Changes

We’ve made the decision to drop VLI. It was a bittersweet choice. I have wanted to do a seminary program like VLI for years and years. But on another level, VLI has been a disappointment contiguous with my church experiences.

VLI opened up to me a world of resources where I can learn about God and grow in knowledge and faith. I am fascinated by the book of Isaiah and especially by the gospels. In both I keep coming back to Jesus. His life is so compelling – I cannot remain the same when I encounter him. In Isaiah I see the same paradox that lives at the core of Christian life: when we glorify ourselves we remain merely human, but when we submit to God he will glorify us. I have to give up striving to be a god, but when I do it, God makes me a god…he makes me his son.

I am tired of the party line about God and church that VLI advances. I am weary of church programs, conservative culture and contrived relational evangelism. VLI perpetuates all of these things. If I had a quarter for every time I heard some older person refer to something that John Wimber said to them that defined their personal ministry…but John has been dead for a decade now. I was in middle school when John died. Can’t we move on? Isn’t there more to the Vineyard than stocky California conservatives and Hawaiian shirts?

I long for a fresh perspective of God, and I am disillusioned with what I find around me. I want…no, I need changes.

Sabbath

It seems to me that sabbath rest is one of the most universally overlooked disciplines of a mature faith, and that word has been on my mind lately. Today we had a very restful day. We watched some TV in the morning, then took a nice walk. On our walk, we visited a friend and ate a light lunch. We got back home in the afternoon and hung out, ate some good food for dinner and are planning to keep on being unproductive for the rest of the day. Anyhow, today was a nice relaxing day and I’m glad we spent time together resting.  This kind of day is something I lost when I started getting over-involved with church, and now I realize how much I miss it and need it.

God’s day of rest in the Judeo-Christian creation narrative marks the boundary for his work of creating and his eternal relationship with his creation. Besides monotheistic theology and circumcision, sabbath rest was the most significant distinctive of the Jews in their social context. Sabbath is featured among the ten commandments, and by the time of Jesus had evolved into a complex series of rules that guided observance of weekly rest. This is on the same list with “don’t have idols” and “don’t murder people”. It is significant to note that no other society from creation to the start of the common era had a day of rest – the very concept of taking a weekly break to be with family and reflect on spiritual things was universally absent outside of Israel.

Jesus spoke against all the rules governing what the sabbath could consist in – but his challenges reinforce the purpose of the sabbath as a day of rest. Jesus says that people were not created for the sabbath, but rather the sabbath was created for people. The manner of observance of a day of rest seems to be a personal choice, but I encourage you not to let religion get in the way of resting with God and family.

Misplaced Memories

I went for a run yesterday when it got up to 50 degrees outside. I brought my iPod along and stumbled on an old MxPx album called “Ever Passing Moment” and a song at the very end of the album “Misplaced Memories”. The song is about a broken relationship – knowing the band, probably about a girl. But like many songs about romance, I see another fold of meaning beyond.

Verse 1
if I could take what I’ve learned
from all the mistakes I’ve made 
from the pages that I’ve turned
from the lost games that I’ve played

Pre-chorus
I’d be a better person for it
better than deciding to ignore it
it meant so much to me
I wanna make things right with you and me

Chorus
misplaced memories
I’ve retraced my steps so many times
maybe it was meant to be and
maybe all the answers are right in front of me

There’s more words in the song but you get the idea…when I hear this song, I think about singing it to God. When I look back at my short 24 years, I see that I made so many spiritual mistakes…so many. I miss God’s amazing patience and love for me when I ignore my repeated failures. And as I think about big decisions I am about to make, I can’t help but wonder which choices will be mistakes when I look back from the future.

Slowly Better

Quick update today. I am getting better slowly – I managed to work a normal day yesterday and am on track for another today. Fortunatey this week has been light on evening activities. I am apprehensious about evening activities, especially about driving and being far from home. Anyhow, that’s my quick update. Time to get some exercise and get to work for my 7:00 meeting.

Not Quite Through Yet

Yesterday night I ended up at urgent care after the stomach bug symptoms returned. I think this thing is linked to anxiety, and I have been very anxious and fearful these past few weeks.

I am going to go back to work tomorrow. Period. This thing is 80% in my head, and I can’t avoid my office forever. And yet, the thought of going back to my usual lifestyle doesn’t sit well with me. I do too much. I don’t rest enough. I have stopped loving life and have instead filled it up with stuff that I do.

I am at my limits in every facet of my life. All sorts of yucky stuff comes out of me when I am stretched this thin. I am irritable, brittle, angry - I snap at Laura without reason and al my old habits are living and stronger than ever. I try to medicate myself into thinking that I am okay; I just want to feel better, but every way I am naturally included to fix this myself breaks down my good life a little more.

I cannot fix myself.

Rockin’ with Tuba

I was playing guitar just now and we had the birds out in the office. They seem to like my guitar playing, especially my acoustic guitar (not shown). Anyhow, they were out and I had this silly idea – I wonder if Tuba would like to sit on the tremolo bar for a bit. It was so intensely cute that Laura had to take some pictures. The full set is posted in the ‘pets’ section of our smugmug gallery.

I am feeling much better. Laura and I went shopping after church, and I got so hungry that I ended up eating a 1′ sub wrap, complete with cold cuts, cheese and fixings. No stomach problems. What a relief to be through this thing!

While shopping, I picked up a few new T-shirts. Since I pretty much have been wearing T-shirts to church, I figured it’s probably time to expand my palette. My favorite shirt that I couldn’t wear to church and hence didn’t buy proclaimed “practice safe lunch: always use a condiment” and featured frolicing squeeze bottles of ketchup, mayo and mustard. I was also tempted to pick up the “warning explicit content” shirt, modelled after the warning that music companies put on CD cases to tell kids which ones will irritate their parents the most.

Now it’s time to finish up our Lord of the Rings extended marathon with the last half of “Return of the King” and then I’m off to youth group.

Hard to Kill

My body is recovering from my stomach bug – but I have found that so is my superwhatever. It has been greedily feeding itself these past couple days when I have been too weak to distract it. Distact it? Did I seriously think that was all it would take? How does one kill a superwhatever?

Well, it’s time to dig out the car and go to church. I hope I find an answer there – this thing is hard to kill because it won’t stay dead.

Murder

I have been home sick today with a stomach bug, and I am quietly reading “Velvet Elvis” by Rob Bell. I have been reflecting on my own journey with God and especially with my church. Over the past weeks and months, it has all begun to feel so empty. Rob writes:

Perhaps you have been around Christian communities enough to want nothing to do with them, and one of the reasons is the talk all seems so shallow. Like no one is talking about what really matters. I think this is a direct effect of the state of the souls of many pastors and leaders. So many leaders in Christian communities are going so fast and producing so much and accomplishing so much that they become a shell of a person. There is no space to deal honestly with what’s going on deep inside them. (118)

What I would have earlier pointed to others around me, I now see staring back into my own eyes. I have been busy doing church stuff. I have been producing results. I have been studying hard and earning good seminary grades.  And yet I am a shell of a person. I am one of the pastors and leaders Rob is talking about.  I have been that shell of a person since I was a little boy, and I am only now starting to see it. My claim to membership in that group of hollow church leaders is as strong as any others’ claim. Earlier in the chapter, Rob muses:

I meet so many people who have superwhatever rattling around in their head. They have this person they are convinced they are supposed to be, and their superwhatever is killing them. They have this image they picked up over the years of how they are supposed to look and act and work and play and talk, and it’s like a voice that never stops shouting in their ear.

And the only way to not be killed by it is to shoot first.

Yes, that is what I meant to write.

You have to kill your superwhatever. (116)

I need to be successful at work, to lead the big projects that matter to my business, to delight the people I support. I need to be instrumental in forming a vibrant growing church. But…I deny who I am, even at my core. I tone down my progressive values because I want my conservative audience to accept me…to love me. I demand perfection of myself and those around me – whose perfection is it anyway? Why do I get so bitter when people fail to be perfect? When I fail to be perfect? The result: my ”perfection” must die.

I have to kill my superwhatever.

Sick

Yesterday night I had a nervous breakdown. And then I was sick to my stomach and couldn’t get to sleep until 2 am. Yeah, things haven’t been going well lately.

I am beginning to suspect that my pent up anxiety and anger is more than what is merited by my life circumstances. I am going to give God as many chances as I can to deal with it. Living Waters tonight should help, but I am kind of nervous about that too as we will be meeting in a new location I am unfamiliar with. I am beginning to think that I might need professional help to deal with my stuff.

Anyhow, I realize that I have been isolated and snappy lately – and I am going to work on it. For those of you reading that I have lately been less than nice to, please accept my belated apologies. God is still working on me.

Most Relevant

I have been working to become a more whole, balanced person, and as I become healthier and healthier, I realize that my church life is less and less healthy. As I study the gospels more, it occurs to me that striving to reach mostly churched upper-middle-class Republicans probably wasn’t the great comission that Jesus had in mind. I’m not sure how much more of this bullshit I can take.