I love a good cause. I love getting all worked up and fighting for something. Unfortunately for the world, which has so many things to be fought against, the causes that tend to really get me worked up tend to be somewhat mediocre in the grand scheme of things. For instance, at the camp I used to work at, I made it my personal responsibility to fight against the practice of putting the staff donuts right behind the coffee machine where the guests could see them but not actually reach them. I believed with all my heart that this was inhumane and cruel and I would denounce it to the office staff whenever I found the big pink box taunting our visitors. Then I'd go back to my office and fire off a few really nasty emails to important people asking them to pass policies and post signs to prevent people from committing this heinous act. I like to think that the management's recent decision to remodel the entire office and actually remove the offending counter in the process was because of my campaign.
Sunday I was walking into a church I was visiting for the weekend, ever-present coffee mug in hand, when I spied a sign placed conspicuously near the door to the sanctuary. The sign said, in polite but very firm letters: "Please, No Food or Drink in the Sanctuary." I wasn't sure what to do. This very church had just sold me the coffee that was now banned from complementing my worship of our common God. I felt cheated and embarrassed, like when you are at someone's house and they hand you a cold drink without a coaster and then have to ask you to use a one even though there are none in sight and you have to find them behind the picture of grandma on the end-table under the lamp.
My cause instincts were raised and I wanted to pull the greeter aside and tell him just what I thought, not only of his church's ridiculous policy but what it said about their theology. Didn't Jesus eat and drink with his disciples? Didn't the early church eat and drink together? Even science shows that having a coffee in your hands during church will only make the service better and is well worth the risk of carpet stains. I speak from personal experience when I say that those trays of grape juice they pass around once a month cause a bigger spill and stain risk than a cup of Joe. (I still feel a twinge of fear even twenty years later whenever one comes my way).
See how I get all worked up? Why are such petty issues so important to me? Why are things like sex trafficking and child slavery and homelessness and breast cancer something I can look past but my banned coffee gets my hackles raised in a hurry? I think I know why. Because all those other things happen to someone else, somewhere else. We Christians have a tendency (like all people do) to wrap ourselves up inside our cozy bubble and forget that there are real things wrong with real people in the real world just outside. We don't care that people don't know God and will suffer needlessly for it because we don't know any of those people. We don't really care that kids are being sold for sex because we've never been to a place where kids can be born and sold without anyone even knowing--or caring--that it happened.
Jesus was known for hanging out with sinners. And this kind of intimate fellowship fueled his cause instinct to give everything he could to save them from themselves. I'm sure that in Jesus' church we'd be allowed to drink coffee in the pews. But I'm also sure that the coffee drinker next to me would be someone who desperately needs to be there, to hear the words coming out of Jesus' mouth, someone I'd probably be surprised to be sitting next to because they'd be so different from me.
I think this is what we need to do. We all need to go get something warm to drink--coffee, hot chocolate, tea, even plain hot water if that's your fancy--hold it in your hands and ask God to expand your horizons. Then get up and find a cause.
2/22/10
2/8/10
It Actually *Is* Greek to Me
I've decided to learn Greek. My wife and I were talking and we decided we needed hobbies or something to dedicate our minds to. We were spending too much time just hanging out and not doing anything; a human being needs something to occupy his mind and heart. For some people TV does the trick. We don't have TV and our internet is painfully slow, so even Youtube videos are out. So, um, Greek it is.
I realize that doesn't really make sense. But according to Meyers-Brigg, I'm an Intuitive person and we I's don't need things like "logic" to explain our decisions. My gut said "learn Greek", so I am. My gut rarely does me wrong. Of course, my gut isn't the one that has to do all the work of memorizing vocabulary, but so far my brain hasn't complained. My shoulders are certainly not happy about it though. But then they grumble whenever there's too much computer involved and that's not necessarily a result of the Greek. I think my shoulders have already become the grumpy old man I fear lies in my own future someday.
There's an interesting thing about Koine Greek--the dialect of Greek that the New Testament is written in. It seems that there's very little written in it outside of the Bible. For a long time, scholars thought that it was basically "God's Dialect", a language that must have come straight out of heaven since no one else wrote anything in it. But then they found some receipts and shopping lists in various places around the Mediterranean and decided that it's just another plain old language. There's not much written in it because it was basically the Greek Pigeon of the day--the Greek that everyone learned to speak because they had to in order to communicate with everyone else, especially their rulers (or conquerors rather). If you were going to write something really deep and profound and important, you would have used a more formal version of the language, or maybe even your local language instead of Koine. Its like writing the constitution in Southern Hick English with Ebonics.
And therein lies the beauty of the Bible. The people it was written to didn't speak proper Greek. They spoke Koine Greek because everybody spoke Koine Greek. So, that's what Paul and Company decided to write their letters in. The book that we consider to be the Very Words of God Himself was written on legal pad in everyday language--probably with lots of spelling errors (though I haven't gotten that far yet). This really impresses me about my God. That he is so plain and ordinary sometimes. Of course, he's also freaking amazing in a way I cannot find the words to describe ("freaking amazing" comes close though), but he's also simple. And ordinary. And that means he's accessible no matter what is happening, no matter where I am and what I'm doing. I could be picking up after the dog or shaking the president's hand in the Oval Office--God matters.
We'll see how I feel about the simplicity of God once I get into parsing nouns and verbs though. I have a feeling I'm going to be wishing I was walking that dog again.
I realize that doesn't really make sense. But according to Meyers-Brigg, I'm an Intuitive person and we I's don't need things like "logic" to explain our decisions. My gut said "learn Greek", so I am. My gut rarely does me wrong. Of course, my gut isn't the one that has to do all the work of memorizing vocabulary, but so far my brain hasn't complained. My shoulders are certainly not happy about it though. But then they grumble whenever there's too much computer involved and that's not necessarily a result of the Greek. I think my shoulders have already become the grumpy old man I fear lies in my own future someday.
There's an interesting thing about Koine Greek--the dialect of Greek that the New Testament is written in. It seems that there's very little written in it outside of the Bible. For a long time, scholars thought that it was basically "God's Dialect", a language that must have come straight out of heaven since no one else wrote anything in it. But then they found some receipts and shopping lists in various places around the Mediterranean and decided that it's just another plain old language. There's not much written in it because it was basically the Greek Pigeon of the day--the Greek that everyone learned to speak because they had to in order to communicate with everyone else, especially their rulers (or conquerors rather). If you were going to write something really deep and profound and important, you would have used a more formal version of the language, or maybe even your local language instead of Koine. Its like writing the constitution in Southern Hick English with Ebonics.
And therein lies the beauty of the Bible. The people it was written to didn't speak proper Greek. They spoke Koine Greek because everybody spoke Koine Greek. So, that's what Paul and Company decided to write their letters in. The book that we consider to be the Very Words of God Himself was written on legal pad in everyday language--probably with lots of spelling errors (though I haven't gotten that far yet). This really impresses me about my God. That he is so plain and ordinary sometimes. Of course, he's also freaking amazing in a way I cannot find the words to describe ("freaking amazing" comes close though), but he's also simple. And ordinary. And that means he's accessible no matter what is happening, no matter where I am and what I'm doing. I could be picking up after the dog or shaking the president's hand in the Oval Office--God matters.
We'll see how I feel about the simplicity of God once I get into parsing nouns and verbs though. I have a feeling I'm going to be wishing I was walking that dog again.
2/4/10
© 2010
I don't consider myself to be a creative person. By "creative", I mean being able to take something from nothing and make it into something. For instance, my friend Amy can sit down and make a picture of a tree that comes from some idea in her head. I don't have ideas like that, much less am I able to make them into reality.
Whenever I see something creative though, I really want to be creative too--even though I can't. The other night, my wife and I watched "Stranger Than Fiction", one of the best movies ever. I love it because it is so unlike any other movie I've ever seen; plus it's about a socially hampered guy who gets a totally awesomely fun girl. I guess I identify a bit. Anyway, every time I watch it, I want to write my own story.
(If you haven't seen this movie, stop reading right now and go rent it. Seriously. Do it now.)
(You seen it? Ok, continue reading.)
(I'm not kidding here, you'll kick yourself if you keep reading without seeing the movie.)
My story would go something like this. There's this guy who is a CPA and he has a cell phone that would someday save his life. He suddenly starts seeing phantom film crews everywhere that are filming him, but no one else can see them. There's also a director that keeps explaining the next scene to him, but no one else can hear or see him. He thinks he's going crazy. So he finds a local movie buff who helps him figure it out because somewhere along the way he discovers that the movie is going to end with his death.
Meanwhile, he decides to take up the piano and falls in love with one of his clients who is a french chef. In the end, he jumps in front of a tractor (the whole thing is based in Iowa) to save a little girl from being run over and breaks a whole bunch of bones. He doesn't die though because a piece of the cell phone gets lodged in his leg and it keeps him from bleeding to death.
Yup, this is the story that Stranger Than Fiction makes me want to write. But it wouldn't be as good as the movie. Also, its a complete rip-off of the original, so that's kind of working against it as well.
Today I got an email from my pastor with an interesting quote. Its from some guy named Dallas Willard. I don't actually know who that is, but knowing my pastor, Dallas is probably some amazing guy that would change my life if I'd read anything by him. I'm just saying my pastor likes all the same stuff I do. Here's the quote:
This is interesting to me because I'd been having much of the same thoughts recently regarding theology and God. Those of us who care to worship God are convinced that he is worthy of worship. How we are convinced of this seems to be different for each person, but whatever happens, we can't let go of this deep down feeling that there is something there that is worth it in the end. Something amazingly beneficial to us and the world; something worth thinking about; something BIG and GOOD. And in our efforts to explain this person to ourselves and to others, we basically end up writing bad knock-offs of the real thing. They all come close--some come really close, but we're always left with something that just doesn't fit. Some piece of God revealed to us in the Bible that just doesn't fit into our story.
But being the wishfully-creative-but-not-actually-creative person that I am, I can totally understand the desire to create a God just like the real thing. I meet him and think, "Man, how awesome would it be to be the one that came up with that!" So I sit down and work something out that sounds just like him and its entertaining and useful and makes me feel good about who I think he is. But what I've created isn't Him.
Its also very frowned upon by copyright laws.
Whenever I see something creative though, I really want to be creative too--even though I can't. The other night, my wife and I watched "Stranger Than Fiction", one of the best movies ever. I love it because it is so unlike any other movie I've ever seen; plus it's about a socially hampered guy who gets a totally awesomely fun girl. I guess I identify a bit. Anyway, every time I watch it, I want to write my own story.
(If you haven't seen this movie, stop reading right now and go rent it. Seriously. Do it now.)
(You seen it? Ok, continue reading.)
(I'm not kidding here, you'll kick yourself if you keep reading without seeing the movie.)
My story would go something like this. There's this guy who is a CPA and he has a cell phone that would someday save his life. He suddenly starts seeing phantom film crews everywhere that are filming him, but no one else can see them. There's also a director that keeps explaining the next scene to him, but no one else can hear or see him. He thinks he's going crazy. So he finds a local movie buff who helps him figure it out because somewhere along the way he discovers that the movie is going to end with his death.
Meanwhile, he decides to take up the piano and falls in love with one of his clients who is a french chef. In the end, he jumps in front of a tractor (the whole thing is based in Iowa) to save a little girl from being run over and breaks a whole bunch of bones. He doesn't die though because a piece of the cell phone gets lodged in his leg and it keeps him from bleeding to death.
Yup, this is the story that Stranger Than Fiction makes me want to write. But it wouldn't be as good as the movie. Also, its a complete rip-off of the original, so that's kind of working against it as well.
Today I got an email from my pastor with an interesting quote. Its from some guy named Dallas Willard. I don't actually know who that is, but knowing my pastor, Dallas is probably some amazing guy that would change my life if I'd read anything by him. I'm just saying my pastor likes all the same stuff I do. Here's the quote:
"The acid test for any theology is this: Is the God presented one that can be loved, heart, soul, mind, and strength? If the thoughtful honest answer is; "Not really," then we need to look elsewhere or deeper. It does not really matter how sophisticated intellectually or doctrinally our approach is. If it fails to set a lovable God--a radiant, happy, friendly, accessible, and totally competent being--before ordinary people, we have gone wrong. We should not keep going in the same direction, but turn around and take another road."
This is interesting to me because I'd been having much of the same thoughts recently regarding theology and God. Those of us who care to worship God are convinced that he is worthy of worship. How we are convinced of this seems to be different for each person, but whatever happens, we can't let go of this deep down feeling that there is something there that is worth it in the end. Something amazingly beneficial to us and the world; something worth thinking about; something BIG and GOOD. And in our efforts to explain this person to ourselves and to others, we basically end up writing bad knock-offs of the real thing. They all come close--some come really close, but we're always left with something that just doesn't fit. Some piece of God revealed to us in the Bible that just doesn't fit into our story.
But being the wishfully-creative-but-not-actually-creative person that I am, I can totally understand the desire to create a God just like the real thing. I meet him and think, "Man, how awesome would it be to be the one that came up with that!" So I sit down and work something out that sounds just like him and its entertaining and useful and makes me feel good about who I think he is. But what I've created isn't Him.
Its also very frowned upon by copyright laws.
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