Never Angry

I'm not exactly sure where this is coming from, but there seems to be a large portion of Christianity that feels that Anger is a sin. (Like, black and white.... Adultery is a sin; anger is a sin.) I feel like it has to be connected to the idea that God is only love, and that the God of the OT is somehow different than the God of the NT.

For whatever reason, anger is viewed to be inescapably bad. All the time. Never discipline your children when you're angry. Never respond in anger. Never do anything when you're angry. Always, always, always let go of your anger before you do anything. Somehow, it is always bad for us to be angry. It is always shameful to experience anger. And it is especially wrong to express it. 

........

That idea is so far removed from the picture we have of Who God is, I don't understand how Christians can believe that. When I express that concern - that we are trying to be something God is so not - their response is usually something along the lines of, "Yeah, but that's God; He's perfect." As if to say that because we can't be perfectly angry, therefore we should NEVER be angry.

I can't be perfectly righteous, either. Should I forget that whole idea? I can't be perfectly just or perfectly loving or perfectly anything. But we still try to bring out the good parts of those attributes and we fight against the wicked tendencies within us.

This comes up most (in my experience) when it comes down to how to raise your kids. Some of this I understand is straight-up fear of CPS (which I fight with a fair portion of the time). If someone hears that you spanked your kid while you were angry, they're automatically going to be thinking "beating" instead of discipline. That's the world we live in.

That doesn't justify doing things in a way that's not Biblical. There seems to be this idea that you cannot love someone/something and be angry with it at the same time. That's not true in the least. Getting angry at a friend who gets wasted every weekend isn't a lack of love; it's actually a sign of love. You want something better for them. You want them not to actively destroy themselves. That's not mean or bad or unkind. That's an outpouring of LOVE.

Getting angry with people isn't bad of itself. And most people can understand it on that level - but then you say "Getting angry with your kids isn't bad" and they get very nervous. When my parents got angry with me because I did stupid things, all it did was reinforce that they loved me. They were trying to protect me, and when you see something you care about endangered, the natural (proper) response is anger. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. If they had never gotten angry with me, all that would have meant was that I wasn't worth enough to them for them to get angry about it.

Someone at our Bible Study wondered aloud the other night why there seemed to be so many more suicides today. I honestly think it's because anger is so repressed today. The people who would use it right are afraid to use it at all, which leaves the people who are too selfish to avoid using it, who are naturally going to misuse it. Anger is a extraordinary tool that too many people are ignoring or actively avoiding instead of trying to use it well. My dad had the easiest way to change my life when I was little. It didn't work for my mom (sorry, Mom), but all my dad had to do for me to NEVER, EVER do something again? Get angry with me. He didn't need to yell, threaten, discipline, spank - nothing. He just had to be upset with me and I was done. My world was wrong, and I couldn't stand it.

The things we want to protect are the things that, when threatened, will make us angry. We're supposed to get angry when someone hurts people we love. GOD gets angry when people hurt His kids. Why? Because He loves His kids! How angry He gets is directly related to how much He loves us. You cannot love something and never get angry when its mistreated. So when Joash is born, if Evelynn dares to hit him, she's going to feel some anger despite the fact that I love that little girl so fiercely.

Getting angry isn't wrong. Be angry and sin not (Eph. 4).

Getting angry because someone hurt my pride, because something didn't go my way, because of ME - that's when anger is just wrong. When my anger is about ME - because someone was an affront to ME, not to God, not to the people I love. When anger is selfish, then it's wrong. But anger is good. We can know that because God gets angry. Getting angry with your kids over sin isn't a bad thing; it shows them the seriousness of sin and it shows them how much God means to you. Getting angry because they're making your life harder, that's wrong.

Growing Up

"Let God make a man out of him before you try to make a husband out of him."

I saw a meme today on Facebook with that caption. I'm not even going to get into the idea of me making anything out of someone else. What bothers me is this (seemingly prevalent) idea of having to wait until someone else is "done" before we get involved with them. It's very disturbing when taken as a general rule.

For one thing - I'm still not done. Are you? I certainly didn't feel qualified to be a wife when I got married. And I didn't feel qualified to be a mother when I had a baby. I'm still growing. I'm still maturing. I didn't feel like a I was old enough to be "Mrs. Shrout." Some people are never going to become "spouse material" until they're in the situation where they have to be. They're just never going to grow that way until they suddenly are in that place. I was never going to be ready to be a mom. Not ever. I am a mom. Am I ready? Ehhhh..... Sorta? I don't feel ready to have TWO, but guess what?

I'm not arguing that we shouldn't be careful or we should go with the first opportunity, but that's where having a relationship with God is vitally important. God uses other people and new circumstances to grow us. If we never extend grace to people to see how God will use us or other circumstances in their life to grow them, we're not being very grateful for the grace that God has extended to us.

This is where it really comes in handy believing that God has a specific person picked out for you and it's not really your decision at all - except to say "Yes, Daddy" or be a Jonah and run for it. All my life, that's been my view of marriage. There was someone that God had for me (and me for him). I just had to wait and pray and see who it was. And I had to be ready and willing to deal with whatever faults he had - because he was going to have them. Maybe there would be gigantic sin issues. Or maybe there would just be things that he did that drove me crazy (like the people who bounce their legs incessantly). Or, most likely, some of both!

The point was, it was never up to me to change him, or even to wait for God to fix him up before I would think about being in a relationship. It was my job to follow wherever God led - and if this was the guy, that meant being the best wife I could be, even if he was a terrible husband. Even if he was wrong, if he took our family in the wrong direction, if he was a bad father, if, if, if, if, if. Who he was was entirely irrelevant if that's who God wanted me to marry. Because if God wanted me to marry him, then he was automatically the best. No one else could ever be better than him.

Every decision is like that. If God wants me to work at McDonald's, then McDonald's is the best job for me. If God wants me to move to CA, then CA is the best for me. The easiness/hardness of my life is not what determines if it's good for me. I know what's best by knowing where God is directing - not by what looks or feels best.

(Right now, it would feel best for Zack to get promoted TODAY, for him to be put back on days, for us to get a signing bonus that takes care of a down-payment for a nice 4-bedroom house in the area, and for us not to have to move more than twenty minutes from church. That's what feels best. But - unless he gets a call today - it's not.)

There's a lot of people who don't think that way. They think marriage is all up to their discretion within God's principles (which pretty much just means marrying a Christian). If who I had married had been up to my discretion, I'd have NEVER gotten married. It was the scariest, hardest decision I ever made in my life. And I wouldn't have made it if I hadn't been sure that it was the one God wanted me to make.
 
God didn't have to give me an awesome husband. My life could be so much harder. He still has faults, but he loves God and he loves our family. And he works ever so hard to be better. (And he doesn't bounce his legs. =D)

And that's what I think people should be looking for - the person God has for them. Not someone who fits all their criteria, or someone who has their life in order, or someone who is "a man." Just look for the person that God has for you because that's where you are going to be best off and that's where you are going to be able to do the most good. Give them grace for everything else. Give them a chance to grow. Give them room to fail and encouragement to get up and try again.

How do you know who is the right person? James tells us to ask for wisdom because God gives it liberally. Ask.

Crying Babies

Having a baby changed a great deal for me about the way I saw children in general. Abortion became more than something I knew was wrong. It became something I cannot stand. 

Other things have changed too, and one of them is what I can watch on TV. 

I can't stand movies or shows with crying babies in them anymore. They always bothered me a little, but now I can't stand them. Because while everyone else is acting, the baby isn't. I don't know what goes on behind the scenes and I'm sure that their parents are somewhere nearby - at least, I sincerely hope so - but still. The baby is not acting. 

And that's part of my entertainment??? Violence didn't bother me in movies because it's not real. Nudity does because it is. 

And crying babies are really crying. 

What Is Perfection?

I tend to think about this a fair amount. Mostly because I think that people (me too) have a very flawed view of what Heaven is going to be like. I know that what I thought about Heaven has changed a LOT over the years. Heaven will be perfect, right? So what is perfection? More specifically, what is HUMAN perfection?

Is perfection never being told "no?"
Or is perfection being able to be told "no" without having a bad attitude about it?

Is perfection never falling down?
Or is perfection never getting hurt from falling down?

I feel like we have this sort of over-achieving sense of what perfection is, like we expect that when we are in Heaven we will have the same kind of perfection that God has. As if we'll suddenly know everything and be able to execute everything without flaw. As if, in Heaven, we'll all have perfect voices with absurd ranges so that when we sing, no one will sound "bad."

I don't think that's what human perfection is. I think human perfection is seen in Christ - Who prayed for the cup to pass from Him and then accepted the Father's decision. He asked for something that wasn't going to happen, that He KNEW wasn't going to happen. Asking wasn't wrong. He even asked THREE times. Asking multiple times wasn't wrong. What would have been wrong, is if He refused or even gone to the cross with something less than complete willingness and surrender to the Father's will.

If we are all perfect at everything we try, then the body of Christ is no longer a body in Heaven. We will not have different gifts - we could all be the eye and the ear and the nose! That's never the picture we get from anything - not even the Trinity. They have and always will have their positions, their "gifts" as it were. They are diverse and yet perfect in their diversity. Their diversity, in fact, is part of what creates perfect harmony. I think, even in our thinking about Heaven, we are trying to become gods. We want it all.

I'm pretty sure that there are going to be artists and musicians and mathematicians and engineers and (fill in your blank) in Heaven. And no one is going to feel improperly about their skill set - either proud of it or embarrassed of it. And THAT is going to be perfection. It's going to be accepting God's way without reserve - not only accepting, but taking great joy in whatever task He has for me. It'll be being able to be told, "No, you may not build my temple, but you may gather the supplies" - and instead of any kind of negative response, I jump up and down like my daughter and get all excited because I get to "Help a Daddy!"

Evelynn loves helping. She helped me make cheesecake last night. She wanted to help with every part of it, but she couldn't. But she was still super happy with helping me pour the milk and hold the mixer. Because she loves helping me, being with me, doing something WITH me. The important part is not what she's doing - it's doing it with me.

Trusting

I wrote a post on Facebook the other day about some of the things that I've been struggling with recently, along with a poem that was difficult to write and difficult to mean. Sometimes, I don't know how I meant it or if I'll be able to mean it next time something happens. I hope so. With God's help, I will. I know that in the end, He will always bring me back.

This poem preceded the other one. This one... was not the finished product of God's working. This was not the end of the struggle, but mostly how I felt through the last three months or so.

This is where I was BEFORE He gave me faith.


I feel so lost and helpless
I feel that I've been thrown
Into the waves; they crush me
I have no breath to groan
The waters pull me down again
The storm is getting worse
Every time I think I see
The land, I get reversed.

Oh, God, where is the refuge?
My strength is almost gone.
If You do not bring me through
For me, there'll be no dawn

My cries are lost in thunder
My arms are weighted down
I cannot see a shoreline
Without You, I will drown
Where is the comfort of Your arms?
Where are the words of peace?
I cannot feel You, but I know
For You, the waves will cease.

Oh, God, You are my Refuge
My Rock, my Hiding Place
And in Your time, You'll bring me through
And I will see Your face.