Parenting & Pastoring

So that's it then. Pastoring is the tireless task of continually helping people adjust their perspectives to see what Jesus sees.

I had this flash of insight as I walked away from two giggling children--my four year-old son and his five year-old cousin. They weren't giggling when I encountered them five minutes earlier. Now they were happily writing letters and drawing shapes on my in-laws' (their proud grandparents') driveway. Moments earlier, my son, Caleb, had one of his new chalk pieces raised defiantly over his head, about to throw it down to shatter it on the driveway. No doubt things had started out more like I left them after my brief intervention. However, something had happened just before I arrived that had changed His relationship with the chalk, with his cousin, and with the driveway he had initially been at peace with.

After taking in the scene and asking a simple opening question, ("What happened?") I discovered that Caleb had dropped one of his new pieces of giant chalk (brand new, virgin chalk just received yesterday for Christmas) and it had broken in at least two pieces, disappointing him and dashing his joy at the same time. My knowledge about my son and how he often reacts to unexpected disappointments helped me realize that I had to act quickly to keep him from, in response, deliberately breaking the remaining pieces each, one by one. It seems that my son reacts to uncontrollable disappointment with controlled aggression. Since he wasn't able to control the accidental breaking of his chalk, he chose to feel empowered by deliberately breaking other pieces rather than face the sadness of the situation.

OK. Back story now complete, I can tell you that I yelled, "Stop!" which did keep him from immediately throwing the next piece of chalk down. Then, I ran to his side and embraced him. And his response to my compassion, was to break down crying and finally move through the pain he was feeling but trying to deny.

I know this may all sound like as much psychobabble, but I think I have the essence of the situation in the right light. However, it hardly matters what was actually going on with my son before I first yelled 'stop' and then ran to embrace him. This intervention would work with almost any painful predicament people find themselves in. It's just that, without Jesus in our hearts, we try to do all kinds of other things (gluing chalk together, inventing softer driveways, providing therapy groups for chalk artists) rather than providing what every heart needs. A command to rest, and then a loving environment to provide it.

It seems to me that this is exactly what the church should be. It was what Jesus was. According to Matthew's gospel, Jesus BEGAN by preaching "Repent!" That is, His first message was "Stop!" Then He quickly ran in with the hug, because, according to John's gospel, "He knew what was in man." Read that, He knew what we needed, and still does.

He knew we were feeling pain that couldn't be redecorated or remodeled satisfactorily to the point of reversing our pain. He knew that mere modification of our problems was just avoiding the important thing--that we were hurting. We were hurting ourselves and were poised to hurt others, all the while smarting from the evil we ourselves had experienced.

Look at the Garden of Eden as a petrie dish in which this first encounter with evil was tested. Enter sin FROM OUTSIDE. Deception fell the first tree, which then knocked over the second and we've been falling, dying, and rotting away ever since. Bud did Jesus enter in order to judge us? To condemn us? Not then and not now! He quickly discerns the situation, understands exactly what is going on (even though we are clueless and are focused more on blaming the source of the problem rather than dealing with the reality of its consequences) yells, 'stop!' and moves in with the hug.

I won't go into the theological unpacking of his response, which may on the surface seem less "hug-like" and more "punishment," but trust me for now, it's not. His response is nothing more than the announcement of His pre-determined, pre-planned response to our first ever disappointment and that was to spread his arms out on the cross and die in our place so that we wouldn't experience the consequences He knew we were heading into as a result of our choices. Jesus' entire earthly (and supporting heavenly ministry via the Holy Spirit) is encapsulated in the Genesis 3:15 promise he declares in the wake of the sin-war's first gunshots.

But back to the main point.

As I walked away from my son and his cousin, I was pleased for having changed their course of action. I was glad my son did not add insult to injury, destruction to accident, and that I could head off further pain. I also took some time to help him see how he could do some things with his now smaller chalk pieces that he couldn't do with them when they were new and whole. In the same way, Jesus has not yet reversed the curse of sin, but He has shown us how to act while earth remains in its dark valley.

And ironically, the way we are to act is the same way He acted and will continue to act. To stop people who are getting ready to add destruction to accident, misery to circumstance, insult to injury. And then to hug them so that they can get over the temporary experience of pain and learn the everlasting way of love.

Thus, as a pastor, I am charged with the continual redirecting and refocusing God's hugged people into hugging others, and teach his sin-arrested people into compassionately arresting others in their tracks so they can experience something else than the inevitable pain of another step in sin.

It's how Jesus sees things, I think. At least it's what I'm seeing now.