Are you willing to forgive?

Posted: 19 February 2013

As human beings we are an emotionally fragile bunch. That however is not a bad thing. Indeed, it is our emotional state that most readily separates us from the animal kingdom. We perceive love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness and fear, and we can deliver those positive or negative emotions to others in the way we act. These negative emotions when given or received, hurt, and can hurt very deeply. The old school yard response to bullies runs, ’sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me’. It may be a cute rhyme but it’s not true. What affects us most deeply is not the physical insults that come our way but those which offend us on a personal level. To have a trusted friend betray us hurts. To have a sibling insult another sibling hurts. These hurts are very real and they do not easily dissipate.

Society has some plan as to how to deal with physical insults. Courts and prisons are full of people who have caused physical hurt to another in some way. This is not the same with emotional hurt. Sometimes we will be initially unaware that our words and actions (or our response to those words) have offended another. Even those who are most careful may still at some point offend another person. There is no shortage of friendships and families that have broken down because deliberate or indeliberate offence has occurred. These delicate situations are not easy to resolve because all parties may, to some extent, have hurt another by their actions, choices or words. Recall the parable of the Prodigal son who offended his father by taking his inheritance to indulge in a wasted life. In time he returned truly sorry for his actions and his father forgave him but the one person who could not forgive was the older brother who had remained at home always faithful. In the end, by his anger, the older brother became as guilty as the younger.

The reason rifts do not get resolved is because too many of us feel justified in our positions of hurt or anger at another. People can spend a lifetime explaining the precise way in which they have suffered offence, and this may well be true, but at that point there are only two options. One can remain convinced of the need for the other person to reform and thus remain hurt and angry forever, or make a conscious decision to forgive. Now as soon as people hear about forgiveness they get specific ideas of what that means, for example, ‘I am happy to forgive as long as…’, or, ‘we can only move forward when…’. This is not genuine healing forgiveness. Forgiveness in the truest sense is a highly radical proposition, one not known well by a neo pagan society. Forgiveness involves an unconditional all embracing love of the other regardless of what offence, hurt or anxiety has been given us. This type of forgiveness involves taking our gaze from the other onto our own lives to examine where we may have given offence. It is rare that one person is completely innocent while the other is completely guilty.

True forgiveness brings about a love that is patient, kind and rich in mercy. Even if we are truly the innocent one, forgiveness will be quick to turn the other cheek. Those who follow the Christian faith will recognise the ancient petition in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’. Here it seems clear that personal forgiveness from God is completely dependent on our willingness to unreservedly forgive others, and be happy about that forgiveness. We must not remain thinking that our forgiveness makes us a better person than the one who we have forgiven. If we remain as the righteous older brother in the story of the prodigal son, we cannot say we have forgiven. If we do not acknowledge that our actions may have offended another, we cannot say we have forgiven. What we are too often looking for is a judge and jury, we want to have our story heard and be told who is guilty and innocent. This sort of mentality will never find peace because mercy is always greater than justice. The person who spends his life looking for justice will always be hurt and never have the opportunity to be truly happy. So go on, in this New Year, reach out in true forgiveness and see your life transformed.

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Why I Decided Not to Move In With My Girlfriend

Posted: 2 May 2012

I have been going out with my girlfriend for almost three months and thankfully all is going very well. I was filling in a friend on this news the other day and at the end of the conversation the person asked me, with a face of anticipated excitement, “Will you be moving in together”? I was initially surprised by the question as I imagined it was obvious to most people I know where I would stand on such an issue. However I guess that it is no longer ‘obvious’ why a young dating couple would decide not to pack their bags and find a place together. Let me explain then why I have decided not to share a bed with my girlfriend.

Cohabitation prior to marriage is well and truly the most popular path for young couples. Just over 75% of couples now live together prior to marriage and for many of them it is something they slide into rather than necessarily consciously deciding upon. When he or she begins to spend more nights at the other person’s house than their own, eventually it seems natural to stop paying two lots of rent.

But while cohabitation is billed as an important way to get to know the other person and ensure a more secure future marriage there is really no evidence to back that up. Social data shows cohabiting relationships last about 2.5 years before breaking up or converting to marriage but conversion rates to marriage are declining. Among couples who begin cohabiting, 46% will have married and 46% will have broken up in within five years. For those who do eventually marry though, divorce rates are double those who do not cohabit before marriage.

Why then is cohabitation the accepted norm, and at the same time completely useless in helping couples discern their future? The answer to both questions is the same: sex. When a couple moves in together it is the fruit of that fact that they have began engaging in sexual relations already. Cohabitation is about sex, let’s not be confused. The cohabiting couple make the subliminal statement to each other that “I don’t need to be married to you to have sex with you”. That is a very critical statement in the health of a relationship because sex goes from something once worthy of vows before God, to something not much bigger than deciding what one will have for lunch. The vow a cohabiting couple make is this, “I promise to have sex with you until such a time that I meet someone else who I would rather have sex with”. I watched the movie ‘The Vow’ recently, a romantic comedy/drama based on a true story. The main couple meet, begin dating and eventually the guy asks the girl to move in with him. The scene was portrayed as this special romantic moment where the man had finally stepped up and done the right thing. Rubbish! All he had really said was, “I want to have sex with you more regularly but I want the freedom to end it all in case it doesn’t work out”. How romantic is that?!

So what about the couples who do live together but eventually marry? I question the freedom with which they entered into that marriage and their real desire to be together until death. Sex by its very nature is designed to bond a couple but when a relationship gets physical before its time, important issues like character, life philosophy, and compatibility go to the wayside. Consequently, everything is romanticised and it becomes difficult to remember the important issues let alone talk about them. When a dating couple engage in sex, they disregard checking for an intellectual commitment and instead enter into an emotional and sexual one. Budding love is very fragile and can easily be crushed by lust. Just because a cohabiting couple may eventually make it to the altar (or more likely the garden) is not a sign that share a true love. Many couples who marry today do not choose marriage as freely as they might have, they often simple slide into it. It just became the next choice in a series of unwise choices. A cohabiting relationship is based on the principle that one can walk away at any time and this attitude is not easily dislodged just because a wedding certificate has been signed.

Couples who cohabit certainly desire love and they undoubtedly try their best to love one another, but the problem is their best will not be good enough because they are relying on tainted and corrupted information. They learn how to have sex with the other person but not about the person, they desire to be loved but fail to understand how to love.

If I was not interested in discerning any possible future with my girlfriend, then sure, we might as well shack up now. But my heart like every other human heart desires to find a love that will last a lifetime. I have a far diminished chance of finding that love if I take the easy option now and simply follow the social trend. Love is too precious a commodity to be is cheapened and destroyed through the social evil that is cohabitation.

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How well do you know your Family?

Posted: 11 January 2012

Welcome to 2012! Did you have a restful break from work…or did you have a break at all? Did you know that at the end of 2011, Australian workers have stockpiled 129.6 million days of annual leave! It matches the recent conversation I had with a man who admitted that he had not taken annual leave for three years even though he has a young family. His response as to why, was that he liked being at work and would not know what to do otherwise (I guess that if one had not taken a break for that long, one may forget what to do with the time).

This does make me wonder though, why we are not taking breaks. It is good that we like our work but why are we not going home? Could it be that it becomes easier to be at work than to engage with the family?

In our homes and amongst our families we also have work that must be done and it is not mowing the lawn or tidying the house. The real work is the work of building up a community, a place where love is received by each member of the family and a place where each member is able to give love.

At the end of last year I spent one month away leading a residential course for twenty young adults from around Australia. During the month the participants receive many different aspects of formation but apart from everything what makes the event so transformative is the strong community that is formed. These young people that begin as strangers end up as lifelong friends and not only because they lived together for a month, but because they shared their lives at a deep level, their joys and their weaknesses, their hopes and their fears. So close does the group become that by the end it is a challenge for them to settle back into home with their own families. However, if our families were as strong as they should be that month would not seem so extraordinary. In this course there is no TV, no phones, no internet, no iPods and at each meal we eat together. In free time we play cards, board games and talk to one another. We have events in which each person publically honours someone else in the community. Much planning goes into this course but everything that is done there should be and can be done in the family; it is the work of a family.

Many of us may be living with our family under the one roof, but that does not mean we know anyone in our family. Each time I travel on the train there are people sitting and reading magazines about the latest celebrity news. I often wonder if they would score higher in a quiz about a celebrity or in a quiz about someone in their own family. How would you score in a quiz about the members of your family?

Just as one can be married but not really have a marriage, one can be in a family but not really have a family. If our family life only exists by default because we live in the same house then perhaps this New Year is the time to address the situation. And the solution is not complicated. It begins by opening up channels in when we have opportunities to share in one another’s lives. That is why the dinner table should is the most crucial piece of furniture in the house. The dinner table is the place where daily lives are shared, and not necessarily the major events but more importantly the minor ones, the details that only a family really have an interest in. For when we have a place to share our insignificant stories we have room to share the significant crossroads of life. Once the family is secure around the table it begins to make sense to share weekends and holidays together.

When we feel we belong to a family then our weekends and annual leave becomes valuable time to spend not just with the family but as a family, not doing but being. The work of building up the family then takes on its own joys that put the paid work we do during business hours into perspective. We begin to see that work exists for us; we do not exist for work. So if you are the owner of some of those 129.6 million days of annual leave perhaps give some thought to trading them in for time with your family in the coming year.

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Winning at the Dating Game

Posted: 27 November 2011

Dating someone is tricky business. It is a bit like playing poker, we do not want to reveal our cards too quickly, yet if we hold onto them for too long the correct moment can pass and the game might be lost. In both dating and poker there is always a risk factor involved. If you never sit down to play a game of poker it is absolutely guaranteed that you will never lose a game of poker, however, it also means you will never win a game of poker. Similarly if you never allow yourself to enter into a relationship with another person it is absolutely guaranteed that you will never be hurt by the other person, but of course it is also guaranteed you will never share in the joys of a relationship.

While there is always the risk of getting hurt in a relationship it is possible to live out a relationship in a way that both minimises the risk of hurt and increases the likelihood of discerning whether or not it is a relationship that might be a keeper. Everything really comes down to prudence, which in modern times has sadly been reduced to being overly cautious. However, prudence is the pivotal virtue which gives us the ability to know what actions are appropriate for us in a particular time and place. Prudence is very much ‘practical wisdom’ for daily living.

So here is my list of three ways to practice prudence in a relationship. They are three ‘do-nots’ but each ‘do not’ should be seen as an invitation to ‘do’ something. The points are simple in theory but not always so in reality. Just as one needs to practice strategy and skills to win at poker, one needs to practice strategy and skills to win at dating.

One. Do not place all your hopes for happiness on the other person. This rule works for dating right through to marriage. There is a natural desire in a relationship to seek joy through the person we are with, and that makes sense, I mean if there was no joy in being with a person why would we bother? We all come to a relationship though with our personal set of needs, perhaps we have a tendency to be lonely, or, perhaps we have a low sense of self worth. It is important to try and discover what our particular needs are and be aware that we do not place them all on the other person because if we do that we will very quickly suffocate them. And we can become so suffocating that we kill off any future the relationship might have had.

Two. Do not neglect the rest of your life. When we begin a relationship with someone who brings us a great deal of happiness we can tend to leave other parts of our life to one side. We naturally desire to spend more and more time with the other person and that is not a negative but it can cause us to put aside the company of family and friends and focus solely on the person we are in a relationship with. Especially at the start of a dating relationship, there needs to be aspects of our life that exist, to some extent, without the other person, we need to remain who we were before we begun dating. Without that balance of other people and activities we risk finding ourselves back at point one putting all our needs on the other.

Three. Do not grasp for what is not there…yet. This is perhaps the most important point. If you really think about it, most of the problems we have in relationships come about because we try to jump ahead of where we are. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we reach out to take the fruit because we do not want to wait. Often we grasp out of fear, we are scared that the outcome which we long for will not come to us. Ironically when we do grasp in a relationship we can end up taking a step backwards, we can do damage to the way we see the other person and end up being disappointed and hurt.

If you are dating someone, the relationship will last because you have played the ‘game’ correctly. If we suffocate the other with our needs, if we let the other aspects of our life lay empty, we will end up letting some card slip out to soon and others come out too late. And once that is happening we can grasp at the end result all we want, it will only serve to frustrate the relationship and we risk losing the game entirely.

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Not a faith of rules but of perfect love

Posted: 25 September 2011

For many of us – myself included – we can say easily and without much thought “I trust in God”, but in reality how many of us really do, and to what extent? There are some beautiful words from Christ in chapter seven of Saint Matthew’s Gospel:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For the one who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your son asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him.”

These are the very words of Christ, the Son of God and God Himself. They should fill us with great hope. If we cannot believe these words deep within our being, then there are no words we can believe. Admittedly, these words are not easy. Yes, they are easy when everything is going as we desire but when life turn sour or when our plans tend to differ from God’s, it is then that we face the temptation to turn and walk our own way. Essentially all sin and all vice is us deciding to walk our own way. It is us not trusting that God’s only desire is to provide for us out of His love.

We think we know what will make us happy, well actually, we do know what will make us happy, it is to be loved and to give love in return. What we are not so clear on, is working out how to love rightly in every situation. If God really is the personally loving God that Jesus Christ told us about then should we not be willing to hand our whole lives and its direction to him? If we do not constantly come back to God as a God of love and learn from Him, then we will begin to see Him and all of Christianity and her teachings as merely rules given by a harsh taskmaster.

All this talk of trusting in God though is an unachievable ideal, if we do not incorporate the grace of God into our life. The secular world says that all you need to be happy is within, but this is wrong, or at least, it is incomplete. We are creatures, wonderfully made creatures, but still only creatures and fallen ones at that. We struggle to do what we know we should do. Our desire and our will are often in conflict. The only way to perfection, to reach the plan of God for our life, is with sanctifying grace. You might say to yourself, “I will be ok, I just need to toughen up” but without grace you will fail as certain as the sun will rise tomorrow.

We must ask for God’s grace every day, if necessary we must pray for the desire to desire God’s grace. There is a popular image of Christ standing at a door knocking but the door has no handle. The door represents our hearts. The Lord stands and knocks but he will not force entry into our lives, only we can open the door to the Lord, and we can be assured that the moment we do, his grace will come flooding in. It is primarily in the sacraments that we receive this grace; these are the channels of blessing that Christ left for us. Frequent Holy Communion and Confession will feed and purify our souls. We should cling to the sacraments like we would to a life vest in the ocean. St Augustine once wrote, “Pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on you”. This needs to be our plan for life.

Christ said “be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect”. He would not have set us such a high goal if we were not given the means to do it. Let us never forget we are the creatures of a God of love, a God who loved us so much that he died, not for humanity as some general concept, but for you and for me personally. The only way to our true happiness is through God’s plan. Sometimes God’s plan is difficult but there is no reward without a struggle, no crown without a cross. When we unite ourselves to the cross of Christ our burdens are lifted and we will find the happiness we desire.

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Love, not Hate

Posted: 23 September 2011

It seems that everywhere I look there are people who are going out of their way to annoy me! People who insist on driving at 70km even though the limit is 90km. People who have personal phone conversations on the train. People who chew with their mouths open. The list could take up this entire column! There are situations, however, that are beyond ‘annoying’, situations that can affect us in serious ways.

I was recently speaking to some friends who run a franchise business and the franchise director is really making life very difficult for them, to an extent that it is affecting their ability to run their business. The director tells lies, is obnoxious and rude. More than just affecting business, though, when we encounter people like this it can adversely affect our happiness. We begin to boil on the inside, it consumes us at work and at home, we begin to hate the person and are led into personal sadness and depression. These sorts of situations will play out for all of us in different ways through our lives but how can we respond?

It seems to me that there really are only two answers: we can burn with hate for the person or we can burn with love for the person. Love?! What?! The person who is causing us harm and grief in whatever way, is most often acting out of their own pain. They might be having family problems; perhaps they are insecure or lonely. Mother Teresa often spoke of loneliness as the greatest poverty especially in the modern Western world, and even a person who appears to have it all (family, career, assets etc) can be deeply lonely. Whatever it is, there is probably a pain in their heart.

Our encounter then with the person who is causing us so much grief should before anything else be seen as an opportunity to show love. One of my all time favourite movie scenes is in the film ‘Karol’ which tells the story of the life of Karol Wojtyla prior to him being elected as Pope John Paul II. Karol lived as a Bishop in Poland, which suffered at the hands of the Nazis and, once they had moved out, the communists moved in. Both movements were ones of hate. Seeing the Church as their largest threat, the communist leaders planted spies all around Bishop Wojtyla. One particular spy was sent as a student into Wojtyla’s university lectures. The spy also bugged the confessional to find anything he could which would accuse Wojtyla of encouraging a violent uprise against the regime. Day in and day out, this spy listened to the pain in the hearts of those who came to Confession and he heard the love of Christ that was offered to them by Wojtyla.

In a very moving scene, the man, who could no longer live with himself, approaches Wojtyla to confess to being a spy. “Even though I hated you, your words slipped inside of me like water through a crack. You speak of love. Such a sick word”. And with that he broke down in the forgiving arms of the future Pope.

The point is that we all know the typical response to those who cause us pain. It is to cause them pain back. But there is another way and, amazingly, there is no weapon against it.

Love will break down any barrier because every hardened heart, every cruel boss, every offensive individual we meet desires love.

But it’s not enough just to smile at the person when we see them and avoid them like the plague the rest of the time. We need to love them, actively.

In the autobiography of St Therese of Liseux, she tells the story of a particular nun who irritated her to no end and made her life miserable. Therese reaches a point where she writes “I reminded myself that sentiments of charity were not enough; they must find expression, and I set myself to treat her as if I loved her best of all.” Therese loved this fellow nun, not just in words but with actions. She looked past what displeased her to see the person with all their pain, and their hurt but also their gifts and talents.

Whoever is causing you trouble is not going to be any worse than the communist spy but, even if they are, the key is to love them, love them actively, love them like you would love the most important person in your life. You will turn your difficult situation around but most important you will genuinely help someone and become a better person yourself.

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Bucks Parties: An Opportunity for Men to Step Up

Posted: 22 September 2011

My good friend (let’s call him Tom) got married recently and in preparation for this joyous occasion the customary buck’s party was organised.

We were informed that this particular event was to be held in two parts: The day events would include a round of golf, lunch and a game of bowling; the night event would include a selection of more ‘adult’ activities.

While golf and bowling are rather tame activities in and of themselves, they did involve Tom being dressed in a blonde wig, a frilly pink dress and being obliged to carry around a life size, blow up doll all day.

To add to the excitement, during the travel to the various destinations, the hired mini van had been well equipped with a number of sexualised games and activities for both the groom-to-be and his fellow travellers.

I was later told that night activities (which I missed) involved dinner via Nyotaimori (the practice of serving sushi on the body of a naked woman), much drinking and a visit to a city strip club.

Bucks’ parties are traditionally an opportunity for a man to spend time with his close male friends and engage in activities that might not be possible once married.

It is a sort of ‘rite of passage’ from adolescence to adulthood but perhaps it is worth considering what we are including in this rite?

I am not sure how an event involving strippers and sex games can be considered as preparation for anything more than a life of unfaithfulness (and the evening my friends had was rather tame compared with other bucks’ nights).

The idea of quality time with one’s friends makes sense, but if an activity such as attending a strip club would be completely out of bounds after marriage, how on earth could it be justifiable before marriage?

What does it say about a person’s view of the value of sexuality and the dignity of the human person to watch a paid stranger provocatively remove their clothes?

How can a man stand on top of a bar with a stripper one weekend and stand before the altar of God the next weekend making vows to love with a love that is faithful and true?
Perhaps to a degree, one can excuse (maybe) someone who has had no formation in the sacred character and nature of marriage, someone who knows nothing of the meaning of sexuality as a gift to be shared with one’s spouse and not with everyone that comes along … but … to those who are practising their faith and call themselves Christian, the excuse is severely weakened.

One does not stumble into a strip club without some idea of what is going on and one cannot claim to be watching a woman take her clothes off as merely something to do while enjoying a round of beers with the guys.

My friend Tom is a faith-filled man, a good man. He actually called me prior to the buck’s party to pre-warn me about what might transpire.

Unfortunately, though, warning those who may be offended is not enough; we must lead by example. Each of us needs to decide what type of man we are going to be.
Do we stand by and let things happen, or do we take a stand and make things happen?
There are moments in every life in which a man can rise up and say “I choose to walk another way, to walk in the way of what is right”.

For a man who is getting married, the statement to his best man might translate to, “I’m looking forward to the buck’s night you are organising but we won’t be mocking sex or using women as objects”.

There can be no confusion about where we stand on such an issue, it is non-negotiable.
The buck’s night preparation provides a valuable opportunity to show our friends that the dignity of the human person is something we prize above all else.

What more honourable gift can a man give as sign of his undivided love?

A man should not avoid a strip club because he thinks his fiancé may not like it; he should avoid a strip club because it is a place that declares ‘sex and love have no value’ and a real man knows that is a lie.

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