Give/Takeaway

That given is taken away – is sometimes a pattern in earth life.  Like so many factors in life, there are at least two sides to a matter.  There are more, of course, but the multiple does not fit our cherished saying: There are two sides to a coin.  We need a coin with at least three sides: affirmative, negative and neutral.  The analogy is only useful when the answer is only a clear choice between yes and no.  For most matters the coin should really be diamond shape, able to rest on several facets – all at once.  We tend to make of life as a stew made up of ingredients that are quite good on their own (individual) but giving up the individual advantages and disadvantages for the advantages and disadvantages of mixing (relationships).  It is likely that most of our problems related to life and death, suffering and health, like and dislike, good and evil are tied to the duties and privileges related to being an individual among individuals trying to build a society while reserving the individualism that we crave.  The story may be simply illustrated: I was elected the chairman of a board making serious decisions related to Christian ministry in the world.  That board was made up of about thirty persons who knew and respected each other well.  I tended to guide the meeting with a mixture of Robert’s Rules of Order and the comradeship that created some informality.  When the issue became tight, I moved more toward the legalism of the rules so to keep order, and move the business along in a legal context.  I was challenged on an occasion, and explained my procedure which had grown out of the tradition of the group and learned by me in this group before I was chairman.  For some reason I asked the member (a great fellow and a good friend of mine) if he was moving to have the group speak to the ruling as out-of-order and if he wanted tight application of the rules.  He smiled, paused a moment and said: You have already guessed that I want your style when it is on my side, and would prefer the rules when they might serve in my favor, or vice-versa.  I have no motion.  Everyone laughed.

Life is like that.  The understanding human ambivalence born of imperfection may lead to lies, thievery, or a set of contradictions to our values.  The man violating the vows of marriage is often livid, even murderous, if his wife violates the standard.  There is commonly selfishness in us that we don’t tolerate well in others.  Cheating we rail against cheating.  Taking privilege we rail against privilege.  In this we must have a value system and follow it not only with intellectual approval but in the holistic life that practices what he or she preaches and would like to receive from others.  We have been going through a period during the last few years in which it has been found that some clergy violated boys in sexual involvement.  What they gave in spiritual ministry was neutralized for them in physical conduct.  It is related to hypocrisy, trauma, confusion, degradation, distortion, and, for many, lifelong disturbance.  Those imposing such acts, sometimes in ignorance, have made matters worse in the doing (hypocrisy) than if they had not offered the beauty of the righteous Christ to vulnerable persons who may not have the skills to separate the good from the evil.  Christ does not need hypocrites to do his work. This was part of the sin of Judas, a pattern of betrayal that not only violated the ministry of the greatest person to have ever lived on earth, but those companions faced with the conflicts introduced to their faith and emotions by his betrayal.

The parent who lives with the attitude toward the son or daughter: Do what I say not what I do, becomes a Judas figure to the child.  I had a friend long ago who offered his son a thousand dollars on his 21^st birthday if he did not smoke tobacco during any previous period of his life.  The lad did well until about his eighteenth year, and began the habit to the disappointment of both mother and father.  On the son’s twenty-first birthday the mother prepared a family celebration.  She made a little speech noting the long ago proposal for abstinence.  She closed by saying: I now insist that your father give you a thousand dollars as a fine for not offering an example so you might keep that promise you made as a little boy.  The father not only paid up, but admitted openly that his son’s need for a father’s consistency in practice had been violated.  We may have little realization how our performance of grace in giving even in love is lost by that which follows.  Students have refused parental support because of the family’s ill-gotten dollars.