fear cubed

I guess this might be a final thought on fear… but who knows; at least it’s the final one thus far.

Why am I not fearful about more things?  I mean I know what I am scared of and have admitted as such to myself and I also know what I am scared of and have not admitted to myself, but what really has got me at the moment is: why am I not fearful of these things that  I should be fearful of?

 I won’t get into the details of what those things should be.

fear good

So I am scared of my future, it’s really no big deal. 

In fact, I’m glad to say that I am, at least I’m a realist.  I don’t think we are honest enough with fear.  It’s like we want to cover it up, as if it’s bad.  There seems to be something wrong with crying out and admitting to fear.  We really are a bunch of liars; we go around showing strength and fortitude, and yet we are crying for answers and certainty. 

For my Old Testament class we have to read all of the Psalms.

i don't wanna farm

I'm scared I might be a seeder/seed planter.
That is I'm scared that in my ministry career I am meant to be one who goes out and sows the message and truth of the gospel, that I go out and teach.  There is of course nothing wrong with that, but I am scared that that is all it is meant to be.  I'll be honest, I'd much rather reap what others have sowed; I like harvesting, its "easy" and fun.
Jesus was a seed sower...

my doctrine on doctrine

Doctrine is great, it’s a great way to put theological beliefs and statements into memorable, "carry-on" formats.  The Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, Westminster Catechism, etc. all take big theological systems and put them into a simpler format.  Which is a great thing for the church and the church people, it allows non-clergy to better know their own theology without having to have studied it for several years, and it allows the clergy to better teach it without teaching it for years.  In this way it is fantastic.

Of course with this, and like many other things, I also have my disagreements with how it is used.

cold turkey ain't good turkey

One of the things that I am really against is cold turkey evangelism.  I’ve done enough times to know that I don’t like it.  Of course the argument for it is that you do it with the trust that God will somehow use it for his purposes.  I agree with that, and when I do evangelize I am taking that to heart.

My problem is that it is simply a bad way to evangelize.  It is wrought of love.  Now of course I know that even taking the time to tell them about the Lordship of Christ is loving for me to do, but honestly how loved do they feel?  If all I do is come up and share the gospel with them and then leave them at that what love would they feel?  Would they feel loved that I took the time to come up to them to talk to them about Jesus?  Maybe… if they were already Christian, but if they don’t know Christ yet then what?  If it’s without some sort of continuing relationship what love is really given?  

Loving should go hand in hand with suffering, and there is no suffering in cold turkey evangelism, there is persecution, but not the long suffering that Christ experienced.  He spent 3 years with his disciples only to die without them "getting it" until he rose.  That’s suffering, that expending yourself and not seeing any fruit.  This is the sort of suffering that relational evangelism brings, not cold turkey.  We should expect, and desire, to spend time with people, watch them sin, and never get it.  We should expect them to deny Christ, turn away, make grandiose statements about his divinity and then in the next second be against Christ’s work.  That suffering is much worse than merely being spat upon, that suffering breaks hearts.

I’d be willing to say that that is the model of evangelism that is set up for us.  The gospel isn’t about getting people to convert, it’s about the Lordship of Christ enabling us to truly love and serve God, and, if we are doing that faithfully, conversion will happen whether we want it to or not.  Just going out and throwing out the Word randomly is bad stewardship to.  A farmer sure as heck doesn’t just randomly scatter seed, he does it with purpose and intent, some may fall on the path, but he is sowing seed in the field where he will be sure to tend to it. 

We do have to proclaim it, but it’s different proclaiming a Messiah to people who are looking for one than to people who think they are their own Messiah. And if we are to proclaim it, it should be in the community that we live amongst, that we will be around daily or weekly, not to random people on the beach or a street that we probably will never see again.

When nothing energizes

So a thought crossed my mind upon reading a friend of mine's blog.
Meaninglessness in life.  For the existentialist this is of course to be expected, but for someone with religion, faith or what have you, it is unexpected, and the hardest part is dealing with it.  Often times I know I have felt this way.  My thought process is this:  "OK, I have a problem; I feel little.  I need to fix the problem; I need more faith because if I had faith I wouldn't feel this 'lessness'.  I need to feed my faith by going to that which I know that feeds it (in my case Christian Scripture)."
I'm won't lie, sometimes, most times, it just does not work.  I am seeking joy, fulfillment, experience and I must admit Scripture doesn't really give that.  But, it does give me eyes to see it and know it.  However, in these times I feel listless and need to be able to see why is it that when I go Scripture to be inspired I don't find it working?  I'll admit there is one reason that it doesn't work: legalism.  I am only doing it to try and make some magic happen.  The other times I don't know, but I think a fair assessment would be that its not that I need to have my eyes opened but that I need to be in a place to be able to use them.  Often times this past semester I got incredibly bogged down in school; talk about lifeless, studying and learning, and as much as I absolutely love it, it just gets monotonous, without any reprieve. Then the time of the week comes where I am exhausted and drained, and I have to go to my internship at the retirement community.  Let me tell you, there is nothing more lame than having to go to an internship when you have absolutely no desire to.

But then again, for whatever reason its rejuvenating.  I'll admit at times it was hard this past semester, trying to get up the energy to go out and love people, but the right mindset is when I need.  My mindset when it works is selfless and serving, thinking about the small things I am doing, because they are small things, to further the work of the chaplain ministry of the community; when its hard its being worried about if these small things amount to anything and if its just a big waste of my time.  I wonder, though, what will it be like when I am doing ministry full-time?  The main question is how can I find joy when I get bogged down in the things find joy in, like learning, theology and ministry?  Right now I find it by getting out of what I get bogged down in and getting into a place to give myself away, to serve and love, and even though I am completely and totally drained at times, giving myself to serve people seems to give me life and energy.  That's something that I want to do just as much now as when I am older.  Its something I want to do with Alison when we are married, something to do together with my kids when we have them.

America the Beautiful and the Despicable

I love America, or I should say the idea of America.
This idea is prevalent everywhere in our republic and its what I love.  The Bill of Rights is a great example of this,  and America's global greatness is a testament to how well its worked out.  I could go on and on, but to sum it up in a sentence, the rights to freedom in America has made it productive, progressive and powerful, to say in a word... great.
Of course there is a point where the idea encounters impedances.  Say what you want about partisanship or the taboo degradation (as opposed to moral degradation, taboo degradation is the degrading of things society deems taboo, like sexuality, drugs and rock n roll), but that's not what I am talking about here, and personally I don't think that's the problem; I could say that its merely the fruit of the problem I am talking about.  The real problem with America[ns] that I see is ignorant desire for the status quo and greed.

These two play off of each other, we want the status quo because we know how to work it to our financial advantage and we're greedy so we fight for the status quo.  This happens in industry, politics, education, labor unions, etc.  Prime example: the steel industry in the United States.  They were on top of the steel industry world thanks to Henry Bessemer and Andrew Carnegie, anti-trust evasion and World War 2, but then the world caught up.  New technologies came in to play, but for whatever reason the industry didn't jump on them like the rest of the world did and they began to lose global market share.  The steel labor unions kept striking and asking for more money, which was great for them, but only at first not for the industry at all, as now the overhead increased which served only to work for the competition.  The same thing was and probably still is at work in the auto industry; I can see it at work on Wall Street and I can see it working in teacher's unions, congress and the population at large.  Point being, we like the status quo, because we can make it work for us.

I don't know what it is about rocking the boat, but what works is rocking the boat and making changes (now I feel like I sound like Obama, but I'm a maverick!), that's the whole reason the government is set up the way it is, and the way the Constitution was written.  It was made so that it could change, warp and bend, congress is bicameral, goes through elections every 2 years and is subject to Presidential veto. The idea of amendments was to allow for further change, for instance the electoral college and the way Vice Presidents are elected.  With such a historical precedence as that I find it interesting that I see less change, or at least what I perceive.
I'm sure people have probably felt this way in the past, but it seems like the only seemingly Pax Americana was the 90s and maybe the 50s and the 20s.  Of course I find it interesting that both of those times eventually gave way to a sort of fall, the 60s for the 50s and the Depression for the 20s and this occured for various reasons, but I wonder if it was for similar reasons that I am speaking of here?  The status quo was definitely rocked in the 60s and it was definitely rocked in the 30s and both times I would say that it could have been prevented and I think the comfort of the status quo and the ability to work it for one's advantage probably played a role in why the boat wasn't rocked.  We need to rock the boat.  Either I'm really pessimistic, or prophetic, but I am led to believe that if we don't rock the boat in some places then it will be rocked for us.