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The Introduction to “Dying To Control”

Posted on February 8, 2013 // 1 Comment

A few questions that I’ve received about my book and blog are “What inspired you to write it?”, “What is ‘Dying to Control‘ all about?” and “What are you hoping to accomplish?” In thinking about how to answer these questions, I figured it might be helpful if I posted the book’s introduction. If the following does not answer your questions or if you have any additional questions, please let me know.

 Introduction

Time was beating second after relentless second as I sat, hunkered down in my apartment study, surrounded by the workload of seminary. Mindful of a deadline that would arise shortly after dawn, I fired away at the keyboard, writing a paper on the subject of God’s holiness. Having been exposed to impressions of God from an early age, I described his holiness as I had always envisioned it—a glorious light radiating his absolute power and authority throughout the universe. I defined holiness in terms of purity, perfection, and the absence of sin. Then, as I was explaining why humans cannot enter or even look upon the holy glow of God, something curious happened. Without warning, the words, “Stop writing what you already think!” blew through my mind. Silenced, I sat staring at the bright, square light of the monitor as a calming peace draped over me.

After a while I stood up, picked up my Bible, walked out of the study, sat down on the living room couch, and began reading the story that speaks to why the relationship between God and humankind is so distant—the story of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit in Genesis 3.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

2The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,3but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

4“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5“For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

8Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

 

“Where are you?”Those words caught my eye in a way they never had before, and like a child seeing fireworks for the first time, I gazed at them in fearful delight. Awed and perplexed, I began to wonder: If sin and sinful beings cannot exist in the presence of God, then what was God doing walking in the garden of Eden after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit? And why did God call out, “Where are you?” An all-powerful, all-knowing God certainly would have been aware of what they’d done and where they were hiding. This Genesis story, credited with explaining the expanse between a holy God and a sinful humanity, actually speaks of a God who reaches out to us.

I didn’t know this God, or at least I didn’t understand the complexity of this God. The God of my Catholic upbringing would have yelled, “I know where you are! I know what you did! Come out and receive your just punishment!” The God of my Protestant faith would have retreated to the purity of heaven to begin bridging the chasm between a holy God and a sinful humanity. Why was I taught that sin could not exist in the presence of God? How had I missed God’s invitation in verse 9 for so many years?

As I watched the foundation of my Christian faith detonate, I marveled at the glorious display. For the first time I was seeing God in color. The blinding white light of a punitive dictator who torments us for our sin had given way to a colorful array, and the silhouette of God as an alienated friend who must overcome the cosmic law that sinful beings cannot exist in his presence faded to black.

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 Since those dawning hours on September 23, 1998, my life has been consumed with studying, teaching, and experiencing the implications of Genesis 3. This book is a product of that journey. Written through the lens of Adam and Eve, Dying to Control is a reflective commentary on twentieth- and twenty-first-century American culture.

To appreciate this book, you don’t have to consider the garden of Eden drama to be a historical account; all that’s necessary is that you’re willing to consider the possibility that the story offers some insight into humanity’s conflict with God and one another. For too long now the debate between the scientific and religious communities over the historical merits of Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden has divided and distracted people from the story itself. Arguments over issues such as whether serpents ever walked or talked have grown old and have little bearing on the meaning and relevance of the account.

To illustrate my point, consider the story of the Three Little Pigs. Imagine if someone dismissed the tale because pigs do not build houses and wolves cannot blow them down. In response to the dismissal, imagine someone else trying to validate the story by providing scientific evidence suggesting that pigs may have at one time walked on two legs, had opposable thumbs, and had a brain mass capable of architectural design. Can you hear the ensuing debate over the intellectual potential of pigs and the lung capacity of wolves? None of which, by the way, would have any bearing on the moral of the story. In the end, with each side fighting to win the debate, the message of the Three Little Pigs would be lost.

To be clear, I’m not equating the story of the Three Little Pigs with the story of Adam and Eve. Rather, I’m drawing a comparison that illustrates our society’s absurd treatment of the garden of Eden drama. I find it hard to believe that those who argue against the historicity of the story simply dismiss the account as a mythical tale that offers little or no insight into our human condition. I also find it hard to believe that those who argue for the historicity of the story continue to focus their attention on protecting their position against attack and dissent. The garden of Eden drama—one of the oldest and most widely cherished stories in human history—has been misused and abused in the battleground of America’s culture war.

Today, across America, you’ll find religious enclaves still fighting this war. Consumed by their self-preserving causes, these communities of truth fighters adhere to a theology of a God who blows down houses when we don’t live by his rules. Deafened by the noise of warfare, these communities don’t hear, but rather fear, the engaging words of God: “Where are you?”

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Where are you?

Like Adam and Eve, we all hide among the trees when we’re afraid. We congregate there with those who view the world in similar ways and welcome what they see of us. We hide and gather with like-minded people because we fear the world seeing the naked truth of who we are and what we think and the shameful deeds we’ve done. We fear being exposed, for once we are truly known, we realize we must face an even greater fear—the fear of rejection.

To avoid living in fear, we grope for control of our lives and surroundings. Desperate to gain control of our world and our eternal destinies, we hijack anything that might give us the power needed to exert our will. Again and again, however, in our attempts to preserve and promote self we end up killing ourselves and one another. This sad irony has been an underlying theme in human history.

So, what do we do? In a world bleeding with religious conflict, in a world coughing from pollution, in a world starving for nourishment and love, what do we do?

Lasting solutions begin with making honest evaluations of ourselves as individuals and as members of families, neighborhoods, nations, and the world community. Instead of covering our humanity, we need to interact with and seek to understand one another in the midst of our humanity. Only after we stop hiding and blaming others for the woes of our world will we be able to own and address the shame we have each brought upon the human race.

My hope for humankind in the twenty-first century is that we will emerge from the shadows of shame to experience freedom from our obsession with control. This is the kind of freedom the world needs—a freedom that releases unconditional love and compassion.

My hope for this book is that it will stimulate self-reflection and dialogue that will draw people out of hiding to experience life with one another. I also hope this book will contribute to the theological framework of the next generation of Christians who believe they have a God-given responsibility to participate in restoring an Eden-like beauty to every dark corner of our world.

In the end we have a choice—individually and collectively. We can continue fighting for control by ignoring, denying, deflecting, rationalizing, and whitewashing the truth of who we are and what we think and the shameful deeds we do—or with open and outstretched hands we can submit to one another.

Fight or submit—that is the choice set before us. That is the dilemma of dying to control.

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Is It Wrong to Want Control?

Posted on January 18, 2013 // Leave a Comment

In my last post—We are Adam Lanza—I made the point that “we as a society are obsessed with the illusion of control, and when tragedy strikes, we’re more interested in trying to restore that illusion than in honestly assessing and dealing with the problem.” In response to that point, some people have asked, “Is it wrong to want control?”

That’s a good question, and it’s the subject of this post.

The desire for control is a natural phenomenon. Our mind is constantly taking in data through our five senses, filtering through that information, trying to make sense of the world around us. When we are unable to make sense of our world, or when our world goes into a state of chaos, we feel anxious and seek to bring order to that chaos. Taking it a step further, when our world becomes so chaotic that we feel personally threatened, fear kicks in, triggering the flow of adrenaline, setting off our fight-or-flight survival instinct.

Therefore, our desire for control—our desire to understand our environment and feel safe in it—is normal, which is why we appreciate the joke about the two men in the woods being chased by a bear. You’ve heard that joke, right? Two men are in the woods when they stumble upon a bear. Instinctively they turn and run. As they’re running away from the bear one man yells to the other, “Why are we running? We can’t outrun a bear?” Without looking back, the second man responds, “It’s not the bear I’m trying to outrun!”

The joke works because, in a humorous way, it brings to light a dark truth that we can relate to, that in life-threatening situations our natural instinct is to preserve self. That’s the natural order of things; that’s survival of the fittest. However, even though the fight-or-flight response is a natural and understandable reaction to an oncoming threat, it’s not our only option.

In the joke about the two men running from a bear, one man could have made the choice not to run; he could have sacrificed his life so that the other man could get away. Granted, that wouldn’t make for a funny joke, but it would make for an incredible story.

You see, in the face of fear we don’t have to run. We are not slaves to our primal urge to protect and preserve self. We can rise to something better, something that transcends the natural order of things. We can choose to love.

In a hectic, complicated world our illusion of control is constantly being threatened. Whether it’s an approaching super-storm, the effects of a sputtering economy, or the possibility of another terrorist attack, our lives are full of uncertainty. We can respond to each new threat with a fear-driven fight-or-flight mentality or we can be motivated by love. It’s our choice.

To be honest, I’m tired of living in fear—it’s exhausting. When you’re motivated by fear: you feel anxious; you worry; you have nightmares; you dread what might happen; you hold your possessions tightly, not wanting to lose what you have; and you’re always looking out for people that can hurt you.

In contrast, living in love is invigorating. When you’re motivated by love: you’re at peace; you have hope; you have dreams; you look forward to what will happen; you hold your possessions loosely, willing to share what you have; and you’re always looking out for people that you can help.

Being motivated by love sounds so much better than being motivated by fear, doesn’t it? So then why is it so hard? Why are we so anxious? Why do we spend so much time worrying about what might happen?

For love to overcome our fear, we have to believe that there’s more to life than our own survival, that we’re part of something greater than our own individual lives. We need to be willing to sacrifice self for a greater good. I like the way a friend of mine put it in response to my last post: “The pendulum of entitlement needs to swing back to what made this country great…God, country, family, self.”

In the end, the question “Is it wrong to want control?” may not be nearly as important as the questions “Why do we want control?” and “What do we do with the control we have?”

Are we motivated by fear…love…or something else?

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We are Adam Lanza

Posted on January 11, 2013 // 1 Comment

A blog entry that I posted three months ago, titled The Illusion of Control, received an unusual number of hits this past week. Curious as to why, I reread the entry.

The post began with a brief summary of the tragedy that occurred in the Washington metropolitan area back in October, 2002, when ten people were killed and three others were seriously wounded by two snipers randomly shooting people in shopping center parking lots and gas stations. Reflecting on that tragedy, I wrote:

“Horrific stories like this one are disturbing. Somewhere deep within our beings, maybe in our souls, we feel a most unsettling angst—one that tends to linger. Death can have this effect on us, particularly in situations where it could have been avoided, or in this case when it is a random, senseless act of violence. It just feels wrong.”

Somewhere in the middle of reading that paragraph I felt a cold chill as my mind migrated north from a parking lot in Washington DC to an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. For weeks now I have been wondering whether I should write something about the massacre that occurred in Sandy Hook on that cold December morning, but honestly, I have been at a loss for words, trying to make sense of yet another “random, senseless act of violence.”

With Sandy Hook Elementary School on my mind, I continued reading my post from three months ago:

Beyond the tragic loss of life, there’s something else about an event like this that disturbs us—the jarring realization that we’re not in control of our lives as much as we’d like to think. The idea that I could be shot while loading groceries into my car reminds me that I do not sustain my own life. Sure, we can avoid dangerous situations and take meticulous care of our bodies, but ultimately we’re not in control. There are countless internal and external variables that could end our lives in an instant. A blood vessel could burst in my brain as I type these words and there would be nothing I could do about it; a drunk driver could hit me head-on before I have a second to react; a tidal wave could wash over my family as we stand helplessly on the beach; and a giant asteroid could be hurling toward Earth, and the only thing we could do would be to count down the seconds until impact. We are at the mercy of the world around us, and we need our bodies to perform countless involuntary functions to keep us alive. That’s part of why hearing a story about madmen randomly shooting people is so troublesome; it’s a shocking reminder that life is fragile and that we do not have ultimate control over our lives. Death, without warning, can visit any one of us at any time.

Reading that paragraph, I realized what it was that I wanted, needed, to write about.

This post is not a commentary on what happened the morning of December 14th, in Newtown, Connecticut; it’s about what’s happening all across the country now. Gun control has taken center stage in public and political discourse. Those in favor of greater gun restrictions have proclaimed the need to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again, while those against changing the gun laws have insisted on the need to defend the Constitution and our Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Seriously? Do those trying to take the moral high ground of defending the Constitution seriously believe this is a Second Amendment issue? And do those fighting for increased gun control seriously think that they can prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again?

Folks, let’s be honest with ourselves; this frenzy over gun control is largely a reaction to our illusion of control being shattered.

In the days after Sandy Hook, social media channels were flooded with concerned parents panicking over whether or not they should send their children back to school (as if the world had just become a dangerous place). And once the issue of gun control was raised, gun advocates started to lose their minds, sensing that their control was being threatened because “Big Brother” might take away their guns and their God-given right to buy and sell semi-automatic weapons.

So, what’s my point?

My point is that we as a society are obsessed with the illusion of control, and when tragedy strikes, we’re more interested in trying to restore that illusion than in honestly assessing and dealing with the problem.

Let’s take the shooting at Sandy Hook for example. We want to believe that access to guns is the problem, and we want to read a moving article like I am Adam Lanza’s Mother and think that addressing mental illness is the solution. Gun control and mental illness may be issues that we need to address, but they are not the foundational problem that’s killing our nation.

The foundational problem in America is that we believe that we are each entitled to control our own destiny and that “nobody has the right to tell me what to do.” In the case of Adam Lanza, we don’t know what motivated him to do what he did on the morning of December 14th, but I am convinced that beneath his motivation was the belief that his actions would somehow place him in a position of power and give him the control that he thought he was entitled to have. I further believe the same is true for the majority of people who have taken matters into their own hands over the past few decades, opening fire in their high schools, places of work, and public venues. The difference between those individual and the rest of society is that they were each detached from their conscience and unable to comprehend the gravity of their actions.

But are we as society any different than Adam Lanza? Have we as a society detached ourselves from our collective conscience and can no longer comprehend the gravity of our actions?

While the rich continue to insist that they’re entitled to keep more of their money, and the poor believe they’re entitled to more public assistance, and the sick feel entitled to unlimited health-care coverage, and the aging expect social security to support them until they die (even if modern technology allows them to live for another 100 years), our nation has dropped off a “fiscal cliff.” We are spending trillions of dollars that we don’t have, and while this is all happening, Republican and Democrats are fighting for control of Congress and the country, more interested in supporting the causes of their campaign donors and getting re-elected than in representing their constituents.

We have lost our collective conscience!

Just think for a moment about what we do on the day after Thanksgiving—the day after giving thanks for all the blessings that we have. On that day—Black Friday—we spend more money than any other day of the year, and we literally trample over each other buying stuff we really don’t need because we think we’re entitled to it. It’s insane! We have become so obsessed with our individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that we are unable to comprehend the gravity—the insanity—of our actions. So instead of looking the problem in the face when a massacre like Sandy Hook occurs, we kid ourselves into thinking the solution to the problem is as easy as gun control and a national campaign to address mental illness.

Seriously, is that what we really believe?

When will we be honest with ourselves? When will we stop chasing the illusion of control? When will we stop indulging our entitlements at the cost of bankrupting our nation and killing the next generation? And when will we stop trampling and shooting anyone who stands in the way of our controlling our own destiny?

We might not like it, and we might not want to admit it, but we are Adam Lanza.

And we need to get help before it’s too late.

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The Illusion of Control

Posted on October 16, 2012 // 3 Comments

This excerpt from chapter 6 addresses the effects that modern technology has had on how we experience (or don’t experience) life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

     The illusion of control vanished as people across Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland feared for their lives. There was at least one sniper on the loose, randomly shooting individuals in shopping center parking lots and gas stations. As panic settled over the Washington metropolitan area, people began to look over their shoulders as they loaded groceries and pumped gas into their cars, hoping, praying, that they would not be next.

     After three weeks of terror, on October 24, 2002, two perpetrators were apprehended at a rest stop off an interstate highway. The ordeal had finally come to an end but tragically not before ten people had been killed and three others seriously wounded by the Beltway snipers.

     Horrific stories like this one are disturbing. Somewhere deep within our beings, maybe in our souls, we feel a most unsettling angst—one that tends to linger. Death can have this effect on us, particularly in situations where it could have been avoided, or in this case when it is a random, senseless act of violence. It just feels wrong.

     Beyond the tragic loss of life, there’s something else about an event like this that disturbs us—the jarring realization that we’re not in control of our lives as much as we’d like to think. The idea that I could be shot while loading groceries into my car reminds me that I do not sustain my own life. Sure, we can avoid dangerous situations and take meticulous care of our bodies, but ultimately we’re not in control. There are countless internal and external variables that could end our lives in an instant. A blood vessel could burst in my brain as I type these words and there would be nothing I could do about it; a drunk driver could hit me head-on before I have a second to react; a tidal wave could wash over my family as we stand helplessly on the beach; and a giant asteroid could be hurling toward Earth, and the only thing we could do would be to count down the seconds until impact. We are at the mercy of the world around us, and we need our bodies to perform countless involuntary functions to keep us alive. That’s part of why hearing a story about madmen randomly shooting people is so troublesome; it’s a shocking reminder that life is fragile and that we do not have ultimate control over our lives. Death, without warning, can visit any one of us at any time.

     However, in twenty-first-century America, we live with the illusion that we’re in control of our lives. Most mornings when we get out of bed, we expect to return to our pillows that evening. The average American has no reason to think otherwise, and so understandably we assume each day we’ll live for yet another day.

     We’re able to live with this illusion of control because technology has helped us mitigate the curses. Most Americans don’t have to fight off wild animals. Thanks to gunpowder, pesticides, vaccines, and other modern developments, we’ve regained control over much of the animal world. As for our struggle with the ground, irrigation techniques, genetic engineering of plants, modern machinery, and advancements in weather forecasting and seismology have helped us manage and even at times control our groaning planet. We’ve mitigated the curses to a greater degree than any other people in human history, and as technology continues to progress, so will our illusion of control.

     …Technology feeds the illusion of control so much so that it is easy for us to think that we don’t need God, that we can sustain ourselves, and that we can tame our groaning planet. As a result, we’re consumed with self-preservation. Instead of focusing on today, we worry about tomorrow. Instead of being content with what we have, we search for what we think we need.

     As we pursue self-preservation, life is passing us by. We want to believe that “there’s always tomorrow,” which is why death, particularly the unexpected death of a loved one, leaves us questioning how we spend our time today. In mitigating the curses, we seem to be losing sight of what really matters—life together.…

     As technology continues to advance in the twenty-first century, offering us more and more control over the curses, who or what will we trust to sustain our lives? Will we spend more time pursuing the illusion of control? Will we commit more energy to preserving our own existence? Will we become more adept at playing the blame game? Or will we become more grateful for what we have, take more responsibility for our actions, and regain perspective on what really matters in life?

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