I Used to Be Smart.

I love sports. It’s pretty ridiculous, actually.

In fact, I have figured out that I can seperate every NFL team into its proper division, and name every NFL head coach. I can rattle off a list of players ten miles long. No matter what NFL/MLB team you’re a fan of, I can have a pretty detailed conversation with you.

Similarly, I have discovered, that sports is tied very securly to my ego (I’ve always known this, I just needed Don Miller to put into those words for me). UK basketball especially. A UK loss is personal. It’s a slight on ME. It means I have to listen to Louisville fans taunt me, or Duke fas, or whoever’s fans. My ego takes a severe hit with every UK loss. (And I know I’m not the only one.)

So I’ve been thinking about this. Maybe I need to significantly devalue sports in my life. Maybe I need to significantly devalue UK basketball (and if you’re not from Kentucky, you don’t understand the size of the statement I just made). Like tv, sports takes up so much time and energy that could be devoted to something else. It’s an opiate of sorts, dulling me, drawing me away from what is actually important. As Americans, especially American males, we’ve picked up the idea that sports can make us matter. Watching and rooting for teams is what gives us significance. Being a fan of a championship team, we believe, is a great honor. By thinking that sports matter, we divert ourselves from the things that ACTUALLY matter.

People were made to play sports. That’s their point. For us to run, jump, throw, sweat, cuss, compete. It’s a place where we give our bodies the physical action that need, and a place where we can experience community. It’s not something that gives men an excuse to neglect responsibilities. It’s not something that allows 350 lbs. men to sit on the couch with too many beers and too much processed food, screaming and becoming generally disgruntled.

I feel like a huge hypocrite saying all of this, but maybe it’s true. I’m trying to change how I view sports. I’m not listening to ESPN radio anymore, especially when there are valuable news shows on NPR. I’m trying to not watch sports as much, but I still fall asleep to the sounds of Sportscenter.

Maybe I’m overrecating, and I’ll just replace sports with something else, or maybe I’ll just come crawling back with my bruised ego. We’ll see.

We all know that there’s a problem with how Americans eat. I don’t think that’s a very controversial point. Walking down the street in any decent sized city, or working in a restaraunt gives a person all the evidence he/she needs to confirm the thesis. But why? What happened? I think there are two big reasons.

What was once difficult to obtain is now a convenience. If I wanted to, I could get into my car right now, drive to the store, pick out any of several cuts of meat, including steak, drive home, cook it, eat it all, throw away the packaging in my garbage can, take the can to the curb in the morning, and never see the trash again. I can do all that with no connection to the things that make that process possible. I have no idea what it takes to make the gas that fuels my car. I have no idea what it takes to raise the cows, chickens, pigs, whatever that will become whatever cut of meat I may choose. I have no idea what effect they have on the land, what effect my consumption has upon the animal population, what effect the market has on the farmers raising the meat that I buy. For all I know, the meat that I could choose to eat was never even an animal. It was never born. It never ate. It never deficated. It never gave birth. It never smelled like an animal.

That’s just the start. I could repeat the same process with my trash. With the solid waste that I will expel later as a result of eating the meat. I’m clueless about it all. I have no connection to it.

I believe that things were never meant to be consumed this way. They were never meant to be so alienated from the processes that allow us to consume them. That alienation has allowed Americans to eat certain things (red meats, highly processed foods, etc.) in quantities that the human body was never meant to handle. So we’re fat. We’re all ridiculously fat. (Yes. Me too.) Perhaps understand where our food comes from, what our food used to be, what it takes to produce our food would change the problem a bit.

Secondly, profit has replaced health. This is the big one. What sells is king. Profit is the greatest good. There’s no way to get around it, it’s capitalism. However, it has horrific consequences. Health is not the first priority. With profit as the first priority, health takes a backseat, and what is conducive to a large profit margin is often what is detrimental to individual health. People fall prey to clever marketing (can you blame them?) and the food companies dictate to people what they will eat, for the sake of their profits and to the detriment of their health.

Having such an unhealthy nation is a real problem. The physical healthy of a nation is the not the disease — it is a symptom. If a nation is phyiscally unhealthy, it is unhealthy in many other ways — in how it treats the environment, in how it relates to the other, in how its inner life functions. All are symptoms of a greater disease of alienation and brokenness that this American life has come to be characterized by. The tv blaring in my ear that I should turn off, the artificial sweetner in my drink, the iPods and cell phones that cut us off from human contact — they’re all sad, and continually cutting us off from each other.

And that makes us fat.

“Gonna Change My Way of Thinking”

Gonna change my way of thinking,
Make myself a different set of rules.
Gonna change my way of thinking,
Make myself a different set of rules.
Gonna put my good foot forward,
And stop being influenced by fools.

So much oppression,
Can’t keep track of it no more.
So much oppression,
Can’t keep track of it no more.
Sons becoming husbands to their mothers,
And old men turning young daughters into whores.

Stripes on your shoulders,
Stripes on your back and on your hands.
Stripes on your shoulders,
Stripes on your back and on your hands.
Swords piercing your side,
Blood and water flowing through the land.

Well don’t know which one is worse,
Doing your own thing or just being cool.
Well don’t know which one is worse,
Doing your own thing or just being cool.
You remember only about the brass ring,
You forget all about the golden rule.

You can mislead a man,
You can take ahold of his heart with your eyes.
You can mislead a man,
You can take ahold of his heart with your eyes.
But there’s only one authority,
And that’s the authority on high.

I got a God-fearing woman,
One I can easily afford.
I got a God-fearing woman,
One I can easily afford.
She can do the Georgia crawl,
She can walk in the spirit of the Lord.

Jesus said, “Be ready,
For you know not the hour in which I come.”
Jesus said, “Be ready,
For you know not the hour in which I come.”
He said, “He who is not for Me is against Me,”
Just so you know where He’s coming from.

There’s a kingdom called Heaven,
A place where there is no pain of birth.
There’s a kingdom called Heaven,
A place where there is no pain of birth.
Well the Lord created it, mister,
About the same time He made the earth.

–Bob Dylan

I just wanted a cup of burnt coffee and a different place to read. So I gave the rather masculine lady a Starbucks $1.80, and I found a table in the corner. I drank the burnt coffee, and read my book.

At the end of the second chapter, I looked up to see a man outside. He was nobody I had never seen before. He wore his blue shirt tucked neatly into his slacks. He’d long ago abandoned his coat, it was too cumbersome and hot for August. His tie was tied perfectly. He was tall, thin. He had bad posture. His shoulders rolled forward and gave him that Montgomery Burns look. He was in a hurry. He shifted nervously from foot to foot, enamored in a cell phone conversation that I couldn’t hear. I wonder if he’s talking to a client, closing a big deal? Or maybe his boss is frustrated with inability to close that big deal. Maybe it’s his wife, and their arguing about who has to take their daughter to soccer practice and who has to pick her up from ballet, and who is going to have time to fix dinner. Whatever it was, he had to get somewhere quickly.

He was determined. He closed his phone, clipped it back onto his belt, and charged into Starbucks like a man ready to conquer half of Europe. He had been to Starbucks before. His hands were in his pockets, and before the masculine lady could greet him, he had deposited two dollars, wrinkled by his nervous energy, onto the counter. “Tall Half-Caf.” He was much too busy for full words or descriptions. Only a monosyllabic exclamation would do. It was all I heard him say. “Tall Half-Caf.” Not even patient enough to wait for his 20 cents in change, he turned and charged out the door.

I sat in the corner, book in hand, burned coffee steaming in front of me, wondering what in the world I had just seen. What happened? What’s this world that we’ve created? Must a man be so chained down that he must roll his eyes every time his cellphone rings? That he must charge into Starbucks and order his coffee in half words, and charge out the door without so much as an exchange in pleantries? No smile? No hello? No ten minutes to enjoy at least part of his “Tall Half-Caf?” Is that we are? Is that what we have to be? Aren’t people made for something more than rushing from one appointment to the next, fueled by tall, burned, halfway caffinated coffee?

Is that what I have to be when I grow up? Am I already so connected to the grid of modern society that I have no choice but to become a fidgeting Mr. Burns, ordering mono-syllabic drinks and rushing out the door? I have to believe that a man is something more. Something more than the sum of his assets, something more than the pile of his stuff.

I feel a deep desire to unplug; to reject modern, Western society and all its values; to endure the weird looks and inability to understand from my family; to be free, and to do something I love. I’ve been thinking crazy thoughts today. Should I sell my car? Should I be somewhere other than here? Must I leave to figure out all of the questions in my head? Can I ever figure out the life I wish to lead unless I cut ties with the life I currently lead? Does anyone want to go in half on a van and drive to the West coast? (Be careful if you say yes, I just might jump.) Am I just wound up from reading Don Miller and drinking too much coffee?

I don’t know, but I promise myself that I will always make time to say hello.

So now I want to buy a van, and drive to Oregon, and it’s all Donald Miller’s fault.

I’m gonna recommend this book BIGTIME:
Through Painted Deserts.

We’ve created this monster. It’s all a thing of our design. It’s our cutting, our stitching. It’s our signature on the corner, our stamp on the back, our barcode on the packaging.

We created these sprawling cities and ridiculous commutes. We created these vehicles of ridiculous proportion that are used for the absolutely trivial. We sent the levels of demaned barrelling through the ceiling of supply. We’ve made it impossible to get anywhere by means of anything but vehicles powered by foreign oil. We’ve abused the privilege of convenience as if it were our God-given right.

So let’s all gather ’round to squander this inheritence and we laugh with manical delight over the monster we’ve sewn together. And the light on our face by the electricity screaming through the bolts on his neck will cast the shadows that reveal the sinister truth of it all. And we’ll rosin the bows of the fiddles we’ll all play as the monster we’ve assembled burns the city to our feet.

So we’ll pray solemnly for rescue from a force we cannot stop as the monster that is our mirror destorys all we have created.

Pacifism may be wildly impractical. It may sound utterly stupid. However, I believe it to be necessary.

Pacifism is not necessary for self-preservation. In fact, it often lands in the complete opposite. Self-preservation, I believe, is not the greatest good. Pacifism is a terrible way to offer protection. But I do not believe that is our job.

Pacifism is misconstrued. It is viewed as cowardly, or stupid, or as ridiculously counter-cultural. It’s labelled as “hippie bullshit” and other similar epithets. Because of all of that, I hate to even use the word pacifism, for fear of taking up arms with baggage that I do not wish to carry. So I prefer words like nonviolent and peaceable to pacifist.

What lies at the heart of any sort of nonviolence rooted in Christianity must be this: the belief that God will eventually bring God’s justice to the world. That is all. There is a coming kingdom in which God’s rule will the only rule and all that is wrong with the world will be set right.

God’s kingdom will not be a kingdom established by violence and exclusion. It can’t be. That’s not God’s character. Violence will only beget more violence. Exclusion will only lead to bitterness and hatred. No kingdom that God will establish will engender those things as a by-product. I can’t imagine how that will happen. I don’t know any way that it COULD happen, because I’m not that smart. God’s kingdom will have to be established in a way that NONE of us could possibly imagine, because who God is is something so much greater than we have the ability to imagine.

The arrogance to believe that we can bring God’s kingdom through violence, or that we have been somehow specially appointed to bring that kingdom into the world is an arrogance that is wholly inappropriate and unfounded, and one that must be wiped from our perspectives — ESPECIALLY if we are to be Christians.

Pacifism may be silly. It may be wildly impractical. It may be full of implications that cause more questions that provide answers, but I believe it is the true outworking of a faith that believes that God is coming to set things right with the world, and that we must live our lives in ways that are faithful to that message, not in ways that attempt to take God’s work into our own hands.

This has nothing to do with America, and everything to do with Christians. To be honest, I don’t care what America does. America could run roughshod over every nation in the world, and if it was simply doing it in the name of America, I would have no grounds on which to object. The problem is that we’ve forgotten that we’re not Americans, we’re Christians. Our loyalty is bigger than international borders, and our perspective is bigger than self-preservation.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the ceter of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.”
– Thomas Merton

Since I first read this quote, it’s been one of those things I’ve never quite been able to shake from my head. But I first read that quote 5 years ago, and we all know how time goes. You forget things that were once important to you. The things that have shaped you have a way of not being the big deal they once were. While driving with my friend DH this weekend, and passing the exact spot of Merton’s epiphany and talking about its impact, I was reminded how little it seems I care about it now.

Every day I work, I work with people. It’s all I do. I’m far from an island. I don’t love most of the people. I can put on a smile and pretend to like them, because I know that’s how I make money, and I know that’s what pays the bills. But I don’t like them, and I rarely love them. I rant about them in the back of the restaraunt, hurling epithets that I won’t repeat here. I resent them for coming to the restaraunt, for making my job a necessity. That’s a tragedy, and sin — not a little sin that your parents used to scare you into obeying them — a genuine, deplorable sin.

Most of those people aren’t very lovable. Some of them never make eye contact with me, and they talk down to me as if I’m a complete idiot, and I often walk away feeling significantly demeaned. But it doesn’t matter. Some of them ogle every girl that walks by their table, girls that are my friends, girls that deserve better. But it doesn’t matter. Some of them are rude, and difficult, and coarse, but it doesn’t matter. Some of them are unintelligent, uneducated, ignorant. But it doesn’t matter. Some of them smile back at me. They leave tracts on the table and make a point to tell me that I did a good job. That still doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter because they’re still all the all. They’re “all just as bad and just as good and just as distracted.” They’re all jacked up and they’re all beautiful and they’re loved fiercly by the God of the universe — everyone just the same as the next. And I forget that. Every day I forget that. Every day I believe that it is all more about me, and my need for validation and vindication than it is about everyone else. I haven’t lived up to anything I say, or anything I write. I am wrong, and of all of these things, I repent.

Take some time to read this story. (If you haven’t already seen it.)

I read this earlier today, and I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon. I don’t know if it’s true or not (the writer doesn’t give us any reason to think otherwise), but it’s certainly something that merits conversation. What I have been thinking about is this: there are many people that I know that would tell me that “Marie” is in hell, especially lacking any evidence of any sort of conversion. I have a strong gut-level, visceral reaction against the idea. That’s the only way I can think to describe it. Somebody telling me that Marie is hell-bound is honestly like a punch in the stomach. I can’t handle it.

I have a lot trouble with the idea of God condemning a character like this, and there are MILLIONS of people like this around the world. People for whom the deck is SO stacked against them that finding a way out looks impossible. I think they’re Jesus’s “least of these.” They’re the people who have been so marginalized that they can’t even get a foothold on the path to the type of conversion experience that evangelicals demand. Overcoming sexual abuse, physical abuse, drug addictions — it all seems like too much. It’s hard enough for me to deal with my nagging need for validation, I can’t IMAGINE what a person like Marie must go through.

God’s grace is huge. My grace is small. God’s justice is real. My justice is tainted.

I have such a difficult time believe that this is the only chance someone like Marie gets. With the complexity that is God, I want to believe that there are more chances out there — second, third, fourth chances — that redemption is broad and so great that a girl who was beaten down by things beyond her control before she even had a chance gets another chance to figure out who God is, how God loves, and what God can do, not just for her sake, but for the sake of millions of people in the same situation.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m a short-sighted heretic. You tell me.

I’ve written before about the idea that the gospel is always good news to those who hear it. To the opporessed, it is freedom, to the blind it is sight, to the poor it is relief, etc.

Earlier today I was listening to Bright Eyes. I’m sure you’ve never heard of Bright Eyes, and that’s fine. It’s this guy named Conor Oberst. For whatever Oberst may be, he is certainly one thing: relevant. It is clear from his music that he is in touch with one of the obsessions of our generation — medication.

Maybe it’s nothing new. Maybe people have been trying to medicate themselves since time began. But from where I sit, it seems like we’re a generation obsessed with medication. Whether it’s alcohol, illegal drugs, perscription drugs, or anything else I’ve left out, we’re obsessed. People believe themselves to be incapable of dealing with life without the aid of medication (why this happens is a different, more complex story).

If the gospel is good news to all who hear it, how does the gospel relate to our obsession with medication? Does the gospel promise that it can be our medication? Or does the gospel offer a life that can be lived without medication?

I’m quite sure about the answer to that question — there are many implications to work out both ways. However, the gospel does offer this in the way of good news: there is a way to approach, live, and deal with life in a way that is a real solution. While all of the medications that my generation turns to are incomplete solutions that usually do more harm than good and leave people more broken than before they were medicated, the gospel stands a true solution. A solution that fixes people, a solution that doesn’t let people down, a solution that doesn’t find people with their heads hung over toilet bowls.

If you’ve seen Garden State, think of Zach Braff’s character — medicated, unable to deal with life as it is. Through returning home, he finds that he wants to live a life without medication. This is the hope that the gospel offers us — the ability to live life for what it really is, without the need for the escapism that is medication.

That’s big.

There’s line from a song by Andrew Osenga:

can I sing it hard enough that it will finally sink in?
the promise that I’m loved, and the promise I’m forgiven?
what I’m trying hard to say is that I’m wanting to believe in you again.

I’ve probably listened to it ten times without even thinking twice about it. Last night, it makes sense. “The promise that I’m loved, and the promise that I’m forgiven.” It’s not just a line in a song. It’s a huge deal. Realizing that we’re loved and realizing that we’re forgiven changes everything. I can’t speak for everyone else, but for me, much of what I do, and how I acted is rooted in the need to be loved — to be validated and accepted. It changes the way I act, and in ways that aren’t always desirable. However, if I could realized that I AM loved? And that I AM forgiven for anything I may have done? That’s huge. We don’t have to (like Augustine said) thrash about looking for love, because we’ve found all the love that we could ever have or need. That’s the real deal.

Living it, however? A different story.

I have a confession to make.

This is hard, but if you need to laugh at me, that’s okay.

I love cheesy pop-rock songs. Journey. Foreigner. Meatloaf. I can’t help it. Singing “Don’t Stop Believing” could be one of my favorite things in the world. I am a jukebox hero, just looking for paradise by the dashboard lights.

It’s true.

What’s at stake in the evolution debate?

I just saw a commerical for a program called “From Ape to Man” on the History Channel, and I started wondering. Why do we fight about it? Is it such a big deal?

I can’t say much about how non-Christians feel about this. That’s their own thing. This is an intra-faith kinda deal. For the record.

So, if this is directed toward Christians, we’re operating under a fundamental presupposition — there’s a God. There’s no getting around that one. And we’re all pretty sure that God is a creative force. It’s significantly difficult to believe in God, and to NOT believe that God created everything that’s here. That’s pretty fundamental. So if we’re Christians, we at least agree to that point — whatever is here, God created it.

The disagreement happens when we start discussing the mechanism. Do those details matter? If we all agree that God created everything that’s here, does it matter if we disagree on HOW God created?

I say that it doesn’t matter, and that if we agree on the point, then the details are irrelevant.

Do the details matter?