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Posts Tagged ‘life’

An Open Letter to Monday

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on June 4, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Dear Monday,

I hate you. Here’s why:

You are made up of the most deplorable garbage and rubbish that this world has to offer. You sneak up on me after a relaxing weekend like a rabid possum hiding in the trash can at night. You wake me up at an ungodly hour. Seriously, I’m not even a Christian at 5:30am and yet you demand I meet you then and there. Merciless monster.

You are a reminder of everything I don’t like to think about: how much I need to get done this week, time is fleeting, I am mortal, the polar bears are losing their ice boats, the Loch Ness Monster is dead, John Lennon is dead, I have a hang nail, ECT.

Garfield hates you. That cynical cat taught me everything I know about life. Therefore, I hate you too. (Incidentally, I love lasagna.)

Traffic is always the worst when you come around. I run into more walls when you’re around. I’m always groggy and mad at the world when you’re hovering over me. I don’t have a case of the Mondays. I have a case of the “stupidest day ever”. It’s contagious.

Monday, you are terrible to me. But you know what? 

You are the day that the LORD has made. I will rejoice and be glad in you. Because this is the day, this is the day that the LORD has made.

I rejoice today for his sake. Not for yours, Monday. 

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Honey & Moonlight: Meditative Mumbling On Creative Constipation

Posted in Jesus, Speech, The Arts, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 31, 2012 | 6 Comments »

I’ve got a Norah Jones record playing (currently a duet with Ryan Adams). I’ve got a cupacoffee at my elbow. It’s a dirty blonde with Antarctic proportions of sugar in it. Do I need my coffee to taste like candy? No. As a native-born Texican, I can drink it black. But if it’s possible to get your coffee to taste like candy, why wouldn’t you?

I’ve been thinking about the process of creation lately. I’m not sure how it works for other tortured souls. For me, it looks different in different mediums. If I’m writing words, it’s usually pretty quick (though I cringe and mope through the revisions). If I’m playing in the mud, I just try to keep it out of my eyes. But when I’m writing a song, that’s where I see the greatest distance between taste and ability.

Ira Glass from “This American Life” has some great words on this.

I have the language in my head. I have the harmonic rhythm in my chest. But the melody is hiding under the table. The lyrics are halfway out of bed or halfway smeared on a windshield.

Making a song requires the same discipline as anything else, I guess. It’s like when I was in college, working on Bach or Bottesini. I shaped every phrase. I measured out vibrato in coffee spoons. I strained to control bow speed and weight, listening through bedrock for the sound of a stampede. I even had one teacher tell me to write a poem, describing what I “felt” the Bach cello suite No.1 was about. It ended up sounding like a very sad Dr. Seuss story about cats. Never again…

There’s one particular clam I’m trying to pop right now. It’s called “Honey & Moonlight”. I tried to think of what I would call someone to show them how much I cared. Instead of “sunshine” or “doll” or “sweet cheeks” (which are not my favorite things and, therefore, not legitimate terms of endearment), I opted for honey and moonlight. They are two of my favorite things and I can think of no better combination to describe someone I like.

For a couple of years now, it’s only been a handful of words with this haunting, plaintive melody. The people who’ve heard it really like it and wonder what the rest sounds like. So do I.

Stuck. Stuck in the dark, straining to gain momentum. So, I ask you problem solvers: what do you do when you struggle with a problem off and on for a long time? Should I take a walk? Should I take a train to Pawtucket? Should I sing things upside down? How do you overcome writer’s block?

(So grateful that Jesus never gets writer’s block. Constantly speaking the world.)

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How to Love the Punster in Your Life

Posted in Speech, tagged , , , , , , , on May 30, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Punsters are individuals who are blessed with the ability to see and create puns in everyday conversation. They do this via wordplay, homophones, homonyms, and being comedic geniuses.

If you know a punster, you’ve probably rolled your eyes more than a few times. You may even have tried to punish them for being hilarious. This post is intended to help you understand and love the punsters in your life. I’m no pundit, but I’ll try to help. I only have twenty minutes.

1.) Laugh. While an honest punster makes puns for the sheer pleasure and joy of it, they also appreciate it when other people get the joke. If the joke’s about a forest, branch out and enjoy their sense of humor. It will boost their self-esteem treemendously. If it’s a pun about cows, let the joke moove you to a chuckle. Even if you’ve herd it before, punsters udderly enjoy repeats.

2.) Have patience (even if you’re not a doctor). If nobody laughs at first, a dedicated punster will usually repeat the pun with greater emphasis until you at least acknowledge the genius of it. Nurse their comedic ego back to health. Give them a shot of confidence. Even if it’s complete pundemonium, keep cool.

3.) Join the fun! If their pun is humerus and you feel the kneed to get a leg up on the competition, share your own! Even if it’s lame. Even you feel defeeted afterwords. Don’t kick yourself. You’ll toetally heel. And if the punster is any friend at all, they’ll laugh patiently at the joke. Maybe yule get better by Christmas.

And what do you know? I finished on time. How punctual.

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The Deep Magic of Skin

Posted in Science, tagged , , , , , , on May 29, 2012 | 3 Comments »

I am 10 trillion cells.

16% of my body weight is skin.

1.6 trillion skin cells coat these muscles and bones. Somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 skin cells jettison every hour. That means, in the last 24 hours, I have lost roughly a million skin cells.

This means that I change. I change a million-cells worth every day. Every hour, I regenerate like Doctor Who. Though I may look similar, my face today is not the same face you saw yesterday. It is newer even as I grow older. And the same is true for you. We age like a paradox and are the only creatures to fuss about it.

And because I am changing so frequently, every portrait of me is a lie. Even something as recent as a graduation photo is not representative of present-day me. That face is old and gone, even while the features of it are young and gone. This is the grinning madness of truth. We are older when we are younger. We are younger than we were yesterday. Newer cells for older selves.

But those skin cells have to go somewhere. Where can I put my old face? Casual litterbug that I am, my skin cells shed wherever they please. The dust on my books? Mostly me. Window sill grim? Mostly me. In the course of a year, I’ll leave 8 lbs. of myself just lying around the house. Or in the car. Or at the public library.

That is the wonder of all this is: I leave myself everywhere. If I’m shedding skin cells by the hour, then wherever I go I leave bits of myself. My body dispenses souvenirs. There are pieces of me in the deserts outside Tijuana. I still linger in the forests of Vermont. Most wonderfully, there are parts of me hanging around somewhere in Busch Stadium (where I truly belong).

Every portrait of me is a lie, but I everywhere I go, I leave faceless portraits. While I can’t be everywhere at once, parts of me can be parts of everywhere at once. And that’s a start.

What about you? Where have you left yourself? Any place nice?

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I’m Always Angry

Posted in Jesus, The Arts, What If?, tagged , , , , , on May 27, 2012 | 4 Comments »

“If I wasn’t a Christian, I would’ve killed you years ago.” I can still remember saying that to a friend back in high school. Even though we were joking around, it was probably indicative of a much deeper problem in my soul.

My friend and I were talking about what we would do if we weren’t bound by Christian convictions and ethics. Basically, we liked to play the “what if” game. Some people don’t have much patience for this game, but Paul apparently liked it (1 Cor.15- “what if Christ is not risen from the dead?”).

While I can’t remember his hypothesis, but my own speculation was this: if I wasn’t a Christian, I probably would’ve killed a few people before taking myself out in some dramatic fashion (wrestling a bear, maybe). This sounds dark, but when you’re shooting your mouth off as a high school kid, you don’t always ponder the weight of your own words.

Why did I tend toward destruction (both my own and others’)? Why not, “If I wasn’t a Christian, I’d steal a lot of stuff” or “if I wasn’t a Christian, I’d become a paranormal investigator and make some sweet coin on my own T.V. show”? Because I had rage issues. And I find I still do.

Now let me be clear. You will never see me storming down the sidewalk, tripping children and kicking blind puppies. I’ve learned to control it. I’m actually a very laid back, peaceful guy. I’m just a peaceful guy with a proclivity for rage.

I tend to be passive-impulsive. That’s probably a psychological category, but here’s how I use it: I’ll get a sudden surge of anger, but I won’t do anything about. Some imagined slight from an acquaintance. Some careless word from a friend. A direct insult from someone I don’t much care for.

It could be anything.

It will immediately become enrage, but you would never know. Externally, I’d look calm. But internally, it would simmer and fester there just beneath the surface. It’s terrible. It breeds bitterness and resentment and I end up plotting terrible things on the people that wrong me and tearing them apart in my mind. But again, it’s passive. Nothing will ever be acted out. And that, of course, means that I will rarely resolve the issue with the person who’s offended me. And that’s not healthy.

There’s a great line from this great movie called the Avengers. You may have heard of it. At one point, Bruce Banner turns to Captain America and says, “That’s my secret, Captain: I’m always angry.” When I heard that line, I instantly identified with it.

I can look as calm as a Hindu cow, but if I’m not careful, anger and rage and resentment can sneak in and eat away at me. They can combine to become a constant presence in me. And before I know it, I’m living life, trying to love people and honor everyone with a time bomb just beneath my ribs.

Sure, I’m not always angry. Sometimes, I’m very happy. But anger and rage and wrath are the struggles that come up most often. You have yours. I have mine. We learn to control them and we deal.

Now, this brings up the question: is my love, then, sincere? Paul tells Christians that our love should be genuine. So, if I’m loving people while I’m angry, am I really loving them?

I’m angry because my pride has been wounded or I feel I’ve been cheated out of something I was supposedly owed. Rage turns me inward, introspectively and forcefully focusing on my self. Love, as a rule, is others-focused. So, I find this law at work: two opposite forces, rage and love, active in the same body. That sounds like a pretty common Christian experience to me (see also Romans 7:7-25).

But what do you think? If you’re a Christian, can you imagine what your life would be like without Christ? What does such a scenario tell you about your particular inclinations as a broken human being? Is there any value in the “what if” exercise when applied to matters of faith?

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Beautiful, Childish Things

Posted in Jesus, The Arts, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 28, 2012 | 3 Comments »

Fed Up With Growning Up

Deep down, I just want to play. I’m childish. Notice that I didn’t say “I’m childlike”. Childish is a word that, especially in the Church, is looked down on because of its perceived connotations of pettiness and fussy discontent. An -ish ending on a word often conveys a nasty condition. Childlike, however, is much more acceptable. If you’re childlike, you’ve retained your sense of wonder and faith and innocence. But I’m fed up just enough with the abuse of both words that I honestly don’t care to make a distinction anymore.

I’m writing this because I feel Christians (myself included, certainly) are a bit too grownup for their own good. Let there be any bit of silliness, any revelry in a pile of leaves, any “infantile” joke, any overall frolicking (beautiful word, isn’t it?) and you’ve obviously devolved into an irresponsible creature, lacking in perspective.

Now, for sure, we do need to “grow up” in the sense of human anatomy and psychological development. We must support ourselves and those we love. We must pay our taxes, give generously, love well, take our punches, and learn from the scars. That sort of growing up is wonderful and natural and good.

But there is a colder form of maturation that is no maturation at all. It is not growing up. It is growing out. It is a process in which one grows out of all things childish or childlike or imaginative or silly. It is a putting away of childish things. And here’s where I think Christians run into a severe misunderstanding.  This is where I was stuck for a long time before I grew up a little.

Childish Things

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11)

This verse has become a licence to jettison one’s childhood in favor of big boy and big girl clothes. This verse has been twirled like a club, beating dreamers into submission, into “acting their age”. If acting your age means being wise as serpents and innocent as doves, loving other people as fellow creatures made in God’s image, and putting the needs of others before our own, then we should certainly act our age. But this verse is often pushed down the throat of the kid in us, choking the life out of our silliness and our creativity. This is the verse that builds up inhibitions. This is the verse that lies and tells us there no monsters under the bed. This is the verse that tells us faery land doesn’t exist.

At least, that is what the verse has been twisted to say.

But there needs to be a few things said about the context and meaning of this sweet little verse. 1.) It is descriptive, not prescriptive. Paul is explaining something that happened in his youth. He is not commanding all Christians to follow suit. 2.) This verse is the illustration, not the point. In context, Paul is talking about how we won’t need prophecy or tongues or knowledge because one day we will be fully known as we ought to be. 3.) Putting away childish things does not mean putting away the child.

The Fear of Appearing Childish

Let me harp on that last point for a bit. Just because I don’t play with my X-Men action figures anymore doesn’t mean I don’t love the epic scope and grandeur of sweeping battle fields and heroic action sequences. Just because I no longer create little bug worlds in my mom’s garden does not mean I don’t lose myself in the shock and wonder of nature (see previous post). The child in me is still very much active, even if I’m an adult.

But this is what a lot of grown-ups fear: being thought of as childish. In “An Experiment in Criticism”, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Nothing is more characteristically juvenile than contempt for juvenility.” Which is worse: the man who gallops through the woods just so he can get dirty or the man who’s too scared to admit he wants to as well?

As one who works with students in a church setting, I often feel like I have more fun than some of them. Oh, they enjoy themselves and do alright, I suppose. But every now and then, I can see their shields go up and they become too scared to move. Some of them always keep an eye on their peers, wondering if they’re doing it right, if they’re acting their age. It’s times like those I wish I could just lock them in a closet with a Winnie the Pooh book until they learned to laugh again. Maybe it’s this monster we call “adolescence” that robs everyone blind.

Do It Again!

We’ve lost the childish joy that God immortal has. Look at the apparent monotony of the created order. All daisies look like daisies. Chickens lay eggs. Fish swim in water. The sun rises every morning, over and over again. Hum drum and ho hum. Yawn.

But God does not view it as monotony. He doesn’t look at it as a lack of variety that all daisies are the same or that the sun comes up again and again. God has enough abounding vitality to exult in a repeated game, like a child wanting you to play the same song or do the same trick over and over until you pass out.

“Grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. Bu perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, “Ethics of Elfland”)

The eternal appetite of infancy. That craving to revel in wonder and find continuous delight in the repetitive magic of life. That is what I mean by being childish and childlike. Putting away childish things doesn’t mean you burn yourself hollow of everything that makes childhood sweet. If anything, it allows you grow up enough to hold onto your childhood.

 

 

 

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The Good Giver of Gladness

Posted in Jesus, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 27, 2011 | 3 Comments »

Distracted by Shock

I’m working on a paper on Leviticus right now. Well, not right now. I’m blogging right now. Such a funny word. Blogging. I’m distracted by the word “blogging” from blogging right now, which is in turn distracting me from my paper. And we’re back.

I thought I’d take a break from thinking and writing about God so that I could think and write about God. I could count on two and a half hands the number of times I have looked in the Bible and been so utterly shocked by God that for weeks I couldn’t shake it. The astonishment lingers like when you see the flash of a camera on the other side of your eyelids. The image burns itself into the darkness.

A Bible-less Culture

Last week, I was reading through Acts (because I have a severe interest in church planting) and came to a story I remember seeing on flannel graph when I was little. In Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas are at Lystra (in present day Turkey (in present day Asia Minor)). They are preaching the Gospel. They are two Jews (one of them a very learned biblical theologian) and they are preaching the Gospel to crowds of non-Jews. These people have no synagogue. They have no Bible. They have no knowledge of Yahweh. They have no hope for salvation.

They are polytheists. They worship a pantheon, a plurality of deities. But when they see Paul heal a life-long cripple, they worship him. They call him Hermes and they call Barnabas Zeus and the priests of Zeus bring oxen and garlands and they offer sacrifices to them. So, all of a sudden, because God acted through Paul to heal a broken body, the Gospel is capsized and the messengers become the end all be all of the message.

But once the apostles understand what’s going on, they tear their clothes. They show their grief and their heart-sickness at the misunderstanding. The misunderstanding is this: creation should be elevated above Creator. It’s an old heresy and it has been dehydrating souls for millennia, shriveling humans up to the size of their idols.

Then the apostles open their mouths. They explain that they too are broken, sinful creatures, “of like nature” with them. They are no Olympians. There are no Olympians. They are simply worshiping creatures, trying to point the people of Lystra back towards the Creator.

But remember, the crowds at Lystra had no Bibles. They had no concept of the Great Story. They did not know what Yahweh had been doing since the beginning. They could not unscroll the first book of Moses and read the creation story to gain that infinite reference point, to better understand their relation to the Creator.

So, how do you share the Gospel with no “church background”? Here’s how Paul and Barnabas did it. This is what shocked the boredom right out of my heart.

The Gospel of Pleasure

Verse 15: “We bring you good news [we preached the Gospel], that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.”

The apostles redirect the crowds’ right and powerful urge to worship. They simply give them a new aim: Yahweh. The implication of the Gospel is simple: turn from the worthless, turn to the Infinite Worth of God himself.

Verse 16: “In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”

Did you catch that? Paul and Barnabas know that these people have no reference point for understanding what God has done through Israel and the Messiah. So, they go directly to the things that the people Lystra had always thanked their gods for: rain, prosperity, food, gladness. And the apostles put these good gifts into their proper place:

They are witnesses.

Gladness Points to God

They are all good gifts that point deeply and fervently back to the Giver of all good gifts: Yahweh. The living God who made everything gives humanity good things, not so that we should be thankless, but so that we may follow the trail back to the living God who takes good care of all people.

But notice something incredible here. Not only does God give good things, he gives satisfaction itself. It is God who satisfies the heart. It is God who imbues us with gladness when things go well, when we sip our pumpkin spice lattes, when we stroll in the rain for the sake of strolling in the rain. Any joy or happiness or delight you’ve ever felt was a gift from God. More than that, it is a witness to God. It was given so that you might be redirected from the gift back to the Giver.

God does good by giving us gladness. I have friends (some who love Jesus, some who don’t) who are much happier creatures than myself. I’m something of an Eeyore (and that’s okay, Tiggers). But they are almost skillful when it comes to sucking the marrow out of life. I love being around them. They’re wonderful. Their gladness and their happiness is proof that God is good. It is God who gives gladness. It is God who gives satisfaction, on any and all levels.

Happiness (and I make no distinction, as some Christians do, between joy and happiness) is engineered to give pleasure. That pleasure is designed to point us back to God. Adam and Eve wandered from God, seeking their joy apart from Yahweh. Yahweh has provided the way back to his own goodness through his Messiah, Jesus Christ. Yahweh himself is the source of all pleasure (in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore- Psalm 16:11). And all throughout this world, Yahweh shines in all that’s fair. He has dotted our paths with sign posts, all pointing us back to his goodness and beauty.

The Gospel is for anyone who wants happiness. The Gospel is for the lovers, the dreamers, and me. The message of the Christ’s Gospel of pleasure is this: all satisfaction is ultimately given to make us turn and worship Yahweh, the living God who created us all. Try and remember that the next time you enjoy one of his good gifts, whatever it might be.

 

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Though…Yet: Reflections On Loss and Joy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 17, 2011 | 4 Comments »

Habakkuk 3:17-19

17Though the fig tree should not blossom,
   nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
   and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
   and there be no herd in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
    I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
19GOD, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the deer’s;
   he makes me tread on my high places. To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.

Sometimes I read a bit of Bible and think, “wow, that is profound” and I store it away in this mental pot of wise and beautiful truths. These few verses have always been that way to me. They were always an example to me of how God’s people should respond to adversity with nobility and strength.

But then life happened. Life happened with a vengeance. In the span of a month, my life took a couple swifts shots to the heart. Love, expectation, hope, job security, future plans: all of them were wiped clean like sand castles at high tide. I remember that I posted the above text as my Facebook status right after the first domino fell. I was determined to react to adversity just like Habakkuk.

I didn’t.

I went through all my stages of grief. I’m not sure what the stages of grief are, but I know what mine are. They involve a lot of quiet walks in the woods, a lot of anger, and a lot of not talking about it. Like any honest man, I was forced to ask God (demand, actually) for an explanation. And it had better be a good one. But after a lengthy period of pure numbness to the life that had burned down around my ears, I began to come back to this text, often in the long hours of the night. I began to pick it apart and turn it over in my head and make it my own. It wasn’t hard. This was (and in some ways, is) my situation.

I’ve even come up with a title for these verses:

“Though my world breaks, yet I will rejoice in God.”

Verse 17 is a progression from bad to worse. To quote Gertrude, “One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, so fast they follow.”  In an agrarian culture like ancient Judah, their crop and flock failing them meant that their way of life, their means of supporting themselves, their sources of sustenance/delight, basically all that they depended upon and enjoyed, was now gone. This would mean that their world, all their stability and comfort, had fallen apart. All needs and wants hitherto relied upon: lost. That’s the situation.

But verse 18 is the strange, counter-intuitive response.

Yet.

Yet I will rejoice. I will rejoice in what? In optimism? In looking for the silver lining? In counting my blessings? In replacement joys? In the hope of getting all my requirements and loves back, safe and sound? No. Sometimes, you don’t get everything back twice fold like Job did. Christians don’t like to talk about those stories, but they happen. And what do you do when your left with a loss that isn’t being healed?

“Yet I will rejoice in the Lord“. Notice that he doesn’t say, “I will rejoice in the Lord’s blessings”. He doesn’t look to God as a giver of joys. He doesn’t look to God as secondary to happiness. He looks to God as the SOURCE of joy. God becomes primary and preeminent as pleasure. Habakkuk rejoices in God. He takes pleasure in God. He delights in the nature and character of God first, who He is. Only then does he move on to say that he takes joy in the God of his salvation.

So, even though all his dependencies and pleasures fail (presumably beyond his control), he remembers that God has saved him. And that simple, transcendent and devastating fact changes everything. It’s not that he ignores what has happened to him. Get that. He fully acknowledges that life sucks and that everything has gone wrong. Yes. But, in light of those fractures, he runs to the one who saved him. And in THAT God, the one who saved him despite calamity, he takes joy. He finds his healing for loss in God Himself.

This is probably the hardest thing for me to do.

And he not only finds ultimate, immutable pleasure in God. Look at verse 19- he also finds ultimate, immutable strength in God. God is his joy and his strength and Habakkuk needs both. When all his dependencies and pleasures are lost, he doesn’t crumple up like an old letter. He is not lost. He is made secure in dangerous positions. He is empowered to tread in the midst of deadly terrain. God becomes his pleasure and his strength.

Notice that he doesn’t take strength in God as he takes joy in God. God simply IS his strength. If He were not Habakkuk’s strength, Habakkuk could never have found the willpower to make God his strength, let alone to delight in Him. His ability to rejoice in God is wholy contingent upon God being his strength. God’s enablement is the only way verse 18 could possibly be a human response to such an inhuman situation in verse 17.

And he doesn’t resent or complain about the fact that all he loved and needed was taken from him. He doesn’t lash out at God or the Babylonians (the people who would later come to take all the crops and flocks of Judah). He instead takes all anger, all frustration, all pain and grief and focuses it into a seeking and a striving after God. This is difficult. I can’t justify holding a grudge. I’m honestly not angry at anyone. I can truly say that I’m not. It’s more just the situation. I was left alone with it and I had to deal with. More than anything, it’s just dealing with the hole that I was dropped into. That’s what I had to wrestle with. It happened. Beyond my control. How do I respond?

This was Habakkuk’s response to the world breaking around him: to actively take joy in the God who had saved him and to remember that his strength is only and always God, even in the dangerous, trecherous situation he found himself in. I love that these verses are a song, played with strings instruments. Sweeter still.

So.

Though my world breaks, yet I will rejoice in God.

May it ever and always be so with me.

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Newness and Awareness

Posted in Scripture, tagged , , , , , , on March 18, 2011 | 4 Comments »

What’s new? I’m emerging from a shivering, sore throat stupor that has lasted a few days too long. I still haven’t made a move to publish my children’s book. And I’ve started drinking my coffee black like a real Texan.

Busy.

An artist friend of mine once remarked that to say “there is nothing new under the sun” was a rather boring way to look at the world. I clutched that comment and thought it over for about six months. This is the feeble product of that musing.

What my friend was referring to was a recurrent phrase in the book of Ecclesiastes: “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecc.1:9). Some have taken this to be a hapless, pessimistic view of the world. But, in context, the Preacher is actually saying that this is the way NOT to look at life. It is the reality of life without God (nothing new).

Ecclesiastes employs a dialectical system of opposites. It’s a conversation he has with himself from two different sets of eyes. The negative view of life (“nothing new under the sun”) and the positive passages (“apart from him [God], who can have enjoyment”) are thrown next to each other to outline the Preacher’s quest to find meaning in life. The dead end pursuits, life “under the sun” (life lived by earthly standards) left him feeling empty. A God-centered life gives true fulfillment and meaning to the monotony of life.

Life “under the sun” sees…

Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset. Day in, day out.

Life from the hand of God sees through such a different color.

Lamentations 3:22-23:

“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.”

What mercies never come to an end? As C.H. Spurgeon once said, “All beyond hell is mercy.” Breathing is a mercy. Water is a mercy. Sunsets are mercies. A recognition that God’s hand is the source of all things liberates life from monotony.

I quote G.K. Chesterton at length here, mostly because he’s awesome.

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps god is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them (Orthodoxy).”

Christians are too bored with life. I am. I am blind to the daffodils that emerge like dead warriors’ blades from the grave. I am deaf to the cardinals who sing a duet in the pine tree outside our window. I am numb to the sunrise on my shoulders.

I wear my callouses with pride. Calloused to the mysterious triune God revealed in Holy Scripture.

C.S. Lewis once said, “God is not a static thing…but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.”

A dynamic, pulsating, life. That is the God of living water. That is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is the God of pleasures forevermore. And Christians are guilty of turning a casual eye to the Lord who commands the sun to “do it again!”

And I am bored.

Why so complacent?

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Jim Swilley

Posted in Jesus, Scripture, tagged , , , , , , on November 15, 2010 | 4 Comments »

That’s How You Start a Monday

This morning, my daily NPR informed me of another stunning story.  If you haven’t heard, a few weeks back Bishop Jim Swilley came out to his congregation that he was gay.  I’ve lost track, but this is probably the 74th pastor to do this in the last five years.  I’m a bit frustrated.

I don’t usually write angry blog posts and this will not be the first.  I’m not frustrated that Bishop Swilley is now a happy man, getting a good night’s sleep.  I’m not that frustrated that his ex-wife is the associate pastor at his megachurch. I believe it’s wrong, but dirty brass needs little inspection when the ship is going down. And you know, I’m not even so frustrated that he’s gay.  While it pains me, I realize that his orientation is merely a symptom.

I’m mostly just frustrated with how he justifies it all.

I’m sick of the tired arguments that attempt to legitimize a homosexual orientation.  Homosexuals deserve love and respect just like everyone else, but their attempts to justify their lifestyles do not satisfy.  Bishop Swilley’s view of Scripture is casual at best, and dangerous at worst.  His view of God’s truth is the indulgent greenlight for his behavior.

Please understand that this post is a reaction not against Bishop Swilley himself, but against view of Scripture and its authority in life.  It took tremendous fortitude to come out to his congregation and I’m saddened by the so-called “Christians” who would turn a cold heart to him or do worse.  That said, I’m more saddened by his approach to God’s Truth.

Following are just three of the problems I have with Bishop Swilley’s defense of his homosexuality.

First Problem: I Didn’t Ask for This

The bishop told his congregation that his sexuality was unasked for, “imposed” upon him.  He of course is asserting the position that homosexuality is a way one is born and not a choice.  Bishop Swilley insists that it was not a preference but an ontological certainty that he was gay.  He struggled with for decades.  He quoted Scripture, casted out demons, and fought against his own mentality to deal what he was feeling.  I can’t imagine the strain that must have put on a young man.  I sympathize with him.  It must have been a hard way to grow in the South.

Now, I’m not going to get into whether or not there’s a “gay gene” or whether or not it is a matter of choice.  For the record, I don‘t believe it is a choice, but that is not the concern here.  For the sake of argument, let’s say that it is a part of his nature.  Let’s say that he really was born innate tendencies toward the same sex. It’s who he is.

Does such a defense justify his desires?  Does it make his wants any less sinful than my own?  I was born with innate tendencies toward pride, lust, and covetousness.  It’s very natural for me to have those desires. That’s the way I lean as a human being.  But those are the desires that I must fight daily, by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Why?  Because natural does not mean good.

Geoff Ashley, of the Village Church, puts it this way:

“Even if one were born with an orientation toward homosexual desire, such a proclivity would not evidence the legitimacy of that desire. Sin has radically affected every aspect of our lives and permeates all of our desires and affections and we are daily called to repent and trust Christ for strength.”

Nature vs. preference is a moot point.  Sin is sin and it should not be excused even if it is simply a part of human DNA.  Humanity, in its entirety, is fallen and needs to be redeemed by the Gospel of Christ.

Fun extra: Bishop Swilley, in another interview with Joy Behar, quoted Romans 9:20 (“Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’”) to suggest that God made him as a gay man and that he should not question God’s wisdom in that.  Unfortunately (though I appreciate the appeal of such an argument), that verse is actually talking about salvation.  In the context of Romans 9, Paul is actually referring to God’s sovereignty in the purpose and destination of eternal souls, not in the way God that creates people.

Second Problem: Focus On Your Own Game

In his interview with NPR (which I would highly recommend you listen to), Bishop Swilley quotes Phil.2:12.  He expounded upon this verse by saying that ” your relationship with God is not my relationship with God and, frankly, it’s none of my business”.  Therefore, his responsibility should be simply to preach the Gospel and let the Gospel do its work.  A bishop should not meddle in the spiritual lives of his parishioners.  It is their own salvation that they need to work out with fear and trembling.

I have a problem with this because he takes that verse out of context with marvelous abandon.  Paul saying “work out your own salvation” is not an attempt to steer clear of interfering in the lives of people.  Actually, that whole verse is an attempt to get into the lives of those people in Philippi.  In the same verse, Paul commends them for their past obedience to his teaching.  Clearly, he felt that he (as a minister of the gospel) had the loving right to speak truth into their lives.

So for Bishop Swilley to quote Paul to insist that a Christian’s life is a private matter (including whether or not he or she is a homosexual) betrays a total, and perhaps willful, ignorance of the context.

Third Problem: Jesus and Homosexuality

At the end of his interview with CNN’s Don Lemon, Swilley agrees with the host that Jesus never talked about homosexuality.  Again, Geoff Ashley at the Village has written brilliantly on that subject.  I’ll let you read it in its entirety, but one of his points is that Jesus never mentioned homosexual because it was not a relevant issue in first century Jewish culture.  He also makes a great point about the foolishness of making an argument from silence.

Love and Disagreement

I have a deep and strong affection for the homosexual community.  I truly do.  I believe they are one of the most misunderstood, mocked, and persecuted tribes in America today.  They deserve nothing short of our utmost kindness and respect.

But that doesn’t mean that I need to agree with them where their views depart from Scripture.  My love for them is also expressed in my speaking the truth about Christ and about truth and about the intended role of sexuality in the world God created.  And I welcome civil and sincere discourse.

Here’s to hoping that the angry comments will not descend upon me like a squadron of TIE-Fighters.

Your PB from J for today: “This is true love.  Think this happens every day?”

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