Pressing Hot Buttons Through Christ

Acclaimed negotiator and Harvard Law School professor Roger Fisher had a thought experiment where the nuclear codes of the United States should not be located in a suitcase handcuffed to an aid. Rather, they should be surgically embedded into the chest of the aid. The aid would carry around a knife. To access the codes, the President must cut open the chest of the aid. Fisher thought that if the President was unwilling to kill one person then the President had no right to launch a bomb to kill millions.

Clever. So clever in fact that Fisher wrote, “‘When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, ‘My God, that's terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President's judgment. He might never push the button.’”

We talk about things in our society as being “hot button” issues. Our language gives us the sense that humans are so easily triggered that if we were to push them we would become hot. I wonder if part of our problem is not the issues we discuss, but that we image being so easily set off that it is like pushing a button. If we are going to stick with the button metaphor, perhaps we can take a page from Roger Fisher’s book - move the location of the button.

Can you imagine the hot buttons of your life being embedded in the heart of another? Could you imagine embedding the hot buttons of your family behind your heart? Could we create the conditions such that we are aware of the costs of pressing the button before the button is pressed?

Perhaps that is what Bonhoeffer was getting at in the book Life Together where he says, “Jesus Christ stands between the lover and the others he loves.” and “Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them.” The idea being that ever Christian relationship always is mediated by Christ who stands between the two people. And so when I look at the face of the other, I see Christ first. And when they look at me, they see Christ first.

What if we understood the the “hot button” always resides on the other side of Christ. That we have to hurt, remove or even kill and “go through” Christ in order to press the hot buttons. Would we be willing to press the button knowing it comes at the harm of Christ?

The Contronyms Conundrum

Amelia Bedelia is a fictional character from my childhood. She was a young person who was trying to navigate the world when language is so full of double meanings. And so Amelia Bedelia got into all sorts of trouble not because she misunderstood but because she understood. She just understood the other meaning. For instance, when asked to “draw the drapes when the sun comes in” Amelia Bedelia might get pencil and paper to illustrate the drapes. But she did not close the drapes. She understood the “other” meaning of the word draw.

There are a set of words called contronym which are common and yet rare. There are not that many contronyms in total but we use them all the time that we remain unaware of how rare they are. A contronym is a single word that have two contradictory meanings.

Here is a list of the most common contronyms I found:

• Apology – a statement of contrition for an action or a defense of one

• Bolt – to secure or to flee

• Bound – heading to a destination or restrained from movement

• Cleave – to adhere or to separate

• Discipline – a form of training to obey rules or a form of punishment for an offense (or a field of study)

• Dust – to add fine particles or to remove them

• Fast – quick or stuck and made stable

• Left – remained or departed

• Peer – a person of the nobility or an equal

• Sanction – to approve or to boycott

• Weather – to withstand or to wear away

These common and simple words above are words English speakers say we understand and that their meaning is clear. But these simple words show us that words can have not only different meanings but directly opposite meanings. The existence of contranyms should humble us when we consider reading the Bible - a collection of books written in different languages over different time periods. Could it be that there are passages in the Bible that have Hebrew or Greek contranyms?

Yes. Yes there are.

The most cited one is in Job chapter 9 when Job’s wife tells Job to “barech God and die.” Your Bible might show that the word barech means to curse and to bless. So which is it? Is Job being instructed to bless or curse God and then die?

We are limited and the Bible is not always as clear as we would like it to be. As Paul says, we see through a mirror only dimly. Which when you think about it, this is a masterful sentence. Not only does it state a truth (we do not fully understand) but the sentence itself is an example of that very truth:

Do we see just fine but the mirror is dim and it makes what we see dim? Or is the mirror so dim that we can only see small specks of light? Is the dimness in our eyes or the mirror?

What a conundrum.

The Christian Telos

There is a quote making its rounds on my socials that states, “The test of Christianity is not loving Jesus, it’s loving Judas.”

It is a clever turn and change of expectations. It is the sort of thing that preachers love to do if we are creative enough to come up with it.

The quote points out the telos of the Christian life. Telos is a fancy word that means the target or the end or the goal. For my doctoral work, I have had a decent number of conversations with people about what they would say the telos of the Christian faith is. One might imagine that there are numerous ideas. Some say the goal of the faith is to get to heaven. Some say it is to repair or restore the world. Some say it is to have a relationship with God. Some say it is to conformed in the likeness of Christ others say it is to glorify God.

The United Methodist Church suggests a telos “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” The denomination recently splintered from the UMC (the Global Methodist Church) suggests a telos “to make disciples of Jesus Christ who worship passionately, love extravagantly, and witness boldly.”

According to theologian and scholar Roberta Bondi, the desert mothers and fathers taught the telos of the Christian life is love. The goal of the faith is love. More often we think that we do some loving action in the service of something else. That love is a means or a way to another goal. I love my child, so that they might… Or I extend love to someone else so they will… In this way, love is not the telos just the means or way we reach another telos.

When we treat love as a means to an end, then we run the risk of not loving in order to achieve the desired end. We might do unloving actions in order to achieve the telos of say, truth. But if love is the goal, then truth will bent for the sake of love. Not love for the sake of truth.

For instance, the famous scene in Les Misérables where a thief steals silverware from a bishop but then is caught. The authorities bring the thief back to the bishop so there may be a set of charges brought against the thief, but the bishop says the silverware was a gift from the priest. In fact the bishop then tells the authorities that the thief forgot the candlesticks.

In this famous illustration of grace, the truth was bent in the service of love. The bishop understands the telos is love, not truth. If the telos was truth then the bishop would have laid the charges against the thief, but this does not happen. The telos is not truth but love.

The quote from above points out the telos of love. The test of the Christian is our ability to love - especially the thief, betrayer, and enemy. If the goal was something else then we would only need to love Judas for the sake of something else greater.

But, as Paul says, the greatest of these things is love.

There is no greater telos.

Automatic Water Faucets and Humility

The guy at the sink did every move imaginable - the standard-palm-slow-push, the blackjack-dealer-hand-flip, the peanut-butter-finger-spread, the three-stooges-hand-up-and-down, and the catch-a-fly-clap - all to no success.

And he was getting visibly frustrated that he slid down to the sink net to me, hopeful that faucet would produce the water needed to wash off his soapy hands. After he apologized for violating the unspoken rule in men’s restrooms (known in the south as the “Porcelain gap”), he then said something I will never forget. “I hate having to beg for water.”

No wonder Christianity is a tough sell to the world.

Christianity teaches about the need to let go of control, the value of humility, and how we are not self-reliant. I am aware that automatic faucets are not the greatest things in the world, but I am saying that there is something for each of us to experience being a beggar. For we are each just that, beggars for mercy and grace. The Good News is that God is the source and giver of mercy and grace.

The tough part is that when we receive mercy and grace it feels like we did not do anything to earn it or that we deserve it. It is almost as though we were beggars who received that which was given by another.

Those water faucets (and paper towel dispensers while we are at it) are opportunities for those of us who have to practice what it is like to be in need. What it feels like to beg for something and have to rely on someone/something else for help.

And if we are going to get frustrated when that water does not come out right when we ask for it, perhaps we can consider our fellow sister or brother in need who is asking and we are just as difficult as the faucet in that bathroom that refused to share the water.