Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.
Philippians 3: 12-21
I want to start off by talking to you about two-year-olds and stop signs. First: Two-year-olds. There is nothing more paradoxically adorable and horrible than a two-year-old. On a bad day I would choose a wounded aggressive Rottweiler over a two-year-old. You see two-year-olds are prone to what is called “temper tantrums”. We see them in shopping centres melting into the dirty tiles below, a desperate parent by their side, well past the point of embarrassment, with a desperate look in their eyes – questioning the meaning of life.
It is not really the two-year-old’s fault. Their brains are still developing and at this particular stage they have an inability to integrate their emotions with other aspects of their thinking and personhood. So when they are angry, they become anger personified. That is why they look so….possessed. The good news is that through socialization (and their parents not abandoning them), they develop the ability to integrate. Of course a four-year-old also gets angry, sad or scared but unlike a two-year-old they do not become the emotion they are experiencing. They integrate it with other functions of their personhood. Thank God they do!
Interestingly enough, throughout our lives we have bouts where we get thrown off. Say you lose someone close to you. The sadness you feel can suck you in so deeply, that it intrudes into other aspects of your life and affects them negatively. This week I missed an important appointment out of sheer absentmindedness, because I am struggling to come to terms with the fact that my father-in-law passed away. I am, in a sense, being disintegrated by the experience. Don’t worry, I should be back on track soon.
It does not need to be something as dramatic as losing a loved one that can throw us off. Sometimes we struggle with integration without something notably bad happening. We want to lose weight but we lie on a couch eating taco chips. We intend to save money and then buy an expensive rooftop-tent that we will use two times in seven years. We all need some help to integrate and organize ourselves.
(Slide 2 Stop SIgn) Second: Stop Signs. What do you do when you see a stop sign? Well hopefully, if you are a good law-abiding citizen, you stop. But answer me this…if the stop sign remains at the place where you saw it, why do you stop stopping and drive off? It’s difficult to answer such a stupid question isn’t it? It is simply the nature of all caution traffic signs that you are expected to notice it, abide by it but then move on beyond it. Everybody knows that. More on this obvious fact and why I remind you of it, later.
(Slide 3 Disintegrating Man) In the letter to the Philippians, you meet a mature Paul. It was one of the last letters he wrote shortly before the end of his life. To speak of a mature person is just another way to speak of an integrated person. The philosopher David Whyte describes maturity in terms of being integrated when he says:
(Slide 4)“Maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts; most especially, the ability, despite our grief and losses, to courageously inhabit the past the present and the future all at once. The wisdom that comes from maturity is recognized through a disciplined refusal to choose between or isolate three powerful dynamics that form human identity: what has happened, what is happening now and what is about to occur.”
As you read Philippians 3, you will see what Whyte describes personified in Paul. He speaks about the past, realistically about his present, but also about his future hope. Verse 13 can be easily misunderstood. Paul says he forgets what is behind, but that is not true because in this very chapter and elsewhere he does recall his past in quite some intimate details. But because of that remembrance, he is able to put the past behind him – this is what he means in verse 13 (as some translations have also translated it). To put the past behind you, you must recall and deal with your emotions about it, to get integrated.
(Slide 5 – Goals) Rule 7 in Beyond Order…
So, in Rule 7 of Beyond Order, Jordan Peterson stress the importance of having a goal. He explains how it helps to integrate you. How adults without a goal can develop depression because they lose a sense of meaning and purpose. He speaks from his clinical experience as a psychologist, so he knows what he is talking about. He says that discipline plays an important part in all this. Getting on the road to maturity requires you to decide to pursue one issue or craft. You should limit your identity by choosing one thing and saying no to many other things you have the potential of also becoming. Much like a person in a committed relationship is saying yes to enter a covenant with one person, by implication he also says no to many other potential partners.
I mostly agree with Peterson that somebody with a goal, even when it turns out to be not the best one, is better off than somebody wandering aimlessly through life. Aimless wanderers either end up as cynical, quasi-artistical or addicted. Almost all of them end up lonely. Peterson says we should distinguish between failure and quitting. Failure could come about because you gave up, but it could also occur for many reasons beyond your control. Quitting is the kind of failure that happens if you don’t try long and hard enough at something. When you lack focus. If quitting becomes a habit you end up with a sad life full of half-finished projects and missed life lessons and missed opportunities for development. Your live is not integrated.
So, it is not what Peterson says that bothers me; I agree with most of it. But he does omit something. You see in his former life, Paul was not a failure. He was quite successful. In the first part of Chapter 3 he reads out a resume that would have impressed any Jew. But that success left him feeling deeply regretful and empty. You see, we can drift aimlessly and end up feeling disintegrated.
But we can also be very focused and successful and still end up feeling dissatisfied and disintegrated. And the funny thing is whilst Paul was writing this letter he wasn’t seen as the success we see him as today. He was chased away (not only by authorities but even by some churches here and there), threatened and looked down upon. Even though he was focused like never before.
So this begs the question, how can we handle success in such a way that it does not make us full of pride and arrogance? How can we handle seeming failure in a way that doesn’t make us cynical or regretful? How can we go through success and failure without quitting and with our maturity intact?
(Slide 6) Dogma and Spirit
What prevents people from maturing is a rejection of either success or failure, or both – the ability to recognize either and move forward. Which brings us back to my story about the Stop sign. Dogma (great word!) is like traffic signs that are there to warn us. They want us to pause so that we can avoid the mistakes of those that have come before.
You should know the formulated content of your faith. Studies in Canada in 2017 has shown that about 31 percent of Canadians are religiously affiliated. They are reported as being the happiest of all the people surveyed in the study. Most of them have received proper religious instruction – most have been presented with dogma.
So dogma – our religious teachings – is like traffic signs. Reminders. Moments to pause. Moments to use caution. Signs help us to stay on the right track and prevent mistakes made by those that has come before us. As new circumstances, conditions and discoveries might call for new traffic signs, so new conditions, circumstances and discoveries might call for an expansion of our dogmas. Dogma is the best attempt to put the rational content of our faith into words. It is usually helpful. We need to know how to express the content of our faith and dogma helps us to do that. It helps us to integrate who we are with what we believe. Wherever people come to convictions, dogma will inevitably follow just as traffic signs will follow wherever people drive cars on roads. We need stop signs to be safe. We need to know the basis of our religious faith to help us do the right thing.
But what would happen if a person that stops at a Stop sign, as he is supposed to do, refuses to move on? He will cause a dangerous traffic jam that will prevent many getting to their destination. He will probably cause others to be hurt or even to die. Something similar can happen with dogma. It happens when we do not keep in mind that dogma is a sign that points beyond itself. What we are able to express in words about God, even our very best utterances about Him, still falls short. If we forget this, dogma becomes a suffocating idol. It sucks the life out of us and others when we blindly follow it. It is like stopping at a Stop sign but instead of moving on, we refuse to go beyond. This is not wise at all.
(Slide 7) Spirit
What helps us to reach beyond dogma is Spirit. We are now in Pentecost time in the church calendar, the time we celebrate and focus on the work of the Spirit. If dogma is like a traffic sign, the Spirit is like the engine and steering column of us, the car. The Spirit propels and steers. It moves us onward, respecting the rules of the road in accordance with the traffic signs. The way and the direction into which the Holy Spirit steers us is often surprizing and unexpected. The people he sends us to, and the places he sends us are often the last ones we expected to end up with. The Spirit gives us vibrancy and a zest for life, it ignites a fire, it’s a spark and power and energy to move us forward.
In today’s passage and also in the rest of Paul’s letters one sees a beautiful interplay between dogma and Spirit in Paul. Paul formulates the content of our faith and the meaning of Jesus’s life for us in a way theologians still marvel at. It’s crazy to think how much work and thought he put into this, considering that he did not really have the long-standing tradition that we stand on today. He did not hold an academic position. He did not get study grants, yet he took dogma seriously. And then in between these brilliant formulations of the content of faith, we have biographical data that give us glimpses of his Spirt filled, activistic side. The Paul that pushes on to the next place when the Spirit prompts him to. The Paul that endures being shipwrecked, beaten, imprisoned and stoned. “You don’t do that if you ain’t got no engine folks!” The Paul, who in his letter to Romans, after a very articulate breakdown of faith and salvation, bursts out in worship and awe.
This wonderful maturity, this integration we see in Paul has a source. The source is the One he followed. Jesus. Jesus, who said: “I have not come to abolish the law and the prophets but came to fulfill it”. Can you hear how when Jesus says this, He describes a grip on dogma but also an openness for God’s Spirit to push Him beyond it? When Jesus impressed the leaders at the temple at age 12, I think it was not just his knowledge of the dogma but his interpretation of its implications. Jesus taught in a way that gripped the crowds, but he touched the untouchables in a healing way and served people in need in an equally inspiring way. He was the most integrated person that ever lived.
So, Paul summarizes the goal of his life, integrating the failures and successes to make sense in the light of one overarching goal: knowing Christ. Ultimately that is the only thing that makes going through the series of successes and failures meaningful. Christ is the one that keeps us and the universe together. Nothing can mature us better, can de-two-year-old us better than following Christ.
(Slide 8) Close
Isabel and I mourn the loss of her father. My kids mourn the loss of their grandfather. It’s not like I think of him as a perfect man – none of us are – but he was such a great example of maturity, of an integrated man. He recognized his failures and successes. He was loyal to a fault when it came to his faith and church. Kind of a traditionalist. He knew his dogma. But he was also open towards being guided and interrupted, if that was needed to attend to the needs of others. To move when the Spirit prompted him. When such people pass away you realize how their lives blessed yours. He knew Jesus and Jesus knew him. He knew the dogma, but was known by the Spirit.
I know what I want to live for. I want to know Christ and mature and get integrated and whole as I do. Join me. We do it best when we do it together.
Amen
Gabriel J Snyman
May 23rd 2021