I have been a long time estranged from posting in this blog. And in parallel, I have a long time felt estranged in my relationship with my Father. That is to say, not only have I not been to church for several weeks, but I have not taken the time to pray, to read, to serve, to worship, to the point of relative estrangement.
I know that I have often said, because it is true, that you don't need to perform any purifying rites or jump through hoops or meet prerequisites to draw close to God. You don't need to become clean, pure, and good in order to approach Jesus because the point is Jesus's redemptive grace, not the worthiness of our offerings. So is it right that I feel estranged from God when I haven't been paid attention to Him in a while? It's not as if I have to wash myself in some river or sacrifice a spotless lamb or subsidize an orphanage in Darfur, and then I can go to church on a buzz of righteousness. In a very syllogistic sense, sin means separation from God, Jesus's death saves us from our sin, therefore our estrangement from God is stripped away wholly by Jesus's sacrifice. But in a relational sense, if you've wandered away from your lover for a while, there's a very personal process of reconciliation that needs to be worked through by both parties.
I'm reminded by the culmination of the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. Surely, the son knew that his father was good and merciful. But after squandering his wealth in wild living and falling to the abject position of feeding pigs for a living, the son returned home with humility, yes, and meekness, yes, but also a sense of estrangement. The son said to himself, I will go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.
The son returns with no sense of entitlement. He knows who his father is. But does he see himself as a beloved heir because of his father's extravagant love? Or does he see himself as a son estranged from his father, beginning the road to restitution? Dramatic irony prevails; we know how the story ends. The prodigal son is embraced joyously by his father, who sets aside his judgment, wrath, and sorrow, and runs to welcome his lost child home. And in a certain sense, I guess it's less important to figure out whether the prodigal son was right or wrong to feel such abject undeserving because this story is a true and human story, and whether or not we should feel that way, when I have estranged myself from God, I do feel like the prodigal son and I do feel that God runs to me with welcoming and encircling arms.
I used to identify more with the older brother: the one who was patient and diligent for years and never got the recognition he deserved. I used to be troubled by that the idea that I was siding with the wrong perspective, and thought it would be a sign of wisdom and a realization of truth when I finally came around to identifying with the younger brother, the prodigal son.
I prefer suspended chords to tonal resolution in music, but I think I prefer reconciliations to estrangements in real life.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Hot Sun, Dry Sand, Empty Nalgenes
I've liked deserts for a few years now. I originally liked mountains exclusively, and I still like mountains, but as someone once said, there's always gonna be another mountain. Deserts convey this wonderful sense of expanse and vastness, this sense that you're seeing all there is to see and at the same time, there's more beyond the horizon in every direction; and they test the adventurer's mettle in a different way than a mountain. Where a mountain will dictate how quickly or deliberately you climb, what vistas will unfold around the next switchback, or the level of your adrenaline as you navigate a particular sector, a desert makes the challenge simple and puts it directly in your control: how far are you willing to go?
Usually, when I venture into the desert, I bring a finite number of Nalgene bottles with me, and when I run out of water, I turn back. (I hate it when authors casually reference their experience like that, as if most authors have ever spent a lot of time climbing Mount McKinley or rebuilding a war-torn African village, but know that I have been in a lot of deserts.) This method pretty much tells me how far I can allow myself to go with a guaranteed assurance of survival.
Several thousand years ago, a group of liberated Hebrew slaves also set out in a jaunty exodus into the desert of Sinai, and they also carried a finite amount of water in urns or sheepskins or whatever sufficed before BPA-free polypropylene came into common usage. They probably refilled all their containers on the eastern side of the Red Sea, knowing it might be some time before they had another opportunity, and headed off following a giant pillar of cloud or fire, depending on outdoor lighting. And at a certain point, they ran out of water.
To this point, the Children of Israel and I share a relatively common experience. Faith is the point at which you shake your water bottles empty and continue into the desert based only on the promises of God's deliverance.
At a certain point when I was living in Charleston, I remember thinking it funny that I had recently purchased three used books, and all three of them had to do with the main characters crossing desert landscapes, and two of them were about them perishing in the wild. The defining characteristic of a desert is that there's no obvious water out there, so it's not the same as rolling the dice and committing yourself to fate. Once you've run out of the water you brought, your plan is pretty much no plan. So it took a lot of faith on the part of the Children to continue on to what most of us would call probable death. Especially since, as some pointed out, they could've just returned to Goshen. But the Children carried on into the wilderness for forty long years, relying on God alone, unable to use anything they had brought to ensure their survival. This allegory is true in terms of our ultimate condition of sin and our need to be saved by God, but physically, corporeally, I don't think I've ever been in such a place of trust, in a place where I so exclusively needed God's provision.
The Children did not always acquit themselves with grace and patient faith. They complained bitterly, rebelled, and doubted the Lord, wrongfully. But they were in a place in the desert, astoundingly dependent on God's provision, that few of us have seen. Few of us have the faith to shake our water bottles empty and continue our journey reliant on the providence of God.
Usually, when I venture into the desert, I bring a finite number of Nalgene bottles with me, and when I run out of water, I turn back. (I hate it when authors casually reference their experience like that, as if most authors have ever spent a lot of time climbing Mount McKinley or rebuilding a war-torn African village, but know that I have been in a lot of deserts.) This method pretty much tells me how far I can allow myself to go with a guaranteed assurance of survival.
Several thousand years ago, a group of liberated Hebrew slaves also set out in a jaunty exodus into the desert of Sinai, and they also carried a finite amount of water in urns or sheepskins or whatever sufficed before BPA-free polypropylene came into common usage. They probably refilled all their containers on the eastern side of the Red Sea, knowing it might be some time before they had another opportunity, and headed off following a giant pillar of cloud or fire, depending on outdoor lighting. And at a certain point, they ran out of water.
To this point, the Children of Israel and I share a relatively common experience. Faith is the point at which you shake your water bottles empty and continue into the desert based only on the promises of God's deliverance.
At a certain point when I was living in Charleston, I remember thinking it funny that I had recently purchased three used books, and all three of them had to do with the main characters crossing desert landscapes, and two of them were about them perishing in the wild. The defining characteristic of a desert is that there's no obvious water out there, so it's not the same as rolling the dice and committing yourself to fate. Once you've run out of the water you brought, your plan is pretty much no plan. So it took a lot of faith on the part of the Children to continue on to what most of us would call probable death. Especially since, as some pointed out, they could've just returned to Goshen. But the Children carried on into the wilderness for forty long years, relying on God alone, unable to use anything they had brought to ensure their survival. This allegory is true in terms of our ultimate condition of sin and our need to be saved by God, but physically, corporeally, I don't think I've ever been in such a place of trust, in a place where I so exclusively needed God's provision.
The Children did not always acquit themselves with grace and patient faith. They complained bitterly, rebelled, and doubted the Lord, wrongfully. But they were in a place in the desert, astoundingly dependent on God's provision, that few of us have seen. Few of us have the faith to shake our water bottles empty and continue our journey reliant on the providence of God.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
To the Unknown God
Back in college, when I was going through a stagnant period in my relationship with God, my college ministry advisor suggested that I re-read the stories of Biblical role models. Abraham, Moses, David, the Apostles. Jesus. I think oftentimes when we think of analyzing a role model, we start out with the blanket approach of finding application and "we should do as they do," so when we read that Stephen admonished the Pharisees, we instantly begin to think of modern-day Pharisees that we're supposed to be admonishing. And sometimes we skip that step of actually considering what these Biblical heroes did and appreciating in humility how greatly they acted for God.
Incidentally, South Park just put out an episode entitled "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs" that cautions the viewer not to enter a reading of a text with too many preconceptions. Well, that was one of the lessons, among many, from that episode.
In my eyes, Acts 17 is one of those episodes for Paul that stands out as a high point in his ministry simply by the feat alone, not because it was Paul and we're supposed to be like Paul. The act is a speech Paul gives. The place is Areopagus. The audience is a group of Athenian philosophers who "spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas."
Paul begins his speech acknowledging that the Athenians are very religious. He mentions that he has carefully studied their objects of worship and found an altar labeled TO THE UNKNOWN GOD: a philosophical ideation of the unknownable. He then boldly posits that he is going to reveal this unknown god to them. Paul then describes in short the nature of our monotheistic creator God, emphasizing the difference between an omnipotent spiritual God and a human-formed idol and explaining the relationship we are meant to have with this God. He incorporates a quotation from a Greek poet and uses it as the basis for further thought. He ends his speech with the admonition that in the past, God overlooked idolatry, but those days are over and judgment is pending through a man that God demonstrably raised from the dead.
Let's look at what Paul did there, in just a few paragraphs. Sometimes we read too much into the written text of an oratory, forgetting that speeches are meant to be heard in the moment and not re-analyzed on a line by line basis, but the Athenians are erudite enough to indulge us on this one.
Paul demonstrates that he is familiar with the Athenian religious and philosophical beliefs. He has made a careful study of their temples and their idols, he knows of their religious devotion, and he even quotes one of their poets' writing to them. How many Christians out there take such a righteous pride in their oblivion to other cultures, including pop culture? I certainly haven't studied the holy texts or practices of other religions enough to engage them on their own terms. I couldn't quote you one passage from the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita. But Paul wouldn't have been effective here if he had just sailed in the breezeway of the temple and started selling his own wares without any appreciation for the mindset of the people he was supposed to be engaging.
Yet even as Paul acknowledges the Athenians' piety and philosophy, he is bold enough still to declare the truth of God in no uncertain terms. He says, "You say there is an unknown God. Here is the God you do not know." It is a remarkable segue, both unashamed and sensitive. Paul realizes that these men are searching for truth: it is a mark of wisdom to acknowledge that there are things we do not and cannot know. Instead of rebuking them for their polygamy and idolatry, he recognizes that they are searching and points the way to the truth. Paul also doesn't hold back on his authority on the truth. Sometimes, we get herded too far down the path of acknowledging the unknown. We might desire too much to find common ground, and when someone says, "Well, can we really know anything about God and Jesus?" we might hesitate to declare an absolute truth, and instead fall back to a subjective "Well, we can't know anything for certain sure, here's what has worked in my life." The truth is that we can't know everything; the truth is also that there are some things we do know, things that we have considered carefully and found to be true and corroborated by the Holy Spirit, and we should share those things unashamedly. And somehow, delicately and confidently, Paul threads the needle between sensitivity and audacity in this section of his speech. It's a trick we would do well to learn.
It's worth noting that Paul does not launch into an exposition on the life and sacrificial death of Jesus in this speech. If you're reading the passage for an instant apply-to-my-life, you might find this absence problematic because how are you supposed to present the gospel without the four-step methodology? But if you're reading the passage and appreciating that it's Paul talking to a group of intellectuals and doing so brilliantly, it's more than an example. It's upper level oratory. But it is an interesting question and maybe an inexplicable gap, considering that the Athenians began the exchange by asking Paul to explain his new teaching on Jesus and His resurrection. Paul only mentions those items at the conclusion of his speech, as demonstration of God's intent for man to repent. One has to wonder how much the Athenians have already heard about the gospel of Jesus.
The speech ends with the reception given it by the Athenians in the crowd. Some sneered, some said that they wanted to hear more thoughts on the matter, and some became disciples. Sometimes we can hear truth and only sometimes it will move us.
Incidentally, South Park just put out an episode entitled "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs" that cautions the viewer not to enter a reading of a text with too many preconceptions. Well, that was one of the lessons, among many, from that episode.
In my eyes, Acts 17 is one of those episodes for Paul that stands out as a high point in his ministry simply by the feat alone, not because it was Paul and we're supposed to be like Paul. The act is a speech Paul gives. The place is Areopagus. The audience is a group of Athenian philosophers who "spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas."
Paul begins his speech acknowledging that the Athenians are very religious. He mentions that he has carefully studied their objects of worship and found an altar labeled TO THE UNKNOWN GOD: a philosophical ideation of the unknownable. He then boldly posits that he is going to reveal this unknown god to them. Paul then describes in short the nature of our monotheistic creator God, emphasizing the difference between an omnipotent spiritual God and a human-formed idol and explaining the relationship we are meant to have with this God. He incorporates a quotation from a Greek poet and uses it as the basis for further thought. He ends his speech with the admonition that in the past, God overlooked idolatry, but those days are over and judgment is pending through a man that God demonstrably raised from the dead.
Let's look at what Paul did there, in just a few paragraphs. Sometimes we read too much into the written text of an oratory, forgetting that speeches are meant to be heard in the moment and not re-analyzed on a line by line basis, but the Athenians are erudite enough to indulge us on this one.
Paul demonstrates that he is familiar with the Athenian religious and philosophical beliefs. He has made a careful study of their temples and their idols, he knows of their religious devotion, and he even quotes one of their poets' writing to them. How many Christians out there take such a righteous pride in their oblivion to other cultures, including pop culture? I certainly haven't studied the holy texts or practices of other religions enough to engage them on their own terms. I couldn't quote you one passage from the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita. But Paul wouldn't have been effective here if he had just sailed in the breezeway of the temple and started selling his own wares without any appreciation for the mindset of the people he was supposed to be engaging.
Yet even as Paul acknowledges the Athenians' piety and philosophy, he is bold enough still to declare the truth of God in no uncertain terms. He says, "You say there is an unknown God. Here is the God you do not know." It is a remarkable segue, both unashamed and sensitive. Paul realizes that these men are searching for truth: it is a mark of wisdom to acknowledge that there are things we do not and cannot know. Instead of rebuking them for their polygamy and idolatry, he recognizes that they are searching and points the way to the truth. Paul also doesn't hold back on his authority on the truth. Sometimes, we get herded too far down the path of acknowledging the unknown. We might desire too much to find common ground, and when someone says, "Well, can we really know anything about God and Jesus?" we might hesitate to declare an absolute truth, and instead fall back to a subjective "Well, we can't know anything for certain sure, here's what has worked in my life." The truth is that we can't know everything; the truth is also that there are some things we do know, things that we have considered carefully and found to be true and corroborated by the Holy Spirit, and we should share those things unashamedly. And somehow, delicately and confidently, Paul threads the needle between sensitivity and audacity in this section of his speech. It's a trick we would do well to learn.
It's worth noting that Paul does not launch into an exposition on the life and sacrificial death of Jesus in this speech. If you're reading the passage for an instant apply-to-my-life, you might find this absence problematic because how are you supposed to present the gospel without the four-step methodology? But if you're reading the passage and appreciating that it's Paul talking to a group of intellectuals and doing so brilliantly, it's more than an example. It's upper level oratory. But it is an interesting question and maybe an inexplicable gap, considering that the Athenians began the exchange by asking Paul to explain his new teaching on Jesus and His resurrection. Paul only mentions those items at the conclusion of his speech, as demonstration of God's intent for man to repent. One has to wonder how much the Athenians have already heard about the gospel of Jesus.
The speech ends with the reception given it by the Athenians in the crowd. Some sneered, some said that they wanted to hear more thoughts on the matter, and some became disciples. Sometimes we can hear truth and only sometimes it will move us.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Romans vs James
When posed with the query, "I really have intentions to start reading the Bible again. Where is a good book to start?" I would always point to Romans. Romans is a great summation of Christian theology, written in very organized and accessible language, and its chapters flow from one logical thesis to the next. The first chapter describes humanity's moral corruption and deviation from God, the second continues on to explain the law that delineates between holy and unholy and the condemnation under which we stand, and the rest of the book goes through the arguments of whether Jewishness is of spiritual import, the exemplification of godly faith by Abraham the patriarch, the explication of God's provision and our redemption through Jesus Christ, the exhortation to live transformed and righteous lives as new believers, our obligation and indebtedness to God's divine law, the explanation of the great hope we have in God's salvation, and the call to bring the gospel to the Jews and to the nations. In fact, most evangelical Christian literature follows a similar model: describe God's perfection and creationist relationship with man, demonstrate man's sin and corruption, show Jesus as the hope and assurance of salvation, and give counsel to lead transformed and missional lives in response to the gospel truth. Romans is overall an excellent read for establishing the basics about sin, the law, salvation, grace, and the relationship between God, Jesus, me, and you.
For the advanced subscriber to the gospel of Christ, I've recently decided to point to the book of James. Once upon a time, I was pretty dismissive of James because here was my understanding of the epistle:
Chapter 1, be persevering under trials, check.
Chapter 2, faith without works is dead, understood.
Chapter 3, no man can tame the tongue, simple concept.
Chapter 4, be nice and humble and peacemakers, okay.
Chapter 5, be patient for the Lord's coming and pray a lot, got it.
It's not that I oversimplified the text, although that certainly is true of most of my literary distillations. James is not a difficult or abstruse read. It lacks the bizarre prophecies, scriptural cross-references, or theological nuances that are more replete in a lot of other New Testament books. James is, to the casual reader, an easy book.
But the more I've progressed in my pursuit of Christ, the more I am convinced that this Christian life and our approach to scripture is not based in conceptual understanding. It is a benchmark of maturity for Christians that they progress from being able to read and interpret the Bible on an intellectual level to becoming the people that exemplify the better parts of God-inspired character. The first time you read James 1, you might read it like I read Proverbs: good wisdom, good advice for living so that we can all play nicely with each other. But the next time you read James 1, maybe you'll consider Jesus dying so that we could shrug off the shackles of sin, the dregs of our very nature, and become one with God and become like Him in righteousness, and you'll be humbled by the sort of person you are supposed to be: a person who welcomes trials and difficulties with joy in his heart, a person who takes pride in his humble circumstances knowing that he is where God wants him, a person who perseveres patiently through harsh circumstance spurred onward by an eternal perspective, a person who is quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, a person who keeps a tight rein on his tongue, a person who looks out for widows and orphans and keeps himself pure. And that's only the first chapter, succeeded by the chapter that tells you that faith without substantiating works is in vain.
If you read that passage not with the goal of conceptual understanding, (check, I've got this passage down) but with perspective on the sort of person you are and the sort of Christ-like nature God expects of His servants, it is utterly humbling and transforming, and you come to an awestruck understanding that only through God's grace and the transforming work of the Holy Spirit will you become anything like that because it's not in our nature. You come to appreciate that Jesus modeled this righteousness to unfettered perfection. You draw closer to God's heart.
Romans is a good book for the head. James is a good book for the heart. As Peekay would say, first with the head, and then with the heart. Ecclesiastes is probably Level III.
For the advanced subscriber to the gospel of Christ, I've recently decided to point to the book of James. Once upon a time, I was pretty dismissive of James because here was my understanding of the epistle:
Chapter 1, be persevering under trials, check.
Chapter 2, faith without works is dead, understood.
Chapter 3, no man can tame the tongue, simple concept.
Chapter 4, be nice and humble and peacemakers, okay.
Chapter 5, be patient for the Lord's coming and pray a lot, got it.
It's not that I oversimplified the text, although that certainly is true of most of my literary distillations. James is not a difficult or abstruse read. It lacks the bizarre prophecies, scriptural cross-references, or theological nuances that are more replete in a lot of other New Testament books. James is, to the casual reader, an easy book.
But the more I've progressed in my pursuit of Christ, the more I am convinced that this Christian life and our approach to scripture is not based in conceptual understanding. It is a benchmark of maturity for Christians that they progress from being able to read and interpret the Bible on an intellectual level to becoming the people that exemplify the better parts of God-inspired character. The first time you read James 1, you might read it like I read Proverbs: good wisdom, good advice for living so that we can all play nicely with each other. But the next time you read James 1, maybe you'll consider Jesus dying so that we could shrug off the shackles of sin, the dregs of our very nature, and become one with God and become like Him in righteousness, and you'll be humbled by the sort of person you are supposed to be: a person who welcomes trials and difficulties with joy in his heart, a person who takes pride in his humble circumstances knowing that he is where God wants him, a person who perseveres patiently through harsh circumstance spurred onward by an eternal perspective, a person who is quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, a person who keeps a tight rein on his tongue, a person who looks out for widows and orphans and keeps himself pure. And that's only the first chapter, succeeded by the chapter that tells you that faith without substantiating works is in vain.
If you read that passage not with the goal of conceptual understanding, (check, I've got this passage down) but with perspective on the sort of person you are and the sort of Christ-like nature God expects of His servants, it is utterly humbling and transforming, and you come to an awestruck understanding that only through God's grace and the transforming work of the Holy Spirit will you become anything like that because it's not in our nature. You come to appreciate that Jesus modeled this righteousness to unfettered perfection. You draw closer to God's heart.
Romans is a good book for the head. James is a good book for the heart. As Peekay would say, first with the head, and then with the heart. Ecclesiastes is probably Level III.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Ghost of Christmas Recent
23 December.
Here are my notes from the Christmas service I put together for interested crew members:
It’s easy to see, in a theological sense, why Good Friday and Easter are important commemorations for Christians. Jesus’s sacrificial death and subsequent supernatural resurrection are the cornerstone of our salvation and our restitution with God our Father. But why is Christmas, the supposed celebration of Christ’s birth, important to the believing Christian?
A possible and increasingly common answer is that it’s not. Many people would point to the season’s commercialist nature, the date December 25th’s origin in the pagan festival of Saturnalia, and the seeming insignificance of a birthday as a divine milestone to infer that the observance of Christmas is irrelevant to the Christian faith.
In response, I came up with two serious reasons that Christmas might be a worthwhile occasion to celebrate. The first stems from the precedent that it is appropriate to celebrate special days to commemorate special occurrences. In the book of Leviticus, God ordained the Feast of Passover for the Israelites to remember their deliverance, the Feast of Unleavened Bread to further remember His distinctions of holy and unholy provision, and the Feast of Tabernacles to remember their time of nomadic itinerance and utter dependence on God in the wilderness. Although not biblically mandated, it seems also appropriate to celebrate a special day commemorating Jesus’s arrival into the world: the miraculous beginning to a very special and remarkable 33 years, perhaps the greatest 33 years in the history of mankind. Even if it’s since been moved to the wrong day, it’s a day worth celebrating.
The second argument for Christmas is the significance of Jesus’s incarnation. It’s true that His death on the cross was what saved us from sin, overcame death, and captured eternal life for believers. But His life among us on earth gives an inexorable, indelible portrait of the sort of God we’re supposed to worship: it’s a historically true rendering of a God who really loves us. If you feel sorry for someone, you give them a handout. We observe this behavior in the way we give to the Salvation Army or the Vietnam Vet around Christmastime. We feel sorry for the disenfranchised and the destitute, we see that it is right to help, and we give. But if you love someone, you leave where you are and go to them. If your brother or sister had fallen into difficult times, you would buy a plane ticket and travel thousands of miles to be with them. And given our plight and sinful condition, our God responded not with some blanket, impersonal measure, but instead left where He was and came to us Himself.
I like to think, and I think it’s reasonable to think, that Jesus didn’t see His time on earth solely as an obligation towards the plan of salvation, but that He actually likes us and liked to spend time with us. He wept with Martha and Mary, ate with His disciples, took the time to coach and mentor them personally, played with little children. His coming to earth was a matter of love, not duty. And Christmas is a celebration of, yes, His coming to earth in human form.
It is an important truth that God loved us not only enough to die for us, a one-time event, but enough to live with us day in and day out and still love us. In light of that love so demonstrated, how then should I live?
2 February.
My most recent favorite passage: James 1:26-27:
“If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
Here are my notes from the Christmas service I put together for interested crew members:
It’s easy to see, in a theological sense, why Good Friday and Easter are important commemorations for Christians. Jesus’s sacrificial death and subsequent supernatural resurrection are the cornerstone of our salvation and our restitution with God our Father. But why is Christmas, the supposed celebration of Christ’s birth, important to the believing Christian?
A possible and increasingly common answer is that it’s not. Many people would point to the season’s commercialist nature, the date December 25th’s origin in the pagan festival of Saturnalia, and the seeming insignificance of a birthday as a divine milestone to infer that the observance of Christmas is irrelevant to the Christian faith.
In response, I came up with two serious reasons that Christmas might be a worthwhile occasion to celebrate. The first stems from the precedent that it is appropriate to celebrate special days to commemorate special occurrences. In the book of Leviticus, God ordained the Feast of Passover for the Israelites to remember their deliverance, the Feast of Unleavened Bread to further remember His distinctions of holy and unholy provision, and the Feast of Tabernacles to remember their time of nomadic itinerance and utter dependence on God in the wilderness. Although not biblically mandated, it seems also appropriate to celebrate a special day commemorating Jesus’s arrival into the world: the miraculous beginning to a very special and remarkable 33 years, perhaps the greatest 33 years in the history of mankind. Even if it’s since been moved to the wrong day, it’s a day worth celebrating.
The second argument for Christmas is the significance of Jesus’s incarnation. It’s true that His death on the cross was what saved us from sin, overcame death, and captured eternal life for believers. But His life among us on earth gives an inexorable, indelible portrait of the sort of God we’re supposed to worship: it’s a historically true rendering of a God who really loves us. If you feel sorry for someone, you give them a handout. We observe this behavior in the way we give to the Salvation Army or the Vietnam Vet around Christmastime. We feel sorry for the disenfranchised and the destitute, we see that it is right to help, and we give. But if you love someone, you leave where you are and go to them. If your brother or sister had fallen into difficult times, you would buy a plane ticket and travel thousands of miles to be with them. And given our plight and sinful condition, our God responded not with some blanket, impersonal measure, but instead left where He was and came to us Himself.
I like to think, and I think it’s reasonable to think, that Jesus didn’t see His time on earth solely as an obligation towards the plan of salvation, but that He actually likes us and liked to spend time with us. He wept with Martha and Mary, ate with His disciples, took the time to coach and mentor them personally, played with little children. His coming to earth was a matter of love, not duty. And Christmas is a celebration of, yes, His coming to earth in human form.
It is an important truth that God loved us not only enough to die for us, a one-time event, but enough to live with us day in and day out and still love us. In light of that love so demonstrated, how then should I live?
2 February.
My most recent favorite passage: James 1:26-27:
“If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
Friday, January 1, 2010
I'm On A Boat
I remember in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, there was a great metaphor using a boat in the middle of an open ocean as a commentary on existentialist direction, or lack thereof. And in Searching for God Knows What, Don Miller explains how humans view and interact with each other in terms of a lifeboat metaphor. It's my turn to explain what the spiritual implications are of being on a boat.
I'll start with some observations on not-being-on-a-boat, since that's probably a common experience for most prospective readers. If you're not on a boat, and you're trying to live a gospel-centered life, you could easily find yourself with a lot of decisions to make. Whether to go to this church or that one. Whether to actually go to this church or that one. Whether to hang out with this set of Christian friends, or this set of non-Christian friends. Whether to spend time in the homeless ministry or mentoring the youth group. Whether to spend discipleship time reading a book, working in a soup kitchen, or just forgoing the practice altogether. Whether to tithe and how much. The simple and powerful decision to follow Christ can somehow manifest itself in a lot of pick-and-choose as to what features you want to upgrade your package of Christian lifestyle.
When you're on a boat, you're confined to a 300 foot cylinder several hundred feet underwater with 150 other guys in a complicated and demanding work environment. The paradigm of decision-making is distilled to one decision: every day, all you can decide, and all you have to decide, is whether to follow Jesus or not.
You have no privacy. Your life is utterly transparent because you live, eat, sleep, and work in the same 300 foot cylinder. This transparency precludes the duplicity of any sort of double lifestyle that self-conscious Christians sometimes find themselves in: party hard on Saturday night, then show up at church the next morning and smile at everybody; or be angry at your wife and children and then show up to the office with a genial temperament. If you're having a bad day, you can't decide to stay at home until you can make yourself presentable to the outside world. If you have a secret addiction to pornography, you can't shut the door so no one will know. You are who you are.
The sentiment of "you are who you are" is troubling for people who don't like who they are or who feel that they're not who they should be. But the truth is we should be very pleased with who we are because we are supposed to be redeemed by the salvation of Christ, made new in His image, transformed through the continual work of the Holy Spirit. We are to have been perfected. So this test of transparency, of being on a boat, is a test of whether you really believe that you stand where you say you do with Jesus. If you believe in the transforming grace of the gospel, then the fact that you are who you are is not a source of shame but a glorious testimony to the gospel of Christ.
Being on a boat also means that you have nonstop opportunities to live out the gospel because you can't defer the nonstop instances of interaction with other people. The questions of how to forgive, how to show mercy, how to turn the other cheek, and how to be a servant are much less academic because you are afforded those chances all day, every day. And you can't choose your church, and you can't choose whether you're surrounded by people you like or not: you've got what you're given. So it's not ever a question of whom you're going to love, but whether or not you're going to love. If you think about that condition, it's a truer sort of love.
Many people do not have the chance to be on a boat in the same way that I am on a boat. But I think it's still a good idea every once in a while to distill all decisions away from decisions regarding circumstance and focus on whether we want to follow Christ or not.
I'll start with some observations on not-being-on-a-boat, since that's probably a common experience for most prospective readers. If you're not on a boat, and you're trying to live a gospel-centered life, you could easily find yourself with a lot of decisions to make. Whether to go to this church or that one. Whether to actually go to this church or that one. Whether to hang out with this set of Christian friends, or this set of non-Christian friends. Whether to spend time in the homeless ministry or mentoring the youth group. Whether to spend discipleship time reading a book, working in a soup kitchen, or just forgoing the practice altogether. Whether to tithe and how much. The simple and powerful decision to follow Christ can somehow manifest itself in a lot of pick-and-choose as to what features you want to upgrade your package of Christian lifestyle.
When you're on a boat, you're confined to a 300 foot cylinder several hundred feet underwater with 150 other guys in a complicated and demanding work environment. The paradigm of decision-making is distilled to one decision: every day, all you can decide, and all you have to decide, is whether to follow Jesus or not.
You have no privacy. Your life is utterly transparent because you live, eat, sleep, and work in the same 300 foot cylinder. This transparency precludes the duplicity of any sort of double lifestyle that self-conscious Christians sometimes find themselves in: party hard on Saturday night, then show up at church the next morning and smile at everybody; or be angry at your wife and children and then show up to the office with a genial temperament. If you're having a bad day, you can't decide to stay at home until you can make yourself presentable to the outside world. If you have a secret addiction to pornography, you can't shut the door so no one will know. You are who you are.
The sentiment of "you are who you are" is troubling for people who don't like who they are or who feel that they're not who they should be. But the truth is we should be very pleased with who we are because we are supposed to be redeemed by the salvation of Christ, made new in His image, transformed through the continual work of the Holy Spirit. We are to have been perfected. So this test of transparency, of being on a boat, is a test of whether you really believe that you stand where you say you do with Jesus. If you believe in the transforming grace of the gospel, then the fact that you are who you are is not a source of shame but a glorious testimony to the gospel of Christ.
Being on a boat also means that you have nonstop opportunities to live out the gospel because you can't defer the nonstop instances of interaction with other people. The questions of how to forgive, how to show mercy, how to turn the other cheek, and how to be a servant are much less academic because you are afforded those chances all day, every day. And you can't choose your church, and you can't choose whether you're surrounded by people you like or not: you've got what you're given. So it's not ever a question of whom you're going to love, but whether or not you're going to love. If you think about that condition, it's a truer sort of love.
Many people do not have the chance to be on a boat in the same way that I am on a boat. But I think it's still a good idea every once in a while to distill all decisions away from decisions regarding circumstance and focus on whether we want to follow Christ or not.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
A Journey and a Hiatus
I will be getting married today, and I will be deploying until sometime in the spring. I will not be making regular posts to this blog for some time.
You know those pregnant moments in life? Goodbyes at the airport where there's just a little too much time for uneasy silence and smalltalk before they call boarding on the flight. The mornings before afternoon weddings where you're excited for the event but not sure what to do with yourself. These meaningful moments where there is a heavy and palpable sense that something should be said or expressed, tears should be shed, memories relived, promises made in earnest, but we hesitate.
I have a sobering thought that maybe a lot people hesitate and don't say what they want to say when the moment is right, and the moment passes. That life begins to chronicle a series of uncomfortable silences where everyone there is thinking the same thing. That we're familiar with an expected script of what life should look like but sometimes don't actually know how to live. I don't want to live life that way, as a series of expectant, tentative moments. If you want to hug someone, kiss someone, love someone, tell someone something, you've got to do it.
I'll catch you all (I don't actually know who reads this thing) in six or so months.
You know those pregnant moments in life? Goodbyes at the airport where there's just a little too much time for uneasy silence and smalltalk before they call boarding on the flight. The mornings before afternoon weddings where you're excited for the event but not sure what to do with yourself. These meaningful moments where there is a heavy and palpable sense that something should be said or expressed, tears should be shed, memories relived, promises made in earnest, but we hesitate.
I have a sobering thought that maybe a lot people hesitate and don't say what they want to say when the moment is right, and the moment passes. That life begins to chronicle a series of uncomfortable silences where everyone there is thinking the same thing. That we're familiar with an expected script of what life should look like but sometimes don't actually know how to live. I don't want to live life that way, as a series of expectant, tentative moments. If you want to hug someone, kiss someone, love someone, tell someone something, you've got to do it.
I'll catch you all (I don't actually know who reads this thing) in six or so months.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Inerrancy and Bad Metaphors
"Inerrancy" is a term I have been prone to throw around casually with regard to the Bible. Most people with a passing familiarity with Christian belief take it as standard doctrine that the Bible is inerrant, or at least infallible. Inerrant states that the Bible is free from all errors or contradictions and is true in every aspect, spiritual and historical, while infallible is a more limited understanding that the Bible is true in spiritual and practical matters with the possibility for minor contradictions as a historical account.
I'd always approached discussions with biblical inerrancy as one of those standard Christian assumptions. If you're a Christian, let's agree that we both assume the Bible is true and therefore use it as a benchmark for any other conclusions or inferences we reach. If you're not a believer, then for the sake of this conversation, we'll treat the Bible as a useful historical and cultural text and exclude biblical inerrancy from our list of givens.
The idea of biblical inerrancy has only recently come to the forefront of theological discussion. Before modernism and postmodernism pushed the reader to consider the source and author's perspective for a written text, most people wouldn't think to call the Bible inerrant because it was assumed to be so. But now we are trained to read between the lines, put things in context, research amplifying information, ask who the author is and what his motivation might have been.
So I was sitting in bible study one day and we were considering one of King David's psalms. And we were running into a wall with one of the psalm's phrases; I'm not sure which, but for "a man after God's own heart," King David says a lot of angsty, emo things. So I asked, do we have to take everything in the psalms to be true?
Some girl: What do you mean, Matt? Don't you believe the Bible is true?
Well, sure I do, I said. I take it as historically preserved and accurate, and I take it as moral and spiritual truth as well.
Then you have to take the psalms as truth too.
What I'm saying is, even if the Bible is historically accurate and spiritually true, there are things said in the Bible that we don't take as truth. "Am I my brother's keeper?" for example. So here, included in the Bible, is a collection of poetry and songs written by a King of Israel. Good stuff, to be sure, but infallible?
The girl didn't understand my question, which might be just as well for reasons I'll bring up in a few paragraphs.
I recounted this story with another friend, my friend who's studying to become a pastor, and he shared his perspective. He said he didn't like to say anything about the Bible that the Bible doesn't claim about itself. This practice seems wise, since Proverbs 30 (and Matthew 5) warns against adding to Scripture. And my friend said that the strongest statement the Bible makes about itself is that it is useful:
"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." -- 2 Timothy 3:16
(On a related note, it's clear from 2 Peter 3:15-16 that Peter at least considered Paul's epistles to be in the category of Scripture.)
The perceived danger with disavowing biblical inerrancy is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If the Bible is possibly flawed, then everything we thought was true tumbles into a whirling chaotic mess of doubt, and what do we base our faith on? Jesus Himself says (Uh oh! Did He actually say it?) that we are to follow His words as if we were building a house on a solid foundation.
My friend and I agreed that we generally believe in Biblical infallibility and probably inerrancy. The logic "God is perfect, the Bible is God's book, therefore the Bible is perfect" is not a watertight syllogism, but it's certainly tenable. Maybe there is no statement in the Bible that claims its own inerrancy, but there are still very good arguments based on archeological consistency, textual preservation, and the personal and historical work of the Holy Spirit that would give excellent bases to take the Bible as a book of truth, and moreover, truth that transcends any other source of truth out there in the canon of things-written-down. If people want to go on believing and telling each other that the Bible is inerrant and infallible, I don't take it as a bad thing because in all honesty, I'm still part of that camp, even if I might start to avoid saying it explicitly. And sometimes if you don't throw that card down on the table right away, you'll interact better with the other players at the poker table, and who knows, even learn a thing or two yourself.
While the poker metaphor is still hot, there's a definite wild card here, and that's the omnipresent Biblical phrase "w(W)ord of God." It's a definite player because it shows up everywhere in the Bible and there are so many significant things said about the "w(W)ord of God." John 1 ascribes that title to Jesus and His incarnation, but is that a universal application of the term? Consider as an example Psalm 30:4-5:
"Who has gone up to heaven and come down?
Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands?
Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and the name of his son?
Tell me if you know!
Every word of God is flawless;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him."
It would be speculative to delve into this discussion without more advanced etymological scholarship. I'm pretty sure I need to either find or become a Greek and Hebrew scholar before I can really say anything intelligent about the matter.
I've told you that my friend Peter thinks the first eleven chapters of Genesis are parabolic in nature. And my friend Orestes interprets the book of Job as fabular. Clearly, Scripture is not something to take with blanket literalism, not if we respect it, but a dynamic entity with which we as Christians will have to wrestle. You know the great thing about wrestling with something? You have to get up close and personal with it.
I'd always approached discussions with biblical inerrancy as one of those standard Christian assumptions. If you're a Christian, let's agree that we both assume the Bible is true and therefore use it as a benchmark for any other conclusions or inferences we reach. If you're not a believer, then for the sake of this conversation, we'll treat the Bible as a useful historical and cultural text and exclude biblical inerrancy from our list of givens.
The idea of biblical inerrancy has only recently come to the forefront of theological discussion. Before modernism and postmodernism pushed the reader to consider the source and author's perspective for a written text, most people wouldn't think to call the Bible inerrant because it was assumed to be so. But now we are trained to read between the lines, put things in context, research amplifying information, ask who the author is and what his motivation might have been.
So I was sitting in bible study one day and we were considering one of King David's psalms. And we were running into a wall with one of the psalm's phrases; I'm not sure which, but for "a man after God's own heart," King David says a lot of angsty, emo things. So I asked, do we have to take everything in the psalms to be true?
Some girl: What do you mean, Matt? Don't you believe the Bible is true?
Well, sure I do, I said. I take it as historically preserved and accurate, and I take it as moral and spiritual truth as well.
Then you have to take the psalms as truth too.
What I'm saying is, even if the Bible is historically accurate and spiritually true, there are things said in the Bible that we don't take as truth. "Am I my brother's keeper?" for example. So here, included in the Bible, is a collection of poetry and songs written by a King of Israel. Good stuff, to be sure, but infallible?
The girl didn't understand my question, which might be just as well for reasons I'll bring up in a few paragraphs.
I recounted this story with another friend, my friend who's studying to become a pastor, and he shared his perspective. He said he didn't like to say anything about the Bible that the Bible doesn't claim about itself. This practice seems wise, since Proverbs 30 (and Matthew 5) warns against adding to Scripture. And my friend said that the strongest statement the Bible makes about itself is that it is useful:
"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." -- 2 Timothy 3:16
(On a related note, it's clear from 2 Peter 3:15-16 that Peter at least considered Paul's epistles to be in the category of Scripture.)
The perceived danger with disavowing biblical inerrancy is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If the Bible is possibly flawed, then everything we thought was true tumbles into a whirling chaotic mess of doubt, and what do we base our faith on? Jesus Himself says (Uh oh! Did He actually say it?) that we are to follow His words as if we were building a house on a solid foundation.
My friend and I agreed that we generally believe in Biblical infallibility and probably inerrancy. The logic "God is perfect, the Bible is God's book, therefore the Bible is perfect" is not a watertight syllogism, but it's certainly tenable. Maybe there is no statement in the Bible that claims its own inerrancy, but there are still very good arguments based on archeological consistency, textual preservation, and the personal and historical work of the Holy Spirit that would give excellent bases to take the Bible as a book of truth, and moreover, truth that transcends any other source of truth out there in the canon of things-written-down. If people want to go on believing and telling each other that the Bible is inerrant and infallible, I don't take it as a bad thing because in all honesty, I'm still part of that camp, even if I might start to avoid saying it explicitly. And sometimes if you don't throw that card down on the table right away, you'll interact better with the other players at the poker table, and who knows, even learn a thing or two yourself.
While the poker metaphor is still hot, there's a definite wild card here, and that's the omnipresent Biblical phrase "w(W)ord of God." It's a definite player because it shows up everywhere in the Bible and there are so many significant things said about the "w(W)ord of God." John 1 ascribes that title to Jesus and His incarnation, but is that a universal application of the term? Consider as an example Psalm 30:4-5:
"Who has gone up to heaven and come down?
Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands?
Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and the name of his son?
Tell me if you know!
Every word of God is flawless;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him."
It would be speculative to delve into this discussion without more advanced etymological scholarship. I'm pretty sure I need to either find or become a Greek and Hebrew scholar before I can really say anything intelligent about the matter.
I've told you that my friend Peter thinks the first eleven chapters of Genesis are parabolic in nature. And my friend Orestes interprets the book of Job as fabular. Clearly, Scripture is not something to take with blanket literalism, not if we respect it, but a dynamic entity with which we as Christians will have to wrestle. You know the great thing about wrestling with something? You have to get up close and personal with it.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Psalm 102
It's been a while since I considered a psalm. For some time, I've felt pretty distant from God emotionally, so the "hide not thou thy face from me" aspect drew me to the 102nd psalm. Here begins the commentary.
1 Hear my prayer, O LORD;
let my cry for help come to you.
The most sound way to read the diction is that the second clause augments the first; that is, the psalmist pleads for the prayer to come through to the Lord's attention. Alternatively, I like to think it could also be him asking that his cries for help be directed to the Lord, as opposed to some other false earthly source of hope or aid. It's a common failing to look to false doctrines or flawed humans when we should be looking to God; therefore, his prayer is appropriate.
2 Do not hide your face from me
when I am in distress.
Turn your ear to me;
when I call, answer me quickly.
3 For my days vanish like smoke;
my bones burn like glowing embers.
More than a time of dire trouble, I've recently been concerned with the temporal nature of life. How multiple days seem to pass quickly, uneventfully, without clear meaning, irrevocably. It's a distressing thought, well expressed by the line "my days vanish like smoke." It's not only times of tribulation, but also times of stagnancy, where it is well to ask God to enter into our lives.
4 My heart is blighted and withered like grass;
I forget to eat my food.
5 Because of my loud groaning
I am reduced to skin and bones.
6 I am like a desert owl,
like an owl among the ruins.
7 I lie awake; I have become
like a bird alone on a roof.
Again, I'd posit that we wither and atrophy not only at the presence of suffering and persecution, but also in the absence of a vibrant and dynamic relationship with the God who is our only source of life and vitality. Food and sleep lose significance and life loses color.
8 All day long my enemies taunt me;
those who rail against me use my name as a curse.
9 For I eat ashes as my food
and mingle my drink with tears
10 because of your great wrath,
for you have taken me up and thrown me aside.
11 My days are like the evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.
Here we enter into the question of whether the psalmist's sentiment, that the Lord has wrathfully thrown him aside, is theologically viable or not. I once got into an argument in Bible Study where one girl couldn't understand what I was asking: just because we accept the Bible and the Psalms therein to be true books, does that necessarily make the psalms themselves infallible expressions of truth?
12 But you, O LORD, sit enthroned forever;
your renown endures through all generations.
13 You will arise and have compassion on Zion,
for it is time to show favor to her;
the appointed time has come.
14 For her stones are dear to your servants;
her very dust moves them to pity.
15 The nations will fear the name of the LORD,
all the kings of the earth will revere your glory.
Recently, I was reflecting on the whole emphasis on God's glory and fame, and how big of a deal His reputation seems to be. I think a lot of the questions we have about the matter stem from the more self-centered cause that we want to be ourselves recognized too. Doubters will ask, why is God so concerned with His own glory? If He were so great, wouldn't His reputation be pretty immaterial to Him? And the answer that I find reasonable is that in a hierarchical paradigm where God is all-that omnipotent and expansive and awesome, the natural response of subordinate creation would be awe and worship. It just makes sense. Therefore any less of a response, any more casual or less reverent, is inappropriate and out of place, reflective of something broken in the relationship.
16 For the LORD will rebuild Zion
and appear in his glory.
17 He will respond to the prayer of the destitute;
he will not despise their plea.
18 Let this be written for a future generation,
that a people not yet created may praise the LORD :
19 "The LORD looked down from his sanctuary on high,
from heaven he viewed the earth,
20 to hear the groans of the prisoners
and release those condemned to death."
21 So the name of the LORD will be declared in Zion
and his praise in Jerusalem
22 when the peoples and the kingdoms
assemble to worship the LORD.
It's a pretty powerful idea that future generations not yet created would praise the Lord because of what their predecessors wrote down about Him.
23 In the course of my life, he broke my strength;
he cut short my days.
24 So I said:
"Do not take me away, O my God, in the midst of my days;
your years go on through all generations.
The author seems to be reminding the Lord of his own mortality. Other question: if the author's life is so tiresome and ill-begotten, why does he ask for more years? A few possibilities come to mind: certain aspects of our God-given lives are more advantageous to live out and experience than the glories of heaven, or the author has some purpose or work he still wants to finish, or the author is fallible and is expressing a misguided desire to stay on earth and defer his reunion with eternity.
25 In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
26 They will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
Like clothing you will change them
and they will be discarded.
People probably read verses like the ones above and think, oh, it means that God lasts forever and has an eternal nature, but I suspect few people have thought about the heavens, the stars and galaxies and nebulae billions of years old, being discarded and changed like used garments. We can't even fathom how crazy ancient certain celestial phenomena are in comparison to how long we've existed, much less the timelessness that the psalmist ascribes to God by comparison.
27 But you remain the same,
and your years will never end.
28 The children of your servants will live in your presence;
their descendants will be established before you."
Do we have that same communal and multi-generational attitude about faith? When I think of my faith with the Lord, do I think of myself and my ministry, or do I aspire to a long-lasting vision of thousands of descendants enjoying the fruits of a tree I labored to plant right now? God sees His work on a large scale, and we would understand Him better if we endeavored to adopt that mindset as well.
1 Hear my prayer, O LORD;
let my cry for help come to you.
The most sound way to read the diction is that the second clause augments the first; that is, the psalmist pleads for the prayer to come through to the Lord's attention. Alternatively, I like to think it could also be him asking that his cries for help be directed to the Lord, as opposed to some other false earthly source of hope or aid. It's a common failing to look to false doctrines or flawed humans when we should be looking to God; therefore, his prayer is appropriate.
2 Do not hide your face from me
when I am in distress.
Turn your ear to me;
when I call, answer me quickly.
3 For my days vanish like smoke;
my bones burn like glowing embers.
More than a time of dire trouble, I've recently been concerned with the temporal nature of life. How multiple days seem to pass quickly, uneventfully, without clear meaning, irrevocably. It's a distressing thought, well expressed by the line "my days vanish like smoke." It's not only times of tribulation, but also times of stagnancy, where it is well to ask God to enter into our lives.
4 My heart is blighted and withered like grass;
I forget to eat my food.
5 Because of my loud groaning
I am reduced to skin and bones.
6 I am like a desert owl,
like an owl among the ruins.
7 I lie awake; I have become
like a bird alone on a roof.
Again, I'd posit that we wither and atrophy not only at the presence of suffering and persecution, but also in the absence of a vibrant and dynamic relationship with the God who is our only source of life and vitality. Food and sleep lose significance and life loses color.
8 All day long my enemies taunt me;
those who rail against me use my name as a curse.
9 For I eat ashes as my food
and mingle my drink with tears
10 because of your great wrath,
for you have taken me up and thrown me aside.
11 My days are like the evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.
Here we enter into the question of whether the psalmist's sentiment, that the Lord has wrathfully thrown him aside, is theologically viable or not. I once got into an argument in Bible Study where one girl couldn't understand what I was asking: just because we accept the Bible and the Psalms therein to be true books, does that necessarily make the psalms themselves infallible expressions of truth?
12 But you, O LORD, sit enthroned forever;
your renown endures through all generations.
13 You will arise and have compassion on Zion,
for it is time to show favor to her;
the appointed time has come.
14 For her stones are dear to your servants;
her very dust moves them to pity.
15 The nations will fear the name of the LORD,
all the kings of the earth will revere your glory.
Recently, I was reflecting on the whole emphasis on God's glory and fame, and how big of a deal His reputation seems to be. I think a lot of the questions we have about the matter stem from the more self-centered cause that we want to be ourselves recognized too. Doubters will ask, why is God so concerned with His own glory? If He were so great, wouldn't His reputation be pretty immaterial to Him? And the answer that I find reasonable is that in a hierarchical paradigm where God is all-that omnipotent and expansive and awesome, the natural response of subordinate creation would be awe and worship. It just makes sense. Therefore any less of a response, any more casual or less reverent, is inappropriate and out of place, reflective of something broken in the relationship.
16 For the LORD will rebuild Zion
and appear in his glory.
17 He will respond to the prayer of the destitute;
he will not despise their plea.
18 Let this be written for a future generation,
that a people not yet created may praise the LORD :
19 "The LORD looked down from his sanctuary on high,
from heaven he viewed the earth,
20 to hear the groans of the prisoners
and release those condemned to death."
21 So the name of the LORD will be declared in Zion
and his praise in Jerusalem
22 when the peoples and the kingdoms
assemble to worship the LORD.
It's a pretty powerful idea that future generations not yet created would praise the Lord because of what their predecessors wrote down about Him.
23 In the course of my life, he broke my strength;
he cut short my days.
24 So I said:
"Do not take me away, O my God, in the midst of my days;
your years go on through all generations.
The author seems to be reminding the Lord of his own mortality. Other question: if the author's life is so tiresome and ill-begotten, why does he ask for more years? A few possibilities come to mind: certain aspects of our God-given lives are more advantageous to live out and experience than the glories of heaven, or the author has some purpose or work he still wants to finish, or the author is fallible and is expressing a misguided desire to stay on earth and defer his reunion with eternity.
25 In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
26 They will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
Like clothing you will change them
and they will be discarded.
People probably read verses like the ones above and think, oh, it means that God lasts forever and has an eternal nature, but I suspect few people have thought about the heavens, the stars and galaxies and nebulae billions of years old, being discarded and changed like used garments. We can't even fathom how crazy ancient certain celestial phenomena are in comparison to how long we've existed, much less the timelessness that the psalmist ascribes to God by comparison.
27 But you remain the same,
and your years will never end.
28 The children of your servants will live in your presence;
their descendants will be established before you."
Do we have that same communal and multi-generational attitude about faith? When I think of my faith with the Lord, do I think of myself and my ministry, or do I aspire to a long-lasting vision of thousands of descendants enjoying the fruits of a tree I labored to plant right now? God sees His work on a large scale, and we would understand Him better if we endeavored to adopt that mindset as well.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Hypocrisy
is the one word that almost always comes to conversation when people mention why they disdain or rejected the church. The mention of the word implies that there was once a genuine interest in what the church was centered around: Christ, His mission of love, and our resultant mission of love; but when stark disparities arose between the "talk" and the "walk," people were turned off and walked.
My friend Joe mentioned this experience last night at dinner, remarking that he had always been expecting a church to be passionate and proactive about going out and doing something good, vice showing up once a week and checking off their good deed for the day. It's an almost archetypal commentary, albeit with many singular exceptions.
Hypocrisy is, at its most distilled definition, saying one thing and doing another. The fact that the church is errant, that its members are sinful, does not alone make it hypocritical: we espouse a doctrine that claims that man is depraved and sinful and that our sinful nature is everything absolutely wrong in the world. Our story is a story about Christ's love, not our own. In fact, it's a story of the redemption of our fallen nature through no action of our own. If we sin, we are simply being consistent.
But we also preach a doctrine of love and redemption, and if people see us as hypocritical, it's because they expect that love is transformational. That if we as Christians really encountered and believed in this amazing, divine love that we claim to experience, on a daily basis, we would be different people altogether.
The broad fact that so many outsiders see Christians as hypocritical means that there could be a universal expectation or understanding that true love transforms people into their better selves, and if you believe in good creation, into who they were meant to be. In this age of deconstruction and relativity, I think that a universal assumption like that is remarkable.
In this discourse, I sort of bastardized a lot of significant parts of our theology. The Bible does speak to Christians walking by the guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead transformed and perfected lives of righteousness and love. It does espouse a definite morality for the adherence of its followers. It doesn't say we can get away with murder because we are fallen, but that we are through Christ "a new creation." But the point still stands: people expect the love we talk about to be life-changing and epic. People are interested in the idea of life-changing love. Aren't we supposed to have the ultimate answer for that? If there's hypocrisy anywhere, there it is.
My friend Joe mentioned this experience last night at dinner, remarking that he had always been expecting a church to be passionate and proactive about going out and doing something good, vice showing up once a week and checking off their good deed for the day. It's an almost archetypal commentary, albeit with many singular exceptions.
Hypocrisy is, at its most distilled definition, saying one thing and doing another. The fact that the church is errant, that its members are sinful, does not alone make it hypocritical: we espouse a doctrine that claims that man is depraved and sinful and that our sinful nature is everything absolutely wrong in the world. Our story is a story about Christ's love, not our own. In fact, it's a story of the redemption of our fallen nature through no action of our own. If we sin, we are simply being consistent.
But we also preach a doctrine of love and redemption, and if people see us as hypocritical, it's because they expect that love is transformational. That if we as Christians really encountered and believed in this amazing, divine love that we claim to experience, on a daily basis, we would be different people altogether.
The broad fact that so many outsiders see Christians as hypocritical means that there could be a universal expectation or understanding that true love transforms people into their better selves, and if you believe in good creation, into who they were meant to be. In this age of deconstruction and relativity, I think that a universal assumption like that is remarkable.
In this discourse, I sort of bastardized a lot of significant parts of our theology. The Bible does speak to Christians walking by the guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead transformed and perfected lives of righteousness and love. It does espouse a definite morality for the adherence of its followers. It doesn't say we can get away with murder because we are fallen, but that we are through Christ "a new creation." But the point still stands: people expect the love we talk about to be life-changing and epic. People are interested in the idea of life-changing love. Aren't we supposed to have the ultimate answer for that? If there's hypocrisy anywhere, there it is.
RAOK
Since I graduated college and moved three times in the course of about a year, it's been challenging to find solid Christian fellowship and community. You find a church or a bible study or community group, and most of the regulars already have their preset social circles. They're not trying to be exclusive: it's just human nature.
Here in this particular phase of my career, I'm a hard guy to get to know because of I'm on 12 hour days, rotating shift-work. In other words, I basically cannot attend or commit to anything regularly because I might be starting my day at 4 am or 4pm, who knows. The mercurial schedule makes it so that I can attend church maybe once or twice a month and bible study with about the same frequency.
My friend Nathan happens to be my friend, not because it was easy or convenient for him, but because he makes it a priority and an intention to be my friend. When I first met up with him about five months ago, he said he really just likes hanging out with me and wanted to be my friend. Nathan is a newlywed, which means he has extra incentive to stay in the house, especially at odd hours of the night. But he's chosen to make room in his schedule for me, often last-minute or at unconventional times of day, purely because he values our relationship.
That's the thing that I'll remember most about Nathan. Not his earthy wisdom, not his Christ-centered ethos, not his sense of humor, not his insight, although all those things are certainly there, but his simple demonstration of kindness and love in going out of his way to do something good for me. He is a busy, busy man, and he made our friendship a priority.
It's a nice thing in itself, but it also gives some perspective. Do we love God because He is perfect and righteous and holy and just and magnificent? Or do we love Him because in an extreme act, He went out of His way to do something great for us? He is a busy, busy God, and He made our relationship a priority.
Here in this particular phase of my career, I'm a hard guy to get to know because of I'm on 12 hour days, rotating shift-work. In other words, I basically cannot attend or commit to anything regularly because I might be starting my day at 4 am or 4pm, who knows. The mercurial schedule makes it so that I can attend church maybe once or twice a month and bible study with about the same frequency.
My friend Nathan happens to be my friend, not because it was easy or convenient for him, but because he makes it a priority and an intention to be my friend. When I first met up with him about five months ago, he said he really just likes hanging out with me and wanted to be my friend. Nathan is a newlywed, which means he has extra incentive to stay in the house, especially at odd hours of the night. But he's chosen to make room in his schedule for me, often last-minute or at unconventional times of day, purely because he values our relationship.
That's the thing that I'll remember most about Nathan. Not his earthy wisdom, not his Christ-centered ethos, not his sense of humor, not his insight, although all those things are certainly there, but his simple demonstration of kindness and love in going out of his way to do something good for me. He is a busy, busy man, and he made our friendship a priority.
It's a nice thing in itself, but it also gives some perspective. Do we love God because He is perfect and righteous and holy and just and magnificent? Or do we love Him because in an extreme act, He went out of His way to do something great for us? He is a busy, busy God, and He made our relationship a priority.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
The Start of Something New
So I'm getting married next month and it seems like time for some reflections on that elephant. To clarify, by elephant, I'm referring to the significant happy event, not the fiancee.
The format of my reflection shall be a dialogue between two fictional characters, Bebo and MattDunn. It shall remain a didactic exercise for the reader to determine whether one of these personae is allegorical for a real-life person of relevance and whether one is simply contrived for this blog post.
Bebo: Thanks for meeting me here in this quirky coffeeshop, MattDunn.
MattDunn: You're welcome, Bebo. I don't even like coffee, but I'm a bit of a junkie for human companionship, so I'm generally amenable to meeting with anybody, anytime, anywhere if it means good conversation.
Bebo: So is it true that you're getting married? Facebook tells me so, but you've also been twice previously married on Facebook, so I don't know whether to take you seriously.
MattDunn: Yup. It's true. It's happening.
Bebo: Wow, so tell me about your fiancee. What do you like about her? How and why did you come to decide that she was going to be the one for you?
MattDunn: I wanted to start my dynasty soon, and she's a woman of child-bearing age with all indications of fertility.
Bebo: True statement, but that describes all the dozens of women over the years who fallen madly in love with you that you've had to fight off with a stick.
MattDunn: Well, I'll tell you, when we first started dating, I found myself focusing on more of the differences between us than any valuable commonalities. And I'll tell you, most of us aren't born naturally able to love unconditionally and sacrificially, and to think of each other in the best possible light. I think by default, we tend to want to find carbon-copies of ourselves. So I was a little more critical of her then. I used to think: she doesn't sing as well as I do, she doesn't dance as well as I do, she doesn't cook as well as I do, she doesn't follow sports, and she doesn't watch a lot of movies, so what does she have going for her?
Bebo: Seems a little harsh.
MattDunn: I agree completely, and it's pretty immature, but when you think about it, everybody seems prone to that sort of self-centered thinking. Girls will grow up making lists of attributes for their ideal husband: he has to love animals, he has to be a musician, he has to be funny, he has to be taller than I am, he has to care about third world countries, or whatever; the point is that most people make lists of what they're looking for in their counterpart and expect a real, three-dimensional, breathing human being, flawed and fantastic at once, to match up with this fantasy wish list. It's trivial and superficial and unrealistic when you put it like that, but it's common, and I fell into that a little bit.
Bebo: So it wasn't her fault for not measuring up to your expectations.
MattDunn: It was my fault for projecting trivial expectations on her. You can't approach a relationship with the subconscious hope of the other person changing into someone else for you. That's not fair to them. Where do you get off asking them to change like that?
Bebo: So can't a person have standards for marriage?
MattDunn: Absolutely they can and they should. But they should realize that they're not on the market for finished products. People are meant to do a lot of their growing up through the experience of marriage; they're not supposed to be polished, completed works prior to it. I know a lot of girls in college who automatically ruled out a lot of earnest and good guys around them because they weren't able to see that the guys were works in progress, still learning to be real men.
Bebo: Yeah, you still haven't answered my question about why you picked your fiancee as the one for you.
MattDunn: Simply put, she has the biggest heart of anyone I know. I've never known anyone who loved me as completely and unconditionally and sincerely and unreservedly as she does. She is never too tired to talk about my day. She is never unwilling to put aside what she has in front of her to take care of something for me. She used to walk a mile and back to my apartment just to do my dishes or laundry when I lived off-campus. If there's anything she can do to better my day, she does it without question or hesitation. She never holds back affection or affirmation. She always, always smiles a megawatt smile when I come into the room. It's like I turn on her smile just by existing. She has a lovely smile. She is my biggest fan, and if one of our deepest needs is to be known and loved and liked for who we are, I will never find someone who could love me better. There's an excerpt from a book I was reading recently called Third Class Superhero by Charles Yu:
It's the truth like he has never heard the truth before. She doesn't mean it with sentiment or virtue, doesn't want credit in the big book of good deeds or bonus points towards Heaven. She doesn't regret it or begrudge him a single minute of her life. Her love for him is not something that can be changed -- it's physics, not emotion: It's the atomic weight of radium. It is vast and it is exact. It is tender and finite and inexhaustible. Her love for him is a fact. Her love for him is a brutal fact about the world.
That's what I think about it, Bebo, and I'd have to be a prize idiot to walk away from that kind of love. It's the best thing in the world.
Bebo: MattDunn, it sounds like your time dating Emily has really deepened your understanding of what love is.
MattDunn: It's definitely transformative. It's also nice to find a sweet Christian girl who will watch South Park and The Ultimate Fighter with you. And on days that I miss The Ultimate Fighter, she'll even send me a link so I don't have to search for the episode on Google and spoil the results of who wins the fight for myself.
Bebo: How does Jesus Christ fit into your perception of marriage?
MattDunn: I can think of three distinct ways that the personage of God is irrevocably intertwined with the concept and practice of love, and marriage, at its most ideal, is the culmination of love here on earth. The first way is that we humans are created in the image of a loving God. Bespotted and adulterated as we have made ourselves, 1 John 3 tells us to "behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! [...] Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him." That same chapter tells us that our ability to love is a God-given gift: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not love God, for God is love." So if we can act in love and live a life where we love others in a mode pure and complete, we are doing so because God made us as reflections of His nature and design.
Bebo: All right, fair enough. We were made by a loving God in His own image, so it stands to reason that our capacity to love would follow suit. What's your second connection to God?
MattDunn: Well, it's the fact that Jesus Christ demonstratively taught us to love. Everything He wants us to do, He did himself. In 1 John 3, we are told that we love "because He first loved us," and that "in this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins." Jesus didn't just sit outside the temporal realm and make broad declarations about love -- He came down and did it the hard way. So when Paul tells us men in Ephesians 5, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her," it is a powerful command to love sacrificially.
Bebo: So how does that play out in your personal relationship with Emily?
MattDunn: One of the biggest lessons we have to learn to be decent human beings is learning how to forgive. And forgiveness is not a blanket nicety: it's a personal surrendering of your own rights to allow for the shortcomings of another person who has damaged you in some way. Sometimes when Emily did something stupid or wrong, I would kinda hold on to that anger or the fact that I was right and she was wrong, and even if I said I forgave her, I would remember it the next time she made the same mistake. There's no such thing as "forgiving and not forgetting." Forgiving means you have to give the other person a blank slate, every time, up to infinity, no matter what. But the lesson was really transcendent for me because it made me think of how my sins were personally grievous to God, to the point where He had to bleed and die for them to be forgiven: not just statistics on a sin-spreadsheet He could erase with the push of a button. And yet His mercies are still new every morning, so that's something that's expected of me.
Another more metaphorical example is debt. Emily has a pretty sizeable college tuition debt, and when we get married, I will assume and pay most of the debt. This situation had the potential to engender resentment and frustration, but a good friend pointed out to me that when Christ positioned Himself as the bridegroom to take the church as His bride, He had to pay off her debt with His life and in doing so made her perfected and spotless and new. He counted it as worthy to pay off her debt because it meant He had his perfect bride. There's certainly something there I can take away from His example as I go about paying Emily's financial debt.
Bebo: MattDunn, you are very wordy and long-winded, and I'm starting to suspect my only role in this dialogue is to break up the paragraphs into more accessible chunks.
MattDunn: By Jove, I think he's got it!
Bebo: That's what I thought. What about the third way that God connects to your up-and-coming marriage?
MattDunn: Just that imperfect people like me are unable to love completely without the daily and miraculous grace of God. It doesn't come easily or naturally to us, despite being made in the image of God. The call to love someone as your wife is an incredibly high and demanding task to be commissioned with, and I'm definitely not up to it on my own, so this marriage will be an exercise in faith and dependence on God for it to work.
Bebo: That's it?
MattDunn: What? What do you want from me?
Bebo: You've spent all this time talking about love, and you haven't even mentioned 1 Corinthians 13. Or the whole Genesis 2 description of Adam and Eve being created compatible for each other.
MattDunn: Oh, everyone talks about 1 Corinthians 13. It's expected.
Bebo: So what is marriage to you? Is it mutual cohabitation with benefits?
MattDunn: It's supposed to be the ultimate witness and testament to God's love. You're supposed to be able to point to a marriage and say, that's what love is, and that's the best glimpse in this lifetime of what God intended when He designed us to love, and the best gift that He has ever given us. I don't think that's true of most marriages, but it's supposed to be. And yes, I'm also looking forward to the benefits.
Bebo: Sex!
MattDunn: Uh, a mobile beer bottle dispensary, but sure, that too. My friend Patrick, who plays a lot of video games, once referred to women as "mobile spawn units." That's another good role for them.
Bebo: So talk to me about your take on the biblical roles of man and woman in marriage, and how instrumental communication is going to be, and whether you've been introduced to the 5 Love Languages or the Act of Marriage, and how will key aspects of your marital intimacy change as you grow older...
MattDunn: No, that stuff doesn't interest me so much. Look, we'll make it work. Marriage has been made to work with great success without a lot of taught methodologies. I love her and she loves me, it's a true statement on bad days as well as good, and God is on our side on this one. It'll all come out okay.
Bebo: What's the best piece of marital advice you ever heard?
MattDunn: From the movie Claudine: "Love is when a man brings the groceries instead of eating yours."
Bebo: So is there a possibility that you'll be getting married and then deployed the next day?
MattDunn: No way, that only happens in the movies.
The format of my reflection shall be a dialogue between two fictional characters, Bebo and MattDunn. It shall remain a didactic exercise for the reader to determine whether one of these personae is allegorical for a real-life person of relevance and whether one is simply contrived for this blog post.
Bebo: Thanks for meeting me here in this quirky coffeeshop, MattDunn.
MattDunn: You're welcome, Bebo. I don't even like coffee, but I'm a bit of a junkie for human companionship, so I'm generally amenable to meeting with anybody, anytime, anywhere if it means good conversation.
Bebo: So is it true that you're getting married? Facebook tells me so, but you've also been twice previously married on Facebook, so I don't know whether to take you seriously.
MattDunn: Yup. It's true. It's happening.
Bebo: Wow, so tell me about your fiancee. What do you like about her? How and why did you come to decide that she was going to be the one for you?
MattDunn: I wanted to start my dynasty soon, and she's a woman of child-bearing age with all indications of fertility.
Bebo: True statement, but that describes all the dozens of women over the years who fallen madly in love with you that you've had to fight off with a stick.
MattDunn: Well, I'll tell you, when we first started dating, I found myself focusing on more of the differences between us than any valuable commonalities. And I'll tell you, most of us aren't born naturally able to love unconditionally and sacrificially, and to think of each other in the best possible light. I think by default, we tend to want to find carbon-copies of ourselves. So I was a little more critical of her then. I used to think: she doesn't sing as well as I do, she doesn't dance as well as I do, she doesn't cook as well as I do, she doesn't follow sports, and she doesn't watch a lot of movies, so what does she have going for her?
Bebo: Seems a little harsh.
MattDunn: I agree completely, and it's pretty immature, but when you think about it, everybody seems prone to that sort of self-centered thinking. Girls will grow up making lists of attributes for their ideal husband: he has to love animals, he has to be a musician, he has to be funny, he has to be taller than I am, he has to care about third world countries, or whatever; the point is that most people make lists of what they're looking for in their counterpart and expect a real, three-dimensional, breathing human being, flawed and fantastic at once, to match up with this fantasy wish list. It's trivial and superficial and unrealistic when you put it like that, but it's common, and I fell into that a little bit.
Bebo: So it wasn't her fault for not measuring up to your expectations.
MattDunn: It was my fault for projecting trivial expectations on her. You can't approach a relationship with the subconscious hope of the other person changing into someone else for you. That's not fair to them. Where do you get off asking them to change like that?
Bebo: So can't a person have standards for marriage?
MattDunn: Absolutely they can and they should. But they should realize that they're not on the market for finished products. People are meant to do a lot of their growing up through the experience of marriage; they're not supposed to be polished, completed works prior to it. I know a lot of girls in college who automatically ruled out a lot of earnest and good guys around them because they weren't able to see that the guys were works in progress, still learning to be real men.
Bebo: Yeah, you still haven't answered my question about why you picked your fiancee as the one for you.
MattDunn: Simply put, she has the biggest heart of anyone I know. I've never known anyone who loved me as completely and unconditionally and sincerely and unreservedly as she does. She is never too tired to talk about my day. She is never unwilling to put aside what she has in front of her to take care of something for me. She used to walk a mile and back to my apartment just to do my dishes or laundry when I lived off-campus. If there's anything she can do to better my day, she does it without question or hesitation. She never holds back affection or affirmation. She always, always smiles a megawatt smile when I come into the room. It's like I turn on her smile just by existing. She has a lovely smile. She is my biggest fan, and if one of our deepest needs is to be known and loved and liked for who we are, I will never find someone who could love me better. There's an excerpt from a book I was reading recently called Third Class Superhero by Charles Yu:
It's the truth like he has never heard the truth before. She doesn't mean it with sentiment or virtue, doesn't want credit in the big book of good deeds or bonus points towards Heaven. She doesn't regret it or begrudge him a single minute of her life. Her love for him is not something that can be changed -- it's physics, not emotion: It's the atomic weight of radium. It is vast and it is exact. It is tender and finite and inexhaustible. Her love for him is a fact. Her love for him is a brutal fact about the world.
That's what I think about it, Bebo, and I'd have to be a prize idiot to walk away from that kind of love. It's the best thing in the world.
Bebo: MattDunn, it sounds like your time dating Emily has really deepened your understanding of what love is.
MattDunn: It's definitely transformative. It's also nice to find a sweet Christian girl who will watch South Park and The Ultimate Fighter with you. And on days that I miss The Ultimate Fighter, she'll even send me a link so I don't have to search for the episode on Google and spoil the results of who wins the fight for myself.
Bebo: How does Jesus Christ fit into your perception of marriage?
MattDunn: I can think of three distinct ways that the personage of God is irrevocably intertwined with the concept and practice of love, and marriage, at its most ideal, is the culmination of love here on earth. The first way is that we humans are created in the image of a loving God. Bespotted and adulterated as we have made ourselves, 1 John 3 tells us to "behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! [...] Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him." That same chapter tells us that our ability to love is a God-given gift: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not love God, for God is love." So if we can act in love and live a life where we love others in a mode pure and complete, we are doing so because God made us as reflections of His nature and design.
Bebo: All right, fair enough. We were made by a loving God in His own image, so it stands to reason that our capacity to love would follow suit. What's your second connection to God?
MattDunn: Well, it's the fact that Jesus Christ demonstratively taught us to love. Everything He wants us to do, He did himself. In 1 John 3, we are told that we love "because He first loved us," and that "in this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins." Jesus didn't just sit outside the temporal realm and make broad declarations about love -- He came down and did it the hard way. So when Paul tells us men in Ephesians 5, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her," it is a powerful command to love sacrificially.
Bebo: So how does that play out in your personal relationship with Emily?
MattDunn: One of the biggest lessons we have to learn to be decent human beings is learning how to forgive. And forgiveness is not a blanket nicety: it's a personal surrendering of your own rights to allow for the shortcomings of another person who has damaged you in some way. Sometimes when Emily did something stupid or wrong, I would kinda hold on to that anger or the fact that I was right and she was wrong, and even if I said I forgave her, I would remember it the next time she made the same mistake. There's no such thing as "forgiving and not forgetting." Forgiving means you have to give the other person a blank slate, every time, up to infinity, no matter what. But the lesson was really transcendent for me because it made me think of how my sins were personally grievous to God, to the point where He had to bleed and die for them to be forgiven: not just statistics on a sin-spreadsheet He could erase with the push of a button. And yet His mercies are still new every morning, so that's something that's expected of me.
Another more metaphorical example is debt. Emily has a pretty sizeable college tuition debt, and when we get married, I will assume and pay most of the debt. This situation had the potential to engender resentment and frustration, but a good friend pointed out to me that when Christ positioned Himself as the bridegroom to take the church as His bride, He had to pay off her debt with His life and in doing so made her perfected and spotless and new. He counted it as worthy to pay off her debt because it meant He had his perfect bride. There's certainly something there I can take away from His example as I go about paying Emily's financial debt.
Bebo: MattDunn, you are very wordy and long-winded, and I'm starting to suspect my only role in this dialogue is to break up the paragraphs into more accessible chunks.
MattDunn: By Jove, I think he's got it!
Bebo: That's what I thought. What about the third way that God connects to your up-and-coming marriage?
MattDunn: Just that imperfect people like me are unable to love completely without the daily and miraculous grace of God. It doesn't come easily or naturally to us, despite being made in the image of God. The call to love someone as your wife is an incredibly high and demanding task to be commissioned with, and I'm definitely not up to it on my own, so this marriage will be an exercise in faith and dependence on God for it to work.
Bebo: That's it?
MattDunn: What? What do you want from me?
Bebo: You've spent all this time talking about love, and you haven't even mentioned 1 Corinthians 13. Or the whole Genesis 2 description of Adam and Eve being created compatible for each other.
MattDunn: Oh, everyone talks about 1 Corinthians 13. It's expected.
Bebo: So what is marriage to you? Is it mutual cohabitation with benefits?
MattDunn: It's supposed to be the ultimate witness and testament to God's love. You're supposed to be able to point to a marriage and say, that's what love is, and that's the best glimpse in this lifetime of what God intended when He designed us to love, and the best gift that He has ever given us. I don't think that's true of most marriages, but it's supposed to be. And yes, I'm also looking forward to the benefits.
Bebo: Sex!
MattDunn: Uh, a mobile beer bottle dispensary, but sure, that too. My friend Patrick, who plays a lot of video games, once referred to women as "mobile spawn units." That's another good role for them.
Bebo: So talk to me about your take on the biblical roles of man and woman in marriage, and how instrumental communication is going to be, and whether you've been introduced to the 5 Love Languages or the Act of Marriage, and how will key aspects of your marital intimacy change as you grow older...
MattDunn: No, that stuff doesn't interest me so much. Look, we'll make it work. Marriage has been made to work with great success without a lot of taught methodologies. I love her and she loves me, it's a true statement on bad days as well as good, and God is on our side on this one. It'll all come out okay.
Bebo: What's the best piece of marital advice you ever heard?
MattDunn: From the movie Claudine: "Love is when a man brings the groceries instead of eating yours."
Bebo: So is there a possibility that you'll be getting married and then deployed the next day?
MattDunn: No way, that only happens in the movies.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Hey Stephen
This Sunday, I had an amazing time at church because I was talking to my pastor's wife and she was discussing how she couldn't watch regular boxing anymore because she found the violence of mixed martial arts and the UFC much more appealing. Right on.
The pastor also preached a sermon on Acts 6-7, about the life and martyrdom of Stephen, and it was a great reminder of some simple truths for me. But as I opened my Bible to Acts 6, my eye caught the verses preceding the chapter:
"And when they had called for the apostles and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name."
This verse reminded me that we don't have to rely on foreseeable consequences to come of our ministry, or of our sacrifices. In my last post, I lamented the idea that we would have to suffer through certain periods of our lives, that we would have to sacrifice some of our God-given time to something other than our happiness. And how often do we feel the need to substantiate or rationalize our suffering with a definite benefit or positive consequence that comes of it? But in this instance, the apostles don't see hundreds come to faith immediately afterward, nor do they receive the encouragement of the stubborn religious elders saying, "You're right, Jesus is the Messiah!", nor do angels descend from heaven and give them their notarized deed for a celestial mansion. They take a beating for the sake of their beloved Lord Jesus, and they are glad for the simple privilege to do it.
And Stephen! I hadn't read his story in a long time, so it was a powerful thing to recall the details. Stephen was a young man, still new to the Christian faith, but firm in his convictions and bold in his testimony. And as he delivers his reproach to the council of priests, himself full of the Holy Spirit, he seeds "the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." To offer historical context, in the Judaic judicial system, physically standing was a way of affirming someone's testimony, a more demonstrative equivalent of our placing one's hand on the Bible and swearing. To see Jesus affirming his testimony: what an honor for Stephen, the fearless fledgling believer! And he didn't ask the same questions that you or I ask, what good will come of this action. In all candor, shortly after his martyrdom, "a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered," "and as for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house, and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison." It's true that in the long run, the diaspora of believers helped spread the gospel across widespread Middle Eastern regions and sent Saul on his fateful way to Damascus, but there was no way anyone saw that coming at the time. There's no doubt from the way the story is presented, from the testimony Stephen gives, and from the way Jesus Himself stands behind it, that Stephen was doing a magnificent thing for His Lord, but if Stephen were asking the same skeptical questions that I often ask, he wouldn't have acted as he did.
Of course there's a place to think sensibly about using our time and energy well, and of course cost-benefit analysis has its applications in ministry. But for where I am, it's important for me to remember the value of suffering simply in faith for my Lord, to hope that I'm worthy of the same calling as the apostles, and to not make personal cost-benefit the basis of how I approach the gospel and the pursuit of Jesus Christ.
I hope that in time and by transforming grace, I would rejoice to be counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.
The pastor also preached a sermon on Acts 6-7, about the life and martyrdom of Stephen, and it was a great reminder of some simple truths for me. But as I opened my Bible to Acts 6, my eye caught the verses preceding the chapter:
"And when they had called for the apostles and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name."
This verse reminded me that we don't have to rely on foreseeable consequences to come of our ministry, or of our sacrifices. In my last post, I lamented the idea that we would have to suffer through certain periods of our lives, that we would have to sacrifice some of our God-given time to something other than our happiness. And how often do we feel the need to substantiate or rationalize our suffering with a definite benefit or positive consequence that comes of it? But in this instance, the apostles don't see hundreds come to faith immediately afterward, nor do they receive the encouragement of the stubborn religious elders saying, "You're right, Jesus is the Messiah!", nor do angels descend from heaven and give them their notarized deed for a celestial mansion. They take a beating for the sake of their beloved Lord Jesus, and they are glad for the simple privilege to do it.
And Stephen! I hadn't read his story in a long time, so it was a powerful thing to recall the details. Stephen was a young man, still new to the Christian faith, but firm in his convictions and bold in his testimony. And as he delivers his reproach to the council of priests, himself full of the Holy Spirit, he seeds "the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." To offer historical context, in the Judaic judicial system, physically standing was a way of affirming someone's testimony, a more demonstrative equivalent of our placing one's hand on the Bible and swearing. To see Jesus affirming his testimony: what an honor for Stephen, the fearless fledgling believer! And he didn't ask the same questions that you or I ask, what good will come of this action. In all candor, shortly after his martyrdom, "a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered," "and as for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house, and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison." It's true that in the long run, the diaspora of believers helped spread the gospel across widespread Middle Eastern regions and sent Saul on his fateful way to Damascus, but there was no way anyone saw that coming at the time. There's no doubt from the way the story is presented, from the testimony Stephen gives, and from the way Jesus Himself stands behind it, that Stephen was doing a magnificent thing for His Lord, but if Stephen were asking the same skeptical questions that I often ask, he wouldn't have acted as he did.
Of course there's a place to think sensibly about using our time and energy well, and of course cost-benefit analysis has its applications in ministry. But for where I am, it's important for me to remember the value of suffering simply in faith for my Lord, to hope that I'm worthy of the same calling as the apostles, and to not make personal cost-benefit the basis of how I approach the gospel and the pursuit of Jesus Christ.
I hope that in time and by transforming grace, I would rejoice to be counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
This Mortal Coil
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.
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.
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.
Friday, July 24, 2009
I'm a Smart-Ass
Today, during pre-marital counseling, the male half of my mentor couple was asking about blogging, and how it's set up, and I explained to him about free online sites like blogger.com and how some blogs were just desultory expositions on what people did during the day ("Today I walked around the Rice village and ran into an old friend") and some are centralized around a specific theme ("Sarah's Southern Cooking Journey" or "Fred's Foray Through Med School" or "Paul's Political Profferings").
He asked, "So why would people read your blog?" (in a general sense) and I said, "Um, because it's awesome?"
Of course, an old friend once told me, "I always thought of you more as a wise ass than a smart ass."
MLIA.
He asked, "So why would people read your blog?" (in a general sense) and I said, "Um, because it's awesome?"
Of course, an old friend once told me, "I always thought of you more as a wise ass than a smart ass."
MLIA.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Double Hockey Sticks
In general, people are too quick to distill the Christian faith into a dichotomy of going to heaven or going to hell, and the point of believing in Jesus is to avoid burning for all eternity. That summary builds a religion motivated by fear and misses the central concept of falling in love and pursuing a personal relationship with a mysterious and wonderful God. There's a lot of imagery around heaven and hell that derives more from Dante and Jonathan Edwards than from any biblical text.
But as undesirable as that dichotomy feels, our notions of heaven and hell are very difficult to dismiss, especially in light of the scattered, but dramatic biblical passages about what happens after physical death. In Matthew 13, Jesus describes what He calls "the end of the age": "The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."
There's so much scattered and arcane Scripture that makes reference to "the end times" that Christian eschatologists fill books compiling interpretations of the clues: what the 1299 days from the removal of "the daily sacrifice" to the establishment of "the abomination of desolation" might really mean, or what the number 666 really entails. And what comes of that is a fragmented, piecemeal, and usually terrifying perspective on the afterlife: the sort that spawns novels like the Left Behind series or sermons like "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
In the book Searching For a God to Love, Chris Blake makes a compelling case that the whole "burning in hell" concept espoused by popular Christianity is "the worst lie ever told." He makes the point that a lot of our conception of hell comes from the ancient Jewish mythology of Sheol, the dark underworld, and that a Christian paradigm built on fear is irrational, since the most frequently given biblical command given by God to people is "do not fear" or "be not afraid." Also included is an illustrative story about a man who meets an angel walking down the road. The angel carries a bucket of water in one hand and a torch in the other and when asked, explains that the water is to put out the flames of hell and the torch is to burn down the castles of heaven -- "Then we'll see who really loves God."
There's an artificial contrast here set up between wanting to believe in a desirable God and wanting to believe in a real God, where real is defined by Scriptural inferences. The former mindset says, of course God is good and loving and merciful -- what kind of God would be cruel enough to send your parents or grandparents or best friend to eternal damnation? What kind of God would be impotent or uncaring to save them from a horrible fate? What kind of God do you believe in? And the latter mindset says, well, the Bible objectively mentions heaven and hell, so what kind of idealized, indulgent contrivance of a God are you hoping for, when the Scriptural evidence of judgment is before you? The artifice comes from the fact that our conceptions of heaven and hell are scattered notions at best; we know some things, but not all things, and we know what many Scriptures say, but not what they mean. I had a youth pastor who said he was once convinced that the Apocalypse was coming in the 80's because the winged demons that scoured the earth were clearly the UH-1 Huey helicopters in Vietnam. So to say that our popular paradigm of heaven and hell is objectively Scriptural is a narrowly focused perspective at best: it's like reading the parts of an automobile tech manual about the warning indicators and concluding that the car is inherently a death trap. And the truth that has to come to bear is that God is loving and God is incomprehensible to us: surely in those two truths, we can allow that there may be a truth that satisfies both the Scriptures we read and the God we want to follow.
I think about these things because my grandparents are not believers in Jesus Christ and because they're aging all-too rapidly. I wonder why this circumstance doesn't seem like a pressing issue for people, especially my parents. Why nobody worries about the prospect of old people, our loved ones, perishing eternally. Is it that we think that there are other ways to the Father besides Jesus? Because (with allowances for Romans 1) most of us think there aren't. Is it that we really don't believe in the reality of heaven and hell? Because most of us say that we do. Is it that we don't think we have an integral role to play in the advance of the gospel? Because most of us say we have. Is it that we don't care about our grandparents, our relatives, our friends who have not found salvation in the One we claim to be the only source of salvation?
I know it's bad salesmanship, and worse relationship for that matter, to be pushy about things, but you'd think more people would be showing more concern about their grandparents getting older or even their friends approaching death day by day. You'd think we would be like Paul, who so desired the salvation of the Jewish people that he claimed he would give up his own salvation if it would guarantee theirs. I don't see that most of us are like that. We have a lot of thinking to do to reconcile what we believe about heaven and hell and whether that adds up with any Scriptural basis and how we want to think God would treat our loved ones who are at once sinners in the hands of an angry God and beloved children of a kind Creator and people who mean the world to us. I know in my head that we are all sinners who deserve what we get and that the redemption of Jesus Christ and our promised eternal bliss is an unwarranted mercy, so it's missing the point to blame God; but I think in my heart that my grandparents are good people who shouldn't go to hell and that if they die unsaved, I'll probably be asking God why He didn't make a more foolproof system. Does hell, as we think of it, even exist? If Satan is to be eternally punished, would God really give him his own eternal sovereignty? Either we haven't given it enough thought, we've found resolution for our questions on the matter, or we're desperate and dying on the inside from the encroaching crisis.
And if we're wrapped up about the issue, I think that brings us back to what kind of God we believe in. And the reminder that God is loving and that God is incomprehensible helps me think nothing so specific as, maybe unrepentant sinners won't go to hell, but something more broad and true: that God is loving and God is incomprehensible to us. Surely in those two truths, we can allow that there may be a truth that satisfies both the Scriptures we read and the God we want to follow.
But as undesirable as that dichotomy feels, our notions of heaven and hell are very difficult to dismiss, especially in light of the scattered, but dramatic biblical passages about what happens after physical death. In Matthew 13, Jesus describes what He calls "the end of the age": "The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."
There's so much scattered and arcane Scripture that makes reference to "the end times" that Christian eschatologists fill books compiling interpretations of the clues: what the 1299 days from the removal of "the daily sacrifice" to the establishment of "the abomination of desolation" might really mean, or what the number 666 really entails. And what comes of that is a fragmented, piecemeal, and usually terrifying perspective on the afterlife: the sort that spawns novels like the Left Behind series or sermons like "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
In the book Searching For a God to Love, Chris Blake makes a compelling case that the whole "burning in hell" concept espoused by popular Christianity is "the worst lie ever told." He makes the point that a lot of our conception of hell comes from the ancient Jewish mythology of Sheol, the dark underworld, and that a Christian paradigm built on fear is irrational, since the most frequently given biblical command given by God to people is "do not fear" or "be not afraid." Also included is an illustrative story about a man who meets an angel walking down the road. The angel carries a bucket of water in one hand and a torch in the other and when asked, explains that the water is to put out the flames of hell and the torch is to burn down the castles of heaven -- "Then we'll see who really loves God."
There's an artificial contrast here set up between wanting to believe in a desirable God and wanting to believe in a real God, where real is defined by Scriptural inferences. The former mindset says, of course God is good and loving and merciful -- what kind of God would be cruel enough to send your parents or grandparents or best friend to eternal damnation? What kind of God would be impotent or uncaring to save them from a horrible fate? What kind of God do you believe in? And the latter mindset says, well, the Bible objectively mentions heaven and hell, so what kind of idealized, indulgent contrivance of a God are you hoping for, when the Scriptural evidence of judgment is before you? The artifice comes from the fact that our conceptions of heaven and hell are scattered notions at best; we know some things, but not all things, and we know what many Scriptures say, but not what they mean. I had a youth pastor who said he was once convinced that the Apocalypse was coming in the 80's because the winged demons that scoured the earth were clearly the UH-1 Huey helicopters in Vietnam. So to say that our popular paradigm of heaven and hell is objectively Scriptural is a narrowly focused perspective at best: it's like reading the parts of an automobile tech manual about the warning indicators and concluding that the car is inherently a death trap. And the truth that has to come to bear is that God is loving and God is incomprehensible to us: surely in those two truths, we can allow that there may be a truth that satisfies both the Scriptures we read and the God we want to follow.
I think about these things because my grandparents are not believers in Jesus Christ and because they're aging all-too rapidly. I wonder why this circumstance doesn't seem like a pressing issue for people, especially my parents. Why nobody worries about the prospect of old people, our loved ones, perishing eternally. Is it that we think that there are other ways to the Father besides Jesus? Because (with allowances for Romans 1) most of us think there aren't. Is it that we really don't believe in the reality of heaven and hell? Because most of us say that we do. Is it that we don't think we have an integral role to play in the advance of the gospel? Because most of us say we have. Is it that we don't care about our grandparents, our relatives, our friends who have not found salvation in the One we claim to be the only source of salvation?
I know it's bad salesmanship, and worse relationship for that matter, to be pushy about things, but you'd think more people would be showing more concern about their grandparents getting older or even their friends approaching death day by day. You'd think we would be like Paul, who so desired the salvation of the Jewish people that he claimed he would give up his own salvation if it would guarantee theirs. I don't see that most of us are like that. We have a lot of thinking to do to reconcile what we believe about heaven and hell and whether that adds up with any Scriptural basis and how we want to think God would treat our loved ones who are at once sinners in the hands of an angry God and beloved children of a kind Creator and people who mean the world to us. I know in my head that we are all sinners who deserve what we get and that the redemption of Jesus Christ and our promised eternal bliss is an unwarranted mercy, so it's missing the point to blame God; but I think in my heart that my grandparents are good people who shouldn't go to hell and that if they die unsaved, I'll probably be asking God why He didn't make a more foolproof system. Does hell, as we think of it, even exist? If Satan is to be eternally punished, would God really give him his own eternal sovereignty? Either we haven't given it enough thought, we've found resolution for our questions on the matter, or we're desperate and dying on the inside from the encroaching crisis.
And if we're wrapped up about the issue, I think that brings us back to what kind of God we believe in. And the reminder that God is loving and that God is incomprehensible helps me think nothing so specific as, maybe unrepentant sinners won't go to hell, but something more broad and true: that God is loving and God is incomprehensible to us. Surely in those two truths, we can allow that there may be a truth that satisfies both the Scriptures we read and the God we want to follow.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
A Large Debt is a Great Opportunity to Put Your Money Where Your Money Used to Be.
I think most of us want very much to love and follow Jesus faithfully. Especially when the matter comes to money and material possessions, we endeavor to say what He would want us to say because He Himself had a lot to say on the matter: Jesus lived a nomadic lifestyle, derided rich Pharisees and tax collectors, and ate with beggars and prostitutes. We admire that He was so willing to be poor because He was so aware of what true wealth is. Theologians debate back and forth about what it could mean that the Beatitudes in Matthew say "Blessed are the poor in spirit," and the equivalent verses in Luke read simply, "Blessed are the poor." Sermons tell and re-tell the story of the poor widow who, in giving her last mite to the church, gave a bigger contribution than the other more prosperous donors. And so on.
There are also many who tend to temper this profligate dismissal of the value of money with arguments for good stewardship and counterarguments on the side of material pursuits. These people are the people who would say, "Well, if you really believed that, then what's to stop you (or everyone) from donating all their money away and living a happily ascetic homeless existence?" They would continue with that thought, "See, you don't really believe that Christians shouldn't have money. It would be poor stewardship and horribly irresponsible if you didn't take care of your family and their future. Plus, you have to earn money to give it away. Also, the whole Bible talks about taking care of the poor and destitute among us. If having no money isn't a significant thing, why make such a huge deal about them being poor and us not being poor?" Some such arguments may be motivated by a desire to preserve a comfortable status quo, but a lot of it is well-intentioned and well-thought-out.
So if tomorrow, you suddenly and unexpectedly incurred a $100,000 dollar debt, how would you react? It would be a wonderfully pragmatic test to see what you really thought about the matter of money.
I suspect many Christians would interpret such circumstance as exactly that: a test. Either they need to pray and believe harder, or it's one of those karmic what-goes-around-comes-around phenomena, but if they wait it out in faith, then eventually God will bless them, and probably (although never voiced aloud) financially. Either that, or there's some lesson hidden in the circumstance that they have to figure out, some revelation about how they're living their life, and if they figure it out, God will restore normality. It's how our common interpretation of the book of Job and Chicken Soup for the Soul resolve: no one just dies poor and alone without the closure of either a belated reward or a valuable life lesson.
"The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the earth produced its fruit." -- James 5:16-18
"And the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed, the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." -- Job 42:10
The other extreme is also pretty conceivable. Many people simply divorce the issue of money from any sort of spiritual application. Money is one of those necessary tangibles, the currency of this temporal existence, and something that won't exist in heaven, so why bother placing all this spiritual value on who has it and who doesn't, and how you spend it?
"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." -- Job 1:21
"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moths nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." -- Matthew 6:19-21
"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit,' whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.'" -- James 4:13-15
Those people are like the people who are quick to point out the Biblical distinction that the love of money, vice money itself, is the root of all evil. There's a lot of Scripture out there that would suggest that distinction is simply splitting hairs: that to seek or have lots of wealth is to keep a Pandora's Box on top of a gasoline tank next to a live, plugged-in arc welder. What I'm saying is, a lot of Scripture almost makes you uncomfortable to be on the side of the rich.
"Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. Indeed, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of the Sabbath." -- James 5:1-4
"Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,' you do well; but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors." -- James 2:5-9
"Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, and gentleness." -- 1 Timothy 6:6-11
The funny aspect of being $100,000 in debt is that there are a million Christian books and solutions for how to manage the money you have in a Christ-honoring way, but few satisfactory answers to the issues of having no money. And probably the best way to think about that one is to do what Paul said in his final letter to Timothy: remember Jesus Christ.
"Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." -- Matthew 8:20
"You were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold [...] but with the precious blood of Christ." -- 1 Peter 1:18-19
"For you were bought at a price." -- 1 Corinthians 6:20
If you had suddenly and unexpectedly incurred a $100,000 debt, and you had to pick among a myriad of Christian perspectives, my hope would be that the circumstance would draw you closer to the mind of Christ, and that it would tangibly remind you that once you were in grave and inescapable debt, and that God paid it for you at great personal cost. And that oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be.
There are also many who tend to temper this profligate dismissal of the value of money with arguments for good stewardship and counterarguments on the side of material pursuits. These people are the people who would say, "Well, if you really believed that, then what's to stop you (or everyone) from donating all their money away and living a happily ascetic homeless existence?" They would continue with that thought, "See, you don't really believe that Christians shouldn't have money. It would be poor stewardship and horribly irresponsible if you didn't take care of your family and their future. Plus, you have to earn money to give it away. Also, the whole Bible talks about taking care of the poor and destitute among us. If having no money isn't a significant thing, why make such a huge deal about them being poor and us not being poor?" Some such arguments may be motivated by a desire to preserve a comfortable status quo, but a lot of it is well-intentioned and well-thought-out.
So if tomorrow, you suddenly and unexpectedly incurred a $100,000 dollar debt, how would you react? It would be a wonderfully pragmatic test to see what you really thought about the matter of money.
I suspect many Christians would interpret such circumstance as exactly that: a test. Either they need to pray and believe harder, or it's one of those karmic what-goes-around-comes-around phenomena, but if they wait it out in faith, then eventually God will bless them, and probably (although never voiced aloud) financially. Either that, or there's some lesson hidden in the circumstance that they have to figure out, some revelation about how they're living their life, and if they figure it out, God will restore normality. It's how our common interpretation of the book of Job and Chicken Soup for the Soul resolve: no one just dies poor and alone without the closure of either a belated reward or a valuable life lesson.
"The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the earth produced its fruit." -- James 5:16-18
"And the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed, the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." -- Job 42:10
The other extreme is also pretty conceivable. Many people simply divorce the issue of money from any sort of spiritual application. Money is one of those necessary tangibles, the currency of this temporal existence, and something that won't exist in heaven, so why bother placing all this spiritual value on who has it and who doesn't, and how you spend it?
"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." -- Job 1:21
"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moths nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." -- Matthew 6:19-21
"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit,' whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.'" -- James 4:13-15
Those people are like the people who are quick to point out the Biblical distinction that the love of money, vice money itself, is the root of all evil. There's a lot of Scripture out there that would suggest that distinction is simply splitting hairs: that to seek or have lots of wealth is to keep a Pandora's Box on top of a gasoline tank next to a live, plugged-in arc welder. What I'm saying is, a lot of Scripture almost makes you uncomfortable to be on the side of the rich.
"Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. Indeed, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of the Sabbath." -- James 5:1-4
"Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,' you do well; but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors." -- James 2:5-9
"Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, and gentleness." -- 1 Timothy 6:6-11
The funny aspect of being $100,000 in debt is that there are a million Christian books and solutions for how to manage the money you have in a Christ-honoring way, but few satisfactory answers to the issues of having no money. And probably the best way to think about that one is to do what Paul said in his final letter to Timothy: remember Jesus Christ.
"Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." -- Matthew 8:20
"You were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold [...] but with the precious blood of Christ." -- 1 Peter 1:18-19
"For you were bought at a price." -- 1 Corinthians 6:20
If you had suddenly and unexpectedly incurred a $100,000 debt, and you had to pick among a myriad of Christian perspectives, my hope would be that the circumstance would draw you closer to the mind of Christ, and that it would tangibly remind you that once you were in grave and inescapable debt, and that God paid it for you at great personal cost. And that oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be.
Job Satisfaction and Other Shorts
Job Satisfaction IN THE NAVY!
(Binary Scale)
Find pleasure: 1
Search the world for treasure: 0
Learn science technology: 1
Begin to make my dreams all come true, on the land or on the sea: 0
Learn to fly: 0
Play in sports: 0
Skin dive: 0
Study oceanography: 1
Sign up for the big band: 0
Sit in the grandstand when your team and others meet: 0
Sail the seven seas: 0
Put my mind at ease: 0
Make a stand: 1
Protect the motherland: 0 (training commands to date)
Join your fellow man: 1
The perks of my job are apparently highly exaggerated.
This next generation of Americans will be one of selectively excellent spellers. Specifically, every female will be able to spell the words "bananas," "delicious," "tastey" (sic), "Fergie," and "glamorous." This phenomenon recalls an earlier generation that was able to spell the words "some," "pig," "terrific," "radiant," and "humble." If the wisdom of the ages were collated, the sentence "Some terrific, delicious, tastey, glamorous, radiant, bananas, humble pig Fergie" would be flawless except for want of a predicate.
Seriously, did no one think to spell out "laodicean" in a pop song? The Scripps spelling bee could've gone so much further.
(Binary Scale)
Find pleasure: 1
Search the world for treasure: 0
Learn science technology: 1
Begin to make my dreams all come true, on the land or on the sea: 0
Learn to fly: 0
Play in sports: 0
Skin dive: 0
Study oceanography: 1
Sign up for the big band: 0
Sit in the grandstand when your team and others meet: 0
Sail the seven seas: 0
Put my mind at ease: 0
Make a stand: 1
Protect the motherland: 0 (training commands to date)
Join your fellow man: 1
The perks of my job are apparently highly exaggerated.
This next generation of Americans will be one of selectively excellent spellers. Specifically, every female will be able to spell the words "bananas," "delicious," "tastey" (sic), "Fergie," and "glamorous." This phenomenon recalls an earlier generation that was able to spell the words "some," "pig," "terrific," "radiant," and "humble." If the wisdom of the ages were collated, the sentence "Some terrific, delicious, tastey, glamorous, radiant, bananas, humble pig Fergie" would be flawless except for want of a predicate.
Seriously, did no one think to spell out "laodicean" in a pop song? The Scripps spelling bee could've gone so much further.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
