Too Easily Pleased

Transcript

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[0:01] Thanks Jared. Good morning. So thanks for the opportunity to share a few thoughts. I imagine, and I'm also just really tickled that my son said that he was very excited for my message. And so that helped me to, energized me and get prepared. So I'm glad for that. So let's start off with a word of prayer as we think about this message. Father, we thank you indeed for this time together. Thank you for the blessings of fellowship. Thank you that you give us scriptures for us to read and to remember and to learn who you are and who we are. Help us understand and to follow your commands, to love you, to follow your truth, to follow you and your word Lord. We pray that this message will be pleasing to you and will be helpful for people as we live our lives Lord. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

[1:11] So let me start off with the other passage. This is the other passage in John chapter eight. And let me read that and then we'll take a look at this also briefly. So this is John chapter eight and Jesus is speaking with some of the Jewish people, including some Pharisees, and there's a dispute going on. So to the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, if you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. They answered him. We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. We are the descendants of Abraham. We are the descendants of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free? Jesus replied, very truly, I tell you everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

[2:15] I know that you are Abraham's descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me because you have no room for me. So I ask you to pray for my word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father's presence and you are doing what you have heard from your father. Abraham is our father, they answered.

[2:37] If you were Abraham's children, said Jesus, then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father. We are not illegitimate children, they protested. The only father we have is God himself. Jesus said to them, if God were your father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own. God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father. You are the devil and you want to carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don't you believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.

[4:03] So in this passage, obviously, Jesus is having a dispute with some of the Jewish people. And we have this section, this verse that I'm guessing many of you are familiar with, that the truth will set you free. And I thought that might be helpful for us to think a little bit about freedom.

[4:23] I'm guessing around July 4th, we've heard lots of messages and sermons about freedom. And I thought it would reflect a little bit about freedom. And as we consider the concept of freedom, I just want to mention that I really appreciated Pam Getterland. So she's been leading us in our book discussion group on misreading scripture with Western eyes. And that's been really helpful for myself and I expect for others. And the authors, I think, provide many good points. And the authors address how many American churches emphasize particular virtues that may sound nice, but don't actually have a biblical basis. Virtues like freedom, independence, and liberty can be emphasized beyond what God seems to be expressing because they come from a different framework that isn't biblical.

[5:10] So in any case, I thought I'd look at a couple of passages. We obviously looked at a couple of passages in Old Testament and New Testament and think about this. And I think this also aligns well with the series that Pastor Hans-Erik has been talking about. And I think that's one that's been leading us in Romans, which I've also really greatly appreciated.

[5:26] So the first passage in John Chapter 8, this passage is we didn't have time to read through them, but it's actually bookended by two stories which really illustrate some key points. And before we dive into this passage, I was wondering if I could ask some children to volunteer to help illustrate a couple of key points. And I gave Yoshi a heads up. I don't know if Joel and Leah are here. able to come up and I just want to illustrate a couple of key things and are you willing to come up and help us yeah I know it's alright if you can start on the bottom so I'm gonna ask you to do three different things and the first one's a little bit easy and the other ones are gonna be a little bit more challenging okay so you're on the bottom steps and then can you walk up to the top the three stops okay thank you that's pretty easy come back down no I'll explain it to you and then I want to ask one of you to put on a blindfold one of you want to do it okay okay okay okay wait a minute so maybe it will do this in a couple of stages oh I have other blindfolds we'll have you both do this okay here let me help better better better better better better better better better walk up the steps. Oh wow, very good. Okay. And now see if you can walk back down. Okay,

[7:49] very good. Okay. How's our insurance here? Okay, so I'm going to ask here, take one blindfold off and Joel, oh no, no, just for one of you. So maybe Yoshi, if you can be the volunteer. Keep your blindfold on. And Joel, can you help Yoshi walk up the steps? Okay. And help him come back down.

[8:35] Yeah, good job. Thank you, Joel. Okay, thanks. Okay, let me take that off. Okay, and tell me now, among the three different tasks, which one was easiest? All of them. All of them. Okay. So they illustrated really differently than what I expected. Okay. But which one was the easiest? I think the blindfolded going up and down. Going up and down the stairs. Going up and down the stairs without a blindfold. Without a blindfold, that was maybe the easiest? Yeah, I don't know. It was kind of hard. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Okay, you can go back down.

[9:16] Well, that sort of worked as anticipated. But anyways, thanks, Joel. Thanks, Yoshi. Well, I think you'll get to see what we're going to do next. What I'm talking about later on, you can probably anticipate in terms of being able to see and so forth. But so, because this also goes to other parts of this passage where Jesus says, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but I will have the light of life. And so Jesus is arguing with the Jewish people. And um, Jesus also says, as we mentioned, um, that, um, then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Um, and there's a condition there though, that the condition is that if you hold to my teaching, and I like the message translation of this particular passage, which says, if you stick with this living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourself the truth and the truth will free you. And as we think about freedom, um, it's kind of interesting to me that, um, interesting, um, Jewish is having, I mean, Jesus is having this dialogue and the people seem to think that Jesus is talking about human freedom because they say, we are Abraham's descendants. I've never been slaves of anyone. How can, uh, how can you say that we shall be set free?

[10:44] And they seem to have forgotten that Abraham's descendants were indeed slaves 400 for 400 years in Egypt. Um, and Jesus clarifies that he's talking about a deeper freedom from sin. So he says, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. And, um, we also have the passage, um, from Paul in Romans six that pastor Hanser preached about last week when, um, like in verse seven, it says that anyone who has died has been set free from sin. And pastor Hanser expanded upon that. It was kind of interesting, um, illustration also.

[11:17] Um, and this confusion seems to continue today as people seem to talk about freedom and liberty and independence at a human superficial level. And there's a really wonderful, um, sermon from C.S. Lewis that also, I think, clarifies or crystallizes this even further. So C.S. Lewis is talking about our desires and ambitions in this particular, um, sermon. And I want to quote, um, from this particular, um, sermon, read about a paragraph of this. And it's really interesting, um, perspective that C.S. Lewis brings in thinking about our desires and ambitions. And, um, in terms of our perspective, our human perspective and God's perspective. So C.S. Lewis, um, says, if there lurks in most modern minds, the notion that, uh, that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing. I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider that unblushing, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the reward, promised in the gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition

[12:39] when infinite joy is offered us. He says, when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.

[12:55] We are far too easily pleased. So C.S. Lewis points out that we are far too easily pleased, focusing on a superficial temporal level when God is focused on a much deeper and longer time frame of our freedom and joy. God is offering infinite joy and infinite freedom from sin and an eternal truth. And because God's timeline and perspective is much longer than ours, this also helps to put into perspective as we consider trials and difficult, and as we consider our own abilities in our lifetime, as James also talks about.

[13:29] And it's not as if God is not concerned about our current condition in this world now. Jesus illustrates this beautifully in the two miracles that bookend this passage in John. So at the beginning of John chapter 8, we have the story of Jesus releasing a woman who was caught in adultery.

[13:46] And she's about to be stoned and Jesus releases her. And as many as pointed out, we notice that someone who is very noticeably absent, the woman's partner, in adultery, presumably a man, is not in this particular story.

[14:00] Jesus tells the woman to go and leave her life of sin. He grants her both, freedom from being stoned and an invitation to be freed from her sin. And there's another passage, the other bookend of John chapter 8, where Jesus blesses a man who immediately, both immediately and deeply. So in John chapter 9, Jesus heals a man who was blind from birth, giving him sight. And again, Jesus provides both immediate freedom from blindness and freedom from his sin. However, it's sad that instead of this healing leading to celebration and to praising God, the Pharisees get stuck in their legalism. They see this healing on a Sabbath as a problem. Instead of seeing this as the perfect day for healing, the Sabbath was meant for healing, for redemption and for celebration, not simply as a stoppage from labor. The first thing we see is the healing of the Pharisees. The Pharisees questioned the healed man, but refused to accept his testimony and the truth, and so they throw him out.

[15:01] The passage ends with this in chapter 9, starting in verse 35. There's this dialogue that's happening between Jesus and the man who was healed. Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, Do you believe in the Son of Man?

[15:18] Who is he, sir? The man asked. Tell me so that I may believe in him. Jesus said, You have now seen him. In fact, he is the one speaking with you. Then the man said, Lord, I believe, and he worshiped him. Jesus said, For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see, and those who see will become blind.

[15:47] Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, What? Are we blind too? Jesus said, No, we are not blind. We are not guilty of sin. We are not guilty of sin. But now that you claim to see, your guilt remains.

[16:03] Jesus offers us sight and freedom and truth, but we often choose blindness, slavery, and lies. So in thinking further about freedom, Yuki reminded me of this passage in Genesis. So after creating Adam, God gives him this command in Genesis 2, verse 16. Genesis 2, verse 16.

[16:27] But better better better we seem to focus only on a superficial level, making mud pies on a slum when God offers us infinite joy and freedom. So continue to think about freedom. We also have the story of God freeing, sorry, lost my place.

[17:07] We have the story of God freeing his people from slavery in Egypt. So we have this really wonderful passage in Exodus 6, which was read to us, but I want to read through this again and consider this. So just to remind us, by this point in his story, God had commanded Moses to return to Egypt, which he reluctantly did.

[17:26] Moses and his brother Aaron first approached the elders of the Israelites and Moses performs the signs that God had given them and they believe. So Moses and Aaron then go to Pharaoh and ask him to let the Israelites go, but of course he says no. Pharaoh makes their lives even worse by commanding them to make bricks without providing straw. And so of course the people complained to Moses and Moses in turn, complains to God.

[17:51] Oh, losing my place again. Moses in turn complains to God at the end of chapter five. The Israelites and Moses are feeling broken and disheartened. So we pick up this passage at the beginning of Exodus chapter six, where God states who he is and what he'll do. And I really love this passage because God very clearly and very boldly states who he is and what he'll do. And as I read this, I'll try to emphasize what God says. God states in who he is and what he'll do. As we take a look at this, and I just ask us to reflect on this, as this is Moses, I mean, God speaking to Moses after they've been disheartened and so forth, after Pharaoh for the first time says he's not gonna let them go.

[18:37] Then the Lord said to Moses, now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh because of my mighty hand, he will let them go. Because of my mighty hand, he will drive them out of his country. God also said to Moses, I am the Lord. I appear to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty. But by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself fully known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners.

[19:16] Moreover, I have heard the word of God, and I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant. Therefore, say to the Israelites, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Amen. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.

[20:09] So at this point, I think it would be a really great place for God to do a mic drop and walk off. He has clearly proclaimed who he is and what he will do. And it would be great if the following passage right after that said something like, Moses reported this to the Israelites. They all praised God and trusted him and followed him. But that's clearly not what it says.

[20:32] Instead, we have this passage in verse 9. It says, Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor. So in hindsight, we can see why they didn't listen to God. They are discouraged because of their circumstances have gotten worse. They are commanded to make the same coat of bricks while getting straw on their own. But this is the same problem of focusing on worldly circumstances and at a worldly level and not paying attention to the deeper truths and the longer timeline. God will, of course, as we know, will indeed free them from slavery in Egypt. Obviously, there's a lot of things that happen in between. There's the 10 plagues and so forth. There's a lot that happens.

[21:13] So as we think about as God reveals his truth to us, how are we blind? Not just simply as individually, but also as collectively as a people. So it's helpful to be thinking about, I think, our own blindness individually, but also collectively. How are we still enslaved by our own sinfulness, our own blindness?

[21:36] And there's obviously, there's lessons that we can learn from our history. Many Americans celebrate the independence and refer to the Declaration of Independence. And we have this really wonderful part of the Declaration, which I think is good. It says, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are great ideals. I think it's a wonderful passage. But the truth was apparently not self-evident enough.

[22:08] They obviously continued to practice slavery and perpetuate many inequities towards women and to those who weren't wealthy enough to own land. We also recently celebrated Juneteenth. And I really appreciated Pastor Ann Zarek providing us a nice summary of this. It's a good memory in terms of our history in the U.S. And Juneteenth was an important step in the right direction to providing freedom from slavery. But it wasn't enough. And we still have much work to do.

[22:37] And just personally, you may have heard recently the news that the Supreme Court ruling came down this past week. It was a ruling that was passed Thursday morning that rejected affirmative action in college admissions.

[22:48] I'll say that from my perspective, I felt like the Israelites who were discouraged when Pharaoh told them to make bricks without straw. I think many of us anticipated intellectually this type of ruling was going to come down. But I, for myself, was sort of surprised at how it hit me emotionally.

[23:07] It was really hard to read some of the passages or the parts of the ruling and what people were writing and saying. And I know that we might be coming from a wide variety of perspectives on this particular ruling.

[23:19] But it hit me emotionally kind of hard. And it doesn't end the work that I do as someone who focuses on diversity. But I also have to trust God will ultimately continue to, that God will be the one who will be ultimately redeeming this world from the many inequities. And we have a lot of work that we continue to do.

[23:38] So as we consider these passages in the Bible and our American history, I hope that this will help us to pause and to be humble, to realize that we too, including myself, have many blind spots. So I'd like to wrap up with a couple of concepts that I think might be helpful. So these are some concepts from the field of psychology that have helped me to sort of think about our blind spots and our self-awareness.

[24:08] So there's something called the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is based on a series of psychological studies that were conducted at Cornell University by two researchers, Dunning and Kruger. I won't go into the experimental details, but their work revealed that many of us have extreme difficulty in accurately assessing our own strengths and our weaknesses. We often overestimate our skills, thinking that we're better at a particular skill, especially for skills for which we're just beginning to learn and at which that we're actually incompetent. So this conflicts with much of the dialogue that we often hear about the importance of self-confidence, saying that we all need more self-confidence. But the Dunning-Kruger effect shows that we actually may not need more self-confidence, but more self-assessment, a more accurate way of assessing ourselves.

[24:59] And Dunning-Kruger also shows that we can underestimate our skills, especially for skills for which we've been doing for a long time and especially that we're actually very competent in. So it shows that we can overestimate or underestimate our skills. And the reasons for this are different, and I won't go into the details, so I'm happy to talk further about this if you want. But the final conclusion is the same, that we often don't assess ourselves accurately. If you want to learn more, there's a really cute little YouTube video from Ted Ed about the Dunning-Kruger effect, which you can watch for yourself, but it nicely summarizes the key points.

[25:36] But the key lesson from the Dunning-Kruger effect is that hopefully it teaches us to have more humility, helps us to pause and I think to reconsider ourselves more accurately. There's another concept which I think helps us from the field of psychology, and it's called the Johari window. And if you're able to show that. Yeah, cool. So if you take a look at this, so this is developed by two researchers. Their first names are Joseph and Harrington. And so they're just somebody who's combined two first names, Johari or Johari. I'm not quite sure how they pronounce it. But if you take a look at this, there's two axes and four quadrants. And it's not as neat as this, but I think you get the basic idea. So on the first horizontal axis, as you go across, there's things that are known to yourself and things that are not known to yourself. And then on the vertical axis going down, there are areas that are known to others and not known to others. So in the top left quadrant, that's sometimes referred to as the public area. These are things which are both known to yourself and known to others. And so if you think about a window, this is a window that goes sort of both ways, and you can see outside and people can see into yourself.

[27:04] And so that's sort of the public area. And then another quadrant on the top right-hand side, that's areas or things about yourself that you don't know. And these are the blind spots. So other people know and realize that, but perhaps for whatever reason, you don't know for yourself. And sort of like a one-way window or one-way piece of glass. And then on the bottom left-hand side is another quadrant, which is sort of the reverse, where things that you do know for yourself, but other people don't know about you. So that's your private area. And then on the bottom right-hand side, this is unknown to all. So this is dark. You don't know for yourself, and other people don't know you. That's sort of a big mystery.

[27:48] And so if you could go to the next slide. Oops. Yeah, there we go. Thanks. What people are encouraging us, so as you think about this, that if you do have blind spots, you can grow, you can make that spot a little bit smaller if we seek feedback. If we ask people, we get feedback from other people. If you get, people who can honestly speak truth to you. If you have people, like in my life, I'll share privately, or I'll share publicly that Yuki is one who very honestly shares things with me, and I really appreciate that. That she tells me very bluntly about things about myself, and that's really good. And I hope all of us have people who can speak truth to us and reveal things to us that may not be aware of. And then in terms of going from the public area to the private area, we want to be thinking about how we can appropriately and strategically think about how we can disclose things for ourself. So this doesn't mean that, I know some people seem to encourage that. At least for myself, I don't think that we have to disclose absolutely everything about ourselves. It's not meant to be that the public areas get to be really big and take over everything. I, particularly as an introvert, want to have certain things that are private,

[29:01] and it was probably so. And so I think it's important to think about that, but also be thoughtful about how we disclose things. And also then to think about the bottom right hand quadrant, things that are unknown to all, that this is something that we, through shared disclosure, shared discovery, that this is something that can be helpful for us to reveal and understand things about ourselves. And so this Johari Winnahubsy sort of reflect on it is not meant to be something that, you know, that you can apply directly, but it's something that you can sort of reflect on. It's sort of a more, a model or a theory or a concept that can help you sort of think about different aspects of who we are. What I also appreciate about the Johari window is that it's something that you can think about for yourself individually, but also collectively. So that as we think about our systems and our societies that we live in, that as a society, we also have blind spots, and we also need to think about how we can seek feedback and engage with other people, and to become more aware of us collectively as a whole. So thanks for sharing. You can remove those here. Thanks.

[30:12] So I hope that the Dunning-Kruger effect and Johari window can help us become more aware of simply just the importance of self-awareness, or people also talk about metacognitive skills, being aware and having these skills to reflect on who you are.

[30:30] So as we think about, in particular, as a society, that we all have blind spots, so the writers of the Declaration of Independence didn't seem to quite realize that they weren't really truly seeking freedom for all people. They were primarily interested in the freedom from the British government, and understandably so, but they were blind to the inequities that they were still perpetuating. And so we too, as an American society, are generally blind to many inequities and have many blind spots. And so we need to continue to work to help people become more aware, and I believe that Pastor Hans-Erik has also recently spoken about the importance of being alert, and this is something that I think is very true, that's being alert of what God is doing through his Holy Spirit, but also what God is doing in our lives individually and collectively. So going back to the illustration with the children, they showed us that if some of us are blind, that we can help and encourage each other and help those who are blind to hopefully see more of the truth. But of course, we also need to be careful about that. Jesus was also trying to teach the Pharisees who claimed to see, but Jesus was also showing that they were indeed blind, and the Pharisees were unaware

[31:43] of their own blindness and the deeper truth. And so we too can be inflicted by this blindness and arrogance, as the Dunning-Kruger effect also shows, that we can be arrogant and overestimate what we think we realize. So we constantly have to be alert for the temptation to think that we know more than we truly know, and to have the humility to constantly strive for deeper truths. And if we think we have some understanding, we have to be very thoughtful about how we communicate this to others. And so we have to seek true freedom from our own sinfulness, including our sinfulness to be arrogant, to overestimate what we think we understand. So as we do seek that truth though, I do pray that we'll also seek humility to become more aware of our individual and collective blind spots.

[32:26] So thanks for the opportunity to share a few thoughts, and I hope this is helpful. And let me pray to wrap up. And yeah. Father, we do thank you that you do truly know who we are, and you do know the extent of our own blindness. We do pray that you would grant us the humility to reflect on this, and to continue to seek more of your truth, and to share your truth in loving, compassionate ways, Lord.

[32:57] Thank you for the opportunity to think about this, and I pray that this is helpful for revealing your truth to more people, and to sharing your love. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.