HELPFUL & NECESSARY REDUNDANCIES

As a kid growing up, I remember mumbling the phrase, “That’s redundant.”  By that I meant  “You don’t have to keep repeating yourself.  I got it.  Now shut it.”  As you might imagine, I would only mumble such a response under my breath.  My frustration was usually in response to an older person (brother, parent, coach) micro-managing my behavior at the time.  For years I thought “redundant” was a negative word implying words and deeds that were unnecessarily repetitive.  This orientation likely peaked in my early adolescence when I naturally thought that I was smarter than my parents and when hubris was just to be accepted as a well deserved reality.  Looking back I can see how at age fourteen I thought my parents were rather dull and lacking in understanding about life.  By age twenty-one I was surprised how much wisdom they had accrued in a short period of time.

With greater maturity over the years, I came to appreciate how wise and smart my parents really were and how their redundancies were really helpful and necessary to my development.  One in particular was reading the Bible as a family at the dinner table every night finishing with prayer.  My father called this redundancy "returning thanks."  Whoa to us if we left the table early and skipped this redundant practice.

You may remember the old joke that goes like this: a visitor to New York City asks an old virtuoso musician for directions: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall.”  The old fellow replies, “Practice, practice, practice.”   I love that story, because it is so true broadly in life.  Not everything is like learning to ride a bike in that once you learn you don’t have to learn twice.  This is particularly true in human relationships and spiritual formation.   There redundancies are necessary and helpful if relationships are to grow into intimacy.

William Booth, co-founder in 1865 of The Salvation Army, was known to say from time to time, “The tendency of fire is to go out.”  What he meant was that our spiritual relationship with God will die out unless the fire of that relationship is redundantly stoked, fed fuel, and continually attended to.  In other words, there is a necessary and helpful redundancy to any relationship (friendship, marriage, business, and spiritual journey).  The fire of a relationship must receive attention and care whether it is to be blazing as in a steel mill or just giving warmth and light in the hearth of a home.

Spiritually speaking, to grow in grace and intimacy with God, it is helpful and necessary to daily practice what John Wesley called the means of grace: prayer, reading Scripture, meditation, fellowship with other believers, worship, reading wholesome literature, giving thanks and praise to God always as testimony to his grace and provision, and all the other ways we remain open to God’s presence and appreciate His identity.  To paraphrase the Carnegie Hall joke,  “How do I get to being “filled to the measure of the fullness of God?” (Christ-likeness, Holiness, intimacy with God)  Answer:  Helpful and necessary redundancy of the means of grace are required.  This is not because the means are ends in themselves.  They remain God’s means.  They are his ways in which God draws near and speaks to us revealing his love and guiding us in the journey with Him.

A good place to start with helpful and necessary redundancy is between an appreciation of Thanksgiving and the glory of Christmas.  Try thirty days of verbally articulating thanks and praise (affirmation) to those to whom you are close.   Watch how it spills over into your spiritual life.  You will discover its salutary impact on all your relationships.  You will also discover how God will use your thanks and praise to draw you even closer to Him throughout this special holiday season.  Thanks and praise be to God for the possibilities of helpful and necessary redundancies!