Security

So lately I've been thinking about security in life. A couple friends of mine have gotten robbed. Others have unexpectedly lost loved ones.

On the practical side, I've been thinking about writing a will.

On the philosophical side, I've been contemplating what it means to not lay up treasure where moths and rust (not to mention taxes, thieves, and incompetence) can get to it.

What does it mean to use money for good? What does it mean to stand up for justice? I was reading today about companies that work change Google results to hide slander from bloggers. And perhaps for the first time, it struck me: That's a good use of technical skill: Working to protect the reputations of people.

Commitment

I came across this blog post tonight. Very though-provoking.

Seek

I haven't had a lot to post - well, actually, I've had a lot to post, but I just don't seem to be finding good words to write it all down. Life has been pretty good, although many of my friends seem to be in the middle of tough times, so there will probably be opportunities to be helpful there.

I've also been contemplating that I don't tend to be extroverted or high energy. I don't tend to resonate with fire-breathing (Mr. Awesome) or crazy spontaneous camping trips. Or as one of my friends likes to say, I'm boring. And I'm not quite sure what to do with that. I was reading Tipping Point and the author was talking about connectors. These are people who naturally enjoy and maintain light social connections with many, many people - and that doesn't tend to be me.

I not contemplating this in a "Oh, I really need to be reassured that I have other talents" way, but more in a "Huh...I wonder how this plays into my relationship with God?" way. Did Jesus have a personality? Would Jesus' ministry have been different if he had a different personality? Could there have been a still sinless but more introverted Jesus? Or more extroverted?

(On a side note, I've been reading in Isaiah about how many God tells people to seek him and they will find him. So I've been pondering why God seems so hard to find.)

Okay, So I'm Ignorant

I was at a teaching a few months ago where the speaker talked about how Protestants don't know their Bibles nearly as well as they think they did. Specifically, he asked how many Protestants could summarize, say, Haggai. I brushed off the comment at the time. Anyway since then (and partially in response), I've been trying to get more familiar with the prophets.

Meanwhile I asked a friend for a theological book recommendation and he loaned me The Greatness of the Kingdom. He described it as talking about the Kingdom of God in the Bible, and it sounded a little dry - a few bits from the Gospels, a lot from Revelation, and maybe a scattering of other passages. I'd really wanted something that dealt more with the Old Testament, and definitely something more practical and thought-provoking than a discussion of a few passages.

So I wasn't very excited about the book (to be fair, that's mostly Dan's fault since he did a lousy job of describing the book) but I decided it would be rude to completely blow off the suggestion. It turns out the book is a fascinating 500-page in-depth study including significant discussion of the entire Old Testament, including the prophets, and many of the New Testament references to the Old Testament. The also includes sections of "How do we interpret the Bible?" (hermeneutics). It's also an interesting snapshot back in time - the book was written in 1959 - to see how the author applied the Bible to that place and time.

The book has been great - although slow reading - and I won't blog about much more of it. But one point that has really stood out to me is how many points in the New Testament refer back to the Old Testament, especially the prophets, and how badly I don't know the background. One quick example: Jesus' message starts with the announcement that the kingdom of God is coming (here and here). But there's no additional information provided about what kingdom. Why don't the gospel writers provide more information? Well, because they assume the gospel readers know about the kingdom from passages in the Old Testament -- especially the prophets.

So I'm realizing that the the speaker was pretty on target about his comment: There's no way I should be so ignorant of what the prophets said about something that Jesus talked about so frequently.

Honesty and Wit in Politics

I came across this article today. It's mostly a light-hearted essay about weird beach laws. But one of the quotes is from a mayor when asked about a law "prohibiting baby carriages from being parked on sand within 15' of a beach entrance":

"I can't fathom what the thought process was behind that one," said Mayor Adam Schneider, who did not know the law existed until a reporter questioned him on it. "We can do a pretty good job of looking foolish when we enforce `real' ordinances, let alone something like this. I just hope I don't get embarrassed and find out I voted for it in the past."

I like the mayor. He's aware of political reality (looking stupid, weird processes, possibility of embarrassment); he's not too proud - he can admit the law seems bizarre; and he's smart enough to realize he might have voted for it. Politics would be a lot more fun if more people had his wit and honesty.

Cents...

Lately I've been getting a number of interesting offers from businesses. My high school reunion, for example, sent me a form letter - a form letter which required my high school name, mascot, and color. It even implied that we'd had a previous reunion. If I didn't know that my high school class is actually organizing a reunion, I would have pondered if it was a daring scam to steal my credit card info.

Meijer (groceries), meanwhile, is being very clever. They used to run a charity program where they would give a small amount (1-4%) of the amount of one's spending that exceeded $100 per month. I doubt I gave more than $12/year that way. Probably more like $2. But I happily handed over my Meijer every time to let them track my groceries.

Now they want me to re-enroll. They'll donate 0.5% of all my purchases to charity - if I pay with cash, debit card, or Meijer credit card. The debit card was not in the initial offer, but they "modified" their policy based on "customer input". Unfortunately, I also get 0.5% cash back on my credit card, which I could give to charity if I was feeling, well, charitable. Part of me wonders if the whole charity aspect was a ploy to increase Meijer credit cards: Try out the program, get people hooked, then encourage them to continue giving by getting a credit card. On the plus side, I don't really like Meijer easily tracking my purchases, and now I don't have to carry a key-fob around to identify myself. I just have to remember to drop a quarter in the jar from today's purchases.

In other news, I'm practicing my home-improvement methodology. I found a small draft in the basement of my new place, so I'm trying the "plastic sheet + duct tape" approach.

Come Now, Let Us Fight

I've had the pleasure over the last few weeks to be challenged in my beliefs in various ways, most of them through interactions that I've been having with others. One of the more thought-provoking questions was "Why do so many Christians take the words of Paul more seriously than the words of Jesus?" (The comment wasn't meant antagonistically, however the print may sound.) It's actually a good question, but not one I'm caring to blog about today.

Instead I'm thinking about something I read in a history of the church book (Church History in Plain Language). The author comments that during the Protestant reformation, Catholics and Protestant sects often militantly fought each other because they saw beliefs not so merely as individual, but as communal, and if one believed falsely, one led the entire community astray. While I'm glad that theologically debates aren't fought to the death and religious beliefs aren't forced upon me, I've been thinking about that passion for others and for seeing other's walk a good path.

My impression is that in American, many of us view spiritual beliefs as private. And even if they aren't private, we often speak in code words or cliches - "God wants us to come to him in faith." The sayings may be true, but they conceal that people view the sayings very differently. Who do I mean by God? Faith? What does it mean to come to God in faith? Is that an active or passive? How do I learn about what it means to come to God in faith? And does everyone agree with the answers I'd give? My guess is no, not at all.

So why aren't we more passionate about sharing our knowledge, our beliefs, our understanding with others? After all, it's what sustains us in tough times, right? It's the source of our hope and joy when times are dark. Isn't it that which gives us meaning when the world is turned upside down? Well...maybe not. Here's three reasons I've been contemplating why we aren't more verbal with our faith.

1. Frequently, we don't have the character for prolonged disagreement about important issues. How we fight or debate reveals our character deficiencies. Paul tells Timothy "And the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth..." My first thought in debate is usually "Wow, it's really important that this person see truth." And then when I'm done, I often realize that by about the third sentence out of my mouth, I'd totally forgotten about them and focused on winning. (Never mind that they actually might be right...)

2. Sometimes, our beliefs aren't as important as we claim they are. We don't really see our faith as being our hope in a confused and messed up world. It's more like dessert. Nice, but not really essential. Sometimes, as part of this, we aren't really sure what we believe...and it's not a priority for us to figure out.

3. All too often, we don't deeply care about other's spirituality. Alright, I'm making assumptions. Let me rephrase: Often I don't care - at all. And from observation, I'm guessing others are like me. We're glad we have hope in a crazy world, and if our neighbor came and begged for us to share our beliefs, we'd obliged him. But we aren't desperate for others to have our hope. We don't look at people and think "Oh God, please send more workers to help these people. Please, change me, use me, let me communicate you to them. If it means a Mohawk, tattoos, a different career, embarrassment, shame, the loss of friendships - please God, let me reach others with the hope that I have."

And yes, I think there's other reasons too. There's issues of calling, uncertainty, growth, humility, timing, wisdom, and so on. It's possible this is more me projecting myself onto others than the actual state of affairs. Comments?

Slippers and Wishing

I'm back. Or, more accurately, I'm moved. While I'm at it, I've lost another roommate to marriage. I think that means that over the last five years, I've lost every roommate to marriage. Of course, that's only 2 roommates, but five years sounds more impressive.

I'm not quite settled in yet - it's hard to find spots for all the junk I never use but desperately want to keep. But I'm trying to do better at actually using it and not replacing it rather than simply hoarding it.

And for the first time ever, I'm contemplating the joys of slippers. I've never really thought of myself as a slipper person, but I like to sleep barefoot, and the way the heating in my new place works, it tends to be a bit chilly when I wake up. Slippers seem to be an excellent solution. It's weird - slippers have always seemed a bit pointless to me, so it's weird to find myself contemplating them. I guess that's my weekly dose of walking in other people's shoes.

Protestant Priests

I read an fascinating book (maybe Biblical Eldership by Alexander StrauchZ) which commented that Protestants often function as though their pastors are Protestant priests.

It's both an interesting and thought-provoking comment. As I understand Catholicism, the priests are different than the members: Only the priests are able to perform the sacraments - marriage, Eucharist, last rites, baptism, etc. In some rituals, there's the idea of the priest acting as the person of Christ.

In the Old Testament, the priests were the mediators between the people and God. If one had sins to atone for, one brought an appropriate sacrifice to the priests - which was how the priests were fed. Since priests were God's mediators for Israel, they had special rules for being holy.

I'm not entirely sure what the book meant about Protestant priests (I need to find the comment and re-read the section), but here's some things I've been thinking about:

- Do I believe there is certain ceremonies (Lord's supper, baptism or marriage) that only pastors should perform? If so, why?

- Do I believe pastors are more holy than other church members?

- What ministry do I believe only pastors should perform? Why?

- What do I actually think is different about someone once they've been appointed a pastor?

Confession: Marriage is actually the one that tripped me up here. I'm used to something like "By the authority committed to me as a minister of the Church of Jesus Christ, I declare that ________ and ________ are now husband and wife" or " I, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the state and the church, declare you to be husband and wife". (Here's a whole list of wedding pronouncements.")

I tend to think of "minister" and "pastor" an interchangeable, although I'd accept that those needn't be identical words. A quick Google search for "define: minister" suggests my first impression is reasonable. So what exactly is the authority committed to a pastor to declare a couple man and wife? Is it merely the state law requiring a pastor* for marriage? (* - Yes, the actual legalize is a bit more complicated. Judges can marry, some churches offer anyone a "minister" status, and there's actually a difference between the state requirements for officiant and pastoring - I've known churches that have been willing to let non-pastors receive "minister" status so that they can perform marriages. Nuance aside, pastors are the primary officiants at the weddings I know of.)

If the authority is merely state law, what do statements like "...and by the church" mean? Does the pastor have a special authority from the church regarding marriages? Or can I claim that authority? If this authority is special to pastors, where do they derive it from? And how is this different from having a special "holy" class of people - priests?

Of Pastors and Heresy

I thought about titling this entry "Anything you write can and will be used against you..." I've been contemplating authority and openness. A couple of my pastors now follow my blog (at least casually), and I've thinking about the implications.

One of result is this: It's an awful lot harder get away with heresy. And in general, I think this consequence is a good thing. I know, I know, America has stereotypes of leaders being evil men (and women) who can't wait to use their power for evil. How many admirals in Star Trek were ever good guys? (Kirk was demoted back to captain...) Even the beloved Twenty-Four doesn't exactly overwhelm us with good high-ranking officials.

But the absence of authority does not prevent evil - it merely leads to other evils. For example, if we had no environmental laws, how many corporations would be ecologically friendly? Child labor laws are the result of children's work conditions. Anti-theft laws are the result of stealing. And so forth. I'm not claiming that all power is used for good, but that we (I) often underestimate the legitimate good use of power.

I see leaders restraining evil -- appropriately -- as a GoodThing(tm). It's a GoodThing for my pastors to know how I communicate - both content and tone. It's good for them to be able to say "I know you want to teach a church class, but you really need to work on your attitude toward Apple and iMacs. Your writing just doesn't reflect the tone and awe toward them that we feel is vital in teachers." (For those of you not familiar with my church, a significant fraction of our staff and leaders are Apple fanatics.) It's good for the pastors to know the people they are giving responsibility to. It's good for them to know people's doctrine, heart, character, and such.

That said, real openness toward church leadership is hard, especially when one aspires to lead. It's easier to settle for a fake openness that doesn't seem too wicked, too evil, or too corrupt than to genuinely own up to one's beliefs/attitudes/character and see how leadership responds.

It's harder still to accept negative responses from leadership, such as "We're sorry; we don't think you're ready for that responsibility." Rejection, err, constructive criticism is harder still when one thinks leadership's reasons are garbage. Been there, done that. Sometimes leadership is right and I didn't see it. Usually I was right. (Okay, maybe not. But more right than not.)

But the really tough question is this: Do I trust God to work through leadership, even when I think they are making the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons? I'm not talking about really important decisions like "What is the gospel?" but just the "minor" day-to-day decisions that appear to impact me. Do I think God is bigger than the authorities in my life? And do I think he works more powerfully when I faithfully serve under my leaders, or when I work around my leaders?

[Disclaimers: Happily, I haven't had any major clashes with leadership lately. It makes writing this much, much easier. Often I think of these important topics when I'm going through the trial, and it's tough to write about while doing justice to all parties. But I have had my fair share of clashes with various authorities. In many clashes, I've decided much later that leadership was right. There's a few I'm still pretty certain I was right about, and it's been a huge challenge to trust that God sees and guides. And there's a handful where I'm not clear who was right.

I also don't intend this post to suggest that leadership should always be followed, or that advice is the equivalent to command, or that one should stay under abusive leadership. I'm thinking more about day-to-day living, not the "What should I do if my demon-troubled king starts hurling spears at me?" question.]

Bits N Pieces

So I don't have much to say about my absence from the blog-o-sphere, other than, well, that's life. I've had a number of deeply encouraging interactions with friends over the last couple weeks, which is perhaps a bit scary given that my girlfriend is out of town for half of that time.

It's weird - I don't exactly have more time with her gone. In some sense I do, and yet I to have an elastic schedule which expands to fill whatever time I have. I heard a teaching once about time management like filling a jar: If one first puts in the big rocks, then the small rocks, then the sand, and then the water, then it's easy to pack the jar full. But if one starts with sand, it's hard to get the bigger rocks (e.g priorities) into one's schedule. Maybe this elastic experience means I'm doing a good job of time management.

I'm also trying a new experiment with an MP3 bible and iPod shuffle that I own to try and get through the minor prophets. I've always had a hard time reading through the prophets, mostly because the action seems very slow. I've also never been a strong poetic reader - as much as I dabble at writing it - and that may not help. So I'm trying to listen to them several times and seeing if that helps my comprehension. The jury is still out on that, but I can now summarize Nahum. I don't exactly get why a three chapter explanation of God shaming and annihilating Nineveh makes the Bible while other oracles don't, but I can at least summarize Nahum. I've also made a mental note that God's anger is very, very scary.

(I've also been contemplating how impervious Nineveh seemed, and how easy it is for me to think America is untouchable. There's been a handful of recent occurrences - such as Katrina and the TV show Jericho - that have reminded me that God wouldn't have any trouble wiping out America if he set his mind to it. Nahum is another such reminded. It's sobering that all of our technology, wealth, and civilization is meaningless against the intentions of God.)

One of these days I'll get back to blogging about my reading, but for now, here's an interesting survey on modesty. It looks at how guys answered lots of different questions about how women's attire and posture communicated to them. The Al-scientist likes data, and it's interesting how guys answered the questions. As modesty tends to be a hot topic, I should probably put lots of theological disclaimers on the survey like "Popular opinion doesn't make right" and "Just because some guys are offended doesn't mean don't wear it", but maybe I'll just stick with this disclaimer: "Caution: Hot topic. Use common sense, wisdom, and godly counsel."

Choose Wisely...

For once, I have more blog topics than I care to bore my readers with. So my thoughts on the first two chapters of The Lamb's Supper will be postponed. I also will skip my thoughts on my proposed presidential campaign theme.

I spent most of today reading Decision Making and the Will of God: A Biblical Alternative to the Traditional View by Gary Friesen. Oh, that didn't say much about it? Alright, the gist of the book is that God doesn't have an individual will for our lives. Instead we're called to obey God in what he commands, and live wisely by his principles in our choices. But Friesen argues that there's no "one right choice" to our decisions when there isn't a clear command. The author's four point summary of his points is:

1. Where God commands, we must obey.
2. Where there is no command, God gives us freedom (and responsibility) to choose.
3. Where there is no command, God gives us wisdom to choose.
4. When we have chosen what is moral and wise, we must trust the sovereign God to work all the details together for good.

His points aren't entirely revolutionary for me, but I tend to have strong "there is one exact choice" leanings. Friesen does a good job looking at how the Bible discusses decision making and how that differs from the typical American (evangelical protestant Christian?) view of God having a precise knowable will for each and every one of us. So that's my summary of 500 pages, much of which is spent discussing various Biblical texts.

For example, I'm looking for housing and a roommate. At the moment, I have no supernatural revelation from God about where to live - or with him. I have a few commands about what not to do (e.g. moving in with girlfriend = BadIdea). And then there's a collection of desires about what I'd like in my housing situation

• Warm, dry, safe place to live
  
• Place where I can host activities and have guests over
  
• Cheap (economical) housing
• Affordable housing
• Somewhere near my work, church, and friends
  
• Quiet relaxing environment
• Financially stable roommates
• Roommates who share my values
• Trustworthy roommates (e.g. won't steal my stuff)
• etc.

Many of these desires are based on biblical commands or principles. For example, affordable housing is based on the principle of living within my means. Cheap housing is based on my preference of saving money. But that preference can conflict with other values, for example, living near other friends, or having warm dry apartment, or living near work and friends.

Likewise, there's trade-offs in my selection of roommates. For example, do I prioritize hospitable roommates or ones who can consistently pay rents? If my roommates also value hospitality, then is it realistic to have a quiet relaxing environment?

The traditional view is that there is one right choice for my housing situation, and that if I seek God appropriately, that choice will become clear. The view Friesen supports is that I'm to determine values and trade-offs (e.g. hospitality, frugality, location, etc.) and make a decision (assuming, of course, I'm not violating any clear commands from God, such as "Gophers are evil.")

Thoughts?

Of Catholics

I had a chance to hear Scott Hahn speak this weekend. I'm not entirely sure how to describe the experience, but here's a scattering of thoughts I've had.

Christianese: I've often been reminded - either in teachings or by blank stares - how Christians have their own vocabulary. Frighteningly, Christians sometimes don't even know what their words mean. It's like a physics major saying "Clearly derivative of acceleration with respect to time is velocity" and then drawing a blank when asked what velocity is. This weekend, I definitely walked with a list of vocabulary to figure out. It's my fault for showing up at an event intended for the Catholic faithful, but I was surprised at how different the vocabulary was.

The Presence (experience) of God: After about four and a half hours of lecture, I finally realized that the way Scott Hahn talks about the experience of the presence of God in the Eucharist is paralleled in the way I perceive the dwelling of the Holy Spirit inside of Christians: He is God inside us. There is so much depth and amazement in that simple statement, the idea of a holy being choosing to dwell inside of me. < /mystic > Perhaps because of that viewpoint, or perhaps because of something else, I just don't get the emphasis on the Eucharist. The focal point seems foreign and unnecessary. I suspect there's a underlying views that I'm just missing.

Honestly Now...

For those of you who like links, here a few...
- A few neat thoughts on Damaged Goods.
- A lighthearted paraphrase of Leviticus for modern dinner manners (found via Ochuk).
- A nifty way of dealing with the Greek Bible text, or at least the best I've found so far (thanks Dan).

Meanwhile, I've been thinking about my voting preferences and honesty.

Honesty? Well, that was this week's sermon.

Voting preference? I've been pondering variants of this problem...

Candidate A is a typical politician who moderately supports my important views on key issues (e.g. budget policy, abortion, Iraq). Candidate B is a politician who openly disagrees with many of my core issues, but has an unusual reputation for honesty. He outlines significant policy changes he wants to make on these issues, but also promises limit his reforms to these proposals and not pursue more radical changes.

Given the deciding vote, who do I vote for?

It's a challenging question, because of how it distills the challenge of honesty: Do I prefer a leader who says he agrees with me but leads who-knows-where, or one who openly leads toward a known outcome that I disagree with?

Or put another way, how much do I value honesty in leaders who don't agree with me? Am I willing to vote for them? If not, do I those who disagree with me politically to have the character to do so? If neither I nor my opponents will, then we're stuck in the current cycle of distrust and anger. I've effectively said that my positions are more important than trustworthiness, and that until I can assure that my positions will be represented, I won't vote on issues of character.

And if I won't vote on issues of character, why do I expect leaders with character to be elected?

Sowing and Reaping

Recently I was helping a friend's daughter learn GIMP (aka almost Photoshop). I feel old since film photography is foreign to her. The topic came up because I was trying to explain why darkening and lightening tools were called 'burn' and 'dodge'. Anyway, the moment along with some other interactions has me thinking about this:

Sow an act...reap a habit;
Sow a habit...reap a character;
Sow a character...reap a destiny.
-- George Dana Boardman

More, I've been thinking about how appreciative I am (or at least ought to be) of so many of the habits my parents imparted to me. It's hard to make a choice in a radically different way than the way I've made the last hundred choices. In fact, it's scary how often my choices are self-reinforcing. I don't like calling strangers, so I avoid tasks which require to me call strangers, so I tend to be stiff and nervous on the few times I do call strangers, which reinforces that I don't like calling strangers.

On the other hand, I remember my dad constantly teaching me "Go after the ball" in soccer. When I played soccer as a child, we often had balls in the middle of nowhere with me and someone from the other team running after the ball. Usually it was clear who would get to the ball first. The temptation is for whoever is going to be second to the ball to just give up and let the first player have it. But that's lousy game strategy.

First, sometimes the first player slacks and doesn't run fast enough, so if the second player is going after the ball hard enough, sometimes he'll get there first. Secondly, the first player has to make a faster decision when he gets to the ball if someone else is going to challenge him for it. It's harder to make a smart decision quickly under pressure. When one doesn't put the pressure on, the player can leisurely survey the field and make a solid pass. With pressure, mistakes happen, or at least sub-optimal plays.

Hustle pays dividends in life too. Not always, but often. And it's hard to learn hustle as young professional. It's a little scary to me that if my dad hadn't taught me when I was young, learning it now might be very, very challenging. I've been wondering how many other life skills I learned from my parents that I'm not even aware of...and how many life skills others are trying to learn now that I take for granted.

8 Hours

Story time. And a little bit of philosophizing about character decay over time.

A friend of mine (okay, several friends of mine) is looking for a new job. It's gotten me thinking about a couple summers I spent in Florida as part of a leadership training program. The program was 10 weeks. We worked during the day (~40 hours / wk) and spent 4 or 5 evenings a week at various church or training activities. The program fees were like $1500 (including room board and food budget), so it was possible to make a small profit over the summer, especially if kind souls helped with the program fees.

Of course, not all of us were lucky enough to have jobs awaiting us when we arrived in Florida. For us, the training program helped us out by giving us a job: Looking for a job, eight hours a day. Lately I've been reflecting on the days I spent looking for a job that summer. I'm still amazed at how many resumes, phone calls, and applications (picked up, filled out, and delivered) can be done over eight hours.

I'm not sure I've ever been that dedicated to a job search since then. I've also been wondering whether or not I'd put that much effort into the search if I lost my job tomorrow - I don't know if I have the self-control for that, or the humility to let my friends nag me over that goal. Alright, who am I kidding, my friends will harass me anyway; I might as well let it be productive for me.

The Right Tool...

I just thought I'd mention that I have my computer back up and running. Ironically, after all the trouble I had with my old hard drive, my new windows installation took one look at it, went to work repairing the disk, and now I'm happily copying data off it. Well, I think I am...time for bed.

P.S. Remind me sometime to talk about how the Christian life is more like a road rally than a marathon.

15 seconds...and poof

So the poof part is that my computer hard disk finally failed. Mostly it is my fault for getting caught unprepared; it had been acting weird for a couple weeks now, but I just hoped that it was alright. I haven't lost much (I did a late November backup), but lost my latest (1+ year) update of my finances from paper to Quicken. Oops. So my computer usage may be a little off for the next couple weeks while I fix that up.

Meanwhile, CBS is doing a thought provoking contest. They are offering a 15 second spot to say "anything" you want...within certain restrictions (e.g. no profanity). So I've been thinking about: How would I use those 15 seconds to communicate the gospel in a clear and creative way using both audio and visual appeal? My follow-up thought is: Is there a better message to communicate to America? Something more like John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Christ? If so, how would I present it?

Baaa...and evil.

So it doesn't feel like I've been doing much lately, although I'm managing to keep myself busy with one activity or another. But I did start a class today at church on 'discipleship in the 1st century,' which is looking at what Jesus meant by discipleship. It's particularly interesting since we don't have many examples of discipleship in America today. When was the last time I knew someone who followed a teacher around, emulating the way the teacher lived life? (And no, cults don't count.)

We talked a lot about sheep - communal animals, vulnerable, and valuable for wool, food, and milk. We talked about raising sheep in the Middle East, and how the sheep were generally travelling - none of this 'put the sheep in the pasture by Michigan State with donkey' bit.

Anyway, two thoughts that were a good kick in the pants, err, stood out to me. The first is that following Jesus often involves movement, especially movement to places I wouldn't naturally go. The second thought was that an inherent part of following Jesus is whether other people follow me as I follow him. It's easy for me to loose focus, especially that following Jesus isn't a purely nebulous 'do good' type idea, but there's a very concrete application. I don't think our concept of teaching (e.g. verbal instruction) quite captures the essence of this application, but neither does the nebulous 'do good' idea.

Meanwhile there was a fascinating comment to my last entry:

So you believe that Christian people are the only people in the world that love others unconditionally... w/o self-protection?

I'm still thinking that one through, mostly because I wrestle a lot on what exactly the Bible means in teaching that we're fallen (depraved?) and how that interacts with our experiential observations of people.

Giving And Receiving

So a week ago I mentioned that I'd been reading Tropical Gangsters. Today I thought I'd share one. Ironically, this is one of the few quotes of Steinbeck that I've really appreciated (even though that may scare my high school English teachers). Reading this quote made me think of Gates and Buffet's recent donations, although it's far older than that.

Perhaps the most overrated virtue on our list of shoddy virtues is that of giving. Giving builds up the ego of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver. Nearly always, giving is a selfish pleasure, and in many cases it is a downright destructive and evil thing. One has only to remember some of our wolfish financiers who spend two-thirds of their lives clawing fortunes out of the guts of society and the latter third pushing it back. It is not enough to suppose that their philanthropy is a kind of frightened restitution, or that their natures change when they have enough. Such a nature never has enough and natures do not change that readily. I think the impulse is the same in both cases. For giving can bring the same sense of superiority as getting does, and philanthropy may be another kind of spiritual avarice.

It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it be well done, requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact and great understanding of relationships. In receiving you cannot appear, even to yourself, better or stronger or wiser than the giver, although you must be wiser to do it well.

Tropical Gangsters, pg 13, quoting a John Steinbeck essay

As others commented earlier, I don't know where Gates' heart is coming from. But I've been pondering whether I really believe people change after accumulating great wealth, and what sort experience it takes for that change to happen.

I've also been pondering whether Jesus would agree with Steinbeck or not. I don't know. Here's something else I read today: It's possible to be many good things without Christ - charitable, disciplined, self-restrained. But without Christ, we cannot love others without self-protection.