My friend Rick and I seem to be in similar places these days.  He wrote an excellent post about how we Christians tend to spend an awful lot of time “trying to earn points for Someone who isn’t keeping score.”

I’m guilty of this.  I think all Christians, at one point or another, more often than we care to admit, are.  I think this is why we’ve wound up with such a well-deserved bad reputation when it comes to judging other people: we simply get lost in the search for people who seem to be doing things that we can consider so much worse than anything we’ve done (or said, or thought) that it somehow makes us feel better about ourselves.

“See, God?  I would never do something like that.  Where’s my gold star?” Continue reading “Who’s Keeping Score?”

“I’m fairly sure that if you took porn off the internet,
there’d only be one website left and it’d be called, ‘Bring Back the Porn.’”
— Dr. Perry Cox, Scrubs

So it’s time for a little honesty, even if it’s a little painful.

This may come as a shock to some of you, particularly of the female variety, but when men are left alone with the computer long enough, we will eventually go look at things we shouldn’t look at.  It doesn’t require any level of unhealthy obsession, nor do I refer to those accidental exposures resulting from sites that masquerade as sites offering something else, but hope to lull someone in unexpectedly.

Sooner or later, we just go there.  I would think that there are some women who do the same thing.  Perhaps not as many as I might imagine, perhaps not.

What I do know is that I am trying to avoid the temptation.  And thanks to two amazing friends of mine, one here in Charleston and one now in California, I’m getting a little assistance in this endeavor.  I now have a program on my computer that bills itself as “accountability software.”  It quietly keeps a record of websites I visit, and if it suspects mischief on my part, it sends my friends an email with the link to the site in question.

I know for a fact that it works, because the first “accountability report” has already reached my friend Archie.  I am happy to report that the sole link listed on the email he received contained a link to a blog entry in which the writer listed some of the humorous search terms his blog visitors had used; some of the words, though certainly not X-rated (or even R-rated, for that matter), included words like sex and the names of certain undergarments.  There were no pictures, nothing untoward.

It’s the kind of thing none of us should need, of course, but in those times when weakness might otherwise take advantage of one’s will, there’s something to be said for shame as a deterrent.  Though my two friends are quite strong in God, I know that they are equally apt to struggle with such a problem from time to time:  No Christian is perfect, though some of us tend to lose sight of this critical little fact from time to time.

I’m grateful to them for being willing to keep me accountable.  And I feel better going into 2009 knowing that I’ve got two such loyal friends to keep an eye on me when I need them most.  It’s a nice way to start a new year.

…between Santa Claus and Jesus Christ?

Santa Claus is only good — only “shows the love,” if you will — to those who are good, not those who are “naughty,” and represents all of the things we all really, really want.

Jesus Christ loves and sees the good in everyone regardless of how naughty they may have been and represents the one thing we all really, really need: His grace.

Just something to ponder as we get closer to December 25th and begin wondering about the real meaning of Christmas.

Happy holidays to you all!

I decided to challenge myself this week spiritually and physically by fasting.  It began at midnight Tuesday morning, and I plan to end the fast at lunch time on Friday, which will be about 85 hours.

That’s 85 hours of nothing more than coffee and chicken broth.

Oddly enough, foregoing food has not been as difficult as I anticipated.  And for someone like me, who might be able to turn eating at a buffet into an Olympic event, that’s saying something.  But it is something I really wanted to do for a dear friend who has had a major impact in my life.

The main reason for the fast is to pray for Archie and the rest of the team at South Bay Church in Northern California; their first preview service, the culmination of several months of work and prayer, happens this Sunday.  It’s a moment that they have really worked hard to reach, and I hope you will join me in wishing them all well.

If you missed the “Arch-a-thon” I held back in August, and you’d like to know more about this incredible guy, just click the “Arch-a-thon” tab and start reading.

In any case, if you’re so inclined, please say a prayer for them that things would go well for their first service.

I’m sitting in my favorite coffee shop, pondering what happened one week ago today, and more specifically, what happened in the months leading up to that one particular day.

On Sunday, my pastor did an interesting, brutally-honest sermon about Christians and politics.  It was the kind of sermon you wish you’d hear a pastor deliver, but you’re generally disappointed that no one ever does.

If you’d like to hear it, go to this site and download the podcast from November 9th, titled “Them, Us and Us.”  I don’t think you’ll be sorry.

It was a reminder that as Christians, we’re supposed to respect authority, be supportive, treat others as we want to be treated.  And in the world of politics, that’s beyond a tall order.

He quoted Romans 13:1-2, which reminds us, like it or not:

“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.  Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”

And he pointed out another passage, from Titus 3:1-2:

“Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, to malign no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men.”

Politics should never be about maligning anyone, but it seems to be about little else these days.  And it gets worse every year.

Both sides of the issues, and in some cases all three, four, or more sides, were guilty of it, and I don’t pretend to exclude myself.  But it seems to me now that we, as Christians, need to be at the forefront of leading a way to unity, not hiding in the background, wondering if the new president-elect is some kind of anti-Christ, or if God is turning his back on us, or any of the other things otherwise God-fearing Christians have been heard to say about the new administration.

I have a lot of hope that positive change will come, but I am realistic to know that no change will come unless both sides are willing to sit down and work things out.  And for some, that’s the last thing they seem to consider appealing.

A record number of people, more than 71 million, tuned in to watch this year’s election results.  That’s a tremendous number of people.  And they were watching the final round of a bloody, bitter football game.  And when it was over, there was excitement, cheering, sadness, hurt feelings, and in some cases, permanently-damaged friendships.

For what?

How do we get past that?  I guess it begins with us getting over ourselves.  Another tall order.

Christians have a poor track record of showing compassion when it comes to someone whom they think somehow falls short of their idea of the ideal.

I’m just glad God doesn’t seem to suffer from the same kind of discrimination.

I had dinner with a close friend from church tonight, and at the restaurant, our order was taken by a young guy — I’m guessing he was maybe 18 or so — who had one arm.  We were naturally curious, but didn’t ask.  But after we ate, we noticed the same guy straightening up in the dining room, and so we got into a conversation.

It turns out that this guy lost his arm in an automobile accident that happened when he fell asleep behind the wheel.

“Oh, man, I’m sorry,” my friend said.

“No, man, it’s a blessing.  I’m lucky to be alive.”

I don’t know why it strikes me as being so out of the ordinary that someone so young could have such an amazing attitude about such a big loss, but it does.  I’m glad we had that conversation, because it really puts into perspective the day’s minor inconveniences.

And it says a lot about someone who could go through something like that and be grateful.

“You have much more power when you are working for the right thing than when you are working for the wrong thing.”

— Peace Pilgrim

In 1953, a silver-haired woman who identified herself as Peace Pilgrim started a 28-year voyage to share with the world her desire for peace.  She would continue that mission until she died in 1982, and this year, had she lived, she would have been 100 years old.

I like the quote a lot, because it is true.  But how often do we get so caught up in the day-to-day problems that we lose sight of what’s right and what’s truly important?  For me, that’s pretty often, but a lot less often lately.  I’ve really started trying to rething what I’m fighting for, and in doing so, I’ve begun to realize that a good bit of what I’ve considered important in the past isn’t really important at all.

Yesterday’s post, about getting serious, was the result of me doing a self-inventory.  My friends, my faith, my career, my debt load, my weight.  I need to be serious — much more serious than I have been in the past — about what I am fighting for.  To do that, I need to figure out what is and isn’t right in my life.  And the things that do make the cut are the ones that I need to embrace fully.

It’s not about me wanting to be on some kind of power trip.  I think this kind of power isn’t at all the kind you wield over others; it’s the kind that you wield over the problems in your life that keep you from being who you can be.  Who you were made to be.

Figuring all of that out is no small task, but then nothing worth doing ever seems to be, does it?

There are lot of things I want to change in my life.  I got a clear reminder of one of them when I got on the scale this morning, for the first time in far too many mornings, and find that while I’m not as heavy as I expected, I’m heavier than I should be.

I was happy that I’m still 38 pounds down from my all-time heaviest weight.  But at one point, I had gotten close to 70 pounds from that weight.  So I have relapsed.

There are other areas, like debt, where I need to make some serious changes.

The list could go on for a while.

I am also reminded of a bible verse, Jeremiah 29: 12-14, which says this:

“When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I’ll listen. When you come looking for me, you’ll find me. “Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.”

So I’m working on a lot of things, redefining who I am and what I want out of life.  So I can be serious about making it happen.

On my latest blogjog, I dropped by Watching My Sister…Disappear, a great blog written by Mary Louise, whose sister, Peggy, suffers from an Alzheimer’s-like illness.  Mary Louise was mentioning AOL’s decision to close down (or “sunset,” if you prefer their cutesy, Palin-esque way of putting it), and referred to her earliest comments.  One of them really spoke to me:

“Did you ever hear that saying, ‘I complained I had no shoes, until I met a man with no feet?’  Sometimes my days seem so hard because I have a child with Tourette’s Syndrome. Its not drastic or life threatening but it still drains my heart and soul. My heart goes out to you and your family. I have no shoes but you have no feet. I will say a prayer for your sister.”

I really needed to read that comment today.  Yesterday, I felt like I had no shoes.  For no specific reason.  It was just a bad day.  I was down.  Big time.  I was trying to figure out how to make things happen and just realizing the enormity of what that will take.  I’m committed to working things out, but there’s no easy, quick fix.  I’m also a little down about the fact that a co-worker of mine has put in his notice and is leaving.  And for a few other issues not worth specific mentions.

I had no shoes.

On my way back home after selling off a few DVDs I haven’t watched in a while, I passed an accident scene.  I saw a car that looked badly mangled.  There were two fire engines with red lights blazing, three police cars with blue lights blazing.  And an ambulance with someone loaded in.

They had no feet.

It’s so easy to ignore all your blessings when you encounter one little stumbling block.  I need to work on that.

In Hebrews, the Bible talks about removing all encumberances that block you from being able to worship and live the way God wants you to live:

¹Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. ²Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

—Hebrews 12: 1-2

It’s about being a Christian for the long run, getting the roadblocks out of the way so you can stay focused on serving God rather than being pushed around by things that aren’t really as important as they may seem.

There have been plenty of entanglements in my life in the past few years. Some of them aren’t sins at all in and of themselves, but can be when you focus too much on them. Watching television or surfing the net, for example, aren’t necessarily sinful (depending on what you look at, of course). But even watching only Disney movies, when that takes so much time that you don’t take time for prayer or other things that you need to be doing, particularly when it comes to serving God or following what He wants you to do with your life…well, that becomes a problem.

My biggest spiritual entanglements at the moment are debt and impatience.  Sure, I can do something about both, and I’m working on them.  But the stress over debt — debt I shouldn’t have ever built up to begin with — takes too much of my focus.  And impatience over working out solutions and then actually making those solutions work is enough to keep me discouraged if I don’t stay focused on the long distance plan.

Yes, I’d love to have a rich relative who’d just write me a check so that I could just pay off what I owe to the credit cards and be done with it.  But since I don’t have rich relatives — no Uncle Moneybags in the family tree — I have to stick with my own plan to get the debt off the books.  And unfortunately, it will take time.  I can’t get completely out of debt in two months.  It’ll take at least a full year, even with me doing my best, in the absence of a winning lottery ticket or unexpected windfall.  So I have to be patient.  And focused.

I’m trying to listen — really listen — to what God is telling me to do.  On a variety of levels.  It’s not easy to do sometimes, but no one ever said being a Christian is supposed to be easy.

But I want those roadblocks out of the way, so I can figure out what I need to do for the long haul.

One of the recent topics in the daily devotional I’ve been reading talked about liturgy.  The author is a big fan of those words repeated in worship and prayer from week to week.  A common example of liturgy is “responsive reading,” used by traditional churches.

Responsive readings are generally found in the church hymnals, and contain portions to be read by the minister, portions to be read by the congregation, and in some cases, portions to be read by both.

I hate responsive reading.  Despise it.

The author of this devotional I’m reading makes this point:

“Repetition makes them a healthy habit, like brushing my teeth or taking a shower, rather than dead words that don’t mean anything anymore.”

She goes on to compare liturgy like a giant sticky note that reminds her to stay accountable and to take time to think about the actions she’s taking as a servant of the Lord.

I can see her point about the reminder, but I couldn’t disagree more about liturgy being the means to that end.  For me, liturgy is like “Religion by Rote.”  And rote, defined in Wikipedia, is “a learning technique which avoids understanding of a subject and instead focuses on memorization.”

And therein lies my problem with it.  If you’re not focusing on the understanding of something, but rather just focusing on which specific words you need to say, then you’re not really learning anything.  You may well be able to recite the words without looking at the reading, but are you really taking the additional time to think about what the words actually mean?

When I’ve attended services that use responsive reading — and I’m happy to report that my church does not — I’m generally more concerned about not missing my “cue.”  I’m thinking, as the reading is happening, “okay, when the pastor’s through with this part, I start right here.”  It’s not about what’s being said as much as when I’m supposed to start saying my part.

A while back, I wrote a piece about the Lord’s Prayer.  In the Bible, Jesus gives the Lord’s Prayer as an example of how to pray to his disciples.  The point he was making was that in prayer, you need to praise God, confess the sins you have committed, ask for forgiveness for them, and forgive those who have committed wrongs against you.  Our prayer should reflect what Jesus said was the greatest commandments of all:  to love the Lord God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

I don’t think that Jesus meant for people to pray by simply reciting the Lord’s Prayer and calling it a day.  Anyone can recite the words; it takes a little more effort to turn the words into something personal, with meaning, that really speaks to what’s happening in your life and the needs you have.  And if you’re not really willing to take that additional step, then why bother praying?  You’re just saying words.

When I was little, we were taught a prayer that we were supposed to say before we ate.  It went something like this:

“God is great, God is good,

Let us thank Him for our food.”

That was pretty much it.  It worked for kids who were a little young to get the concept of asking for forgiveness and, more importantly, being big enough to forgive those who have wronged us.  But it at least got the praise element out there.

But when I was little, it took a while of saying that before it ever dawned on me exactly what I was saying.

When I pray, I talk to God.  I don’t recite.  I don’t repeat the same words every time.  I believe that God is real and is alive.  So why wouldn’t I want to have a real conversation with Him?  There are certain people I pray for every time I pray:  my parents, my close friends.  I pray for people who I know are going through troubles.  I pray for people I know who have done nice things for me or other people. And I pray for people who have done something to me that I considered at the time to be some kind of slight.  (And I pray again for forgiveness in being so self-absorbed that I couldn’t take the time to look at the situation impartially when it happened.)

It’s a habit that I’m trying to get better and better at.  But it’s not something I ever want to feel rehearsed or impersonal.  I don’t mind a reminder, but I don’t want the words I speak to God to be words I’m borrowing from someone else; I want them to be from me and from my heart.

He deserves that and so much more.

Before leaving for California, my friend Archie gave me a book called The One Year Daily Grind.  It’s a daily devotional written in the style of daily blog entries, and the tag line on the cover reads, “Grab a mocha and spend some time with God–every day.”  I like that idea; I need to spend more time with God.  I’ve needed to for a while, but only in the past year or so have I really begun to realize the extent of that need.

The entry for September 3rd, titled “Quiet Desperation,” recalls this familiar quote:

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
— Henry David Thoreau

In this particular day’s entry, author Sarah Arthur talks about looking out of her window and people-watching, something I like to do from time to time.  She wonders how many people are living a life in which they have no concept of God, and who therefore have no concept of the hope that Christ’s death and resurrection represents.  She writes that imagining how many people may be in that boat is enough to make her depressed even though she has “been given a kingdom that is unshakable,” a reference to Hebrews 12:28.

I think there are plenty of us who know God and who still have those moments of desperation.  A lot of people who aren’t Christian seem to think that Christians always think we have all of the answers.  We don’t, but it’s our fault that we give that impression, because we tend to get so cocky about things just because we feel that God has our back.

It would be so much easier if accepting Christ was the moment that we got every answer to every question, that we could suddenly know, beyond any doubt, that we were on the right track.  There would never be any need to re-evaluate who we are, why we’re here and what we’re doing with our gifts.  Then again, I guess that if there was never a need to ask ourselves such questions, there’d be no more opportunity to grow.

Off and on for the past few years, I’ve been feeling my own kind of quiet desperation.  That there’s something out there waiting for me that I’ve just managed to not take any notice of, and that I need to find.  If that doesn’t make a lot of sense to someone who reads this but may not know me personally — which I imagine is most of the people who read this little blog — then don’t feel bad; it doesn’t fully make a lot of sense to me, either.  But that’s the best way I can describe it.

But I know that something has been missing.  I’m happy professionally.  I’m not inordinately unhappy personally.  (How’s that for diplomatic?)  But there’s something more that I know I should be doing, and I’m only beginning to start figuring out what that is.  I have a pretty good idea at this point, because it has been needling me for a while now, first as a whisper, but more recently — particularly in the past year and thanks to a good friend — as something more clear and pronounced.

And it’s still a scary thought.

But change is supposed to be a little scary, right?  Stepping out of a comfort zone, no matter how small the step happens to be is supposed to be a little unnerving.  Even if you don’t actually leave the confines of the comfort zone…if you just take a baby step here and there towards its boundary, that’s a frightening proposition.  Otherwise, I suppose there’d be no such thing as a “comfort zone,” right?

But I think that not taking the steps, once you start to realize what they are, can only lead to more quiet desperation.