"Enforced uniformity confounds civil and religious liberty and denies the principles of Christianity and civility." Roger Williams
In all my years of involvement in organized Christian groups there has been no allowance for freedom. Whether in families or the larger community. Until somewhat recently I couldn't see this...and the same holds true for the society I was born into. What's called freedom really isn't freedom at all. What we've got are just different forms of control or better said...attempts to control. No matter how well intentioned, it just exacerbates the existing deep problems by creating illusions.
“If we accept that God is love, and that it is human beings who are to respond to this love, the explanation is simple. Love cannot be forced, ordered, or made obligatory. It is necessarily free. If God liberates, it is because he expects and hopes that we will come to know him and love him. He cannot lead us to do so by terrorizing us.” Jacques Ellul
"Expectations are one of the dominant ways that we attempt to control our lives, our relationships and God. Largely, they are disappointments waiting to happen. When one has a system of expectations, then ‘I’ become the center of the universe and everything and everyone is subject to my judgment and punishment depending on how they are ‘currently’ meeting up to those expectations (whether my expectations have been communicated or not).
Expectations are all about ‘doing’ … about performance. There is little room for ‘being’ within the web of expectations and ‘being’ has little to offer the one trying to control through expectations. "Who cares about who you are as long as you are doing what I think I need and expect." Expectations are largely a substitute for God, or in some sense, the need we have to play God ourselves.
And remember, ‘control’ is all about ‘fear’.
Letting go of ‘expectations’ is soooo risky; it feels like a free fall since our world was held together by that web, but it is in that ‘risk’ that you find a God who does not meet your expectations (thankfully), but loves you and is involved, and in that ‘risk’ is where ‘faith’ grows. Then we begin to live more in the environment of ‘expectancy’, the edgy, free flowing realm of wonder and surprise." William P Young
To find life it takes some letting go.
10 comments:
Ouch! (a productive "ouch," that is) Thanks, Kent. This going right along with what I've been mulling over for the last several days. The idea that my panic attacks have everything to do with control, performance, and expectations. And much of my parenting is still rooted in that as well. It's so hard to let go of.
Kent,
I decided to finally create my own Blog. I hope you will come visit "me," add me to your Feeds, read my entries, and leave comments. I'd love that!!
By the way, your Blog is in my Blogroll!
http://amyiswalkinginthespirit.blogspot.com/
Thanks!
~Amy :)
P.S. I will come back later today to leave a specific comment on your most excellent post!
Tina, I do hope the Ouch turns out to be a freeing ouch. Remember the conversation I shared with you awhile back? That came during a time of great realigning of many things in my life and many of the places I had learned to naturally gravitate to in my head that stood in the way.
Having some of my wrong thinking exposed during those conversations produced some moments of "ouch" but I was growing to love the rearranging it was producing in my life (experiences) so I kept walking back through that door hoping for some more. I look back on that painful season in my life that led me to that season of conversations and I stand in awe of the Love that was pursuing me to help me break a little more free from the wrong headed thinking that had kept me all bound up. I love your heart and desire to be freer than you are today.
Amy, thanks for stopping by and I did leave a comment over on your new blog.
Kent,
I'm new to being here, reading, feeling and hopefully growing. I am grateful to continue to grow and will continue to read often.
Mark
Hello Mark. Hopefully you will find something here to encourage you on with Father Son and Spirit.
I have to say that my questions are and have been with me all these 46 years of life. Letting go is something I thought I could do. It 's like peeling away the skin of an onion, layer by layer. So, while on vacation this past week, I found my wife reading "The Shack". She briefly told me the beginning of story, both about Missy and Papa. She said, "I think you'll like it." I read the whole book in 3 days and it brought my questions into my heart. I find that asking for help and letting go are part of the same coin. My faith life has always been private. It feels good to be here.
Mark
The story in The Shack has a way of stirring things in us and drawing us out and that is a good thing.
If you feel so led to hang around here we will do some searching together.
I'm convince Mark that the only way letting go becomes possible is as we moment by moment come to feel more secure and at rest in Father. The things we have picked up that he never intended for us to pick up just begin to lose their appeal to us. It really is a wonderful thing. Traveling becomes so much easier as the unnecessary stuff of this world begins to fall away.
Kent,
Excellent blog. You're so right on. Sigh...expectations just kill the spirit and relationships. With Papa, particularly.
I agree. I think the core feeling underlying expectations is fear. The need to control grows from this.
I think I'm going to post a blog tomorrow on fear. I actually already had posted it on my MySpace page, but it seems that many of us in Blogland have this topic on mind.
~Amy :)
Hey Kent,
You've had a great run of posts here. All are kinda 'where I'm at' at the moment.
No one told me that freeing yourself from expectations can be messy at times though! Currently I'm apparently not meeting the 'expectations' of a friend. In a way I feel bad for him, to get all worked up over unmet expectations; but I'm not at all tempted to jump through someone else's hoops anymore.
I agree Rick, it can be very messy. I had a very important relationship that had been strained for awhile even before I began this process of freeing others from expectations I had of them and learning to live free of those that they had of me and during that process it became even more strained...today it feels healthier than it has ever been. It's been a relationship that has been with me all my life. It feels really good.
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