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Can You Marry Yourself? Well, apparently…sorta…kinda?

May 26, 2012 by Texan Puddleglum

I read a fascinating (read: alarming) article last night. In Fargo, North Dakota, Nadine Schweigert married herself in front of 45 friends and family. She’s currently honeymooning in New Orleans. She is a divorced yoga instructor with three children to support and she had been on a quest for happiness.

Schweigert tried therapy, self-help books, friendships: anything to fill the void in her life. “I was waiting for someone to come along and make me happy.” Tired of waiting for that someone to come, she found that someone in the mirror.

You can read all the particulars in the article. I’m sure it was an interesting ceremony to watch. But as I read her story, I was reminded of that quote by Blaise Pascal:

“All men seek happiness without exception. They all aim at this goal however different the means they use to attain it. . . .They will never make the smallest move but with this as its goal. This is the motive of all the actions of all men, even those who contemplate suicide.”

Happiness was so important to Nadine that she finally just married herself, convinced that such a move would bring her the happiness she’d been missing. But I have to wonder: what happens if she meets somebody new? What happens when that person makes her more happy than she could ever make herself? Would she divorce herself? Who will keep the house, her or her? I mean, how quickly could she move on after that sort of heartbreak?

I don’t mean to make (too much) fun. She obviously was a hurting individual who thought this maneuver would satisfy. I get that. We’re all desperate for happiness. But as someone once said, “There’s no smaller present that a person wrapped up in themselves.” And I just have to wonder how different her life will be now that she’s hitched to herself.

What do you think? Would you be happier if you just married yourself? To what extent does happiness factor in a marriage?  Is it better to be alone or is it better to marry yourself? Would that really make you less alone? Discuss.

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I Support Monsters Under the Bed

May 25, 2012 by Texan Puddleglum

When I was young, I wasn’t afraid of the dark. I was afraid of the things that lived in the dark: monsters. Monsters were very real. They lived in my closet. They lived in the basement (night or day). And they definitely lived under my bed.

Bedtime was around 9 o’clock for me. I’d tip-toe to my door with the hall light on. I’d turn the knob and  tap it open. (You never just swung the door open. That’s a sure way to let the monsters know you’re coming in, rookie.) In those days, my light switch was by the door and my bed was at the other side of the room. So, I had to flip off the switch, sprint to my bed, jump the last couple feet, and dive under the covers before they got me.

If you move fast, the monsters can’t catch you.

Night lights didn’t help. My brother making scary monster sounds didn’t help (we shared a room then and, for some reason, his impression of Harry Monster from Sesame Street terrified me). The darkness didn’t help. And the fact that there was an entity of pure shadow and evil waiting just a few feet below me as I slept did not help.

Monsters under the bed.

As a man, I’ve come to terms with their existence. I think I’m too old to be much bait for them anymore. I enter the room and perhaps the monsters smell a faint trace of the terrified child within me. But I’ve got too many things on my mind to pay attention to that fear. That fear is tiny and see-through. I don’t even notice it. I’m really not much of an bargain to those midnight predators. So they leave me alone. I’m no longer a target.

But if I ever have kids, what will I tell them when they come running to me, crying about the beasts that wait for them in the night?

I’ll accept their story as credible. I’ll walk them back to their room. I’ll stoop under the bed and stare straight into the blackness and address that monster directly. “Hi. Remember me? We’ve met before. Listen. My kids are fast. My kids are smart. My kids sleep with semi-automatic weapons under their pillows and they tend to get twitchy when they’re scared. I won’t be responsible for what they do to you should you feel bold tonight. Sleep tight, monster-under-the-bed.”

After applauding me for training my children to be hardened warriors, you’ll probably tell me that I shouldn’t encourage their wild imaginations. I should turn on the lights and show them the cluttered, monster-free space below their beds (even though monsters have active camouflage when under direct illumination, silly).

But I’ll disagree. If I tell my children monsters aren’t real, I won’t merely banish their fear. I will also banish any ennobling courage that will make their fear endurable. If I threaten the monsters under their bed or if I make sure my kids are loaded up on ammo for the night, the fear is then treated as real and legitimate, and my kids will have a licence to fight that fear, to stand up to it.

I’d rather my children be afraid of monsters under the bed than a bully at school. If they can shoot a monster between the eyes in their sleep, how much more will they be able to overcome the fear of bullies, tests, public speaking, green beans, etc?

To echo C.S. Lewis on the merits of scary stories for kids, “Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies [in life], let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage [and semi-automatic weapons].” I will not keep their minds from the knowledge that they were born into a world of pain and strength, death and healing, fear and courage, monsters and Jesus. My children will have open eyes and brave souls. That is why I support monsters under the bed. Face fear. Shoot it in the face, if you like. Cultivate courage however it comes. And by all means, sleep tight.

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Why I’d Choose Aslan’s Country Over Heaven Any Day

May 24, 2012 by Texan Puddleglum

A few years back, Dr. Jerram Barrs, a professor at Covenant Seminary, was speaking about the Narnia books at a Borders bookstore (remember those?). The store had been gracious enough to host the event and Dr. Barrs had drawn a large crowd, speaking about the Chronicles of Narnia and what they meant. At one point in the Q & A, a little boy stood up and said, “I don’t want to go to heaven! I want to go to Aslan’s country!”

I remember that story because that little guy’s desire was so right. In my favorite book in the series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Reepicheep the mouse has this lifelong wish to see Aslan’s country, the land where Aslan came from, where Aslan’s father reigns supreme. And at one point in the book, Reepicheep says this:

“While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.”

Christians tend to get very excited about heaven. And that’s great. I’m sure heaven will be fantastic. But it seems to me that we’re missing something. The Bible is very clear: heaven is not our final destination.

People really want to know what heaven will be like. People are so desperate to know about it that they write books about the afterlife. I completely understand this motivation. Some people even go so far as to say they’ve died, gone there, and come back to tell us what our home will be like. But heaven is not our home. Heaven is merely the threshold.

But this reigning “heaven-is-the-ending” philosophy has a few problems.

1.) It leads to an “I’ll Fly Away” escapist mentality. The rationale goes something like this: This world is not my home. God will scrap it anyway. My job on earth is to grin and bear it until I die and then the real party starts. To quote Colin Hay, “I’m waiting for my real life to begin.”

2.) If heaven is the final destination for a Christian, then the Christian has no meaningful reason to take care of the earth. Oh sure, we should be good stewards of creation and we’re commanded to care for the earth. But because our citizenship is in heaven, I don’t really have a reason to recycle or fight pollution or save the whales. Heaven will be litter-free and THAT’S where I’m going.

3.) It just ain’t biblical.

I’ve already written about how I think God is not going to scrap the world and start over with a new one. But whether you agree with me there or not, the real biblical story does not end with all the saints floating up in heaven. It ends with a new sky and a new land, renewed and cleansed from all sin and death.

And upon that new earth, the holy city, new Jerusalem, will come down out of heaven to be the dwelling place of God among humanity. That old hymn “I’ll Fly Away” should really be about leaving heaven to come back down to our true, eternal home: the earth.

This is what C.S. Lewis was trying to get at with the idea of Aslan’s country. A real place with real walls and streets and trees and running water. That’s where the saints will live out eternity. You can read all about this in the Book of Revelation, chapters 21-22.

In the end, heaven will come down to subsume the earth with “the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel” (Rev.21:10-11). We will live out eternity here, on the earth-renewed, in Aslan’s country, bathing in the glory of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea. And he will dwell among his people and they shall reign forever and ever.

That is why I will sink with my nose to the sunrise. Because that’s my real home: this earth, cleansed from evil, wrapped in the Light of the glory of God. The promise of Aslan’s country.

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I’m Publishing My First Book and I Need Your Help To Do It!

April 12, 2012 by Texan Puddleglum

Here’s the deal, my friends. I wrote a children’s book about an owl that’s afraid of the dark. Four out of five friends say it’s really good. But I’m not talking to Ted anymore…

Anyway, I have a very nice publisher who’s interested in giving it to you. The problem is, I need to raise a bit of money to carry some of the costs. Ergo de facto, I have begun a project on Kickstarter to get it started. And that’s where YOU come in!

It’s simple. You pledge some dough and that dough goes toward the baking of my first little book.

Here’s the link.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1508580320/help-me-publish-my-first-book

I would love it if you would check it out and think about pledging. A minimum of $20 will get you an autograph in your book. A pledge of $100 will buy you immortality. This is what I do.

I love you all. Please help me publish my first book!

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Final Takeaway from New England

April 6, 2012 by Texan Puddleglum

Welp. A week ago I was driving through Pennsylvania on the way back home to St. Louis. The exhaustion of constant movement and constant interviews had absolutely wrecked me. I’m still a bit sore from it. And on Monday, I was back in the grind: teaching at church, going to classes, going to work, writing papers, hanging out with my nephew and niece, eating ice cream. Just a real full schedule.

But now that I’m on Easter break (one of the perks of going to a seminary), I have a few spare hours. And I figured, since so many people have been asking, I’d just post a short final summary of what I learned in New England. I met with about ten pastors/church planters in four days. I drove a total of 3,215 miles, round trip. I lost a back window on Raymond (my trusty CR-V) to a rock on the highway. And I ate way too many nutrigrain bars (healthy, but not a lot of variety). So…here’s my last post on the trip. Two things:

1.) I want to plant a church in New England. Seriously. This trip was not a deterrent. There were discouraging aspects to the trip, but overall it was very confirming. I can’t see the future, but unless God kills me or something, I want to someday plant a church in Providence, RI. This will be a few years down the road. I still have to finish seminary. That’ll take a couple years. I would like to find some type of core group in St. Louis to head out with me. The problems are location and commitment. I don’t know many people (single people notwithstanding) who would like to uproot and move their families to a distant city to be a missional community in a region that has a strong hostility to the gospel. Challenges abound, glory be.

2.) Providence is a weird city. The city I’ve chosen to plant in (so far as it depends on me) is a funky little joint. You can drive down Rhode Island in an hour. You can drive across it in 30 minutes. The capital really does take up a huge chunk of the state. But it’s such an insular area (much like New England in general). There are people who have lived in Cranston (20 minutes from downtown Providence) all their life and they’ve never been to Providence. There are folks in Barrington who would never drive all the way around the Narragansett Bay to get to Warwick because that would take like 25 minutes! And who would drive all that way? Everything is close but everyone is distant.

I’ve long agreed with Ed Stetzer that America is no longer a pancake. We are not just one culture across the board. America is a waffle. There are thousands of little divots across the nation with their own individual cultures. Providence is a microcosm of that cultural diversity. On the west side, you have traditional New Englanders (see earlier post for a brief snapshot). They’re mostly blue collar Catholics with traditional values seen through a libertarian spirit. On the east side, you have the more liberal, cultural elite college swells who just hate Christianity. And those two sides rarely interact. And surprise-surprise, the east side is the area I’m attracted to.

I learned a lot about that town and the best ways to go about penetrating that culture, but much prayer and training is needed (and probably a montage featuring some rockin’ 80s music). Pray for me, if you think of it. But more than anything, pray for New England. It is the least-churched region in America and there are whole communities where the gospel of Christ hasn’t been preached or heard for centuries. And that is just plain stupid. Please commit with me to pray for that region as a whole and for Providence, RI, in particular. As King of the universe, Jesus deserves all of that region.

Godspeed, y’all.

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Lessons From New England

March 27, 2012 by Texan Puddleglum

Well, I’m in Rutland, VT. Again. The downside of meeting with pastors and church planters is that they are very busy guys. Not all of them can meet when you’d like to meet. And for me, that means I do a lot of back tracking. Takes a toll on the gas budget. But I’ll be cutting the trip short a day, which means I’m driving home Friday morning, trying to push as hard as Raymond (my plucky CR-V) can hussle. It’s been a quite ride here in New England so far. Your continued prayers are very much needed. Been equal parts discouraged, excited, flummoxed, and bedraggled lately. Always tired.

Here are a few standout lessons/observations I’ve picked up on the trip so far:

1.) I need to relax. I have the type of personality that, once it gets going, can’t stop. If I get into the mentality of go-go-go, work-work-work, I will kill myself in pursuit of results. Merely a year ago, I was pulling down 70-80 hours a week, working three jobs while working through grad school part time. So when I go on a trip to interview church planters and pastors in New England, my mind says, “This is a business trip and I must perform well.” But God, in his unrelenting playfulness, shoved the Vermont Institute of Natural Science right across my path today. It just appeared on the side of the road, up in the mountains. It was like something out of a folk tale. I giddily spent over an hour gazing at bald eagles, great horned owls, golden eagles, turkey vultures, ravens, and one very aggressive cardinal who chirped and snapped his beak at me from behind his screen cage. It was magical. The forests in Vermont are something out of Tolkien. So, I was reminded today that I need to remind myself always to slow down and actually enjoy life. And I used to be such a slacker, too. Shame.

2.) I don’t know what I’m doing and neither does anybody else. Churches love to figure out “what works” in a culture. How can they best thrive and succeed? What’s the best 10 step program to grow a church from 50 to 500 in two years? What’s the best method for sharing the gospel so that everyone in your office or dorm will come to Christ faster than you can say “awesome”? But what I’ve found is that methods don’t really work in New England. The people here are so closed off and independent that any attempt to sell them a product (i.e. some flashy gimmick or marketing scheme to make the gospel appealing) immediately crashes and burn. Outside of preaching the Bible and consistently loving people, the church planters in New England will readily admit, “No one knows what they’re doing. We’re all just trying stuff.” That’s the method. Try stuff. Stay faithful to God and to your people and, in terms of the how, you just have to figure out what works best in your context. And that’s a load off. Ministerial technique doesn’t mean much up here. It’s all about honesty and faithfulness for the long haul.

3.) At least in northern New England, the people are the most theologically ignorant folks you’ll find in America. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. I was sitting down with a pastor in the Upper Valley area (in New Hampshire) yesterday. He told me he’d been there for 12 years. In those 12 years, the larger evangelical church in America has gone through a ton of controversy (the new perspective on Paul, the whole Rob Bell/hell thing, the recent Elephant Room/T.D. Jakes goat rodeo, to name a few). But he never had to deal with any fallout from those bombs in his New England church. Why? His people don’t know about the controversies. And frankly, they wouldn’t care. You can’t impress your congregation there by dropping names like John MacArthur, John Piper, or Charles Spurgeon. They have no idea who those guys are. They are a very practical, very here-and-now people, and they just want to know what the Bible says. In the more religious places I’ve lived (Dallas- big evangelical town; St. Louis- big Catholic town), we have the luxury to recline at our local Starbucks and argue over theological tidbits. We can knit pick to our hearts content and come out feeling edified (or at the very least, smudge and arrogant). But as one pastor in Concord, NH told me today, “We’re just trying to survive. We don’t have to time to deal with all that stuff.” It sort of puts things in perspective. And it really frees a pastor up to actually love his people without having to deal with important questions regarding controversial books. Those questions are important. They just don’t come up in northern New England. Boston and Providence might be a different story. I’ll hear about that in the next couple of days.

Last.) New England demands the long haul. A church planter who’s been in his community in New England for a decade is still planting. He’s not yet established in the community. Everything here is old. The cities, the buildings, the cemeteries, even the forests seem older than the things back West. The families here can trace their ancestry back to pre-Revolutionary America. They are rooted in their communities. Anyone who comes in from the outside to tell them how they should live (even if they preface it with “thus saith the Lord”) is met with immediate suspicion and even contempt. To belong in New England, you have to stay in New England. If you move here to plant a church, you better be willing to root for the Sox, root for the Patriots, wear a lot of flannel, grow out your beard, and become one of them. You can’t be a foreigner trying to reach the natives. That’s stupid. It won’t work. You have to love them and you have to love the process of becoming one of them. And that requires complete relocation of being, of thought, of manner, of speech, of lifestyle. Hardcore.

So, that’s all I got on a Tuesday night. I’m going to go look for a place to crash here in Rutland. I’ve been glued to their local Bread Co. for the last five hours, working on stuff for seminary and Sunday school and children’s stories and my brain is, how you say, le scrambled. Boston tomorrow. Providence and Brookfield, CT on Thursday. Driving home Friday morn.

Pray for me?

Until next time…

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Update from Nashua?

March 26, 2012 by Texan Puddleglum

Greetings from Nashua, New Hampshire! (Possibly.) No matter what the maps tell me, I’m never entirely sure what city (or village or hamlet) I’m in.

I saw my first “moose crossing” sign on I-89 S today. Culture shock. But after hours of small mountain roads, bathed in beauty and threatened by blind corners, it was a real liberation to get out onto the open highway once more.

I spent last night in Rutland, VT. Managed to catch a showing of the Hunger Games. It wasn’t totally right (and by that I mean, it didn’t totally match the images in my head that formed when I read the book), but it was still a lot of fun. I got my first real exposure to New Englanders in that movie theater too. It was probably the smelliest theater I’ve ever sat in. Very run down, very much in a grimy little strip mall. It was beautiful. And a very accommodating parking lot in this hospitable college was nice enough to put me up for the night. I woke up to snow. Lovely cold.

My first impression of New Englanders? They’re a little rude, a little closed off, and a little bit loud. So, it’s basically what years of T.V. and movies have prepared me for. No surprise there. I’ve met the stereotypes. I’m ready to get passed that. And so, through the mind-numbing powers of media, it seems God has been conditioning me for years to meet these people. And I even had a very nice conversation with my waitress at the restaurant where I crossed into Vermont.  It’s been real nice.

I’m sitting in a Starbucks now, listening to the smooth tones of Esperanza Spalding. But I must focus. Today marks the first day of my pastor interviews and it’s time to actually write down some “good” questions about church planting. I’m in Hollis, NH at 11:00 and West Lebanon, NH by 2pm. Always on the move.

Thanks for your prayers. They’re always needed.

 

 

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