Don't have a cow man...

The other day my family and I watched the movie "The Nativity Story" , it was great, I thought it was very well done. I didn't know how my kids would react to the scenes where the babies in the movie (John the Baptist, and Jesus) were being born, well I found out the next day.

We were going for a walk and on our way back to the house Zoe was skating really fast on her Heelys, she stopped for a minute and was really out of breath.

Xander turns to her and hears her gasping for breath and says "Man Zoe, you sound like Mary when she was having Jesus!"

WOW! I thought that was hilarious, "You don't only sound out of breath you sound like your giving birth to God"...only a 5 year old could come up with that one!

GOOD NEWS!!! : All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God!!!

So I came across some good news in the Bible that I hadn't seen before. That news is this in a nutshell: "All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God." (Romans 3:23). There are a bunch of other versus with this same theme, basically the idea of Total Depravity and Orginal Sin. I always thought and was taught that this was the "Bad News" (especially when someone regurgitated the Bad News/Good News evangalism technique "I've got some bad news, you suck and your gonna burn in hell, the good news is that if you say these magic words about Jesus it will all be ok"). Here's a very uncomfortable video to demonstrate, not the good news bad news technique but just as bad, (I think Mitt Romney stars as the hero in the video, you'll have to watch to see what I mean).

The thing is that the bad news is not the bad news at all, it really is really really good news that we are totally depraved and that all of us have fallen short of the Glory of God, in fact it may be the best news.

If I'm correct in latching onto the idea that the whole purpose of my being is for me to seek and obtain a right relationship with God and that God Himself is all that can satisfy the longings of my soul, and if there is no way on my own I can come into a right relationship with God because of my sin, then that is just awesome! It's awesome because it means that God must be incredibly good and worth obtaining, so good that not even Christ "who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped" (Phillipians 2:6).

I was always shown Romans 3:23 to explain to me how I was destined for Hell and this is why I needed Christ to save me. True enough, but it does little to motivate me to love God. I'm just looking to save my own skin. But if I take the focus of this idea off of me and put it onto God, I can see something completely different. That God desires for me to have the very thing that will bring total, abundant, and even overflowing satisfaction to my entire being (a relationship with Him) and the even better news is that this gift of God is so good that there is no way I can be good enough to deserve it. I could work for the rest of eternity and not be able to earn or deserve it by any standard human or divine. Even if I lived a PERFECT life for all of eternity I still could not deserve a relationship with God that could satisfy me and Glorify Him simply because I had a beginning and He didn't (maybe another post on this idea later, maybe not). This relationship that God is offering must be AMAZING!

If I DID earn or deserve this relationship with God then the magnificance of being with God would have to be limited by my mortal ability to achieve the deserving of it and therefore God's goodness would be limited by my goodness and then God would cease to be God. In other words what I recieved could only be as good as me. And I am mortal, I had a beginning and I will die. This really limits the scope of whatever goodness I can provide for myself. So this new understanding of Orginal Sin and Total Depravity also brings about for me a new understanding of Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Through Christ I can recieve God who is so good that there is no way for me to deserve Him. And if I was not totally depraved then none of this would be possible!

Thank you Lord that mankind fell from grace through Adam, so that you could give us an inheritance through Christ that is infinately more than we could ever deserve on our own.

Getting ready for Christmas

I was having a discussion with some friends about how we should celebrate Christmas this year, and maybe how we should start planning now to make it a Christmas with at least a partial message of non-consumerism, or at least bridaled consumerism. There was some discussion about how we need change hearts and minds and that maybe focusing on non-consumerism isn't really the right angle. I agree with this idea except to say that the only real way to change a heart and mind is to have that change to be manifested in behaviour. I believe that all of our good intentions at Christmas are generally cancelled out by our propensity toward hyper-consumerism. Not to mention that in many cases the simple living out our cultural norms (ie shopping at wal-mart, using lots of energy, eating lots of food) is actually contributing to the oppression of people all over the world, and although a "boycott" is not really what I think is necessary or effective, a change in behaviour would at least go along way to open the hearts of our church to the fact that our actions have a rippling if not tidal wave effect on people all the way across the world.

I definately agree that the non-consumerism message should not be the only message of the Christmas season, but never-the-less think about what would happen if we did just that. If people actually tried to live out a non-consumeristic Christmas, that would leave them with a giant void (where all the stuff used to be). I think that would be great, because even if nobody mentioned it, since it IS Christmas, Jesus would get some attention. It's not like Jesus is really the subject of the season now anyway, refocusing to to a message of non-consumerism could at least create the opportunity for Jesus to come up in a meaningful way.

Also, as one who has kids, I can attest that it is almost impossible to keep the focus of Christmas on Christ, family, and friends when there is so much time, money, and attention spent on stuff. (right around august we start getting hammered by our relatives to get our Christmas lists together, so basically the consumeristic stage is set very early)

Personally I am all for consumerism, but let's do it right. Here are some thoughts (I might cover some of these ideas in depth in future posts):

• Take the time to find quality items that aren't made by slaves and pay more for them on purpose.
• Since quality items cost more it may cut into your budget, that's ok, just buy less.
• Don't cut out the middle man (he might be your neighbor), and if you cut him out he'll probably have to go to work at wal-mart.
• Have a few awkward Christmas's with no or very few gifts, and let that time of awkward silence (when you'd usually be opening gifts) slowly be filled with conversation and the enjoyment of each other, it'll become normal and comfortable soon enough.
• Tell someone you love them, and try to show it in a way that doesn't involve purchasing something from wal-mart.
• Spend more money on food and eat it together.
• Buy your food from a local farmer, have him tell you a story about it/himself/his family/his business, relate that story to your family.
• Prepare the food with the people you are spending christmas with.
• Buy gifts that aid in the preparation of the christmas meal.
• It must be getting close to lunch because I am talking alot about food.

I'm pretty passionate about this for several reasons, one being that I am all for the resurrection of the small business owner in America and the small town and tight knit neighborhood in the cities. Two I don't like the new slavery, I think it's more cruel than even the slavery of the South in America, because at least those slaves were housed and fed and cared for to some extent because at least they were property (which was horribly wrong), but the slaves of today are less than property. They are simply an endless supply of hungry people, and if they can't care for themselves and thier families on $.13 an hour we'll just get another one who will try. And most importantly I think that one of our jobs as Christians is to redeem things for Christ. And the way we trade with each other is a very good thing to redeem for Him, it is really something that cuts right to the core of who we are.

That's my pocket full of change on this subject, there's probably some more in there somewhere, maybe i should check the seat cushions in my couch...

Speaking of incarnational living...

There's a great Spurlock documentary out there call "What would Jesus Buy". It's about this group of performance artistist/activists. The lead guy is a character called the "reverend billy" who looks and talks like a stereotypical television evangelist, however his message is very different. They call themselve the "Church of Stop Shopping" and thier message is one against the rampant consumerism that is consuming our lives and our culture.

I don't know if these guys would call themselves "Christian" but you know what? I think they get it. When I whine and complain about not knowing what to do about living a life that honors Christ in this American culture these guys have a message that I think really gets me somewhere on this journey, the message?...stop shopping...hey that's a start, really it is.

Here's an interview with Morgan Spurlock at Imago Dei

Good intentions are keeping me from good works.

WARNING: This post may not make a lot of sense, the ideas I'm working on here aren't as of yet fully developed.

That being said...I was thinking the other day about words like "incarnational" and "works" and general ideas about the evidence of salvation displayed through the way in which I live my life. Alot of this thought has been brought on by my new job. Although I am thankful that I have a "really good" job that pays well, I find it hard to cope with the fact that I must spend all this time at the office and much of that time is spend not doing a whole lot. Sure there are bursts of activity and sometimes its really busy with projects and problems and fun stuff like that. However sometimes there's really NOTHING to do, and yet I'm still kind of expected to waste my life away sitting at this desk. I know I know i should get creative and all that and put that time to better use. So we can get into the ethics of corporate life and my responsiblity as a christian and a father and a husband and how my corporate schedule pretty much sucks most of my time away, but that is for another post.

The thing is that I have this desire to 'do something' for Christ and for others, and integrating that desire into the monolithic nature of my work schedule is really a pretty daunting task. I keep coming to the conclusion that I'm serving two masters and one of them has got to go. Now you may ask why I don't do anything about this breach of integrity that has seeped it's way into my life, and I would answer that I do, and that what I do has created yet another little trap.

You see to cope with the fact that I feel somewhat paralyzed by demands of corporate life and the middle class american lifestyle I often resort to good intentions. What I mean is that I'll think good thoughts and have good conversations at church or at bible study. I'll talk about the starving people in china and all that, i'll watch the compassion international videos on TV and send them some money, and I'll even go and meet with a homeless man in my neighborhood and help him out in some small ways with food and money and whatnot. You might say, well hey, that sounds good, sounds like your doing some good things. And I might agree with you, but still something doesn't feel right about it. Something is a little off.

Now obviously all the talking at church and at bible studies is pretty blatantly shallow behaviour. It's just talk, and it's main purpose is to make me feel better about myself, and to help me to think that since i'm spending part of my free time considering the things of God then somehow that makes me a good person. Most of the time the main purpose is to make other people think I'm smart, so you can see that is pretty much just pure sin. But the actual activities, the giving the helping, that's real right? I mean I only have a little bit of time left at the end of the day, and my family would like to see me some, and well, by the time i've met my minimal expectations for the day its 10 or 11 at night and i'm pretty tired, and at that point I still have to get my entertainment fix (which is also a subject for another post). So if I can manage to scrape together and hour or two here or there to help out a homeless guy or maybe dig a little (a very little) deeper into my pocket book to send some money to Ghana or whatever then what else can be expected of me right? My intentions are good, my intentions are to serve Christ with all that I have. And by my very american standards I have about 2 hours a week to give to him.

I think I may be putting a little to much weight on my intentions. In fact I think I'm letting the intentions associated with my actions completely redefine and exaggerate the significance of my acitons. I even think that sometimes at church or bible study when I talk about the suffering in the world and come up with brilliant hypotheses about how to alleviate it, I somehow actually convince myself that I have done something good. It's like I have some kind of guilt-o-meter in me, but it doesn't work very good. You see it's supposed to go off whenever it has detected that I haven't done much good stuff lately, however I can fool it by doing some pretty menial stuff and having really good intentions (like helping out a homeless guy but not really having any kind of plan that would require me to really get involved in this guys life), or even better I can trick it by simply talking about doing good stuff.

All of this obviously is a result of a severe lack of integrity in my life. And by integrity I mean to use the meaning of integrated. Meaning that instead of having a compartmentalized life with the bulk of the time being completely meaningless and then that time is sparsely peppered with a few bits of very over glorified acts of "good works". And even though I'm using the word integrity with the idea of an integrated life, by not having my life in this way I am basically suffering from all the same symptoms that any man who lacks integrity in the more traditional sense.

What I want is a life that has meaning, and not only that but that all of the natural and God ordained parts of my life would build upon each other to enhance that overarching meaning. I mean from what I do for money, to how I spend time with my wife and children, to how I spend time with my friends, my free time, my spending, my reading, my entertainment, my acts of service...why can't it all be driving toward the sigular purpose that I know I was created for and that is the worship and glorification of Christ... I have to find out how to live my life (meaning how to spend my time) better. Maybe the corporate gig has got to go, I definatly have to change how I relate to it. Not to mention I just have to get some kind of vision for some kind of life that is different that anything I've seen. Hopefully I can do more than than to just talk about it and have good intentions...

Still here.

I haven't posted in a while, been pretty busy. Generally my posts are a pretty spontaneous reaction to an "AH HA!" moment. I guess my brain is still percolating a new idea, and when it gets done I'll be sure to share it.

right now I'm reading Cryptonomicon , In Defense of Food, Ministries of Mercy, and Psalm...just in case your interested.

Total turn around

Read this article . If this is how it all went down, then WOW...not only are my worries about Huckabee's integrity greatly eased, but I am very very impressed.

Basically the article says that Ed Rollins (Huckabees advisor) said that they had to go negative in order to control some of the damage being caused by the Romney campaigns attacks. Rollins knows what he is talking about, and knows how this game is played. Huckabee went along with it, made the spot, and then was praying about it the day the attack was going to begin and decided to pull the ad at 11:10am (they were going to release the ad at a press conference at noon).

They would have preferred to cancel the press conference and the whole thing at that point was done impromptu. Yes some mistakes were made, and yes probably some people were still trying to get a "swing in" amidst this whole thing. But the bottom line is that Huckabee made the call, and stopped the attack.

So it looks like we have a guy here who is really willing to take a personal hit in order to follow his convictions. Even against the advice of his advisors, even in the midst of adversity. That is truly unique in politics.

I'm back on the Huckabee express! ... for now anyway ... I must be bipolar or something...sheez...