Kethuvim

I'm so sick of hearing about people like the lady in this article, I could just scream. Read this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15127464/?GT1=8618

For starters, I could understand making an argument that the book was trying to "indoctrinate children in the ways of Wicca" if, in fact, J.K. Rowling was a Wiccan, but she's not. Why would someone try to indoctrinate millions of children into something that they don't practice themselves? The answer: they wouldn't. So bye-bye to that argument.

Next on the list, show me a teenager that claims to be a witch or wizard because they read Harry Potter. I have yet to find one. If your child becomes a witch because of reading a piece of children's fiction, then you suck as a parent and your child had a number of issues to begin with.

Most of the people who claim that Harry Potter books are evil have never read them, and if they did read them, they read them with a pre-judgement of what the books were going to contain. Anyone who has read these books for sheer entertainment (like myself) will see that the books are, essentially, the story of good seeking to triumph over evil. That sounds familiar...where have I read something like before? HHmmmmmm...oh yeah, I read it in the Bible.

Lastly, the people who shield their kids from Harry Potter are generally hypocrites because they will let their kids read Lord of the Rings (written by a Christian) and the Chronicles of Narnia (also written by a Christian). Those books also have witches, wizards, and incredibly dark and evil people in them as well. What makes those books any different than Harry Potter? If you're going to throw out Harry Potter, then you have to throw out Frodo and Aslan as well.

The worst part of all of this is that people who don't follow Jesus see this and think that this is how all Christians are. I can't wait to read these stories to my son, if that makes me evil, then...well, I guess I'm evil.

So I realized yesterday that my son, who is almost 12 weeks old, is tougher than I am. We took him yesterday morning to get his first of what will be something like 8,000 rounds of immunizations. And by "immunizations" I mean, "extreme needle torture in which they inject your baby with a number of viruses." As we drove to the clinic, I had flashbacks from when I was a small child and my mom and a nurse had to literally chase me around the doctor's office to pin me down before I got shots. Seeing as how Ezra can't move enough to be chased, I didn't foresee this being much of a problem, but I was praying to our Lord in heaven that the experience would go better than that.

He was smiling all morning, obviously not realizing that he was about to be shot up with a few ounces of deadly disease. We got him into the room and the nurse was very nice. She had me hold him facing out, which was nice because he couldn't give me the, "I thought you loved me, why are you doing this to me?" look. She jammed the first of three needles into his thigh (at this point, it took everything in me to not jam the needle into the forehead of the nurse and scream, "How do you like it!!!???") and he let out a scream that I can only describe as something akin to the noise made by the Raptors in Jurassic Park. The nurse (mercifully) was very fast with all three needles. Then the funniest thing happened. Ezra stopped crying after about five seconds. It was at this point that my proud dad, uber-male instinct kicked in and I realized that my son is, in fact, Herculaen by nature. Whereas I still wince and almost vomit at the thought of a needle, my twelve-week old son cryed for about five seconds, then smiled as we put him back in his car-seat. It was a knowing smile; a smile that said, "Hey dad, you're a pansy and in a couple of years, I'll be kicking the crap out of you and your giant love handles." Ah, I couldn't be more proud.

I haven't posted a picture of the boy on here in quite awhile, so I thought I would indulge you.

Indisputably the cutest kid ever, except for the excessive vomitting and amazing amounts of poop. But I suppose I can handle all of that, seeing as how he's one of the most laid back babies I've ever been around.

I was reading in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance last night and I came across something interesting. The author was writing about enthusiasm and it's relation to doing quality work on a machine (i.e. the machine called "us"). He brought up an interesting point. The Greek word in which we derive our word "enthusiasm is "enthousiasmos." The interesting thing about this word is that it literally means, "full of theos" or God. So our word enthusiasm, which Webster defines as "strong excitement of feeling" was originally a word who's meaning denoted a strong fervor for God.

Think of the implications of this. The American Church seems to be at polar extremes on the enthusiasm scale. American Christians seem to be either religious nut-jobs who take the fervor thing to ridiculous extremes, thus looking like a bunch of crazies, or they are totally apathetic and go through the motions each Sunday. Isn't there a balance somewhere. The community I live in is totally apathetic towards God. Actually, let me qualify that statement a bit and say that they are excited about their churches, but not necessarily God. Try and engage in a conversation with your average Christian sometime, and what you'll find is that they will spout out a lot of facts that they know about God, but they exhibit little enthusiasm for really letting him change anything about them. However, if you mention the Indianapolis Colts game (and by the way, they're horribly overrated), and they'll show great animation as they speak of Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison, and the like. I can't lie, I'm guilty of this from time to time as well. What's the source of all of this?

Could it be that we're not all that full of God? Going to church every Sunday doesn't mean that we will automatically recognize God's presence in us. Reading your Bible every day doesn't assure this either. Most Christians don't want to hear this, but to be full of God is to live like Jesus. It's to strive each day to live as he lived, not just learn what he taught. We've really screwed that up over the years. Our churches are full of people who know a ton about Jesus and about God, yet it's made no real difference in them. Thus they lack enthusiasm for God. What this yields is a crop of Jesus-followers that lack quality in their lives that Jesus came to model and show the world was attainable to all in God. It's time for the Church to be full of God. After all, it wasn't Peyton Manning who said, "I came that may have life, and have it to the full."

I spent the entire day yesterday at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. I was spending the day there with the family of one of my high schoolers who was having her fourth surgery on a problem that the doctors can't seem to fix. I came to the conclusion that children's hospitals are probably the saddest places on earth. If they aren't first on the list, they're up towards the top with nursing homes and refugee camps. The hospital administrators have done everything they can to make it a cheery and welcoming environment, but there's really no way of avoiding the sadness of small children with cancer, and various other diseases that other hospitals can't treat. This is the first time I've been to Riley since becoming a parent myself, and I guess it just hit me harder this time.

I found myself watching families waiting for their children to get out of surgery. I watched them as they tried to hide their nervousness and anxiety, and failed miserably at it. I watched them pace back and forth, waiting to hear anything from a nurse or doctor on the condition of their child. I watched them play cards with glassed over and disinterested looks on their faces in the waiting area. They watched the cards, yet their minds were in the operating room with their children. I wonder at their circumstances; how they arrived there, when they arrived there, when and if they'll leave with their children. I think of my own beautiful son and I think about how much I would be freaking out at that moment were the circumstances of these parents to become my circumstances. I found myself praying for these families as I observed them. I couldn't help but feel their pain.

I can't get one little girl out of my mind. I don't know her name, so I'll just call her Riley. Her mother came in to the waiting area to eat her lunch. Riley couldn't have been more than 9 months old and she was being pulled in a Radio Flyer wagon. Behind the wagon was a series of machines that the girl was hooked up to. I couldn't take my eyes off of her. She had beautiful, bright eyes and she soaked up the world around her as she waited for her mother to finish eating. She looked at me and smiled one of the most beautiful smiles I've seen. As she smiled, I can't explain this fully, but I saw a glimpse of God in it. I came to an understanding of some stuff that moment. I realized that God holds these little ones close to himself. They are precious to him. And although we can never fully understand the circumstances they find themselves in, Riley has taught me in one beautiful smile that God is present in the sufferings of his little children...and in ours.

Ok, my last post told what I'm currently listening to (not that anyone really cares), this post will tell you what I'm currently reading or have finished recently.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
I love the fact that when I mention this book to other Christians they immediately start sweating and twitching and think I'm going to move to Tibet. That reaction alone makes it worth reading. If you know nothing of this book, it's a story of a man and his son taking a motorcycle journey through the West. He speaks of their adventures, interspersing his philosophy of how fixing motorcycles has a great deal to do with fixing society. That's an incredibly ignorant and simple summation of the book, but I don't feel like boring you with a gigantic description of it. Anyway, I'm about halfway through it and it's fantastic.

The Divine Conspiracy - Dallas Willard
If you've never read any Dallas Willard, stop reading this post, go to Amazon and buy all of his books. Have you done it yet? Now? Waiting...waiting...waiting. Ok, good. Now that you have all of his books coming shortly, you'll soon enjoy them as much as me. Anyway, this book is all about how the Church has totally missed the boat as far as Jesus' message. We've taught that Jesus used the phrase, "Kingdom of God" as an otherworldy place we go when we die. However, Jesus was speaking of an earthly Kingdom where God's people live in such a way that brings about real life as it was intended to be. I can't wait to finish this book.

The Fingerprints of God - Robert Farrar Capon
The author uses a series of images to describe how God has worked through history. One of his main points is that the Gospel writers and many of the New Testament writers opted to focus on who Jesus was (and is), and not just what he did. You'll have to read the book to see how he sews all of this up, I recommend it.

Here's a list of what I'm listening to currently.

Bill Monroe "Anthology" - A collection of traditional bluegrass from a Mandolin master.

Bob Dylan "Blonde on Blonde" - Yes, I know his vocals tend to be a bit whiny, but who cares, his music is amazing.

Bob Dylan "Live - Rolling Thunder Revue 1975" - I recommend this to anyone wanting to start listening to Bob Dylan

Robert Johnson "King of the Delta Blues" - One of the original blues masters of the early 20th century. Legend has it, he sold his soul to the devil to learn how to play guitar. I'm beginning to think that's the only thing that will make me a respectable guitar player and not a total hack.

Sufjan (pronounced "soofyan") Stevens "Greetings From Michigan" and "Illinois" - Anyone who can play 20-some instruments deserves respect and a listen.

Grateful Dead "Workingman's Dead" - Brilliant from start to finish.

Bob Marley and the Wailers "Exodus" - Anytime I'm having a bad day, I put in Marley and let the three little birds tell me "Don't worry about a thing, 'cause every little thing is gonna be alright."

Derek Webb "Mockingbird" - He asks a lot of good questions about the current state of the American Church, great album. One line that I love, "My first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man. My first allegiance is not to democracy or blood...it's to a King and a Kingdom."

That's about it. From time to time, I'm going to start giving lists like this. I'll probably do some stuff about what I'm currently reading as well.

People have asked me why I follow Jesus. So here's why I follow Jesus:

- I love the fact that his first miracle was turning 150 gallons of water into 150 gallons of vintage wine. What a party.
- He touched the untouchables.
- He sat down and had dinner with people he didn't agree with.
- He said things like, "Love your enemies," and then went out and loved his enemies.
- When he looked at people he didn't see a prostitute, adulterer, tax collector, Pharisee, Roman soldier, Samaritan; he saw people that he loved.
- When he looks at us today, he doesn't see prostitutes, drug-dealers, meth addicts, alcoholics, rebellious children, homosexuals, abortionists; he sees people that he loves.
- When all of his disciples abandoned him, he returned and simply said to them, "Come have breakfast."
- His heart breaks when our heart breaks.
- He's patient with me when I mess up.
- When all hope in someone is lost, he shows up and breathes hope into them.
- He looked at the religious establishment and condemned it for helping no one.
- He still looks at the religious establishment and expects it to help someone.
- He wasn't afraid to say what was right even though they killed him for it.
- He set up the Church to be his hands and feet on earth and to take care of one another.

Those are just a few of the reasons. I have more...many more.

Sunday night, I had the opportunity to have a two hour drive all to myself. I sort of enjoy these times, because I can think about stuff while I'm alone. There's wisdom in solitude. There's also wisdom in watching the road instead of blindly staring out of the windshield in pensive thought, but that's for another post I suppose.

Anyway, I was traveling around dusk through a fairly flat part of Indiana. Actually, the word "fairly" probably doesn't belong there at all, it was totally flat. I was able to watch the sunset out of my side window as I drove down the road. It was beautiful with blue, pink, orange, and purple hues, depending on what minute you looked at it. There was a small bank of clouds near the area where the sun was setting. At the beginning of sunset, this bank of clouds was illuminated in a fiery orange glow. As the sun sank lower and lower toward the horizon, these clouds transformed from orange, to pink, to purple, to blue, and finally seemed to disappear into the blackness of night. I watched this happen over the span of about a half an hour and I got to thinking that it seemed an awful lot like the cycle of life.

I remember that sunset because of its beauty. I watched it change and was, in some way, connected with it while it lasted. I want to be beautiful (I'm in no way speaking of physical beauty, because physical beauty is shallow and man-made). I want to be remembered as beautiful. It sounds morbid, but we're all headed toward the twilight of our lives. I don't dwell on this fact, but it is inescapeable. For some the sunset comes sooner than it does for others, but make no mistake, darkness will come at some point for all of us. The question is what will our sunset look like? Will it be spectaular and beautiful, one that people will remember, or will it be marked by dull gray clouds and darkness?

There's a proverb in the Bible that speaks to this, it says, "The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot." This is essentially a question of beauty. Think of Mother Teresa. She was a beautiful woman who will always be remembered by the world as just that. What legacy will we leave? One of beauty and light, or one of darkness? I want to be beautiful. When people attend my funeral one of these days, I want them to be able to say honestly that I was a good man. I want them to say that I was a good husband and a good father. I want them to say that they appreciated the fact that I loved everyone regardless of who they were. I'm not sure what they would say were my sunset completed today, but my goal is to work toward a legacy of beauty. What legacy will you leave?

The thing about Jesus is that he was so different from everyone else around him. Not "side-show circus freak" different, but different in the way he looked at people and responded to the culture around him. I've already showed you how Jesus gave the verbal middle finger to Rome by saying that the way to be blessed was not by force, but by being weak. That was just one instance. There were a million other situations where the words of Jesus flew directly in the face of popular thought. It all had to do with the fact that the way to win victories in this world were through love, humility, weakness, and acceptance of people.

It seems like the church doesn't do any of those things well anymore. We suck at love, we suck at humility, we strive for power, not weakness, and we only accept people that are like us. If you're reading this, and you don't consider yourself a follower of Jesus, I want to apologize on behalf of my brothers and sisters who say they believe in Jesus and yet look nothing like him. I'm sorry if you know me and I have acted this way as well. I'm sorry, I really mean it. Don't let the Church get in the way of you following Jesus, he was a beautiful man who lived a beautiful life. The way of life he proposed is the best way to live. It's a life of peace, a life of love, a life worth living.

So what is the solution? Well, it would help if we would take Jesus seriously. Jesus is easy and fun until he starts asking something out of us. When he gets uncomfortable, we start giving excuses as to why we can't do what he's asked us. I'm going to Haiti next year with a group from my church. We're going to be helping people by passing out shoes to children who have none, building houses, and that sort of thing. I've had so many people say to me, "I just couldn't go, I don't think I could do it." Bullcrap. The truth is that you don't want to, not that you can't. Going to Haiti isn't exactly within my comfort zone, I hate flying, but to be honest, I'm tired of living in my comfort zone. I don't find the words "comfort zone" in the Bible. But I digress.

It's time for the Church to take Jesus seriously. It's time for the Church to stop striving for power, marketability, and prestige, and start striving to be humble, loving, caring, and weak (by the our culture's standards). I really believe that if the Church recognized just how weak it is, God's strength would blow us away. Children would stop sdying from starvation, AIDS would be a thing of the past and young girls in Thailand would stop being sold into sexual slavery. Let's allow God to be God, and stop trying to produce his strength on our own.

Sorry, it's been awhile since I posted. You can sop up your tears of sorrow over that fact, because here goes...

I mentioned in the last post how right wing fundamentalist Christians are striving for power to try and bring about some glorious theocracy in this country. I also mentioned that I feel like this is contrary to how we're supposed to be. The Bible makes it very clear that when we are weak, we are actually strong. Jesus said in Matthew 5, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." I looked up the word "meek" in good ole' Webster and found three definitions:

1. enduring injury with patience and without resentment
2. deficient in spirit and courage
3. not violent or strong

In other words, meek=weak. Jesus calls those are weak in the eyes of the world "blessed." We can come to one of two conclusions, either Jesus was a complete nut-bar or he was really on to something. Now we have to look at the last part of Jesus' words to get the full meaning of what he is implying. Jesus tells the people the meek will inherit the earth. The word "earth" is actually better translated "land." This was a very political statement against the Roman Empire who controlled Judah at the time of Jesus. Roman culture was aggressive and bent on world domination. Put the pieces together. Jesus was telling the people that the way to inherit the land back was to be weak. Obviously, Jesus wouldn't get a job on any military strategy boards, but maybe he should. What would happen in this country if Christians stopped trying to gain political power, and we just sat back and loved people the way Jesus asked us to? We may lose some "rights," churches may have to start paying taxes, but really who cares. God is stronger than any policy any country can throw at his people. The book of Daniel says that the Kingdom of God has the power to crush all other kingdoms. However, this is only accomplished through love, humility, and service.

Let's turn to Paul, he seemed to know a little bit about God. In his first letter to the Church in Corinth, he says this,

"For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God."

It doesn't seem to get more direct than that. In God's Kingdom, the have-nots beat the haves. The nerds beat the jocks, the uglies beat the supermodels. Please tell me that you see how different this is than the rest of the world we live in.

I've gone too long in this, so I'm going to add a part 3 in a couple of days.

Judges is quickly becoming a fascinating book of the Bible for me. I was studying the story of Gideon this morning and found it interesting. Gideon starts out with 22,000 men to fight against the Midianites. God then tells him that he is going to reduce that number so that the Israelites can't claim that they won the battle by their own might. God then reduces the number to 10,000 and eventually to 300. The Midianite army on the other hand was said to have men and camels beyond number. The amazing thing is that, according to Jewish Historian Josephus, the three hundred were the most cowardly among the Israelites. The text says that these three hundred drank from the river lapping the water from their hands like dogs. This was, apparently, a sign of cowardice in ancient times. So Gideon is sent up against an innumerable army with 300 pansies and God admonishes him to be without fear. Rrrriiiiigggghhhhhttttt.

This is one of those stories where God seems to me to be a little bit crazy (I'm sure Gideon thought the same thing). To top it all off, Gideon's "army" is comprised of men that aren't even real soldiers. How do I know this? Gideon doesn't even give them real weapons. He equips them with trumpets, a jar, and a torch. Does this seem a bit crazy to anyone else? Long story short, they surround Midian's huge army camp in the middle of the night armed with torches, jars, and trumpets. The Midianites wet themselves (presumably) and run like scared little girls. Gideon's army of wussies wins without weapons.

I think there is a lot to see in this story. I also think that there is a lot that the Church doesn't get about this story. In a time where Christians in this country feel like it is our main goal to gain political clout and power, it seems that this story should be one that we take a serious look at. The idea of weakness being the ultimate in strength is all throughout the Bible (which I will show in part 2). Why do Christians strive for power (politics, corporate world, church growth, etc.) when the very Bible we claim to follow suggests that we're only strong when we are at our weakest? Our faith is not defined by laws that are passed. If someone wants to take the Ten Commandments out of a court-room, who cares, it doesn't mean that God is somehow weakened by it. If the government says that abortion is constiutionally legal, who cares, go out and love someone who gets pregnant outside of marriage and show them a better way. This is going to sound terrible, but if your faith is defined by laws that are passed for or against Christians, then your faith is worthless. Our strength is found in God and God alone, and nothing can take that away, nothing.

Seriously, this kind of crap has to stop. Take a look at this:

http://www.armorofgodpjs.com/

I'm not even sure how to respond. I love the look on the kids' faces. The only thing to complete the look would be a tattoo on their foreheads that says, "Please beat the crap out of me!" I'm just glad the Evil One now has no hold on our children. Dear Lord...

I've always had trouble with the description of God in the Old Testament. I can't lie, I'm bothered by the wars, the killings, and the apparent harshness of some of the Torah. I'm currently studying Judges and I came across a passage in chapter 3 that made me think a bit. Most of the stories of each individual judge start out like this, "and Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord..." It will then repeat that God, in his anger, handed Israel over to a certain nation. Israel would then be enslaved for a number of years and, in turn, cry out to God for help. Here's what I find amazing: he always listened and always sent a judge to get them out of their troubles.

The Bible says that God is slow to anger. I believe this to be true. I believe it because I am not just a burnt spot on the ground somewhere. However, we can't avoid the fact that, at times, God gets angry. He gets angry at injustice. He gets angry at disobedience. The reason he gets angry at disobedience is because he knows that following the Torah (and Jesus' summation of the Torah, love God, love people) is the best way to live. It's the way that leads to life. He gets angry at times because he desires so much more for our lives. His anger is fueled by disappointment. In the same way, there will be times when Ezra gets older that I will be angry with him for disobeying me. I won't be angry because of my own pride (i.e. "How dare he break my rules!"), but because I want so much more for him. I want him to live a good life that is marked with love. When he doesn't do this, I'll probably get angry with him.

The coolest part of the story in Judges is that God doesn't hold a grudge. When his people cry out for help, he listens, and he responds with love. If you look throughout the Old Testament, he does this with Israel hundreds of times. It's like it's part of a huge cycle, disobedience, anger and enslavement, mercy and grace, repeat the cycle. I'm amazed at God. I'm amazed at his infinite patience and love. I'm amazed that I can never be so far away from God that he won't allow me to return. I can never be so far away from him that he won't love me. I'm starting to be ok with a God who gets angry, I just have to remember that his mercy balances the scales.

All Hail Governor Forehead!

Posted above is a picture of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. You may be wondering (probably not) why I'm posting a picture of Senor Noggin. I only post this picture to tell you that my son now has the exact same hairline. My wife and I can't quite explain it. I've always seen babies lose hair on the backs of their head for obvious reasons (i.e. rolling around on the back of their head and whatnot), but I've never seen a baby's hairline recede like a 40 year-old man's hairline (or...mine). The hair on the back of his head seems to be getting heavier, but he's losing the hair on the front. It's hilarious because when he gets mad, he wrinkles his face up like some crotchity old man in a nursing home who's chicken and rice wasn't pureed enough for his liking. Now that he has the hairline to match, his brief tantrums seem quite charming and adorable. Who knows what the future holds for my son and his freakish hairline, perhaps a Governorship?

Seriously. If I crapped as much as my kid, I wouldn't have any bones left. We're going through diapers like the Irish go through Guinness. Also, I didn't know that the best way to get a child to poop is to put a brand new diaper on them. Last night I was changing him before bed and no more than 30 seconds after I put his diaper on him, I saw the classic look: furrowed brow, pensive look, squirmy legs. Sure enough, soon following was the inevitable gastro-intestinal explosion. I didn't have to check the diaper to know that he just dropped a deuce in his Huggies, the look of relief on his face was enough to know what happened.

So this morning before I left for work, he was in his swing and sleeping. I leaned down to tell him I loved him. No sooner did I get back up that I heard the same unmistakeable sound. I'm not sure if it's a good sign that everytime his dad looks at him, talks to him, thinks about him, he loads his pants. Maybe he's trying to tell me something.

I had a great experience in Ezra being born...I got to cut the umbilical cord. In the weeks...months...years...eternity leading up to Ezra being born, I was torn as to whether I was going to cut the cord or not. However, when the moment came, I decided to go ahead and do it. If you want to recreate this experience (and I know that so many of you are just dying to), the best thing I can tell you to do is to find the sharpest pair of scissors in your house, and cut through a bratwurst. I guess it's kind of like that, except with less blood and no screaming child attached to the other end...anyway, I digress (can you digress from nothing?...perhaps Nietzsche would have something to say about that)

I came to realize something as I cut the cord. Ezra took his first step of growth. He was taking a step toward independence from his parents. While he was in the womb, he relied on my wife for everything. That cord was his entire life force. He received everything from that cord. All of his red blood cells came through that, all of his nourishment, everything. He wasn't able to do anything on his own. Now that he's out of that cursed ovarian bastille, he has to work for his food, his liver must produce it's own red blood cells. His organs all have to function on their own. See what I mean by him taking a step toward being independent from us? He still has a long way to go, but he is taking steps toward that. Soon enough he will be eating cereals, then baby food, all the while needing his mom's milk less and less. The he'll start using a spoon on his own and won't need us to feed him anymore. Then the next thing we know, he'll be married and put us in a nursing home (too big of a leap?).

My point with all of this is that I think there's a greater truth in all of this. When we first begin seeking God, we're attached by a cord. Maybe I should say that when we first come to the consciousness that we're seeking after God, because I've mentioned before that I think we're all seeking for him although we may not necessarily put it in those words. When Jesus becomes the man we follow, we're nothing more than infants. We're in desperate need to mature, or we'll perish, in the same way that Ezra must mature or he won't be around long (I think I just threw up in my mouth typing that). Paul (a writer in the Bible) puts it this way, "But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it." The problem with the Church today is that we have so many Christians that are content to be on milk their entire lives. They just sit there and let everything happen to them. They are content to never mature. The crazy thing is that no one cares about this fact. Can you imagine seeing a twenty year old sucking on a bottle full of formula? We would think they were crazy and we would question them about it. But the Church is full of twenty year olds sucking on bottles (figuratively speaking of course).

What is the by-product of all of this? A Church that says that it's the poor people's fault that they're poor and they can help themselves. A Church that claims that you have to be a Republican to be a "good Christian." A Church that thinks it's ok to have multi-million dollar buildings. A Church that believes that violence can bring about peace. A Church that resorts to the very legalism that Jesus hated (i.e. don't drink that, don't say that, wear this, don't wear that, etc.).

I don't know about you, but I think it's time for some solid food.

The second thing I realized when I looked at my son is that I never want anything to harm him. I also realize however, that this is totally unrealistic. I don't want Ezra to hurt. I don't want him to ever have to deal with a broken heart, broken bones, cuts, scrapes, grief, etc. I love him too much to want to see that. The problem is that he lives in this world. This means that he's going to break a bone, he's going to get cuts and scrapes, he's going to have to deal with sorrow and pain.

I realized something about God in all of this. I've always wondered (like most, if not all, of us have) why a supposedly good God allows us to hurt and grieve. It clicked with me when I saw my son that it isn't that God wants us to suffer, but that it is inevitably part of living in this messed up place. Watch the news for three seconds and you realize that this world has issues. In fact Jesus says something along these lines, "In this world you will have trouble..." In other words, crap happens. It happens because this world is a mess, and we can't help but be caught up in the mess.

So this leads to another question: why does a good God not insulate us from the mess? Think about it; if I don't want Ezra to hurt and don't ever want him to find trouble, I can insulate him from the world. I can lock him in the house and not let him leave. But what kind of a person would that make him. If I give him everything he wants and form a cocoon around him to protect him from junk, I'll end up with a male Paris Hilton (with a great deal less money of course), an entitled, awful human being. This makes sense to me when it comes to God. He doesn't keep us from suffering because suffering can form us into better human beings (or bitter human beings if we let it). We end up loving God, not because of all the stuff he gives us or because he acts as a barrier from trouble, but because he's God. We love him for the sake of love, not out of a sense of duty.

One last thing with this. The end of that verse from Jesus says this, "...but take heart, I have overcome the world." In other words, if we cling to him, we win. When Ezra gets a cut or scrape, I'll be there to clean up the blood, dry his tears, and wrap him in my arms while assuring him that it will be alright. When we are wounded, God seems to have just the salve we need to let us know that everything will be alright.

**On a much lighter note, I had a dream the other night that I was one of the X-men. Apparently my only real power was the ability to wake up in a puddle of saliva with a loss of feeling in one of my arms. Not exactly extraordinary.

Just a quick update on the boy and mommy. He's great, she's great. He's eating like a hog. When he isn't nursing on mommy, he's fruitlessly trying to nurse on me.

So it says in Genesis that people were created in the image of God. This means that there are elements of God in all of us, we just need to look hard enough at our surroundings to find it. In watching Ezra being born, I started to think about certain aspects of God in a whole new way. The next couple of posts will deal with some of my thoughts.

I was one of those dads that kept vehemently insisting that I wasn't going to watch my kid being born. I was just going to stare at mommy's face and be a support. After all, I saw the birthing video in eighth grade, and it scarred me for life. But alas, I watched. I happened to glance down and I saw a cone-shaped head with peach-fuzz on it. When he was pushed all the way out, they placed him on Mandy's chest (cord and all) and wrapped him in a blanket. It was in that moment that I had this thought, "So that's what God thinks about us."

When I saw him laying there screaming from trauma, I realized that God's love is infinitely larger than anything we can imagine. Higher than the heights, deeper than the seas, that sort of overly poetic stuff. I think I always knew that God loved us unconditionally, but I didn't understand it (or at least partially understand it) until last Monday. To see something that you created be born was an experience like no other. Nothing that kid could ever do could make me love him any less than I do right now. He's going to say things to me to hurt me, he's going to wrong me in a lot of ways throughout his life, but I'm never going to stop loving him.

God's love is like that. We hurt him, we go against what he knows is good for us, and yet he always loves us. Even if we don't love him back, even when we curse his name, he responds with love and acceptance. Contrary to popular belief, God isn't waiting for us to screw up so that he can drop us into hell. He's genty coaxing into a better way of life. A life of joy, a life of peace, a life of good decisions. When we deviate from that plan, he still loves us. He always has, he always will. That's how God feels about you.

Well, it finally happened. The boy was finally born...all 8 pounds, 11 ounces of him. To say that he's the cutest baby ever born is, of course, an understatement. Don't believe me, check it out for yourself:

See? I told you so. That's a great picture, but not as good as this one:

I think he likes his car seat. He's just masking his real emotions.

Anyway, he's the cutest. I'll be blogging fairly frequently in the next few days. This whole experience has caused me to think a lot about what God thinks of us. I'll share my thoughts.