Being chosen for the other's inclusion

Being Chosen for the other’s Inclusion

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            In the last year and a half, I have intentionally listened to people with perspectives that differed from my own. My thinking has been challenged, sometimes changed and occasionally confused in the process. But I would rate it a great blessing to look over the horizons of reality from new sites and perspectives. Still every once in a while there is no greater joy than to discover that you are standing on a solid ledge with a sense of a truth that is refreshing and you are sure it will pass the test of time for the rest of your days. It is a rewarding experience to gaze across a scenic valley and simply breathe in, breathe out and enjoy a view to remain precious throughout time.

This ledge is a place where I can stand firmly and will forever more remember the valley below.

 

            Throughout the first thirty years of my Christian life I was firmly in a theological camp described by the terms “Sovereign Grace” or “Calvinist”. I owe much to my “Reformed” background. Perhaps I am not even responding to Reformed theology as much as to the Reformed theology as I understood it. But in the last year I have begun seeing being chosen in Christ with a different sense than in my past. Much of this change came by thinking upon how God chose the patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I began to realize that when these patriarchs were chosen, the ones they were chosen over still seemed in the Genesis accounts to have stories of redemption and reconciliation. I began to see that in God’s form of election he chooses one not to exclude everyone else, but rather he chooses one that many might receive grace. That has helped me to see the world in a vastly different way than earlier in my Christian life.

            This begins in God’s choosing of Abraham over all the nations. He calls Abraham and tells him he has chosen Abraham and his seed, and is going to make his seed a great nation. We might be tempted to think that the rest of the nations are going to be cast aside. But God tells Abraham that he is going to make of him a great nation, and through this great nation all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed.

            We then get to read the story of how God chose Isaac and his mother Sarah over Ishmael and his mother Hagar. With all the talk of how Ishmael was the wild child we sometimes miss the beautiful story of how God heard Ishmael’s cries and Hagar’s prayers. Hagar and Ishmael had been cast out of Abraham’s protection. The ancient world was often not a good place for a woman who had no family, tribe, or clan to protect her. Hagar was turned out to wander without protection. She felt powerless to protect or provide for her son. She laid him down in the wilderness. She walked a ways away from him, hearing his cries as she moved away. She prayed and asked God the most pathetic and painful of prayers. She asked that she would not have to see him die. God spoke to her, in what manner we know not. But he encouraged her that he had heard her son’s cries and that God would make of him a great nation because he was also of Abraham’s seed. So even if Sarah and Isaac are the chosen ones, Hagar and Ishmael are still connected to the blessing chosen to be fulfilled in the seed of Sarah and Isaac.

            Finally we read of the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob cheats Esau of both the birthright and the blessing. Esau is angry enough that Jacob flees for his life. Many years pass and Jacob overstays his welcome with Uncle Laban. Jacob returns with his wives and livestock. He is headed for the land of Abraham and Isaac. But before he can get there he discovers that Esau stands in his way, and that he has more of an army than Jacob. Jacob decides to try to put bargaining chips between him and Esau. He puts his livestock first, his servants, then his concubines, then Leah and finally his most loved wife, Rachel. He is afraid that Esau will seek vengeance. Instead Esau sees Jacob, and like the father in the Prodigal Son story Esau runs to meet, greet, and embrace Jacob. Esau does as an elder brother to Jacob exactly what the elder brother in the Parable of the Prodigal never did. There is reconciliation between Jacob and Esau.

I understand that Scripture says “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” It seems to me to be a hyperbole of comparison. Jacob is given the honor of fathering the twelve tribes of Israel. Through Jacob’s lineage would come all of Israel’s prophets, priests and kings. Finally when the time was at hand, his family line would culminate in the birth of Jesus Christ. In comparison with such blessings what did Esau receive? Esau received nothing. Everything was given to Jacob. One was loved and the other hated in comparison. That was the appearance but the reality was that Jacob and Esau were granted reconciliation.

My concept of God’s choosing people has a different kind of mathematics these days. In my past I thought that if God chose one person everyone else was rejected. But now I can see that in choosing one God chose many. My newer perspective of being chosen allows me to view the world I live in differently than in my past.

If we have been chosen in Christ, then surely there must be the many others who will be blessed because we have been chosen in Christ. If we are citizens of a holy nation then surely all the nations of the earth around us will be blessed. If we are priests within the royal priesthood of Christ, then surely a nation of priests have been created to pray and intercede for all those around us. To be chosen should not lead us to believing others are thereby necessarily being excluded but rather ought to lead us to believe that the many are now to be included. 

Seeing a Tedx Tulsa event.

I Was able to see

This Tulsa Event

 

 

A review of the event by Dan McDonald

 

 

            A Tedx Tulsa event was held in the Williams Building in downtown Tulsa on Tuesday evening September 23. The evening’s theme was “O! The Humanity!” I will try to tell you a little bit about it from my perspective.

            I have a confession to make to the speakers. You were all wonderful and I came away with something from each of you. I have another confession to make. On Monday evening I was doing some writing. Sometimes when you try to be creative your mind achieves an entrance into a zone where time no longer exists. I was writing Monday evening and that happened. It happened up until about 2 AM Tuesday morning, when I noticed how late or how early it was. Suddenly I moved from the zone of near complete focus on writing to the zone of angst because I get up about five in the morning to go to work and then I was going to work until it was time to leave, so I could get ready for the Tedx event. So if I don’t remember each of your key points my final confession is that I was probably not in as good of a listening zone on Tuesday evening as I had been in a writing zone on Monday evening. Still, I felt so privileged to be at the Tedx Tulsa event and come next year I’ll want to be there again.

            Here are the speakers who spoke at the event in one photograph:

 

Left to right: Ryan Eller, Kinda Wilson, Tamara Lebak, Zack Litwack, Jeremy Charles, and David Burlin

 

            Ryan Eller was the first speaker. Ryan spoke on how establishing a bucket list changed the direction of his life. I waited more than fifty years to do that. My decision last year to go and see at least one new thing a year or do something I had never done was fulfilled in my going to California to see the Giant Sequoias at Yosemite, the Coastal Redwoods at Muir Park and to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. As a bonus I was able to discover the beauty of Sausalito. But this paragraph is about Ryan’s bucket list which included 100 items. He showed some of the highlights and some of them were sane like jumping out of a perfectly safe airplane with a parachute. There were ambitious events on his bucket list like walking the Great Wall of China and running a marathon; and also some romantic ones like kissing his wife at the top of the Eiffel Tower. One of the things he discovered as he checked off the goals of his bucket list is that he discovered that the people he met and sometimes helped were the achievements that gave him the most satisfaction in the process.

            The second speaker was Tamara Lebak, an associate minister at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She spoke on learning to embrace diversity. One of the things she spoke of that most resonated with me is that if we are to deal with diversity it means that we need to understand who we are and finding comfort in our own identity groups. Sometimes it is fear of others, of their differences that drive our inability to be civil and respectful and to gain an appreciation for the perspective of others. Diversity does not mean universal agreement from her perspective as much as it means being comfortable enough with one’s own perspective to not feel threatened by another’s perspective. I believe that is something which is extremely important to realize.

            Zack Litwack, an independent film maker, showed a short film he had done. It was a respectful attempt to honor German Expressionism, a genre that blossomed in the days of silent black and white film. I will have to watch his work more when I have had more sleep than I had the night before the Tedx event. I didn’t fall asleep, but my concentration level was not alert, and that is a pity because I found what I saw and took note of to be a wonderful work of art that mixed horror, with humor, and definitely humanity.

            David Burlin addressed the audience next. I was drawn into his story of how he had enlisted in the military in early 2001 and was celebrating his birthday in September of that year when an announcement was made for all military personnel to return to their units. That was, as I am sure we all realize September 11. David’s story was the story of transitioning from life in the military where there was mission, service, expressions of leadership, and camaraderie and tight knit community to life outside of the military. He discovered some difficulties in transitioning to civilian life, where his first job was operating a ditch witch. Eventually he transitioned to working with veterans trying to make the transition from military to civilian life. He learned that one way for returning veterans to begin to deal with the issues in their live was to lead them to express themselves in one word about how they were feeling. That seemed to be a way for many of the returning veterans to begin to feel their way into dealing with the issues that seemed bigger than they were from time to time. A one word answer was often a beginning point to clarifying a major issue in their lives as they transitioned from military to civilian life. Then they began working together to realize what they had understood as positive aspects of military life and how that gave servicemen something unique to offer civilian life.

            Jeremy Charles spoke next on photography. His life work of photography was transformed when he went to live with Native Americans in El Salvador. In his idealism and exuberance he hoped to live with the tribes and enter into their culture. But he came to realize that he would never really be the member of their culture. At best he was an informed tourist. So he began viewing photography as the work of a tourist whose photographs and pictures are expressions of opinions. If he could not truly become a member of another culture, he could try to show the honor and virtues, power and hero in what he could see in their lives. Jeremy’s talk started slow and then gradually worked into his subject matter until virtually everyone was pulled into his talk and looking at the photographs he showed to support his talk.

            The last speaker was Kinda Wilson. I had met Kinda a couple of months ago at a conference I went to. There was a video clip at the conference of what drew her to the worship service of the church she attended. I found the video refreshingly down to earth and met Kinda briefly at that conference. When I discovered she was speaking at the Tedx event I bought tickets immediately. It proved a treat to see her speak.  She spoke as if she were unleashing pent up energy, delivering words in rapid fire quickness spoken in rhythm with a poetic expression. She also gave a wonderful message. I sound like a fan, don’t I? She sought to redefine the word “weird” for us, as she expressed how she had been described at times in her life as weird. She has learned to turn that critique around so as to yearn to pursue the unordinary that exists outside of the middle of the bell curve; in those unordinary extremes where one discovers innovation and authenticity.

            Experiencing Tedx Tulsa has impacted me and my thinking regarding my future. I found a common thread through all these speakers. Each and every speaker sought to live life with passion, seeking not so much to find a job as to find a way of expressing life in a way that was directed by drives and desires rooted in the depths of their inner beings and human experiences. This is why each speaker had something definite to contribute to the theme of “O! The humanity!”

            Here is what I want to encourage in myself and also in my readers. Don’t let the passion of your life be just for weekends and vacations with all your other moments dedicated to “normal life”. I am not convinced that everyone gets to live out their dream on a full time basis. In fact I am pretty sure that a lot of what makes us good people is the suffering and hardships we encounter that help instill empathy in us. But I am also convinced that if we give in and turn from our dreams until we are simply living someone else’s expectations for us that a major part of our humanity will die in us long before we finally die. That is a shame. So here is the take away form Tedx Tulsa 2014 . . . Cultivate and express your inner dream and passion and give it opportunity to grow and protect it so it will not die until it has given you the opportunity to live.

Tedx Tulsa, thank you for such a wonderful night. I needed reminded that even if not all of life is spent pursuing our dreams, if we lose our dreams, then have we not also lost our lives?