Blog 11: Let Go My Ego.

So, my wife is out of the country.

I've been alone all week. And it's cold. I'm the guy who has to have the house cool at night because he gets too hot when sleeping. I'll spare you the details of how that works in any practical way. The point is, this week, without my wife... I had to add two extra blankets to the bed. Not only that, I had to fold them in half and lay them on my side. That's how cold it was without her there. When you consider, normally, I have to hang one leg out of the covers just to keep from bursting into flames, well, that says alot.

Oh ya, I said I wasn't going to start giving details. Sorry.

Did I mention it's lonely here?

My point?

Actually, I don't have one there. This is mostly a cry for sympathy.

Is it working?

Hey, I forgot... Hello everyone.

Yes yes, I realize that I was so caught up in my own lonely, cold, pizza-eating self-pity that I forgot to say hello. I'm sorry. I'm a bad man.

Well, on to more important things.

I'm going to come right out and say a couple things to start off. I try to say what I believe honestly and clearly, all while being as open and inoffensive as possible. I'm not out to harm anyones sensitivities. And, so far, no one has complained, so... victory is mine! (man, Family Guy is funny... sorry, bad reference.)

I say all that because I'm going to begin with this. I believe in God. I believe God is real. I believe God is a real being. I believe in the Christian God. Who also happens to be the Jewish and Islamic God. Who, as it turns out, was also part of many of the early pantheons of gods that many early cultures believed in. He is referenced in Babylonian mythology. But that isn't the point here. The point is, I believe He is real. I will concede that, for the most part, we don't know what we are talking about when it comes to the nature of God... but I still believe He exists.
Which means, by extention, I believe in the existance of the devil. Satan. Lucifer. I believe that he too is real. My beliefs of him are much more traditional than my beliefs on the nature of God, but again, the history and specifics are all irrelevant for this discussion.

The point is, I believe they exist. But today, I'm not focusing on them so much. It's important for me to say that because of the question I'm about to ask you.

The question is this.

Who/what is a persons/mankinds worst enemy?

If, after reading what I said just before that question, you still say "the devil"... well, you don't get a cookie. The answer "the devil" doesn't count for this quiz. For two reasons.

One. If you are christian/religious, then you already assume that he's the baddest baddy around. It's a given. So we aren't going there.

Two. If you aren't a christian/religious, then you don't believe in the devil anyway, so going their is virtually pointless. So I guess what I should have asked is...

Who/what is a persons/mankinds second worst enemy?

Ok, fair enough. Actually, both questions are accurate depending on which group you fall into, but you get the point.

Just think about yourself for a moment. Short of the originator of evil, who is the worst enemy you have? What is the worst enemy you have?

Many of you probably find the answer obvious. But just in case you don't, if you want the answer, go look in a mirror and tell me what you see?

You are your worst enemy. I am my worst enemy. We are our own worst enemies.

Now, if you gave that answer, you are correct, but that is still a bit of a vague cop-out answer. What does that mean? Why is that true? How can that be true? In what way is that true?

I'll make it simple. One word. Three letters.

Ego.

You want to know what makes our own lives so difficult sometimes? It's our own ego. I'm not saying other things don't contribute. I'm just saying this is at the top of the list.

Ego.

What is it that causes us to react in any given way? Or maybe I should say, what causes us to react negatively to stimulus?

Let's say you are driving in your car, and someone cuts you off. Do you get cranky about it? Some of you might not. And those who do, some of you probably keep it inside without screaming. But even so, the feelings arose.

Why?

Ego. You got wronged. The cut you off. Pulled in front of you when it was your turn to be somewhere. They can't do that to you. You are more important. It inconvenienced you. You. How dare they? Don't they know you have places to be? Don't they know they are moronic jerks?

Ego. In that scenario, your status was more important than theirs. You were self centered. You were Egocentric. You weren't concerned with their needs. Only yours.

Now, you might say, "that isn't wrong." Fair enough. It's not. At least, not always. What if that person who cut you off had a pregnant woman in the back seat, but you just couldn't see her? And they were racing to the hospital? Sure, not real safe, but would you have gotten upset if you had known that? If you had known there was actually a reason for the seemingly rude behaviour?

Ego is what causes you to NOT stop and think about it. It tells you to react on self interest.

How about this. You are working on something. Your car. Your computer. Some project. It doesn't matter what it is. But you are working on it. And you've done it before. You know what you are doing. While you are doing it, some one comes up and tells you that you are doing it wrong.

How does that make you feel? Do you get angry inside? Or at least a little cranky inside? Does it frustrate you? If so, why? What if they had said that what you are doing works, but there is a much better way of doing it?

Would it matter? Would you still be upset? Probably?

Look, we don't like to admit it, but we usually get a little upset when this happens.

But why? (insert the word "ego", here.)

What is happening at that moment? Well, you've done what you are doing many times. You know what you are doing. Do you need someone telling you what to do? Or how to do it? Or that they can do it better? Cause really, that's what they are saying. If they can recognize that you aren't doing it a good way, then, they must think they can do it better.

How dare they. Coming up to you and implying that you don't know what you are doing? That you might not know what you are talking about? That's an insult to your abilities and intelligence. That is them saying they are better than you.

Now, you might not have all those words come into your head. But the emotions show up that go with them. At least some of them.

That is your Ego. Your ego doesn't want to be told what to do or that it doesn't know what it's doing. It doesn't like the suggestion that someone else might have a better way, or might know something you don't. Your ego interprets all that stuff as if it's a threat or challenge to who you are.

Because nothing is more important than your Ego. At least, so your ego thinks.

Just to be clear, I keep saying "your ego." But I'm talking about mine as well. I'm no better. I have an ego. I get pissed off when someone tries to tell me my business. Oh, I might smile and nod and be polite, but inside, I'm screaming at them to shut their pie hole and mind their own business. Inside, I'm telling them that I don't need some half wit moron telling me what is true or not.

And that may work for us really well, right up till the moment we are slapped in the face with irrefutable proof that they, in fact, were correct. Not us. Not me.

Them.

Well, the ego can't handle that. The ego can't handle the fact that sometimes, we don't know what we are doing, or at the very least, someone else might be able to do it better, or know more about it.

Our Ego is our worst enemy because it convinces of things that many times just aren't true. Trying to protect us from the appearance of failure in our minds. "No, it can't be my fault. There is no way I am wrong. It must be Ted's fault."

Have you ever done that? Something went wrong at work and immediately without hesitation you said, "I didn't do it." or "It wasn't my fault."

I've done it more times than I can remember. It's down right embarrassing as I think about it.

That's ego.

Our Ego tries to control our world. Tell us what to think and how to react. And, really, I don't think this is anything that most of us don't already know.

So why prattle on about it, then?

Because Ego is why Christianity, and religion in general, is so screwed up. Ego is why many people refuse to learn more about those who are different or think differently. Ego is why "christians" spend most of their time fighting with each other over who is more right instead of working together to save lives.

Ego is why so many people never find salvation.

And I'm not just talking about non-christians. Ego is why so many "christians" never find salvation.

Because ego won't let them be wrong. Ego won't let them be wrong and realize they have something to learn. Ego won't let them open their eyes and see truth. Ego won't let them open their heart and love.

Ego won't let them see God.

Ego only lets them see themself. And that is the exact opposite of salvation.

Now, some of you are probably shouting "that's the devil at work."

Well, sure. I believe that. But here is the truth.

We don't need the devil to make us be that way. We are more than happy to do that on our own.

For us, the devil only prods us to do that which we already want to do. If that weren't true, it wouldn't be called "temptation." Because if we didn't want to do it, we wouldn't be tempted.

But let's back up the time machine. Back to Lucifer. Before he fell. Who tempted him?

No one. All he needed was his ego and a lack of self control.

Now, we could argue whether or not Lucifer had an ego. But that's a metaphysical argument for another time. I'm just going to say that I think he does and did no matter what his physical make-up actually is.

The point is, we are our enemies. We cause ourselves to have problems with others. We create our own conflict. Sure, someone else might start the trouble. But we don't have to help it out.

I'm talking spiritually and relationally here. If someone steps up and is trying to harm you or your family, I think we are dealing in a slightly different realm. I'm not talking about that.

Spritual and relational. Self centered vs other centered. Egocentric self importance vs open selfless compassion and self confidence.

Wait, what?

That's right. Selfless and self confident go together. Selfish and self confident almost never go together.

If one isn't comfortable with themself, they are not capable of seeing beyond themselves to focus on others. We are too caught up with trying to make ourselves comfortable instead of just being comfortable. And more importantly, the selfish person is trying to get other people to see them as confident and comfortable, while a truly confident and comfortable person doesn't care who sees it. They simply aren't worried about it.

And because they aren't, they can worry about other things. Like other people.

I'm sure you realize it, but this is one of the biggest themes in the bible. What were the words of Solomon?

Pride goes before a fall? A haughty heart before destruction?

The entire gospel is themed around this concept. They just never used the word Ego.

Jesus and Paul and the others kept talking about emptying ourselves to self. Paul called it "dying to the old man."

Did you ever notice in scripture that it was the person of WEAK faith that was trying to force everyone to do things a certain way? And the person of STRONG faith was able to be comfortable doing just about anything because his "faith" permitted it?

That's because the person of STRONG faith had nothing to prove to anyone. The person of WEAK faith is trying to prove himself to everyone.

The person of STRONG faith can roll with life because of that. The person of WEAK faith cannot.

That is because the person of STRONG faith has removed his/her ego from the equation and allowed God and others into their life. The person of WEAK faith is still letting their ego show everyone how everyone one how great they are, and trying to fill others with their big egocentric based focused. Trying to conform the world to the whims of their ego. The whims of their view.

They don't want everyone to revolve around God. They want everyone, including God, to revolve around them.

We can blame Lucifer for all this if we want. And don't get me wrong, he deserves a whole lot of blame.

But in the end, we have no one to blame but ourselves. No one makes us act a certain way. We choose to. No one chooses for us.

Pride and ego. Flip sides of the same coin.

The question is, "What is driving you?"

Happy Sabbath, peace, and good night.

Blog 10: The Hole Meaning.(yes I spelled that correctly)

Hey y'all.

Hmm... that isn't the accent that I normally speak with. How about...

Cheers.

Nope... that's not mine either. How about...

Hey and stuff.

Ya.

So... Hey and stuff.

About a week or so ago, I was having lunch with a couple of pastors. We get together every month to be a support for each other. It's usually just some food and chit chat and some "hey we did this recently" and just general sharing and the like.

He was telling us about this guy who goes to his church. This guy... we will call him "Ted"(not his real name), started attending my friends church not quite 2 years ago. Ted had been listening to a Christian radio station, one that will remain nameless, and had learned all the things that my friends church taught. When Ted came to the church, he was so excited to find a this church that was teaching all the things he had already learned. He was excited to have a place to worship and he was eager to be a part of what was going on there. He was going to be baptized.

My friend was pretty excited for Ted, but also for the fact that this was going to be easy work for him. Ted already knew everything he needed to know. He didn't have to teach the man anything. Ted was ready to go.

However, Ted is a smart man. He didn't want to rush it. He's a careful kind of guy. Wanted to attend a while and make sure this was right. After a while, Ted's excitement started to fade. He started skipping church. He sited all kinds of pressure from his family and from his job. He wasn't sure if this is what he wanted. He wasn't sure if he wanted to continue or not.

This was about 9 months or so after Ted had started attending.

My friend wasn't sure what to do. Ted already had all the information. He had already learned all the facts. He didn't know what else he could do to help Ted besides just continuing to pray for him.

One day my friend decided to try giving him another book to read. Well, a couple chapters from a book. Something that my friend felt was a really great sketch of who Jesus is and what He has done for us.

Ted read it. Then he read it again. After that, he read it again.

Ted came to church the next week and was on the verge of tears.

Why, you might ask? If Ted already new everything he needed to know, if he already had all the facts and information, what could that book possibly have said that he didn't already know?

If you asked that, then you asked a great question.

My friend asked him what was wrong. Ted replied that, he had been studying the bible and learning all this stuff, and trying order his life around what he thought was true, but until that moment, he hadn't understood that he was forgiven.

He didn't know that Jesus had forgiven him. He didn't understand that he didn't have to feel guilty. He didn't understand that he could come to Jesus, and that Jesus would accept him.

Now, if you aren't a Christian, then you are probably thinking, "so what?"

If you are a Christian, then you are probably asking "how can someone learn about God and the bible and not know that he or she is forgiven, since it's sort of the point?"

Both would be asking great questions.

We might ask, "What was he being taught? What was he learning?"

"Was it a failure of the teacher and teaching? Was it a failure of the student?"

The answer to those last two is probably "Yes" and "Yes."

In the last blog, I bored you a bit with talk about making sure you check the facts and not just trust anybody who is trying to teach something.

This time, it's the other side of it.

All the time Ted was studying, he found exactly what he was looking for. Information. Facts. The step by step list of how to be a Christian. You know those lists right? 7 Steps to Losing 20 Pounds in 2 Weeks! 5 Easy Steps to Becoming a Successful Person.

As most of us find out, this stuff usually fails. Just like it failed for Ted.

Because, Ted found exactly what he was looking for.

The problem is, Ted didn't know what he was he was looking for. Or at least, didn't know what was there to be found. And the fact that the teachers who had taught him hadn't taught it to him is highly suggestive as well, but I'm not going to go there.

Here is a truth. A person usually finds exactly what they are looking for. It may not be what they think they are looking for, and it may not be what they need to find. But it is what they are looking for.

The question is, do we know what we NEED to find? Do we know what we NEED to be looking for? Are we asking the right questions? Are we asking any questions at all?

What do we want out of life? Where do we want life to go? Do we even know?

Ted didn't. Ted was like everyone else. Wandering around, trying to be a good person, and trying to live with the guilt of his failures. Trying to atone for his life. Trying to create fulfillment in himself.

In the end, he finally realized that it wasn't something he could do by following steps. By learning facts and figures. It required a different type of learning. Not information, but meaning.

Now he understands that his life means something.

Even if you are not a Christian, this is still true. Everyone is searching for something. We just don't always know what. A purpose. A meaning. An answer to the question "why am I here?" "What is my purpose?"

Most everyone is trying to a fill a hole in their life. Some people try to fill that hole with facts and information. Whether those facts are religious or secular doesn't matter. Neither will succeed, usually. Information by itself does little for us. Information that leads us somewhere does.

Ted looked at the information and thought that IT was the destination. Ted is a classic Christian example. An example that is way too common. One that seems to happen more and more every time I turn around.

Here is how it works. A person learns something. Have you ever learned something and it made you a little excited? "Wow, I never knew that! That is so cool!" Or something like that.

Those are good moments. Some information you didn't have and now you do and you feel pretty good about yourself for having improved your status in someway. It brings an emotion high.

You keep learning, you keep searching, and each new bit that you learn brings with it another "ah ha" moment, and it feels good.

But what happens when the "ah ha" moments stop happening? Not much new is coming anymore, and with it, no more emotional highs. Everything becomes mundane again. No more excitement, no more higher joy. Just normalness.

It's because we tend to believe that the information was the goal. The facts were the destination. What we usually don't notice is that we never really do anything useful with these facts. They usually don't change us. We fail to apply it in the right way.

That's what Ted did. That's what the bulk of Christians do. It's what the bulk of non-Christians do, for that matter.
A Christian comes into a church so excited about what he/she has learned. But then, in about 9 months to a year, they realize that they really aren't learning anything new and the excitement is largely gone. They start to feel disenchanted and finally run out of reasons to keep coming.

Their hole never got filled. They didn't connect with anything.

Which, really, is the point right there. Every human has a desire to connect in something way with something more than just them. They need to feel important. Special.

Connected with something bigger. Something with meaning. Perhaps something full of love?

And the hard thing is that, finding that usually has very little to do with raw knowledge and information. It's not like trying to find the code to cracking a safe.

Ted's example is one that I see so much it's sometimes depressing.

I met with a lady this past week. Her story was just like Ted's. Ironically, the same radio station. Again, I won't go there.

She had questions. She doesn't go to church. But she knows all the stuff church teaches. All the rules, the rights, the wrongs.(or so she thinks... just like Ted)

Her questions, while important, were largely irrelevant. They were minor detail questions. Insignificant stuff that really has little baring on anything.

However, I could tell that she wasn't at peace. You interact with enough people and you start to be able to tell the difference very quickly when someone is happy and when someone is faking happiness.

She was faking.

But I didn't want to push her. I told her she was always welcome to come and talk to me and to come to anything my church had going on and I told her when all of our different meetings were, but I made it very clear to her that if all she wanted to do was talk to me, that was ok too.

She asked me if she had to come to church to be saved.

That is a question full of obviousness that is just waiting to explode all over.

I answered it. I said, "No." Cause it's the truth. Just so we are clear.

She said, "ok."

I said, "May I ask why you don't go to any church?" She had mentioned that earlier.

Her answer was that she didn't feel she was "holy" enough to go to church. Her life wasn't perfect. Not real bad... she said she hadn't ever done anything horrible. But it wasn't perfect. She still messed up and made mistakes. She didn't feel acceptable.

Well, the problem at this point was very obvious. So I asked the obvious question.

"Do you feel like you are forgiven?"

She turned away and started to cry.

The answer, again, obvious.

But she spoke, "Well, ya... I guess, well, I don't know... "

That translates as a "no."

I asked her if she had ever asked for forgiveness.

Her response was, "Ya... well, I don’t' know... I don't feel like I can. God won't want to listen to me. I'm not good enough."

Now, mind you she was "saved" when she was 15. Baptized and everything. And now she’s about 60.

Mind you, she's been "learning" all this good stuff from the preachers and teachers on this radio station. And while I could mock the radio station, the truth is, it doesn't just happen with that radio station. She had done all the official bible studies as well.

And, she and Ted aren't the only two. I'm am studying with no less than 6 people right now, who are exactly the same way. To put that in perspective, I'm only studying with 6 people. So, that's 100% of everyone I’m studying with outside of my regular group studies. And trust me when I tell you, many of the ones in those group studies are just like that.

I explained to her that none of her fears were true. I showed her from the bible, I explained it in analogy, I used stories, I pulled out every thing I knew to use. All of it just to help her understand that she is loved, forgiven, and that she doesn't have to feel guilty, and that she can go to God any time she wants.

Again, we can ask why it never dawned her to ask. Why it never dawned on her to look for that answer. Why it never dawned on those teachers to tell her. Why it never dawned on those bible study writers to teach that.

The point is, we need to understand what we are missing, before we can find it.

In the middle of trying to make sure no one is fooling us, we need to make sure we aren't fooling ourselves.

We can't fill our holes with science or religion. Facts or figures or information.

That hole is where meaning goes. Love. Connectedness. Purpose.

As a Christian, I would say God. But even if you don't buy into God, the principle is still the same.

We all want our lives to be about more than just existing.

I'll leave you with this.

Whatever your search is, whatever you are looking for, whatever you need... don't let yourself get lost in the details. Don't lose site of the forest because all those pesky trees keep getting in the way.

Find your perspective.

Find a way to be complete.

Blog 9: It's All True Unless It Isn't

Shazam!

Hmm... I keep saying that hoping that one of these times I will turn into Captain Marvel, but it never seems to happen. Don't tell me comic books lied to me again?

Well, today's post is brought to you today by the letters "A" and "Q and the number "3."

Once again, it's been too long. I could make excuses. They might even be true. But they would still be excuses, so I won't bother.

I have a cold.

Ok, that's sort of an excuse. But not really. Did it make you feel bad for me? That was the purpose.

Ok, a question for you. How many of you like it when people who clearly don't know what they are talking about try to speak authoritatively about something in a manner ment to convince you they are correct?

Does that make you happy?

I get it all the time. Good, well meaning people trying convince me about something about which they know nothing about. I sometimes wonder if people think to themselves "hey, there's a pastor, I must attempt dazzle him with my brilliance." It's as if sometimes I think people feel they need to prove something to me.

I'm not sure why. I'm just another guy with a semi fancy title.

I mean, we all get those email forwards from people in which they are trying to warn us about some cleaver scheme or deadly food which turns out to be false 99.9% of the time. But a whole string of someones bought into it and decided to send it around the internet hoping to annoy/help/dazzle/amaze someone by the information there in.

Then there is the christian example. "Doesn't it say in the bible that...(insert idiodic statement here)?" or "I heard some preacher say once that... (insert another idiodic statment here)?" as if because a preacher said it must absolutely be true. You know, because preachers are never wrong.

Then there is the science example. "If you take rocks and frog urine and boil them with ginseng and drink it at exactly 92 degrees, you will never ever get sick." or "my grandma told me once that if you...(you know what to put here)?"

Pick your walk of life. Religious, secular, whatever... there are always people ready to dazzle you with knowledge they don't actually posses.

So the lesson for today? Search out the truth.

Urban legends, religious or scientific myths and other here say abound in our culture. Alot of the time they are part of our knowledge base without even knowing they are there. At some point we bought into the lie and stuck fiction where fact should be. All of us have done it at some point.

I'm no less guilty.

And in casual conversation, when we weren't prepared and we can't remember and we go "You know, I can't remember but I swear I read once that...", well, that's forgiveable. We all do it.

But then there are the conversations that matter. The ones that change lives. The ones where the information presented will alter the way in which someone makes a real decision. Then... it's not so forgiveable.

Myths, legends, old wives tales... call them what you want... so much of it has krept into our way of life. Sometimes it's in the form of our traditions. Sometimes it's in our ritual (which is usually part of our tradition). Sometimes it's in our fundamental belief system.

And sometimes we have grabbed onto it so hard, that even when we are presented with the clear, irrefutable proof that we are being irrational, we still cling to what we think we know instead of learning something new and useful. Comfort and ignorance over progress and learning.

Let's think about it in a political way. I'm not going to expound in any way about our candidates for president. But if we vote based on what we heard someone say about them, instead of actually researching what these people have done and what their history says about them, we would be really stupid.

A wise person votes based on an informed decision, not based on a preconceived notion, or a missquoted rumors.
The rest of our lives should be no different. The history of christianity should teach us that above all else. For hundreds of years christianity committed attrocities and got away with it because of the ignorance of the people. Sure, sometimes it was forced ignorance. But sometimes not.

Today, in an era of unpresidented information dissemination, we have the opportunity to learn in a way no one in history has been able to. All the information we need is at our disposal. The rocks of history have been overturned and the secrets have been spilled.

And yet, there are many who would rather stick to the error of history, than acknowledge it's falicies.
In the realm in which I work and live, I hear all the time things like, "Well, they would never teach this back in my day." or "Give me that old time religion. It's good enough for me."

It's funny. Cause, if it was good enough, then we wouldn't be here anymore. "We need to do the things we did when I was a kid. That's how to teach people."

Right. It worked so well then. How come we didn't finish the job?

We can't afford to rely on the word of people when comes to the things that really matter. Like salvation. Like our spirituality. Like our future. Things of life and death. And not just our life and death, but the life's of those around us.

I spend more time working with people who's spirituality is all screwed up because of false religious myths and teachings than other group of people. "Well, I was taught that..."

Really? Where did they get that? Why did they teach it? Where is the foundation for it? Is that actually true?
And yet, people will base huge life changing decisions based on falicy.

I had a person recently tell me they need to postpone their baptism. I asked why. He said because they had gotten angry with a family member. I asked why that should postpone it. He said because they clearly must not be ready. So I asked if christians never get angry and make mistakes.

He didn't have an answer.

The truth is, he was basing his decision on a preconception of what a christian is. Perfect in everything. Never making mistakes. Never getting mad. Never sinning.

Seriously?

But this is what happens when we gain our knowledge of things second, third and fourth hand. It gets distorted.
Most people do not seem to realize that the Apostles in the New Testament were baptizing polygamists and drunkards and slave owners. They were baptizing them wholesale. And they didn't all change right away. That's why there are so many letters in the bible trying to teach the different groups to focus on God and to let him lead their lives to to live those lives rightly.

It's because those lives weren't right the moment they came to God.

This is just an example of the type of religious knowledge that gets ignored or forgotten. So, as result, the way christianity in general treats people who might be less than perfect is based on not remembering that. By that I mean, we have no tolerance for people who to line up perfectly with what we think a good christian should be. We don't baptize them till they are perfect. Even though the Apostles weren't doing that.

And so because many live their lives constructed around information that isn't true, it spreads to those around them and polarizes societies. People walk away from God because of the ignorance of the people they interacted with. They were taught wrong and took the flawed teaching, made it true and based life altering decisions on it.

I see people struggle so much in there spirituality because of this. This more than any other thing.

All because somewhere at some point, someone decided to get lazy with their learning. They just believed what they heard cause it sounded fine. It sounded authoritative. It didn't matter that it was absolutely false. It just sounded good.

There is a fantasy book I read a few yeas ago called Runemasters. In it, the nobles could purchase runes that would grant them different abilities. The abilities would be tied to other people. For example, if you wanted a rune of strenght, you would by one, the rune would be put on you, but the strength it gave you actually came from someone else. The runes only transferred the power.

That really has little to do with what i'm talking about. But at any rate, there was the evil general that was trying to take over the kingdom. And he had aquired hundreds of runes of glamor and speech. He was so handsome and smooth talking that he marched his army right up to the gates of the main opposition, an opposition that out numbered him and would have won easily in a realy fight, and he smiled and told them he was a friend and spoke eloquently and asked them to lower their defences and let him and his army in.

And they did.

Not one person died. Not one arrow shot. Not one sword swung. It ended in the time it took for him to speak the sentence.

All because he looked the part, sounded good and had the right words to say.

That is obviously an over the top example. But the truth is the same kind of thing happens every day in our lives. We heea things. They sound good. Maybe it resonates because we want it to be true. Or we like to person who said it. They are so nice. They have a great smile. They just sound honest.

We can never trust the words of people. Because even if they aren't trying to lie to us, who says that they didn't buy into someone elses lie and are teaching that?

Just because we are smart does not mean we can't be fooled.

I was trying to get this idea accross to some people in bible study a couple weeks ago. I kept reminding them to always go back and study things for themselves and never take the teachers word for it.

And the one lady, bless her for giving me the benefit of the doubt, kept saying "go back to the bible and your pastor."

I kept saying, "Even the pastor can deceive you or be wrong."

And she kept saying "But you are called by God."

She was so sure of my authority. That I couldn't possibly lead her astray because of who I was. That is sooo dangerous.

In the end I had to make it very clear that just because I may have been called to this life I live, that it didn't mean I wouldn't make bad choices and deceive her. Willingly or otherwise.

She didn't like that. But it was true.

Everyone has an oppinion and that's good. But obviously not everyone can be correct.

The thing I want to stress to today is this. Always check the answers yourself. Always go and find out for yourself. Don't just believe the word of the person telling you something. Or the one book you just read. If it matters enough to you that you are considering making decisions based on the information, then go and do the homework.

Let's not have a string of missinformed decisions change the course of our personal histories.

What I say is true. Of course, you won't know for sure until you go back and do the homework.

Don't just take my word for it. I'm just some other bloke saying stuff that might not be true.

But I'm not. It's all true.

Unless it isn't.

But I wouldn't do that.

Or would I?

Hmm...

Have a great night.

Blog 8: What Do We Stand For?

So, wow, the summer has been busy.

And it isn't over yet.

That's more or less my excuse for not posting in forever. Which is really a rotten excuse for skipping out on my peeps.

Am I allowed to use the term "peeps?"
Hmm.

Well, since last time we spoke, I've been to Camp Meeting for a week, then went back to camp to be Camp Pastor for a week.

I have to tell you... Camp Pastor is the best thing ever. I had a ton of fun. It was Junior camp which means the kids were all age 10-12. The kids were fun, the staff was(and still is) fun... I just had a great time.

It was almost like vacation.

I even have a tan now. Sort of.

However, there was one thing that outraged me and it had nothing to do with the people or the camp.

While I was there I had lots of time to talk and goof off with the staffers. Most are either seniors in High School or early in their college years.

A great group of people, all of them.

Over the week, as I talked with them at different points individually, I had asked some of them what the best and worst parts of the summer at camp were for them.

They all had different ideas of what the best parts were.

The kids. The events. The spirituality. Stuff like that.

But when I asked them what the worst part of the summer was, virtually everyone of them said the exact same thing.

Pastor's retreat.

Over the summer, they are their for a week of Camp Meeting, a week of cub camp, 2 weeks of junior camp, 2 weeks of teen camp, a week of spanish camp(should they stay so long), and then the 3 days of Pastor's retreat.

But out of that whole summer, the worst part of it is the 3 days of Pastor's retreat?

Worse than dealing with bed wetting campers? Worse than dealing with camp politics and drama?

Worse than the early mornings and late nights? Worse than dealing with cranky parents and cranky bosses?

Yep. The worst part was dealing with the Pastor's for 3 days out of the summer.

One person said they had never been treated so bad as they had by some of the pastor's during Camp Meeting. And then, having to deal with no one put pastor's for 3 days...

I actually saw it coming. Only because I had heard of some of the things that had happened. But I didn't know it had been bad for so many of them.

As it turned out, I had only heard a small snippet of the things that actually happened. Nothing criminal. Just extreme rudeness and self absorbed entitlement.

Now, don't think I'm being naive. I know that pastor's can be elitist. They can be caught up with themselves and their perceived status. But as I saw it there, the mass effect that it could have had, and maybe still will, it was like a slap in the face.

I was ashamed to be called a pastor.

To be associated with people who undo everything we stand for.

Now, you may be saying, "Um, ya... there are pastor's and priests running around raping young boys, and this is what you get angry about?"

That's fair. I don't have a good reason. Maybe it's because I've never seen the other up close. I'm not sure.

But I saw in my mind what could have been. A group of good people who's spiritual sensability was completely destroyed.

Fortunately, they weren't.

This time.

Now, to be fair, most of the pastor's in my conference are good people. It was only a small handful that were causing problems.

But a small handful is still a handful too many. It is unacceptable.

This made me start thinking about how we treat the people around us in broader terms.

The example I just gave is clearly a christian problem. But the idea behind is not just a christian problem. How many young people went down a path of bad decision making because someone treated them bad at a critical moment? Or, a number of people treated them badly at a number of critical moments?

It's not just in Christianity. People trying so hard to quash certian behaviour go overboard. Or worse, it's just lazy, selfish people wanting to have their way because they think they are special and entitled.

Like those pastors.

Lazy and selfcentered.

As a christian, it is my honor to try to represent God as honestly as possible. It's not easy. Don't let anyone fool you. The bible isn't nearly as clear cut as some would like to say it is. But it's not impossible either.

One of the biggest points of the gospel is that God is easily accessible. He isn't looking to destroy you. He isn't looking to judge you(do not confuse this with ideas of THE judgment. There is a difference between making a final judgment, and being judgmental.)

The gospel isn't about a micromanaged list of good and bads we have done. This is not how God is looking at us.
He sacrificed everything to save us and make it easy for us to find come to Him. Our mistakes are already covered.

So, when I see someone, especially a pastor, behaving in a way that does NOT represent that, it makes me very angry.

The truth is, when a person sees a christian, especially a pastor, the way they are treated by that person reflects directly on how that person perceives God. If the christian is a selfish pompus ass... well, if that's how a christian is, then what kind of God do they serve?

If the christian is running around flaunting their status, or perceived status, being rude, selfish and elitist, how does that make people see God?

How many people have completely left and denounced God, because they saw christians and clergy and said, "if this is what God is like, I want no part in it."?

One is too many. And unfortunately it's alot more than one.

More damage is done to God's cause by christians than almost any other group. We are our own worst enemies.

Every person I have ever met and known who has left the church, I don't care which denomination, has done so first because of how someone treated them. It's only after that do some from that group decide that God doesn't exist.

They don't want me, so God doesn't want me, so I don't want him.

A real God wouldn't act that way and wouldn't allow his followers to do so, therefore God doesn't exist.

Who can blame them?

Why would anyone want to be part of a group of "saints" who treat people worse than the "sinners" do?

It's insanity.

Christians have made it easy for evil to prevail. We make it easy for evil to seem more accessible than good.
Because the "saint" will thumb his nose at your flaws, but the "sinner" won't. The sinner says, "ya, I know what you mean, I sure like the way she looks too."

The saint says, "that's bad, and you're bad."

At least, that is what some christians have caused many to believe.

Jesus said that he accepted us exactly as we are. The bible is clear that we don't have to improve to be accepted by God.

You into smoking crack while having gay sex with prostitutes? (I think I covered almost every stereotypical christian sin there.)

God still accepts you.

Does he want you to stay that way? No.

But that's just common sense. No one else does either. No good atheist parent wants their kid on drugs and sleeping with anything that has a pusle.

But they do accept their kid none the less.

So does God. It's no different. He says, "I want you. Don't worry about taking a shower and changing cloths. Just come here. We can clean you up later."

That's the same thing a parent will do, christian or not.

But this is the God I serve. The one that worries about fixing you later. The one that just wants you to be safe and at home. The one that isn't wagging his finger at you.

Did you ever notice in the story of Abraham and Sodom and Gamorah that God was the one who came to Abraham before destroying them? They were the worst of the worst on the planet, and yet God stopped to talk to Abraham first. Did God need Abrahams permission?

No.

Did God know what Abraham would say?

Yes.

Abraham keeps asking if God will spare them all, if there are X number of people there.

Everytime God doesn't hesitate to say yes.

Then he waited for Abraham to continue.

God only stopped saying yes because Abraham stopped asking Him to spare them.

He was doing two things. One, he was testing Abraham. Two, He was looking for a reason to not destroy a single person.

The situation is more complex than just that, but you can see the pattern.

How about the famous story of the woman caught in adultry who was brought before Jesus? Much time is spent talking about the evil hypocrasy of the pharisees trapping this woman just to trap Jesus.

And rightly so.

But make no mistake. The woman was, in fact, guilty.

And after Jesus thoroughly embarasses her acusers?

He looks around and scratches his head and goes, "Huh. That's odd, where did everyone go? I could have sworn there was a bunch of people here accusing you of something. Do you see any of them now?"

To which she replied, "um, no?"

To which he replied, "Weird. Well, I guess we can all go home now. I'll catch you later, ya? Till then, stay out of trouble and take it easy."

Mind you, this is the same Jesus who said that "judgment has been given to the son(that's him)."

So, to be clear, the one given the task of judging us, isn't actually interested in judging us. Instead he just forgave us and went on his way.

This is the God I serve.

And any one who doesn't represent God in that manner is no servant of God's and has no business claiming to be one.

John said that anyone who does not love the people around him are not from God because God is love.

Go and be that love for someone today.

Blog 7: Opportunity in Chaos.

Holy cow and such. It's been way too long. I have all kinds of excuses as to why I haven't posted in over a month, but all of them are just that. Excuses.

I tried to make another excuse today. I'm sick. Nasty little cold. But no! Not today. Today I will push through it and prevail! Onward and victory and other cheesy words and phrases.

The word for today is "hardship." Actually, that might technically be two words. But the word could just as easily be "trials", "personal atrocity"(again, two words), or anything else that more or less means the same thing.

Why do bring this up? Well, mostly because it came up alot over the last month or so in the conversations I've had with other people. It got me thinking, and as we all know, that rarely ends well.
But it does, however, provide me with nifty blog material. Soo...

Woohoo.

Now, we have all experienced some sort of hardship or bad moment or what have you at some point in our lives. Some worse than others, or course. This theme comes up alot in my line of work. However, what got me thinking about it was a youth Sabbath school I sat in on about a month ago. I trade off teaching it with a lady who is there every week. I have to rotate my time since I have three churches all grasping for my attention.

Oh the joys of "popularity".

Gag.

However, since I happened to be late that day, she went ahead and taught and I sat and pretended to be one of the little monkies instead of the head monkey.

And she did a fine job.

Huh, that was anti-climactic, wasn't it?

Oh yes, my point. I forgot.

The lesson was on hardship and it's purpose. And she did a great job of going through the lesson and regurgitating all it's pre-written points and reciting all the christian cliche on how troubles and trials are just tests that refine our faith.

I am sure any of you who have ever even heard of a bible have heard all that stuff before. And there is scriptural reason for those responses. However, they never really get expanded on, and rarely ever get made practical and relevant and real to us in any way. They just remain some abstract idea that some how we are suppose to just be happy with.

I don't think that was ever the intention. We humans like to create our own problems.

But I digress.

So the lady recited all the lesson goodies and gave all the cliche(albeit vaguely accurate) responses. But then she stopped and looked at me. And she said, "I know this, I've heard all before. But honestly, I just don't get it. I don't understand how this is suppose to work. Hardship just makes me sad and angry and bitter. I just don't know if I understand this. I have a hard time with this idea."

I'm paraphrasing, of course. It's been over a month, and my brain doesn't remember that far back very well.
But her question was honest. Her feeling was genuine. And her need was real and palpable.

All of us either have, or will, experience something in our lives that will alter the way we see everything. And if it doesn't, it probably should. But taking that experience and trying to trivialize it with general comments like, "it's for your own good" or "it will make you a better person" just frustrates us instead of helping us. Those ideas may have some truth to them. But very few things in life are ever that straightforward or clear cut.
I would like to suggest two things in regard to this concept. And I think the realities there in are more or less accurate regardless of one believes in the guidance of God or not.

The first one is very simple. Not everything that happens to us actually has anything to do with us.

This gives christians more problems than any other group. Especially North American christians. We are very egocentric. Everything is about us or me. And when you combine that with the idea that God is love and that He is always working for my good, we can easily forget that God also works for other peoples good as well.
For example. You are driving down the road and as you cross an intersection, some drunk guy runs a redlight and completely annihilates you from the side. Later as you are laying in a hospital bed, broken and bleeding, you are wondering why this happened to you. What did I do to deserve this? Why did God make/allow this to happen? Why didn't He protect me?

All of those are very natural questions, but they all assume a premise that is quite possibly false. The false assumptions is that the accident had anything to do with you at all.

Maybe it did. But it didn't have to. There are 6.9ish billion people wandering around this planet and to think that everything that happens has anything to do with me is a bit selfish and egocentric. How many people were involved with that accident? You, the other driver, a plethera of witnesses and maybe collateral damage victims. A handful of police and paramedics. Nurses and doctors at the hospital. Not to mention your family and friends and the other drivers family and friends.

How many is that?

Alot.

But of all those people, the accident was meant to be a lesson for you? Just because you were at the center?
Maybe.

But concider this, and I will use a very poor analogy to demonstrate. If you are in the center of a mob of people and you have a gun, and you start pulling the trigger, who is going to impacted the most? You, the one at the center holding the gun? Or the people around you who are eating the bullets?

What that very bad analogy shows is that just because you are in the middle of the situations doesn't mean that it's about you or that it only affects you. Or that it even effects you the most.

One thing I've found in dealing with dying people and the funerals that follow is that it's almost always harder for the people live than the one who is dying. Sure, it's happening to the dying person, but it is much harder on the non-dying people. In many ways, they much more to deal with. The dying person has one thing. He/she is will soon be dead. Those who have to live on have that and much more.

Who says the benefit or silver lining of an experience has anything to do with the one in the middle of any given issue?

Which leads to the second point I'd like to make here.

Much has been said about how hard times can some how make us better people. Alot of it I think is stuff we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night. Some of it is true. Some of it is not.

Within the christian community, we always look for some higher meaning in everything. I'm not saying that is bad. I will say that we should refer to point one I made earlier.

But also, I would like to suggest a concrete and relevant truth about the nature of hardship vs status quo.
To be clear. No one wants hardship. Not me, not anyone. I would almost never choose it over easy living. And I don't think anyone wants us to.

But when hardship does come, and it will, here is a reality to consider.

Every day we go through our lives. We have a nice little routine. We get up. Use the bathroom. Brush our teeth. Eat breakfast. Shower. Go to work. Come home. Eat dinner. Go to bed.

Or some other variation on that. You get the idea. We have this routine that we go through every day. And most of the time it's pretty static. It doesn't really change much. Sure there is vacation, or a sick day, or the weekend, but most of the time our lives are pretty ordered.

And that's ok. However, on an intellectual level, it restrains us. We know what is coming. We know what to expect. Our world is pretty contained and smallish, and there is no need to reason beyond it. Why come up with a different way of doing things if the way we are doing it works just fine? We get fed, we get paid, we are more or less content. Why fix what isn't broken, right?

The only problem there, is that while we move along just fine, we don't really get a chance to grow much. Not intellectually, not emotionally, not experientually.

Until something comes along to shake things up, that is. Something like a good old fashion hardship. Something breaks down our routine. Reveals the flaw in our perception of everything. Shows us that the way we do things does not actually work all the time. And when this happens, we are suddenly forced to look for a way to get through the problem and triumph.

The hardship forces us to think differently than we normally do. Our routine doesn't hold all the answers anymore. Or at least, the hardship revealed issues that we never bothered to consider.

And then, once we have finally broken through that trial and found our way out of the shambles, we have new perspective on things. Our life was changed. The parameters of our life have been altered and the borders of the box that we normally think in have been shattered, or at least been pushed outward.

What hardship does for us is that it forces us to think differently and to consider possibilities and directions that we would never have normally considered.

Let me give you are real life example. One not so catastrophic.

I used to be an artist/designer. I would sit and paint or design on whatever project I was working on. I would always go into it with a plan of attack. I knew more or less what I was wanting to accomplish, and I had an idea of how I was going to get there. I have my own techniques for doing my art and my own concept of how design should work and what it should look like. Every artist does. That is how we know what a mistake is.

Then you make a mistake. A wrong brush stroke. A wrong font size. A wrong color. And suddenly you are scrambling to figure out how to fix this mistake, especially if it's something that isn't easily fixed. So I would look and look and stare and think. Then I would stop, get up and step back. Just walk away. Then I would come back and look at it again. It would be at that point I would notice something.

I would notice that my mistake didn't look half bad. Not only that, as I would look at it, I would realize that the mistake looked better than what I had intended. And not only that, I would start to see ways to not only incorporate the mistake but I would see new directions in which to take the piece that would never have even considered if I had not made the mistake.

The mistake took me in a direction that my normal ideas about art and design would not have taken me.
You know how often that happened to me? Almost every time I made a mistake. So, alot.

We are creatures of habit. We almost never try to think of things in new ways unless we are forced to. And, unfortunately, hardship is one way of forcing us to think in new ways. It's not the only way, or course. But it's a pretty effective one.

And whether we think that the things that happen to us are random, or whether they are guided, makes no difference. Either way, we are still faced with an opportunity to see things differently and alter the way we look at everything.

Carpe Diem. Sieze the day. Like most phrases it has become cliche. But like most cliches, they become that way because there is an element of wisdom to them.

We are presented with opportunities for growth and expansion every day. We just need to be able to recognize them and grab hold and then let those opportunities take us to a place we hadn't considered before.

Live long and prosper.

Blog 6: Nothing in a Name.

Hey and stuff.

Do you know what one of my favorite shows on tv is? Notice how I didn't say it was the best show on tv. Because really, there are better.

Eli Stone. Yep, that's what I said. Eli stone.

It's about a lawyer who gets a brain aneurism who starts hallucinating. It turns out his hallucinations are actually visions, and he has to follow them to help people.

I'm guessing right now that there are a couple of you thinking, "Well sure. You are a pastor, you would like that crap."

You would be wrong. I couldn't stand Touched By An Angel. I hated Seventh Heaven. I pretty much don't like any of those shows because they generally just suck. I'm more of a Battlestar Galactica kind of guy. Or Scrubs.

I really like Family Guy.

I don't usually like those because they are so ridiculously unrealistic that it's just laughable. They aren't even remotely believable.

Now, I'm not saying that Eli Stone is the epitome of believablility. But it brings up a concept that hits a defining point about God interacting with people.

This guy, Eli, isn't a christian. He didn't even think he believed in God. No surprise there. That makes for interesting writing. He's a greedy lawyer. And he's a very good greedy lawyer.

But now, he starts seeing that there is a pattern to his hallucinations. And he thinks that to ignore them would be ridiculous. And he starts helping people. It destroys his life. His mentor/boss now hates him. His engagement falls apart. He winds up alienating almost everyone in his life. But he keeps doing it because it's right. He's finally doing the right thing, and how can he not help these people when it's clear he's the only one who can, because he's the one put in their path?

The reason why I like this show is because, despite it's hollywood slant, it's frightenling accurate. All throughout the bible, God did exactly what is happening in the show.

In the show, the writers didn't set Eli up to be some good christian man who gladly takes on the role. Eli is the guy who wishes it would all go away so he can get his life back.

Us Christians have a very high opinion of ourselves. We look at our storied history. Our traditions and doctrines. We have built our lives around our orthodoxy. It is all in all to us.

Unfortunately, we forget the other part of our history. The part where whenever God really needed something done, He would often have to choose someone else to do the work, because His "faithful" were too busy either focusing on their beliefs and reveling in their namesake.

If we look at our spiritual ancestors, the Jews, the people of Israel, we see that we are just like them. They were so caught up in their name, their heritage, that they couldn't even see God when he stood among them. So, He took the message to other people who would listen.

I think one historical tidbit that gets ignored is a very telling one. Whether you are Jewish or Christian, we still look at God's chosen people, the Jews as an example. The people who had the rules and followed them. Well, followed them sometimes.

Except, Israel was called Israel because Jacob was renamed. But we know that. And really, Jacob wasn't that great of a guy. He was a liar and a cheater.

But go back to his Grandfather. Abraham. Abraham was from Ur. Ur is in Babylon. That made Abraham a Babylonian. So really, the Jews were Babylonians of a different path. This puts alot of history into perspective when you consider how much Israel despised the Babylonians. Especially after they conquered Israel. Which happened because God couldn't get Israel to clean up their act. When they wouldn't listen to His chosen righteous, God brought in someone who wasn't righteous. Someone who ultimately did what they were told, even though they weren't part of the "flock."

Like Eli Stone. Like Abraham, who's family, and likely even him, were polytheists. Like Ruth, chosen among idolaters to be in the line of Jesus. Like Rahab the pagan prostitute who was David's ancestor, and therefore Jesus ancestor. Like Paul, who was actually running around killing christians. Like Balam, who was a pagan prophet, and even though he wasn't an overly righteous man, knew that he could only do what God asked, nothing more, nothing less.

All the flawed and screwed up people. All the people who didn't carry the fancy title of Christian or pure Jew. God picked them to do some of his most important work because he couldn't count on the ones he already had.

Being a "christian" means nothing. Being a servant of others means everything. Just carrying around the title gets one nothing. The name is empty. It's the actions that matter. Not the rules, or the standards. Not the beliefs or the doctrines. But the service to the people around us. Yes, the bible says we must believe. But the James also said that even the devil believes in Jesus. Just saying that one believes and is there far part of the club means nothing. James said, "You say you have faith, and are a christian? Fine. But I'll show you that I am by my actions."

James understood that words mean nothing. It's not a works thing. It's a love thing. He said in that same letter that the only religion that God cares about is this: caring for orphans and widows and the needy.

That's not just a powerful statement, but it's a very telling and condemning statement. God only cares about helping people. This is the religion that matters. Therefore, any religion or belief system that does not produce, promote, teach or have at it's core and every other part this type of religion, is False.

Just believing the "right" thing, or having the "right" name, or being part of the "right" church, denomination, "religion" or group, means nothing. There is no power or meaning in it.

If we actually believe in God, then the thing that should matter most, the thing that should be the focus of everything we are, is the service of others that comes from our compassion for others which is the evidence of our love of God.
I believe that it is the missunderstanding of this point that has done the most damage to "religion" everywhere. This is why Christianity fails. This is why people don't like some christians. It's because many people recognize that most Christians spend all their time guarding the club, and no time actually living the love they profess to have.

And I believe that it is because of this, that God tends to find some poor shmuck who isn't inside the club, who hasn't bound himself up in the club mindset, to go and get things done.

God is no respector of persons, races, religions, sexes or creeds. There is only one thing God respects. The person who is willing to act out of love.

Anything else is usually just self serving. And if we as humans have little use for a self serving individual, why would we think that God would?

Choose to be selfless. Be the type of person that so many others claim to be.
Talk is cheap.

As a wise Jedi named Yoda once said, "Do, or do not."

Forget the names and titles and catagories. Just go and do.

Period.

Interlude: An added link.

Today is a day that will go down in... memory? Infamy? Colostomy?

Hmm.

The proper vocabulary seems to elude me...

At any rate, today I have added my very first blog link, oddly enough, linking me to another blog.

His name is Jeff. His blog is Pack Light. Check it out. Also check out his other blogs which are listed on the Pack Light site. To the right. (i'm not sure if I should stop there or keep going..."and we can fight, into the night, and it's tight...in your line of sight... and...")

As it turns out, I'm not a poet, and I won't be ending my day job anytime soon.

However, Jeff is a brilliant guy who coveres a broad range of subjects from the religious to the socially active to the political to the environmental. But most importantly, he is unswervingly loyal to Jesus.

So, whether or not you decide that you agree with his perspectives, he always does offer interesting perspectives to think about. Check it out.

Oh, and just incase you don't see the link to the right under "Other People Who Say Stuff", I'll put it here as well.

http://www.packlight.blogspot.com/

Alright folks, try not to burst into flame accidently, and have a great day.

Blog 5: Cultural Diversity = More Than 2 Ways To Skin A Cat.

OK, so last time I mentioned something about going to Puerto Rico in January. It turns out that I wasn't telling a fib. We were there.

And, our timing was good as well. We left Illinois right when the really bad wave of freezing death passed through town. Unfortunately, we came back again. We went from 90+ degrees on the beach in the morning, to 9 degrees in Chicago.

Unpleasant.

Besides the nice weather, we had a good time. I put this trip into two parts. The first half and the second half. The second half was a little more fun. We spent time at the beach, went to San Juan, visited El Moro and ate fish with the head still attached. Admittedly, that last one was a little gross, but the fish was tasty.

The first half was fine, but most of the time was spent at the Alumni weekend for Antilian College(Antilian University, now I think.) Nirma's parents graduated from there so we went to all the programs with them. Nirma's sister and husband came along as well. The programs were fine, but since I don't really speak spanish that well I mostly just sat there and people watched which brings us to the point of this blog.

During all this people watching that I noticed some things. Puerto Rico is a different place. With a different culture and people.

Yes, I know, you already knew that. Stay with me though.

While in many ways Puerto Rico is highly influenced by American culture, in most ways it's still distinctly different.

And, again, you say "duh."

They have McDonald's and Taco Bell. Mercedes Benz. All of the same conveniences exist there.

Except that at Taco Bell you can get french fries and at McDonald's you can get a burrito.

But that isn't what I'm talking about. The peopel all have jobs and are always on their cell phones, just like here. And yet, it's foreign. Completely foreign.

The pace is slower. But traffic is faster.

And the clothing style is different. Completely modern, but with it's own flare. Especially for the women. Everything is tighter and more revealing. So much so that you could immediately tell who was from there and who wasn't. Most "christians" wouldn't approve.

I won't lie. I didn't mind so much. I'm a guy with all the guy genetics. Sue me. And I rarely get uptight about such things.

But as I said, most "christians" wouldn't approve.

And there is the rub. Most christians in America wouldn't approve. But down there? No one seemed to care or even notice. That's just the way it is. No one thinks wrongly of it. It is just normal. Even in church. Even in the Adventist church.

(gasp!)

So, ya, funny story. We are sitting in Church. And everyone is piling in and everyone is friendly and everyone is dressed like, apparently, everyone dresses. I didn't care. But coming from Cornbread, Illinois, I noticed. And the church service shockingly normal. Almost painfully normal.

And as they called the children forward for a childrens story, they played a cute little cartoon up on the projector screen that contained a friendly train conductor calling all his child friends to get on board and come along for a wonderful journey. And all the friendly animals were their to greet them and they all sang songs together and, well, it was everything a kid could want to see as they are coming up front. It was great. Perfectly normal. If I had been a kid, I'd have been loving it. It was a little cheesy, but hey, when your 5 you don't notice cheese. Unless you're eating it.

So I never even thought twice about that cartoon.

Apparently, to of the locally stylish college girls came in and sat down behind Nirma's sister.

Right now, all the guys reading this just perked up. Shame on you.

Anyway, they sit down. And as this cartoon starts playing, these girls who wouldn't pass too many dress code standards here in the states, are horrified that such an inappropriate cartoon would be played in church. How could we let our standards fall so far?

So, if I understand them correctly, it's ok to dress like spring break in Daytona, but happy Jesus cartoons are bad.

This brings us to a little thing called culture.

If I walk into a church in Puerto Rico and start causing grief because they aren't doing things according to an American standard, who has the issue... them, or me?

Let me add another word to culture.

Context.

Everyone who picks up a bible and reads it interprets what it says. How we interpret it is largely dictated by how we were programmed from birth. This is also known as our Cultural Context. Everything we were ever taught, experienced, saw, heard, etc., it all forces us to think according to a specific set of perameters. And for some reason, we seem to think that everyone else was programmed according to those exact same perameters.

Well, except in Africa where there are tribes. But that's a different culture.

Oh... wait...

Except for certain middle east areas where women are seen as property. But that's a different culture.

Oh... umm...

Except for parts of America that is not surrounded by corn, but instead surrounded by skyscapers or neon lights or... or...

And once you start down that road one eventually asks, "So which culture is correct?"

Unfortuanately, that's the wrong question. Since there are no perfect people, there are probably no perfect cultures.

In Europe, they condemn America for how much violence we have on TV. Yet, they often have blatent sex and nudity all over their regular programming. There, violence is bad, but sex is good.

In America, believe it or not, we are all prudes. Even our TV. But we have no problem killing people ten at a time in horrible bloody ways. Apparently here, violence is good and sex is bad.

And while there is probably a third option that is more correct than either, the point is we are all shaped by these forces and we use them to interrept everything we see and do.

So, were the college girls out of line and crazy? Or was I the one who didn't understand what was going on?

We get ourselves into trouble when we start believing that everyone must conform with our own standard. When ever I say that I always get one person who says, "That's why we have the Christian standard."

Right. And which christian standard would that be? The American one? The European one? The Puerto Rican one?

It's different in every country. For that matter, it's different in every state. Go to church in Michigan and then go to church in California. As a matter of fact, take a Californian and put him/her in a Michigan church for day, and take a Michigander and put him/her in a Californian church for a day and see who has the heart attack first.

Illinois, being in the midwest is more on the "conservative" side. Not as much as Michigan, but not nearly as "liberal" as California. And I hear it all the time from people when this discussion comes up how those Californians are just letting Satan in on all sides. Californians, by contrast would consider all these midwesterners "legalists."

Clearly they can't both be right.

Or maybe that's the point. Maybe they are both right, because of the fact that they are both wrong.

There is no perfect culture. We are all screwed up. Everyone is just trying to figure it out. So when I, caucasian male American who doesn't know right from wrong, walk into a Hispanic church in on a Hispanic island full of Hispanic people who also don't know right from wrong... at what point do I presume to be the bearer of proper standards, of proper context for them?

This is why we have so much friction in christianity today in America and everywhere. So many christians worry about that which is on the outside, but the truth is we are doing more damage to ourselves than that of what anyone else is doing to us. Too busy are we trying to decide questions of "me vs. you", instead of focusing on "what did God ask me to do today, right now, right here?" Because the answer to THAT question is different for every single person in existance. And to subject someone else to a plan that God designed for me and not them is much like taking a fish out of water and trying to force it to breath air. It wasn't designed to, it wasn't meant to, and trying to make it do so will kill it.

And so it is with serving God. Being a Christian. Figuring out how to live that life. When we take a person and try to force them into a mold that wasn't shaped for them, we destroy them. Ask any random ex-christian why they left, and this will be at the core of that reason. Some person, or group of persons, treated them selfishly and without love by forcing them into a mold not made for them. Never bothering to find out what God was doing with them. Never bothering to find out what they actually needed and instead just assuming that what the person needed was what they needed.

We don't like to tolerate difference or diversity because if someone else acts differently than me, thats ok, therefore I must not be ok. I must be wrong. And we so hate being wrong. Therefore we are right and they are wrong.
And so the wheel turns and wars begin and people die.

Once we can accept that we don't have it all figured out, then we can accept that no one else does either. Understanding that scripture was written in a culture 2,000 years dead means we understand that interpreting through our own culture is a bad idea. Not that culture is bad. Just that our culture does not contain absolute truth. Only a version of truth. Good in some areas, not so good in others. Just like every other culture on the planet.

God gave us just enough information to find Jesus, gave us a couple warnings, but left out alot of everything knowing full well that we were just going to screw it up anyway.

He gave us leeway. He knows we don't have it all figured out, and He doesn't expect us to figure it all out. Therefore we shouldn't assume that we have. Or that we will.

Despite my overly curious nature, I find that very freeing. And I like freedom.

God bless America.

I mean, Puerto Rico.

Um... right.

Post 4: The Pursuit.

Happy New Year!!

Umm. It seems I missed the train on that one. Sorry.

So, ya. Life got busy and such. I hope everyone had a great holiday season. And New Year beginning. And. And.

Nirma and I went to Puerto Rico in January. It was a good time. Actually, I could write an entire blog on the experience. Something about diversity and cultural difference and how it needs to impact our thinking. Maybe I will do that. But not today.

We arrived back to our house on a Thursday afternoon from Puerto Rico. That left me with less than 24 hours, including sleep time, to write 2 sermons, have an elder's meeting, finalize and reherse a special joint communion service between a couple of the local churches of which I was hosting and in charge of, and return the myriad of messages that had accumlated while I was gone. It was a bit of a whirlwind.

However, I was ready for the next week of work and grateful for a full week to get my next sermon written.

Depending on how one works and thinks, the process of putting together a sermon will vary. My process goes a little like this. I pray alot. I want God to write my sermon for me. I read until something starts to formulate in my mind. Once the idea gets rolling, I go take a shower. Yes, that is correct. I shower. For some reason, I think so much better in the shower. Plus, my office is in the basement, and it gets really cold in my basement, so a warm shower is a nice break. Then I come back and start to write. Now, mind you, this takes most of a week. The formulating of ideas, and then running and coalescing thoughts in my head can take a couple days. The bulk of sermon writing happens in ones head, not on paper. At least it does for me. Usually by thursday night or early friday, it's all done and printed. And by done and printed I mean that I have an outline from which I will preach from. I don't use a manuscript. I like the flexability of an ouline. Plus, it requires me to have a better grip on my subject matter than having a manuscript in front of me.

Anyway. I share that so I can share this. Monday comes around and I can't seem to pull anything together in my head. But that's not entirely unusual. Sometimes it takes a couple days to find a direction.

But when Thursday rolled around and I had nothing, not a single idea to run with, I was getting a little concerned. Friday came, and I had nothing. It was friday afternoon and, while I wasn't exactly panicking, I was a bit worried. No one wants to walk up to the pulpit and start there sermon like this, "Today, our sermon will be taken from this magazine I found on the sidewalk... let me see... ah yes, it says here that Honda will be releasing not one, but three new motorcycles this year. And this is much like how Jesus, um, decided that all of the... easter bunnies, yes, that's it, Easter Bunnies, should be made from chocolate for all eternity. May His Glorious name be praised. Amen."

I'm pretty sure they have had people committed for less than that.

Well, I was sitting my chair trying to figure out what was wrong. Why was my mind blank? Why couldn't I come up with a single new thought? It was at that point that a disturbing thought entered my mind.

I realized I had nothing more to say. When part of what you do is based around the concept of conveying information to people in order to help/teach/encourage/admonish/etc., and you suddenly realize you have nothing more to say... well, you can see the problem that creates.

I was going over in my head all the different concepts and ideas and I realized that I had said everything I knew how to say about them. Many of them I had hit more than once from different angles and I didn't know how to make it different. I didn't know how else to say it, and even more, I wasn't sure it was going to make any difference even if I did.

Now, if you were paying attention to my dissertation on how I write sermons, you will realize one glaring problem. I was upset because I had nothing to say, and yet, the whole purpose of doing what I do is to convey what God wants said. I was focusing on me and not on God.

One thing sermon writing has done for me is to answer my own questions about things. I still have unanswered questions about many things, but I've answered most of the ones that had caused me problems. For me sermon writing is not only highly educational, but also in many ways cathartic. It allows me to work out theological quandaries but also to pass on what I've learned to those around me. I'm not saying I'm always right, but it has brought be a measure of peace.

And there were two other parts to my distrubed conclusion. One, I was feeling like maybe I'd hit a block and become so overconfident in my "knowledge" that I had rendered myself unteachable. Which is bad and is also self diluted cause I really know better. The essense of learning is that, the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. Secondly, I had grown increasingly frustrated that my people weren't "getting it." Week after week, day after day, I try to get them moving in a direction, and consistantly meet failure. Or at least it often seems that way. As if progress depends on my definition of it.

All these things I know better than to fall into, and yet, there I was. I wasn't burnt out, but I think I was at the very least ignoring my own teaching. Perhaps headed toward burnout.

It was at that moment, I remembered something I had read from Rob Bell. He had a very similar situation happen to him, except for the opposite reasons. So I went back and read.

He describes a moment he had before going up front to preach one day. Rob Bell is the pastor of Mars Hill church in... Michigan? Yes. Let's go with Michigan. It is a hugely successful church with thousands of attending members. So here he is, postor boy for young successful pastors, and he is hiding in a back room with his car keys in his hands, five minutes before he walks up to preach, ready to sneak and walk away from it all. And his reason?

"I realized I had nothing else to say."

A small lesson there is, success and failure have nothing to do with satisfaction, happiness and burnout.

But even though our situations were vastly different, I discovered that our causes had a similar source. He describes talking to a councelor. During this visit the councelor tells him, "Rob, I know what your problem is."

"It's sin."

Rob had one of those "say what?" moments.

But the councelors response was one of the more profound things I have heard in a long time.

"Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God wants you to be. Anything else in your life is sin and you must repent of it."

Now, I think we can all agree that is a bit over generalized and over simplified. But the underlying point is no less true. And for those of you who may not put much stock in God, the point is still a valid one and I'll say it differently.

Your job is the relentless pursuit of who you are suppose to be, and anything else is a waste of time.

It's mostly the first half of that, that I like. "The relentless pursuit of who God wants you to be."

For Rob, the problem was that he was trying to be what everyone else wanted him to be. Superpastor. Everywhere, all the time, fitting the mold to make everyone happy.

And I found, as I thought about it, that even though I protest so much at being just another typical pastor, in many ways I had been just reacting. Making decisions based on everyone around me. But not based on me at all. I don't mean that in a selfish way. It's good to be selfless. But one can't ignore ones self. You can't ignore your instincts. Your better judgement. Your own personal needs. Otherwise you just collapse.

Your pursuit of whatever you pursue just becomes hollow. You become hollow.

And you find that you have nothing left to say.

After all that, I had a sermon to write. And I wrote in less than 2 hours. Every successful preaching and sermon giving teacher will tell you that 2 hours is about 10 hours too short at the minimum to write a good sermon. And usually they are correct.

I went in to church the next day. Instead of a typical biblical sermon, I told three stories. One of a guy from Union College named Mike Needles. Another of Solomon. And the third of Rob.
Solomons is short and simple. Read Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:17 if you want to see the words. The short of it is this. Solomon was trying to find the meaning of his existance. And he searched everywhere, tried everything whether good or bad, and succeeded in every endeavor. But at every point he found it meaningless. He kept finding himself unworthy of the great king who had come before him, his father David. Over and again it was meaningless.

Like chasing after the wind. And he hated it all.

But at the very end of the book he finds the one thing that actually mattered. Fear God and keep his command.

Solomon was looking for meaning every where. But he neglected the one place that actually mattered. God wanted him to be something, to fill a role, and he was fighting it. Trying to be wise, but ignoring wisdom.

Just like Rob was looking to everyone else to find his purpose.

The story of Mike is the success story. The short of it is that we were all together at a function and someone broke into his car and ripped him off and trashed it. But he didn't get mad. He remembered that he had been no different at one point in his life, he remember where he had come from, and now knew who he was to be. He figured he had it coming, but more than that, he knew who we was suppose to be and understood that one day those kids who did that to him would figure it out. Maybe.

I've never forgotten that day.

Now, the point of the sermon when I tied it all up had to do with people who had junk in their past, but unlike Mike had never come to terms with it. They can't let the memory of it go even if the problem is no longer there.

People who, like Solomon are trying to find meaning everywhere in everything, only to find it hollow and empty and to have taken them somewhere they didn't want to go.

Or like Rob, trying to please everyone, and keep pushing through. Putting on the mask, sucking it up, and going forward until one day you have nothing left to give. And everything falls apart.
That was the jist of my sermon. But here is the part that amazed me.

Before I got the sermon, before I had really talked to anyone, we had the portion of the service where people can tell what they are thankful for, or give a request for prayer. What amazed me was that out of the 10 or so people who spoke up, every single one of them asked for help because they were feeling that they had were reaching this point of running out of steam. Not sure if they could keep going or keep it up.

I was totally oblivious to any of these things. Some pastor I am. But the point that this made to me was that I was trying to figure out what I needed to tell these people, what they needed to be hearing, and the reality was, what they needed to hear had nothing to do with my ability to discern it.

Why I thought I had nothing to say, God took my nothing and used it anyway. I wrote that sermon because of me. I didn't write it for them. At least, I didn't know I was writing for them. It turned out to be one of my top 3 sermons of all time. Not because it was good, but because it was relevant.
This may all seem a little scattered in scope so I'll bring this back around to the purpose. Which is actually two fold.

One. Never think that what you are doing is irrelevant. That you aren't making an impact. That you have nothing left to offer. You do. You ALWAYS do, even if you don't realize it.

Two. Our job in life is to be who God wants us to be. Who we are meant to be. Define that as you will. Not what anybody else wants us to be. Everyone has this stuff in their past that controls their thinking and decision making. It holds us back. We are still trying live according to someone elses mindset. Which would be ok if we were, in fact, them. But we aren't. And this we have to deal with and kill it. Not ignore or run away from it. We can't run from it. It just finds us again. There is a saying that says, "Where ever you go, there you are." Our problems follow us because we are the problem.

We, as individuals, must deal with our personal histories, external expectations, and start being who we are suppose to be.

Everything else in our lives hinges upon us figuring that out.

Good luck and God speed.

Post 3: Meaning Beyond The Con

31,536,000 seconds. 525,600 minutes. 8760 hours. 365 days. 12 months.

These numbers all have one thing in common. They all equal the same thing.

1 year.

One year ago today, two days before Thanksgiving, my doctor called me with the results of my regular follow-up exams and told me that I had cancer. Again.

Two days before Thanksgiving.

We were already packing up to head out for the big family get together. We had been looking forward to getting away, and suddenly we weren't feeling to much like going. We had lost the desire to be a part of it, and we didn't want to ruin it for everyone else.

But we decided to go anyway. We decided not to say anything till after we got back from Thanksgiving. We would go. We would force a smile when it was time to smile, laugh when it seemed everyone else was laughing, and eat the food even though it we really weren't all that interested in eating. We didn't want bring everyone down so we just put on our best show and went through the motions. We just acted normal.

"Hey Tony, you've been staring at that cookie for 5 minutes and it's starting to creep me out. You ok?"

"What?!? Who said I was dying?!?... I mean, I like cookies. No cancer here."

Gag.

Ya, it went well.

Now, go ahead and ask me if I was feeling overly thankful. The answer is decidedly "no."
Fast forward to yesterday.

We are sitting in the doctor's office waiting for the results of my latest post-chemo tests. I started thinking back over this last year. Trying to smile through Thanksgiving. Going through all the tests with all the tubes and needles poked and inserted into various and unpleasant places. The surgery to put in my access port for chemo. The anticipation of the hell that was to come. Praying to God the day before chemo that I would wake up from the nightmare to find that it just a big dream or mistake. Going in the next for my first treatment and realizing it wasn't a dream and it wasn't a mistake. The next four months nausia, vomiting, head aches, weakness, chills, loss of hair, anemia, blood infusions, pain, erratic emotions and the realization that it was all much worse than anything I had anticipated. The unpleasant surgery to remove my access port. The recovery. And now I was there waiting to find out if history was going to go in circles for me.

Fortunately, it wasn't to be. My CT scans were as they should be and my blood tests were frighteningly close to normal. My doctor said, "It seems like you might have to suffer through till old age kills you after all."

Fair enough.

Now, it's two days before Thanksgiving again and I'm ready to go. I can smile and laugh and eat some great food... and I won't have to pretend too much.

Now, ask me if I am feeling overly thankful. The answer is "hell ya."

Now ask me why.

Is it because I have no cancer currently? Is it because I don't have 4 more months of chemo-torture looming ahead? Is it because in two days I'll get to put up with some of my crazier family? (maybe, maybe, and probably not)

Maybe it's because not have to die soon.

Maybe.

Do you know what a "shell game" is? I'm sure you all do. It is a game where a person hides a small object like small ball, or pebble, or pea under one of three cups, and then shuffles them around in order to confuse a player, then get them to place a bet as to which cup it is under. It was originally played with thimbles and a pea, then later walnut shells(hence the name "shell game") and a pea.

They show you the pea, put it under a cup, shuffle it around trying to confuse you, then stop and ask you to bet and choose a cup. They tell you that you have a one and three chance in choosing the correct cup. They are very good at shuffling the cups quickly so that they can mess you up. They usually let you choose correctly once or twice to suck you in. Then they make it hard for you, until you start losing.

It seems easy enough, though. If you just pay close enough attention, you should be able to follow the pea or ball because there are only three places the ball can be. Cup 1, 2 or 3.

And there in lies the illusion. The con man gets you to buy into to the parameters of the game as if they are actually true. The player knows that the con man is being tricky with the cups. They expect it. They expect the con man to switch up the cups or shift the ball from one cup to the next. But what the player doesn't realize is that it is an illusion with in an illusion.

The ball isn't under any of the cups. The player is given a false set of choices and then made to believe that they are the real ones. They are convinced they have three choice. Cup 1, 2, or 3. But really the ball is in the con mans hand the whole time.

Most of you probably knew that already. But have you ever stopped and looked around at your life to see just how often we believe that the set of options around us are really the only choices we have to choose from?

We habitually buy in to the parameters put in front of us and rarely try to see around them. I doubt any of you would ever fall for the shell game. And yet we do it every day.

Back to me being thankful.

Do you know why I'm thankful? Or maybe I should say, what I'm most thankful for? Because, yes, I am thankful that I don't have chemo anymore. I'm really thankful I don't have cancer anymore. I'm glad I'm not actively dying. I'm super glad I had my wife with me the whole time. She's awsome. But none of those things helped me accept the reality of this last year. None of those things had meaning beyond themself. (except for my wife, but that is another topic.)

I made this myspace(refer to first blog) page BECAUSE I had cancer. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have done it. I didn't feel like I had the time. But I had it, so I did. You are reading this blog BECAUSE I went through hell. And most importantly, I got back in touch with alot of people I had forgotten I cared about and had missed for a very long time BECAUSE my life was jeapardized by illness.
I'm thankful for my cancer because I'm thankful for all of you. Surviving is great. But having something more to show for it, to have made it worth not giving up, this brings meaning.

It brings thankfulness.

Don't let life convince you that your options are small and meaningless. Don't let yourself be convinced that the bad situation you are in is out of your control or without meaning. That the only options you have are "bad" and "worse" because what you see in front of you is often just an illusion.

It's just a shell game.

It's a false and flawed premise. There is more going on than what you see.

Look for it.

Happy Thanksgiving.