From Pride To Repentance: Why It Is So Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry

Get this for a link – only last Friday night I’m watching a interview programme with the rock/jazz/pop group Chicago. I had recorded it from a few days before and it was an opportune time to watch it. I’m not the biggest fan of Chicago, but they’ve done a few tunes that I’m familiar with that I like and I’d seen them in some videos with Earth, Wind and Fire and they were alright. I like Earth, Wind and Fire – not everything you understand, but I like them. Then to find out Bill Champlin who plays for Chicago also wrote After The Love Has Gone that EWF popularised was a nice connection.

Anyhow, so I’m watching the interview and am not really that impressed by the level of knowledge that’s coming from it, but I am impressed by the music that they play some of which I hadn’t heard before but are apparently part of the group’s greatest hits, if you will. So I finish at that and think nothing of it.

Then on my way home from the teacher training session last night I’m reflecting further in preparation for last night’s blog and I’m walking through a walkway in a shopping precinct and I pass a pub that’s playing Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry. It’s one of those occasions where a song just sticks to your head. You get me? You may have had a tune before, or a train of thought, but that is interrupted by the distinctive song that you actually like. (Yeah, I know it works with songs you don’t like as well, but let’s keep it positive.)

So I’m going back home with this song in my head from a group whose interview I’d seen last Friday, but it still doesn’t connect with me yet what it has to do with anything. Indeed when I got home and put together the blog the song was no longer dominant in my thinking for as I wrote the blog I was also watching an episode of Columbo that I’d also recorded from Sunday. (Have I mentioned what a blessing the SkyPlus box is? Especially when there’s nothing on to watch!)

However this morning I wake up and in my head I’m thinking back on the entry I’d written and I thought to myself in all I wrote about frustration and the like I wasn’t quite sure I’d expressed the sorrow I had in actually partaking in something hazardous to my relationship with God. In a sense I was blocking God out. Shutting off a relationship that means life to me. And I hadn’t said I was sad about that, or even sorry, or even repentant.

Although I hadn’t expressed it in the blog, however implicitly you want to read into it, I was and am sorry about it. Not that it was essential to blog it, but the thought in my head was around the process of reconciliation which requires some level of acknowledgement of hurts made and a desire to build bridges to re-establish that healthy relationship.

As I thought further I considered why it is so hard for me to say I’m sorry (ahhh you see how it all connects now, eh?) and this may just be me, but there’s something about saying sorry that acknowledges failing on your part. That requires a level of humiliating yourself, lowering yourself, placing yourself at the mercy of someone else. For it to work effectively for the health of the relationship this lowering of self has to be genuine and not only expressed in words but reinforced with action to follow.

Thus in a very real way sorry works with repentance. That is to say I really mean I’m sorry when I turn 180 degrees from the wrong (misguided, ignorant, stubborn, pig-headed, rebellious, contentious, argumentative, selfish) direction that I had set for myself, and walk in humility towards reconnecting and doing whatever is necessary great or small to do that. Yet there is the rub, who wants to really admit they are wrong? Who really actually wants to put away their agenda, genuinely for the interests of the other. And I mean for the interests of the other, because situations can be manipulated only too well that seeks to get our agenda done anyway by going through an appearance of repentance. That is why for me it is so hard to say I’m sorry, because it feels as though I lose.

Then again that highlights the same point I was making yesterday that it reveals the true nature of my heart – how self-centred, self-satisfying, self-justifying and self-gratifying I am to the cost of anyone else. Thankfully, as I’ve found from occasion to occasion, when the love breaks through, those issues are swept away to be replaced by that awesome character of Christ that is humble, meek, gentle, approachable, flexible, patient and in every way that which makes for peace. My ego, reputation and desire to be right is blown away to actually desperately wanting to maintain and enjoy this true life-giving relationship with God through Jesus.

As a result the best position for me to be in as a follower of Jesus is a repentant one as experience by experience He shows me His way as opposed to my way and how turning to His way from my own works in our best interests.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Frustration and Melancholy

I’m quite clear that not all the blog entries on this blog are great. Maybe not even good. Perhaps there are one or two that would be considered sub-standard, not really all that interesting or missing something somewhere. What keeps me blogging though is the discipline of getting the thing done from my head and/or my heart and put it out and motivate further thoughts for future blogs or at least keep the rhythm of thinking to write going. Sometimes it inspires me to consider day to day issues and connect to others and see where it goes.

Today for example two streams of thought ran through the day almost concurrently but one flow was in greater ebb at the beginning of the day than the end, and the other was rising towards the end of the day although had connections to the beginning.

This morning I was frustrated. I didn’t help it. I rather wallowed in it and were it not for the book I was reading on my way to work and subsequent distractions of work and the like, I would have reasoned myself into self-pity and a justified morose attitude. I flung myself in a huff to myself at the sense of injustice that caused the source of frustration. Sadly for the frustration, however, then I got a good word that was actually linked to something that nagged me about the frustration.

The good word was that frustration is an expression of anger. As I pondered on that further and the negative connotations of that it began to make sense. After all it is not in my experience that frustration has been associated with godly character and conduct. Usual bed-fellows of frustration include annoyance, irritation, impatience and pent up anger as well as that sense of injustice.

Digging further behind the reasons for frustration I also saw that frustration is something that comes along when a much desired outcome has been postponed – I can’t have something perhaps, or there’s been an issue that prevents some situation from taking place. Either way, my sense of control and passion to have things my way has been thwarted and that is not to the liking of my ego. Now I can mask it, perhaps divert energies elsewhere, but it still resides in my system unless it is resolved properly and I get over it, or I do something I regret. As far as I’m aware today I didn’t do something I regret, but that was only because of that good word that reminded me of where frustration really comes from.

What’s worse, though, is that there is something about frustration that makes a claim on who the most important person in my life is. I can hardly claim to love Jesus wholeheartedly when my reaction to plans thwarted is to throw my dummies away, get upset and refuse to co-operate with life as I should. That is a clear contradiction. That is to say frustration is an obstacle to real worship of God and a healthy relationship with Him. Obstacles to healthy relationship with God are a problem.

By deduction then, frustration is not really a God thing. After all, how can God get frustrated when He knows His plans will work out anyway? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure God expresses feelings throughout scripture – that’s clear. For all of that, however, there is an element in which He knows His plans are never thwarted and the place of frustration is never needed if full confident faith is placed in Him like a child entrusts herself to her father. So frustration at times can be an expression of missing the focus of faith.

Of course this kind of learning can be on the surface of the mind without being embedded in the heart and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities to learn this and allow the Spirit to embed it deep into my persona as my place of trust for Him.

Oh and about the melancholy. On this score I heartily approve of seasons in life where melancholy is present. I don’t condone a life lived in melancholy, I don’t even see the value of extending a season of melancholy beyond its time, but I do believe that melancholy should be digested from time to time. I find melancholy can often be a good way of reflecting and contemplating how changes in life necessarily upsets the previously known order of things and can often require the departure of familiar friends – even if those friends are regular routines and habits.

Departures and goodbyes should be treated seriously, just as there should be joy and thanksgiving for whatever benefits have been received, so there should be that sense of loss that will happen as a result of the departure. That’s why we don’t dwell on melancholy we don’t want to get things out of perspective, but it’s exactly the desire to get things in perspective that should allow us to spend some time walking through with God in the attic of past things.

And on that note I must extend thanks for your time In reading these jaunts, it’s been a pleasure blogging for you.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Playing Out Of Position - Part Two

Reading, I love it. I was sitting down the other day in one of those neat straw made deals in a conservatory in Salford and for the best part of an hour or so I was just chilling and reading the Michael Foot biography. Kenneth O. Morgan (I wonder if he get upset if we miss that crucial O.) did a fantastic job on the book in making it engrossing reading, I hope I get round to doing a review of it when I’ve finished it.

So whilst I was on the throne recently and had an opportunity to read more about Foot it reminded me of a text I’d sent to a dear friend of mine. By the way as a small diversion, isn’t it a privilege to have dear friends, you know the sort to whom there is a connection and a repartee on a given subject. I love those kind of dear friends. I haven’t always had them and I thought my brother would be the only one at one stage, but God in His kindness allowed me to link with some others, really nice of Him.

Anyway, so I text this dear friend earlier before my stint on the throne and I said to the friend that Foot was the right man at the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact what I should have said was that Foot was a good man in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is no era in the 20^th Century or any stage of the Labour movement when that brother would have been the right leader. Sure things may have been worse if Healey or Shore had taken over in 1980, but seriously what kind of message are you sending in letting a scruffy, old, rhetorician anywhere near the keys to power?

As I reigned on the throne, however, I saw that point as the ideal way to get us back on where we were and the links between part one of this two part series. Quick recap – we can play players in their best positions and hope for the best, or we can have a system for which we select certain players at certain times even if it’s not playing the brother at his best position. We linked that with the current Liverpool malaise and the less we say about that the better.

So here’s the link. As you may recall back in April I made a Statement of Intent which was basically reiterating a phrase I’d come across at the beginning of 2009 – In my element for my season. Rooted in Psalm 1:3 this was all about a renewed commitment to being planted exactly where God wants me to be physically, socially, spiritually, vocationally, relationally, etc. etc. Making the statement is one thing, living up to it is another thing. Uncovering what that costs is an even more tricky thing when we consider it in greater detail. As I have discovered and continue to discover this can be a very costly business.

It’s costly, but it is worthwhile and here’s my contention on the issue. I’m sure some people are predestined to be misfits and malcontents – their role in the larger scheme of things is to make people uncomfortable by asking awkward questions in awkward ways and appear somewhat on the fringes of the mainstream. Thankfully God gives us biblical dudes who fit that bill like Elijah and John D. Baptist (is it the only biblically acceptable denomination? You decide. OK actually God does, but you can have a good guess, as a hint it doesn’t start with ‘y’).

This calling, though, is pretty specific though and you’ve got to be very well equipped emotionally, mentally and relationally to deal with the flack, rejection and abuse that comes with it. In a very real way you have to be designed for the task. That leads neatly into another underpinning scripture behind the desire not to see people play life out of position. Ephesians is a book in the bible worth serious study – when you’ve read it once, read it again and then one more time to even begin to comprehend what on earth Paul is saying and its vast implications. One little verse in there gets to the heart of what I’m all about with the playing in position deal.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

First thing that I notice about this is that it is not an individual call – it relates to a corporate call to be about the business for which we’ve been made. Implicit within this and to further explained later on in the letter if the corporate is going to be effective in getting on with its business, the individual parts need to be in their place functioning as they need to function. Or as Paul puts it

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:15, 16 emphasis added)

Now for each part to be working properly and with the recognition that we’re different parts of the growing organism there is great importance on discovering what our place is. That discovery process is not superficial but gets to the core of who we are as defined by God not by personal experience, friends, family, denomination, etc. although these can contribute to the process.

The deal then is about going back to the Coach to discover what our best position is, because He would have the best idea of where we fit in the team. Everyone wants to play up front and hog the headlines, but thankfully the Coach knows best. He plays us in different positions, sure, but He knows that you’re a right back or a left winger or a tough tackling midfielder or a commanding defender or a creative maestro just behind the front two, or the goal-poacher.

He knows and once you know He knows and He lets you know then not only do you find out but on playing in that position you feel at your best. Each position requires discipline and an understanding of what the position demands, but these demands are not imprisoning and confining, indeed these are Garden of Eden opportunities where you can eat the fruit of any tree – you get to enjoy all the garden and then discover that it contributes to others also being released to do what they’re called to do. Before you know it, everyone is in their place, everyone functions out of love and joy in Christ rather than dictation or obligation. Then you’re pinging the ball around and playing the lovely football of life enjoying sharing and serving each other, setting each other up for goal scoring opportunities whilst covering for each other to prevent break-aways.

It’s a joy. It’s a delight. It’s a pleasure. It’s an honour. It is no longer mind-less routine or ritual. It is no longer drudgery or confusing hypocrisy as you kid yourself with the fake-it-till-you-make-it psychology. It is being in your best position and enjoying Christ in it. It is then having an impact on the lives of others by doing that.

I am convinced in my brief time on planet earth that far too many people … far too many Christians … far too many eager well-meaning followers of Christ are playing out of position. Far too many accept their circumstances, background, institutional and inhibitive or deceptive doctrinal demands from work, home and church without any consideration to where God actually has placed them to be as His workmanship.

I know only too well how soul-destroying it can be. I know only too well how real it seems at the time and how it appears to be all there is your life and it’s a status quo you can live with, when in actuality it takes the love of God to break through to help you move on with your life to be rooted and grounded in Him. I know only too well how miserable and unfulfilled and unfruitful this kind of living can be. So it’s no surprise that I have a desperate desire to see people awake to who they are in Christ and then join Him in the steps towards real freedom, real service, abundant living by fruitful serving by the character of Christ being formed in us.

It’s not a utopia that gives us our selfish gratifications, but it is a real godly Kingdom in which who we really are becomes further revealed in us as we give our lives completely to Him. That won’t necessarily help Liverpool win the Premier League, but it will certainly help followers of Christ to enjoy the Kingdom that we’ve been translated into.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Having A Laugh

Part two of Playing Out Of Position will be published tomorrow.

In the meantime I just wanted to share this from something I read today.

This article made me laugh. A legitimate report on the BBC with the National Secular Society are complaining that staff in faith schools have to support the faith of the school! Whatever next? Doctors may actually be required to have some desire to see the health and welfare of their patients?! Lawyers may actually be required to have some knowledge of the law?!

Good grief, this epidemic could actually spread and people might actually be required to care and have some affiliation to the occupation in which they work. That’s just scandalous. I sincerely hope the government, who I hope aren’t all politicians, takes this matter seriously and challenges this business of people in faith schools actually needing to support the faith of the school. It’s just preposterous.

Oh and heaven forfend that we should discriminate, oh dear me, no. Discriminate, that’s just wrong, even if we do it every day on very good grounds like I want a taxi driver who can actually drive, I won’t accept one who can’t. I think the National Secular Society should invest some time into that as well, so as to make this world a safer place to live in where no one has to believe in anything and can do anything they like.

Thank God for the National Secular Society.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Playing Out Of Position

I don’t usually write about football on this blog. I know I did earlier on in the days of this blog, but since the other blog’s come along I’ve tended to share my comments about the sport to that site. Bear with me over this two-parter, if you’re not that way inclined, there is method in the madness behind bringing this subject up on this blog at this time.

I love football, I love watching the game and having conversations and reading insights and views on the game. I have read quite a number of books on the game, more on the characters of the game and some of the big clubs and important developments particularly in the English game. One aspect of it that can be over-played or under-played is the role of systems and tactics in the game. Some argue that for all the talk about formations and player positions, it is still about 11 guys on the pitch doing what comes instinct win the game. It’s about a ball and those guys trying to score as many as goals as they can whilst trying to stop the opposing side from doing the same thing.

I appreciate this simple analysis of the game and can understand that with regards to some teams they have been assembled because they are good at what they do. The coach/manager recognises that and just looks to utilise that in the game by getting the players to play as they can play and hopefully they will work as a cohesive unit to achieve the aforementioned goal.

There is, however, another perspective on the game that says that the coach/manager plays a more influential role in setting a playing culture with a system that follows based on getting players to understand their role in that system and who can play to that system. The thinking being that if all the players do what they have trained for over the week then they will be able to counter-act the opponents and express themselves in a way that allows them to achieve that goal.

For fans of Liverpool Football Club it’s pretty obvious that Rafa Benitez subscribes to the latter view of the game. This has its merits. The system can make the best of certain key pieces of the jigsaw, so the spine of the team – Reina, Carragher, Mascherano, Gerrard, Torres – when playing in their favoured positions can help see the way Rafa wants to play work effectively. It’s not just a case of neutralising a player in the system, you would have to stop them all from playing.

To make the system work, the accompanying players must also be disciplined in their contribution to the team. This means that certain players who some think may deserve a run in the team don’t get it, because they don’t fit Rafa’s view of the system for the particular game. It also means that certain players may not play either in their favoured position or in their favoured style.

A typical example is Dirk Kuyt who came to the club with a prolific goalscoring record from Holland and was expected to be one of the guys up front knocking them away. As it’s turned out, Rafa has virtually converted the player into a hard working, toiling wide midfielder who comes inside from time to time and can support the attack play when called upon. Dirk has done a tremendous job in applying himself to this task. No one faults his effort and the tireless way he scampers across the park looking to break up opposing attacks and show himself available for the attacking forays of his own team. He is committed and dedicated to his task and as a result, without being as big as Gerrard or Torres, he is also a virtually automatic selection in the team. He fits the system that Rafa’s worked out.

However, as many Liverpool fans may also observe, the optimism that we had at the end of last season has somewhat been deflated like a balloon. Funnily enough it’s because there’s no evidence that we’ve improved on the performance of the latter part of last season and there’s nothing convincing about the way the team and the system operates now. So whereas we lost two games in all of last season, we’ve already doubled that before mid-November and looked nothing like convincing in a number of games. The latest draw with Birmingham virtually throwing away any chance of us winning the Premier League. As pundits often point out, you may not win the League before Christmas, but you can certainly lose it and with the current gap between Liverpool and the league leaders, Chelsea and the unconvincing performances at home and away, there is nothing to suggest that the situation is going to be overturned.

The reasons for this are numerous, including not replacing a vital part of the system – Alonso – and instead playing a rather stultifying system of two anchor midfielders too similar to each other. As well as that we’ve had the injuries to Gerrard and Torres with no ready replacements for them in either position or in alternative system. There is also continued frustration in the sense that certain players are being under-utilised and not played in their best positions. The latter point is understandable if the prevailing system is working, but as it’s patently not the plan B is notable by its absence. In the meantime a number of players of outstanding worth are being somewhat wasted whilst a number of other players are being utilised who with the best intentions in the world are not good enough even for the system, let alone the club.

Thus Liverpool fans suffer another frustrating season of seeing any promise of success drain away to be replaced by the odd resilient performance and the knowing capacity to put a good unbeaten run together only to discover once again it’s too little too late. It is not the fault of the board, as has been used before, neither is it the fault of the players, necessarily with a few exceptions. The responsibility lies at the manager’s door.

Meanwhile it is fascinating to look at the concept of players playing out of position. One who has particularly been highlighted in conversations I’ve had recently is Yossi Benayoun. For West Ham he was a mercurial creative force who would play behind the strikers and gained a reputation for being unpredictable, tricky and a flair player of great ability. His signing for Liverpool was interesting because as well as the excitement of having such a creative player in our midst, there was also a question of where would he play to get the best out of him and allow that to be to the benefit of the team.

As it turned out over the few seasons that he’s been with us he has put in the best effort he could and scored some crucial goals and especially this season has really been a key player in terms of creating things where others around him lack that capacity. In all that, though, it’s been clear that he’s not been playing in his best position. Sometimes this has meant that his contribution has been limited and somewhat frustrated, but like Kuyt he still digs in and does his best. Yet you can’t help but wonder what would happen if he played more often in a place where he could really cause damage to the opposition. So it’s not to say he’s not playing well or playing his part, but it is to say that as long as he’s playing out of position he is not being at his best for the team and the team is somewhat the weaker for it.

Yes, there is the argument of the way the system would have to be rearranged for that to take place, but doesn’t that bring it back to the whole point of a way of team-building? Rather than try and fit players not a system where their best isn’t realised, surely it’s a case of identifying players and flexible systems that allow them to express themselves in a disciplined manner that still brings out their best and bring about the results.

It seems to work for Chelsea where even Joe Cole, who is another you could argue who hasn’t always played in his best position, contributes significantly to a system of play in the Mourinho era, Hiddink season and currently with Ancelotti. You look at the Chelsea team as a whole and it doesn’t look like any of the players are playing out of position, they appear to thrive in the positions they play in and the system promotes their abilities so that they are as prepared to scrap out a result as they are to completely dominate and overpower the opposition. The players fit the system and the system works as the players still play in their favoured position.

What this has to do with anything beyond football analysis and a sense of disillusionment about the team I love will be explored in the next part of this two-parter.

In the meantime, consider the following. What the football picture brings to mind is the question of fitting in a place and system. Which is more important, the individual or the system? Can individualism be allowed to blossom without hindrance and create an effective and developing society? Can a community with a strong sense of overriding purpose truly appreciate and bring out the best in the individual? Especially in the context of being relational beings is there something in recognising who we are not just as an individual but in the larger context of family, community and society as a whole?

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd