Baxter often lives on the extremes. He will sprint to get away from his litter box or to catch a piece of bouncing kibble, but then he will be dead to the world on his blanket where nothing can stir him. He will get all excited, hissing and spitting at another cat on the other side of the window, but then he could care less about the rabbits in the yard, seeming not to even notice they are there. He will cry ceaselessly when he is hungry, but at most other times he goes by the adage, “Don’t speak, unless spoken to.” With Baxter it is all or nothing, fast or stop, excited or unconscious, loud or silent. He doesn’t live in the middle.
Sometimes we get ourselves into the same sort of mind set. We react to situations rather than reflect upon what is the best way to deal with them. We draw the lines of our judgment bold and indelible. We like someone or can’t stand them. We are right, and they are wrong. We know the best way to proceed, and they don’t know anything about it. We have been taught a certain way when we were young, and that’s the way it has to be. It’s all or nothing, and we often don’t realize that the corners we are boxed into are of our own making.
Lent is a time to stop and think about the attitudes and positions we hold, and to measure them against what the gospels display for us. The point is not to compromise our convictions away or dilute our beliefs into mushy thoughts that say anything goes. Jesus is far from this kind of teacher. Instead He shows us the fit between our beliefs and convictions and the human conditions we all experience. Think of the woman caught in adultery or the criticism of His disciples eating grain from the fields on the Sabbath. Recall Jesus’ teaching about loving your enemy or the parable of the Good Samaritan. Notice what Jesus does in these situations. He makes distinctions between the sin and the sinner, between the strict rule and the circumstances of genuine need, between loving someone whom you already like and moving beyond your comfort zone to the enemy or stranger. In turn, these distinctions create new possibilities for relationships. People see others in ways they never saw them before, allowing for a connection between them that was thought impossible in the past.
For example, Jesus shows us that we are all sinners as we stand over the adulterous woman, that we all have been hungry and needed food when we criticized the disciples. He tells us that hating enemies takes energy for doing good away from us, and that unexpected combinations can be found in others like a “Good Samaritan”. Jesus doesn’t do away with right and wrong or true beliefs and falsehood, but He shows us it’s not so simple when we put these things into practice. The human face of sin always harbors some goodness. The true believer lives the faith always within the limitations of our physical, psychological and social nature. And our character’s quirky combination of apparent contradictions gives God the clay out of which to fashion a new creation, a
new humanity, transformed by the Spirit.
So before jumping to the next conclusion about God, others or ourselves, slow down and walk to it. Between the start and the end of the journey, we may discover a better way than we knew before, a truer understanding than we once had, and a new friend in someone we once thought a fool. Walk, don’t run; stay calm; speak softly. Lessons Baxter needs to learn, and maybe we do too.
