Ask + Right Answer = Faith

Lately I've noticed that my faith in God is directly proportional to the amount of times that he gives me what I want. It's like the more prayers he answers (by answer I mean answers yes to whatever I'm asking for) the more willing I am to give and to feel secure in my faith.

Honestly, sometimes it frustrates me. To think of God as an unreasonable elitist who requires his followers to give things up, to measure themselves by an impossible standard. God wants us to sacrifice in order that we might gain?

I've heard it once, and it makes sense, that when God tells us not to do things, he's not arbitrarily throwing around rules for some divine amusement, really, what he's saying is "Don't hurt yourself."

Don't cheat on your wife. Don't hurt yourself

Don't steal. Don't hurt yourself

Don't concern yourself too much with possessions, people or feelings. Don't hurt yourself.

Because these things will hurt.

My experiences only confirm this. Any time I've spent following my own plan, earning my own trust, spending time distancing myself from where God wants me, has resulted in insecurity, worrying and pain in myself and others.

I'm always going to struggle with contentment, sometimes I feel like God could give me the perfect job/wife/car/child and I would still wonder if there were something more out there. It's my Achilles and I want nothing more than to overcome it. I'm learning though, that you can't crawl out of a hole by digging deeper (trite analogy.)

Freedom isn't found in having everything, it's found in having nothing and wanting nothing.

Pray for me.

How many times have you prayed healing for a sick friend? How many times have you asked someone to pray for you?

If God's will is that you are sick, you are sick right? If God's will is that you are suffering, you are suffering.

Is it God's will then, if you make a decision and are forced to suffer the consequences? Something profound has crept into my thoughts (through the help of Mr. Eldredge)

What if we understand that it IS possible to live outside of God's will? That God's will is his perfect path, but we're able (and often do) choose another way.

It is possible to live outside of God's will. To choose another way. If there was no way, why pray? Why evangelize? Why ponder the deepest meanings of scripture or recycle?

Because it's possible that we haven't made God happy. Think about the Lord's Prayer -- A scripture memorized by Catholics and Christians alike.

"Thy Kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven."

Why would Jesus tell his disciples to pray this way if it weren't true? Nowhere else in the bible does God have us repeat some mantra, in fact there are myriad verses describing that we're saved by faith, rather than works (Eph. 2:8 for example.)

So why, if God's will was not up for our choosing, would Jesus bother to pray for it? God doesn't seem interested in rote memorization.

But, what if God in his perfection created us to have stories that ended in us, and stories that ended in God and the ability to choose between them?

In one is found the peace of God's action, in the other, no promise of security. But each were written by the same Hand.

It almost seems like parallel events are happening in heaven, God's perfect will being acted out, and Jesus is begging God that what happens here on earth be a reflection of the goings-on upstairs.

Where people are choosing God's will.

So when Jesus prays this, he's asking that the perfect will of heaven would be made to happen here. On earth.

God's will is present in our lives, whether or not we are living it is our fight.

Green is the New Red (Herring)

Al Gore released his report showing that there's been no change in the climate since he released his Oscar-winning "An Inconvenient Truth."

There's an interesting phenomena that surrounds tragedy. It seems that people, regardless of their affiliation, like to surround themselves, at least partially, or perhaps "voyeristically", in tragedy. It's the reason people line up to attend the funerals of their acquaintances. There's a certain commiseration in corporate suffering.

I think the same thing is happening with "Global Warming." Now, I don't know exactly where I stand on the subject, I believe it's an issue the needs attention, but I think it's a bit blown out of proportion.

It's moved beyond a humanitarian concern to become a political and economical necessity. If you want people to vote for you, make sure you include the words "Green, Sustainable, Environment" in any order. If you want to sell cars, make sure you have a green leaf or similarly nature-themed icon located on your car.

I think we've been inoculated by our mass-hysteria. There is a placid sense of security, knowing that our impending doom is solvable, and solvable only through believing in our mighty government.

I'm not prone to conspiracy theories, but think about it. I don't believe our government created global warming, but isn't it possible that they've perpetuated it? Or at the very least supported it?

In hysteria, we become weak. We become needy, we become dependent. Isn't that an old military tactic? Starve the country and take them over? What if our recent obsession with sustainability has left us insecure and defenseless?

Here's the gravest injustice. While we're all paying attention to the waving hand of global warming, we're not paying attention to the suffering, and hunger and disease which is real, and not hypothetical.

People are dying today. The ice caps are melting tomorrow.

Being an A-hole is something that never came naturally to me. It's just the sort of business you fall into. Like answering a mystery ad. in the paper, or taking over your father's business.

I feel like an actor some of the time. Like I'm playing a role designed for someone else, a better actor, someone who wants to be an actor. I've always wanted to know, and to be known.

Pride is an anchor dragging, weighing into me in still moments that require my strength. The anchor that proves me, that qualifies me.

It jumps in front of my character, speaking quickly, before integrity can answer, calling all of the camera's attention. It steals every first impression, and preceeds my physical presence, often my representative speaking on my behalf.

My New Book.

I want to write a book, I just don't know what about.

I think the crazy stuff I think of would make a fine book, maybe a "Blue Like Jazz" meets "The Great Gatsby." That would be excellent.

I'll call it "Hemingway and Fitzgerald are Raging Inside Me"

Unfinished.

I have probably 500 unfinished stories and just as many songs in the same condition. I don't know why I can't seem to finish anything, the more I realize myself the more I'm understanding how distractable I really am.

I'm tired of being inside my head so much. This slothful start to a spring break has got me thinking about how much I really like being busy if only so that I don't have time to sit and think. Must turn the editor off.

I'm just sick of thinking about myself so much, not in a (well possibly in a) self-centered way but really, I'm tired of it. I think maybe it's God's agenda, the more we think about ourselves the more empty we realize that paradigm is.

See how distractable I am?

I want to start less sentences with "I."

Maybe the reason I have trouble finishing things is because I'm afraid to. I think that's what alcoholics call "a moment of clarity." I think that if I finish something, I'll be afraid of how good it's not. It's really easy to talk about all the things I "almost" did.

It's really easy because you don't have the responsibility of ownership. When you finish something it's done, and it's over and a new project waits to be approached, but if you leave things unfinished, there's always the possibility of revisiting it, or better yet, there's NO responsibility involved, no real risk.

But, the consequences of living a life filled with "almosts" and half-written pages is an empty one.

I will finish something everyday, starting with this stupid unedited blog.

Changing our "self"

I've been bummed out for too long, trying to outrun the confines of my "predicted personality."

While I do feel like there is some credibility to that Meyers - Brigg test, I'm understanding that it doesn't take into account the transforming power of God. I believe that throughout those personality quizzes, if you were to replace every instance of "personality" with "tendency," it would yield a more accurate and encouraging result.

You see, because tendencies are changeable. They are "fluid" as my bro Travis says. Tendencies do not give you a road map of your inevitable destination, rather they give you a sort of prognosis as to where you "would" go, providing no changes were made.

Provided that you choose not to change.

So yeah, according to my Meyers-Brigg "tendency" scale, I have the natural inclination towards melancholy, and provided I never changed or perhaps even indulged my God-given tendencies, I would end up happiest working as a teacher, or a counselor or in management.

But God is bigger than any constraint. He's stronger than our self-fulfilling prophesies and with time, effort and God, we can truly become who we want.

And, with God helping, we'll become who He wants, which is the biggest we'll ever be.

God help us.

INFP

Apparently, this getting to know yourself thing is pretty hard.

Earlier this week I was given the results of my Meyers-Brigg personality test, it's a fairly long, complex psychological analysis tool aimed at reducing all of your quirks, intricacies, and tendencies into a compact, understandable four letter acronym. There's four categories and in each category there can only be one of two available results, with varying degrees.

My "MBTI" Meyers Brigg Test Indicator is: INFP

At first, knowing what it meant to me was great, it meant understanding that I am "Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving" this was great. All good things.

My experience got even better when I started reading the typical descriptions of what the characteristics of an INFP might be. Knowing that only about 1% of the population is made up of INFP's was great consolation. Affirmation that my feelings of being misunderstood and alone were founded on truth, I am misunderstood and semi-alone, just due to the fact that 99% of people aren't wired the same way.

Soon though, as I began to acquire more knowledge about what makes an INFP, I'm beginning to understand that the brooding melancholy note that plagues me, seems to define me. That is, most of what I'm reading tells me that I'm passionate while misunderstood, and deeply devoted though easily hurt.

The descriptions are starting to become discouraging; ranging from a list of occupations that I don't want, to understanding that I'll probably always be lost in my head and unhappy within most social settings. I hate that it's so accurate, as it just leads me to believe that even their prognosis is correct.

What if I am relegated to teaching? What if I am meant to live a life of encouragement, rather than participation? All of these things are starting to wear on me and I almost wish as if I hadn't taken the test, so maybe I would understand that my life is going to be a constant work in progress, that I'm always going to toil against my nature, but in doing so, I would grow and stretch and learn to love my diverse personality.

Should I learn to just accept myself? Or be frustrated that a test just told me that I'm very similar to a million lives I don't want?

Vague and pointless

I guess the decision was made for me.

DURHAM '08

I think, rather than lowering the tuition at schools, or spending taxpayer generated income on financial aid for prospective students, we should implement a mandatory two year "workforce" experience for new high school graduates.

Borrowing from (among others) the Swiss and Lebanese system of mandatory military service following high school graduation, a similarly mandatory workforce experience would do wonders to stimulate higher education enrollment as well as encourage students' success once admitted. I believe that by forcing students to find employment after graduation would stimulate the economy ten-fold:

1. A fully staffed workforce for "menial" (lower-wage earning) jobs, rotating every year.
   
2. A much higher enrollment in higher education
3. An overall lower amount of student loan debt
1. (This is due to the anticipated savings accrued during one's "workforce experience, perhaps an employer-paid wage-matching system involved)
   

These are just a handful of reasons supporting the success of the proposition. Mandating that EVERY high school student must spend two years washing dishes, laying tile, scrubbing toilets, painting houses or making fast-food ensures a higher probability of continuing one's education, that they may increase their odds of finding gainful employment.

I would argue that most people do not seek a life of uncertainty, where the job that pays the most at the time of their high school graduation is the job in which they want to plant themselves. I think that many people see college or any other system of higher education as an economic impossibility. The concept of student loans or applying for federal aid seems an insurmountable undertaking when taking into consideration the probable occurrence of typical obligations.

A student who gains a perspective on what the job outlook for newly-minted high school graduates is, is a well-prepared student. He/she would likely understand the pressures and their own squandered opportunity by participating in "grunt-work."

All-in-all my plan seems effective, and while none of this is supported by fact, I feel that it's a fairly accurate assessment of humanity.

Thank you.

Update

It's been a difficult and strange few weeks. I'm not sure about much anymore.

I know God is good, I'm sure about that.

Waking Up

For me at least, It's easy to think of God in key moments of life, when someone is down, when someone is sick, when I am either sick or down, or when something goes really right or when something goes really wrong. It's easy to go to God when my back is against a wall, but I'm realizing that that's not trust at all.

It's like a fair-weather friend calling you on holidays and birthdays. God is amazing everyday and knowing that should make us want to join him in it.

Being thankful has always been hard for me, but I've been truly humbled lately and It's coming easier. With all the variables in our bodies, between the trillion cells in us that need to synchronize perfectly, it's a miracle to just wake up.

It's 6:25, Thank you Father, for opening my eyes from sleep.

"If the only prayer you ever said was, 'Thank you.' that would be enough."

Meister Eckhart

Resolutions: Everyday

As I sit here waiting for sleep to quell my usual Sunday night anxiety, my eyes wont close and my brain won't slow. My late Sunday nights, caused by staying up late and sleeping in through the weekend usually result in a mind racing with possibilities, doubts, vague hope and prolonged unrest.

It's funny/sad that I took the time a few weeks ago to drive up to the mountains for some personal reflection/worship goal-writing and now I can't even remember where I put the notebook containing all of my profound resolutions.

There's a strange phenomenon at the gym around this time of the year. Each year, the first week in January finds the gym packed and buzzing with sweaty determination. Christmas present memberships are redeemed and bodies are changing. There's a waiting list for the stair-stepper and a line at the front counter.

Just a few weeks into the month however, the gym returns to about normal and stays this way until the first warm days of summer.

What happens between the beginning of a new year and a month into it? We lose focus, we forget about ambition and change and we return to the comfortable myopia that's kept us from achieving much of anything during the past year.

It's just so easy to stay comfortable and afraid. I'm confident that if we found a way to harness the drive and passion of new beginnings, we could change the amount of our lives every single day. What if we change our life, everyday?

I submit that every single day we're alive is an awe-inspiring gift from God. If we changed our life, each one of those days the power would be unstoppable. It's easy to neglect some anonymous, distant "goal" but what if everyday, we tore away small chunks of these goals, consuming them, achieving them, and ready for tomorrow, a new day to change our life. I'm confident that this can be done, every single day.

This poem has spoken to me today in a beautiful and life-changing way.

I have studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me --
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire --
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

Edgar Lee Masters

Not Yet Empty

Almost everyday for the past few weeks, I've turned on the computer, opened this blog, and typed some unintelligible mess of melodrama in attempts to reconcile myself, with... myself. It's like I have this seemingly impenetrable layer around my heart preventing me from feeling almost anything.

I'm fighting the daily battle between who I used to be, who I am now, and the man of God I'm commanded to be; the tug-of-war leaving me anesthetized and vacant.

To feel empty is to at least feel something, and I'm not there yet.

My brother Russ sent this to me today, I think this paradigm could change the world.

"God knows, I could be wrong.

It strikes me as odd that we, each of us, can be mistaken about the weather, about which direction to turn to get to a spot across town, about how we play the stock market, about any number of things, but we can be dead certain about religion and about God.

Perhaps, as most evidence suggests, Jesus was not born on what we now know as Christmas day. Perhaps Jesus wouldn’t make heads or tails out of evangelical healers in two thousand dollar suits while Austrian-crystal chandeliers hang within the camera shot. Maybe God’s love includes gays and lesbians, the Buddhist down the street or the atheist over in the next cubicle. It’s possible what you believe is not as important as how you express that belief, how you buy food for the homeless or comfort a stranger who is flustered at the store because she has just come from the hospital where her father is dying or remember that person who just can’t stand you with love during a prayer.

Maybe God is not found in certainty, which serves to limit God to our own comfortable conceptions, but, rather, in uncertainty and a healthy agnosticism in places, letting God be God instead of a judge and jury schooled in our own prejudices and preoccupations and self-centeredness. Perhaps “God knows, I could be wrong” is an admission of faith, not of defeat. We may be mistaken — the arrival of God will not come in the form espoused by novels about the end times or in the image of a holy city being lowered down from the clouds on pulleys like it was some kind of cheap scenery change. The arrival of God or the second coming of Jesus may very well have taken place already and, in fact, continues to take place over and over again in the people and in opportunities around us, if only we had the eyes to see and the openness of the heart to feel.

God knows, I could be wrong, and in that, I think, I am necessarily right."

Definition

Rob Bell had probably the perfect answer to the question of how he faces critics.

"There's over a billion people in this world without clean drinking water, and 46 million americans don't have health care. That means if they get sick, they don't have anywhere to go. Half of the world, 3 billion people, live on less than 2 dollars a day, so the world is an emergency. When followers of jesus can think of nothing better to do with their time than pick apart and shred to peices the work of other followers of Jesus who are trying to do something about the world, that's tragic and I don't owe those people anything."

I love this answer. To me, the Church has become largely concerned with definition. We seem to want to define ourselves as one thing or another, Progressive or Fundamentalist, Liberal-Christian or Conservative, Evangelical-Free or Non-denominational. We're always looking to define ourselves by labels.

The problem with this preoccupation though, is that definition exists to separate one thing from another. We define a word, give it a meaning so that it means one thing and only one thing. We define things so that other things cannot assume their identity. This is necessary, for say, underwear at summer camp, but not for Christianity.

Even "Christianity," in all its ubiquity has lately become taboo. Apparently "follower of Christ" has replaced the antiquated "Christianity" as the label of choice for the progressively serious disciple. I will agree that the term has been diluted so much that it probably resembles G.W. more than it resembles a loving and amazing Jesus.

But this is not a call to walk away. Rather, it's a call to take back the name that once meant "Christ-like" and extinguish our rampant feelings of entitlement.

We are called to humility and peace. I agree with Rob Bell, I feel like too much time is spent pondering the great intricacies of eschatology, when our brothers and sisters are dying from preventable diseases, in preventable situations.

I want to live a life of redemption. Let's fix the world and then argue. I have a feeling the lines of our differences will begin to blur.

"Once" was an amazing movie. I bought the soundtrack already, good call Jesse.

I'm moving to Canada

Now, I know that it was a horrible tragedy. Over 1,400 people lost their lives, buildings/families/businesses/homes were destroyed, but honestly, what the hell kind of hurricane inflicts over THREE QUADRILLION DOLLARS IN DAMAGE?

According to this article, one of New Orleans proud residents is suing the US government for over $3,000,000,000,000,000. This fantastic piece of work feels entitled to reimbursement of about 220x the entire US 2007 GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT. This person wants over 220 times the value of ALL of the goods and services produced in the US during an entire year.

How does one settle on this amount?

"well my house is flooded... lost about $20,000 there... can't work much anymore... lost about $20,000 a year there... things sucked for awhile, this year was pretty much shot, a few friends died... 3 quadrillion ought to do it."

Times like this I really hate the American way. I probably seem insensitive, and I'm sure FEMA /Dubya dropped the ball, but oh my God, really? 3 quadrillion dollars?

What's ALMOST as worse, apparently over 250 people filed claims for over a billion dollars. This means over 250 people thought that what they lost was worth over $1,000,000,000 dollars. Now, I'm don't mean to demean any of the New Orleans residents, nor do I want to put a monetary value on their lives (isn't that exactly what they are doing?) but I'd like to see some financial statements reflecting 250 different people with over a billion dollar net worth. According to my limited research, there is only about 320 billionaires in the entire US. And I highly doubt they were all visiting their summer homes in the low-rent district of New Orleans during the hurricane.

This is the ultimate welfare system and the ultimate in human opportunism. Seeking some irrational comeuppance by exploiting a very real tragedy.

Last Night's Bullet

For a month or two now, a few friends and I have been meeting together over beer and discussion. We read through a book and discuss the chapters after having read them each week. The books have been great so far (the one and a quarter that we've been through) each of them inspiring, refreshing and poetic in their own ways. We call it the BBC, beer book club for lack of a better name. I would say it's been a charging force in my spiritual renaissance.

Tonight though, BBC was terrible. Brady said something so terrible and true that it kind of hit before I knew what I had heard. It felt like what I would assume a gunshot would feel like. I kind of think (speaking in complete ignorance) that a gunshot probably hurts.

I'm guessing it really hurts. I think when it happens, it aches and stings at the same time, with equal force. I guess it to be a strange dulling feeling that aches like a broken bone, but stings like a burn.

What he said felt this way, what he said was probably the single most convicting thing I've ever been told. Hearing that someone thought you were a certain way, only to realize you were just like every one else is sobering, it's painful, and it's only the beginning.

The problem with gunshots though, is not really how it feels when it happens, or really how it ever feels.

The problem with gunshots is fixing them, repairing the wound, saving your life. You have to essentially reverse the entire process by which you were shot, the bullet needs to come out, things need reattaching, skin needs closing. It's like pausing the scene at the worst possible part and rewinding it slowly, frame by painful frame.

But the beauty is in the repair. I'm learning that.

The hardest parts of Brady's words were that they were true. It hurts like hell but I'm glad it happened. We talked last night about using these tragedies, thanking God for them that we have a new platform from which we can change and inspire.

Today's a new day. Today was harder than yesterday and I suspect it's going to keep hurting.

Taking the hard way

"If you are a really, really good teacher, in your second year you'll be paid the same as any other second-year teacher and less than a really bad teacher with 10 years' experience."

This is so true. I've always been hesitant to join the teachers' money-gripe association, both because I like what I do, and I feel like it's a tired, trite, self-defeatist thing to do.

I'm starting to make adult-sized decisions, both in scope and (hopefully) in wisdom and it feels good. I love so much about teaching, it's a shame that the kids are not really one of them.

OK, I take that back. My Journo class is great. I truly do feel like we're doing something bigger than us, something that really might make a difference. But other than that, It's a struggle. I don't connect with the rich kids, and I don't feel like there's enough of an age difference between myself and the seniors to really earn their respect.

I completely enjoy working in the company of intelligent people. Literally every teacher at the school has been welcoming and supportive.

I love my parents, I love my father, but I can't be him. I'm absolutely terrified of living a life of safety. I want the struggle and I want the growth.

I keep hearing the phrase "the easy way is seldom the right way"