Before and after

I used to think that the best stories had a beginning a middle and an end. Then my brother introduced me to Anime and more often than not you are just dumped into the middle of a story and have to figure everything out. It was frustrating at first, but now I realize that it engages you in the story more, you have to work at listening and watching within the story to figure things out. You actually have to work as a participant while watching or reading the story.

Once there was a man. He grew up in a home that loved God and he became a Christian. His faith was his own and he was very passionate about it. He was a warrior and fought for his homeland on many occasions. His faith often led him to speak truth into the lives of others and affect them in profoundly life changing ways. Eventually he met and married a wonderful woman and they had several children together. One day though this man saw another woman. He left his wife and children and committed adultery with this other woman. After some time the man died.

Was this man really a Christian? Was he really saved? Be very careful with your answer. Give it some thought. Take some time to consider why you answer the way you do because it is vastly important.

Once there was a man who knew nothing about God. He lived his life in a rough neighborhood and grew up very poor. He was given some religious education, but it didn't show in anything more than an assent to morality and was not a real aspect of his life. He had several girlfriends whom he slept with, got into fights and was just a regular rough blue collar Joe. One day he started reading the Bible and through this became a Christian. He worked hard and graduated college, married his high school girlfriend and then started a successful church as a pastor. After some time he died.

Was this man really a Christian? Was he really saved? Be very careful with your answer. Give it some thought. Take some time to consider why you answer the way you do because it is vastly important.

Many people would answer that the first guy is not a Christian and the second guy is. I would have to ask you how do you measure someone's Christianity? If everything we get is by grace, and all the things anyone ever does for God are just fulfilling basic requirements how do you measure Christianity?

We get so caught up playing God in other people's lives we forget it isn't our job. We don't know the beginning from the end, we don't know the full story. Often times these question come up and we assume that we can accurately judge everything about a person's life from limited information. We assume sin done before becoming a Christian is less bad than sin done after becoming a Christian. We assume our actions affect our salvation.

That first person could be King David from the Bible, the entire nation of Israel from the Old Testament, or a story about someone related to me by a friend.

The second person could be Kevin Seelinger a Young Life guy I knew, Mark Driscoll, Abraham from the Old Testament, or several friends of mine.

My answers about how people are living and whether or not they are saved has changed from time to time because I think that I know the beginning and end of every story. Instead we live life like an Anime. (Yes, big eyes and over done emotions are reality!) We get dumped into this world and have to work to interact with the story that is going on around us.

I often fail at treating people like they can be given grace. I just look at them and assume (wrongly) that they were always like this and cannot change. I diminish the power of Jesus Christ by not giving out grace and realizing that the story I am working out of is bigger then I am.

The other thing I find myself doing is assuming that people who end well are saved and people that end poorly are not. We find both examples in the Bible. If we assume on the salvation of people who are several thousand years removed from us and show them grace, why not in the here and now? I think it hearkens to a desire for control. If we can follow the rules then we will be okay. We are assured of our salvation by our good works and piety. Wait how are we saved again? Oh right, through grace! How do we live life? Oh right, by grace! If we miss this then we miss what God wants to show us. It's all about Him. Only, ever, always about Him. If it becomes about anything else then we have missed the point.

Now this is not a post condoning sin. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, had to die because sin was so bad and we could do nothing about it. This post is about remembering our place and living in grace, showing grace to others. Welcome to the story it's big, bold and beautiful.

Challenge: What story are you living out of?

Games as a metaphor for life

Hello all you sports enthusiasts!
I am sure there are many of you out there who spend some time each week, month, or year plugged into the television watching with awe the exploits of your favorite team. It can be exciting and exhilarating when other people are rooting with you! It is a great experience as we watch superb athletes compete for a prize.

Now for the metaphor.

I find that I live life not by the principles of an athlete playing the game, but rather as a spectator. It seems that life has not become a group activity where everyone is playing the game their hardest and best. Rather, it seems, I am on the sidelines talking on a cellular phone stop to play the game for a few minutes and then do something else. Real athletes spend almost their entire lives practicing for their short time on the field. I bemoan the missed catch and cheer about the amazing touchdown pass, but spend little time thinking about how much time and energy went into that one fantastic moment. Practice in all reality is something I shy away from. It isn't sexy, it is sweaty, hard, boring and repetitious. Practice is very much like the military. It's gritty, dirty and takes motivation, determination, courage and guts. Instead, I find, as a child of my culture I live my life as if I will only have to play the game for two minutes and find even that is too hard. I don't practice to play the entire game of life but rather the convenient moments that are easy and fun. Theodore Roosevelt said this in a speech given at the Sorbonne Paris, France, April 23, 1910 and it bears repeating.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Even Paul the Apostle said "Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops." (2 Tim 2:3-6)

Thinking about these things I have been asking myself questions. Am I allowing distraction, laziness, fear and cowardice to rule? Am I on the sidelines cheering, or practicing hard long hours to meet the challenge? Dedication comes through focus on one thing. In all the examples of people who accomplished amazing feats in business, sports, or science we find the willingness to put in long hard hours toward the accomplishment of an amazing goal. The question I am asking myself lately is, Am I living or just subsisting?

How about you?

What questions say about you!

I think we have all heard the statement "There is no dumb question!" This is true, but as we said in the military under our breath, "Yeah but there sure are a lot of dumb people." On the other hand I don't think we ponder much about what a question is asking at it's core, or rather what the questioner is asking at their core. Reading Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance pushed me to think about questions, not only to think about "the most important questions", but also to see what substantive information I can gain from a question.

When someone asks a question beginning with "Who..." it is a question of identity and person hood. Who are you? Who am I? Who is this? We seek to identify a person sometimes for our own safety but also so we can remember and classify them. We never ask "Who is this tree?". Who is a functional recognition of person hood.

Questions asking "What..." are questions of action. When your mother asked you "What are you doing?" as a little child you could very well know fear if you were misbehaving. The "What..." question can also be a question of identification of something non-human. What is this?

Asking "When..." is a question of time. When is a question of precise happening, but can also be vague. When did this happen? can be accurately answered with...long ago!

For those of you following the five W's and an H rule will not be disappointed as "Where.." questions have to do with location. These also can be as specific or as vague as the answerer may want to make them.

"Why..." questions deal with motive. Why did you commit that crime? The question "Why am I here?" presupposes as part of the answer some larger motive in existence.

Questions of causation are dealt with by "How..." type questions. "How did this happen?" is a typical one, as is "How was your trip?". In the latter question it is imprecise but accepted as someone's concern with your well being.

If you have made it this far you may be wondering why I am going through this as the points I am making seem blatantly obvious. They are very obvious, but I think most people miss them because of this. A question tells the person being asked not only where you are deficient, but also something about you. If you are a person who continually asks "Why..." questions then you are concerned about others motives. If you ask "How..." type questions you are a practical person who is concerned with the basics of things. I don't care why! How did this happen? There are whole television shows devoted to "How..." questions. Brainiac, and Myth Busters. The other thing that is fun about questions is that sometimes they are rhetorical! A parent rarely walked into a room that is a disaster and asked, "What happened here?!" without knowing! This also tells you that the person asking the question assumes on your knowledge or that the question is so obvious as to not need explanation. Questions can be a search or many other things but they always reveal something. Pretty neat huh?

Challenge: Beef up your question inventory! Try asking questions that you are not used to asking, or answer every question with a question. It is harder than you think! (Unless you are British because they use the interrogative voice way more than the average American. They consider it more polite.)

Why being right doesn't really matter.

Hi!
My name is Andrew and I love to be right. It doesn't matter the situation, and it doesn't matter the topic. Life is a game and if being right is the scorecard, then I want to win. What's odd about my desire to be "right" is that it doesn't really matter. This truth came home to me in a big way recently.

I have been filling out a job application that wanted a job history first and then a place for education, address, etc. As I started my job history I realized that I haven't really been very amazing. Oh I have done things, but nothing out of the ordinary. I have skills but so do a lot of other people. It was really telling that my ego was deflated based on an expectation of someone reading a job history of mine. In reality I felt lame. I looked at what I had accomplished, compared myself to others, and saw how little I have really accomplished. I looked at my life for a second and realized how much I use my intellect to insulate me from my fears. Sometimes even writing (because I know I have some ability there) is me trying hard to be smart, to be cool, to be right. How pathetic.

The reality is that fear often motivates me more than love. The reality is I live in a dumpy basement apartment crammed with different piles of books I am currently reading (or was a month ago) random papers, and Rubbermaid tubs of clothing because I don't have room for a dresser. When people ask me how school is going I say "Fine", or "Good" because I can't describe how awful I am at deadlines. Even the name deadlines is crazy. If you don't meet them...you die! Gahhh! I fear failure at school not because it is hard, but because I gave up and quit several years ago. That quitting haunts me a bit and is a weird emotional snafu that comes up at the most inopportune times. Now I get to work full time and go to school, not because I want to but because I have to. Yuck.

Between my hang ups, fears, random self loathing, and slightly crazy life I defend myself by being right and having answers. This was all blown apart on a recent trip to Alaska. I talked to a buddy who has had three major catastrophes in his life. He asked questions that I realized if I tried to answer or give some sort of solution to or try to "fix" his problems I'd say things that would in reality be stupid. There was no "right" answer. This wasn't an academic challenge or a debate. This was real life come screaming into my buddy's life and into mine. Pain. Real, tangible, heaviness in the room you can feel, nothing you can do about it, pain. His pain was felt by me in a very real way and it exposed all my stupid, desires to be right and all the stupid walls I put up for exactly what they were. What do you do with that? I could be "right" all day long and my friend, who I love, is still sitting there in emotional agony.

So I gave up. I just sat there and listened and tried to be a friend without any stupid easy answers that sound trite in the face of cancer, divorce, betrayal, loss and death. I just reminded him of truth. That this is a crappy world full of sin and death. That it is so crappy God sent His perfect Son and people can't stand Christ so they kill him. The beauty of it is that even though people are God's enemies and killed Christ God showed His power and raised him from the dead and through that death forgives us and invites us to be adopted into His family. That is where true hope lies.

Otherwise I live in a harsh loveless place, powerless, without any control over anything. If you don't believe that watch Instinct with Anthony Hopkins. There is some good psychological stuff in there about control.

I choose to believe in the reality of hope in Christ and a good God who goes out of His way to love us. In the end me being "right" won't solve anything, builds up my own pride, and in the face of the difficulties of life really doesn't matter. Time to give up the self serving game for something better called love.

Challenge: When difficult things happen in life where is your hope? Put up a post I'd love to hear about it.

Another way Americans are selfish

Today I read a great article about the "War in Afghanistan". I think it speaks volumes to some of the policy's of those in power - namely us. We can whine and cry about Hope and Change but the truth is we all just want free health care. What a sad state of affairs. How did we go from the Land of Opportunity to "The Land of Entitled Handouts"? I think the nation is in great shape and the politicians we elect are representing us adequately. Rather I should say the politicians some of us elected. Not everyone voted. NOT EVERYONE VOTED! Women fought for years to vote, blacks fought for years to vote, people aged 18 fought to vote. Now you ask the normal person on the street if they voted and you have a less than 50% chance of an affirmative. Apathy rules the day.

Because apathy rules the day, politicians are not held accountable. Oh, right before an election you gave me handouts with my own money? Thanks I'll vote for you again! Wait what about all the decisions that politician made over the last 2-4 years? Might that have a greater bearing on whether they are a good person to vote for or not? Oh, right that would take work and research. Sorry, Lost is on. The politicians actions directly represent the lazy apathetic people in this country. We will continue to support those who keep us comfortable and happy. The government's money is our money! The government's rules are our rules! There isn't some magic money box in the sky. It's this little thing called taxes. The more government spends the more taxes they are going to collect. Newsflash...taxes are going up.

Obama's stuck. Even if he wanted to bring all the troops home, he would then dump more warm bodies into a non-existent job market. That's not politically expedient. Even if he wanted to bring troops home he won't because he has asked other countries to man up and send more troops. That's not good foreign relations.

What does all this have to do with selfishness and Afghanistan? Well if we knew the effects of our war efforts on a population like Mexico we would not support it for an instant. If there were bombing raids on a Mexican village and 20 Mexicans died there would be an uproar! Every news camera crew from every major network would be camped out in Mexico. In Afghanistan it is sanitized by news reports with no blame. "17 killed by bomb in Afghanistan today." Well who killed them? Who set the bomb? Just random numbers and random bombs that walk out into the street killing people. Last time I checked bombs needed makers. The war is sanitized by it being far away, against people we truly don't understand instead of close and personal with our next door neighbors. The other thing is that we support it because we don't truly care as a collective enough to find out if our government is really making good decisions. It isn't trust it is laziness. We want someone else to do our thinking while we sit back and keep ourselves entertained.

While I don't have a magic answer that will solve everything, I know full well that more people calling for accountability in more matters would make a difference. If politicians knew they would be called into account for the sloppy messes they make they might think a bit more long term, instead of what is politically expedient for the next election coming up. Change comes through responsible people making responsible decisions they are accountable for. If we really want change it has to come from us as a people first. Otherwise we continue to support the status quo.

Challenge: Get to know the names of some local politicians. Try to find out what being the Speak of the House means. Practice a little bit of civics. It could just be enjoyable.

Why someone telling you “You can be anything you want to be when you grow up!” is absolutely ridiculous.

When I grow up I want to be…a tree. This is something I tell children whenever the question comes up. The truth is I can’t be a tree, but me saying I want to puzzles small children and keeps them quiet for a minute. The reality is we are not born into a vacuum, and there are limitations in life. You cannot be “anything” you want to be when you grow up. Sorry to burst you bubble. Most people who have said this statement are teachers. They are trying their level best to get you to think outside the box. They are trying to help you not limit yourself. Unfortunately people take this statement meant for learning and blow it way out of proportion. There are many factors that influence who you are and what you can accomplish. One of those is your inherent abilities. Some people can never, and should never, play an instrument, or sports, or hold a public office. Some people are awesome with their hands but could never write a novel. Each of us just by our genetic make-up has limitations. Even if we are amazingly smart and talented there is this thing called time and aging that eventually limits us as well. Even if we had the capacity to learn and do everything, time will slow us down and make us focus on a few of our strengths. Another one of those things that hang us up is our position in life. If you were born to dirt poor parents there may be limitations on where you go to school, how high you can rise in life, etc. Now I know all the rags to riches stories they are in Reader’s Digest every month. Most of us though, statistically, never rise above the station of our parents. It isn’t that we can’t I think it is just we often lack the desire, gumption, work ethic, etc. We become apathetic, complacent, and content. The last thing that can hold us back is the real subject of this writing, and that thing is identity.

Identity is the sub-level, base instinct, of who you believe you are. In the Matrix movie it is called “residual self image”. Identity is a base level of how we see ourselves that we have difficulty overcoming. Now the beginning statement is an attempt to get people to develop a better identity. To people in hard or difficult circumstances the statement may get them, when they are young; to not accept the world they see around them. It is an attempt, early on, to try to get people to re-identify their identity. To people in better circumstances, or more affluence it is an attempt to get them to strive and work for a dream. If you live where everyone has a car at 16 and your parents are independently wealthy you accept that this is a normal part of life. You are rarely outside of this comfortable existence so you accept what you see. If you live in an area where drugs are a problem, then you accept that they are a normal part of life. You accept that you will probably deal drugs for a job, etc. You have never seen any other life and so become so inured of what you see that you cannot think above that level. You identity has become rooted to the environment around you. If you grow up in France, speaking French, eating French food, you understand that your identity is French and you have certain cultural ideas that are part of your identity. If you grow up Catholic, you can say all the prayers, you feel comfortable around a liturgy, you have a base assumption about things that you rely on and trust in. Your religious identity is Catholic. All this just to say often the greatest impediment to our development as people is our identity. Late at night or early in the morning when you cannot lie to yourself and the rush of the day has ended, or has not begun, ask the question: Who are you?

In the movie Wanted the main character is beaten for not answering the question, “Why are you here?” His answer that stops the beating is, “Because I don’t know who I am!” In the Dark Tower saga by Steven King whenever the Gunslinger apologizes he always begins or ends with the phrase, “I have forgotten the face of my father.” Identity is so important that it permeates all of our cultural heritage, oral tradition, and stories. It comes from our past and propels us towards the future. Your identity is there and it determines how you envision yourself, which determines how you think, which determines how you act, which determines your place in this world. If you change someone’s identity then you can change the inward person and the outward action. That is why you hear of stories of people who escape bad circumstances and “rise above” them. They changed their identity from those around them. It is why you have stories of a prince who took a common girl, shy and unimposing. He married her and took her away for a year. When they returned she was radiant, bold and impressive. Her view of herself had changed from, “I am a shy commoner” to “I am the Queen of this land”. Her identity had been replaced by the prince. This is why we like stories that show change. It not only shows us that it is possible but also gives us hope. Identity can build us up or tear us down. Everyone has one and communicates it to those around them through their actions. Often our dysfunction comes from a poor identity. Often our greatest victories and successes in life come from identity as well. Who we are is eventually more important than what we do. What will a man do if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?

Challenge: Think about these three questions for 15 minutes. Be brave, take a chance, and look at who you really are. What is your identity? Who are you at the core? Who do you want to be?