This past week I have had my gut wrenched in tension. I finished Shane Claiborne's new book Jesus for President and then heard him speak on the subject. I also have observed somethings this past week and this evening that have allowed me to see things a little bit newer.
In the book Shane and his boy Chris Haw painted a picture of the political history of Israel. They talked about our relationship with God and the struggle that existed there in the B.C. They also brought out the startling color of Jesus' presence in the world and His teachings. The idea was that Jesus was not passive and He was not violent. Through His teachings he taught Love above everything else. That those who want to hurt or violate us can be disarmed with Love.
Shane and Chris then translated this teaching on Jesus to modern day America or "The Empire" as they called it. After reading through this book I can't say that I completely agree with everything that they are saying (it wouldn't be a good thing if I did) but their position has forced me to think and look at exactly what I believe myself. So as a result I am sitting in tension (my favorite word for the past year).
I had taken students to see Shane and Chris speak and in the discussion afterwards they were constantly throwing out "what if" questions out. I am not a big fan of these questions (because there will always be another what if) but I entertained the "what if" questions asked by the small group of students that fit into my parents Pacifica. I don't know if they were happy with my response because I told them we had to live in Tension, that it is a good thing to live in between places. If we don't get that turning feeling in our stomachs about an issue then we are not living up to the potential that God has created us to.
If you do pick up Jesus for President I'll tell you the same thing I told my students, that you have to remember (and this is displayed very well in the book) that whenever you are confronted with big issue questions you have to take them back to who God is and God has shown us over and over again throughout history that He is Love (compassion) and Holy (justice). Tension is a wonderful thing isn't it.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Numb
It is interesting to me I have spent the entire week living with entirely no privacy always being interrupted or asked to do something and constantly having to entertain or try and enlighten the students that were around me. On my first full day of being off of the houseboat I found that I missed those things. I missed constantly being around people, being able to affirm my students and to discourage any negative perceptions that they would put on themselves (diminishing their view of themselves). I took a long nap today but around 8 I also started to feel very tired I was at a gathering so I pressed through and once I got home I decided to do some reading (Jesus for president, more on that in another post). I couldn't focus on that as I thought I was to tired to grab what Shane was throwing at me. So I grabbed this film numb that was actually do on Thursday and thought if nothing else I could let the acting of Matthew Perry put me to sleep. What I found has got the wheels turning in my head at the moment so there is now way I could sleep without working them out here.
For those of you who have not seen the film, it is about a man who because of a mental issue feels like the world existing around him is not there. He is "numb" to the feelings that he is experiencing and questions whether physical things are really there at all and because of this he feels uncomfortable and anxious all of the time (solitude and the golf channel are the only things that make him comfortable). He freaks accordingly with this and begins a mission seeking therapy, drugs and even a 4 day stay at a institution that is doing research on his disorder. When he begins first dealing with his mental que he meets a girl and finds out that she is the only person he can even feel remotely comfortable around. Like all great love stories he ends up sabotaging the relationship and then realizing he has to get her back (his go to line was "I'll love you for the rest of my life, it would really help if you were around for it").
I love how we exist in tension because I found a common and personal line that existed within the week I just experienced and the film I just watched. The thing is we are all not ok, we have been blessed to live in this glorious mess. We are forever marred by sin and will always live as human beings in tension. In this tension we must remember that we are created in the very image of God Himself. As we know we are not ok we can not look for other people to carry us the length of the marathon. People exist in our lives to help us move towards (and some away) from God and His promise. When we lean entirely on people who are just as flawed as we are we will start to hear things that are not true.
We begin to put limitations on what we think we can do, we begin to find value in not how God created us or what we should think of ourselves but in the opinions of others. Kealand my younger brother has this thing he does when I correct him sometimes. He will tell me "that is only an opinion (often times this is when I give a fact but I think it provides the illustration)." His view of reality is not determined on the truth that I bring into it. I noticed that with this week when students had the spot light thrust upon them, their confidence would die a little bit. Whether they were following an awesome wake boarder or simply waiting their turn to wrestle on the tube of despair, they would most times shoot out a self deflating comment, or they would just give up and allow victory to slip from their grasps.
This makes me sad because there were so many times growing up and there are still in fact times that I allow the views of others to dictate what I can and cannot do. I never played baseball growing up because I knew I would never be good at it, I never asked someone out in high school because I didn't think I was worthy of having a relationship like that, these and many more things paralyzed me throughout most of my youth.
God created us in tension for a reason and that is that we will not be afraid to fight and to learn from our failures. I heard a story about Mike Lowell (third baseman for the redsox), when he was growing up his father would take him and his brother to the batting cage and then to ice cream afterwards. The only stipulation for the ice cream was that they swing at every single pitch. He was showing them that in baseball and ultimately in life you have to not be afraid to swing. We will miss and we will strike out but actively seeking to make contact, to pursue something better so much better then just giving up and letting the strike go by unprovoked. I said at the beginning of last week that I was aboard to create opportunities for my students. I am now actively seeking opportunities to swing for them as well as for me.
At least these are all of my thoughts at the time.
CJ-Out
For those of you who have not seen the film, it is about a man who because of a mental issue feels like the world existing around him is not there. He is "numb" to the feelings that he is experiencing and questions whether physical things are really there at all and because of this he feels uncomfortable and anxious all of the time (solitude and the golf channel are the only things that make him comfortable). He freaks accordingly with this and begins a mission seeking therapy, drugs and even a 4 day stay at a institution that is doing research on his disorder. When he begins first dealing with his mental que he meets a girl and finds out that she is the only person he can even feel remotely comfortable around. Like all great love stories he ends up sabotaging the relationship and then realizing he has to get her back (his go to line was "I'll love you for the rest of my life, it would really help if you were around for it").
I love how we exist in tension because I found a common and personal line that existed within the week I just experienced and the film I just watched. The thing is we are all not ok, we have been blessed to live in this glorious mess. We are forever marred by sin and will always live as human beings in tension. In this tension we must remember that we are created in the very image of God Himself. As we know we are not ok we can not look for other people to carry us the length of the marathon. People exist in our lives to help us move towards (and some away) from God and His promise. When we lean entirely on people who are just as flawed as we are we will start to hear things that are not true.
We begin to put limitations on what we think we can do, we begin to find value in not how God created us or what we should think of ourselves but in the opinions of others. Kealand my younger brother has this thing he does when I correct him sometimes. He will tell me "that is only an opinion (often times this is when I give a fact but I think it provides the illustration)." His view of reality is not determined on the truth that I bring into it. I noticed that with this week when students had the spot light thrust upon them, their confidence would die a little bit. Whether they were following an awesome wake boarder or simply waiting their turn to wrestle on the tube of despair, they would most times shoot out a self deflating comment, or they would just give up and allow victory to slip from their grasps.
This makes me sad because there were so many times growing up and there are still in fact times that I allow the views of others to dictate what I can and cannot do. I never played baseball growing up because I knew I would never be good at it, I never asked someone out in high school because I didn't think I was worthy of having a relationship like that, these and many more things paralyzed me throughout most of my youth.
God created us in tension for a reason and that is that we will not be afraid to fight and to learn from our failures. I heard a story about Mike Lowell (third baseman for the redsox), when he was growing up his father would take him and his brother to the batting cage and then to ice cream afterwards. The only stipulation for the ice cream was that they swing at every single pitch. He was showing them that in baseball and ultimately in life you have to not be afraid to swing. We will miss and we will strike out but actively seeking to make contact, to pursue something better so much better then just giving up and letting the strike go by unprovoked. I said at the beginning of last week that I was aboard to create opportunities for my students. I am now actively seeking opportunities to swing for them as well as for me.
At least these are all of my thoughts at the time.
CJ-Out
Saturday, June 14, 2008
show up in tension
So I am finished with UnChristian and Blue like jazz. I feel challenged about where my eyes and heart are set after reading them. If I could only choose one word to describe the feeling that these books launched me into, it would be tension. I have been teaching my students for the last year and a half that we are made to live in tension. That the forces of our sinful desire and the promise of Jesus are pulling at us, that Chaos and Peace are at war and we are the prize. I don't know if they've heard me at least they are polite and knod or laugh when I make a joke in between my thoughts on tension. The truth is we do exist in tension, as Rob Bell has put it we were not made to live as Angels (or the Divine) or Animals (or the Profane), because of our sin we are thrust into the middle between promise and chaos.
About 5 or 6 years ago there was a tv show that only lasted one season. I am pretty sure my pop and I were the only one who watched it, but it was on ESPN and it was called "Playmakers." This was when ESPN was trying to become more then just a sports reporting news network (experiment was a failure). This show however dealt with the day in and day out goings on of a fictional professional football team. It showed the moral ambiguity that existed in the lives of the players. It was a fun show and since I spent the majority of my childhood building football teams on madden football (I believe I averaged 20 or so a month, I had a short attention span). Anyway there is a scene in a certain episode where a player knows he is outmatched and he will be beaten over and over again by a certain player. He stayed in the locker room as his team left to go play the second half. His coach comes over to him and ask's him what is up (it had just come out that the coach had prostate cancer in this episode as well and was having his first chemo after the game). The player asks him "how do you do it? How do go up against something that is so much bigger then you? With all of the odds that are stacked up against you, how do you handle that?" The coach response to him was "you know guys like you and me all, the poor slubs that we are, all we can do is to just keep showing up."
It was so simple and yet when I heard it floored me. All I was asked to do in the fight for my soul was to keep showing up. To not give up the fight, but to relish in the fact that I was apart of this saga, this story since Adam and Eve were deceived.
Those were all of my thoughts at the time at least.
CJ-Out
About 5 or 6 years ago there was a tv show that only lasted one season. I am pretty sure my pop and I were the only one who watched it, but it was on ESPN and it was called "Playmakers." This was when ESPN was trying to become more then just a sports reporting news network (experiment was a failure). This show however dealt with the day in and day out goings on of a fictional professional football team. It showed the moral ambiguity that existed in the lives of the players. It was a fun show and since I spent the majority of my childhood building football teams on madden football (I believe I averaged 20 or so a month, I had a short attention span). Anyway there is a scene in a certain episode where a player knows he is outmatched and he will be beaten over and over again by a certain player. He stayed in the locker room as his team left to go play the second half. His coach comes over to him and ask's him what is up (it had just come out that the coach had prostate cancer in this episode as well and was having his first chemo after the game). The player asks him "how do you do it? How do go up against something that is so much bigger then you? With all of the odds that are stacked up against you, how do you handle that?" The coach response to him was "you know guys like you and me all, the poor slubs that we are, all we can do is to just keep showing up."
It was so simple and yet when I heard it floored me. All I was asked to do in the fight for my soul was to keep showing up. To not give up the fight, but to relish in the fact that I was apart of this saga, this story since Adam and Eve were deceived.
Those were all of my thoughts at the time at least.
CJ-Out
Monday, June 09, 2008
My Front Porch
I love it sometimes when things that I am reading come together. I take it as a sign that I am on the right track. The beginning of something. A little bit ago I wrote about a book I started called UnChristian. I don't know if I would say it is a eye opener, but it confirms many of the things I feel about the misrepresentation that is currently behind the tag Christian I will explain why I say misrepresentation in a sec). The other book I picked up for the first time (I know I am nearly a decade behind everyone, but I wasn't chosen by that book until now) Blue like Jazz by Donald Miller. These two books go together like lamb and tuna fish.
UnChristian talks about how the we as Christians are representing our own name sake (Jesus) and Blue shares thoughts about what Christianity should be (it reminds me of Mere Christianity). There is a section where Don Miller is speaking about how him and a campus group set up a confessional booth in the middle of a well known anti Christian campus. The only trick was that they were not taking confessions they were giving them. They were apologizing not for the ways others have misrepresented their faith (although they mention how embarrassed they were for those things), such things as the Crusades, Slavery, Missionaries wiping out entire indigenous people, Manifest Destiny, Salem Witch trials (ok that wasn't a big one but I think someone is owed an apology). But they would talk about how they personally have not lived out the message and mission of Jesus (to seek, love, serve, the least the last and the lost).
I was thinking about these two books the other day as I was driving through a neighborhood and I started to notice the houses around me. I didn't like them, they were big and glorious and looked perfect, but none of them had front porches (I have had a thing for wrap around front porches). Every house had an immaculate deck on the back (that was filled with other toys: pool, hot tub, etc.) but all they had was a front door with a step. I don't know when front porches went out of style but I really want to go back to those times. Because what you have with a front porch is a gathering place, you see people as they are going and as they are coming, you can sit and carry a conversation with someone across the street. Now it is get into your house as fast as you can.
Well as I drove through I was thinking that our houses are very much like how many Christians (me included) live their faith. We don't have any front porch's any more, we seclude ourselves to what we do on Sunday's and we talk about how great it would be to go to Africa and cure HIV/AIDS. We talk a lot but here is the thing I keep finding all of that talk is just hot air and it truly amounts to nothing. Much like the morning mist it will dissipate with the first rays of light.
I have notices many people building front porch's, those who desire to see people who we pass and neglect on our sprint into our castles. I so long desire to be one of those people, I have been convicted in my own life that I am not living with a front porch, that I am not inviting those outside of my safe haven into my life. I suppose that if I were to confess I would say that I truly desire to serve God but my selfishness causes me to hesitate, I talk about helping the poor but and I will as long as there is nothing good on tv. I say I am concerned about spreading the Gospel, but the reality is I am to busy thinking about what apartment I would like to move into, or what car I would like to buy. Because of my position I sometimes feel that I am doing enough for the kingdom, but in the end I am just as lazy, forgetful and uninterested as some of my students. I can talk a good game, but the actions of my life would scream something different.
I am in the pursuit of now building a front porch and much like how I challenged our whole congregation to last Sunday, to open my eyes and see the needs, hurts, pains that are around me.
At least those are all my thoughts at the time.
CJ
UnChristian talks about how the we as Christians are representing our own name sake (Jesus) and Blue shares thoughts about what Christianity should be (it reminds me of Mere Christianity). There is a section where Don Miller is speaking about how him and a campus group set up a confessional booth in the middle of a well known anti Christian campus. The only trick was that they were not taking confessions they were giving them. They were apologizing not for the ways others have misrepresented their faith (although they mention how embarrassed they were for those things), such things as the Crusades, Slavery, Missionaries wiping out entire indigenous people, Manifest Destiny, Salem Witch trials (ok that wasn't a big one but I think someone is owed an apology). But they would talk about how they personally have not lived out the message and mission of Jesus (to seek, love, serve, the least the last and the lost).
I was thinking about these two books the other day as I was driving through a neighborhood and I started to notice the houses around me. I didn't like them, they were big and glorious and looked perfect, but none of them had front porches (I have had a thing for wrap around front porches). Every house had an immaculate deck on the back (that was filled with other toys: pool, hot tub, etc.) but all they had was a front door with a step. I don't know when front porches went out of style but I really want to go back to those times. Because what you have with a front porch is a gathering place, you see people as they are going and as they are coming, you can sit and carry a conversation with someone across the street. Now it is get into your house as fast as you can.
Well as I drove through I was thinking that our houses are very much like how many Christians (me included) live their faith. We don't have any front porch's any more, we seclude ourselves to what we do on Sunday's and we talk about how great it would be to go to Africa and cure HIV/AIDS. We talk a lot but here is the thing I keep finding all of that talk is just hot air and it truly amounts to nothing. Much like the morning mist it will dissipate with the first rays of light.
I have notices many people building front porch's, those who desire to see people who we pass and neglect on our sprint into our castles. I so long desire to be one of those people, I have been convicted in my own life that I am not living with a front porch, that I am not inviting those outside of my safe haven into my life. I suppose that if I were to confess I would say that I truly desire to serve God but my selfishness causes me to hesitate, I talk about helping the poor but and I will as long as there is nothing good on tv. I say I am concerned about spreading the Gospel, but the reality is I am to busy thinking about what apartment I would like to move into, or what car I would like to buy. Because of my position I sometimes feel that I am doing enough for the kingdom, but in the end I am just as lazy, forgetful and uninterested as some of my students. I can talk a good game, but the actions of my life would scream something different.
I am in the pursuit of now building a front porch and much like how I challenged our whole congregation to last Sunday, to open my eyes and see the needs, hurts, pains that are around me.
At least those are all my thoughts at the time.
CJ
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)