Five Lessons for Everyone (Part 1)

I’ve been reading a book called Adam’s Return: the Five Promises of Male Initiation by Richard Rohr. The book looks at a wide range of cultural male initiation rites that communities used to initiate a young boy into manhood. Among other things, and the subject I’d like to take up briefly here, the book talks about the five lessons that every young man must learn in order to be the leader that he must be as a male in his community. The five lessons are:

Life is hard.

You are not that important.

Your life is not about you.

You are not in control.

You are going to die.

These lessons were not simply found in Israelite culture, but in cultures across the board. Scripturally speaking these are lessons found, and not accidentally, throughout the Written Word. I think that these are lessons, male initiation aside, that we all need to learn if we are to understand our relationship to God and to each other.

Life is Hard

Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble on account of me.” Because of Jesus we will have trouble. Let me add this: because we are human we will have trouble. Because we are alive we will have trouble. You can’t avoid hardship. It’s not a matter of if but when and how severe. And the larger question is, How will we respond to it? We are a culture that avoids suffering, detests it, pretends like it doesn’t exist. We bury ourselves underneath a plethora of pleasures and distractions, seeking to forget that we are hurting, that the world is bent and broken, and that we ourselves are, deep down in the dark places of our souls, bent and broken. We must learn, and it is not an easy lesson to swallow, how to suffer and how to learn from our suffering. God uses suffering. Nothing is wasted in God’s kingdom. He uses everything--including our suffering. Life is difficult. How will we respond to it?

You are Not That Important

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve wanted to say or have said to a teenager seeking counsel from me that they aren’t nearly as important as they think they are. At first glance that seems like a harsh statement, but it isn’t. Here’s why: We are a very, very privileged country, our teens especially succumbing to our culture of conspicuous consumption, believing that everything is owed to them and that the sun rises and sets at their beck and call. Parents don’t help much, feeding their teens insatiable appetite for more with...well...more. Jesus said that life is more than food and drink. We need to understand and to impress on younger generations that the world is bigger than our own field of vision. It’s bigger than our own wants and needs. It’s bigger than our own personal destinies. Now, none of this is to downplay how important we we are in the eyes of God. And I believe that if we understood that, and if we understood that He sees every human being as important, then our own field of vision would expand. Our importance is not based on what we think of ourselves, what we own, what we do, but on Who we belong to and what we look like in His eyes.

to be continued...

shalom, matt