January 16, 2010 "Losing Our Competitive Edge"

Isaiah 49:1-7
John 1: 29-42
Six years ago, we shifted from the Church hosting Refugees from South Sudan in our homes, to traveling to Sudan to develop relationships and build trust, to promise the return of their sons and daughters who had been named The Lost Boys. I met John Dau's Uncles, one of which was a Military Veteran named Thor, a General of the Liberation Army, a guerilla soldier. Everything about this man screamed that he had been conditioned for war, as described by Isaiah: “a polished arrow, a sharpened sword hidden for battle,” the man stood over 7 feet tall in full battle fatigues, every muscle and sinew ready to react. One evening, he had held me at knife point and drawn a line from my jugular to my groin, stating that he would like to cut open my body in which to hide his children for them to get to America to start over; but that he hoped I might carry their cause and concern for them instead. In a word, he scared me. The next night, as we stared out at the stars, Thor asked “For as long as any can remember, we have been the people of this place, and we knew who were were. Now because of War, because of Deportation and Exile, because some have been refugees in America/ in Australia we are a diverse people. When “they” return from all these places, who and what will we be?” In the words of Isaiah: It is too light a thing that you should be a servant, to restore the remnant, you shall be a light to the Nations, that the salvation of God may reach to the end of the earth.”
I recall I responded to him, that rather than being diluted by having been dispersed throughout the world, their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, had been learning, and these would bring back knowledge and ideas his people had never before considered, creating belief in a new Nation; but that also these would have left their image upon the rest of the world, so we who had never before known of this people, never before cared, would now be concerned. AND that when we refer to people as “we” and “they” we accept the “we” as an extension of ourselves, and we distance ourselves from what is “other.”

Andy Warholl once described that everyone seeks 15 Minutes of Fame. Whether the Congresswoman, the Federal Judge, the 9 year old Student Council member, the gunman, or the President, each of these have in the last week had a moment in the spotlight. But the point of being a Light to the Nations is not to be seen, to be noticed, to be brilliant, but instead the purpose of light is to illumine what had been in shadow, to bring salvation to places of darkness. The task of the living is to use circumstance to reshape our future, to reconsider what might have been and might be in that light, otherwise we are condemned to continue what has been.

We are surrounded by messages in our culture which name “Carpe Diem, Seize the Day, Go for the Gusto, Reach for all you can Get, The world is in your hand, all you have to do is to stay on the Green line, to follow the yellow brick road to success.” We are a Capitalist society, where profit drives success. Governments are designed to provide what the culture values as infrastructure but which in the immediate may not be profitable to provide. Christian Faith is Counter-Cultural. Faith involves care for the widowed, the poor, the lost. Faith is not involved in winning and losing and profit and loss, but in resolving conflict, in providing human compassion and care.

Fifty years ago, in 1960, those studying Conflict, determined that there are different kinds of conflicts, and the question is not whether conflict is good or bad, but how we respond, to raise or lower anxiety. These identified Five Levels to Conflict.
The first is simple disagreement, I choose to sit on the couch when you want to go out and visit with others. I choose meatloaf and you prefer vegetables. Nothing is right or wrong about these, but by compromise, by sharing our differences and similarities, life is more full.
Level Two is that of a Parent to Child, or Teacher to Student, where there is belief in Authority and an intrinsic right and wrong, logic and reason, a willingness to use power to persuade the other, the child, the student, to consider what otherwise would not have been chosen, slapping the hand that would be burned by fire; an enforced timeout to stop a fight.
Level Three Conflict is a Competition determining who has the greater resources, the greater power, the more desire to win, recognizing that there can only be one winner and the rest, all the rest, lose. Level Four is about amassing power for security, so as to never be challenged again. Level Four is not about the right or wrong, profit or loss, or acceptance of one another, but recognition that competitors challenge the authority of the winner, challenge power. How many of our commercials today, are not about whether their product is good or better than another and why, but undermining and destroying the credibility of the other. We live in a world so accustomed to profit and loss that we assume competition, as we pull up to the stoplight everyone is our competitor, as we approach the Grocery check-out we desire to be first.
Level Five, at that time fifty years ago was believed to be theoretical, that our morals would never allow us to consider. Level Five is acceptance of killing.

At every level, the only requirement to escalate conflict is competition, a matching, a desire to not lose. When those who simply disagree are unwilling or unable to compromise, when one wants to teach the other a lesson, conflict is changed from Disagreement to Authority. When the child rebels against the parent, the student attempts to teach the teacher, there becomes a competition to win. At any level, all that is required to escalate Conflict is an unwillingness to compromise, a matching one to one of power. All that is required to lower Conflict, at any level, is a lack of willingness to compete, to seek something other than winning.

If there is a competition between The Bears and The Lions, whether in the Roman Coliseum or the Superbowl, the Christians are always going to lose. What we need to be about, is how to change the game, from faith competing with the world, to faith being valued, compassion and a desire to listen being prized. Despite what the Commercials emphasize Human culture is not about The Blackberry. Humanity is about relationships. How do empathize, how do we forgive?

The question of marriage is not about “whether you love honor and obey,” but that when you are overwhelmed and out of control, when you are lost, can you trust this other to care? Not to compete, but to care so much, that although they will be wounded and hurt because we are overwhelmed and out of control, that they will stay committed and caring. Even more, that afterward, and there is always an afterward, that they will reclaim and redeem as if a brand new relationship.

Part of the reason why we have so many conflicts today, more than in generations prior, is because of role confusion, we do not know who we are to one another. Are our parents our teachers, challenging us to succeed, or as servants providing for us what they never had? We live in a changing world, with changing roles and relationships. What the Gospel of John provides, is that after being Baptized, John continued to claim a relationship with Jesus. John plainly affirmed, and trusted, “This he of whom I said After me comes he who ranks before me.” The Gospel has numerous names for Jesus, recognizing he fulfills many roles simultaneously, but that these are not identities of power, rather these ore identities of relationship. Son of God, Lamb of God, He who takes the sins of the world.

And it is in following, in seeking, in accompanying on the journey that we learn not only Who Jesus is in our midst, but who we are in relationship and what is required to be a Disciple.

How do we change from matching one another, to giving up our competitive edge, without condescending or giving up? To instead remain engaged, but change the game, and not play? I once counseled a couple about whether to accept annulment of their marriage in the Catholic Church. While initial responses seemed to be a choice between whether to reject their relationship by claiming they were never spiritually united, or whether to name the other as a drunk and philanderer, the possibility arose whether to accept that the other had not at that time been ready for the commitment of marriage. This undercut the game, suggesting a possibility that had not been considered. It left the door open, that they could grow in maturity and relationship, without accepting responsibility or casting blame.

How can we, in this competitive culture, where we strive to be first in line, to be the first to finish dinner, to get life over, change and choose to give up our competitive edge in order to act in faith?