Questions on Example

I've been reading a lot - not books, some magazines, lots of blogs. I'm realizing things too. I'm realizing that:

1. Everyone has struggles.
2. Some people have more to deal with.
3. Growing up is tough.
4. It's hard to be perfect.
5. No one is perfect.
6. Life is a series of choices, both wrong and right, both educational in one way or another.
7. If we love God, we should do it.
8. If we don't love God, we should not be afraid to admit it, but be responsible enough to let everyone else make up their own minds.
9. I'm often naive.
10. I'm often mis-informed.
11. I want people (for some reason, ESPECIALLY young people) to be passionately in love with Christ.
12. I haven't done much to show it.
13. My heart breaks when they don't.
14. I want to do more . . . I might be afraid.
15. We CAN be better.
16. We CAN be positive.
17. There is too much tolerance.
18. There is not enough tolerance.
19. Someone has got to say something.
20. It should be me.
21. God is real.
22. Death is real.
23. Hurt and healing are real.
24. I'm sick of us looking for the intimacy with God without the responsibility.

There's more that I know . . . I just wish I could tell you.

Grace.

Give me a kiss

Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don't make a fist
Take this mouth
So quick to criticise
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss

Why wouldn't we want God to give us a kiss?

"You kiss [your heavenly father] with that mouth?" Hmmmm.

Grace.

Long Writer's Block

Still got writer's block . . .but I'm watching a guy while his parents are away this week, so I haven't had much time to write or think.

BUT, C.S. Lewis says that life isn't a bunch of roads that lead to some center, but a single road that forks every few hundred feet. You either choose right or left. Where do I want to go today?

Writer's Block

I know I've not written for a while. Writer's block. Sucks.

Confusion

Today's quote: "We can easily praise, because we have so much to be thankful for."

I think we confuse PRAISE with THANKSGIVING . . . at the very least, I have heard many people confuse those to facts.

PRAISE has to happen whether we think we have things to be thankful for or not. The two ARE not the same. It's like loving your mother even when she tells you to go clean your room. Praise is loving God for WHO HE IS. It's not dependant on what HE's done, and ESPECIALLY not what he's done for us.

Grace.

How Do I Get to England from Here?

My wife is still in Atlanta . . . I'm still playing Tiger Woods 2004. It's not quite as entertaining. I'm trying to figure out why my blogs are all about stuff that would be better used if they were in a book and making me money.

In any case . . . I was reading C.S. Lewis again this morning before I came to work. And, yes, another GREAT analogy from Mere Christianity.

Clive was giving a talk to a bunch of Royal Air Force men . . . when one old, embittered man stood up and said, 'I've no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I'm a religious man too. I've fel Him: out, alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that's just why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who's met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal."

This litter exerpt, I think, is becoming the basis for the most recent revision of my views on worship, specifically blended worship (which, btw, is a term I can't stand!): why old people and young people can't seem to agree on how to tell God that they both love Him.

It has to do with reality. The man from the RAF had a REAL encounter with God. He FELT God. He SENSED God's presence. He SURRENDERED to God. Then, when it came time to turn to the CHURCH, the written liturgy, the tradition, the ritual, all seemed so very bland and uninclusive to his soul. They seemed 'petty and pedantic (i.e. dull and incredibly hung-up on details) and unreal'. He turned to a body of believers that had something that seemed much less real.

In essence, a map. Should you go to the east coast of this pretty vast continent (or, in Newfoundland, outdoors anywhere), you'll see ocean . . . loads and loads of ocean. You'll see beaches, and smell salted air, hear birds and waves, feel the ocean breeze on your face, etc. You'll experience the Atlantic. If you look at a map, you won't see or feel or hear any of those things, but you'll see a lot of colored ink that is supposed to represent EVERYTHING that we know about the Atlantic Ocean. Not nearly as invigorating . . . but useful . . . especially if you're on your way to England.

Two points are made in the exerpt:

1. As dull as the map may seem, it represents the collective experience of hundreds of thousands of beach-goers and sailors that have come before us. "Masses of experience." is how Lewis puts it. Whereas my single experience is a snap-snot, the map is a collection of everybodies.
2. If you want to go anywhere, the map is vital. Walks on the beach are incredible, and your experiences are much more entertaining than looking at a silly piece of paper.

Now . . . with our someone-proclaimed 'praise and worship' movement, I fear not only that the older Christians among us think we're trying to rip apart the map they helped draft, but that they're also correct. I've got decreasing amounts of sympathy for those of us who say that they can't just worship to band music or electric guitar solos or stagnant liturgy. In all of the things that 'we just can't do' we're self-righteously robbing God of what he rightfully deserves (i.e. GLORY). I just can't help but think, as I'm involved in more and more discussions about life, that we're completely missing the boat . . . . me too.

In our ARMY, I agree that it might be nice if we could 'rouse the troops a little . . . we've got a real-world war to fight with soldiers that a pudgy and comfortable. PLEASE remember that the MAP of our history and collective experience is STILL very usefull and VITAL for our battles. Let's just work on forging a new path, finding a new passage from A to B, not blinding wandering on the beach.

Grace

This gets 34 Creativity Points

My wife, for a housewarming gift, bought me a subscription to my favorite magazine on the planet: Mental Floss. It's incredible. It's an all-things-trivial library of goodness. (Aside: my wife is spending the week at a conference in Atlanta . . . sorry if I sound depressed).

Anywho, interesting feature this month . . . the stories behind our favorite inventions (e.g. the Pez dispenser, Ex Lax, the Paper Clip, etc). Ok, remember that for a minute.

You'll probably know that I am quite sick of Christianity's counter-productive attempt to market itself; not that it NEEDS to be marketed, but the image portrayed to the world is not a picture-perfect image of Christ. When we do something 'big', it's generally so tacky and predictable that 'twas a failureth before it had ever begun.

SO, enter the Roller Coaster. The Roller Coaster was first invented by a minister on Coney Island who, appalled at the number of men frequenting the local pubs vs. those frequenting the local places of worship (though I guess a pub really is a place of worship, when you think about it), that he built a contraption that is now recognized as the official beginning of the Roller Coaster. I'll have to consult Mental Floss for the rest of the details, but he built it to lure the men back OUT of the pubs.

For God's sake, can we take a lesson in creativity and lay off the religio-political nonsense? More on religio-political nonsense later.

Grace.

Why Jesus is Like Windex

So, Kristy gave me a great book for Christmas: it's a devotional, collected from the writings of C.S. Lewis. Gotta love good ol' Clive Staples.

I'm reading tonight and it's talking about how in order for us to see God, it has to be HIM that intiates it. As much as we might WANT to see Him, if He doesn't show Himself, nothing that we can do will make Him. And though He has no favourites, He reveals Himself MORE to some than to others.

This is a little hard to deal with, because it WOULD seem that God has favourites. But Clive goes on.

Just as sunlight shining through a window reflects better from a mirror that is clean vs. a mirror that is dirty, so too "if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred."

Which makes me think a lot about how blurry God seems to me sometimes. And about how much dust I have.

Grace.

Opinions, Please

In my everlasting quest to be Miscellaneous Dept Director (though, I think I like Director of Miscellaneous Services better), I'm in the middle of designing a website for Camp Walter Johnson. It's literally a day old, however, please look at it and tell me what y'all think. Everything SHOULD work.

http://home.earthlink.net/~desmondsmith/cwj-trialwebsite/default.html

There's a lot NOT done yet, I know that all of the text will probably look like it was cut and pasted to fill space . . . good reason for that. Either way, it's only up there for a day or two.

Thanks.

Grace.

Blame it on Adam & Eve

Following an interesting conversation this afternoon about all the reasons why a certain church sucks, and following the sharing of this conversation with my wife, she helped me see the following conclusion. In church, as in life, we as a people are all about blame.

When something goes wrong, we do whatever we can to show how someone else is responsible and how we are at least somewhat innocent. Luckily, it's not our faults :-) Just blame it on Adam & Eve.

Here's what happened in the Garden after Jim and Gertie (I mean, Adam and Eve) ate of the tree (it's a paraphrase, hopefully funny, yet accurate; for the complete history, read Genesis 3).

God: Hey, Adam . . . hellooooo? Anybody here? It's the creator of the universe coming to walk with you in the cool of the even-ing.

Adam: I'm hiding.

God: What? Why under the firmament would you do that?

Adam: I couldn't find my pants.

God: Excuse me?

Adam: I couldn't find my pants, Lord. I didn't want you to see me naked as the day you made me out of dirt.

God: Well, who told you that you weren't wearing any pants? Did you eat the apple I specifically told you not to eat?

Adam: Ummmmm . . . kinda . . . I guess.

God: Adam? Be honest . . .

Adam: OK, OK, I ate the whole thing . . . right down to the corps. I even got that little hard feeling shell thing on the inside that keeps the seeds in place . . . and it got stuck in my teeth and you haven't invented toothpicks yet, and . . .

God: Adam . . . why did you eat the apple?

Adam: The woman made me do it . . . the WOMAN THAT YOU MADE FOR ME . . . so in a way . . .

God: Don't even say it . . . Eve? Come out here.

Eve: Hey God. Welcome back . . .

God: Thanks . . . so Adam tells me that you gave him an apple . . . have anything to say about that.

Eve: Uhhh, yeah . . . BUT IT WAS THE SERPENT. HE gave me the apple. You know? The serpent that YOU MADE.

God: Honest to me, I really wish you people understood me more.

The point is: neither Adam nor Eve took responsibility for their own actions. It was someone elses fault. IN fact, it was partially God's fault, according to their logic.

But we do the same thing. We don't like something happening in our church, or place of business, or whatever, we always place blame as far away from ourselves as possible. It's ALWAYS someone elses fault. The next time you're in a conversation with someone, with generally negative overtones, take a listen. See how many times one takes responsibility for oneself, compared to how many times one picks out the flaws and faults of another. It's pretty shocking.

God, PLEASE help us realize that we need to serve you. Nothing else matters. If we're going to church primarily expectinging to get something out of it, in the words of my wise wife, we should just stop being Christians.

I don't know how many times I can say, "It's not about us." When we place any of the purpose of our faith on ourselves, we rob God of His glory.

What would Jesus Do? He'd take the blame for all of us, leave the splendor of heaven and hang, nailed to a cross, until he died, covered in blood and spit . . . funny that.

Grace.

I Love You More

I've really been thinking more about this "I Love You" idea from my last post. I can't quite figure out where we complicated it. I don't have any one to blame, realistically; we're just continuing a 2000 year-old process. It just seems like whatever we do is tarnished with our own preferences and desires. We pray that all the glory would go to God, but only when something is happening that appeals to our tastes . . . that seems to rob God of the love that he deserves. It's like buying your wife a bowling ball so she'll go bowling with you more often . . . you can explain it away pretty easily by saying, "I just want to spend more time with you, honey." But the reality is that you want to spend the time on YOUR terms.

I'll spend time with you when it's at the bowling alley. Wouldn't that seem to lessen the love that your wife would feel. "C'mon honey . . . come on down to the bowlin' alley and let me show ya some luv."

I'll worship you when the praise band is playing. I'll pray when I'm not so tired. I'll go to church only when the band is on duty.

I love you, Lord.

Grace.

How do I love Thee?

I know this is long, so if you're NOT going to read the whole thing, you'll want to read the last two paragraphs.

I'm not old . . .I'm not as old as the young people that work with me think I am, and I'm probably not even as old as I think I am sometimes. I am old ENOUGH to be concious of some changes that have taken place over the past number of years. I DO find it a little weird that the kids I work with don't know what it's like to grow up without the internet or cell phones. Honestly, that blows my mind. Before long, most kids won't know what it's like not to have the internet on their cell phones . . .

Weird.

Today in our meetings we got talking about worship . . . it's been a recurring theme throughout the day, not IN our meetings AS SUCH, but in personal conversations, etc. I can't believe how far my feelings on all of this worship stuff has come in the past few years. I was saying earlier today that I truly believe we're missing the boat on the whole thing . . . most churches, most congregations, just completely missing out. I hate the term blended worship. I'm hating more and more the concepts of traditional and contemporary services. I think it's the same thing as hating 'buzz words' that once were cutting edge but are now only used by people who want to sound cutting edge but in reality they're far from the edge (e.g. out-of-the-box, generation x, etc).

Here's what I think . . . what we're tying to do is to make our current programs fit into a slighty diffent mode than they've been in for the past number of years . . . but the motivation seems to be somewhat competetive or I-Told-You-So-ish. Example: we want our bands to be recognized as worship leaders . . . but the logistics of leading what is our concept of worshp with a brass band are much more involved than with a guitar. The schemas that we're developing show that worship is led by a guitarist or keyboardist, which isn't necessarily correct, it's just what we've declared subconciously to be correct. We're also trying to make new programs work that don't always gel well with Army practice over the past number of years. That motivation seems very "there little value in the past"ish.

1. This whole situation serves to teach us a couple of things:
   there's a disconnect between what we have and what we recognize to be where we need to be
2. we want to be found in the will of God
3. we don't know how to get to that point; or at the very least we haven't found a common path to getting there
4. division is not healthy; pruning is healthy, fertilization is healthy, division is not.
5. we need to find a common, unfleeting motivation (one of my biggest issues with our current philosophies are how frequently they change . . . rebirth takes time, gestation is a long process only because there is a lot of stuff that needs to happen before a new child is ready to face the world.
   

I have to deal with the last one. Common ground will allow us to unite as the body of christ once again. The common ground is our purpose for life. The common ground is the only reason that were were placed on this planet in the first place. The common ground is worship. But, not worship as we seem to currently understand it; worship as God understands it.

It's not 'til we FULLY understand that worship isn't about what instrument we play, nor is it what we sing, nor whether is it the similarities to what we hear on the radio, NOR IS IT ABOUT US. Worship IS only and CAN BE only about God. When it is not, it ceases to be worship; it becomes something much less. If worship is expressing our feelings of love to our heavenly father, then it cannot be motivated by any selfish desires . . . it's not about Him then, it's about what we get out of it.

I have to think more about all this as what I really want to say is not REALLY coming through well . . . I have one more illustration.

It's funny that saying I love you hasn't changed over the past how ever many millenia that people have been able to communicate. When someone says to me, "I love you." I know EXACTLY what they mean; i don't expect them to come up with a new way of telling me, nor do I try to fit their way of telling me into any kind of constraints.

I recognize that our approach to worship is changing, were caught in the middle of a cross-generational gap that goes far beyond any one person's comprehension. What I find very intriguing is that after almost seven years of being with the woman that is now my wife I still tell her the same thing that I told her 7 years ago: "I love you". After 25 years of LIFE, how I tell my parents that I care about them deeply is to say: "I love you". Three spoken words that express the ultimate is human emotion is still the choice method for expressing the ULTIMATE in human emotion, after thousands of years of existence. New ways of expressing love don't have to be researched or devleoped. My wife understands and, from what she tells me, loves to hear me tell her those words. I don't have to find another way to say it. Anytime that I'm doing anything else, I'm wasting time that I could be expressing my love to her.

Perhaps if our main concern was telling God that we loved Him, we wouldn't get so drastically carried away with the methods we choose to use . . . we can argue all we want amongst ourselves about which is the better way, which is more effective, but the fact of the matter is that God just wants to hear it from us. Just tell Him.

Back in the US

I'm much enjoying wearing T-Shirts in January (73 degrees F . . . I'll take that). It's OK to be back, though I'm a little thrown off as I'm JUST getting back and I already have to spend a whole week away from my wife. That stinks.

Christmas was very good, although extrememly busy. Kristy's sister got married, and so we were pretty involved with preperations for that. I got to meet and hold Caleb William Reid (Harvey and Tracy Reid's little Baby in Newfoundland)

++++ It was HERE that I lost about 20 minutes of GREAT material . . . I REALLY don't like the way this blogger handles my entries, just for the record. I'm RE-Writing from here on ++++

So, I'm AWAY from my wife, which stinks. I JUST got back in the country and now have been whisked away to Atlanta where I'll sit through some meetings that may or may not have a drastic effect on humankind as we know it. The point is: I miss my wife. It may be the mushiness, but I'm going to write some more tonight about lessons from marriage. I actually think it's pretty good. Like I said, I miss my wife. It's a horrible feeling. I'm concerned. I'm lonely. (Yes, I'm pathetic too). All I want to do right now is to check out of my Atlanta hotel and drive all the way back to our apartment in Charlotte and just spend the rest of the week with her. It's not something I NEED to WORK at in order for it to be true. I haven't even got to be completely concious of the fact that she's not HERE . . . I'm just always aware of it.

Interestingly enough, I've been aware of a need to be closer to Christ for some time . . . but I haven't WANTED NOTHING MORE THAN to kneel and pray, or seek forgiveness, or tear my robes in anguish. I've often chosen other things over my maker . . . example, a few weeks ago I sat and watched the overtime of the Panthers vs. Falcons game . . . didn't phase me that I needed to spend time with Jesus.

I'm VERY aware of the time that I spend with Kristy. I feel gulity when I don't. I don't have that same motivation by guilt, it would seem, in my relationship with Jesus. Now, I SAY that I love both of them (Kristy AND Christ) but it seems as though, it may only be half true.

The only other thing that I can think to write is this . . . if I were to treat my marriage the same way that I treat my relationship with Christ . . . it would seem to be doomed to fail . . . go figure.

I don't know.

Grace.