Beyond Passion

There is a lot of digital ink spilled encouraging people to follow or not follow their passion. It is the stuff of graduation speeches and fodder for motivational memes. I was told mixed messages. I should follow my passion because this might be what God is calling me to do and that my passion is evidence of my gifts and graces. I have also been told that I my passions are really better suited for hobbies not employment.

We laude passionate people. We find their convictions intoxicating and we are in awe of those who are passionate when they speak or sing or preform. We have a love/hate relationship with passion, but by in large it is an ingredient to thriving.

Maybe.

Rather than add to the conversation about if we should or should not follow our passion, I want to encourage us to think beyond passion to something else that is better suited to guide our lives and build up the common good.

Follow your compassion.

Passion is the seductive internal fire that does not necessarily draw us toward another person. Compassion is the ability to suffer with another which requires us to move toward another. If we follow the compassion not only will we move toward another but we also discover what God is calling us to do and be. If you are struggling to know what God is calling you to do or be, your compassion is a better indicator than your passion.

We have seen people who are consumed by passion. They loose all sense of themselves and their impacts on others all in the name of “following their passion.” Passion can consume you, it conquers.

Compassion does not consume but it can only exist if it assumes. Compassion must assume human action or the compassion does not exist. Passion exists on its own, even without action. Compassion only can exist with the action of another. I can have a passion for music without ever learning to play an instrument. Conversely, compassion moves us to be instruments (of peace, mercy, kindness, etc.)

There is a place for passion, but let us get beyond passion and into the land of compassion.

The land of passion is overpopulated anyway.

"For We Are Consumed By Your Anger..."

“For we are consumed by your anger;
by your wrath we are overwhelmed.
You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your countenance.”

— Psalm 90:7-8

At first reading, some might read Psalm 90:7-8 and think, “God is so mad at us that God will destroy us and we should be afraid of how angry God is at us.”

The problem is that when we take a verse or two and do not look at the overall arc of scripture we really can miss the much bigger point. In this case, the bigger point is that no matter how much we want to think that God is angry with us, God is not angry with us.

I know this can sound like I am speaking crazy since the “Scripture clearly says” that we are consumed by your (God) anger. How could this be a verse that testifies to how God is not angry with us?

The words here indicate that perhaps we are not consumed (as in that we are being destroyed) but that we are consumed (as in it captures our imagination) with God’s anger.

Humans are consumed, convinced and sure with God’s anger.

Maybe we are consumed with God’s anger because we believe, deep down that God cannot really love us. We are angry people and so God must be angry. We project ourselves onto God and thus violate the one of the big ten (thou shall not make graven images). God’s ways are not our ways and yet we are convinced/consumed with the idea that God must be angry.

God is not angry at you. You do not anger God - your actions are not significant enough to make God angry. Maybe we want to believe God is angry with us to convince ourselves that our actions are much more important then they really are in the grand scheme of things? Maybe we are convinced that God is angry at us as a way to exert some feeling of power and control? I mean what could be more powerful than to be able to get under God’s skin?

Pentecost and Moses

There are several connections between the story of Pentecost in Acts 2 and the story of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11. It is worth your prayerful consideration how the story of Pentecost reverses the tower of Babel. It is also worth considering the ways Pentecost connects with the story of Moses. Specifically the fire that does not consume. 

Moses encountered a bush that is not consumed by fire. The disciples at Pentecost were on fire but were not consumed. There is a lot to unpack here, but might I just offer this one insight: God does not consume us, but allows us to consume him. 

In the communion liturgy and sacrament, it is God that offers himself for our consumption. God allows God-self to be consumed by the community, Where primitive religions fear a God that will consume (kill) them, the God manifest in Jesus Christ shows a God that does not consume humans. Philippians 2 speaks of Christ who did not see equality with God as something to be exploited but Christ emptied himself and took the form of a slave - willing to be crucified. 

I commend to your prayer life the question of what does it say that God is willing to be consumed rather than be the one who consumes? For some this is scandalous. To others this is foolish. But Christ crucified is Good News.