Articles by Rubel Shelly at Heartlight

How to Think of God

rshelly@rc.edu (Rubel Shelly) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Maybe it is because they're so fresh from the hand of God. Whatever the reason, there is a lot to be learned about God from paying attention to infants.

I watched her as she came into the restaurant. What an engaging smile! Nobody had to do anything for her. No performances. No gifts. No getting up to make a fuss. The smile came from within and seemed to be part of her nature.

She sat in her high chair and played as the adults ate. She made no demands and never fussed. Look her way, though, and she would reward you with that ever-present smile. A pinch of saltine was wonderful to her. She clearly enjoyed chewing on a toy or two her mother had brought. And that constant smile on her face would just melt your heart every time you saw it.

At various times in the course of the evening, people made her the center of attention. They peek-a-booed, patty-caked, and chin-chucked. She loved the attention, sure enough. You could hear her chuckle from deep down inside.

Everybody in the restaurant was sneaking glances at her now. A couple of times when her eyes caught ours, she offered that captivating grin. She didn't appear to feel intruded upon that strangers were basking in the glow of her favor.

I just knew it had to end though. She'd get tired. Then she would turn grumpy, fuss a bit, and need a bottle or nap. Although I'm sure it happens, we never saw it that night. For the entire time we shared the room with her, she smiled. No, she beamed. Her radiant face made us feel special for being there.

Then it dawned on me how like that night is the experience of God. We have somehow convinced ourselves that we must jump through hoops, offer extraordinary gifts, or otherwise draw his attention and favor to ourselves. Then, convinced he is looking, we work to crank up the performance level lest his perceived smile turn to a sour, scolding look.

By what terrible logic did such an image of the God of All Grace emerge? Has its widespread acceptance led some to despair and give up on his favor?

God's presence in our lives is much more like that of the baby my wife and I saw in a restaurant that night than some can bring themselves to believe. His constant gaze is accompanied by a natural, easy smile. It is only natural, after all, for a Father to enjoy watching his children. No need for any of us to make a fuss or think it is necessary to earn his favor. No need for us to fear that his mood will turn gloomy and his manner forbidding.

Next time you have the chance to enjoy such a sight for yourself, think how much you are witnessing the nature of God -- and rejoice.

Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these" (Luke 18:16 TNIV).

Rubel Shelly preached for the Woodmont Hills Churchin Nashville for thirty years. He is the author of more than 20 books. He has accepted the position of President of Rochester College. For more details, click here or here to email.

Website: RubelShelly.com

Back to Basics

rshelly@rc.edu (Rubel Shelly) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

With the World Series recently completed, maybe a baseball story is in order. No, it isn't about the Yankees or Phillies. It is about the start of an expansion team almost half a century ago. Specifically, it is about that team's manager.

The name Casey Stengel will be associated forever with the glory days of the New York Yankees. He managed those fabulous teams that fielded Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, and Mickey Mantle. They won pennant after pennant, World Series after World Series. As those players aged and retired, though, the team's fortunes went south. And Stengel had to find another job -- even before the days of quick-to-fire-managers of the George Steinbrenner style.

It just so happened that a new Major League Baseball team had been formed in New York, and the fledgling Mets offered Stengel the manager's job. He accepted. Not known for getting the details exactly right, this is what he said at his media introduction as the Mets' first skipper: "It's a great honor for me to be joining the Knickerbockers." (Oops! The Knicks play professional basketball.)

Explaining why his first pick in the expansion draft was a catcher, Stengel gave one of his classic replies. "You gotta start with a catcher, 'cause if you don't," he said, "you'll have all passed balls." It's hard to argue with that logic!

In the Mets' first year of play, Casey's Castoffs lost 120 games. He must have known what was coming. At the team's first spring training in 1962, he took his players for a stroll around the diamond. "Them are the bases," he told them.

Although not competitive that year, the Mets gradually got better. Eight years later, they made it to the World Series.

Stengel was right. A baseball team needs to know where the bases are. And it does need a catcher to keep the ball from flying back to the wall with every pitch. These are among the basics to the game of baseball.

All of us need to get back to the essentials on occasion. It is easy to get sidetracked with fascinations and forget why we chose a particular career, made the commitment to love a certain person until death, or put our faith in Jesus.

If you have lost your early enthusiasm for any of life's truly important things, maybe it's because you've neglected the basics. You can get so weighed down with problems and squeezed by demands that you lose the joy God built into life. So maybe you need to get back to the fundamentals. Focus. Simplify.

Jesus gave a back-to-basics answer to a man who wanted to know about heaven's most important commandment:

Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence. This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: Love others as well as you love yourself. These two commands are pegs; everything in God's Law and the Prophets hangs from them (Matthew 22:37-40 MSG).

When you remember the basics, all of life works so much better.

Website: RubelShelly.com

Art, Crime, and Justice

rshelly@rc.edu (Rubel Shelly) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Roman Polanski is variously described as a master film director, creative genius, and passionate artist. After his recent arrest at the Zurich airport, there has been an outcry from some of his fellow-artists who allege to be "dismayed" by the event -- with nearly 100 of them signing a petition to protest it.

One of the signers, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, went beyond affixing his name to the shared challenge and wrote a newspaper piece insisting that "whatever you think of the so-called crime, Polanski has served his time."

Here are the facts of public record: Polanski was indicted in 1977 for rape, furnishing a controlled substance (Quaaludes and Champagne), committing a lewd or lascivious act upon a child, and sodomy. The predator was 42 at the time of his crime, and the victim was a 13-year-old girl he was paying (with her absent mother's permission!) to pose for him to photograph nude in a hot tub. After a plea bargain to plead guilty to statutory rape and to have various other charges dropped, Polanski fled the country in 1978 and has been a fugitive ever since.

Where is the "so-called" part of this crime? Is being a Hollywood figure a true pass from basic moral accountability? Does being an "artist" or "genius" free one from an obligation to the law? What is there about the passing of time that exempts one from being caught, arrested, and prosecuted for breaking the law?

Anyone who is not offended by the sort of sophistry that wants Polanski set free or turned into a martyr because of his arrest has either lost or has never possessed a moral compass. It is not self-righteousness to say that adult sexual predators must not be allowed to get by with their crimes -- even if they agree to pay half a million dollars to their victims and thereby get their victims to join the plea for their freedom. A wealthy man running from the law and still being hired to work his cinematic craft for millions has hardly "served his time."

For one thing, the very term "artist" is sullied in a culture that calls it art to soak a cross in urine or to scream obscenities into a microphone. For another, the outcry over this arrest reveals just how radically out of touch many in the entertainment world are with the reality ordinary people live.

Then there is the simple hypocrisy of it all. Alison Arngrim, an actress best known for being in TV's "Little House on the Prairie" and who has spoken publicly about her own experience of being sexually molested as a child, makes a good point about this case. "If Roman Polanski were a Catholic priest or a Republican senator," she asks, "would these people feel the same way?"

The issue here isn't even legal-but-immoral fornication, adultery, or homosexual acts. It is the acknowledged criminal act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a child and illegal flight to avoid prosecution. Current age, artistic ability, and box-office success are not substitutes for justice under the law.

Artists are just like the rest of us -- acclaimed or unnoticed, deep in debt or flush with money, wise or foolish. And, yes, law-abiding or criminal. When the latter, they -- just like the unwashed rabble -- must be held accountable.

Website: RubelShelly.com

Respect and Truth-Telling

rshelly@rc.edu (Rubel Shelly) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body (Ephesians 4:25 TNIV).

I had occasion recently to read a classic piece of Russian literature called "The Death of Ivan Ilych." If you haven't read it, perhaps you owe it to yourself. But don't read it on a rainy, dark day when your spirits are low. It is a tragic piece from the pen of Leo Tolstoy about a man who dies in a conspiracy of lies, truth withheld, and demoralizing pretense.

The reason I was reading this piece was to lead yet another group of students through a discussion of the complex issues around informed consent in medical care. Or, to couch it more broadly still, we were going to discuss the issue of truth-telling and respect for human beings.

In case you don't know the story, it is the fictional account of a man whose illness is clearly taking him to the grave. But his wife enters a conspiracy with his physician to keep the truth from him. They tell him, "Oh, you are looking better today" -- when he clearly is not. They say, "The treatment is working" -- when they know it is not. They pretend that he cannot know the obvious about himself.

So Ivan Ilych dies with great anger toward those who should have given him the greatest comfort. He felt alienated and alone when he most needed the assurance of closeness and love. He had to suffer without comfort from the physicians he needed to trust and the family whose love he craved.

Okay. Enough of the literature survey! Let's turn to the reality of life as you and I must live it every day. Whether it is bad news from the doctor, rejection by a friend, or one's fragile job status at work, the truth is a fundamental right.

Maybe some don't want to tell a painful truth for the sake of genuine compassion that recoils from causing upset and anguish of heart. That is fully understandable. But what happens when the truth does come? From a stranger? That they will discover you knew all along? Then the pain is even greater.

Truth-telling need not be confused with truth-dumping. There is a way to tell the truth that honors compassion and concern. Yet the ethical duty of giving me the truth to which I am entitled entails the risk that putting it in my possession will indeed cause pain. Just stand there. Or sit with me. Or walk through it with me. Ethics and compassion, truth and love -- they should never be strangers.

Perhaps the bottom-line issue with telling the truth is always respect for the other person. The Golden Rule, after all, is about treating the other person as you would want them to treat you. Correct? So perhaps the question is not always whether but how to communicate the truth -- lovingly, prayerfully, kindly.

As Ivan Ilych realized, it is better to be loved in the context of painful truth than to be treated with such disrespect that no one can be trusted.

Website: RubelShelly.com

When You Know It All!

rshelly@rc.edu (Rubel Shelly) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

One of my all-time favorite quotes is from Coach John Wooden, who turned 99 this past Wednesday: "What really counts in life is what you learn after you know it all."

After the initial chuckle, that is an ouch-maker for most of us. The older we get, the more set in our ways we are likely to be. The older we get, the harder it is to master new skills and adapt to new paradigms. The older we get, the more likely we are to tune out ideas that would require re-thinking a point of view.

I wonder how all you older accountants and CPA's felt about replacing those pale green ledger sheets and sharp pencils with computer software. The software required one of those newfangled machines called a computer! Do you know anybody who said it was just a fad that wouldn't last?

How does a physician stay current with new medications, diagnostic tools, and therapies? How does an attorney stay abreast of changes in the law? How does a professor stay current in her area of scholarly research?

A key to success in every profession or business is teachability. You can get left behind pretty quickly these days. So a really good educational experience bears little resemblance to indoctrination -- the memorization of fixed right answers. It is instead the mastering of good tools that allow one to do credible research and the fostering of a mindset that is willing to test everything.

In one's personal spiritual life, pride is among the deadliest of sins for the simple reason that it prohibits learning. The idea is not that we should vacillate as doubting, ambivalent souls. Conviction is admirable. But informed convictions are eager to entertain questions, new ideas, and challenges. It is rigid dogmatism that is offended by them. And Jesus rebuked folks who wouldn't think or grow.

Don't you suspect openness to instruction was a big part of Jesus' charge that his followers be child-like? "Unless you change and become like little children," he said, "you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3).

More good ideas have been killed with "We've never done it that way before" than with good reasons as to why it shouldn't be done some new way.

Maybe the young learn with more eagerness because they aren't afraid to fail. Perhaps the reason older people or firms or churches learn so little so slowly is that pride makes us unwilling to take the risks necessary for progress.

Prejudice against all things new is self-defeating and unworthy of people in God's image. There are no uninteresting ideas, only disinterested people.

Website: RubelShelly.com

A Dad Who Gets It

rshelly@rc.edu (Rubel Shelly) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" (Romans 8:14-15 NRS)

There have been some awful stories in the news of late. Serena Williams' foul tirade, Joe Wilson's catcall during a presidential address, a husband-wife team of kidnappers and sexual sadists -- the litany of human behaviors ranging from insufferably rude to downright evil just goes on and on. There will be more.

But last week there was a truly wonderful story in the news for a couple of days that deserves one more telling. It is proof that some fathers understand what really matters. They aren't insensitive slobs who ignore or abuse kids. They don't stomp on hearts. They are good guys who love their families and do right.

It's the story of the young Monforto family -- Steve and Kathleen, with daughters Emily and Cecilia. They live in Laurel Springs, New Jersey, and like baseball. On a recent Tuesday night, they were in the first row of an upper deck along the third-base side of the field for a Phillies home game against the Nationals.

With Phillies outfielder Jayson Werth at the plate, Steve saw a foul ball headed his way. He leaned over, extended his hands, and made a good catch. It was his first-ever foul ball at a game! He smiled, exchanged fist bumps with people in his section, and put the newfound treasure in the hands of three-year-old Emily. Dressed in her pink shirt and Phillies cap, she promptly tossed it over the railing to the fans below! Daddy Steve's arms went up and his jaw dropped.

At the same instant, Emily turned toward Dad -- and sensed she may have done something wrong. Maybe it was the groans of all the fans nearby. Maybe it was the look on Dad's face. Then Steve reacted. He smiled at her, took his little girl into his arms, and kissed her. His immediate concern was to reassure her.

"When she threw it over, I kind of gasped and was like, 'Oh, no! There it goes.' But then the look on her face was that she may have done something wrong," he said, "so I wanted her to know that she didn't do anything bad."
The episode was caught by the camera crew broadcasting the game that night. It was played immediately on the stadium screen -- and the crowd cheered. It has been played countless times since on Internet video.*

EMBED-Little Girl Tosses Back Foul Ball - Watch more free videos

It was really encouraging to have something positive to see, feel good about, and celebrate. Steve Monforto did the consummate right thing to put his love for his daughter above his disappointment over a lost souvenir.

It's a good way for you to visualize your own Heavenly Father. He isn't in the business of chiding and punishing. His concern is to reassure his daughters and sons that each of us can be all he created us to be. That's good news.

As for Emily, her Dad jokes that she is getting offers to pitch.

*If you receive this by email, you can see the video with the article by going to http://tinyurl.com/hl20091012

Website: RubelShelly.com

Good News about Tomorrow

rshelly@rc.edu (Rubel Shelly) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

There is a broad-based consensus to the effect that the world is suffering a crisis of trust. Or, to say it negatively, there is a dominant spirit of cynicism at work to undermine traditional American optimism and confidence in the future.

So-called world leaders make speeches in which they ramble, defy basic civility, make obscenely foolish statements, and lie. Our national, state, and local politicians alternately get indicted for criminal acts or have to resign from office due to some scandalous behavior put into the public spotlight. The only thing worse are the cases where some public official is clearly abusing the power of an office but is entrenched and powerful enough that no one will call him to account.

In business, the failure of accountability takes a slightly different form. The government pours in billions of dollars to keep a company from imploding (a questionable strategy in itself!) and watches failed executives pocket millions in bonuses while the employees lose jobs, health care, and retirement benefits. When it isn't illegal, it is still immoral. The crisis in trust is exacerbated.

There is an obvious point of beginning to set things right. To restore an attitude of trust and optimism. To slay the evil dragon of cynicism. The place to start for making our ethical culture healthy again is simple truth-telling.

The term "simple truth-telling" is not to be heard as a claim that getting people to tell the truth will be simple. We have worked for years to establish a widespread relativism that justifies everyone's lies -- from those of sexual-predator clergy to favor-selling politicians to company-raiding management.

But I had an experience last week that gives me hope. In my ethics class, 50 students wrote a short essay on the issue of truth-telling in human relationships. But wouldn't I expect them to say people should tell the truth? Hadn't I raised the issue in a manner that would prejudice them to my point of view? At the least, wouldn't they know what I wanted to hear in their essays?

Perhaps. But it had never kept students in my classes before from being split among "always," "usually," and "it all depends." These 50 were adamant that people have a fundamental right to know the truth. Our "right to know" was clearly seen to entail the "right to tell" -- even in the emotionally supercharged context of medical ethics and the disconcerting truths patients often get.

It will take a while for this generation of young people to fill the spots currently occupied by the folks who have made such a mess. We can only hope these 50 reflect a growing revulsion against falsehood and a restoration of trust.

The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in those who tell the truth (Proverbs 12:22 NLT).

Website: RubelShelly.com