The Corner and The Ring – Part 2

Who’s in your ring?

Who’s on your side fighting for you? Not just fighting for your rights or your way, but maybe even fighting against those things so you’ll get what you need … instead of what you want.

Take the figurative “Mama Bear” example. Have you ever come across a mother who’s child just got snubbed ? (I have had this privilege on a number of occasions.) It doesn’t even matter if the child was wrong. The proverbial “Mama Bear” may even acknowledge their child’s error, but they will still rip off your face and then scold their kid with the evil eye, silent treatment, or cellphone restriction.

Why are people fighting for you? Is your cause or complaint really worth others getting maimed over it? What’s the motivation behind your cause? Selfish gain or strength amidst incapability? Sometimes we need someone who will put their neck on the line for us. And sometime we’ll need to be the one to stick out our neck for another. This takes shape in various ways – helping someone find a job, coming to someone’s defense, networking an unfamiliar social group, providing financial suppoert, holding faith while someone wrestles through doubt, or supporting someone out of addiction.

The fear associated with fighting for others is that eventually we’ll be taken advantage of. This is a legitimate concern if the person you’re fighting for is able to fight for themselves, they just opt not to because of laziness or stubbornness. But then there are those who seriously need your fight for a season, while others will need it for a life time.

Sometimes we need to let others fight for us so we can continue fighting.

Who’s in the ring fighting with you?

Not just fighting in your place but fighting alongside of you?

In the book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon emphasizes the benefit of team work, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”

For those willing to endure 3 novels or an epic trilogy, The Lord of The Rings depicts the profit of fighting with others and for others. The Fellowship couldn’t have accomplished the task as individuals alone, and their commitment to Frodo empowered him to succeed in the role he had to play in the story.

It’s  easier to fight against each other.  Churches do it. Employees do it. Teammates do it. But this only makes us weaker and works to defeat the vision, or cause, that only a united front can experience. It requires individual commitment and contribution to progress together. So we hold each other accountable, spur each other onward, and sacrifice personal gain for the greater good.

Sometimes we need to fight with others to achieve what we can’t alone.

Who are you fighting for?

We’re accustom to fighting for ourselves. We fight for a place in line. We fight for the first “Annoying-Me-Elmo”. We fight for fluff.

We stand up for the stupidest stuff.

Proverbs 31:8-9 should challenge hell out of all of us, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

Who will you stand up for?

Jon Foreman sings in the song, “Instead of a Show”:

Quit fooling around
Give love to the ones who can’t love at all
Give hope to the ones who got no hope at all
Stand up for the ones who can’t stand at all, all

Humans are natural born fighters, and we will continue to fight for our selfish causes until we stop fighting against the One who defeated what we couldn’t overcome.

God became man and fought the fight against sin that no one could win, which frees us to stop fighting for selfish gain and self promotion, enabling us to enter the ring of human desperation and stand up and fight for the spiritual, physical, emotional, and relationship needs of those knocked out.

The Corner and The Ring – Part 1

Who’s in your corner?

I have the tendency to go at it alone regularly. People are unreliable, so why rely on them? This mentality forces me to face life on my own, confident in my personal potential, capabilities, and resilience. It may save me from heart break, but how am I to strengthen, support, and correct myself in times of confusion, anxiety, and destructive behavior? I’m left with two options: depend on myself or depend on others.

Someone will say, “But you can always depend on God.” I would affirm this, but He doesn’t free us from the dependecy deliemma. He’s actually designed us to depend on one another. Many Christians are misinformed about the communal requirement of their faith; I know because I’ve relied on myself for most of my life.

Simply put, Christianity is to be embraced by the individual, but it’s to be lived out in community. I can’t force someone to follow Jesus, I can’t become a Christian for them. This decision must be made by the individual. Our father’s faith, our friend’s faith, or our grandma’s faith isn’t going to do us any good. We’ve got to decide for ourselves. But we can’t be a Christian all by ourself. We need other Christians to help us follow, submit to, and obey Jesus. We need to depend on others to help us depend on Jesus.

We need people in our corner.

The pillars of our culture project and praise images of the self-made man. Every man is an island. Simon and Garfunkel sang their observation this way,

I have my books And my poetry to protect me; I am shielded in my armor, Hiding in my room, safe within my womb. I touch no one and no one touches me. I am a rock, I am an island. And a rock feels no pain; And an island never cries.

“Good fences make good neighbors,” writes Robert Frost, portraying the idea embraced by many that the safest way to live is separated from each other – worry about yours I’ll worry about mine.

Against popular belief, living in isolation doesn’t strengthen us, it blinds us to our weakness. We need those who care enough to tell us what we don’t want or like to hear about ourselves (lacking this will lead to living a life comparable to the brutal first weeks American Idol). The most important people to have in our lives are those who will always have our back, but won’t always take our side. “Heart friends,” to quote Leta Flowers. We need people in our corner.

Boxers are better fighters when they have someone in their corner, coaching them, mending their wounds, and pushing them back into the ring. We become stronger when we depend on the wisdom and direction of those who have gone before us weathered and seasoned by experience. We become stronger when we reveal our weaknesses (instead of always painting perfect pictures of ourselves) to those who are committed to and invested in our lives and our transformation. We become stronger when we’re offered forgiveness, lifted to our feet, and given the charge to press on and stand firm in our faith, hope, and love.

The Gospel destroys our independence.

This is Gospel community. It begins when the individual admits their spiritual weakness separating them from God, where in which they receive the strength of Jesus through salvation. At this moment they join the company of the weak, who are dependent on Jesus and strengthened by one another. According to Paul, one of the first Christian missionaries, Christian community should be a reflection of the Cross, “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. We should all please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.’” The Cross is the model for Christian community – carrying others burdens, serving other selflessly, and helping point out and remove our junk so we can be made whole. “It is the fellowship of the Cross,” writes Bonhoeffer, “to experience the burden of the other.”

There is great appeal to and great fear of Gospel community. The appeal is support, strength, and encouragement. The fear is caused by the reality that to be supported, strengthened, and encouraged by others we’re required to reveal our weaknesses, our needs, and our sins to the community – we have to admit that we don’t have it all together. Pride, jealousy, gossip, and dishonesty are community killers. Pride inhibits us from admitting anything is wrong by indicating that every thing is alright. Jealousy compares and competes, viewing those in the community as a threat. Gossip leaks our weaknesses into the ears of those who don’t care about us, to make themselves feel better about the weaknesses they ignore. Dishonesty disables community because it prohibits the community from suffering with and for us.

Isolation is for idiots too scared to be cared for. But, as Matt Chandler says, “People don’t fall into Gospel community, they have to pursue it.” It’s easier to step into the ring when you know you’ve got community in your corner.

[Inspired by My Sweet and That Wednesday Night Crew]