...doesn't understand.

I hope that at some college, a professor is doing a study about Facebook statuses. Have you ever gone through and read them? I'm amazed each new day by what I read, by the pain that seeps into that brief little passage each day, and I wonder how much there can be. You see, I don't deny what goes on, and I don't deny that people like to be heard and to cry out, but when I read things saying that someone "doesn't understand why it has to be this way," or "How can someone say I love you and then take it back?" I have no reaction but first to be saddened and then to question, why. If I ask these people what's wrong, or what happened, or are you ok, I inevitably get back some response saying they don't want to talk about it. I don't get it. People just want uninformed pity I guess, but that makes little sense to me.

Dynamism.

It's interesting, really, to look back on myself, like I've been laying this track behind me. When I think of things that I said, things that I did, just 6 months, a year, a week ago, it's hard to believe that I'm still looking at me. Who was I, then, when I stepped on to this campus? Different thoughts in my head, different motives, different hair. I'm different now, in the small and big ways, because I'm in a different place. It's like I'm looking at the Statue of Liberty, and this whole time I've been walking around it, and now I'm looking at the same thing but in a very different way, and in so doing I've changed a little myself. I came in here looking to continue being the smartest ass around. I came here looking for a girl to hold my hand and validate me, or help me validate myself, who knows. I came here looking for the same things I left high school wanting. It gets tiring, though, to keep chasing after dreams that aren't there anymore, because once you've caught the dream you still have to remind yourself why you wanted it in the first place. But regardless of the correct analogy or what I was, it's a strange experience to see that I not only am, but I'm very much becoming. I'm ok with that for the first time. For the longest while I took pride in the way I was unmoving in my mannerisms, in my dress, in my speech, in my view of those who do what I might not. And the point isn't what those views actually are, the point is that the world doesn't end if you become a dynamic character in the movie of your own life. Keep the first things first, God, Family, the search for Truth. If scripture says it, do it. Never get into your head that you are defined by your idiosyncrasies, or at least don't be afraid to become who you'll be, knowing that those things that you hang on to might have to be left behind. Challenge yourself today. Don't challenge society if that's what you always do anyways, don't question authority if that's your M.O. Limit yourself, squeeze the edges of your bottle, and chances are what comes out was extra anyways.

"Resistible Revolution"

I've been told by some people that I just have to read certain books. My life will be utterly changed. I got a text about a book that said, "read it, it will change your life and everything you believe in." Guess what? I'm not going to read that book. "You haven't watched 'The Passion'? How can you not watch 'The Passion'!!!" Guess what? I won't watch that movie. Stop hassling me, people, I'll read and watch what I want to read and watch. Also, I don't want to have some random book change my life and everything I believe in. If one book that is not the Bible can shatter all your beliefs, then you have some very weak beliefs. If some book that some guy wrote about why you should live more like he does is enough to make your world turn upside down, then your thoughts have no depth and your beliefs are like a house in the sand. Yes, books can shape and add and chip away at what we think and believe--and rightly so--but we should accept as doctrine no text but scripture, even one man's use of scripture. If I'm to believe Irresistible Revolution is powerful because it uses scripture and personal experience, then I submit to you Health and Wealth, a book about how God wants you to have a lot of money and things. That we should sell our possessions and live as spiritual transients is a very "college" idea. We're people with no responsibilities, who haven't lived, who are willing and eager to emulate those with glamourous lives, even if that glamor is in the spirituality of one's poverty and celibacy. There's a reason that for centuries many of the world's most effective ministers have lived in homes with families and with at least modest personal wealth, and that reason is not greed. God is a God os sacrificial love, and He's a God that understands the way things are and need to be. The Lord asks that we be willing to forsake all to follow Him wherever He may call, but His calling does not always necessitate the liquidation of our assets. We should not presume that some man who wrote a book can interpret the call of God in our lives, and we cannot be fooled into thinking that God's call is the same for all His children. His call is to serve, His call is to love, His call is to sacrifice, His call is to give. Sometimes this may lead to a call to poverty, but it may also result in a call to hospitality within His blessing of a home. 

Don't let those who do not know you tell you the explicit call of Christ in your life. Be convicted by the Holy Spirit alone, not words that seem good when propped up by hard-cover books. Filter teaching through scripture. Love.

Been writin' some.

I've been doing a lot of writing, here and on my Facebook account. Especially when it's not poetry, I go into each piece to explore some idea that's still foggy in my mind. I go back and read the things and see that each one begins with an idea, then asks the big and sweeping questions, often cynically. A funny thing happens then, when the questions have been asked. They start to get answered. I mostly feel like I write the first half and let the Lord take care of the second, filling in the blanks in my rhetoric, but I know this underestimates the fallibility of my mouth and ears. I don't know why I have to go through this process to figure these things out, or at least flatten them out like leaves pulled from the soles of my feet. I know they're there, I feel them, I know what they are, but they are pretty messy. 

Mars Hill

Mars Hill Church today, I love that place. Every time I'm there I wonder why so many people at SPU love to hate it. Yeah I get that the lights can be bright and the music can be loud, and maybe I don't leave every time feeling like God's gonna send me a Cadillac tomorrow if I read my Bible. What I think, though, is that modern American Christian culture takes ultimate pride in being contrary, in being counter, in seeking out what is least popular. What's our real motivation, though? I don't really care if people like Mars Hill, just like I might not be a huge fan of other churches for this reason or that, but what makes me cringe every time is the way silly young philosophers feel qualified to curse the successful work of God in a congregation because it seems too "commercial." What happened to being all things to all people? What happened to seeking and saving the lost? Why must we spend all our energy avoiding things that have become successful for a reason? It seems to me that the reasons people reject certain churches (size, music, A/V effects, etc.) are all too often hypocritical. "Oh I just think those things distract from the message." Whose fault is that? Are you not, in saying that, ignoring the very message you wish so much to highlight? If the pastor of a church leads and speaks effectively, if he preaches boldly the word of God and shows the character of a Godly leader, then why do you hate the place so much? 

About Mars, I once heard someone say, "Oh I don't like it there because he hates women." I almost puked all over her shoes. We've bought so much into an androgynous culture and a hermaphrodite Jesus that we are unwilling to recognize that scripture has something to say about gender roles within the family. This is not a matter of subjugating or hating women, but honoring God's model of the family. We've grown too content seeking churches that will gloss over scripture in favor of more palatable modern ideology. Christ did not come so that we could ignore God's word but to free us from legalism, and the modern church has been festering with progressive legalism for far too long. Again, I don't care if people like my church, although I'd prefer them to. What I care about is that we as a generation return to scriptures as our ultimate authority for life and Godliness, not some hybrid of modern intellect, disdain for tradition, and the softest pillows of scriptural coddling. We have this certain set of sins that is sexy to claim and hate; pornography, alcoholism, sexual sin, eating disorders, pride, etc. What we don't want is for someone to barge in and say we've focused on all the wrong things in all the wrong ways, we don't want someone to muscle in on our sob-story support groups yelling that this isn't what we were made for. We are to separate sinner from sin, we are to encourage others in the truth, we are not under any circumstances to deny the truth in favor of avoiding society's exposed toes. Let's tear down this progressive idol and serve the God of our fathers.

Life's Big Lessons

I keep thinking there should be some unifying theme of my interactions here in life, like my existence is the subject of some moral-of-the-story movie where the way things turn out never really matters. An awkward encounter with a friend seems like it should find a common theme with something I read in a book that day, a sudden realization that jars my head onto the track I've been missing. In some ways it's like that. The themes don't come neatly packaged though, no commercials half way so you can refill your cup, but nevertheless I'm compelled to believe that there is some justice to the experiences of the day. Justice, in that there is something to be learned by just living; it's not all seeking cathartic moments. And maybe that's the theme of every day, that we waste too many as unconscious doers, as though each passing day were a formality on the way to some vacation. Maybe that's why we're so stressed out. We all grew up asking why, some of us get to be the big thinkers who get paid to keep on asking. But why did we ever stop? We seem to think that the answer to "why" will always be unsatisfying by its very nature, like our whole life is some rhetorical question to which the idiot in the back of the room keeps shouting "Because." Lost in the noise of our discontent is the legitimacy of "Because," that answer that keeps us paying attention because it's worth it. When life's big lessons aren't vacuum-sealed and made to order, we feel cheated - this was supposed to make sense so I could grow. The point is that life's lessons are much more like a box of needles that fell into the shag carpet, and the finger-pricks along the way remind us that we're alive, and that it is not easy.

Basketball

I've been playing basketball lately, with whoever will lace 'em up, and I realize how much I miss those better parts of high school. Yeah, it's tough to be in that spot when you can't see out, but once you're up out of that pit you can look back in, and you see what you want. Me, I see the people I could have said more to, I see the people to whom I could have meant more, I see things like basketball that I wish would have fallen my way. But here I am, and so I think it's time to go shoot some hoops with my cascade shoes on, and think about what is.

I'm deaf and blind

I am a blind deaf man
My eyes and ears describing sentries
Buffered brokers bearing codes.

I see nothing, no sights beset me
For my eyes do catch them first
And tell me what they see.

I see not that mountain there
But my guards did catch it, 
Shouting to me about soaring heights and sweeping foothills. 

Glistening peaks that tower tall,
Slopes that grope at heaven,
Mist that lingers like the better friend.

I didn't hear that song just now,
But my flanking guards did, hard at work,
Whispered to me of a haunting tune that did beset them.

Clanging tunes of string that shook,
Quivering voices warning and pleading,
Words that hinted, still, of silence.

I sit serene and sentries search
For sights and sounds to seek and sing
They whisper softly to me, and all I catch is code.