In Search of The Rebooted Life

by Michael J Klassen

Years ago, while I was working fulltime as a freelance writer, I purchased a Compaq laptop that I loved. In fact, the first 14 months, I wore out two keyboards.

The only problem with the computer was that it rebooted at random times during the day. Back in the day, software wasn’t near as adept at automatically backing up our files on the hard drive. So, I could lose an hour or two of work if I hadn’t typed “control s” regularly enough. At times, I would be adding the finishing touches on a sentence or paragraph that, I was convinced, was a work of art in its own right, when suddenly the screen would go blank and the computer would start all things new. On more than one occasion, I nearly threw my beloved laptop into the concrete wall in my basement office.

Yet, other times when my computer would start slowing down, rebooting was the answer to my problems.

New Year’s Day is all about rebooting. Many people make resolutions this time of the year. “I don’t make resolutions, I make goals,” someone commented to me earlier this week. But what’s the difference?

The packed gyms in my community this first week of the year prove that more people than me make a commitment to reboot their lives and start losing weight. But by the end of the month, the number of people in the gym revert to pre-New Year’s Day figures.

All of us are wired with the deep desire for new creation. Movies like Groundhog Day and 50 First Dates call out to that deep desire. Countless times growing up, I wished I could start over on the semester at school. I just wanted to reboot my backlog of homework.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could truly reboot our lives whenever we wanted, just like we can reboot our computers?

The good news for all of us is this: God is all about rebooting. “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22–23). Every morning, God pours out his love and forgiveness on us.

And here’s further evidence of the God who reboots: Paul wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Not only does God pour out his love on us every day, but we also live every day as a new creation.

So what does it mean to live the “rebooted” life?

It means that God’s forgiveness of us is complete. The sins of our past have been completely erased by the blood of Jesus. Our past no longer needs to haunt us. We get to start over!

When we give our lives to Jesus, we get to start over every day! Reboot.

Conversation Starter

1. Share a time when you got a chance to reboot.
2. What does the rebooted life look like to you?

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Michael co-pastors The Neighborhood Church with Eugene Scott in Littleton, Colorado.

I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Going to Take it Anymore

Hockey may be hazardous to your health. Just ask Bryan Allison, who was hospitalized a few years ago after a hockey game in Buffalo, NY. What’s the big deal? Hockey players get hurt, you say. Except Allison isn’t a hockey player; he’s a fan, who hurt himself after viewing a thirteen year-old video tape of his favorite NHL team playing a 1989 playoff game.

Like a personal version of Groundhog Day, his team lost again–just like the first time he watched the game live. And just like the first time he watched, Bryan Allison became furious. Suddenly Allison hefted the TV and threw it off his second floor balcony. The only problem was Allison forgot to let go and plunged with the TV to the ground. In my book, the TV was not all Bryan Allison couldn’t let go of. Anger, literally and figuratively, drug Allison down.

Eugene C. Scott joins Mike in writing A Daily Bible Conversation twice a week.

TODAY’S READING (click here to view today’s reading online)

Ezekiel 37:1-38:23

James 1:19-2:17

Psalm 117:1-2

Proverbs 28:1

If you’ve found A Daily Bible Conversation helpful, share it with your friends. Forward your daily email or send them a link to the website: www.bibleconversation.com.

INSIGHTS AND EXPLANATIONS

Psalm 117:1-2: Twenty-nine words. That’s all the psalmist needs to tell us much of what we need to know for life: All nations, all people gratefully recognize God as the source of life.  Know that his love and care will last longer than anything we can imagine, even our lives. “Praise the Lord.” Oh my, it took me thirty-two words.

THE WORD MADE FRESH

Allison isn’t the only one, however, who has trouble letting go of his anger. Here in the United States anger is becoming epidemic. Reports of revenge, road rage, and retribution are as common as dirt. Revenge is an entire Hollywood movie genre unto itself. Anger lives and thrives in our world globally and personally. Witness the centuries old rage of the Middle East or a modern-day tantrum in a traffic jam. The only difference in the anger is scale. There isn’t much you and I can do about anger on the global scale but there is on the personal.

When I was in seventh grade, I had a friend whose parents were both professional counselors. Among the many strange things that went on in that house, they always had stacks of boxes filled with empty wine bottles sitting by their back door. One night I finally mustered the courage to ask about them.

“Some of our clients struggle with pent-up anger,” John’s mother told me. “So we have a special room we take them to. And under heavy supervision, we allow them to release their anger by throwing these bottles against the wall.”

Sounded fun to me. Little did I know that John’s parents were practicing therapy based on the idea that anger must be released–vented–like steam in a pressure cooker. Unfortunately this popular, misguided, supposed cure for our anger epidemic is actually part of the problem.

Research shows anger cannot be stored because its source is our famous fight or flight response: a chemical/electrical response to real or perceived danger. Once activated, those chemicals eventually cease firing and anger, or whatever emotion we have tied to the chemical reaction, dissipates.

How is it, then, that many of us wake in the middle of the night and feel that rush of rage all over again even years later? Psychologist Dr. Archibald Hart says we have stored not anger but rather nurtured the hurt or fear or frustration that our bodies, in an endless loop, interpret as danger. Worse yet, anger becomes an ingrained pattern so that our fuses become shorter and shorter. Venting anger as pure powerful emotion actually fuels it. Thus Bryan Allison reigniteed a thirteen year old rage that lands him two stories down and in the hospital. Hockey may be hazardous; anger definitely is.

What’s the answer? Repression? Denial? No! Hart argues that a healthy release of anger flows through forgiveness. Not a mealy-mouthed forgiveness that excuses wrong, whining, “It’s okay, really.”

Rather Hart advocates a forgiveness forged by truth and reality that says, “Yes, you wronged me and I could do the same to you. But I choose not to. I choose not to hold this against you. I choose forgiveness and freedom.”

James, the brother of Jesus, said the same thing long ago: “be slow to become angry.” Later James quotes his brother Jesus saying, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Forgiveness is not protecting the offender. It is love, not anger in action. Forgiveness never erases consequences. It simply loves in the turbulent wake of the betrayal. Forgiveness also does not equal trust. Forgiveness is a gift; trust is earned one kept promise at a time. But most of all, as I wrote yesterday, forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness shudders at the pain, weeps at the loss, but then stands tall. Forgiveness remembers and places grace on painful memories. Finally, forgiveness is reciprocal. Extending forgiveness to others frees them from your hate and revenge. But like a boomerang, it flies back granting you freedom from your hate and revenge as well. Forgiveness is freedom! Forgiveness is the remedy to anger not unrestrained expression.

From the cross Jesus said, “Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” With those words Jesus neither excuses nor forgets. With the pain of betrayal racking his body and soul, he chooses to love. We need not start with such a grand display as that. Instead when you are cut off in traffic today, choose to lay it aside–forgive (because they probably don’t know what they are doing!). Then when something more serious, a memory of a past wrong, scorches you, take the first step toward freedom from anger and pray, “Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing. But You do!”

1. How has anger possessed you?
2. Which passage spoke most to you?
3. What did the four have in common?

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Eugene co-pastors The Neighborhood Church in Littleton, CO and writes a blog eugenesgodsightings.blogspot.com