on the carpet, three on the couch, novels open in our laps. We are discussing a character in the book – a mother who doesn’t know her teenage son is gay.

“Well, I know one thing for sure,” I say, straightening up and splaying my paperback flat on the rug. “If my son were gay, as his mother, I’d know it, even if he didn’t tell me. I’m sure I would just know it.”

There’s a pause as my fellow book club members digest my emphatic declaration.
…I’m over at the Lincoln Journal Star today, writing the second in a series of posts about making assumptions. Will you join me over there for the rest of the story? (and if you missed the first post about making assumptions, you can read it here).

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Lunch with Lucy: A Story about Listening

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A few weeks ago I had lunch with Lucy. I don’t know Lucy well – I’d only met her once through a mutual friend at church. When we were first introduced she mentioned she had a great story to tell me, so when she emailed to invite me to lunch, I accepted. I was curious about her story.

As it turned out, Lucy told about 20 stories over lunch, one right after the other in a breathless rush as she leaned over her plate, hands gesticulating wildly. All her stories were about how God has spoken in her life, or moved her in a specific way or performed a particular miracle for her.

I hardly said a word during our hour-long lunch. We didn’t chat about our families or church or our jobs or even the blistering heat wave. We didn’t discuss which might be better, the chop salad or the curry chicken soup. Lucy talked about God. And I ate my sandwich, occasionally interjecting a “Huh,” or “Hmmmm,” or “Really?”

My lunch with Lucy wasn’t as much a conversation as it was a testimony.

I admire Lucy’s passion, her conviction. As I polished off my tuna melt and two glasses of iced tea, nodding my head as Lucy rattled through her stories, barely pausing for a forkful of chop salad, I marveled at her courage and her willingness to speak so freely and boldly about God’s impact on her life. And with me, a near-stranger, someone whom she’d only met once before as we stood with our donut holes and Styrofoam cups of coffee in the hallway at church.

But on the drive home, alone in the quiet of my mini-van, I couldn’t help but wonder: maybe this, maybe Lucy, is exactly where we Christians go wrong? Maybe we’re so busy talking, we don’t stop to listen.

Maybe we’re so busy telling our own stories, so eager to convict and covert, we don’t pause to hear anyone else’s story.

I know Lucy’s intentions were honest and good. She likely takes Jesus’ Great Commission – to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19) – very seriously. She clearly feels called by God to tell her story in the hope of inspiring and convicting those around her, and she clearly believes this is an effective means to accomplish that.

Honestly, I can relate. I love to tell my stories, too. I write nearly every day about God and faith and how I try to live out that faith in the everyday. My goal is to inspire and convict, too. The thought of even one reader coming closer to God as the result of what they read on my blog is enough to keep my fingers on the keyboard.

But I suspect if Lucy talked to her co-worker or her neighbor or the bank teller in the same way she did to me, most of those people would clap their hands over their ears and sprint screaming for the hills. Or perhaps they’d do what I did at lunch: nod politely and scheme an appropriate time to make a get-away.

Lucy made the mistake a lot of Christians make: she forgot that we’re not all on the exact same spiritual page. She forgot that sometimes people simply want to be heard instead of talked at. Lucy made the same mistake I often do: she assumed that my story was the same as her own. And if it wasn’t the same, she assumed it should be.

I didn’t say much during my lunch with Lucy, but I did learn an important lesson that day over a tuna melt and iced tea. Sometimes the best way to tell a story is to listen to one instead.

{I don’t usually post on Tuesdays…but Prodigal Magazine — a new fav — is hosting The Listen Project link-up today, and this one seemed like a good fit. Head over and check it out…and link up your story about listening, too.}

…And another note…I’ve been thinking a lot about the assumptions we — I — make in our day-to-day living, and how those assumptions can hurt and alienate. Stay tuned over the next week or two for a couple more posts on this topic. I’ve got more to say!


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