You and I

I've been watching some Youtube videos on narcissism. It's kind of hard. I see some of myself in those descriptions. These particular videos were made by women, so their experience is with narcissistic men. It's my own weakness that lets these things get into my head.

There was one thing that really caught my attention. They mention how narcissists speak in you statements. The counter point is that healthy individuals use I statements. I found this particularly troubling. I have a very hard time speaking in I statements.

Now how many people went back and counted the I's up to this point? Seems to contradict what I'm saying (see, another one!). I can lecture with I. I can't talk about feelings with I. That's always bothered me. Where I work, they teach people how to hold difficult conversations. And this is one piece of advice we give too. I really struggle with it. It comes out sounding and feeling, well, awkward. Forced. Insincere. I don't like feeling insincere. Integrity is very important to me.

I feel in stories. Doesn't that sound weird? When a piece of music or a song generates an emotional reaction, a story forms in my mind. I'll even zone out filling in the details. Actually, just about any emotional time I can think of had a fictional story associated with it. I'll pull bits and pieces from things that interest me. I've created entire universes inside my head. All as a way of processing some emotion.

A friend of mine feels in color. Different colors represent different emotions. I find it quite fascinating. For me, different stories represent different emotions. Now here's where the real problem comes in - I don't consciously know what those feelings are. I don't think I could even tell the story. The act of putting it down loses all of the emotional content. And I most definitely cannot tell you what emotions it's processing. Maybe some larger, obvious ones. But the shades are all lost. Hidden behind a fog.

To speak in I statements, I have to translate from story into words. How do I do that when I don't know what the story means? It isn't until all is said and done that it finally clicks. Up to that point, all I have is the story of what happened. And I'm not the only actor. Sometimes, I'm not even the main one.

Fiction or Non-Fiction?

I knew someone who also told themselves stories. She told stories to change her reality. She believed her stories. At first, I used to wonder if my memory was going. If I had forgotten what happened. I finally realized this person imagined having conversations and convinced herself that they actually happened. Fantasy was an escape. And she lost the ability to distinguish it.

I know my stories aren't real. Just like I understand television isn't real. I don't know how to explain it. They're processed differently in my brain. And even if a story's going while someone is talking, there is a difference, a wall, between the two. I'm not sure why this seems important enough to write down.

I suspect that person is a covert narcissist. She would only speak rationally when I got angry. And yes, beating my head against a wall eventually makes me angry. Ironically, that only makes me angrier. In Romans, Paul talks about treating enemies with kindness to pour "burning coals of fire on their head". That was the first thing I thought of when I realized what was happening. Am I the one who's wrong and having burning coals dumped on my head?

Paul encourages us to love our enemies. The purpose of kindness is reconciliation. The kindness increases after it has it's effect. This person stopped their kindness after they got an excuse to be a victim. Their kindness is a lie designed for their own glory. God wants His kindness to flow through us and out into the world. His kindness doesn't end. It doesn't have a purpose other than the benefit of the other person. His kindness is proactive, not responsive. I think that's the difference.

Sounds like rationalizing, doesn't it? Believe you me, I can rationalize with the best of them. And yet I find peace in the words. So don't trust me. Don't take my word at face value. Ask the One who searches the heart of men. Who digs into our deepest motives. I believe this is what He asked me to write. And I believe His Son's blood covers the parts that I got wrong.

Conversations

So something weird happened today. I was discussing with my friend/co-worker some form we were submitting to a client. It was a quick conversation. One of us would begin a thought, and the other finished it.

Now I have a bad habit of trying to prompt people when they pause to think of a word. Not here. I actually finished her sentence. Correctly. The conversation gained an energy as this went back and forth. It was a new experience for me.

In college (oh, so many years ago), I read a book called A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken. I remember two things from that book. One, there's a species of goose that mates for life. And two, the author and his wife had a language all their own for communicating. He describes how they developed code phrases for faster or even clandestine communication. I remember thinking how much I wanted a closeness like that.

What struck me the most today was the gap between where I am and there. I mean, this is the first time in my entire life I've ever had a conversation like this. It's still a far cry from what's described.

I wonder in times like this if God gives glimpses of what should be just to keep me going. I'm grateful for it. And for a friend who's taken the time to communicate in ways I understand. God reminds me that I cannot accept the lie that everything I want is wrong.

C.S. Lewis describes us as bent in his trilogy Out of the Silent Planet. Elements of what God created are still present within us. We're off the mark, not completely divorced from it. We still have the desires that He put inside. Those desires aren't wrong. A lot of my own plans to fulfill those desires turn out to be wrong. Wanting it isn't.

I think the turning point really came when I finally accepted that Jesus' blood covers everything. I can approach God with exactly how I feel and what I want. I don't have to get it perfect. In His love, looking at me through His Son, He shows the difference. And He addresses the need - the real need. The real desire. It's amazing how my understanding of what I want changes every time I talk with Him. Layers I didn't even realize were there.

God created us in His image. He is deeper than we can comprehend. We go that deep too. But we are bent. It takes a lot of courage to face those dark layers. And it takes faith to remember, hope, dream that one day they'll be unbent. That God's love, focused through the lens of Jesus' sacrifice, will overwhelm them. And maybe I'll have more stunning conversations.

Thing 1, Thing 2

Two different things are bouncing around in my head. I'm not sure how they're related. A friend asked me to watch the movie Replica. The movie raises the question of what makes us human. The other thing involves the nature of sin. Let's start there.

There's one story about Jesus where the religious leaders brought a handicapped man to Him. They asked Jesus who's sin caused the handicap - the man's or his parents? Jesus gave the answer "neither".

I have to admit that my own mental workings make me susceptible to the temptation of rules. The lie that if you follow all of the rules then you're good. That's simply not born out here. Sin causes us to disobey, not the other way around.

Looking at the world from the rule's point of view, we're good until we break the rules. I think the Bible views it the other way around - we're bad so we break the rules. Sin is a spiritual state. We come into the world that way. The man's handicap came from sin. Not a sin, but sin as a general state.

Jesus wasn't good because He lived by all the rules. He lived by all the rules because He was righteous. Righteousness and sin have nothing to do with what we do. We are one or the other. And that dictates what we do.

Who We Are

So now the first point - what makes us human. The movie involves copying a person into a clone and into a machine. Yep, they managed to hit two science fiction memes at the same time. Both are based on the same premise - that you are nothing more than chemical mixtures and electrical states. These are things that can be copied from brain to brain to brain.

Except that we just discussed spiritual states that drive what we think and what we do. If we accept the spiritual, then we also accept that it sets those states, like a computer programmer who controls the transistor states through software. One changes the other to accomplish it's purpose.

Can that be copied?