Ubiquitous Musings

A Foreskin in the Night

2011-11-08T21:08:00.000-08:00

The purpose of this post is to answer a question put to me by a friend: "Exodus 4:24-26. What is that all about?" What you are about to read is what I came up with. I didn't consult any other sources. I just looked at the Bible and did some searches for related passages based on the words in the text, and I used my own theological/biblical understanding to fill in the gaps. Feel free to disagree. Feel free to push back. Here we go.

²⁴ At a lodging place on the way the LORD met him and sought to puthim to death. ²⁵ Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son'sforeskin and touched Moses'feet with it and said, "Surely youare a bridegroom of blood to me!" ²⁶ So he let him alone. Itwas then that she said, "A bridegroom of blood," because of thecircumcision. (Exo 4:24-26 ESV)

At the pointin history described in Exodus 4, the full Torah had not been given yet. NoMosaic Covenant existed. The Israelites did not have a whole legal code to liveby and complex social and religious rules to keep. All they had was theAbrahamic Covenant. The biblical account reads as follows (all of it issignificant but I put in bold the focal points for our discussion):

⁹ And God said to Abraham, "As for you, you shall keep mycovenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. ¹⁰This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and youroffspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. ¹¹You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a signof the covenant between me and you. ¹² He who is eight days oldamong you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whetherborn in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not ofyour offspring, ¹³ both he who is born in your house and he who isbought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be inyour flesh an everlasting covenant. ¹⁴ Any uncircumcised male whois not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from hispeople; he has broken my covenant." (Gen 17:9-14 ESV)

While thatis not the only time circumcision is mentioned before Moses’ incident, it isthe one that provides the cultural, theological, and literary background to thepassage in question. God chooses Abraham mostly because he can. He’s a decentguy, but he is certainly not perfect. He has faith in God, and the Bible makesit clear, that’s the real redeeming quality he has. So God chooses him as theone man (along with Sarah, his wife) who will be the beginning of a wholechosen people. God promises to give them prosperity, provide the land for themto live in, and make them into a nation. The one thing they have to do—the oneand ONLY condition—is they have to be circumcised. They have to circumciseanyone who wants to be part of it all, to receive God’s gift. And what happensto anyone who doesn’t do it? He is to be cut off from his people. He has toleave. He isn’t allowed to hang out with the rest of them anymore. It’s seriousbusiness. Even if that means being sent alone into the desert (because maybethat’s all there is around), they’ve got to go. They can’t just disregard theone condition and still get to benefit from the agreement, and the people arepart of the benefits of that agreement.

Keep that inmind now, and follow me forward. The Israelites are with Moses in the desert.He went and led them out of Egypt (having survived the weird ordeal of being abloody bridegroom). Now, he is giving his last sermon, and he is making it onefor the record books. It is nearly the entire book of Deuteronomy. The story inquestion is now 40 years in the past. The Mosaic Covenant is in place, and theyare supposed to obey the law, which still includes circumcising everyone. It isthe distinctive for being part of the people God promised to Abraham. Butthere’s more. A lot more. Including and even mostly what Moses says in thispassage:

¹¹ And the LORD said to me, 'Arise, go on your journey at the headof the people, so that they may go in and possess the land, which I swore totheir fathers to give them.' ¹² "And now, Israel, whatdoes the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walkin all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heartand with all your soul, ¹³ and to keep the commandments and statutesof the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good? ¹⁴Behold, ^to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven ofheavens, the earth with all that is in it. ¹⁵ Yet the LORD sethis heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, youabove all peoples, as you are this day. ¹⁶ Circumcise therefore theforeskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.

¹⁷ For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, thegreat, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. ¹⁸He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner,giving him food and clothing. ¹⁹ Love the sojourner, therefore, foryou were sojourners in the land of Egypt. ²⁰ You shall fear the LORDyour God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shallswear. ²¹ He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you thesegreat and terrifying things that your eyes have seen. ²² Yourfathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the LORD your God has madeyou as numerous as the stars of heaven. (Deu 10:11-22 ESV)

In thecovenant with Abraham, the sign was to be physical, so there could be nodenying who was part of the people. In this later covenant with Moses and thenation of Israel, they still had the physical component, but an outwarddesignation for God is never enough, as was shown in nearly every story aboutAbraham's descendants all the way through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,and now Deuteronomy. They didn't get it. For a people dedicated to God and byGod, they weren't very godly. They lied, cheated, stole, sold their familymembers into slavery, murdered, took advantage of each other, and challengedeverything God told them along the way. Only an inward change would make anydifference. They needed to dedicate themselves, their hearts, who they wereinside, not just undergo some physical ritual when they were too young even toremember it. Notice the range of implications this inward circumcision issupposed to have. It is supposed to mean they humble themselves before God andeach other, stop oppressing people and start standing up for justice, changetheir attitude toward God, and make them more like him, recognizing what he hasdone for them and wanting to pass it on to others.

And summedup, what is the result of all this transformation? The following passage fromlater in Deuteronomy sums it up nicely:

⁵ And the LORD your God will bring you into the land that yourfathers possessed, that you may possess it. And he will make you moreprosperous and numerous than your fathers. ⁶ And the LORD your Godwill circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you willlove the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you maylive. (Deu 30:5-6 ESV)

They willlive. They will live, and they will love God with all of themselves, but thatwill happen only after God circumcises their hearts for them because they won'tever be able to pull it off on their own. All this should be sending vibrationsof "that sounds like New Testament!" through your brain, because thegospel starts in Genesis and doesn't stop.

But what doesthat have to do with Moses and his son and a creepy ritual in the middle of thenight? Everything.

Moses hasjust been sent to go back to his people. He is to act as God's onerepresentative (in partnership with his brother), and as of yet, all he has todo to keep up his end of God's agreement with Abraham's family is to becircumcised and circumcise all the males in his household. He would have beencircumcised when he was a baby before he took his fateful cruise down theriver, so no problem there, but as it turns out, for whatever reason, he didn'tcircumcise his son. Maybe he didn't consider himself as part of the covenantpeople anymore since he left 40 years earlier and had married into a family ofMidianites, not Israelites. Whatever it was, He is supposed to be the examplefor all the people, and he is already failing. The penalty is to be cut offfrom the people, but he is in the process of returning to his people. His sonprobably doesn't know anything about circumcision. It's Moses' responsibility.He didn't the one thing they were supposed to do. And that is right after he istold to threaten divine judgment on the Egyptian firstborns, but he hasn't takencare of his own firstborn. God shows him he is serious. Deuteronomy shows thatGod is concerned with the heart, but if you disobey what God has clearly toldyou, how right can your heart really be?

And Moses isMr. Israel? The Chosen People poster child? Not if he doesn't fix this problem.

That's thereal question about this passage. Why the sudden and harsh reaction to thestate of his kid's genitalia. The rest is weird but not so crucial. I also amless confident as to what it means. First of all, why did she touch the foreskinto his feet? I have a thought, though I can't say for sure. Notice thefollowing two passages:

² And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire outof the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it wasnot consumed. ³ And Moses said, "I will turn aside to see thisgreat sight, why the bush is not burned." ⁴ When the LORD sawthat he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses,Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." ⁵ Then he said,"Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place onwhich you are standing is holy ground." ⁶ And he said, "Iam the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God ofJacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. ⁷Then the LORD said, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people whoare in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I knowtheir sufferings, ⁸ and I have come down to deliver them out of thehand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broadland, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, theHittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. (Exo3:2-8 ESV)

And

¹⁸ "You shall also make a basin of bronze, with its stand ofbronze, for washing. You shall put it between the tent of meeting and thealtar, and you shall put water in it, ¹⁹ with which Aaron and hissons shall wash their hands and their feet. ²⁰ When they go into thetent of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister, to burn a foodofferingto the LORD, they shall wash with water, so that they maynot die. ²¹ They shall wash their hands and their feet, so thatthey may not die. It shall be a statute forever to them, even to him and tohis offspring throughout their generations." (Exo 30:18-21 ESV)

The firstpassage takes place just before the story in question. His feet seem important.They carry the dust of the road, which as indicated by Exodus 30 symbolizes theuncleanness of the person. In the ritual system of Israel, most of the time,uncleanness won out. If something that was ritually clean touched somethingthat was ritually unclean, they both became unclean. But when the clean thingis God, or something especially full of God's presence, God cleanses whateverit is. She anointed him with the blood from the foreskin--blood being a centralpart of how they ceremonially removed guilt--and she did it on the part of himthat most represented his uncleanness, his being at odds with God. Sheceremonially took away his guilt and made him right with God at the same timeshe corrected what the problem had been in the first place--the uncircumcisedstate of his son.

The restgets even more speculative. I believe it was acceptable for her to be the oneto fix the problem for two reasons. The first is that she is his wife, andGenesis is clear that husband and wife become intimately united. I think thetruth of that concept runs far deeper than we really get, especially in ourindividualistic culture. The second is that in the communal culture of thispeople, guilt doesn't really belong to just one person, and neither doesgoodness. People are responsible for each other and contribute to each other'slives.

As for whatshe meant by a bridegroom of blood, I'm guessing it was something along thelines of lashing out at him as her husband for forcing her to have to cut offpart of her son's penis, which I'm sure was very bloody. Any more than that,and I would trying to speculate on what a woman from another part of the worldover 3000 years ago had going through her head. I just don't think I'm ready togo there, nor do I have any idea how she knew what to do, or how they even knewGod was going to kill Moses. The text doesn't say, so I can't either.

There arecertainly other ideas out there. Some people think the reference to bloodpoints back to his murder, meaning that what God was mad about was the murderthat was never atoned for, but nothing in the context suggests that to me. Ibelieve the best interpreter of the Bible is the Bible, so the best approach isto find what it has to say about related ideas in other places, not reading inthings that aren't there. Of course, Icould have spent a lot more time researching, and maybe it would have turned upother ideas. Feel free to compare this to what commentaries and other sourceshave said about it and let me know if I'm wrong!

Learning from Eve - Part 2

2011-06-12T11:10:00.000-07:00

As I continue to share my thoughts about women and God, I want to clarify my intentions. I am writing about the beauty of God to be found in women and the wonder inherent in all daughters of Eve. I am not trying to lay out the different roles appropriate for men or women, biblical or otherwise. I am not brave enough to take on that topic at this time, and it isn’t really relevant to what I have been thinking about. Also, many of the characteristics I will attribute to women may not be—or even probably not—true of every woman. As with all groups of people, certain characteristics are generally true but cannot be forcibly applied in every case. Thank you for your patience with my observations, not my absolute model for what a woman has to be.

There are many things I appreciate about the Eastern Orthodox Church that I prefer over the way the church has developed in the West, but the foremost of all of them is how they view the image of God. I’m not an expert on their beliefs by any means, but they view the history of humanity through the lens of imago Dei in a way the Western Church has neglected over the centuries. Humanity has the utmost value. We are the image of God, the physical representation of God on the earth. Everything we were when we were created was a direct reflection of who God is. That, of course, was marred when we sinned, but that does not lessen its beginnings or its eventual restoration.

The fullness and wonder of the image, the likeness of God in humanity, is not only in Adam. Nor is it in exclusively in Eve. It can only be fully expressed in the interaction between the two. Each is a partial picture of God’s nature and character, and they fit together perfectly to paint God’s likeness.

Much thought has been devoted to how men are like God or how God can be seen in manhood. He is Father, warrior, protector, provider, king. I would like to take the time to find out what the feminine can teach us about who God is. The value of the image found in both man and woman is immeasurable.

Eve’s legacy, though dimmed, is not lost. It still resides in all her daughters, and someday, it will be restored to its fullness once more.

In my experience and observations, along with reading Captivating have shown me the wonder of women. They are meant to beautiful, and indeed, they are all beautiful, showing God’s glory in who they are. My wife is gorgeous, and I hope I don’t embarrass her by writing that she is. She is truly captivating, both outwardly and in who she is. I have known that for a long time, but in thinking about it lately, I have also come to understand certain things about it better. Women, including my wife, not only provide beauty in themselves, but they usually also desire to create beauty around them. It is how they were made; it is how they reflect God.

Women are enamored with loveliness. They delight in the beauty of their friends and their surroundings. How many women do you know that don’t try to make their home a beautiful and comforting place? When my wife (and my mom, when I was growing up) want the house to be clean, and the décor to be just right, and everything in its place, it’s not about being OCD or overly controlling (though some may turn it into that) it’s about an innate desire to create and maintain beauty in life. I didn’t get that growing up, so I was irritated by insistent commands that I make my bed every day (it just got messed up again that night, after all!). I finally understand that women (and some men) desire order not to irritate the people who are not naturally neat, but to create beauty.

And what is more comforting than being a child held by his mother after being hurt or scared, or a husband resting with his wife after a stressful day? Women are meant to offer the comfort God offers. They are here to tell us that everything is going to be okay. They are here to offer their softness and tenderness and make us feel better when the world turns ugly.

Of course, not all women do those things as well as others, and the desire for order can become about control, and the soothing comfort can be lost to demands for respect or allowing herself to be used as a doormat. Worry takes over and obscures the message that all will be well, and fear of rejection covers what beauty there is to offer. That is the toll taken by the Fall. But the spark of divine beauty resides in every woman, and if she lets Christ work in her, he will begin to restore what has been lost.

As a man, I am grateful for the half of the image of God found in women. Life would be dreary without it. I am grateful for the women in my life, for my mother, my sister, my wife, and now my daughter who I am so excited to meet.

Next time, I will elaborate on how I, as a man, can be the best husband, father, son, brother, and friend to the women in my life, and how they can help me be the best man I can be.

Learning from Eve - Part 1

2011-06-09T22:12:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, my wife and I are about to meet our first child, a little girl, any day now. I can’t really imagine how my life is about to change, but I can only think it will be for the better. As her arrival has come closer, I have been thinking about girls and women and how I can be the best father possible for our new daughter.

One of the storylines of Scripture is of the image of God. Humans were created as God’s image, and the fullness of that image happens when the cumulative of both men and women is combined. The full story of the imago of God includes falling into sin and marring the image, God taking on the image of humanity in Jesus, Jesus restoring the image of God in his work, and humans being transformed to the image of Christ, thereby restoring the image of God in humanity. As I look into that narrative, I discover something about humanity, something about God, and something we have often overlooked in the church. I discover Eve.

For too long, we have looked at Eve, and instead of seeing the mother of all who live, and instead of seeing one of only three people who have ever lived as sinless human beings (if only temporarily in her and Adam’s case), and instead of seeing the glorious likeness of God in all the beauty of womanhood, we have seen the stain of the first human sin. The first failure as a human being. The first temptress. The first person to side with evil against God. By seeing only the failure instead of the beauty, we have missed something essential, and we have forfeited much understanding of women, humanity, and God.

Typically, we learn from Eve that women cannot be trusted. We learn from Eve that woman are dangerous. We learn from Eve that men need to be protected from the temptation women offer. We have ignored the fact that God confronts Adam after the fall. God sees Adam as owning his own responsibility, but for some reason, we have fallen for Adam’s lame excuse that it was Eve who gave him the fruit.

I reject that view of Eve, which has been unconscious for some and painfully conscious for others. I take responsibility for my own sin, and that frees me to look for the beauty of God to be found in Eve and in all of her daughters.

I believe women have tremendous insight into God, hugely important contributions to our theology. Unfortunately, theological inquiry and teaching has been predominated by the masculine. Of course, I appreciate all the study men have done regarding our Creator and all they have shown us, but if we neglect what women can teach us, we lose more than we can afford. I do appreciate that the body of theological teaching produced by women is growing. I look forward to how we view God grows as the long ignored feminine perspective on the divine begins to come to light.

In the meantime, I would like to share what women have taught me about God, not by their careful study and teaching, but simply by being women.

I will have more to say about that soon.

Goforth's Journal - Celebrate Portland Week

2011-05-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

Goforth's Journal, a fellow Portlander's blog, is in the midst of "Celebrate Portland Week," and each day he is featuring the writing of a different Portland blogger.

Today's post is by me and is titled "The Adventures of Being a Man: Hiking the Trails through Portland's Diverse Terrain." I hope you enjoy it!

66 Books in 33 Days: Sprinting through God's Story

2011-05-16T10:38:00.000-07:00

I recently completed a journey that covered quite a distance. As I drove around the Portland Metro area making deliveries, I also experienced Eden, the Exodus, David’s rule in Israel, Exile in Babylon, the coming of Messiah, and the spread of a small sect of passionate Jews throughout the known world.

How did I accomplish all this? Well, I wish I could tell you I was making my deliveries in a DeLorean, but our flux capacitor burned out a couple months ago. I also wasn’t reading my Bible while driving. I feel like that wouldn’t be the greatest witness when the cops question me about why I ran over an old lady at a crosswalk.

I decided to make use of all the driving time I have while I’m at work, and I invested in the ESV audiobible. I loaded it on my iPod and started to journey through scripture as I drove across Portland. I ended up listening to the whole thing in about six weeks. 33 days of actual listening to get through all 66 books of the Bible. I’m writing about it not to brag (it was super easy, just listening as I drove), but to share what it meant to me and what I learned from it. Several things about this new experience surprised me. I’ve read through the Bible several times, at least a couple of them being required reading for classes, but I’ve never listened to the Bible before. It was a radically different experience, one that I thought might be worth sharing. I probably won’t do it justice, but it’s worth a shot.

Listening to the Bible is like sitting at God’s feet and listening to him tell his story. Reading it is, of course, wonderful too, but hearing it really delivers in a wholly new way for me. While this is not the primary reason for my infatuation with listening to Bible, I love the fact that it is the way most of God’s people throughout the ages encountered Scripture before the last few hundred years.

Listening deprives me of my ability to stop and think about a word or phrase in isolation. Of course, meditating on a small passage has amazing benefits, but there is something about being forced to continue the thought process, about not being able to remove a sentence from its context that highlights new and powerful meaning. It also shows me how much of the Bible I haven’t totally mastered: a lot of it. Books like Matthew, for instance, are so familiar to me that I hardly even notice the details as I read, but when I’m inundated with a huge, unrelenting dose, I realize how much of it is super challenging and how much of it I don’t really know what to do with.

I began at the beginning.

Genesis proved a wondrous tale of faithfulness, intrigue, pain, and redemption. Moving quickly from creation to betrayal, promise and redemption, and with all the bumps in between, it’s an emotional roller coaster that really amazes me at the ridiculousness of how the heroes of faith choose to live and how immense is God’s patience and faithfulness for his children. Moving from there through the rest of Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy) one might assume that listening to long lists of rules and genealogical records might be enough to make me want to drive into the Columbia, but instead, I found new beauty in it all. Reading each individual law in Leviticus can be overwhelming—or at least overwhelmingly boring—but quickly moving from one to the other allows you to hear God’s heart. When you encounter the body of what it looked like for Israel to obey God, you see his desire for purity, goodness, order, justice, and right relationships. He cared about his people and wanted their lives to be characterized by wholeness, not violence and betrayal of what should be loving relationships, not sickness and selfishness. The Law reveals God’s love.

Reading books that told the story of Israel further through history provided the opportunity to notice repetition. Listen really allowed me to hear when words, ideas, phrases, events came up over and over again. They caught my attention. I noticed in the prophets how much life and vitality was important to God. Ezekiel in particular is a shining beacon of life in the darkness of sin and death. God really wants to impart life in us, revivify us, taking us from the mundane and destructive and implanting something powerful and new in us that will carry us forward in passion in his grace.

You can't see the big picture without all the pieces, each telling its own story

I also realized how much about Hebrew poetry and rhetoric I don’t get. I don’t know what to do with Proverbs as a whole. I thought I knew, but encountering it again (in one sitting) made me think about what I’m supposed to do with it. The proverbs aren’t promises. In fact, they sometimes seem to suggest values that go against Jesus’ teaching. Should we or shouldn’t we plan ahead, save, provide for our futures? Proverbs says ‘yes.’ It seems like Jesus says we should leave it to God and focus on more important things, like the kingdom of God.

What in the world is Song of Songs talking about? I don’t really know. Do you? Ecclesiastes? Are we supposed to ignore everything but the last chapter? Is there more in there we can learn from? Again, I have no idea.

So much of Hebrew style and technique is simply foreign. It’s just not how people write in current, Western culture. How do I read apocalyptic? There is nothing like it being written now. I’ve learned the basic characteristics: it’s written by communities under oppression, it’s symbolic of battles between good (God and his people) and evil (the oppressing rulers), it’s about struggle, it’s about hope of future liberation.

I don’t get it. I know those things, and I could probably point out the recurring features in whatever text, but it doesn’t resonate with me. It doesn’t touch my soul. I wish I could connect with it, really understand it. Maybe some day I will.

In general, I’m a Hebrew Bible guy (which is why I say “Hebrew Bible” instead of “Old Testament”), but listening to large chunks really began to accentuate the patterns, the larger thought processes of the New Testament (Greek Bible?). I ended up listening to the epistles in a matter of two days. They are really short! The entirety of the New Testament took only about a week and a half, listening to about two and a half hours a day (weekdays only). It’s kinda amazing to hear what James has to say, and within the same half hour, to hear what Paul says about the same thing from a totally different perspective in Romans. It really provides a fullness and richness to these ideas that is almost impossible to pick up if you read a few verses here and a few there over the course of like five years.

I noticed this interesting occurrence because the repetition of words stood out to me so clearly:

“For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28 ESV).

“You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24 ESV).

Ha! What do you do with that? If you read them alone, not in the larger contexts of their books and the whole Bible, they sound entirely contradictory, don’t they? But since I listened to them both in their full contexts in the same day, it made complete sense. They work together beautifully, and if you take one without the other, you have a deficient view of what the Bible says. This was one of the huge encounters I had that was so different of fulfilling about listening to the Bible rather than reading it.

I love the Bible, and I hope to be able to share some of that love with other people. I hope this post has been able to do that, at least a little bit. Maybe you won’t all go out and journey through the whole Bible in a month and a half like I did (not all of you have two to three hours a day to make use of like I do), but I hope you will at least think of the hard parts, the boring parts, the interesting parts, the stories, the letters, and I hope you will find some interest in encountering them and finding the value in them, whether it be by listening or reading, taking on large chunks or diving in to the details, or any way at all. I will continue to read and listen, both to the big picture and studying the minutiae, always expanding my understanding and encountering knew things, and I hope you do too. God has spoken to us, and it would be shame if we never took the time to find out what he said.

The Season of in Between

2011-05-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

My spring semester ended two weeks ago, and with the birth of my first child coming up next month, I decided not to take classes this summer. That means I have about four months without any school related responsibilities! Normally, my classes and homework consume a considerable portion of my time, so it is a welcome respite.

My issue now is not trying to fit in everything I have to do, but prioritizing the things I want to do.

How do I spend my summer in a way that allows me actually to take a break, relax, and recuperate but at the same, doesn’t just waste it? I don’t really want the summer to end with the only things I accomplished being beating six Xbox games and watching eight TV shows beginning to end on Netflix. What does it look like to use my time well during a summer break?

My wife always knows about the things I want to do. I share them with her, to the point that I think she gets annoyed because I share endless aspirations and rarely actually do anything about them. Unfortunately, I have so many things I want to do that actually doing them all would be impossible. So how do I choose which ones to pursue?

I do want to play some games. I do have a show or two I want to watch. Mostly though, my hopes for the summer involve reading and writing.

I have two books tumbling around in my head, one a novel and one non-fiction. They are dying to come out and find life in the pages of a completed book. It would be great if this could be the summer of their birth. I’ve been thinking about the non-fiction book and talking a lot about it with my partner in crime, Aaron. I’m hoping since it’s team effort, having the sense of accountability will motivate me actually to make progress on it. I’m pretty excited about it. The next step, I think, is to do some interviews. It’ll be fun.

As far as reading, my list is about a mile long and keeps getting longer. I have plenty of time for reading now, though. I read every day on the bus to and from work, and I listen to books on my iPod while I work, so I’ve been getting through about three books per week that way, not counting any reading I do at home. Right now I’m listening to Desiring God by John Piper, reading The Finale by Calvin Miller on the bus, and reading Love Wins by Rob Bell at home. It’s a great time to be a reader.

I also want to spend time with my wife, friends, and dad and sister, and I want to be prepared for our baby. I might even start exercising (but I’m not holding my breath on that one…).

I just hope I can get into the mode of making progress in all those areas without feeling stressed and stretching myself too thin, as if I weren’t taking a break. That’s a challenge. I tend either to overload myself with responsibilities and projects or slip into a sluglike pattern of laziness and apathy. Neither state is super fun for very long, so I really need to get that balance right.

Anyone out there have the magic formula to help me get it just right?

The One Where Love is Always Self-interested

2011-05-06T09:59:00.000-07:00

It’s been a long time, but I remember high school discussions about whether altruism is possible. We wrestled with the question of “Is it really possible to do anything without being motivated by self-interest?” There is an episode of Friends that deals with it as well. Phoebe wants to believe it with all her might, and she spends the episode trying to discover a way to make it work. She finally stumbles on donating money to PBS, which she hates, and simultaneously gets Joey on TV by doing so. She thinks she has finally done something that does not benefit her in any way and is quite pleased about it. Joey points out that she is gaining pleasure from doing a totally selfless act, and therefore, is gaining something by it.

So the question is “Can we ever do something good and/or loving for someone else without ANY self-interest, without gaining anything at all by it?”

I can take care of my pregnant wife, doing things like rubbing her feet, bringing her drinks of water, doing chores, staying with her when she is sick. None of those things are directly beneficial to me, so is that altruism? No, probably not, for each of those things reinforces her love, strengthens our relationship, and if nothing else, allows me to spend time with her. I definitely gain from anything good I do for my wife.

What if I do something for a stranger?

I can give money to someone who asks for it, or buy a meal from the grocery store for the guy sitting outside, or donate to a charitable cause. I can volunteer to serve food at the Rescue Mission. I am now sacrificing time and money to help a person I don’t even know. Surely that must be altruistic, completely selfless. Alas, I gain recognition for doing selfless acts. I may even gain social benefits by talking with them and interacting with them and finding a little of who they are. I benefit.

What if I help someone anonymously?

What if I send cash to someone who needs it anonymously, or I drop money in a donation box, or do any number of things that would help someone else, but no one would know I did anything? I still find satisfaction in knowing I did something good. I gain.

We can up the ante a little bit and concede, ‘ok, I can’t do anything selflessly, but what about Jesus?’ What of his crucifixion? Surely, Jesus, the perfect god-man, must have been capable of completely selfless action.

Picture the garden at Gethsemane. Jesus is there, desperately wanting the support of his disciples (which he doesn’t get because they keep falling asleep) and falling to his knees, pleading to the Father to take away the wrath he is about to receive. He asked that if there were ANY other way, God would show it to him, but since there was no other, he would do God’s will. Luke describes him as being in agony over what was about to come. His mental anguish was so great he needed an angel to comfort him and he began to sweat drops of blood. Surely, he got no pleasure from his sacrifice, no gain by his death.

But really, there are two problems with this example. The first is this: “Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2). Notice the phrase “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.” Jesus allowed himself to be killed because it would bring him joy! I don’t think the suffering itself was high on his list of favorite things, but he knew the results would bring him joy. His motivation was not altruistic at all!

The second problem is that his saving work allowed his children access to him; it allowed millions of people to know and love him, establishing relationships with him. Again, he experiences good because of the good he did for us.

So, really, is completely selfless good, pure altruism, something we would even want? If the only perfect human who ever lived couldn’t pull it off, is it really a good thing to be entirely disinterested in the good you do?

Ask your loved ones.

I think a simple question to my wife would reveal very quickly what she would think about it. What if I only told my wife I love her because it would make her feel good. What if I only give her gifts because she wants them. If I find no happiness in her presence, no genuine joy at her touch, but I only spend time with her because she wants it, would she appreciate it? I think not. She would be hurt that I did it mechanically, not out of my own love for her, my own emotional desire to be with her and please her. True love rejoices at others’ joy. True love finds pleasure in pleasing others. True love finds no cost too great in order to bring good to the objects of its affection. True love, while not merely self-interested, finds great gain in providing benefit to others.

Remember, when Jesus commands us to love one another as the second part of the greatest commandment, he does not say “Love your neighbor and deny yourself.” He says “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The two are not mutually exclusive. They are necessary pairs in the endeavor to spread love.

Going back to the original question, “Can we ever do something good and/or loving for someone else without ANY self-interest, without gaining anything at all by it?” I would have to say the answer is “no.” But that isn’t something to mourn, as if humanity has failed, and no real love can be known. We can rejoice that true love is beneficial for everyone involved, even when we sacrifice, and especially when it is grounded in the only pure source of love, God himself.

Grieving for Bin Laden: Why the Death of a Terrorist is a Cosmic Tragedy

2011-05-02T00:24:00.000-07:00

As I encounter almost endless commentary about the recent demise of the mastermind behind thousands of deaths, having watched Obama’s announcement, and seen footage of mass celebration outside the Whitehouse, the uneasiness in my soul continues to grow.

Osama bin Laden deserved to die. He was a twisted, evil man, darkened by unimaginable sin and marred by diabolical hatred. His death is a victory for justice.

Yet I mourn for him.

God’s precious child, whom he knew as he formed him in the womb, has perished. Even more, as far as we know, he is now eternally separated from his Father, condemned to suffer forever.

He deserved his fate.

But that fact makes it no less tragic. His death and what it entails are the grim conclusion to his abominable life. A man that was created in God’s image spent his years steeped in violence, hatred, suffering, fear, and pride. If anyone in our lifetime has been characterized by sin and death, he fits the bill. That, too, is something to mourn. A man that was created to represent God on earth dedicated himself to assaulting God’s character and creation, demolishing the light within himself and snuffing out thousands of other people who were all dim reflections of their maker.

The truth is I deserve that fate as well. You do too. Every one of us has committed violence against God’s creation and terrorized the beauty of God’s divine nature residing in us. But God chooses moment by moment to spare me and you, not because we deserve to live or have the right to breathe, but because he is merciful and filled with grace and compassion. We still live because he is love.

He is also absolutely holy, and at some point, everyone who is characterized by the evil will die. We should praise God that he has given us a way to receive his own goodness and set aside the evil and injustice we have taken upon ourselves. He does this, too, because his is love.

And because he is love, he wants all of us to make this choice, and I believe he mourns for everyone who reaches the end and remains bound by the chains of his own evil, choosing eternal death, separation from our Father and everlasting suffering.

Death is the ultimate enemy conquered by Christ, and it is a cosmic tragedy when it claims a victim, regardless of how deserving.

I believe because God is love, he even mourns for Osama bin Laden, and though we can be grateful he no longer can harm anyone else, we should be careful not to rejoice at the things that make God grieve.

EDIT:
As I interacted with someone on Facebook about this a little more, I realized I should probably nuance this a bit. The reason I wrote this blog was in reaction to all the people out there who are unrestrainedly excited that someone just died. At the same time, I don't want to be one-sided either. Justice is a good thing. As an attempt to balance what I am saying, here is some of what I said on Facebook in that conversation:

"I have to acknowledge that God also loves justice. And part of that justice involves protecting his other children from the ones who are violent and hateful. And, ultimately, that justice leads to the death of those who refuse to turn to him. I can praise God that he has protected those who would have been harmed if Bin Laden continued to live, and I can praise him that he has acted according to his perfect nature and character.

I think the short version is that I mourn for the man, but I can rejoice in God's justice, which is good, for God is good."

The Best Laid Plans

2011-03-20T15:54:00.000-07:00

Tina Lips led the discussion on Matthew 6:19-34 today at Evergreen as we continue to go through the Sermon on the Mount. There was a lot of good discussion on the whole passage, talking about what treasures we set our hearts on and where we leave our priorities. The section of the passage that got me thinking the most was this:

²⁵ Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? . . . ²⁷ And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? . . . ³⁰ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹ Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' ³² For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. ³⁴ Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble (Matt 6:25, 27, 30-34).

I am not a worrier really. I tend not to worry about problems in the future, though that fact may not be so much from godliness and doing a great job of living by this passage so much as it is from mental necessity. If I worry about things in the future that I have no solution for and at this point have no way of fixing, I stress and freak out. So in order not to meltdown, I mostly don’t think about such things until I have to. Unfortunately, I don’t know that that really falls in line with what this passage is saying either.

Someone pointed out that the point of this passage isn’t so much to chastise people who worry and say, “Stop doing that!” and leave it at that. The point is that we should be trusting in God to meet our needs. We don’t have to worry about tomorrow because God already has it figured out for us. In light of that more complete picture, my method of ignoring future problems is not really the same thing as trusting God with my future. That’s something I need to work on, but I think it isn’t too much of a stretch to move from where I am the trust aspect. It’s mostly a matter of thinking intentionally and approaching it through a filter of faith rather than emotional expediency.

Where I do encounter more difficulty is in trusting God with my future when I’m not worried about it. While this point isn’t explicitly dealt with in the passage, I think the underlying idea is there. I don’t worry about things in the future much of the time because I have my plans in place. The problem is that if my security about the future is grounded in life going according to my plan, I’m in trouble. I’ve experienced many times before the fact that life just doesn’t respect the fact that I have certain expectations. The universe is quite rude, in fact, totally disregarding the work and mental effort I have put into figuring how I want to structure the course of my life.

Since the universe centers on me so much less than I would like, I have to trust God. When those moments come where something shatteringly big changes the course of my life when I liked it just fine how it was going, I have to realize maybe God knows what he is doing, and taking this detour is way better than the route I had mapped out. When I plan a big change and shift that I think will totally enhance where I’m headed, and the bottom falls out of my plans and I’m stuck right back where I was, I have to acknowledge maybe I’m getting ahead of God, and he has a purpose for keeping me right where I am. Sometimes life, and God, foiling our plans is really frustrating, even devastating. I have to believe that he knows better than I do though. Maybe he knows a much more effective (if radically different) approach to achieving what I was trying to do. Maybe he knows a much better goal to try to achieve.

Plans have a way of changing, and if God’s plans never fail, and if he always grants us his precious and very great promises, even though it may be anything but comfortable, I have to trust that his ends are better than my means.

Following Jesus: A Beginning (Part 2 of 2)

2011-03-11T10:44:00.000-08:00

“When we are called to follow Christ, we are summoned to an exclusive attachment to his person. The grace of his call bursts all the bonds of legalism. It is a gracious call, a gracious commandment. It transcends the difference between the law and the gospel. Christ calls, the disciple follows: that is grace and commandment in one. ‘I will walk at liberty, for I seek thy commandments’ (Ps. 119.45).”

I have started this second part of this blog with another quote from The Cost of Discipleship because I think Bonhoeffer has really nailed the foundational ideology underlying what I am trying develop into a way of approaching life in Christ. Following Jesus isn’t about obeying commands, as if the point were to keep a list of rules, but it is composed of obeying Jesus, making obedience the means to the goal of unity with Jesus. Fortunately for us, Jesus sums up his commands as “The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ³⁰ And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:29-31). He put it another way in John: “³⁴ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. ³⁵ By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:34-35).

While these commands from Jesus are beautiful and wonderful, they are abstract enough not to be very helpful for people who want more specific guidelines on what were are supposed to do as disciples (followers) of Jesus. They are more of a broad approach to life rather than a structured instruction manual. This, I believe, is on purpose for two reasons. The first is that as soon as you set down a concrete command for life, someone will create a heartless law out of it. The second is that the details of a life characterized by love will play out different in every individual to one degree or another. Nevertheless, I think for the person hearing Christ’s call, a pragmatic outline of what answering the call is like will be welcomed and helpful, perhaps necessary for some to know how to move forward.

“Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.”

This powerful and difficult quote from The Cost of Discipleship sets the framework for how to embark on a life of following Jesus. Using Bonhoeffer’s terms, following Jesus incorporates two parts: discipleship and the living Christ. I see it as two streams of thought or two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, we have obedience. On the other, we have immersion in Christ.

Having faith, we must set out to obey, to live the Christian life. But how? Another way to ask this is “What is God’s will for me?” This question has the power to move us on to great things or to paralyze us in doubt. The first step is not to wait for some manifestation of God in power and glory before we obey, but simply to obey what we can already see clearly. All of us have some aspects of our life we can quickly identify as not quite in line with God’s character or the command to love. Whatever it is, whether bitterness toward someone, an addiction, some continued act of selfishness or disregard for someone else, we can clearly see that we must move to correct it. We may not have a complete picture of what our life is to become, but we can take these steps (whether large or small) toward obedience.

At the same time, we will ultimately not get very far if we neglect the other side of the coin. The other side is where the living Christ plays into our lives. Fortunately for us, Jesus is not dead but alive, and able to interact with and transform us. Immersion in Christ is the key to making the whole thing work. This is where my thoughts on monasticism come to into play. What we call spiritual disciplines are the primary means to immersing ourselves in Christ, unifying us with the Spirit of God. Consistent prayer, reading and meditating on Scripture, solitude, self examination, being in and seeking God’s presence. These are all integral parts of connecting with God so that the Spirit can transform our hearts and minds into being like Jesus. These are the individual practices, but there are necessary community practices as well. We are commanded to “love one another,” which is logically impossible if we never come in contact with others. We need to serve each other, speak into each other’s life, and allow trusted fellow disciples in so they can help us along the way. The spiritual practices that shape this part include communion, worship, confession, encouragement, generosity, and honesty both when it’s pleasant and when it’s hard.

Once again, these practices are the tools we use for the goal of immersing ourselves in Jesus. Chris Leonardo once said this to me regarding these practices: “Making the effort to maintain spiritual practices carries little cost, for when we fail, we learn, and when we succeed, we find God.” We might struggle to keep these disciplines, and we don’t need to feel guilty. We just need to keep trying, and when we succeed, we encounter Jesus in a way that transforms us, empowering us to keep going.

By immersing ourselves in Christ through these practices, we are transformed, which gives us a heart and mind that are closer to Jesus’ heart and mind. The result of that change is that we will see more of what needs to change in our lives, adding to the list of clearly seen things to obey. In this way the two streams inform each other. Obeying clears away some of the hindrances to immersion in Christ, and immersing ourselves in Christ clarifies our sight with regard to ourselves and our lives. Of course, these processes are not alternating endeavors. I don’t obey so that I can then experience Christ, then experience Christ to help me obey. They have to happen simultaneously. If you wait to do one before you undertake the other, you will never get anywhere.

While I have attempted to give some practical principles, the details remain abstract because each person has different struggles and places for growth in which to obey. Each person will find God in slightly different ways and through different spiritual practices, though we all ought to participate in some of them, others may only be helpful for some people and maybe only for a time. I could also go further into what kinds of obedience and how the various disciplines connect with this whole process, and maybe I will later on, but these are the basic ideas of what I have been thinking about. I hope this discussion (which has turned out longer than I anticipated) makes sense and is helpful for taking the next steps for someone. I know that it has helped me make an important transition in my own approach to following Jesus, and though I have certainly not mastered the process, it is a beginning for me as I attempt to be a more complete disciple of Jesus.

Be sure to read up on Aaron's perspective on our conversation here.

Following Jesus: A Beginning (Part 1 of 2)

2011-03-10T22:16:00.000-08:00

Following Jesus is beautiful in its simplicity and stunning in its complexity. Jesus lets loose his call, and we can either answer it and follow, or ignore it and go on down the road our lives were headed before. This is where the simplicity lies: it is an either/or decision. There are only two options. Many people who self identify as Christians attempt to find a middle ground of following Jesus in some of what they do and think, but I think they deceive themselves, for this middle ground does not exist. Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes three biblical examples of such people in The Cost of Discipleship:

⁵⁷ As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." ⁵⁸ And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."

⁵⁹ To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." ⁶⁰ And Jesus said to him, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."

⁶¹ Yet another said, "I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home." ⁶² Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:57-62).

In each of these cases, the men who spoke with Jesus wanted to follow him, but only if it were on their own terms, meaning ultimately, they wanted to follow themselves and receive the benefits of association with Jesus.

Additionally, Bonhoeffer asserts, “only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.” At first we may be reticent to assent to both of these truths at once (particularly the second), fearing that we add a requirement of works for salvation, but I don’t think it changes the requirements for salvation at all. We are saved by God’s grace, through our faith in Christ. Yet, to have faith is an act of obedience in itself, and true faith will certainly continue to produce obedience after the first moment a person declares his faith.

Typical language trying to reconcile a spiritual life grounded in faith and grace with the impetus for godly lifestyles involves the language of gift and response. It goes something like this: God has given me salvation through the gift of grace and undeserved love; I have accepted that gift through faith in Jesus; as a result of my faith, I begin to love Jesus and am grateful for all he has done for me; that love I have for Jesus motivates me to express it through obedience to his commands and conformity to his ways. I have little argument with this way of thinking. I think it is helpful, even beautiful, and ultimately, biblical. Where I want to push back a little is that it may not offer much in the way of practical application.

The practical life application I have come to is a product of several weeks’ worth of thinking, particular about the topics of discipleship and monasticism, and they came together through reading the first couple chapters of The Cost of Discipleship. However, I didn’t really draw it into a coherent thought process until I was trying to discuss the bits and pieces of my thoughts with Aaron Smith.

I’ll share what I came up with in another post, which I will create shortly.

Love and Rejection, A Tale of Missional Living

2011-03-06T21:09:00.000-08:00

This morning I went to church early to rehearse with the band, and Chrissy went to do homework at a nearby coffee shop until it was time to join us at the Lab. While she was there she overheard a conversation involving the two baristas and a patron that came in for a few minutes. If you don't know anything about our church community, here are some of the salient aspects that have relevance for their conversation:

The Evergreen Community is self described as a "missional, holistic, Christian community"
We meet in the Lucky Labrador Brew Pub at two locations before the pubs open on Sunday mornings
We are a church community that seeks to guide people in a relationship with Jesus that leads to growth and transformation, from whatever stage of their spiritual journey they may currently occupy
One of the key goals is to be a place that is safe particularly for people who may be wary of attending a more traditional church in a church building, whether because they have never been part of a church body before, they have had previous bad experiences with other churches, or any other reason

The conversation Chrissy overheard was disappointing to say the least. The third member, the patron of the coffee shop, as it turned out was a staff member of the Lucky Lab. He was telling the baristas about the ridiculous situation he had to put up with, namely working in a pub that hosted church that morning. The baristas were incredulous, and they all shared a good laugh at the stupidity of such a phenomenon. They even joked about checking it out, much the same way one would talk about wearing a frying pan as a hat.

This painful conversation was disappointing for a number of reasons. First of all, it seems that people of the very group we most desire to reach find us not only unappealing but even laughable. Second, one of the people involved in the conversation was a member of the pub's staff, in which our gatherings have been happening for years, and though we knew they were never excited about our presence, we would have at least hoped they might have become less hostile through direct observation and some personal contact with us. Finally, if a church like ours that is designed to be gentle and welcoming to those who might normally feel like outsiders, how is it that we seem to have failed so miserably with these three people, and is it even possible for any church community to accomplish this goal?

Chrissy told me about her experience just before the gathering started, so I had it running through my mind as Dustin began to preach about the Sermon on the Mount, specifically Matthew 5:38-48. Particularly relevant was when he began talking about loving one's enemy and praying for those who persecute us. He pointed out that if we are not supposed to hate, but love, our enemies, what makes them enemies is not how we feel about or treat them, but how they feel about us. He told us about a previous church where he had ministered. They had been the first church in their area to meet in a public school, and there was some serious hostility. The lead pastor was on the school board and was faced with one other board member in particular who simply hated him and the church, but the pastor always treated the other man like a friend. What a perfect example of obedience to Jesus' words, and it seemed effortless for him!

While this story is encouraging, it didn't end with him winning over the hostile board member. He simply obeyed and loved the man because that was the Christlike, loving thing to do. God doesn't promise us that living like Jesus will make everything better, and everyone will love us for it. On the contrary, he promises that people will hate us for it and treat us badly. But what makes it worth it is pleasing Jesus and being able to show Jesus' love to everyone, some of whom just might accept it and turn to Jesus because of it!

I will begin and continue to pray for those who work at the Lucky Lab and have to put up with our admittedly strange customs each week, as well as for the baristas and everyone else in our sphere of influence who may love us, hate us, or fall somewhere in between. I hope that our whole church community, including me, grows so much like Jesus that loving everyone around us, including those who think we are ridiculous, becomes our natural response.

Illuminated Windows

2010-11-26T09:06:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons I enjoy winter is that it gets dark earlier. Since it is dark outside, people are in their homes with the lights on. Stay with me now, though this might sound creepy. I love looking through people's windows as I walk by or ride by on the bus and catch a glimpse of life inside. I'm not looking for anything in particular, and there's no part of sexual voyeurism. I just enjoy getting to see a small snapshot of life. Most often, people leave their shades closed at such times, which is appropriate to protect privacy during personal or intimate times. But sometimes, the curtains are open and I get to see how someone likes to decorate, or what they are watching on TV. Yesterday, while I was on the bus, I went by a house with big open windows, and peering out at me as I watched him was a beautiful white cat. A couple blocks down I saw a woman in her kitchen sipping on what I presume to be a cup of tea.

I think these windows into people's lives are beautiful. I also think many other media exist for presenting illuminated windows that give a brief glimpse into one's life. Social networks are a great way to provide and seek out snapshots of one's experiences, tastes, and thoughts. Facebook, Twitter, and blogs serve as easy ways to share oneself publicly. I have to think, though, that just as open windows can illuminate both picturesque and uncomfortable or even lewd scenes within, social networks can share harmless, enjoyable information as well as things that should be kept private. The dilemma of Facebook and Twitter are that they feel private. We have friends who view our information, but in reality, we are broadcasting whatever we do on these sites to the whole world. Despite privacy settings, if someone has enough savvy and interest, anyone can access our information. This article presents a perfect example of people who posted things that would have been perfectly acceptable among friends, but in a public sphere, they were not only inappropriate, but they were ruled to be criminal by the courts.

I think we need to be careful about what we say and how we say it, or what pictures or links we post. People are peering into our lives, and it is not always the people we intend. If information or thoughts or pictures are private in nature, reserved for intimate or personal space, they don't belong online. This is no different than if something personal or intimate is taking place in your home, you wouldn't want someone watching through the window. In those times, you close the blinds and shut the world out. It is inappropriate to share some things with public eyes. Yet other things are fun and healthy to share with whoever cares to receive them. Carelessness and fearful prohibition are both irresponsible and potentially destructive reactions to living in a social world. Leaving one's curtains open at all times whether watching tv or making love is reckless and grossly inappropriate. Leaving them closed at all times deprives you of viewing the outside world and letting in the daylight. A responsible, thoughtful person knows when to leave a window to the world open to share life with the people around them and when it is best to keep private things private.

Checking in from PDX

2010-10-04T20:03:00.001-07:00

As usual, life is busy. Whenever I actually live in such a way that doesn't completely reflect slug-likeness, I seem to be in a constant state of being almost behind. I suspect--as long as it doesn't spiral out of control--this fact is a good thing.

Not all busyness is mundane, however. This weekend Chrissy and I went out to McMenamins Edgefield Resort for a nice weekend together. We went out on Saturday to enjoy the whimsical artwork, pub fare, beautiful scenery, and partake at the winery. We spent a wonderful night there together and even shared a dip in the heated saltwater soaking pool. I'm so blessed to have such an amazing wife to share experiences with, and I can't wait to see where our road takes us next!

School and work keep me on my toes as usual. I have more Hebrew to work on than I really care to think about (how in the world am I supposed to concentrate on Old Testament/Hebrew Bible in my later studies if I don't like working with Hebrew?!). My Acts and Epistles class is good but rather basic, so a lot of it is stuff I have already learned through the years or with my amazing professors in the Evangel University Theology Department. Thanks to my Mentored Field Ministry (internship) I've gotten that little extra push I needed to become more active with Evergreen. I've enjoyed getting to know more people as well as getting to know Dustin better. It has given me the chance to meet with Dustin regularly, become involved with administrative tasks, and make an intentional effort to connect with more people in the community.

Another Evergreen related development is my newfound interest in the fight against sex trafficking in Portland. I have experienced a growing passion to rescue young women and girls who have been trapped in a life of slavery and sexual exploitation. I have been in contact with Todd Diskin from Mayor Sam Adams' office to find out about how the city is involved, and Evergeen is looking into how we can make a difference. I am excited about doing something to help victims of this egregious evil, and I'm lookomg forward to being a part of Evergreen's efforts.

To be or not to be... Racist?

2010-09-20T20:55:00.001-07:00

What does it mean to be racist? I know I typically think of extreme cases like the KKK or even just thinking that people of other races are dirt and treating them accordingly. But I don't actually know anyone like that. Does real racism--or bigotry of any variety-- have to be so overt, or is it more subtle in most people? Can you truly believe that people of every nation, color, faith, gender, and class have the same intrinsic value, deserve the same opportunities, and are capable of the same things as people who fit your own profile and still be a bigot? I think the answer might be 'yes.'

Dr. Paul Metzger spoke yesterday at Evergreen about racism. He told us that Portland is full of racism. At first that statement seems absurd, but I think racism outside of the South is more subtle, but no less terrible. The way Paul put it is that (if you're not white) in the South, it doesn't matter how close you get, it matters how high you get. In the North (or the West Coast), it doesn't matter how high you get, it matters how close you get. I think that makes a lot of sense: it doesn't matter what color an executive, or senator, or president is to someone in the Pacific Northwest, but people don't necessarily want to live in the same neighborhoods as people from different backgrounds, or sit next to them on a bus, or have to live with them.

I think Bob really nailed the issue when he took it a step further than race and pointed out the same tendencies toward varying classes and economic backgrounds. That expansion is where it began to feel like there might be something to work on in me. Of course, I don't think of people as beneath me who have less; that's not the issue. My tendency is more along the lines of falling back on stereotypes in situations where I don't have an opportunity or reason to know someone as an individual. For example, I absolutely do not believe that someone on the street is any more likely to harm me because that person is of a particular race. However, if he dresses like he is part of a gang, then I'm more likely to be wary around him. Unfortunately, maybe someone truly in that lifestyle would do harm to a stranger, but to most people, that urban fashion is just a means of expression and fitting in to a group. At the point I allow myself to make a judgment about any person, based on any external criteria, I take a step toward bigotry.

Now, I could justify my caution around rough looking guys--regardless of race--and say, "Since I can't know who this person really is, better safe than sorry," and I could easily avoid contact without doing him any harm. But what about someone who likes music that I hate or comedy that I find distasteful and inane. Maybe somehow I find a person who values everything I just can't stand, and loves the things that seem worthless and even crude, idiotic, or destructive to me. At that point I have a choice. Do I humble myself enough to say, "Maybe there is value in this I just can't appreciate, or maybe neither is better than the other, or maybe his way sucks, but something has led him there, and before I make a judgment about him as a person, he deserves a chance to show me who he is," or do I simply (perhaps subtly and without consciously thinking about it) decide that since I like things that are good and hate things that are bad (whether morally, qualitatively, or however else) and he likes what I hate, he must be bad?

The next step comes in defining the opposite of prejudice. Is it tolerance? I can easily tolerate a person without valuing them or even treating them well. The problem with tolerance (as Dr. Metzger pointed out) is that it can often just as easily be described as indifference. True opposite of bigotry is not tolerance; it is love. Love reaches out and touches someone. Love doesn't ignore someone who needs us. Love actively seeks the betterment of its object, and it does it without demeaning or degrading. Loving someone from a different race or social background isn't simply abstaining from seeking harm or elevating yourself above another person, but it is giving yourself to that person in a big way or small.

Openness, vulnerability, and personal risk characterize a life free of prejudice. That's not an easy way to live, even if you don't bear any hard feelings toward different people. I know I have work to do in myself, and I'm sure it will take a lifetime, but if I can make progress and show people Jesus' love, it will be a life well spent.

Justice in the Rain

2010-09-07T19:32:00.000-07:00

So, the rainy season is here, or rather--since I live in Portland--the end of the dry season. It was the first rainy day since I started commuting to work by bike and bus, and I ordered a rain jacket just for that, but it didn't arrive by the time I left for work. To compound the soakage I would certainly already experience, the bus was a good 15 minutes late, and the stop happens to be at the corner of two busy streets, right in front of a storm drain, which means that cars have to cross over a little river in the road to get in the right turn lane. Needless to say, I received the full onslaught of dirty water from several sets of tires. I boarded the bus feeling gross and soaked and a tiny bit sorry for myself, though I really was trying to keep a positive attitude since it was an unavoidable situation and I was only about 25 minutes from getting home and drying off.

We all know what happens when you ride the bus anyway.... right? What was I thinking?

A few minutes into the ride a guy, maybe a little younger than me, got on. He was one of those super chatty bus riders I never want to sit by. He introduced himself to a couple people and asked for a cigarette from someone. What is significant about him is that apart from his bus-chattiness nothing indicated he was in any way different from anyone else--that is, until he started talking about sleeping at Mt. Tabor. At this point, I felt foolish being so displeased by a 45 minute commute in the rain when probably thousands of people in Portland have to live and sleep in it every day. I guess sometimes I need a little wake up call to remind me about priorities and perspective.

More than that, this situation got me thinking. We just talked about justice this week at Evergreen and not doing nothing and not getting overwhelmed trying to do everything. In addition to simply figuring out exactly how I can contribute, how we all can, we talked about the idea of helping people without viewing ourselves as heroes and the people we help as victims. In other words, can we help people without inherently elevating ourselves above them as we do it?

Another recent experience that comes to bear on this topic was when Chrissy and I were in line to get into the Portland International Beer Festival. A homeless gentleman was walking past the queue and loudly pointing out how people could be putting their money to better use. He challenged a couple guys who proudly proclaimed they intended to get drunk, which sent him into a fury, repeatedly shouting, "God's gonna ****ing kill you!" However, before this point, in an attempt to prove how frivolous we were all being with our money, he announced he only made $600 per week. $600 per week! I was astounded. That's double what I make actually going to a job! That got me thinking, and I have been much less motivated to give to supposedly needy people since that day.

But maybe I should look at all of this differently. Maybe it shouldn't matter how much I have compared to another person. Maybe if someone needs help, I should help if I can, not just if I am better off than they are. I think if I keep thinking in terms of hierarchies and the one better off helping the one in need, I miss the point, and I will never really help anyone. We all have need. Our needs just differ. Someone may not have food for the day, and I can provide that food, but I have a need they can fulfill. I can learn from wisdom they have, or I can grow as a person by giving from what God has given me. However I look at it, I live a selfish life. I don't think there will ever be a time when that won't be true to some extent, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try to grow. I hope God will help me as I work to change my outlook, gain some humility, and really learn what it means to give, without demeaning those who receive or thinking better of myself than I should.

Eternal Death

2010-02-08T09:28:00.000-08:00

"Eternal death is in a very real sense the extension and finalization of spiritual death. If one comes to physical death still spiritually dead, separated from God, that condition becomes permanent." - Millard J. Erickson Christian Theology

This thought really struck me. Of course, this has been my basic understanding of what happens when nonChristian people die for a long time, but he presents it in really the perfect way, I think. I believe completely in the concept of a real Hell, where people suffer forever. I don't want anyone to go there, nor do I think God really wants anyone to go there (there are scripture references that back me up on this). On the basis of Erickson's more theological phrasing, it seems to me that the standard youth group explanation of "People choose for themselves where to go; God only sends people to Hell who already want to be there." isn't a bad thought. The reason I say that is that I don't think we really understand what Heaven or Hell are like. The Bible is quite vague and uses a lot of what is probably metaphor and symbolism, without really presenting a concrete blueprint for us. Basically, Hell is the place of spiritual (and eternal) death. Heaven is the place of spiritual (and eternal--if we include the new earth...) life. Spiritual life is entirely involved with intimate connection with God, of a relational and worshiping nature. Spiritual death is entirely involved with separation from God. Therefore, whatever we want in this life is what we get in the next. The only difference is that we can change our mind so long as it is before our physical death. There comes a point when we can no longer change. There is a deadline. Just like a person getting a tattoo has a lot of time to think and decide what he wants to get. He could have decided on a dragon for two years, but then he changed his mind a week before he plans to get it, and instead he gets a tiger. He has that freedom. However, once he goes under the needle, there is no turning back. His decision is made, and it's final. In the same way, I could reject and re-accept God an infinite number of times in this life. However, once and die. I am stuck. I receive whatever I wanted at the point my days end. (of course this last part makes it seem like i don't believe in eternal security of salvation, which I do in some ways and in some I don't, but that's a topic for another day.)

I praise God for his sovereignty, and his security, wherein he feels secure in his sovereignty enough not to be threatened by human free will. He grants us the freedom to decide for ourselves whether or not love him and glorify him. If we want to love and worship he, we have the opportunity and may continue to do so for eternity. If we want nothing to do with him, he does not force us, and we can continue in that decision forever, as well.