Haddaway

Roses are red, violets are blue

I only wish my neighbor knew

The golden rule

They teach in schools

Leaves this part out

‘Cause no one knows what we’re talking about

But we hear it in our songs

And we all just sing along

Thinking that we're falling in

Just like a trap, like you’re inside

It’s in your mind, not in your heart

I can’t tell apart the different kinds!

Like it’s a thing that you can make

But we all know you can’t fabricate it

You can’t arrange it

‘Cause it’s not an arrangement

Like a bunch of roses

All colored red from broken noses

And bleeding hearts, my beating heart

Can’t be still, ‘cause this is real

I don’t know you but I know what I feel

If it’s a trap, it was made for me

That’s why they call it destiny

The ground below, the sky above

I think I’m falling, falling in

Man, I feel you, Haddaway

I just wish I had a way

To put my feelings into thoughts

‘Cause just emotions are like the ocean

Go overboard and then you’re lost

What’s the cost? Just chemicals

That tell my brain we’re animals

But that sounds wrong

‘Cause this is wrong

But it felt so right

Maybe just the thought is nice

Just like a story, Romeo

And Taylor Swift don’t know me though

Maybe Disney knows what’s true

Cause theirs is true

As opposed to fake

First kisses, then we go to make

Excuses, saying “it’s not there”

Like it was something in the air

‘Cause it has power that feels sublime

But power is just work over time

So now it’s work?

Man, life’s a jerk

Cause it speeds up faster every time

My time to work is nine to five

So let’s just say that it’s an art

That comes directly from the heart

When it’s not there, it’s not my fault

So how come it hurts?

Maybe to feel, you have to choose it first

It's not about feelings or lack thereof

It's a verb to choose to

It's patient, kind, it doesn't boast
It condones the least but forgives the most
It demands perfection, yet looks past flaws
It's pleased with little, but demands it all
And what we all can't seem to get
Is that we never fully deserve it
We think it's a fact
Like day and night
Or that it's a right
But it's not! It's an act
It has an object
And that's us!
We didn't choose it; It chose us!
It came down and gave its life
For us to live, He had to die
'Cause here on Earth, it's gonna hurt
Rip out your heart, 'cause to be safe
Outside of heaven, there's just one place
To keep your heart all whole and well:
The hardest, darkest pit of Hell.
They say it's blind, and that it's strong
But if yours is blind, then you chose wrong
So choose to serve, but make it known
This thing of yours is second to One
If you don't agree before too late
This thing will look a lot like hate
'Cause they won't get it; all that they saw
Is that you didn't follow their law
So don't fret about feeling,
Or feeling too much
Just arrange your priorities in such

A way so that, when push comes to shove,

The one you choose is the One you

EDIT: I want to make sure this is clear. This is a spoken word that should be read and understood as a sort of personal narrative or journey. The first stanza presents a flawed yet very common viewpoint, a very worldly and secular one. The second stanza transitions into the disillusionment of that viewpoint and a state of questioning and confusion, a common consequent of the first stage. The final stanza presents truth as I understand it, to the best of my ability in this limited form to convey truth. As with nearly any viewpoint, there are nuggets of truth in all three stanzas/stances, but only the last one should be interpreted as largely in line with my understanding.

Boundaries

I considered titling this post "Setting Boundaries on a Boundless God", but I decided that could be misinterpreted too easily. My purpose in this post is to explain my (recently revisited) views on boundaries in Christian relationships, particularly those between people of the opposite sex. My goal is to walk through the existence, cause, and purpose of boundaries in light of eternity; in other words, I will attempt to look at earthly relationships while "setting my mind on things above".

First of all, I want to emphasize that this blog consists entirely of my understanding and opinions. I do my very best to make sure that what I write is in line with what we read in the Bible and what God has revealed to us, but I reserve the right to change my stance on most things, and I strongly encourage others to comment below or talk to me if they disagree or are confused about something. On that note, I would also like to add that my views on boundaries and relationships recently changed, and the realization and lesson that brought about that change is the main focus of this post.

Secondly, I want to define what I mean by "boundaries". For the entirety of this entry, unless I state otherwise, "boundaries" refer to rules or guidelines in relationships that are set in various areas in order to govern relationships and make them holy and pleasing to God. The main boundaries that I am aware of are summed up in the TEST acronym: time, emotional, spiritual, and touch. As a simple example, we often set "touch" boundaries pretty clearly (e.g. don't have sex with someone to whom you are not married). The other three can be more confusing. How much time is too much time to spend with a "friend" of the opposite sex? What can you tell them about your walk with God, and what should you hold back?

Having said that, I think that boundaries are grossly misunderstood throughout society today, even in the church and Christian groups. The main question that boundaries are meant to address is, what are relationships between Christians supposed to look like? Whenever we ask questions like this -- questions that deal with how something is supposed to be -- it is imperative that we do not like at how things are in the world today. As a Christian, I firmly believe that we live in a broken, fallen world, so the way things are is by no means a good indication of the way things are meant to be. In order to look at the way things are meant to be, I believe there are two places we can look: Heaven, where all will be made new and everything will be restored to the glory for which it was created; and the Garden of Eden in Genesis 1 and 2, before the fall, when God created everything, saw it was good, and sin had not yet entered the world. I firmly believe that both of these are the best examples we have of how all things were originally created to be, and how, in the realm of the Divine where all things are made new, all things always have been and always will be.

So what do relationships look like in these places? It is my contention that boundaries, as we currently define and understand them, do no exist in either of these places. In case that didn't sound controversial enough, according to the assertion in the previous paragraph, this means that, even in earthly relationships, boundaries are not meant to exist. 

Let me unpack this a little bit, starting with the Garden of Eden. Let's go through the TEST acronym.

--TIME: Adam and Eve were the only ones there, and, as near as we can tell, they were always together. Nowhere in scripture do we see them separate until after the fall. Adam didn't have to go to work; the garden gave them food. Eve didn't have to deal with painful childbirth; that came later.

--EMOTIONAL: Eve was created from Adam's side, to walk with him and be his helper in everything (I'm not making a statement about gender roles here, so please don't read too much into that sentence). The very fact that she was made from a rib, which is perfectly even with the middle of the body and so close to the heart, seems to me to imply that Adam and Eve were to walk through life together, side by side, sharing everything with each other.

--SPIRITUAL: this one seems the clearest to me. Adam and Eve walked together, and together they walked with God in the closest relationship with God any human has heretofore experienced. In God's presence, there can be no boundaries in your spiritual life. In fact, I would conclude that their spiritual lives were indistinguishable from each other, and were, in fact, one and the same, as they both walked together with the same God.

--TOUCH: God made it pretty clear that their job was to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth." Not only this, but the Bible made it abundantly clear that, before the fall, Adam and Eve didn't even need to wear clothes. I'm not going to bother expounding on that more.

From my point of view, God did not set any boundaries in the relationship between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. While he did set clear boundaries in regards to what they could eat and what they couldn't, these rules applied to both of them together, not one or the other. In other words, for all intents and purposes, Adam and Eve were treated as one entity, with no separation, distinction, or division between them. Indeed, why else would the Bible make a reference to marriage in the second chapter by saying "the two shall become one flesh", except to emphasize that, in the perfect state of creation, man and woman are not separate, but united?

So if this is what everything is supposed to look like, what happened? Why aren't we all walking around naked and sharing every intimate detail of our lives with everyone we meet? The answer, of course, is sin happened. In choosing to disobey God, mankind broke the intimate relationship we had with Him. As a result, we broke our perfect relationships with each other. Notice that, immediately after sinning, Adam and Eve first hid from God, then made clothes to hide from each other. Thus, sin doesn't just separate us from God, but also us from each other. 

Is this not what we see when we look around today? All around, I see people suffering from the pains of loneliness, longing for the care and affection of a friend, needing support and guidance in their search for truth, and desperate for the embrace of a true lover. In one sense, boundaries aren't something we put in place, but something that were created as a consequence of sin. To avoid confusion, though, I will call these separations due to sin "walls", and reserve "boundaries" for the guidelines we set for ourselves. Sin deprives us of the intimacy and unity for which we were created, both with God and with our fellow humans. The image I have heard used is the two beams of the cross. The first pillar, the one that holds up the other, is the vertical beam, signifying our relationship with God. Without this beam and this relationship, nothing can stand. The second beam is the horizontal beam, which signifies our relationship with our fellow humans. Both of these are pivotal relationships in the life of a Christian, as demonstrated by the two greatest commandments "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength" and "love your neighbor as yourself".

Having started in paradise and worked through the fall, we now turn to God's plan for the redemption of the world. In its simplest sense, this plan is simply bringing the world, mankind, and all of our relationships back to the state for which they were created--namely, the world without walls, without separation, and without sin. If this is our goal, why do we create more boundaries for ourselves in our relationships with others? The answer is, once again, because of sin. Our broken relationships leave us desperately starving for the satisfactions we were created to have. Yet, because of our sinful nature, we are not only unable to return to the holy, perfect state from which we fell, but we naturally will not seek out God and this holiness. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that, although we all have needs that can only be truly satisfied by God, no man, woman, or child naturally seeks God of their own volition, for it is completely contrary to the nature of sin that is ours from birth. Rather, God seeks us out and pursues us, drawing us closer to himself by an act of divine grace. Nevertheless, we, in our brokenness, look for other ways to satisfy our desires, with one of the primary ways being through relationships with other people. Now, I want to be very careful, because, as I have already asserted, we are meant to be in close, intimate relationships with other people. However, to return to the imagery of the two pillars of the cross, these relationships can only stand in holiness when we are first firmly grounded in a relationship with God. In the absence of this first relationship, all others are taken captive by sin and brokenness. As C.S. Lewis writes in The Four Loves,

We may love another person too much in proportion to our love for God. But it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy.

Finally, then, we arrive at boundaries as we have previously defined them. Boundaries are (somewhat) clear rules and guidelines that we put in place in order to prevent us from seeking from our fellow humans what can only be rightfully given by God. Love, for example, in all its forms, must come first and foremost from God, who is the definition and source of perfect love, and flow from Him to us and then to other people. Intimacy, both physical and emotional, is a means of satisfying our deep desires to be loved and not left alone, to be a part of something or someone else. This desire exists because we were made to exist in perfect fellowship and unity with the three-personal God in the realm of the Divine. Yet we are so easily deceived into thinking that it can, and should, be satisfied in a deeply emotionally or physically intimate relationship with another human being. Thus, we put in place boundaries to prevent such idols and false gods from taking hold of our lives. In a very real sense, then, boundaries are not meant to work contrary to our deep desires as it so often seems, but to refine them, to turn them towards the Thing for which they were originally meant, and, in doing so, ultimately satisfy them. As C.S. Lewis writes in The Weight of Glory:

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

We have now established why boundaries exist, and why they are good. They are ultimately tools to be used in our sanctification. At this point, we have arrived where many Christians find themselves, with boundaries viewed as a good thing meant to keep us from sin and make us holy. However, the purpose of this post was not to justify boundaries as they are currently viewed. Nearly the opposite. The goal was to review, in light of eternity and God's story, why boundaries exist and where they come from. It is imperative that we do not forget where these boundaries come from and why they exist. If we do, we come dangerously close to the legalism of the Pharisees, who knew the letter of the law by heart yet still managed to miss the entire point.

Having reached this point, I do not want to stop here. Knowing where boundaries comes from gives us a unique insight into how we should live out boundaries in everyday life. First of all, it is absolutely necessary to remember that boundaries exist because of sin. In a world with no sin, there is no need for boundaries. This is what we saw in the Garden of Eden, and I am convinced this is what we shall see in heaven. If you do not agree, I challenge you to think: what boundaries does God place on his love for us? My answer would be none at all. So when we, at last, with unveiled faces, reflect to each other the boundless--and boundary-less--love of God, and are entirely caught up in His presence, having put to death any semblance of our individuality apart from God, why should we then still have boundaries with each other? I will freely admit, it can be difficult to grasp and accept. For example, will clothes be necessary in heaven? (For now, let us look past the fact that, in heaven, we shall not have bodies in the same way we have them on earth, but shall take on new, heavenly forms the likes of which we cannot conceive.) By this line of thinking, the answer should be no, they will not be necessary. For what necessary function could clothes offer in a realm where there is no lust, no self-glorification, no ugliness or malice or self-deprecation, no shame, and no sin? Perhaps I would do best to quote C.S. Lewis once again, this time from his image of heaven given in The Great Divorce:

Some were naked, some robed. But the naked ones did not seem less adorned, and the robes did not disguise in those who wore them the massive grandeur of muscle and the radiant smoothness of flesh.

The reason I bring this up is that so often I think we view boundaries not as consequences of sin and a means to our sanctification, but the opposite of sin and the goal of our sanctification. We view breaking these boundaries as inherently sinful, and keeping them inherently righteous. But understanding where they came from, these distinctions are meaningless! For as God sanctifies us and makes us more pure, more holy, and transforms us into the image of his son, we are freed from the bonds of sin and are no longer bound by them. And since our boundaries exist because of sin, once we are freed of that sin, these boundaries are no longer necessary. In a sense, the more "righteous" ones are the ones who are more free to "break" what we would consider standard boundaries. They are no longer bound by boundaries, because they are no longer bound by sin. As an example, a teenage girl should feel no qualms about discussing her latest breakup with the pastor at her church, while a similar conversation with a guy her age might be cause for caution. Sanctification breaks down both walls and boundaries as it frees us from sin. In the church, therefore, where it is presumably the goal of each person to continue to be sanctified and changed, we should see closer relationships between people, even people of the opposite gender. Because as well as pursue God and are brought into his presence, we are necessarily all brought closer together until at last, one day, we are all unified completely in God.

I may have said some pretty controversial things in this post. My main goal is to inspire thought and reasoning. Our ultimate source of truth is the Bible, and any rules and assumptions made about the Christian life must ultimately be grounded in Scripture. I recognize that I have not directly quoted any scripture, so my ideas are subjective at best, and I reserve the right to change them in the future. However, I did try my best to appeal to the general story of the Bible, rather than simply reasoning grounded in earthly observations. In my experience, many articles on boundaries between men and women in the church rarely quote scripture, and instead appeal to vague notions of purity and sin. My goal was to provide a counter to this by working through relationships from the beginning and arriving at the result, rather than starting with the assumption that boundaries are necessary and showing how they work and what can go wrong if they are crossed.

I want to end with a final warning. If you take what I have said in this post as license to be as emotionally open and intimate with other people as you please, or to constantly flirt with members of the opposite sex, or to be more physical in a relationship with a significant other, you have missed the point entirely. The point is not that we no longer need to establish any sort of rules or guidelines for earthly relationships and are therefore free to act as we please. To do so is akin to reading the Bible and ignoring any part about God or Jesus. Such an attitude neglects to plant in place the first pillar of the cross and instead reaches straight for the second. The point of this post was to say that, first and foremost, we are all meant to be united with God, through Christ, with the Holy Spirit living inside of us. As we continue to seek him and as He pursues us, draws us closer to Him, and sanctifies us into the holy, perfect image of his Son Jesus Christ, we will find that any earthly relationship we had to let die in the process will be rekindled in a glory we cannot imagine. As we are caught up in the Person and Persons of God, we will inevitably reach perfect unity and intimacy with our fellow humans as well.

Let Me Tell You a Story

As with many of my recent posts (I'm using a relative time scale, here; I realize not many of my posts can be considered "recent" anymore), I'm going to start by talking about something I like. Unlike those other posts, I'm pretty much going to end there. Ye be warned. Continue at your own risk.

One of my favorite video games is Assassin's Creed. I own all of the main games, and I have played through the first two installments in the series twice each, despite the fact that the first one isn't really that great of a game in comparison to the others. I own a hoodie styled after the Assassins' uniform, and a ring with the symbol of the Assassins engraved on it. You could say I'm a bit obsessed. You wouldn't be the first.

What most people don't know, however, is why I like Assassin's Creed so much. Sure, there is the amazing gameplay and unnecessarily violent executions, but there's more too it than that. It has to do with the storyline of the game. If you are not familiar with it, allow me to enlighten you. If you are familiar with it, you might not have ever heard it phrased in this way. Either way, continue reading, if you are so inclined, and let me tell you a story.

Let me tell you a story. This story is about a group of people. This group was relatively small, but it seemed as though most of the world was against them. In reality, a single driving force opposed them, but this force extended its reach to nearly every aspect of life. But this small group of people knew the truth: that something big was coming; something terrible would happen, and it was not that far off. But the rest of the world, and the forces that opposed them, could not see it. They refused to see it. And the force that opposed them was content to keep them blind to the truth and use the illusions to further their own ends. But this group worked tirelessly to free people from the illusion and reveal the truth. They sought to liberate people from their slavery, warn them of the coming disaster, and show them the hope that still remained.

Now at one point early on in the life of this group, one part of the group sought to use the group to further their own interest. They had subtly but willingly joined with the force that opposed this group. This hurt the group, but the truth persisted, and the faithful members rescued the group. And this group began to grow and propagate. And it spread to all different cultures and societies and manifested itself in all different ways. Some bold heroes of the group left their culture to bring the cause of the group to other places that had never heard of it, or to places that had only a small faction of the group and needed teaching and training. And all the while the forces of the world tried to oppose this group, but somehow this small group persisted and survived. In fact, it thrived and multiplied. And every so often they would receive messages from beyond that would confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that what they were doing was true and just and right.

And in the effort to further their cause and the truth, this group has shaped the course of history. Many famous historical events were shaped in a large part by members of this group. But too often they were lost in the background by the history books. But it didn't matter, because the truth and their cause continued throughout the ages. And the more time that passed, the more urgent their mission became, and the more important it was that they dispel the illusion that the opposing forces so eagerly wished to keep in place. And the forces that opposed them tried everything they could. They persecuted this group in all manner of ways, but it didn't matter, because this group knew the truth. In the midst of chaos and attacks from the enemy, they kept their eyes on the truth and on the end, because they knew what was coming, and it compelled them to act.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Did you catch it? If you are not familiar with the storyline of the games, the group is the Assassins, and the opposing force is the Templars. The games manage to insinuate the conflict between these two sides into nearly every major event in history, from the fall of Rome to World War II to Mahatma Ghandi. 

For those of you who are familiar with this storyline, and especially for those of you that aren't - namely, the ones who think my obsession is childish and trivial - I invite you to contemplate the following: what if I told you that the above story is, in fact, not about Assassin's Creed?

As a matter of fact, this story is true. It is the story of the Church of Jesus Christ and their mission to spread the Gospel to all people of all nations.

I contend that many of my passions and obsessions are similar to this one. True, there is usually something about the surface level that appeals to me, but often it does not stop there. When you have a spare moment for thought, consider applying this logic to me, your friends, or even yourself. Ask the question, is there a larger story at work here? Is there something beneath the surface tickles my deepest desires and entices me in deeper? You might be surprised at what you find.

Debt, Death, and why we do Works

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Princess Bride. I used to watch this movie whenever I was home sick, which I thought was appropriate, considering the premise of the movie is a grandfather reading a story to his sick grandson. It wasn't until I was older that I realized the entire movie is a farce. As a young boy, I merely thought it was a fantastic adventure tale, filled with sword fights, schemes, chases, and of course, "true love". I loved it, because every young boy loves an adventure, the idea of having a mission to do, like winning back your true love or avenging your father's death. That's why boys look for heroes in history, sports, and war. Looking back, though, I can understand now why my parents would always laugh at scenes like the following scene which features a character named "Miracle Max":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9tAKLTktY0

 Clearly, this scene is meant to be funny and ridiculous. After all, the very thought of someone being "mostly dead" is absurd. Dying isn't like cooking a steak, or something that can be measured in varying degrees. You're either alive or dead. There's no real in between. At some point, everyone learns this fact.

And yet, for some reason, we frequently act as if death isn't binary. We act like death is a process that can proceed in varying amounts, and in either direction. Not literally, of course; most of us accept that dead bodies don't come back to life. But when it comes to spiritual death, we act like those rules don't apply anymore.

What I'm talking about is the way we treat salvation. We treat it like a debt, in the sense that it is somehow finite and quantifiable. This is not to say we think we could ever pay back this debt. But the fact is, that viewing our salvation as a debt cheapens it in a way we can't imagine.

Let's unpack this for a little bit. My guess is we get this idea from the Bible. Nothing wrong with that. It's a pretty trustworthy source of spiritual truth. Passages like Matthew 18:21-35, wherein Jesus compares forgiveness to a king forgiving his servant of a great debt, then that servant turning around and throwing someone else who owes him a small debt in jail. Another example is in Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus is eating with a Pharisee when a woman who is called a "sinner" falls at Jesus's feet and weeps. Jesus informs the pharisee that she loves much because she has been forgiven much, and that "whoever has been forgiven little loves little", which he says after giving the pharisee an example of two debtors who were forgiven their debts.

I'm not detracting from these examples at all. Jesus said them, after all. What I think has gone wrong is our understanding of these passages as it relates to our salvation. So often, we view our sin as this massive debt, one which God then forgives. Then, prompted by these passages, we decide that, since God forgave us, it is our job to love Him a lot and forgive other people, and serve God by telling others about him. Those are good things, and I'm not saying we should stop doing that. What I am saying is that that line of thinking is fundamentally flawed. When we view our salvation as the forgiveness of a debt, we are adding to that metaphor our modern understanding of what debt is; namely, debt today is quantifiable and, more importantly, avoidable. Comparing our salvation to debt forgiveness as we understand it today is saying that our sin, however great, was still finite, and that, in theory, we could eventually work enough to pay it back. And so often, that is how we view our Christian works: as paying back a debt. But this is such a flawed way of thinking!

See, debt has historically been treated very differently than it is today, when we have bankruptcy and foreclosure and defaulting and loans and debt is simply a reality. In the past, if you owed someone money, they could have you thrown in what is called "debtor's prison" until you or your family paid back the debt. If you think about this for a second, you'll realize that it is a lot harder to pay off your debt when you're in prison and can't work. Another, even older system is indentured servitude, or serfdom, wherein a debtor would essentially become a slave to their creditor until they had worked off their debt, which could be years, decades, or even never. So debt in Jesus's time was very different from debt in our time. In our time, one way or another, debt will eventually go away. In Jesus's time, there was no such guarantee.

This is why it is so important to realize that our sin is so much more than just a debt that we have to pay. Sin is death. And as we have already established, death is irreversible and unquantifiable. There is no "mostly dead". We were just plain dead, until Jesus sought us out and brought us back to life. And just because this is spiritual life and death we are talking about doesn't mean that coming back to life is any more extraordinary. Spiritual resurrection is every bit as miraculous as bodily resurrection, and in many ways even more so.

So then where do works come in? In the debt analogy, it made sense: we owed a debt, Jesus forgave it, and yet we still worked for Jesus to pay it off. No one would ever phrase it like that, at least not out loud, but if you're like me, you think that way sometimes in your head. You think "I'm doing all of this work for God, because he forgave me. Therefore, I have to work for Him." On the outside, this might look fine, but this is a broken way of thinking. We can never put a dent in our "debt" to God. What he has done for us far outweighs anything we could ever do for him. In fact, as we're about to see, we can never do anything for Him.

Hopefully most of us know that we are not saved by works. That's a given. But so often we think and act like our works are something we are doing for God. I think we need to remind ourselves of Ephesians 2:8-10:

"For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

These verses seem like they might hold the answer to our question, where do works fit in to all of this? It is clear, from these verses, that our salvation has absolutely nothing to do with works. In fact, our works never give us reason to boast. So why do them then? If they don't impact our salvation, and they don't give us any bragging rights on earth or entitle us to any extra jewels on our crowns in heaven, what's the point? That's where verse 10 comes in: God prepared these works for us. We are created to do these works. These works are our mission.

That's what we're all looking for, isn't it? That's what every person on this earth wants: a mission. A sense of purpose. To feel like we are a part of something bigger. To know that we are making an impact on the world. That's why we see so many people and organizations dedicating their lives to everything from cancer research to football to space exploration to playing the cello to defending our nation to running for political office. And to be clear, none of those are inherently bad things. But if you dedicate your life to their mission instead of God's mission, you are ultimately going to be left wanting.

So the picture we get from the bible is not one of a debtor who is forgiven of his debt and slowly works his way out of it. That view trivializes sin and glorifies our own efforts. The image we get is more like a man who is slowly dying of an unknown disease. He has no living relatives, no friends, no one that cares about him or that will miss him if he dies. The doctors can't help him and tell him he doesn't have much time left. He has no money and has to sleep on the dirty floor of a crumbling, third world hospital, in the hopes that maybe one of the doctors there will take pity on him and find something to help him. But slowly but surely, he wastes away, until one day, without anyone noticing, he breathes his last breath.

...

...

...

Suddenly, he wakes up. He's back on the floor of the hospital, but there is a man looking at him. This man picks him up and places him in a bed, a luxury he hasn't had for as long as he can remember. The man's rescuer is Jesus, and Jesus tells the man "It's okay. I brought you back to life." The man is speechless. No one cared about him before. No one even knew he existed. But then Jesus brings him back to life. He has him transferred to the top of the line health facility, where the man gets constant medical attention, gourmet meals, and the most comfortable bed he had ever felt. On top of all of that, Jesus comes and visits him every day and talks to him, treating him as an friend, which no one had ever done before. True, this man still cannot leave his bed, but he has companionship and food and comfort, everything he had every desired but had never had.

After a while, though, he realizes that even this is not truly satisfying. He knows he has everything he has ever wanted, but, put simply, he is bored. He has an empty feeling, an insatiable desire for something more, something he can't quite describe. It's the same desire I mentioned earlier, that every person feels. The desire for adventure, for a sense of purpose, to feel like you belong, to know that you will leave a lasting impact. And no amount of friendship, food, warmth, comfort, or medical attention can give satisfy this desire.

That's when Jesus says it. "I'll trade places with you," he tells the man. "What I did for you, I have also done for countless others. And still there are countless more people like you. But I'll trade places with you. I will lie, crippled, on this bed, and let you go out and do to those other people what I have done to you. It won't be easy. You'll have to find them."

This is it. This is the answer to the man's lingering desire. Finally, he has found his mission. No, it isn't easy, but it is fulfilling.

So you see, works are not our way of paying God back for all he's done for us. No, on the contrary, works are the greatest gift God has given us! God has given us a mission, a purpose, a group to belong to, a chance to love other people in the way he has loved us, a chance to bring the greatest news we have every received to someone else! Sure, Jesus could find these people much more efficiently if he chose to do it himself and not use us. But thank God that he does choose to use us, despite all of our flaws and imperfections. He lets us be the vessels through which he reaches the world with his love. He lets us do the good works that he has already prepared for us.

It isn't always easy. And we aren't always going to get it right. But this is our mission: to find the people who are dead like we once were, and show them the amazing love that this person named Jesus has showed us.

So let's go find them.

A Grief Observed

Stage 1: The Leidenfrost Effect

It's normal. All is well.
I'm alone. But all is well.
She's not here. But all is well.
It's normal. All is well.

A simple text. All is well.
A sudden plunge.

All is well.

When no pain comes, all is well.
She's not here. But all is well.
But she's not there. And all is well.
It didn't happen. All is well.
But it did. And all is well.

I feel no pain. All is well.
But I do. And all is well.

What is this pain I feel?

It is not the pain of nerves, like you feel when you have a tooth pulled. It is not the pain of emptiness, like the pain you feel when your tongue touches the exposed gum. It is the pain of numbness; the pain you feel when they give you local anesthesia but keep you awake during the procedure. Your nerves are numb, so it does not hurt, but you know it should. You can feel the roots being severed, hear the ties being torn. Your conscious knows that this should hurt, but your subconscious cannot, will not, accept it. And so all is well.

The danger of this stage is that, because it doesn't hurt, we are not prepared when it does. And I wasn't.

Stage 2: The Stiff Heart Questions

The feet, mechanical, go round. Until it hit me. It wasn't the plunge that did me in, it was the lingering. The realization that she wasn't just a few hundred miles away anymore. The realization that I don't know how to move forward from this. The realization that she doesn't get to be a light in this world anymore. The realization that I don't even know what it will be like this December in San Diego anymore. The realization that now there is now only one person who can fully understand me when I say "First Maker Last Maker". The realization that there is one less person who will ever call me "Tilaps". The realization that those pictures on Facebook are now just pictures, and there is no longer anything of substance behind them. The realization that on October 23, she texted me, and I never responded.

A few hours too late, I responded to her text:

Janee,
The other day, you and Claire asked for a C.S. Lewis quote. I never did send you one. Here is the best one I could find:
"You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of -- something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for". We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work."

I broke down. I asked "why" more times than I can count. Why, God? Why her? Why now? What is your will in this? Where is your healing hand? What is the greater thing you want to show us? How could that possibly be your plan for her life? Why was that your plan for her life? What are you trying to teach us? Why couldn't you teach us some other way? What good could this possibly accomplish that you couldn't accomplish some other way?

I was mad. I began to wish God had taken me instead, that my depraved mind would end and her loving spirit would continue.

All this time, I would simply scroll through Facebook, my newsfeed as full of her face as my eyes were of tears. Yes, I freely admit, by this point, I was sobbing. Nose running, breath staggering, the whole bit. If you know me, you know that this isn't exactly a common occurrence. I decided to join the crowd and change my profile picture to honor her. I posted a picture of the Pocket in an elevator (missing Paul, somehow). In the description, I gave her another C.S. Lewis quote, this time from A Grief Observed:

If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her.

I also posted another quote from the same book as my status, dedicated to her of course. The quote read:

God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.

The problem with both of these was, I was not ready to accept them. Sure, I knew in my head that Janee didn't really lose anything. In fact, she is more alive now than she ever was when I knew her. She is more filled with joy than she ever could have been this side of eternity. But that first quote continues to say that the mother's spirit of motherhood has, in fact, died. She is no longer a mother. That part of her, brought out by the child, is gone. True, that is not the chief aim for which she was created, but it was a part of her nonetheless. So that quote really doesn't give any comfort.

As for the second one, in my head it always made sense. But it is one thing to understand something and another to own it. For example, this past Sunday, the pastor at my church flippantly referenced John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." Almost everyone has heard this verse, and I dare say that most Christians wholeheartedly believe in it. But have you ever had to truly take hold of that promise - "whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life"? I know I have not. Not that I didn't believe in it. I can assure you that I did. But it is one thing to believe in something and another to take hold of it. And in this case, taking hold of that promise meant letting go of a dear friend, and that is not a painless process.

Stage 3: Help my Unbelief

Gradually, the tears subside, and I begin to try to think clearly. I would quote scripture, songs, books, and people to myself. I said to myself exactly what I would have said to someone who was in my position two weeks earlier. But what I found was that all of the knowledge and quotes in the world couldn't change how I felt. It was simply not a matter of knowing that she is seeing God face to face, or that God is still in control. It was a matter of accepting all of those realizations I had come to in the previous stage. It is something that I could never have understood until it happened. As I said, I knew exactly what I would have said to someone else in my position, but now I know that there is nothing you can say that will help. There is no secret thought, no cathartic moment, no magical phrase that can simply make it all better.

I would hear other people say things, and my conscious mind would scream them at my subconscious until I became physically out of breath. But, as with the first stage, the subconscious will only ever move as it pleases, not as the conscious wills it. Some of these things were:

"God is good, and God is sovereign. He knew he would be glorified more with Janee with Him."

"She ran the race so hard that she beat all of us."

"She is home now. We will see her soon!"

"Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful servants." -Psalm 116:15

All of these things are true, and all of them are comforting. I readily accept them as such. But try telling a man who has just lost his leg that he only has to wait a little while until all will be made new. If he is a man of great faith, he will agree with you with little complaint. But that does not mean he can walk. He will eventually learn to get around with a wheelchair or prosthetic limb. But he will never be exactly the same, and no amount of comfort or faith can change that.

In addition to these comforting phrases, I began to see her in everything, but especially in song lyrics and quotes. In keeping with the staccato moments of feeling in my life at that time, I am simply going to list these with no explanation:

"I remember you like yesterday, yesterday

I still can't believe you're gone
I remember you like yesterday, yesterday
And until I'm with you, I'll carry on

Every lament is a love song

Yesterday, Yesterday

I still can't believe you're gone

Oh so long my friend, so long."

--"Yesterdays", by Switchfoot

"End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it...white shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise"

--The Return of the King, directed by Peter Jackson

"Where is my song?

I've lost the song of my soul tonight

Sing it out

Sing it out

Take what is left of me

Make it a melody

Sing it out

Sing out loud

I can't find the words to sing

You be my remedy

My song

My song

I'll sing with what's left of me"

--"Sing it Out", by Switchfoot

"The shadow proves the sunshine"

--"The Shadow Proves the Sunshine", by Switchfoot

"Looking for signs in the night sky

Wishing that I wasn't such a nice guy

Wonder what it means to live forever

Wonder what it means to die

I know there's meaning to it all

A little resurrection every time I fall

You got your babies, I got my hearses

Every blessing comes with a set of curses

I got my vices, got my vice verses."

--"Vice Verses", by Switchfoot

"Here's to your bright eyes

Shining like fireflies

These are my souvenirs,

The memory of a lifetime

We were wide-eyed with everything, everything around us

We were enlightened by everything, everything

So I close my eyes and go back in time

I can see you smiling, you're so alive

I close my eyes and go back in time

You were just a child then, and so was I

We were so young, we had no fear

We were so young, we had no idea

That nothing lasts forever

Nothing lasts forever

[...]

Life was just happening

Life was just happening

I wouldn't trade it for anything

My souvenirs"

--"Souvenirs", by Switchfoot

"Lay down

Your sweet and weary head
Night is falling
You’ve come to journey's end
Sleep now
And dream of the ones who came before
They are calling
From across the distant shore

Why do you weep?
What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see
All of your fears will pass away
Safe in my arms
You're only sleeping

What can you see
On the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
A pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home

And all will turn
To silver glass
A light on the water
All souls pass

Hope fades
Into the world of night
Through shadows falling
Out of memory and time
Don't say "We have come now to the end"
White shores are calling
You and I will meet again

And you'll be here in my arms
Just sleeping

What can you see
On the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
A pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home

And all will turn
To silver glass
A light on the water
Grey ships pass
Into the West"

--"Into the West", by Howard Shore

"We’re still smilin as the day goes by

and how come nobody
ever knows the reasons why

Burry you deep so far
you can't see
If you're like me
who wears a broken
heart on your sleeve

Pains is troubles that
you know so well
Either time don't
It can't or it just won't tell

I'm not the type to say
I told you so
I think the hardest part
of holding on is lettin it go

I don't know what time it is
or whose the one to blame for this
Do what I believe what I can't see
And how do you know
which way the wind blows

Cause I can feel it all around
I'm lost between the sound
And just when I think I know
there she goes

Goodbye for now
Goodbye for now
So long"

--"Goodbye for Now", by P.O.D.

"Until the sea of glass we meet
At last completed and complete
Where tide and tear and pain subside
And laughter drinks them dry
I'll be waiting"

--"Restless", by Switchfoot

"But I'm not sentimental

This skin and bones is a rental
And no one makes it out alive

Until I die I'll sing these songs
On the shores of Babylon
Still looking for a home
In a world where I belong

Where the weak are finally strong
Where the righteous right the wrongs
Still looking for a home
In a world where I belong
[...]
And on the final day I die
I want to hold my head up high
I want to tell You that I tried
To live it like a song

And when I reach the other side
I want to look You in the eye
And know that I've arrived
In a world where I belong

In a world where I belong
In a world where I belong
Where I belong
Where I belong

I still believe we can live forever
You and I we begin forever now
Forever now
Forever
I still believe in us together
You and I we're here together now
Together now
Forever now"

--"Where I Belong", by Switchfoot

"Till He returns or calls me home

Here in the pow'r of Christ I'll stand."

--"In Christ Alone", by Keith Getty

"When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul."

--"It is Well with My Soul", by Horatio Spafford

I'm sure there are more, but I'm also sure that you probably didn't even read all of those. To be honest, I realize that there is no way to adequately express what I went through, and what I am still going through. But I did notice two recurring themes in all of the above excerpts. First, the idea of where we belong. Janee is where she belongs. I am not. This is not my home. Janee is finally home. I should not lament the departure of a stranger for her true home, simply because I am not yet leaving. Second, there is the concept of life being a song. Janee lived her life like a song. To be honest, I lost the words to my song recently. But through all of this, even when I cannot feel it, I can trust God to simply take what broken life I have and make it a song for Him to sing. Indeed, that is all I can ever do.

I don't claim to be fine. I don't claim to be done processing. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that grief is not a process. It is a cycle. At some points, I find myself unable to accept what has happened. At others, I simply break. And still at others, I realize that, while I am not yet made whole, that one day I will be. Janee just had that happen a bit sooner than I did. Will I ever leave this cycle? I do not think so. I think grief is not something inspired by an event, but rather a harsh reality of a fallen world. To live in this world is to grieve. Sure, eventually the rawness of her death will fade as I grow to rely on God more and more. But I will never again walk on two legs until I reach the other side. This I know. What I am currently learning, however, is that I never have. It just wasn't until something pushed me over that I realized it.

I don't claim to be wise. I don't claim to be able to transcend my current situation and speak general truth. All I know is what I see and feel and what I know to be true. That is what I have tried to communicate. Whether or not I succeeded is for you to decide.

Stewardship

If you know me well, you know that I am a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpieces, The Lord of the Rings, and the movies directed by Peter Jackson. If you don't know me well enough to know that, I'm not entirely sure why you're reading this blog. Anyhow, one of the tensest scenes in The Return of the King is when Gandalf confronts Lord Denethor, who is the steward to the throne of Gondor; that is, he and his family are not the rightful heirs of the throne, but they are charged to watch over Gondor and the throne in the absence of the true line of kings, from Isildur son of Elendil down to the present Aragorn, son of Arathorn, the rightful heir to the throne of Gondor.

The throne room is austere. A chill emanates from Denethor as he sits brooding on his cold throne. Gandalf is trying to convince Denethor to call for help from Theoden, king of Rohan, to defend against the armies of Mordor that rise up all around Gondor. The conversation proceeds as follows:

Denethor: You think you are wise, Mithrandir [Gandalf]. Yet for all your subtleties, you have not wisdom. Do you think the eyes of the White Tower are blind? I have seen more than you know. With your left hand you would use me as a shield against Mordor, and with your right you would seek to supplant me. I know who rides with Theoden of Rohan. Oh, yes. Word has reached my ears of this Aragorn, son of Arathorn, and I tell you now, I will not bow to this Ranger from the North, last of a ragged house long bereft of lordship! 

Gandalf: Authority is not given to you to deny the return of the king, steward! 

Denethor: The rule of Gondor is mine! And no other's!

Watching this scene, it is clear that Denethor is power hungry, selfish, and delusional. He lays claim to a throne that was never meant to be his. He claims to have knowledge, wisdom, and a right to rule, when in reality he has none of these things.

I cannot help but wonder how many of our lives might look the same to an outside observer. We read in the Bible that God created the heavens and the earth, and that he entrusted the earth to mankind to care for it. So from the beginning, we were meant to be good stewards of what God has given us.

The problem arises when we start to ask, what is a good steward? Undoubtedly, Denethor thought he was being a good steward of the throne by not letting a Ranger (basically, a yeoman hunter-soldier) rule the kingdom of men. Often, we use the term "being a good steward" to tell someone to put their money in the bank, go to college, save up for retirement, and develop talents that we seem to be naturally gifted at. But is that really what good stewardship is? I recently heard a sermon by Matt Chandler, a pastor at The Village Church, on "The Parable of the Ten Minas" found in Luke 19:11-27. In this parable, a man who is king of a country gives some minas (a lot of money) to some of his servants for them to put to work while he is away. When he comes back, he rewards two of his servants that used their minas to earn more minas. But one servant had simply buried his mina until the king got back, and here is his report: "Sir, here is your mina. I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man. You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow."

So what does this mean? We are supposed to use the money God has blessed us with to make more money? No. Like all parables, this is not meant to be taken literally. Hopefully by now you are starting to see the parallel. The king was already king. His servants could not change that by how they acted, just as we cannot detract from God's glory and dominion at all by our actions. The minas are everything God has given us--our money, our time, our energy, our intellect, our strength, our talents, our relationships, our desires--and they are given to us for a spiritual profit. God gives it to us, and he rewards us for spiritual profit.

So this "wicked" servant is delusional! He thinks that the king "takes out what he did not put in and reaps what he did not sow." But the minas were never his to begin with! They always belonged to the king, and he entrusted them to the servant for a spiritual profit. And the king's reaction is even better. In the next verse, he says, "I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant! You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow? Why then didn’t you put my money on deposit, so that when I came back, I could have collected it with interest?" Note that there is a question mark at the end of the second sentence. He is not agreeing with the servant, he is calling him a liar! If the servant really thought that the king was harsh (hint: he isn't) and would take what isn't his (hint: he doesn't), then he would have at least tried to make sure he had something to give the king! It is akin to when people say, something to the effect of "Well, if God judges us like that, I don't want anything to do with him." Right, that'll show him. You're not going to make a point, you're just going to be judged.

The point of all of this is that everything we have is not ours. It is, and always has been, God's. He has entrusted it to us and charged us to go and use it to make a spiritual profit.

This past spring, I went through a particularly rough period of life. I began to withdraw from social interaction, and I lost almost all of my motivation to go to class, try hard in school, eat healthy, work out, and just live a decent life. I ended up being diagnosed with anxiety and depression, and I eventually went on anti-depressants, which I am still currently taking. Praise be to God that He has delivered me out of that storm, but I did not emerge as the exact same person. I learned a crucial lesson in the process.

You see, an interesting thing happened when I found myself at the very bottom of the dark pit I had fallen into. When everything had fallen apart, I had to put my life back together piece by piece. In doing so, I had the unique chance to examine each piece on its own, outside the context of what I thought had been a pretty well put-together life. Imagine, if you dare, starting over from nothing, and having to explain to yourself exactly why you spend nearly 40 hours per week sitting in a chair, either taking notes or regurgitating them in various forms. Why did any of this stuff matter anyways, I asked myself.

Fortunately, God answered this question when I could not. And his answer has already been stated in this post, which is now getting to be much longer than I originally anticipated. He told me "I gave you everything you have for a spiritual profit."

So there it was. The defining criterion. My life in its entirety is meant to bring glory to God; to know Christ and to make him known; to love God and to love others. Everything else--school, work, money, exercise, health, food--is only important insofar as it contributes to that one single purpose. In the end, my life did not end up looking that much different on the outside than when I began. But now, I recognize that the center of my life, the sole, single purpose to which everything else must relate and submit, is Christ himself, and his mission for the world.

In the popular worship song "Came to my Rescue", we sing the words "Lord all I am is Yours." I know in the past, I have taken this to mean that I am giving everything that I am to God and calling it His. But in light of all of this, I don't think that is what it means. In reality, everything I am is already God's. It was never mine to begin with. I can't even claim to be giving Him something, because I am just giving back to Him what He just gave to me to hold on to. Even then, I am giving him back a broken, shattered remnant of the good life he originally gave me. Praise be to God, then, that we read in Psalm 53 (ESV):

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it.
You will not be please with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Where we start to get into trouble is when we begin to view our lives as our own. We then begin to place ourselves at the center, and assume that everything else in our lives has to submit to us, to our needs and desires. We become like Denethor and the wicked servant.

From this perspective, it is easy to see how Denethor became as callous as he was. For 1000 years, 26 generations, no King sat on the throne of Gondor, and Denethor's family had ruled as Stewards. Similarly, we sit on 2000 years since God himself walked the earth. But the length of time is not what matters. What matters is, how will you react when the King comes to claim His rightful throne?

EDIT: Here is a link to the Matt Chandler sermon I referenced:  http://www.thevillagechurch.net/sermon/good-servants-wicked-servants-and-the-enemies-of-god/

The Language of God

I have been reading through a book called The Language of God, by Francis Collins. Collins was the head of the Human Genome Project and is a very strong Christian. Many of his ideas really intrigued me.

For example, consider the following description: "the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy." This description seeks to reconcile the Big Bang theory with the creation account in Genesis. To Collins, the Big Bang "forces the conclusion that nature had a defined beginning" and thus "cries out for a divine explanation."

Romans 1:20 states, "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." In every generation, mankind has seen something in nature that he simply cannot explain without looking to divine intervention. To ancient man, it was the sun rising in the sky or plants growing out of the ground. In the Renaissance, it was the mysterious force that made things fall to earth and kept the moon orbiting around the earth. In the Enlightenment, it was the origin of the earth in the cosmic perspective. What is it now? Right now, the mere fact that our universe is able to exist as it does is inexplicable. Collins writes:

Altogether, there are fifteen physical constants whose values current theory is unable to predict. They are givens: they simply have the value that they have. This list includes the speed of light, the strength of the weak and strong nuclear forces, various parameters associated with electromagnetism, and the force of gravity.

And if any of these forces changed slightly, the universe as we know it would cease to exist. If the nuclear binding force were slightly lower, no elements other than hydrogen could ever form. To me, this points to God's words to Job:

          "Who shut up the sea behind doors
          [...]
          and set its doors and bars in place,
          When I said 'This far you may come, and no farther;
          Here is where your proud waves halt'?"

God told the waters "This far you may come, and no farther." He told gravity "This hard you may pull, and no harder."

So we see that God's invisible qualities have, indeed, been clearly seen. True, mankind is constantly searching and finding answers and explanations to these mysteries, but should we expect anything less from a God of infinite depth and complexity? Have we not seen enough to know that, just when we think we have arrived at the fundamental building blocks of the universe, we discover something even smaller, more complex, and difficult to understand?

The fundamental error of science is not that it continues to search. The underlying sin of all mankind is the assumption that, because we continue to learn and discover more, we will one day have learned and discovered it all. It is the same fatal mistake that Satan made, thinking we can become like God, all-knowing, all-powerful. Instead of being filled with awe at God's creation and praising Him, we are inflated with pride at our puny understanding and seek wisdom apart from God. And until we turn away from this pride and turn back to seeking God for wisdom and understanding, we will never obtain it.

If you want a link to the book, here it is: http://www.amazon.com/The-Language-God-Scientist-Presents/dp/1416542744.

C'mon Son

At the Flinn Scholar's retreat up at Chapel Rock, I attended a poetry workshop. The professor leading us decided to focus on anaphora, and asked us to write a poem accordingly. The poems I wrote in the allotted time were not worth the ink I used on them, but immediately afterwards, I was inspired to write the following poem. The inspiration came from my experience in Santa Monica, where "C'mon son" quickly became a popular phrase amongst the project folks. I posted it with the hashtags #processingthroughpoems #cmonson #letsbereal. So here it is.

C'mon Son

C'mon son, let's be real
C'mon son, think it through
C'mon son, listen up
C'mon son, this is true

C'mon son, don't just live
C'mon son, don't just walk
C'mon son, don't just hear
C'mon son, don't just talk

C'mon son, don't be nice
C'mon son, disagree
C'mon son, dare to doubt
C'mon son, come and see

C'mon son, dare to ask
C'mon son, dare to mind
C'mon son, dare to seek
C'mon son, dare to find

C'mon son, Jesus saves
C'mon son, soon you'll see
C'mon son, hear Him say
"C'mon son, follow me"

Think it Through

Inspired by many of my experiences out sharing in Santa Monica, here is a poem I wrote. It's a little rough at parts, but I just finished the last few lines and figured I would just post it now.

Think it Through (or, Some thoughts on Life and Sharing)
Some unimportant words on the important things in life

A simple little question that so often scares away:

"Sir, would you care to take some time out of your busy day?"

And usually they walk,

But if they stay to talk,

I'll ask them my first question and see what they have to say

"This one's a little tricky" I will warn them in advance.

"Why are we here? For God? For us? Or is it purely chance?"

Their speech begins to stall

But their features say it all:

They haven't really thought about their present circumstance.

The problem isn't time, or "I have better things to do"

(They had the time to stop and talk with me about their view)

It's a pitfall in disguise,

And here's what I surmise:

The problem is they simply haven't thought to think it through.

Either God is real, and Jesus is the Truth, or else He's not.

But if He is, then Heaven is sublime, and Hell is hot.

They say the thought is nice,

And they're open to advice,

And yet they live like atheists without a second thought!

A life that's lived apart from God can never be enjoyed;

No cause, no purpose, no effect; of principle devoid.

The only road from there

Is one-way to despair;

A faithless leap from off a cliff into an empty void.

See, I remember planning out my story like an arc,

But when I reached the very end, I wrote a question mark.

Some day, we all will die;

Why do we even try?

And then I found the One who turned my life to light from dark

Whenever I begin to doubt and wonder what to do,

There comes a time when I decide to question what is true.

And answers can be found

Where grace and truth abound.

I find them every time because I choose to think it through.

God made us all in love, but then we chose to go astray;

We pushed aside his perfect plan and chose a broken way.

But God didn't leave us there

He came down, His love to share,

And nailed his own Son on the cross, our debt of sin to pay.

When I was dead and fallen, I had nothing left to do.

I had no way to save myself, this much I knew was true.

My mind could not conceive

The grace I would receive

Thank God that He's in charge, not me, and He can think it through

So now it's said, and what is said I do believe is true.

I thought it through and made my choice, so now I challenge you:

Don't take life sitting down,

Get up and look around,

And turn your doubts to questions, and then choose to think it through!

The Meadow, the Snow, and the Wooden Rock

The other day, for some inexplicable reason, I decided I should journal and write a free-verse poem. I have no idea why; I am by no means a poet, and when I do try to write poetry, I almost always prefer strict rhyme scheme and metre. Nevertheless, here it is.

The Meadow, the Snow, and the Wooden Rock

While walking through the meadow

I see the clouds ahead

White, puffy masses

Not dark, to bring rain

But they will block out the sun all the same

I stop to issue a brief prayer

Then cautiously begin again

As I walk, it starts to fall

Not in flakes, just drops of snow

The ground is speckled white,
      and soon it is covered

The trees all lose their leaves
      and stand spreading their bare branches
      like open arms,
      looking up to heaven

At first it seems surreal,

A snowy paradise,

A whitewashed escape
      from the meadow path

But as I walk further

I begin to see what I do not see:

An end.

I don't want to go back,

Though I'm not sure I could
      even if I tried

There is nothing but to trudge
      onward

As my feet grow heavier
      with each step,
      laden with snow

Gradually I being to see that,
      beneath the thick white blanket,

The meadow grass is still there.

Here a small hill,

There a dip,

There a shrub.

But in this whitewashed land
      they all appear as merely small defects in the landscape,

like pillows beneath a white comforter.

True, the plants are there,
      beneath the snow

The meadow land remains the same

But as my vision turns to white,

My memory goes blank as well;

The look of dirt,
      the feel of grass,

The slopes between the highs and lows
      all start to fade from thought,

Lost in a sea of blank unfeeling.

And soon the lumps seem to be
      no more than lumps,

Dead remains of the things beneath

Soon my confusion turns to
      anxiousness

My curiosity to hopelessness

In my despair, I remember my prayer

Issued at the threshold where
      the meadow yielded to the snow

I begin to think,

"Surely I have left the trail,

If, indeed, there ever was a trail."

Was there? Was the meadow real?

Or was that the shadow, and this the reality?

Beneath the white sky and the
      white-covered land

There are no signs, no landmarks,

Nothing to help me find my way,
      or even confirm there is a way.

Worry turns to doubt and fear,

To anger, bitterness, mistrust

There is no way out of here

So I do the only thing
      I know to do

I turn around and begin to run
      as fast as my snow-laden feet
      will carry me

Back to the meadow from whence
      I came

As I run past the monochrome landscape,

The unchanging scenery,

I begin to wonder how much further.

"Surely I did not come this far"

And surely I didn't,

But the snow remains, so I run on.

Twice, thrice, four times the distance
    I think it ought to be

But all I can see is white;

No meadow is in sight.

Here I am, my efforts spent,

My best ideas gone down the drain.

With no thoughts left,
      and my energy lost,

I fall to my knees,

My head stooped in surrender

And in this posture,

A familiar prayer returns
      to my lips

A promise echoes across the land

Not heard, but felt, as if
      the thought had been my own

But it is too foreign and
      too powerful to have originated
      from my spent and broken skull.

I raise my head,

And open my eyes,

And I find myself gazing upward

At those two wooden beams from the
      foot of that cross.

This, the first and only steadfast
      landmark I can see

Had always been fixed
      at the end of me.

As I stare at that bloody tree

I see the sky is no longer pale,
      but cloudless and blue

The sun's light shines down
      on a brand new scene

One I have never seen, but know
      all the same.

Behind that steadfast wooden rock

I see the path I am to walk

Through the grass it weaves into the trees

A great big forest, dark and deep

Lies ahead on the path for me

Yet I will walk with courage and humility,

Knowing that, should I lose my way,

There is a path, and an unfailing Guide,

A terrible tree that points the way,
A wooden rock, the light of day,

When I fall on my knees and give my life away,

At the end of myself,

The beginning of eternity.

Now that you have read the poem (and maybe even enjoyed it, though I dare not press my luck), I should probably clarify that this poem is definitely metaphorical and, for the most part, autobiographical. That's all I will say on the matter, at least for now.