Connecting Like Jesus

Practices for Healing, Teaching, and Preaching

Mary Albert Darling

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781506454931
• eBook ISBN: 9781506454948
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

A hands-on resource for all Christians who want to communicate with more passion and power Tony Campolo and Mary Albert Darling have teamed up to explore the dynamic connection that occurs when spirituality/spiritual practices are combined with effective communication practices. Churches and other religious organizations depend on the ability of their leaders and members to communicate (speak, teach, and preach) within their congregations and beyond. This important, practical guide will reveal Campolo's preaching secrets and Darling's wise counsel as a professor of communication.

TWO

PRACTICES FOR SOUL HEALING

MARY ALBERT DARLING

3

It Is About You

Knowing Yourself as the Starting Point for Soul Healing

Oh it’s so hard to see, when my eyes are on me.

—from “Make My Life a Prayer,” sung by Keith Green

May I know myself, may I know Thee.

—Augustine

Although “it’s not about you” is a popular line, it is not entirely true. It is about you, especially if you want to help care for others’ souls. The Golden Rule, given to us by Jesus, states, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12). Jesus goes on to say in Matthew 19:19 that the second greatest commandment, just after “Love the Lord your God” is to “love your neighbor as yourself.” The assumption in both of these verses is that we want to be loved and treated in healthy, life-affirming ways, and that’s how we are to treat others too. These verses also imply that we know what is best for ourselves and that we are consciously aware of how we want others to care for our own souls. But that may not be true for everyone. Some people may not know or love themselves and therefore do not know the best ways to treat themselves, much less others.

It is about you, especially if you want to help care for others’ souls.

That is why focusing on how we want to be treated is important. But it still may seem too self-centered. This kind of self-awareness is not selfish, however, unless we figure out how we want to be treated—and then stay there. As we have seen, if we want to be like Jesus, then our eyes must inevitably move from ourselves to others.

Exceptions to the Golden Rule?

Even though we may believe the Golden Rule in theory, there may be certain people who we do not think deserve to be treated in loving and edifying ways. But Jesus did not put any exceptions or qualifications on the Golden Rule. He did not say, “Do to others as you want them to do to you unless it is someone who is mean to you, irritates you, or even does something harmful or hateful.” I often wish he did. But long before Nike came along, Jesus told his followers to just do it. That is why it is called the Golden Rule, not the Golden Suggestion. If it were a suggestion, when someone does something unloving to us, we would not have to be loving in return. Mean people are not easy to like, much less love. Yet if we want to follow the Golden Rule, we must be loving and kind. That is the path to soul healing, and it’s not always an easy one. It is interesting to note that right before stating the Golden Rule in Luke 6:31, Jesus tells us to “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27–28). In Romans 12:17–21, Paul expands on what it means to love others: “Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. ‘I’ll do the judging,’ says God. ‘I’ll take care of it.’ Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good” (The Message).

But Jesus did not put any exceptions or qualifications on the Golden Rule.

I find it easy to romanticize these verses. Loving my enemy seems noble as a concept and at a distance. I can pray for my enemies as faceless entities. But when they become real people, sometimes the last thing I want to do is love them.

I have a friend, Jacob Atem, who is one of the “lost boys” of Sudan. Both of his parents were killed in Sudan’s 1987 civil war. As their village was burning, six-year-old Jacob and his older cousin fled to the jungle, and then along with thousands of other boys whose parents had been murdered, soon began the thousand-mile walk to Ethiopia and then Kenya. Only half of them made it. Jacob was carried much of the way on his cousin’s back, and the two of them barely escaped death several times.

Jacob told me that he has forgiven the people who killed his parents and caused horrific pain and death to thousands. I asked him if he could say that he not only has forgiven but also loves these people. He immediately replied, “Oh yeah! If I forgive them, there’s no reason I shouldn’t love them.” Jacob said that the only reason he does not hate them is because of his relationship with Jesus. On his own, he never could. “Based on my life story, how can anybody honestly convince me that I am to love them? There is no way, except with the Holy Spirit in me. I call this the Holy Spirit communication. It’s the Holy Spirit in me. I see the people who killed my parents through the Holy Spirit. I am so thankful that God is in me.” Jacob went on to say that “Other Christians helped change my view, but the Holy Spirit changed my view most. I am in love with God and God is helping me through other people.”^[1]

Jacob’s attitude may be hard to grasp and even harder to put into action. But as theologian Wendy M. Wright wrote in The Rising, “We may not like the other but we are called to love. We may certainly not validate or condone his or her actions. But we are called into a radical sense of our interconnectedness as creatures and children of the same God. To perceive this deep-level of interdependence, especially with those . . . who would seek to harm or destroy our worlds, seems a nearly impossible task. Yet the Gospels prod us on. At the furthest reaches of our capacities to love, we are urged, ‘Love even your enemies.’”^[2]

Jacob was able to forgive, and now he is helping heal others’ souls because the Holy Spirit profoundly healed his soul. Jacob’s kind of transformation is only possible if you are willing to become fertile ground for the work of the Spirit. That can’t happen without an understanding of another possible enemy: you. If you don’t love yourself, you can get in your own way and not be able to love others in the ways God intended. You can learn to love yourself by accepting God’s love for you—available at any moment. Then you can start the transformational process of becoming aware of how you truly and lovingly want to be treated so that you can treat others that way too. The following communication and spiritual practices can help you gain this awareness so that you can live out the Golden Rule and become focused on others— for the purpose of helping heal their souls.

The Practice of Noticing

Noticing how and why you think, feel, believe, talk, act, and react the way you do opens the door to discovering your true self—an image bearer of God—so that you can treat others in soul-healing ways. Without this awareness, we can too easily get stuck in faulty, unhealthy relationships and never know why, much less know how to fix or even get out of them. When I asked Mindy Caliguire in our interview what she saw as the role of self-awareness in connecting with others, this is what she said:

Because I see sharing my faith as sharing what is real—like my experience of faith, of trusting God, and of being confident in the Kingdom— rather than sharing a core set of doctrinal statements, self-awareness is critical. I need to ask myself how exactly am I trusting God right now? In what way am I choosing faith? What is the basis of my confidence? Where am I struggling to have faith or to believe in God’s presence, goodness, purpose in a given situation?

Being able to honestly answer questions like these requires a great deal of awareness. Socrates, the great Greek philosopher, understood the importance of self-awareness when he said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” But David, the Psalmist, understood that self-awareness alone was not enough. In Psalm 139 he wrote, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23–24). David knew that God must guide his self-awareness if he was to discover his true self. Jesus promised that God’s Spirit would be available to guide us, too (John 14:16–17). The Holy Spirit can reveal any unhealthy patterns in ourselves, as long as we don’t block the Spirit’s work in our lives.

One night, when the temperature had gone down to seven degrees, our furnace stopped working. When the technician came, he could not find anything wrong with the furnace, although it was not blowing out any heat. When he went outside, he found that the entrances to our exhaust pipes were covered with ice, blocking the pipes from getting any air. We can be like those pipes, shut off from the work of the Spirit due to our hardened hearts or to aspects of ourselves we have never noticed (but others may have). Asking the Holy Spirit to help us look honestly at ourselves, just as David did in Psalm 139, opens us to the redemptive work of the Spirit in our lives. Healing from the Spirit then enables us to help heal others.

Jesus often invited others to become more self-aware. As Brian McLaren noted in our interview, “Jesus tried to help people see themselves. He would tell a parable, and the Pharisees would know that he was speaking of them [Luke 18:9–14]. In the parable of the prodigal son, after he left home, squandered his money, and ate with pigs, the prodigal son ‘came to himself’ [Luke 15:16–17], which is another illustration Jesus used to help people see themselves in a different light.” Not all who Jesus invited accepted his invitation to increased awareness. Brian’s first example with the Pharisees illustrates the problem of a hardened heart. His second example is more hopeful—the prodigal son became more selfaware. But before we decide to leave home and go through the trials and mistakes that lead us to eat with pigs, let’s first try looking at reasons the prodigal son may not have been self-aware enough in the first place.

Jesus often invited others to become more self-aware.

Difficulties in Becoming More Aware

Becoming aware of how we relate to others can be difficult for a variety of reasons. Some of us may not think much at all about how we come across to others—in the field of communication, such people are called “low self-monitors”—whereas others of us, “high self-monitors,” may think about it a lot. A good exercise to determine where you might fall on this high-to-low continuum is to visualize yourself as a bystander as you go through your most recent twelve waking hours. How might your words, the tone of your voice, your eye contact, and other body language have been interpreted by others? How much did you show that you are interested in seeing them? How often were you supportive? Angry? In a bad mood?

If you are surprised by what you recall, you are probably more toward the low-self-monitor end of the continuum. If you are not surprised by observations of your behavior, you are most likely on the higher end of the continuum. Our ability to self-monitor is an aspect of what is called impression management, which is our attempts to influence how others see us, including that all-important first impression. In an old “Far Side” cartoon by Gary Larson, Tarzan is anticipating meeting Jane. In his mind he is going over the various ways he might greet her, including “How do you do. My name is Tarzan, and I believe you are known as Jane?” and “Allow me to introduce myself . . . I am Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle . . . And you?” When he actually sees her, he blurts out, “Me Tarzan! You Jane!”

We use impression management in a variety of ways, from trying to impress a love interest to getting a job. The idea of impression management may seem disingenuous, but if our goal is to connect with others in the best ways possible, then it is important to be purposeful about how we come across. Intentionally creating false impressions is, of course, wrong. But we can unintentionally create false impression too. Although high self-monitors can see themselves as very self-aware, that does not guarantee that they are accurate in their awareness. How we see ourselves coming across does not necessarily match how others see us.

How we see ourselves coming across does not necessarily match how others see us.

If you have ever watched the popular show The Office, you might have noticed that the main character, Michael Scott, appears to be trying to be very intentional in how he communicates. He thinks he is a great manager who relates well with his staff, but many of his employees see him as incompetent. They often roll their eyes when he talks, or they take offense or are confused by his words; but he seems to be clueless about his communication style.

You may know someone like this—someone who believes he knows how he is coming across, but does not. If you don’t know anyone like this, you may want to consider what Steve Carell, who plays Michael Scott, said in an interview on Larry King Live, June 17, 2008: “If you don’t know a Michael Scott, you are a Michael Scott.” If you start to think you may lack some self-awareness—perhaps even like a Michael Scott—...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Epigraphs
• Dedication
• An Introduction to Spiritually Charged Communication
• Connecting Like Jesus
• Practices for Soul Healing
• Practices for Teaching and Preaching
• Postscript for Spiritually Charged Communication
• “One Another” Verses
• Using This Book in Small Groups or Classes
• Notes
• The Authors
• Index