A morning rant

I woke up the other morning totally worked up. 

GETTING WORKED UP

My phone is one of my (many) alarm clocks, so when I hit snooze for the 49th time, I noticed there were no replies to an email from the day before. This is something that TICKS ME OFF. When you're asked a question, why can't you frickin' ANSWER the question??? If you're not sure yet, just reply and say you're still figuring it out! Say SOMETHING! But don't just ignore me and leave me to wonder what message you're trying to send with your silence! 

After all, I know I'm not the type of person that people clamor to be with. So when you don't answer my invitation, I wonder...are you putting me off while you look for an excuse to turn me down? Are you trying to insinuate by your silence that you're out of my league and I was delusional to have approached you in the first place? Are you hoping I'll just forget about my request so you don't have to feel rude by coming out and saying you don't value me enough to sacrifice your time for me? Or am I not the problem at all, and it's just that you're a slacker who has no ability to keep track of your emails and reply on a timely basis? If you don't ANSWER me, then how should I know what you're trying to say? And how can I adjust my response appropriately??? Seriously, I'd rather you just TELL me you want nothing to do with me so I know to quit bothering you than to ignore me and make me wonder if I'm imagining insinuations that aren't really there. Aaaaaaah!

So that was my thought process at 5:20am. I visualized conversations in which I pinned people to the wall and said, "Look, maybe I'm not the most fun person who ever lived, but at least I'm a respectful and compassionate enough person to answer you when you ask me a question!!!!"

From there, things went downhill. I started folding laundry from last night, all the while thinking, "Those slackers who don't answer emails are also lazy slobs. They rarely even DO laundry, much less fold it nicely and put it away. Sure, maybe I'm not the most charismatic person ever, but at least I know how to live as a responsible adult! So who are they to think they're better than me???"

I was on a roll. I started condemning people who are bad teachers, people who don't listen, people who give bad advice...you really don't want to hear it all. At this point, it was something like 5:28am. (It didn't take me long to work myself up into a frenzy, as I was following well-worn mental pathways of indignation in my mind.) 

IS INDIGNATION THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT?

Now, I generally assume that all of my thoughts are actually words I'm directing to God...that my thought life is really just an ongoing prayer. And since I consider prayer a conversation, it only makes sense to ask my Dad to weigh in on what I'm thinking. So I slowed down long enough to give him an opportunity to agree with me. I wanted him to be just as riled up as I was that people were failing to appreciate the good qualities of his beloved daughter and treating her with less than the respect and consideration she deserved! I wanted him to cheer me on in my indignant rant and to reassure me that compared to these losers, I wasn't so bad!

But when I paused my imaginary vindictive conversations, the only thing I felt was this weird kind of silence, as if God refused to enter into my fury...yet still invited me into his presence...saying, "Wow...um...that's a lot of energy for 5:28am. Let's talk about it." 

Now, when I want to hear from God, I usually jump-start the process by asking myself, "What would God probably say about this?" So as I reflected on what I know of my Dad and his character, the thought that went through my mind concerning the morning's rant was...

Nowhere does it say that the fruit of the Spirit is indignation. 

Rather, the fruit of the Spirit is: 
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, & self-control...

and I'm certainly at the opposite end of the spectrum from ANY of those right now. 

So perhaps this worked-up feeling is not my Dad's desire for me after all.

But honestly, that just added to my indignation. "WTF, Dad?!?! Are you saying I have no right to get upset about these people putting me down??? I'm just supposed to be HAPPY when people call me a loser and let them do it??? Don't you care about the injustice being done to me???"

I knew that couldn't be the case. I know my Dad DOES care very much about correcting injustice! I know he DOES get upset when his kids are put down. I know he DOESN'T just sit back sipping his margarita when people are attacked. After all, this is the same God who said, "Anyone who harms you harms my most precious possession. I will raise my fist to crush them..." (Zech 2:8-9) 

So acknowledging that my Dad DOES actively care, I had to admit...the feelings God wants me to have (love, joy, peace, etc.)...those do, in fact, sound way more pleasant than feeling worked up and indignant. 

But the fact of the matter is that I sort of ENJOY indignation and worked-up fury. I get some sort of rush out of mentally proving people wrong and putting my rivals down. I love to recount the ways I've been mistreated. Even though I know it just gets me MORE worked up and annoyed and self-righteous, I enjoy following that line of indignant thought. Somehow I've been fooled into thinking indignation and self-righteousness are POSITIVE feelings. But why the heck is that???

WHY I ENJOY INDIGNATION

I think it's this: Getting indignant feels better than the alternative...which is to feel the shame of agreeing that I really AM as unacceptable as I'm accused of being. 

I mean, there's a part of me that doesn't believe I'm a second class person...that believes I have unsurpassable worth because I'm made in the image of God. On the other hand, there's another part of me that worries that my accusers might be right - that I'm NOT good enough. After all, even if these specific accusations about me aren't true, I can't deny that I DON'T live up to who I want to be.

But agreeing that I'm unacceptable and living with the resulting weight of all that shame is something I don't think I could survive! I'd rather accuse others than take the accusation myself! So that's why I resort to projecting indignation and self-righteousness. It feels better than receiving accusation and shame. 

The problem is, my Dad doesn't say SHAME is what he wants for me either. On the contrary, he says the output of a person facing him should be love, joy, peace, etc. So how am I supposed to get there? How can I forego the bondage of both shame AND indignation...and instead experience the freedom he's talking about?

WHATEVER YOU'RE FACING IS WHAT YOU'LL REFLECT

That's when I remembered something I learned from my man Tim Keller: "Whatever you're facing is what you'll reflect." Basically, he's saying that you can tell what's going into you by looking at what's coming out of you.

If adorableness is reflecting out of the mirror, then adorableness must be facing it in the first place.

But if the things reflecting out of me are accusation, name-calling, comparison, and rivalry...then it must indicate that I'm somehow facing an input of all these things. I decided to analyze the input of thoughts I'd been experiencing lately, and I recounted the following thoughts that have been going through my brain lately:

• You're not made right. There's something fundamentally wrong with the way you're designed.
• You're the kind of person people just put up with. You're not the kind of person people CHOOSE.
• You're not competent to run your own life. You lack social aptitude and the ability to interpret reality.
• No one will ever understand you because you're just weird.

Eek. No wonder there's indignation spewing out of me at the butt-crack of dawn if that's the kind of input I'm receiving! But where is that accusation coming from?

I was suddenly reminded of Galatians 5 where Paul gives two opposite lists of outputs in order to help people determine where their input is coming from...God's Spirit or his enemy. I looked it up in the Message version, and here are some of the things on the list:

Signs my input is coming from the Enemy		Signs my input is coming from my Dad
a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage	vs.	serenity
cutthroat competition	vs.	not needing to force our way in life
a brutal temper	vs.	a sense of compassion in the heart
the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival	vs.	a conviction that a basic holiness permeates people
spending time comparing ourselves with each other	vs.	able to marshal and direct our energies wisely (even at 5:28am)

Okay, so these lists made it pretty clear to me which input I was facing and reflecting...and it certainly wasn't coming from my Dad. 

It also occurred to me that the accusatory input I was receiving wasn't REALLY coming from all those people I was mentally skewering, either. The true source of it was my Dad's enemy who "accuses us day and night." 

I mean, sure, maybe the enemy was using those people to deliver his accusatory message, or maybe he was just twisting their words in my mind to make me hear insinuations that the person never intended, or maybe they were simply deflecting the accusation they were receiving just like I was...but ultimately, that accusation came from the enemy. So if the accusation I was hearing wasn't really coming from people, I was just wasting my time trying to find ways to turn it back on them.

A NEW INPUT

But all this information didn't really calm me down. By this time I was sitting in completely stopped traffic on my way to work...which did absolutely nothing to help my worked-up fury. In fact, to tell the truth, I was getting more and more agitated as I admitted that my morning rant was outside of God's desire for me - in fact, it was participation with the enemy in one of his favorite activities (accusing people) - and yet I had absolutely no desire to stop it. I felt sooooo frustrated because it seemed like everyone and everything was against me.

In one of my less proud moments, I turned my accusatory spew on God. "Fine! I get it! This rant is sinful because I'm acting like your enemy; not like you. But guess what...I DON'T WANT TO OBEY YOU AND BE PEACEFUL. I want to continue relishing in my rant. Maybe the fruit of the Spirit does feel better than indignation, but right now I CAN'T GET THERE. What you're asking is too hard. So if you want my output changed, you're going to have to give me a new input." (I'm always surprised when this type of thing doesn't bring lightning bolts down from the sky.) But instead of the lightning I deserved, this is the thought that flashed across my brain in technicolor:

I don't accuse you; I accept you.

At first I dismissed it and continued my mental rant, but it just kept coming to me over and over again until eventually my whole thought process slowed down and I started to listen. And this is the thought that came to my mind:

God's not the one accusing me.
He didn't give me those lists to accuse and condemn me; 

He gave me those lists because he DOESN'T want me to feel condemned.
He gave me those lists so I could recognize when the enemy's feeding me condemning bullcrap...
and then stop receiving it from him.
So maybe I should repent and listen for God's input instead.

CALMING DOWN

This still didn't really help, though, because I imagined that at this point, my Dad's input would be pretty annoyed and sharp...telling me to grow up and get over myself.

However, a passage of Scripture came to my mind that began to dissipate my worked-up fury. This is what it said:

The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing. (Zeph 3:17) 

When I thought about this verse, suddenly I realized something...he quiets me with his LOVE. He doesn't quiet me by yelling at me and telling me to fix my attitude OR ELSE. He doesn't quiet me by telling me I'm an idiot who needs to get it together. He doesn't quiet me by sending me to time-out until I can act like a big girl.

On the contrary, he quiets me by grabbing me in a big bear hug and whispering words of love and affirmation until I calm down and realize I have no need to prove myself because I'M ALREADY LOVED AND ACCEPTED. I've already been labeled his most precious possession. I've already been adopted as his child. I've already been chosen as his bride. I don't need to prove myself to him.


And that was pretty humbling, because I realized what a crazy response that is. After all, when I feel accused, I respond by indiscriminately throwing condemnation back at my accuser...even if they don't deserve it. But when God gets falsely accused by me, he responds by indiscriminately giving out LOVE...even though I DO deserve his condemnation. (After all, let's face it...who am I to talk to the creator of the universe in such a flippant manner???



SWEEPING ME AWAY

So he quiets me with his LOVE. But what is that love really like? How strong is it? Suddenly I thought of the verse that says God's love has been poured out into our hearts (Rom 5:5), and I got this image of me standing underneath a raging waterfall...trying to keep my footing as an overwhelming outpouring of God's love rushed over me...so strong and wild that it was sweeping me away.  

I started thinking about the way my Dad loves me. 

I thought about the horrible weight of accusation and condemnation that I'd been feeling and how I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy...and then I realized that Jesus WILLINGLY put himself in a place to endure accusation and condemnation on the cross - even though he didn't deserve it. And why did he do that? He was taking MY accusation and condemnation so that I'd never have to sit under it again. He took the accusation and condemnation coming to me so that I could receive the acceptance and love that were coming to him.

I thought about the fact that I'd spent all morning trying to make myself right in God's sight, in my own sight, and in everyone else's sight...and how frustrating that was. Then I remembered that I'm ALREADY made right in God's sight because when Jesus switched "transcripts" with me, all of his good grades went onto my record. He did all the hard, frustrating work of living absolutely perfectly and proving himself so that I wouldn't have to...so that I could live peacefully without worked-up fury because I'm already proven.

I thought about how much patience my Dad has with me that even when I'm acting like a spoiled brat, he still cares so much about restoring me to fullness that he forgoes the annoyance he deserves to feel and continues to approach me with invitation and acceptance.

And then I suddenly realized...

• The more I thought about HIM (rather than thinking about ME), the more I felt the fruit of the Spirit described in Paul's list. 
• The more I focused on his love (rather than focusing on my rant), the more I calmed down. 
• The more I focused on his awesomeness (rather than trying to prove my own awesomeness), the more I felt release from all that shame. 

When God's voice was the input I was receiving, my output was totally changed. In fact, the more I allowed his love to quiet me, the more all thoughts of myself were swept away altogether. 

And here's the surprising thing: I discovered that I actually enjoy forgetting about myself a whole lot more than I enjoy indignant self-righteousness rants. I guess my Dad was on to something all along. 

Those who look to him are radiant; 

their faces are never covered with shame. 

--Ps 34:5