Thoughts on Isaac

My friend Rachel wrote a powerful piece last week called “I Would Fail Abraham’s Test.” She refers to the mind-blowing story in Genesis 22 of God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son. If you’re not familiar with the story, you can read it here.

Rachel’s conclusion (dramatically over-shortened) is that obedience should be secondary to love, or more accurately that those who refuse to “disengage their emotions in the name of obedience” have done an admirable thing. Perhaps these commandments are not meant to be followed. Perhaps God wanted Abraham to refuse.

I am not yet a mother, and still I know, deep in my gut, that I would sooner turn my back on everything I know to be true than sacrifice my child on the altar of religion.

Maybe the real test isn't in whether you drive the knife through the heart.

Maybe the real test is in whether you refuse.

It’s an appealing reading of a difficult passage, neatly fitted to our modern sensibilities. But I don't think this reading works. While Rachel probably isn't often accused of whitewashing the Biblical text, there are actually far greater problems here than she lets on. The situation here is actually worse than she says. The passage ends in a way that brooks no argument:

The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

Abraham isn't castigated by God for “passing” the test... he is praised! How could this God have anything to teach us about morality? That’s a question better answered by Derek Rishmawy, who articulates an understanding very similar to my own. It’s worth reading that link fully, and maybe several times. It’s a piece I would have written if I were a better writer. And smarter. Derek does a great job explaining a position that’s difficult to explain, but he does a great job of clarifying and (mostly) simplifying it. I say mostly because he insists on dragging in a dead Danish philosopher to the discussion, which is the opposite of simplification (Love ya Derek). He concludes:

That doesn't mean we should stop questioning, thinking, reading, studying, and just settle for the first, obvious reading of any text we come to. No, all too often that will lead us astray and may even lead us to affirm things out of “deference” to God that he himself would never affirm.

So maybe that resolves the difficulty of the Genesis narrative. Or maybe you just scratch the whole thing and write it off as a primitive-but-unsuccessful attempt to understand God’s will. “The Old Testament God is so violent,” I hear people say all the time, “unlike the New Testament God who is so loving and kind.” I think this is a false dichotomy, but I hear it all the time.

Regardless of what you do with the Old Testament, though, the problem gets worse. Fast forward to the New Testament and check the book of Hebrews. Almost all of the New Testament is written by Jewish Christians, but this is the only book written exclusively to Jewish Christians. It’s the only book of the Bible ever speculated to have been written by a woman. The writer has vast sections of the Old Testament memorized and structures every argument in the book as an extension of the Hebrew Scriptures. This guy knew his stuff. And in Chapter 11, the author lists the great heroes of the faith. For some of them, it’s obvious why they’re in the list. For others, it’s harder. The first time you read it, you think “I see why Gideon and David made the list, but what’s the deal with Abraham and Jephthah?”

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”

Again we see Abraham being praised for offering Isaac as a sacrifice. Derek’s “cultural distance” may work for the original story, but to the author of Hebrews child sacrifice has been forbidden for a thousand years. What gives?

***

Quick sidebar here. This may look like a terrible story, but I am seriously invested in it. After having kids, I wrestled with this passage for a long time. It’s changed my understanding of God and faith in some important ways. At this point, it’s fundamental to my faith. One of the many results of this wrestling is that we named our third child Isaac.

Crossed 20 pounds before hitting 4 months. We call him Goliath. And Shaquille.

I love each of my kids more than life itself. I’m quite serious about that: I’d die to save one of my children, and I certainly wouldn't sacrifice him on any altar. I’m convinced that Derek is correct: that God asked Abraham to do something that Abraham did not consider immoral. In fact, you can see this yourself in both Genesis and Hebrews. Abraham’s objections to sacrificing Isaac aren't moral or emotional ones, they’re logistical. Isaac is the Child of Promise, whose descendants will be like the stars. How can he have descendants if he dies?

There’s a hint in Hebrews.

He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.

Isn't this a revisionist reading? Where did the author get this idea? Child sacrifice is a pretty major no-no (i.e., Leviticus 20:2-5, Deuteronomy 18:10, Proverbs 6:17, Jeremiah 32:35, etc), so what is he commending Abraham for?

The author of Hebrews commends Abraham not for blind obedience, but for faith. Faith, he says, is “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Faith isn't having the right set of beliefs or even rote obedience to a creed, it is believing in and acting on the promises and character of God, even when it’s difficult to understand how those things could be true. God promised Abraham that Isaac would have descendants. God will keep his promises.

And we see this in the story of Abraham, in a small detail that’s often overlooked. Abraham journeys toward the mountain with his son and with two servants. On the third day, he tells his servants “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

The obvious reading is that Abraham is lying to his servants. Yet why would he? As the patriarch and head of the house, they would sacrifice Isaac themselves if he told them to. As Derek points out, this was not in the least bit uncommon. Is Abraham lying to his son? There’s no reason. If he’s a heartless murderer, why not knock the kid out or just tie him up?

The obvious reading is wrong. Abraham wasn’t lying, he was demonstrating ultimate faith. God had stood in front of him, face to face, and promised that Isaac would live to have children. Therefore, whatever happened on the mountain, Isaac would live. Abraham is practically daring God here. “You promised,” I imagine him thinking. “You promised that my son would live. If you are true to your word, if your character can be trusted, then my son and I will walk up the mountain, and my son and I will walk back down.”

That is faith: believing that God is who he says he is, and that he will do what he has promised to do.

Stories in the Bible aren’t about the people in them, they’re about God. This story is no different. God accomplishes two things here: he begins to show the ways in which he is different from the tribal deities with which Abraham is familiar, and he shows that he can be trusted to keep his promises. The fullness of his will regarding child sacrifice (i.e., all the ways he’s against it) will be revealed in time. For now, it’s enough for Abraham to know that God can be trusted.

The writer of Hebrews calls Abraham "He who had embraced the promises."

Let it be said also of us.

Tolerance

This is a really challenging piece, but it's the best long-form writing I've seen online in a while.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/

"I can tolerate anything except the outgroup." Relates well to the empathy stuff I posted a while back. Another time I'll write up my thoughts, but right now I've got to boogie and want to post this before I forget.

Rich Memories

This past week was the anniversary of Rich Mullins' death, but I was too busy to write anything. I'll save the exact reasons I still love Rich's music for another post; here I just wanted to record two memories I have from his concerts.

The first was from a show in the mid-90s. Rich talked more in his concerts than any musician I've ever seen. And he was fascinating. He was great at calibrating invitation and challenge: his songs and mini-sermons would comfort and convict in equal measure. He also had a lot of crowd interaction; he hated studio music and loved going back and forth with the audience. On this particular occasion, somebody yelled a political question and Rich hit a well-worn soapbox. Bill Clinton was in office and it was a few months away from the election.

"Why are you so hungry for a king?" Rich said to his (mostly) conservative evangelical Christian audience. "You're so focused on winning elections that you lose sight of what the Kingdom of God is all about. God doesn't need to get the right guy in office for his will to be done." That's a rough paraphrase (it was half my life ago) but Rich kept building up along the same vein. And the audience loved it and was building with him. Downgrading the political arena is always popular when "our guy" isn't in office.

"Our ultimate hope is in Jesus, not the government. Do you believe that?" Rich asked, and got loud "yeahs" in response. "Do you really believe it?" he asked again, and got even more response. "Well," Rich said, "I hope you remember that you once believed it when the Republicans take over in November." And the place went ballistic. People were yelling, cheering, and clapping. Rich had predicted a Republican takeover!

Rich just stood on the stage and watched the crowd. I watched him deflate as he realized that almost nobody had even understood what he said. Then he walked back to the piano and started his next song; he didn't say anything else the rest of the night.

---

I got to see Rich in concert three times the year before he died. There had been talk that he was done recording and done touring. He only traveled to raise support for Compassion International, and he'd been living on a Navajo reservation where he taught music classes in the local school. All of his record earnings had been placed in a trust, from which he drew a yearly stipend equal to the average working wage for an American blue-collar worker. So when he announced one more tour, I hit every location I could.

The last concert I saw, he played his normal songs but also a new one that would be on his upcoming Jesus album: You Did Not Have a Home. To introduce the album, he told a weird story. He talked about listening to an interview with Billy Graham, who had recently dropped out of all endeavors except preaching. He'd stopped counseling presidents, teaching students, writing books, and everything else. The interviewer asked him why, and Rich repeated Graham's words verbatim as he tuned his guitar.

"The things I was doing were good things. But I believe that my time here on earth is short, and with the little time I have left I intend to spend every moment possible preaching Christ crucified, so that when I stand before God I won't have left anything un-done." He said he was making his last album: The Jesus Record. Then he played the song and it sounded exactly like it did on that link. He never got a chance to make the Jesus Record; he was killed six weeks later when a semi hit his Jeep.

No conclusion from me; you can draw your own. But I imagine him singing this song on the way out. 

Thoughts on Ideological Empathy

I've been meaning to break out of my blog radio silence for a while now, but life has (surprisingly) remained somewhat complicated. I read a great piece tonight by my very close personal friend Derek Rishmawy¹, though, that deserves comment. He begins:

We seem to live in an age that lacks intellectual imagination; at least when it comes to the thought processes of others.

It's worth reading Derek's post because this is a really, really important point. I, unfortunately, have absolutely nothing of my own to add to the discussion. However, I've read and thought about this topic quite a bit, so if nothing else I can at least tie in some helpful resources.

There's an actual technical term for this particular type of intellectual imagination: it's called "A Theory of Mind."² According to El Wik:

Having a theory of mind allows one to attribute thoughts, desires, and intentions to others, to predict or explain their actions, and to posit their intentions. As originally defined, it enables one to understand that mental states can be the cause of—and thus be used to explain and predict—others' behavior.

This ability to understand the intentions of others can be especially difficult in online interactions, in part because nonverbal signals don't translate over the internet. Lacking these social cues, we sometimes attribute intent to others that they do not in fact hold. But Derek's not the only one who's been noticing this recently. On Snarkmarket, one of my favorite blogs, Robin Sloan talked about this very thing almost two years ago. He describes something called the Long Now debate format, which is at attempt at create "empathy and good faith."

Take two debaters, Alice and Bob. Alice goes first, presenting her argument. Then Bob stands up, and before he can present his counter-argument, he has to summarize Alice’s argument to her satisfaction. So it’s basically an exercise in empathy and good faith. If Alice agrees that he’s got it right, then Bob proceeds with his argument—and when he’s done, Alice has to recapitulate it to his satisfaction.

This is actually referred to, in many circles, as an "ideological turing test." I first heard the phrase here:

If someone can correctly explain a position but continue to disagree with it, that position is less likely to be correct.  And if ability to correctly explain a position leads almost automatically to agreement with it, that position is more likely to be correct.  It's not a perfect criterion, of course, especially for highly idiosyncratic views.  But the ability to pass ideological Turing tests - to state opposing views as clearly and persuasively as their proponents - is a genuine symptom of objectivity and wisdom.

I'd like to someday demonstrate symptoms of objectivity and wisdom, so the idea of being able to state opposing views as clearly and persuasively as their proponents is one that appeals to me. I'm not claiming I do it consistently, I'm just saying it's an appealing idea.

---

1 Not really. We've never met. We occasionally interact on social media, though.^↩

2 I was originally made aware of ToM through the writings of Charlie Stross. Click here, then search the page for "theory of mind." Ironically, Charlie does not display a strong Theory of Mind when he writes about those with whom he disagrees, but as with the Krugman example, that's not so rare. Ironically, I once listened to a one-hour panel discussion between Stross and Krugman that was incredibly enlightening, but that's a story for another time.^↩

Top Ten Reasons I Fail to Keep the Blog Up To Date

10. Laziness.
9.
8.
7.
6.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.

Belated Thanksgiving Thoughts on Unemployment

We've just completed paying off our third month of bills since I was laid off in September. I chose not to file for unemployment, and now three months in we still haven't touched our emergency fund. We pay our bills a month ahead of time, so as of this moment we've got money for all of our bills until the end of January. I am deeply, deeply, thankful.

1. I'm thankful for the generosity of family and friends. The emotional value of the gifts has far surpassed the financial value, but the financial value is significant.
2. I'm thankful for local companies that have let me do freelance work for them.
3. I'm thankful for Craigslist, Ebay, and Amazon, through whom I've sold a lot of our "junk" at prices that actually make a difference for our financial situation. Trade works!
4. I'm thankful for financial teachers whose mistakes I've benefited from. Great teachers make hard times easier.
1. Dave Ramsey, who convinced me to build an emergency fund and taught me how not to need it. When you don't have a steady income, it's really nice having no payments and no credit card debt.
2. Mr. Money Mustache, who's supplied the proper amount of kick-in-the-butt that I seem to require.
3. Ramit Sethi, whose principles of automation has kept my mind off the bills.
4. The 3DM/5 Capitals team, who give me a grid for understanding how money fits into the rest of my life.
5. I'm thankful for the opportunity to focus on finishing my MDiv degree. I started in 2005, stopped in 2008, and as of September I was still six classes away from finishing. By January, I should be done.
6. I'm thankful that I've been able to support my wife as she's finished her PhD. She's an absolute rockstar, and has excelled while spending far less time on the degree than many of her classmates. I've been thankful that I've been able to dig in and help some in this final push.
7. I'm thankful for the opportunity to drop my kids off and pick them up at school. I love working, but I hate being away from my kids.
8. I'm thankful for conversations I've had with several churches and with Vanderbloemen Search Group. I'm still not sure what the future holds, but having consistent conversations has kept me hopeful for the next season in our journey.
9. I'm thankful that God never leaves us or forsakes us. This is the solution to the problem of pain: God does not always prevent hardship, but he never asks us to go through it alone.

2013 has been the hardest and best year of my life. I can't wait for the fresh start of the New Year.

The Strategy of Satan

This entire post is a reaction to a brilliant post by one of my favorite authors. It's worth reading. Let me know if you want to push back or hear more about this: I could go on all week.

I'm thinking, this evening, of my very last meeting at a former job. This was years ago, but I remember it almost perfectly. The job was a church job, and the meeting was a church planning meeting. We were trying to figure out how to encourage people to get to know their neighbors and to throw Jesus-like parties, and connect with people that they'd passed over. And while we were having this discussion, the question came up: were we personally going to do this? Who would we invite?

One of the people in the meeting was a good guy, about my age. Crazy talented, loved Jesus, super smart, the works. He had friends who were far from God, and this distressed him. He was convinced that they're never really understood what it was that they rejected; that they were inoculated against lame, boring, suburban Christianity but were dying to meet Jesus. I thought he was right. But then he said something I've never forgotten.

"Most of the 'neighbors' I'd invite don't actually live around me," he said. "In fact, if I do this I'll probably try to avoid my actual neighbors. They're all Christians, and they're the kind of people my friends are trying to stay away from. Inviting them would be bad for my personal brand."

I was so gobsmacked that I didn't say the first thing that came to my mind. And then the meeting was over, and it was two days before my last day, and I was already working my way through some depression, and I just didn't have the energy or desire or courage to say what I thought:

That's Satanic.

Pause there. New thought.

What is the purpose of God in the world? 

Heavy thoughts for the one AM on a Friday, but I've been laying in bed thinking and I figure this is better out than in. What is the purpose of God in the world? Surely the best way to tell is to look at Jesus. What was Jesus' primary purpose? What overriding logic applied to all of his actions and words on earth?

I would argue that Jesus' primary concern was the radical disruption of division. The division between God and His people, the division between Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, men and women, clean and unclean: Jesus' primary strategy was the destruction of barriers wherever he found them. It's intrinsic to the Kingdom of God. What did Jesus pray for with his last hours before the crucifixion? Unity.

I don't expect you to agree with that conclusion. It took me a lot more than that brief summary to reach it, and I wouldn't expect you to agree without seeing me show my work. But take it, for a moment, to be true. Imagine with me that you agree. If Jesus' primary strategy was overcoming the separation that people experience with God and with each other, then what would we expect Satan's strategy to be?

Yeah. I'd expect it to include a way to manufacture differences in order to increase division. To erect barriers wherever possible, no matter how arbitrary. There's a word for that activity: it's called branding. I accept  (i.e., don't rail much against) corporate branding as a necessary evil, but there is nothing I distrust so much as a personal brand.

It's a crippling thought, because our entire civilization runs on brands. People who set out to cultivate a personal brand don't do so because they're evil, they do it because it works. You can't hardly give away a product without a brand. You certainly can't stay in business without it. But branding is, at root, nothing but differentiation. "This is better than that." "This is cooler than that." "Good/smart/funny/rich/moral people use this, not that." What can you do without a good brand? It's the system of our world.

But if Satan's primary tool is to create division, and if the primary purpose of branding is to create division, then shouldn't we be at least a little bit cautious?

Persecution and Tolerance

Over at his unassuming Wordpress blog, Tim Stafford talks about the disconnect between the constant persecution of the book of Revelation (and indeed, the entire New Testament) and the "skeptical tolerance" of our modern era.

This is the dilemma that Lesslie Newbigin wrote about so searchingly almost thirty years ago. The west, inoculated with its Christian heritage, has become the toughest missionary challenge we face. It resists God not by violence or threats, but by scorn and the substitution of other gods, such as pleasure. Revelation’s sounding trumpets and rivers of blood and monsters rising up out of the deep seem oddly out of touch and unhelpful, as far as I can see.

The only passage in the New Testament that seems to speak to western, tolerant skepticism is Acts 17, which records Paul’s brief sojourn in Athens. There he was treated cordially, listened to with curiosity, and (in the end) scoffed at. But not stoned.

The New Testament doesn’t seem to directly advise those whose neighbors, like the Athenians, treat us politely but with heavy skepticism. Perhaps historically speaking this era of tolerant western skepticism is only a momentary break in the unrelieved hostility that Revelation foresees. To me it seems like something else: a challenge for which we have few directions.

A fantastic read by a fantastic writer. By a curious coincidence, I preached on Acts 17 this past weekend. If you're interested, you can get a copy here.

An Odor Update

The blog has been radio-silent for the past two months.  I sent this note to some friends and thought it might be worth putting out in public.

===

Hey friends.  I've appreciated your prayers and encouragement over the past month.  Despite our difficulties, I've never been so aware of God's care and protection.

As you know, my last day as Associate Pastor at the Lexington Vineyard was Sunday, May 20th.  I finished my responsibilities, preached my final sermon, and walked away clean.  After being let go, I decided to put a 30-day hold on looking for new permanent work.  I don't always make good decisions when I'm emotional, and between the job and some other family difficulties, a "pause" seemed like a good idea.  I had a contracting arrangement with a local engineering firm, and so I picked up more hours to cover our expenses and focused on getting our home ready to sell if we moved out of state.

Now that the self-imposed 30 days is up, I've realized that it would be difficult for us to "land" anywhere before the school year starts in the fall, and my preference is not to move Jenna or Liam in the middle of the school year.  In addition, Judi still has a large amount of PhD work to finish at Asbury before December, so staying here in Lexington for another year seems like a good path forward.  With this in mind, I applied for and received a permanent role at the engineering firm, which will keep us here in town until next Spring at the earliest.

In addition to the work, I've still got a foot solidly in the pastoral world.  I'm on track to finish my MDiv by next May, I'll be preaching once a month at a smaller church, and I'm part of a coaching huddle with a national discipleship organization.  This should be a good year of preparation for whatever comes next.

Again, I can't say enough how much I appreciate the prayers and words of encouragement, challenge, and wisdom that I've received from friends over the past month. Thanks for being one of them.

Eleven Years Today

Saturday, April 20, 2002

Hard to believe.  And we love each other more now than we did then.

Cynicism and the new Dove ad

You've seen the new Dove ad already, right? If not, you should see it. It's really an incredible piece. Watch it full screen, it's worth it.



As I said, this is really an incredible piece, for all kinds of reasons. It's a phenomenal concept... the experiment alone could easily be someone's doctoral thesis. The execution is perfect: on a purely artistic level, it's brilliantly shot and edited. And the message hits hard. I don't know a woman that wouldn't be impacted by this. Heck, I'm far outside the target demographic and it still got to me. They did a great job with it. And it's not even the first one of these Dove has made. Remember this?

And yet by the middle of the first viewing all of my warning bells are going off. Are there some good thoughts in here? Absolutely. Are most women too hard on themselves? Sure. As a man, can I make blanket statements about women without being labeled a sexist? Probably not. But the point stands: while there's a ton of good in this ad that will be helpful for a lot of women, it doesn't change the fact that this is an ad. A brilliant ad, a clever ad, a well-produced ad, but still an ad. Dove isn't running a charity, here, they're trying to sell more soap.

How much money per second do you think Dove spent on this ad? The typical Super Bowl ad is, what, 100k per second? More? How much do you think they spent for a 180-second video? Do you think Dove execs think this was a good investment? If you ran a beauty supply company, how much would you pay to have women forward the following quote to each other while crying about it?

I should be more grateful of my natural beauty. It impacts the choices and the friends that we make, the jobs we apply for, how we treat our children, it impacts everything. It couldn't be more critical to our happiness.

I'll let others deconstruct the ad itself... notice the use of word clusters: "thin" and "pretty" with "happy," "fat" with "sad," etc. At $100,000 per second, there's not an unintentional word in there. I'm not particularly anti-corporate, so it doesn't bother me that the same company that sells women-empowering Dove soap also sells a soap brand for guys: the extremely progressive and women-empowering Axe. I'm not even stressed about the fact that about 10 seconds of the ad is devoted to women who aren't blond Caucasians. Gotta work the FPLM magic somehow. I just want to point out the thesis of the ad: beauty couldn't be more critical to our happiness.

I know that I can be cynical. I'm not necessarily proud of it. But when I see something like this, I can't help but ask "What does the author want to be true?" and "Should I believe that?"  It's shocking how frequently the second answer is "No."

Jesus and the Pharisees and Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

Now there's a mouthful.

I wouldn't say that I'm a terribly fearful person. I rarely make choices based on fear; in fact I would frequently do well to have a little more fear. But one fear I've had over the past year or so, in the background of my mind, is the fear of ending up a Pharisee. Especially as I've watched some of the Christian debate in the public sphere, I've asked myself both "What would Jesus do?" (and I mean that as non-trivially as possible) but also "What would the Pharisees do?" I don't want to be a Pharisee.

I've been listening to the New Testament in 2013, and it's been fascinating. These people seriously got Jesus' goat. Last week, we covered this on our reading plan:

You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

I read that, and I thought "Please God, do not let that be what you say about me. I don't want to be that guy." But over the past six months or so, I've also been spending some brainpower on America's national religion: Moralistic therapeutic deism, or MTD for short. According to El Wik:

Moralistic therapeutic deism ... is used to describe common religious beliefs among American youth.

• A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
• God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
• The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
• God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
• Good people go to heaven when they die.

It's not hard to imagine where this comes from: it's taught in churches all the time. People pick MTD up out of the air in America... it's not just teenagers that believe this. Over 90% of Americans believe in God, but the vast majority of them believe in this. It's not Fosterism (yet), but we're getting there. People are into Jesus because he sounds like this.

Except that he doesn't. He doesn't at all. Perhaps the most shocking thing for me, as I've been listening to the Gospels again, is how much of what Jesus says goes expressly against MTD. To the extent that such a belief system is compatible with Christianity, it's at the fringes. To the extent that these five ideas are true, it's as incidental to the core things that Jesus taught about himself.

And so the takeaway for me, as I've been watching the myself and the church over the past few months, is that I need to beware MTD just as much as I need to beware "Pharisee-ism." Both sides are equally seductive, and equally dangerous. I need to live in the constant tension between John 5:39-40 and  an equally terrifying verse: Malachi 2:17.

You have wearied the Lord with your words. 

“How have we wearied him?” you ask. 

By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them” or “Where is the God of justice?”

Don't be that guy. 

What I Pray For My Kids

Every night, I pray for Liam as I put him to bed.  On Tuesdays, when Judi is at school, I pray for Jenna too.

Every night I pray the exact same thing.  The words may vary a little bit here and there, but my desires for them are consistent and so I try to make my prayers consistent as well.

Dear God, 

Thank you so much for Liam. I love him very much.

Please help him learn to love You, and to love all of the people around him.

Please help him to make good choices, and please keep him safe and healthy.

In Jesus name,

Amen.

There are other things I can think to pray.  Before I had kids, I thought praying for safety was overrated.  Instead, we should pray that God would use them powerfully!  These are things that make more sense before you have children.

Every prayer that you pray in front of your kids has to be an honest one to God (kids can tell when you don't really care), but it also has to be something you're teaching your kids.  "This is how I talk to God, kids," or "This is what I want most for you."

If I can pray anything I want for my kids, I want them to learn to love the 1st and 2nd commandments, to learn to make good choices, to be safe, and to be healthy.  Maybe someday I'll add to that prayer, but not today.

Take care of my kids, God.

God Breaks Through

I work at a church.  It's an incredible privilege to be able to give your best hours of the week to the Kingdom, and it's not a privilege I take lightly.  But there's something that happens when your church is your job... it's easy to miss the point.

It's so easy to get into "Work Mode."  Who do I need to talk to? What responsibilities do I need to take care of?  What am I doing after I finish this?  Even when I visit a different church where I have no responsibilities, it's easy to get stuck in my default (analytical/critical) state.  "Why do they play that song that way?  How have they set up their greeters?  Why are they mixing the sound that way?  Should I steal that line?"

It's easy to be in my own self-absorbed world.  Sometimes God just waits for me to get over myself, like a friend waiting for me to come to the door.  Sometimes I hear him knock.

But sometimes he simply breaks through.  Unwilling to wait, unwilling to be the second-most important thing in my life, unwilling to let me miss Him due to my own distraction... sometimes God simply breaks through.

I hope this Easter, you can experience that, if just for a moment.  May God break through your preoccupation and meet with you.  May you be aware of that when it happens.

I hope your Friday was Good.

What I Said at the Funeral

Judi's grandmother passed away last week, and the family asked me to perform the funeral.  Helen was an amazing lady.  Two tidbits that stood out from her obituary:  she and her husband were married for 68 years at the time of his death, and over the past several decades she'd spent over 17 THOUSAND hours volunteering at the local hospital.

Quick math tangent:  17,870 hours, divided by 24 hours a day, makes over 744 days.  If you went into a hospital, and volunteered every single minute of every day (no sleep, meals, or bathroom breaks) it would take you over two years to do that.  If you tried to volunteer 17,870 hours by working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, it would take you almost a decade.  That's craziness.  And that doesn't count all of the cakes and blankets she made (at home, on her own time) for the hospital staff and patients.

The family asked me to perform the funeral, which was a first for me.  I've done a LOT of weddings, but this was my first funeral.  I spoke from the book of Job, chapter 7, where Job says that "life is a breath and our days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle."  Job's a tricky book to quote, because so much of it is stated by the Job and his friends but then refuted by God.

I've seen a weaver's shuttle exactly once.  It was a lady over in Southeast Asia, weaving a silk tapestry.  For the most part, you couldn't really even see the shuttle because it moved so quickly.  Just a flash, and it was gone.  But then it came back for another round; another line of thread laid down, and another, and another.  Our lives pass so quickly as a series of moments that we can never get back.  But each moment is the basis for the next, and the one after that, and the one after that.  Over time, we see this succession of moments not as a pile of individual threads but as a solid fabric:  the tapestry of our life.

I spent the rest of the time talking about Helen's tapestry.  The three dominant colors in hers were generosity, service, and faith.  What will yours be?

Porn and Seat Belts

Imagine if buckling your seat belt made your car go faster.    Hold onto that idea, we'll come back to it. 

I'm fairly sure this is the worst thing I've read in a long time. Summary:  Researchers want to study porn's impact on guy's brains, but they can't do any research because they don't have a control group.  They can't find any guys who haven't seen porn.

Think about that. 

If you're in the midst of a battle with pornography, this post isn't really for you.  Do the stuff I talk about here, but it's just a start.  I recommend reading this, and then talk to somebody.  I'll listen to you if nobody else will.

But if you're a guy who doesn't struggle with pornography, let me give you two easy steps to make sure you don't accidentally start.  Here's the best part:  they'll make everything about your internet experience better.  FAR better.

First, install (free) ad-blocking software.  

I use Adblock for Chrome.  Do you use Firefox?  Click here.  Safari?  Click here.  Internet Explorer?  Click here.  There are folks that argue against ad-blockers, because so many sites are supported by ad-based content.  Ignore these people.  I know from my own experience and the experience of MANY guys that I've talked to that explicit banner advertisements can be a gateway into temptation.  Close that gate up.

Here's the best part:  even if you never get served questionable ads, the internet is a better experience with an ad-blocker.  You don't get crazy popups, you don't get loud sounds that load in some other tab, and you can actually focus on whatever it is you're trying to read.  Plus, your webpages will load far faster, because they're not pulling down tons of graphical ads.  Getting an ad-blocker is like putting on a seat-belt, but it drastically increases the relative speed of your internet connection.

Second, start using OpenDNS (free).

If you're reading this blog, you probably live around me, which means you're probably on Time Warner Cable or Insight.  These companies use their own DNS services, which are generally sub-par, ad-driven, and SLOW.  I won't fully explain what DNS is (click here for a good explanation) but for now, think of it like an address book.  When you say "I want to go to Google," DNS is the one that actually routes you to that website.

A slow DNS service makes web addresses resolve slowly.  Getting a better one lets your computer "find" websites faster.  It won't make a difference in how quickly the actual content of the website gets downloaded to your computer, but it helps the process get started faster.

Once you're using OpenDNS, though, you can perform some additional magic here.  You can set filtering levels so that certain types of websites are routed around.  The DNS filter simply won't go there.  This is a screenshot from my settings:

This is better than a software filter for two reasons.  First, it applies to all devices (think tablets), not just ones that have the software installed.  Second, it doesn't slow down your computer.  Instead, it speeds it up!  To set up OpenDNS on your home router, click here.

If you're thinking "I don't need this stuff, I don't ever look at porn" then you're missing the point.  These two things will give you a better internet experience even if you've never once been tempted.  It's not an 8-foot fortress wall to keep the bad stuff away... it's more like a guardrail.  But guardrails aren't a bad thing.  And they don't get in your way.

A Reply for Dan

Hobby?  Not really.  But Dan made Wylio.com, which is cool.

I had dinner last night with my college roommate/best man and his wife.  Over the course of the evening's conversation, he asked me how my quest to write 52 blog posts this year is going.  I started to answer, got distracted (me?  imagine!) and never got around to answering the question.

The answer is that it's not going well, because the vast majority of what I write I never publish.  Almost everything on this blog in the past 3 years (admittedly, not that much) is something I wrote in 5 minutes and published immediately.  Anything that takes longer never gets published.  Some of that is distraction (me?  distracted?) but mostly it's that the more I look at something I write, the more problems I find with it.

Right now I'm functioning more as an editor than a writer.  It hasn't always been this way, but we are indeed shaped by our work.  The longer I look at something I write, the more work that I think it needs before it's worth sharing.  This is a pretty drastic change from earlier in my life, where I was much more careless with my words.

The only way (thus far) I've successfully broken the cycle is to publish without thinking too much about it.  So that's what I'm going to try for a while.  I'll start by going back through the hundreds of "draft" blog posts I have on Blogger, and picking a few to publish.

We'll see how it goes.

Three down, 49 to go.

I See Men Like Trees

The Vineyard is reading through the New Testament this year, which is less work than you might expect.  There are 260 chapters in the New Testament and 52 weeks in the year.  That works out to exactly 5 chapters a week, or one chapter a day Monday through Friday.  You even have the weekends off!  You can find the reading plan here.

This year I've been trying something new:  listening to the Bible instead of reading it.  Faith comes by hearing, after all.  I just open up YouVersion on my smart device of choice and play a professional recording of the day's passage (click here for more info).

It's been an interesting experience to listen instead of read.  I'm not much for audiobooks; I can read FAR faster than someone else can talk, so audiobooks are always too "slow" to be really mentally stimulating.  But this has been different.  My mind still moves at its normal speed, but the "slowness" of the audio recording has the interesting effect of drawing me back to passages that I race past.  I'm able to think about the words in a different way than I would if I were just reading through.

Today's chapter was Mark 8.  Jesus has just finished giving the disciples a hard time about their lack of faith, pointing out that he'd just done a pair of miracles where he'd produced (literally) tons of food, but they still doubted him.  "They" (the disciples?  The crowd?) bring Jesus a blind man and ask Jesus to heal him.  Jesus begins by spitting in the man's eyes, which is a more impressive feat than it seems.  How confident are you that you could walk up to another person and spit directly into their eyes?

Regardless, Jesus spits on the man's eyes and... it doesn't take.  The text says that the man regains his sight, but when he looks around he doesn't recognize anything.  The men he sees "look like trees walking around."  Obvious questions include:  why does the text say he regains his sight if what he sees doesn't make sense to him?  How does he know what trees look like, to compare people to trees?  And, most importantly, what the heck just happened?

On the surface, it looks like Jesus tried to heal the man, whiffed, and then got it right on the second try.  Why?  Jesus seems to do some sort of calibration, but he's never had to do that in his other miracles.  What's different about this one?  What would have happened if the man had left halfway through the miracle?

I've read and heard a lot of different thoughts on this, and some of them are extremely compelling.  But I wonder how many times I've missed the miraculous work of God in my life because it happened over a period of time, instead of instantly.  This guy goes to see Jesus unable to see, and leaves able to see.  That's miraculous.  But what about the changes that happen over the space of a week?  A month?  A season?  Are they any less miraculous?

Don't despise the small beginning.

In Which I'm Suspected of Being a Drug Dealer

One of my goals for 2013 is to update this blog 52 times. We'll see how I do. 

This evening I sold a phone on Craigslist.  I met the gentleman at a McDonald's and from there we drove over to a Verizon store so he could activate it.  I told him on the phone I'd be the tall skinny guy at McDonald's, and he said "Cool, I'll be the short jealous black dude." Everybody's jealous of my height until they try to sit in my car.

He was a cool guy named Rashad.  Mid-20s, engaged, and he'd just come from mentoring some troubled teenagers through his church. We had a good talk about various kinds of outreach, and then he leaned over and asked me a question I don't hear very often.

"This might be a weird question," he said, "but do I smell like weed?"

I'm not in the habit of visiting McDonald's to smell random strangers I meet on Craigslist, but I gave him a sniff.  "A bit," I said.

"They put out their joints the moment I came into the room," he said.  "I left a little bit earlier than I planned, because I felt like I was starting to get high just from the second-hand smoke.  I was worried about getting pulled over; the cops would never believe I wasn't using pot."

"You're not carrying, and possession is nine-tenths of the law," I quipped.  I was proud of that one.

We got to the Verizon store and activated the phone, small-talking the entire time. Rashad was buying the phone for a friend who would be in town for a week (funeral) but forgot his phone back in Texas. The store was relatively quiet; there were only a couple other people besides the sales team.  Once the activation was complete, he put the phone on speaker, set it down on the counter next to his iPhone, and tried calling himself from it.  While the phone was dialing, he started counting out the cash for me.

"Hello?" said someone on the other end of the phone.

"Sorry, wrong number!" he said, hanging up the phone.  We all got a good laugh, and he stopped counting out the money again while he looked, puzzled, at the phone I'd just sold him.

"I forgot my number!" he finally and loudly exclaimed.  "I'm telling you, man, it's that weed!"

Suddenly, the Verizon store got very, very quiet.  I looked up and realized that everyone in the store is looking at me, holding the cash that a young African-American man is counting out to me.

The store manager walked over.  "Sir, is there a problem?"

Everyone in the store watched me take the last of the cash from his hand.  "No, I'm just leaving.  Nice to meet you, Rashad."

As I walked to the door, I heard the salesman ask "Wait, don't you know each other?"

"No, just met him tonight," said my new friend, as the door closed behind me.

The manager stood by the door and watched me walk to my car, and was still watching me when I drove out of the parking lot.  I've been home for an hour, though, and the po-po haven't knocked on my door, so I'm guessing he didn't get a plate.

One down, fifty-one to go.

How we manage our money

This past week, I posted this on Facebook:

145 interactions?  Never seen that before.

That is, without a doubt, my most-interacted with bit of social media ever (Wolfram Alpha agrees).  I was stunned to see the number of people who liked it.  We didn't get that much interest when announcing the birth of our kids!  While I'm positive that many of those folks are already debt-free and are recognizing the work of a fellow-traveler, I also expect that many of the "likers" (is that a word?) are hungry for the same thing we're experiencing now.  I've had several people ask for an explanation of how we handle our money.  This is it.

I should point out that I am hardly a personal finance expert.  If I were smarter or better with money, we wouldn't have added that debt in the first place.  Today, I make $10k a year less than I made eight years ago when I was 24.  You'd think that the early earning power would have given me a massive head-start, but instead it set us back.  I got used to out-earning my poor decisions, which ended up being a problem when my earning potential decreased.  Engineering firms pay better than churches.  Who knew?

I've been hosting Financial Peace University at our church, and I've been watching people struggle with their budgets.  I really like Dave Ramsey, and his principles are solid.  But his budget forms are really difficult for me.  Too much work.  Judi and I have migrated to an easier system that's worked well for us.  I called into his show and asked him what he thought, and he said MY approach seemed like too much work.  To each his own, I guess.  But here's what we do.

We've totally stopped using credit cards, and minimized debit cards (except for gas).  We've stopped worrying about accruing points; we've found that the amount we save when paying cash is much more than we were getting for our points.  We keep our cash in envelopes and only use cash for most purchases.  We use envelopes for groceries, clothing, special projects, and a mini-emergency fund.  So far so good, Mr. Ramsey would say.

Each one of these gets its own number

Here's where it gets odd:  we found that envelopes work so well that we use electronic versions for our non-cash expenses.  We budget based on three checking accounts:  a general account, a housing account, and an auto account.  The general account is the primary fund.  It gets the paycheck, pays the debt, and transfers money to my other accounts (both checking and savings).  It's kinda like what Ramit says, except I don't use credit cards.  Every payday, money is also transferred to my housing account and auto account.  The housing account pays the mortgage and all utilities, all of which auto-drafts.  We should have a little bit of extra money in that account every month, and we let it build up and we use it for projects.

An example of a sub-budget (housing, in this case)

The auto account is the same.  Every two weeks it gets half of my monthly budgeted amount, and it auto-pays our insurance.  We also have a separate debit card that is only for gas purchases; it's hard to impulse-buy when you're only buying gas.  Every month a little extra money builds up, which we use for basic maintenance like oil changes.

We also use four savings accounts:  one at our bank (with our emergency fund) and 3 at ING, which I love.  If you're interested, let me know and I'll refer you... I think I get $10 for referring someone.  We have mini-savings accounts through ING for gifts, vacations, education, and so on.  I don't know if I could make ING my primary account, but it sure is nice to have as a supplement.

It's not rocket surgery, but this works for us.  I'm always open to improvements... do you have any tips to share?