Smells Like Cinnamon

Hey Nate,

Almost every time we speak, I learn something. It seems like you naturally bring out the best in people.

With some people, wherever they go, it is like the whole world blossoms around them. This is wonderful. Not only for that person and the people around them, but also for Christ. My decision to choose Christ was based on recognizing the Holy Spirit in specific people that I interacted with. Recognizable Christ is good for everybody.

This letter is in case you ever lose the recognizable Christ. It tries to answer some of these questions:

• How would you get it back?
• Is this a gift you could give your daughter?
• If you wanted to give this as a gift, what would you do, and when would you do it?

I attribute the stuff in this letter to:
1) A dance last summer with a girl named Rachel, and 2) A message by Ed Young, titled Made in the Shade. He poses the question, “Who made your shades?” - painting a clear image that people take their emotional and behavioral cues from the reflection they see when they look at your face and at your eyes.

We both know that trying to fake or mask emotions will ultimately result in a feeling of disillusionment and betrayal, because you will be found out. But there are things we can do with Christ’s help to change our emotional response to incompetence, from what it might be today, to produce genuine results.

This letter is meant to provide a framework and a posture to make the Recognizable Christ recovery process coherent. This framework should help you to figure out, “I am here!” and then choose a direction.
Here are a few things I am taking as given:

• Ecclesiastes 12:13
Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.

• Matthew 22:36-40
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Now that we both know what our job description is, here we go with Smells Like Cinnamon: Tailoring Your Emotional Response to Incompetence

I. People and Incompetence
Recognition Triggers Emotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Life Long Learners are Life Long Incompetents . . 7
Competence: A Monotonic Walk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Competence: The Dazzling Dance of Dexterity . . 10

II. Jesus and Consciousness
Forgive Them. They Know Not What They Do. . . 11
Forgive Them. They Know Not What They Do? . . 13
Go. Keep doing what you are doing and feel guilty
about it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
They know exactly what they are doing! . . . . . . . . 16

III. God and Posture
God Likes to Take Pride in His Work . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Comparing Gifts is Disrespecting of the Giver. . . 18
Break the Habit of Comparing Gifts. . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Emotional Cues from the Parable of the Talents . 20
Performance or Partnership? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
“Out! Damn’d Spot!”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

I. People and Incompetence

Recognition Triggers Emotion

When you think about the smell of freshly turned soil, or cedar sawdust, or suntan lotion, or cinnamon cider at Christmas, a whole set of emotions are attached to the recognition of that smell. People watching you might even ask, “What are you thinking about?” when they see those emotions surface for that instance. But before you hear the question, there is a sympathetic or resonant response in them that has already shaped the tone of their question. Their question will be flavored with emotion, perhaps concern, envy, or childish delight.

People are tuned in with emotion. Emotions are where people live. Recognition triggers emotion. If we change the setting to one where you are teaching, instructing, or taking someone into a new social environment, as quickly as you recognize incompetence the student will see and automatically respond to the emotion you associate with incompetence.

The goal going forward is to continually foster an environment that makes you receptive to Christ as a tailor working with you in a cooperative effort. A tailor that can shape your emotional response to the recognition of incompetence until it becomes like cinnamon at Christmas.

Life Long Learners are Life Long Incompetents

We agree that the recognition of incompetence causes an involuntary emotional response that will echo to the people around you. Another way of saying this is: “How you learn is one of the most important characteristics for determining how rich your life is.”

Learning is about working through incompetence, but people have differing responses to incompetence. One clear example of differences you can explore with a simple survey is the gender difference in response to those most classic of incompetents: The Three Stooges. Competence matters in the social selection process. People have a tendency, and an incentive, to hide their incompetence. There is actually more than a little hypocrisy here in that the false front sets a standard so high that it can encourage weak people (people in the habit of comparing) to give up. Here is Jesus speaking in Luke 11:43-46. (Note: The application here is not identical but the flavor is the same.)

“Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.”
“Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it.”
One of the experts in the law answered him, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.”
Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.”

Anytime you show incompetence in a learning process, you put rungs on the ladder for your audience. If your audience is your children this is good.

Children often compare their insides to other people’s outsides. You can help them by becoming a lifelong learner - A person blessed with the opportunity to let God continually tailor your emotional response to your own incompetence.

Competence: A Monotonic Walk

This is the structure part of the letter. When people learn, for example to tie their shoes, they go from:

unconscious and incompetent (1)
to
conscious and incompetent (2)
to
conscious and competent (3)
to
unconscious and competent (4)

Usually I present this using shoe tying as an example. But for you, let’s walk through this using volleyball as an example: at first you don’t even know what volleyball is and are incompetent at playing it. After that you know about volleyball and you know that you are incompetent at playing it. Then after attention and practice you are competent at volleyball but you still have to focus on each step. For example, while playing you might have to tell yourself, “On bump sets it is important to bend your knees!” Eventually things become automatic - for me let’s change back to talking about shoe tying. This morning I tied my shoes and don’t even remember doing it - I’ve done this so many times that it is unconscious.

So now we have structure — A bit of a ladder. What drives people to make progress? Sometimes it is contempt for the incompetent. Sometimes it is shame, embarrassment, peer pressure, envy, insecurity and fear. This sounds pretty bleak... it is amazing when you discover what drives some people to excel!

There are lots of problems with this set of motivators. One problem with all these motivators is they don’t accommodate moving back toward incompetence to explore other ways of doing things. People who learn this way are often rigid and stale.

In other words, they learn how to become competent at something and then stop learning about it. Therefore, they may not learn other ways or may not get even better at it. Perhaps because they cannot bear to look for long at incompetence - maybe it is too risky. People who are driven by fear rarely become virtuosos.

Competence: The Dazzling Dance of Dexterity

Jesus teaches a different way. A way based on looking into an honest mirror. You can see that way in the Gospel.

You see this dazzling dexterity in the best of artists - people who can go back into incompetence and change a technique that would be a “practice makes permanent” habit for those driven first into competence and then driven to look away.

There are people who can recognize where they are and then treat themselves as students. The only way I know to do this is to learn to look through Jesus’ eyes with an applied study of the Gospel and as much Holy Spirit help as you can get by obedience to the “Love God and love people” command. Lets’ look at Jesus and consciousness as he loves God and people. We can count on people to supply the incompetence.

II. Jesus and Consciousness

Forgive Them. They Know Not What They Do.

One reason Jesus came was to help us be more competent at loving God and loving people. Throughout his ministry he was dealing with people of differing levels of incompetence and differing levels of awareness.
How he chose to respond to each person he met depended on how conscious they were of their incompetence. He did not treat each person the same, rather he treated each person as an individual based on their state. Let’s look at some examples as we try to figure out what’s going on. Luke 23:34.

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

Jesus recognized that the people were unconscious of what they were doing. Some would say they were unconsciously competent at evil - this happens when people hang out with the wrong crowd and shape their habits and consciences based on the traditions of men. Others would say that they were unconscious and incompetent at doing good. Either way, Jesus recognized their state and responded to them based on that.

Let’s see what happens if we take his words here as a mantra and apply them willy nilly...
Forgive them for they know not what they are doing.
Forgive THEM for they know not what they are doing.

Forgive Them. They Know Not What They Do?

Is it always the case that 1) people do not know what they are doing, and 2) the actions people are taking are directed against you rather than some third person that you are commanded to love?
Consider John 10:31-32.

Again the Jews picked up some stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?”

Hey! He missed a chance to say, “Forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” Where’s the mantra? These people knew what they were doing.
Or consider John 8:3-5.

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”

Jesus could have walked off and whispered quietly to himself as they began to stone the woman, “Forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” Or he could have said, “Hey! Look at that bird over there!” as he whisked her safely away from the crowd. But he did not. A part of his job was to teach us to love.

Let’s pick up where he left off, John 8:6-9.

They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept questioning him, he straightened up and said them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left with the woman standing there.

Things to notice: 1) he used motion to command the attention of peoples eyes, 2) he provided a new backdrop with a lot less emotional content - the ground, and 3) he put his audience into a posture of introspection or perhaps prayer - looking down.

After he stands and asserts, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her,” he sets the posture of introspection again by stooping down and writing on the ground again. These people were teachable. He made these people conscious of their incompetence and put them into a learning posture.

Good thing he wasn’t just repeating that mantra.

Go. Keep doing what you are doing and feel guilty about it.

If we stick with the same event and listen carefully to Jesus’ closing words: “Go now and leave your life of sin.” In some translations that is “Go and sin no more.” This is really different than, “Go. Keep doing what you are doing and feel guilty about it.”

Jesus doesn’t ask people to do things that they cannot do. Remember from Luke, Jesus replying to the teachers of the law: Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.”

Jesus is not like that. John 14:15

“If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever  the spirit of truth...”

Don’t feel guilty. Change your behavior. When you make an active decision for obedience you get help.

They know exactly what they are doing!

We started with, ““Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” Jesus was speaking about people who were unconscious. Here is a different case from Mark 9:42.

“And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.”

In the Gospels, Jesus addresses people in each of the four states of learning differently. Since this model of learning is new to you, I’ve kept it to just four steps, or better, four states. With Jesus, there are more than four states in his measures of competence. For example, consider Peter’s betrayal. Peter understood all the concepts. There was complete consciousness. Peter was just not aware of how incompetent he was. As you apply this framework or model, you will rapidly learn to recognize “incompetent but unaware of it.” A little different than unconscious. This “unaware of it- ness” may be that problem of not looking into an honest mirror.

III. God and Posture

God Likes to Take Pride in His Work

Do you like to take pride in your work? God made us in his image and he would like to be able to take pride in his work, too. We have a habit of messing that up. One example is Genesis 6:9-14.

This is the account of Noah.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.
Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on the earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out...”

Noah showed a cooperative and obedient posture.

Comparing Gifts is Disrespecting of the Giver.

“God made me and God don’t make no junk” is a quote I first saw on a Chicago inner city elementary school aged child’s art in the 1970’s... as reproduced in Time Magazine. A long time before that, David had the same attitude.

Consider how God responded to David at the transition between Saul and David described in 1 Samuel 13:14 “... the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people...”

Since the examples in the Old Testament were put there by God, what part of David’s behavior did God seek out?

Break the Habit of Comparing Gifts

David focused on solving problems. Evaluating “Will that work?” is different than comparing and complaining. Consider the contrast in 1 Samuel 17:32-37,

David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.”

Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth.”

But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of the Philistine.”

We talked about Recognizable Christ. Did we talk about recognizable Saul? - a weak person in the habit of comparing.

As an aside, I am told that people who grow up in rural areas hold an advantage as difference makers, because they are not perpetually compared. City people, on the other hand, can be pounded into Sauls. The opinion of people is a bigger part of the environment in the city.

This section was about making a decision to break the habit of comparing gifts.

Emotional Cues from the Parable of the Talents

We talked about people being “tuned in” with emotion. Jesus knew this as he related the Parable Of The Talents, Luke 25:14-25.

“Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’
“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
“The man with the two talents also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.’
“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
“Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’

In response to the description of the person with one talent, I use experienced fear as a prompt. On prompt I paint myself as the servant with only one talent, who is afraid, who wants to hide and bury it, and then look to see if there is any truth in the picture.

This can create a kind of inverse response to fear that works well from an obedience standpoint. The fear response becomes action  and it is not just bluff and bluster hoping something will go away. The response is earnest work and investment.

This section was about God, Posture and Fear.

Performance or Partnership?

We are talking about God and posture (and enthusiasm). The difference between a performance posture and a partnership posture cannot be overstated. In some vocabularies it might be like the difference between negotiation and cooperation, but for now since we are focusing on kids and competence we’ll stick with the title we started with.

When I first started dancing in 2000, the best person at this kind of dance asked me to walk across the floor. As he watched, I tried to hide the fact that my right foot isn’t on straight by holding my foot straight. When I do that it kind of messes up the way my knee bends... After watching me walk, he explained that I could do the dance. He then pointed out that there are two kinds of dancing: performance dancing and partner dancing. He explained that I could do the second.

In performance dancing the room is full of people and you are dancing for spectators.

In partner dancing there are only two people in the room looking at the music together. There are no spectators. David’s character was shaped as he partnered with God to solve problems. This is different than playing to the crowd - A difference that Saul, Saul’s daughter Michal, and the 4 out of 5 people who don’t recognize God only slowly understand.

As Jesus spoke to the woman at the well, his focus was on setting her straight. The disciples approached with concerns about what that woman might do to his reputation. Recognizable Christ is less about worrying about what people might think and more about setting up partnerships with God.

Noah walked with God. An orientation where God is more important than public opinion is key to tailoring your response to incompetence. Please be careful when starting kids in sports judged by humans. Think of Saul. Then think of David. Then think of Jesus.

“Out! Damn’d Spot!”

This is a quote from MacBeth. Shakespeare knew a lot about human nature. Almost all humankind is caught up in a denial trap that terminates most hope for improvement. Denial happens when accepting the truth results in an unacceptable outcome. If there is no forgiveness, all that is left is denial. People cannot look in the mirror.

Forgiven Christ followers have a dexterity advantage when it comes to seeing the truth about everything, including their competence. Of all people, who better should be able to look candidly into the mirror than a Christ follower?
Smells like cinnamon.
¶ 8:11 PM