I woke up today and I thought, "I hate my job. At least, I hate this phase of my job. I wish I could just skip the next two months of my life and be done with it."
And then I was struck by the gravity and wrongness of my statement.
I guess recently I've realized that I'm concerned with my own finite mortality. I'm especially scared of growing old and dying. It's not that I'm worried, like Hamlet was, about "what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil." It's just that God gives us this one life, that we know of, to make count, and it's flying by day by day.
There are so many things I want to do, so many things I want to see, so many things I want to experience. This human existence that you're living in is the same one in which poets have penned sonnets, in which conquerors have taken Asia, in which architects have built skyscrapers, and in which lovers have built families. Life is too short to consider any of it expendable. I am 24: I am already 1/3 to 1/4 of the way through my expected term, and closer if unforeseen circumstances come to bear, and I feel like I'm just getting started. How can I afford to consider any period expendable? We do love to anticipate things to come, but I can't think of saying of any present period of time, "I wish it were over already" because it's part of a brief, finite lease on this earth. When we abide in the mentality that we wish now were over already, we don't consider the expendable time, and it's almost the same as if we had pressed our magical fast-forward button. --
-- I have to leave for work now. To be continued.
Continuation: there are a lot of things that could be said on the topic of finite mortality and carpe diem and all that, and most of them have been said to the point where there's nothing incredibly new on the subject I could post here. Suffice it to say that while there are things we suffer through patiently and deliberately, there is never a time where you should be wishing away a part of your God-given life. When that dilemma arises, either change your attitude or change your circumstances.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Samaritan
So the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) has worked its way into popular reference, but today I was confronted with the fact that I might not really understand the story well enough to be a Good Samaritan.
I guess if I found someone lying bleeding and battered on the roadside, I'd probably stop and help that person out. That's what any decent person would do. The Good Samaritan is not a story about what any decent person would do because at least two decent people walked right on by the injured man. Priests, righteous men, and the like. I've heard the story once preached (here's the link, just click on the sermon from 6/15/08) in a way that fleshed out a lot of significant contextual details about the Good Samaritan story: that the road from Jericho to Jerusalem was a long, straight road, infamous for violence and robbery, and that a despised Samaritan would be the biggest target for getting his ass kicked on that road, much more so than an Aaronic priest, giving him great incentive just to hurry on his way, and that the naked victim was virtually unidentifiable, essentially an everyman whose only definite characteristics were that he was beaten half to death on the side of the road: that he was in need.
Today I was driving home from work at 12:30 am, and I passed an everyman with his thumb up under a streetlight along the winding country road to home. Faded baseball cap, orange reflective construction worker vest, blue jeans, cigarette. Everyman. As I watched him diminish in the rearview mirror, I saw him stare long and resignedly at the back of my car. Just another car passing by. And I thought to myself that I didn't know anything about this guy, except that he appeared to be in need of a ride, presumably to somewhere like home, but at least to a better place to spend the night than the side of the road in the middle of rural dark nowhere. I wondered why I was so willing to volunteer at homeless shelters in large, sponsored groups, but not to pick this hitchhiker up. A lot of excuses surfaced immediately because we're quick to excuse ourselves: I was tired, I had a long day behind me and another ahead, this man could be a dangerous psychokiller, no normal person would expect to give hitchhikers a ride, I owe it to my family and fiancee to live safely, and a million more. But I didn't really think the guy was a psychokiller. If someone doesn't own a car and wears a construction vest, that makes him underprivileged and therefore violent? I've always said that love means you give the other person the benefit of the doubt. And I realized that I had no good reason not to help him out. That's the thing about helping people: you can start anytime you decide it's what you want to do.
So after five miles of this mental back-and-forth between the little angel and little devil on either shoulder, I turned my car around and drove back to that intersection, to the streetlight, but he was already gone. I was a little relieved, but also ashamed. If Jesus tells a story illustrating how to love your neighbor, and in that story, the person with the most to lose chose to act in love at great personal risk, then a guy like me can definitely give a guy a simple car ride home without letting pre-judgment or inconvenience stand in the way.
Is "pre-judgment" a sort of etymological precursor to "prejudice"?
Addendum: Today (the day after) I saw him again and I gave him a ride home. It would have been a 10 mile midnight walk. His name was Luke, and he told me his life story, and he told me the key to a successful marriage is communication. He's worked at the same paper mill with the same partner for 15 years. I think he was pretty stoked about not having to walk 10 miles.
I guess if I found someone lying bleeding and battered on the roadside, I'd probably stop and help that person out. That's what any decent person would do. The Good Samaritan is not a story about what any decent person would do because at least two decent people walked right on by the injured man. Priests, righteous men, and the like. I've heard the story once preached (here's the link, just click on the sermon from 6/15/08) in a way that fleshed out a lot of significant contextual details about the Good Samaritan story: that the road from Jericho to Jerusalem was a long, straight road, infamous for violence and robbery, and that a despised Samaritan would be the biggest target for getting his ass kicked on that road, much more so than an Aaronic priest, giving him great incentive just to hurry on his way, and that the naked victim was virtually unidentifiable, essentially an everyman whose only definite characteristics were that he was beaten half to death on the side of the road: that he was in need.
Today I was driving home from work at 12:30 am, and I passed an everyman with his thumb up under a streetlight along the winding country road to home. Faded baseball cap, orange reflective construction worker vest, blue jeans, cigarette. Everyman. As I watched him diminish in the rearview mirror, I saw him stare long and resignedly at the back of my car. Just another car passing by. And I thought to myself that I didn't know anything about this guy, except that he appeared to be in need of a ride, presumably to somewhere like home, but at least to a better place to spend the night than the side of the road in the middle of rural dark nowhere. I wondered why I was so willing to volunteer at homeless shelters in large, sponsored groups, but not to pick this hitchhiker up. A lot of excuses surfaced immediately because we're quick to excuse ourselves: I was tired, I had a long day behind me and another ahead, this man could be a dangerous psychokiller, no normal person would expect to give hitchhikers a ride, I owe it to my family and fiancee to live safely, and a million more. But I didn't really think the guy was a psychokiller. If someone doesn't own a car and wears a construction vest, that makes him underprivileged and therefore violent? I've always said that love means you give the other person the benefit of the doubt. And I realized that I had no good reason not to help him out. That's the thing about helping people: you can start anytime you decide it's what you want to do.
So after five miles of this mental back-and-forth between the little angel and little devil on either shoulder, I turned my car around and drove back to that intersection, to the streetlight, but he was already gone. I was a little relieved, but also ashamed. If Jesus tells a story illustrating how to love your neighbor, and in that story, the person with the most to lose chose to act in love at great personal risk, then a guy like me can definitely give a guy a simple car ride home without letting pre-judgment or inconvenience stand in the way.
Is "pre-judgment" a sort of etymological precursor to "prejudice"?
Addendum: Today (the day after) I saw him again and I gave him a ride home. It would have been a 10 mile midnight walk. His name was Luke, and he told me his life story, and he told me the key to a successful marriage is communication. He's worked at the same paper mill with the same partner for 15 years. I think he was pretty stoked about not having to walk 10 miles.
Monday, August 10, 2009
QNA
I've often been told that my thought progression is typically non-linear. A week ago, I was trying to remember a phrase that I was going to write down that could serve as a simplification for how we meander through problem-solving life, and another question occurred to me: is life a question that begs an answer or an answer that begs a question? And of course, that was a much better thought than the one I was originally trying to recall.
Of course, you can substitute anything meaningful for "life" in that question: is truth an answer that begs a question or a question that begs an answer? What about God? I know people who have come to faith in Jesus Christ because He was the answer to a long series of philosophical and ontological questions: people who started by asking what sort of God might exist, and what sort of God would need to exist for the world to make sense, and what real love might look like in demonstrated form, and how a universal sense of justice and mercy might play out, and they ended up discovering the gospel as an ultimate answer to their sojourning and a completion to what they were missing. This sort of thinking is well found in C.S. Lewis nonfiction. Life was the question that begged an answer. But I also have known of people who have encountered Jesus Christ, in some form or another, and been pressed to something deeper, to ask questions and consider aspects of life they had never before considered or seen. Maybe Paul is a great example: in his encounter with Jesus, Jesus's glory and presence literally blinds him, and based on the reality and magnitude of his experience with Jesus, Paul goes on to ask (and address) questions about his eternal status, how Christians should live, how the church should act and govern itself, and where the young set of believers stood in their faith and their theology. As far as I can read from his writings, Paul did not initially approach life with questions: for him, God was the answer that begged the questions.
There are decidedly people in both camps, and I think nowadays, I sympathize more with the answer-begging-the-question camp. Having gone to a small, private high school, I was exposed to a lot of innovative teachers who were always trying new pedagogical methodologies. The first three days of a physics class might start with an open-ended discussion on the subject, "What is science?" One semester exam for a math class was simply the question: "Is mathematics created or discovered? Explain why." The starting point for learning, for the search for truth, was the big questions, and the value was in the experience of formulating frameworks and testing answers. But there were also the science teachers who were effective by simply making something explode in a beaker on the first day of class, demonstrating to us beyond a doubt that science existed and that it was something to be reckoned with. And based on watching a volatile exothermic reaction or nodes materialize out of nowhere in a vibrating transverse wave on a piece of string, we had to figure out relevant questions and probable answers. And it seems to me that a lot of the Old Testament is God taking that same show-me approach. Bam! Burning bush. Bam! The Red Sea parts. Bam! Pillar of fire. Here I am, I am God, you know beyond a doubt that I am out here, real and in your face. Now that you've seen me, I'm sure you have some questions because I am the Answer that begs the questions.
This demonstrative approach surely finds itself also in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to where the apostle John declares, "This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and send His only Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."
When I was growing up, I read almost all of the prominent child psychology books of the 1990's. It's weird, but it's true. My mom would borrow these parenting books from the library, and I'd read them to stay ahead of her so I could see what new parenting techniques or attitudes were forthcoming, so I ended up reading Reviving Ophelia, The War Against Boys, and numerous others, including Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong. That last book addressed trends and implications in moral education in American schools, and in particular, it advocated the old-school William Bennett approach of teaching virtues like honesty, courage, perseverance, and using stories to reinforce the points. The book contrasted this recommended approach with the more recent tendencies to present children with ethical scenarios and have them formulate a sense of morality based on their conclusions: if your family were starving, would it be morally permissible to steal bread to feed them, and so forth. Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong made the point that children are not naturally good -- they have to be taught morality -- and presenting them with complex ethical scenarios before their moral sensibilities are established is disorienting at best and damaging at worst. The book made a lot of ancillary points that were stupid and obsolete in its thinking, but it gave more credence to the notion that sometimes answers should precede questions.
I'm not saying that my proclivity towards the answer camp is more correct (that conclusion is left as an inference to the reader), but it's probable that this classification might serve as a helpful way to understand people better: whether they begin with questions or whether they begin with answers. I think conversations will make more sense. I think life, truth, God can work with either.
Of course, you can substitute anything meaningful for "life" in that question: is truth an answer that begs a question or a question that begs an answer? What about God? I know people who have come to faith in Jesus Christ because He was the answer to a long series of philosophical and ontological questions: people who started by asking what sort of God might exist, and what sort of God would need to exist for the world to make sense, and what real love might look like in demonstrated form, and how a universal sense of justice and mercy might play out, and they ended up discovering the gospel as an ultimate answer to their sojourning and a completion to what they were missing. This sort of thinking is well found in C.S. Lewis nonfiction. Life was the question that begged an answer. But I also have known of people who have encountered Jesus Christ, in some form or another, and been pressed to something deeper, to ask questions and consider aspects of life they had never before considered or seen. Maybe Paul is a great example: in his encounter with Jesus, Jesus's glory and presence literally blinds him, and based on the reality and magnitude of his experience with Jesus, Paul goes on to ask (and address) questions about his eternal status, how Christians should live, how the church should act and govern itself, and where the young set of believers stood in their faith and their theology. As far as I can read from his writings, Paul did not initially approach life with questions: for him, God was the answer that begged the questions.
There are decidedly people in both camps, and I think nowadays, I sympathize more with the answer-begging-the-question camp. Having gone to a small, private high school, I was exposed to a lot of innovative teachers who were always trying new pedagogical methodologies. The first three days of a physics class might start with an open-ended discussion on the subject, "What is science?" One semester exam for a math class was simply the question: "Is mathematics created or discovered? Explain why." The starting point for learning, for the search for truth, was the big questions, and the value was in the experience of formulating frameworks and testing answers. But there were also the science teachers who were effective by simply making something explode in a beaker on the first day of class, demonstrating to us beyond a doubt that science existed and that it was something to be reckoned with. And based on watching a volatile exothermic reaction or nodes materialize out of nowhere in a vibrating transverse wave on a piece of string, we had to figure out relevant questions and probable answers. And it seems to me that a lot of the Old Testament is God taking that same show-me approach. Bam! Burning bush. Bam! The Red Sea parts. Bam! Pillar of fire. Here I am, I am God, you know beyond a doubt that I am out here, real and in your face. Now that you've seen me, I'm sure you have some questions because I am the Answer that begs the questions.
This demonstrative approach surely finds itself also in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to where the apostle John declares, "This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and send His only Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."
When I was growing up, I read almost all of the prominent child psychology books of the 1990's. It's weird, but it's true. My mom would borrow these parenting books from the library, and I'd read them to stay ahead of her so I could see what new parenting techniques or attitudes were forthcoming, so I ended up reading Reviving Ophelia, The War Against Boys, and numerous others, including Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong. That last book addressed trends and implications in moral education in American schools, and in particular, it advocated the old-school William Bennett approach of teaching virtues like honesty, courage, perseverance, and using stories to reinforce the points. The book contrasted this recommended approach with the more recent tendencies to present children with ethical scenarios and have them formulate a sense of morality based on their conclusions: if your family were starving, would it be morally permissible to steal bread to feed them, and so forth. Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong made the point that children are not naturally good -- they have to be taught morality -- and presenting them with complex ethical scenarios before their moral sensibilities are established is disorienting at best and damaging at worst. The book made a lot of ancillary points that were stupid and obsolete in its thinking, but it gave more credence to the notion that sometimes answers should precede questions.
I'm not saying that my proclivity towards the answer camp is more correct (that conclusion is left as an inference to the reader), but it's probable that this classification might serve as a helpful way to understand people better: whether they begin with questions or whether they begin with answers. I think conversations will make more sense. I think life, truth, God can work with either.
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