Of Broken Arms

I broke my arm. It's taking me dang long to write this post with one hand. For this reason my posts this summer are probably going to happen hardly at all. Sorry. I know you are all greatly disappointed.

Here's a picture of the injury in the hospital, before it was set:

Of New Beginnings to Old Ventures

Today I leave for camp. I am a new man of sorts, I hope. Last summer was a horribly unproductive affair due to my divided attention between plenty of petty idols with a little sliver of care for God.

A friend recently told quoted to me a mantra: "If you don't think of something in your power as a possibility, then it will never happen." In this specific context, I do not want to keep living in my current state of unproductive Christianity, and I even more specifically do not want to have another summer like I did last year.

So now, I am ruling it out as a possibility. Your prayers are desperately desired.

I am going to try and update this once a week, we only have free time on the weekends for the most part, so we'll see how that goes.

If you would like to write me mail, then let me know.

Of "Two Hands"

A while ago I did a post based around Jars of Clay's song "Two Hands." Well, here is their explanation of the song:

Jars of Clay: Stories Behind the Songs (2 of 7) from Jars of Clay on Vimeo.

Of Materialism

"Our minds, which are even now only just awakening after years of materialism, are infected with the despair of unbelief. The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul in its grasp."
--Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Materialism can be applied to an over desire for pleasure and other sins, yes?

The Onion On American Education Issues

I daggum love the Onion. For those of you that don't know, the Onion is a fake news network that creates satirical news stories and videos which are sometimes inappropriate, but always witty and hilarious while pointing to the real issue at hand.

This particular article struck me as something I simply could not not share. Here's a snippet. The article was titled "Report: Increasing Number Of Educators Found To Be Suffering From Teaching Disabilities":

WASHINGTON—A shocking report released by the U.S. Department of Education this week revealed that a growing number of the nation's educators struggle on a daily basis with some form of teaching disability.

The study, which surveyed 2,500 elementary and high school level instructors across the country, found that nearly one out of every five exhibited behaviors typically associated with a teaching impairment. Among them: trouble paying attention in school, lack of interest or motivation during class, and severe emotional issues.

"For teaching-disabled and at-risk educators, just coming to school every day is a challenge," said Dr. Robert Hughes, a behavioral psychologist and lead author of the study. "Even simple tasks, like remaining alert and engaged during lessons, can be a struggle. Unfortunately, unless we take immediate action, these under-performers will only continue to fall further behind."

And it only gets better. I love how it's mind-blowingly funny and at the same time points to two important issues: One, the incapability and underpaid nature of much of the teaching profession. Two, the oversimplification of the issue of kids falling behind in school as simple "learning disability."

So, what do you think?

Summer Conference Notes--Ezekiel 37:1-14

Two weeks ago I was at RUF's Summer Conference in Panama City, Florida. These are the notes I took at the first night's large group session.

Driving image for the rest of conference: The Word of God is like an untamed, uncaged, fearsome lion, and we need to surrender ourselves to it and quit trying to put it in a cage or act like it's a kitten.

Scripture for the Night: Ezekiel 31:1-14

The Word of God comes in different types of "buckets:" Proposition, story, poetry--each a different mode of revelation.
--Ezekiel's bucket is a visual revelation, or apocalyptic prophesy.

It is important to note that it begins with God, God's hand sweeps Ezekiel off like a barrel over Niagara Falls.

We don't need better quiet times or another great truth to apply to our lives, we need our hearts to be reached.

Ezekiel was taken to a valley, not a mountain. Mountains were traditionally where heaven and earth met, but he valley was desolate, filled with bones.

The answer to God's question "Can these bones live?" is the point of the passage.

In the ancient Middle East, covenants were made between weak and strong nations.
--If the weaker nation broke covenant, they were destroyed and their bodies/bones were tossed into a valley, a symbol of the broken covenant. This was an image Ezekiel's audience would have understood.
-->Likewise, our hearts are dry and cast out, "Our bones are dried up, we are cut off," because of our own pursuit of sinfulness, our own covenant breaking.

Sometimes, this dry-bone-ness is manifested in a sort of depression, sometimes in a pressure, like we are carrying a huge weight on our shoulders: everything: our relationship with God, everything with school, etc.

When we feel left for dead, like dry bones lying in a valley, then the Lion roars the loudest.

Illustration: In the movie Defiance, [which was an excellent movie] Tuvia was crushed under the weight of all those people relying on him.

At the end of yourself, change happens on the spot. God spoke, and immediately the skeletons came together.

God appeared to Ezekiel when he is in Babylon, not Canaan, which means that God went into exile with Israel. God followed his people into an exile that He himself imposed on them.

Of Mass Assaults

31

Judging from my experience as a daycare and summer camp counselor, I think it's an accurate number. Speaking of attacks:

59%

As much as it disappoints me, I also think this one is accurate. You can only defeat so many zombies when you don't have guns (even though blades don't need reloading) and when you have some moral sense or desire to save your friends and family.

Of Aces

I know only about half of you care, but I just had to put it down somewhere that today, the 24 of May, in the year of our Lord 2009, I successfully completed a disc golf hole in one (1) shot.

That's right, son! I got a hole-in-one! I was playing Park Circle down here in Chucktown with my pastor, his son, my brother and another friend, so there were witnesses. It was only a 248 foot hole, but still...

I was dang excited too, I always thought it was a little silly when people got so pumped after an ace, but I must say that when you do ace a hole, it's an adrenaline rush. My throat was already hurting, but I think I threw my voice out from screaming "YEAH! YES!" at the top of my lungs several times.

Park Circle Hole #15, aced.

Of Theology's Resurgence

A snippet of this article, taken from The Curator:

Theology is returning to the intellectual scene, says John Milbank, professor of religion, politics and ethics at the University of Nottingham. "That's why people like Richard Dawkins are so frightened, and why we're getting a more militant atheism."

He rattles off a list of renowned philosophers - Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Antonio Negri, Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux - who are currently writing about Christianity. In The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?, due for publication next month, Milbank debates with Slavoj Zizek, Marxist theorist and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, about secularism, politics and the meaning of Christianity. The pair will also cross swords at an Institute of Contemporary Arts debate in mid-June.

"Forty years ago it would have been very unusual for a theologian to be in a public debate with a major intellectual. It's a sign of a shift," Milbank says. "Even Marxists take religion seriously. It's only the Anglo-Saxon left liberals that don't."

So then, I while the rising militant anti-Christian movement can be very annoying and disheartening, it can actually be considered a good thing. In my opinion, one reason that it is occurring is because American Christianity is finally emerging from a generational lapse in clinging to good theology.

Finally, it seems, the up-and-coming generation has actually lept from their parents faith to own it as their own, and in doing so has lept to solid theological footing, or at least the pursuit of such.

One Handed Worship

I’ve been living out of sanity
I’ve been splitting hairs and blurring lines
I am a house that is divided
In my heart and in my mind.

While my jury is still out on the overall quality of the new Jars of Clay album, The Long Fall Back to Earth, I found this song, "Two Hands," particularly intriguing.

Once again, like they did with "Dead Man (Carry Me)" on their last album, the first verse slapped me right in the face with my own reality. I mean, not too long ago, I myself said that I was not living sanely. The next portion of the song points to a lot of mine and many people's problem:

I use one hand to pull closer
The other to push you away
If I had two hands doing the same thing
Lifted high, lifted high!

Ah! What if I had two hands doing the same things? Instead of raising one to heaven and with the other sowing seeds of sin or exalting an unworthy idol or feeding my petty insatiable pleasures, what would the power of my life be? Jesus himself said "No one can serve two masters," and while money may not be the distraction for everyone, the concept holds true.

Think about it: no professional baseball player breaks records by batting one-handed. And Beethoven may have been deaf, but he sure as heck didn't write all that bangin' music with one hand.

No one who has the ability to put two hands worth of effort into something is celebrated or considered wise for only using one.

Do we really then want God's name to be glorified? Do I think he's worthy of worship? We will nominally raise one hand in exultation and with the other we point fingers, kill, steal, jerk-off, or grasp for whatever fleeting fortune we can claim in our few years upon this earth.

When someone really wants something, they use two hands in an attempt to obtain it. Do we desire God to be praised? The logical answer would appear to be a resounding "No."

I have a broken disposition
I’m a liar who thirsts for the truth
And while I ache for faith to hold me
I need to feel the scars and see the proof.

Such is our condition; every human is a hypocrite, to what degree is the key. We are all liars, thieves, murderers, adulterers, idolaters, and God has placed in us his image bearers an inherent desire for the truth, a desire for something in which to rest our faith.

Now, I believe, not nearly as firmly as it merits, that God's word has given us a very grace-filled opportunity to "feels the scars and see the proof." I think that, additionally,

If we just keep digging we can reach the foundation
Of our souls
And if we just keep cutting all the chains from our hearts
We’ll lose control.

And losing control is just about the best thing that can happen to us. I am realizing more and more that following Christ is less about literally doing what he did and more about getting my own dang self out of the way and letting him do what he did in me.

How to do that fully, I do not know yet and I doubt any follower will ever fully grasp, but I am here and I am determined to continue to discover how to do it more and more.

And it feels like giving in
It feels like starting over
It feels like waking up, and you know it’s coming
It feels like a brand new day
Open your eyes.

So think, as I am thinking: what do I use my other hand for beside lifting it high to God, the only one worthy of it being raised to? And how can I turn myself towards two handed worship?