Hold on, let me get my phone

You know that commercial, the one where the Dad is explaining to his pre-school aged son why at his advanced age he is still eating Cheerios for breakfast? The son, understanding the importance of keeping his Dad’s heart healthy then haphazardly packs cheerios into his Dad’s briefcase or suit jacket or whatever is cute and precocious. Well, when I got to work this morning I checked my work bag and found this little stow-away.

I wish I had some cute story to tie it all together. Something like I couldn’t find my own cell phone and Isa, sensing my frustration, had given me hers in act of selflessness. But that isn’t the case. I’m sure Isa just thought it would be fun to hide one of her toys in my work bag and forgot it there. But it still made the start of my day wonderful just thinking about it.

Studying versus Living the Good News

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.” – Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, ed. By Charles E Moore, as cited in The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne.

One of the options Kierkegaard is missing here is that Christian scholarship can sometimes become the end rather than the means. By that I mean we can get so wrapped up in studying the Bible that we leave no time to actually put its lessons into practice. I know I am guilty of this. It’s easier to hunker down with a book and immerse yourself in academic language and analysis than to step out of my comfort zone and out into the very world that Christ was sent to save. I spend a lot of time worrying about exercising my intellect and not enough time being the body of Christ. Knowing about Christ is often enough for me because possibly encountering Jesus in one of the ‘least of these’ out in the world is terrifying.

My friend Fish is often complaining that for all his post-graduate education all he has learned is how to tear things down. His contention is that academia is a study in deconstruction rather than invention. I can’t disagree with him. A lot of supposed intellectual discourse is really just one man’s argument broken down and then regurgitated for reconsumption by like-minded folks. I wonder if this same disease has infected the Church. Our most prominent Christian leaders seem more interested in defeating the “opposition” (whatever that is but it is generally political in nature) than living out the Good News. James Dobson is always complaining about something wrong in American society, some evil that is leading us further from God. I don’t mean to sound like he is wrong (he isn’t necessarily wrong on everything) and there certainly is a place for speaking the truth, for standing up for godliness in the face of a secular world. But he and others seem so wrapped up in it that they are missing the chance to really be Jesus to those most needy. They are so busy defending the kingdom of God that they don’t have time to live in it. I don’t want to be like that. I want to be more like Mother Theresa. I want to find my Calcutta and start doing whatever is needed rather than just studying it.

Best Fourth of July Ever

This was by far, the best Fourth of July I’ve ever had. I know that may sound kind of reactionist. I know I get tired of people immediately declaring something to be the “best of…” immediately after it finishes rather than taking a moment to really historically analyze the statement. But I’m not worried about such histronics (is that a word?) in this case because such a personal historical analysis of Fourth of July’s takes about three seconds. I can say I only have two 4^th of July memories that spring to mind as even worth mentioning in a Best Fourth of July conversation.

The first was when I was a child and my Dad lit fireworks off in our backyard. I remember the sweet crackle of sparklers that my Baby Brother and I started off with. I remember sitting on the grass in the chilly night air watching my Dad use our plywood sandbox lid as a launching pad for all the blazing glory. And I remember a couple fireworks landing on our neighbors’ roofs and that pretty much being the last year we shot our own fireworks. This was certainly the most family-centric thing we did on the Fourth when I was growing up.

I have some disconnected Fourth of July memories growing up, but just your run of the mill kind of stuff like sitting on the warm cement of my front door step watching the city’s firework display on the horizon about 5 miles away. I’m sure I played in a couple baseball All-Star games on a 4^th of July weekend, but for whatever reason those games are disassociated with the holiday in my memory. I know I got in deep trouble one Fourth when I was 6 or 7 for throwing used smoke bombs over our backyard fence into our neighbors’ yards. I can’t remember the logic behind the initial act; I’m sure I thought I was cleaning up the mess in our yard, but I don’t know why I thought throwing them over the fence was a good idea (other than throwing anything as far as you can when you’re 6 is always a good time). My dad either caught me in the act or figured it out once he asked me where all the smoke bombs went. He made me go next door to the neighbors and apologize. For all I know that could have been the same Fourth of July as the memory I relayed in the last paragraph.

I also remember the first Fourth of July I spent with my Beautiful Bride as a married couple. We were living in Beaverton in this dumpy little duplex. I hadn’t planned anything for the Fourth and my wife was expecting something more than just sitting around and drinking beer. We drove into Portland to see if we could find somewhere along the Columbia to park and watch one of the larger firework displays. It was late afternoon by the time we got going and I’m sure all the spots had been taken by lunchtime. We ended up not being able to find a spot and so we just drove around for a couple hours. We drove all over Vancouver, Clark County, Gresham, Portland, and Beaverton watching whatever fireworks we could. We saw a couple brush fires along the highway and lots of fireworks.

So you see, there wasn’t a whole lot of competition for the best Fourth of July. But it didn’t matter because this year would have been tops no matter what.

The fun started mid-afternoon when we took Isa to one of her friend’s 2^nd birthday party. I only knew a couple people there and the party was strictly segregated between direct family and the little girl’s friend’s parents. The temperature was pushing 90, but their backyard had several large trees and it felt great to sit in the grass and just relax. Isa was quite the 2 year old ham and had a good time playing and eating (the banana cake was pretty good).

Eventually people moved inside, but due to lack of space I stayed outside and played Oregon Trail on my cell phone. I’ve been playing since March in 5 – 10 minutes segments so I haven’t gotten very far. It’s the updated software rather than the Apple II floppy disk version we all played in elementary school, but the game is still the same and even better in some regards. Hunting is still the best aspect, but you can also fish now or even fend off bear attacks (sorry to my Beautiful Bride who was apparently mauled by a bear because of my poor marksmanship skills – she did survive though). I forded a river (and lost some supplies because it was too deep – who knew 4’7” was too deep to ford?), 3 of our family got dysentery, and we made it to Ft. Laramie! By then (back in reality) it was time to go home so I’ve been put on an indefinite hold on my quest to make it to Oregon.

Once we left the party we headed home and I started marinating some steaks for dinner at my Beautiful Bride’s request. Isa had a dinner of leftover pizza and then decided to try out her new sprinkler toy that she got for her birthday. We got her swimsuit on and got her out in the heat of the early evening, but she was a little frightened by the water-shooting, orange sprinkler. I hadn’t initially planned to, but I ended up running through the sprinkler holding her (I at least had the forethought to take my socks and shoes off first) a couple times and then holding her hand a couple more times.

By then she had gotten up the courage and went through it a couple more times on her own.

We played around some more and she got me to go through it some more (read: act like a human shield for her).

 It actually felt really good to cool off, although she got a little chilly near the end.

I immediately moved to grilling. Due to the heat I was trying to avoid turning the oven on, but the onion rings (again at the request of my Beautiful Bride) didn’t exactly have grilling instructions. I winged it and tried to cook them on the foil-lined top rack of the grill.

They got a little blackened and were edible, but it wasn’t my most inspired cooking moment (some people didn’t seem to mind).

We had decided to let Isa stay up and watch fireworks for as long as she could. We got her bathed and in some jammies just after they started firing the first round, although it wasn’t quite dark yet. Both of our next door neighbors, as well as the house behind us, and about 6 other families within a stone’s throw from our house were shooting off fireworks. It was like a 360 degree professional fireworks show, all from the comfort of our own backyard. We put a cushion on the grass and all laid down to watch. Isa wanted to swing for a little bit so I pushed her in her blue dolphin swing while she watched the explosions in the sky. She was a little scared, but for the most part enjoyed them and even clapped at some of the more colorful displays.

By 10:30 the fireworks were still going strong (reports in The Columbian indicated it was a display unlike any other – it appeared all of Vancouver was simultaneously lit up by fireworks) but Isa was fading. We put her to bed despite the ongoing cacophony and laid back down in the backyard to watch the remainder. I’ve never been a big fan of fireworks, but that night was a special demonstration. With the Fort Vancouver professional show not happening this year it’s like the public picked up the slack. The moon quickly became obscured by the smoke (this actually reminds me of another Fourth of July memory. I was working at Baskin Robbins in Salem between my sophomore and junior years of college and living at my now-mother-in-law’s house in Dallas. I had to work on the Fourth so I was driving back into town about 11:00. Dallas kind of sits in a little hollow between surround hillsides. As I crested the largest hill before entering the outskirts of town I saw what looked like a thick winter’s fog coating the city. The smoke from all the fireworks had just settled upon the city and sat there like a cloud. It was amazing to see) and the smell of sulfur was everywhere. We stayed out there until 11:30 trying to comfort Gonzo who was a little jumpy from all the sound. We went to bed shortly thereafter and surprisingly the fireworks ended pretty soon after the midnight curfew. No 3:00 AM fireworks waking us all up and making us grumpy. It was a perfect ending to the Best. Fourth of July. Ever!

Jon & Kate

I know I should be above caring about this type of thing. Television celebrity gossip is what it amounts to, but I can’t help it. Despite having watched a total of 5 episodes of the actual show “Jon & Kate plus 8” I found myself completely heartbroken and angry when the announcement came on Monday that the couple was separating (Kate filed divorce paperwork earlier that day as well making it very official).

I guess I felt angry because I felt a little hoodwinked both for me and for fellow members of the Christian community. You see, Jon & Kate was subtlely marketed as a “Christian” show, or at the very least as Christian-friendly (if that’s even a term). There was enough press out there that indicated both Jon and Kate were Christians and had a faith based marriage that the Christian sub-culture immediately latched on to them (not in huge numbers, but it’s hard to say exactly how large the Christian sub-culture is to begin with). Jon and Kate were invited to speak in various churches. A book “written” by Kate (in quotations because it was ghost-written by another author for Kate) was peppered with Bible verses and referred to their faith. So, it was sad to see a supposedly Christian marriage end the way it has (nothing is technically final as of this post, there is a chance for reconciliation, but realistically I think that rarely happens). I’m aware of statistics that show Christian marriages have a higher divorce rate than other marriages, but these numbers seem dubious and easily manipulated. What exactly is a Christian marriage? Do both spouses have to be Christians or does only one have to be? What if you switch faiths or renounce your faith during the marriage but your partner doesn’t, is it still considered a Christian marriage? You see my point; there are too many variables to accurately measure such an idea. Regardless, that wasn’t the point. For someone to promote themselves as having a Christian marriage and then let that supposed sacred covenant dissolve in divorce seems disingenuous.

I better clarify my statement before I’m accused of saying Christians should never divorce. That is clearly not the case. There are Biblical based reasons, infidelity, where divorce is allowed. There are even situations not specifically outlined in the Bible where I believe divorce is justified (abuse, just imprisonment of one partner, etc.), but none of the Jon & Kate situation doesn’t reveal any such reasons. In fact it’s not real clear why they are getting divorced other than they are not getting along and that is never a justifiable reason. It leaves me wondering whether they have walked away from their faith and taken a worldly way out of dealing with their problems, or if they were just pretending to be Christians to make some money off all the saps out there wanting to see a solid Christian family example on TV.

But I suppose the evidence of a lack of true faith has been there for a couple years now. As the show shifted from detailing the lives of a working couple struggling to raise 8 kids and make ends meet to a celebrity couple jet-setting with their 8 kids to pre-paid getaways it should have been obvious where the priorities were lying. It would have been hard to turn down the financial security the show offered the family. I’m definitely not saying I’m above such things. But they quickly became addicted to that money. Jon quit his job. Kate hasn’t worked since the sextuplets were born. The show was their only source of income. So it is understandable why even in the face of marital discord they would choose to continue with one of the main things causing the problems in the first place: the reality show chronicling their lives. They probably couldn’t fathom being able to support their family any other way. But that is the most distressing thing about the whole situation: instead of choosing to quit their show, they chose to quit their marriage. They felt that providing their kids with money, toys, and a large house was more important than living less affluently but as a family.

It makes me think of the parable of the lost sheep. They may feel lost and wounded right now, but Jesus is out there looking for them. He can heal them. I would gladly rejoice if that’s what happened, especially if it happened away from cameras in the privacy of their home, with the humble help of a pastor.

Summarizing the Beatitudes

“God’s kingdom isn’t built for people who are trying to act holy or religious. It’s not built for people who are trying to cover up sin. It’s built for people who are trying to be honest about sin. God built his kingdom for people who know that they need God, not for people who think they deserve God. And that’s why God’s kingdom will always seem upside down.” –Brian Kilde, Compass Church, 4/5/09

Iranian election protests

Source: AFP/Sergei Supinsky

I’ve been engrossed in the coverage the last 48 hours of protests over Iran’s Presidential election results. I’m not going to claim I’m more knowledgeable than I am – I had to even look up Iran’s governmental structure because I didn’t understand how they could have a President when they have a Supreme Ruler (the Ayatollah). But I have been very moved by the protesters, especially the large numbers of women I have seen in released pictures (part of me worries that the male: female ratio of actual protestors is different than the male pictures: female pictures ratio since pictures of beautiful young women are bound to draw more attention). I was too young to really be affected by Tiananmen Square (all I remember is being pissed that my cartoons weren’t on on Saturday morning) and although I remember the fall of the Soviet Union I didn’t have an emotional reaction because I hadn’t experienced the mass fear that my parents had dealt with most of their lives. But seeing oppressed women voicing their outrage at injustice, especially in the very misogynistic Middle East, makes me feel hopeful. It’s so rare to see change taking place, and I’m probably jumping the gun by saying so, but it’s encouraging and inspiring.

The Narrow Gate vs The Broad Road

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Matthew 7:13-14

“Here then is the first test: has your profession of your faith in Christ cost you anything? If not, it may not have been a true profession. Many people who trust Jesus never leave the broad road with its appetites and associations. They have an easy Christianity that makes no demands on them, yet Jesus said the narrow way was hard. We cannot walk on two roads in two different directions at the same time.”[1]

“For some of us we like the idea of following Jesus, but we haven’t given him our heart in the sense of really a willingness to have it cost us something. We want to live life on those two paths so we find ourselves quite conflicted, living in the popular ways of the world, giving our heart to all sorts of things other than Jesus; although we like the idea of giving our heart to Jesus many other things get our attention.”[2]

Have I given my heart to Jesus?

I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of something that my faith in Jesus has cost me, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything. I feel like I first made a true commitment to being a disciple of Jesus in September 1999. At the time I was a sophomore in college and if I think back to that time I can’t remember anything that this change cost me. I didn’t lose any friends. My family did not reject me. I didn’t have to quit a job or school. I didn’t have to give up drinking, or smoking, or some other vice. I certainly didn’t lose anything of material value.

In fact if I’m being honest with myself I made the commitment to Jesus for all I thought I would gain: peace, eternal life, and direction in this life. But I didn’t consider that I would have to give up something. Oh, I knew that there were certain worldly things I shouldn’t participate in any more. I even went through a period that year in college where I destroyed a lot of my CD collection that I felt was a bad influence. I worked really hard at not swearing anymore. I tried really hard to not make lustful comments about girls to my friends. I certainly was willing to give up the way I acted before my commitment; in fact I immediately wanted that change to happen even if it was by my own determination and not the life changing presence of the Holy Spirit. But I wasn’t willing to cede control of that change to Jesus.

Basically I was caught up in acting religious. I wanted to look like a Christian, but I wasn’t willing to let Jesus make those alterations in my character, I tried to do them myself. In that way I consider myself to still be on the broad road. As Pastor Dodson stated, I like the idea of following Jesus, but I haven’t truly given him my life. I’ve certainly gotten better at understanding what my commitment to Christ truly meant and the life-changing power He provides. I’ve been willing to give over small parts of my life, but not my life in its entirety. I’m still holding on to my finances, my job/career, and lifestyle. It scares me to think that Jesus may ask me to quit my job and take a lower paying one. Or move to somewhere not as comfortable as here. Or be more directly involved in ministry rather than existing on the periphery. It scares me because I enjoy control over those areas, even if that control is imaginary.

I’d love to end this by promising I’ll give those things to God, release them from my clenched fists, but I can’t promise I won’t snatch them back at some point.

God, help me to follow you on the narrow path. Guide me from the broad road and all its self-serving luxuries. I want to follow your path under your guidance. Take my life, even when I’m not willing to let it go.

 

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[1] Unknown commentary as quoted by Micah Dodson, Compass Church, 3/29/09.

[2] Micah Dodson, Compass Church, 3/29/09.

Victim blaming

http://www.katu.com/news/local/47930877.html

I’m not going to get into who is right and who is wrong in this case. In any case where it is one person’s word against another’s there is no way to be certain who is telling the truth. As such I’m not here to say for certain that this was a rape or consensual sex. I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of this story, because it is all too common, but then I saw this quote from the defense attorney.

“She was, by everyone’s account, 14 going on 25,” Terry said. “A very beautiful girl, attractive, well-developed physically.”

I just wonder if anyone is buying that that is an excuse for either, 1) consensual sex, albeit with someone under the age of consent, or 2) raping a 14 year old. The implication in the attorney’s statement is that the victim contributed to the situation by being sexually appealing. To put it more bluntly, because the girl had big breasts she was just asking for sexual attention. I’ve read about victim blaming and the rhetoric of rape that places responsibility for a woman’s sexual assault on her own sexuality, but I had never seen such a blatant example until now.

And then on the other end of the spectrum is the ongoing, and at this point nauseating, feud between David Letterman and Sarah Palin. To recap: Letterman made some off-color jokes at the expense of Palin and her daughters. One of which included a joke about her daughter being impregnated by Alex Rodriguez on a recent trip to New York. Letterman was implying this was 18 year old Bristol, Palin took it to mean her 14 year old daughter Willow (who was the one on the trip to New York with Palin). Sides were drawn and a war of words insued. Unfortunately there are no winners. Palin took the minor joke and escalated it into an attack on all women. Unfortunately this is an illogical jump considering the joke. At best Letterman is guilty of an unfunny joke, at worst he is guilty of being slightly cruel. But to make the jump to,

“I would like to see him apologize to young women across the country for contributing to kind of that thread that is throughout our culture that makes it sound like it is OK to talk about young girls in that way, where it’s kind of OK, accepted and funny to talk about statutory rape,” she said. “It’s not cool. It’s not funny.” (Bauder, David AP as seen on news.yahoo.com)

It doesn’t make any sense to me. The person who needs to apologize for “contributing to a culture of accepted statutory rape” isn’t David Letterman, but David Terry.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tv_palin_letterman;_ylt=AiJxP5xgMPHGsiBaq1jvB8MDW7oF

UPDATE: I added a link on the “What I’m Reading…” page to Shannyn Moore’s post questioning Sarah Palin’s outrage over the comments. Very insightful.

Confession: My aversion to prayer

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8

Confession: I hate to pray. That seems antithetical since I consider myself a follower of Jesus. I enjoy reading the Bible, Biblical commentaries, listening to a sermon on Sunday, thinking deeply about the meaning of Jesus’ teachings, but the last thing I want to do on any given day is spend time praying to God.

At times I’ve rationalized this lack of communication with God by reading the Bible more or meditating on a particular moral (like loving your enemies) and assuming this made up for my lack of prayer time.

I’ve also rationalized it by trivializing the things I would normally pray about. When I do pray regularly I fall into a pattern. I follow the outline of the Lord’s Prayer (start with a declaration of God’s character, ask for God’s spirit, seek forgiveness of sins, forgive any wrong’s I feel have been committed against me, seek moral guidance, declare God’s power, Amen) and stick in the personal and family requests that I feel like I should be praying for somewhere near the end. Sort of like a child’s prayer that ends with, “and bless mommy, daddy, and grandma and grandpa, Amen.” But it gets so formulaic. Some days I have to struggle to find something unique to expound upon regarding God’s character. And if I don’t follow the pattern I feel like I’m being a poor disciple. If I skip straight to the personal requests I feel like a selfish ingrate who is treating God like a vending machine and expects all my prayers to be answered. This makes me disenchanted and anxious about prayer time and I start putting it off or trying to do other things to make up for it.

I also fall into a fatalistic mindset about life very easily. It’s not that I believe God isn’t listening to prayers, or even answering them, but I think about God’s omniscience and rely on him to know what I should be praying for. The formula in my head goes something like: God knows everything; God knows the desires of my heart, so if I just think about my prayer list that is sufficient to get that information to God. I treat God like some sort of thought monitor and if I think about something that act alone is enough to sort of upload what my request should be to God. It’s a very selfish and lazy approach to prayer.

I was thinking about all this on the way to work this morning while listening to the March 22 sermon from Compass Church. The message was focused on the verse found above from Matthew 7. The speaker was quick to point out that God wants us to pray to him. He wants us to make requests. He wants to communicate with us. I shouldn’t feel like I am bothering him, even with little stupid requests.

To not pray based on my reasons listed above amounts to a sinful attitude. It makes me self-reliant (as opposed to relying on God’s plan and strength), prideful, and most pointedly, an unbeliever. This last point really struck me. The thought had occurred to me at different points in the past. By not praying wasn’t I basically turning God into a moral code or an intellectual exercise? Truly I was. Jesus came to Earth not to give us some practical lessons for everyday life, but to make a way for us to have an actual, living relationship with God. By avoiding direct communication with God I had cut much of the relational aspect of God out of my life.

In the sermon, Duke proposes that we act like orphans when we do this. I like to think we’re more like rich heirs who take all that our father gives us, and do so appreciatively, but never bother to have a relationship with him. It’s like my bank account gets filled every month and so I know that my Father is watching out for me, but I don’t ever call him to thank him, or share what’s going on in my life, or ask for his help or advice. It’s ungrateful and if it occurred in real life we would consider it selfish and abhorrent. Especially considering how much our Father wants to have a relationship with us. He’s constantly calling and I’m ignoring his calls or telling him I’ll call back later and never do.

So what’s the solution? In writing this I’m not making a declarative statement that I have conquered this feeling. Quite the contrary, because even as I’m thinking of ways to correct this attitude I am also thinking of ways I can still get out of it. It’s a matter of self-discipline really, a character trait that I sadly lack when it comes to things I don’t necessarily enjoy. It’s the reason I have never been able to stick to an exercise plan and it’s the main reason I don’t have a daily schedule to pray with God. Sadly, there’s no one to blame but myself.

Zack Morris on Jimmy Fallon last night

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