Category: Conviction

Casual Blasphemy

I figured something out today.

The President is not the anti-christ. He’s not the savior, either. He’s just a man. He gets up in the morning, and he goes to bed at night. By all accounts he loves his family in the same way you love yours. He eats, drinks, and goes to the bathroom.

He’s a man.

I think that’s part of the problem. The President is so beloved by the largely liberally slanted media and the Hollywood “lobby” that he’s been almost deified, in a sense. He was elected because his promises appealed to more people than the other guy. Twice. This is the way of elections. President Obama won fair and square both times. Move on.

When I saw this clip on YouTube:

of Jamie Foxx calling the President “our Lord and savior,” I wasn’t particularly offended as a believer because I recognized the statement for what it was: a clearly misspoken and probably taken out of context remark that was likely meant with at least some irony by mssr Foxx. At least I hope so. It’s difficult to imagine anyone actually believing President Obama is anyone’s savior. Yet I do think Foxx’s words, spoken casually, are symptomatic of a larger problem.

This morning I saw a representation of this painting online, called “The Truth.”

20121127-075211.jpg

The artist, Michael D’Antuono, has said his intent with the painting was to provoke political dialogue and that he meant to display the painting in a mock voting booth.

I can only speak for myself, of course, but to me this isn’t so much about the artist having the constitutional right to say whatever he wants: he has that right. I think he knew exactly the kind of reaction a painting of this nature would provoke in the “religious right,” and painted it with that in mind. He got the reaction he wanted, along with a large bowl of controversy. I’d imagine he probably sold a few tickets to art exhibits as well.

Back to my original point: President Obama is a man. He’s not the savior. He’d certainly acknowledge that himself. He’s not a hero, either. Most people aren’t. His election (both times) was certainly ground-breaking and showed how far our country has come.

Yet as I mentioned earlier, The President was elected based on what he said he would do. He was also elected based on who he was and what he represented.

The media and Hollywood has created this…cult of personality around him. We allowed that to happen. We encouraged it. We still do.

He’s a man, people. A smart and gifted one, but he can’t fly or lift cars over his head. He can’t save anyone, maybe not even the country. Salvation (and deliverance) lies elsewhere, and we as a people have to be careful of the burdens and expectations we place on our public servants.

Still, I look at the crown of thorns in D’Antuono’s painting and what I feel is not so much outrage as sorrow. He clearly does not understand what it represents. I wonder if he truly understands what his painting represents?

It’s not just oil and pigment. If there are actually people out there who believe the President to be something he is not (such as a savior), they are worshipping at an altar they want no real part of.

Just because the constitution gives people the right to say (and paint) stupid things does not mean they should. Casual blasphemy is still blasphemy, and whether or not you believe it does not matter. Think of the outrage if Muhammed had been mocked depicted instead of Jesus.

Then again, no one really thinks twice about offending Christians.

John 15:18 says, “remember if the world hates you that it hated me first.”

I read this commentary about the above verse, and I thought it was interesting:

If the world hates you – As the followers of Christ were to be exposed to the hatred of the world, it was no small consolation to them to know that that hatred would be only in proportion to their faith and holiness; and that, consequently, instead of being troubled at the prospect of persecution, they should rejoice, because that should always be a proof to them that they were in the very path in which Jesus himself had trod. Dr. Lardner thinks that πρωτον is a substantive, or at least an adjective used substantively, and this clause of the text should be translated thus: If the world hate you, know that it hated me, your Chief. It is no wonder that the world should hate you, when it hated me, your Lord and Master, whose lips were without guile, and whose conduct was irreproachable….

I think we need to expect mockery, and much worse. I think the world is changing, and quite obviously turning away from God.

It makes me sad, but also resolved. There is much work to do, and we as believers have much responsibility.

Politics and the rhetoric that comes with them really don’t matter in the end.

Jesus does, and what we do with Him.

I Would Do Anything

I can’t think of anything worse than when the kids are sick. Not because it’s typically messy, or gross, or I don’t like cleaning up their puke or their snot or their (literal) crap. Not because of what it does to me.

Because of what it does to them.

Their playfulness becomes helplessness in the face of whatever is making them sick. Their joy is replaced with fever, or coughing, or whatever their symptoms are. It sucks worse than just about anything.

When the boys were sick last weekend there was a point where David had just gotten done throwing up in pretty much every room of the house and John was coughing like crazy. Jen was in the bedroom dealing with her own flu and I had just gotten the boys chilled out and resting.

20121121-064122.jpg

20121121-064139.jpg

I remember thinking I would gladly bear their illnesses if it were only possible. I would do anything to assuage their suffering.

I thought that again just now, at 0644, on the day before thanksgiving. I’m holding John as he sleeps and praying the antibiotics do their thing and we don’t need to take any more drastic measures, like the hospital.

I would take his pneumonia in a heartbeat and I would bear it gladly.

The conviction that just slammed into me is that’s how God feels about us. Ultimately, he didn’t just cure our illness (which was terminal). He gladly bore it for us, and he experienced everything on our behalf. He bore all, and suffered all, and he died.

God died.

For me. For my sons.

I can feel the baby breathing against my chest as I thumb type this, and I’m thinking about how much God loved the world.

20121121-065733.jpg

I think about how much I love my kids, and that I would stop at no length to protect them from anything. I would be sickened, or beaten, or humiliated, even killed. I would literally do anything for them.

That’s what Jesus did.

Critical Thinking

I did a testimony before the FCC Youth Group and College Group Sunday night, and I’ve been picking it apart in my mind ever since. I guess it’s like everyone says–we’re our own worst critics.

What I’ve been thinking about is that I spent so much time focusing on my…brokenness and what I felt were the reasons for it that I didn’t spend enough time on what God had actually changed in my life. I focused on what at the time was hopelessness rather than hope.

I think that’s historically been my tendency. The interesting part is that as much stuff was messed up or tragic in my life, the blessings Jesus brought to my life once I let him were a hundredfold. More, even.

Yes, my parents died far too young and I grew up (mostly) without them. I still had my sisters, and they were and are incredible women who love me even when I’m a giant a-hole.

I experienced a lot of death in my life, but I experienced even more life. Before I had my own family, I got to watch my nieces and nephews grow up. And after I got together with my wife, I became part of her family as well. They accepted me immediately, as I was. And I got to watch my older son grow from just out of his toddler years to the strong and vibrant 8 year old he is this very day. Then I got to witness my younger boy literally enter the world. Amazing doesn’t cover it.

I spent many long years alone, and trying so many things to fill the voids in my heart and life. Those voids are filled (though my desire for God has only been stoked. It grows exponentially. The more I get, the more I want…). My wife is not just someone I sleep next to who shares my name. She’s my partner in all things. She’s with me literally in sickness and health, for better and worse. She’s seen me at my worst and at my best. She is extraordinary, and I love that even if the part of life we share here is brief, there is more.

There is more.

There is so much more.

I need to stop thinking so much about what made me the way I was, and focus on who made me the way I am. And I need to be ready to share that with people.

Throwing Fits

Earlier today, John really wanted a cookie (he calls them cakies). I informed him he needed to eat his food first, and then he could have dessert when we came home. He proceeded to have a pretty good meltdown, complete with a healthy portion of tears and carrying on.

He wanted that cookie right then and was pissed when he didn’t get it.

Around the same time, my older son wanted to go for a bike ride with his grandpa (we were hanging out over there). That didn’t work out, either, and he went into a class III pout/sulk. This is an 8 year-old version of throwing a fit, and not much different from what his little brother was doing.

He wanted to go for that ride, and he was pissed when he didn’t get to.

I was thinking about the whole thing tonight when we got home and it occurred to me how much like that we are with God. We go to him with entreaties for what we think we need to have or want to do and we throw fits if it doesn’t happen on our timetables.

We want our cookies now, and sometimes there are other things we need to do first, or go through first.

I’m as guilty of this as anyone. There was a time a few years before I met my wife when I was convinced I’d met the person I was “supposed” to be with. I remember praying that God would help that situation work out in my favor. I was convinced that if it happened with us, every other messed up thing about my life and myself would suddenly make sense.

It did work out, for a time, and I was happy enough. But not really. I knew she was pulling me away from God, but I didn’t care. I told myself I had things under control.

I don’t think it surprised anyone when things imploded in a spectacular fashion that messed me up for years, until a beautiful young woman from Yuma sent me a message on MySpace.

After things ended, I was furious with God. I resolved not to ever share that part of myself with anyone again, even though I desperately wanted to. With that resolution, I was also withholding part of me from God. It wasn’t just the matter of denying my company to the ladies, but also rejecting the part of me God created to know him best.

I was throwing a fit, because I wanted to be with this woman and God knew better than I what I actually needed.

Maybe it’s like that with you, or has been. You want something from God or someone else, and you want it now.

Maybe you won’t get it. I don’t know how you respond to that, but for me it made me want to turn away from God rather than toward him. It made me take my toys and leave the sandbox for a while, metaphorically speaking.

It didn’t help at all.

So how do you handle it when God doesn’t give you what you want? Do you throw a fit? Do you sulk? Do you run toward God or away from him?

From There to Here

I’ve been trying to organize a bunch of my thoughts over the past year or so into something a little more cohesive. I wanted to share with people a bit more about where I was, and how I got here from there. My final result ended up looking like this. For better or worse, it’s done. Check it out if you have a chance. You can post your comments here if you want to let me know what you think.

Finding My Place to Serve

If someone would have told me even a year ago I’d be serving and worshipping with the FCC Youth Ministry in any way other than perhaps vacuuming the Upper Room I would have told them they had to be higher than the clear blue sky.

Yet that is what happened.

One or perhaps two Sunday mornings a month you will find me in the high school room doing my best impersonation of “teacher.” I wonder how I got there sometimes. Oh, yeah. It’s because my wife is more awesome than yours.

We were having a conversation about serving, and where we might do that. More specifically where I might serve. She encouraged me to think of where I’d been hurt the most, and blessed with the most healing by God. She said she thought that is where I would be most effective in my service.

High school, without a doubt.

I was not a popular kid. I was a geek then and am now. The popular kids then were just as ruthless then as they today, I’d imagine. When you combine that with the deaths of three people close to me thanks to heart attack, suicide and cancer from 16-18 you get a messed up kid, which I very much was.

I made it, though, and I am here today by the Grace of a loving and forgiving God who saw fit to speak truth about my value to Him into my wasted heart. I may be patched, and I may be scarred, but Jesus was, too.

The knowledge that he did those things on my part is why I can go into that room on Sunday mornings and just keep sharing with the kids the truth that’s been revealed to me, even though it scares the crap out of me sometimes.

Aside: Let me tell you about the Youth Ministers at FCC. They are two young men who lift those kids up in ways many of them will never even know. They preach, and teach, and pray, and they make the kids think and challenge the things that feel so much like truth when you’re young.

They use the gospel, and humor, and truth, and the Grace empowered them by a God who is in the business of reaching people. These men, along with the other men and women who serve as teachers and Focus Group leaders, prayors and laborers–they’re doing a great work, and a labor of love. They are, to a person, awesome.

–end of aside

I am not yet including myself in that awesomeness, because I have much yet to learn. Yet because of serving with them and praying with them over the past few months, I know I am in the right place and doing the right thing. I thank and praise God for that assurance.

It is no picnic. It’s tough being a kid, and often being made to go places you aren’t that interested in being. Like Sunday School.

I’m not giving up on them, and I plan to stick with both the ministry and them as long as they’ll have me or until God wants me somewhere else. Certainly the kids will change with the time. I hope I do, too.

Right now, I’m just really grateful to be here, and have the chance to do what I’m doing.

Your Story Matters

Last night at church Zeb talked about sharing your story and faith with people, and how effective it can be. I believe it. Hearing stories from people about what God had done in their lives showed him to me in a way just hearing a lesson never would have.

I think our stories are so effective because they can show people they aren’t alone in their struggles, and that there is hope.

For what it’s worth, here’s something I came up with a while back that gives you an idea about my story.

3%

This morning I read a summary of remarks made by Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards at the DNC, and the gist of them was that Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and others want to make it difficult for women to obtain healthcare and other services, which are often obtained through Planned Parenthood.

I wanted to know more about what she said exactly, so I found a transcript of her speech here .

The summary seemed fairly accurate, but it did make me want to know a little more about Planned Parenthood.

They are:

the largest U.S. provider of reproductive health services, including cancer screening, HIV screening and counseling, contraception and abortion. Contraception accounts for 35% of PP’s total services and abortions account for 3%. PP conducts roughly 300,000 abortions each year, among 3 million people served.

In a fact sheet published in March of 2011, Planned Parenthood stated in 2009, they performed 332,278 abortions, out of 11,383,900 “services” performed, which would come close to confirming their stated 3% figure (more statistics available here).

Let’s just look at 332,278, the number of abortions performed in 2009. That’s a lot, even if it is a small percentage.

I think the problem Planned Parenthood is having is that they don’t want to separate themselves from that number. I believe if they did, they wouldn’t have as much trouble obtaining funding for their other “services,” which are absolutely worthwhile.

So in my opinion, Mitt Romney and others in the GOP are not necessarily wanting to deny funding to PP as simply a corporate entity, rather as a provider of abortions, small as the percentage performed actually is.

I can’t support any number, and consequently am unable to vote for anyone that does, directly or indirectly. Allow me to express my personal reasons:

20120906-081145.jpg

20120906-081155.jpg

20120906-081232.jpg

20120906-081242.jpg

Unpopular

It’s interesting how scripture can and will lead you on a journey, if you let it. This morning, for example. I sat down at the kitchen table to read, and my bible was still bookmarked in Acts from church this weekend. A reference to Deuteronomy 30:14 caught my eye:

No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

The word is in my heart.

I struggle to find time for it sometimes. There are so many more important things. Things like breakfast, and Facebook, and fooling around on the computer.

The word is in my heart so I may obey it.

This led me to Deuteronomy 30, so I could get the context of verse 14.

15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

I look at verse 17 and 18 and it makes me so aware this is where so many are headed in today’s culture of self-absorption, self-gratification, and moral relativism.

We’ve become “tolerant” of so much as a people–as a country–that things have become permissible and even encouraged that would have landed people in chains not long ago.

It really gives me this sinking feeling when I think about it. Knowing what the world was made to be and could have been and then juxtaposing that with what it’s become is heartbreaking.

So many “religions” are coming to prominence these days that are turning heads and hearts from the only real deliverer.

The names and small g gods don’t really even matter because they are all the same, and lead to the same place.

Which isn’t heaven.

Heaven isn’t simply a state of mind, or a cornfield in Iowa. Nor is Hell.

These places are real, and the truth does not lie in Universalism, or Mormonism, or Hinduism, or any other ism. It’s great to make people feel better about themselves, but they also need to know the truth.

Wide is the path that leads to destruction, and lots of people walk it. More every day.

If you want to know the truth, and you want to avoid the destruction promised in Deuteronomy 30, you need only look to the red letters of John 14:6 (they’re red in my Life Application Study Bible, anyway):

6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

It’s pretty simple, really. It might not be a popular view. It may not be thought of as “tolerant” of other religions. Some people might think it arrogant of Christians to think it, much less say it.

But it’s the truth.

Our job, believers, our only job, is to bring that truth to people and places that don’t know it. To government officials who don’t practice it, but pay lip service to curry favor and win elections, to people that hate us, and hate God.

We aren’t meant for destruction, and we need to put our petty denominational squabbles aside and do the work we were given.

I think of a song by the band Switchfoot;

we were meant to live for so much more, have we lost ourselves?

We need to stop trying to make the popular kids like us, and start telling them the truth.

We need to be unpopular. We need to diminish ourselves, that He may increase. So people that don’t know him will Choose life, and their families will live.

Tough Questions, Tough Decisions

We talked about Mormonism vs Christianity last night for the High School/College Sunday school class, and it was a really interesting discussion. Zeb showed part of a documentary that was more of a compare and contrast between the two.

It was doubly interesting because you hear so much about the similarities between the two religions, to the extent it makes them sound like pretty much just different sides of the same coin.

No. Different coins, man. Different currency.

Mormonism does not align with Christian scripture, does not align with the bible. I am not here to debunk all the many points of Mormonism vs Christianity, though I encourage you to look into the differences yourself.

There are many of them, and though Mormons do a lot of good and are without question some of the nicest people you will ever meet, there is something missing in their theology.

Zeb offered a simple question in the way of testing whether or not Mormonism or any religion is “Christianity.”

What does it say about Jesus?

After viewing the documentary footage last night and asking myself the above question I can say that Mormons can call themselves whatever they want–they do not follow the Jesus of the bible. And the Book of Mormon is not “another gospel of Jesus Christ,” but more akin to “Religious fiction.”

That being said, it obviously led me to thinking about the current presidential election.

Is it possible to separate my beliefs about politics and what goes on in the country and the world?

What do the candidates say about Jesus?

I’ve heard President Obama profess a belief in Jesus on many occasions, and claim Christianity, even in the face of stubborn and often stupid accusations. For my part, if he says he believes, I’ll take him at his word.

Governor Romney claims to believe in Jesus as well, but also professes a strong Mormon faith. I do not question his character, and agree with more of his potential policies than disagree.

The only thing is, I’ve also heard him say words to the effect that Mormonism is Christianity and Mormons proclaim the same Jesus as Christians.

That isn’t true.

If Gov Romney doesn’t believe the things he says and says them anyway, he’s covering up some glaring flaws in a religion he pays lip service to because he wants to be president. President Obama could be guilty of the same thing.

If Gov Romney does believe the things he says about Mormonism and Christianity he’s a fool and an apostate, and will one day face judgment for those things.

Based in what those two men say about Jesus and what I believe in my heart about Him, I’m going to have some hard decisions to make in the time before the election, and some hard questions to ask myself.

Can I really separate what I believe about politics from my faith?

Should I?

How about the candidates? Can they do the same?

So many questions…