Kethuvim

We're all going to die. Really. You, me, that guy, all of us. I've been thinking about this alot lately because we've had a couple of people in my congregation get some very bleak news from the doctors regarding cancer. A woman in our church heard the words, "There's nothing we can do" this week from the doctor. How true.

I think the reason we struggle with death is because we secretly think we're immortal. We're not. Doctors and medicine don't help either. You watch the average medical commercial and you get the feeling that you'll be around forever. This is why it tears us apart when we lose someone close to us, because it violently slams us back into reality. "If he died, then I guess I will too." Think about it. Have you ever gone to a funeral of someone you loved, looked into the casket and thought, "That'll be me someday." I bet you have, but maybe at a deeper level.

Medicine is an illusion. All doctors know that all they exist to do is to delay the inevitable, and maybe lessen the pain as your life slips away. Maybe we would have a better grasp of reality if doctors, upon bringing you out of the womb, said to your parents, "There's nothing we can do." They can't. Don't get me wrong, I think doctors have their place. They can, at times, give us a few more years with our loved ones. I'm just wondering if all of our medical advances interrupt some part of the natural order. By the way, I'm not having a bad day, I've just been thinking about this lately.

Ok, so there was nothing adventurous about Halloween, but the title sounded nice, so I used it. You know how sometimes you start out with an idea, and that idea at the time sounds good? You know how sometimes when you start to think about those ideas, they start sounding maybe not so good, but you're too far into the idea to start over? Case in point, my son's Halloween costume. My wife and I were trying to find a costume for Ezra when we stumbled across a totally adorable Asian silk outfit. "What a great idea," said my mind. "We'll dress him up as martial arts type guy or something."

The closer Halloween got, people started asking us what we were going to dress Ezra as. I found it harder and harder to explain. We found him a pair of toy Sais (small weapons used by Raphael of Ninja Turtles fame) to carry around as well to round out the outfit. Here's the end result, minus the Sais (the mall where we took him trick or treating had a "no toy weaponry" rule that we decided to follow.
Behold, we dressed our son as an Asian stereotype. A painfully adorable Asian stereotype, but an Asian stereotype nonetheless. I did feel better when I saw an equally Caucasian girl dressed as a Geisha, complete with eyeliner to make her eyes look...well...more Asian. I didn't feel quite so racist.

My wife decided to dress up our other child, who happens to still be in the fetal stages of development. Here's the result of that one.

I'm not going to lie, when she showed this to me, I laughed for like five minutes. And finally, I leave you with a picture of Ezra after he decided to waltz into Victoria's Secret by himself.

Mandy says that he only went in to pet the fake pink doggy, but I know better. I'd like to think he was driven by a deeper, and more primitive force. You know, the force that he can't seem to take his hands off of when we change his diapers. I rue the day when I will have to explain to him the ins and outs of the secret that Victoria is hiding.

This is the most amazing football play in the history of the sport. Even if you don't like football, you can appreciate this.

http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/video?id=3083220

Wow.

Here's a site where you can find out what the number one song in America was on the day you were born.

The #1 song on the day I was born? "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" - Rupert Holmes. You may not recognize the title, but the lyrics, "If you like Pina Coladas, and gettin' caught in the rain..." Wow, and to think that I turned out straight, given the fact that I was born on a day when the #1 song in America was one of the gayest songs ever written.

I'm reading The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel. I'm starting to realize that I haven't had a true Sabbath in months. The purpose of the Sabbath isn't just rest, it's to center ourselves on the Creator. In Heschel's words, "The Sabbath teaches all beings whom to praise." In my words, it's not just a day off, it's a day up. We're always defined by what we do. If you don't believe me, listen in on a conversation between two people who have never met, and see how long it takes for someone to ask, "So what do you do?" The Sabbath is a reminder that we aren't defined by what we do, but by who we belong to. We cheapen the Sabbath when we make it a purely physical experience. It's about soul care, and, frankly, my soul could be better. Here's what Heschel says about it.

"Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath, we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week, we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self."

I can't leave my job behind. I have a day off most weeks. But even on my day off, I can't disengage from what I do. I'm constantly thinking and worrying about the people I minister to. For the Sabbath to truly be holy (set apart) as God intends it to be, we have to leave the world behind and focus on who we are. We have to set apart a time for God to be the center, and for him to be the center, everything else has to fade away. I believe the health of our souls depends on our ability to disconnect from our world and connect to the One who created it all. That's what the Sabbath is...a disconnection for the sake of connection. We will never find the wholeness we desire without Sabbath.

...but, for some reason, Christians don't. I saw this quote from Gandhi today.

If you want to smell the aroma of Christianity, you must copy the rose. The rose irresistibly draws people to itself, and the scent remains with them. Even so, the aroma of Christianity is subtler even than that of the rose and should, therefore, be imparted in an even quieter and more imperceptible manner, if possible.

The Christians that I know who are doing the most for God's Kingdom are also the quietest. You won't find them on Larry King defending their faith, you won't find them writing scathing editorials to newspapers who they deem "liberal." You find them spending time with people, loving them in the best way they know how, and smelling an awful lot like Jesus in the process.

Sorry for the silence recently. I just haven't had much to say. Anyway, here's a list of things I've been reading...just read the title, you get the point.

Everything Belongs - Richard Rohr
This book is amazing. I read it quickly. It deals with how everything in life is there for a purpose, including all of the crap we deal with. He spends a great deal of time dealing with suffering and pain, and how these events in our lives are necessary for maturity and growth. We seek all the time to bury and remove any bad thing from our lives, but without the bad, the good is essentially meaningless. Not exactly a light read, but incredible.

Adam's Return - Richard Rohr
This book deals with male initiation rites in cultures throughout history. He spent years studying these initiation rites and their purposes. Rohr basically lays out why men today have so many issues; they've never been initiated by an older man or community of men. For every reason why Wild at Heart by John Eldridge sucked, this book was good. Eldridge's book was all about making surface changes, this book gets at the internal issues that cause men to stop being men. Good read...if you're a dude.

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
This is a novel about a family who goes to the Congo in the 1950s to be missionaries. The father is one of these preachers who were so prevalant in that time period. He was domineering to his family and anyone else, including the people he was trying to "save." He was completely ineffective as a missionary because he didn't listen to the people he was there to help. He had his way, and no one else's mattered. I'm only about halfway through this one, but it's great. It does lose a point with me because it has that annoying "Oprah's Book Club" sticker on it. Geez, I can't stand her.

His Name is One - Jeff Benner
For anyone who likes language, and is especially interested in the Hebrew language, this book is a must read. Every chapter has at least one "Aha!" moment. He basically deals with all of the names in the Hebrew language for God. He talks about how we have mistranslated many of these names into the English, which has led to a lot of misunderstanding of God's character. One particular instance blew me away, and it would freak out any biblical conservatives. The name "El Shaddai" in Hebrew is translated into english as "God Almighty." However, the literal translation of the name is "mighty teat." Yes, I said "teat," as in a female animal's ummm...milk bags. So the ancient Hebrew people saw God as a loving mother who nourished her children with milk. So much for the male dominated culture who refuses to believe that God has female qualities. There are many other moments of brilliance in this book.

I saw a dandy yesterday.

"The wages of sin is death. Repent b4 payday."

Oh, how the people will flock to that church this Sunday, flogging themselves with reeds in penitence the whole way...

The book, not the year. Anyway, I'm reading 1984 right now. I read a few years ago, but I didn't really grasp the significance of it. I thought the book was "good," but I didn't really find it unsettling or revolutionary. I'm finding it increasingly hard to read it this time, however.

If you know nothing of this book, I'll give you an incredibly brief synopsis. It's essentially a dystopian fantasy written in 1949. It tells of a world in which no one is free and everyone is under the control of the Party. There is no history, no free thought, no freedom, only the Party. If the Party says that something exists, it exists and always has. If the Party says that something doesn't exist, it doesn't exist and never has. If the Party says that two and two equals five, then it equals five and nothing else. The book follows a man named Winston who is questioning all of this, but is eventually arrested for his wrong thoughts. The Party then tortures him into submission. Read it for the all of the other details, it's a fascinating book.

I've found myself being very uncomfortable in my reading, which isn't like me. I've been trying to figure out why this book is affecting me like it is. The I figured out the reason: it's inhuman. The whole idea of this society is to reduce people to an animalistic existence. They seek to destroy a person's humanity so that they will obey. So why is this unsettling? Because free thinking and the right to make our own choices is what makes us human, and to think about a society where this is impossible is sickening at best.

In Genesis, at the very beginning of human existence, God gives people the choice to do what they want. He tells Adam and Eve, "You can eat anything you want, just don't eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." He tells them not to eat of it, but it's not like he puts a shield around it or anything. They still have the choice to eat of it, God is basically telling them that if they make the choice to eat from it, then everything will be screwed up. As humans tend to do, they make the wrong choice, eat from the tree, and everything goes south. God endowed every human with the capacity for free thought and choices. Not every thought or choice leads to life, but nonetheless, he gives us the right to choose. The fact is that God had to put that tree there because he knew that without choice and free thinking, people could not be human. Without choice, there is no way to love something or someone.

What is really eating at me is how many churches seek to control the behavior and thoughts and choices of their people. I could name a few of these churches within 10 minutes of where I sit typing this. They have good intentions (I think), but what they are really doing is turning their people into something less than humans. If we are told what to think about God and we blindly lock-step to what we're told, then it is impossible to really love him in a deep way. When free thought is taken away, as it is in a lot of churches, then we're robots, and robots have no capacity to feel and love. If anything, a churches main goal should be to find ways for people to be fully alive and fully human. by restricting what someone can think or believe, we're telling them that there is no other choice but to think like we do. Thus, we render them as something less than human. Any thoughts?

Watch this video from the National Geographic channel. The thing I find funny is the narrator's voice. It's like a Saturday morning cartoon narrator, but he's describing baby seal pups getting slaughtered by whales. I find it comical, maybe I'm just sick.

For the last few years I've been questioning everything that the Church does. Personally, I feel like I should be doing this as a minister. I think that one of the reasons the Church is in such a mess is that there haven't been enough people asking the big "why?" question. But I digress. Actually, I didn't digress because I haven't made a point about anything yet (editor's note: This section should have been removed before hitting the publish button. Sorry for the inconvenience.), but whatever.

So what I've been thinking about recently is, why do churches offer an "invitation" time (some churches call this an altar call). If you've never been to church before, let me explain. This is the time, usually after the teaching, where the speaker invites people to come forward and "accept Jesus." There is then 3 or so minutes of music in which people can respond. Here's the thing, I've grown up in church my whole life, and I can honestly only remember 3 times where someone has come forward spontaneously. In every other instance, it was scripted. The people had already met with the pastor and scheduled the time they would come forward. Does this seem ridiculous to anyone else? Out of thousands of church services I have attended, I've only seen 3 spontaneous responses. That's crazy.

So why do we do it? This is a question where I can honestly say I don't have an answer. The only thing I can figure is that the modern "altar call" as we know it, must have evolved out of tent revivals. At some point along the way, someone must have said, "Let's do that this Sunday" and the rest is history. I firmly believe that we offer invitation times simply because we always have. It's another instance of doing things just because that's the way it's always been done. It's time for the Church to stop and think about these kinds of things.

Unanswered invitations make the Church and the pastor look bad. When no one comes forward, which is definitely a majority of the time, what that says to anyone visiting who isn't a follower of Jesus is this, "Our message is so revolutionary and earth-shattering, that no one responded to it." That's not to say that people don't make changes in their lives, and it's not to say that people don't sit in their seats and make a decision to do something, but that's exactly my point. Why do you have to come forward in order to decide to follow Jesus? The answer: you don't. If there are any other pastors out there reading this, take a good look at the issue and ask some of the tougher questions of "why?". You may find that there isn't a good answer.

Here's a good article from the ooze. A little grumpy at times, but then again, you're probably used to that from reading my crap.

I was thinking about something the other day. The word "Christian" only appears in the Bible three times. In all of those three instances, the word Christian is a noun. It's a person, not a description of an activity. Think about how often we use "Christian" as an adjective. Christian music, Christian book store, Christian radio station, "that wasn't a very Christian thing to do," etc.

We use Christian as an adjective to distinguish ourselves from the rest of the "world." Maybe I'm overestimating the importance of this, but what if I'm not? What if we're doing ourselves a huge disservice by using "Christian" as an adjective as much as we do? What if we're not supposed to section ourselves off from society by re-creating everything in our society as "Christian." We even have "Christian" satellite service. Does anyone else see a problem with this?

So if there were more coaches like this, sports, as an entity, wouldn't be the ridiculous soul-sucking debacle that it has become. I love this guy. Basically, the coach is ticked off that a local newspaper went after one of his players who is struggling on the field and "kicked him while he's down."

Here's the video. Enjoy.

So if salvation is about nothing more than heaven and hell (which most Christians in this country would propose), then how do you get it? Who gets it? Is it us? Only us? Who is "us?" Are there certain hoops you have to jump through to get it? What are those hoops? In what way is the "hoop" system considered grace?


Most evangelical Christians, when asked how someone goes about getting to heaven, will say any combination of these things: be baptized, say the "sinner's prayer," repent, confess Jesus as Lord, ask Jesus into your heart. There will be some variables depending on which denomination the person subscribes to, but those are generally the responses you will get. So here's another question; if different denominations of the same religion can't agree on how to get to heaven, then who's right? Who's really in? We're pretty certain on how to get to heaven, but no one can agree on the criteria. And not to mention that the words "sinner's prayer" and "ask Jesus into your heart" never appear in the Bible.


Some would say to look to the Bible to see how attain salvation. Okey-dokey. The Bible is all over the map as far as how to attain salvation. Jesus seems to throw salvation out to people in the strangest of ways. We already looked at Zaccheus and the fact that all Zac had to do was tell Jesus he was going to do something. Jesus resonded with salvation. So how do you get it? Just say you're going to do something?

Find a concordance, look up "salvation," "save," and "saved." I want you to especially look at the instances of those words in the gospels. I want you to notice how Jesus gives "salvation" to people and under what circumstances. He's all over the map. In one instance, he says that unless we believe in him and are baptized, we will be condemned. In another instance, a guy is saved when Jesus sees the faith of his friends. So in order to be saved, we have to have the right friends.

The fact is that the salvation Jesus speaks of is holistic. It is designed to permeate our lives, our whole lives. It isn't just about dying. It's about living and living life to the full. Jesus saves me every day and I thank him for that. I think it's time for the Church to stop wasting time talking about who's in and who's out. I have an idea. Why don't we let God decide that? It's not our job to say who's in and who's out, because we, as Christians, can't even agree on the criteria. I believe that when we start talking about which people are going to heaven and which are going to hell, we start treading on very dangerous ground. I'm not willing to tread on that ground.

I have spawned the cutest kid on the face of the earth. Here are some pictures taken of Ezra at the RCA Dome where the Colts play.
He looks pretty good in endzone huh? I wouldn't mind that being his future career choice. How soon is too soon to have him start lifting weights?

Like this. For anyone that thinks following Jesus is all about being lame and judgmental, I hope you see that when people really follow Jesus, it looks quite opposite to that.

So where was I? I'm actually not sure, so I'll just start in. One thing to know in this whole conversation is that our word "salvation" comes from the Latin word "salus" which means healing. Take a minute and think about that from a spiritual perspective. We live in an incredibly fractured world. The fact that we live in this broken place makes us broken. There's something deep down in us that isn't right, and if you take a few minutes (hours?) and sit down to think about it, you'll know what I mean. We all have a nagging sense in the pit of us that we're not right, that there's something more. When something is broken and fractured, it needs to be fixed.

So in walks salvation to the party to bring healing. Think of the word salvation and see if there's another english word that fits in with it. How about salve? A salve is an agent of healing. It's something that you put on a wound to heal it. I hope you see that salvation has to have an earthly component to it. It can't just be about a future other-worldly problem-solver. I mean, if that's the best God can do, then we have to stop talking about how powerful he is. If all God can do is maintain the status-quo of crap we live with, then he doesn't sound all that powerful to me. Personally, I need salve, and I need it now. I'm a mess most of the time. I need some healing, I need fixing, and I'm not willing to sit around and wait to die for that to happen.

It's not that I'm against a future hope. Paul himself says, "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all others." I'm just advocating that the Church start putting more emphasis on this life than the afterlife. I believe that God isn't done with this earth yet. I believe that he's calling his people toward a better way of living and to bring about change on this earth. If my focus is on heaven, then I'm not all that concerned with changing anything about this place. I'm not all that concerned with seeing anyone transformed, I'm just concerned with trying to procure a heavenly home for them, while ignoring the fact that they may be living in hell right now.

I honestly believe that the impotence of the American Church and a great many of its members is due, largely, with the fact that we're taught that heaven and only heaven is where it's at. It's much easier to ignore the problems of this world if you have this mindset, because as long as you're "saved" who cares? It really leads to a selfish mindset. Following Jesus becomes about me and my salvation, and trying to make sure I do enough to stay on the "heaven" side of the ledger.

Part three will be next week.

It needs a bit more paunch around the midsection, but all in all, not too bad.

I'm going to be a father again. I personally blame my wife's left ovary, since that's where the fated egg originated. We had our first ultrasound this morning and everything's looking fine. Here's the picture:It looks like a Teddy Graham. Well, a Teddy Graham with a gigantic cranium. Do you want to know the best words on the planet? "There's only one." God help us all.

Did you whince when you read the title for this post? Me too. This may sound heretical and sacriligious, but I can't stand that word. Maybe that's not 100% true. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I can't stand what the Church has done to that word. We've neutered it, narrowed it down to just a select few that we can't agree on, and, in turn, lost nearly all of the original meaning of the word itself.

When you think of the the word salvation, what comes to mind? For some of us, the thoughts that come to us might be positive. Mine would be positive, but also incredibly muddy and odd. But for a great many people, the word salvation conjours up nothing but horrible memories. I have a kid in my youth group who's dad will have nothing to do with the Church because, as a child, he was at a church camp where they blocked him onto a boat dock and wouldn't let him off until he "accepted Jesus and was saved." That makes me want to puke, but many people have similar thoughts about salvation. So what else comes to mind? Heaven? Hell? A helmet-haired televangelist admonishing you to secure your place in heaven by sending that check? These are some of the thoughts that come to my mind as well.

I'm pretty tired of hearing about salvation in the Church. I'm tired of salvation being reduced to a future thing, while ignoring this life. I'm tired of Christians talking about who they "saved" this week, as if people are part of some giant checklist.

It sounds scandalous to a great many Christians, but the salvation that Jesus spoke of had very little to do with the afterlife. It had everything to do with this life. There's a great story in the book of Luke where Jesus talks to a man named Zacchaeus (evidentally a wee little man). Zacchaeus was a tax collector, which meant that he was basically a rip-off artist who preyed on the poor and oppressed in order to line his own pockets (did tunics have pockets?). Jesus comes into town and calls to Zac (I'm tired of typing his whole name) and invites himself over to dinner at Zac's house. The religious people start grumbling about the fact that Jesus is associating with a "sinner," but Jesus continues on to Zac's house anyway. Zac's first words to Jesus are this:

"Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."

Interesting words from Zac, because he's essentially agreeing to bankrupt himself. Keep in mind that the text never says whether or not Zac followed through on his promise. All it says is that he makes this promise to Jesus. Jesus' response is, "Today, salvation has come to this house..." An interesting note here is Jesus' play on words. The Hebrew word for salvation is "Yeshua," which, incidentally, is Jesus' real name in Hebrew.

So this passage leads to a lot of questions. What does Jesus mean by salvation? If he means what most American Christians believe he means, then we have to conclude that all it takes to get to heaven is to say you're going to do something. Forget all of our doctrine on baptism being the means to salvation (it doesn't say anything about Zac being baptized, and interestingly enough, the Bible never mentions any of Jesus' disciples being baptized either). Forget all of our doctrine on "accepting Jesus into your heart" or "professing Jesus as oyur Lord and Savior. All we get from the text is that Zac said he would give half of everything he had to the poor, and Jesus in return "saves" Zac. If you're going to stick to the fundamentalist view that salvation is all about heaven, then you're quickly painting yourself into a corner that you can't get out of. We'll talk more about that in the next post.

I contend that Jesus is speaking of a much deeper salvation; a salvation that takes place in the here and now. I believe that Zac was saved from a life of materialism. I believe that he was saved from a life of ripping people off. I believe he was saved from a life of selfishness and greed. That's real, down-to-earth, present-day salvation, not some "pie in the sky when you die" garbage. Jesus realized that Zac needed to be saved from his ways. He needed to be saved from a horrible life of not caring about anyone but himself.

In the next post, we'll explore the root of the word salvation and, according to the Bible, how you attain it.

I've been thinking about mystery. No, not the cheesy Jamiroquai throwback, soul-patch wearing, creep on VH1's "The Pick-up Artist," I mean actual mystery. I was thinking about mystery as it pertains to God. Mystery is something that we westerners hate. We want everything in a nice and neat package that we can neatly unpack at our convenience. The problem is that God doesn't operate like that. He's hidden and enigmatic at times. The definition of mystery is: a hidden or secret thing, not obvious to the understanding. This leads me to some questions. Is it possible that this is one of the bigger reasons why people don't follow God? Is it because they feel like they have to know everything about him before they can give their life to him? Why does the Church talk about the mystery of God, and then try and give easy, lame answers to everything that happens in life? If a mystery is something that is hidden or secret, doesn't this mean that there are just some things we aren't ever going to know about God?

I've struggled with God's mystery at times in my life. There are times, even now, when I'm bothered by a particular aspect of God. There are times when I wish God would just come down, give me a three-hour lecture (with a flashy powerpoint presentation) about who he is and who he is not, so that my eyes would be opened. Here's the thing though. When I buy a new video game, I don't sit down with the instructions and memorize them before I play the game. I just start playing, and I figure it out as I go.

When I bought a new digital camera, I didn't make sure that I had everything figured out before I turned it on, I just turned it on and started taking pictures.

Do you like art? Do you have to understand an artist and his motivations, before you can appreciate and love his art? Isn't it possible to just appreciate the art without understanding the artist?

What about music? Do you have to understand all of the lyrics, all of their meanings before you can listen to and enjoy their music? I listen to and enjoy Sigur Ros. All of their lyrics are in Icelandic. I don't have the first clue what they're saying, or even the subject matter of what they are singing; all I know is their music moves me. All I know is that it's beautiful and I can just close my eyes and let the sound wash over me.

It's like that with God. I don't understand everything about him. In fact, there are times when I'm not sure I know anything about him. All I can say is that he moves me. There are times when all I can do is sit back and let him wash over me. Sometimes that's all the understanding I have. It may be the only understanding I'm going to get. Maybe that's ok.

So I just engaged in my favorite wallet-raping excursion of putting gas in my car, and I realized something, we are an incredibly impatient people. Let me just say, straight away that I struggle from time to time with patience, usually behind the wheel, but it's something I've worked on and continue to work on.

I was about three people deep in line after filling up and the guy at the counter was buying cigarettes and a lighter and about everything else he could find. There was this older guy in front of me and I could tell he was getting antsy. Not slighty antsy, more like totally ticked off kind of antsy. He was doing that sigh thing, where he was hoping the guy in front of him would hear him and realize that he was ruining his whole day by buying a pack of cigs. So the guy at the front of the line was done paying and he was putting his change back in his wallet and the cashier said "Next." The guy in front of me steps forward to the counter and growls, "Pump 5" and just sort of tosses his $20 bill on the counter and walks out.

I paid my money and left and the guy was still angrily mumbling to himself. All I could do was shake my head. I probably stood in line for a total of two minutes. This guy wasn't there much longer. I had a bunch of thoughts going through my head as I watched this guy. Why are you in so big of a hurry? Does this really matter? Is it really something to get angry about? Then I realized something. He isn't impatient/angry/upset at the guy in front of him at all. His misguided emotions had nothing to do with the guy in front of him. It had everything to do with a deeper unrest inside of him. That kind of ridiculous anger and impatience comes from somewhere else, somewhere deeper, somewhere unseen. It's the opposite of what God intends. He wants his people to have a deep sense of shalom, a wholeness and peace that endures even through life's difficulties. I mean, what would this guy's reaction be to something that mattered? What would his reaction be to something really difficult. Judging by his reaction to a meaningless loss of two minutes, I'm guessing his head would pop off. No shalom, no peace, no wholeness.

If you're someone who struggles with anger and impatience (as I have and still do fromt time to time), I hope you realize that your anger runs deeper than your circumstances. Take a deep breath and ask yourself the question, is this really a big deal?

That's latin for ridiculous. Ok, probably not, but whatever. So I saw a statistic yesterday that proved to me that our country is completely doomed and our downfall will probably happen in my lifetime.

1 in 4 Americans didn't read one book last year.

Let that wash over you for a second. 25% of this country didn't read a book last year. That's insane. We are officially the dumbest modernized country on the planet. How can a country survive when so few of its people seek out knowledge and wisdom? Answer: It can't. Somewhere in this country right now, a group of authors sit together and weep bitterly.

As you may know, I hate church signs. Well, maybe that isn't true, I hate that the people who put them up are serious about them, I, frankly, find most of them hilarious in a very sad way. I saw another "good" one the other day in the town where I live. It simply said, "How would Jesus drive?"

Let that sink in for a minute. Let the raging torrent of idiocy wash over you. Never mind the fact that this church spent probably somewhere in excess of 10-15 thousand dollars on this sign. Never mind the fact that a good number of people in my town can't afford to pay their electric bill, while said church spends said amount of dollars on said sign. Ignoring those facts, it still begs the question, who cares how Jesus would drive? What does that have to do with anything? My wife's response was priceless: "Um, he probably wouldn't."

I think there's something bigger going on here though. How vacuous and ridiculous has American Christianity become that we even have to ask, and/or answer a question like that? I understand what they are implying by asking the question, but if someone who claims to follow Jesus can't drive without being enraged and flipping everyone off, then, to be honest, their faith isn't worth much anyway. I don't mean that as a judgment call on anyone, but when I look at the Bible, I don't see the writers spending too much time on stuff as petty as being courteous to others while riding your donkey/chariot. When you read the Bible, especially the New Testament, it seems to be a given that a Christ-follower would be courteous to those around them. Being courteous and loving isn't part of the package of following Jesus, it is the package. Why can't churches who have signs ask questions that matter? Why do they have to have signs at all?

Seriously. Check this out. I think that dog just ate my soul, I'm not sure.

I haven't put any pictures of the beast on here for awhile, so I thought I would do that now. Here's a picture a friend of ours took at a youth group pool party this week.

Adorable.

Here's another from the party. Notice the lovely physique. He has his father's attractive shape.

Really, I think he needs more food. There's nothing more sad than an under-nourished child. The picture would be perfect if you insert a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a Dale Earnhardt hat on him. He has what I like to call "frat-guy stomach." He looks like he's a few cases of beer over the line in the gut department.

It's been a few months, but we finally had to take the boy to get his one-year shots. All of the other immunization experiences have been sort of ok. This one, however, was cut from a different cloth. We get into the room and the nurse is showing us a chart of everything that they'll be giving him. I'm sitting there counting on my fingers how many shots he's going to get and I started to run out of fingers. So how many shots did my boy have to endure? Five. I would be crying if someone gave me five shots and I'm 27.

I had to hold him on my lap and pin his arms down while the nurse rammed needle after needle into his legs and then his arm. The thing that sucks is that he's getting to the age where he remembers things like that. My guess is that the next time we take him to the doctor, we'll have a fight on our hands. He had stopped crying after his immunizations and he saw the nurse again and started balling again. I had to laugh, though I felt kind of sorry for the nurse. What a crappy job, to have to stick a bunch of little kids with needles. She is hated by more kids than I can imagine. Anyway, he's covered in bandages and he's recovering well.

Looking for a new and creative way to stick it to the man? Read about how this man went about it. Brilliant.

Read this article. Good stuff.

So I got "tagged" by one of my college students. If you don't know what that means, well...then your life still has purpose and meaning. It basically means that I have to list 10 random and interesting facts about myself, then, in turn, annoy 5 more people by tagging them. I'll brutally murder her for this later, but I suppose I'll play along. So here goes:

1. I just bought and am currently listening to a Bill Withers CD. Yes, it's 1970s era R&B, but back off, "Ain't No Sunshine" is one of the best songs ever written and his voice is like...a waterfall of silky butter...or something.

2. I'm a sucker for Classical music. What can I say? The Four Seasons by Vivaldi is amazing, and anyone that disagrees is an uncultured moron.

3. I think music sounds infinitely better on vinyl than on a CD or an Mp3 player. You can't beat the crackling and popping that comes along with vinyl, it just adds something to the music.

4. I'm a human being. Doesn't sound interesting, but there are still people that, maybe subconsciously, believe that ministers are somehow inhuman.

5. I hate Christian music. It is, by-and-large (there are a few exceptions), uncreative, copycat garbage.

6. I secretely wish I was British...or Irish...or Scottish. I'm magnetically drawn to the UK. If I could find a way to make a living for my family in Britain, I would move there tomorrow.

7. I hate when people touch my little toe. I don't know why, but it makes me want to vomit.

8. Speaking of vomit, I threw up Red Gold salsa in 8th grade one time, and I still haven't eaten that brand since then. It's like I can still taste it.

9. My dream vacation would be to take three months and tour all over Europe. This is one of those things that will never happen as long as I live, but I guess that's why it's called a "dream" vacation.

10. I'm plagued by a constant sense of failure in my ministry. I'm pretty convinced that I'm the worst youth pastor on the planet. OK, maybe not as bad as the ones that sleep with their kids, but you get the point.

Alright, here's who I'm tagging.

Matt Polley - Oh, this will be a beautiful thing.
Kim Golden - As will this
Michael Baysinger
Harvey the Rabbit
Johnny Chimpo

If this guy gets elected, I'm moving to Canada. Read this. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will strike first to win victory." What a dunce.

I've been studying a lot today (a novel concept for a minister) and I've been focused on a particular passage in Ephesians. It says this, "For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works..." On the surface, maybe not much there, until you dig into the Greek a little bit.

The Greek word for "handiwork" is "poiema." It's a word, that in the Greek language was used to describe a work of art. Or, said in a better way, an artist's relation to his work. It was used to describe any work of art, a song, a poem, a statue, a painting, etc. This understanding blew my mind. To think that we're all, in some mystical way, God's artwork that he's creating to change the world. That's amazing. I think one of the greatest problems in the church today is that a great many Christians see themselves as a "sinner, saved by grace." The fact is that, in God's eyes, we're not seen as sinners, but as a beautiful work of art that he is fashioning and shaping into a world-changing masterpiece.

Something else that's interesting is that the voice used in the Greek lends itself ot a continuous action. In other words, God isn't done with us yet. In fact, according to Galatians, until we die, or Christ returns, the work of redeeming us, and the rest of Creation continues unabated. If we could somehow grasp this, concept, that God isn't finished with us or the world, how different would this world be? Maybe we could spend more money on health care for the poor than we do on bombs. Maybe a few more people could be cured of their curable diseases. Maybe, just maybe, if we could see ourselves as a beautiful work of art, as God, in fact, sees us, the world would be a better place.

You have to figure it out for yourself. All I know is that our current solutions to filling the emptiness (sex, alcohol, shopping, friends, etc.) aren't working, so maybe it's time to try something else.

I believe that God gave us all certain passions and desires. I'm not sure that killing off our passions and desires is what God intends. This is where a lot of ascetics go wrong. Wearing itchy clothing and castrating yourself may seem like a good idea (does it?) to kill the desires that derail us from time to time, but it isn't really necessary. I don't think that God is asking us to rid ourselves of the desires he's placed in us, all he wants us to do is to control them and use them in a constructive way.

Somehow these dicussions always lead to sex, maybe because sexual problems are so much a part of our culture. God gave us a sex drive (can I get an "Amen" from the congregation?). We're the only creatures in all of creation that have sex for any other purpose than reproduction. In other words, we're built to enjoy sex for recreation, not just procreation. To illustate my point, I have cats that live around my house, one night I heard a horrible commotion under our front porch. guess what was happening? I don't think I need to answer that, but needless to say, it didn't sound like a whole lot of enjoyment was being had by either party, especially the female. The sound actually made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Anyway, what I'm saying is sex is something to be celebrated, not destroyed. However, I don't believe that God has given us license to go and (for lack of a better phrase) mount everything that gets into arm's length of us. One of the writers of the Bible makes it very clear that "all other sins people commit are outside their bodies, but those who sin sexually sin against their own bodies." In other words, sex does something to us. It's impossible to have sex with someone and not give a part of yourself away. When we have sex with someone on a drunken bender, it does something to us. It causes us to lose something. Sex isn't meant to be given away to just anyone.

I always hear people talk about teenage sex in terms like, "Well, they're going to do it anyway, we should at least make sure they're protected." This is such a copout to me. It may prevent a few more teenage pregnancies and STDs (and, incidentally, I'm all for that), but it doesn't get at the heart of the issue. I've heard numerous teenage girls talk about their first sexual experience and say things like, "It wasn't what I expected." Behind those words lay a reservoir of pain and regret. Those words rang with, "Mr. Right apparently wasn't Mr. Right after all," and "I kinda wish I would have waited." Don't tell me that we can't control our urges and desires. Yes we can. A Tomcat can't control his sexual impulse because it's merely that, an impulse, an instinct. With humans, we were created differently and the sexual urge is a desire, not an instinct. It's something that can be controlled. When we lose control of this desire (or any desire for that matter), we make the emptiness inside of ourselves that much bigger.

So the key, I think, is to channel our desires into more ocnstructive efforts. I'm not going to sit and list ways that we can better our world around us, you're all big boys and girls and ca find things on your own. This is all easier said than done, but Jesus described following him as a "straight and narrow way that few find." Doesn't sound all that easy to me, but I've known a few who have found it, and I want to join them.

Have you ever wondered where the motivation comes from, that drives us to do the things we do? Maybe you have and maybe you haven't. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I've been looking at my life and I've realized that my life is marked by a deep-down disquiet. There's a rumbling inside of me, at the deepest part, that I'm not happy and peaceful. I think if we all take the time to look deep enough, most of us will find the same inner feeling. That's not to say that there's nothing in my life that brings me joy or happiness, I'm just saying that deep down, I'm not right. I have this nagging sense that I'm not as I should be. In the Bible, we're told that God longs for his people to be free. Maybe the sense I'm getting is that, deep down, I don't feel the freedom that God has promised me.

I'm certainly not blaming God for any of this. He's provided the way to life and peace, I'm just, frankly, not following that way to the best of my ability.

So what motivates us? I guess the best way to say it is...emptiness. Deep down, a great many of us are empty. This feeling that something isn't right within us can basically be defined as emptiness. What this emptiness leads to is lust. We always associate lust with purely sexual motivations (and rightly so a great amount of the time), but lust takes on many different forms. The Greek word for "lust" translates literally as "in the mind." So lust is anything that grips our minds and won't let go. For some of us, sex is what grips our minds, for some it's shopping, for some it's drugs, for some it's alcohol, etc. When we lust after something, we are convinced that we can't live or be content without that something. Do you see what this leads to? Affairs happen because a man/woman is convinced that they will never be happy until they have that other man/woman. Alcoholism happens because the alcoholic has a sense of disquiet, and is convinced that alcohol will make him/her content. Some of us have a deep down sense of emptiness that leads to us having to buy the next trendy item. "If I just had that iPhone..."

The problem with all of this, is that lust can't deliver on the promises it makes. It can't make you content, it can't fill the emptiness. All it can do is make you lust for more. Think about how this progression plays out in real life. Rapists and sex offenders didn't just wake up one day and decide to do what they do. It was a long process that began with a lust for sex that continued to grow and grow, and eventually morphed from a "harmless" addiction to porn, to a monstrous addiction that led to violence. Porn stars didn't just wake up one day and decide to be porn stars. It started at a young age when that girl decided that the "guy of her dreams" could fill the void inside of her. What started as an "innocent" and casual fling morphed into an addiction that she can't get out of.

The question that all of this leads to is, "How do you fill the emptiness?" More to come next week.

You know, if I hear one more person talk about how Christians are hypocrites, I'm going to puke. Sure I'm a hypocrite, but so are you. Outside of Jesus, no one has ever lived out their convictions perfectly 100% of the time. Here's Webster's definition of "hypocrite":

1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

Looking at that definition, that puts pretty much the entire human race into the hypocrisy game. I've heard so many people tell me that they don't follow Jesus because Christians are hypocrites. Sure, we're hypocrites, but not because we're Christians, we're hypocrites because we're human. But the thing I find interesting is they'll join an environmental group that protests big oil, and they'll drive to the protest in their car that uses said oil. They'll join a group that rails against the logging industry, but they have no problem using paper. I know these are broad-sweeping statements about these kinds of groups, but let's call it what it is, it's hypocrisy.

I'm all for environmental causes, and really any cause that improves the earth and the human race, but the point I'm trying to make is that no one is immune to the hypocrisy bug. I understand how Christians display a lack of love from time to time (some more often than others), I do this as well depending on my mood, but don't use an excuse like that to defend your unbelief. Let's all work together, everyone, Christians, Jews, atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. to better this world. Hypocrites unite!

Since Haiti, I've had an increasingly uneasy feeling about my life. I can't really explain it, suffice it to say that I feel like I'm resisting what God is calling me to do because I'm a pansy. I'm becoming more and more disenchanted with the American Church because of their lack of a spine. They say they stand for things like justice, peace, and love, but really it's all lies. What the American Church really stands for is prosperity (personal and corporate), doing just enough to get to heaven but not really change, and saving souls (read: pad heaven's stats but ignoring the here and now needs of the people that Jesus told us to help).

I know all of this comes across as grumpy, anti-American, and unevangelistic, but who cares. Sorry I guess, stop reading if you're uncomfortable. I feel like God is calling me to be an advocate for people who have no voice, which actually might be the purpose of being a minister. I'm not actually sure what form this is going to take, but frankly, I'm not excited about the task. Why am I not excited? Because it will probably cost me a lot. My job, my house, my comfort. People in America don't like when Christians, especially ministers, decide to start speaking up about injustice. It's obtrusive, caustic, and uncomfortable. If Jesus taught me anything it's that when you take up the cause of the oppressed, the religious establishment will hate you for it, and they'll crucify you to shut you up.

I saw a lot of injustice in Haiti, but I also see a lot of injustice in America and in my own communtiy. These people need a voice, I feel like I'm called to be a voice. The question is whether or not I'll accept the challenge or go on being comfortable.

Go to iTunes and hit "party shuffle" and see what comes up from your list of songs. Let me know the first ten on your playlist. Here are mine:

1. Behind Blue Eyes - The Who
2. Hold On - Tom Waits
3. Untitled 5 - Sigur Ros
4. No Earthly Good - Johnny Cash
5. Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
6. We Win! - David Crowder Band
7. Thank You - Led Zeppelin
8. Dear Lord - Joseph Arthur
9. O Holy Night - Sufjan Stevens
10. Palm Sunday - Jerry Garcia Band

What are you listening to?

We had a much-needed day of relaxation. We took two walks to two different beaches. On the second trip, we walked about 3 miles and when we got to the ocan, we all just jumped into the water in our clothes. The Caribbean is beautiful. I've never seen water so blue. We walked the three miles back to the mission and I got chaffed in areas I didn't even know I had (Note: Never use Gold Bond with menthol on chaffed areas, I'm still screaming).

This country is so contrasted and strange. As I stood on the beach, I looked to the left and saw the ocean with a mountain behind it. I looked to the right and I saw a beautiful palm-lined coast. I looked ahead and saw blue water as far as the eye could see. Then I looked behind me and saw trash and indescribable poverty. It was a strange feeling. I've never seen a place that has so much going for it, and yet nothing going for it at the same time. That doesn't make much sense, but it just seems that since they have so much beauty in their country, that they could easily be a tourist destination, but the whole situation seems so hopeless. It was just an odd feeling to look in one direction and have a sense that everything was right in the world, and then look another direction and have the feeling that nothing was right and just in the world.

Except my jet plane, in this instance, is a 2002 Honda Civic. I'm off on family vacation all next week, so I'll continue my Haiti journal posts when I return. May God's blessings go with you throughout the next week.

The highlight of the trip, so far, occured at 4 a.m. this morning. We attended a prayer meeting in the village in someone's home. This Sunday, the group will celebrate 20 years of meeting 5 mornings a week. Five mornings a week for 20 years! That's crazy. Anyway, it was beautiful beyond words. As they prayed aloud, I didn't know what they were saying, and yet in some way I knew exactly what they were saying. They would pray and then they would break out in song, whose only musical accompaniment was a rooster across the street who was begging us to know that the sunrise was close at hand. We had a translator who would translate the parts of the serice that pertained to us. The Haitians took time to thank us for leaving our families to come and help their country. Then they prayed for God to bless us and for a safe journey back to the States. As they sang again, I found tears running down my face. How can they pray for us? The poor Haitians praying tat God would bless the spoiled Americans. I couldn't help but cry at how gracious they are to us, when we honestly don't deserve their grace. But, after all, I guess that's the nature of grace, you can't earn it. If you could, it wouldn't be grace, it would be a salary. One of the Haitian men named Gaston (great name by the way) stood and said, "We thank God for his grace and love. To wake up each day is a grace." I wish I could say that I see each day as a grace, but I would be a liar. God, help me to have a more Haitian way of viewing you and your gifts. Throughout the whole service all I could think was that we may be far wealthier than they are, but they're far richer.

I will never, as long as I live, forget this morning. I saw God's Kingdom appear like a pearl in the mud. I saw hope growing in the midst of a hopeless land. I saw what it meant to follow Christ and to be a part of his Church.

Later in the day we worked in the clothing pantry. It was total chaos. Each kid that came in was supposed to leave with two shirts, two pairs of pants, and a new pair of shoes. The problem was that there weren't enough pairs pants to go around. The reason for this is that Americans don't think before they donate anything, they just want it out of their house. What does this lead to? A room full of pants with a 40 or 42 inch waist that literally no one in the country of Haiti could possibly wear. This is so typical of Americans. We have too much stuff, we just want to get rid of it, so we dump it on someone else, not even thinking about whether it can actually be used or not. I actually saw fur-lined boots, sweaters, and winter coats. We're in the freaking Caribbean. It was a rough day, and I'm not sure there was anyone on my team that wasn't in tears at some point, including me.

I've come to the conclusion that we really don't have a grasp on what reality really is. I think of the problems I deal with at home, and suddenly they don't seem like that big of a deal. Reality is holding a three year old who has had malaria for three weeks. Reality is not knowing whether she will live or die as she puts her head on your shoulder and then looks at you through bloodshot eyes, silently begging for your help. As I clasped her to my chest, all I could think was that this doesn't have to happen. It doesn't have to be this way, this is a preventable disease.

God, show me where I can help. Give me the courage and the ability to change the world, one person at a time.

Today was much less strenuous, but we got a lot accomplished anyway. My group put bookshelves together and set up a library for the school here. It felt great knowing that the kids will now have a place to sit and read.

In the afternoon we spent time helping a guy from Georgia who came on the trip with us. He has come up with a new formula of ingredients to add to peanut butter as a supplement for children's nutrition. This formula is healthier and more cost-effective than current similar formulas. By adding vegetable oil, powdered sugar, powdered vitamins, and whey protein, he can give kids here the nutrition they need. He's here to conduct a research project on it for eight weeks to see if it improves the health of some of the kids in the village. If it does work, he will find a way to mass produce it, and ship it to develpoing countries to combat starvation. We helped him mix the ingredients in and he let us taste some of it. It's incredibly tasty, but not exactly a good idea unless you want giant love handles. Helping him today made me realize that my generation really can end world hunger in our lifetime. I heard a guy from an organization called "Kids Against Hunger" say today, "Jesus said, The poor you will always have with you,' but he never said, 'The starving you will always have with you.'" I had never thought of it that way before. World hunger is so simple to stop, if Americans would just stop using 80% of the world's resources to get fatter and richer. All God asks for is equal distribution of what he has created. When I get home, I will be doing what I can to do my part to distribute everything more equally.

I'm beyond exhausted. My crew was responsible for working on building the house today. We worked alongside Haitian masons. Not "masons" like the bloodthirsty American cult (for any Masons reading this, just kidding...sort of), but more of the brick-laying variety. They did the lion's share of the block-laying, but we were able to do some. We mostly hauled mortar (read: really thick and heavy concrete), and cinder blocks (read: heavier than mortar buckets). I estimated that I carried 400 or more cinder blocks in a five hour span. I also was able to hand-sift a mountain of coral sand which is a component of the mortar, which the Haitians hand-mix. The Haitian workers are machines. If I had a construction business, I would hire these guys in a second. Long story short, we got all four walls put up in one day, not a bad day's work.

The thing I noticed about Haitian buildings is that they choose function and practicality over beauty. This house will withstand a hurricane when it is finished. My house is beautiful, but a hurricane (or tornado, seeing as how I live in Indiana) would reduce my house to something less than rubble. There's the difference. In America, we build for beauty, in Haiti they build for function and strength. I'm beginning to see that it might just make more sense toi build the Haitian way.

I'm starting to adjust to the insane climate. Sweating has become normal, so it doesn't bug me like it did when we arrived. Same can be said for the heat.

I was challenged by the American guy who runs the Mission to try a Haitan pepper. They just call it "pepper" and it's about the size of half an Ibuprofen tablet. I like hot stuff, but anyone who does will tell you that the smaller the pepper is, the hotter it will be. I thought about saving myself the trouble and just going ahead and eating it while sitting on the toilet, but I decided to take a chance. Holy crap, this thing was hot. Ten minutes of pain and increased sweating. I nicknamed it "Satan's Tylenol."

Anyway, I'm calling it a night, I'm wiped out.

Haitian children are beautiful. We were working today at building a house for a family who lost theirs in the last hurricane and we drew a crowd, as a group of "blancs" tend to do. I felt a bit like a fish in an aquarium ("Don't tap the glass, whitey gets scared.") The crowd consisted mostly of children and teenagers. The kids crave attention. They will come up and just touch your skin, as if the lack of pigment somehow feels different. They'll hold your hand, and if you put your arm around them, they snuggle up to you. It feels so good to give them the physical contact that they are starving for.

We then took a tour of Grand Goave, the village where the mission resides. It's more of a town than a village. It's ver poor, like the rest of Haiti. The people are so friendly and so polite. Every once in awhile, you would a child's voice shriek, "Blanc, blanc ("white" in Creole if you haven't figured that out yet), photo." We took a lot of pictures and then showed them the digital picture. The loved it. They just giggled and giggled.

Tonight I had the privilege of preaching at a Haitian church in the small village of Jeaty. Their worship was amazing. It was a very surreal experience to be preaching in a dark hut, lit by one kerosene lantern. As I preached, I could hear the people saying, "Oui (yes)." I think it's the Haitian way of saying, "Preach it brotha!" They were very gracious and kind. Worshipping in a strange place and with people you don't know really gives you a sense of how universal God's Kingdom really is. I feel blessed to be a part of it.

I'm back, and as promised, will be sharing my journal with you from the trip. Thanks for your prayers for the trip, it was amazing.

I guess this place is everything I expected and nothing like I expected. I expected poverty, but what I saw was hopeless destitution. I expected everything to be a little different than the States, but what I got was complete chaos. The streets of Port-au-prince are hard to describe. Two to three million people, trash everywhere, guys just peeing in the street, people all over the place selling the same crap, and hoping against all hope that someone will buy enough for them to eat that night, taxis called "Tap-Taps" loaded with people and blaring music. It was like some crazy, impoverished street carnival that never ends, and always smells of garbage and sour milk.

So, the drivers are crazy as well. There are no stop lights, no stop signs (did I mention that there are between two and three million people in this city?), no road markers, and no rhyme or reason to the driving pattern. The only general rule seemed to be that the person with the biggest vehicle and/or loudest horn wins. To drive here, you have to be half-skilled and half bat-crap insane. We saw a cop giving someone a ticket. I had to laugh. What in the world do you have to do to get a ticket in this chaos? Kill someone? Drive while sober?

Shortly after we arrived at the Lifeline Christian Mission compound in Grand Goave (by the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ), we unloaded a huge 45 foot long shipping container full of supplies. It was good, hard work and we got to work with some of the Haitian staff here at the compound. I worked with one man named Juvel. We were hauling lumber together and he worked my butt off! We were hauling it about 40 yards and he kept hurrying me back to get more. When we were done, we talked with each other a little (very little considering his English sucks and my Creole is worse). He asked me if I had a baby, and when I told him "Yes", he said, "Very good, good job." I thought that was funny. Anyway, I'm wrecked already from a long day of traveling and work, and because I've been sweating since we got off the plane.

Clever title to the post huh? I couldn't think of anything else. Anyway, it seems like it's been awhile since I rapped at you (only 6 days or so, but it seems like longer), so I thought I would give the skinny (I have so much street cred, look at the clever use of slang) on what's going on in my life.

Almost a week from the minute that I typed this, I will be landing in Haiti. I'm very excited about the trip, though it will be hard to be away from my wife and child for that long, especially with no chance of talking to them until I arrive back in the states. The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere doesn't have a fully functioning phone system? I can't even believe it. Man, Jesus, when you called me to go and do your work, couldn't you have called me to a more convenient place? Geez. Just kidding.

I'm over the flying thing. Hard to believe after reading my last post, but I've pretty much decided that I have no control over the whole deal anyway, so whatever. I'm just going to have a Vet shoot me up with about 100 CCs of Horse Tranquilizer before the trip, that should be adequate.

I'll probably post again before I leave this next Sunday. After that, it will be awhile.

I hate it. I hate flying. It may be "the only way to travel," but I'd rather have a car, or a hovercraft...I've always wanted to ride on a hovercraft. And forget that crap about, "It's the safest way to travel." If I get in a car crash, my chances of survival are pretty great, but if I get into a plane crash at 37,000 feet, I'm done. So spare me the psycho-babble about how safe air travel really is.

Anyway, I just looked at the plane I'll be throwing up in from Indianapolis to Miami, and it's actually not a plane, it's a Cracker-Jack box with wings. Not to mention that all 21 of us are carrying at least 100 pounds worth of luggage on board. Can this stinkin' thing even get off the ground with that kind of weight.

Did anyone ever watch the A-Team? You know how they always had to trick B.A. into flying and then they would club him over the head with a wine-bottle like a defenseless Harbor Seal? That's going to be me.

I don't actually throw up on planes, I just sweat profusely and my hands get all clammy and I sit and pray, "God, keep this plane in the air. God, keep this plane in the air. God, keep this..." Come to think of it, flying may be the best thing for my prayer life.

I don't get it, I'm not usually this bad about flying. It's never been my favorite thing to do, but I've never been this aprehensive about it either. Maybe it's because I have a kid now, who knows? Maybe it's because I only fly about once every four or five years, so I'm not used to it. Maybe it's because I over-think this kind of crap. I don't know, all I know is that June 10th can't be over soon enough.

1. I watched a show on the history channel about Hippies the other day. If you take away the massive amounts of drugs and promiscuous sex, a lot of their ideas were, at their foundation, strangely Christ-like. But, unlike Christians, their music was actually good.

2. Where has the book, "Les Miserables" been my whole life?

3. I got two bumper stickers the other day that now hang in my office. The first one says, "Jesus called, he wants his religion back" and the other one says, "If going to church makes you a Christian, does going to the garage make you a car?" Brilliant.

4. I wonder if they'll invent tele-porters before June 10, so that I don't have to fly to Haiti? I think our flight from Indy to Miami is on like a tiny chicken-freighter or something.

5. Speaking of Haiti...um it's hot. I looked at the Weather Channel website and at 10:00 am this morning, the heat index was 104. I will have no skin left when I return. I talked to a lady from my church that's been there before, in February she got a sunburn through her clothes. Sounds like a great place for a pasty white kid huh?

6. So...gas prices...fun huh? At least our government cares about it right? Is anyone else investigating the idea of buying a Vespa Scooter?

7. My kid threw up his whole dinner the other night, and then some. It looked like a bile-soaked grocery store exploded in our living room. My wife and I looked at each other and said, "So...what do we do?" We decided to burn the house down and start all over, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

8. I have to go to the bathroom, I'll be back in a few. Ok, I'm back. I feel much better.

9. Hey, we crowned a new American Idol last night. Can you hear that? It sounds like a new career already floating away in the breeze.

10. I've really been questioning my ministry recently. I don't know why. I sometimes feel like a dismal failure at what I do. I was up at 4:00 this morning because I couldn't stop thinking about this. Does these thoughts happen in other career fields, or is ministry exclusive in this one?

Here are the latest statistics/character taits/ummm...whatever else I feel like writing about my 10 month old.

Height: Somewhere in the 31" range. This means that we can officially have nothing laying on tables, chairs, shelves, etc. Also, it means that I've already contacted the NBA to let them know that the number 1 pick in the 20__ draft is already a done deal, this kid is huge.

Weight: 21-ish lbs. He's long, lean, and faster than I am.

# of teeth: 5. His two top teeth in the middle have a gap in between them, which makes him look like Spongebob when he smiles his big cheesy grin.

Walking?: He just took his first steps on Saturday night. He's up to a record of 5 steps before he falls flat on his face and cries.

Still cute: Umm...of course. Pretty much the cutest baby on the planet. I'm biased, I know. One of the high school girls in my youth group had this to say, "He's like 'magazine cover' type cute." I told her that if she would just wait another 17 years or so, she could have a "magazine cute" husband.

Favorite food: Toast with butter, ravioli, carrots, grass clippings, dried leaves, my leg, anything he can get his hands on. This kid will literally eat anything. Here's a mock conversation that would illustrate this kid's appetite.
Me: "Eat this Ezra, it's a cow sphincter."
Him: (insert Spongebob-esque grin) "Dadadadadada." (Fist goes into mouth ingesting said sphincter, followed by a grimace, followed by him smacking the table which is his way of saying, "MORE!")

Still pooping his pants?: Can you hear me gagging through your computer screen?

That's about it. I love this kid. This morning I asked him if he would just stay this size and not turn into a teenager. He just grinned. There was a hint of, "You just wait" in that grin.

On behalf of all Christians worldwide who are not former child stars and actually have a functional brain, I would like to apologize to the world for the whole Nightline debacle last week.

And, if by some odd chance, Kirk Cameron reads this post, I have something to say to him too. Um, Kirk...stop speaking on my behalf. You don't represent me. You may be a brother in Christ, but stop acting like you're God's new warrior and that all of us think like you do. You can't prove the existence of God. I'm sorry to tell you that, but you can't. If we could prove it inconclusively, we wouldn't need faith. Stop accosting people on the street in the name of Jesus. Stop going on national television and making idiots of us all. Go to church, do your thing, serve people as Jesus would, and keep to yourself. Thanks.

"Mama always said, 'God is mysterious.'" - Forrest Gump

I believe this to be true. But what does it mean? It means that God works in different ways at different times. We like to try and fit God into a nice and neat box, but he's just too stinkin' big to cram into our measly little boxes. Jesus compares the Holy Spirit to the wind, saying that it blows where it wills. You can't catch it, you can only live in it and, at times, allow it to guide you. If God is mysterious, then that means that he isn't going to work in the ways that we feel he should. He isn't going to answer our prayers in the niec and neat way that he would. If he did, he wouldn't be mysterious, he would be predictable (and miserably boring). Sometimes God acts in giant ways where it is pretty obvious that he is working. However, more often than not, his ways are more subtle, his actions more hidden. Most of the time, when God is changing us, the change acts like a fine wine, subtley evolving and growing in us until it reaches its full potential.

I'm reading a book right now called Grace (Eventually) by Anne Lamott. She speaks a great deal about God has changed her over the years, but it has been slow and frustrating. It's been a series of strikes and gutters, ups and downs. She says this:

"That's me, trying to make any progress at all with family, in work, relationships, self-image: scootch, scootch, stall; scootch, stall, catastrophic reversal; bog, bog, scootch. I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kinds of things; also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in silence, in the dark.
I suppose that if you were snatched out of the mess, you'd miss the lesson; the lesson is the slog. I grew up thinking the lessons should be more like the von Trapp children: more marionettes, more dirndls and harmonies. But no: it's slog, bog, scootch."

Exactly. Every major form of spirituality acknowledges that any change (if it be worthwhile change) comes slowly and not without great effort. I hate that though. I live in the age where anything I want, I can get with the click of a mouse. It just seems that our mysterious Father's computer runs more like a 1985 Apple, instead of a brand new Mac. It also seems that he's ok with that, I guess it's time that I start being ok with it too.

I saw a picture on CNN.com this morning of the devastation in Greensburg, Kansas. If you know nothing about the story, an F5 tornado (read: ridiculously large tornado 1.5 miles wide) directly hit a small town in Kansas, completely destroying it. The picture was of a guy standing in a ruined church building. There was only one wall left standing and on the wall was a picture of Jesus, still hung perfectly straight that the wind didn't touch.

Totally creeped me out. I know this kind of a situation leads to all sorts of questions about where God was and all of that. Frankly, I don't have the answers and I'm ok with that. However, looking at that picture, it was almost like in some mystical way, Jesus was saying, "I'm still here. Despite what it might look like, I'm still here, and I'm still in love with every person in this town." I don't know why God doesn't stop stuff like that from happening, maybe the miracle in the whole thing was that there weren't hundreds of people killed, who knows. I do know that the Bible makes it very clear that where there is suffering, there is a Savior. There is a Savior who suffered through life in many different ways. There is a Savior that is close to the suffering, offering hope, love, and a sense of peace through the crap. It took a picture in a ruined shell of a church to remind me of that.

On my way to work this morning, I was careening down the highway at a "please don't give me a ticket" type speed, when I noticed a small box turtle crossing the road. I saw it in time to swerve, so I missed it. However, I was thinking about the fact that the turtle didn't have a snowball's chance in the seventh circle of hell of making it to the other side of the road. It's a fairly busy highway, and I watched as this thing crept across the road, with semis and Honda Civics whizzing by it at breakneck speeds.

My journey with God feels like that sometimes. It seems like I'm trying to make it to the other side of the road, but I can't go any faster than a crawl. Meanwhile, there are a million things trying to derail and destroy me. Sometimes these things miss, but other times, they seem to hit their mark. At times I just want to tuck inside my shell until everything blows over, but for some reason I can't. I keep hearing God's still small voice encouraging me to continue. So I go on, all the while asking this still small voice, "Um, can't you just give me a little help and remove the stinking obstacles, make the road a little less busy so that I can make it to the other side?" To which the Voice responds, "Um, you know that if it was easy, it wouldn't make it worthwhile when you arrived at your destination, so no, I won't remove the obstacles."

As I continue across the seemingly endless road, what I find is that I was getting more help than I realized. We're all getting more help than we realize.

I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness, mainly how much I suck at it sometimes. The Church should be full of the most forgiving people on the planet, and, unfortunately, it seems to be the opposite in a lot of respects. The thing about forgiving other people is that, when we refuse to forgive someone, it doesn't hurt the other person, it hurts us. Forgiveness (in a manner of speaking) is a completely selfish act. It has to be, because forgiveness is more about us than it is about the person who wronged us. When we refuse to forgive, we become bitter, which ultimately leads to our destruction.

Writer Anne Lamott puts it this way, "In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poision and then waiting for the rat to die." I think that says it all. If someone wrongs me, it isn't the other person that suffers, it is I who suffers when bitterness eats my lunch. So who has wronged you? We all have wounds, and unless we clean them out by forgiving the person who wounded us, we'll become infected by it and ultimately die from the poison.

I don't know if you've seen the video of the Virginia Tech killer yet, but if you haven't, be ready for it to chill your blood. I watched it on cnn.com today and it almost made me sick to watch it. On top of that, I couldn't help but be filled with sadness at this young man who threw his life away.

As I watched, I couldn't help but want to reach out to the guy and tell him that it didn't have to be this way. I wanted to tell him that, although people can be jerks, killing them isn't the answer. I wanted to tell him that the only way to truly conquer the evils he had endured in his life wasn't to lash out with more evil, but to destroy it with love. I wanted to tell him that you can never conquer evil with evil.

I also couldn't help but think about the rest of his life. Every killer has a story, no one wakes up one morning and starts shooting. The thoughts that ultimately ate him alive and cost the lives of 33 people started a long time ago. Was he picked on as a kid? Did his parents hate him? What injustices in his life led to the hatred? Don't get me wrong, I don't blame society for what happened, the only one to really blame is the shooter, I just can't help but wonder if he had ever seen what real love looked like.

As we mourn the deaths of the innocent, may we never forget about the guilty as well and see if maybe we can't prevent another incident like this one by showing the love of Jesus to everyone we come in contact with. Real love, transforming love; the type of love that melts away bitterness and builds joy in its place.

Recently, Joshua Bell, one of the world's best violin players, was commissioned by the Washington Post to play his violin in a busy subway station in D.C. during rush hour and see what happened. This article in the Post tells the story. Read it here.

Incidentally, the article is long, but is honestly the best piece of writing I've ever encountered in a newspaper. This article says a lot about our culture. It truly made me want to cry.

When Ezra gets excited, he makes this noise when he inhales. It's a hard sound to describe. As you can tell by the subject of this post, it sounds like a squeal, but I'm not sure that this word does it justice. It sounds like a devastating hybrid of this:

and this:

Apparently somewhere in the storied histories of my family and my wife's family, a ringwraith mated with a velociraptor, which mucked of the gene pool in such a way as to produce this:

It chills the blood, doesn't it? Look at the steely glance, the wrathful smile, and the razor-sharp teeth, just waiting to attack the first person that tells it "no."

Seeing as how yesterday was Easter, I've been thinking a great deal about resurrection. I spent most of my life as a Christian talking about the Resurrection of Jesus in purely historical, and then future, fact. In other words, all I focused on was that the Resurrection happened some 2000 odd years ago to a man named Jesus, and then it would happen again to those who were faithful in the "Last Days." So what happened as a natural by-product of this was that I didn't really believe that the Resurrection of Jesus had any real impact on me as I live today. However, I'm starting to see that the Resurrection, far from being just an historical event, is really more about today than it was about 2000 years ago.

I can look back at my life and see that it is a series of resurrections. I can see times in my life where I felt dead inside, and yet God, in his love and mercy, brought life to a dead place inside of me. When I read the Bible now, I see that we serve a God who, if nothing else, delights in bringing life to dead places, and beauty from ugliness. He loves to take a pile of ashes and make them beautiful once more (incidentally, this plays out in his created nature; look at what's happened near Mt. St. Helens, the land s being resurrected from ashes). He loves to take a pile of dry bones (look at the book of Ezekiel) and make them live again. He longs to bring this world back to Eden and make it right and beautiful once more. In this light, the Resurrection of Jesus becomes incredibly real for this time and place. He longs for his people to bring beauty to this earth through a series of resurrections.

What he really desires is for his people to be involved in a universe-wide movement back to Eden. This means that we should find the poorest of the poor, and help them resurrect their lives, aided by the power of God. This means that we are to find single moms who are trying to get by, and help them to resurrect their lives. This means that we are to be good stewards of God's creation, and we should care about environmental issues. The list goes on and on.

I thank God that the grave could not hold Jesus, and I thank God that he longs to bring that same life to other dead places, places in you, and places in me.

Man, have you ever had one of those days? You know, the type of day where one thing gets to you and eats at you. The thing may not even be a big deal in the big scheme of life, but for some reason, it just gnaws at you. If you haven't guessed, I'm having one of those days. I need a hug.

I'm going to be gone for a few days, so I thought I would give an update, as well as some really adorable pictures of the boy.

That is all, I'll be posting next week when I get back from glorious West Virginia.

So here are some things I've been mulling over as of late:

1. Why haven't I bought every Sigur Ros album ever made?
2. Why can't Christians put out anything remotely as talented as a Sigur Ros album?
3. Why are Christians ready to accept death-bed confessions of faith, but refuse to accept a homosexual who is truly seeking God?
4. Why has homosexuality become the taboo sin for Christians? Could it be becuase Christians feel threatened by homosexuals, as if they're going to "catch gay" if they go to church with them?
5. Why can I not keep my 8 month old full? I mean seriously, he isn't that big, where is all the food going?
6. I've been doing Weight Watchers for 2 weeks now, ummm...why do I seem to be getting fatter?
7. Why is it that the more I learn about Jesus, the less I know about him? And why does that make me love him even more?
8. Why can't I get into a Lynyrd Skynyrd album like I used to? Why do I just find their music now oddly annoying?
9. Is there a better Jazz musician than John Coltrane?
10. At what point do you stop calling them "love handles" and call them "giant fat bags."

These are the things floating around in the ole' duders head these days. What can I say, I think I need counseling.

I was flipping through channels again this morning while I was feeding my boy (anyone who has read this blog for any amount of time knows where this is going) and I came across the same "Bible study" program that I spoke of last week. This morning they should have titled the program, "Same crap, different people." This time it was three ladies sitting around the table and they were speaking about demons. I guess when you have nothing to say about Jesus, you have to talk about something right?

They were all bantering back and forth naming all sorts different demons that seem to exist when one of the ladies says, "...and what about financial," to which one of the other ones says, "That's right, there's a spirit of poverty." By spirit, of course, she meant demon. I did a quick keyword search on BibleGateway.com for "spirit of poverty" and this is what it yielded:

Sorry. No results found for "spirit of poverty" in Keyword Search. Idiot.

Ok, so I added the "idiot" thing at the end, but you get the idea. This idea that some devious little demon lurks in your mind and makes you poor not only isn't biblical, it's completely ridiculous. What this leads to is the idea that, "I'm having financial problems, ok, I'll just rebuke that demon in the name of Jesus and, 'Voila!' everything is cool." I always believed that some people were poor because of bad choices, some because of injustice, and some just because they didn't have a chance to be anything but poor, but now I can add another reason...those darned demons. Maybe if I rebuke those demons tonight, Visa and Mastercard will go out of business thus eliminating my debt once and for all. Start praying and rebuking people.

I was flipping through channels this morning before work and came across a TV preacher. I know, I do this too much, and I need to stop. Everytime I see one of them, it makes me embarrassed to be called a Christian. Anyway, this guy was sitting around a table with his three adult children (who, incidentally, look and talk just like him), "studying" the Bible. By studying, I mean the three kids were sitting there listening to their father makes stuff up as he went and then throwing a vague and obscure Bible passage in for good measure. The whole scene was a bit creepy, but I digress.

He was talking about blessings and how when we speak them, God answers and blesses us. By blessing, he was, of course, speaking of monetary and health blessings. The statement that made me almost spit my eggs and hot sauce all over the lving room was this, "The power is in speaking the blessing. When we speak it, Jesus is obligated to make it happen, that's his job." WWHHHHAAAATTTT!!!!! Where did that come from? Since when is Jesus obligated to do anything we tell him to do? I wasn't aware that that's how the relationship works. Because God knows that when you love someone, you immediately start demanding that they fulfill your requests, right?

I'm not sure that we want to get into a game where we start using a phrase like "Jesus is obligated" and "it's his job." Maybe we should leave Jesus' job description up to God.

I just ordered a Sigur Ros album. They may be the best band to ever come out of Iceland. Of course, what competition do they have in that category? Oh yeah, Bjork is from Iceland...so like I was saying, they're certainly the best band to ever come out of Iceland. They're a partly-instrumental, ethereal type-music band (Good Lord, I am an amazing music critic). I listened to a couple of their CDs this past weekend with a friend and I was blown away. Here a few reasons that you should stop reading this now and go buy a Sigur Ros album:

1. My blog sucks and at this point you want to do anything but read it.
2. You're a follower by nature and you would indeed walk off a cliff if someone told you to.
3. Sigur Ros invented their own language called "Hopelandic," and they sing a number of songs on their albums in this made-up language (at this point, you should be saying, "Wow, that's pretty impressive, I'm going to go and buy their entire catalogue.")
4. The guitarist sometimes plays his guitar with a violin bow.
5. You think that I'm so freaking cool that you can't help but buy anything I tell you to.

Do you need any more reasons than that? My friend told me that he was talking to a friend of his while listenign to Sigur Ros and his friend said, "I think this is what death must sound like" (he, of course, meant that as a compliment). So, in conclusion, listen to Sigur Ros and it will make you want to die. No wait...I meant to say that if you listen to Sigur Ros, it will kill you. No wait...never mind. I ordered it from Amazon and opted for the free super-saver shipping, which means that I will receive my CD sometime between this Thursday and November 2009. Now go and purchase their CDs you lemmings!

Update because you care: It shipped yesterday afternoon.

I have a confession to make...I watched some of the Oscars (and by "some" I mean like 30 minutes on and off). It seems that this year the environment took center stage, what with Al Gore's documentary on Global Warming gaining so much attention. Let me state that I have no problem with environmentalism. I don't take the traditonal Christian view of the environment of, "Hey, let's destroy it, because Jesus is going to come back anyway." In fact, I'm trying to take some steps in my own life to be a bit more conscious. However, I get tired of celebrities talking a good game and then living something so seemingly different than what they profess. I find it interesting that Christians get accused of being hypocrites constantly, yet other groups of people don't.

I watched as celebrity after celebrity pranced on stage and mentioned something about the Oscar's being "green" this year (I found it odd that they never seemed to define in what way the show was "green"), and about how we should be more responsible. All of these comments gained applause from their peers. Did no one else happen to notice that pretty much everyone arrived in a giant limo? Are those eco-friendly now, did I miss the memo? I'm guessing a limo gets roughly the same gas mileage as a Sherman tank, so how can they justify it?