The One Truth you Can NOT ignore on Easter

Jesus died. It is an historical fact. He was betrayed by a friend, rejected by his countrymen, and brutalized and murdered by the Romans who ruled over the land. His limp and battered body was taken down from the cross on which he had breathed his last, wrapped in burial cloth and placed inside a cave-like tomb, his story to be added to the list of those who failed in their opposition to power. He was dead.

Death can change the course of history. We can only wonder how different the world might have been if Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy and Martin Luther King had lived longer. World War I erupted after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. The Greek Empire split soon after the passing of Alexander the Great. The death of leaders has a profound impact on those who follow.

From the Gospel accounts, the death of Jesus Christ was devastating to his followers. His closest friends fled the scene when he was arrested, leaving him to face his execution alone. While a few of them showed up to watch his final hours on the cross, most of them are not mentioned in the story. A few days later the friends were together but seemingly in hiding.

Reading through Scripture we can guess at their thoughts. From the recorded conversations we see that they had a typical Jewish understanding of Messiah. They expected Jesus to lead a military revolt against Rome and restore Israel to prominence in the world. While Jesus is described as making multiple references to his coming death it seems that his words were lost on his disciples. They clearly did not get it. The death of Jesus shattered all of their dreams and illusions.

And then Sunday came. The tomb was empty. Some of Jesus' female followers came back to the group with a preposterous tale of an empty tomb and Jesus alive. Two of the male leaders, Peter and John, ran to the tomb to see for themselves the massive stone moved and the revealed tomb empty. Later that night, Jesus appeared to them all. He was not dead. He was alive.

History changed in dramatic fashion. Within just a few years the message of this resurrection had spread throughout the Roman empire. Churches sprouted up in cities that were dominated by the worship of Roman and Greek gods, churches that continued to exist in spite of severe prosecution. 2000 years later the message continues to spread into areas where it is unwelcome, into cultures in which the prevailing ideology is opposed to it.

While deaths can change the course of history, nothing has change history as much as resurrection. Jesus the Christ through His resurrection declared to the world that He is not just another man. His resurrection allows no room for those who desire to simply add Him to history's list of great moral teachers and prophets, does not allow him to be classified as just another great man and leader. The resurrection declares that He is far more. The apostle Paul states it clearly in his letter to the fledgling church at Rome, saying that Jesus was “declared the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead.”

Indeed He was.

Happy Easter.

Be Careful Who You Trust, 4 rules to Avoid Being Hurt

It is the people we trust the most that can do us the greatest harm. So often the warning signs are there but we just don't see them. I learned the lesson the hard way.

I thought I knew him, but I was wrong. We had spent hours together and had deep conversations about faith, family, personal failures and life in general. I supported him, encouraged him and defended him against criticism. I held him out to the world as a quality man, someone to be listened to and respected. He seemed to be a man of insight, a man whose life was filled with remarkable experiences and amazing stories.
Sadly, the stories he shared did not actually tell the true story of his life. Over time I learned that the stories he chose to tell and the secrets he chose to reveal were not the open and honest disclosures of a great man but instead were part of a false persona, stories designed to lead others to falsely assume goodness and stability that did not actually exist.
As so often is the case it was adversity that revealed his true character.  Some bad decisions left him indebted to others, and instead of doing what he could to make amends he just walked away.
While his actions revealed the fraudulent nature of his personal claims, they did not stop him from continuing to make them. In post after post in social media he continues to make assertions of faith and statements of deep family commitments, implying he is a humble man working on the problems in his life. The false persona is continually on display.
In thinking about his story I am reminded that it is more normative than exceptional. We live in a world where people exhaust great amounts of energy creating false, praiseworthy images of themselves, where words and actions coexist in contradiction. We strive to put on a good face for the world, often showing who we hope to be instead of who we are.
Problems such as these are not new. 2000 years ago Jesus attacked this character flaw when he observed it in the religious leaders of His day. He called them "whitewashed tombs", beautiful on the outside but empty and dead on the inside. Like my friend, these religious leaders seemed to get away with it. They built a following of people who believed their lies, people who would defend them against criticism. They mastered spiritual language and used it to support their actions and to quiet any who dared to disagree.
So what do we do with such deception? while it is hard to stop it and difficult to correct, we can limit the negative impact on personal lives.

Here are a few rules I am setting for myself.
1- Avoid superficial praise. People love to look good on blogs and on Facebook. If they are truly worthy of praise they can get it in real life from people who know more of the story.
2- Look to actions over words. Not just momentary acts of goodness, but a track record of consistent goodness over time.
3- Look for lasting relationships. People of Good character do not leave a trail of broken relationships behind them.
4- Watch out for excuses. Quality people own mistakes, work to correct them and seldom play the role of victim.

A lesson I learned from being on a TV Game show

Life lessons can come at unexpected times. For me, one came while standing in line waiting to audition for a television game show.

Game shows have been a huge part of my life. I have been on five shows, losing on a show called Hitman in 1983 and on Scrabble in 1993. My first new car was a truck I won on Wheel of Fortune in 1984. I paid for most of medical school with my winnings from Super Password in 1986. In 2002 I was a contestant on Pyramid with Donny Osmond and won $50,000!
While waiting for the Pyramid audition I was conversing with other contestant wannabes about the tryout. I was standing next to a young woman who was extremely nervous. She desperately wanted to be on the show and was afraid that when the time came to play the game that she would not be able to hold it together.
In the course of the conversation I shared that I had been on four previous shows.
"Oh my gosh! Don't you get nervous?"
"Not really, no."
"Why not?"
"Before I came here today I told a 27 year-old woman that she had cancer. That was a life. This is a game."
And that was the difference between us. She placed a tremendous amount of importance on a game, got nervous as a result, and did not succeed. I played the game like it was a game, knowing that the outcome would not change my life. In that context it was easy to remain calm, and I was able to do well. Perspective is everything in life!
I think about how much time and energy we waste worrying about things that in the long run really don't matter.
What matters? Faith. Family. Friends.
What doesn't? Almost everything else!

 

The dumber we feel the Wiser we get

I want to be wise like an owl but to some patients it seems I end up being more of a wise... donkey.  Here is a story of a patient who found me especially ignorant. It takes a lot to render me speechless, but this lady came pretty close!

Like most doctors patient appointments are scheduled every 15 minutes. Not all visits last that long, some are quick and easy and others are longer and more complicated. Sometimes visits that should be simple take much longer than they should. Most often this happens with a patient who is nervous or worried and who needs reassurance. Every once in a while it happens because a patient refuses to accept or believe what I tell them.

I think of a patient I saw in my first year of practice. A young mom brought her 6 month old baby in with a cold. It was a pretty straight forward visit, the baby had a runny nose and cough and a completely normal physical exam- no fevers, no rashes, no wheezing, no ear infection. The baby looked great. As I concluded looking over the baby I turned to the mom. "She looks great! Just a little bit of a cold, she should be better in 5-7 days," I said (in what I thought was a reassuring tone)

"Well I think she needs antibiotics!" came the Mother's irritated reply.

"She has a viral illness and antibiotics are never indicated for a virus, " I explained.

"Well I disagree!"

I must have missed the "What to do when your patient thinks you are an idiot" lecture in medical school, because I was caught completely off guard. I tried in several different ways to educate her on the nature of the common cold. Nothing I said had any impact. Ultimately she told me that if I did not give her what she wanted that she would file a complaint about me and go somewhere else!

Exasperated I blurted my response- "If after 9 years of school and 3 years of specialty training I do not know how to treat a cold, I should just quit!"

She left me and the practice and I never saw her again.

When she left I was I an state of shock. I could not believe that someone would go to a doctor and have no interest in what the doctor had to say! But that was her. In her mind a high school diploma, 6 months of parenting, and the opinions of friends outweighed all of my training and expertise. She was an expert. She had nothing to learn from me, and in fact had no respect for what I had to say.

What kind of person would respond in this way? A person who viewed themselves as the ultimate authority, who trusted themselves above all else.

We can judge her and call her foolish, and we might be right, but we should do so with caution. The tendency to dismiss those who can teach us and challenge us is actually quite common. We all have a tendency to overvalue our own opinion.

The writer of Proverbs was well acquainted with this aspect of human nature. In the first chapter he gives profound advice, saying that wise people listen and learn, that an appropriate fearful respect of God is where knowledge begins, and that rejecting wisdom and instruction are characteristics of foolish people.

Looking at my life I have experienced the truth of this apparent paradox. As I have aged I have become much less trusting of my own judgment and insights, more self-questioning, more help seeking and more dependent on God. The result- I feel more inadequate and make wiser decisions. Go figure! It only took me 50 years to "discover" a truth declared in the Proverbs thousands of tears ago! 

4 Life lessons on Failure, Learned through Football

Life lessons often come in unexpected ways and at unexpected times. Some of our greatest lessons are learned through failure. I failed, miserably, at football my freshman year in high school and learned some valuable lessons in the process.

I was not cut out to play high school football. Somebody should have told me, should have taken me aside and said, "Dude, you weigh 117 pounds. What are you thinking?" Unfortunately no one did so my assumption that tackle football was not much different from the touch football I had played as a child led me to sign up for football my freshman year.
Remarkably, they found a set of pads my size (I think the label read “Toys R Us”). I did the best I could in drills, listened carefully to the coach’s instructions and made sure that I performed each skill and technique exactly as instructed, hoping he would notice my diligence. It was not long before he did.
The drill was simple. Two lines, single file, about 10 yards apart. The coach tossed the ball to the person in the front of one line, who would catch it and run as if going around the end of the line on a sweep. The front person in the other line was supposed to run over, meet the ball carrier head on and make the tackle. I was in the tackling line.
When my turn came the coach flipped the ball to the player who would become the starting fullback, a boy my height who outweighed me by 50 pounds. I sprinted to the spot and did everything just the way the coach had taught us. I kept my head up, hit him in the chest and wrapped my arms around him and drove hard with my legs. Next thing I knew I was flat on my back staring up at the sky with cleat marks on my chest. The coach fought back laughter, "You did it just how I taught you." He shook his head, "What can I say?"
My football career ended a few days later. Technique was no match for brute force. I turned in my helmet and my kid sized pads and sulked away, forced to deal with the reality that this was one thing in life that I could not succeed at no matter how hard I tried. Wisely, the coach did not try to talk me out of quitting. He did not offer platitudes or empty words of encouragement. He just let me go.
The coach did so many things right and in so doing gave an example of how we can respond to young people who have dreams that do not align with their abilities.

First- He let me try. Although it was obvious that someone with my size and athletic ability was not likely to succeed, he let me try and let me succeed or fail on my own.
Second- He gave me the tools to succeed. He showed me the correct techniques, how to do the drills. When I failed it was not because he did not work with me.
Third- He allowed me learn my limitations for myself and allowed me to fail.
Fourth- He was truthful in his response to my failure and let me learn from it.

Looking back now I realize how important these lessons are. While every person is an individual blessed with unique gifts and talents, none of us succeeds at everything we try and desire does not ensure success. It is often through failure that we learn who we are and what we can do and through disappointment that we gain a sense of personal direction. We do well when we teach these things to our children.

Like the post? You know what to do- Share It! Have comments or questions? Share them too!