a son and a tattoo later...

what it boils down to is that i've been slacking off.  a two month lapse in writing is reprehensible and, unfortunately, typical.

the urgent marches it's regiments of details down the streets making a show of it's tyranny, pulling it's drably painted phone call nukes behind litigation tanks driven by family budget sergeants.  when i pull myself from the parade, i've found that it has pounded my mind to mush.

all those boots stepping in unison.

i could fill you all in on the details of my first son's birth and his first week and how that has changed life, so on and so forth.  but the fact is that i'm still absorbing it all.  at this point, i've nothing to add to the litany of cliches about this sort of thing.  don't get me wrong, i'm ecstatic.  but the things that get me to that point are generally the most difficult for me to put into words.  the progression of ease in writing has always moved, for me, from pain, to pleasure, to love.  love takes the most work, the most time, the most thought.

give me a while, it'll come.

instead, i thought i'd intro an idea i've had for the next few weeks here.

there are five truths that are fundamental to my faith.  when these go, i go.  they make the mold that my life slides into.  and i work to make sure that's the case, and not the other way around.  that's when we start having problems - pragmatically and theologically.  they're five phrases that, while not written in the bible, sum up truths that fill the pages of scripture.

i thought that i might take a few weeks to run through these five phrases and what they mean at their roots followed by what they mean in life.

for those of you who were wondering, this process will explain my recent tattoo.  for those of you who didn't know or care about the tat, it'll just be an opportunity for conversation.

first installment coming soon:

SOLA SCRIPTURA

assumptions

During a conversation this evening, I was reminded by a gracious brother, that I assume.  Though he didn't say as much, that is the core of the problem.

Historically, it has been a trend in my life to establish a solid friendship with a boatload of respect shared between parties, common ideals and worldview (or not), etc.  What I mean is that it's not a casual acquaintance.  Once the friendship is established and I'm confident that the other individual knows and understands the care and respect that I have for him or her, my effort to bolster that understanding dwindles.

To put it simply, I slack off.

The fact that the relationship was strongly established, however, brings us to the place where we are happy to speak into the other's life, to come along side, to help grow.  We give help, we receive help.  Community sanctification is a wonderful thing.

Down the road a mile or two, I wake up halfway through a conversation and it becomes clear that in the course of helping and being helped, I had neglected to make my purposes and my care plain.

We all know what it means to assume...

In the process of chiseling away at life and godliness, I forget to inspect the foundation to make sure that a stray stroke of the hammer hasn't done any structural damage.  I assume that the foundation is solid.  Unfortunately, it isn't always.

What happens is that the people that I love most become more aware of a critical eye towards them than they are of the loving care that I have for them.  Thankfully, I believe that the Lord has kept me from this type of situation with my wife.  But with others it has, at times, become a real issue.  Condolences haven't been offered.  Congratulations haven't been shared.  Observations, questions, and suggestions have been perceived as nitpicking.  In short, care has not been communicated.

I've had to ask forgiveness more than a couple times.

Not good.

We are told so often in Scripture that we need to remember the Gospel, not to forget, to hold fast!  As humans we very quickly forget our own story.

When you think about it, if God didn't just save us and let us fly, if he went through the trouble to remind us of his care and love over and over in life and in Scripture, it stands to reason that we should do that with our friends and family even more.  If we need to be reminded of perfect love, how much more do we need to be reminded of imperfect love?

Paul asks his readers to have confidence in God's love based on God's gift of his son.  If that has been given he will much more freely he give all things.  The gift of the Mercedes indicates that the floor mats weren't held back.

The fact of the matter is that what I've given to family and friends is really fairly minimal.  

There's significantly less rapport there.  I don't blame you if you wonder how freely I'm going to give you anything, much less "all things" if I haven't recently taken the time to make sure that you know that, first and foremost, I care about you.

So, there you have it, a public statement of my shortcoming and sin.  Godliness comes through moments and means.  I'm praying that mine is growing.

unbelief

I need to double check the schedule, but last I looked I'm scheduled to share a sermon on July 20th.

It's been a while.  It's been a long while.  If this is going to work, I'll need an extra truckload of grace.

One of the things that has been whispering to the tail region of my brain - the portion that doesn't get much attention unless it acts up or creates a grinding squeal of a ruckus that can't be ignored  - is that unbelief is much different and much more subtle than we give it credit for.

The author of Hebrews mentioned that without faith it's impossible to please God, because if we want to please him, we need to believe 1) that he exists, and 2) that he's a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

It has been my experience that generally we look over the first part of that list of requirements.  And, frankly, when there are only two rules, it seems foolish to just assume that the first is a given.  This is the sort of thing that ranks up there with professional baseball players showing up late.  Two rules: be on time and hustle.  "Yeah, yeah, got it, right.  You want us to get to the park two hours before game time.  It's covered.  Could we move on to the fun stuff, let's say, batting practice."

It seems to me that the fewer the rules, the more we should pay attention.  Does that make sense?

So, the first of those two requirements should, I think, get a bit more play.  We read it, "Yeah, well I wouldn't really be reading the Bible if I didn't believe that you exist.  Check.  Moving right along."

But when I break it down, I wonder if it's really that simple.

Believing that God exists involves a bit of information.  Saint Anselm defined God as the being than which none greater can exist.  It's an awkward but logically sound way of saying that, by definition, God is perfect - he's the best of everything that can be conceived of, and better.  It's called the Ontological argument, if you're interested.

Scripture might be a bit clearer, when it comes down to it.  God is perfect virtue.  As perfect virtue, he is perfectly true.  As perfectly true, he is perfectly trustworthy.  Since he's perfectly trustworthy, we can believe everything that he says about himself without reservation - as long as the method of communication is trustworthy and our reception of the information is also trustworthy, but that's for another discussion at another time.

If he is perfect in all things, complete and whole, then to take away one of the perfections is to make him imperfect.  A being that is no longer perfect can be no longer God.

Make sense?

All that being taken as true, those moments when we call God's goodness into question; when we think that he could not really have our best interest in mind as we lose a job; when we ignore his power to heal because what we think what we really need is medicine, rather than prayer; when we think that this last sin has got to put us beyond the reach of his grace; when we think that our life is an expression of God's disfavor rather than the opposite; when we feel pretty good about ourselves and think that surely this time we've earned a few brownie points; all are expressions of unbelief.

Those are moments when our hearts are saying "God - I don't believe that you are who you say you are."  Once we're there, we might as well come out with it and tell him that we believe he doesn't exist.  Because, after all, if we don't believe that he is who he said he is, we're calling into question his trustworthiness, his unchanging nature, his perfection.  And if he's not those things, he's not God.  We can think of a being that's entirely those things.  So, if our prayers are being heard by someone that isn't all of those things, then we're praying to something other than God.

Right?

Puts an interesting spin on those moments, I've found.  In my life it has become much simpler to identify sins of unbelief, of pride, of a sense of earning my salvation, of anger, of lust, of worry, of greed when I realize that at the root is a degree to which I'm looking at our Father and telling him that he's not real.

Once I recognize the truth - that God is real - I can adjust my perceptions, confess my sin, and move on to bigger and better things.

In short, I can believe.

So, those are some rough thoughts that I've been tossing around for the sermon.

Show of hands - who thinks it would be helpful to hear that explained a bit more?

d) all of the above

Crammed with packing, lifting and turning, working twelve hour days, negotiating, satisfying subpoenas, and sidling up to clients all buddy-buddy like, the last couple weeks have been nuts.

But we're now in a new location, just down the street about a mile.

Just two weeks before our move to a new apartment - a move about which we have been quite excited - a good friend told us of a place in their building, twice the space, roughly the same rent, new kitchen, and so on.  So, we took a look.  The landlord had not yet moved out, and it was dirty in the manner of someone who left suddenly and immediately cut off the cleaning service - we're not talking Mrs. Havisham-my-fifty-year-old-wedding-cake-is-still-on-the-dining-room-table dirty, but we are talking month-old-dusty-dry-dog-food-in-the-bowl-and-the-fridge-smells-funny dirty.  Still, the apartment had a lot of old construction potential.

We looked.  We haggled.  We checked the utilities.  We spoke with the owner.  We arranged the approval of the co-op.  We checked our credit (phenomenal, by the way).  And we almost said "yes" and signed the paper work.

The pieces, though, just didn't quite fit together.  After two voice mails and a text message from the owner within two hours, a projected increase in rent, utilities that seemed much too high, and a general feeling of ill-ease, we pulled our bets and stuck with our original lease.

Now that we're here and all the heavy lifting is done; now that my back is feeling slightly less stiff, the laundry's done and the dishes are out of the sink, we realize that the old rule is still true.

When the options are several, the first instinct is the best one.  Don't second guess.  At the end of the day, A), B), or C), is generally better than D) all of the above.  It just takes a bit more guts to choose only one.

Cookout conversation for Christians - being all things to all men with a burger in hand

Back at school there was a group of us who observed an amusing trend among new students at the college - freshmanitis, we termed it, inflammation of the personality.  It was observed that, as students join the new community context, it was frequently the tendency to take whatever they "are" and become more of that.  Musicians painted their fingernails silver (where was the rule that said you shouldn't?).  Iconoclasts began riffling through the handbook looking for rules to intentionally break.  Student leaders tried to rally the troops around the cause of creating and internet cafe ambiance in the little food counter alternative to the cafeteria.  

Aspiring theologians began heated debates about reformed theology with people who probably didn't care to listen.  The laid back types looked on from afar rejecting it all with lack of interest that bordered on anger.

It all was the usual multiplied by five - add zeros as appropriate.

All of this within the first 24 hours of arrival on campus and slowly trailing off towards the end of the freshman year.  Personally, I was all of the above - a brainiac with leadership skills, theological training, and a subtle flair for the arts run amok.  It was not pretty.

Somewhere along the line it occurred to me that we were amplifying our differences in order to create a name for ourselves as individuals.  We all felt a need to be noteworthy in some way.  So, what we were naturally, became what we were unnaturally for a year or so until things calmed down in those late teen angst ridden days.

I've been finding of late that political, artistic, theological, lifestyle, parenting, and employment opinions are getting a lot of airtime in personal conversations in the church - primarily when differences exist.  Give or take, half the time the conversations are learning experiences, the other half seem to be residual effects of freshmanitis.  Discuss, discuss, discuss, with no resolution and with much more interpretation of truth than application of truth.

Once (well several times - it took a while to sink in), I was told that an opinion offered before it was requested, a preference expressed before it was invited is often observed as arrogance - whether or not it actually is.

As cookouts proliferate this weekend, I am forced to wonder if the unbelieving souls who are in our presence look at us like a bunch of freshman trying to prove our mettle over burgers.  I wonder if it speaks well of the church, of God's saving grace, to spend time tossing opinions back and forth in (even friendly) debate with no clear purpose to resolve and no clear expression of humility.

Being all things to all men, I think, may have an element of humility involved that prefers to lower the volume of an opinion in order to amplify unity under the cross.  Context, as they say in theological circles, is king.  And I wonder, even when a patently false opinion is shared, if there might be more to be gained by holding my peace than by rebuffing the error in the presence of an unbeliever.  Laying down my preferences and being all things to all men in order that I may save some may frequently involve simply not responding.

If nothing else, holding that opinion back can be a great exercise in cultivating a realistic perspective of what my thoughts are worth.  It cultivates humility - an area where I can always use some weeding and a bit of fertilizer.

when with the ransomed...

when it's all said and done, we have very little idea what's actually going on.  

he upsets the plans, re-organizes our closets without our permission, throws out our favorite recliner, gives us pabst blue ribbon instead of samuel smith's nut brown.  

worse, he takes a child.

we look up at him, squinting a little, brows tight, the corners of our mouths upturned as if to ask, "what?  really?"

like abraham raising the knife over isaac, we turn our hearts to praise when it doesn't make a bit of sense.  but, for isaac a ram appeared.  

we break out the binoculars and scan the landscape for burning bushes.  when none are found we gather a couple hundred people and light lamps in jars hoping to break them in unison, frightening the valley full of ghouls into a frenzy.  when they don't respond, we wet our lips to blow the trumpets and tighten our sandals to march around the city seven times.  when the walls don't fall, we find a leader and we hold up his arms to keep the sun standing still.  when it moves, we send our priests into the river waiting for it to dry.  when our feet get wet, we watch and pray.  when we fall asleep, we search for someone to sweat blood.  when all that we can muster is perspiration, we gather in a room to pray, waiting for the women to burst in crying that the stone had been rolled away when they arrived.  when the silence is deafening, we turn our eyes heavenward because the last time we saw him he was rising in that direction and he promised that he'd return from there.  

but it's been an awfully long time.  it really has.

when it comes down to it we remember that he rose, that he is risen, just as he said.

on the rest we'll just have to wait for answers.

but, jesus wept and so can we.

rough tuning

like my son has been tap tap tapping against the inside of my wife, sometimes harder than others, making his presence known, my brain has been tap tap tapping on the inside of my skull, waiting patiently and not so for me to use it again.  like my son sometimes impatiently grows, very alive, very eager, my mind has been jumping to and fro.

after a while it becomes difficult to ignore that scraping on your skull.

when it becomes loud enough, painful and joyful enough, when one too many people have said they miss hearing your voice scribbled and typed, after clever essay upon clever essay has been read, once the winter has turned to spring and the evenings are a little longer and a little milder, once the true light on my pipe has taken and the blue grey smoke of an english blend fills my mouth, once the press has been pushed and the coffee poured, my fingers begin to type.

but it's been a while and i've never been one for over editing.

just enough to make it cogent.  just enough to make it clear.

i'll tune it, sure.  but it won't be fine.  it'll be rough and unshaven.  it'll be me.