This will be a switch from the deep (and confusing logic) of my last post. Hopefully it comes a little more naturally.
Yesterday, I went to The LEGO Movie. I swear, I tried so incredibly hard not to cry. I really did try. By the end, however, I was unsuccessful. I cry at everything. I cry when I'm happy and when I'm sad. I cry with movies and with music. I used to try not to cry and I would be ashamed when I was younger, but now I embrace it and I encourage others to cry. The human body releases three kinds of tears, which each... Well, I'll stay on topic.
What I've realized though is that I cry much easier than I ever have, and as weird as it sounds, this has grown as my relationship with the Lord has grown. The more I feel that I understand and have conformed to God's heart, the more tears just come naturally. I cry at what seems like the silliest things, too. Heck, I cry at delicious foods, or watching a fan meet a famous person.
I asked myself "Why?" Why do I cry at everything? I realized it's because we live in a world that was created by God, and he cares about his creation. He didn't just create some basic things we like to say are most important, either, such as love and death. God created oak trees, the Mona Lisa, electro swing, skyscrapers, hamburgers, Breaking Bad, gymnastics, mathematics, accidental curly fries, supernovas, smiley faces, being double jointed, water fountains, the old west, kaleidoscopes, spaceships, and so much more.
I think that as Christians, we can sometimes forget this, especially those of us with a logical slant. I do think that we need to remember there are things to be priority in our emphasis, such as love, justice, mercy, and other values. However, we live in a universe created by God, and he cares about every single element of it.
I grew up watching movies and looking for the "normal" values (from how I was taught). You watched a movie for it's positive characters, for a good and happy ending, for interesting twists, and for clear moral lessons. Otherwise, a movie was considered pointless and stupid. As I've made new friends, however, I've seen a world beyond these oversimplifications of media. I've realized that you can watch a movie for a talented director, for beautiful music, for anti-heroes, for a genre that seems to effect our hearts just right. Movies can pique our passions for a variety of reasons, and maybe some deserve to be emphasized, but they all matter.
I think this is why I cry at everything. because God cares about everything. He even cares about a single actor portraying an emotion really well. He cares about what it feels to be in a cyberpunk dystopia. He cares about a director who can portray a variety of film genres well. In this way, we can say "everyone is special" and that man is made in God's image... and not be lying. Because when we play favorites with what counts as being important, we diagnose the people who care about what isn't "important" as being broken or less than special.
So I'll continue to cry at everything, because passions are important to God. I love seeing everything done in excellence. I even love watching a story of a character making bad choices and destroying their lives like in Breaking Bad, because I learn to do better, and I sympathize with people just like Jesus did when he suffered for our sins. I'll cry about the Peanut Butter Pickle Bacon burger at Killer Burger because it's so delicious. I'll cry at emotional piano covers of inappropriate songs like The Bad Touch by Tom Rosenthal. And I'll cry to see how happy my friends are at shows and movies I don't quite get just because I know how it effects them.
I'll keep trying to care about everything. Everything. Because God cares about everything, and if I love and grow to be more like him, I will too.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Monday, May 12, 2014
Do We Control Our Lives?
In this life, we can categorize happenings in two ways: controllables and uncontrollables. There are things we have the ability to control and things outside of our control. Our mindset about each of these is addressed in psychology as an internal locus of control or external locus of control, being whether we tend to blame controllable forces or uncontrollable forces, respectively. A strong internal locus of control means we take a lot of responsibility (but degrades into blaming and shaming ourselves), and a strong external locus of control means we understand there are things outside our control (but degrades into making excuses and playing the victim).
It seems that, by human nature, we default to a strong sense of external locus of control (things outside of my control are to blame for my situation). Most articles and guides on the two locuses of control are about developing a stronger internal locus of control, and thus helping a person take responsibility for their lives. Motivational speakers and success books emphasize this mindset that we can take control of our lives (which is common thinking for the Enneagram type Three). Likewise, the "happiness is a choice" mindset is a reaction to the default of an external locus of control by emphasizing an ability to control our thoughts and thus our emotions. Every self-help section of books is filled with titles such as Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives and Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. There is great value in these ideas of taking control of our lives, and I believe that we generally have a greater control over our lives than we tend to think. I often repeat the mantra, “If you really want it, you’ll make it happen. If not, you’ll make excuses.”
I believe, however, there are some very dangerous consequences of an overemphasis of controllables and an internal locus of control. The first is that a complete control of emotions makes them arbitrary and reduces their value. While it’s good to have an effect on our emotions and be able to healthily regulate them, if they become a simple switch that we turn on and off, we negate the purpose of negative (but not bad) emotions like sadness and anger, and the positive ones like happiness become the equivalent of a pleasure button to be pressed constantly and consequently devalued. Emotions tie strongly with the artistic side of our identity as humans, where we appreciate things that often have their beauty in being out of our control.
Another consequence of the extreme internal locus of control is a paradox of the will that is created. Suddenly, we can step back from our decisions to effect our own will that made them. This sounds simple enough, but the problem is that our will is required for us to desire to change itself. That same will cannot alter itself and exist at the same time, in the same way a snake cannot eat itself. You can work your way back altering your will and desire deeper and deeper, but never will you reach the end of it.
When we over emphasize the internal locus of control, we also degrade love. One of the most beautiful elements of love is that it is freely given to us, rather than taken. A belief that all things are controllable makes love a demand of ours rather than a gift. In a lesser version of this same error, we can see love as something to be earned, where we can receive it through the control of our own actions to thus make us worthy of love.
One of the worst consequences of an emphasis on controllables is that instead of an obedience to God, they can become our own way of not trusting him. While a Bible full of commands about how to live our life surely suggests we have responsibilities and should use our control, when we derive hope, meaning, relationships, purpose, and such out of our own actions, we devalue the need for God in our lives. If happiness really is a choice, then I don’t need Jesus anymore because I can just choose to be happy.
My last point, and in fact the main reason for which I wrote this article, is a twofold point of psychology and theology. When we de-emphasize uncontrollables, we deny our own needs as human beings which God gave us. In doing this, we are actually denying God’s created order and will. It would be insane to say that living without food is a choice, because we know that we begin to die physically without the nurturance that God designed us to have. Few people would say that a negative reaction from the deprivation of physical sustenance somehow suggests a lack of faith in God, or a lack of taking of personal responsibility. However, we often act as though a negative reaction from the deprivation of emotional sustenance (relationships, love languages, etc.) suggests a lack of trusting God and a shoving off of responsibility and playing the victim role. We don’t realize that this mentality makes things worse, as God designed us to break down emotionally without proper sustenance as he did on Earth, and we will actually create more emotional problems in the same way we would from starving ourselves.
God created a world of controllables and uncontrollables. A healthy person lives knowing both these realities. Trusting God does not mean denying his created order, and his created order includes having physical and emotional needs. If you deny that parts of the world, including internal parts of yourself, are out of control, you will harm yourself, distract yourself from God’s will, and devalue the beauty of his creation. Faith in God requires uncontrollables!
Bonus Points - Related to Motivation and Responsibility
It seems that, by human nature, we default to a strong sense of external locus of control (things outside of my control are to blame for my situation). Most articles and guides on the two locuses of control are about developing a stronger internal locus of control, and thus helping a person take responsibility for their lives. Motivational speakers and success books emphasize this mindset that we can take control of our lives (which is common thinking for the Enneagram type Three). Likewise, the "happiness is a choice" mindset is a reaction to the default of an external locus of control by emphasizing an ability to control our thoughts and thus our emotions. Every self-help section of books is filled with titles such as Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives and Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. There is great value in these ideas of taking control of our lives, and I believe that we generally have a greater control over our lives than we tend to think. I often repeat the mantra, “If you really want it, you’ll make it happen. If not, you’ll make excuses.”
I believe, however, there are some very dangerous consequences of an overemphasis of controllables and an internal locus of control. The first is that a complete control of emotions makes them arbitrary and reduces their value. While it’s good to have an effect on our emotions and be able to healthily regulate them, if they become a simple switch that we turn on and off, we negate the purpose of negative (but not bad) emotions like sadness and anger, and the positive ones like happiness become the equivalent of a pleasure button to be pressed constantly and consequently devalued. Emotions tie strongly with the artistic side of our identity as humans, where we appreciate things that often have their beauty in being out of our control.
Another consequence of the extreme internal locus of control is a paradox of the will that is created. Suddenly, we can step back from our decisions to effect our own will that made them. This sounds simple enough, but the problem is that our will is required for us to desire to change itself. That same will cannot alter itself and exist at the same time, in the same way a snake cannot eat itself. You can work your way back altering your will and desire deeper and deeper, but never will you reach the end of it.
When we over emphasize the internal locus of control, we also degrade love. One of the most beautiful elements of love is that it is freely given to us, rather than taken. A belief that all things are controllable makes love a demand of ours rather than a gift. In a lesser version of this same error, we can see love as something to be earned, where we can receive it through the control of our own actions to thus make us worthy of love.
One of the worst consequences of an emphasis on controllables is that instead of an obedience to God, they can become our own way of not trusting him. While a Bible full of commands about how to live our life surely suggests we have responsibilities and should use our control, when we derive hope, meaning, relationships, purpose, and such out of our own actions, we devalue the need for God in our lives. If happiness really is a choice, then I don’t need Jesus anymore because I can just choose to be happy.
My last point, and in fact the main reason for which I wrote this article, is a twofold point of psychology and theology. When we de-emphasize uncontrollables, we deny our own needs as human beings which God gave us. In doing this, we are actually denying God’s created order and will. It would be insane to say that living without food is a choice, because we know that we begin to die physically without the nurturance that God designed us to have. Few people would say that a negative reaction from the deprivation of physical sustenance somehow suggests a lack of faith in God, or a lack of taking of personal responsibility. However, we often act as though a negative reaction from the deprivation of emotional sustenance (relationships, love languages, etc.) suggests a lack of trusting God and a shoving off of responsibility and playing the victim role. We don’t realize that this mentality makes things worse, as God designed us to break down emotionally without proper sustenance as he did on Earth, and we will actually create more emotional problems in the same way we would from starving ourselves.
God created a world of controllables and uncontrollables. A healthy person lives knowing both these realities. Trusting God does not mean denying his created order, and his created order includes having physical and emotional needs. If you deny that parts of the world, including internal parts of yourself, are out of control, you will harm yourself, distract yourself from God’s will, and devalue the beauty of his creation. Faith in God requires uncontrollables!
Bonus Points - Related to Motivation and Responsibility
- “There is no try, only do.” The famous quote from Master Yoda of the Star Wars universe. I strongly dislike this quote, because “trying” means putting your heart into something. You made a real effort, and while mankind judges by outside appearance, God says his priority is the heart. I’d rather the failed friend who put in their whole heart than those who accidentally do the right action. Success is a helpful hint at effort and a good heart, but is generally an unreliable guideline. The truth is, the best friends and achievers are the ones who consistently try and fail, not the ones who do well with ease. Nothing worth admiring was ever done without first trying to do it.
- Excuses. It’s bad to make excuses (suggesting a fabrication), but sometimes we have excuses regardless of our intention. A blind person makes a poor art critic, and I’ll gladly excuse them for it. The concept of “no excuses,” while generally helpful for a motivator, can degrade human beings for limitations God himself put into our world. If I want to judge when having excuses is a problem, I generally ask myself two questions: Is this person trying to change? Is the person taking responsibility? Personally, when someone let’s me down, I prefer an excuse (assuming they have one) because it helps me understand, and I can judge no one who I do not understand.
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