Latest / Finding God at Work / 19: In All Our Inadequacies

Transcript

19: In All Our Inadequacies · Finding God at Work

0:05
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, I'm Chris.
0:07
This is Finding God at Work.
0:14
Just a reminder that Finding God at Work
0:16
isn't just a podcast, it's also an online
0:18
course.
0:19
Check it out at FindingGodAtWork.org.
0:27
Our current series is wholehearted, becoming healthier Christians
0:30
at work.
0:32
And with this episode, we are bringing the
0:34
series to a close.
0:36
Way back in our first episode, we were
0:38
looking at the question, how do we have
0:40
both self-acceptance and a radical commitment to
0:44
growth and change over time?
0:46
Because intuitively, we know that we need both
0:47
of those things.
0:48
If we have some vision of human nature
0:51
or human life that we're aspiring to, but
0:54
our way of getting there is self-condemning
0:57
or shame-based or constantly filled with guilt,
1:03
we know that's going to put us in
1:04
a dark place.
1:04
That ultimately doesn't work.
1:06
We need a way to accept ourselves and
1:07
our real limitations, our real weaknesses, our real
1:10
personalities in order to move forward.
1:13
But we also know that moving forward is
1:15
part of human experience, that we also need
1:17
a radical commitment to growth and change over
1:20
time.
1:21
That if our vision of self-acceptance is
1:23
just sort of pampering ourselves without ever being
1:26
willing to confront problems in our behavior, problems
1:29
in our character, our deep emotional needs and
1:32
our need for life in an existential way,
1:35
we're not going to end up where we
1:37
need to be either.
1:38
Somehow, paradoxically, we need both self-acceptance and
1:42
a radical commitment to growth and change.
1:45
And the good news is that Jesus, in
1:48
his teaching on human nature, gives us that
1:51
combination.
1:52
He gives us exactly what we need to
1:54
both be accepted, to accept ourselves, and to
1:57
enter into a lifelong process of change, becoming
2:00
the kind of human beings that we most
2:02
deeply want to be, and in the Christian
2:04
worldview that we were created to be.
2:08
So we looked at a variety of ways
2:11
that Jesus put this together, his implicit holism
2:14
in Luke chapter 10, where he affirms that
2:16
we can love the Lord our God with
2:18
our heart and our soul and our mind
2:20
and our strength.
2:21
When we kind of unpack that as thoughts
2:23
and feelings, our heart or will, our body
2:26
and our soul as a relater, integrator, and
2:29
receiver, that all of these things are meant
2:31
to go together and be deployed for love
2:34
in God's kingdom.
2:37
So that was kind of our starting place
2:38
for this series.
2:39
We visualized it as one side of a
2:41
Venn diagram, and then on the other side
2:43
of the Venn diagram, we can look at
2:44
all the mental health challenges we face in
2:47
the workplace.
2:47
So we looked at depression and anxiety, addiction
2:50
and recovery, neurodiversity, and trauma.
2:54
So we've been letting Jesus be our psychologist,
2:57
letting his teaching guide our thinking and our
3:00
feeling as we look at these different challenges,
3:03
while also integrating valid insights from the social
3:05
sciences and other sciences that can help us
3:08
think about what it means to be healthy
3:09
human beings.
3:11
Now, there is a danger here for those
3:13
of us who are disciples of Jesus.
3:15
We looked at this a little bit in
3:16
our first episode, too, and that's the danger
3:18
of us pursuing an unhealthy vision of life
3:21
in a specifically, quote unquote, Christian way, where
3:24
you can have an unhealthy version of life
3:26
that has religious overtones.
3:28
And I would say usually this happens because
3:31
people are pulling apart things that God wants
3:33
to put together.
3:34
So, for example, you could have brain on
3:36
a stick Christianity, where it's all about ideas.
3:39
It's all about what you think the feeling
3:41
life is mocked or repressed or at least
3:44
dismissed as not very relevant to Christian maturity.
3:49
And when you're given that vision of Christianity
3:51
and you try to live it out, it
3:52
turns out you do have feelings and those
3:55
matter.
3:56
And so you can't actually live life as
3:58
a brain on a stick because you're not
3:59
a brain on the stick.
3:59
You're an embodied, emotive human being.
4:02
On the flip side, you can have other
4:03
expressions of Christianity where we're just blobs of
4:06
sensitivities who are never able to confront the
4:09
difficulties of our life and take responsibility that
4:12
we have a will.
4:13
We have a capacity to choose and to
4:15
do something and to pursue what matters in
4:17
life.
4:18
So we can go off the rails in
4:19
a lot of different ways.
4:20
But what Jesus calls us to is to
4:22
have these things together, our thoughts and our
4:25
feelings, our will and our body, our soul,
4:29
and that that is the framework, the grounding
4:32
from which we can look at these different
4:34
mental health challenges that we face in a
4:37
healthy way.
4:39
And I think as we've dug into those
4:40
various mental health challenges, we've seen an answer
4:44
to our question.
4:45
So our question, how do we both have
4:48
self acceptance and a radical commitment to growth
4:52
and change over time as we face into
4:54
all of the different challenges that we may
4:56
have in our mental health in the workplace
4:59
and beyond?
5:00
And the answer we've seen is that we
5:02
let God meet us with his gracious love
5:05
in all our inadequacies because his love takes
5:10
us in as we are and his love
5:13
heals us.
5:15
So just by way of review, we've seen
5:17
that same theme interwoven through each of these
5:19
different mental health challenges.
5:21
So with depression, it's when we accept that
5:24
we are experiencing depression if we are, that
5:26
we find that God's power is made perfect
5:28
in our weakness.
5:31
With anxiety, we learn that there's nothing God
5:33
expects us to do, that he will not
5:35
empower us by his grace to accomplish.
5:38
So again, we can accept our limitations, not
5:40
have to be superheroes, but trust that God's
5:42
grace will meet us and empower us to
5:44
do the things that we do need to
5:46
do.
5:47
That future orientation can be one of peace
5:49
as we see God providing for us.
5:52
With addiction and recovery, we realize we have
5:54
deep needs.
5:56
We ultimately have a need for life.
5:58
Addiction is a life source disorder.
6:01
And the good news is there is a
6:03
source of life offered us in Jesus.
6:05
And so when we admit how we've sought
6:07
life in unhealthy ways and then commit to
6:10
radical change, we can actually receive life in
6:12
healthy ways from Jesus and move forward in
6:15
healing and in grace.
6:17
With neurodiversity, we saw how every brain is
6:19
different, that we're meant to be part of
6:21
a motley crew, not every human being being
6:23
the same, but different strengths, different abilities, different
6:26
perspectives.
6:28
And how when we accept that our brain
6:30
is different and that that's okay, we end
6:32
up being able to advocate for ourselves in
6:34
the workplace.
6:35
And that means we're actually advocating for others.
6:37
And we're affirming the creativity and the diversity
6:39
of God in the way that our work
6:41
teams come together.
6:43
And then finally, with trauma, we saw how
6:45
when we identify our traumatic memories, by tracing
6:49
back from our challenges we're facing at work
6:51
to our emotional responses to childhood or earlier
6:54
experiences in our life that may be traumatic,
6:58
that that allows us to then welcome God's
7:00
presence into those memories allows us to unlearn
7:04
our learned helplessness allows us to move forward
7:06
in to new challenges in the workplace in
7:09
a healthy way.
7:10
We let God meet us with his gracious
7:12
love in all our inadequacies.
7:15
That love takes us in as we are.
7:18
And that love heals us.
7:22
So where do we go from here?
7:24
Well, it's interesting, we've been talking a lot
7:27
about human nature, right, letting Jesus be our
7:29
anthropologist, but we don't just need teachings or
7:33
ideas about human nature.
7:35
We need a vision of human life and
7:38
love and work as it's meant to be.
7:42
We need to see what human life can
7:45
really be like.
7:47
And thankfully, Jesus gives us that vision too.
7:52
So in that same passage, Luke chapter 10,
7:54
where Jesus affirmed this teaching of loving the
7:57
Lord your God with all your heart and
7:58
soul and mind and strength, and loving your
8:01
neighbor as yourself, actually went further and unpack
8:03
this teaching with a story.
8:05
So we could visualize what is this teaching
8:07
really like?
8:08
What is human life meant to be like?
8:12
So this is starting in verse 29, the
8:14
original person who had kind of been grilling
8:16
Jesus asking him some questions.
8:18
That's the he here.
8:20
But he wanted to justify himself.
8:22
So he asked Jesus, and who is my
8:24
neighbor?
8:25
In reply, Jesus said, a man was going
8:28
down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was
8:30
attacked by robbers.
8:32
They stripped him of his clothes, beat him
8:34
and went away, leaving him half dead.
8:38
A priest happened to be going down the
8:39
same road.
8:41
And when he saw the man, he passed
8:42
by on the other side.
8:44
So to a Levite, when he came to
8:46
the place and saw him passed by on
8:48
the other side.
8:50
But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where
8:53
the man was.
8:54
And when he saw him, he took pity
8:56
on him.
8:57
He went to him and bandaged his wounds,
9:00
pouring on oil and wine.
9:02
Then he put the man on his own
9:04
donkey, brought him to an inn and took
9:06
care of him.
9:08
The next day he took out two denarii
9:10
and gave them to the innkeeper.
9:12
Look after him, he said.
9:13
And when I return, I will reimburse you
9:15
for any extra expense you may have.
9:19
Which of these three do you think was
9:21
a neighbor to the man who fell into
9:22
the hands of robbers?
9:24
The expert in the law replied, the one
9:26
who had mercy on him.
9:28
Jesus told him, go and do likewise.
9:34
Now, this famous parable of the Good Samaritan,
9:37
as it's often called, is usually presented as
9:40
a kind of summons to missional living, going
9:43
out and serving the vulnerable.
9:45
And we'll get there.
9:46
You know me, I like mission.
9:49
But I actually want to present a different
9:51
lens for this passage from early Christian theologians
9:55
in the first few centuries of the Church.
9:58
Sometimes this passage was viewed as an image
10:01
of the incarnation, an image of Jesus becoming
10:06
human, of God sending Jesus to meet us
10:09
in our vulnerability.
10:12
So first I want to start with just
10:14
an idea of, okay, some basic ideas about
10:16
the incarnation and then get back to this
10:18
specific interpretation of this passage.
10:21
So one of the earliest Christian theologians outside
10:24
of the New Church father named Irenaeus, and
10:28
Irenaeus wrote a book called Against Heresies, probably
10:31
around 180 AD.
10:34
And there's a little section in it where
10:35
he's talking about Jesus's incarnation, how Jesus reveals
10:39
the father to humanity.
10:42
And he says this, For the glory of
10:45
God is the living man, and the life
10:47
of man is the vision of God.
10:51
For the glory of God is the living
10:53
man, and the life of man is the
10:56
vision of God.
10:58
It's a real important note here when the
11:00
word man is being used here.
11:01
This is like a translation from the Latin,
11:04
ultimately from the Greek anthropos, which really means
11:06
human or humanity.
11:09
And so it's not specifically talking about man
11:11
versus woman, but human beings.
11:13
So we could say, For the glory of
11:15
God is the living human, and the life
11:17
of humanity is the vision of God.
11:22
What Irenaeus is saying here is that when
11:24
we think about human nature, when we think
11:27
about what human nature is meant to be,
11:30
it's meant to be the glory of God.
11:32
The glory of God is the living human.
11:36
Without the presence and the glory of God,
11:40
humanity can't be what it was meant to
11:41
be.
11:43
The life of humanity is the vision of
11:46
God.
11:47
In the same passage Irenaeus writes that Jesus
11:51
showed God to man and man to God.
11:56
Jesus showed God to humanity and humanity to
12:00
God.
12:01
So Jesus, by being in his very nature
12:05
God, but becoming human, shows us what human
12:10
nature is meant to be.
12:12
It's his life, his person, that is the
12:16
vision of a human being fully alive, of
12:19
humanity filled with the glory and life of
12:22
God.
12:23
That's what it means to be human.
12:27
Okay, a couple centuries later, another theologian, Athanasius,
12:31
writes a book called On the Incarnation.
12:33
So this would have been in the early
12:34
300s.
12:36
And in this book he has this real
12:38
pithy, beautiful statement summarizing the same idea that
12:41
Irenaeus was talking about.
12:43
So he's speaking about Jesus, and this is
12:45
what he says, For he was incarnate, that
12:48
we might be made God.
12:51
For he was incarnate, that we might be
12:54
made God.
12:56
Okay, now that that could be misinterpreted.
12:58
The kind of scriptural reference that Athanasius probably
13:01
has in mind here is 2 Peter chapter
13:04
1 verse 4, where Peter says we can
13:06
become participants in the divine nature.
13:09
So this is not saying that we're going
13:10
to become God in the sense that we're
13:12
going to be equal with God, or have
13:14
the same powers of God, or like create
13:15
our own universes like God created his universe.
13:17
That's not what it means.
13:18
What it means is that the way that
13:20
God is in his nature, his love, his
13:24
character, his goodness, all the things that we've
13:28
explored throughout this series in terms of the
13:30
beauty of who God is as he comes
13:32
to us with his gracious love, that we
13:34
can become like that in our being, because
13:39
Jesus became like us.
13:41
We can become like God.
13:43
That's what it means.
13:46
He became incarnate, that we might be made
13:48
God.
13:50
The term for this that the Eastern Church
13:52
has used is theosis, or deification, becoming like
13:56
God.
13:57
Again, sometimes the language can be confusing if
13:59
you don't have the context here, but it's
14:02
a beautiful image.
14:03
It's our humanity becoming fully what it was
14:06
meant to be because of God's grace.
14:10
One of the kind of paraphrases of this
14:12
idea from Irenaeus and from Athanasius is saying
14:15
that we can become by grace what God
14:18
is by nature.
14:21
Humanity fully alive, the living human, the living
14:25
man.
14:27
Jesus shows us what humanity is meant to
14:31
be.
14:32
Okay, now with that in mind, just one
14:36
generation later than Athanasius, you get Augustine, another
14:39
key theologian, and he's looking at this passage
14:43
of the parable of the Good Samaritan, right?
14:45
And he's got all of these ideas about
14:47
the incarnation of Jesus in his mind, and
14:50
how Irenaeus taught about it, how Athanasius taught
14:53
about it.
14:54
Okay, so when he reads this passage and
14:56
he gets to this story of this man
14:59
who's attacked by robbers and stripped of his
15:02
clothes and left for dead, what goes through
15:05
Augustine's mind?
15:06
He thinks this is about humanity as a
15:09
whole.
15:09
So I'm reading now from his commentary.
15:11
He says, those who stripped him, namely of
15:15
his immortality, and beat him by persuading him
15:19
to sin, and left him half-dead, because
15:22
insofar as man can understand and know God,
15:25
he lives, but insofar as he is wasted
15:27
and oppressed by sin, he is dead.
15:30
So what Augustine is saying is that this
15:32
man on the road who's beat up, who's
15:34
half-dead, that's humanity.
15:36
We're all beat up and half- dead.
15:38
We have so many flaws because of our
15:40
sin, and we're so weak, and we can't
15:41
help ourselves, and we just need somebody to
15:43
come save us.
15:44
So then, who does that make the Good
15:47
Samaritan, who comes and bandages this man's wounds
15:51
and pours on oil and wine and brings
15:54
him to a safe place and takes care
15:56
of him?
15:57
It's Jesus.
15:59
Jesus is the Good Samaritan.
16:01
Jesus is the one who comes to us
16:03
in all of our inadequacy and gives us
16:06
God's gracious love, the love that takes us
16:10
in just as we are, and the love
16:12
that heals us.
16:14
That's the vision for human life that we
16:17
need.
16:19
Okay, but we do get to mission, because
16:21
how does Jesus end this teaching?
16:24
He says, who was a neighbor to the
16:28
man?
16:30
And the expert in the law dutifully replies,
16:31
the one who had mercy on him, and
16:33
Jesus told him, go and do likewise.
16:38
Because remember, we start from a place of
16:40
self-acceptance in God's love, but then God's
16:43
love moves us into a life of change
16:46
and growth, and that's a life of mission.
16:48
That's a life of us going out like
16:50
Jesus went out to save us, to love
16:53
and heal others in his name.
16:55
We go and we see people who are
16:57
lying on the side of the road, and
16:59
we remember that yes, they are part of
17:02
broken humanity, laden with sin, full of inadequacies,
17:05
just like us.
17:08
And Jesus comes to them in us to
17:12
save them, to help them, to help them
17:14
find the same healing that we've found in
17:17
Jesus.
17:18
Jesus is not just our anthropologist, Jesus is
17:22
the true anthropos, the human that we were
17:25
meant to be.
17:27
And when we come into him through his
17:29
gracious love, when we experience life with him,
17:32
he turns us into the kind of human
17:34
beings that we were meant to be.
17:38
So as you move forward into the rest
17:40
of your life at work, and you face
17:43
these challenges, whether it's depression or anxiety, addiction,
17:48
difficulties because of neurodiversity and the way people
17:50
respond to that, trauma, other things that we
17:54
didn't even have time to dig into specifically
17:56
in this series, as you face those challenges
17:58
in the workplace, as you run into your
18:00
own inadequacies again and again, as all of
18:03
us will in the workplace.
18:05
Remember this, that God can meet you with
18:09
his gracious love in all of your inadequacies,
18:13
because it's the love of Jesus that takes
18:15
us in just as we are.
18:17
It's the love of Jesus that heals us.
18:20
It's the love of Jesus that makes us
18:21
the kind of human being that we really
18:23
want to be at work and everywhere else.
18:29
Lord Jesus, thank you that you are the
18:31
true anthropos, the true human, the true worker,
18:35
that you know how to be a whole
18:38
and healthy human being at work.
18:41
We ask that you would graciously love us,
18:45
that we would experience that love, so that
18:48
we can work like you do, so that
18:51
we can become healthier Christians at work.
18:54
Do your work in us as we do
18:56
our work with you.
19:01
Thanks for listening.
19:03
Finding God at Work is a production of
19:05
Mission Central, a ministry based in Aurora, Illinois,
19:08
dedicated to forming Christians for mission in everyday
19:10
life.
19:11
You can subscribe to the podcast wherever you
19:13
listen to this episode to get 10 minutes
19:15
of teaching on faith and work every Tuesday
19:17
and Thursday.
19:18
To get resources to go deeper with each
19:20
podcast series, read our blog, and get info
19:22
about upcoming courses on faith in the workplace,
19:25
go to our website, missioncentral.church.