Pastor Daniel's Blog

I recently read The Shack by William P. Young.

The thought that has stuck with me the most from that book is that relationships at their best are about expectancy rather than expectation!

Now you should know something about me before I try to explain this....as a child I was always that kid that followed all the rules and expected everyone else to do the likewise.  Now that may sound like a good thing on the surface--and certainly, none of my teachers were complaining as I ran the gauntlet of school!  My knack for following the rules made me predictable and easy to lead, teach, etc.

But eventually, this knack for following the rules began to cost me--mostly in the social realms that I inhabited--and ultimately, in my most vital relationships with my pastor, my wife, and my God!  Why because, rule-keeping can be very different from obedience & faithfulness.

Now, permit me to stay away from those vital 3 and share a recurring instance from my high school years to illustrate the dysfunction that my focus upon rules and achievement caused in my life.  I was in the honors program in high school, which basically meant I studied a lot and wrote tons of papers.  I knew absolutely nothing about effective time management and often found myself staying up late working on homework.  No biggie--I would just catch up on my sleep when the weekend came.  Eventually, my body began to say no, and I would wake up the next morning around 7am with my face in the book I was supposed to have already read and written about!  Frantically, I would race to finish and crank out some semblance of a paper.  By a quarter til 8, when I should have been walking out the door, I'd just be getting started on the actual writing!

Now... obviously at this point, I've failed the assignment.  Anyone with good common sense would tell me to forget about it and move on with life.  Learn from the failure.  Be honest with your teacher.  Ask for help in addressing the dysfunctional behavior and learning new self-management skills.

But I couldn't do that.  Why?  Because the driving force in by brain said it was against the rules to not turn in a paper.  It was against the rules to not get an A in that class.  It was against the rules to fail.

Additionally, it was expected of me to be that guy that worked harder than everyone else--the guy who goes the extra mile.  So somehow my mixed up thought-patterns were telling me that I was more righteous because I was working overtime on this assignment instead of going to class on time like the rest of my classmates.  Furthermore, I knew that tardiness to a first period class was a totally negligible offense in my school as long as it didn't happen more than 5 times and only sporadically.

So I worked on my paper til 8:15, then raced off to school and turned my paper in in the middle of my english teacher's lecture.  And twenty minutes later, I was on with the rest of my life.  Mission accomplished!  No need for change in my life.  No need for growth.  I had kept the rules--at least the important ones :-)

Fast forward (through a lot of heart-ache and unresolved, dysfunctional, behavior patterns) to page 203 of the shack where I read:

Believe it or not, I was doing all I could to keep the rules.  And I truly felt that I had preserved my reputation and my integrity by doing what I had done.  It was all about getting that A and keeping my academic record in tip-top shape.

But what had I done?  My claim was that I had held up my end of the deal as a student by getting my assignment done and turning it in as soon as I got to school.  The sneaking suspicion that my teacher had to live with was this: what was the nature of my tardiness and was it connected to the fact that I had a paper due that morning?  But she and I both knew that tardiness was not hers to discipline--it was an issue that front office administrators would address if it was perceived as getting out of hand.  So I had taken bricks of perceived responsibility & met expectations, joined them together with the mortar of my incomplete version of "the rules", and built a wall between myself and my teacher.  I knew she couldn't touch me.  I was safe.  And besides, I was such a "good student" that she gave me the benefit of the doubt.

To answer the question more fully, what I had done was solidify my status as a good student on paper while at the same time removing myself from the educational process by blocking the relationship between me and my teacher!  This is a trend that I have tended to continue ever since.

Why do I do it?  I think another line from this same chapter of the shack helps to explain:

I wanted the certainty of an A.  I was avoiding the uncertainty of discovering (or acknowledging) a flaw in my character.  The certainty of an A would keep me on top of the world in the good student category.  The uncertainty of a new flaw would have driven me closer into a constructive relationship with my teacher if I could have embraced it.  She would have helped me.  And we would have had joy and true fellowship in the process.

Relationships are not static and achievement oriented!  But ultimately, relationships are all that really matter.  Slowly, read these words spoken by the character of the Holy Spirit on page 205 of The Shack: