We have a fire pit in my backyard. We love our fire pit more than our house.
Our yard backs up to fields, train tracks, and a town park. It’s quiet except for our dogs barking at people walking by on the path. Eight years ago, I decided to build a fire pit for our family. I cleared the spot in the corner of the yard, put down weed block and rocks, built a nice perimeter. We bought a picnic table at Costco and a bunch of those cheap plastic Adirondack chairs you see for sale everywhere. I love my fire pit very much. Karen always says, “Building this fire pit is the best thing we’ve ever done to the house.”
Our fire pit is our happy place. It is the place where we sit on cool summer evenings and watch the sun go down. It is where our family gathers to roast marshmallows and retell old stories. It is where we sit with friends, drink wine, and talk late into the evening, the conversation flowing easily over the burning coals at our feet. There is something about a fire that gets you talking, makes you feel calm, loved, known, and heard. It is only 40 yards from the house, and it’s another world.
The pit itself is nothing special. I made it from a “kit” I bought at Lowe’s. The kit was comprised of—get this--bricks and a metal ring. It came with detailed instructions. “Make a circle with the bricks. Glue them together. Place the metal ring in the center.”
I’m a rebel. I didn’t follow the instructions. While I was setting it up, it looked too small, so I went and bought more bricks and made it wider. The ring no longer fit, so I gave it away. Lastly, I decided that gluing the bricks together was unnecessary. They weren’t going anywhere unless a tornado touched down in the center of them. If for some unforeseen reason I ever wanted to move my fire pit, I wouldn’t need a bulldozer or a dozen marines to do so. I could just move it brick by brick. There my fire pit sits to this day, orderly yet movable, solid yet impermanent, with no metal to contain the flame but posing no risk to anything around it. We’ve had a million fires by now, every one of them warm and beautiful.
This week, I decided to take a break from Facebook for a spell. Every day for the past few months, I would see everyone post their opinions over hot topics –COVID, politics, conspiracies, theology, and of course, race. Many of the opinions had merit and many were well-stated. Many were filled with grace and humility, though sadly some were characterized by arrogance, dismissiveness and mistrust. Some were laced in confidence and others were clearly works in progress. Regardless of what I thought of the opinions, the sheer volume of them, and the divisive tone of so many of them, was getting to me. My soul was burning, my eyes were watering, and my water bucket was empty. I needed to tap out for a spell.
So I’ve been thinking about my own opinions. I have many of them. My family and close friends know what they are. Some of them are strong, even passionate. As a pastor on Facebook (and in real life), I often must put my hands in my pockets to keep myself from typing what I want to say, only because I want to represent Jesus, not opinion, and because I want to unify, not divide. Besides, many of my opinions have changed over the years, and they will probably change again before it’s all over. I’d rather not read back over them 20 years from now and think, “Wow, I wasn’t very bright back then, was I?”
Anyway, as I was thinking about opinions and how we hold them, it occurred to me. Our opinions are like my fire pit. Bear with me.
Where do your opinions come from? Mine were a construct, a kit with directions. I got them from my Presbyterian parents, my small-town upbringing, my conservative college, my decades of immersion in the evangelical subculture. I got them from this friend or that preacher or this teacher. I got them from talk radio or the books I’ve read. They weren’t bad opinions, but they had room to grow. I haven’t changed that much—I’d still call myself basically conservative, and my faith in Jesus is stronger than ever. But at some point, I realized the ring wasn’t necessary. That metal circle I’d been carrying didn’t always fit the real world I was observing, a world of chaos, pain, and things I would never experience. It’s okay; my opinions can stretch a little bigger and wider. The circle can grow. I don’t feel threatened.
And what about those bricks and glue? My opinions, like bricks, are weighty. They aren’t easily moved and for the most part they are fine right where they are. But here’s the key: They aren’t glued down. They can be shuffled and re-arranged if necessary. If one is broken, it can be switched out for a new one. And for heaven’s sake, if for some reason I ever need to move the whole thing or change my conclusions, I can do it, brick by brick. By not gluing them down, I can change. I am agile in mind and nimble in spirit. I can still burn a good fire and my pit can still provide a place to gather and talk, but my opinions can move wherever the Spirit of God leads. Only he judges all things rightly.
Friends of all stripes—as a pastor, I implore you to consider this. Perhaps your opinions are like a fire pit. Perhaps you don’t need the ring anymore. Perhaps you never needed the glue in the first place. Perhaps it’s okay to change. Perhaps it’s even time to build a new space and light a new fire and see where it leads.
We can still have a beautiful conversation around our circle.