Bishop Rob Wright:
Jesus used to ask his friends who do you say I am right? And I think the invitation here is is that you know, for us to get quiet with ourselves on a walk or, you know, by the lake or whatever, wherever we do quiet and say you know who am I? Am I what my mother says I am? You know, because sometimes the family of origin issues can be a blunting our access to God’s grace. Or am I who God says I am? And just to latch on to that, but God says some wonderful things about who we are.
Melissa Rau:
This is Four People with Bishop Rob Wright. Welcome to Four People with Bishop Rob Wright. I’m your host, melissa Rau, and this is a conversation inspired by Four Faith, a weekly devotion sent out every Friday. You can find a link to this week’s Four Faith and a link to subscribe in the episode’s description. Good morning, bishop.
Bishop Rob Wright:
Good morning.
Melissa Rau:
You titled this week’s devotion Enough, and it’s based off of Psalm 34. And to me, Psalm 34 is really it’s a message and praise for deliverance from trouble, yeah. And so I skimmed the whole Psalm and I’m like, okay, but where’s the enough thing? And so tell us what’s on your mind today.
Bishop Rob Wright:
Well, it’s been on my mind for a while. Actually, like everybody else, I’m listening to the media, I’m listening to the news, I’m watching my phone, I’m skimming Facebook, I’m on Instagram I mean just like everybody else. I’m reading the newspapers, et cetera, and I’m noticing something in popular culture. I’m noticing maybe it’s always been there. I’m noticing that we’re talking about being enough. I’m hearing wives and husbands and young people talk about being enough. If you do a little bit of a search, you can find websites. You can find TED Talks about being enough and, as I say in the meditation, that concerns me. And it concerns me because do we really need one more invitation to lifelong insecurity? Do we really need one more invitation to a perpetual sort of emotional and spiritual torment? And that’s the funny thing about reading the Bible, living with scripture for a while, is that you listen to the popular culture through a particular ear and when you read the Psalms and other parts of the scriptures, you listen to Jesus talk. You know that we have something to say back to these ideas, that these ideas are just a sort of refreshed version of vanity and really a functioning atheism. And what I mean by that is I’m sure you’ll ask what I mean by that is is that whoever said we were enough, and by what measure, and who gets the measure Right?
Melissa Rau:
Yeah, you know it’s funny. Ever since Hamilton came out the musical with themes of enough and being satisfied.
Bishop Rob Wright:
Yeah.
Melissa Rau:
I’ve never, actually I’ve never really identified well with that statement because I’m like I don’t know that, I just want to be enough. I think I get the sentiment.
Bishop Rob Wright:
Yeah, sure.
Melissa Rau:
Right, it’s really. It’s really about confidence and all that stuff, but I don’t want to just be enough. I want to be more than enough.
Bishop Rob Wright:
Well, god bless you, you know, for being more than enough. What I worry about is somehow implicit in the idea of enough is that I have no insufficiencies, that I have no inadequacies. That’s what concerns me. And when we think that a reality is possible, you know, beyond human frailty, then we sort of abandon. You know at least what we think, we know about being a human. Which is the best of us are flawed, right. The best of us are partial. You know, graces and talents are given in uneven proportions, right, I mean, or portions rather. So what I like about what the Bible has to say back to ideas that emerge in popular culture, is something that I think is deeper and solid. So, if I’m always aspiring to be enough, or even more than enough, you know, first of all, who gets to measure, by what measure, and is there peace in that, or is there a constant churning? And so, don’t get me wrong, I’m for excellence, I’m for getting up early, I’m for getting it done, I’m for, you know, a life, work balance, that is, health at home and achievement at work. I’m for all of that, but I just I think the scripture wants to help us call out our tendencies to be out of balance to be. You know, as one friend of mine used to say, out over our skis. You know, I’ve never skied a day in my life, but I get the image, you know. And so what I want to say in this meditation is is, first and foremost, I want to say that, as far as we can tell, no human being is enough. There is always room for growth, there’s always room for learning, and the best place to take our partialness is to the God of enough.
Melissa Rau:
Well, that’s really smart, because the last I think the last line of Psalm 34 really sums the rest of it up. It says the Lord redeems the life of servants. None of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned. So can you talk a little bit more about being enough versus taking refuge in God?
Bishop Rob Wright:
Well, maybe I think what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to say the only enoughness that we’re going to experience is when we take our partialness to God’s enoughness. I think that is the interdependent created order that will give the rest. It’s funny to me that when I’m writing these things, I’m working hard on them and sometimes I never know where I will land. I mean, I’m on a journey with the thing and it landed with rest, and I think that’s what my concern is. Is that, with this constant image? Bob Marley says that this is a world of lifelong insecurities, and is that the best we have to offer? And does God have anything to offer other than that? That’s what I’m interested in and, as I said in the meditation, the collected wisdom of men and women, innumerable men and women down through the millennia seem to think that the best usage or the best place for our fragmentation or the fragments of our lives is to throw it in the direction of the enough God and have the enough God actually help us to even see the beauty in our weaknesses and in our wounds and actually to make something of them that is good for, you know, the community. That’s the other part of it that I want to say about this obsession with individual enoughness is that it’s individual enoughness Right. And so it seems like what we’re just trying to do is be these, you know, encapsulated, individual, little icons of perfection. And you know, good luck with that. What I think I trust more is that I find a way and you find a way, and we find a way together to live with my benefits and my deficiencies in relationship with your benefits and your deficiencies, and somehow God stirs up that pot and makes something that’s good for more than you and me, and I think that’s a better idea of community rather than these little, you know, siloed, you know not quite fleshly human beings. It worries me, and I’ll tell you, it really worries me when I think about, you know, our teenagers, you know if the North Star and you know social media helps us along with these. You know perfect photographs and the perfect makeup and perfect bodies and all this sort of stuff. And then you know, I think a constant diet of that will send us spiraling. And here is God saying I created you in my image. You know those hips, those eyes, that nose, those earlobes, those hands, that height. Here’s God saying you know, I can use all of that, and I think that’s what I want people to talk about. More is God’s enough.
Melissa Rau:
Love it. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about that after a short break.
Easton Davis:
Hi listeners, thank you for listening to Four People. A space of digital evangelism. You can keep up with us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Robbrite. And now back to Four People.
Melissa Rau:
Welcome back to Four People, bishop. I’m curious about the goal then. So what’s our goal If our goal is not to be enough, or maybe enough is not possible, with or without, I’m not quite sure. What should we be striving toward?
Bishop Rob Wright:
Well, I think it is. I mean, I’m working it through myself. I haven’t got it all figured out, but I think it is to discover and develop the capacity that God has given you. I think that is what it is. I think it is understanding that I am an amalgam of grit and grace. I am an amalgam of strengths and weaknesses, and trying to figure out what the golden thread through that is and how to offer that to the world. I think that’s what the goal is. I remember at a be very vulnerable here with you. I remember in college just trying to figure out what life was going to be. I had finished five years as a Navy, I was putting myself through college, I was working three jobs and then, if that wasn’t enough, then comes this sort of cloud of who is God and who am I. I’m a little bit busy, god, right now, for this, you know. So I got to. I mean, I’m old school. Sometimes the kind of prayers you need to be praying are on your knees at your bedside, and I just remember being on my knees on my bedside saying, hey, god, that’s the way I pray. Hey, man, I need some help here. And I remember saying to myself you know, god, I have a. I like people, I have a big mouth, I can talk and I’m not afraid. And I don’t know what you can do with that, but I’m offering that to you. Now there’s a lot I didn’t have right. In fact a list of what I don’t have is pretty long, but I offered it. You know, in our Book of Common Prayer we call that oblation. That’s the prayer, it’s a genre of prayer, it’s oblations, it’s. I’ve done an audit, done some inventory, this is who I think I am and I’m offering it to you. I don’t know quite what to do with it, but maybe you do. That’s what I’m talking about. I don’t really even know what to do with me now. And so you know, these many years after that prayer, and so I think it’s a perpetual state of offering what we think we know about ourselves to God’s enoughness. You know, this is why I like St Paul so much. In Ephesians, the third chapter, god can do infinitely, abundantly more than I can ask or imagine, according to the faith that work in us. And so I think this whole idea about enough is that maybe our idea of our enough is limited by our limited imagination, and so I want to trust a God who has more imagination, according to St Paul’s, than I could ever ask or imagine, and so I’m worried that if I use my bar for where enough should be, if I will miss God’s mark, I’m wondering if you know I’ll settle for a burger and fries when God had you know, god had you know steak and you know filet mignon caviar for me. I’m worried about that, and so I don’t want to be my own God and my own vision be my whole life. I want to access God’s vision for my life, and I think that’s what I mean by God is enough.
Melissa Rau:
Okay, so what kind of message might you have, though, for people who don’t feel adequate, who don’t feel worthy of doing the work with God or have God work through them? Or, you know, people who feel overwhelmed or maybe intimidated by the whole notion that they are to be used by God?
Bishop Rob Wright:
Yeah, it’s a big struggle, I mean, especially when people get down into this whole notion of worthiness and deserving and all that sort of stuff. You know, I think one of the pieces that we’re talking about here, implicit in what we’re talking about here, is you know who gets to say what you are. So I think that this is why we have to maybe a prairie is. God helped me to see myself as you see me, right? I think you know. So this notion of worthiness is really sort of a vanity turned inside out, right, it is that, you know, it’s pridefulness. I’m saying I’m not worthy, but God has said you’re worthy. Now who gets to win the argument, right? So if you are made in God’s image, called according to God’s purpose, you know, fearfully and wonderfully made, as scripture says, right From your head top, from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, right, god is saying you are my beloved, you are my child, I mean, you know, we’ve got to figure out why we don’t want to believe that. We’ve got to decide whose voice we are listening to. First and foremost, worship really is. I have decided to describe maximum worship worthship to this person, these words, and so worship is. I am who God says, I am Right. I am not who Vogue magazine says I am Right. I am not what you know. We think about our own country. For a long time, you know, women were limited from full access to democratic process, and so, thank God for those suffer jets who said no, no, no, no, I am who God says I am. I am female, I am wonderfully made, I have memory, reason and skill, I have capacity and I ought to be participating in the democratic process, etc. So, when you look back at history, it is the people who decided to believe God you know what God said about who they were who have made the difference in the world, and so that’s what I would say. It’s like who do you say you are? I mean, jesus used to ask his friends who do you say I am Right? And I think the invitation here is is that, you know, for us to get quiet with ourselves on a walk or, you know, by the lake or whatever, wherever we do quiet and say you know who am I? Am I what my mother says I am? You know, because sometimes the family of origin issues can be blunting our access to God’s grace or am I who God says I am, and just to latch on to that. But God says some wonderful things about who we are and I think when we go there, the enough means, you know, am I talking enough to God? Am I deciding that, god you know? Am I letting the fact that God loves me penetrate my life enough? Yeah, I mean, that’s the enough I want to talk about.
Melissa Rau:
Well, and then clearly there needs to be a bit of competency then too, in what scripture says. God says yeah Right.
Bishop Rob Wright:
You know, they got this, they got this new thing. I don’t know if you have it there where you are.
Melissa Rau:
It’s called Google and I don’t know if I ever I don’t know that I always trust the Google.
Bishop Rob Wright:
Here’s what I mean. Here’s what I mean. A lot of people have done some of this work for you. I mean we could, we could do some searching about what the Bible says about you know who are we. I mean, you know there’s this wonderful and certainly there are. There are books, and, if we want to not trust the internet as much, but there are wonderful resources that can just help us to get some of these verses you know. You know in our consciousness, so we can begin to think about them. Look, I recognize that. You know the average person, if they go to church, if they go to church, is only in church an hour, hour and a half, and I recognize that you know whatever you’re getting for an hour and a half in many times, you know many times is no match for what you’re. You know what you’re getting. The other, you know six and three quarter days, right, six and seven, eight days, or whatever it is. And so I think we have got to just we’ve got to watch our diet, and what I mean by that is is that you know what are you feeding yourself, who are you allowing to feed you, what are those messages? You know? I mean I’ll sound like an old prude here now, and you know, what worries me a lot about the music that I listen to right now, that the young people are listening to, is it’s crass. And and what I mean crass, it’s not that it’s just not my taste, it is the messages have. Really, you know the messages are you’re a thing, you’re a brand, you know you’re, you’re, you’re a consumer at base and you’re not these other things, which is you are human, right, you’re made in God’s image, you have dignity and worth. You know you, you are. That sex is a gift given from God and you are not limited to your genitalia. You know so. So I worry about, you know, that constant diet of, of, of foolishness that people are ingesting. And you know I have to say this too while I’m on this subject maybe I’ll get myself in trouble here and it’s ironic to me that at these music awards, the people who sort of, who sort of call this sort of demeaning, these demeaning words, art, when they win the award, they stand up and say thank God, and I think, I think God is saying don’t thank me, baby. I didn’t write that. Look, we’re getting off the track here. What I’m trying to say is in God. There is enough to know about yourself. That will give you peace, that will give you a sense of wholeness that the world cannot give. But the world will give is this constant gerbil wheel. And the only way we can find our way into something that feels like still waters and green pastures, according to Psalm 23, is when I know that I’m in you, that is, I’m in God, and that God is somehow working through all of the unevenness and even some of the shards of my life to bring me peace and to benefit the world.
Melissa Rau:
Well, thank you, bishop, it’s never enough speaking and listeners. We’re grateful to you for listening to four people. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Rob Wright. Please subscribe, leave a review and we’ll be back with you next week.
