Episode 123149: 3/15/26 Autobiography: Who Will You Be?

4:53 So our 23rd president, 23rd president of the United States is a man named Warren G. Harding. He was president, sorry, 29th president of the United States. It was Warren G. Harding, president from 1921 to 1923. And apparently Warren G. Harding was a decent human being. but at the same time in the years since he's since he was president he has been consistently on the list of worst presidents that we've ever had and and apparently Warren G. Harding even thought this about himself there's a quote that he he said about himself he said I am not fit for this office and never should have been here so how did Warren G. Harding get elected if he wasn't fit for the office. He wasn't competent for the office. And even he said, I'm not competent for the office. How did he get elected? So Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book about the, well, he wrote a book a number of years ago called Blink. And in it, he tells the story. And this is his perspective.

5:56 His perspective was that how did Warren G. Harding get elected? How did he become the 29th president in the United States? And Malcolm Gladwell maintains that just people looked at him. That's how he got elected. That he would walk into a room and he was a tall man. He was handsome. He had broad shoulders. He had this deep resonant voice. He had this very, very dignified presence. If people saw him, and the problem for Warren G. Harding was people looked at him, and he looked exactly like what people thought a president should look like. Even if he said himself, I'm not competent, I'm not qualified for this, but he looked like he was. here's the question, what are we looking for? Like when we look around the world, what are we looking for? In the gospel today, here's the blind man and the people looking at him, and they say, the Pharisees say, well, he looks like a sinner.

6:53 That's why he's in this situation. He looks like a sinner. He looks like a man who must have done something wrong because he's blind. In the first reading, 1 Samuel, you have Samuel comes to Jesse's family, looks at his sons and sees Eliab, right? He's his oldest son and he's like, okay, he looks like, he looks like the person, kind of like Warren G. Harding. He looks like a leader. He looks like a king. Of course, we then heard how God stopped Samuel and said, actually, that's not how God looks. He says, man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart.

7:25 We started this series a couple weeks ago at the beginning of Lent called Autobiography. And the reality of Autobiography is this, is that every life is a story. So every person is an author. The question we have is, who will you become at the end of the story? So we looked at every story has a title, that we know that every story has a beginning. Last week, we'd looked at the fact that every story has a middle. But if you've ever thought about what would you include, have you ever thought about what would you include if you had to literally have to write down your autobiography? What would you include? Like what kind of things, what kind of circumstances, what kind of events would get your attention? that if you look over your life, what do you see? When you look at your autobiography, what do you find? That when you, again, when you examine your life, the question is this, what do you look for? how do you look?

8:19 Again, we heard this. The Lord doesn't look as man looks. The Lord looks into the heart. So we have these questions. How does the Lord look? But also the bigger question in some ways right now is how do we look? Like what do you and I mostly look for? Another way to ask it is this. What do we most easily find? When we look at our lives, what do we most easily find?

8:42 For this, this is me. I'm not sure if this is you, but every time I meet someone or talk to someone or just say hi, just greet someone and they say, hey, how's it going? My brain scans my story. My brain scans my day, my week, my whatever, my life and reports all that's gone wrong. I don't know if you've had this experience too where someone says, how are you doing? And it's like, oh, my brain scans through and 95, I've said this before, but 95% of my life could be like, oh, it's great. It's actually really, really good. But what do I talk about? Like, what do I see? What do I look for? I report on the 5%, oh, this is really hard right now or this is kind of a struggle right now. Even if 95% of life is great, how rarely do I take the opportunity to report on the great and just look for the negative?

9:23 And not only look for the negative, I remember the negative. I don't know if you're in a situation where I can get notes or messages. People even tell me like positive comments. If I get one comment, one negative comment, one critical comment, man, that's the one that stays with me. And I'm not alone. There's a psychologist named John Gottman. John Gottman talks about this. He says, actually, to balance out the negative comment, one negative comment, you need at least five positive comments. I've heard the number up to, for every one negative comment, we need up to 12 positive comments. So when it comes to what I look for in my life, man, I oftentimes look for the negative. I oftentimes look for this thing to complain about. And maybe it's this, maybe that we're biologically hardwired to look for the negative. I think at some point, looking for the negative kept our ancestors alive. That you see the rustling in the bushes, and like, I'm not gonna examine that. I'm gonna run away because it might be some good, might be some food, might be something nice. It probably also could be a saber-toothed tiger.

10:17 So our biological hardwired to look for the negative in the past, I think, kept us alive. But in the modern world, it keeps us stuck. To find ourselves always looking at the negative is to be stuck on the outside looking in. To always look for the negative is to find ourselves on the outside looking in. We've been following the story of the parable of the prodigal son. And there's a moment, right, in the story that Jesus tells where the younger son has come home and his father's ran out to meet him. He brings him in. They've slaughtered the fattened calf. They're celebrating. There's a party going on. And at this point of the parable, the older son walks up and he realizes a celebration is happening. A party is going on right here. He realizes, my brother is alive. In this moment, he realizes there is a reason to rejoice. and the older brother is stuck.

11:13 He sees a moment of real joy, and all he can see, all he's looking for, is a reason to be angry. So life, in our life, what are we looking for? In our story, in our autobiography, there are so many times we're faced with the invitation to enter into joy, but we're stuck on the outside looking in.

11:39 Sometimes, so often, we're looking for all the reasons not to celebrate. Okay, maybe there's something good going on, but here's all the bad things going on. When we're faced with the invitation into joy, we find ourselves looking for all the reasons to be angry, just like the older son. All the reasons not to love. And the older son, in this moment, when he's on the outside looking in, this is an incredible description, an incredible image of what hell is. In this moment, the older son, invited into joy but refusing to enter into joy, this is a description of he's choosing hell. Not saying he's sinning, but if heaven is love, if heaven is rejoicing and joy, and I refuse to enter love, if I refuse to enter into rejoicing, if I refuse to only look for the things that make me angry, for the reasons not to celebrate, the reasons not to love, choosing hell.

12:36 During this series, Pray 40, we're following the prodigal son. We're also following Dostoevsky's book, The Brothers Care of Matzah. And one of the lines Dostoevsky writes, he says this, he says, hell is the suffering of being unable to love. Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.

12:57 And in this parable, that's the older son. and in our lives that's us that we're invited into joy but we're looking for something else we're invited into joy but we're looking at something else you know imagine imagine the older son imagine the older son thinks he's being sensible imagine the older son thinks like no i'm not going to enter into this why because i know my little brother i know he's just going to take this and he's going to run away again. And the reality is, yeah, maybe. A caveat to this, we have to be wise, right? When it comes to these kind of things, there's a psychologist named John Deloney. John Deloney says this, he says, behavior is a language. So how someone behaves, like if someone has told you by their actions that they can't be trusted, believe them. So behavior is a language. so yes be wise but here's the danger there's a difference between being wise and being cynical there's a difference between being wise and being stuck on the outside looking in there's a difference between being wise and choosing to look for a reason to be angry instead of a reason to rejoice I think though sometimes I think we sometimes conflate we've concluded that cynicism is actually a mark of intelligence that someone who I won't be fooled like I'm not I'm not going to get my hopes up I'm not going to get excited about this.

14:21 I'm going to stay back because, listen, my eyes are open. Again, we think that cynicism is a mark of intelligence because, like, no, I see the game. I see the trick. I'm not going to be fooled. In fact, the opposite is true. There was a study, a study in 30 countries with almost 200,000 adults. And they found this. They found that cynicism is not a mark of intelligence. It's a defense mechanism to avoid being exploited. that those who are cynical, those with poor reasoning skills, were more likely to see human nature as selfish and untrustworthy. In fact, it's a lack of wisdom that leads us to cynicism. But even more than that, it's a lack of courage. There's another psychologist, he's a psychologist out of Canada, he once said that he said, being cynical is preferable to being naive. So it's not like, well, you either be cynical or naive.

15:14 You know, being cynical is better than being naive because once you've been hurt, there's no going back to naive. Once you've been betrayed, you're not going back to naive. But also, there's no point in staying at cynical. It requires a degree of courage to get past cynical to something better. Why? Because it takes no effort to be cynical. It takes no courage whatsoever to be cynical. Because what's cynicism? Cynicism is pessimism plus suspicion. it's pessimism plus suspicion and that if there's any word that might define the older son it's that word suspicion he comes and hears the party. He's suspect. What's going on? And we've all been there. We've all been in this place where we come upon a situation, a person, anything, and we tell ourselves a story. The story is, okay, this is what someone thinks of me.

16:06 And every time they confirm that, every time they act in a certain way, I think, yep, there it is. We have the suspicion of like how hard something's going to be or this event I'm going to go to is going to be miserable or that person, that roommate I have, they're going to leave her mess again because they always leave a mess. Always. They never do their dishes. Suspicion, we tell ourselves a story and then we look for proof. It's one of the reasons why C.S. Lewis once said, Suspicion often finds what it suspects. Another way to say it is, you find what you look for.

16:46 Here, they're going to fail again. Yep, see, there it is. Suspicion often finds what it suspects. And there's the reality in our lives. We find what we look for. There's a comedian named Theo Vaughn. Theo Vaughn has a podcast. And relatively recently, he had a man named Tony Robbins on his podcast. I like both these guys. Theo Vaughn's super funny. Tony Robbins, charismatic guy. At one point, Tony Robbins walked Theo Vaughn through this exercise. He said, okay, Theo, I want you to look around your room. This is your studio. He said, look for red. So looks for all the red things. Now close your eyes. Okay, name all the blue things. And it was kind of this, you know, this kind of trick. And he was like, oh, I can't think of any. He's like, yeah, because why? Because this room has a bunch of blue things, but you were looking for red. so you didn't see the things that were blue and even then he said but how many red things he said this this one this one he's like i bet you even found things that weren't red but you counted them as red he's like yep that orange truck over there because why because we find what we look for so here's here's our autobiography the question is this what am i looking for Thank you.

17:59 because I'll find it. In your autobiography, what are you looking for? You'll find it. Am I looking for a reason to be miserable? Am I looking for a reason to be angry? Am I looking for a reason to be suspicious? I'll find it. Or am I looking like the Father looks?

18:21 Remember, that's the whole point. Man sees the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. How does the Father look? in this parable. What we see is the father looks for hope. I mean, the fact of the matter is, here's the younger son. He's been gone for who knows how long, and the father is at the furthest outskirts of his property, scanning the horizon for the return of his son. That kind of hope takes courage. and the father looks for joy.

18:51 Say it like this, the father looks for an opportunity to celebrate. I mean, if we look at this, here's the younger son comes back. The father looks for joy, and when he finds it, when he sees it, he steals the moment as an opportunity to rejoice.

19:11 The father steals joy. If you want to know how the father looks, this is how he looks. He looks for joy. He looks for a reason to celebrate. He looks for a reason to rejoice, and then he does it. Again, how does the father love you? How does he love me? He loves us like this. Now, notice this. The younger son, at this point, the younger son has done nothing. There's rejoicing happening. The father's looking for joy. He finds it. He's stealing joy. And the younger son, at this point, has done nothing. We don't know if he's learned his lesson. Like we don't know if he's changed his ways. We don't know if he promises to be a good boy from now on, right? We don't know if he feels badly. All the son is, all the son who's being rejoiced over, all he is is not dead. That's it. All the father knows is my son was dead, but now he's alive again. He was lost, but he's found.

20:07 And the Father takes that fact as an opportunity for joy. He takes that fact as an opportunity to steal joy in this moment. what do I look for?

20:27 What should we look for? We have to look for joy. And every place we find it, we have to steal joy. We have to steal it. We have to steal it for ourselves. We have to steal it for the people around us. We have to steal it for the Lord. We have to steal it because our story is actually meant to be a story where we look for joy and then steal joy at every opportunity we have. And the reality, of course, is that we could lose. We could get our hopes up. We could try to find joy in a place. We could look for joy. we could not find it. We could find joy and celebrate it, rejoice over it, steal it, and lose it again. but that's what we're called to be, right? Because ultimately in this whole parable, the prodigal son, ultimately this Lent in our lives, we're not called to stay as the younger son who gets welcomed back. We're not called to stay as the older son who's invited in. We're actually called to be the father. This is who will you become at the end of your story? We're called to become the father.

21:20 The younger son who, yes, he came home and was celebrated. He has to become the one who must welcome and celebrate others. The older son who's angry has this resentment and he was pursued, he was invited into joy. He has to become the one who can face the anger and the resentment of other people and invite them into joy.

21:41 This story doesn't end with us being the one rejoiced over. It ends with us being the kind of people who can look like the father and steal joy wherever we find it. This Pray 40, this Lent, this life, you and I are called to become the kind of person who's like the Father, who's courageous enough to look for hope, who's courageous enough to look for joy and to steal every opportunity for joy. because this is your story. This is your life. This is your autobiography. Every life is a story. Every person is an author. The only question is, who will you and I become at the end of our story?

22:36 and who we become is dependent on what we pay attention to. Who we become is dependent on what we see, and what we see is dependent upon what we see.