2022 Archives

Dave Brisbin 2.27.22
A pastor came with us to Mexico to deliver food and supplies to one of the poorest areas along the US border. Our organization supplied five dining rooms that served before-school breakfasts, and the women who served the children every morning insisted on serving us lunch, because that was who they were. After lunch the pastor sat the women down and through an interpreter, led them through the “sinner’s prayer,” the ritual he believed brought them into the Christian fold and made them acceptable to God. The women dutifully did as he asked, but came to me later highly insulted. What went wrong?

With every good intention but without knowing them, the pastor judged what they needed according to his standard of faith. He didn’t know they were all devout Catholics or Protestants who rose in the dark every morning to hours of work preparing food, cleaning for the next day, loving those kids as their own expression of gospel. Without taking time to find out whether they wanted or needed his help, he went home feeling he did well, leaving me to repair relationships as best I could.

Dave Brisbin 2.20.22
Does anyone ever really change another person? Fix them? Lord knows we try. And though we can persuade, manipulate, even force people to do what we think they should, that’s compliance or obedience, but not change. We can help people: support them, talk to them, change circumstances, create the best environment for change, but any one of us changes only at the moment we’re ready. And no one can make us ready.

All we can really give each other is support and information. Support can be material or emotional; information is conceptual. As good as those can be, the most important things in life are non-transferable because they are experiential. No one can give us the ability to play guitar, speak a language, ride a bike, trust, love, change, because no one can give us the experience of hours of immersion and relationship. We don’t change or fix others, and Jesus never said he did either. Instead of I heal you or I forgive you, he says your faith has made you whole, your sins are forgiven. Jesus recognizes when change has taken place, but knows he can only show the door, open the door, lead the horse to water. The rest is up to each of us.

Dave Brisbin 2.13.22
The reality we believe is the reality we endure. What we believe about reality becomes our experience of it and shapes our lives so profoundly that we don’t see reality as it is—only what survives the filter of our worldview. Because this is true, every responsible philosophy and religion on earth teaches some form of non-attachment, stepping aside from entrenched beliefs to make us free enough to see and accept what really is. There is no peace until we do.

Jesus said, don’t judge or you will be judged, and the way you judge, your standard of measure, will be measured to you. Don’t judge, narrowly understood as condemning or at least condescending others, is deeply embedded in our cultural psyche, and yet, on more levels than we’re even aware, our entire world is built on judgment. But isn’t that necessary? Don’t we have to make judgments about people and situations in order to know who we can trust, how to choose alternatives?

Dave Brisbin 2.6.22
A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it…from Frank Herbert’s Dune. But we won’t see the truth of this until we first see the process. Ancient Hebrews called God’s spirit ruach: breath, wind, and spirit all at once. Defined by motion. A process. Ancient Christians called God trinity, which they best defined as a blur of constant interaction, a relational process within God.

A belief about God is a mental snapshot that stops the process. This is where we miss the bus: thinking about God as something that can be thought about—God’s action as events completed in time. Living things are defined by motion, so God and life are in constant motion; they will never be understood by thinking about them. If we want to see them as they are, we need to change everything we think we know about seeing. Only by letting go of our thoughts, thought itself, accepting the flow, can we know what it means to be alive in God’s presence.

Dave Brisbin 1.30.22
What is the goal of the spiritual life? After all, if you’re going to spend the time and energy to engage spiritual formation, don’t you want to be really clear on the goal? After counting off peace, love, joy, salvation, redemption—all of which would be really good to have, it’s clarifying to see how Jesus answers: if we follow his Way of living and loving life, we will know the truth and the truth will make us free. Freedom. Surprising? Not when you consider that freedom is both the cause and effect of perfect love.

How do you know something is free, that you are free from it? Unless you’re a scuba diver, air is still free. And until I called your attention to it, you were as unaware of your breathing as of your hair growing. Contrast that with food, of which we think about constantly. Something is free when we don’t have to think about it, plan, work, save, pay, fight, or worry over it. The things from which we are most free are the things we worry about the least. But even if something is free, does that mean we’ll automatically stop worrying?

Dave Brisbin 1.23.22
Jesus is relentless. Never lets us rest in old ideas. Or even new ones that have become set and quickly growing old. Like a personal trainer always spurring us on to one more rep, he systematically deconstructs any thought or behavior pattern that, regardless of original value, has now become a limitation.

Whenever we feel we’ve arrived: at right action, right thinking, or right belief that is paying off in material wealth or social or religious standing, Jesus is there to say we have our reward in full, which means we’ve only found treasures here on earth. Wonderful, as far as they go, but treasures on earth are temporary, fleeting, ultimately unsatisfying, and if they represent the extent of our heart’s desire, then we are bound to them here on earth. Jesus is all about treasures in heaven, an Aramaic idiom for God’s presence, always here and now. Treasures found in God’s presence are forever beyond what moths and rust can destroy or thieves steal, and are what give fulfilment and balance to our necessary pursuit of earthly treasures.

Dave Brisbin 1.16.22
We call people passive-aggressive so casually these days, it’s likely we’re no longer sure what it means. Just as guerrilla warfare is an indirect way of opposing a much greater force, passive-aggression is an indirect way of getting what we want or expressing anger and frustration without directly confronting another person. But where guerrilla warfare is a conscious tactic to turn weakness into strength, passive-aggression is usually an unconscious expression of a person’s perceived powerlessness.

People who don’t believe they can make significant choices in life are naturally passive-aggressive in their interactions with others. From chronic lateness, forgetfulness, or losing things to constant complaining, blaming, keeping relationships chaotic and ambiguous, a person who feels victimized finds passive ways forward. Belief systems feed the passive-victim narrative: the belief in an all-powerful God, can make us feel like cosmic victims of fate or destiny, that God is the only actor with a real choice. A belief in original sin—that we are born hopelessly flawed and separate from God—makes us theological victims with Jesus as the only actor who can save us.

Dave Brisbin 1.9.22
Who can really set us free? Judge, jury, priest, pastor, lover, forgiver? We say Jesus is our savior. And we wait. But Jesus said if we followed him, we’d know truth, and that would make us free. Jesus, truth, law, circumstance? Who can really set us free?

In a movie, an old convict is released from prison. Gets a job bagging groceries and drives his boss crazy raising his hand every time he needs a bathroom break. Finally told he doesn’t have to ask, just go, we hear his voice tell us that after forty years, he couldn’t squeeze a drop without sayso. The state released him, but who can really set him free? In the other direction, Gandhi and MLK found an interior freedom that even the full weight of British and American empires could never crush with all the laws and soldiers they could muster. Who set them free?