A little bit of this, a little bit of that

Identity theft has become a pandemic sweeping our generation, not your credit and name going towards financing someone else’s pet projects, no, your hopes, your dreams, who you are and what you were meant to be have been strategically stolen, muddied, blurred and seduced in order to fuel someone’s pet project: the further attempt of abjection of any image of God. Much like a tenant under eviction, Satan knows he will not be able to keep this place — so he is intentionally wreaking as much destruction and havoc as he is allowed in order to make sure that as few as possible know what it is to be fully loved, fully valued and fully alive.

I know it sounds odd, however I’m writing this from the trenches, as someone who had a small taste of what that could feel like but is currently at the bottom again. I watched Braveheart tonight again for the first time in awhile and felt myself longing for that sort of passion of vision: the singular drive for a large Goal, not for me, but for others, that makes whatever work, whatever pain, whatever energy spent worth it. The vision to know who you are, without question. The vision to know what you’re fighting for and that it’s worth it. Doing something you are fully passionate about that energizes rather than exercises.

I want that. And I want that for you too.

I woke up this morning thinking abut the creation vs. evolution debate and have discovered that the debate is really useless and quite a red herring that many “Christians” are up in arms about. My reasoning? Let’s plot it out for a second:

Theory A: the universe happened by chance after a cosmic explosion which produced the shreds of life which over time came to be ordered and living in the manner we know it today.
Purpose: None — randomness
My Conclusion: Since there is no purpose to life other than possibly to sustain the evolutionary lines, why would I bother doing anything except that which makes me feel good?

Theory B: God created the universe, earth, people, plants, animals, etc in the blink of an eye — but is an impersonal God and is now off doing his thing somewhere else.
Purpose: unknown — because he wanted to?
My Conclusion: Since there is no purpose to life other than possibly to sustain life, why would I bother doing anything except that which makes me feel good?

Theory C: God created a base universe which exploded into being and has now evolved from the basic creatures he originally created — but is an impersonal God and is now off doing his thing somewhere else.
Purpose: unknown — because he wanted to?
My Conclusion: Since there is no purpose to life other than possibly to sustain life, why would I bother doing anything except that which makes me feel good?

Theory D: God created the universe, earth, people, plants, animals, etc whether in the blink of an eye and/or had evolutionary mechanisms in place for more growth and is a personal God, with a vested interest in our welfare, wants to know and have relationship with us and wants us to have a passionate, fulfilling life.
Purpose: unknown — I postulate that because of the fullness of his relationship and the deep creativity, God wanted to share that with others.
My Conclusion: Since there is more to life than getting by, I have something I can live and strive for and relationships that are worth the messiness. I can work to build for the future because I believe the future will exist for me and for others, even after I’m not living on Earth anymore.

So my point is this — it doesn’t matter what people are taught or believe about evolution or creation unless it’s in the context of a purposed life and a relational God. If we have no bigger purpose, then we’re living for ourselves today. If there isn’t a God who cares about us and our fulfillment, then there is no morality or reason for morality — which I believes makes the argument of ‘Do what feels good as long as you don’t hurt anyone’ moot — what does it matter if I hurt anyone in the process?

Let’s not spend our energy, words and reputation fighting a battle that won’t actually change hearts, let’s choose our battles wisely and fight them with intelligence and ferocity.

I’ve noticed a trend in hollywood movies — in the romantic guy A and girl A are a couple and girl A and guy B are friends (but meant to be) there is invariably the jackass litmus test that occurs in the script: the point at which she creates a situation to out guy A as a jackass and prove that guy B is the guy she really wants to be with. You can see that in the Wedding Singer when Glenn and Julia are on the airplane and she asks for the window seat. You can see it in wedding crashers when Claire and John play the speed slap game and then Claire creates the situation later with Sack. I’ve also seen it in Speechless when Julia asks Bob what his reaction would be if his partner admitted they cheated, and it’s returned to when she asks Kevin the same question at the end of the movie.

I don’t have a thought per se on this now — it’s just interesting, though I may amend it later.

I was reading Gen 1-3 and a couple of things struck me as interesting. In Gen 2 when God created man, he placed him in a garden with all sorts of trees that were visually pleasing and good to eat. In the center of the garden he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It struck me as interesting that placement; placing the very thing that will bring you life in close proximity to something that will bring about certain death. As I think about it as well, God told them “…for when you eat of [the tree of life] you will surely die.” It makes me wonder if I’ve skipped over the real meaning of this statement. I look at the statement and knowing the rest of the story and human history that that act brought about circumstances that eventually lead to their physical death.

I wonder if I’m amiss, however in thinking that this is what Jesus is countering when he says ‘I come to bring you life to the full’ — There is undoubtedly a reference to the life in the hereafter, but I also have to believe that both of these are referencing a spiritual and quality of life death and life as well.

I know that in my history, I have never felt more dead than when I’ve been pursuing things that are not of God and working to temporarily pacify the arrogant tantrums of my fractured soul. Conversely, I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m doing what I need to do, when my life is in order and I’m working towards being the man God has designed me to be. I think for me and for most of us, God has placed a tree of life next to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that’s been living in each of us for years. Many of us have eaten of the knowledge tree and while it may be gratifying, it’s not satisfying.

One of the other things that struck me as interesting as well was one of the lines from Gen 3 — Sometimes through the telephone game and not paying attention we can add or subtract details from what God has told us: “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it.’ It’s fascinating to me in reading that again that she has several things that are a bit off about her statement. The first is that she refers to it as ‘the tree that is in the middle of the garden,’ but there are two there diametrically opposed. The second is that somehow she got the idea that not only were they not supposed to eat it, they weren’t even supposed to touch it.

In thinking about this, I think many in the church suffer from this mentality, self included: as we go along, we lose focus on what things are and are not good for us and we get to the point where it’s so bad that not only should we not do it, but we shouldn’t even touch on it.

One of the things that comes strongly to mind here is teaching and talking about sex in church. Sex and sexuality is something that everyone deals with once their biology comes to term. In biology and commonality, it’s something as common as eating, sleeping and going to the bathroom — everyone who has the biological capacity has to deal with sex on some level. Understand me clearly: I am not relegating sex to an animalistic cycle of have need <-> satisfy need, I am saying that it is something that affects everyone frequently. I think that many times inthe church, discussing sex, for instance with your kids or with the youth in the youth group, etc, is something that is so private or even bad that it’s not discussed. And since it’s not discussed with good, holy, honest and God-led authority, our version of what we should or shouldn’t do, how we think about sex and how we deal with our own sexuality becomes very twisted to where we adhere to a rigid set of rules because that’s the way it is, we look at the rules to see which can be bent (because rules generally don’t explain WHY, they just lay out WHAT) or we experiment because we don’t understand the why.

Every one of us has a choice when we’re hungry — we can choose that which brings us life or we can choose that which brings us death. Similarly, I know I need to stay more grounded in the truth so that I know what God says on things so that I can have clarity in what he has for me.

Worry is a funny beast. Not funny as in the abominable snowplow, but funny strange. As I’ve been going through the stages of frustration, fatigue, a bit of burnout and stress, I find myself worrying about things that seem absolutely huge and this afternoon had an epiphany — the things that I’m consumed about are the foil which keeps me from thinking about the things that are really bothering me. Not going to get into specifics, but there’s a situation that has been in my thoughts for quite a bit now and I find my thoughts wandering off thinking about the situation and how it’s going to work out — I just realized that it’s not the situation that I’m worried about — the situation makes for a slightly more pleasant (if not neurotic) distraction from the things that are _really_ bothering me.

It may be a defensive thing. I know that growing up I never felt truly liked by anyone and thought that if I showed myself to be really smart or really good at things that people would like me — and it was somewhat true. The problem was that I wasn’t solving my need — I needed real connection with people who loved me, to know I was loved without condition, but that I was in fact feeding the very thing I didn’t want: people liked me for what I did, not who I was. I rarely had trouble getting into a team at lunch recess, I was decently good at most sports and often got to lead and rearrange things to my liking. But there was an unquenchable need that none of that could satisfy.

As I’m considering my current situation, I have some things that I should definitely take care of and not procrastinate doing any longer and I’m finding myself asking more and more often ‘What does it matter if
does or doesn’t happen?’ … yet some of the things that need to be done may appear scary enough that instead of actually considering how to deal with that, it’s easier to be consumed with worry about something else that might be more pleasant and exciting.

The thing I’m coming to realize is that as I plan and execute for the future that I’m going to become more and more settled in the right things to do, that I will have less to worry about because the things I need to do are being taken care of and everything else is gravy.

My goals for this week:
- Get more rest
- Eat foods that my body is going to like and use better
- Drink lots of water
- Walk/Exercise at least 2x this week
- Spend time talking and listening to God every day
- Let the other stuff take care of itself.

One of the interesting aspects of social networking is the plethora (tell me, pablo, do you know what a plethora is?) of applications and quizzes and surveys and how popular they are — primarily out of boredom — that people post online for their friends to read about them. On Facebook, one of those applications was the Love Languages application. Being that I’m fairly familiar with mine, I played with it and found that, as usual the questions were asinine and I found myself re-reading the answers looking for MY answer.

It got me thinking though as I IM’d my friend Nate about it, that I feel a bit strange because what others would perceive my incoming love language to be, it’s actually my outgoing love language. Those who know me at all know that I have a heart for service (even though my attitude isn’t that great sometimes) and that often I will want to do something for someone. I don’t know if it’s just a defense against having people near me or if it’s actually that it’s different, but I actually receive love in 2 different ways than Service. When someone does something for me, I usually feel deep gratitude, but not necessarily really loved. I usually feel most loved by knowing that someone wants to spend time with me and having appropriate physical touch.

I really understand the physical touch aspect of it because if my relationship with that person isn’t right, I don’t want them touching me and it bothers me when people who I don’t really trust are in my personal space for very long. I also understand the quality time/quality conversation aspect of it because when I have it in good ways, I feel much more loved and connected to someone — especially if they are initiating and I feel the loss when someone I care about does not want to do so anymore.

Am I weird? Definitely. I’m definitely thankful for my friends who continue to initiate, who like to spend time together and only expect me to be the best me I can be — nothing more, nothing less. Thanks guys.

So on Saturday, skittles and I headed off to Irvine to check out the OC Flyball Winter Games. You can check out information about flyball here (ocregister.com) and here (ocflyball.org). The group describes it as doggie drag racing — 2 teams of 4 dogs and handlers compete to see how quickly each team can have each dog in series jump over a series of obstacles, jump on a special box which ejects a ball and take the ball back across the finish line. Only one dog per team can be across the line at a time and missing or going around obstacles or going over to the other team’s run is grounds for disqualification for the run. From what I saw as well, the competitions are based on the best of 3 runs for each team and the dogs and handlers all get into it. I’ve never heard such a cacophony of barking in my life but it was a lot of fun.

As I was trading emails with someone today, I realized that Flyball can be an illustration of how we go about life:

I think in life there are some of us that are very pleased just to run around with the chew toy and our handler. Some of the dogs at the show looked the happiest when they had a ball or toy they were carrying around.

Some of us just sit on the sidelines and bark at what we feel like barking at or squeal because we can’t get out and play with the others.

Some of us get into the race, jump the obstacles and at the last minute decide that the other ball in the other box looks more interesting and so we’ll go over there, which unfortunately interferes with the other team and gets us disqualified from the race.

And then there’s the few that bound with joy over the obstacles to the goal, jump on the box with glee, grab the ball and race home where the handler’s cheering us on the whole way. Not around the obstacles, but over them, not lackadaisical but with speed and with the joy of just going for it. May we be the team who run the race set out for us well, who hop on the box with glee and go exuberantly back to the Master.

As I’ve been working one of the songs that came across my playlist was John Mayer’s “Love Song for No One” and it struck me as funny because I had lived my life that way for many years. Now, while I’m excited about being in a relationship at some point and being married at some point, I’m not in a hurry to get there and I’m not in a hurry for THEM to get here. I’m an introvert, so I actually _like_ being alone, in my space with nobody intruding on it.

Take your time getting here, I want to finish my book

While I was in the area at church last night where they serve food for the production volunteers I witnessed something that was both funny and sad at the same time when it comes to relationships and church life. One of our creative guys was working on something and when I came back there are 4 girls sitting against the wall talking to him — I may have it wrong, but I believe he said he was being interrogated — but I digress. As I listened to the conversation they were talking about an event coming up for Valentines day and was asking who he was taking and whatnot, to which he replied ‘Well, it’s not a couples event, there are guys tickets and girls tickets, not couples tickets.’ While that response didn’t go over too well, the girls proceeded to discuss amongst themselves (by name) who it would be great to set him up with.

When he asked them why they were trying to set him up their response was ‘We’re hoping you will set US up too’. After a few more people joined, he made a comment (that I didn’t hear) and one of the newcomers responded ‘I don’t get it, how did this event become about marriage with guys?’

The girls did by applying pressure about this guys’ private life and wanting to set him up — not because he and someone would be a great match together — but because he “needed” to be set up with someone — anyone! What I have seen over time is that given time and space, people will naturally gravitate to one another. Sometimes a matchmaker may look at two people and see a good pairing and make a suggestion to both parties but that takes into account how both people are and is a suggestion rather than pressure. When applying pressure, it simply illustrates the relational gossip progression that sadly infuses church culture.

The relational gossip progression in church goes something like this: If they’re single, people wonder who they’re interested in. If they’re talking, people wonder if they’re interested or dating. If they’re casually dating someone, people wonder when they’re going to make it official. If they’re official, people wonder when they’re going to get engaged, then married, then kids, etc. Frankly that whole hamster wheel puts pressure on guys and girls and it’s not welcome. When people lack a connection to each other and engage in questions on their personal life it does not foster trust and it doesn’t foster community — primarily because people engaged in information discovery are not motivated by getting to know the other person better, they’re motivated by getting to personal information.

This kind of gossip fishing is damaging to relationships and communities because it attempts to seduce intimacy from someone with nothing in return. It doesn’t build the other person up, it doesn’t encourage growth and it acts as a hinderance to actual relationship because it puts a block both between the seducer and their victim as well as the victim and the person being discussed.

I’m not going to tolerate it in my life, I encourage you to examine yourself to see if your conversational ethics are in order.

Yourself is a sad, lonely man who lives on a hill in Siberia. He says it’s somewhat cold, but it’s a dry cold, so much more tolerable. Yourself likes candle-lit dinners and sunset walks on the tundra with his Yak, ‘Yak’. Sometimes when he needs entertainment, he puts acorns in the ice to frustrate the squirrels.