fear of man

So I'm currently sitting in my favorite coffee shop in Chesapeake, Bean There, watching it storm outside and reading. I'm also listening to Pandora, which I've recently rediscovered as being awesome.

Anyways, something I've been thinking about lately as it's come up in sermons at church and in small group discussion has been what my new pastor, Eric, referred to as 'fear of man.' The fear of man being when I let the fear of what others think of me dictate how I act.

This is something I've struggled with most of my life; worrying about how others view me. Never wanting people to dislike me, or think badly of me... I always have to be funny, or smart, or hardworking, or responsible, or any of a million other good things. While I don't think it's inherently bad to be any of these things, I've compromised my integrity on more than one occasion in order to maintain that image. I've laughed at things when I cringe inside, I've argued over a point just to prove myself right, I've used work as an excuse when really just didn't want to do something else.

Why do I put forth this false self? Why do I need people to like me? To think I'm better than I really am? And what's worse, my actions are telling lies about the gospel. In church we talked about Galatians 2 where Paul confronts Peter from withdrawing from the Gentile believers when the Jewish believers arrived. By worrying about what the Jewish believers would think of him, Peter's actions were saying that the Gentile believers were inferior, that they weren't as good as the Jewish believers.

What lies are told by the way I'm living my life?

I hope that being aware of it will help me to be less prone to worrying about what others think about me. I'm not sure that there's some magic steps that I can follow in order to break myself of it, but it's something I'll continue to deal with.

Too Much Tragedy

I am so tired of my school coming up in the news for the wrong reasons.

My heart goes out for the families of all those affected in the shootings on the military base of Fort Hood in Texas. Every time I hear about something like that my mind immediately goes back to the shootings at Virginia Tech over two years ago. And the fact that the shooter at Ft. Hood was a graduate of VT made feel even worse about it. There have been a seemingly absurd number of deaths that have had ties to Virginia Tech over the past couple of years. To name a few...

• This is how the 2006-2007 school year started, with an escaped convict killing two people and escaping into Blacksburg.

• Then of course the shootings on April 16th 2007 where a gunman killed 32 students and professors before turning the gun on himself.

• The following November, a freshman committed suicide by jumping out of a window in Pritchard hall (the dorm I lived in.)

• In February of 2008, a student was killed and another badly injured when they were hit by a car while crossing the street

• This past January, a graduate student was killed and decapitated by another graduate student in a cafe on campus.

• In August, two Virginia Tech students were found shot dead at a local campground

• In October, a Virginia Tech student went missing after a Metallica concert in Charlottesville and has still not been found.

• and now a Virginia Tech graduate, Nidal Malik Hasan is suspected to be responsible for the death of 13 soldiers and civilians at Ft. Hood in Texas.

Does this list seem ridiculous to anyone else for a span of 2 1/2 years? It's probably not even everything that happened, there's probably some incident that I've forgotten about. It sometimes seem like a cloud hangs over the school, that death and tragedy are not far from the students of the school.

And more than once, I have felt weighed down by all of this death and tragedy at the place that was home to me for 5 years, the lives lost were people I walked by every day, had class with, watched football games with. You would think we'd be good at dealing with tragedy by now, but that's something that I don't think we can ever get 'good' at.

I pray God would comfort those affected by this latest tragedy, and those that continue to be affected by all the other tragedies. I don't know what else to say beyond that.

Today I gave a guy a ride home from jail.

no, really.

I was volunteering and painting outside at a primary school across from my parent's church and this young guy comes walking up to me and asks if he can borrow my phone. He just got out of jail and needs someone to pick him up. So I let him use my phone as he tries unsuccessfully to call his dad and some other people. He said he needed a ride to portsmouth or he would have to walk. Now portsmouth is a 20 minute drive away, and this dude was gonna try and walk it?

So i did something that, looking back, I don't think i would have done 5 years ago, I offered him a ride. So we jumped in my car and started driving to portsmouth (p-town to the hip crowd) and we started talked about how he had just got out from a 60 day sentence in jail because he missed a court date, and that his girlfriend was supposed to be giving birth to his daughter today. All this for a guy who just turned 20.

Now i'm not the most conversational person in the world when I'm meeting someone for the first time, and so it was a little awkward at times, and there was a fair amount of small talk, we talked a little about church and God, but not much and before I knew it we were in p-town. I said God bless, and wished him well as I drove off from his house.

Driving back I was thinking about how even a few years ago I wouldn't have done something like that for a complete stranger. It was one of those things that helps me realize the work God is continually doing in our lives. I don't think I live my life incredibly different than I did a few years ago, but i think i respond to things differently now. I think in my good moments, I'm a lot less selfish than I used to be. (in my good moments) And that God has given me a heart for the marginalized people around me. (thanks Marshall)

I'm not usually one that does a lot of self reflection and self-analysis, so I think today was a good moment to just see that God's brought me a long way, and still has a long way yet to bring me.



Currently playing : Divine Romance - Phil Wickham

Signs

This is not a post about a Mel Gibson movie
or about a great game to play in small groups
or about things that direct the flow of traffic

This post is about signs from God.

I think that just about everyone at some point in their life has asked for a sign that what they're doing is right or a sign that points us in a direction to choose one thing over another.

Whether they're asking for a sign from God, or from something else, it seems like most of us want affirmation from something or someone else that what we're doing is right.

We want this sign to reassure our own insecurities and doubts.

Sometimes I want a sign that God is real, that I'm not imagining this whole thing and that what i've experienced is a genuine experience and not something contrived.

Sometimes I try to trick God into letting me have what I want. "If i'm not supposed to date this person, give me a sign not to." (I think I used this a lot when I was younger)

But are signs really going to be the thing that sways us towards God? The Bible doesn't really have a good track record of them working out. How many times did God perform miracles and wonders for the Israelis coming out of Egypt? And still they turned away from Him almost as soon as the wonders were over. How many times did Jesus perform miracles for the disciples and yet Thomas still didn't believe until he touched and saw the resurrected Christ.

Jesus even says "Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe." Which says to me that we shouldn't need or rely on signs.

Because faith is precisely that, not seeing and yet still believing.

So then what good are signs at all? Should we want to see signs from God?

Psalm 86 says

Give me a sign of your goodness,
that my enemies may see it and be put to shame,
for you, O Lord, have helped me and comforted me (v17)

The psalmist isn't asking for a sign for his sake, for his reassurance, but for others, that his enemies might see the error of their ways and come to know the true God. Is that why Jesus did signs and wonders? So that those who did not know him would understand that he had power and authority from God?

I don't know, maybe that's all signs were supposed to be, just letting outsiders know that this person has authority and you should pay attention to what he says. What do you think?

the problem of pain

I may or may not have stolen the title for this post from a c.s. lewis book.

I have not read this book, and this post is not about that book.

but I like the title anyways.

Pain sucks. for the past 2 months I've been dealing with chronic joint pain. It started out in my knees, but has progressed to just about every joint in my body, from my neck to my toes. Last week I was diagnosed with rheumatory arthritis. which is essentially the immune system going haywire to the point that it attacks the body's joints, causing inflammation and pain in the joints.

This is not fun.

But this post isn't about that.

This post is about responding to that.

When the realization that I will be taking pills for the rest of my life to deal with this, and that even then, nothing is guaranteed, I was angry. Angry at God for allowing this to happen to me. Haven't I been faithful? Haven't I done work for your kingdom? How am I supposed to get up early and have a quiet time if i can barely get out of bed and ready on time because of the pain. How can I stay in shape and take care of my body? Why God? Why do you hit me with this on top of everything else I have going on in my life?

And to be honest, I still go back to this massive self-pity party sometimes, I still have moments where I let myself get angry at God because of this. But I was quickly reminded of what my friend Derek would say.

"This is not how God intended it to be."

And he's right. When God created the world, everything he created was good. There was no pain, no suffering and no death... until the fall. But now we live in a world that is corrupted by the fall. Our relationship with God, with others, with our environments and with ourselves have been corrupted by the fall. This includes pain. God never intended for us to feel pain, but we were selfish, we chose to be selfish, and the resulting world is broken because of it.

And Christ has redeemed our spirits, but not yet our bodies. So while we've been given spiritual freedom in Christ, our bodies our still bound to this world. Following Christ doesn't mean you are less likely to get cancer, or AIDS, or arthritis. We have to deal with these things like the rest of the world. Though we should deal with it better than the rest, because we have eternity to look towards. We should have hope for freedom from this broken world.

We often don't.

We feel like we're entitled to more.

That we've earned the right to a good life.

That's nowhere in scripture. Somewhere along the line we got this idea that we should expect to live a life free of pain. That if things go like they should, we'll live a happy, pain-free life. In my opinion, that is the problem of pain. That we are surprised when we encounter it. That we are unprepared to deal with it because we've grown up in good neighborhoods and with bad theology. I hope I learn to deal with it better, and learn to trust God despite it.

the far side of the sea

"If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there Your hand will guide me,

Your right hand will hold me fast."

-psalm 139:9-10

I really like the poetry in the Old Testament: Psalms, parts of Isaiah, etc. This is one of my favorite psalms. I can't give you a good reason why, it just struck me the first time i read it.

There's a lot of different things in there, from God knowing when you rise and when you lay down, to Him making us as creations ' fearfully and wonderfully made,' to the psalmist petitioning God that He would search his heart for any offensive way. It has a lot of good and comforting things in it.

The thing that i love about verses 9 and 10 is that the author is saying even if i go beyond the sea, away from everything I know, away from the temple in Jerusalem where God dwelt, still God will pursue us there. There is no where that is too foreign or too far that God will abandon us. It's not a revelation by any means, but I think the poetics of how it is put here really struck a chord with me. (growing up by the ocean, I find particular peace with scriptures that speak of water and of the sea.)

I think it resonates with me a lot right now. I've moved far away from where I experienced and grew in God the most in my life; Blacksburg, College, IV, Pritchard. And so part of me equates that place and those people with God. Like in the Old Testament where God did something for the patriarchs or the Israelites and they would erect monuments or altars, I feel like there are places back at Virginia Tech I could do that for. The tree to the right of War Memorial Chapel, litton reeves 1670, bollos, Allen and Dave's apartment/rooms over the years, pritchard crossover lounges and burchard plaza are all places where God did something in my life. I don't have a lot of those places here. I don't have that same history with God in Chesapeake.

And maybe I never will, maybe this is my wilderness and God will lead me out of it into somewhere else. I don't know.

Is anyone else like this? Do you have places where you would build altars of remembrance for what God has done or just places you've experienced God more often? Where are they? What kind of places are they?

Autographs and Apologetics

So I was talking with my friend dave today, he mentioned some of the professors he had up in northern VA were some of the top minds and authorities on apologetics. They were authors and well known people in their field. Kind of a big deal. He said how they were just regular guys but despite that he had to avoid falling into hero worship when he interacted with them.
I think this is a common trend in our Christian society that seems harmful to me. We view well known christian authors, artists and speakers with this sort of worship that belongs with Christ, not with man.

I think it's a carry over from American culture at large. Whether it's actors, musicians, athletes or some other person that is either talented enough or lucky enough to make it into the spotlight that is today's media, we elevate people to the level of worship, or near worship, We want to model our lives after Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, John Mayer, Jay-Z, Lebron James, or Tom Brady. Even people who make it onto reality shows, American Idols, Top Chefs, Next Top Models, etc. Why? Why do we seek out fame? Is it because of our own dis-satisfaction with our identity?

Even within Christian circles; people want to be hip like Rob Bell, or counter-cultural like Shane Claiborne or adventurous like John Eldridge. Why do we stand in long lines to get our books autographed by these guys? Or push people out of the way to get a drumstick that the drummer from Mercy Me threw out into the crowd? I'm not saying anything is bad about any of these people. but I am saying at some level, all these people, from Brad Pitt to Shane Claiborne are not worthy of our devotion.

That belongs to God alone.

And I'm also not saying that doing certain things like these people are bad. Shane Claiborne has an incredible passion for the poor. And I love that about him and his ministry. But that stems from what God is doing through him. Not what Shane is doing himself. And as great as his books may be, they aren't scripture, and we shouldn't treat them like they are. Not everything in it is correct and true of what God desires for us. (Not to seem like I'm railing on Shane Claiborne, of the people I listed, he's probably the person that I struggle the most with hero worship of, so this is as much a reminder to me.)

We should look at one another with the same eyes that God does. That we would love one another and seek out how to sharpen one another into the men and women that God created us to be. But Christ should always be the model for our lives, and we should seek His face.