-2 vs vulnerability

I'm currently participating in a monthly leadership class which is a lot like a huge round table discussion with a lot of learning in between sessions, and last night we continued talking about our spiritual journey and graphing it out and a few things stuck in my head but one thing really stood above everything else: church drama.

The thing that got me was every time 'drama' happened in a church, in someone's story, there was a mumbling about it and they moved on. We don't like talking about church drama because when there's drama it's when church people knock heads and it shows we're not islands, we're movable but we don't like being movable.

Church (lowercase c) drama happens because of one main issue: we're all broken. So, when people's brokenness get mixed up together, there becomes a build up of chaos which then leads to the drama.

So, how do we handle the brokenness, the chaos and therefor eliminate the drama?

Let's take the brokenness first. I learned this weekend you can't fix the brokenness in someone, and neither can they, only God working through them, can a broken person become fixed. We're human, we're broken, and without God's grace, we can't fix that. Yes, first step is to accept you're broken, the person next to you is broken, and there is nothing either of you can do to fix that. It's Grace stupid.

Accepting your brokenness is humbling. We live in a society that says "Do not show weakness" but I'm saying in that weakness, we can be fixed. If we can't accept our flaws, how can we change to better ourselves? Someone, last night, mentioned their desire of perfection. If we did everything perfect, where is the room for growth? Where is the change? In a perfect society, nothing expands, nothing is gained, not until God has full control which then we won't need to grow. Until then, we're to always be learning, growing, and you can do neither in perfection. We're broken so we can help one another.

There's a scene in one of my favorite video games, Xenogears, where a young priest is speaking to the main character in front of a statue of two angels. The male angel, on the right, has one right wing, the female angel on the left has one left wing. The priest says something along the lines of 'God created humans to be like the angels, however we each only have one wing, so to fly, to soar, we must rely on the help of another to reach the peaks we never could alone'. I may be butchering the quote, but you get the point, right? We're broken, and the only way to really work through things is to rely on the help of others.

Humbleness is the first step to relying on others. We're very ego centered people, we all have to do things ourselves, myself included. It's a huge fault, to just accept the help, because I always feel I'm putting people who are offering to help out for accepting the help. Like it's they offer to help just to offer, so when you say 'no, but thank you' they can feel better for at least asking. That's how I think things through and it's sick because offering help is humbling, but accepting help is humbling even more so.

We're to come to God, humbly, but we can't be that way with one another? I call shenanigans. If we can't be upfront with someone, how can we go to God and be upfront with Him? How can I not ask for help from that stranger walking by as I struggle with my chair because it's raining and I have no grip, but I can go to God and ask for healing?

We're broken people, but we don't see the brokenness in others because we don't show the brokenness of ourselves, because when we do, we're vulnerable and we are told when we're vulnerable, we place ourselves in a position to be hurt. I say, nay, and I say when we are placed in a spot to be vulnerable, we are put in a spot to be humbled, to serve, to be served, to be given grace, to give grace, to help another one winged angel, who is just as broken and vulnerable as you are, soar to new heights.

What about the chaos? How do we avoid that? Well, if by severing the first step out of the equation, the chaos quickly falls away. If the issue arises that person 1 needs a dozen plates that are no longer where they should and knows person 2 has plates stock piled for Armageddon, person 1 should be able to go to person 2 and say "My plates are gone, may I have a handful" without there being anarchy and trustees called in to intervene. Person 1 should be humble enough to ask, person 2 should be humble enough to give. Chaos adverted. There also needs to be a self check in place. If you're angry at someone, you're not being humble. The act of being humble is to remove all negativity. Anger is a selfish emotion and bringing that into the equation negates humbleness.

Chaos is the lack of humbleness. You can not be humble if you're in a chaotic place. Yes, you can try, but as long as you see the situation as chaotic there will be that drive to resent the issue. Why is that? We're broken.

At the end of the day, can you say "Lord, I've humbled myself down in front of You and Your people. Thank you." or do we say "Lord, I've had one heck of a day, please make tomorrow better." Who are we to say the day The Lord made wasn't good enough for us to enjoy . . . but that's an entirely different post all together.

Grace and Peace.