Consider the Source

Well let me first apologize for taking ten years between posts. Life has continued to be an amazing learning experience with new knowledge and wisdom coming from some of the most unlikely of sources. It has, however, prompted me to reexamine who and where I am taking my advice and example from. This is what I wanted to write about today.

It seems like in our culture we have many people we would call "idols". We even have a show called "American Idol" that rolls around the country looking for new ones. We have ads that tell us to "be like Mike" and we can buy the jersey of our favorite athletes. We read their books and learn their life stories because, for us, there is something about them that we want to be true about us as well.

There is something missing in this, however, because our focus becomes too intent on merely this habit or that trait to the exclusion of the entire person. We oftentimes devalue the position an idol might have in our lives by leaving the post open to a myriad variety of not-so-worthy candidates. Did he or she have to compensate in some areas to become a star in others? Perhaps a man is the best in his field but he is a horrible husband and father. Perhaps a woman attained an incredible amount of power and leadership and yet lacks compassion or humility.

Would we still want to follow most of our idols if we really knew the whole story about them? Or, perhaps, is ignorance bliss? My personal rule of thumb and my encouragement today is to look at the entire person when looking for someone to admire and idolize. What I don't mean is look for perfect people because, by my count, there only been one of them (and he's an automatic on my list of idols for that and many other reasons).

Let me explain in fuller detail how I advocate this criteria. I would say that it is, arguably, true that just about anybody can be the best at just about anything if you sacrifice everything else for it. This goes back to a previous article where I asked if what you devote yourself to is worthy of the sacrifice. But even a worthy devotion (we're not even going to talk about unworthy devotions here) is not license to neglect every other area of your life. No, I think that holding all of one's passions and priorities in balance, seeing that all of them are attended to, and excelling there is infinitely harder than just picking one thing to the exclusion of the rest.

I want to see athletes that are faithful to their wives and good fathers to their children. I want to see women that can lead companies with power and grace. I want to see ministers that take as much time keeping their own lives in order as they do everyone elses'. I want to excel in my own field but never to the exclusion of my wife or my God. Even if I never am somebody's idol, I want to live that kind of life. And I wish that kind of life on every person because that quality of character and depth of life has always been our destiny. We should stop reserving that life for the people we see on TV and claim it for ourselves today.

But that's just my opinion...

This Grand Experiment

These past four months have definitely been some of the most interesting of my life. Over the course of one summer, I find myself in a vastly different place than I was just a season ago. Most everything that I knew and that was true about my life for the first 27 years is now different.

And so with such change there is to be expected a certain amount of adjusting that's in order. Change management involves missing where you've been and getting excited about where you are. Sometimes its beautiful and sometimes its messy. Change is hard and I can confidently attest to that now first-hand. But recently I've become suspicious. I've started to wonder if all of the difficultly I've had with my attitude and false thinking about my situation is simply me adjusting to change.

I'm starting to thing there's more going on...

I've made big goals for myself here in Richmond. Upon graduating and getting married, most people would be satisfied with getting along with their spouse and being able to pay their bills. Katie and I have ventured beyond, truly believing there is more to life and more to our purpose in Richmond than simply that. What we left in Blacksburg was more than school and a church we loved. We left comfort, we left purpose, we left belonging and satisfaction. What most people will spend their entire lives looking for, we found. And now God has asked us to leave it and refind it in this new place. Why would he do that? Because, in my experience, I don't know a single person that believes that it can be found in the life I'm now living.

I've worked and labored with many people in college that, whether they conciously admit it or not, believe that graduation is retirement from ministry. With a forty hour (or fifty or sixty, depending on who you ask) a week job, many people say I should be satisfied just giving to the church and letting the "professionals" do all the grunt work now. But the lie goes even deeper than that. What I see are people that really believe that true community and deep connection with other people simply impractical for the working person. They get up early for work and get home in time for dinner then bed. The weekends are reserved for errands and then I do it all over again. That may seem like a charactature of what people actually believe but I assure you its not that far from the truth. Somehow "growing up" has become a spiritual and social death sentence for many people.

And so Katie and I have begun a grand experiment to see if spiritual growth and ministry and deep intimate community are still possible in the work world. Have we really just plugged into the Matrix or is more really possible? We're not alone in this endeavor by any means (so as not to sound too overly heroic in this endeavor) but it can sure feel like it sometimes.

But it is in the midst of this that I have had the hardest time keeping my attitude positive and my thoughts truthful about the situations I find myself in. Its as if my mind is being sabatoged in an effort to short circuit our efforts to unplug from the Matrix. I feel attacked and I feel opposed. Many will cynically reject the idea of spiritual warfare as superstituion but, to be sure, we do have an enemy that's come to kill and destroy any effort we make toware "life to the fullest".

My final conclusion on the matter (at least for now) is that Katie and I must be on to something. Because I see now other reason for such a viscous attack on my mind and my heart. Whatever we're on the presipous of discovering must be a dangerous truth - the fact that life is possible, here and anywhere Jesus is. This, in my estimation, may be the most dangerous truth in the world because of how radically it would change our lives if we believed it.

What I believe in theory, I'm starting to believe in practice. Lies are being undermined by experiences to the contrary. And I feel a momentum about the whole thing (kind of like at the top of a roller coaster, just before you tip over the peak) that excites me even in the midst of trial. Pray for us during this time, us and everyone else that's taken part in this grand experiment.

Stay tuned....

The One Man Curriculum

Sorry I haven't written in a while. As of my last post I've been working on some of my "least used tools" and have been doing more listening than writing. Being a good student has always taken a tremendous amount of effort. Sometimes the simplest things, like sitting down and just listening to the teacher, can seem so difficult to do. I've learned a lot over the last week about my attitude and thought life. How so much of my circumstances, while most out of my direct control, can be positively or negatively affected by my attitude toward them.

It was in the midst of learning all of this that I took a second this morning to reflect on Jesus the Teacher. How he was there when I was very much a spiritual baby, as far as my talent and knowledge was concerned, and how he is still here today. I didn't start with one teacher then graduate on to another. Nope, I began with Jesus, I'm still with Jesus, and I'll always be with Jesus. He will always be my one and only Teacher no matter how much I ever grow or learn. He'll always have more to teach me and his example to me will never be less compelling than it is.

It's those last two points that have struck me this morning. I've found a Teacher that has yet to even scratch the surface of what he has to show me and I find that extremely exciting. I've also find a Teacher that has always practiced what he teaches, and his example is profound and powerful enough to deserve my entire life's passion. I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to follow Jesus. I don't hear his followers saying that enough. The Master has given us a full scholarship to this profound life institution he has set up and we often look at the opportunity with a yawn and a sigh. So I say it again, I feel like the luckiest man in the world to be able to know Jesus and learn from him. And every venue I have to state that fact, I plan on doing so - starting with this blog and moving out into the world that I find myself in.

Today I praise God because he is more worthy of praise than anything this world has to offer. Amen.

The Least Used Tools

Somewhere along your journey with God, you may have already realized that one of his preferred roles is that of teacher or trainer. To follow Jesus is to essentially apprentice him in how to live life. Just like any apprentice, you learn a lot of the main skills you will need fairly early on since they are the most common tasks you will do. But as you apprentice longer, you learn some of the more obscure tasks necessary in only special or unique situations. It's not enough to say that these situations don't happen much, therefore I won't learn the skills necessary to handle them. No, it is good to know what you would or should do in the event they do come up.

Jesus speaks of many such virtues, the ability to love and the ability to forgive. These we definitely have the opportunity to use everyday. There are other virtues that Jesus taught about that many of us do not regularly have the opportunity to use. Jesus talks about loving your enemies and praying for them. We all think such a thought is very noble but, in reality, we oftentimes don't have an immediate application to this. I may have people that I don't care for, but I wouldn't necessarily call them "enemies" of mine. Or when Jesus tells us to "turn the other cheek" when responding to ridicule or abuse. I'm fortunate enough not to face this on a constant basis but what happens when I do? Will I prepared to respond to that in the manner that Jesus, my mentor, would have me?

The first time something like this happens, we are often unequipped for it. What did you do the first time you realize you really do have an "enemy", someone that actively works toward your misfortune. Or what did you do the first time someone ridiculed you in front of others? You may still be in the process of overcoming some of these things. It may still take some time for us to respond to situations like this in a Godly manner. But when you finally do begin to respond in such a way, when you begin to see victory in these situations, many of us feel a profound sense of closure about that virtue. We think, "Well God, I'm glad we figured that lesson out. Now lets leave that and move onto the next thing." And we pack that lesson away into our box of "life tools" expecting (or at least hoping) to never have any need for it again.

So it sometimes comes as a suprise when a very similar situation arises some time later. You know this situation, you've faced something like it before. But will you respond to it the way you did before; could you possibly even respond better? And so we dig that tool out of the bottom of our tool box to see what kind of condition it's in. Many times we find that we're a little rusty in our handling of it or that the tool has become a little dull. It doesn't take an incredible amount of time to get it back in working order but we feel inconvenienced for having to do so. It feels like we're retaking a class we already finished and we question the Teacher over the wisdom of this. Frustrated, we ask God, "Why am I having to deal with this again? I learned what I needed to learn the last time so what's the purpose of dealing with it again now?"

Perhaps I'm rambling, but this is I'm feeling right now. Praying for my enemies and responding to ridicule in a Godly way is not something I've never done but its not something I do often. I struggle to find purpose in this. It's like having to take a test again just to see if you'd get the same score. But, reluctantly, I am beginning to see the purpose in the Teacher's ways. These aren't skills that I can just acquire and then just discard. I not only have to keep them, but I have to keep them in good repair. While I'm working on one part of my character, I don't want to neglect another part and see it atrophy. These virtues may be some of my least used tools but they are no less important because of it. They are no less a part of who I am and can just as easily lead to my undoing if I let them fall into disrepair.

And so I find myself in a place I haven't been for a while. Praying for people who I'm sure aren't praying for me and turning the other cheek till I run out of cheeks for them to strike. The Teacher may not have caused this situation to arise but, rest assured, he's using it to teach me something that will eventually make me a Master Life Liver. That's my goal, not comfort, not security, just him - I wanna be like him.

Choosing Your Cross Wisely

"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

This is a famous quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the nature of following Christ. It's famous, I believe, because it stands in vast contrast to the contemporary perception of what it means to be a Christ follower. And so while Jesus himself can say very pointedly that, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me," many of his followers still think that choice is somehow involved when it comes to living a sacrificial life.

Now don't get me wrong, there is choice involved but the misconception is in where that choice lies. This misconception is not only reserved to Christ followers either. In fact, this misconception is the one of the main reasons many non-Christians don't follow Christ. I would say that people are mistaken into thinking that they can choose whether they will live a sacrificial life or not when the real question is what you will sacrifice for.

This my rather long-winded way of stating that everyone will sacrifice their life for something and your choice, whether you feel like you have that choice or not, is to pick what that will be. To sacrifice your life for something is to devote yourself to one thing to the detriment of all other things - it is the proverbial cross you have chosen to carry. Most of the time all of the "other things" may not necessarily feel neglected. But when those things come into competition with that which you devote yourself to, the other things will loss out.

It may not be immediately apparent what your proverbial cross is but I believe with most assurance that you do have one whether you know it or not. And once we have reframed the argument from whether you will sacrifice to what you will sacrifice to, some really interesting conversations can happen. The fundamental question really centers around whether you are sacrificing your life for the right thing. This is a subjective question and only you have the perogative to answer that (because it was your choice, in the first place, what that thing was).

The second question that can then emerge is whether what you are devoting yourself to is really worthy of such a sacrifice. More often than not, its been my observation that people devote themselves to things that are not really worthy of such a sacrifice - they've either undervalued their own life or overvalued what they are devoting themselves to. And its not just that people have been asking these questions and coming up with the wrong answer; I think they have never even bothered to think about it in the first place. The questions have never been asked at all.

These questions are probably worth our effort and time though. They concern themselves with the ultimate point and goal of our life. And while every worthy devotion will ask for your entire life, not everything that asks for your entire life is worthy. In Christ, we follow a God that thought long and hard about the sacrifice that he made for us. On the night he was betrayed he sat in a garden and asked these very questions. And when he got up to face his accusers we know by that action that he considered that which he was passionate about was worth his life. In Scripture it says that he carried our transgressions and died on a tree for our sins - so that we would separated from God no longer. In the garden, Jesus decided that being with you was worth dying for. The cross is his resounding "YES".

We have a incredible example of sacrifice to follow in Jesus. A valuable question to ask today is not whether we will sacrifice but, rather, is what we're sacrificing for more worthy of our lives than Jesus is. The weight of his life and his sacrifice makes it hard to answer that question in the affirmative but that, of course, is up to each of us to decide.