Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!
Except you in the corner. You know who you are…
I don’t know about you, but I had a great Thanksgiving. Good food, good people… good food… all in all, a day well had. And, I got to spend lots of quality time with both of my nieces. The new one and the less new one. They are great. Unclehood is a wonderful thing.
I was trying to decide what I am most thankful for. And really, I’m not sure I can narrow it down to one thing I’m more thankful for than anything else. Some of the top contenders are… (in no particular order)
I’m not dead. (always a classic)
I’m not homeless.
My wife is awesome and also isn’t dead.
I’m not being hunted by ninja assassins. (that I know of…)
I finally finished a long running project. (more on that later.)
There are many others. Some probably more important than the ones I’ve listed. I could go on about the rest of my family, my friends… both real and imaginary… and my churches. But I won’t bore you with the details. In the end, I have to conclude that my life is very good. Better than it has any right to be.
I mentioned my new niece, right? She’s about a month old. She is just this little peanut. I can’t get enough. And her older sister is just growing so fast. She’s 3.5 years old. I gave her pony rides. She likes to sit on my back while I scramble about on my hands and knees, and then buck her off onto the couch.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Good times.
Now, about that long running project. Some of you are aware of it, some of you are not. What we’ve been doing is trying to get one of my churches set up to record video and stream it live whenever I preach there. And finally, after many setbacks, it is done and ready. We are now set up to both stream live, and keep previously recorded sermons available for on-demand viewing. All one needs is a computer and a decent internet connection.
And a desire to listen to me preach badly.
I mean, really, does everyone think the sound of their own voice sounds stupid once it’s recorded, or is it just me?
Maybe, you should answer that.
Anyway, the website is http://www.rockfallssdachurch.org/. If one decides to go there, at the top of the page is a link called “Live and On-Demand Sermons.”
Or you can click here. http://www.rockfallssdachurch.org/article.php?id=7
On that page are a number of links. One is a schedule of dates that will be streamed live. It’s not every week because I have three churches I have to rotate through. So, the dates are listed there.
Just below that is a link titled “Watch Live Now.” I believe it’s purpose is pretty self explanatory.
Below THAT, is a section with links to previously recorded sermons. On-demand sermons, if you will. Should you go there, you will notice they have been broken into parts. This is because we are poor. Hosting is expensive, so we are using a free service that requires file sizes be small. This means we have to break large files into smaller pieces. Fortunately, most sermons only need two pieces.
Also, because it’s a free service, sometimes there are advertisements before the sermon starts. If that bothers any of you, I’m sorry. I do have a solution, though. Put a finger in each ear, close your eyes, then shout really loud till the commercial ends. It should help you avoid the grotesque evil that is a cotton towel commercial. (he said with sarcasm…)
Now, I realize that perhaps not all of your, or even any of you, are interested in this. But for those who might be, there it is.
I encourage you to share the links with anyone and everyone, should you feel it is appropriate to do so. It’s easy to use, and handy if someone wants to be at church, but can’t, or doesn’t go to church, but is interested in hearing a sermon, or just wants to do something different.
It is my hope that one day it can help create a safe, enjoyable and active internet fellowship community. Call it church if you wish. Worshipping and learning about God is more than just sitting in church. I would go so far as to say just sitting in church is the farthest thing from it.
I want there to be a place for someone who is interested in God, but doesn’t feel comfortable in church. It’s my hope that this will help there.
So, please, try it out if you wish, let me know if you run into problems, and I hope you all have a great weekend.
Till next time.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
Blog 17: An Idiot's Tale
Greetings.
Welcome to another installment of…
“Stupid Things Done By Tony”
In today’s episode, we find our perpetual idiot helping a grieving family as they prepare for the funeral.
“What could possibly go wrong there?” I hear you say.
Well, let me tell you all the ways I can be stupid. Ok, in my defense, it was only one way in which I was stupid, but I digress. Let me tell you all about it.
Last Friday I received a phone call from a person who attends a church in the next town over. The 52 year old son of one of the members passed away due to a heart attack. They are trying to plan for the funeral, however their pastor is out of town and can’t get back in time. Therefore, they decided to call me and ask if I would be willing to perform the funeral for them.
Of course, I said yes. Not because I just love doing funerals. I don’t. I’m happy to do them because it’s necessary and needs to be done. But it’s not what I categorize as “fun.” However, I’ve done my fair share in the last few years and have become more or less comfortable doing them.
As a side note, it’s amazing the things you can get used to. But continuing on…
I don’t know this person or family. I tell them to contact me back once they know when the funeral will be, and I will sit down with them and work out the details and talk and pray with them.
Now, let me clarify something. Some of you may be wondering, “Why wait for them to get the funeral scheduled before rushing right over to be with the family?”
You ask a good question. Here is my answer. I have found that the first couple days after a death are a whirlwind of phone calls and trips to the funeral home and scheduling and taking care of business paralleled only by wedding preparations. Therefore, unless I was called in before the death happened, i.e., coming to the hospital to sit with the family as they watch their loved one die, I try to stay out of the way till they actually have the time to focus on themselves. Until then, I’m only getting in the way.
And this is what I did. I waited till Sunday and then we set a time to get together. Not to ring my own bell, (trust me, I’ll be humiliating myself in a moment…), but this turned out to be perfect timing. They told me how this was the first time since the man died that they’d had a moment to sit down. They were finally done setting up the arrangements, and were just now catching their breath.
Ah, how my ego soared as I realized, once again, my superior wisdom and judgment paid off.
Well, as I listened to them and talked with them and narrowed down what would be in the actual service and let them talk about their fear and anger and frustration and denial and whatever else popped in their heads, I gave them sage wisdom and advice designed to lift their spirits and give home without trivializing their loss and grief.
Oh yes. I’m THAT good. (ugh…)
Well, after my brilliant afternoon with these people, and by people I mean mother and wife, I prayed with them and for them and headed for the door.
Let me pause here for a moment. Let me tell you the other half of my day. It’s important for what I said to this family next.
I’ve been trying to exercise more. It happens in spurts, but I’ve been getting better. That morning my wife and went out and jogged about three miles before I had to stop for fear of my heart and lungs bursting forth from my chest cavity. After that, we went out and did the week’s yard work. Cut the grass, trimmed everything… you know, stuff like that.
I was completely toasted. I was done. Absolutely tired. I was ready to take a shower and go right back to bed. It took all I had just to get out of the chair when it was time to go visit with these people.
The lessen here is, do your best to avoid trying to be the patient, wise, strong, comforting figure when you are wanting nothing else than to not be any of those things. I know, life happens and we don’t always have the option… but still, go into it with the knowledge that you aren’t at your best and proceed with caution.
Back to my story. Ok, I think I’ve played this up so much that you are probably going to find this anti-climactic. But here it goes.
As I’m heading to the door, the mom and wife see me out and notice what a beautiful day it is. They say, “Wow, so are you going to out and enjoy the beautiful day?”
I said, “Oh, I’ve already done that. I jugged like mad this morning and worked the rest of the time in the yard. I’m so beat I could just drop dead.”
“…I could just drop dead.” He said to the people who’s funeral he, not 2 minutes before was helping them deal with and plan.
Really? I just said that? I smiled and walked off as if I hadn’t said it, and they didn’t react, but I felt like the worlds biggest jerk/idiot. I sat in my car pretending to check a message when actually I was begging God make them not remember that I had just said that.
Seriously? I could just drop dead? I might as well have said, “I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack and die just like your son tragically did. Isn’t that funny? How weird. Te he.”
Just to be clear, I don’t generally make those mistakes. And, maybe, that was the problem. I went into this situation very confident. Confidence isn’t bad, mind you. But I had just been thinking that day as I was pulling out my funeral sermon texts and getting ready, how, “I’ve done so many funerals in the last couple years, I’m getting pretty good at this death and family thing. I’m getting good and putting people at ease. Maybe I am cut out for this stuff after all.”
And then not 3 hours later… “I could just drop dead.”
You go long enough without the world noticing your mistakes that you start to believe that really don’t make them. I know better, of course. And yet, knowing it didn’t seem to stop me from shove my foot knee deep into my mouth.
I know that I’ve talked about pride and ego more than once. This is just another angle at which these things can just step up and thwack us in the head. Comfort is good. But in some situations, there is such a thing as being too comfortable. So comfortable that you let your guard down and start making stupid choices. Saying stupid things.
We like to pick on young people for this problem. You know else does it well?
Everyone else.
I have an elderly lady in one church who tells you point blank that she can get away with saying anything she wants because she’s old and people feel they have to let her. So she just takes advantage of it. I have no less than 5 other people notorious in my churches for doing also, even though they don’t make any claims about it.
You know who else is bad at it? Married people. They get about six months to a year into their marriage and decide they don’t have to be nice and thoughtful anymore. They say things in a tone and manner they would have never used when dating. Or with anyone else EVER, for that matter. And they… we… rationalize like this. “What? We’re married. I shouldn’t have to be careful.”
I’ve actually had people say this to me about themselves as if it’s a profound truth.
My response is always, “Um, yes, you do.” We do. We shouldn’t stop just because we are married. We should try even harder BECAUSE we are married. Love should drive us to want this. And if we don’t… well, I’d start asking myself, “why?”
You’ve heard the saying, “Love is never having to say you’re sorry.” Well, ok. I get the meaning. If you are acting in love, you will never do anything that you need to apologize for. And, that is true. But here is what is more true.
No matter how hard we try, we always screw up and do or say something stupid. Even in marriage and friendships. So, I like to say it like this. “Love is always being first to say you’re sorry.”
Of course, this isn’t about marriage. It’s about life. It’s about any person we come in contact with. The situations of life in which we exist.
Do we get so comfortable with ourselves and our abilities that we careless and thoughtless?
I did. I got lucky. I know other people who would have melted down right there had I said that. It was thoughtless and insensitive, even though it wasn’t intentional. Now, think about the times we do stuff like that and it IS intentional?
Don’t let our competence get in the way of our compassion. Don’t let our thoughts get in the way of our thoughtfulness.
Of course, it could just be me. Maybe I’m the only moron who does stuff like this. In which case, feel free to ignore me.
Have a great night.
Welcome to another installment of…
“Stupid Things Done By Tony”
In today’s episode, we find our perpetual idiot helping a grieving family as they prepare for the funeral.
“What could possibly go wrong there?” I hear you say.
Well, let me tell you all the ways I can be stupid. Ok, in my defense, it was only one way in which I was stupid, but I digress. Let me tell you all about it.
Last Friday I received a phone call from a person who attends a church in the next town over. The 52 year old son of one of the members passed away due to a heart attack. They are trying to plan for the funeral, however their pastor is out of town and can’t get back in time. Therefore, they decided to call me and ask if I would be willing to perform the funeral for them.
Of course, I said yes. Not because I just love doing funerals. I don’t. I’m happy to do them because it’s necessary and needs to be done. But it’s not what I categorize as “fun.” However, I’ve done my fair share in the last few years and have become more or less comfortable doing them.
As a side note, it’s amazing the things you can get used to. But continuing on…
I don’t know this person or family. I tell them to contact me back once they know when the funeral will be, and I will sit down with them and work out the details and talk and pray with them.
Now, let me clarify something. Some of you may be wondering, “Why wait for them to get the funeral scheduled before rushing right over to be with the family?”
You ask a good question. Here is my answer. I have found that the first couple days after a death are a whirlwind of phone calls and trips to the funeral home and scheduling and taking care of business paralleled only by wedding preparations. Therefore, unless I was called in before the death happened, i.e., coming to the hospital to sit with the family as they watch their loved one die, I try to stay out of the way till they actually have the time to focus on themselves. Until then, I’m only getting in the way.
And this is what I did. I waited till Sunday and then we set a time to get together. Not to ring my own bell, (trust me, I’ll be humiliating myself in a moment…), but this turned out to be perfect timing. They told me how this was the first time since the man died that they’d had a moment to sit down. They were finally done setting up the arrangements, and were just now catching their breath.
Ah, how my ego soared as I realized, once again, my superior wisdom and judgment paid off.
Well, as I listened to them and talked with them and narrowed down what would be in the actual service and let them talk about their fear and anger and frustration and denial and whatever else popped in their heads, I gave them sage wisdom and advice designed to lift their spirits and give home without trivializing their loss and grief.
Oh yes. I’m THAT good. (ugh…)
Well, after my brilliant afternoon with these people, and by people I mean mother and wife, I prayed with them and for them and headed for the door.
Let me pause here for a moment. Let me tell you the other half of my day. It’s important for what I said to this family next.
I’ve been trying to exercise more. It happens in spurts, but I’ve been getting better. That morning my wife and went out and jogged about three miles before I had to stop for fear of my heart and lungs bursting forth from my chest cavity. After that, we went out and did the week’s yard work. Cut the grass, trimmed everything… you know, stuff like that.
I was completely toasted. I was done. Absolutely tired. I was ready to take a shower and go right back to bed. It took all I had just to get out of the chair when it was time to go visit with these people.
The lessen here is, do your best to avoid trying to be the patient, wise, strong, comforting figure when you are wanting nothing else than to not be any of those things. I know, life happens and we don’t always have the option… but still, go into it with the knowledge that you aren’t at your best and proceed with caution.
Back to my story. Ok, I think I’ve played this up so much that you are probably going to find this anti-climactic. But here it goes.
As I’m heading to the door, the mom and wife see me out and notice what a beautiful day it is. They say, “Wow, so are you going to out and enjoy the beautiful day?”
I said, “Oh, I’ve already done that. I jugged like mad this morning and worked the rest of the time in the yard. I’m so beat I could just drop dead.”
“…I could just drop dead.” He said to the people who’s funeral he, not 2 minutes before was helping them deal with and plan.
Really? I just said that? I smiled and walked off as if I hadn’t said it, and they didn’t react, but I felt like the worlds biggest jerk/idiot. I sat in my car pretending to check a message when actually I was begging God make them not remember that I had just said that.
Seriously? I could just drop dead? I might as well have said, “I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack and die just like your son tragically did. Isn’t that funny? How weird. Te he.”
Just to be clear, I don’t generally make those mistakes. And, maybe, that was the problem. I went into this situation very confident. Confidence isn’t bad, mind you. But I had just been thinking that day as I was pulling out my funeral sermon texts and getting ready, how, “I’ve done so many funerals in the last couple years, I’m getting pretty good at this death and family thing. I’m getting good and putting people at ease. Maybe I am cut out for this stuff after all.”
And then not 3 hours later… “I could just drop dead.”
You go long enough without the world noticing your mistakes that you start to believe that really don’t make them. I know better, of course. And yet, knowing it didn’t seem to stop me from shove my foot knee deep into my mouth.
I know that I’ve talked about pride and ego more than once. This is just another angle at which these things can just step up and thwack us in the head. Comfort is good. But in some situations, there is such a thing as being too comfortable. So comfortable that you let your guard down and start making stupid choices. Saying stupid things.
We like to pick on young people for this problem. You know else does it well?
Everyone else.
I have an elderly lady in one church who tells you point blank that she can get away with saying anything she wants because she’s old and people feel they have to let her. So she just takes advantage of it. I have no less than 5 other people notorious in my churches for doing also, even though they don’t make any claims about it.
You know who else is bad at it? Married people. They get about six months to a year into their marriage and decide they don’t have to be nice and thoughtful anymore. They say things in a tone and manner they would have never used when dating. Or with anyone else EVER, for that matter. And they… we… rationalize like this. “What? We’re married. I shouldn’t have to be careful.”
I’ve actually had people say this to me about themselves as if it’s a profound truth.
My response is always, “Um, yes, you do.” We do. We shouldn’t stop just because we are married. We should try even harder BECAUSE we are married. Love should drive us to want this. And if we don’t… well, I’d start asking myself, “why?”
You’ve heard the saying, “Love is never having to say you’re sorry.” Well, ok. I get the meaning. If you are acting in love, you will never do anything that you need to apologize for. And, that is true. But here is what is more true.
No matter how hard we try, we always screw up and do or say something stupid. Even in marriage and friendships. So, I like to say it like this. “Love is always being first to say you’re sorry.”
Of course, this isn’t about marriage. It’s about life. It’s about any person we come in contact with. The situations of life in which we exist.
Do we get so comfortable with ourselves and our abilities that we careless and thoughtless?
I did. I got lucky. I know other people who would have melted down right there had I said that. It was thoughtless and insensitive, even though it wasn’t intentional. Now, think about the times we do stuff like that and it IS intentional?
Don’t let our competence get in the way of our compassion. Don’t let our thoughts get in the way of our thoughtfulness.
Of course, it could just be me. Maybe I’m the only moron who does stuff like this. In which case, feel free to ignore me.
Have a great night.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Blog 16: A Donkey's Butt
Ok.
I’ve been a very bad boy.
I have posted since May? April, if I’m being honest?
For those of you who actually care about what I say, I’m sorry for that. Not sorry for you caring, sorry that I’ve let you down. It’s been a busy summer, but really, that’s just a lame excuse. I could have found time to do this. I enjoy doing this. I am so happy when I see that someone has actually read this, and even more, when someone says, “hey, what you just said wasn’t total feces.”
It makes me feel all warm and tingly in my intestines.
The problem is, I had(have?) been feeling as though I was(am?) swimming in the icky waters of misguided purpose.
The real irony of that is that, it was the great summer that led me to that feeling.
I spent a huge chunk of the summer at summer camp. As usual. I love it. It was even better than last year for me. And last year was great. I felt like what I did made a difference. I felt like I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t just to get people to take me seriously. I could just be me. I was working with mostly teens so, maybe that means I’m a tad immature if “being me” is a lot like being a teenager. Hmm…
But I had fun. And I saw great things. And young people were coming to me and asking questions on their own without prompting. And we had great discussions. And people gave their lives to God. I was once again reminded that there is hope for our young people.
Then I had to come home. Immediately, all the sincere searching was replaced with ridiculous church politics. People trying to make statements, not find God in their lives. Not everyone, of course. But it doesn’t take too many before you start sharpening pointy objects and making plans to use them.
One day, after a particularly ridiculous afternoon listening to some particularly ridiculous lunacy, my wife and I came home, walked in the door, stopped and looked each other in the eye, and at the exact same time said, “It’s time for us to leave.”
I can’t speak for her, but for me I was realizing, I’m a youth pastor. With no youth. I am in the wrong place with the wrong people. It’s not my strength. It’s not my purpose. It’s not my blah blah blah, whatever.
Whine whine whine, is what I did.
I started thinking about the last 6 years of my life and trying to figure out what it had to do with anything? Why get cancer twice in four years? Why did it suck worse the second time? Why have I had to suffer so much physically? (understand, I’m the guy answers these questions for other people…) Why am I in a place with people who make me insane? (Not all of them. Not even most of them.) Oh whoa is me. My life is hard, why can’t things ever go right? Why can’t I just be in a place where things work and my I don’t have to have the responsibilities that I have and I can just focus on the stuff that ACTUALLY MATTERS… instead of all the lunacy that normally deal with? Why why why?
I spent a fair amount of time looking and praying for a new place to be. I even went to my boss and let him know that it needed to happen. I even cried. A lot. I think my boss is convinced I’m insane. It’s too bad he won’t see this. Maybe I should send it to him. Hmm…
Anyway.
Nothing came of my desires to go somewhere else. I’ve slowly been resigning myself to the idea that, for now, this is still it.
Tonight, my asked me if I had seen that my friend (insert fake name… here.) had started a blog. I said, “Huh, really? I hadn’t noticed. I’ve been too self absorbed in my life to care about anyone else’s.”
Actually, I only said the fist half of that.
So, being the good friend I am (stepping aside to avoid the lightning…), I pulled up and read it. First, not only is it good, which didn’t surprise me, I noticed something that I had largely not paid attention to recently.
Other people have rough lives too.
Which led me to another conclusion.
I’m a self-absorbed donkey butt.
This guy is one of my best friends. We met the first week of seminary. We became great friends and basically did everything together for three years until we graduated. Video games, classes, skipping classes… you know, the good stuff.
It turns out that, while I’ve been absorbed how much my cancer sucked, and did suck, and how much my life can be crazy, and it can be, and how much I want things that I can’t have, which I do… HE has not only been worrying about keeping his pastoral life in some sort of normal range, same as me, but also been trying to keep his marriage from exploding into a gory mess of awful. And while he’s been trying to keep THAT together, he’s been praying to God that his wife won’t follow through on the urges to kill herself AND their infant child. And while trying to work through THAT, trying to come to the grips with the fact that, the status of her depression may or may not get much better.
I believe in honesty. So when I tell you that there were serious moments near the end of my chemotherapy where I wanted to die rather go through anymore, know that I’m not exaggerating. It was THAT bad.
Every day.
But then I got better. So far. Now, it’s just a memory. A bad one, sure, but a memory. I’m not still sick. And those churches I’m so frustrated with? They are growing. God is blessing there. They aren’t growing because of me. They are growing because God is making it happen. I could take another entire blog to explain why I believe that. I’m watching God do great things here in my district all the time.
And instead of being excited about it, I’m whining about things that are transient. My life is easy. It’s good. I never have to worry that one day I’m going to come home to find my family dead. My biggest worry is whether or not I will get a phone call and have to listen to the crazy lady chew my ear off for 20 minutes about how she washed socks and had a bowel movement. (true story)
Sure, I sometimes worry about whether I’ll get cancer again. But that’s not much different from everyone else. “Gee, I hope I never get cancer like that Tony guy. That seems like the opposite of fun.”
In reality, I’m a selfish, self-absorbed child, complaining about how I don’t get my way, and get to do the things I want to do the way I want to do them. Sure, I have friends who’s lives are seriously stressed and they are scared every day about something truly important. But hey, that’s not important, right? Why should the life of my friends matter to me?
Ugh. I’m such a schmuck.
I don’t even know that that means, but I’m sure it’s true.
And because of this, I’ve focused more on me, instead of doing stuff that matters. Like blogging, for example. It may not matter to most of you. But even if there is only one person who feels it makes a difference to them, then it’s completely worth it.
Everything is transient. Good things and bad things both. Life, is transient. It’s too bad I haven’t been living as if I believe that. I teach every day that the thing that matters is most is self less love toward others.
I’m just not sure I’ve actually learned that lesson. At least, it seems like I haven’t.
For this, I apologize. You may ask, “Why?” The answer is simple. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Selfishness impacts everyone around the offender. I can’t be selfish without someone else being negatively effected by it.
I recently taught that the reality of Salvation is selfless love. From God to us, and us to Him and others.
I asked myself if I felt this described me.
I haven’t answered myself yet. I’m truly afraid of what I might say.
It’s easy for me to sit back and see the flaw of other people. To see their problems and dissect them and analyze them. But it’s down right painful to do it to myself.
Maybe if I did it more often, it wouldn’t be so bad. Or maybe, if I did it more often, I wouldn’t have to do it at all. I’m not actually sure that made sense. But there it is. I said it.
After all of this, what is my point? Why do I bother to tell you all of this? Is it just a plea for sympathy?
No. Sure, sympathy feels nice, but it doesn’t actually solve problems.
When you try to live life in a vacuum, all you do is create a black hole. You create a zone of awful that just sucks the people around you in. Being self absorbed makes the life of the people around stressful and miserable. It creates tension and conflict. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen my wife and I fight over stupid… stupid stuff. I’ve seen myself get mad over absolutely ridiculous things.
If this describes you, I have good news. You have the power to do something about it. You can actually change this. I recommend prayer and surrender and determination. But the understanding that is needed is, the thing you do next is your choice. No one can make you stay where you are. No one can make you stay miserable. No one can make you live a life you hate. And whether what’s need is a change of location, or just a change in attitude, it’s still a choice that you can make.
I have a choice I have to make in my life. No one can make it but me.
What choice are you going to make?
I’ve been a very bad boy.
I have posted since May? April, if I’m being honest?
For those of you who actually care about what I say, I’m sorry for that. Not sorry for you caring, sorry that I’ve let you down. It’s been a busy summer, but really, that’s just a lame excuse. I could have found time to do this. I enjoy doing this. I am so happy when I see that someone has actually read this, and even more, when someone says, “hey, what you just said wasn’t total feces.”
It makes me feel all warm and tingly in my intestines.
The problem is, I had(have?) been feeling as though I was(am?) swimming in the icky waters of misguided purpose.
The real irony of that is that, it was the great summer that led me to that feeling.
I spent a huge chunk of the summer at summer camp. As usual. I love it. It was even better than last year for me. And last year was great. I felt like what I did made a difference. I felt like I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t just to get people to take me seriously. I could just be me. I was working with mostly teens so, maybe that means I’m a tad immature if “being me” is a lot like being a teenager. Hmm…
But I had fun. And I saw great things. And young people were coming to me and asking questions on their own without prompting. And we had great discussions. And people gave their lives to God. I was once again reminded that there is hope for our young people.
Then I had to come home. Immediately, all the sincere searching was replaced with ridiculous church politics. People trying to make statements, not find God in their lives. Not everyone, of course. But it doesn’t take too many before you start sharpening pointy objects and making plans to use them.
One day, after a particularly ridiculous afternoon listening to some particularly ridiculous lunacy, my wife and I came home, walked in the door, stopped and looked each other in the eye, and at the exact same time said, “It’s time for us to leave.”
I can’t speak for her, but for me I was realizing, I’m a youth pastor. With no youth. I am in the wrong place with the wrong people. It’s not my strength. It’s not my purpose. It’s not my blah blah blah, whatever.
Whine whine whine, is what I did.
I started thinking about the last 6 years of my life and trying to figure out what it had to do with anything? Why get cancer twice in four years? Why did it suck worse the second time? Why have I had to suffer so much physically? (understand, I’m the guy answers these questions for other people…) Why am I in a place with people who make me insane? (Not all of them. Not even most of them.) Oh whoa is me. My life is hard, why can’t things ever go right? Why can’t I just be in a place where things work and my I don’t have to have the responsibilities that I have and I can just focus on the stuff that ACTUALLY MATTERS… instead of all the lunacy that normally deal with? Why why why?
I spent a fair amount of time looking and praying for a new place to be. I even went to my boss and let him know that it needed to happen. I even cried. A lot. I think my boss is convinced I’m insane. It’s too bad he won’t see this. Maybe I should send it to him. Hmm…
Anyway.
Nothing came of my desires to go somewhere else. I’ve slowly been resigning myself to the idea that, for now, this is still it.
Tonight, my asked me if I had seen that my friend (insert fake name… here.) had started a blog. I said, “Huh, really? I hadn’t noticed. I’ve been too self absorbed in my life to care about anyone else’s.”
Actually, I only said the fist half of that.
So, being the good friend I am (stepping aside to avoid the lightning…), I pulled up and read it. First, not only is it good, which didn’t surprise me, I noticed something that I had largely not paid attention to recently.
Other people have rough lives too.
Which led me to another conclusion.
I’m a self-absorbed donkey butt.
This guy is one of my best friends. We met the first week of seminary. We became great friends and basically did everything together for three years until we graduated. Video games, classes, skipping classes… you know, the good stuff.
It turns out that, while I’ve been absorbed how much my cancer sucked, and did suck, and how much my life can be crazy, and it can be, and how much I want things that I can’t have, which I do… HE has not only been worrying about keeping his pastoral life in some sort of normal range, same as me, but also been trying to keep his marriage from exploding into a gory mess of awful. And while he’s been trying to keep THAT together, he’s been praying to God that his wife won’t follow through on the urges to kill herself AND their infant child. And while trying to work through THAT, trying to come to the grips with the fact that, the status of her depression may or may not get much better.
I believe in honesty. So when I tell you that there were serious moments near the end of my chemotherapy where I wanted to die rather go through anymore, know that I’m not exaggerating. It was THAT bad.
Every day.
But then I got better. So far. Now, it’s just a memory. A bad one, sure, but a memory. I’m not still sick. And those churches I’m so frustrated with? They are growing. God is blessing there. They aren’t growing because of me. They are growing because God is making it happen. I could take another entire blog to explain why I believe that. I’m watching God do great things here in my district all the time.
And instead of being excited about it, I’m whining about things that are transient. My life is easy. It’s good. I never have to worry that one day I’m going to come home to find my family dead. My biggest worry is whether or not I will get a phone call and have to listen to the crazy lady chew my ear off for 20 minutes about how she washed socks and had a bowel movement. (true story)
Sure, I sometimes worry about whether I’ll get cancer again. But that’s not much different from everyone else. “Gee, I hope I never get cancer like that Tony guy. That seems like the opposite of fun.”
In reality, I’m a selfish, self-absorbed child, complaining about how I don’t get my way, and get to do the things I want to do the way I want to do them. Sure, I have friends who’s lives are seriously stressed and they are scared every day about something truly important. But hey, that’s not important, right? Why should the life of my friends matter to me?
Ugh. I’m such a schmuck.
I don’t even know that that means, but I’m sure it’s true.
And because of this, I’ve focused more on me, instead of doing stuff that matters. Like blogging, for example. It may not matter to most of you. But even if there is only one person who feels it makes a difference to them, then it’s completely worth it.
Everything is transient. Good things and bad things both. Life, is transient. It’s too bad I haven’t been living as if I believe that. I teach every day that the thing that matters is most is self less love toward others.
I’m just not sure I’ve actually learned that lesson. At least, it seems like I haven’t.
For this, I apologize. You may ask, “Why?” The answer is simple. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Selfishness impacts everyone around the offender. I can’t be selfish without someone else being negatively effected by it.
I recently taught that the reality of Salvation is selfless love. From God to us, and us to Him and others.
I asked myself if I felt this described me.
I haven’t answered myself yet. I’m truly afraid of what I might say.
It’s easy for me to sit back and see the flaw of other people. To see their problems and dissect them and analyze them. But it’s down right painful to do it to myself.
Maybe if I did it more often, it wouldn’t be so bad. Or maybe, if I did it more often, I wouldn’t have to do it at all. I’m not actually sure that made sense. But there it is. I said it.
After all of this, what is my point? Why do I bother to tell you all of this? Is it just a plea for sympathy?
No. Sure, sympathy feels nice, but it doesn’t actually solve problems.
When you try to live life in a vacuum, all you do is create a black hole. You create a zone of awful that just sucks the people around you in. Being self absorbed makes the life of the people around stressful and miserable. It creates tension and conflict. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen my wife and I fight over stupid… stupid stuff. I’ve seen myself get mad over absolutely ridiculous things.
If this describes you, I have good news. You have the power to do something about it. You can actually change this. I recommend prayer and surrender and determination. But the understanding that is needed is, the thing you do next is your choice. No one can make you stay where you are. No one can make you stay miserable. No one can make you live a life you hate. And whether what’s need is a change of location, or just a change in attitude, it’s still a choice that you can make.
I have a choice I have to make in my life. No one can make it but me.
What choice are you going to make?
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Interlude: Another added bit of wholesome goodness.
Words that mean the same as hello.
Other words that are funny and witty.
Um... oh ya. I've added a new link. It's at the right. It's also right here. http://www.inspirationformoms.com/ It's called Laura's Mommy Talk.
Are you a mother? Then this site is for you.
Are you a stay at home mother? Then this site is for you.
Are you a Pleknorian from the planet Pleknor? Well, unless you are also a momma Pleknorian, then perhaps this site is not so much for you.
Laura has a great blog that she tries to update everyday with thoughts and tips on such things from exercise and all around healthiness, to parenting experiences, to humor and encouragement. Perhaps even all of those at once. It's a great blog that's worth checking out.
So, go. Check out my friends blog and all her mommy wisdom.
Pleknorians are welcome, too. If you must.
Other words that are funny and witty.
Um... oh ya. I've added a new link. It's at the right. It's also right here. http://www.inspirationformoms.com/ It's called Laura's Mommy Talk.
Are you a mother? Then this site is for you.
Are you a stay at home mother? Then this site is for you.
Are you a Pleknorian from the planet Pleknor? Well, unless you are also a momma Pleknorian, then perhaps this site is not so much for you.
Laura has a great blog that she tries to update everyday with thoughts and tips on such things from exercise and all around healthiness, to parenting experiences, to humor and encouragement. Perhaps even all of those at once. It's a great blog that's worth checking out.
So, go. Check out my friends blog and all her mommy wisdom.
Pleknorians are welcome, too. If you must.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Blog 15: Let There Be Fruit
Greetings fellow programs.
What, has no one here ever seen Tron?
Huh. Maybe I am old. I didn’t see this coming.
Anyway, what was I going to tell you…
Oh. That’s right. The wedding. I recently had the privilege to perform a wedding for a good friend of mine. Cool stuff. Got to see some old friends and embarrass the wedding party publically. Well, I don’t know if they were all that embarrassed, but I sure had a fun time.
But let me tell you about what happened at the reception.
Let me start by saying this. Everyone has certain occupational hazards. Pastor’s, for example, might as well walk around with giant targets painted on their chests. Someone is always gunning for you. And so it was at this reception.
As I was sitting at my table laughing and joking with a couple of old friends, a couple gentlemen from another table came over. They wanted to ask the pastor some questions. Now, understand, I am always up for that. I enjoy it. It’s fun. It’s part of who I am. These guys, however, were less interested in asking question as they were going to show me how I was wrong and what I believe and teach are wrong.
At one time they had been a part of my denomination, and they came to me completely certain of what I must believe and teach on certain things. So certain were they, that they just started unleashing their ammo on topic after topic, completely certain I was going to disagree and argue with them and they were going to show me their infallible proof of how wrong the denomination is and by extension, I am.
Over the next two hours, they “discussed” 5 or so different topics that they were sure I was going to fight them on. What the topics were are largely irrelevant. Feel free to inquire if you wish. But the point isn’t the specific topics. The point is that it never once occurred to them that I might actually agree with them.
Which I did. On ever topic but one. And even with that one, I only disagreed in one area, and agreed on the rest of the point. Really, we couldn’t have agreed much more across the board if we had planned it.
And yet, they kept looking for a way to disagree. This is because, they weren’t really looking for a discussion.
They were looking for a fight.
They would launch into a scripture referencing festival, and follow it with, “how can you believe and teach this?”
To which I would reply, “Well, I don’t. I agree with you.”
To which they would reply, “No that’s not tr,… wait, what?”
Every time it was complete bafflement that I wasn’t disagreeing with them. A long time ago, they had been taught certain things. They had believed them. They had believed that this is what the denomination actually believed. Certainly, many do. But not in any official way. But they believed that it was official and that every pastor believed and taught these things. Which, as it turns out, isn’t true. They had learned from pastor’s who were teaching agenda. And these guys had bought it.
Then, one day as they were studying, they discovered that it wasn’t true. It’s funny how the truth always finds it’s way to light. It can only be buried for so long before it sneaks out of it’s prison. And it had snuck into their lives. And this is good and great. There is only one small issue here.
This all happened over a decade ago. And now, ten years later, they are still angry about it. They are still hunting down pastor’s they come into contact with.
Let me be clear. They were not mean. They were not rude. They were perfectly friendly and we had a great discussion. No one left angry. I don’t want to give the impression that this was a verbal brawl. One of these guys I had met a few times in the past before I was a pastor. It probably emboldened him some to talk to me.
But it doesn’t change the intent. They needed to let me know that I was wrong. And when they discovered that I agreed with them, they didn’t know what to do. All the fuel of their fight evaporated. Sort of. One of the two kept trying to find something else to disagree on. It was amusing in some regards.
But I keep going back to 10 years later and still angry. Or at least, still with the bitter taste. Why is that so?
Let answer that question with another question.
When people meet you, once they have met you what do they believe you stand for?
These guys clearly thought they knew what I stood for. Until they actually met me. Then they found out I stand for something else entirely. They were happy with that turn of events, but it did confuse them.
Which caused me to ponder the question, what do they stand for? Well, based on the interaction I had with them, I started concluding that they basis in religion was about confrontational biblical knowledge. Maybe this isn’t true, but having met and spent time with them, this is the impression given. 10 years after being set free with the “truth”, they are still angry, and still arguing about this truth.
Which begs the question, what did they stand for before they learned the “truth”? Where they the same, just on the other side of the fight? Angryish then as they are now, but with a different purpose to their fight?
Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never know. And It’s really not for me to judge. I don’t point this out to pass judgment. We all have our pet peeves and pet issues that get under our skin.
I use this as an example to as my question again.
Once people have met us, what do they believe we stand for?
I don’t ask that with any assumptions. I don’t know what any of you believe personally. At least, not all of you. I know some of you are Christian, some aren’t. But you are all my friends.
But what do people think you stand for? And I don’t necessarily mean specific point of belief.
Back in January I baptized a 17 year old boy. Ha. I called him a boy. Darn. I AM old.
I baptized this kid. Before he was baptized, he came to church on Sabbath and was talking to the head deacon. Now, this kid is a bit awkward. He’s a good kid, but he has problems with being accepted socially. But he gets excited about church and God. And he was looking forward to being an “official” part of the church family. So, he tells the head deacon he’s getting baptized the next Sabbath.
Well, I hadn’t told the deacon yet.
The deacon flipped out. Instead of showing excitement for the kid, he gets angry and starts ranting about how no one told him, and now he was going to have to fill the baptistery and he only had an entire week to do it (it takes a evening of an open faucet). He does this in the middle of the sanctuary. In front of everyone. And this kid felt like he had done something wrong. This guy was yelling at him. It was totally unacceptable behavior. And all the kid had done was tell the deacon how excited he was.
The kid almost didn’t go through with the baptism. He thought maybe the church didn’t want him.
When people meet that deacon, what do they believe he stands for?
What motivates us to act? How is it that some people share similar factual details but act upon them differently? How is it that some people confuse things and turn the detail into the believe, and make the belief insignificant like the detail?
I was sitting in a board meeting the next month. We were discussing the desire some people had to put on a musical program for church performed by our own people. It was a good idea. Immediately one gentleman piped up. He wanted to know what we were going to do to sensor the music.
Now, it doesn’t matter that this wouldn’t even be an issue. We only have 2 people in that church with any music talent at all, they are both pretty traditional/conservative.
Really, he wasn’t talking about that. He was talking about the baptism. That 17 year old kid asked for a specific song to be played. It was a contemporary Christian song by the group Casting Crowns. It was a very mellow, spiritual song. Beautiful song. Completely and utterly appropriate.
This gentlemen said that if we were going to be performing music like that we either needed censorship or he was voting against it. I asked him what was wrong with the song. He responded that it was “evil.”
I asked him what was evil about it.
He said, “I don’t know, it just is.”
It just is. This was his reasoning. “It just is.”
Brilliant.
Translation? The song wasn’t evil. He just didn’t like it. It turns out there is a huge difference there.
Instead of being happy about the baptism and encouraging our people to actively participate in worship, he wanted to complain about music that was never going to be a part of the service anyway.
When people meet this guy, what do they believe HE stands for?
It doesn’t matter what we believe in life. Ok, let me rephrase that. It does matter what we believe in life. What I mean to say is, whatever we believe in life, how does that belief manifest in our lives? What do we show people that we believe in? What we stand for?
The bible uses a phrase that is applicable to anyone regardless of their belief system.
You will know them by their fruit.
That which our life produces is a reflection of what we truly believe. Not what we say we believe, but what we truly believe.
A grape vine produces grapes. An orange tree produces orange. Always. Never do these things produce any other type of fruit.
Poison oak always produces poison oak and never anything else.
What do we produce?
Back in the early church people were arguing over disputable and irrelevant beliefs. These arguments became the larger focus of their lives. The apostle Paul kept trying to tell them to forget about these things and focus on stuff that actually matters.
One example of this is the example of circumcision. Jewish Christians were trying to get gentile Christians to circumcise themselves for the sake of salvation. The only problem was that circumcision had nothing to do with salvation. But they fought about it none the less.
Paul went into a long winded argument about how pointless and irrelevant either argument was. None of it mattered. In the end finished his argument like this.
“The only thing that matters is faith expressing itself in love.”
Please stop and read that sentence again. I don’t care what you think religion is about. I don’t care what side of religion you are on. If you have missed this point, you have missed God’s point. You have missed the point who we are suppose to be. Whether you believe in God or not, the point of that sentence is relevant. The only thing that matters is expressing ourselves through love. With love. In love.
Only love.
There is no other point.
As a Christian, I believe this is the reason Jesus came to die. He came to teach us this point. He hadn’t been dead 10 years before everyone forgot that the only thing that mattered was faith expressing itself through love.
But if we aren’t producing this around us, then what are we standing for?
Once a person has met you, what do they believe you stand for?
What kind of fruit does your life produce?
What, has no one here ever seen Tron?
Huh. Maybe I am old. I didn’t see this coming.
Anyway, what was I going to tell you…
Oh. That’s right. The wedding. I recently had the privilege to perform a wedding for a good friend of mine. Cool stuff. Got to see some old friends and embarrass the wedding party publically. Well, I don’t know if they were all that embarrassed, but I sure had a fun time.
But let me tell you about what happened at the reception.
Let me start by saying this. Everyone has certain occupational hazards. Pastor’s, for example, might as well walk around with giant targets painted on their chests. Someone is always gunning for you. And so it was at this reception.
As I was sitting at my table laughing and joking with a couple of old friends, a couple gentlemen from another table came over. They wanted to ask the pastor some questions. Now, understand, I am always up for that. I enjoy it. It’s fun. It’s part of who I am. These guys, however, were less interested in asking question as they were going to show me how I was wrong and what I believe and teach are wrong.
At one time they had been a part of my denomination, and they came to me completely certain of what I must believe and teach on certain things. So certain were they, that they just started unleashing their ammo on topic after topic, completely certain I was going to disagree and argue with them and they were going to show me their infallible proof of how wrong the denomination is and by extension, I am.
Over the next two hours, they “discussed” 5 or so different topics that they were sure I was going to fight them on. What the topics were are largely irrelevant. Feel free to inquire if you wish. But the point isn’t the specific topics. The point is that it never once occurred to them that I might actually agree with them.
Which I did. On ever topic but one. And even with that one, I only disagreed in one area, and agreed on the rest of the point. Really, we couldn’t have agreed much more across the board if we had planned it.
And yet, they kept looking for a way to disagree. This is because, they weren’t really looking for a discussion.
They were looking for a fight.
They would launch into a scripture referencing festival, and follow it with, “how can you believe and teach this?”
To which I would reply, “Well, I don’t. I agree with you.”
To which they would reply, “No that’s not tr,… wait, what?”
Every time it was complete bafflement that I wasn’t disagreeing with them. A long time ago, they had been taught certain things. They had believed them. They had believed that this is what the denomination actually believed. Certainly, many do. But not in any official way. But they believed that it was official and that every pastor believed and taught these things. Which, as it turns out, isn’t true. They had learned from pastor’s who were teaching agenda. And these guys had bought it.
Then, one day as they were studying, they discovered that it wasn’t true. It’s funny how the truth always finds it’s way to light. It can only be buried for so long before it sneaks out of it’s prison. And it had snuck into their lives. And this is good and great. There is only one small issue here.
This all happened over a decade ago. And now, ten years later, they are still angry about it. They are still hunting down pastor’s they come into contact with.
Let me be clear. They were not mean. They were not rude. They were perfectly friendly and we had a great discussion. No one left angry. I don’t want to give the impression that this was a verbal brawl. One of these guys I had met a few times in the past before I was a pastor. It probably emboldened him some to talk to me.
But it doesn’t change the intent. They needed to let me know that I was wrong. And when they discovered that I agreed with them, they didn’t know what to do. All the fuel of their fight evaporated. Sort of. One of the two kept trying to find something else to disagree on. It was amusing in some regards.
But I keep going back to 10 years later and still angry. Or at least, still with the bitter taste. Why is that so?
Let answer that question with another question.
When people meet you, once they have met you what do they believe you stand for?
These guys clearly thought they knew what I stood for. Until they actually met me. Then they found out I stand for something else entirely. They were happy with that turn of events, but it did confuse them.
Which caused me to ponder the question, what do they stand for? Well, based on the interaction I had with them, I started concluding that they basis in religion was about confrontational biblical knowledge. Maybe this isn’t true, but having met and spent time with them, this is the impression given. 10 years after being set free with the “truth”, they are still angry, and still arguing about this truth.
Which begs the question, what did they stand for before they learned the “truth”? Where they the same, just on the other side of the fight? Angryish then as they are now, but with a different purpose to their fight?
Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never know. And It’s really not for me to judge. I don’t point this out to pass judgment. We all have our pet peeves and pet issues that get under our skin.
I use this as an example to as my question again.
Once people have met us, what do they believe we stand for?
I don’t ask that with any assumptions. I don’t know what any of you believe personally. At least, not all of you. I know some of you are Christian, some aren’t. But you are all my friends.
But what do people think you stand for? And I don’t necessarily mean specific point of belief.
Back in January I baptized a 17 year old boy. Ha. I called him a boy. Darn. I AM old.
I baptized this kid. Before he was baptized, he came to church on Sabbath and was talking to the head deacon. Now, this kid is a bit awkward. He’s a good kid, but he has problems with being accepted socially. But he gets excited about church and God. And he was looking forward to being an “official” part of the church family. So, he tells the head deacon he’s getting baptized the next Sabbath.
Well, I hadn’t told the deacon yet.
The deacon flipped out. Instead of showing excitement for the kid, he gets angry and starts ranting about how no one told him, and now he was going to have to fill the baptistery and he only had an entire week to do it (it takes a evening of an open faucet). He does this in the middle of the sanctuary. In front of everyone. And this kid felt like he had done something wrong. This guy was yelling at him. It was totally unacceptable behavior. And all the kid had done was tell the deacon how excited he was.
The kid almost didn’t go through with the baptism. He thought maybe the church didn’t want him.
When people meet that deacon, what do they believe he stands for?
What motivates us to act? How is it that some people share similar factual details but act upon them differently? How is it that some people confuse things and turn the detail into the believe, and make the belief insignificant like the detail?
I was sitting in a board meeting the next month. We were discussing the desire some people had to put on a musical program for church performed by our own people. It was a good idea. Immediately one gentleman piped up. He wanted to know what we were going to do to sensor the music.
Now, it doesn’t matter that this wouldn’t even be an issue. We only have 2 people in that church with any music talent at all, they are both pretty traditional/conservative.
Really, he wasn’t talking about that. He was talking about the baptism. That 17 year old kid asked for a specific song to be played. It was a contemporary Christian song by the group Casting Crowns. It was a very mellow, spiritual song. Beautiful song. Completely and utterly appropriate.
This gentlemen said that if we were going to be performing music like that we either needed censorship or he was voting against it. I asked him what was wrong with the song. He responded that it was “evil.”
I asked him what was evil about it.
He said, “I don’t know, it just is.”
It just is. This was his reasoning. “It just is.”
Brilliant.
Translation? The song wasn’t evil. He just didn’t like it. It turns out there is a huge difference there.
Instead of being happy about the baptism and encouraging our people to actively participate in worship, he wanted to complain about music that was never going to be a part of the service anyway.
When people meet this guy, what do they believe HE stands for?
It doesn’t matter what we believe in life. Ok, let me rephrase that. It does matter what we believe in life. What I mean to say is, whatever we believe in life, how does that belief manifest in our lives? What do we show people that we believe in? What we stand for?
The bible uses a phrase that is applicable to anyone regardless of their belief system.
You will know them by their fruit.
That which our life produces is a reflection of what we truly believe. Not what we say we believe, but what we truly believe.
A grape vine produces grapes. An orange tree produces orange. Always. Never do these things produce any other type of fruit.
Poison oak always produces poison oak and never anything else.
What do we produce?
Back in the early church people were arguing over disputable and irrelevant beliefs. These arguments became the larger focus of their lives. The apostle Paul kept trying to tell them to forget about these things and focus on stuff that actually matters.
One example of this is the example of circumcision. Jewish Christians were trying to get gentile Christians to circumcise themselves for the sake of salvation. The only problem was that circumcision had nothing to do with salvation. But they fought about it none the less.
Paul went into a long winded argument about how pointless and irrelevant either argument was. None of it mattered. In the end finished his argument like this.
“The only thing that matters is faith expressing itself in love.”
Please stop and read that sentence again. I don’t care what you think religion is about. I don’t care what side of religion you are on. If you have missed this point, you have missed God’s point. You have missed the point who we are suppose to be. Whether you believe in God or not, the point of that sentence is relevant. The only thing that matters is expressing ourselves through love. With love. In love.
Only love.
There is no other point.
As a Christian, I believe this is the reason Jesus came to die. He came to teach us this point. He hadn’t been dead 10 years before everyone forgot that the only thing that mattered was faith expressing itself through love.
But if we aren’t producing this around us, then what are we standing for?
Once a person has met you, what do they believe you stand for?
What kind of fruit does your life produce?
Friday, March 20, 2009
Blog 14: That One Thing
Top O’ da mornin’, even tho tis evnin’, to ya.
Must be left over’s from St. Patty’s day.
So, there was this group of people called the Ephesians. This was mostly because they lived in a little place called Ephesus.
These Ephesians were mostly Greco-Roman. Greek thinking Romans. Gentiles. The lived like gentiles lived, worshipped the god’s of the Greek thinking Romans, and worshipped Caesar above all.
That was until Paul showed up and started converting them to Christianity. This Christianity was crazy. It’s God was unlike any other God that had ever existed in any religion ever.
In a letter to these people, Paul told them how this God had sacrificed everything just bring salvation to these people. This was powerful for them because up to that point, no God had ever sacrificed anything for them. Their gods constantly demanded sacrifice from them. Their food. Their land.
Their children.
But instead, this God sacrificed HIS child for THEM. It was crazy. It was insane.
To them, it was beautiful. That someone would go that far just for them, a worthless lowly people.
Paul told them that, afterward, God had rewarded his son for the sacrifice by giving him the inheritance of the Father’s kingdom and power. But even more, that anyone who was willing to serve this God who had done this for them, they could share that inheritance with the Son, this Jesus who had died for them.
The inheritance of a God to a people who lived in poverty and squalor. It was unimaginable. There was nothing that compared to this anywhere. One day, they would be princes to the God who saved them, brothers of the one who died for them, adopted as royalty without penalty.
But over time, other Christians came with selfish ambitions. Jewish Christians who were elitist and racist. They didn’t like that these gentiles, these heathens, could have the grace of God like them, without penalty. They weren’t even circumcised. How could their God bring in this abomination?
Paul showed them that God didn’t have favorites. He told them how this God didn’t have a hierarchy within his people. They were all the same to him. And to a people who were slaves, ground down under the heal of oppression from not only their own emperor, but even their fellow Christians… this gave them hope.
This God wanted to treat them all the same. This God said that they were just as good as those Jews who had known God first and been chosen by God. Now, these Ephesians were being chosen by God as well. This God believed that these Ephesians were just as important as their Caesar. Which was hard because to them, Caesar had been a god himself.
Paul told them how God wanted them to come to Him. They didn’t need a priest in a temple to gain access to God. They could actually talk directly to Him. They didn’t need to bribe the temple priests, and pay temple prostitutes to grant them favors in order for this God to hear them. He was free. He was easy. He wanted them to bother Him. He wanted them to come to him, not timid and afraid, but confident and bold. They could come, and He would listen.
Not only that, but this God wanted to give them a portion of his power. His spirit. He wanted to put part of him in them. No other god had ever done that for his followers. Sometimes the gods would bless an individual with power and renown. But this new God wanted to give ALL his followers this power and spirit.
The Ephesians learned that this Paul had once killed Christians. He had been an enemy of God’s son. Paul and tried to undo everything God was trying to make happen. But instead of punishing Paul, God took him introduced him to the son that had died, and made Paul and important servant with great power. A man who would change the world for this God. A man who single handedly changed the course of Rome itself.
The Ephesians wondered that, if this is what this God does for his enemies, what might he do for his friends?
Paul told them how God had revealed the truth and knowledge of His plans to them. This God wanted them to know everything that was going on. To these Ephesians, this was against everything they knew. The gods didn’t share their plans. They were above that. Humans were but mere insects in the eyes of the gods and not worthy of the plans of the gods and for a God to share his most secret plans of history with them was unimaginable.
Zeus didn’t share his plans. Poseidon didn’t share his plans. Aphrodite didn’t share her plans. But this God?
He shared everything.
But he didn’t just share it with them, he shared with every being in existence. To all those “rulers” of the heavens and earth and under the earth. This was crazy. How powerful was this God if he knew things that the other rulers didn’t? If there were beings in the heavenly realms that didn’t know things this God did, how powerful was he? How big was His domain?
The gods were all limited to their place. Ares was powerful in war, but not in love. Poseidon had power over the sea, but no where else. Zeus was the God of lighting, but not the sea. Some gods ruled the hills, others the valleys.
But this God ruled them all. Had power over them all. Had knowledge of everything and everywhere.
There were rulers and beings and spiritual things. And there was this God who was more than all of them combined.
How could such a thing exist?
But not only that, this God wasn’t petty. Sometimes in history his followers made him seem that way. But all he wanted was to make everyone part of his family. He loved them with a love that had no measure. It couldn’t be imagined.
The Ephesians couldn’t grasp this well. They knew that the gods didn’t love them. The gods tolerated them. The gods demanded them to be afraid and to pay for their lives with their own blood.
But this new God loved them and was willing to pay for them with His own blood.
The Ephesians had known love, but never from a God. And here was a God that claimed to love them so much that there was nothing they could ask for, nothing they could even think of or imagine that he wasn’t able to do for them and that one day He would do for them.
How would this have affected this people? This people who were so poor and powerless and trampled down that they weren’t capable of fulfilling the love they had for the people they loved. They didn’t have the money or influence to make the dreams they had for their loved ones come true. And their gods never were interested in helping.
But this God would. He could do things that they were not able to imagine. He loved them, and had the will and ability to do something about it.
Paul told them how this God loved them, and that this love was greater than all knowledge. Love was more important than all knowledge. Compassion was more important than anything.
This was powerful to these Ephesians because most religion was about secret rights and knowledge. Especially amongst an upstart group trying to bring down the Christians called the Gnostics. To them, salvation was about knowing more. Learning more truth. Learning some piece of secret information that gained them immortality.
But this God was saying that if they would just accept his love and pass it one, that was that was needed to have that salvation and immortality. This God only asked that they would care for everyone they would come in contact with. And that, by doing so, they would understand the character of this God. The God that loved and ruled out of love and not out of fear or anger.
2000 years later, we still haven’t learned this lesson. We are trying to find that piece of information that will redeem us. We hope to gain knowledge as a means unto itself. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
Knowledge is good. Great even. But love is better.
God has come under attack in so many ways, mostly because of how his followers have presented him. But most of it isn’t even true. Our God only wanted us to understand what love was and what love means and how to live love in our lives every day toward everyone.
God didn’t ask for religion. He asked for love. God didn’t ask for more rules. He asked for love. God didn’t ask for more doctrine. He asked for love. God didn’t ask for separated groups. He asked for love.
God asked for one thing.
Love.
Must be left over’s from St. Patty’s day.
So, there was this group of people called the Ephesians. This was mostly because they lived in a little place called Ephesus.
These Ephesians were mostly Greco-Roman. Greek thinking Romans. Gentiles. The lived like gentiles lived, worshipped the god’s of the Greek thinking Romans, and worshipped Caesar above all.
That was until Paul showed up and started converting them to Christianity. This Christianity was crazy. It’s God was unlike any other God that had ever existed in any religion ever.
In a letter to these people, Paul told them how this God had sacrificed everything just bring salvation to these people. This was powerful for them because up to that point, no God had ever sacrificed anything for them. Their gods constantly demanded sacrifice from them. Their food. Their land.
Their children.
But instead, this God sacrificed HIS child for THEM. It was crazy. It was insane.
To them, it was beautiful. That someone would go that far just for them, a worthless lowly people.
Paul told them that, afterward, God had rewarded his son for the sacrifice by giving him the inheritance of the Father’s kingdom and power. But even more, that anyone who was willing to serve this God who had done this for them, they could share that inheritance with the Son, this Jesus who had died for them.
The inheritance of a God to a people who lived in poverty and squalor. It was unimaginable. There was nothing that compared to this anywhere. One day, they would be princes to the God who saved them, brothers of the one who died for them, adopted as royalty without penalty.
But over time, other Christians came with selfish ambitions. Jewish Christians who were elitist and racist. They didn’t like that these gentiles, these heathens, could have the grace of God like them, without penalty. They weren’t even circumcised. How could their God bring in this abomination?
Paul showed them that God didn’t have favorites. He told them how this God didn’t have a hierarchy within his people. They were all the same to him. And to a people who were slaves, ground down under the heal of oppression from not only their own emperor, but even their fellow Christians… this gave them hope.
This God wanted to treat them all the same. This God said that they were just as good as those Jews who had known God first and been chosen by God. Now, these Ephesians were being chosen by God as well. This God believed that these Ephesians were just as important as their Caesar. Which was hard because to them, Caesar had been a god himself.
Paul told them how God wanted them to come to Him. They didn’t need a priest in a temple to gain access to God. They could actually talk directly to Him. They didn’t need to bribe the temple priests, and pay temple prostitutes to grant them favors in order for this God to hear them. He was free. He was easy. He wanted them to bother Him. He wanted them to come to him, not timid and afraid, but confident and bold. They could come, and He would listen.
Not only that, but this God wanted to give them a portion of his power. His spirit. He wanted to put part of him in them. No other god had ever done that for his followers. Sometimes the gods would bless an individual with power and renown. But this new God wanted to give ALL his followers this power and spirit.
The Ephesians learned that this Paul had once killed Christians. He had been an enemy of God’s son. Paul and tried to undo everything God was trying to make happen. But instead of punishing Paul, God took him introduced him to the son that had died, and made Paul and important servant with great power. A man who would change the world for this God. A man who single handedly changed the course of Rome itself.
The Ephesians wondered that, if this is what this God does for his enemies, what might he do for his friends?
Paul told them how God had revealed the truth and knowledge of His plans to them. This God wanted them to know everything that was going on. To these Ephesians, this was against everything they knew. The gods didn’t share their plans. They were above that. Humans were but mere insects in the eyes of the gods and not worthy of the plans of the gods and for a God to share his most secret plans of history with them was unimaginable.
Zeus didn’t share his plans. Poseidon didn’t share his plans. Aphrodite didn’t share her plans. But this God?
He shared everything.
But he didn’t just share it with them, he shared with every being in existence. To all those “rulers” of the heavens and earth and under the earth. This was crazy. How powerful was this God if he knew things that the other rulers didn’t? If there were beings in the heavenly realms that didn’t know things this God did, how powerful was he? How big was His domain?
The gods were all limited to their place. Ares was powerful in war, but not in love. Poseidon had power over the sea, but no where else. Zeus was the God of lighting, but not the sea. Some gods ruled the hills, others the valleys.
But this God ruled them all. Had power over them all. Had knowledge of everything and everywhere.
There were rulers and beings and spiritual things. And there was this God who was more than all of them combined.
How could such a thing exist?
But not only that, this God wasn’t petty. Sometimes in history his followers made him seem that way. But all he wanted was to make everyone part of his family. He loved them with a love that had no measure. It couldn’t be imagined.
The Ephesians couldn’t grasp this well. They knew that the gods didn’t love them. The gods tolerated them. The gods demanded them to be afraid and to pay for their lives with their own blood.
But this new God loved them and was willing to pay for them with His own blood.
The Ephesians had known love, but never from a God. And here was a God that claimed to love them so much that there was nothing they could ask for, nothing they could even think of or imagine that he wasn’t able to do for them and that one day He would do for them.
How would this have affected this people? This people who were so poor and powerless and trampled down that they weren’t capable of fulfilling the love they had for the people they loved. They didn’t have the money or influence to make the dreams they had for their loved ones come true. And their gods never were interested in helping.
But this God would. He could do things that they were not able to imagine. He loved them, and had the will and ability to do something about it.
Paul told them how this God loved them, and that this love was greater than all knowledge. Love was more important than all knowledge. Compassion was more important than anything.
This was powerful to these Ephesians because most religion was about secret rights and knowledge. Especially amongst an upstart group trying to bring down the Christians called the Gnostics. To them, salvation was about knowing more. Learning more truth. Learning some piece of secret information that gained them immortality.
But this God was saying that if they would just accept his love and pass it one, that was that was needed to have that salvation and immortality. This God only asked that they would care for everyone they would come in contact with. And that, by doing so, they would understand the character of this God. The God that loved and ruled out of love and not out of fear or anger.
2000 years later, we still haven’t learned this lesson. We are trying to find that piece of information that will redeem us. We hope to gain knowledge as a means unto itself. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
Knowledge is good. Great even. But love is better.
God has come under attack in so many ways, mostly because of how his followers have presented him. But most of it isn’t even true. Our God only wanted us to understand what love was and what love means and how to live love in our lives every day toward everyone.
God didn’t ask for religion. He asked for love. God didn’t ask for more rules. He asked for love. God didn’t ask for more doctrine. He asked for love. God didn’t ask for separated groups. He asked for love.
God asked for one thing.
Love.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Blog 13: My Epic Stupidity.
I want to tell you about my epic fail.
And why it’s important.
You know… a story, a lesson… lather, rinse, repeat…
Here it is. An absolutely true story from just this past Saturday.
I wrote this totally sweet sermon. One that I was(and still am) quite proud of. It was informative, interesting, detailed, only moderately relevant, but useful in an interpretation-of-scripture sort of way.
Now, the point of that sermon is completely irrelevant for today’s story. What is important was that I was excited about how cool the subject matter was. Well, cool to me at least. But that’s a different story.
So, there I am, throwin’ it down. I’m throwin’ it down like a Jesus monkey on crack(umm…???). I’m into it. I’m feeling it. The words are flowing. And I’m talking. And I’m talking faster.
As a side note, I tend to exaggerate some. I actually don’t slam the pulpit or shout and scream when I preach.
FYI.
As I’m into it and talking and making my point I made an itsy bitsy little slip.
As it turns out, if you say the words “city should” back to back too quickly, there is a slight risk that you might, let’s say… mix up, the first letters/sounds of each word. “Should” comes out as “could”, and “city” comes out as… well, you know.
As I stood there and blatantly used the descriptive expletive, I kept talking, but was quickly scanning to see if anyone had noticed my slip. I didn’t have to look beyond the second row as my wife, apparently, was having an aneurism from trying to keep the hysterical laughter from spilling out into actual sound.
Apparently, I wasn’t going to get away with it.
But like any “good” preacher, I just pretended nothing had happened and kept on truckin’.
Fortunately, no one, besides my wife, mentioned it to me. It was nice of them all to be understanding of the fact that I’m human, and, apparently, an idiot.
Now, what does this, you ask, have to do with the price of smack in Columbia?
As I reflected on my moment of embarrassment… like ya do… I started thinking about how, while that particular example was relatively innocent, that incident is sort of a metaphor(I have no idea if that’s the correct word…) or analogy(maybe it’s this one…) of a more serious issue.
It’s sort of an adjunct to a previous blog about checking things out and making sure we know what we know.
This, however, is about getting ahead of ones self. Just like how I was talking away and trying to think faster than my mouth could keep up, ending in disaster, we often latch on to ideas and run with them, often to the exclusion of the actual facts. We put an idea together about something and it just fits. It’s perfect. And we go with it. And we share it. And we hold it up as the glowing standard of epiphany. Completely oblivious to the reality of it’s flaws. Completely ignoring those who shed light on our ignorance.
And because our idea is so profound, we start molding the rest of thought around this perfect truth. This idea that impacts the rest of our thought which suddenly starts forming the basis of our larger belief system until we have run headlong down a path without even knowing where we are going.
We liked the idea soo much, we never actually stopped to check out the validity of it. It was just THAT perfect.
We got ahead of ourselves.
I’ve done it. More than once. I’m probably doing it right now. I hope not, but it’s possible.
This is where personal honesty must come in to play. One must be honest enough with themselves to be willing to admit the possibility of personal error. If we don’t, then we don’t have any check or balance in our thinking. It’s just raw brainstorm run amuck.
There’s no intellectual honesty.
It get’s the point where we just start defending our view, because it’s our view. It’s no longer about the facts. It’s purely about me being right and you being wrong. Because if I’m wrong about this, then I might be wrong about something else. And if that’s true, maybe it’s all wrong. Then, not only does my entire belief system collapse, but I also have to acknowledge that someone else was smarter than me.
And, holy gravy, do we humans hate to admit that. Always.
While my verbal snafu isn’t really a problem at all and serves merely as an illustration of a greater point, I did have the real issue slap me in the face twice in the last two weeks. Once because I was a moron and once because someone else was.
Here is mine.
There is a particular belief amongst my people(religious denominational types) that is popular and semi controversial. I’m not going to outline this belief here on these pages. If you really, truly, want to know, I’ll discuss it in private with you. What is important is that I have pretty much always held to the traditional view on the subject. I know, I know… that seems so unlike me. But it’s true. It made sense. At least from a certain perspective. And I was ok with that. It was simple and straightforward.
And I bought into it. So much so, that when people over the years have tried to question it or point out flaws in it, I staunchly, yet politely, let them know that they must be wrong. One person in particular is one of my most trusted friends. His opinion is of great value to me. He forces me to make sure I know what I believe. Even with him, I argued until we just agreed to disagree. Sure, I thought he was wrong. But mostly, it was because I wanted to be right.
We’ve had the discussion a number of times over the years. Even recently. And every time we’ve finished the discussion I’ve always left with the idea that in no way was I buying what he was selling. Not at all.
So last week I’m reading my bible. I’m in the middle of prayer meeting. After we spend our time in group prayer and praise, we then have a bible study/discussion. And during this study, we start with our chapter, take turns reading verses till we read all the way through. When finished, I go back to the beginning of the chapter, and lead the discussion by taking each verse or idea reading it aloud again and asking questions.
Well, we’ve finished and I’m now re-reading and asking questions. As I’m re-reading one section, I read this one verse. And in this verse, it blatantly an directly related to this issue that my friend and I have discussed time and again. It gave the answer(one of a number of verses, it turns out…) to the dilemma of our disagreement.
Once again, I was slapped in the face with solid proof that I am, in fact, an idiot. It was so obvious that I was wrong. I couldn’t have been more wrong. And as I sat there staring at the verse, the rest of the room wondering why I was just sitting there staring at the bible, all the implications of my mistake just fell together like pieces to a puzzle.
The obviousness was embarrassing. For me to have missed something so simple was an insult to my pride and ego(I think we’ve talked about that one before as well…).
I was wrong.
I was going to have to eat crow.
I had been so sure. Completely confident in my stance.
Completely confident in a fallacy.
My friend knew it, and had been very patient with me.
Now, I won’t lie to you. He has a couple other conjoining theories that I still think are inaccurate. But really, that doesn’t matter at all. What matters is that, I was inaccurate and didn’t want to see it.
I refused to see it.
That is very, very dangerous.
The kicker is, the argument for my point wasn’t even grounded in the bible. (I’m laughing right now as I think about how utterly stupid I can be. It’s awesome. *ugh*)
I’m not even going to go into details on the other one. Mostly because my failure was just as bad as hers, and I’d be a hypocrite to point at her for playing with matches while I’m in the process of dousing my head in gas and tossing a lighter on it.
But basically, she tore me up one side and down the other this week because I wasn’t teacher her what she already knew.
That’s right. You didn’t read that wrong. The point of bible study is to go beyond and teach what is not obvious and to give more and go deeper. And for her, going deeper is to have someone recite to her exactly what she already knows, because in that way, she won’t have to think about it and she runs zero possibility of being wrong in some way.
You should have been there. It was classic.
And yet, she was only doing the same thing I’d been doing for years. It seems that the students really don’t rise any higher than their teachers.
We both got ahead of ourselves. Completely self assured in our intellectual smugness. Totally engrossed in our own understanding that we denied the very possibility that we made a mistake.
This can’t happen.
It mustn’t happen. Not if we want to grow as a person. Not if we want to become something more than we are. Not if we want to be useful to those around us in any meaningful way.
Another friend of mine has this quote on her Facebook page.
"Let us dare to read, think, speak, write. Let every sluice of knowledge be open and set flowing." -- John Adams
This is a powerful principle and challenge. Powerful because it pushes us to grow. Powerful because it absolutely requires personal honesty and intellectual humility.
It’s the difference between epic failure and epic success.
And why it’s important.
You know… a story, a lesson… lather, rinse, repeat…
Here it is. An absolutely true story from just this past Saturday.
I wrote this totally sweet sermon. One that I was(and still am) quite proud of. It was informative, interesting, detailed, only moderately relevant, but useful in an interpretation-of-scripture sort of way.
Now, the point of that sermon is completely irrelevant for today’s story. What is important was that I was excited about how cool the subject matter was. Well, cool to me at least. But that’s a different story.
So, there I am, throwin’ it down. I’m throwin’ it down like a Jesus monkey on crack(umm…???). I’m into it. I’m feeling it. The words are flowing. And I’m talking. And I’m talking faster.
As a side note, I tend to exaggerate some. I actually don’t slam the pulpit or shout and scream when I preach.
FYI.
As I’m into it and talking and making my point I made an itsy bitsy little slip.
As it turns out, if you say the words “city should” back to back too quickly, there is a slight risk that you might, let’s say… mix up, the first letters/sounds of each word. “Should” comes out as “could”, and “city” comes out as… well, you know.
As I stood there and blatantly used the descriptive expletive, I kept talking, but was quickly scanning to see if anyone had noticed my slip. I didn’t have to look beyond the second row as my wife, apparently, was having an aneurism from trying to keep the hysterical laughter from spilling out into actual sound.
Apparently, I wasn’t going to get away with it.
But like any “good” preacher, I just pretended nothing had happened and kept on truckin’.
Fortunately, no one, besides my wife, mentioned it to me. It was nice of them all to be understanding of the fact that I’m human, and, apparently, an idiot.
Now, what does this, you ask, have to do with the price of smack in Columbia?
As I reflected on my moment of embarrassment… like ya do… I started thinking about how, while that particular example was relatively innocent, that incident is sort of a metaphor(I have no idea if that’s the correct word…) or analogy(maybe it’s this one…) of a more serious issue.
It’s sort of an adjunct to a previous blog about checking things out and making sure we know what we know.
This, however, is about getting ahead of ones self. Just like how I was talking away and trying to think faster than my mouth could keep up, ending in disaster, we often latch on to ideas and run with them, often to the exclusion of the actual facts. We put an idea together about something and it just fits. It’s perfect. And we go with it. And we share it. And we hold it up as the glowing standard of epiphany. Completely oblivious to the reality of it’s flaws. Completely ignoring those who shed light on our ignorance.
And because our idea is so profound, we start molding the rest of thought around this perfect truth. This idea that impacts the rest of our thought which suddenly starts forming the basis of our larger belief system until we have run headlong down a path without even knowing where we are going.
We liked the idea soo much, we never actually stopped to check out the validity of it. It was just THAT perfect.
We got ahead of ourselves.
I’ve done it. More than once. I’m probably doing it right now. I hope not, but it’s possible.
This is where personal honesty must come in to play. One must be honest enough with themselves to be willing to admit the possibility of personal error. If we don’t, then we don’t have any check or balance in our thinking. It’s just raw brainstorm run amuck.
There’s no intellectual honesty.
It get’s the point where we just start defending our view, because it’s our view. It’s no longer about the facts. It’s purely about me being right and you being wrong. Because if I’m wrong about this, then I might be wrong about something else. And if that’s true, maybe it’s all wrong. Then, not only does my entire belief system collapse, but I also have to acknowledge that someone else was smarter than me.
And, holy gravy, do we humans hate to admit that. Always.
While my verbal snafu isn’t really a problem at all and serves merely as an illustration of a greater point, I did have the real issue slap me in the face twice in the last two weeks. Once because I was a moron and once because someone else was.
Here is mine.
There is a particular belief amongst my people(religious denominational types) that is popular and semi controversial. I’m not going to outline this belief here on these pages. If you really, truly, want to know, I’ll discuss it in private with you. What is important is that I have pretty much always held to the traditional view on the subject. I know, I know… that seems so unlike me. But it’s true. It made sense. At least from a certain perspective. And I was ok with that. It was simple and straightforward.
And I bought into it. So much so, that when people over the years have tried to question it or point out flaws in it, I staunchly, yet politely, let them know that they must be wrong. One person in particular is one of my most trusted friends. His opinion is of great value to me. He forces me to make sure I know what I believe. Even with him, I argued until we just agreed to disagree. Sure, I thought he was wrong. But mostly, it was because I wanted to be right.
We’ve had the discussion a number of times over the years. Even recently. And every time we’ve finished the discussion I’ve always left with the idea that in no way was I buying what he was selling. Not at all.
So last week I’m reading my bible. I’m in the middle of prayer meeting. After we spend our time in group prayer and praise, we then have a bible study/discussion. And during this study, we start with our chapter, take turns reading verses till we read all the way through. When finished, I go back to the beginning of the chapter, and lead the discussion by taking each verse or idea reading it aloud again and asking questions.
Well, we’ve finished and I’m now re-reading and asking questions. As I’m re-reading one section, I read this one verse. And in this verse, it blatantly an directly related to this issue that my friend and I have discussed time and again. It gave the answer(one of a number of verses, it turns out…) to the dilemma of our disagreement.
Once again, I was slapped in the face with solid proof that I am, in fact, an idiot. It was so obvious that I was wrong. I couldn’t have been more wrong. And as I sat there staring at the verse, the rest of the room wondering why I was just sitting there staring at the bible, all the implications of my mistake just fell together like pieces to a puzzle.
The obviousness was embarrassing. For me to have missed something so simple was an insult to my pride and ego(I think we’ve talked about that one before as well…).
I was wrong.
I was going to have to eat crow.
I had been so sure. Completely confident in my stance.
Completely confident in a fallacy.
My friend knew it, and had been very patient with me.
Now, I won’t lie to you. He has a couple other conjoining theories that I still think are inaccurate. But really, that doesn’t matter at all. What matters is that, I was inaccurate and didn’t want to see it.
I refused to see it.
That is very, very dangerous.
The kicker is, the argument for my point wasn’t even grounded in the bible. (I’m laughing right now as I think about how utterly stupid I can be. It’s awesome. *ugh*)
I’m not even going to go into details on the other one. Mostly because my failure was just as bad as hers, and I’d be a hypocrite to point at her for playing with matches while I’m in the process of dousing my head in gas and tossing a lighter on it.
But basically, she tore me up one side and down the other this week because I wasn’t teacher her what she already knew.
That’s right. You didn’t read that wrong. The point of bible study is to go beyond and teach what is not obvious and to give more and go deeper. And for her, going deeper is to have someone recite to her exactly what she already knows, because in that way, she won’t have to think about it and she runs zero possibility of being wrong in some way.
You should have been there. It was classic.
And yet, she was only doing the same thing I’d been doing for years. It seems that the students really don’t rise any higher than their teachers.
We both got ahead of ourselves. Completely self assured in our intellectual smugness. Totally engrossed in our own understanding that we denied the very possibility that we made a mistake.
This can’t happen.
It mustn’t happen. Not if we want to grow as a person. Not if we want to become something more than we are. Not if we want to be useful to those around us in any meaningful way.
Another friend of mine has this quote on her Facebook page.
"Let us dare to read, think, speak, write. Let every sluice of knowledge be open and set flowing." -- John Adams
This is a powerful principle and challenge. Powerful because it pushes us to grow. Powerful because it absolutely requires personal honesty and intellectual humility.
It’s the difference between epic failure and epic success.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Blog 12: Perspective.
May the force be with you.
Hmm, is that even a greeting?
I have no idea.
Today the temperature rose over 25 degrees by lunch time. And it was still below and it was still -2 outside. Do you know what that means?
It is very... very... cold outside.
It's been like this most of the week. Crazy cold. I know, there are places in Siberia, or Alaska, or Canada, or the NORTH POLE... that are colder. But this is much colder than we normally get around here. Oh, it get's cold. But temperatures like -32 and -28 are usually what our wind chill is.But the actual temp? Ya... brrrr.
It's an interesting perspective to have my furnace set to 70 and I'm still freezing inside. I thought, "what if my furnace stopped working? What if my car broke down 30 miles from nowhere? What if I got super powers and could create cold with my mind?"
Actually, I have problems with keeping my train of thought focused. Ignore the last one up there.
But I thought about having to brave the elements. I bundled up and walked outside to the curb to bring in my trash container. And in the 30 seconds it took me to run down and back, my fingers were completely numb. As I warmed up inside, I was confronted with the reality of how fragile the barrier is between comfort and agony. One would think that, after the things I've been through over the last few years, I would have had a good grasp on the concept of not taking anything for granted.
Well, one would be wrong. Apparently.
I had to pick up one of my poorer church members for prayer meeting this week. As I waited outside his apartment building, I watched people come in and out of this subsidized housing complex. People without cars. People bundling up and walking to the store.
In -17 degree weather. And lots of wind.
And my first thought was, as I watched one particular man stroll out... the kind of guy who gives the appearanc of one who's elevator doesn't go to the top, if you know what I mean... as I watched him go out, my first thought was, "Sucks to be him."
And immediately I felt ashamed. Because it really DOES suck to be him. The chances that this guy was going to have frost bite before he got home were pretty good. And this is what he does every day. How close was he to not having a home at all?
How close was he to having to sleep under a bridge? When it's -30 at night and windy?
It was at this point that I realized just how blessed I really am. I think about all the whining I do about bills. All the "compromise" that has to go in to planning a good vacation with my wife. You know what I'm talking about, right? That whole cost vs. fun discussion? We want have X amount of fun, be we only have Y amount of money?
This Christmas I bought my wife a new laptop. Her old one was literally days away from permanent death. So, I found the proper bargain and bought it for her. I also found the bargain for me as well, since my computer, which is even older than hers, is dying. Slower than hers, but still dying.
After Christmas I went and bought mine. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was close enough. One must be responsible and make the proper compromises, right?
Well, to make a long story short, after 4 days I had to take it back cause it was broken. No, I didn't break it. The tech guy was like, "ya, this isn't your fault, it shouldn't do this."So he opened a new one. It did the same thing. He opened another. It also did the same thing. He opened on of the same brand but different model? Same thing.
Broken. All of them.
In the end, they refunded my money and I gave back the computer.
But I figured, hey, I'll just find something else.
Well, then the brakes exploded on our car.
Exploded is probably an exageration. No one died. The car is fine. But I did have to pay to fix them.
There went the computer money. To this day, I still do not have a new computer. When I did the math and realized I wouldn't be able to get my new laptop, I was pissed. I was so mad. I couldn't believe how unfair it was that I basically had to give up my christmas present and not get it back.
And as I sat in the car staring at a building full of people who are half a well-fare check from freezing to death, I began to see what a blessed/spoiled child I was. It wasn't enough that I'm not dead from disease. If I couldn't have my toys, I needed to pout like a baby and tell God how unfair it is.
And here is a guy who is walking to where ever in ungodly weather. I have a house. A nice house. Two cars that run every day. An awesome wife. Good friends. Good family. I never go hungry. I always have hot showers.
Really, I live like a king.
I am so blessed and I never even acknowledge it. Almost never, anway. Instead, I act like I deserve it. Like it's owed to me somehow.
Perspective is such an important thing. Sometimes perspective is the only thing between happiness and discouragement. Actually, I'd say perspective is always the only thing between happiness and discouragement.
I know. This is all cliche, right? The preacher telling people that they need to look at the bad in their life differently so they can be happy.Right. Or, telling people to be grateful for what they have and stop their whining.
Right.
Well, maybe those things are all true. I'm sure they are. But I think we hear it so much, sometimes we stop to think about the truth of it all. Ya, I've been sick and I've had to stretch paychecks. But I could be homeless. And right now that would mean almost certain death. If not, I'd wish it did. I could be alone. But I'm not. I have a crazy cool wife.
What is in your life that you take for granted without even realizing it?
At this moment, for me, it's heat. Because I'm sitting in my office in my basement, and it's down right cold down here. But i'm wearing a t shirt. So, really, it can't be THAT cold.
Perspective. It's such an amazing thing.
Perspective is why a lesbian couple can walk into one of my churches, and one person will welcome them with a hug, and another person will complain and be disgusted that they would dare to enter "God's house."
True story, by the way.
Perspect is the difference between order and chaos. Patterns and random. One person's random is another person's pattern.
Have you ever heard of Fractals? I'm not going to trying to bore you with the math, because I would just butcher it to pieces and there is at least one math genius that I know of who is going to read this and I would prefer to avoid the embarassment.
But the short of it is this. Fractals are a type of math that, for all practical purpose, shows the pattern in random. It's an equation that, if you plot it out on a graph, makes all kinds of beautiful, albeit chaotic looking patterns. They really are pretty. You've probably all seen them. Lots of swirls with jaggedy edges all over them. But definately not orderly by any means.
Until you start looking closely. If you take a small piece of the shape, and blow it up big, you notice that the small piece looks exactly like the large piece. And if you magnify a small piece of that smaller chunk, you will notice that the even smaller piece also looks exactly like the larger chunk. As a matter of fact, it doesn't matter how far you zoom in, it will always look exactly like the large piece. It will follow the exact same pattern.
What appears chaotic isn't chaotic at all. It's actually following a very specific pattern. It's just not a pattern you can see till you change your perspective.The story and applications for fractals are incredibly fascinating. The implications of fractals are huge. Mind blowing even.
Take the forest, for example. Fractal math showed that if you take one tree in a forest and measure that tree at multiple points on it's trunk, branches, leaves, etc... and plot out all these measurements in a fractal equation, you can use the equation from that tree to predict the growth of the entire forest.
I don't mean just the size of the trees. But their location. The density of the forest itself. You can predict how the forest will spread out as it grows.
No joke.
A bunch of math guys proved it. They measured a single tree, then randomly sampled the forest. Different trees, sizes, species, etc... all of it. It ploted exactly the same.
Cool stuff.
But the point is, how random does a forest look to you? It's not ordered. The trees aren't all lined up. They aren't all the same type. They aren't all the same size. They aren't all the same distance from each other. In no visible way is there any repeating pattern that is discernable. It's all just completely beautiful and random chaos.
Except that it isn't. It follows a very specific pattern. It's just a pattern we can't see. We lack the proper perscpective.
I could go on and on about how there is no such thing as chaos and random, but that everything follows a pattern and has an order to it.
Because I believe that is true. Math is proving that more and more every day.
But instead I want to point out how perspective shapes everything we see and do. As much as it's cliche and as much as no one wants to admit it, happiness and despair, success and failure... it is all completely and utterly dependant on our perspective. On how we choose to quantify things. On how we choose to measure things.
Whether it's how you measure blessing or success, or how you quantify your own self worth, all of it is based on our own perspective.
Ask a color blind person what color his socks are. Perspective shapes our reality.I met a guy recently who is completely color blind. By that I mean, he doesn't see any colors at all. Only shades of grey. Everything he sees is a shade of grey. He doesn't know what yellow looks like. Or blue. Or red. He only knows what yellow is based on the shade of grey that he sees. And he does a really good job. You would never know that he's completely color blind.
His perspective is much different than mine in a real way.
How about the autistic savant? Can't figure out how to tie his shows, but can count change by the sound it makes as it hits the floor, and can play master level piano arrangements without ever taking a lesson, or sees music as a language expressed by math.
What does his world look like?
Or, I suppose, the real question is... what does our world ACTUALLY look like?
Here is the truth and, ultimately, the point I would like to make here.
We see exactly what we choose to see. What we want to see. Maybe not what we think we want to see, but in reality, what we want to see.
Our perspective and our reality are the same. It is a chosen "reality." Blessing, curse, order, chaos, happiness, dispair,... these are the illusions of our minds eye.
Here is the question I want to leave you with.
What does your world look like?
And, why?
Hmm, is that even a greeting?
I have no idea.
Today the temperature rose over 25 degrees by lunch time. And it was still below and it was still -2 outside. Do you know what that means?
It is very... very... cold outside.
It's been like this most of the week. Crazy cold. I know, there are places in Siberia, or Alaska, or Canada, or the NORTH POLE... that are colder. But this is much colder than we normally get around here. Oh, it get's cold. But temperatures like -32 and -28 are usually what our wind chill is.But the actual temp? Ya... brrrr.
It's an interesting perspective to have my furnace set to 70 and I'm still freezing inside. I thought, "what if my furnace stopped working? What if my car broke down 30 miles from nowhere? What if I got super powers and could create cold with my mind?"
Actually, I have problems with keeping my train of thought focused. Ignore the last one up there.
But I thought about having to brave the elements. I bundled up and walked outside to the curb to bring in my trash container. And in the 30 seconds it took me to run down and back, my fingers were completely numb. As I warmed up inside, I was confronted with the reality of how fragile the barrier is between comfort and agony. One would think that, after the things I've been through over the last few years, I would have had a good grasp on the concept of not taking anything for granted.
Well, one would be wrong. Apparently.
I had to pick up one of my poorer church members for prayer meeting this week. As I waited outside his apartment building, I watched people come in and out of this subsidized housing complex. People without cars. People bundling up and walking to the store.
In -17 degree weather. And lots of wind.
And my first thought was, as I watched one particular man stroll out... the kind of guy who gives the appearanc of one who's elevator doesn't go to the top, if you know what I mean... as I watched him go out, my first thought was, "Sucks to be him."
And immediately I felt ashamed. Because it really DOES suck to be him. The chances that this guy was going to have frost bite before he got home were pretty good. And this is what he does every day. How close was he to not having a home at all?
How close was he to having to sleep under a bridge? When it's -30 at night and windy?
It was at this point that I realized just how blessed I really am. I think about all the whining I do about bills. All the "compromise" that has to go in to planning a good vacation with my wife. You know what I'm talking about, right? That whole cost vs. fun discussion? We want have X amount of fun, be we only have Y amount of money?
This Christmas I bought my wife a new laptop. Her old one was literally days away from permanent death. So, I found the proper bargain and bought it for her. I also found the bargain for me as well, since my computer, which is even older than hers, is dying. Slower than hers, but still dying.
After Christmas I went and bought mine. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was close enough. One must be responsible and make the proper compromises, right?
Well, to make a long story short, after 4 days I had to take it back cause it was broken. No, I didn't break it. The tech guy was like, "ya, this isn't your fault, it shouldn't do this."So he opened a new one. It did the same thing. He opened another. It also did the same thing. He opened on of the same brand but different model? Same thing.
Broken. All of them.
In the end, they refunded my money and I gave back the computer.
But I figured, hey, I'll just find something else.
Well, then the brakes exploded on our car.
Exploded is probably an exageration. No one died. The car is fine. But I did have to pay to fix them.
There went the computer money. To this day, I still do not have a new computer. When I did the math and realized I wouldn't be able to get my new laptop, I was pissed. I was so mad. I couldn't believe how unfair it was that I basically had to give up my christmas present and not get it back.
And as I sat in the car staring at a building full of people who are half a well-fare check from freezing to death, I began to see what a blessed/spoiled child I was. It wasn't enough that I'm not dead from disease. If I couldn't have my toys, I needed to pout like a baby and tell God how unfair it is.
And here is a guy who is walking to where ever in ungodly weather. I have a house. A nice house. Two cars that run every day. An awesome wife. Good friends. Good family. I never go hungry. I always have hot showers.
Really, I live like a king.
I am so blessed and I never even acknowledge it. Almost never, anway. Instead, I act like I deserve it. Like it's owed to me somehow.
Perspective is such an important thing. Sometimes perspective is the only thing between happiness and discouragement. Actually, I'd say perspective is always the only thing between happiness and discouragement.
I know. This is all cliche, right? The preacher telling people that they need to look at the bad in their life differently so they can be happy.Right. Or, telling people to be grateful for what they have and stop their whining.
Right.
Well, maybe those things are all true. I'm sure they are. But I think we hear it so much, sometimes we stop to think about the truth of it all. Ya, I've been sick and I've had to stretch paychecks. But I could be homeless. And right now that would mean almost certain death. If not, I'd wish it did. I could be alone. But I'm not. I have a crazy cool wife.
What is in your life that you take for granted without even realizing it?
At this moment, for me, it's heat. Because I'm sitting in my office in my basement, and it's down right cold down here. But i'm wearing a t shirt. So, really, it can't be THAT cold.
Perspective. It's such an amazing thing.
Perspective is why a lesbian couple can walk into one of my churches, and one person will welcome them with a hug, and another person will complain and be disgusted that they would dare to enter "God's house."
True story, by the way.
Perspect is the difference between order and chaos. Patterns and random. One person's random is another person's pattern.
Have you ever heard of Fractals? I'm not going to trying to bore you with the math, because I would just butcher it to pieces and there is at least one math genius that I know of who is going to read this and I would prefer to avoid the embarassment.
But the short of it is this. Fractals are a type of math that, for all practical purpose, shows the pattern in random. It's an equation that, if you plot it out on a graph, makes all kinds of beautiful, albeit chaotic looking patterns. They really are pretty. You've probably all seen them. Lots of swirls with jaggedy edges all over them. But definately not orderly by any means.
Until you start looking closely. If you take a small piece of the shape, and blow it up big, you notice that the small piece looks exactly like the large piece. And if you magnify a small piece of that smaller chunk, you will notice that the even smaller piece also looks exactly like the larger chunk. As a matter of fact, it doesn't matter how far you zoom in, it will always look exactly like the large piece. It will follow the exact same pattern.
What appears chaotic isn't chaotic at all. It's actually following a very specific pattern. It's just not a pattern you can see till you change your perspective.The story and applications for fractals are incredibly fascinating. The implications of fractals are huge. Mind blowing even.
Take the forest, for example. Fractal math showed that if you take one tree in a forest and measure that tree at multiple points on it's trunk, branches, leaves, etc... and plot out all these measurements in a fractal equation, you can use the equation from that tree to predict the growth of the entire forest.
I don't mean just the size of the trees. But their location. The density of the forest itself. You can predict how the forest will spread out as it grows.
No joke.
A bunch of math guys proved it. They measured a single tree, then randomly sampled the forest. Different trees, sizes, species, etc... all of it. It ploted exactly the same.
Cool stuff.
But the point is, how random does a forest look to you? It's not ordered. The trees aren't all lined up. They aren't all the same type. They aren't all the same size. They aren't all the same distance from each other. In no visible way is there any repeating pattern that is discernable. It's all just completely beautiful and random chaos.
Except that it isn't. It follows a very specific pattern. It's just a pattern we can't see. We lack the proper perscpective.
I could go on and on about how there is no such thing as chaos and random, but that everything follows a pattern and has an order to it.
Because I believe that is true. Math is proving that more and more every day.
But instead I want to point out how perspective shapes everything we see and do. As much as it's cliche and as much as no one wants to admit it, happiness and despair, success and failure... it is all completely and utterly dependant on our perspective. On how we choose to quantify things. On how we choose to measure things.
Whether it's how you measure blessing or success, or how you quantify your own self worth, all of it is based on our own perspective.
Ask a color blind person what color his socks are. Perspective shapes our reality.I met a guy recently who is completely color blind. By that I mean, he doesn't see any colors at all. Only shades of grey. Everything he sees is a shade of grey. He doesn't know what yellow looks like. Or blue. Or red. He only knows what yellow is based on the shade of grey that he sees. And he does a really good job. You would never know that he's completely color blind.
His perspective is much different than mine in a real way.
How about the autistic savant? Can't figure out how to tie his shows, but can count change by the sound it makes as it hits the floor, and can play master level piano arrangements without ever taking a lesson, or sees music as a language expressed by math.
What does his world look like?
Or, I suppose, the real question is... what does our world ACTUALLY look like?
Here is the truth and, ultimately, the point I would like to make here.
We see exactly what we choose to see. What we want to see. Maybe not what we think we want to see, but in reality, what we want to see.
Our perspective and our reality are the same. It is a chosen "reality." Blessing, curse, order, chaos, happiness, dispair,... these are the illusions of our minds eye.
Here is the question I want to leave you with.
What does your world look like?
And, why?
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