Conviction – Page 10 – A Work in Progress

Stimulus and Response

When my older boy gets in trouble, he’ll go to any and all lengths to explain why it wasn’t his fault. He will happily throw anyone under the bus in order to divert any negative attention from himself. His mom and I are in the process of trying to teach him about responsibility (and accountability, for that matter).

What I’ve been thinking about lately is that so many people these days need to learn that lesson as well. God may well be creator, sustainer, beginning and end, but we have ultimate responsibility for our lives and the decisions we make.

We choose direction in our lives by how we respond to the circumstances that occur in it, whether they are positive or negative.

Concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl says:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

I think that is so true. I would also say that how we respond affects the lives of others and not just our own.

Frankl also says

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

That is also true. The other day I told my son about something that happened at work a couple years ago that very much could have affected our future, and certainly my ability to provide for my family.

I was driving to a remote test site down a dirt road, and I was last in a group of four or five trucks. Consequently, I was eating a great deal of dust. There was no wind and the dust just hung in the air. Everyone was also going very fast, and the main group began to pull away from me.

It was then several things happened at once. I realized I couldn’t see the sides of the road. I hit some bad washboards in the surface of the road and began to fishtail. I attempted to correct, overcompensated, and veered offroad, flipping my truck over and destroying a government vehicle.

That was bad. Had I not been wearing a seat belt, it could have been much worse.

I had to go before a review board and account for what happened. I could have tried to avoid blame and responsibility by blaming all sorts of things and people, but something told me not to, and I just told the truth: I was speeding, even though I couldn’t see well. How could I deny it was my fault?

I told my son (and I firmly believe) that what saved my job was that I accepted responsibility for my actions. The stimulus was the accident. My response was to be honest, even though I knew the cost could be great.

I’ve also been trying to admit to my son when I make mistakes, and to apologize when that is what’s needed. I think one of the larger problems these days is so many people have forgotten how to do that.

Rather, people blame their circumstances for things that happen in their lives, or to excuse the things they do. They blame parents, or teachers, or friends. They blame anyone rather than say, “Yes, I did it. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry, please forgive me.”

We usually do not ask for the negative things that happen in our lives. We don’t have any control over the people that do or say hurtful things, or sometimes literally do hurt us.

But between the stimulus of what happens and the response we make lies a space…

We get to choose our response. With honesty and the acceptance of personal responsibility lies growth. With blame and denial lies stagnancy.

I think that’s where we are now as a society, as a generation.

Our place in life may not be our fault, and sometimes that place truly sucks. Or it could be completely different. Maybe everything is great.

It’s how we respond to those circumstances that determines the true course of our lives.

Life can and often will be so tough. Mine was, at times. I believe what brought me through it to the place I am now is the millennia-old sacrifice of a Nazarene carpenter a world away from Arizona.

I didn’t know much about Jesus at the time I was going through certain things. Yet when he brought healing to the person I am now he also brought healing to the person I was then.

Or think about it like this:

The stimulus was God saw what the world was becoming and had become. It was a fallen and often Godless place, and it needed something to change or all would be lost.

The world needed a savior (and it still does).

God’s response was to send his son as propitiation for the world’s sin and brokenness–for its fallen nature. That response gives us freedom.

If we look at the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalves as stimulus, I wonder how we will choose to respond?

Would that affect our willingness to accept personal responsibility for our actions (and reactions)?

I believe it would.

What would happen if we admitted our wrongs, or gave thanks for our “rights?”

What would happen if we were able to say “Yes, I did it. I’m sorry, please forgive me?”

Of Baptisms and Third Row Conviction

Sometimes young people just…amaze and humble me. Now that I’m old, I can say that with absolutely no irony at all. Since joining the FCC youth ministry, I have seen a lot of what seemed like apathy from the kids I teach. I’ve seen a lot of sleepy eyes and thousand-yard stares from across the table on Sunday mornings. Consequently, I’ve allowed myself to somewhat…expect it from them.

Then, something like this morning happens, and knocks me off whatever high horse or soapbox I happen to be standing on at the time.

Jen and I were sitting down front at church this morning, and two rows in front of us were a half dozen or so of our FCC college-age kids, all in a row. It seemed like a lot of them to be all together, all at once, but it was also cool they were sitting together as a group, so I just made note of it and then proceeded to listen to Jeff as he began his sermon.

After communion and offering, Kari announced a young man would be baptized, and I saw a tall, happy-looking kid of about 19 come down the stairs and into the baptistry. Typically at our church, the person being baptized just sort of stands there, and waits for the person doing the baptism to say their part and then do the dunking. Not this kid.

He said his name (Tim), and that his friend (whose name escapes me) was going to baptize him. He had a grin on his face that probably had half the people in the sanctuary smiling. I know it did me.

He made his declaration of faith, and then his friend baptized him in the name of the father, son, and holy spirit. When Tim came out of the water he practically leapt with joy, and literally raised a fist to Heaven and said “YAY!!” I wish I would have thought to take a picture.

Never have I seen a baptism where the person being baptized showed that kind of joy. It made me remember that the things of the world I often allow to consume me–no matter how great or terrible they might seem at the time–are nothing compared to the joy that can be found in Christ.

I made it a point of going up to Tim after service to talk to him and the very first thing he did was give me a big hug. He was still smiling so huge I thought his jaw would crack. There were several people waiting to talk to him, and they all got hugs and that same smile.

What a great, amazing young man of God.

I hope some of the high school kids were in there to see the baptism. It was a beautiful thing.

What We Forget

This morning I read a headline for an article on CNN.com that made me stop and think for a few minutes. What it said was “Dad Claims Sandy Hook Shooter’s Body.”

I read the article, but what it said didn’t really matter. The title alone was sad, and terrible. Perhaps to most people–including myself–not as sad as the parents claiming the bodies of first graders. As a parent of two small boys, what those parents must feel is unfathomable.

Yet the shooter’s dad had to claim the body of a dead son as well, and in some ways it almost seems just as bad. To him it probably is. Not only does he have a dead son, who by most accounts suffered from sort of mental condition (the level or name of which remains unknown), but he also has to wonder where he fell short as a parent, as a father.

The young man who did this terrible thing was once a first grader as well. He was once an infant, and his father cradled him in his arms, as I cradled my son just last night, and you have cradled your children at some point.

So his father grieves the loss of what he remembers, while also wondering what he could’ve done to stop it, or if he, personally is to blame.

What must that be like, to realize your son perpetrated such a monstrous act?

Let me say briefly that I am not addressing gun control or any political agenda here, but we can’t blame the father for what his son did. The blame lies with the killer. The guns he took from his mother aren’t responsible–he is. Saying otherwise is like saying jetliners are responsible for 9/11.

In any case, I pray the father of the killer is able to find some peace with himself and with God. I hope we as a body of people–Americans, fathers, mothers, human beings–can take something away from this terrible lesson.

Love your kids. Teach them to respect life. If your child is ill in some way–especially mentally–educate yourself all you can about what it is that ails them.

And be there for them, no matter what it costs you. We will never know what was in the killer’s troubled mind that brought him to a place where killing people seemed like the thing he should do.

As for me, I will do my best to make sure I’m available for my kids, to be a dad at any and all costs. What I will teach them I have posted about before, so for today just let me say that as horrible as the act was the Sandy Hook killer committed, his father still lost a son, and that’s sad.

Stream of Early Morning Consciousness

You are everything I will ever need
to complete everything you are asking of me
So I lay it all down for the sake of
Your name
Here I am, God, use me, set me aflame…

It’s so interesting the times God chooses to communicate something to a person. It’s 0440 and I want to be asleep. Lord knows I should be. Yet here I lie, thinking the above song lyric.

Why now, God?

What do I have to offer that you need, or can use? I can’t even manage to sleep…my mind keeps spitting out praise lyrics, like some demented late night Wurlitzer…

you are my all in all

And I wish I could praise you with my own words, but I keep coming back to the words of others, perhaps because my words are not enough

if I had no voice, if I had no tongue, I would dance for you like the rising sun

If I could say what I really meant I would say something to thank you for pulling me from the quicksand that was my life and making a man out of me.

I would thank you for coming to me in my weakness and not my strength, and for showing me it was ok to grieve and be broken.

I would thank you for holding my patchwork heart in your hands, and loving me even when I feel like a ****up. I would thank you for the beautiful and Godly woman who sleeps behind me as I thumb type this, who makes me want to be better.

If I had more words, better words, I’d thank you for showing me my gifts, and bringing me to this smallish town and bringing people like Ken, and Paul, and Jeff, and Zeb and Alan into my life–Godly men who love you and are helping me to pull something out of myself I didn’t know existed.

If I had the words, I would thank you for your Word, and your words, that bring life, that

wake me up inside

And here’s the other thing, maybe the last thing for now. Maybe there are people I know who will read this who do not believe. They might give a little sigh of exasperation because here I go again.

Well, so what.

I may not be the best writer or speaker or teacher or husband or whatever. But I am learning, all the time, and I am realizing that

we were meant to live for so much more

I know this and feel it in my heart. My words might not properly represent you at times before others, maybe even most times. But I know what you’ve done in my life, and nothing anyone says or believes about me can change that.

So I offer you my service, such as it is.

here I am God, use me

I Wonder

Let me begin by saying I am no pastor. I am not a theologian, or apologist of any particular skill. I am just a man who believes, and I am a member of a congregation. As such, I’ve began to wonder a few things about “the church” as a collective body, not just the place I worship a couple times a week.

I wonder if sometimes we forget why we enter those doors, or why they’re even there in the first place?

I wonder if sometimes we sit in judgment on the people who walk through those doors, as if the things that bother us about them matter at all to God?

I wonder if sometimes we think so much about who signs the most checks in the offering plate we forget about the people who have no checks to sign that are right outside our doors?

I wonder if giving people what they expect from church can sometimes supersede giving Jesus what he deserves?

I wonder if we can change–as people and the body–to actually reach the people in our own backyards who are so broken and so jaded and hurt by the world they have no idea who Jesus is?

I wonder if we can ever grasp that while Jesus is the way, truth, and life, the worship methodologies we’ve grown accustomed to are not necessarily the only ones that can bring the proper measure of praise to God?

I wonder if we will ever understand the vernacular of our youth in such a way that we can acknowledge they can actually say something to God with it?

I wonder if we will realize that our preferred level of spiritual reverence is not the only one that exists?

I wonder if we can truly learn to love the sometimes unloveable?

I wonder if we can ever really be the hands and feet of Jesus if we don’t stop trying to please people and start trying to please God?

I wonder if we can remember that in a sense, we are all leaders in our respective churches?

That’s the real trick, at least it is for me. I represent the church, and not just my own church. I represent Jesus before people who have never heard the truth about him. Like it or not, I am a leader in the church. And as Northpoint Pastor Andy Stanley said, as leaders “we are not responsible for filling anyone else’s cup, we are responsible for emptying ours…”

I think if we all just focus on emptying our cups in worship and praise we will be on our way toward living in the fullness of Christ.

I wonder what would happen if we did that?

This young man here is emptying his cup…

Back on the Couch

It has taken me several days to process Friday’s events in Connecticut enough to get to a place in my head and my heart where I could write about it. I was in The Big Swirl frozen yogurt shop with John when I saw something on Twitter about a shooting.

Just then John tried to go behind the counter so we took off and headed over to GameStop to look for some Xbox accessories for David. John decided that would be a great place for a power dump, and it wasn’t until after I changed him that I sat in my car and read the story in full.

The magnitude of the tragedy was simply breathtaking, and I struggled to get my mind around it. What could have happened in this young, young man’s head that he could murder a class full of first graders?

In my mind I saw their faces as he came through the door, probably looking up in curiosity. As a parent my mind immediately went to my own third grade son sitting in his classroom, and two the toddler I’d just buckled into his car seat.

I wanted to be angry at the boy (because that’s really what he was) who had done this evil (because that’s it was), and I even expected to be mad at God for allowing it to happen but all I could feel to this very cold Sunday morning is a sadness so profound it coils in my guts like sickness. I think CS Lewis had it right when he said “no one ever told me grief felt so much like fear…”

I feel a grief of a level I haven’t felt since I was a teenager when I lost my parents and a good friend in my 16th, 17th, and 18th years. I didn’t know how to grieve that loss, and I don’t know how to grieve this one.

Clearly I didn’t know any of those children, but I grieve for them just the same. I grieve for their families. I grieve for what could have been. I grieve for the loss of so much innocence all at once.

I grieve for the teachers and faculty who died trying (some successfully and some not) to protect their students. I grieve for their families.

I grieve for the family of the murderer as well. The love they felt for the killer is no different than what the parents of the murdered children feel. Plus, this young man’s father has to live with what his son did and wonder where he fell short for the rest of his life.

I grieve for the country I love as well, because I feel this tragedy will not pull us together but further apart. It will be gun control vs gun owners and it will not stop.

I grieve because I know something like this will happen again.

I don’t blame the gun, or the killer’s mother for owning the ones used that morning. I don’t blame God or anyone else. God didn’t pull the trigger so many times Friday; a man did. I’m not going to get into the gun control debate today and maybe not at all, but I will say this (and I grieve the loss of my own innocence as well):

I own a gun. I bought it to shoot at targets. I have no plans to shoot any living thing.

But I would put a hundred bullets into the young man who did this thing to protect even a single child and I would be able to live with myself.

I read an excellent post by Morgan Freeman (find it on the Internet) which apportioned blame to media influenced sensationalism and I think that’s true, but not the only truth.

I think we’re failing our kids on a regular basis. So many have lost the idea that life is precious, and what binds us to it is little more than gossamer thread. Violence and violent imagery is ubiquitous. We expose our kids to it and we expose ourselves to it. It makes me despair for people. It makes me think there’s nothing to be done for the world. It makes me think there’s nothing anyone can do, the world is speeding to a sad and inevitable end.

It makes me think there is no hope.

There is hope, and that hope came to earth two millennia ago in a humble and quiet manner.

The hope for humanity is in the form of an obscure Nazarene carpenter who wore humanity for 33 years before dying for it. Our hope is not in a victory that can be achieved by strength of arms, though it is by blood.

We can’t change the hearts of our children, but we can tell them about who can. We can teach them to love like Jesus did. We can teach them every single life means something. We can teach them of the quiet heroism of school teachers and janitors.

I think if we just pour love into our kids then maybe we have a chance against this sort of thing.

Back to this morning. John woke up at 0600, and I brought him out to the couch. I skimmed through Twitter and Facebook, reading news stories about the shooting and people’s status updates about their lives, which carried on. Mine will, too.

Then I saw a picture, and it just wrecked me. It was a painting, really, on a post that was a poem with the rhyme structure and meter of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.’

In the painting, Jesus sat in a classroom surrounded by children, and a teacher was reading to her students from a children’s book.

There will be more pictures in the days to come. Many words will be spoken and written, and not all of them will be loving.

I think the thing to remember is that everyone grieves differently, and we should allow them that. Some will cry, some will pray, some will be angry. Some will curse God or call for the weapons of all gun owners.

We need to let people process their grief in their own way, and then we can move on.

We need to talk about a lot of things.

My Alabaster Jar

I woke up this morning (way too early, thanks to John), and I was still thinking about church last night. Specifically, the music. Perhaps it was that in conjunction with a video I watched earlier in the day:

(Zeb posted this a month or so ago. It inspired me then and inspires me now)

I watched that again yesterday afternoon while Jen was getting her toes did, and I was still thinking about it when we got to church and Jorge sang this song during communion:

I started thinking about truly dedicating my life to something, and what that actually meant.

here I am, take me…

When I got married, I dedicated the rest of my life to being with my wife in all circumstances, forsaking all others. I think it is very much like that when you offer yourself and your service (such as it may be) to Jesus.

I suppose that’s why the church is often referred to as “the bride of Christ.”

I tell myself that my natural affinities would not be useful to Jesus, and that he would never be able to use me for anything of consequence. This morning I realized Jesus doesn’t much care for our natural affinities. If we ask him to use us, he will.

A single lyric from this song popped into my head when that last sentence ran through my mind:

here I am, God, use me, set me aflame

I don’t have much to offer. I don’t have anything of worth. I’m no preacher, no evangelist. I’m getting a little long in the tooth, and lots of things hurt in the morning.

But I don’t want to waste another second of my life taking salvation for granted and serving my own ends first.

here I am, take me…

Better Questions

I started writing a blog post this morning and then decided to scrap it and just see what people thought instead. Several questions have been occurring to me lately:

1. Provided the Gospel is rightly presented, do we have to “do church” the way it’s always been done?

2. If we do church the way it’s always been done has that placed more emphasis on liturgy and less on the prompting of the holy spirit?

3. Can we do church differently and still represent God properly?

4. Can we shift our emphasis from trying to please people to trying to reach people?

5. Can we go places we haven’t gone and do things we haven’t done in the interest of bringing the Good News to people that haven’t heard it?

6. Is our corporate “packaging” of the Gospel turning people away from it?

7. If it is, can we change the packaging but not the gift?

8. Can we worship (musically) with different instruments than we normally do?

9. Can we play non-traditional music and still worship?

10. What does proper worship look like?

11. What would happen if we stopped doing church and started being church?

12. What if everything Jesus said was true?

13. What if we loved people as they were and stopped trying to change them and instead let God do it?

14. What if we let go of our inhibitions about how we worship and just started worshipping?

15. What if we taught our kids how to live by teaching them how to love?

I could keep going forever, but I think John is ready to be awake, which means I’m going to need both my hands to start cleaning up messes and putting out fires.

What are the answers to all my questions? I think that would be different for everyone. Personally, I have better questions than I have answers, but I’d welcome hearing yours. Dialogue is a good thing. I’ll leave you with a picture of John doing what he does best: little boy mischief.

Imago Dei

This morning I had what an alcoholic might call a moment of clarity. It’s so interesting how God chooses to speak to us sometimes, and how our minds, and hearts and souls are awakened to his truth.

This is what happened today.

I was nearly out of gas, so I stopped at the Circle K on 24th Street and Avenue B to gas up and get my daily dose of caffeine (in the form of a 44-ounce Coke Zero). While I was walking from the gas pumps to the door, a beat up little Toyota hatchback pulled up right in front of the doors and two men got out.m

They were wearing some kind of coveralls, but looked like they came straight out of the exercise yard at Chino. Both men were extremely muscular and had braids halfway down their backs. They had tattoos peeking out of their sleeves and collars, and definitely had the intimidating look down perfectly.

One of the men went directly inside, and the other just sort of stood out front. He gave me a barely perceptible nod as I walked past him to go in. I immediately thought they were going to rob the place.

I went over to the soda machine and there was convict number one. He was filling a 44 ounce cup to the very brim with Blue Raspberry Icee.

He paid his .88 cents right before I did, then the two men got in the beat up Toyota and went on their way.

On my way to work I heard this song:

A line from the chorus stuck in my head: there could never be a more beautiful you.

What occurred to me was those
men at the Circle K were beautiful to God. With their tattoos and muscles and braids, they were beautiful to God.

Then these things occurred to me:

1. If they were beautiful to God, that meant I was beautiful to him, too. Even with my scars, and messed up skin, and pelt of hair I am beautiful to God.

2. I was made in his image, according to Genesis. So were the guys at Circle K.

3. Just because I do not always see beauty in things does not mean it isn’t there.

What does it mean to be made in the image of Christ? As usual, I went online and I found this definition:

“…The term Imago Dei (Latin for Image of God) refers most fundamentally to two things: first, God’s own self-actualization through humankind; and second, God’s care for humankind. To say that humans are in the image of God is to recognize the special qualities of human nature which allow God to be made manifest in humans…”

To me that suggests that our outer image really doesn’t matter that much, at least not to the extent we think it does. Certainly not to the extent by which we judge others, and judge beauty.

With that in mind, I think how we treat others–least of these or otherwise–is how we reflect either our image of God or our image of ourselves.

Put another way, If we treat people like crap it’s often because we feel that we ourselves are worthy of the same. Consequently we judge people based on our image of ourselves whether it be negative or positive, and we treat them according to our self-based perception.

I thought the men at Circle K were thugs because they fit into a thug-shaped box in my tiny little brain. Maybe some people see me and feel I fit into a box, too?

I was wrong, and they’re wrong, too.

I can’t say that I’ve ever felt like a standard bearer for Christ. It doesn’t matter. If I bear his name then I bear his image, too.

I need to pray for clearer vision, and truth in my perception of others. I need to act with imago Dei in mind, not imago Tom.

I Have Decided

John woke up at 530 today, and like so many other times we ended up on the couch with him snoozing and breathing gently on my shoulder-those little puffs of baby breath more precious than gold. I do some of my best thinking and praying while holding babies or maybe just watching the kids play sometimes.

This is what occurred to me today. As a believer, I may not have the understanding of my San Diego family, at least as far as them believing what I believe, or not sometimes thinking I may have imbibed a little too much of “the Kool-Aid.” I may not have the support of much of the country, because it certainly seems to be trending toward Godlessness. For my own part–because I am not perfect–I may even have doubts sometimes about the goodness of God, especially when I see some of the jacked up stuff going on out there in the big, wide, ugly world.

But the young man I am holding needs me, and trusts me, and looks to me to know how to live. The one sleeping down the hall does, too, even if we struggle sometimes.

The woman sleeping in our bed, in our home, in the life we’ve made for ourselves loves me, too. She needs me to be capable, and Godly, and strong. On my own, I am none of those things.

I am weak, and callow, and filled with all manner of vile things.

But I am not on my own, not since March of 2000.

That’s when I decided I needed a savior.

For my family, for my home, for my future, for myself, I had to (and have to) make a decision for myself, even if it means a lot of things in my life will suffer because of it: