Tagged: family
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Captain has turned on the “Fasten Seat Belt” sign
I used to think it was Christians who were virtually mindless robots, all saying the same thing. Since receiving the Holy Spirit, I can report from the inside that Christians are certainly not robots and moreover we are certainly not nearly close to saying the same thing about anything. It’s like part of the Holy Spirit’s manifestation in a person includes suspicion of everyone and everything–often including what the heck the Good News of Jesus Christ even is. We’re the most disorganized, freewheeling “people group” I can imagine. (Though, we are rightfully sure that we’re on our way to glory!)
But you non-believers, whether Deist, Atheist, Muslim, Agnostic or any other heathen flavor, you all are robots. After listening to your first five words I find I can accurately forecast your entire train of thought–especially if one of those words is “Trump.”
Or maybe it’s just that you all watch the same shit and I read books.
(Seriously, turn off the television.)
****
One of those books, pictured here, is not a must read. In fact, do not read it (unless you’re a Muslim feeling like the world is out to get you). It’s depressing. I just wanted you to see the title and maybe begin to consider that the last Christian in a region/society has already died many, many times.
****
With the Quebec Mosque terrorist attack, the West is officially back in the game–and playing to lose.
****
Christ Jesus humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
****
I don’t know what to write.
If Thunder walked into your life, could it convince you to turn down the volume? How about if you met Lightening? Would you look up for Lightening?
Ah, but let’s not kid ourselves. You and I, we need the rain. We always have.
****
Despite the above, I believe there is hope. I see the peaceful way forward. And I am working on concrete projects which encourage us to challenge our assumptions, which can lead to peace. Specifically, I’m working on re-tooling how we teach our children math. (Speaking of children, pray for our children, especially H-. I don’t imagine too many six year old’s find themselves forced to work through Euclid’s Elements as their dad works on a Master’s thesis in New Testament.) But I need help, so contact me if you possess the rare trifecta of time, hope, and the Holy Spirit. There’s a lot of work to be done, but I must believe there is time.
The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
Does Three Semesters + Thousands of Dollars = Insight?
The combination of three semesters’ time and many thousands of your dollars (via the post 9/11 GI Bill–thank you) every once in a while has resulted in some insight which is uncommon. I want to bring these to your attention as a “thank you.” Up for discussion in this post is “belief” vs. “will.”
This has been on my mind because I often ask fellow Americans, “What do you think about what’s going on with terrorism?” The response is often, “Well, we lack the will.”
The first time I heard that, I thought, “Hmm. That’s sounds about right. I don’t think I can argue with the fact that we have no national will.”
But then, forgive me, I was clicking around the news clips and stumbled upon an Imam preaching. Guess what he was dissecting? The need to have stronger “will.” Ruh-roh, Raggy! There is no way Islamic thought and Christian thought match up. And they don’t. Do you know how they diverge?
It has to do with the word “believe.” From the beginning, YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, required “belief” from the Israelites. Then the NT writers pick up the word “believe.” But what does it mean to believe in Jesus Christ? What did it mean to believe in YHWH?
Two analogies ought help us. What if I said, “The walls of the house believe the roof”? Or, “Through breastfeeding, the mother believes in her child.” Can you understand the meaning of the word “believe” in those usages? Good. Because those two uses begin to capture the sense of the word. The Christian believes in Jesus Christ, not meaning that we assent to his existence, but that we uphold Him as Lord of all creation.
The nuance here that is often overlooked is that in the case of the house, the roof stops being a roof without the support of the walls. And in the case of the nursing mother, the child stops being a child (dies) without the support of the mother. This begs the question, “What happens if no one believes in Christ Jesus?”
Well, put bluntly, that is the million dollar question.
The Christian, the man or woman who upholds Jesus Christ as their King, believes He is King of Kings regardless of what people believe. On the other hand, the non-believer believes if Christians recanted en masse, Jesus would fade from history, and also that there is no resurrection or eternal life. (This should not be news to anyone.)
What was news to me, and maybe to you, is that as I did a word-study on “will”, I discovered the only “will” mentioned in the Bible is God the Father’s will. And His good and perfect will is all-powerful. That is to say, while the Bible acknowledges that we have wills, from the beginning we are commanded to align our will to His will. Most poignantly Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. YOUR WILL be done…”
In other words, strengthening our will for our will’s sake is not biblical. To call for a strengthened will is not biblical. Calling for a strengthened will is too worldly, it is too human. It’s similar to suggesting that we all do some push-ups in order to not die. Most starkly, to call for strengthened will is what Islam’s preachers do. Sometimes we’re not stopping the advance of that evil book because we’re preaching bad theology. This is why sticking to the Word is so important. It’s confusing out there.
So I have repented. I have changed my ways. I don’t talk about will anymore. Instead, I call for belief in Christ Jesus.
The Apostle Peter said to his hearers in Acts, “Be saved from this perverse generation!”
The Apostle Peter’s words speak to us still, “Be saved from this perverse generation!”
Belief in Jesus Christ is what saves us from our God’s wrath–not a strong will.
Reflection
H- answered, “Officer Judy is from Zootopia.”
“Zootopia, eh? When were you watching that?”
“Before school.”
“So you wake up early enough to watch movies before school when you’re at your mom’s?” I asked.
“I wake up when my alarm goes off.”
“What time does your alarm go off?”
“Seven ten.”
“Then what?”
“I go down stairs and eat breakfast and then I change clothes.”
“You change clothes downstairs? Why downstairs?”
“Well, my mom throws down my clothes, and then I put them on and watch tv until it’s time to go.”
“I see. Where is your mom while you are watching tv?”
“She’s upstairs with C-.”
“Oh,” I said, cutting myself off quickly. Unable to resist the pull to follow inquiry further, I rejoined with, “What is she doing with him?”
“I think they play with each other.”
“Hmm. What do you mean? Like play games? Maybe play video games?”
“No,” she held the note, “not video games.”
“I don’t think I understand, H-. What are they playing?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
As if Truth’s gateway, the rear-view mirror reflected that her searching eyes did not notice mine.
Finding no satisfaction, H- concluded, “More like wrestling, I think. I don’t have the word.”
Surely Colgate Is Aware?
To be clear, this is the working end of H-‘s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flavored kid’s toothpaste tube. Though more slowly than after brushing with my Arm and Hammer Baking Soda toothpaste on vacation because I forgot to pack hers, she still runs to get a drink of water after spitting because–her words–“Hot!”
(I just wanted to give you something to ponder while you wait, breath bated, for me to complete the first short story I’ve written in 355 days.)
H-
“I’m so excited about St. Patrick’s Day because I get to wear green and my mom’s favorite color is green!”
“Ha. That’s true. When is it?”
“I think it’s Thursday next week.”
“Ah.”
“Are you going to wear green?”
“Now H-, when have you ever seen me dress up for a holiday?”
“Do you want to get pinched?”
Brief Note On My Church
Want to know why I love my church? I’ll tell you. On Sunday, as the pastor was wrapping up and about to head to the door in order to greet everyone on their way out, an old lady with a walker–same one as every week–began to be assisted by a younger gentlemen in an effort to get her out of the building before the rest of the congregation was formally dismissed. Nothing special has happened yet. But as she’s heading down the aisle, she, in full conversational volume, starts saying good-bye to all of her friends and offering them “blessings” as it were. So the pastor is talking into the microphone and at the same time this faithful parishioner is distractingly talking out loud to her friends. With me?
I still have an instinct to initially judge the woman and find the behavior inappropriate, but this week for some reason a better angel overtook me. In observing the entire scene from a removed vantage point, I actually gained more respect for the old church and its congregation. The woman’s willingness to talk and the pastor’s steady march to the end signaled that the church isn’t afraid of dying. It’s been there for 150 years, and is going to last at least 150 more. There is no need to act like the woman sinned because she said “good-bye” as she left. Should the Lord tarry, we’re all going to see each other again next Sunday. No big thing.
Maybe this seems insignificant to you, but to me it was yet again a refreshing take on an old, old story.
Humility Post 3
Last week I felt more critical than the one or two weeks before it. Part of humility before God is the recognition that the playing field of life is level. We’re all living on the same level. To get angry or be critical requires an “I’m up here” while “You’re down there” attitude. So that what bothers me about last week.
Another area of life that I’m struggling to deal with is work. You know how you always hear about ex-cons heading back to their previous neighborhood and gangs etc. after being released from prison? And then they fall right back into old patterns and end up back in prison? Well, I’m not an ex-con. But at the pizza place I do behave and talk differently than anywhere but the pizza place. I’m sure part of the reason is because I’m a bit once-bitten-twice-shy about talking about Christianity much at work, but there’s also just plain muscle memory. I worked at a pizza place for 6 years as a smart-alec kid in high school and college. It’s difficult to not conform to the lackadaisical attitude that comes with high schoolers and pizza shops. Retail as a whole is pretty negative, and so even the adults can add to my giving in to jack-arsery. In any case, I sometimes hate apologizing but other times I can’t believe that I just said some things that I said. I’m too old for immaturity.
One thing that is for certain is I am falling in love with the Psalms. In my class on the Old Testament class covering the kingdom of Israel and the prophets, we’ve been working through David’s reign, and really working on building an accurate historical picture of the ancient near east. As I’ve been memorizing the Psalms, often written by the very same David, I almost feel like I can like I can tell which event recorded in 1 or 2 Samuel would have led to his writing them.
Here I can’t help but mention the lesson we were taught regarding the difference between King Saul and King David. Both kings committed unspeakable acts. Yet David is the only man in the Bible (God’s self-revelation to mankind) who is described as being a man after God’s own heart. The question is why? What is the difference between Saul and David? Repentance. Saul passed the blame; David repented.
And here, I can’t but repent for my attitude whilst working at the strip club. Psalm 1 says, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.” The NIV has “mockers” instead of “scornful”. I was mocking God and life while working at the club. That’s no good. All I can hope for is the Christian account of life to be true. Insert commissioner Gordon here.
Humility Post 2
Clever title, no? Last week I introduced that for my Christian character formation class I have committed myself to working on the Christian trait of humility. I shared this partly with the intent of demonstrating what such a process looks like for adult Christians seeking a bit more rigor in their faith (not to take credit for developing this method, but to give an example of what a masters degree program at an Evangelical seminary entails). One active practice that I am going to use to work on humility is a weekly blog post dedicated to reflection on how the process is coming along. Three hundred plus word reflection starts now.
It turns out I’m not very comfortable with the idea of blogging about humility. God has seen fit that I possess the ability to read word definitions and talking and writing about my thoughts on humility seems counter-humble. As evidence of this, when I look back on my blog most of my blog posts have been laced with pride. Many were much more than laced. I don’t regret any of my boastful posts or their evidence of self-righteousness or snarkyness, not at all. How could I? I’ve ended up on a good path and to look back and regret would be a mistake. But I do now see how maladjusted my attitude was. And I do repent of that. I’ve been blessed with too much goodness to be so prideful.
As a result of this, part of me wanted to just publish a blank post titled humility because that’s what I really think about the subject. But that would require me to tell my mentor or mentoring director that I bent the rules a bit on my plan (it requires a weekly 300+ word reflection on the process), which in turn would require justification, which in turn would require more talking, which in turn would require more pride, which is the opposite of my goal. So I’m not going with the blank creative “look at how clever I am” concept.
So the real question is, “How does one who has written so many words out of pride adopt a new attitude of humility?” with the follow-up, “…and be convincing to (possibly) the same readers?”
The first step seems to be to ensure the words convey that the end state of Christian humility is constant recognition of total dependence on God, the father almighty. At the moment I’d express this dependence by thanking God for the ability to blog over the past few years. He has provided me half-a-pea-sized brain and fingers and food and shelter and a laptop and internet connection. Most humans have not been so fortunate. And I want to thank the folks in my life, especially my brother-in-law and the members in Cherry Creek Toastmasters, for encouraging me to blog/write. I don’t believe they intended me to re-adopt Christianity (or be re-adopted by Christianity as it were), but I can’t imagine how I would’ve gotten to the point of working on humility without blogging and therefore without them.
Speaking of, one CCTM friend just emailed me a copy of C.S. Lewis’s “Weight of Glory” sermon last night (he’s never emailed me anything specifically Christian before) and as I read my class textbook today I came across portions of that very sermon/writing by Lewis (never mentioned before). Given the preponderance of “threes” when it comes to these things, we’ll just have to wait and see how Lewis’ work will next appear. And it is some solid writing. In the past I would’ve mocked this as coincidence. These days I am inclined to determine why God sees fit to impress upon me these specific ideas of Lewis’. So I thank God that friends aren’t afraid to share a bit of their life with me as I attempt to transform my own.
Another shift that I can’t help but notice as I’ve been specifically reading on humility and also memorizing the Psalms (which through Psalm 10:16 are in fact uniform on our dependence on God), is my thinking about my ex-wife regarding rearing H-. We were still married for H-‘s first two years, and I’ve said and written many times that she did a great job during those two years. But then I would continue by adding a malicious assessment of the reason (that only I–as her husband and confidant–knew) as to why she did a great job. Does that make sense? I would undercut the compliment with a punch to the throat that only I could deliver because of secrets I knew. Well, though I might not be able to explain it fully, these days I honestly don’t desire to punch. It’s not because I’m tired of punching, but because I can now see how God gave us H- despite ourselves. Her mom and I were just a couple of knuckleheads trying to live the American dream. So these days I just want to express gratitude to her for mothering and nurturing H- with an integrity and discipline that many contemporary American women simply don’t value.
I don’t have a conclusion here so I’m just going to use this admission as one.
The Christian’s Home
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to the Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey is essentially a formula that stories with classic protagonists and plots which involve good overcoming evil are built upon. Think Batman and Robin Hood. Characters are born, leave home, while away they gain experiences but ultimately they return home and get to work. To be clear, despite the many steps in the Hero’s Journey, it is a three-part saga. Begin at home, leave home, return home.
Obviously, I am in school right now being indoctrinated into the cult known as Christianity. Yes, it is a life-encompassing worldview. One of its most adored parables is the story of the prodigal son. Do you know it? Sure you do. The rich dad has a son who asks to get his inheritance early. The dad acquiesces and the son leaves home with his fortune only to squander it. The now impoverished son remembers his father. He resolves to return home even if only to live as a servant. The way Jesus tells the story, the father, instead of being mad, is joyful upon his son’s return.
My question for you is, “What do you believe the bible is?” You see, if you believe the bible contains new information, or put another way, if you believe that Jesus must be the original author of his parables for Christianity to be sound, then I think we’re at odds. Because I believe the bible is God’s self-revelation to his creation. That means that the bible doesn’t have to contain original concepts, or put another way, if the historical record shows that Jesus didn’t come up with the golden rule (he didn’t), that doesn’t not detract from the bible’s value. The bible is valuable because it is God’s self-revelation. In theology we would call it one of a few methods of God’s particular revelation.
Christians believe God has revealed himself to his creation generally and particularly. General revelation (or universal revelation) includes things like my McDonald’s argument, the digestible version of which goes something like: How many churches, synagogues, mosques, temples etc. are there? And you’re going to tell me there’s no God? Okay. Well, you also have to deny McDonald’s exists.
But general revelation isn’t enough for salvation. So God chose to reveal himself particularly as well. The bible is one of his methods. This means that it doesn’t matter if the parables in the bible are original, what matters is what they teach us about God’s nature. The parable of the prodigal son reveals that God will welcome us poor sinners back into his loving embrace if we just come home. The fact that the story of the prodigal son involves the home-leave-return formula that storytellers use to make their fortunes only adds it to the man-made category of general revelation. It’s as if God is using every method of persuasion available to him to convince us to see the truth of our condition.
I like that God would be relentless.
Conversation Over
Last week wasn’t one of my favorites.
Remember my character formation class that I have been touting? Well, the character trait that I have decided to specifically get working on this semester is humility. That really has nothing to do with this post except to share that one of the spiritual disciplines that a book suggests is journaling. All of us bloggers do this without thinking and so while I have been blogging for a few years now, I am specifically going to dedicate one blog a week to my walk with God, if you will. I share this because sometimes I get the feeling that Christians do read these posts every once in a while and maybe they’d be interested to see just what goes on at a seminary. Anyhow, back to last week.
I had lunch with a friend and there was discussion about the nature of God and scripture etc. A couple years ago when we met, we both were in the agnostic category, but obviously I don’t believe I can ignore what I’ve been feeling and learning, nor do I want to. Suffice it to say that he hasn’t changed. He’s old, so it’s not like I expected him to during the course of one conversation. I even said this in the conversation. But I love the conversation and he’s kind of been a mentor of sorts so I wanted to pick his brain a bit about why he believes what he does. Long story short, I sent him a follow up email (old habits–post-flight debriefs–die hard). At the end of the email he wrote that he does not want to continue talking about the subject.
I don’t know what to do next. “The subject” is kind of my life right now. I wouldn’t know what else to talk about. As I have gotten older I have begun to recognize the subtleties of my body’s physiological reactions to life. The physical reaction happens before the words develop to describe how I feel. In this instance, as I read his “conversation over” assertion, I felt a sadness in my gut that demanded a long nap with the hope that upon waking I would discover that it was just a bad dream. Then I labeled all that rejection.
Am I that unbearable?
Captain’s Log 