281. tell me about love (part 1)

You know, it's happened twice already. I write about some frustrating situation at work and through the process of venting on the page, I come to some epiphany that helps make sense of what I do (see blog 267 and 277). But you know, despite these new insights, somehow my coworker seems to find innovative new ways to just plain piss me off.

I don't really want to get into the latest ways he's been getting on my nerves. I want to delve a bit deeper into what I wrote about in my last post about work. In that entry, I talked about how I decided to try my best to treat Harold as a hard-working peer even though he's actually a hardly-working one. And for a couple weeks, it went really well. I mean, he didn't work any harder or faster but he seemed to be in a better mood. As for myself, because I wasn't always scrutinizing Harold - watching him out of the corner of my eye to catalog all the ways he wasn't working - I was able to relax as well and just do my job.

But you know, just when I think I've seen the limits of his poor work ethic and lack of empathy for the amount of work I put in, Harold somehow manages to find a new way to just frustrate the hell out of me.

But that's not what I want to talk about because it's really just more of the same ole situation.

There's something else I've been thinking about. See, the reason I decided to try and treat Harold as a peer was because I took a fresh look at some of the things Jesus said in the Gospels - in particular, the bit where he talks about loving your neighbor as yourself and loving the less than perfect the way God loves us.

And the bit that's tripping me up is that word, "love."

In 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, Paul talks about how doing what seems like holy work without love is equivalent to banging a cheap cymbal. And then he goes on to describe love in that passage you hear at so many weddings (appropriately so, I might add):

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Now if those are the elements of love then how am I doing at work with Harold?

1. patient - most of the time (1).
2. kind - try to be (1).
3. does not envy - there are times when I wish I could just sit around instead of breaking my back lifting boxes but besides that, there's not a whole lot about Harold that I envy (1).
4. does not boast, is not proud - I sometimes complain to one of our drivers, telling him how much work I've done that day compared to Harold so I guess I fail on this one (0).
5. is not rude - nope, not me (1).
6. is not self-seeking - nah...although I'm hoping for a generous raise once my yearly review comes around (1).
7. not easily angered - that's me (1).
8. keeps no record of wrongs - I try to forgive and forget but it's hard when Harold keeps reminding me (0).
9. does not delight in evil - I don't like evil (1).
10. rejoices with the truth - that's why I blog (1).
11. always protects - well, I haven't reported my complaints about Harold to my boss yet, does that count as protecting him (0)?
12. always trusts - I don't trust Harold (0).
13. always hopes - I do hope he'll do better (1).
14. always perseveres - well, I'm still working there...(1)

Ten out of fourteen ain't bad right?

But here's the thing I've been thinking about. Is living out the qualities of love that Paul lays out really love? I don't think so. The qualities that Paul lists are like signposts or indicators that show that a person is motivated by love. In this way, I think it's an all or nothing list.

Here's what I mean. Pregnancy tests work not by going in and verifying that an egg has been fertilized and has attached itself successfully to the uterine wall, they work by detecting the chemical/hormonal changes that take place once those things have happened. In other words, the test doesn't verify actual conception, it tests for signs that conception has occurred. Now in order to weed out false positives, the tests look for a multitude of indicators. If it doesn't find all the right signs, it returns a negative result. (Don't ask me how I know this.)

So I picture Paul writing this letter to the Corinthians and he comes up with this list of qualities that describe someone motivated by love. This is the last thing he writes in this letter and it's pretty long already so I'm thinking he's not all that interested in compiling a comprehensive inventory. Instead, he highlights the sure-things, the things that have to be there if someone is truly motivated by love. So these are the essentials, the bare minimums, and like the pregnancy test, if you ain't got all the signs, you ain't really lovin'.

There's another reason I know I don't treat Harold with love. I have zero respect for the guy. I don't know how to respect someone who consistently takes on the lightest workload possible (leaving me to do the heavy lifting), someone who doesn't check his work (twice in the past couple months I've had to hunt through the shelves to find boxes that Harold scanned in wrong), someone who complains when a rush order comes in because it means he'll have to get up out of his chair and actually do something (since I'm probably already out in the racks working on something else).

But he's my neighbor and Jesus wants me to be Jesus to Harold.

It's so hard to remember that Harold has been fearfully and lovingly made by God, that he is not beyond redemption. It's so hard to look past all the sin that's distorting the beauty God gave him. But that is my job as a christian.

I don't know.

Tell me about love. How do I love this guy? Does going through the motions of love count for anything? What would loving Harold look like?

280. stay tuned..

I apologize again for not keeping up with my one-post-per-week "rule." I had another friend visiting from Hawaii last week and that cut into my time quite a bit but that's not the only reason I didn't write.

There's something that stirring in my subconscious - I can sense it but it's just brewing, sorting itself out beneath the surface. I'm not exactly sure what it is. To be honest, it could be something as mundane as a new idea about the lunch I make to eat at work. Or it could be some profound breakthrough as to how I can change the world through the way I live out my belief in Christ.

That's not to say there's nothing on the conscious side of the brain that I'm working on. There's quite a bit on the plate there as well. One item I've been thinking about lately - the other night at my church's Faith and Race class, we saw a powerful short film about race and racism called The Color of Fear. It's a pretty brutal film that highlights just how far we still need to go in terms of race reconciliation. This film, as well as the readings and the teachings I've been going through in this class, has given me lots to think and write about. But I'm not quite ready to do so yet.

On another note, I just discovered that they sell poi at Uwajimaya! Next week is the final week for the Faith and Race class and we're having a pot luck where people are encouraged to bring something unique (or not) that they grew up eating. I already knew of a place where I could buy Spam musibi (and yeah, I know I could make it myself but I'm far too lazy and sloppy in the kitchen) and so I was planning on bringing that but then I had a brilliant idea.

If you've never had it before, poi is cooked taro that's been mashed into a paste. It's an acquired taste. People who try it for the first time describe it as purple Elmer's glue. So my plan is to take poi to the pot luck. I'm guessing that most people will taste a bit of it before politely moving on to the next dish which means that at the end of the night I'll be able to take the bulk of it back home with me.

Yeah, I'm evil like that, but there are few things better in this world than poi for breakfast.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned.

279. thoughts on communion

The act of taking communion (aka the eucharist) is supposed to be way up there when it comes to the sacred rites of the church. Indeed, in some denominations, the act of taking communion is considered the high point of the service. The rite is observed in a variety of ways - I've experienced everything from very formalized, liturgical services to very informal ones where the elements were placed on a table at the front of the church and people were invited to partake as they felt led (taking a piece of bread and dipping it in the grape juice/wine). There was even one service I attended where the ushers passed out tiny covered plastic cups filled with grape juice. At first I couldn't figure out where the body/bread part of communion was until I noticed that the "lid" of the cup had two layers to it. Under the clear top layer was a tiny wafer that symbolized the bread and below that was the actual cover for the juice. You were supposed to peel back the top layer to get the wafer and then peel back the second layer to get at the juice. Surreal, to say the least.

It's still rather embarrassing to admit this but until a couple years ago, I had only the vaguest notion of what it was I was doing while taking communion. I mean I understood that we were remembering Jesus and obeying his command to "do this in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:23-25), and that the wine and the bread symbolized Jesus' blood and body, and while I suppose those are the nuts and bolts of what's happening, it just didn't feel all that meaningful for me. I did my best to participate with a sincere heart. I tried to think of Jesus dying on the cross for my sins, I tried to confess my sins before partaking so I could receive the elements cleansed, but I still didn't get it. I mean, it just felt like going through the motions.

Before moving to Seattle, I was a part of a house church back in Hawaii. We took turns teaching on Sundays and although I can't remember how it happened, I got picked (or maybe I volunteered) to share a message about communion. Actually, now that I think about it, I do remember a bit of how this teaching opportunity came about.

We had been meeting as a house church for a few months when someone observed that we had never had communion. We all felt bad about this and so the next week we brought bread and wine and decided to give it a go. One of the features of our house church was that it was very open and discussion oriented. Before we shared the communion meal, someone asked the simple question, "what are we doing this for?" And then one by one we began to admit that beyond rote Sunday school answers, we didn't really know. Despite our ignorance, we broke bread anyway but we also said one of us should do some research and share what they learned. And then I got picked...or maybe I volunteered, I still can't remember that part.

I put nose to grindstone. I read the accounts of the Lord's supper in the Gospels and the bit in 1 Corinthians 11 and 12, but I had heard these portions of scripture so often that they didn't help much. So I consulted the all-knowing Wikipedia, but that just gave me a raft of doctrinal history which was about as useful to me understanding communion as learning how to operate a printing press would be in learning how to read. I knew what I needed was to get in the heads of the disciples as they sat around the table with Jesus in the upper room - what were they thinking as they heard Jesus tell them to eat his body and drink his blood?

That's when I found N.T. Wright's book, The Meal Jesus Gave Us. An excellent book and while there are brief bits where he picks at some obscure doctrinal nits, it really helped me reach a deeper, fuller understanding of communion. Much of what follows came about with help from Mr. Wright's book. (I've put my own slant on it so if you disagree on my take on communion, don't slight his book, it's probably my mistake.)

In order to get a fuller understanding of communion, we need to take a trip in the way back machine - way back to 1500 BC, to Moses and the Exodus. I won't rehash the entire story but the salient points are these. The Israelites were held in captivity and made slaves of the Pharaoh until God spoke to Moses through a burning bush, instructing him to free his people and take them to a land that God had chosen for them - the promised land, flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 3:7-10). Ten nasty plagues ensued, culminating in the death of all the first-born children in Egypt. However, this plague passed over the Israelites. To this day, the Passover holiday is celebrated by Jews around the world as commanded by God. It's a time when they remember both their ancestors' suffering under slavery and the work God did to free them.

More significant for this discussion on communion, it's this Passover ceremony that Jesus shared with his disciples where he poured wine and broke bread and told us to do likewise (Matthew 26:17-19). As with everything else in Jesus' life, this is no coincidence - it's a date with deep, beautiful, nuanced meaning.

As I understand it, the Exodus is central to the identity of the Jewish people. Had God not led them out of Egypt through Moses, they say that they would still be living as slaves. In the same way, one of the central tenants of the christian faith is the idea that through the death of Jesus on the cross, those who believe and follow Christ are freed from being slaves to sin (Romans 6:6-7).

But the Passover story doesn't end with freedom. Once freed from Egypt, the Jews wandered the desert for forty years before being led to the land promised to them. And just as times of adversity build character, it was through this time of wandering that the "character" of the Jewish people was developed. Lauren F. Winner puts it this way in her excellent book, Girl Meets God:

"In The Star of Redemption, [Franz] Rosenzweig discusses [Jewish] time and calendars and holidays. About Pesach, he writes, 'The welding of people into a people takes place in its deliverance.' And that, it seems to me, is what both passover and Maundy Thursday are about - making a people. In the Exodus, the Jews are transformed from people into a people and at the Eucharist, instituted there at the Last Supper, we Christians are transformed into a people, too." (Winner 173)

I happen to believe that christians today are like those Jews wandering, stumbling, complaining towards the promised land. They were working their way to what would become Israel. We are working our way to the Kingdom of God - the time when Christ will come again to finish the work of redeeming this fallen world. For me, seeing the Eucharist in this way transforms what was once a staid, Sunday school answer - "we take communion to remember Christ's death on the cross" - into a vibrant reminder that we are all on a journey, that as bleak as the world seems, there is a promised land ahead of us. And I don't think it's a stretch to say that when Jesus instructed us to "do this in remembrance of me," he meant for us to remember both what he did on the cross as well as what he will do when he comes again.

[warning: unorthodox view ahead, please don't stone me]

To be honest, there are still times, while taking communion, that I find it difficult to remember what I'm supposed to be remembering. And I wonder.

As many churches do, my church celebrates communion every Sunday. Other churches I've attended took communion on a monthly or quarterly schedule. But for Jews, the Passover meal is a yearly event and as such, it's a big deal. The ceremony literally lasts all night and it's full of discussion on what the different foods symbolize. In taking communion every week, I have to fight the temptation to think of it as just that thing we do every Sunday.

I wonder if it would be better to take communion just once a year and to make it a really big deal. I think it'd be great to devote one service every year to a fuller discussion of the Last Supper and how Jesus was reworking the Passover celebration. Can you imagine how deep and meaningful drinking the wine and eating the bread would be on a Sunday like that?

Now I know some christians get together on Passover week to celebrate a christian Seder, but this is seen as kind of a fringe thing done only by hardcore christians. And I understand that devoting a Sunday service during Passover week to focus on communion would interfere with Easter Sunday but how about the week before or the week after or maybe some other date entirely?

I would love to see a Sunday where the whole church gets together and celebrates a Seder meal together...but that's just me and my two cents.

278. not slacking off...not exactly

Yeah, I didn't post last week. But I had friends from Hawaii in town.

Also, on Monday nights I've been attending a series my church is hosting called Faith and Race. Thoughtful, challenging stuff.

I'm ninety percent sure I can get to another post in the Layman's Theology series by the end of this week but right now I'm working on something to put on my bass drum.

Here's a preview:


There are places out there where you can send in a design and they'll custom make you a bass drum head but that route costs about $100.

I have other plans. Not sure if it's going to work but it'll be a helluva lot less than the mail-order version.

Wish me luck.

277. cowboys and the kingdom of God

[PREFACE]

Earlier this week I mentioned that I would be adding another installment of the Layman's Theology series. I'm not sure if this entry qualifies because most of it is about a recent situation at work but I do talk a bit about the kingdom of God near the end. Maybe think of this as a practical, real-world application of some of what I've been writing about.

And a word of caution. I've written before about how I made it a point to swear less in my blog (I used to have a potty mouth...see blog 30) but sometimes you just gotta haul out the heavy artillery and drop the almighty f-bomb because no other word will do.

[END PREFACE]

So I haven't said much about what's been going on at work. I've written before about my workplace, - about how dehumanizing it can be and how hard it is to work with a certain coworker (code name: Harold).

These last couple months have been especially busy. I've been working like mad from the moment I start until the moment I leave but I still haven't been able to get on top of things. Thankfully, I've been able to maintain a kind of steady state of chaos (not letting it overwhelm me) but it hasn't been easy. And yeah, there are two of us in the department and so I suppose I should be using the pronoun "we" instead of "I" but you know that thing about eighty percent of the work being done by twenty percent of the workers? In this case, it seems like eighty percent of the work is being done by fifty percent of the workers: me.

Well earlier this week, I'd been noticing that a relatively low priority project (LPP) was really piling up. I asked Harold if he could take care of it. He responded that our boss (let's call him Leroy) had given him a special project (SP) to work on so he was too busy. I knew he was working on SP but it was from another department and I knew I had far too many more pressing matters in our department to get to LPP myself so right before I left for the day, I popped into Leroy's office and told him about the situation. Leroy told me that things in our department come before things in other departments. He said he'd talk to Harold and make sure he set aside his SP to work on LPP.

I've said before that Harold isn't exactly the easiest person to work with - he has a short fuse and he's not exactly what I would call efficient or organized. Now it's not like I walk on eggshells around him, but to be honest, I basically try to stay out of his way (which often isn't hard to do since he spends most of his day at his desk working on...something, don't ask me what because most of the work that needs to be done is out in the racks where the boxes and the files are...where I am).

Anyway, the next day, I knew Leroy was going to talk to Harold and I wasn't sure how he would respond. When I got there in the morning, things were cool and so I figured everything was copacetic. But then in the afternoon, Harold comes back from his lunch break and I see him grab the box that holds the files that have to do with LPP. It's a project that I'd worked on before and I didn't think that Harold had ever done it before so I casually offered to show him what to do but before I could even finish my offer, he brusquely interrupts me saying, "yeah, I know what to do."

Taken aback, I said okay, but there are two parts to this project. I knew the first half was very similar to other things we do on a regular basis but the second half is a bit different and so I went on to ask him to let me know when he was done with the first half so I could tell him about what was different about the second half. Again, before I could finish my offer, he interrupts and says, "hey, I've been doing this for over five years all right? I got it, okay?"

Now before I tell you how I responded, you need to understand something. Like I said before, the reason I wasn't able to get to LPP was because for the past couple months, things have been SUPER busy and no matter how much work I did or how fast I did it, I just couldn't get to the lower priority projects. During this time, Harold was spending the majority of his day working on SP - a project that he can do comfortably while sitting at his desk - while I worked my ass off out in the racks. There were a bunch of times when I'd walk by Harold's desk sweating after finishing yet another kick ass order and I'd see him just sitting at his desk casually working on SP. It didn't seem fair and it didn't seem right and while I just kept doing the best work I knew how, I'd be a bald-faced liar if I told you I wasn't irritated by this situation. But I bit my tongue and kept nose to grindstone.

Well all that latent frustration sprung to the surface upon hearing Harold's blunt/rude/abrasive response to my best attempts at merely offering to help. But while Harold has a short fuse and a loud pop, I have a long fuse and the most aggro response I could muster was to say, "alright, fine. If you got it, you got it." I shook my head, grabbed another order and headed back out into the racks to pull more files.

Of course what I really wanted to say was: "Hey, fuck you, you lazy mutherfucker. It's hard to believe you've worked here for five years seeing as how slow, lazy and unorganized you are. You know, you're so full of shit it's no wonder your breath stinks!"

But I didn't.

Yeah, I'm passive-aggressive. I'm working on it. But you gotta admit, that would have been a sweet response.

Anyway, while I was out pulling my order I calmed down a bit and thought about what I'd written before about trying to spread the kingdom of God at a workplace where I spend most of my time with boxes and files.

And then it hit me.

Yeah, I spend most of my day with inanimate objects but Harold is there as well even though I don't interact with him all that much (and not just because I try to avoid him). How stupid is it for me to be so proud of how I keep those lifeless boxes neat and organized while I secretly harbor gross, nasty thoughts about my living, breathing coworker?

I also thought about the book I've been reading during my lunch breaks, Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. He calls himself an "ordinary radical" but his story is anything but ordinary - among other things, he spent a summer in Calcutta with Mother Theresa and he spent time in Iraq before and during the American shock and awe campaign. He would say that it's a shame that his life is seen as extraordinary because all he did was ask the simple question, "what if Jesus really meant what he said in the Bible," and everything else just followed as a result.

And so that got me thinking. What if Jesus meant what he said when he told us (me) to love our enemies? Now Harold isn't my enemy per se, but that loophole is covered by that bit where Jesus said the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself and there's no weaseling myself out of that one.

And then that got me thinking. What if I include Harold in my little mission to live out the kingdom of God at my workplace? I mean, what if I look past all the shortcomings I see in him and treated him the way I would if he were a kick ass filing and box-shelving machine? Because I really believe that as a christian, the way the kingdom of God gets spread is by living now the way I would if the fall had never happened or the way I will after Jesus comes again to restore the world. If I believe that then why shouldn't I do my best to treat Harold as a peer?

I mean, what if Harold wasn't always this way? What if life has been really shitty to him and that's why he is the way he is now? What if he only does the minimum to get by at work because he's the kind of person Bruce Springsteen was thinking of when he wrote the lines: "end up like a dog that's been beat too much / 'til you spend half your life just covering up." What if he's hyper-defensive because other coworkers in the past have treated him poorly.

And that led to more questions: What if I did my best to treat Harold with respect? What if I tried treating him the way Jesus would if he were working here? What if Matthew 5:46 were translated this way:

"If you only treat hard working coworkers with respect then what reward will you get? Is not your boss already doing that?"

I'm sure there are some who would say that I'm an idiot, that I should bitch and moan to Leroy about the way Harold works, that I shouldn't stand for this kind of injustice.

Maybe they're right to raise those objections but again, what if Jesus meant it when he talked about an entirely new way of living in his Sermon On the Mount - a way of living where love and grace are extended to all, regardless?

According to the rules of this world, it's backwards, upside-down, inside-out, but I'm not a citizen of this world. This week at my Bible study we looked at John 3 where Jesus tells Nicodemus that "no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." And one of the things we discussed is the idea that being "born again" means adopting an entirely new way of living which can (should) be different from the normal way of life.

Back when I lived in Hawaii, every once in a while (usually in Waikiki or in other spots frequented by tourists) I'd see someone walking around with a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and a huge belt buckle. They'd stick out like sore thumbs because the standard dress code in Hawaii is shorts, t-shirt, and slippers (aka flip-flops). But I think that's kind of what it's like to be a christian. I mean, we don't dress different but we live different - we love the unloved, we extend grace where judgement should be, we live now the way we would if the fall had never happened, the way we will in heaven.

I thought all these crazy things our there in the racks, pulling my order, and when I was done, when I went back to my desk to verify my items, I walked over to Harold and apologized to him. I told him that I didn't mean to imply that he didn't know how to do his job and that if I gave him that impression then I was sorry.

He said, "don't worry about it," and I couldn't tell how he took what I said but I figured I'd just take his response at face value and I replied, "cool, thanks."

I don't know.

Maybe he'll never change. Maybe he'll think I'm a schmuck and take advantage of my willingness to put up with his work ethic. Maybe he won't even notice that I'm trying to be nice to him.

Doesn't matter to me...well, that's not entirely true. It's still a huge struggle to not think of Harold as a lazy bum but I'm going to do my best (so help me God) to be Jesus to Harold - to practice preemptive forgiveness and grace. Because just as a cowboy walks through Waikiki with a huge Stetson hat on, I walk through life as a newborn citizen of the kingdom of God.

276. target audience

I've been thinking about what to cover next in my Layman's Theology series (part 1, part 2). But I think I'll take care of a bit of business so I can set my mind at ease and get on with other posts.

See, there were two responses that I got to my post about salvation. One of them was on my Blogger blog and the other was on my pastor's blog. Both of them were very similar and I'm wondering if they were left by the same person. In my entry about salvation, I talked about how salvation isn't just about being saved from hell or being reconciled with God, it's about joining God in his plan to fix/heal/bless this broken/sick/cursed world. Both comments had to do with asking why one had to be a christian in order to be a part of making the world a better place. There are lots of non-religious organizations out there who are already at work bringing attention to and solving the problems I mentioned. What's the difference between them and christians who are doing the same things?

And I didn't have any good answers to give them. Really, those questions continue haunt me because they asked a fundamental question to which I had no adequate response. I've been letting them stew in the back of my mind all week but I'm still coming up goose eggs.

But I don't want to just leave the question hanging. I promised both people who commented that I would try and answer them in a future entry. Unfortunately, this isn't it. This is merely a kind of deflection or a delay tactic (basically an excuse) but I will make good on my word at some point.

Come to think of it, their question is a natural one for a non-christian to ask but the reason I didn't anticipate it was because of the audience I try to write for: christians who are dissatisfied with or are skeptical of what normally passes as christianity in many churches. I suppose that sounds like a pretty odd audience to target, especially for those who've never been a part of the christian subculture, but it's a group that I have tremendous empathy for because I was a member of that group for a substantial portion of my life as a christian.

The more great books I come across and the more amazing people I meet at my church, the more I'm convince of the fact that there's a growing groundswell of christians who want to live out their faith far beyond the walls of the church. There are lots of people asking the same questions I'm asking and that's another reason why I write - because after thinking about these questions for years I finally have some...not answers, that's too definitive of a word...ideas that I want to share because they point towards answers.

Of course I welcome any and all readers as well as all comments and/or questions. Stay tuned, I'm hoping to knock out another episode in the series by the end of this week (I'm giving myself a deadline as a way to spur myself onward).

275. in the meantime

Yeah, I didn't post anything last week, sorry (I try to post at least one entry per week). And this post won't be much either but finishing that entry on salvation took a lot out of me. I mentioned in that post that I had spent around ten hours on that entry. It was probably closer to twenty. Anyone who thinks writing isn't work is just plain wrong (or far more talented than I and if that's the case then I hate you...in love, of course).

In the meantime, some miscellaneous items:

1. I gots lots more in store for the Layman's Theology series so stay tuned.

2. Speaking of that series, my pastor said some really nice things about my last entry on his blog and people left some really great comments. Pastor Eugene gets invited to speak all over the country (and the world) and so his blog has a wide readership. His little plug sent my hit counter through the roof which was tremendously encouraging.

3. I'm currently reading two books that really have my noodle stirring. The first is Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. Just the other day, I was reading this book during my lunch break and realized that he's saying the same things I said, only much better and with more humor and with a lot more life experience to back it all up (among other things, he spent a summer in Calcutta with Mother Theresa before she died).

By the way, if what I'm writing is resonating with you at all, I highly, HIGHLY recommend picking up a copy of Irresistible Revolution. It's by far the best thing I've ever read and I don't say that lightly. You can read a very insightful review of the book here. And while I'm linking to their site, let me mention that the Hearts And Minds bookstore is a great place to find stelar christian writing - a welcome respite from the drivel that passes as christian writing in most christian bookstores (oops, was that too harsh?).

I actually found that book last week while looking for Brian McLaren's new book, Everything Must Change, which as it turns out wasn't out last week because it hit the shelves this week. I picked up McLaren's book this week and I'm only a few pages into it but I can already see that reading this book along with Claiborne's should be a very synergistic experience.

4. Speaking of synergistic pairings, I've been realizing that there have been a few other times in my life where I've read a pair of books that resonated with one another. A few examples:

Most recently, I've just finished The Cannon by Natalie Angiers, which I read along with The Language of God by Francis Collins (who I wrote about in post 271...btw, thanks for the book, Nate). Both books are about science - Angier approaching the topic from a strictly secular point of view while Collins talked about how science and religion need not be at odds with one another. Collins was instrumental in completing the Human Genome Project and currently serves as the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute so his scientific credentials are unquestionable. He also happens to be a devout christian who is troubled and saddened by the current climate where science and faith are commonly portrayed as irreconcilable ways of understanding reality. (As a note of warning, while I found Angier's survey of the various disciplines of science to be fascinating, her writing style was too clever for its own good - when given the choice between explaining something in a way that was cute or clever, she always went with cute, and that gets really irritating really fast.)

Also, this blog probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for my reading Anne Lamott's amazing memoir, Traveling Mercies and Donald Miller's now classic, Blue Like Jazz. Prior to reading these books, I thought writing about spiritual matters had to be done with absolute reverence or mind-numbing, christianese-fueled mediocrity. Lamott and Miller's writing showed me that you could write about life as a christian with verve, wit, clarity, and candor.

And since I've already mentioned McLaren, reading his previous book, The Secret Message of Jesus and N.T. Wright's book, Simply Christian, was enlightening and helped me work out a lot of what I've been writing about in terms of how I've come to re-understand christianity. Both books try to step back and hear the teachings of Jesus the way those in the first century would have heard them. (On a side note, what's up with McLaren's titles? The Secret Message of Jesus was far too provocative and Everything Must Change is far too boring.)

5. And I'll end with this.

I've written before about how early in 2006 I finally found contentment as a single person. Well recently I've begun to wonder if I should just conclude I'm one of those people who has the gift of singleness (see also 1 Corinthians 7).

I mean I've practically there already. I can count the number of dates I've had in the past ten years on one hand and that's including instances where it was just hanging out. I've said before that when one is single for a long time, one of two things happens. You either keep lowering your standards until you find someone because you just can't stand being alone or you keep raising your standards because it would take finding someone that much more amazing in order to give up the conveniences and comforts of being single. I've gone the second route to the point of absurdity.

If you must know, my preferences are as follows (in no particular order): christian, asian, smart, funny, outgoing, has short hair, wears glasses, is shorter than me, likes artsy movies, likes to read, likes coffee, prefers not to have kids, and has a British or Australian accent (and this is the short list). Know anybody like that?

Well, I recently saw a video on the TED website of a woman who comes close. She's not asian and I'm not sure if she's a christian and she doesn't have an accent but she's super funny, super smart, and the fact that she uses big words that I didn't understand before looking them up does things in me that are unmentionable in polite company. Her name is Erin McKean and she's the editor in chief (!) of The New Oxford American Dictionary. She's also really cute.

If the video below doesn't work, you can see her TED presentation by clicking here.

274. thoughts on salvation

(Part three of the Layman's Theology series. You can find part two here.)

[preface]

Thanks to everyone who commented on part 2 (all of the comments are on the MySpace version of the blog). Theology isn't something that should be done in a vacuum. To the contrary, rethinking theology by one's self can lead to really bad places like Waco, Texas or Jonestown. So to keep me from starting my own cult, please feel free to comment, critique, or complain about anything in this series. Or pass a link along to someone who might be interested.

Thanks.

[end preface]

I've wrestled with this topic before in my blog (see post 191 and 251) and each time I've mentioned the fact that I don't have a complete understanding of what exactly salvation entails. As a kind of preface, let me say that this post won't be my last word on the subject but let me share my most recent thoughts.

Linking to my previous posts about salvation has been interesting for me because while rereading those posts, I was able to see a kind of progression. In post 191, I wrote about salvation as being freed from slavery to sin. In post 251 I talked about...actually, I'm not exactly sure what I was getting at but I think I was trying to say that in addition to the personal component of salvation, there is a societal aspect to the Gospel - that what Jesus ultimately wants to do is not just save individuals but also to save whole societies (and that's a loaded statement which I'll unpack later...perhaps in another entry).

I think both those posts are useful but they don't really get at answering one of the big questions I have about salvation. This question has to do with the first century church - a church that had to endure lethal amounts of persecution. As a christian, depending on where you lived, you could be subject to assault from the Romans who saw this new cult as a threat to the Pax Romana or from Jews who considered the teachings of Jesus to be blasphemy. Despite the fact that declaring one's self to be a christian could get you killed, christianity exploded across the continent such that a mere three hundred years after the death and resurrection of Christ, the emperor of Rome, Constatine I, legalized the worship of Christ with the Edict of Milan.

So my question is, what was it that those first christians found so compelling about the Gospel that they were willing to die for it? Because to be honest with you, if I had been living in an area where christians are persecuted today (places in the Middle East or South Asia, for example), I don't think I would have accepted Christ with the messages I heard here in America - that Jesus died so that I could have a "personal relationship" (a metaphor that I'm not entirely comfortable with - see post 270) with God. I mean, that would have been cool but I don't know if that would have been enough for me to adopt a life where I would likely be disowned by my family and ran the risk of being tortured and/or killed if my conversion was reported.

Or think of it this way. If I were a missionary in Sri Lanka, what would I be telling them about Jesus that would convince them to risk all that they hold dear?

That question, what is it about the Gospel that people then and now believe in such that they are willing to lay everything (every thing) down for it, has been a kind of litmus test for me as I've tried to rethink salvation. If it wasn't worth death then it wasn't good enough.

Now before I risk disappointing you all, let me state up front that I'm still working through this issue, but I'll share my current thoughts on it. And while I can't state with absolute certainty that I would die for my new understanding of the Gospel and salvation (because who can be certain until they're staring at the business end of a rifle), I can say that it has made the life I live now more meaningful, and that's a good start isn't it?

Okay then, here we go.

I think the best way to understand salvation is to think of it as signing on to be a part of a revolution - a movement to upend a world that has lost its way and to set things right again. That is the good news of the Gospel.

In the first two chapters of Genesis, God creates the cosmos and it is good, perfect, flawless. And then in chapter three, Adam and Eve, duped by the serpent, eat fruit off the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

And then the shit hit the fan.

Every instance of injustice, of betrayal, of meaningless suffering, rancor, and defeat can be traced back to that little taste. Pride, lust, envy, and every other dark need that drives us entered the scene, poisoning even our best intentions. Large to small, top to bottom, everything in the world that's not as it should be is torqued because of the fall. Everything from national stories like the racism that seeks to unequally punish the Jena Six or the incomprehensible fact that in the richest nation in the world, two years after the fact, New Orleans is still a tragedy; to international issues like the genocide in Darfur, the never-ending dispute in Israel, or the megalomaniacal government of Burma; down to the little nuisances of everyday life - drivers who don't know how to merge, people with fifteen items in the twelve item grocery line, stupid workplace situations.

All of these things because of the fall in Genesis three. As a result, everything else in the Bible from Genesis four through Revelation twenty two has to do with God helping us to get back what was lost. And this powerful play goes on and God commands us to contribute a verse!

Yes, Christ died so we could be freed from slavery to sin and be reconciled to God but that is ONLY THE BEGINNING. As precious as this freedom is, it's kind of like a fringe benefit or a signing bonus. It's not the point of accepting or following Christ. To me, the part of the Gospel that is worth more than life itself is the idea that through the work of Christ on the cross, we become a part of God's plan of redemption and reconciliation. It's like we're given a transfer from the wrecking crew to the repair crew. All the things that are wrong with the world - we become partners in God's plan to set all things right.

And it took me a long time to figure this out, but this work of repair happens on a variety of scales. Very few of us have the resources to tackle global or national problems but wherever we are, in whatever way we can, we are given the task of making our little piece of the world a better place - a place more in line with God's design for it.

A couple months ago, I wrote about how I realized that even though most of my day is spent with boxes and files, keeping those boxes and files as neat and organized as I can is as valid a way of living out my calling as any other (at least until this band thing gets played out). And writing this blog. Although it may not seem like it, I've probably put in close to ten hours on this entry, trying out different ways of saying things - exploring avenues, jettisoning whole sections that were superfluous or not getting at what I wanted to say. I write because it's a tool that God has given me and for me to not use it is simply sin.

Is the idea that we are saved into the task of remaking the world back into what it should be worth dying for? Is this something like what those in the first century church (and those in areas today where persecution still runs rampant) believed such that they were willing to be torn apart by lions or stoned to death? I don't think it's as simple as that - each person must have their own reasons for the faith they hold, but at least for me, it makes christianity something more (far more) than just a Sunday morning show. For me, this means that even though I have very little personal interaction at my workplace, keeping things in order even if nobody notices, even if I don't get any credit, even if the next person just goes in and messes things up again, I am doing my part to make my little bit of the world more like it would have if the fall had never occurred.

You know, having come this far in this entry, I realize that it's not that I want to redefine salvation. It's not that the Four Spiritual Laws are wrong - to the contrary, it is a clear way to explain some key theological concepts - it's just that, well, to be frank, it's too clean and clinical. It doesn't give me anything to sink my teeth into. It doesn't tell me how my life is supposed to change after accepting its statements.

To be fair, back when I was trained to use the Four Spiritual Laws tract, I was told to try to invite the person I was counseling to my church or get them hooked up with a church close to where they lived so they could establish deeper roots. Um...I don't mean to diss, but most churches (at least most that I attended) focus on what my pastor has occasionally referred to as spiritual narcissism - focusing so much on one's own spiritual health that one fails to be the blessing that they're called to be.

I don't want to be saved onto a treadmill of studying the Bible for the sake of looking like a know-it-all at church. I want to be saved into a mission to change the world for the better. And how does that happen? Well everyone's calling is unique but basically it involves doing whatever you can (with whatever you have, wherever you are) to make the world more like it would be if the fall had never happened or the way things will be when Christ comes again to set things right once and for all.

273. yet another excuse

Blah.

Okay, I really, really want to get to more posts in my Layman's Theology series but my church has been in the midst of a huge renovation project and I've been helping out a lot.

Whether we're ready for it or not, Quest 4.0 goes live this Sunday so I'll have my nights back to myself again.

I've mainly been helping out with the sound system gear and while I know we can have everything working this weekend, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I wish we had at least one more week to finish the install and tweak everything. (warning, techno-speak ahead) It's a pretty major upgrade - we're going from a sixteen channel, one monitor mix setup to a thirty two channel, four monitor mix plus subs plus sound piped to other rooms in the building. We have far less EQ than I'd like (only one 1/3 band EQ that we're using for mains), far more compression than we need (12! channels), and not nearly enough time to train people on it all.

That said, it's going to be a really sweet system. We've been playing music through the mains while working on the renovation and I've consistently been surprised at how clean our new Mackie S408 loudspeakers (emphasis on "loud") sound.

So stay tuned. And feel free to needle me with nasty comments if I don't get back to posting more entries next week.

272. an uncensored take on omnipotence

[PREFACE]

Sorry it took so long to get around to posting this but it's a difficult topic and so this entry has gone through a couple of major revisions. I still don't think it's as polished as it should be but I'm tired of working on it and I want to move on to other thoughts in this series.

Please, please, please let me know what you think in the comments section, especially if you disagree.

[END PREFACE]

A Layman's Theology, Part 2.

In the past few years, there is one epiphany I've had about God that has helped me make sense of him and his world and it goes like this:

God is God and can do whatever it is he wants to do because that's what it is to be God.

There are a number of places in the Bible where we are told to fear God. Many modern interpretations of these verses suggest that a better way to understand the way "fear" is being used is to substitute the word "respect." But I wonder if by fear, the writers actually meant, well, fear. I mean, think about the world those writers lived in. There were no scientific explanations for the world that surrounded them. An earthquake was not, as we now understand it, the result of a shift in tectonic plates - it was a terrifying display of powers as mysterious as they were cataclysmic. Also, there were no microbiological explanations for illnesses. Our present day celebration of a child's first birthday harkens back to a time when many babies died in their first months of life (often during childbirth) and so reaching the one year mark was truly a cause to celebrate.

I think it's nearly impossible for us to understand what a terrible and fearsome world this used to be because while we have not been able to domesticate all of the wild powers of this planet (hurricanes for example), we are able to explain their origins and predict the paths of their destruction. We also know how to prepare for the wrath they bring. Also, modern medicine has extended the length and quality of life in ways that no one could have dreamed of two hundred (let alone two thousand plus) years ago and even when cures are beyond the abilities of modern medicine, death and demise are usually able to be explained in clinical terms.

Science has allowed us to subdue much of what used to terrorize by linking causes to effects. This has led to a subconscious intolerance for that which we can't predict or understand and I think this has tainted our view of God. It has led to the view of God where some believe that we can influence or predict the behavior of God the way we do natural, physical phenomenon. Some believe we can do this by praying a certain way (more on this idea further down) or recognizing the signs of the times.

I think it is a mistake to lessen our fear of God the way we've lessened our fear of nature. God is as much of a unexplainable terror today as thunder and lightning were to the disciples. I think the easiest way to acknowledge this is to concede that God is God and can do whatever it is he wants to do.

It's this fear that is the foundation for the wisdom spoken of in Psalms and in Proverbs. Yes, God cares for us and provides for our needs the way he does for the birds and the lilies but he does so out of love and grace, not because he has to.

Let me approach this from another angle.

Normally the sentiment, "God is God and can do whatever it is he wants to do" is compacted down into a single, handy word known as omnipotence and it sounds more innocuous when condensed like that but when you unpack that word, don't you find something like what I just put forward above? So as politically incorrect and cold as it may sound, I really do believe that God does not have to explain himself - the things he does and doesn't do. And while that notion may offend our ideas of freedom and accountability, they don't apply to God because well, who are we to judge?

In Romans 9:14-24, Paul takes on this very idea of God's sovereignty and our disrespect in questioning it. "But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?" Again, as offensive as it may sound to us, we have no right to question God. I mean, sure we can ask whatever questions we want but God is under no obligation to provide an answer.

Think about the Book of Job. Most of that book is made up of Job asking God why a huge set of calamities have plagued him and in the end, does God explain himself to Job? No. He spends four chapters questioning Job, basically asking Job what his credentials are and how they give him the right to question him.

This uncensored view of omnipotence has actually been a boon for me because I spent my formative years as a christian in churches where they preached what I've previously called transactional theology. I would frequently hear sermons where the pastor would say that if you did so and so then God would do such and such. This equation could take the form of the personal, "if you pray for your spouse in a certain way then God will bless your marriage," or the political, "if this group of lost people would just repent from their evil ways then God would bless this nation."

On a personal note, there are two things that I've always wanted from God: to meet and eventually marry my wife and to interact with him in the personal way that I've heard so many other christians talk about. With both of these desires I was told by many church leaders and christian books what I needed to do in order to have God bring these things into my life. But no matter what I tried, I remained single and God remained silent. And for a long time, I beat myself up about this, thinking that I wasn't good enough or trying hard enough or reading the right books because the way I was hearing the advice, it seemed like a sure thing. If I did the proper actions then, like cause and effect, God would respond with the desired outcome. But that's not the way things went down.

It was when I finally realized that God doesn't jump through hoops that I was able to make peace with my situation in life. I came to understand that God is free to impart or withhold whatever blessings he choses and so not receiving what I prayed and tried to work for was not necessarily a result of a lack of some spiritual effort on my part but was merely the way God chose to let my life play out. I was able to relax because as far as I could tell, my being single and not being able to hear from God was not the result of a character flaw or some lack of special knowledge that I wasn't privy to. It was just God's will.

Some might object that such a view of God makes him out to be unfair or cruel or capricious, but how so? I mean, isn't it infinitely more unfair for us mere created creatures to object to the one who crafted the universe, to accuse him of giving us stones when we asked for bread? Isn't it cruel of us to forget our place in God's created order and to criticize him for not acting as we think he should - and this after he left the splendor of heaven to commune with us on this dusty, depraved planet, eventually dying an unimaginably cruel and unjust death for we spoiled creatures.

No, I think viewing God in all of his omnipotent autonomy leads to the opposite view - that any and all blessings he imparts are not something he is obliged to provide, rather they are unfathomably loving acts of infinite, unimaginable kindness and benevolence. Simply put, we don't deserve anything from God (apart from judgement) and so anything we have that is good in our life is there only by his amazing grace.

Thanks be to God.

271. truly, a gift from God

Christianity has been under attack by atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, and to be fair, I think we deserve it. Let me state unequivocally that I find a literal, seven day account of creation to be indefensible. Likewise, I think the more recent arguments for Intelligent Design, while not as bankrupt as those in the young earth creationism camp, are still woefully eclipsed by the torrential avalanche of evidence that supports good 'ol Darwinian Evolution. So as a christian, I find it frustrating and disheartening to see creationists and ID advocates act as the mouthpiece for the christian position in areas where science and faith overlap. This so often being the case, I think it's no wonder that the church is thought to be populated by anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, Biblical literalists who deserve to be mocked by atheists.

That's why I was thrilled to find this fascinating mini-debate/discussion between host of the podcast, Point Of Inquiry, D.J. Grothe, and Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Grothe had Collins on his show to talk about Collins' book, The Language of God, where he talks about the compatibility of science and faith - that choosing one does not mean one has to reject the other.

What I find so refreshing about this discussion is his rejection of dishonest tactics on both sides of the debate between believers and atheists. One of my favorite bits comes about thirty one minutes into the discussion where he talks about how centuries before Darwin and the idea that the universe is billions of years old, Saint Augustine did a close study of Genesis and found that it was not meant to be taken literally. He goes on to say that a strictly literal interpretation of the creation story is a very recent development in the grand scheme of biblical studies.

I really hope to be able to pick up Collins' book soon (that damn budget) because if it's half as thrilling as he is in this debate, it'll be a a book that will knock my socks off.

Again, you can hear the debate here:

http://cache.libsyn.com/pointofinquiry/POI_2007_08_31_Francis_Collins.mp3

270. a layman's theology

As of late, I've obviously been a very reluctant writer. And while I'd like to feign ignorance, I know exactly why I've been silent. There are ideas I want to write and think about but they're big ideas that will take up a lot of time and words so let me be plain about it: I'm lazy.

But over the past few days, I found a link to an article on Mother Teresa from three different places, and it's this article that has (finally) put me back to working at words. It's a fascinating, challenging article about letters that Mother Teresa wrote to confidants about years of not feeling the presence of God as she ministered to the impoverished in Calcutta - an absence that "seems to have started at almost precisely the time she began tending the poor and dying in Calcutta, and -- except for a five-week break in 1959 -- never abated."

This article resonated with me because I'm one who can't really remember any kind of personal experience with God. Well, I take that back. Something about the gospel presentations I heard back when I was a Sophomore in high school touched a fundamental (poor word choice, sorry...if you don't get it, don't worry about it) part of me such that I decided to...well, looking back now, I'm not sure what it was I was deciding to do, but I knew that I felt a calling to something larger than myself and so I signed on.

What followed were years of trying to figure out how to do this thing called Christianity. I joined Christian clubs, I read Christian books, I (unfortunately) listened to Christian music, I went to church where I helped out in whatever ways I could, I did my best to read my Bible and pray in the morning. Basically, I did all the things that the sermons and the books I was reading told me were the things to do to be a good Christian.

But I never found anything that I would call a relationship.

For a long time this troubled me because talk of "relationship with God" was ubiquitous in Christian circles (at least the ones that I found myself in). It seemed like everybody was chatting it up with God, kicking it with Jesus. I kept trying to figure out what it was I wasn't doing, what it was that I didn't get. There were lots of times when I wondered if I wasn't good enough for God or if he didn't converse with me because of some innate character flaw.

Well, after years of feeling this way, wondering about this whole relationship with God thing and why it was that I wasn't in the loop, I finally just accepted that God does indeed commune with some people in an intimate manner and I wasn't one of them. I suppose I could have come to the conclusion that people who talked about their relationship with God were deluding themselves or that they were using a metaphor in a way that seemed far to literal, but I'd been around too many amazing, sincere Christians who really did seem in tune with something of the divine and I refused to discount their experiences just because I wasn't having them.

My coming to grips with the whole relationship bit is just one of the issues with Christianity that I've made my own peace with. Anyone who's been reading this blog for a while knows that I've asked a lot of questions about Christianity and how I understand it versus the way it was explained to me in the churches I attend years ago. Most of these questions were written in times of great frustration (see blog 179 and blog 201 for examples) but you know, another reason I haven't been writing as much lately is because I've made a kind of peace with all of those old questions.

I don't go so far as to say I have the answers to questions like, "what is the role of the church?" or "what is the Kingdom of God that Jesus keeps refering to?" or even "what is salvation - what are we saved from or saved into?" I mean, there are the shallow, Sunday school answers that go something like, "the role of the church is to worship God," and "the Kingdom of God is what heaven will be like," and "salvation is what keeps us from going to hell," but I was never satisfied with those answers and so I pushed and probed and I blogged and I read books and ever so slowly, I started to find my own answers.

What I hope to do in the coming weeks/months is to share my newfound thoughts on Christianity - how I made peace with the questions that used to plague me. I don't have any format in mind and I don't know what topics I'll cover in which order. Basically I'm going to shoot from the hip and share what comes to mind first and then go from there. It'll probably be a bit wooly and rough around the edges, but I'll do my best.

My hope is that I'll be able to offer some insight for those who are asking the same sorts of questions. I don't claim any kind of authority and I certainly don't have the academic credentials to be taken too seriously but at the same time, I think the gospel that Jesus preached is available to all people - not just those who went to seminary. I guess you could call what I'm trying to do a kind of layman's attempt at constructing a theology that works for him.

Sounds like fun, no?

....don't answer that.

269. it begins with a run

I went for a run yesterday.

A small gesture, but a very important one. See, without even noticing it had happened, a few days ago I realized that I had fallen into a rut - a very comfortable, very unproductive rut. I think the whole work situation greased the slide down into this rut, but it hit me after almost two weeknights straight of playing the most inane online games imaginable (playing them night after night until I was too tired to keep my eyes open) that I realized that I needed to make a change. And the run was a small step out of the rut, but it was an important one and it felt good.

But it's just a first step.

Couple other background items before I can get to what's really on my mind.

A few days ago, I took a long hard look at my budget, comparing income to outgo, and it was a sobering experience. I didn't think I was spending that much but I couldn't figure out why I wasn't able to add to my savings account. After running the figures through a basic budgeting program, it became clear to me that I needed to cut way back on my spending if I wanted to purchase some big ticket items I had my eye on.

While working on my budget, I thought about my job and how un-fulfilling (to put it mildly) it was. I thought about quitting and getting a different job and that's when I had another sobering realization.

I don't really know what I want to do after the band thing gets played out. I mean, if I could wave a magic wand and conjure up any career I wanted for myself, I'd make myself a successful writer of short stories and screenplays but I don't have a magic wand and sorcery is generally looked down upon by the church. Now I know I have some regular readers and I'm grateful for their belief in my writing abilities but let's be honest - a writing career is a poor plan B, even if I was as talented as Anne Lamott or as disciplined as Aimee Bender (who writes for "two hours everyday, that's the law"), it would STILL be a poor plan B.

So I started to ask myself, "what am I going to do after the band thing?" And then I went on craigslist to see what kind of jobs were posted and there was absolutely NOTHING I was interested in even trying. I felt like Lloyd Dobler in the movie Say Anything when he says, "I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that." And it's not that I'm lazy, I do want to do good work, it's just that I don't know what kind of good work I want to do.

And this seems unrelated, but it leads nicely into what I want to end with. This weekend, I saw the movie Stardust (yes, it was within my budget) with some friends and to be honest, the main reason I saw the movie was not because I thought it was going to be good (I didn't) but because it starred (no pun) Claire Danes (sigh). Turns out, the movie was actually quite delightful - a wonderful story as long as you don't ask too many hard questions at some of the plot turns.

It's a fairy tale, and like many of the genre, it has to do with a boy who stumbles into a situation that is far larger than he is. In this case, Tristan, a humble stableboy, hopes to win the heart of a girl by crossing a wall that leads to a magical kingdom called Stormhold to bring back a falling star but it turns out that the star has turned into a girl named Yvaine. Word gets out around Stormhold that a falling star has landed and two parties set out after it (a prince and a witch) because possessing the heart of a star leads to immortality. Through the course of the movie, Tristan the stableboy becomes Tristan the brave, sword-weilding hero and of course everyone lives happily ever after.

I mention the movie because there's one scene where Tristan and Yvaine are trapped in the brig of a sky pirate. They need to escape but Tristan complains that he's just a regular guy and not up to the task. Yvaine tells him that there are stableboys and then there are people who are only stableboys until they find their true calling and she believes, of course, that Tristan is one of the latter.

Because I was already thinking about my budget and my job and getting myself out of the rut I was in, this bit of the movie really resonated with me. I know there are lots of things I could do after the band, but most of them have to do with "regular" jobs. Way down deep, there's a little mustard seed of hope that believes I can take a bite out of the world, that I can make it better in some fundamental way. And I don't mean playing nice with boxes in a warehouse, I mean Martin Luther and his 95 Theses, Martin Luther King Jr. and his Dream. I mention these two not just because of their related names but also because they made a place for themselves in history by working to make the world a more just and beautiful place - a world more like Eden and less like Babylon. See, I don't want to be great or to be known or famous, but do want to make the world a better place to live and I want to do so in the largest way possible.

And I don't know what that will look like or how I'll get there but yesterday I went for a run.

And that's a manageable start.

268. injury plus insult

Another update on the work situation.

So, um, guess who won the Employee of the Quarter award last week? I'll give you a hint: it wasn't me.

Yeah, so last week Harold was christened Employee of the Quarter. Harold: I'll-do-the-easy-work-first-and-hope-that-someone-else-does-the-hard-bit Harold, take-a-break-whenever-you-can Harold, hoard-a-bunch-of-the-blue-carts-even-though-other-departments-need-them-more-than-we-do Harold.

Speaking of blue carts...no, I'll get to that in a second.

First I just want to make something clear. The thing that grinds me the wrong way isn't the fact that I didn't win Employee of the Quarter. I don't care about the award. It's the fact that HAROLD won because if Harold is an example of what my company considers an employee to be lauded, to be identified as a kind of ideal (because that's what these awards are supposed to do right?) then...then..then I honestly don't know what to say. When Harold told me about it I congratulated him with a smile then walked down one of the rows of boxes where he couldn't see me and then I...well, I didn't know what to do because it all seemed so surreal. I just shook my head and went back to stacking boxes.

The rest of the day went by in a kind of daze but late in the afternoon I got a message saying that people had been noticing a number of blue carts in our department - these are heavy duty blue dollies used to move boxes around the warehouse. Late in the afternoon, all the orders that are due to go out the next day get printed out and get distributed among the workers. If you get your list of orders and can't find a cart for yourself then life sucks for you.

In our department, I'd been noticing that we had a surplus of these carts but Harold guarded them jealously and I wasn't about to risk pissing him off by suggesting that we share them. Well, I guess word finally got out to the other departments and the same afternoon when Harold won the EOQ award,I got the message to give up a couple of our carts. I told them, "no problem, I'll wheel them over myself."

Thankfully, Harold had gone home by the time I got the request so I didn't have to tell him we were getting rid of some of our carts but as I was wheeling them out to the department that was requesting them, I noticed a bunch of people giving me stink eye (a Hawaiian Pigeon English term - I think in the mainland it's called the hairy eyeball or the evil eye). See they probably thought that both Harold AND I were hoarding all the carts for ourselves. Thing is, I've never brought a cart into our department, and while I've never actually seen Harold bring a cart into our department, there's only two of us in our department so who else could it have been? Oh, that and the fact that he's told me on a couple occasions that he's grabbed some carts for our section.

So here I am, wheeling these carts out so other people can use them and people are looking at me with a gaze that says, "hey asshole, thanks for finally sharing those with the rest of us." And I wanted to tell them that I wasn't the one stealing them. I wanted to tell them that Mr. Employee of the Quarter was the one filching them but I bit my tongue and just put the carts back where they belonged.

Injury plus insult makes for a pretty severe test of my spreading-the-Kingdom-in-secret philosophy. Truth be told, I've been noticing this week that it's been harder than usual to keep myself motivated enough to work to the standard I set for myself, and it's usually hard enough as it is.

But I've been thinking about the passage in Matthew 11:28-30 where Jesus tells us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. I notice that he didn't say, "my hammock is comfortable and my pillow is fluffy." Even though he promises rest for our soul, it still requires a yoke and a burden, easy and light as they are.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though that day last week did its best to upset me, I'm soldiering on as best I can.

267. two quotes

Update on the work situation, Harold has inexplicably been doing better. He's been getting more work done and with fewer errors which is a relief to me because a nuclear bomb of a project just got dumped on our section and we both need to be operating at full capacity to get it all done on time.

Maybe this sounds bizarre but even though my job doesn't involve much personal interaction (most of my day is spent with boxes and files), I've come to believe that doing my job with excellence is just as valid a way of spreading the Kingdom of God as any. Here's what I mean.

Being an agent for the Kingdom (aka being a Christian) means making the world around you a bit more ordered and beautiful than when you found it and doing this as often as you can in whatever way you can. I used to think that doing Kingdom work only counted when you were working with people (preferably widows, orphans, and/or the poor). This thought always troubled me because I'm a pretty introverted person - meeting new people stresses me out and I hate making small talk. As an introvert, I used to think that I was useless as a Christian since I don't like talking to people on planes or while waiting in line at the bank or at the grocery store.

I'm not sure how I came to see things differently but I've come to the conclusion that spreading the Kingdom of God involves ANY activity that makes the world look or feel more like it would if the Fall had never happened. For me at my workplace, this means that when I take a few extra seconds (and that's usually all it takes) to straighten up files in a box (instead of leaving them cluttered), I'm doing a bit of Kingdom work. When I tape up a box that's about to fall apart instead of just throwing it back up on the shelf they way everyone else would, that's Kingdom work.

Some might question how doing this very impersonal work counts as fulfilling The Great Commission and while the results aren't as tangible as, say, a Billy Graham crusade, it's the bit of the world where God has placed me and I will tend to it as best as I know how. That is what it is to be a Christian. That is how God's will gets done on earth as it is in heaven.

But, some might object, it's just a box of files.

Yeah, it's just a box of files but you know what? When I initially opened that box of files and saw how messy it was, I felt shat upon because the person who had been at that box last didn't care enough about the next person to leave it in an orderly fashion. I like to think that when I take that little bit of extra time to straighten up the files before putting the box back, that when the next person pulls that box out they will be surprised by how nice it is inside and how easy it is to flip through the contents to find the file they need.

Now our warehouse holds millions of boxes and tens of millions of files so it sounds stupid of me to say that my tidying up the hundred or so boxes per day that I deal with makes any discernible difference. And it's not like people can tell who straightened up a box or even that the box was straightened up at all - for all they know, the box just arrived from the client and so it had never been messy or out of order before they got to it.

True enough but take a look at Matthew 6:1-15 - a portion of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus outlines the agenda of his Kingdom. There's a lot of talk about not doing things for show but doing things in such a way that only God sees the good that you do. I don't think this doing-things-in-secret only applies to giving alms and praying. I think it applies to each and every area of our lives. Sure, I might never get credit for all the tidying up I do, but it's not about getting credit. It's about doing the right thing even if (especially when) God is the only one watching.

Now before you get the wrong idea, let me confess that I'm not always up to the task. Sometimes because of a looming deadline, sometimes because I'm just too lazy, sometimes because I'm just not in the mood, I do leave a box as messy as when I found it. My bad.

Two quotes that help me work the way that I do:

First, Mahatma Ghandi said, "You must be the change you want to see in the world."

I think of what an amazing place work would be if everyone treated boxes and files the way I do when I am at my best. That would kick ass but I'm not holding my breath.

That's where the other quote keeps me going.

In her book, Plan B: Further Thoughts On Faith, Anne Lamott writes about the nonviolent social activist, A.J. Muste and how during the Vietnam War, he stood outside the White House holding a candle night after night. On one of these nights a reporter asked Muste if he really thought his vigil would change the policies of the United States.

Muste replied, "Oh, I don't do it to change the country, I do it so the country won't change me."

In my previous post, I talked a bit about how I felt like work was changing me into someone I wasn't. Muste's quote is a bulwark against that tide. Maybe no one will ever notice the work I do to keep boxes neat and tidy. That doesn't matter because I'm not doing it to get noticed. I'm doing it so that this relentless, impersonal job doesn't change me. And that's far more important than recognition.

266. work sucks

(Note to self, try writing shorter posts and maybe you'll post more often.)

Lately, I've really been hating my time at work. Mine was never a job I took for fun or fulfillment, rather I purposely took on a relatively menial, brainless job so I could save my creative energies for after work. Thing I've been finding though is that when you spend eight hours per day, five days a week on meaningless work, that meaningless tends to cling to your psyche - kind of like the black alien goo (Venom) that takes over people in Spiderman 3, only without the superpowers or the cool costume.

Now I've been at unfulfilling jobs before but the big difference between this job and those jobs is that I've never felt so unappreciated and unimportant - basically disposable. But honestly, that's not a huge deal. I pretty much expected that. What really grinds me about this job is my coworker - let's call him Harold.

Normally I don't like to dis on people, but the fact is, this guy is unorganized, impatient, selfish, and while I wouldn't go so far as to say he's lazy, he certainly doesn't know how to prioritize. Given the choice between tackling a difficult task with a looming deadline or doing something easier that's due a few days later, he'll take the easy way. Oh, and he likes to start stuff but he doesn't like to follow through and finish. Couple this with his lack of organizational skills and off the top of my head I can name three projects that should have been done from start to finish that were only started.

All this pisses me off because one, it makes me look bad because it looks as if our section doesn't have its shit together and two, it makes my work that much harder because his unfinished projects impinge on my ability to get my own work done.

A few months ago, I would just go in and finish his half-baked projects just to get them off the board but I'm sick of it and I'm not going to keep saving his ass.

But.

But this isn't like me and I don't like what this situation is doing to me.

Normally, I go out of my way to help and at first, that's what I did with Harold. Helping him finish his work made our department look on top of things and it also made work run more smoothly for me (because things were organized). But I started to realize that I was enabling Harold's sloppy work ethic so recently I've started to leave him to his own devices, even if I knew a train-wreck would result, even if I knew we'd both be left scrambling when crunch time came around.

Letting things go to hell like this isn't me and I'm wondering if not being me at work is leading to me not being me outside of work as well.

Here's what I mean.

When Harold does a half-assed job, I suppose it's because he doesn't give a shit. But I do. As a Christian, I work as if I'm working for God, not for my supervisor (Colossians 3:22-24). Now maybe this is taking the idea too far but when I think of "working for the Lord," I lump in the section I work in as a part of that so in a way, when I stop saving Harold's ass all the time and thus let things get a bit more sloppy than I would like (but still within company standards), I feel like I'm not being true to myself or my calling. Does that make any sense?

I suppose I should bring some of my issues up with Harold, but here's the thing. He's been with the company for more than five years whereas I have yet to make one year here. Who am I to tell him how to do his job? Well then I could talk to my supervisor about the situation but it's just Harold and I in our section of the company and if the supervisor comes down hard on Harold because of something I say, that could make a lame work environment downright hostile (did I mention that Harold has a really short fuse?) And again, ratting people out is also not normally a part of my personality and so I feel like I'm stuck in a bind.

(note to self, try writing shorter posts)

265. don tomate

Okay, sorry about that. This has, by far, been the longest stretch between posts I've ever allowed myself. Before this, the longest "break" I took was back in July/August of '06 (see blog 219).

So why the long break?

As strange as it sounds, I've been asking myself the same thing for weeks, because I just wasn't posting and it wasn't that I didn't want to post, it wasn't that I didn't have anything to write about, it wasn't even plain ol' laziness because I did want to write...only, I didn't actually write anything - at least nothing that made it to the posting stage.

And then yesterday at lunch while eating my tuna sandwich and reading The Cannon by Natalie Angier, it hit me. Angier's book is about the fundamentals of the sciences, and it was while reading her chapter on scale and measurement that I realized that I had lost my sense of wonder at the world. And you can't write without wonder. Well, you can but it's not going to be very fun to write and certainly no fun at all to read.

See, Angier was saying something about how so much of our understanding of the world is tied into things that are sized relatively close to us. For example, it's pretty easy for us to understand how large one inch, one foot, or one mile is, even if we don't use a ruler. That's because we're used to operating at a scale where inches, feet, and miles are tossed around all the time. However, when it cones to understanding how small a nanometer is (a human hair is about 80,000 nanometers wide) or that the nearest star to our planet (besides the sun) is Proxmia Centauri - a mere 4.2 light years away (24,000,000,000,000 miles) which is a tiny distance considering that the galaxy closest to ours is 2.5 million light years away.

According to Angier, understanding the world at the nanometer level or the intergalactic level is nearly impossible for us because they are so beyond anything we could ever experience with our limited senses.

Now I can't remember exactly how it was that I went from Angier talking abut scales to my minor epiphany, but I realized that the world has become wonderless. And while I love science (which is why I'm reading Angier's book) and what science has done for the world, I also blame science for sucking all of the wonder out of the world. Because as lovely as sunsets are, they are only so because the sun has to travel through more of the earth's atmosphere while near the horizon. As vital as love feels, it's a chemical process in the brain that leads to strong interpersonal bonds which makes for more successful child rearing - a favorable evolutionary trait (see here).

Take any part of nature or human experience that seems transcendent or worthy of awe and you can find a cold, mechanistic explanation for why or how it makes you feel that way. Is it any wonder that I (and many others, I suspect) have forgotten how to marvel at anything anymore? Doesn't all this scientific rationalism leave us with the feeling that we're naive to be dependent on these sloppy, archaic things called emotions?

You might get the idea that I've been morose and depressed all this time, thinking that science has sucked all the marrow from life, but that hasn't been the case. My emotions have been on an even keel - swinging between doing-fine-I'm-okay to whoopee-let's-go-fly-a-kite. But I think part of the reason I haven't been writing is because this whole science-has-an-explanation-for-everything thing has been a kind of invisible anchor.

To tell the whole truth, it's more than this science thing that's been holding me back. I'll talk about some of these other "anchors" in future posts, but (finally) here's what my little lunchtime epiphany taught me.

I need to find a way back to wonder and beauty and awe. But I can't just jettison what reason and science has taught me. I don't want to retreat into fantasy or absurdity (meaninglessness). But then how do we maintain our humanity in an increasingly mechanized/mechanistic world? And how do we make the case for Christianity when atheism is becoming more popular through authors like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins? And it's not that they're making new arguments, it's more that the idea of there not being a supreme deity is more acceptable now. How do we go about correcting the injustices of the world (like those perpetrated by, say, the United States) when even in the face of damning evidence of damnable actions, people seem far more interested in Friday's release of the iPhone (and yeah, I want one)?

Big problems, big questions. Small blog. But you (I) have to use what God has given me and so instead of being intimidated by what I'm up against, I need to get back at the business of jousting windmills.

Anchors aweigh!