Chiding

The other day Frank, my senior minister, commented that he has not been blogging much lately. His specific comment was something to the effect of, "I'm blogging like Wally." While not being offended by his comment, it motivated me to blog more. . . or at least to try and blog more. We'll see how it goes.

I started a post a few weeks ago concerning Tiger Woods while messing with ommwriter for mac (which is a cool program for removing distractions while writing). I was rather frustrated with how much the media was hounding him about his little encounter with the fire hydrant and the tree. I didn't have time to finish my thoughts on that blog when I started it, so it ended up sitting on my desktop for a few days before I tossed it. At that point, i was more messing with the software than really collecting and writing my thoughts.

A couple days later the news broke about his personal downfalls. While I was not shocked with the news, I was surprised by the media's response. A famous man wrecks his car a few days earlier and tries to be quiet about what and why happened and everyone hounds him to speak up and share the story. I remember the headlines, "Tiger cancels his appointment with the state troopers again!" The media was relentless. Then, it comes out that he has been unfaithful to his wife and it seems to be second or third page news. One would think that his unfaithfulness would be more important or dramatic than than driving his fancy SUV into a tree. (Granted, his wife did extricate him from said SUV with a golf club. That to me is funny and ironic.) But it wasn't. By the time the truth came out, it seemed to me that the media and everyone who thrives on news had moved on to the new big thing.

What is it about our society that we chase after all the dirt and all the secrets. Why is it that we pry and poke and dig until we get the "truth" and in my opinion exacerbate the situation? I am certainly guilty of this. Every morning after I get ready for the day, I find myself perusing three or four websites to see what happened in the world the day before. And, unfortunately, I continue to check back to see if anything else has happened since the last time I looked. That, in turn, gets carried into other conversations with a simple, "hey, did you see this story or that story?"

We are a reality TV society. We thrive on peeping into the lives of those around us, those down the street, and those on the other side of the world. We want to see and feel their excitement, shock, and pain. We are so infatuated with the lives of others.

The question my mind then asks is why? Why are we so infatuated? Why are we so intrigued by Tiger Woods or our latest classmate from high school we found on facebook? Is it so we can compare ourselves to them and say things like, "I've turned out better than them!" Are we looking everywhere we can for people who are more messed up to feel good about ourselves? Or, is the bigger issue the fact that we don't want to think about ourselves so we bury ourselves in looking at others to forget? Either way, I think the big issue is that we are not happy with ourselves.

Jesus has something to say about that in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7). Why do you look at the sawdust in the lives of others when you walk around with planks in your own eyes? If I'm going to look at the world and "judge" or whatever it is I will do with the world, I first need to check myself and make sure I am ok. I think the second greatest commandment hits on this too, "Love your neighbor as yourself." While it calls us to loe our neighbor, it also calls to love ourselves. That is a challenging thing to do.

Its hard to love ourselves. We know everything about ourselves. We don't need the media to dig into our closets to reveal our skeletons to ourselves. We live there in the closet, continually replaying the past and wondering why we were so messed up. We can't let go and move on, even though we should.

In my journeying through Leviticus the last few months, I have been gripped by the way that the Israelites were challenged to deal with sin. Well. It goes a bit farther than that. They were expected to not intentionally sin. If you intentionally sinned, you were either booted from the community or stoned. If you unintentionally sinned, when you realized it, you were to take an offering to the tabernacle to make yourself right in order to keep you and the community in the right with God.

What if we were to take the lead from this and actually deal with our skeletons? What if we were able to deal with our past so we could live in the now, looking ahead rather than struggling with what is behind us? How do we do that? How do we somehow instill in ourselves the want to do that? How do we overcome the fear of saying, "this is me"?

Maybe we simply need the media to focus on us and hound us, dig at our pasts until they find the truth. Then we would have to deal with it, just as Mr. Woods is right now. I doubt my life is that interesting. . .

Lord, help us to be a people who chase after your righteousness and holiness. Help us to be a people who learn to love ourselves because you show us love and grace. May we be a people who learn to revel in that love and grace and show it to others, so they can know how great you are. Move us to deal with the the planks in our own eyes so we can help others with their own sight.