I am the working title

An Agnostic Taught Me About Romance

2009-12-23T00:26:00.004-06:00

I have been reading Robert McKee. He is probably the most brilliant mind I have ever encountered in any form. As far as I know, he is an agnostic, but somehow God has taught me more through his book than a year's worth of sermons.

McKee has taught me a lot about a lot, but he has caused a major paradigm shift in my idea of romance.

I've read Joshua Harris and Cloud & Townsend and heard from a dozen other older, probably wiser men and women on how romance should be done. I think it's a very important issue, and should not be so often dismissed as some type of adolescent angst. Romance is, essentially, the process of answering the second most important question you will ever face: Should I marry someone, and if so, who?

How you decide to answer this question will define the rest of our life more dramatically than anything else, save your relationship with God. Therefore, deciding the process by which we find the answer is neither trivial or childish, but serious beyond most other activities and ultimately life defining.

McKee doesn't really offer advice about romance, but he offers some profound insights about human nature, and it's rocked my world.

In making decisions about friendships or romantic relationships, most people are entirely trait focused. What are their spiritual gifts? What are their personality traits? Are they introverted or extroverted? What are their goals? What is their calling? Are they Complimentarian? Calvinist? What is their character like? Are they honest, ethical, compassionate, genuine? Do their know the Bible? What are their flaws? What are their strengths? Do I enjoy spending time with them? Do I trust them? Do I think they are attractive?

Knowing someone's traits probably has some degree of importance, and answering questions like those is probably worth doing before you dive in head first, but that used to be my primary basis for deciding if I should date someone, as I believe it is for most people. Then I read McKee.

People's personality changes. They have new life experiences, they have hormone changes, and their personality changes. People's character changes, both for the better and for the worse. People make moral compromises, God convicts and changes people's hearts. For these reasons, everything about a person that is in any way trait based is perpetually in flux, and fundamentally unreliable. As such, personality or character traits are not a good basis on which to make a lifelong commitment.

There is a difference between knowing someone and knowing about someone. As a rule of thumb, everything you could possibly explain to a third party about someone is what you know about them. What you could never explain or articulate, is you knowing them. Everything you know about their traits is stuff you know about them. This is mostly unrelated to whether you actually know them or not.

If you are a Christian, you were predestined before the foundation of the world to be a child of God (1 Peter). You were known intimately before you were created, and you, like everyone else, where created in the Image of God, (Genesis 2) but we were each created in the Image uniquely. That is, you bear a slightly different angle of the Image than I do. We are all created by God with the greatest intentionality, containing at our very core a reflect of the nature of God, but each of those cores is slightly different, showing slightly different aspects of God. (See Grudem's "Systematic Theology")

Furthermore, we each are in the process of being conformed to the image of Christ, which is a process of perfection of our own unique natures. When we have all been perfected, we will all still be different, because God has made us all unique, yet bearing his image.

Beyond your traits and goals and gifts and calling and talent and masks and history and all the layers we all have, you have a core to your being, and inner most self. This is unique and created specifically by God. It may show differently as your character and personality changes, but your inner most self never changes. God does not alter it. It is who you are at the most basic level. It is the epitome of the unique image of God inside you.

People have many desires, both conscious and unconscious. Your unconscious desires are unconscious mostly because they are too fundamental and too complex to be articulated, even to yourself. McKee says your unconscious desires are always stronger than your conscious desires, and that as you grow as a human being, your conscious desires will more closely compliment your unconscious desires.

McKee also as you have one unconscious desire that is stronger than all the others, and in the end, it rules your life. Perhaps you have heard "Character is destiny." I think this is what it means. Not character traits, but who you are at the most fundamental level defines what your life will be, in the long run. The longer you live, the more this "controlling desire" dominates your life. You will, ultimately, make decisions out of your most fundamental and compelling part of your nature.

This controlling desire is generally too deep to be aware of, too fundamental to analyze, and too complex and multi-faceted to understand, let alone communicate to someone else. It is too deep in your inner self to be observed, but I think you can know a little bit about it by seeing its effects.

If God has designed you to get married, your innermost self, your controlling desire, has been designed to compliment and be complimented by the innermost self, the controlling desire of one other person better than any other person. You are designed to fit together at the deepest level with one other person, like a lock and a key, you are made for each other. I believe this predestination to compliment one another applies only to your deepest, truest self, and not to the multitude of personality and character traits, goals and gifts, that are closer to the surface and forever in flux.

Granting all of this is true, the question of romance then becomes how to discern whose innermost self most compliments your own. This is, I think, going to be different for different couples, but I have a few ideas.

Know yourself, or else everything else is useless.
It is impossible to discern the character or true self of a person who is not genuine, honest, and, at least to some degree, vulnerable. Someone who is not this way may be a wonderful person, but you have no way of knowing. Ergo, this person is not ready to date. Period.
Experiencing someone's controlling desire takes a lot of time spent together. I think it is a good idea to spend a lot of time with someone as a friend (both one on one and in a group) before you decide to invest romantically.
Judgment is clouded in a vacuum. It's important to be close friends with several members of the opposite sex so that you can tell the difference between infatuation based on superficial traits or the thrill of getting to know someone deeply, and the potential for lifelong commitment between someone who is deeply compatible with you.
The best measure of compatibility is the effect you have on them and the effect they have on you. Are you closer to God because of the friendship? Are they? Do they merely make you feel good, or do they facilitate holistic growth as a person, not because they are trying to, but just because it is naturally how they interact with you? Do they edify you the way you might most mature Christians to, or do they seem unusually designed to build you up in particular, and you them? You can't see their controlling desire, and you probably won't ever be able to quantify or describe it, but you can see its effects. Do the effects you have on one another suggest you are designed to fit together. This does not mean you get along or make each other feel good as much as it means that you help each other grow.
Watch what actions the other person takes. Actions tell you a lot about who a person is. The more pressure, the more significant the choice, the more the choice tells you about their true self. Pay attention, people make more significant choices than you may realize.

These things said, the methodology of how you date is not terribly significant. Whether you court or date casually is not important. What matters is that you adhere to biblical principles, especially honesty, and pursue someone based on who they are on the deepest possible levels. Mold your methodology around these things. I'll close with this:

"Life teaches this grand principle: What seems is not what is. People are not what they appear to be. A hidden nature waits concealed behind a facade of traits. No matter what they say, no matter how they comport themselves, the only way we ever come to know characters in depth is through their choices under pressure." - Robert McKee

Someone Like A Rabbit

2009-11-15T03:15:00.002-06:00

I know someone like a rabbit
Afraid, and move, who knows of what
And move, twitch, move, freeze
Twitch, move, never never never

Stay, except on the move, and move
Freeze, and move.

I tried to ask her
Why she is so afraid
Twitch, and she's gone
Camouflaged, freeze and move

Corner, catch, squeak, dash
Freeze, move

I don't think she wants
Move, eat, move, sleep, move
Did you know you can be miserable
Without wanting anything?

She is, I think
Freeze, move, twitch, move

I don't like her
She makes me anxious
The best way to get away from
her, is, stillness... or something

Pretend to be a rock
Sit, Sit, Sit, Sit

I'm more like a turtle
Plod, Plod, Danger!
Impersonate a rock
Pull everything in

Sit, Sit, Sit, Sit
Until it all goes away

Carry it with you, your shell
That's important
It slows you down, but
Always safe

Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie
Until it all goes away

The rabbit bounces through
Hide under the covers
Like a little boy
Inside a shell

I know someone like a rabbit
I don't like her
She makes me afraid
How does she do that?

1 John 1

2009-11-13T01:02:00.000-06:00

A lot of times, I feel like I'm missing something in the Christian life. Jesus came and promised this abundant life, but I don't really feel like I'm living it. I feel like I'm sorta living it. Maybe about 60% living it. But I read in the Bible how it talks about joy in Christ and abundant life and all that kind of thing, and honestly I have a lot of trouble resonating with that.

I have my mountaintop experiences like everyone else, but I don't think that's what the Bible is talking about when it talks about joy. It seems like the original Christians had this kind of ongoing experience where, even when things were hard, they really enjoyed life. “Sorrowful but always rejoicing,” you know. (2 Corinthians 6:10) I feel like something is just a little bit off. Not way off, mind you, but a little bit off, and I have trouble expressing it.

And I feel like if I told Christians about that, they'd say something really cute about finding my joy in the Lord or being faithful in quiet times or something like that. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I do decent with that sort of thing. I really don't think that's the problem.

And honestly, I don't think I'm alone. I live in this Christian community and I see a lot of things, and I feel a lot of us have this Godly contentment—sort of. We have joy in the Lord—sort of. You ask people how things are going and they're like, “life is rough but God is good,” and that's fine but something in the way they say makes me feel like we're all missing something.

First John is my favorite book in the Bible. John wrote it around 90 AD. At this point, stuff has been pretty hard. John is really old, probably in his 80's or so.

When I think about John's life, I feel like this should have been a really sad time for him. Like, John is a teenager or so and this incredible teacher named Jesus shows up when he's fishing with his brother. So, the teacher wants them to come with him, and John and James follow Jesus around for about three years. And I have to imagine those were the most incredible three years of John's life. He sees the transfiguration. He sees all these miracles, he gets to talk with God incarnate and learn from him and he has this totally life changing experience.

Then, Jesus dies and it's awful, but he comes back from the dead and it's incredible. And they hang out with the Risen Jesus a couple times, and then John sees him go back into heaven. Then John's in the upper room and the Holy Spirit falls on him and all the other apostles at Pentecost, and that had to be incredible. Then all these people start getting saved, and John and Peter are doing miracles and teaching in the temple.

And then John's brother gets stoned to death in public, and all the Christians flee from the Jewish persecution. But then the leader of the persecution (Paul) becomes a believer in this amazing appearing of Christ, and stuff is going pretty good again. And then the Holy Spirit says that Gentiles are to be included in the Kingdom of God too, and there's this awesome period of evangelism led by this guy, Paul, where churches get planted in most of the known world within about 10 years.

Then Paul gets murdered. And then Peter gets murdered, and everything kinda falls to John. And then the headquarters of the Church in Jerusalem gets destroyed because the Romans burn the whole thing to the ground. So John has to flee his homeland and he ends up in this pagan city of Ephesus. He starts pastoring a church there that Paul started, but apparently after Paul died things just went sideways, and the Ephesian church is having all these problems, and Christians are getting tortured and killed left and right.

So, I imagine old man John sitting in his house, and all his friends that he started with in the Church are dead. The ones who didn't get themselves lit on fire or boiled in oil just died of old age, and there's hardly anyone left who remembers the earthly Jesus or the Holy Spirit falling at Pentecost. And John's sitting there and he's probably thinking:

“You know, I'm probably not going to make it much longer. The Romans have already tried to kill me, the Ephesian silver guild tried to kill Paul and they don't really like me either. I get sick all the time now, it's hard to travel, I can't stand up straight. One day they're going to knock on my door and drag me out and burn me to death, and if that doesn't happen, any night I might go to bed and just die in my sleep.”

So he sits down and he writes this letter, except it doesn't seem to be written to anyone in particular. There's no addressees, there's no greeting. It doesn't have a lot of structure like the other epistles. I read it and I feel like John just sat down one night and started writing. It's like people who write a letter to be read at their funeral or something. It's like he's saying, “I'm going to die and there's some things you Christians need to remember when I'm gone.”

So, he sits down and he basically sums up all the essentials of the Christian faith. And that's why I like it so much. John doesn't seem to have some specific problem in mind. He's just telling all the Christians who are going to live after him what's really important for them to remember. So the first thing he says is this:

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you.”

And basically all that's saying is that John wants to tell the Christians about his personal experience with Jesus. It must seem like a lifetime ago that he went around the Judean countryside with the Rabbi Jesus, but that's the first thing that comes to his mind. He wants to tell them about it.

Then he says two things that really confused me. He says, “so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”

So in two sentences he has two purpose statements, and it took me a long time to reconcile those two together, and this is what I got.

He tells them about his experience with Jesus, and then right after that he says “so that you too may have fellowship with us.” Now, some people are going to tell you this that means that the recipients aren't Christians, and that John wants to have fellowship with them by them getting saved and being included in the universal Church together.

In the next chapter, John specifically says, “I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.” Apart from that, he talks about the readers being his children, and having the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and an intercessor for their sins, so it's pretty clear to me that you have to side with commentators who say that this is referring to people who are already Christians. The Bible just doesn't use phrases like that to talk about nonchristians.

What John is demonstrating is that every Christian can experience deep fellowship with other believers if they choose to follow specific practices, and in this text John gives us two specific practices that develop deep fellowship between believers.

I already talked about the first practice. John says that he is telling them about his personal experience with Jesus so that they will have fellowship with him. Honestly, I don't think that's very hard to apply, but to be really honest I don't see it a lot within the Church.

How come no one talks about their quiet times? I mean, seriously. We talk about our day and our classes and our girlfriend or or a book we ready or even some theological issue, and we talk about all of that because it has a level of importance to us. But sometimes, (not always, but decently often, I think) we have a really good quiet time, and there's some kind of a eureka moment, and the Holy Spirit speaks to us through the Bible, and when that happens it's a big deal, but we don't usually talk about with out friends. Maybe if there's like a testimony night you might say something or maybe you put it on your blog, but somehow it never makes dinner-with-friends conversation.

And I don't do this too much either so I think I get why it doesn't happen. At least for me, I'm afraid of being seen as arrogant or 'that super-spiritual guy' or like I'm disclosing too much or something. And it does seem like there's this cultural attitude that your time in the word and your prayer life and your interaction with the Holy Spirit are private things. That somehow it's not okay to talk about them at the in an informal setting, when you're just hanging out with your friends in the cafeteria or whatever.

But honestly, that's not Biblical. In the Bible, when God says something to someone, or the Holy Spirit moves in someone, they share it with their brothers and sisters in Christ. Because it's good for them. Believe it or not the Holy Spirit doesn't speak to you just for you. He speaks to you so you can take that word and build up other people. And when you share that truth that you got from your time with the Lord, it lets that truth sink more deeply into you. The Bible is not your personal manual to the spiritual life. It's meant to be understood in community. It's supposed to be shared and discussed and explained and proclaimed and sometimes even debated and all of that is good.

So the first practice John gives us to create deep fellowship is to share your experiences of God with other people. Then he says:

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

What I want us to get from this transparency. That's the big idea of the light and dark metaphor. Walking in the light doesn't mean you never sin, and it isn't as much related to the idea of living rightly as it is to the idea of living in a manner that is open and vulnerable. It means talking about sins and struggles. When I was doing my research for this passage I came across a commenter who said it really well, so I'm just going to read what he said about it because I think it's helpful.

“The symbolism of light as knowledge also implies that when Christians 'walk in the light' their lives will not contain hidden sins, falsehoods, or deception. Such walking 'in the light' results in deep divine and human fellowship.”1

I have a friend at a nearby college who is kind of like a little sister to me. Some of you know I'm an only child and I always wished I had siblings, so this girl kind fills that void in my life a little. We have a very, very open relationship in which we feel comfortable talking about issues that we need some masculine or feminine perspective on.

She has a pretty serious boyfriend, and a lot of the time she talks to me about issues relating to their relationship. Before I started talking to this girl I didn't really realize how hard it is for girls to understand guys, but apparently it's really hard.

Recently, she's been struggling because her boyfriend used pornography. And she came to me out of the blue and she said, “Matt, why do guys use porn?”

And the little sensor in my head that tells me when to step carefully started going off, because, you know, it's kind of a touchy issue. And so I kinda hemmed and hawed because I honestly there's no easy answer to that question and I wasn't really sure if it was the kind of thing that I should talk about with her, and she cut me off and said,

“Is it for masturbation?”

And I was like, “Well, yea.”

And you know I could tell she looked very sad because of her boyfriends issues with that and so forth. And so she started asking me all these questions about why he would want to do that and what that says about her and if it's an issue to break up over and so forth and so on, and I did the best I could to help her understand what was going on from my personal experience with it and the experience of guys I know who are struggling with it. And at the end I gave her some Christian websites that might be able to give her a little more information.

At the end of our conversation she said something that just burned itself in my memory, and I thought I would share it with you because I think it really illuminates this passage. I tried to get it down word for word after our conversation, but I may have paraphrased it some.

She told me, “You know, I think we need to talk about issues like this in groups of guys and girls. I know that most girls would freak out if they heard me say that, but I think it's really important for girls to understand the struggle that's going on and understand where they can help and where they need to let the guy handle it with his guys friends, because most girls know that almost all guys have used porn, but they don't know what to think of it or how to deal with it, so they just pretend like it's never been a problem for their husband or their boyfriend, and that's not healthy. And the same thing with girls. Girls have all kinds of issues with body image and eating disorders and masturbation and things like that, and I think guys need to know what they are doing to make those problems worse and what they could do to help. And I know that it's not really socially acceptable to talk about those things in the SDR or whatever, but I think we need to change that because I think it's really important to get those issues out in the open, especially between guys and girls.”

And as much as what she said scares me, and as much as I cringe away from the idea of talking about those things in mixed gender groups or even just in a group in general, and I think she's right. I'm sure you've all heard “Sin grows in the dark and dies in the light,” and there's a lot of truth to that.

And so, this is really the second practice that John is advocating: He's saying, if you want deep fellowship, be open about your sins and your struggles. That's what it means to walk in the light.

I've been using words like open and transparent, and I want to clarify what I mean by that. Being open or transparent or walking in the light does not mean that there's one or two people who know all about your dirty laundry and you put on a clean, shining face in front of the rest of the Church. It also doesn't mean you dump your issues on everyone. It means that, when stuff is really bad, you bring it before a community. Or, when someone brings up a topic that you have struggled with or do struggle with, you're okay talking about those personal issues with your brothers and sisters in Christ.

And I know that's a really scary thing, but I'm pretty darn sure that this is the Biblical model.

So,in the beginning I told you that I felt like I was some kind of joy missing in the Christian life. And then I told you that John says that every Christian can experience deep fellowship through two practices, and that those practices are talking about how you have experienced God in your life, and being transparent about your sin and struggles.

John says, “indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”

John has joy because he has fellowship with God. But the twist is, the thing we wouldn't expect, is that his joy isn't complete. Here is an apostle, who witnessed the transfiguration, saw the risen Christ, was indwelt with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, wrote a large section of the Bible, and his joy is not complete.

And you notice, he doesn't say that his joy will be complete when he gets to heaven, and he doesn't say that is joy isn't complete because not everyone is a Christian, or because people are turning away or there is persecution or something.

He says that he is writing this letter so his joy will be complete. He also says he is writing the letter so he will have fellowship with these other Christians. I already told you that you can have deep fellowship with other Christians, and John already told us how. This is the why.

Because when we have deep fellowship with Christians it completes the joy that we already have in our fellowship with Christ. And I think that's what is missing.

Most Beautiful

2009-09-13T23:15:00.002-05:00

The king was reflecting. Presently, he was reflecting on what he should reflect on for the next half hour. If he had been a less disciplined man, he wouldn't have reflected at all, but reflection was in the schedule for today, so he sat and reflected. You don't get to be king by avoiding the things on your schedule.

At this thought, the king decided to reflect on how he became king. It was a good story, which he told himself often to remember how very clever he had been in becoming king. He always talked to himself out loud when he told himself the story. It went something like this:

Many years ago, before I was a king, I was lord over the modest city of Roskilde. Though the people of my fair city where relatively happy under my lordship, I desired better things for them, and set about building that future. Through my wisdom, we developed a water management system, that allowed us to generate three times the crop yield we had in previous years. I surveyed the land and found good places to open mines for silver, copper, and iron.

The construction of an iron mine proved my greatest stroke of genius, as it allowed my people to construct weapons of unparalleled power. My city became the industrial center of the region. My people labored tirelessly, producing unbreakable armor, longspears, and iron chariots.

Some the other cities in the region began to fear me, for they knew that at a whim I could crush them under my heel. But I was both wise and and merciful, and using my skill in diplomacy, I instead invited the other cities to unite with me and form my first kingdom. (Naturally I would be king, for who else had the wisdom to to govern such an alliance?) All the cities gratefully accepted my offer, and we began to build a consolidated force.

We expanded quickly for some time, with more and more cities joining our kingdom. Eventually, we met the borders of other kingdoms, and I graciously allowed them to ally themselves under me, as I had with the cities before. But these people where proud and stiff-necked, and they spurned my grace and killed my emissaries. So, of course I sought to discipline them, because though I did not know them, I loved them, and wanted them to experience the bounty and peace of my reign. I was like a father to them, disciplining children whom he loves.

There were many wars with many nations after that, and I lead my troops fearless from the front, slaying thousands with my own spear. My cunning strategy and raw courage lead my troops to stunning victory after victory, and soon my kingdom stretched from the Western Sea to the Eastern Sea, and from the Southern Desert to the Northern Wastes.

Of course, one cannot discipline a nation in the same way he disciplines a single person. Because I loved them, I burned many of their cities. And some men I slew in battle, and others I had executed, and still others I disfigured. Though the discipline was painful for them, I know it did them well, for now they are my loyal subjects.

Of course, it would be dishonest of me not to admit that those conquered peoples benefited me as well. The treasures those lands had horded from other conquered peoples, I redistributed to the benefit of my entire kingdom. I built a spectacular palace with gold from the East and gemstones from the West so that all who ventured to my capitol might appreciate the splendor of our kingdom.

I collected beautiful virgins from every town in my kingdom for my harem, so every city and village could be represented in my children. The women were exceedingly beautiful, and I took much pleasure in them, and indeed, they were my prized possessions. I cannot imagine how much they adore me, after I rescued them from their families' mud huts and hopeless futures in farming towns, introducing them instead to a life of fine food, silk clothing, and gold jewelry, with no work to do whatsoever, bearing children to the king himself. Many of them do not speak our language, but I can see their worship in their eyes.

Suddenly the king was greatly troubled, for he began to reflect in earnest. He recalled the former days, when his harem pleased him, so that whatever troubled him in the managing of his kingdom during the day could be soothed away by evening. As the king thought, though, he realized that now he went to bed anxious, sleeping little and waking early.

And yet, he thought, the management of the kingdom goes well, and there is less strain on my leadership that in the old days of constant war. I have brought peace to the world and yet I am less at peace than when the world was at war. Could it be that I have lost the strength I used to have? Am I growing old and weak?

The king shook his head of such notions. Was he not still strong enough to fight in war? Surely he had not weakened. Perhaps it was his harem that was no longer as soothing as in the old days. That seemed to make sense. He remembered his first wives being more beautiful than these new women they were always sending him. Not that he didn't still have the pick of the crop, but they were what he thought of as commonly beautiful. It had been many years since a woman's beauty had taken his breath.

Yes, he concluded, it was seem that women of great beauty are harder to find these days. Perhaps I shall have to attend to this issue.

At the evening feast, he dined with the generals of his Northern Armies. The king heard many strange tales from them. It seemed a group of rebels or savages had taken refuge in the Great Forest in the far North, for no patrol that went into the forest ever returned. Only a few weeks ago, a company of several hundred men had vanished mysteriously into the forest. One of the generals darkly suggested the rebels might have a sorcerer.

Though the other generals shushed him, the king noticed that they all had similar expressions of fear when the forest was mentioned. Feeling in a gracious mood, the king ordered that the Northern forces be doubled, and that the realm's best magicians be sent to assist the generals in stamping out the rebellion. The generals seemed relieved to have avoided punishment, and the king smiled at his own benevolence.

That night, after the feast, the king ordered that some of his first wives be sent to him that night. Usually, the king preferred the younger women, but he hoped that night he would be able to see again the beauty that stole his breath so many years ago.

The king was disappointed, in his memories, his first wives seemed to be some of the most glorious creatures he had ever seen. When they were brought to him, he reeled in shock. They seemed... common. Undoubtedly their features were faded with age, but even so, they did not seem to have any remnant of the splendor he remembered from his wedding nights.

The king slept restlessly that night and awoke early the next morning. For the first morning since his youth, the king did not want to get out of bed. He hid under the covers, fearing he knew not what until his attendants came to dress him for breakfast.

The king maintained a jovial facade through the following days and weeks, insisting that he was doing better than ever, but the ulcers forming in his stomach told another story. The king woke each morning in a despair that he only covered up for the shame of it. He went through each day in a fog of anxiety, becoming increasingly disconnected from the events in his kingdom. He slept less and less.

The court magicians and doctors were unable to help the king. He took to heavy drinking, but gave it up because of the terrible hangovers. The managers of his harem did everything to attempt to send pleasing women, but the king was no longer amused. He took to spending a great deal of time on the roof of the castle, pondering questions which he could not articulate.

Even so, the king kept his schedule rigorously. It is the mark of a great man: to keep his schedule rigorously, regardless of whatever personal storms he may be enduring. The king applauded himself for his endurance. Indeed, such pride was one of the few joys left to him.

One afternoon, he had scheduled to be entertained by one of the court storytellers. Originally, the king was bored with the story, which was a tragedy about one of the Northern Kingdoms he had conquered a decade or so ago. This particular kingdom had been easy to conquer because the entire royal court, including the king, had suddenly vanished. The storyteller recounted a myth of their disappearance.

The tragedy began with the death of the queen of the realm. The king in the story was so distraught by her death that his counselors feared he might take his life. In desperation, they encouraged him to go on a quest to tame a a fabled spirit. It was said this spirit inherited the beauty of every woman when she died, and, for the man who could tame it, would become the most beautiful and loving woman in the world. Should the king be able to tame the spirit, not only should his grief over his deceased wife be assuaged, but he could take the spirit as his wife, and her power would bring great blessing to the realm.

However, the spirit was guarded by some unknown creature or force. No one knew what guarded her, for none had ever encountered it and lived. Some suspect the spirit had an army of loyal followers, others thought a dragon or some worse beast, others a warlock and still others some kind of fell demon or spirit. All that is known is that those who go seeking her are found dead with no injury whatsoever, without weapons drawn or any sign of danger except an expression of shock and horror on their face.

And while the story of the king who sought the most beautiful woman in world lagged on, stopping for an adventure here or a soliloquy there, that was his eventual end as well. Eventually he tracked down the forest she was said to hide in, went in, and was never seen alive again. Months later, a search party found his body and the bodies of all that were with him, untouched by animals or decay, uninjured, but dead. Surrounding them were hundreds of other bodies of other adventurers who had set out to find the woman.

The king was on the edge of his seat by the end of the tale. He questioned the storyteller in detail about every aspect. The storyteller was able to provide little more detail, except the say that the forest the spirit resided in was about a month's ride from the city of Bera, and that it was large enough to be mostly unexplored.

That night, during the time scheduled for the king to study in his library, he pulled out a map of the region of Bera, and using a compass, drew a circle encompassing the ground that could be covered in a generous estimate of a month's ride. The story said the royal party had passed thorugh numerous small towns and country but made no mention of any large cities, so the king systematically eliminated all routes from Bera that passed through a large city or exclusively through wilderness. He worked quickly, with fervor like a man possessed.

He circled all forests along the remaining routes and then pulled out reports on these lands from his library. He carefully eliminated forests that were regularly hunted, traveled, or used for timber, supposing that the forest in question must be largely unexplored. After his work, only three forests remained as possible candidates. Two lay to the south west, about ten miles apart, moderate in size, but large enough to hide an army or a dragon. The third composed the entire northern boundary of his empire. Pondering this, he realized this was the same forest in which his patrols were regularly disappearing due to a rebellion on the northern perimeter.

He disrupted his schedule to send urgent dispatches (for which a disruption in the schedule was allowed) to the effect that his generals report immediately on the success of the new army against the rebellion, that aggressive measures be taken to quell the uprising, and that a thorough survey of the two southwesterly forests be undertaken at once. Impressed with his efficiency, the king dined briefly with a few of his noblemen, and retired for the night.

He slept well for the first time in many months, dreaming of the peace and joy that would be brought if he could tame the spirit into a woman and bring her home as his bride. He imagined a glorious battle against a formless dark enemy, which he heroically conquered to free a woman of unspeakable beauty, who fell into his arms, overcome with gratitude and longing for him.

A few weeks later, a dispatch returned, reporting that the northern generals had sent a contingent of cavalry to map out the two southern forests as ordered. Companies had been sent in to probe the Northern Forest at 10 mile increments across a 150 mile line, and all of them had gone missing. The generals had now consolidated all their forces into an army of more than a hundred thousand soldiers, and intended to move into the forest in one well defended blob. Furthermore, the soldiers were to leave a wide path of downed trees to indicate their progress, and deploy a group of scouts every day to report where the army made camp. The king replied that he was pleased with the decision.

The king received reports regularly that the move into the forest was encountering no resistance, nor any evidence that anyone was living in the forest. They occasionally came upon perfectly preserved dead bodies, as seemed to be the magic of the forest, but all of them seemed to be dressed as in ages past, and none wore a soldiers uniform.

On the tenth day, the army came upon the camp of one of the companies sent into the forest previously. Unlike previous camps they had come upon, this company had their weapons drawn, and seemed to have formed a line of defense against the beast. There were arrows lodged in tree trunks near where the beast seemed to have approached, and the magician who had been with them had left scorch marks on the ground where he had landed spells. Still, all the soldiers were dead, without any sign of injury or decay. The colonial in command commented that it appeared all the soldiers had been frightened to death.

On the fifteenth day, no scout was dispatched to report on progress. The command outside the forest sent cavalry in to check on the army, and found they had been massacred in the same way as all the others, except that this time it seemed that some had tried to flee, and had gotten many leagues before the beast had caught them. As before, many had draw their weapons or fired arrows before their death. Furthermore, some of the more powerful magicians were still alive, but seemed to be in a deep sleep, from which it was impossible to wake them. The cavalry had returned with the comatose magicians and were awaiting further orders.

The king declared a state of war against the “rebels” in the North, allowing him to muster the entire army of the Empire, which he ordered to rally at Bera. He himself departed from Roskilde, taking with him his Imperial Guard, and arrived at Bera ahead of his armies. He gave further orders that every magician in the Empire, whether battle trained or not, was to meet the army at Bera and join in the war.

Numbering more than a million infantry and a hundred thousand cavalry, with additional knights, paladins, elephants, and siege weapons, and army of the empire took many months to organize. During this time the king spent many months with his counselors and magicians, analyzing what type of beast the army might be facing. After much effort, they were able to awake the sleeping magicians and hear their report. It went like this:

We sensed a presence approaching us through the trees. It was more magically powerful than any entity I have ever encountered. We alerted the commander, who gave the call to arms. As the entity drew closer, a certain awe seemed to fill us, a mixture of fear and a strange affection. We could not turn away from it once it got close enough. The men fired their arrows to stave it off, but I do not believe it has a physical body, so the arrows did no damage. We began to cast spells at it, but they seemed to have no effect. We continued to try different spells, hoping one would drive off the spirit. There were very many of us, and the trees obscured the view of the whole army. As soon as a soldier saw the entity, they froze on the spot, seized, and died. The troops in the rear broke ranks and fled. We watched the army collapsing like grain at the harvest before us, and we pooled out strength, casting the most powerful spell we knew. The strength of the spell was such that some of us died, and the rest of us fell into a coma, face down. I believe that is why we survived, because we never looked at it face to face.

The king's counselors were deeply troubled, and they encouraged him to to abandon the effort, but the king was reassured.

He said to them, “Do you not understand? The power of the beast is fear. It is so fearsome that any who look on it die of the spot. But I fear nothing at all! I will be able to conquer the beast. Indeed, I am perhaps the only hero who can. I will lead the army from the very front. My courage will inspire the whole army, and we shall destroy the fell beast.”

That night the king searched his heart, to examine if there was any fear in him, but he found none. He did not fear death, for he knew a man as great as he should have a fine afterlife. He did not fear losing his kingdom, because life as a king had become so unbearable. All his hope for joy hung on finding the most beautiful spirit and bringing her home. Failing this, he had nothing to lose.

The army set out with the king in front. Entering the forest, they found an exceedingly old man blocking the path. He had almost no hair, with wrinkled skin that sagged all over his body. His knuckles were swollen and purple veins were visible across them.

Yet, the man wore richly colored robes, only a little frayed, with gold and silver inlaid into them. His staff was a nobleman's, inlaid with diamonds and rubies. With great effort, the old man raised his hand, palm outwards, toward the king.

“Hail to The King of Roskilde!” he called in a horse voice.

The king looked down from his horse, “Hail, stranger! Who are you, and why do you block our path.”

“I am the prince of the north, I come to warn the king of the south about the forest he is about to enter. I bear this message to the king: 'There are more dangerous things than fear.'”

The king was angry that this old man would presume to be a prince, but he decided to ask more questions before he killed the wretch. Yet, as soon as the old man had finished his message, he seemed to evaporate in a multi-colored mist, which drifted into the forest.

The men nearby muttered to each other.

“Just a magicians trick!” the king called out loudly, and lead his disconcerted men into the forest before there could be any further sign of mutiny.

Weeks went by of riding through the forest. Nothing happened. The men began to relax, the king grew tense. He wondered what could be worse than fear. All his being was bent into this last adventure to slay some great beast and win the woman who would finally bring him happiness. Each day of monotony hardened the king's resolve.

The forest was thousands of years old, with trees taller than Roskilde's turrets. Summer turned to autumn, and the forest seemed to blossom rather than die. The cool green surrounding the army turned into brilliant shades of orange, as though the roots of the trees drank in fire rather than water. Strange birds the men had never seen filled the skies. Berries and autumn flowers covered the ground.

All this was lost on the king, who forged ahead with the greatest possible speed to meet the beast, not stopping to look upon the forest. Eventually the forest became so thick they were forced to abandon the horses and go on foot.

Weeks turned into months, and the leafy trees turned into pine trees. The undergrowth was replaced by bare ground covered only with a thick blanket of needles. Fall turned to winter, and snow began to fall, first in occasional flurries, then in a steady pour.

The forest seemed to retain warmth, and the journey under the trees remained fairly comfortable. The trees were so think that almost no snow made it to the ground, rather, several feet of snow formed a ceiling above them. Little sunlight penetrated the snow, so it seemed the forest was in a perpetual dusk. The party began to make torches out of pine branches. The king felt they were exploring a cave.

It was dark, and the party was preceding only by torchlight. The king did not bother to carry a torch because he had good eyesight in the dark. He forged ahead of the company by about ten yards, his eyes casting about eagerly for any sign of the beast.

At first he thought it was just the torchlight flickering off the snow, but as he stared into the darkness he became more sure he saw a green light in the distance. Perhaps the eyes of the beast? Did it have green eyes? Perhaps a camp of rebels protected by the beast? The king took off towards it at a run.

The king crossed through the forest at a dead sprint for two hundred yards before the light seemed any brighter. He was no longer aware of whether his men were with him or not. He drew his sword.

The king went through a clearing and into the trees on the other side. Then he could see clearly that something emitting a blue green light was moving through the trees. The light glistened off the ice crystals on the trees and broke into a thousand different hues. It formed a slow rainbow on the snow above him, and he remembered watching the sun set over the ocean as a boy, with his father standing next to him.

He shook the memory from his head and ran on, but the beauty in the clearing continued to distract him. Trails of luminescent mist in ran across the snow ceiling like ants on the ground. It wrapped itself in spirals around the trees and pooled on the ground.

Suddenly he saw her. His sword fell to the the ground. He had never seen a woman so exceedingly beautiful. It must be true that the Spirit inherited the beauty of all the women who died. Her garments were translucent, and light shone through them so strongly it was difficult to look at her directly.

There was a veil over her face, but through it he could see her mouth. It twisted up in a cocky smile. “Why have you come here?” Her voice was high and breathy, full of concern.

The king's heart filled with joy. Surely, this was the trophy that would complete his reign. Surely he would please him beyond all the other women he had seen, and he would allow her to appear in his court on occasion, and other rulers would surrender cities for a chance to see her.

“I have come to make you my wife.”

“And what if I do not wish to be your wife?”

“I do not want to have to force you.”

“Oh, but you do want to.”

“Either way, you will not be able to resist me.”

“Why are you so sure, man, that you will be able to resist me?”

The king expected himself to laugh out loud, but instead he shuddered. Some hidden power displayed itself in the spirit's statement.

The spirit pulled on her veil, and her clothing tore noiselessly and fell to the ground. Her nudity was crushing. Though he had seen plenty of women, looking at this spirit being destroyed his will. He could no longer rule nations. He could no longer govern himself. He fell to the ground and groveled.

He would take her back to Roskilde. He would give her his kingdom. She would be queen and have all he could give her, and he would serve her until he died. It was not fitting that such an ugly creature as he should exist in the same world as she. He tried to tell her all this, but the speech caught in his throat.

All he managed was, “Your face is so beautiful.”

She laughed at him and a strange look came over her. “But, you have not seen my face.”

He looked her in the eyes and tried to ask the question, but he could not. As if in answer, she reached up and pulled on her nose.

The king watched in horror as her skin wrinkled before him. She aged eighty year in a few seconds. Her perfect skin blemished and paled. Her veins bulged out, and her back hunched. Her firm body sagged and bloated. Bruises appeared under paperthin skin.

She continued to pull at her thinning skin, and it stared to come off. With a tremendous but soundless tear, her skin slid off in one smooth movement.

Standing where the woman had been was something like a man in a robe. The robe seemed to be woven out of charcoal and flame. It shifted as though in the wind, and it was sometimes black and sometimes aflame.

Out of the darkness in the robe stared hundreds of pairs of eyes. The eyes would blink and become a different pair of eyes. And all the eyes were fixed on the king, who still lay on the ground. Pinned by wonder rather than fear.

And one by one his eyes locked with the eyes in the robe, and each time memories flooded into him. He saw the faces of women he had violated, saw them clearly for the first time. He watched again as he destroyed beautiful creatures and laughed at their misery. He saw the faces of the people he burned to death in their homes, one after another he watched their suffering, but this time, he loved them. With each death crushed him anew. He watched mothers grieving over sons and fathers over daughters. He saw a hundred years of history in an instant, as a whole city grew and struggled to survive and then burned at his command.

He saw the shame of stable girls he had slept with and never loved. He loved them now and sobbed as he saw them stoned in the public square carrying his unborn child. He watched people starve to death by the hundreds. People he had taken food from to finance his conquests. He felt their hunger and their love for their dying family and yearned to undo the evil he had done. The suddenly the thought occurred to him that all of this was set. It had already happened. The people he had killed were dead. The women he had raped were forever injured. There was no recompense possible.

The king felt pain beyond anything he had ever felt. He lay on the ground body intact, craving anything to stop the pain. He drew his knife to plunge it into his heart, but he locked eyes with yet another pair in the darkness of the robe. When he looked into those eyes he saw himself, dead by his own hand on the forest floor.

He saw the beauty in his own pale face. The nobility of his clothing stained with blood, and it was a wretched image of ruined beauty. He threw the knife from himself, unable to take his own life. Writhing in the agony of his wickedness. It did not get better. Image after image came to him, and he saw greater and greater beauty, and he loved the beautiful things, and he hated himself for the way he ignored it and the way he marred it. He lay moaning on the forest floor as his regret undid him.

After what seemed to be a lifetime, the man in the cloak spoke. His voice was no longer high and light. It rushed from him like a storm's wind among the trees or waves crashing on the beach, a thousand pitches in one terrible sound.

“What do you want.”

The king's mind was blank. Seemingly on their own, his lips formed words.

They said, “Show me your face.”

The man in the robe nodded, and he lifted his hood, and the king beheld The Most Beautiful, and he died.

“Moses said, "Please show me your glory." And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name 'The LORD.' And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live." And the LORD said, "Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen." -Exodus 33:18-23

The Way I See It

2009-07-24T18:22:00.012-05:00

I wrote this essay a few months ago for a class in which I had to articulate my worldview in general and in several specific areas. I read it again today, and started elaborating on and editing it. I thought I would publish it here so I might get some feedback. I wish to give the warning that God deals differently with everyone, and it is unreasonable to read this story and expect God to reveal himself to you in the same ways he met me. If you seek God, he will meet you on his time in the method he wishes. From talking to other Christians, I have gathered that my experience with God is somewhat atypical, so please bear that in mind.

It is also worth saying that suicide is a foolish and cowardly thing to plan or do or consider doing, and generally gains you nothing whatsoever. Though I was suicidal for a significant portion of my life, I'm not proud of it, and I don't recommend that anyone venture into that particular darkness. Suicide or attempting suicide is not a good way to encounter God or get love or help. The fact that it worked out okay for me doesn't mean it was a good plan, and once again, I don't suggest it. There are much better ways to encounter God, and if you want to know about them, you can talk to me about it.

The Way I See It

Søren Kierkegaard once said, “Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth -look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.” I could not make the argument that my life has been made for enjoyment. Growing up in a very christianized city, I have had an intellectual understanding of the Gospel since I can remember. Though I wasn't raised in a church or a Christian home, a propositional gospel filters through when you are raised in such an environment. I'm sure I prayed the sinner's prayer several times, and had a fair understanding of the Bible I acquired from some extended family members.

As I grew up I lacked the baseline happiness that most of my peers seemed to have. I was chronically ill with a then mysterious medical condition, my parents considered divorce afresh every few months, and my peers didn't like me. Being a dramatic seventh grader, I decided there was no joy in life worth living for and my life could not foreseeably ever get better, so the best course of action was to kill myself. I had plans to synthesize a poison by mixing some household products, pretend to be sick, and drink the poison after my parents left for work and I was alone in the house.

The night before I was intending to kill myself, I had a dream. In the dream, I was standing in heaven, looking down at the earth. God was next to me, but I couldn't see him. He showed me my life from heaven's perspective, and then he showed me another person's life. The other person had what I would have called a 'normal, happy life.' After he had shown me this, he said to me, paraphrastically, 'I could have made you any way I wanted, but I made you and your life the way it is for a reason.'

This existential experience would be the cornerstone on which my life was built. I was and am very unsure about very many things. Nonetheless, I had now experienced something first hand that was irrefutable and irrevocable. I knew certain things must be true about the universe. I knew that there was one God, who created me and the universe and was in complete control of it all. I knew that I was made with a specific purpose and had a part in God's plan. It's hard for me to know whether I was saved at that point or not, but I didn't think in such terms. I wasn't sure exactly who the God I met was, but I knew that He was the God who inspired the Bible.

I would still not claim to know much about this God who wrote the Bible. He is transcendent and mysterious, and I certainly can't know the whole of him. All I can know of Him is what he has chosen to reveal about himself. He revealed some things to me in seventh grade. He revealed he had a plan. He revealed he was in control. I learned I could know more about this God I had met in the Bible. Studying the Bible on my own, I learned that God had not only supernaturally intervened in my life, but that he had intervened in history. For a long time I had doubts about the historicity of the Bible.

As I read about the disciples, something changed. I read about their fear of following Christ at the crucifixion, and then read later that they willingly died for speaking of this Jesus, as did many of those who had not ever met Jesus. I understood that this gospel must change lives. I knew that these people had had a real encounter with the Risen Lord, in some form, the way I had.

I also learned that God is Love. All other attributes of God can be ascribed as subsets of his perfect love. Since God was the greatest thing in the universe, it seemed best to me to understand him as well as I could. It made sense to value the things He valued, since He had the perspective to know what was and was not important. One of the first books I read in the Bible was 1 John. John is pretty clear that love is the priority of the Christian life, but the more I read the Bible, the more I find it all over Scripture. I find the imperative of love in the writings of Peter and Paul, in the teaching of Jesus, in the admonishments of the prophets, and the construction of the Law. Love is the value of the Christian life. Everything else follows logically. Faith comes when we see the power of love and trust Love. Hope comes when we have the faith to know that Love will win in the end. Justice comes when we love those damaged by injustice. Love is behind and under every other value in the Christian life.

In my life, this means I drive towards overcoming barriers between people so that love in the body of Christ can be stronger and purer. 1 John 4:11-12 says, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” It has always been God's plan to display Himself in the loving relationships between those who know Him. When God creates man in Genesis 2:18, He said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” On this topic, several Biblical “scholars, seeing the pattern of male and female, have concluded that humanity expresses God's image in relationship, particularly in well functioning human community, both in marriage and in wider society.” (Alexander, 51).

As such, I spend a tremendous amount of energy (proportionally) attempting to build relationships that are not merely pleasant, but edifying: manifesting the image of God. I take serious issue with gossip, slander, malice and the holding of grudges within the Church. I feel I am seriously intentional about developing spiritual intimacy with people around me, being open and genuine, and attempting to include and love people who seem isolated, especially incoming freshmen.

On the flip side of this, I have a lot of fear. I am afraid of opening up and being rejected. I am afraid of trying really hard to build a relationship and being ignored. I am afraid of being devalued or rejected. I am afraid that is these things happen, they may destroy me.

I know this is not a rational fear, but it remains. I know that people probably will do all of this things to me. It has happened before and it will surely happen again. I know that, when it happens, I will be okay. I know that I do not need their affirmation or respect or acceptance. I know that I have what I need in Christ, and the more I rely on it, the better my life runs. Yet I am still afraid of their power to destroy me by rejection, knowing they are powerless.

People seem to think hate is the opposite of love. I disagree. You can both love and hate something. You can hate because of love. I think fear is the opposite of love. John says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear.”

Being an existentialist, I have little to say on the ontology of the universe. I know the God of the Bible exists. I know I exist. I am fairly sure other people exist. The physical world as I perceive it is probably here too, although if it were not I would not be very concerned. It is, at the very least, the least significant of the realities in existence. There is another reality that might be called the spiritual reality, although I dislike this phrase because it implies something ephemeral, and it is the physical world, not the spiritual, that is the less real. In C.S. Lewis' vision of heaven, the unnamed narrator gives a description of the reality of heaven compared with the reality of men, “The men were as they had always been; as all the men I had known had been perhaps. It was the light, the grass, the trees that were different; made of some different substance, so much solider than things in our country that men were ghosts by comparison.” It is the spiritual world that is underlying, fundamental, primary, and ultimately more real than the physical world. As Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”

I have already said much about my Epistemology. I believe knowledge can be obtained through direct revelation from God and the illumination of the Holy Spirit in tandem with the study of the the Bible. There are some things which God has revealed to all mankind, as Romans 1:20 says, “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” An absolute God demands there be absolute truth. The question is not whether truth is relative, in fact such a question is inherently paradoxical. The question is of access to the absolute truth that is out there. The question is also not one of certainty. Uncertainty is merely where I rent a room when I haven't decided what house to buy yet. Having made a decision, my certainty lies in that decision. The question is on the nature of our access to absolute truth, that is, whether our access is objective or subjective.

It is now necessary to clarify these terms. By objective access to truth, I mean knowing truth in a way that this knowledge can be empirically expressed and proved, either scientifically or logically, to be internally consistent. There are a number of objective truths in the Bible as well as in science, nature, math and elsewhere. These truths are useful in providing a concrete basis for a worldview.

By subjective access to truth, I mean access to truth in which the truth is the subject (origin) and I am the object. Essentially, subjective truth is truth that accesses me, rather than the reverse. When I encounter God in a dream, am convicted by the Holy Spirit, encounter the image of God in another person, fall in love, or experience the awe of God's majesty in creation, I am learning truth subjectively. Ultimately, truths that will matter most are those I understand subjectively, because ultimately God is the subject, and I am not. Everything of great significance in my life has happened to me subjectively. As Kierkegaard has said, “The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.”

Salvation is not me going to God, understanding Him, and signing up with his program. Salvation is God knowing me, entering my world, and changing me as he sees fit. This is a subjective, existential experience, and it will always carry more weight than anything I could do on my own. Jesus said that He is, “The Way, the Truth, and the Life.” When Truth encounters us, happens to us, we are the object, and Jesus is the subject. This is subjective Truth. I echo the sentiments of Donal Miller, who said, “I want Jesus to happen to you the was He happened to Laura at Reed, the way He happened to Penny in France, the way He happened to me in Texas. I want you to know Jesus too. This book is about the songs my friends and I are singing. This is what God is doing in our lives.” (240).

I believe that God has an exciting plan for my life. It may not be enjoyable, and it may be very difficult, but because I know the God who created the universe and planned my life, I know that my life will be an adventure if I will live it. I know there is great joy and sorrow and challenge and all epic things in my future, because I follow after a God who is grand and wild. As John Eldridge would say, God has an adventure to extend to each one of us. We are, as people, called into God's creation in a epic adventure. There is wrong to be righted, joy to be had, beauty to be discovered and delighted in, challenge and hardship and and patience and action. These are the things that people, male and female, are made to do, occasionally solitarily, generally in community. I understand a man not by what he is or what he is made of, but by what he does. That is, I believe people are best understood functonalistically. In the Old Testament, 'good' does not refer to niceness or enjoyability, but well-functioningness. A good sword efficiently takes life, a good shovel digs holes of high quality, and a good man follows hard and well after God in the adventure set before him. A good community follows after God in the adventure together. This is what I understand it means to be human.

Logic is important in this quest. Good intentions are insufficient for success, as we have often heard the road to hell is paved with them. Logic guides us to wisdom, to doing things rightly so the work out as we would like. Passion is the strength to run hard down the path God has set. Logic provides the light to see the right path. God is not a God of confusion nor one who hides our path from us, for 1 John 1:5 says, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”

I feel that God is calling me to minister to youth. I am not certain what that will look like yet. Perhaps I will be counselor, a writer, or a pastor. I am confident he will show me what to do when I need to know. My primary motivation for desiring to do youth ministry is that I see a lack of discipleship in the church, especially among the younger generation. For my understanding of the Bible, discipleship, and especially discipleship towards the younger generation, is an imperative command from God to his followers. God told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6:6-8, “these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” When I am old enough, I would like to train parents to integrate their spiritual lives into their parenting so that parenting becomes discipleship, which is rarely seems to be. On a more general level, Christ commands us in Matthew 28:19-20, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." I feel called to fulfill this command and teach other to do the same.

Often times, I feel like minority within the Church. I feel we are not doing things well, but it seems most everyone else thinks we are. When I try to deal with my concerns, it seems to upset people that I am rocking the boat or criticizing the way things have been done. I get much disrespect and hurtful indifference when I am passionate about issues I care about, and it would be much easier for me to blend into the crowd. When this happens, I feel a strong urge to leave the ministry or the church in general. I often become bored and disdainful of the way things are being done.

If I am going to speak the words of truth and address deep rooted problem in the church, it is not realistic for me to try to prevent criticism. I am going to say what I have to say and attempt to address the problems as I see them. I will not mince words, and I will not be other than I am. If someone can show me error, I will certainly modify my views and opinions, however, I will not sit down, shut up, back down, or temper my words because I make people uncomfortable or offended. There is much difference between causing someone to stumble and offending someone. In the American church, I think a lot of people need a rude wake-up in the same way Jesus was a rude awakening to the Pharisees.

However, it is not feasible for me to withstand such pressure on my own. I need to build a strong support structure to live this adventure and fight this battle with me. My main strategy to do this is to pray consistently for such a strong support group and make building intimate spiritual friendships with like-minded Christians a priority. I am also currently seeking a mentor.

In conclusion, my worldview stems primarily from my experiences, and especially those subjective experiences I have had with the Absolute Truth of Jesus Christ and his subsequent work in my life. I feel through this experience I have developed a strong heart and call towards discipleship, especially towards youth and eventually parents. While this may be a difficult road because of my strong and unorthodox views, I believe I have a lot to offer the Church, and that God has sent me to speak prophetically into a sleepy church. If I do things right I will undoubtedly encounter much opposition, however, if I am able to cultivate a strong support group of friends, mentors and a wife, I feel God will use these relationships to strengthen me for whatever he calls me towards.

Works Cited

Alexander, D. T. "Genesis." Holy Bible English Standard Version : the ESV Study Bible. Ed. J. I. Packer and Wayne Grudem. Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Bibles, 2008.

Eldredge, John. Wild at heart discovering the passionate soul of a man. Nashville, Tenn: T. Nelson, 2001.

Holy Bible English Standard Version : the ESV Study Bible. Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Bibles, 2008.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscripts to Philosophical Fragments : International Kierkegaard Commentary. Ed. Robert Perkins. New York: Mercer UP, 2004.

Lewis, C. S. The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. New York: HarperOne, 2007.

Miller, Donald. Blue Like Jazz : Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. New York: Struik, 2001.

Love Song

2009-06-02T09:23:00.006-05:00

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—

from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

-T.S. Elliot

This is one of my favorite poems, and I return to it perennially to soak in it yet again. Recently, it has made me wonder about how much of my life I waste.

I do not mean how much time I waste, as in how much of the time I am doing something unproductive. I wonder how much life I waste by living life asleep. There is so much excellence all around me, all the time, and I am consistently bored of it all. There are astounding colors and tastes and new experiences and delightful people and invigorating challenges, and while I partake in many of them, I miss the glory in most of them.

And because of that I do also waste time. I make choices that are, honestly, boring. There is neither merit nor challenge or joy to them. A few minutes ago I refreshed my inbox, took apart a pen and put it back together, and they were worthless decisions. If I had taken joy in the wonder of mechanical pen, and taken it apart eagerly and wondered at the glory of God in making man to make something like this, then perhaps it would have been worthwhile.

But I didn't. I did it to have something to do. I didn't enjoy it particularly. I was killing time. And that's just it. I am destroying my time. It is worth so much, it has so much potential for excellence in so many ways, if I would only do any of the millions of spectacular things that God has made open to me... but I am content to do nothing in particular.

How long will I hide from challenge? How long will I delay the adventure? How long will I wonder if I dare taste the fruits of dealing with a problem or reconciling to a person? Why am I content with this paltry life when my God has poured upon me an abundant life? My window is open, it is warm outside, and raining, and that is glorious. Why don't I care?

And really, I'm afraid. But I don't really know what I'm afraid of. There's nothing to be afraid of. I'm like a little kid about to go on his first roller coaster ride. It is big and scary. And the world is big and scary, so big it frightens me to look over the edge and see the vastness of it. Dare I live a big life in a big world?

I want adventure and challenge and depth and richness and intimacy and excitement in my life, but so often, second my second, I walk slowly away from these things rather than towards them. Some voice tells me to be safe and protected and reasonable. This voice seems wise, but it is actually a foolish voice.

I've had enough of that. I want all the excellence of God that he himself has built into my life for me. I want to seek it and not run away. And more and more, I'm okay with not being safe. I'm becoming not afraid.

I want to be enraptured with my Father, wooed by the life he has given me. When will I fall in love with Him enough to accept all the gift he has given me? When will I see His glory in His gift? Father, help me! Pull me into your abundant life!

Is Lying a Sin? (Food for Thought)

2009-06-01T11:02:00.004-05:00

When I was a new Christian, I was taught that lying was a sin like murder or adultery, and that it was one of the Ten Commandments. I have been reading the Bible, and like so many other things, what I was taught by the church as a new Christian seems to be contrary to what the Bible teaches. The ninth commandment says, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." I was told that this meant that it was a sin to lie. However, there are some issues with that.

"Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, "When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live." But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, "Why have you done this, and let the male children live?" The midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them." So God dealt well with the midwives." -Exodus 1

Here the midwives lie to Pharaoh, and it seems that God approves, because He, "dealt well with the midwives."

It seems to me that if it wasn't a sin for midwives to lie to Pharaoh, then lying is not a sin. I have been taught that things that are sins are always wrong, there are not 'extenuating circumstances.' When we claim there are extenuating circumstances for our sin, we call that justifying ourselves. Surely lying, like anything else, can be done in sin, with sinful intention or the like, but can we say that it is inherently a sin? If it is, why does God approve the midwives?

Perhaps you might say that the midwives were lying to Pharaoh, who was a foreigner, in favor of the Israelites, who were their neighbors, and this makes the bearing false testimony okay. Consider this:

"And Joshua the son of Nun sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, "Go, view the land, especially Jericho." And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and lodged there. And it was told to the king of Jericho, "Behold, men of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land." Then the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, "Bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house, for they have come to search out all the land." But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, "True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out. I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them." But she had brought them up to the roof and hid them with the stalks of flax that she had laid in order on the roof." -Joshua 2

In the New Testament, both James and Hebrews say that this act was righteous, even though Rahab lied to her own people to defend foreigners. In addition, the false testimony Rahab bore was definitely against her neighbors: Because Rahab protected the spies, everyone in the city of Jericho (except her family) was killed! Yet, the Bible seems to honor Rahab for lying, even though this lie seems to clearly break the 9th commandment.

Perhaps you will say that Rahab was a Gentile, and therefore not required to obey the 10 commandments (and I would agree.) But if we say this, how then can we say that Gentile Christians are under the 10 commandments? We cannot make a distinction between and Rahab by saying that Christians are 'regenerated' or a 'part of God's people' and that Rahab was not, because both James and Hebrews consider Rahab to be saved, so she must also be 'regenerated' or 'a part of God's people.'

So my immediate question for you is: Is lying a sin? If so, how do we know this from the Bible? What do we do with Rahab and the Hebrew midwives?

But this raises another interesting question: Are Gentile Christians (or unbelieving Gentiles) required to obey the 10 commandments? If not, why not? If so, are they required to obey the other parts of the Mosaic covenant? Why or why not?

Bleeding Words

2009-05-30T11:16:00.006-05:00

I could bleed words that mean nothing in my
Silent corner of a home
—(but not mine)
I could spurt them over a page
Like an arterial wound—
—Black blood on LCD paper.

It's not like I haven't done it before,
But the feeling after is like
The emptiness after vomiting or
The cold after a hug from
Someone I know does not love me.

It would be so much better to
Simply know what is inside me.
I know that some things, though true, take no form,
—(in letters.)
But without an outlet I grow stagnant,
And something in me wants to grow.

Dysfunctional Families, and Why I Can't Stand Abraham

2009-05-29T05:47:00.012-05:00

Since I was old enough to know what the term 'dysfunctional' meant, I have described my family as such. Living at home has always felt like living in a war zone, and every conversation is like wandering through a minefield. Recently, as a result of the book Boundaries and a seminar called "Marriage Matters" my home is somewhat at peace. Even though all is quiet on the home front at present, when I go home I feel like a World War I era farmer going home after the war and finding only trenches and craters.

Sometimes it's good to see my parents having a whole conversation without yelling or to have my mom come home and not be afraid that she's going to blow up. At the same time, this armistice has in many ways been harder than the war. While I was lying in the trenches, I didn't really know how much damage was occurring to my family and my soul. Climbing out and walking through no man's land, the devastation crushes me. I had hoped so much more would survive the war, but everything is gone, at least on this battlefield. Trust, affection, safety, hope, strength... all casualties of a twenty something year war. Everything that I have is built outside of this home, outside of this family.

This is not as bad as it sounds. I have a good Family. I have the Church. I have brothers who love me, whom I love. I have father figures here at Moody, and I have a Father. This makes everything okay, really. I want to have a warm, peaceful, safe, loving home. But I'm 20 now and however many hopes I have for what my family will be in the future, I am done growing up in my parent's home. The home I grew up in now lives in the past, and I will always have grown up in that war-torn home.

I have been reading through Genesis, and it has been both shocking and comforting. I have read it before a couple times, but I think I must have been asleep, because I have never been so emotionally engaged. I give most of the human credit for this change in how I read the Bible to Dr. Penley, who has really helped me understand how to read and apply the Bible.

Often as I read, I felt shocked that the characters in the story were such bad examples. I taught Sunday School for a long time, and our children's pastor (and the curriculum we buy) holds up people like Jacob, Abraham, and Sarah as good Christian role models. I was not raised in the church, and so I didn't know a lot about the Bible, and assumed that presenting heroes from Bible stories was a good way to teach kids to be more like Jesus.

I felt angry because these people I was reading about were not the warm, fuzzy, sanitized rolemodels that are in my Sunday school curriculum. I felt angry because from what I read, we should not be asking young boys to be like Abraham or Jacob nor young girls to be like Sarah or Rebekah. I was intrigued. I felt like I was reading Genesis for the first time. I am realizing things that seem so obvious now, but that I had never noticed when I read before.

And I was comforted. I was comforted because all the people I read about were really messed up, and God used them greatly despite how totally screwed up they were. And honestly, I think that might be the point of the narrative. I think whoever wrote Genesis (Moses, perhaps) is trying to say, "Look at how hopeless all these people were, and look how much God used them in spite of it, and know that God can us you." And it was comforting, because if God can use Jacob and his messed up family, maybe there's hope for me and my family.

The story starts with a married couple, Adam and Eve. Adam is a passive, cowardly man who lets Satan come and spiritually assault his wife, and he just stands there watching it happen instead of manning up and taking a stand. Then, when she tries to get him to join in her sin, instead of standing up to his wife like he should have, he bends to her will and joins her in sin. When God comes and asks Adam to give an explanation, he ducks responsibility and blames his wife, and then he blames God for not giving him a better wife. Eve isn't much better. She is manipulative, controlling, unsupportive, and irresponsible.

I was talking to my friend Chelsea about this, and she pointed out that Joseph is the only good role model in all fifty chapters of Genesis. All of the other men follow Adam's example. They are cowards and fools who will not stand up for what is right. All of the women (except perhaps Hagar) follow Eve's example. They are manipulative, deceptive, and catty.

Together, they make up a tragedy depressing enough that it would be a comedy if we forgot that these were real people. The Children of Adam are the most dysfunctional family I've ever seen.

Abel cares more about God than his brother, Cain, does, so God is pleased with Abel. Cain decides to fix this by this by killing his brother. Noah gets drunk and winds up lying around naked, his son checks him out, Noah curses him and makes him a servant to his brothers. Which brings us to Abram in Chapter 12.

Abram, who becomes Abraham, seemed like a nice guy when I first started reading. He doesn't commit a lot of really noticeable sins like his sons do. At a second glance, he bugged me more than anyone else in the story.

Apparently, his wife was really attractive, because Abraham was worried that if the kings of the lands he visited saw her they would kill him and forcibly take her to be their 'wife.'

So he comes up with a really clever plan. He decided that whenever he meets new people, he's going to tell everyone that his wife, Sarah, is his sister, so that instead of killing him, kings will pay him if they are going to steal his wife and rape her. It's not a clever plan to protect her, it's a clever plan to sacrifice her for the sake of his safety and prosperity.

Abraham has every reason to stand up for his bride. He is wealthy man, having many servants and goods and apparently a private army. On one occasion Abraham's brother, Lot, is captured in battle by, "Kedorlaomer king of Elam, Tidal king of Goiim, Amraphel king of Shinar and Arioch king of Ellasar. [They] carried off Abram's nephew Lot and his possessions, since he was living in Sodom. [...] One who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew. Now Abram was living near the great trees of Mamre the Amorite, a brother of Eshcol and Aner, all of whom were allied with Abram. When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan. During the night Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them, pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus. He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people."

If Abraham had wanted to take a stand for his wife he certainly could have. When he took a stand for his brother he took out the armies of four kings, but apparently he's too scared to take a stand. I suppose he also could have just kept his wife in the tent or had her cover up, if he was that worried about her. But apparently he would rather risk her for his benefit. That gets me pretty riled up, but I'll move on for your sake.

Abraham seems to have some issues within his marriage as well:

"Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, 'The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.' Abram agreed to what Sarai said."

This really ticked me off. Firstly, what kind of wife asks her husband to sleep with another woman? I understand that this is culturally acceptable, but it's still a terrible idea. I think Abraham already knows it's a bad idea, because God has already told Abraham that he's going to have lots of kids, but Sarah is getting impatient, so she tries to make the process happen a little faster. She twists her husband's arm into distrusting God, which apparently wasn't very hard, because not only can Abraham not stand up for his wife, he can't stand up to her either.

So Abraham marries Hagar and has a kid with her, and Sarah freaks out. She gets all bitter and jealous about it. She abuses Hagar (who is still her slave) and Hagar's son. She berates her husband to get him to get rid of her. Eventually she does break up the relationship. Abraham can't seem to stand up for Hagar any better than he can stand up for Sarah, and he sends her away to pacify his jealous and manipulative wife, which is the first mention of divorce in the Bible.

Sarah is also too cynical to believe God when He tells Abraham to that she will have the child she longs for, and then she does some lying to Abraham about it. Together, Abraham and Sarah are quite a team. They disregard the promises of God, they mistreat their servants, they keep getting people cursed...

Now, Lot is Abraham's brother, and apparently just as much of a coward. Note that he is a good man, he's too passive to stand up for what he believes in. He offers his daughters to be raped by the men of Sodom so that they don't rape his dinner guests, which is only avoided because angels save his family and destroy Sodom.

Then, his daughters are really worried that they will never have kids, because it is apparently really hard to find a good husband in 2000BC. (Some things don't change.) Even though their father offered them to the Sodomite to be raped, they seem to think he's good enough, and they conspire together to get their father drunk and sleep with him. Lot, who is even more easily manipulated than Abraham, consents and gets drunk with his daughters and then gets them both pregnant (on two different occasions.)

Abraham's kid, Isaac, gets married to Rebekah. He also pretends that she is his sister, and she also gets taken by a king, who gives her back when he finds out the truth. They have two kids, but Rebekah doesn't like the older one because he has an interracial marriage. (Two of them, actually.) The younger son, Jacob, is a momma's boy, and she teaches him a lot about deception and trickery, apparently, because he tricks his older brother out of his birthright (inheritance) while his mom engineers a way to manipulate his elderly father into blessing Jacob instead of his older brother.

Together, Rebekah and Jacob manage to trick Isaac because he's old and can't see, and he blesses the wrong son. Then Rebekah gets Jacob to run away from home so his brother won't kill him for doing what she put him up to do.

Jacob falls head over heels in love with Rachel the first time he sees her. Apparently he's never read Joshua Harris, because he kisses her the first time they meet. Then, he works for her father seven years to earn the right to marry her. So far, he seems like a decent sort of man, loving, hard-working, etc., if not the best with words: "Jacob said to Laban, [Rachel's father] 'Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to lie with her.'"

However, Laban and tricks Jacob into marrying his older daughter, Leah, even though Jacob and Rachel were in love. Jacob is apparently so head over heels in love that he lacks sound judgment to stay sober on his wedding day, and he accidentally marries the wrong girl. "When morning came, there was Leah! So Jacob said to Laban, 'What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn't I? Why have you deceived me?'"

So, Jacob stays with Leah for a week, and then he marries her little sister and sleeps with her. I can't imagine that went over very well with Leah, but then I can't imagine Rachel being very happy that Leah tried to steal the love of her life. So Jacob's lovely household is him, his two wives, who are sisters, and their two servants. Not content to live and let live, Jacob's wives start a child bearing feud. My favorite part is when Rachel trades a night with Jacob in exchange for some mandrakes from her sister... I mean, geez...

Leah, being pretty upset that she is sharing a husband with her little sister, and that her little sister is better liked, takes comfort in the fact that she is the more fertile of the two. She gives Jacob a whole bunch of kids, but Rachel doesn't seem to be able to have kids, so Rachel feels like a really bad wife. She decides to pull a Sarah, and get Jacob to sleep with her servant girl so she can have kids through her servant. Not to be outdone, Leah pulls the same trick.

Finally, Rachel has some kids, Joseph and Benjamin, and they are Jacob's favorites. Jacob favors Joseph so much that his brothers conspire to kill him but end up selling him into slavery to an Egyptian family instead. While working there, the mother of the family tries to seduce Joseph, but he refuses her, making him the first man in the Bible to successfully say no to a woman. (And really the first man to stand up to temptation in general). In return, she manipulates her husband into throwing him in prison.

In the mean time, Joseph's half-brother Judah has kids, one of who gets married to a woman named Tamar. Now, apparently Judah's kid was really bad, but we don't really know how, all it says is, "Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the LORD's sight; so the LORD put him to death." Then Onan, Er's brother marries Tamar, and refuses to father a child with her. "What he did was wicked in the LORD's sight; so He put him to death also." Tamar wants to marry Judah's third son, but Judah resists giving him to her and, at the end of a very convoluted story, ends up sleeping with her instead. It's worth noting that Jesus is descended from this Judah.

Now, the story ends well with Joseph becoming the chief administrator in Egypt and being reconciled to his brothers, but it's pretty messy along the way. It's been encouraging to see how God can use even themost screwed up people, but it's also made me rethink a lot of how we teach the Bible, especially to kids. I don't like that my church's children's ministry is sanitizing the Bible. Chelsea and I had a long conversation about it, but didn't come to much of a conclusion. Thoughts?

Integrity and My Thought Life

2009-05-28T10:23:00.012-05:00

I wish my thoughts worked like sentences. I wish they were linear and complete with subjects and verbs. I wish they organized themselves with three points and an introduction and conclusion. They do not.

Books process in sequence. You read one thought and the next thought. If it is not well written, the next thought may not connect well, but it is always one thought after the other. One at a time. This is peaceful and comforting and usually boring.

I process in parallel, and I hate it. I am always thinking about multiple things at the same time. Not that I jump back and forth from one to another, but actually occurring at the same. Maybe this is how most people think, and you are thinking that this comment is obvious and stupid. Maybe you think this is really weird, and you're thinking I should get some professional help.

For me, trying to understand what I am thinking is like sitting on the edge of a highway. My thoughts move so fast they are blurry and I have hardly understood what I am thinking before it is gone, out of sight and a dozen other thoughts whizzing past. I try to focus on one and understand it but while I do several others move fly by unscrutinized. I try to zoom out and understand the who and I come up with a blurry picture of myself with all these different ideas and thoughts melted together, indistinct and unhelpful like trying to figure out which flavors were in melted rainbow sherbet.

There is always a part of me that is planning the next five minutes a part of me that is thinking about the next year and a part of me that is examining memories of the past and a part of me that analyzing my surroundings. A part of me is wondering how that dent got in the wall while another part of me is thinking about something I read this morning and another part of me is thinking about constructing this sentence correctly.

Another part of me is analyzing it to see if it actually expresses what I wanted and another part of me is wondering is I finished cleaning up in the kitchen. Another part of me is often replaying a song or a movie in the back of my head and sometimes pauses to analyze some lyrics or a scene. Another part of me is talking to myself and explaining to myself whatever I am focused on, while another part is thinking of a metaphor to understand what I am focused on, which, by the way, changes every 2-3 seconds.

I am always trying to bring one strand of thought to the forefront of my mind so I can focus on it and do something meaningful, but it is a constant struggle because lyrics from the song or an imagined video (yes, I see video in my head) from the extended metaphor I am creating pops into my head. This triggers more links and tangents and very quickly I have completely lost my train of thought, although is is really more like an 8 lane superhighway than a train. Trains have one care after the other, highways move in parallel.

I like writing because it forces me to be sane. It forces me to take things one step, one sentence at a time, and put my thoughts in a sequence. Then, I can read over it and understand in a more ordered way what the whole of me is thinking or feeling. Most of the things I write are not written in the order you read them in. I select and drag sentences to make paragraphs of sentences that work together.

It annoys me that I lack the discipline to isolate a train of thought and focus on it very well. It annoys me that I constantly have to refocus and bring myself back to what I was trying to do or just think about. This is, I think, a part of the way God made me. And as frustrating as it is and as much as I hate feeling weird, I think it is okay.

However, it seriously bother me that I often process different things from different parts of my character, with different viewpoints, different values, and different beliefs. For example, until last year, I believed that I was saved by grace through faith, and that salvation was not from myself, that is was the free gift of God, that was given to me because God is loving and kind and gracious, but I also believed that having been saved by faith I was supposed to become more like God by working hard at it myself out of duty because God more or less left it all up to me to sink or swim as I would. (I mostly sunk.) My perspective on personal holiness was compartmentalized from my perspective on God, which left me with more or less two completely different gods, and I ascribed to one in certain areas and another in other areas.

Originally, integrity meant "the quality or state of being complete or undivided." The idea of moral uprightness is a relatively recent understanding of the term. It comes from the Latin word 'integer,' which means 'whole.' This is something I have been struggling with a lot.

I have been doing much better at seeing the world with an integrated worldview, that is, having a consistent view of God and His world and he creatures and sons and daughters. I don't think that I presently have two gods in any areas, with one ruling one area and one ruling another. I think the God is God over my whole life, and this is an important part of integrity. I do this when I don't bring all of reality to myself. I would handle the religious part of reality when I felt pious and the harsh parts of reality when I felt like problem solving and the warm and fuzzy parts of reality when I felt sad, instead of engaging the comprehensive picture of reality at all times. I would pick and choose what pieces of reality I wanted to deal with.

Recently, I've been doing better about dealing with all of reality at a time, with not compartmentalizing my worldview. However, I'm starting to realize that I don't bring all of me to reality. I play to my strengths too much. There are parts of my character that are (relatively) highly developed and there are parts that are underdeveloped.

It may be that I am always stronger in some areas that in others, but that shouldn't be an excuse to abandon the other parts of me. I try to develop that parts of me that I am already strong in and I ignore the other parts almost entirely. It's like only lifting weights with your right arm just because you're right handed.

Recently, I've been reading Integrity by Henry Cloud. He says that most people only use parts of their character to interact with reality, and if we would develop and use all of character, that we would be much more effective in whatever it is we have chosen to do. I think this may be what I need. I am really curious about how Dr. Cloud advises we do this, because he's been pretty vague so far. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Awhile ago, I prayed about all this. The prayer was, like most of my thoughts, very nonlinear and nonverbal, but that I was okay with, because I knew God understood me better than I did. Later I tried to express to other people what had happened that night when I prayed, what I had said and what I felt God had said and done. It was very difficult for me to articulate, so I wrote it into a dialogue and something like a poem. I will leave you with this.

Me: God, the God of the whole universe, the biggest God there could be, where are you, and how should I address you?

God: I'm here.

Me: To the God in the seat in front of me...

Me: Hmm, perhaps that's not good. It makes the seat something like a Jesus Christ, or an idol don't you think? Why don't we try again?

Me: You're right. Okay. To the God who is somewhere between the lenses of my glasses and the seat in front of me And also lives in me: There is a problem.

God: Yes?

Me: See, I don't know really how to fix the problem or what it is at all and I would like to fix it but I don't think I could. Even supposing I knew what it was, and how it could be fixed.

God: Where is the problem?

Me: Well, I suppose the problem is in the way I interact with everyone I know, and I could be wrong, but, I think it's in how they interact with each other to. And I'm really not sure, but the problem might be
with almost everyone. And I don't know if it's only interaction with people. Maybe it's how I interact with almost everything.

Me: Everything? Really? What about the Bible? What about God?

Me: Okay, God, we don't think it's strictly everything. We think it's most things, but not the way I pray, and not really how we study the Bible.

God: Okay.

Me: So, I want you to fix it. I mean, I can't hardly fix it I don't even know what's wrong. But if you could just fix it in me, it would be really great. Could you show me how to pray?

God: Okay.

---------------------------------------------------

The following prayer was mostly so nonlinear and wordless that I have not tried to put it to words. Rather I have picked out phrases I remember from that prayer and structured a poem around them and attempted, in the poem, to express the same main idea as in my prayer.

To the God of the whole universe,
God over every moment,
God here in front of me,
God here inside me:

I want to worship you,
in spirit and in truth,
but how is that done?

I want to be thankful,
always and in everything,
but something is missing.

I want to pray at all times,
but I'm not sure that would help
with this issue.

I want all of life
to be a devotional.

I want to worship you
through everything I do.

Not in spite of it.

I want you to be God, and my God:

God of video games.
God of friendships.
God of lunch and dinner.
God of showers.
God of homework.
God of playing sports.
God of reading books.
God of making jokes.
God of laughing.
God of waking up in the morning.
God of working out.
God of sleeping.
God of dreaming.
God of cleaning my room.
God of walking to class.
God of wondering at nature.
God of wondering at people.
God of being angry.
God of being lonely.
God of being hurt and sad.
God of being happy.
God of being bored.
God of being numb.
God of laundry.
God of taking notes.
God of taking tests.
God of acing tests.
God of failing tests.
God of awkward thirty-second conversations.
God of waking up in the middle of the night.
God of all-nighters.

God, I want you to be big enough to me to dominate and cover every aspect of my life.

God, I want to think about you always.
Or perhaps, I want to think about everything through you.

God, I want to worship you always.
Not in spite of what else I'm doing.
But through it.

God, I want my friendships
to be spiritual disciplines.
I want to know you more,
and glorify you through them.

I want to date,
as an act of worship.
I want to feel you,
if I hug a girlfriend.

I want to write term papers,
like lovesongs to you.
I want to read books,
and take in your Spirit.

I want to eat,
and chew with you.
I want to feel you
moving my jaw.

I want to drink,
to taste your bubbles on my tongue.
I want to experience you,
in everything.

I want to exercise
and build your muscles.
I want to love to
build your temple.

I want to write,
words from you and words for you,
In a text message
and on facebook.

I want to dream
to fulfill your passions.
I want to plan,
to charge towards your calling.

When I talk to someone,
I want to be praying.
I'm tired of talking,
Like you're not in the room.

I want to rest,
within your softness.
I want to feel you
coming on with sleep.

I want to live this moment,
with this heart beat,
and this half breath,
worshiping you.

Over and over again,
worshiping you,
through the living
of every moment.

One moment, maybe this one,
I want to die, to and for
and toward you,
worshiping.

Back to Life: The Year in Review

2009-05-28T05:00:00.004-05:00

So, I've decided to resuscitate this blog. I'll give you a brief update about what's been going on.

A lot has happened in my personal life in the past year, and eventually it hit critical mass. When that happened, a lot went down for maintenance, so to speak, and this blog was one of the first to go. I've been writing on facebook a little bit, but I'm not really satisfied with the publisher there, and I so I decided to pick up again here.

This year has been traumatic, but very good for me. I went through a break-up in a three year relationship, some serious health problems, a death in the family, and the worst year I've ever had academically. Through all of this, God has taught me a lot about who I am and who I am becoming, and I feel that in many ways I'm a much different person. I know you probably don't want to read about this kind of depressing thing, so that's all I'll say about my personal issues.

Now that my life beginning to come back together, I think I am whole enough to begin writing in earnest again. I want to be intentional about writing higher quality material. This means more fiction, and more nonfiction commentary on specific events, books, etc. and less me spouting off about whatever I feel like talking about. I don't really care how many people read this, but I am hoping to get some more comments and discussions going on in response to my posts.

As you can see, I've changed the color scheme, and I'm not very sure if I like it. Please let me know what you think. I'm worried that it might display too darkly on some people's screens.

It's good to be back. Let me know what you think.

Empathy

2008-10-16T15:19:00.004-05:00

I was building a radio station over at Pandora today and yesterday, and I came across a song I hadn't heard in awhile. I found the music video, and I felt like it spoke volumes about how Christians should relate to the world, though it is a secular song. I don't think this should matter, but in case your virgin ears might be offended, the singer uses the f-word.

The song is What It's Like by Everlast, and you can find the lyrics here.

Christians spend way too much time judging people. With all that time analyzing everyone else, you would think we would try to understand people a little better, but that's usually not the case. I think that if we took more time to understand the circumstances in people's lives, we might realize that if we had gone through what they had, and didn't have the benefits and blessings that we do, we might act they same way.

That doesn't make sin okay, but maybe that would help us be a little more graceful and loving towards people we see as 'sinners.' Although really, we are all sinners, and are all equally disgusting towards God.

"All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away." Isaiah 64:6

Also, if we would take the time to understand how people get into sin and self destructive patterns, we might be a lot better at helping them get out of that behavior. I was talking to a Christian friend of mine, and I told him I was teaching a class on teen sexuality. I was specifically talking about the reasons that teens have sex.

He told me that the problem is the same as it always was, teens have a 'stubborn heart and want to sin.' While i would agree that may be true on some level, it's not nearly close to the whole truth. I told him that I thought that if he were exposed to the same pressures and problems that many teens are, and weren't taught the Bible in a loving, stable Christian family, he would probably have had sex in high school too.

I hear a lot about calling sin what it is: evil, and I'm all for that. But I don't hear much about calling sinners what they are, the beloved of God.

Light Along the Path: A Narrative

2008-10-09T19:54:00.005-05:00

This is a short story I wrote. I hope you like it.

Daniel was in a hurry to get through the woods. It was pitch black - no moon rose to illuminate the sky tonight. Sweat dripped of his skin and soaked into his clothing. the air all around him was thick and close, like the air in old closet or an attic. Fog rolled all around him, making phantom shapes in the darkness.

Daniel liked the dark. It was warm and close and vague. He didn't pay attention to his immediate surrounding, but headed in the direction he knew was East. Every so often, he ran into a bush or tripped over a root, but this did not concern him greatly. He often caught himself in bushes, and bugs dove on him in swarms, biting at every bit of exposed flesh. This, Daniel felt, was all part of the experience.

Daniel walked briskly through the forest, hands out in front of him, feeling blindly for upcoming trees or thorn bushes. As he walked, the grass under his feet became more and more slippery. Soon Daniel could feel the soft ear squishing under his feet. He knew there was a large bog to the North, but he would have to be miles and miles of track to be close to the bog.

"It must have rain pretty hard here," Daniel said to himself.

the ground became increasingly moist as Daniel plowed on. Suddenly, as Daniel took a step forward, his foot sunk about a foot deep into a puddle. Daniel shivered as freezing water rushed into his boot. Undeterred, Daniel stepped over the puddle and attempted to move on. Unfortunately, Daniel's boat stuck in the mud at the bottom of the puddle, and he fell face down in the mud. Daniel got up, gave an enormous tug on his left leg.

With a loud sucking sound, his leg came free, and he hurried on. At this point, Daniel was not sure that he was on any particular path, but he reasoned that if he simply continued East he would eventually emerge of the other side of the forest. From there, he could get his bearings.

Daniel had just decided he must be almost through the forest when a patch of leaves under his foot gave way. Within seconds, he slid waist deep in a pool of quicksand. For the first time, Daniel stopped and looked around, unsure of what to do.

For a little while he tried to get himself free, but he soon stopped when he realized this made him sink even faster. The quicksand had now risen to his rib cage.

Daniel started to worry. I'm miles off the path. I must have been going North instead of East. I must be in the bog. I can't get out of this by myself. But who will help me? It's the middle of the night, and no one travels this far North, even in the day time. Well, it couldn't hurt to try...

Daniel was about to cry out for help, but then another voice in his head said, Hold on, think about this. If you cry out now, and someone comes, you're going to look like an idiot when they find you.

Daniel hesitated. He did look awfully foolish standing helpless in a pool of liquid earth. However, he continued to sink, and when the quicksand reached his armpits, he grew desperate.

"Help," Daniel cried, "Help! I've fallen in a pool of quicksand!" There was no answer.

"Help! Please, I can't out. I walked into a pool of quicksand. Please, help me, or I'm going to die."

If it had not been pitch black, he could not have seen it, but as it was, Daniel thought he saw a faint light through the trees. Suddenly, he felt hopeful. He continued to yell, and the light came closer. Soon, Daniel could hear branches snapping under foot. A minute later, and the bushes in the distance began to shake.

Suddenly, there was a resounding crack, and a thorn bush directly in front of Daniel bent over double. There was another crack, and Daniel saw that behind the bush, there was a man with a walking stick beating the bush out of his way. Daniel gasped with relief. He looked towards the other man, but the man was shining his light at him, and he Daniel was blinded.

Carefully feeling the ground with his walking stick, the man moved forward. On the edge of the quicksand, he held the stick out towards Daniel. Daniel held on tight, and the man began to pull him out.

The was small and skinny, but he demonstrated incredible strength. After only a few moments, the man had pulled Daniel out of the pool.

"Thank you," Daniel gasped.

"Don't thank me, I didn't hear you calling. I was walking through the woods with my teacher, and he heard your voice. He sent me to rescue you."

"Well, thank him then."

"Are you trying to get to the East?"

"Yes."

"So was I. I was caught in one of these pools just a few weeks ago, and my teacher sent someone to save me. Now I come out here with him every night to find people who are lost."

"How do you navigate this wilderness."

"I'll show you. First of, you're really being a moron because you're trying to get through the forest without a lamp." The strange man lit a lamp, and handed it to Daniel. "Secondly, you don't have a stick to check the ground or fight the thorn bushes." As he said this, Daniel looked at his body in the light. With shock, he realized his clothes, brand new and high quality have been shredded by the thorns. Threads trailed all around him, and in many places the thorns had cut into his skin and drawn blood. Daniel began to suspect that many pricks he had assumed were bug bites were actually thorns.

Looking at his exposed flesh, Daniel realized that there were dozen of ticks burrowing into his skin. "That's the other problem. You need some protective clothing. We'll have to wait until morning and go to my teacher's house. You can get some there. As far as a walking stick, just pick of a good sized branch. It will get hardened and worn down as to use it."

Daniel nodded.

"You can head off east again, it's that way, but if you don't know this area you're liable to get stuck again. I can't promise I'll be around to help next time. Or if you want, you can come with me. I'm going to save a girl to the west. She's fallen in a pit and broken her leg. If you want to follow along, I can teach you a little bit about getting around. After we pick her up, we can go to my teacher's house and rest."

Daniel thought for a moment. "Okay."

The man smiled. "Great. I could sure use the help carrying her in this thicket."

The man helped Daniel to his feet, and together they started off through the woods. Daniel shown his light long next to the strange man's and stuck close to his side. Several time, the man held him back from plunging into a pit or another pool of quicksand. Daniel began to feel increasingly happy to be traveling with someone else in the light, even though he was no longer making good time to the East.

But then again, Daniel thought, I never really was going East after all.

Jesus, Party Animal?

2008-10-06T18:51:00.010-05:00

Some of you may know I work with an inner city youth group called ICI. Recently, they asked me to teach the kids the story about how Jesus at the wedding in Cana. While I was studying it, the Jesus I encountered was radically different from the Jesus I have often seen presented by the Church. For those of you who don't know the story, it goes like this:

Jesus and his family got to a wedding. At the time, Jesus only has five followers, so he brings them along too. While they are at the wedding, the host runs out of wine, and Mary asks Jesus to help out. Surprisingly, Jesus tries to dissuade her, but she persists, and Jesus turns 150 gallons of water into wine for the wedding party. It's also worth noting that this is the first miracle Jesus ever does. He makes wine so a party can go on.

That's my summary, here is the whole version:

"On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples.When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him." (John 2.)

From the way the Church presents Jesus, this is a really strange first miracle. No one is sick or dying, only Jesus' closest friends realized that a miracle happened, and we are forced to consider the idea that Jesus might not be anti-fun.

Firstly, a little historical background: Wedding parties were a big deal in Jewish culture. They lasted about 7 days and you were expected to invited your entire extended family, neighbors, friends, friends' families, and friends' families' friends. This explains why Jesus brought his disciples. It also explains how the party might actually need 150 gallons of wine.

The second thing is, wine was critical to a party or any social gathering because the drinking water at that time was not always safe. While the water was not polluted like it is in Africa of Latin America today, it contained bacteria in enough quantity to cause stomach problems. Paul references this in 1 Timothy 5:23. Wine, on the other hand, had enough alcohol to kill this bacteria.

It's worth pointing out that Jesus and the other Jews weren't getting drunk. The Jews (as well as modern day Christians) considered it a sin to get drunk, although they allowed drinking some alcohol. For guests to get drunk at a wedding was considered disgraceful. They may have been what we would call 'buzzed.'

Therefore, the Jews mixed water with wine to have a safe drinking beverage that was slightly alcoholic. If the host ran out of wine to mix with the water, that was a big social no-no. Doing so could lead to family feuds or even lawsuits.

Understanding that gives Mary's request a little more urgency. Even so, at first, Jesus resists her.

Jesus has two reasons for this. Firstly, he wants it to be clear that he is God incarnate, and he helps out of his free will, not because his earthly mother told him to. Secondly, Jesus is on a mission, and he will only do that which furthers his mission. We know this because he says that his "hour has not yet come."

What is Jesus' mission? Jesus did not come to earth to teach, or do miracles, or be a good example. Jesus came to earth to die and be resurrected so that those who trusted in his death for forgiveness of sins would have eternal life. Where do I get that? From the next chapter, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, [Jesus] that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." Anything that did not further that mission was not important to Jesus.

However, Jesus does help out with the wedding crisis, but he uses it to further his personal mission as well. John says, "This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him." (2:11.)

Jesus was a man on a mission, and his mission was to die as the sacrifice for sin. That's the first point. The second on is this: When we trust in Christ's death, we are united with him in an amazing new life. Let me explain:

John uses the word 'sign' instead of 'miracle.' The difference is that a miracle is merely a supernatural action, whereas a sign is a supernatural action with an underlying spiritual truth. In other words, when Jesus turned water into wine, he was trying to convey a deeper, spiritual truth.

In Revelation, (and elsewhere in Scripture) heaven is depicted as a wedding feast where believers are joyfully united with God. Jesus miracle pictures the abundance of life in the spiritual kingdom of God, both now and in heaven.

What does 'living the abundant life' mean? It means that life with Jesus is infinitely better than life without Jesus. How? Those who trust in Jesus are being perfected in love, (1 John 4) having a peace that surpasses all understanding, (Philippians 4:7) abounding joy, (Romans 14) and a divinely ordained purpose (Ephesians 4:1.) These we have in any and every circumstance, regardless of any trouble we may be in (2 Corinthians 4.) We don't have to care about the acceptance of people, performance, appearance, or anything else the world judges (1 Corinthians 4:3.) We are free from hate, fear, (1 John 4:17-21) depression, (Philippians 4:11) and helplessness (1 Corinthians 1:18.) This is the abundant life in Christ Jesus.

Was Jesus a party animal? Not in our definition, no. Was Jesus a strict, fun killing, rules master? Absolutely not. Jesus dies to give us a wonderful, better, abundant life.

Towards the end of his book, John concludes with telling us his purpose. I will conclude with it as well:

"Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you maybelieve that Jesus is the Christ,the Son of God, and that by believingyou may have life in his name."

Image

2008-10-06T01:32:00.003-05:00

I don't usually like being called a Christian. It has such a negative image in today's society. People see Christians as closed-minded, anti-intellectual, bigoted, rude, judgmental, selfish and clueless. They see us as people who are determined to tell everyone else how to behave and how to think (or not to think.)

The worst part is, from a lot of the Christians I have met, that's pretty accurate.

The term 'Christian' does actually appear in the Bible, in Acts 11:26. The term actually means 'little Christ,' so basically, a Christian is someone who is like a replica of Jesus. Only, Christians seem to have a problem being like Jesus. They would have just assume Jesus is like them.

Part of it is that a lot of people who say they are Christians aren't. They don't have any trust in Christ or his teachings. They don't obey them, nor do they want to. They call themselves a Christian to blend in with people around them, or feel like they have the 'spiritual side' covered. Other people were merely indoctrinated with some political and social ideas at a young age, call it Christianity, and cling to it like a sinking ship because they have never tried to learn to swim. These are the people that protest gay rights parades or throw rocks at people going into abortion clinics. These people are like the overly flamboyant gay people that are looking for someone to discriminate against them so they can be a victim. 'Real' (what does that even mean) gay people can't stand them, and they do a violence to the gay pride movement. The same with the "it's because I'm black" black guy that sees a racist behind every white problem, they are neither representative of most civil rights activists, nor do they actually help their movement.

In reality, being a disciple of Jesus is nothing like all that. It is freeing. It is peaceful. It is loving. It is filled with contentment and yet purpose and determination. It is a better life that I have every experienced elsewhere.

It has nothing to do with hate, but with loving all people. It has nothing to do with being a conservative. It has nothing to do with telling people how to live their lives. I would like to teach some people how to live their lives at some point, but only those people who are interested in learning from me because they see the peace and happiness I have, I have no interest in coercing people to agree with me who don't want to listen.

You don't have to agree with my view on life. Really, I'm not offended. I'm secure enough in my belief that I don't need you to agree with me to feel okay about what I believe. I'm not going to yell at you or condemn you or talk bad about you because you don't agree with me.

In fact, I think people who agree with me about everything are pretty boring. I would much rather hang out with an open minded person with some different opinions and have a friendly discussion about what they believe. I think you can gain a lot of wisdom my listening to what other people think. That doesn't mean you have to accept it, just listen and entertain the idea, without trying to refute everything they say. That's what I try to do. Preferably on a couch with some coffee while listening to some live jazz in a coffee house.

Now that's a blessing, deep conversations in a jazz coffeehouse...

The Nature of Love

2008-09-16T13:17:00.004-05:00

My culture, that is, middle class, white, American culture, has a very poor understanding of the nature of love. Now, I don't claim to be an expert on love, but I do find that I seem to understand it a little better than most of the people I meet. I will try to explain:

Love is not romantic. Romance may involve love, but love does not require romance. Neither is love sexual. Sex sometimes has to do with love, but love has nothing to do with sex. Love is not passive. That is to say, love is not a feeling that you have for someone, or when you are with someone, or at a given time. You may feel tenderness or warmth or affection or longing or safety or exhilaration or desire or comfort or compassion or a number of similar emotions. And if you wish, you can call a certain mixture of those emotions 'being in love,' but ultimately, people aren't "in love" because that is passive. People love. People do not fall in love by accident, they choose to walk in love on purpose.

If love is an action, what does someone do when they love someone? Spend time together? Sometimes. Sleep together? Not usually. Make them happy? Now we're a little bit closer...

Love is a choice to do what is best for someone else at your own expense. Sometimes, that means spending time together. Sometimes that means making them happy, sometimes it means making them sad or angry. Sometimes it means never seeing them again.

For example, loving a crack addict does not mean giving them money for drugs. Loving a crack addict means cutting off their supply and getting them into rehab, even though they hate you for it at the time, and it kills you to make them suffer, you do what is best for them, because you love them.

So love is not always romantic. There is love between brothers and sister, parents and children, and friends. What about when it is? Romantic love seeks to build the other person into a stronger person. It encourages them to both stand on their own and trust in their friends and family. It helps them grow in maturity. Do right, sex is a powerful tool in this goal. Done wrong, sex destroys.

People who don't think sex can be destructive have no comprehension of what sex is or what it does. Sex connects, and it bonds, and it creates. It opens vulnerability in people. Done right, this builds people up. Done wrong, it builds like calcite in water pipes or tumors on organs. Rapid growth, physically, can be good when correctly organized by the endocrine system, but it can be dangerous unchecked, spreading malignant tumors through the body. Sex is the same on an emotional/spiritual level.

So when is sex destructive? When the relationship is not deep enough to support such a bond. When the relationship is not certain enough to continue that the participants can trust in the bond. When it objectifies. When it forces. When self-gratifies.

This is why marriage exists, to manage the raw power of sex through the consensus of the community and the agreement of the participants. Sex can still be destructive within a marriage, but sex outside of marriage is emotionally dangerous at best. A loving boyfriend wants to help his girlfriend mature and grow into a better person, his desire is not to get her into bed with him, because, on some level, he understands that this desire is self-gratifying. It will consume her (or him, or both) like an object, like a commodity. Rather than being a tool for creative purposes, it becomes a hunger that eats and is never full.

You may have noticed that I have not tried to support any of my statements. I am not proposing a logical argument, or even an argument at all. I am offering the small amount of wisdom I have obtained from a few sources I have found credible. You are welcome to disagree. I will not judge you, I will not argue with you. I offer these words as a suggestion of wisdom, which you are free to reject if you find them lacking in insight.

The teacher John, in one of his letters, said to to his followers:

"Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. All who confess that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.

God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.

Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first.

If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their Christian brothers and sisters." (1 John 4, NLT.)

So Jesus demonstrates perfect love, because though people rejected him, he died to take away the penalty for their sins, so that if they trusted in his death to save them, they would be cleansed from all kinds of wrong, and they could experience a new, joyful life on Earth, as well as hope in an everlasting life with God in heaven. This provides a perfect example for love for us. Jesus himself said:

“I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." (John 15.)

Safe In No One's Arms

2008-09-12T00:43:00.009-05:00

I wrote this poem. It's about not letting people know the real you. I always love comments and constructive criticism.

Safe In No One's Arms

I never walk with bare feet
because with people it's too real
The sand is too between my toes
And I don't like to feel

If beauty lies
in beholder's eyes
Then only they can make me ugly

In the dark the world is small
Safer too, curled in a ball
I wonder if they would love me?

To know would be too open
To ask has so much danger
To search for love could hurt too much
I'll keep everyone a stranger

I wonder, could you love me?
Could you make me lovely too?
Is there someone, someones, out there,
who could love me like you do?

In the darkness I'm not ugly
In the silence I am safe
You said, "Sister turn the light on,
We will love you, just have faith."

No I have a choice
and I make it day by day
I let the hours slip by slowly
Talking with nothing real to say

Captivating: The Search for the Heart of Femininity

2008-08-29T22:17:00.009-05:00

Okay, so I've been reading Captivating, because someone gave it to me awhile ago and it's pretty popular, so what the heck, right? These are mainly just my thoughts so far. As a quick summary: I like where she is going, but not how she gets there. Let me let explain:

While I agree with a lot of Stasi is saying (so far, I'm only like 30 pages in) I don't really like the way she proves her points. It seems that her basic premise is that there are these inherent desires in young girls that are the essence of femininity, and that society teaches girls to ignore or repress these desires, and if grown-up girls could get back to their childhood and understand, accept, and fulfill these desires in a healthy way, they would have become true women. In order to support most of this, she uses a lot of 'remember back to when you were an innocent girl, unspoiled by the influence of society...' arguments.

I think that's an overly idealistic argument. There is a lot of purity of thought in youth that is later corrupted by society. On the other hand, I have worked with kids all my life, and children are not innocent by any stretch of the imagination. We may not be born evil, but working with kids has convinced me that everyone is born inherently selfish. Just because young girls share similar desires of their hearts doesn't mean that fulfilling those desires will lead to happiness or Godliness. There are a lot of desires kids have that are really bad ideas, and we train them out of them for a reason.

Secondly, Stasi criticizes Proverbs 31, (actually, she criticizes an interpretation of Proverbs 31, but she says it as though she is criticizing the Bible itself.) Basically, Stasi paints a picture of Proverbs 31 imposing a tyranny on women to work hard to support their husband and family that is unhealthy and impractical. She comes to the conclusion that it is bad because it is impossible to fulfill. She offers no alternative interpretation or explanation of how divinely inspired Scripture is causing damage. She does not even suggest that it has been misinterpreted.

Now, possible Stasi will come back to this point later and explain how God's Scripture is always edifying when correctly interpreted, but I feel like she should have done this in the same section as she wrote about the harm of Proverbs 31. She should have at least emphasized (or even mentioned) that she has a problem with an interpretive theory, not Scripture itself. I think the way she has it written now erodes people's respect for Scripture.

Despite the fact that I don't appreciate her means, I think her main points may have some validity. In essence, Stasi argues that women have three basic longings, and that most destructive behavior and attitudes stems from repressing these longings. She says that if females can recognize these longing and learn to pursue their fulfillment in a healthy way, they will have discovered "what it means to be a woman," or "the heart of femininity."

Stasi says that every girl/woman wants "to be romanced," "an irreplaceable role in a great adventure," and "to unveil beauty." I think this might be true of every person, but I won't go into that here. In explanation of her first longing, Stasi explains that women want someone to pursue them, someone to work for their love. She uses the example of her boyfriend (now husband) leaving poetry on the windshield of her car and craving her a wooden heart.

While I think it's really important to do things like that in a relationship, I also think that different people express love in different ways, and for a lot of people being romance looks nothing like poems and carvings. For some people, being romanced is a lot more low-key. I do believe in Love Languages, and I think there is an over idealization of one or two of them that has made courtly love all flowers and poetry, whereas in reality there is a much greater spectrum to the expression of love.

However, I agree that the desire to be pursued/romanced is a legitimate, healthy desire and it's great if women want to pursue that. As a guy, I would generally try to make my girlfriend/wife feel 'romanced' although I think I would try to make it a little more down-to-earth because a lot of girls I know would feel pretty uncomfortable with some of the ideas Stasi suggests (such as leaving notes on windshields.)

By "an irreplaceable role in a great adventure," Stasi seems to mean an important and integral, yet ultimately supportive role in the quest of a man. She compares this to being the heroine in a war movie or action-drama. She uses such examples as Cora from The Last of the Mohicans or Arwen and Eowyn in The Lord of The Rings.

I am a man on a mission. I want to spend my life helping youth become more like Jesus Christ. That is what I have decided to commit my life to, and I will pour most of my talents, abilities and resources unto that altar unless I get a clear message from God instructing me otherwise. I see myself as a soldier in the Lord's army, and I have standing orders to advance the Kingdom, particularly in the youth world. As such, the idea of a woman who is committed to the same or similar mission is extremely attractive to me. Yet more attractive is the idea of a woman who is committed to such a ministry and wants to partner with me in this mission (and others, for example, raising children.)

I think woman like that are great, but I'm not sure that every woman has that desire or need. Firstly, I think some women are drawn to missions that do not have a significant male figure, because I know that, biblically speaking, some women (and men) are called to celibacy. Perhaps Stasi meant for the masculine figures in her examples to represent God, rather than a husband, but she didn't say that. If she meant God and not a husband, then it seems to me like the exact same thing could be said of men.

I didn't mean for this to be this long, because the main point I wanted to address was her third, on unveiling beauty. However, I think I will do this in a separate post, because I am kinda tired. The topic of feminine beauty is a whole other discussion, and I would like to be able to devote an entire post to it.

I know I seem pretty critical of Captivating, but I really don't dislike it. I know it has done a lot of god for a lot of people, and I respect that. I more dislike the method of it, but I think the message and points are very good. Also, I admit that I have only read a small part of it so far, and my opinion could change a lot. I am going to read the whole thing and reserve judgement until the end. These are only my thoughts so far.

********* <---[To attract attention]
If you are a girl, I would LOVE to hear your opinions on this, especially on Stasi three desires of the feminine heart. You know I always love any kind of comment, but I especially would like to hear what you ladies think on this one, because I acknowledge that I am in no way qualified or informed on this subject. If you (guys and girls) have read Captivating, I would also love to hear your comments on the book.

Personality Test

2008-08-29T01:10:00.003-05:00

I had to take a personality test for one of my classes. I have the results, and I thought I would post them. I think they describe me very accurately, except that I don't think I am good with languages.

Quoted from humanmetrics.com:

Idealist Portrait of the Healer (INFP)

Healers present a calm and serene face to the world, and can seem shy, even distant around others. But inside they're anything but serene, having a capacity for personal caring rarely found in the other types. Healers care deeply about the inner life of a few special persons, or about a favorite cause in the world at large. And their great passion is to heal the conflicts that trouble individuals, or that divide groups, and thus to bring wholeness, or health, to themselves, their loved ones, and their community.

Healers have a profound sense of idealism that comes from a strong personal sense of right and wrong. They conceive of the world as an ethical, honorable place, full of wondrous possibilities and potential goods. In fact, to understand Healers, we must understand that their deep commitment to the positive and the good is almost boundless and selfless, inspiring them to make extraordinary sacrifices for someone or something they believe in. Set off from the rest of humanity by their privacy and scarcity (around one percent of the population), Healers can feel even more isolated in the purity of their idealism.

Also, Healers might well feel a sense of separation because of their often misunderstood childhood. Healers live a fantasy-filled childhood-they are the prince or princess of fairy tales-an attitude which, sadly, is frowned upon, or even punished, by many parents. With parents who want them to get their head out of the clouds, Healers begin to believe they are bad to be so fanciful, so dreamy, and can come to see themselves as ugly ducklings. In truth, they are quite OK just as they are, only different from most others-swans reared in a family of ducks.

At work, Healers are adaptable, welcome new ideas and new information, are patient with complicated situations, but impatient with routine details. Healers are keenly aware of people and their feelings, and relate well with most others. Because of their deep-seated reserve, however, they can work quite happily alone. When making decisions, Healers follow their heart not their head, which means they can make errors of fact, but seldom of feeling. They have a natural interest in scholarly activities and demonstrate, like the other Idealists, a remarkable facility with language. They have a gift for interpreting stories, as well as for creating them, and thus often write in lyric, poetic fashion. Frequently they hear a call to go forth into the world and help others, a call they seem ready to answer, even if they must sacrifice their own comfort.

Princess Diana, Richard Gere, Audrey Hephurn, Albert Schweiter, George Orwell, Karen Armstrong, Aldous Huxley, Mia Farrow", and Isabel Meyers are examples of a Healer Idealists.

Apartment Windows and a Lonely Crowd

2008-08-28T19:58:00.002-05:00

I like to stand by my window and look out over the city. I like the architecture, and I think the lights spreading out over the cityscape are beautiful.

Sometimes while I look out, (but not very often) I see someone else in their apartment window. Usually the apartments near Moody are dark and empty, but today I saw someone reading and someone else watching TV.

I wonder what those people's lives are like. Are they happy? Are they content? Do they have real friends? Do they have the peace I have in Christ? If not, could I show them, if I knew them, or are they closed to the idea? What could they teach me about life, or love, or God? What are they passionate about? Do they like art, or fishing, or business management models? What music do they listen to?

I often wonder this when I see strangers. It's why I like to people watch. I see people driving or walking on the street, and I wonder where they are going, and why they are going there? Where do they work, and do they like it there? If I could talk to their teenage selves, would they be surprised at where they ended up, or are they doing what they always wanted? Is it what they thought, or are they disappointed?

I desire very deep relationships, much more so than most people seem to desire. Consequently, my relationships are almost completely much less deep than I would like, but that's okay. I think I want relationships that are deeper than is possible this side of heaven. I think that will be one of the coolest things about heaven for me: knowing fully, even as I am fully known.

Sociologists call this 'The Age of the Lonely Crowd' because people are more connected and in greater proximity than ever, but they are also more lonely and have more shallow relationships than ever. Some say this is why we have so many problems with depression or random shootings and such. I think it may be a contributing factor.

I was thinking about Moody and my church and my high school, and I think for most people in each place, they are lonely crowds. Lots of shallow relationships of lonely people drifting among the masses. Close friends are an incredible blessing, I hope you cherish them. I also hope you wonder, upon occasion, if you really know your friends as well as you think. I hope you don't have to wonder if anyone knows you like you think.

I think it would be cool if I met one of those apartment dwellers in heaven and got to find out the answers to my questions. I look forward to knowing what you thought after you read this article, and what you did next, and if you ever had the same questions. I doubt I'll know in this life, but I'm okay with that.

Purity

2008-08-26T22:00:00.003-05:00

I know this topic has been done to death in some Christian circles, but I feel the need to weigh in. Today we had the all-hall meeting at Moody, which is basically a meeting where you get introduced to the residence life staff and talk about some policies and some plans for the year for your dorm. Every year for the last while, the leadership of Moody have talked about the issues of masturbation and pornography, which I think is really important. Please understand that this article is for Christians, only. If you are not a Christian, you will probably not understand my view on this at all. Right now, I am not explaining it. Once again, this is written only for Christians.

More than half of male Moody students eventually admit that they were using pornography at the time they arrived at Moody. I would strongly suspect that there are many who never admit to it. I also suspect that pornography and masturbation use among girls is much higher than statistics would suggest because there is much more shame and secrecy associated with sexual sin among females than among males. (1 in 3 users of porn sites are female.)

Honestly, I think the Church as a whole handles issues of sexual sin almost as badly as it possibly could. At most churches, the most any pastor will do to address sexual sin is preach a vague sermon once a year on the dangers of sexual sin. For a nation that idolizes sex, this is simply not good enough. For too long the Church has swept all issues sexual into a corner.

This is neither Biblical nor effective. Most of today's Christian youth are struggling with sexual sin, and very little it being said to them about it. Most of today's Christian youth would like to be free of sexual sin, but they don't know how to be. It's not as simple as 'try harder, pray more, and just stop sinning.' There are people in their churches that know how to help, but the addicts are afraid that, if they reveal their sin, they will be judged and rejected. This is especially true among women.

Also, rarely do the people that know how to help talk about it. People who are struggling have no idea who to go to or how they will be received because the Church refuses to give it the necessary public attention.

If we could be open and honest about the problem, we would be very close to solving it. However, for that to happen, people have to know that they won't be judged and ridiculed for admitting that they have a problem. And that means that people who aren't struggling in this area need to step out and talk about sexual sin, and admit that they have done things that are just as bad, because all sin really is equally heinous in the eyes of God. We need people to offer to talk to those who may be struggling with sexual sin and let them know that it's okay, even good, to come forward. And we need those struggling with sin to be passionate enough for God that they are willing to confess their sins to others in order to work toward holiness.

I think another big problem in the Church is that we don't really value purity. We degrade and shame people who aren't pure, but we don't really praise or honor those who are. I think this especially important across the gender barrier. If guys knew that girls respected them for not masturbating, rather than thinking there was something wrong with them, there would be that much more motivation for purity. In the same way, if guys would refrain for channeling their interest towards the most flirty, most scantily dressed girl, and rather honored purity among women instead of making fun of it, be could raise up our sisters in Christ in a new way.

I am a part of a group called the Barbarians, which deals with much, much more than sexual sin. We are a fraternity of Christian all over the world that strive to live all out for God. We strive to excel in all areas of Godliness, from speech to good study habits to emotional control to sin issues such as pride, lust, etc. If you are a Moody man, and you would like to join the group, let me know and we would be happy to talk to you about the possibility of joining. If you are a man from somewhere else interested in starting or finding a local chapter, send me a message and I will see if there is a group in your area or where we should go from there. If you are a female, there is a sister group (which I believe calls themselves the fairies) that I may be able to connect you too.

If you struggle with sexual sin, I want to say a few things to you.

1. You're not a freak. God still loves you. We, the Church, still love you. We won't judge you, we won't condemn you, we won't think you're weird or that we're better than you.

2. It's not okay. Sexual sin is an offense to God. Paul says, "Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body." -1 Corinthians 6:18-20.

3. You can't deal with it on your own. Sexual sin is addictive, powerful, and isolating. God made sex to bring intimacy, Satan twists sex to make it isolating. Because of this, you CANNOT break the cycle on your own. James 5:16 says, "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."

4. Tell someone. Actually, I suggest telling at least two people. Tell a spiritual leader, such as a pastor, mentor, small group leader, etc. And tell a close Christian friend of the same sex. Confess and repent, and then have them keep you accountable to breaking free from sin. What you should not do is tell everyone. Doing so might drag a weaker Christian down.

5. Be willing to do whatever is necessary to pursue holiness. If that means you need get rid of the internet on our computer, get rid of some music or movies, or get a different job, do it. Any part of your life that is dragging you into sin needs to be cast off. This is what Jesus meant when he said, "And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell." (Matthew 5:30.)

6. Check out some resources. Look around at XXXChurch.com. They have a lot of help for both men and women, as well as some free internet accountability software. Also, Covenant Eyes has some good reasources as well as some better accountability software. (Albiet, not free.) I am still looking for a good book on this subject, if you find on, let me know. The one on XXXChurch.com's website looks really good, but I haven't read it.

I know this topic might be awkward for a lot of you reading this. Honestly, I think you need to get over it. We live in a highly sexualized culture, and if we want to be in the world, we need to be comfortable with addressing sin (but not with sinning.) Most of you know I feel God's call to be a youth pastor. Sexual sin is one of the issues amoung youth (but not only youth) that desperately needs to be talked about. I am very passionate about addressing these issues openly and boldly, and I am not going to sit down or shut up about them. They need to be discussed. If you don't think that the Church should be talking about issues like this, I want to know what Bible you're reading. Whenever there was a tough, disgusting, hard to deal with issue, the prophets talked about it, Jesus talked about it, and the apostles talked about it. I'm going to talk about it, and maybe you should too.

Modesty and Beauty, pt. 1

2008-08-16T01:11:00.005-05:00

Summer is drawing to a close, and the issue of modesty has popped up a couple times. I was reading 1 Peter 3, and it came to mind. I want to talk about the passage and Peter's comments on what makes a woman beautiful and my opinions on beauty, but I feel like, in my mind, I need to address this issue of modesty and iron out my views on that before I can contemplate deeper issues. Even though this is written as though to other people, and it's posted on the web, this is mostly for me to iron out some of my ideas on the subject. If you find it interesting or gain something from it, that's wonderful, but please understand that these are just my personal musings.

The passage that provoked these thoughts was, "Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight." I didn't get into this verse as much as I wanted in this post, but I will try to delve into it deeper in a later post. I feel like there's some preliminary stuff I need to cover.

There is a lot I could say here but right now I'm going to try and keep it simple. There are a lot of cultural, social and theological issues here, and I don't want to write a research paper.

I have never asked a girl to dress modestly or suggested that she should. Why? Because Christian girls should desire to dress modestly out of love for their brothers (see Romans 14.) If she doesn't already have a desire to help keep her brothers from stumbling, I don't want to pressure her into doing it for the wrong reasons. What I have done is help girls who already show a desire to love their brothers in this way understand what is helpful and what is not.

Firstly, a lot of people have this idea that girls being more modest is a substitute for guys having strong spiritual defenses, which is absurd. If we guys are in the world, there will always be temptation, including scantily clad women. Suck it up, soldier. Stop whining about girls making you stumble. Guess who's responsible for your sin? You are. Guess who needs to deal with the problem? You, not them. There will always be sexual temptation. Waiting for better internet filters, marriage to a hot wife, and a new wave of modesty sweeping the nation is not a solution. A solution is relying on god's power and developing self control to build a defense that weathers temptation without giving in to sin.

Now, speaking to Christian girls. Ideally, guys should be able to resist temptation no matter what you wear. Those of you who have visited a location know as "the real world" know that is uncommon to rare. Modesty, for you, serves two purposes. 1. You don't want to contribute to your brother's sin problem. You want to bring him closer to God, not further away, because you love God and you love him. 2. If you want to connect with a guy and build a deeper relationship (whether a Platonic friendship or a romantic relationship) it helps to be modestly dressed. It has been said guys have trouble opening up, which is a completely baseless and unfounded lie, but being on high alert against spiritual attack is not going to help a guy relax. If you want to build a relationship, you need him to feel safe, and being modest can contribute to that feeling of safety.

Now, there are some girls who I know are reading this and thinking, "Hey, I have the right to wear whatever I want, and if some perverted guy wants to lust after me, that's his problem." To this I respond, "yes, you do." You have the freedom in Christ to wear whatever you want, and it is the men, not you, who will ultimately be held responsible.

However, the Christian life is not about rights or freedom. In fact, it is about giving up rights and submission. Ephesians 5 says, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." Paul address the idea of hurting someone else by your freedom in Christ in 1 Corinthians 8,

"Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. [...] So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ." (see also Romans 14.)

The idea of the Christian life is that you should be more concerned about your spiritual family and Christ than yourself, so that you are willing to sacrifice rights, freedom, or comfort for the benefit of others or the cause of Christ.

I think most Christian girls genuinely do want to do that, but it's a very confusing issue and they aren't sure how that looks practically. This is really what I want to talk about.

A lot of girls I talk to about this want clear cut, easy to follow rules. Unfortunately, no such rules exist. Some of you have heard me say that modesty is culturally defined, and this is true. In general, guys from Maine may have a lot more trouble with a girl in a bikini than would guys raised in Miami. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the more you are used to it, the better you can handle it. Secondly, different culture have different ideas about what is sexual. Some cultures see a girl in a bikini and fantasize about sex, others see a girl in a bikini and fantasize about windsurfing. This is because every subculture (and every person) associates ideas and images differently. Know the subculture that you're in.

Also, I think a lot of modesty is situational. Going to the beach or the pool and seeing girls in bikinis is not a big deal for me, because I go to the beach expecting to see that, and I come prepared. A modest outfit at the beach can be a very immodest outfit in a classroom, for example. As guys we need to be on alert all the time, but it helps if there are areas we know are generally safe.

I generally don't have a problem with tank tops. They're everywhere in the summers here, and I think it's a great way to stay cool in Chicago's beastly weather. However, I don't like it when girls wear tank tops to church, because church is a place where I have close friends and deep spiritual experiences, and I don't like having to have my guard up at church. It's nice to be able to relax more. Also, it can be simply distracting from the worship. However, it's still my responsibility to deal with it.

The other thing I think girls don't realize is how much more of a temptation lust is for guys than girls. Dean Arens once said that 70% of guys coming into Moody (and 30% of girls, I think) have an addiction to pornography. (For more stats, check out XXXChurch.) I guarantee you that even the guys that you think are the strongest spiritually struggle with lust. They may be winning the struggles, but I promise you it's a struggle, and there's no shame in that. There's nothing wrong with being tempted, Jesus was tempted in every way. It's okay to admit that you are struggling with a sin. Sin grows in the dark and dies in the light, if we as a Church are serious about fighting sin, we need to be comfortable talking about it. People tend to feel like everyone is doing better than they are spiritually, and they need to keep that a secret.

I think my final word here is this: Girls, talk to your guy friends about what you can do to help them out in regards to modesty. Most guys would be happy to tell you if they thought you wanted to know. But, don't ask if or what they struggle with or how they're doing. That's something they need to be dealing with with an older male spiritual leader, not you. Guys, don't blame girls for your struggles. Step up and take the responsibility for your spiritual life. If you have a problem, find someone older and wiser to talk to about it. Everyone: There are some times when it's not appropriate to share your dirty laundry, but in general, as a church, we need to be comfortable talking about sin (but not comfortable with sinning.) Sin isolates, keeps secrets, lies, and thrives in darkness. God calls us to community, openness, honesty and accountability, and that's an environment that no sin can live in.

"Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble." 1 John 2:10

I think I'm going to wrap it up for now because it's 3am, but I'll write a part 2 on more of the idea of inner beauty and so forth.

Insecurity and Love

2008-08-12T19:15:00.007-05:00

I am alternately the maverick Christian who is going to God's will and love everyone with no care as to what people think of me in comparison to what God thinks, and the insecure sellout who will do most things to feel accepted and loved by a group. I switch back and forth without really noticing.

Prof. Janosz once said, "To some extent, most people will always see themselves as they did in middle school." I think this is more true than we like to admit. Most of the people I have talked to about this have had a very unpleasant experience of middle school, and I think probably I more than many.

A lot of people feel like they are secretly unlovely in some way. People are afraid of being fat, stupid, or boring. I used to think that what I was afraid of was that no one likes me. But I don't really think that's it. I think more accurately, I'm afraid that no one wants to be close to me. I'm afraid that I annoy and hurt people without meaning to. (Which I know is true sometimes, and I don't mean to bother people.) I'm afraid that secretly, everyone is just tolerating me because they don't want to tell me that they don't like me.

I understand that this fairly paranoid and not very logical. However, this is how I saw myself in middle school, and I haven't really shaken the prejudice towards the viewpoint yet. It seems like most groups of people pick some people to be loved more than others, (including those at Moody) and I don't like that. It feels too much like a competition. I played the game once and manage to be very popular in one particular group, but I found I still didn't feel loved because I had tried very hard to present a face that really isn't me. I knew the person people loved was not really me, and I was angry at them for not realizing this. I also drained a lot of my energy being someone I wasn't.

So now I am mostly content to be loved for who I am by those people who who choose to do so. Knowing that I am a child of God helps me be okay with not being loved by most people most of the time, but I'm still afraid that everyone is secretly tolerating me because they don't want to tell me that they don't like me. I guess that that is a part of the war between my soul and my flesh. My soul is secure in Christ but my flesh is not, understandably.

I like Donald Miller's thought's on the subject:
"DOOR: How do you feel the church uses love as a commodity?

MILLER: When we talk about relationships with people, we use phrases like "invest in people," "this person is priceless," or "this relationship is bankrupt." By using economic metaphor we've begun to think of love like money. There is this sense that we can't love homosexuals because that's endorsing them. So, we spout little cliches like "hate the sin, but love the sinner" but we don't actually do that. We sort of isolate ourselves from the world because we fear them, we don't understand them. I think the root of that problem is the fact that we treat love like money. We exist in this social economy where we use affection as dollars."

I got this from an interview that I found online, although he says the same thing in more detail in Blue Like Jazz.

Inside My Mind

2008-08-12T02:06:00.002-05:00

Today, I take you inside the dark interworkings of MY MIND! Muh-ha-ha-ha... ha. It's actually not as weird as it sounds...

I have ADHD. I'm not hyperactive, but I have difficulty focusing. Most people don't know I have ADHD because I am good at focusing when I have a stimulus, such as someone talking to me. I mostly lose focus when I'm alone. I always have at least a dozen trains of thought running through my head, and they interrupt each other constantly. It's really, really frustrating.

It's good when I have schedule or some structure, because it helps me focus. It's also good when I do something with someone else, unless they talk to me so much that I don't get anything done. When I have no where I need to be and no particular plan of how to tackle things, it takes me forever to do anything. For example, on a particularly bad day, it took me an hour and a half to make breakfast (toast and jelly, with yogurt.) I kept getting distracted with other things I was supposed to do, and got about 10 things half done in that time. It's a little bit like being 'Dori' from Finding Nemo, except when I'm reminded of things, I can still remember them.

As you might imagine, it's really difficult to function like this. For a long time, I was really embarrassed about it, and I didn't tell anyone. Since I'm generally fine around people, most people didn't notice. Now, I'm more okay with who I am as a person, and I don't mind admitting that I have a lot of trouble focusing. I used to take meds for it, but they affected my mood really strangely, so I don't anymore. I'm developing what are known as 'coping mechanisms.'

My mind also never stops. I can't remember a time when I have been not thinking about anything for more than 7 seconds (I was trying, and I timed myself.) I like to create stories, so a lot of times my mind is building stories. Sometimes these are utterly fantastic and have no bearing on reality, and other times the stories are sparked by something I see or hear. The stories are not usually developed, they are ideas. As I think of the story, I can see it happening inside my head, like a movie. Often, there is more than one story developing at a time, and I can see them both at once.

This made me really easy to take care of as a kid. I was never bored on long car trips or in doctor's offices. I would take something I saw and start building a story around it. I used to be very open about the fact that I was constantly creating new stories, but people thought it was weird that I could actually watch (and hear) the story in my head. After a while I learned to put a bored expression on my face so no one wondered what I was thinking about.
This short story is amazingly accurate to how my mind works on a daily basis.

I also wonder a lot about Why, How, and What If. I wonder a lot about how they decided to make EXIT signs the size that they did, or how that dent in the way came to be there, or what that shirt says and what it means and why they wore that shirt today and if it means something special to them or if it's just a throwaway shirt.

I like to people watch because I like to wonder what that person is doing. Why are they in a hurry? Do they have anyone they love? What are they passionate about? Do they know God? Do they care? Are they looking? Do they have real friends? Would I like them?

Then I might think, What if he's a spy, and he's following that woman because she has information on the Chinese nuclear program. And a story might develop there. Then I might not like that story. Suppose they are married. Maybe things are hard between them, and she never has time for him, and every time they talk they fight, so they just live in the same house now. But he still loves her, and he followed her today, not because he thought she was cheating, but because he just wants to sit across the street and watch her drink coffee and dream about the days when they could talk. Perhaps he imagines what she would say back them if she could see him now, and he laughs. There is a flashback, and we see them talking and laughing, getting along, when they were younger. Then man gets up to go see her, but he shakes his head and sits back down.

I like talking to people even more, because their stories are real, but it's hard to get people to be real with you, but I suppose that's all for the best, otherwise we'd all be to vulnerable. Still, having good friends to talk with is much better than any story. Art imitates life, but life is the most supreme art.

That was extremely incoherent, I think. Honestly, I'm not sure if I wrote this for you or for me. I think I'm probably the only one who will ever read it, so I guess for me, although I rather like the idea of someone reading it. I like wondering what they would be thinking. I especially like imagining that there's someone thinking, "I get that, I do that too," and wondering who that person might be.

I'm feeling whimsical of late...