What filter do you use?
12/10/2011
I was talking with a guy in Beirut 2 weeks ago and he asked me a question that made me pause, and think. He said, “Mike, what filter do you use?” Huh? Filter? Strange terminology. But I processed it. Chewed it up and spat it out, cause I am good at that. Well trained.
I am not a coffee drinker, but the son of one. But the “filter” he was referring to was the grid in my mind. What kind of grid did I have to sort through the things that came to me. Essentially, what makes up this filter that seems to effortlessly assess the opinions and ideas of others? What are the values I esteem, the worldview I hold, the beliefs that I hold tightly? Have I lost you? Cause I have just about lost myself.
Because I know longer like to think in theory. It is too removed from experience. I don’t want to die a theoretician. I want to live and die in the experience of real life. Let me explain.
People. Our blessing and our er, well, … for us introverts, … challenges. People of varying degrees come at us from every side. I really appreciate the great commandment, “Love God.” That only makes sense. And on a theory level, I like, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Sweet. Makes more sense. Until you have to …well, be with them, live near them, talk with them, respond to them. Can you spell YIKES?
So I like Jesus. I grab Him in a hurry. He is my answer to what overwhelms me. I am so impressed with Jesus. Everything I learn about Him, everything that I see in Him, His character, His way of being, His response at every turn, I really do love Jesus. And then this Jesus is here, now, and again, well… here.
And, quite honestly, I “feel” like a major let down to Him. Like, He says, Yikes, this is what I have to work with? oh my,” says Jesus. But hey, I say back to Him, “it says in Hebrews that you know our weaknesses.” He must like that–me pointing out to Him what He has said. Must be a laugh He shares in His group–the trinity. It is always good to remind God since He is so very busy, He may not remember?
So the fact is, I am so incredibly impressed with Jesus. I love how He does things. Good grief, He is always going after the underdog, the person that socially sensible people would squash. Outsiders, Promiscuous, Beggars, Diseased and Sickly, yuck, yuck, yuck. He looks at them, He sees them, He calls them out. And they think, “Are ya kidding me?” “I’ll take this healing but man, Jesus, is not a good judge of character or He would have passed me by in a heartbeat. But it doesn’t matter, I will take the healing and the forgiveness…
But that is just the point. Jesus has this capacity. This incredible capacity to connect with the ugly, the unfortunate, the neglected, the weird, the socially strange, the oddballs, and the freaks that everyone else steps over. “Excuse me, but I am in a hurry. Jesus loves you,” I yell as I hurry away. I like Jesus. He makes me feel so safe.
It is easy to feel like you just don’t make the grade, like it would be so nice to have it all together. But our experiences haunt us, our failures seem to accuse us, our dashed expectations remind us, we blew it, that we are not ready for the big leagues. We belong with those that are in, unfortunately, remedial training, the losers. Not good enough. Of course, we want to be, we want everyone to notice who we are and what we have done, how incredibly we have become. but not just yet. Because, well we haven’t arrived just yet. We don’t have it together… but we will.
So Jesus says we can do it. We can be a blessing. We can help others. That He has actually given us gifts to use to be this blessing. That we actually have light inside of us. That we have this incredible capacity of love to spread around, that we can follow, and hear, and be led, and know, and expect to do greater things than… Jesus? Oh, my. Me? He is looking at me. The loser. The one who so quickly dodges away. He is convinced that it can be done by anyone. He is just looking for someone who will believe Him.
As I thought about it, regardless of how I felt about myself, my filter is wrapped around Jesus. And that is such a good thing.
