Of Others

I thought this was classic. If I knew a Christian Goth woman, I'd probably buy her one for my own amusement.

Also, one of my friends wrote a very good blog entry about respect, credentials, and love. I'm not sure how public she wants her blog, so I won't link to it. (Although the more technically inclined should be able to find it anyway. +1 respect points if you can.) I've stuck in assorted thoughts of my own.

I think it's interesting to hear people describe themselves - what pieces of info they choose to share at first and what impression they want to make. It shocks me how many adults want to impress me (yeah, I have my people I instantly want to impress as well). These conversations are much different in working relationships than friendships and friendships than dating, etc.

Wow, I'm glad nobody wants to impress me. (Mike: Now the question is - which part is the joke? That nobody wants to impress me, or that I'm glad about being so insignificant?)

One of the weirdest places to do this is church. I've recently been asked a number of times about what I'm involved in ... A few of the queries I've fielded have been motivated by comfort level ... I have no problem telling this set that [various involvement details edited out]...

This full answer only applies to that set of people (apparently my blog-reading public as well, but I'm guessing most of you know me well enough to unpack that anyway).

Ah, the on going question: How honest am I with strangers? I was reading job interviewing tips today. Most them boil down to "Don't be too open, manipulate any negative to seem like a positive. Honesty is not a good policy."

There's another set that's getting ready to judge my spirituality and our possible friendship or no based on my answer. It's sort of in the way the question is asked - lead up to after other prestige questions or before much has been said. There's this feeling that I get that if I've got the right pedigree, we'll try a friendship. If not, why bother?

This attitude fully annoys me and makes me sad...

On the other hand, it is a fair question - the things a person believes, thinks and feels make up who they are. These are often indicated by how they use or waste their time and occasionally by their level of involvement in something.

So here we go - how does one answer that question in both a humble, non-self-serving manner and honestly without negative pride?

Not much else to say. I loved the entry.

Temptation by any other name

I'm amazed how envy and dissatisfaction takes about 2.53 seconds to get a hold in my heart. I was going to the refrigerator to get my packed lunch the other day. (My non-robotically self-made lunch, may I add.) And enroute I encountered the pizza buffet that my work had ordered for the VIP meeting.

And I promptly decided that I wanted pizza.

My next thought was that my own lunch wasn't good enough. (Nevermind that it was cheese & ham sandwiches with mustard on slightly stale bread and a banana. Yes, the slightly stale bread was my fault.) And then I was grumpy at God for providing the VIPs with free pizza and not me. (Nevermind that I earn enough that I could buy pizza; that if I did get a raise, I probably wouldn't buy pizza with it; and that I have other priorities for my money.)

From there, my mind drifted to God holding out on me. Amazing what a few boxes of pizza can bring me to.

Gone to Meddling

Lately I've been thinking about the issues of honesty, respect, and tact. I'm especially thinking about it because I'm discovering lately that I have a lot of views that rub people the wrong way. (I know that is shocking to many of you.) I've scratched or delayed half a dozen blog topics because I haven't figured out a way to write which both honestly presents my thoughts and yet gives respectful space to those with other views.

My problem is that often honesty seems to be taken as implicitly disrespectful and tactless. Why? Because we want people to be who they aren't. I want people to care about my problems when they don't. I want people to like my choices when they don't. I want people to spend time with me when they don't.

Conversations might go like this:

Acquaintance: So why didn't you come bowling last night?
Tactful Me: I didn't feel in the mood to go bowling.
Honest Me: Because Stan went. I despise Stan and can't stand being around him.

Friend: So why did you decide to help out with your church's "Help the elderly" ministry?
Tactful Me: I felt like this was a great opportunity to serve God and just really felt than he laid this opportunity on my heart.
Honest Me: Well, there's this hot girl who said she was going to get involved and I wanted to impress her.

A friend (Charles) recently commented that he found tattoos repulses. Another friend (Stan) promptly commented that Charles was being ridiculous. A part of me agrees with Stan. I don't get Charles. I don't get why he's disgusted by tattoos. But that doesn't give me the right to trivialize or invalidate his feelings or reaction.

How does Charles honestly expression his repulsion to a tattoo artist?

After Charles mentions his repulsion, how do I answer his question "So what do you do?" when I, in fact, am a tattoo artist.

What makes a feeling or reaction silly or ridiculous?

P.S. I'm feeling bad for having demonized Stan and Charles so much. I need a new set of names for abusing when I want to write an example in. Please suggest some good ones.

It's All About Me

So I've been thinking a lot about churches. I realized that I've been with my current church for eight years. That's a long time. And my church has changed significantly in those years. I've been thinking about some of the changes, and whether or not I would have gotten involved had those changes existed eight years ago. Not that the changes are bad - most of them are great - I'm just not sure if I would have appreciated the current church eight years ago.

I've also been contemplating what I expect from a church - and what I should bring to a church when I choose it. I easily view the church as a monolithic entity which should be responsible for welcoming me, teaching me, entertaining me, befriending me, advising me, bring food when my family has a child, and visiting me when sick, and such. But a church is made up of people who have families, 40-hour a week jobs, credit card debt, mortgage payments, and the like. In short, the church is a lot like me.

How many times a week do I call a friend from church to see how he is doing? If others call as their friends as frequently as I call mine, then I'd get about as many phone calls as I made.

How often do I really sit down and ask how someone is doing?

How often do I ask someone to for advice?

How often do I make a point of welcoming new people? Of remembering their names?

How often do I let myself be inconvenienced by others' needs?

How often do I learn the stories of others?

How often do I sit down and ask someone how I came across - and how I could be more effective in communicating with them?

How often am I wrapped up with my life and my comfortable circle of friends that I simply neglect the very activities that I expect from my church? What does it take for me to feel loved and befriended? Am I consistently giving that to others?

I don't think we all bring the same gifts to the church. But I think it's easy for us to expect more from the church as a whole than we bring to the church. Basic math says that if I'm contributing E effort from the church and everyone in the church followed my model, then we each get out roughly what we put in. Figure some loss due to thermodynamics (e.g. friction), and we get back less than we put in.

(I admit, I don't totally buy the math above. I think we often reap benefit that is not proportional to the energy put in. I have other concerns with that representation. But it gets at a point I've been pondering a lot lately.)

Group Think

So I mentioned that I've been thinking about group think verses individuality. Specifically, I've been thinking about organized religion in the form of the church. I think that my generation - and possibly others - tend to be very critical of organized church. Here's some of my musings.

For some reason, I often feel caught in the middle between the people who are badly hurt by the group and the group. Here's some of my frustrations...
- I rarely can get both sides of the story. It's usually a lot easier to get the side of the angry, grieved party than the groupthink.
- We assume sins against us as horrendously intentional rather than painfully accidental.
- When we're sinned against, we usually want justification, not to cover the offense and seek reconciliation, patiently reaching out toward the offenders.
- When we do want to cover the offense, it's often because we're afraid of conflict on matters where the boat should be rocked.
- I believe in the institution of the organized church.
- I don't believe that all churches are good churches.
- I believe in loyalty to a specific church.
- I don't believe in blind loyalty to a specific church.
- I believe it's important to not be tearing down the character or work of other Christians.
- I believe it's important to know the flaws of one's leaders.

I really hate the typical pattern I see, which is that Charles joins the church. Charles is enamored by the church and gets heavily involved. After a while, Charles becomes disillusioned by a combination of factors. Some of this is simply that Charles is loosing his blinders and seeing issues that were problems all along. Other issues are just Charles' take on them.

Charles feels like he can't talk to people. Maybe he tries talking to someone "in leadership" - say, Stan - and the conversation goes badly. Stan doesn't really see the issues Charles sees, or doesn't see them as the priority, or doesn't do a good job communicating his concern to Charles. Charles is hurt and angry. He feels like most of the church group supports Stan. He's angry at his church friends for not taking his side more. Charles doesn't have very many people that he can talk with about these problems - and few, if any, of them are in the group itself.

The few friends Charles does talk to don't have the other side of the situation - partly because they aren't involved in the group and partly because Stan hasn't shared his side of the story with complete strangers. These friends have few choices: They either foolishly empathize about how unjustly hurt Charles is; they staunchly defend Stan without any facts; or they feel caught in the middle without anything to say.

I really don't like the dynamic above in a lot of ways. Here's a few of my thoughts...
- As Stan, it's helpful to frequently discuss major failings - both personal and in leadership.
- As Stan, it's also important to realize that what others are seeing may not be what you are intending. Creating opportunities for others, especially acquaintances/strangers, to share what they see is helpful.
- As Charles, it's vital to seek out and apply the Biblical teachings on reconciliation, forgiveness, bitterness, and the like. We don't like the "If you have something against your brother, go to him." Usually the reason for not doing it? He won't listen. Maybe not, but I think we are really resistant to doing a sincere, prayerful, competent, humble reconciliation attempt.
- As friends, know that there are two sides, both probably somewhat in the wrong.
- As friends, blessed on the peacemakers. Not those who pretend conflict doesn't exist, but those who promote reconciliation between grieved parties.

One final thought: I think church can be particularly susceptible to the feeling that "no one else sees this issue". Why? Because good churches don't encourage gossip. And so there is a much smaller set of "public knowledge". At work, people have a reputation. Their flaws and irritating mannerisms are public knowledge because of gossip. So when I am hurt, it's easier for me to chalk it up to "so-and-so is just jerk about X".

In church, without gossip, I can't easily compare my experiences against "the group consensus". And so it's easier for me to feel hurt rather than realizing that Stan is just a blind fool in some areas.

Is it possible for a church people to be open about the weaknesses they see in others without becoming a gossiping church?

I'm an Idiot...And Other Boring Stories

Well, in my never ending goal of catering to my readers (<-- a joke, Mike), I've decided to post a couple self-humiliating stories. For some reason people seem to appreciate these.

Sob story one: I'm an idiot. Over the past eight weeks or so I've been realizing how much influence I let a handful of people have over me in certain environments. I feel like Pavlov's dog. Let's take a hypothetical straw man - say, Stan. For some reason, some criticism Stan made in high school has stuck with me. I don't know why I care about Stan's opinion. It's not like he's especially insightful or close. Somehow, though, I remember that he commented how nervous I was around him. And now whenever I endup at an event with Stan, my mind jumps to pondering if I'm acting nervous. I spend the rest of the night trying to maintain a coherent line of thought and not jumping back to mulling over whether or not I'm being normal. And then Stan leaves and I relax and life returns to normal.

It's strange. I doubt that Stan even remembers the comment. I doubt that Stan even cares. I really doubt that anyone else cares. Worse yet, I know better. Yet retraining the patterns is incredibly difficult. I'm glad that I don't have many Stan's in my life - and glad that I don't often see them. See now they remind me not only of how nervous I am, but what an idiot I am for allowing this line of thought to have control in my life for so long.

Sob story two: Sometimes being shopping alone at Meijer @ 10p on a Friday night is just really lonely.

Hrm, I need a happy cheerful story...I actually had one, too, but I seem to have forgotten it. Maybe that will be tomorrow's goal.

And I shouldn't leave us all without one serious theological thought...
I've been thinking about what it means that Jesus was tempted in every way, just as we are. One thought: Jesus knows the attractiveness of sin. And he knows why a sin is particularly attractive to us in our life and our place.

Meaninglessly Satisfying

In the meaningless and not terribly surprising category...I guess this means I'm cool according to some stranger. Oh well, I'll not scoff at free compliments.

Pure Nerd 86 % Nerd, 13% Geek, 30% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd. The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful. Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 96% on nerdiness You scored higher than 7% on geekosity You scored higher than 49% on dork points

Mercury poisoning

So today I learned about mercury poisoning. Here's a few of the things I learned:
- Mercury contaminates just about anything it touches.
- Mercury vaporizes when vacuumed, creating a toxic cloud.
- Mercury, spilled and vaporized, makes one's home almost unlivable.
- Mercury is especially dangerous to small children.
- Mercury is present in small glass thermometers, which are breakable.
- Mercury is one of those substances I should talk to poison control about.
- I don't have the number for poison control.

Don't ask how me how I learned all of the above. But I was thinking about how mercury is like sin.
- A little sin is toxic.
- Sin not only hurts me, but it hurts those closest to me.
- Sin is toxic, regardless of whether or not I realize the danger.
- Sin contaminates what it touches.
- Sin is made worse by my attempts to clean it up.
- Sin requires professional cleanup.

It's late. I should wrap all of this into a cool parable. Maybe a story about how I was an idiot and broke a thermometer and caused my apartment to be evacuated. But I don't have the coherency to be that clever. I'm also working through some thoughts I've been thinking about loyalty to a group verses groupthink. Remind me to post it.

Of %#$#*% and FEMA

Okay, first thought for tonight - two anonymous quotes:

Swearing is capable of expressing a raw realness of life that is lacking in all other words in the English language.

and in response to that

I both pity and scorn the uneducated yokel whose grasp of himself and English is so shallow as to consider swearing among the truest touches of emotions. What do they teach in schools these days?

(See Mike? A joke, of sorts.)

Elsewhere, I've been thinking that character development is like disaster preparation. Much of the time it's impossible to tell whether or not character development is happening. Those who are faithfully changing and those who are not look roughly the same. And then Katrina hits. And one's preparation - character - is revealed for the world to see. Sometimes Katrina is getting fired. A death in the family. A loss of a significant other or a divorce. A fight with a best friend.

I was thinking today that I tend to get complacent between the hurricanes and forget how important character and disaster preparation are. I tend to slack and forget to invest in communication equipment, dry food, and evacuation plan. I like glamour and glitz, not hardwork that seems meaningless. We only really see the success - or failure - of disaster preparation when the disaster strikes. We can speculate about theories of preparedness, but the true test is at the moment when landfill is made.

Am I committed to the daily grind of character development? To biting my tongue when others take credit for my work? To being genuinely gracious when others slight me? To playing the servant even when I don't think it matters? Do I believe God sees that which no one else sees? What patterns am I sowing for the future? How will those patterns impact the recovery effort when the next storm hits my life?

Music: A Taste of Heaven?

Ok, so it's been a good weekend for theology. Topics have included Catholicism, charismatic perspectives, the gospel, evil, the will of God, and such. I need to remember that a life of 100% theology is not healthy for me. 99.5% theology and 0.5% recreation would be much better. But that's neither here nor there. Related (indirectly) is a friend's response to my question about why he loved being involved in the band. Paraphrased with permission, here goes: He said it taught him about life...

You learn to play your part and support others while they play their part
You become sensitive and aware of leadership
You have a means to achieve expression

I really like being in a group that works together for a common goal, and where everyone contributes their individual talents, but where they are not supposed to "out do" others; rather, it is the interplay of all of the passages that brings depth and color to the music. When you do play the same notes as the person next to you, you have to learn to be keenly aware of their playing, and you need to align yourself with them with their breathing patterns, their tonality, the tuning...

You can never think only of yourself but you must continuously refine and work on your skills to allow yourself to grow and to give the group room to grow.

Ironically, I thought the above spoke beautifully about God and the church: What he intended the church to be in our lives and the role he wants us to play in it.

...A group that works together for a common goal, and where everyone contributes their individual talents, but where they are not supposed to "out do" others; rather, it is the interplay of all of the personalities that brings depth and color to the church. When you do serve the same roles as the person next to you, you have to learn to be keenly aware of their relationship with God, and you need to align yourself with them with their gifts, their style, the Holy Spirit...

The obvious conclusion is that music must be a taste of heaven.

Of Jokes and Men

Mike: I appreciate your encouragement that I should joke more. However, you should be fully aware that Vulcans do not joke. In other news, I've decided that I need a robot to make my lunch.

On a more serious note, I've decided that I'm a (lazy) minimalist, which conflicts very badly with my goal of eating lunch everyday. I'm trying to minimize (a) amount of money spent per meal, (b) amount of time fixing meal, and (c) boredom with the meal. I've finally gotten tired of sandwiches and bananas, and need to find something viable to take to work with me. Foods that won't destroy my clothing also seem like a plus. A robot seems like an ideal solution: Initially expensive, but cheap to maintain, doesn't get grumpy at being ignored, can learn new tricks, and impresses visitors.

I also have a communication axiom for those who care: Given that you are capable of communicating in two languages with a person who speaks only one, your documentation should be full and complete *in the language of the user*, not in your native language. It's amazingly frustrating to try and read complex technical documentation which has been poorly translated into English and trying to reverse engineer the operational functionality of the equipment.

The experience gives me a whole new sympathy to people who don't speak "Christianese". It's inevitable, I suppose, that groups develop lingo for frequently used concepts. But it's incredibly humiliating to be trying to read between the technical lines for what might have been meant. And I consider myself fairly technically savvy. (Foolishly, perhaps. <-- another joke for Mike.) But I can't see a journalist picking this documentation up and understanding it. And yet one job of an ambassador is to translate. I wonder whether I cheerfully and patiently translate my lingo for others.

A Game of Masks

It's bizarre how little it sometimes takes to get my heart stressed. Yesterday it was the thought around 6p that "maybe you didn't have Labor Day off - maybe you missed work today." And my immediate gut reaction was something akin to the waking up during finals week and realizing that your exam started 15 minutes ago clear across campus. And I spent the rest of the night trying to shake the thought. It's not like I really needed a reminder of how obsessive compulsive I tend to be.

The encouraging thought, though, is that I think people are pretty similar to me. Some of them hide it better - or at least differently - but fundamentally I think we all have many fears that tend to control and drive us. The problem is that we instinctively realize it's not terribly admirable to be driven by fear and so we dress our actions up. It's not that I think all good actions are from bad motives. But I think we're very good at doing good things for the very wrong reasons.

We volunteer because we're afraid of silence and being by ourselves.
We work hard at the job because we're afraid to commit ourselves to our families.
We drink heavily because we're afraid to face the pain.
We study hard because we're afraid to be failures.

How do I interact in people's lives? Do I encourage them that masks are unnecessary? Or do simply add a fear of being vulnerable around me and give them one more reason to wear a mask?

Symbolism

Okay, I'm back to blogging. I'm not quite sure how it slipped to being a week. I was going to make a nice post about recent neighborly mischief I've been up to and my thoughts on how it models the idea of the church as a body. However, I'm tired, so here's a quote I read this week.

"With hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is a miniature representation of our spiritual reality. We want to see ourselves as the heroes of the hour. But spiritually, our predicament is parallel to the armed gangs roaming the streets. Whatever initial mercy we may feel for these people quickly fades as we see these hoodlums responding to loss by shooting at rescue workers, raiding supply convoys, and otherwise disrupting civil order. Spiritually, it is true that our world is a wreck around us due to other's sin. But our response to that sin - the evil and mayhem that we cause - separates us from God, making us wanted criminals.

Suppose these hoodlums become trapped on roofs as the city floods. Imagine them rescuing themselves from their predicament. It is ridiculous! Water has flooded their home. Infrastructure has been destroyed. Cars are gone; gas stations malfunctioning; electricity out. One cannot reliable feed oneself, let alone traverse the many miles to civilization on their own. We send in relief precisely because we do not expect people to be able to cope with the situation their own.

Likewise, the good news is not "Sorry about the hurricane, but if you walk to Houston you can have a new life." Nor is the message "Well, there's an evacuation point five miles south of you; if you make it we'll consider you worthy of evacuation and provide you with aid."

But the Biblical message is "If you trust the rescuer and call out to him, he will get you out." Not out from an evacuation point, but out from the roof of your flooded house. We want so badly to think that we can contribute in some way, some shape, some form to our spiritual rescue. We want to think that some gesture we make, some effort, some token on our part is a necessary part of the rescue. Yet these efforts simply distance us from God.

The wonder of the gospel is that God is at work rescuing the armed hoodlums of New Orleans who have become trapped on flooding roofs. The question is not what can we contribute to getting out, but whether we will trust that Jesus is competent to rescue us without any help from us.

I've been thinking a lot about the spiritual parallels of Katrina and Christianity. About dependence on Jesus for what I can't accomplish. About what death and destruction are and what God wants to avoid. About New Orleans destroyed and what sin destroys in my life. About how God wants to train us to be rescue workers, not hoodlums. About the wonder of his wanting to make hoodlums his children. About how I don't really get it. And that's sad.