Humility Lessons from my Nun

Two weeks ago I talked about how God gave me a nun--a spiritual director who helps me sort through the noises of my soul.

I made my monthly nun check-in yesterday. We ended up talking a good bit about pride and spiritual disciplines that help to check it. There were several that he offered, none of which I tend to be very good at, but a couple have me thinking today.

The discipline that has me most intrigued (and that I think would be the most difficult for me) is the discipline of secrecy. When I give a talk or lead a seminar, I want feedback. Mostly, of course, I want people to say nice things, but even negative feedback is better than no feedback at all. Often, if I don't get it offered to me, then I go fishing for it. I look for opportunities in conversation to turn the subject to me or things that I've done in order to angle for some sort of comment that I hope will be a compliment.

The discipline of secrecy is really a discipline of silent contentment before the Lord. It is saying that the things that I do are for the Lord, the work and the results are in his hands, and so I will be content before the Lord to have done the work for him and not for the approval of others.

My relationships would be so much cleaner and more free, I think, if I weren't so often mining for encouragement to prop up my outward show of perfect performance. If I could draw my contentment from deeper wells, I think I would be much more peaceful, much less manipulative, and much less anxious. My work is done well or not done well before God. In either case, I am free to love and bless others, not use them for my vacuous and ravenous ego.

I think I'll give this secrecy thing a try. Sort of odd that I'd post a blog about it, but us external processors have a hard time doing anything too quietly--even when we're thinking about being quiet, we've gotta' talk it out loud.

Who's Hot, Who's Not

Who's Hot:

*Heels & 'Hoos: UNC men basketball projected #1 or #2 in most polls; UVA alum Katie Couric first solo woman news anchor.

*Tom Cruise: Proud soon-to-be papa stars in can't-miss Mission Impossible 3, but then again...

*NFL & NCAA: Pro football's draft has become newest national obsession; College football crowns new champ in epic championship game then two months later stages greatest basketball tourney in history despite ho-hum Final Four.

*Dook Lax: DNA tests come back negative; but then again...

*Easter Bunnies: Easter Saturday yard work leads to discovery of rabbit's den with two bunnies; the next day the Easter Bunny (no relation) leaves basket with Play-Do pasta maker for Davis.


Who's Not:

*Devils & Pack: Dook to lose more than just Reddick and Williams to this year's draft; N.C. State boosters and media run off all-around good guy (and good coach) Herb Sendek and are dissed and dismissed by first two choices.

*Tom Cruise:...tabloids full of rumors of marital discontent, freekatie.net continues to be hot internet site, and then there's that whole Scientology thing...

*MLB & NBA: Baseball season began a little while ago and the only reason anyone cared was to watch the train-wreck of Barry Bonds' life and ego as drug allegations unravel his inflated career; the NBA playoffs begin way too soon after the NCAA tourney for anyone to think that they really do love this game.

*Dook Lax: ...what do you say if you're the athletic director: way to not molest the stripper, guys? Season's cancelled, coach is gone, and D.A. vows to continue investigation.

*George W: Approval rating continues to decline; former baseball team Texas Rangers so bad already mathematically eliminated from the playoffs.

*Easter Snakes: Easter weekend yard work yields more reptiles than bunnies; yard work done yields more to do.

Good Friday Freedom

I would prefer to think of myself, as Martin Luther once said, as a painted sinner in need of a painted savior. That is, I would like to believe that the threads of brokenness and rebellion and idol-worship did not run through the core of my being. And thus I would prefer to think that Jesus had only to die a little death for me, or at least that my part did not hurt quite so much as yours.

But Good Friday will not allow me to use my illusion for very long.

Good Friday, with it's gruesome twists and turns, calls me to the stark-reality of my situation and His. And what this does for me in my every day life is free me from having to pretend that I'm no longer in need of a savior. All my secret thoughts, all my shameful pride, all my darkest fears about myself and what might be wrong about me are all confirmed at the cross. I am, indeed, a mess.

As I learned in a Sonship Bible study many years ago: cheer up, you are worse off than you think. When I can bring myself by faith to embrace this fact, it relieves me from the posturing and performing that mark so much of my interactions with other people and with God.

And the corollary to this is that the cross is even more powerful and effectual than I could ever imagine.

Indeed, so wonderfully powerful is Jesus work on the cross and his subsequent resurrection that while it confirms the darkest fears that we have about ourselves (that we're not completely put-together, nice, basically good people who happen to do a few wrong things now and then), it also radically re-makes us once we have embraced the reality of Christ's work in our own lives.

The New Testament has lots to say about us being sinners before we meet Christ. But not once does the New Testament refer to us as sinners after we have been found by him. In other words, our fundamental identity once we are in Christ shifts from sinner to sons and daughters.

This does not mean that we do not sin, but rather that our worst and darkest fears about ourselves are exposed on Good Friday and dealt with in the mystery of His work betwwen Good Friday and Easter Sunday. There is an exchange: our identity as sinners for His identity as the Son. We share in His Sonship now, no longer primarily identified as sinners and therefore recklessly free to admit all the worst about ourselves--and all the best about the new identity and hope we have in Christ.

Happy Easter, my friends. He is risen! Hallelujah!

Two Paths to Lord Over the Nations

This weekend we celebrate the dying and rising again of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is enthroned as Lord over all the nations of the earth. But Easter was not the only route Jesus could have taken to reclaim that which he had created.

At the very beginning of Jesus' ministry, the gospel writers record that he was led out into the desert to be tempted. Satan took him to a high place and in an instant showed him all the kingdoms of the world.

"I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours."

Here it is. The expedient path. The painless alternative. The shortcut to glory. No cross. No friends abandoning him. No lashes from a cruel whip. No long, painful, agonizing, excruciating death. No being cut off from the presence of His Father.

Just a little mis-directed worship, and Jesus gets what he came for.

Of course, most of us know what happened: Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'"

In one sentence, Jesus seals his fate. There is only one way now to re-claim that which is rightfully his. Jesus carries the cross three years later, but he embraces the cross here. Jesus declines the expedient solution and goes the way of the cross.

This is instructive for us as Americans--our culture is built around expedient medicating of difficult circumstances, from fast-food to the pharmaceutical culture to the therapeutic self-help culture. Some of this is good and right. Much of it is simply built around expedience and pain-relief.

But Easter, and the decision Jesus made three years earlier to not bend the false knee, tells us that there are some pains worth embracing. There are deaths worth dying. Not all deaths are final. Some deaths lead to life. And, of course, others do not. But before we go with our instincts and select the path of least resistance, it would be wise to allow Easter to speak into our decision-making process.

Easter Truth

To say that there is no such thing as absolute truth is to make an absolute truth statement.

To survey the landscape of various religions and philosophies and propose that there is no one way to understand God or the world but rather that they all point to the same ultimate reality is to simply add more clutter to the already over-developed landscape. In the attempt to take away an exclusive meta-narrative, you have simply fabricated a new one.

To say that it is up to the individual to Golden-Corral style buffet their way through the religious line, selecting bits and pieces of each religion as they go, is to atomize the individual and to spay and neuter all choice. Choice only matters if the choice has consequences. To say that it's all the same anyway is to disempower people and make all choice meaningless. I find empowering people a very small and very secular goal, but even by this measure religious relativism cannot stand up. Ergo, the religious relativist movement has only further served to commodify religion and make it another option among the many--further isolating the individual who was created for a story bigger than him/her self and set out looking for one. Instead of purpose, the pilgrim simply finds more products to choose from.

Easter demands to be dealt with on it's own terms, not as part and parcel of a patch-work of personalized religious choices. This event is radically particular, radically re-orienting, and, indeed, radically relativizing: everything else in the universe must either be understood through this center, or it will not be understood at all.

Tuesday Grab-Bag on Monday Night

It's going to be a busy day tomorrow, so I thought I'd post something tonight before I plunge into a full day.

*A week or two ago I posted some poetry that wasn't so great. If you're interested in some real poetry, check out The Todd Waldo Collection, a book of poetry available for purchase on-line. Todd's a true artist who pushes me to think with his art--as well as laugh. My personal favorite is his poem '70's Child to 70's Child,' which he wrote for me on the occasion of my 30th birthday two years ago. Anytime someone can work in a Smurfs reference in a book of poetry, you know it has to be good.

*There's been a lot of hype about The Gospel of Judas that was just released over the weekend. Christianity Today did a good job of cutting through some of it with this article. Check it out if you're interested in the issues being raised.

*Greatest game show of all time: The Price is Right, no contest. Less geeky than Jeopardy, less random than Wheel of Fortune. An enthralling combination of skill (how much does a Del Monte can of peas cost in California, anyway?), longevity, personality (Rod Roddey, Bob Barker, Barker's Beauties), drama (some serious prizes being awarded every single day, sometimes multiple times a day), and variety of games within the game--Plinko, The Range Game, Hole in One (or Two), the Big Wheel, the Showcase Showdown. I'd play sick just to stay home and watch it from 11 to 12 as a kid. And the beat just keeps going and going and going...

Leaf by Niggle

Last weekend we were at my parent's house in Concord, NC. I picked up a book of J.R.R. Tolkien's short stories and read one of my favorites: Leaf by Niggle.

Niggle is a painter, and Tolkien describes him thusly: "He was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees."

Being an over-achiever, I instantly recoiled: I certainly don't want to be that kind of person. I want to be the sort of person who can do it all--the leaves, the trees, whole forests, maybe throw in some mountains and a nice stream--you want some picnic-ers in that scene? I'll see what I can do.

Tolkien got me.

As the story goes on, Niggle the poor (in both senses of the word) painter is shown to need the aid of his slightly obnoxious neighbor...and his obnoxious neighbor needs him. It is a story about gifts and service, complete with a visit to pergatory (Tolkien was Catholic). It is one of the rare times that Tolkien's faith plays out in very direct ways with his writings--he was not a big fan of C.S. Lewis' Narnia series because he felt they lacked the subtlety that all good art has.

The whole point of the story is that all of us need the body. And my reaction against Niggle's weakness reveals the depths of my issues: if I can't embrace the fact that at times I'm the type of "painter" (actually, I can't paint/draw/sketch at all) who can draw leaves better than whole trees, then I will miss out on the joy of sharing life in community. I become isolated in my attempts at self-sufficiency, and I miss out on the fullness of fellowship.

So this Easter week, I'm celebrating the fact that I'm the kind of painter who can sometimes paint leaves better than trees, or trees better than leaves...and that I don't have to try so hard to maintain the pitiful illusion that I'm good at everything. It's the kind of freedom that we should and do have as Christians, but we (or at least I) find it hard to live in it as deeply and recklessly as we are invited to.

Here's Zoe at 3 months! This is actually the only point in the day that she was actually smiling yesterday, according to my wife. But overall, Zoe's been a great baby. She is dearly loved by her parents and especially her older brother who likes to bring her his stuffed animals to kiss her head.

Panacea Wary

Have you ever heard someone say something like this: "I think if I really loved God perfectly/the way I should/more, then X (sharing my faith, prayer, Bible study, etc.) would naturally follow?"

Let me state for the record: I am wary of this panacea.

Two reasons:

1. At what point do or will we EVER love God truly/perfectly/the way we ought? Answer: never. If we're waiting to grow or to attempt to grow in these areas until we get our love for God all in order, getting ourselves more cranked up to be more in love with God, then we'll never get to anything.

2. Nearly everything that we often list as "X" is a skill, not a natural ability: prayer, sharing our faith, Bible study, whatever. These are all learned abilities, there's maybe 2% of the Christian population to whom these things come naturally. In other words, even if you DID love God perfectly/truly/the way you should, you STILL would probably stink at sharing your faith until you sought it out intentionally.

The word most often used for wisdom in the Old Testament Scriptures is literally "skill in living." Skills are learned, not random outgrowths of other things. I might love football, but to be able to teach others how to play is a different skill set.

In fact, what I find most often my work with students is quite the opposite. As one of my fellow staff workers observed the other day: "It seems those who have only the smallest glimpse of Jesus [i.e. really young Christians and those who are passionately on the journey of being found by him] seem to be the most reckless about talking about him."

Indeed, the early passion of young faith is a powerful motivator. After that fades (as it always does, and this is not to be re-grasped-at but allowed to pass that we might grow into maturity) we must do the real work of growing into skillful living with Christ.

The Real Final Four

Yesterday I mentioned that pressing through my surface-level angst to deeper questions helps me to see the questions behind the questions that are really the significant ones. It also helps me to see where I'm asking the wrong questions.

I learned the right questions from my seminary professor a couple years ago. These are the questions that God is always the most interested in answering, especially in Scripture but really in all of his works. These questions in this order, the real final four:

1. Who is God?
2. What is God doing (or what has God already done?)
3. Who are we? And the corollary: who am I?
4. What do we/I do?

It strikes me every time I think about these questions that the thing that I most often ask about (what should I do?) is the question that God is least interested in answering. The question I ponder probably the least often (the character, nature, and attributes of the God of the universe) is the one that God is most interested in supplying me answers to.

To the Nunnery with Piebald Questions

A couple of years ago I realized that I needed to get me a nun.

One of the challenges of being in full-time ministry is finding older folks who are willing and have the time and space to help sort through things in my own life. At one point over a six-month span, I heard several cool speakers and a couple other IV staff talk about their nuns--older women nuns that they met with on a regular basis that gave them spiritual direction. One staff even mowed grass in exchange for monthly meetings.

I wasn't exactly sure where to find my nun. It's not like there's "rent-a-nun" section in the yellow pages. So I prayed for several months, maybe over a year. And the Lord gave me a nun. His name is Doug Stewart. While he's not technically a nun, he is a wise, godly, older man who is gifted in the art of spiritual direction. We talk about once a month and he helps me sort through the noises of my soul.

One thing Doug has helped me to do is press through my surface-level questions to consider what the deeper questions are: what's the question BEHIND the question? In the case of my piebald tension and the question of my work and God's work I posted on yesterday, there are bigger questions that drive my angst that are pretty significant: do I matter to God? is my work important? am I valuable?

When those questions are exposed, I can begin the healing at a deeper level, a more satisfying level. I am no longer treating outer symptoms but I'm getting to the roots of the issues. I also begin to see where I'm asking the wrong questions.

This is important because everyone has places of angst in their lives that then gets worked out in our walk with God. Thankfully most of the people who read this blog aren't in full-time ministry. So your places of surface-level tension or angst are probably not the same as my piebald tension. But the key thing is not the exact outworkings of our angst but to press through whatever places of tension or conflict exist and begin to ask: what's the question behind this question? What are the issues that are really driving this concern/problem/issue?

And when we get to those places, we usually realize that we're both much better off and much worse off than we ever really thought we were. And then the real healing and transformation begins.

Feeling Pretty Piebald Recently

Two words can describe my first two years of ministry: utter failure. The InterVarsity chapter I was sent to serve dwindled from 50 to 15 by the end of my second year. As the chapter went into its' death spiral, I began to ask some big life questions: would I be better suited to work as a Wal-Mart greeter? is this all my fault? does God care about this whole mess? why doesn't he do something?

There was a pretty phenomenal turn-around over the course of the next several years, and the questions abated.

But over these past several weeks, as I've been in the midst of leadership selection and re-thinking campus strategy and making big decisions about our structures, the question has come back again to haunt me: what's my work and what's God's work? The question has application in both personal growth (i.e. personal disciplines like prayer and Bible study) and in ministry.

My Eugene Peterson/monastic/contemplative/spiritual formation side leans heavily into the reality of God's presence, work and activity in all areas of life. Rest. Be. Reflect. Pray. Be with God more. Do less. I can practically feel my anxiety level melt and my soul settle.

My Bill Hybels/missional/strategic/vision side of me points out the fact that when I do stuff better, we get better results. There's a pretty direct correlation in my ministry over the past ten years to my competency level growth and what kind of results we got. So I need to get to work, learn more, get a little more creative, try more stuff. My adrenaline kicks in: let's get to work!

The Scripture that the Lord gave me in the midst of the VCU death-spiral comes back to me during times like these like an old friend to remind me of what's true. In John 2, Jesus turns water into wine but the servants at the wedding get to be a part of it: they fill the jars with water (and John notes that they 'filled them to the brim'--a nod to excellence in our service) and they take it out to the master of the banquet. The servants have a legitimate role, but it's not water-to-wine work and it's not like Jesus couldn't find other people to fill the jars. We are involved in his work by his invitation, but there is only one water-to-wine maker and we are not Him.

So all our work, whether it's leading a campus ministry or pursuing the Lord in our disciplines or just trying to love our families with God's kind of love, is just jar-filling. We have work to do, and there is, indeed skill involved. We need to learn, to read good books or seek out mentors or attend conferences or some combination of these or other things. But in the end, all eternal transformation and change is water-to-wine work. And there's only one Person who can do that.

Thanks goodness.

Friday Grab-Bag

*I believe. I'm firmly entrenched on the George Mason basketball team bandwagon. If these guys can win this weekend against Florida (a team that they are greatly overmatched against, like they have been for most of the tournament) then I think they can win it all.

*Speaking of basketball (as I am often wont to do) all of Tar Heel nation breathed a sigh of relief yesterday as super-frosh Tyler Hansborough declared that he would come back to play for UNC next year. With Tyler coming and the blue-chip recruits lined up, there will be tons of expectations for this team next year...hopefully they won't wilt underneath them.

*This weekend we're packing up the fam (Davis is doing much better now that he's been off the steroids for a couple of days) and heading down to the Charlotte area to see grandparents and great-grandparents. Zoe has yet to meet my world-famous Oma and Opa, and we've got a fun-filled family extravaganza lined up. A word of warning to those of you young marrieds who have yet to have kids: the grandparent gene is a hidden yet powerful force. When your parents have grandchildren, they become different beings altogether. The same people who used to deny you Cocoa-Puffs and Pop-Tarts for breakfast will now try to ply your children with chocolate at any hour of the day. Which is why your kids will always think your parents are much cooler than you are...and why God made grandparents in the first place.

*Most overrated rock band of all-time: The Rolling Stones. They just are.

Have a great weekend.

Idolatory of Cool

One of the many occupational hazards of being a campus minister (along with prolonged exposure to cafeteria food and the stunting of vocabulary due to continued excessive use of words "dude" and "like" as punctuation) is extended time in youth "cool" culture. Most normal 32-year-olds spend their days in middle management in cube world contemplating how to move up to upper-middle management in cube world. I spend my days hanging out in the Union noticing that New Balances have taken over the top spot as the shoe company of choice of the cool kids.

So it was perfect-storm-like conditions a couple weeks ago when my Adidas backpack zipper broke (yes, I still wear a backpack every day to school) and I had birthday money burning a hole in my proverbial pocket. I had been eyeing cool, over-priced The North Face backpacks for the previous several months, and now it seemed that my time had come. I was going to have a new, cooler backpack.

But something happened in my soul as I zipped around on-line trying to find something a little cheaper than what I could find at my local overpriced outdoor store. The Lord called me to consider my motives for going after this backpack. As I considered it, the chase to be 'cool' in some ways is just the tip of the iceberg as I fight anxiously to be sure that I'm relevant and accepted and applauded by the students I work with. 'Cool' is a terrible master, it will always and forever be just beyond the next purchase of whatever.

In the process of praying about this, I came to a place of repentance in my motives. If I could buy the over-priced North Face backpack (which I had plenty of money to do) as worship, with much gratitude in my heart to the Lord for providing a good gift--if I could make the purchase in faith, hope, and love--then I would do it. If not, I would buy something else that would press me to grow past the tyranny of cool.

So yesterday I walked out of REI with my (admittedly) cool, new North Face backpack. Was the whole process an extended exercise in self-justification? Was I legitimately buying the pack in faith, hope, and love as I walked out the door singing a song of praise? Honestly, this side of heaven, I don't completely know. But I think that this kind of process, entered into honestly and openly before the Lord, will be what frees me from the tyranny of cool...and any other tyranny that vies for supremacy in my life.

Davis, Barry Bonds, and a Heavy Dose of the Down Under's Largest Export

So it took all winter long before it happened, but my two-year-old son Davis finally contracted his first major cold of the season. His cough got so bad, in fact, that the doctor prescribed steroids.

The doctor failed to inform us that steroids would turn our child into Cujo-toddler. Think Barry Bonds is surly? Try a 2-year old Barry Bonds with sleep deprivation, a perpetual runny nose, and a penchant for throwing Matchbox cars.

The only thing that has pacified our little guy for the past four days has been videos. It has been a great source of (probably unhealthy) pride for us as parents that before Zoe was born he averaged probably no more than a half-hour of t.v. a week. Since Zoe has been born, it's probably increased to about 2 hours per week.

This week it's been about two hours of t.v. per every two hours. And his favorite video series is Australia's largest export: The Wiggles

The Wiggles consist of four marginally-talented middle-aged men whose primary abilities consist of a willingness to make overly-expressive faces and lip sync songs about most anything from "New York Firefighters" to "Horticulturalists" ("he's a horticulturalist; he's a regular botanist" is a slice of their captivating song writing).

Davis, of course, loves it. And he's not alone. The Wiggles tour globally and make millions upon millions of dollars off the two-year-old to six-year-old set and their pitiful families. One story I heard recently was of a man who took his kids from Rocky Mount, NC to Roanoke, VA (that's a 4 hour and 22 minute trip according to Mapquest), just to catch a show.

If you're interested in what's up in the preschool sub-culture, check out their web site. In the mean time, I gotta' go. Davis is threatening to take a baseball bat to the television if I don't get him some more Wiggly fun.

Jumping the Shark

As a campus minister working with students, I always say that I'm either the first to know something going on in students lives (i.e. a dating situation or a job opportunity or a change of major) or the last to know.

When it comes to cool stuff on the internet, however, I'm much more consistent: I'm always the last to know.

So it's with great fear and trepidation that I introduce something cool that I just found out about last week: www.jumptheshark.com. "Happy Days" was a long-running, quality television show in the mid-20th Century. One episode they had Fonzie pull a stunt where he jumped a shark--I believe it was with his motorcycle, but I'm not entirely positive on those details. Clearly, when you've got one of your main characters pulling gratuitously silly stunts, you've begun to run out of quality, creative ideas. From that point on, the show began to go downhill.

Ergo, jumptheshark.com. They specialize in identifying when each show has peaked, and they look back at old shows to analyze the exact moment of the beginning of the end. Some shows never jump the shark, others jump the shark and yet manage to jump back over the shark with new writers, new plot lines, etc.

The person who told me about this was a pastor who was talking about applying the concept to churches or other ministries. Has your church 'jumped the shark?' Is your campus group on the way down hill? Fun questions every Christian leader likes to think about it!

At any rate, check it out, it's a pretty fun site with most of your favorite shows listed. I apologize to those of you who have known about this so long it's akin to me posting that "the earth is round" or "I heard that that Anakin Skywalker character in Star Wars will turn out to be Darth Vader" (both statements are roughly of equal import).

I've got meetings all day tomorrow and half of Wednesday, so nothing new tomorrow but hopefully I'll get a chance to post Wednesday afternoon.

Friday Grab-Bag

*Big win for Carolina last night as LSU knocked off Dook in the tourney. We were setting up for our weekly large group meeting (late-night start last night) when the game finished. A student grabbed a mic, made the announcement, and students linked arms and swayed and sang the alma matter. I heard that Reddick was crying, and I gotta' confess that I was a little misty-eyed myself.

*Speaking of the tourney, three of four games last night were amazing. The LSU upset, and Texas and UCLA pulled out wins with seconds left in their games. Some great games lined up this weekend. My revised brackets: a Texas-Wichita State final--doesn't everybody?

*Speaking of our large group meeting last night, my talk on McDonald's being ethnic food went pretty well. There's always something afterwards that I wished that I would have said. In this case it's surprising since I managed to talk for nearly 40 minutes after getting up to speak at 10:45 (which is way past my bedtime). At any rate, the real key for most white folks to understand this issue is to look for opportunities for displacement and immersion. When you intentionally pursue opportunities to be a minority (in my case, living on Overbrook Road for 2 1/2 years) you begin to see things a little differently. I told my story, but didn't necessarily clearly articulate the charge to engage in immersion somewhere.

*Big weekend on campus. Tonight is "Ladies Night"--a 20+ year tradition in InterVarsity at UNC where the men put together an evening to honor and encourage the women of the chapter. This usually takes the form of skits that are either self-depracating or self-glorifying, depending on the participant, but I have lots of fond memories of Ladies Night's as a student. I'm thankful for the men who started it long ago and for the culture of men serving and encouraging the women that it helps to foster.

*We've also got leadership selection all day Saturday. Over 80 students applied to be a part of leadership for the coming fall. I'm encouraged by the enthusiasm and grateful for the tremendous gifts and diversity of talents the Lord has gathered in our fellowship.

*On the home front, we managed to make it to late-March, but we've got our first real colds of the season. Davis sounds like he's about ready to cough up a lung (I'm hoping to snip it and frame it when it actually comes up--he might want to show his kids some day) and Zoe's stuffy and fussy. All this means that mom and dad didn't get much sleep last night, and we're thankful for the wonders of modern medicine that will hopefully clear everyone up in the next couple of days.

Zoe, Ceiling Fans, and Ultimate Reality

Our little girl is about ten weeks old now. One of the fun things to watch developmentally is to see her tune into the world around her. Sometimes she'll be laying on a blanket on the floor and I'll be sitting right next to her. She'll be looking at me, but not really see me--the ceiling fan just over my shoulder is tough competition for an average-looking dad like myself. But then suddenly her focus shifts, and her eyes get really big as she realizes that I'm sitting right there, watching over her, talking with her. She's surprised to see me--in the past few days she's even managed to squeeze out a grin in the midst of all her baby fat.

It struck me yesterday that I spend most of my life looking around at ceiling fans. I spend the majority of my day mired in the netherworld of what I call my everyday life--a combination of worries, trivialities, day dreams, and blog brainstorms. And sometimes in the midst of that I wonder where God is, if he's there at all, or if he cares about this stuff swirling around in my head.

And sometimes suddenly I realize he's right there, the "wide-awake real" is right in my space. He's watching over me. He's with me. I'm so deeply dis-oriented about the nature of the universe that I confuse my life with reality and His life as the abstraction. But when all is measured and judged at the end, I think I'll find that Reality was much different than what I thought it was, and the bulk of what consumes my thoughts and days is not much more than hay and stubble. And most importantly, I think I'll see that my Good Father was always there with me. If only I had eyes to see Him...

McDonald's is Ethnic Food

This Thursday I'm speaking at our weekly large group worship meeting. The purpose of my talk is to draw in the threads of God's heart for reconciliation across racial barriers in our society as we talk about being a missional community. The title of my talk is "Lessons Learned as a White Guy on Overbrook Road." Overbrook road was where Kelly and I lived as minorities in a predominantly black working-class neighborhood in Richmond.

But really my point is that McDonald's is ethnic food.

One of the major barriers to white people being involved in the racial reconciliation process is the fact that we're blind to the fact that we have culture. In the ground-breaking book "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria," there's a great story of a white woman complaining "I'm not white, I'm just normal!" Because white folks are in the majority, we don't even recognize that we have a particular culture. We don't see that we have a particular way of doing things, organizing our society, and a values taxonomy that is good and bad, has strengths and weaknesses, has blessed many people and has done tremendous harm. We don't think about our race and ethnicity because we don't have to. We're not "white," we're just normal.

And so we call all food that isn't white "ethnic food." And that belies the fact that we have no idea that the tray you get with your value meal comes freighted with white cultural values: consistency (you get the same Big Mac from Maine to Spokane), speed, and disposability. We can argue the benefits or detriments of these values, but what we cannot miss is that this combination of values is unique to white America. Until we take the blinders off to the fact that white is a unique and particular ethnicity, it will be impossible for us to enter into fruitful long-term dialogue with our brothers and sisters about moving forward in reconciliation.

A quick plug: Being White is a great help for folks who are interested in taking a step into this journey.

Trying Out Some Definitions

One of the challenges that I've heard several times recently is the challenge to be reading old Christian books. When we engage with people who are before our time, our blindspots are exposed. We get a more fully-orbed picture of the Christian life: life in the ruins but not of the ruins.

I particularly appreciate George MacDonald's writings (you can find his writings if you click on the free Christian classics link over to the right) with his passion for a life of obedience. Most of my adult Christian experience has been in churches that emphasize the centrality of grace. All well and good. However, to have someone articulate a passionate and vivid and distinct understanding of the importance of doing what is right is refreshing. MacDonald frames obedience in a way that it is deeply connected to the grace of God, not in competition with it. It's not 'grace or obedience' but rather 'obedience because of grace.'

And so I've come back to some defintions of temptation, sin, repentance and obedience in the past week or so that I've played around with before.

Temptation: the lie that life outside of God's gracious rule is better than life within it.
Sin: to act in faith on that lie
Repentance: to change our minds and our behavior (by the gift and work of the Holy Spirit) about the nature of true satisfaction and fulfillment; to be re-oriented around the promises of life found in Christ.
Obedience: to act in faith on the promises of God rather than the lies of temptation that come at us through the world, our own flesh and the devil.

I think that the key thing is to realize that both sin and obedience are acts of faith (hence the italics). In neither case do we exactly know what's going to happen to us, or what the outcomes will be. In both cases we're trusting in something outside of ourselves to make us feel more secure, complete, significant and/or whole. When I can begin to wrap my mind around the idea that sin is a faith act, that I'm actually making a conscious choice to attempt to live outside of God's gracious rule, then it helps me to see through the lies a little bit better. I'm motivated to seek first His kingdom, His righteousness. The decisions appear a little cleaner, a little clearer.

At least on my good days.