Tag: Thrice

The Human Scar of Exile

The Human Scar of Exile

by and | Community, God, People

In the course of getting ourselves kicked out of church we started to see a pattern of behavior. We referenced it briefly in the All the Problems of the World… post, where we said:

We’ve written about, and will write more about, this topic – but the summary is, people think that if someone near them is doing behavior X, it will cause them pain. They think that if someone near them is misbehaving according to God, then they will feel pain from God as a result.

This is an old, old cultural scar. Homophobia, racism, legalism, basically all kinds of hatred are examples of this. It’s a lie that people believe and respond to: “I need to control you, or something bad will happen to me. I need you to be what I think God wants, or we won’t be safe.”

We’ve gone over and over the ground of how people try to keep themselves safe. We even know part of why people do this – because of the one fear, the fear of being alone because of who you truly are. We do crazy, damaging things trying to keep ourselves and our relationships safe – and we do crazy, damaging things trying to make the people around us into our definition of safe as a result.

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There’s No Absence of Fear

There’s No Absence of Fear

by | God, People

I used to think there was an emotional state of “no fear.” Entirely unafraid, about all things, all the time. I thought this was a real, legitimate place I should be trying to get to.

Laine (and God (L: it was mostly God…)) corrected me.

There are always new sources of fear. This world is broken. The people living here are broken. Things go wrong. Our dreams fail, and our hopes die. Our relationships can break, our jobs can suck, people can hurt us. We make choices and the people we love make choices, and it doesn’t always seem like it could possibly work out.

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Idols and Alone and Rest for Your Soul

Idols and Alone and Rest for Your Soul

by and | Community, God, People

People Seem Safer than God

 Come, all you weary.
Come, gather ’round near me,
find rest for your soul. 
– Thrice, Come All You Weary

“Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30

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Trust: What is?

Trust: What is?

by and | Community, God, People

Fun fact – the Building Reliability blog post was originally called “Building Trust.” It was old content – some day we’ll tell the story of everything that happened between when it was originally published and when we published it here, but suffice it to say that a lot changed okay.

Because of what changed, Laine was immediately and thoroughly triggered by defining trust in some part as “doing what people expect of you.” Some number of arguments later, we agreed that what’s described in that post is reliability – which is in fact different from trust. And…then we started trying to define and explain trust. Turns out, it really isn’t easy. After a lot of paying attention to where we stumble in trusting other people (spoiler alert: we’re both awful at it, actually…), this post was born. Finally.

We’re going to explain in more detail, but here is the basic definition:

Trust: believing that the other person loves you enough to figure it out – whatever it is.

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The Illusion of Control

The Illusion of Control

by and | God, People

You think you have control. You look around and take stock of your life, and, if it’s a good day, you high-five yourself and feel some measure of peace at how well you’re doing with…stuff. And also things. “My stuff and also my things are right on track!” you say to yourself, proud and pleased. If it’s a bad day, you beat yourself up and you tell yourself to get your act together, and to take control of your life.

But…unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, because we would all be awful at it), you don’t have control. Not really. At most, you have control over yourself and your choices and…even that, let’s face it, isn’t complete control.

Can you safeguard your breath, in the night while you sleep,
keep your heart beating steady and sure?

– Thrice, Beggars

Control only belongs to God, and when people try to wrestle that away from him, it…doesn’t go great. Most of the time, we think other people are in control, and so we spend our time trying to wrestle control from each other. It…also doesn’t go great.

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