January, 2010

equitas — 3 Comments
22
Jan 10

ultimate first world problem

This post was originally published on the Equitas Blog.  Read it by clicking here.

Yesterday, I dropped my car off for a $1200 transmission repair job. I made sure to grab my GPS from the car, though, just in case – I would really rather not have to buy a new unit just because somebody thought they would like mine.

Then my phone decided to act up. I was trying to sync my contacts between my iPhone, my computer, and the cloud. Somewhere amidst the exchange of information, every second name was injected with random characters. The only solution was to manually edit each contact and resynchronize the information across to my desktop and my laptop.

It was a long day. But I got home, reached in the fridge for a cold drink and plopped myself down in front on my television to see what new shows made it on to the DVR. Nothing. Really? All reruns?

I settled on the evening news. It’s a little disingenuous, though, to call it the news. It turned into a discussion about health care in this country. So many questions. Is basic health care a human right? How should we combat rising health care costs? What does it mean for my bank account at the end of the month? What does it mean for my bank account if I get sick? Why are the liberals invading our personal freedoms? Why are the conservatives so unconcerned with the well-being of everyone else?

My wife came home and we decided to just have cereal. It’s been too draining of a day to cook anything now. Thankfully we had plenty of milk, but all of the bowls were in the dishwasher. They were clean of course. It was just that the dishes were still warm from the heated drying cycle that had finished only minutes before.

I think it was at that point that I realized that I am awash in a sea of “first world problems”. Our family’s routine was interrupted by the temporary loss of a second automobile. Precious time from my day had to be devoted to salvaging my address book. Cold drinks. DVRs. Endless conversations that ultimately involve the cost-benefit analysis of providing other human beings with health care.

These issues that can deeply consume us and acutely divide us also distract us. We have become so preoccupied with ourselves and our own concerns and our own opinions and own own beliefs, that there is no attention left to be given to matters of real importance. Perhaps here in America’s culture of voracious consumerism and individualism people cannot help but lose sight of why it is the definition of humanity to act with justice and concern and love for one another.

Perhaps this is the ultimate first world problem. We see what we want to see and are deadened to reality. We hear what we want to hear and are deaf to the cries for help. Our purchasing power is unmatched. Our will is strong.

We can be all that we want to be.

And, still, people are hurting.

goals — 1 Comment
18
Jan 10

goal one

I have two goals set for the coming year.

Luckily, neither of the goals was to describe the goals on this blog immediately after the changing of the year!

Never before have I gazed down the barrel of an approaching year and felt any kind of pressure to express who I would like to be if and when I gaze down another approaching barrel.  One thing I know is that sometime in the time that we call 2009, a transformation that has been ongoing for literally several years kicked into high gear and, consequently, I’ve been seeing the world and my interaction with in in a completely new light.

Perhaps it was senility setting in.  Perhaps it was the New Year’s cheer.

For some reason I’ve set goals for 2010.

Today, let me describe goal 1.

My first thought for my first goal of 2010 was this: Learn Spanish.  Now, after thinking through this a little, I quickly realized that I was setting myself up for certain disaster.  It’s simply too broad.  I’m 30 and I haven’t learned all of my own language yet.  I can’t conceivably learn Spanish.

It’s much like the beauty pageant contestant wanting “world peace.”  I’m not qualified to be a beauty pageant contestant.  Therefore, like, I shouldn’t have a goal that sounds, you know, like one, er whatever.

As I began to process through why I even wanted to learn Spanish in the first place. there were a couple of reasons that began to precipitate out of the mix.  I live in a city and state where the spanish-speaking population is increasing each year.  I want to be able to communicate with, work with, and enjoy the company of these new neighbors.  My favorite joint to grab Mexican food (Taqueria Mexico, South Blvd) is one of those “It’s so authentic you almost need to point to the menu” places.  I’m officially a regular there since, during my last trip, the question posed to me was “¿Three tacos?” and not “What would you like?”  I want to communicate with mi familia de Taqueria.

And I have friends in Spain who are trying very hard to learn English.  It’s much the same situation here.  I want to be able to communicate with these friends on a deeper level.

So, after much deliberation, weighing what I actually wanted to do with this language, here’s my first defined goal (maybe of my life, certainly of my 2010)….

By the end of 2010 I want to be able to carry on a basic conversation (about food, the weather, and some current events) in Spanish.

And, hopefully, not have them make fun of my horrible pronunciation!!!

It’s not a profound goal, but it’s a challenging one – especially for someone who’s early childhood education consisted of learning French instead of Spanish.  And I’ve already started the process – between bouncing words off of a few trusted friends and using a free online social system called livemocha.com, I’m out of the gates.

I’ve got six “lessons” complete.

In a few days, I’ll post about goal number 2!

faith / life — 1 Comment
17
Jan 10

favor

It was disgusting and altogether expected when a visible, if not influential, Christian leader this week connected the events of Haiti with a “pact with the Devil” this the country has supposedly made.  The implication here is that the 7.0 magnitude quake that leveled the city of Port-au-Prince was beckoned from the depths of the earth by the people themselves and their actions.  It further implies that because much of the western world enjoys unprecedented wealth our actions mean we have built up enough credit to receive showers of blessing from the banker in the sky.

(For an interesting take on this, see this link from NPR’s Two-Way Blog. NOTE: I don’t agree with 100% of the contents of the post at this link, but find the concept incredibly relevant.  Donald Miller has also written a response to the aforementioned comments at his blog.)

This concept – that God reinforces good behavior and punishes bad – is deeply damaging to people and to faith.

On the one hand, you have people who begin to subconsciously view themselves on a level akin to rats in a lab.

In college, I had one such rat, named Gilligan.  My goal for him was to increase a behavior (namely, pressing a button in his cage) by using positive reinforcement (i.e. small pellets of food).  The progression was interesting to watch. Once he discovered the button, and began to press it, it was important to reward his behavior every time – this “charged” the button and let little Gilligan know that if He was faithful in pressing, the Button would be faithful and deliver food from the pellet chute in the sky.

If you’ve never read anything on this, you may think that this approach would be the most effective at achieving an increase in a behavior.  Interestingly enough, once the Button was “charged” what really cranked up Gilligan’s Button-zeal was when we switched to an uncertain, variable reward system.  Now instead of getting a ration every time, Gilligan had to wait on the Button’s judgement (aka the software that determined if “now was the time for chow”).  This transformed my little rat from casual worshipper to religious radical.

I imagine him crying out when his prayers did not solicit a reward, “Button, why have you forsaken me, Button?” or “”What have I done to deserve this?  I have no food with which to satisfy my hunger” or “squeaky squeak squeak squeaketh” (untranslated, due to use of explicit language).

When we make God’s providence or punishment contingent on our day to day behaviors, we are engaging a most primitive component of our existence.  We had developed wiring like this to increase our survival skills thousands and thousands of years ago.  And while it’s still useful when studying rats and pigeons, our abilities to reason, decipher, and decide should probably take more of a leading role.

Otherwise, we begin to develop a deep-seeded sense of entitlement; that we deserve to be rewarded for the good work that we’ve done.  The work itself, the satisfaction of helping others, the benefits inherent in a job well done will not be enough.  We do good, we expect good to be done to us.  We expect blessing. Frankly, we expect money, and vehicles, and houses and trips and health. If all good things come from heaven above then we start to wonder why our good would not be rewarded while others have so much.

This view is unhealthy and yet seems to be rampant in communities of faith.

Often, I hear (more realistically, I read on Facebook) people say things like, “I know that if I do this (e.g. pray faithfully, read the Bible, love people), then God will provide for my needs.” There is an incredibly sarcastic (though incredibly funny) side of me that wants to say in response, “I know that if you don’t, God will still provide for your needs.”

For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.
Matthew 5:45

In Button world, church and faith become about a series of behaviors that are reinforced when we, usually mistakenly, connect them with reward-”gifts” from above.  These gifts can be any kind of reinforcement, from money to a “feeling” to a sense of God’s “presence”.  We act to get rewarded.  We act to avoid punishment.  The reasons are steeped in selfishness.  Our attempts to represent selfless love and compassion are voided – they become transactional instead of transformational.  Instead of being an extension of God showing relentless love in all circumstances, we become a relentless prospector showing love to others when our investments show promising returns for ourselves.

Button faith attracts the “worst” of the faithful (those who are “in it for themselves”) and the “best” of the critics (those who say “you don’t do anything without it being selfish”). It introduces handcuffs and restraints to lives intended to be lived free.

One thing is for certain: the people of Haiti did not call destruction on themselves.  We can choose to make this disaster about us, attempting to carve out our own rewared, or about helping people because it’s the right thing to do.  Be the extension of God’s unselfish love.  Make unconditional love truly unconditional.

Pray for the people of Haiti, and those that are there to provide some sort of relief.  The scale of this tragedy is unimaginable.  There are stories that can never be told. Support them by providing relief agencies with the money they need to rebuild Haiti.

equitas — Comments Off
13
Jan 10

equitas

I’ve recently been asked to contribute some posts to the “equitas blog” – equitas is a local non-profit that “provides resources for people groups in developing nations to assist them in becoming sustainable communities.”  During this past year, that resourcing has taken the form of providing money for water wells and education.  There are some compelling stories on the blog and the equitas website. You’ll also find lots of information on the current projects and ways that you can help.

That said, I’ve posted my first post at http://equitasblog.wordpress.com.  It’s entitled “justice” – please check it out.

faith / request — 2 Comments
10
Jan 10

10

“The church is always looking for money.” Am I right?

Recently, I was asked about my thoughts on tithing – which I’m defining here as the religious principle of setting aside ten percent of your productivity (i.e. most often, money) to give to the church.  If you’re a regular church-goer, you’ve probably heard sermons on this topic – probably a couple of times a year.  If you’re not a church-goer, this may be a reason why – because they’re always wanting more money.  While I don’t necessarily love to write about things like this, hopefully this will serve a couple of goals: 1. I get more writing practice in, and 2. we can look at some broader concepts here.  Plus it’s the first “10th” of 2010 – so it’s ironically fitting that a non-religious Christian would be writing about this today . . . at least in my mind.

It’s important to recognize tithing is an old concept from times when productivity was most often measured in commodities and not in profits or money or stocks.  Farmers would give a tenth of their crops to the “people of God” via the high-priests.  Ranchers would give a tenth of their calves.  This was a trend that continued across all “professions” for generations and generations.

It’s also important to remember that these people were “obligated” by law on a number of different fronts – not just giving their tithes.  There were rituals and laws and obligatory behaviors for almost everything.  They were highly regulated – throughout the Old Testament and up to Jesus appearance on the scene, which we’ll get to in a moment.  And one final point – tithing is not exclusive to the Judeo-Christian world: Babylonian texts talk about it; Sikhism talks about it; one of the five pillars of Islam is alms giving in which a fixed percentage of wealth is given to charity.

So for thousands of years people understood that they were required to give ten percent, regardless of sunshine or rain or war or drought or famine, of what they produced both for the greater good of the people and as an element of their worship.  There were punishments for not holding to this rule.  It’s easy to imagine that there was guilt and anxiety associated with this.  Like so many other things, it was “required” behavior.

The law served as an interesting construct in daily lives.  We know about the Ten Commandments – there’s a movie about that, I hear.  We know of the laws about stoning people who let their beards grow beyond 17 cubits and do not groom themselves with the brush formed of the bones of a 3 year old steer and the hair of a purple boar (fact check: this may not actually be a law, per se).  There were a lot of them, but they regulated daily life, especially when you consider the road rage of walking downwind of hundreds and thousands of people and donkeys and cattle in desert-level heat without a rest-stop in sight.  The amount of “stuff” alone would have to have been over-whelming.  You would step in “stuff”.  You would have smelled “stuff”. “Stuff” happens and so there were laws about everything, including “stuff” and the things that being surrounded by “stuff” would make you want to do to your neighbor.

Moving on.

Jesus shows up, amid a time of religiosity and occupation by a foreign army,  and sets a milestone in the course of history as it relates how people express their faith.  By this time, law was king.  Teachers had added their own interpretations of the hundreds of rules people already had to live by if they wanted to be in with God.  Systemic, punishing reprimand was the norm.  What Jesus ushered in was grace-filled, loving, thoughtful, peaceful freedom.

Essentially, His message was this – these laws were in place for a reason.  But, we’ve taken it to the extreme.  Humans (e.g. the Pharisees) have hijacked the system and made it about them and made it worse.  What God wanted to do was foster a sense of right and wrong towards each other.  What people have done is to require mindless obedience to nonsensical amendments.  It’s not about the law.  It’s about your heart.  It’s about the intentions with which you act.  It’s about the generosity of your spirit.  It’s about seeing a need and filling it.  It’s about knowing that when you do it for the prisoner or the poor or the proselytizer, you do it to me.  Not just on my behalf, but to me.  When you see the widow give what little she has out of her compassion that’s worth immeasurably more than the religious man who gives thousands of dollars out fo obligation.

As far as we know the first century church, alive the novelty of “no more rules” didn’t begin hoarding and taxing and running capital campaigns to build larger sanctuaries and nicer facilities.  Interestingly enough, they gave freely.  They sold all their belongings and gave to the poor.  All is well above 10%.  Even most is well above 10%.  When the “tenth” guideline was removed, the early church became more generous.  If we believe biblical history, we can assume this means that more people were having their basic needs met.  More widows and orphans and lepers and the unloved were being loved on.  The intention behind why the law was created had been transferred to the intentions of the hearts of individuals.  The wave of love that was unleashed must have been enormous.

What is aggravating to me is that shortly (in epic terms) after this incredible revolution our churches revert to rules that induce guilt rather than cultivating individual compassion.  Within a few hundred years, the church began instituting rules to ensure that the needs of their clergy were met.  From the earliest of days we can see how the church can ruin a good thing like a well-intending Christian.

Giving is not motivated by guilt and obligation.  It’s hand-cuffed by it.  Jesus understood this.  The early church understood this. They by-passed institutions and establishments with their administrative costs and value-adds and gave lavishly of what they had and who they were directly to those that needed. Why we believed then and believe now that an institution was necessary is evermore beyond my understanding.

If you are a part of a church community like I am, you should fund it’s operation.  You should realize that “tithing” to a church means that you’re not tithing to eradicate need in your community, to feed the widows and orphans, to clothe the naked, to visit the prisoner.  A portion decided by your leaders will be directed to ministries like these, but you are also funding the purchase of equipment, the paying of salaries, the printing of programs, the transportation of guests, etc.  If we choose big, expensive churches, with expanding campuses, high-tech production equipment, and comfortable theatre seating up-grades, we have to be prepared to pay more.  It’s like choosing a Benz over a Ford over a Kia over a Vespa.

I have been taught that we are to “tithe” to our church to meet these needs and if we are so compelled to give beyond this “tenth” to our surrounding community as we see fit.

I believe the teaching of Jesus turns this on its head.  We are to give generously and lavishly to meet the needs that we encounter – whether that’s homeless men needing food or shelter, families needing basic necessities for life at Christmas, children needing clothing, prisoners needing friends.  We are to give from our hearts, motivated by love, compassion, or whatever emotions compel us to eradicate hunger and disease and anxiety and loneliness and pain.

Our churches are best viewed as a luxury as it relates to our faith.  They are not necessary.  They are places that we choose in the same way that we shop for a vehicle.  It’s a matter of preference: do they have comfortable seats, a kicking sound system, a powerful engine, and a smooth ride?  But they have to be in our budget as well.

I will purposefully choose simplicity.  I will purposefully choose a community with lower administrative costs that echoes these thoughts – of giving lavishly from what they have as a church to meet the needs of those around them from an institutional level.  But I will not rely on them to know my heart or to act on my behalf, and I will not be handcuffed by the guilt of not meeting my 10% quota to fund the church.

There is nothing in me that wants to live restrained under the law of the Pharisees or the law of the church.  I choose to live free of the guilt of having only paid 8.2% this month and wondering if I need to make up the difference.  I choose to find and meet needs.

I choose grace.

life — 2 Comments
6
Jan 10

redemption

Redemption gets me every time.

Behind my obviously gruff exterior is a soft-hearted man who would cry at the drop of a hat and its subsequent return to its rightful owner. There is something about redemption and restoration and encouragement that clutches my heart and simply will not let it go before ensuring that my eyes well up and that I have to sniff back tears.

I don’t mind admitting this. I’m not a proud man.

It speaks to a sense of belonging to an inclusive human family as well as a belief that we can live counter to the entropy of the universe. We tend towards chaos. But we neither belong there nor do we have to remain there.

We’re told that God wants whats best for us and has a plan for us. I believe that there is a ‘right’ way for us to live as individuals and as a collective. While I don’t believe that the Creator has packed our calendars full of events and appointments, tasks that we are to complete save eternity hangs in the balance, I think it’s appropriate to say that God would have us live in such a way that we both actively and passively find opportunities to make life better. Simple things. Ambitious things. Things that are a doomed to fail. Things that are overnight sensations.

These things shift our trajectory away from the chaos. They give us purpose and direction in more than one sense of those words. It was the grand intention of God not that I would give a homeless man a sandwich on Aug 17 at 2:34pm but simply that we would live with kindness, generosity, understanding, integrity, and a designed desire to crave justice for our fellow creatures.

It’s these things that make miniscule corrections to our path – a state of perfect redemption approached by the assimilation of millions and billions of unnoticed acts.

There are aspects of my life that I’m not prepared to share on my blog, and so it makes this next bit much less dramatic. But, for a brief moment in time I was able to zoom out and get a wide-angle shot of my life and realized that there is a redemption that’s been happening all along, a restoration, a return to how things should be and how I want them to be. It’s millions of little things that are coalescing into a beautiful work of redemptive art.

And that may make me well up, just a little bit.