It bothers me when I see people trying to be spiritual for the world to see. Jesus spoke strongly against this self indulgence. He said to keep our piousness quiet. Do it in secret. So naturally it bothers me when people use twitter or facebook to pray. But I do it too. Even now, in this moment I’m being holier-than-thou to the people who do these kind of things.
We all have a degree of Pharisee in us.
I constantly have to think about what I put in the public eye, bc many times I’m just trying to manipulate or reform your perception of who I am. My motives aren’t pure. I have agendas.
There’s even danger when I post this blog.
Riddle me this: why are you typing that status update? why are you tweeting that? why are you publishing that blog? why are you texting that?
We can go public so easily nowadays. Its easy to have impure motives. Let’s check ourselves before we wreck ourselves.
Micro and macro. Small and large. During Christmas many times we focus on baby Jesus. As a matter of fact, my last blog was on baby Jesus. But I think that’s the micro story we focus on so much in the nativity. There’s something much bigger happening than just a baby boy being born on the earth.
If you open the Scripture and read the first half of John 1, you’ll see that there’s this person being called the Word. The Word, it says, created the world, and later became flesh. God became a man. That’s why we say Emmanuel, because it means “God with us.”
You see, the reason baby Jesus is such a big deal is because he is the arrival of God on the earth. He came to deliver man from a life without him. To reconcile man to himself.
So, this Christmas, as you celebrate, make sure you celebrate the macro Christmas story. The big picture. Emmanuel.
we were singing carols last night in our church service. the last one we sang was silent night, holy night. what a classic that one is! the last line of that song bothered me a little though. it goes “jesus, Lord @ thy birth.”
earlier when i was teaching the students we had looked a little more closely at the christmas story in the scripture than normal. we looked at john the baptizer’s baby story in luke 1. in the story mary and elizabeth are both pregnant and they visit each other, i guess to talk about pregnant stuff like swelling and morning sickness.
the scripture says that when mary comes into the same room with elizabeth, fetus john recognizes fetus jesus’ presence and leaps within her belly for joy. then the spirit of God fills elizabeth and she starts speaking of how incredible it is that she gets to be in the presence of the Lord. THE LORD. Fetus Jesus, the Lord.
maybe we should change those last lyrics to, “Jesus, Lord way before thy birth.”
my biggest pet-peeve is people who chew. everyone’s chewing gets on my nerves. if you’re around me, don’t be eating. the funny thing is that i chew loudly, too. i don’t notice that i chew loudly, but i know when i’m killin some capecod chips i’m chewing with a bang.
i play and love fantasy football. i talk A LOT of trash. sometimes i’m downright rude and unkind. you know what though? i hate it when people talk trash to me. these people in my league make me so angry when they talk trash. it’s the classic case of “can-dish-it-out-but-can’t-take-it.”
this permeates our lives. someone shared with me a while back something that really grinds their nerves. they hate it when people do this certain thing to them. today, they did the thing they hate so very much to me, obviously forgetting that they hate that.
it seems that a lot of the things we hate in other people are things that, in large part, we do our very selves. maybe this is part of the truth that Jesus spoke, when he said “judge not, lest you be judged in the same way.” could it be that in our broken nature we hate what we are, and that it becomes most evident when we see it in other people?
you know these kind of people and so do i. these are the people who hate everything! i’ve got friends like this. when i say i like something, they automatically voice how they hate it. me: “i like this!” them: “oh yeah, i can’t stand that.”
i know one guy who posts about something he hates on facebook everyday. his status updates are always so sour faced and negative. he’s oprah’s nightmare. how can one seem to hate everything. it’s as if God’s called him to be a critic of all that is, and he finds all that is wanting.
so, i always talk to my wife about these people that “hate” everything. i look at it as such a blemish on the body of believers. it would be nice if they talked about something they loved every once and a while.
when i think these things i’m always reminded of this guy in the scripture named jeremiah. he was a prophet God called to be a “hater.” his job was to confront the sins of his people. oprah would’ve hated him. actually, everyone hated him because he was always speaking negatively about the things they loved so much.
he got the crap beat out of him many times and one time he got angry at God for giving him this job. he told God he wouldn’t speak on his behalf anymore, but this is what he says after that,
his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. i am weary of holding it in; indeed i cannot. (jer. 20:9, read the rest, too. this dude is super angry.)
all this to say, many times negative nancies are prophets in our culture who lead us back to the truth with negativity. though i still wanna punch the people in the face who always say they hate what i like, i see how a voice of truth, albeit unpopular truths is necessary in our culture. not many people are bold enough to come against wrong in a tolerant culture, where the only person not tolerated is the one who seems intolerant.
may we love truth, more than peace and understand that truth is the rocky road to real peace.
my daughter is an interesting human being. she can be loving, affectionate, and snuggly, but she can also be brutal, mean, and rude. mostly her mood is determined by her energy level or her hunger level. if those levels are low then she tends to express negativity and if they are high, positivity.
the funny thing is that she is 2 years old & i’m 27 years old aaaannd we’re not that different when it comes to this human mystery. when i’m tired and hungry i tend to be negative too, except (for the most part) i don’t cry, whine, throw tantrums, or embarrass my family in public.
i, however, am worse than these. my negativity is even meaner than my 2 year old’s. i use my words to brutalize and my actions are rude, and i’m just plain mean. when i observe my daughters actions i find many similarities between her infantile moods and my own.
there is spiritual application to this if you wanna think about it. i guess it’s like Jesus says, “he who has ears, let him hear.”
derek webb, since his solo career began, has been known to write and record songs that sing hard truths into the lives of his listeners, especially people in the christian church. the new stockholm syndrome album is no different. even from the title we can see that this one is going to sting (stockholm syndrome is what happens when a hostage or slave gets so used to their captors and captivity that they actually begin to love it).
he addresses the same basic issues that he has in the past, just in different sounding, and more creative ways. topics like social justice, faith paired with actual works, double minded christians are covered and the list is even more extensive than that.
what the light really should be shed on is the stylistic difference on this album from his previous works. derek webb generally plays folksy/new-grass type music. he takes an entirely different approach here using more electronicky/poppish music (by the way, he would hate that i’m labeling his music). though it is odd at first, this new sound is a beautiful change. you might say that many of the songs are ear candy, particularly when played on a quality sound system, but even without that it is mighty enjoyable!
so if you want songs that are charged with meaning and filled with though-provoking lyrics, but also want to jam, go over to derek webb’s site and drop 7 bucks on that thing.
DISCLAIMER: there are three bad words on the album.
you’ve heard it said, “enough of the small talk.” well, the implications of this phrase is that we need to get past the “how-is-your-day-Q-and-A” and dig into the deeper matters of life. the implications are that there is not enough big talk.
when i say “big talk” i don’t mean the kind we hear from our politicians or kanye west. i mean intentional, meaningful conversations, pregnant with changing-power. its the kind of conversations we have that move us into a new stage of life, or a new level of maturity, impact us so deeply that things cannot remain the same.
many times these kind of conversations get messy and require a tremendous amount of vulnerability and honesty. these conversations move past “how are you?” and “the weather is nice, isn’t it?” into questions like “is the way your living truly bringing you happiness? how?” or “do you think it’s okay to treat that person that way? why?”
this is the way Christ talked to people. remember the woman at the well, when he asked her where her husband was! that was a huge question. it began a conversation that exposed the truth about her life. that is where the power of the impact comes, is helping someone stand in the truth of who they are, or of their situation, before Christ.
many times this is uncomfortable for both parties. imagine how the woman felt when she replied that she didn’t have a husband and when Jesus said she was right and then faced her with the truth. are we willing to get uncomfortable for the sake of truth? especially when it can help someone quit hiding from Christ and live in the freedom he offers in truth.
let’s get past weather talk and get down to the nitty-gritty talk that leaves folks facing THE Truth.
the subject in my brain always seems to turn to authenticity. what’s real or true. the motive of this or that person. my own motives. what drives them to be the way they are. what drives me to be who i am.
we all have an alias. an image of ourselves that we want other people to see. opportunity to portray ourselves as one way or another presents itself everywhere. think about it: status updates, twitter, youtube, digg, blogging, etc. we have made a million ways to help others see what we want them to see about us. dating also affords itself to alias-ness. john mayer says when people date they like to try to show the best of who they are, even if that isn’t who they are.
do all of us have to be fake? do we have to wear the mask? must we try to hide who we truly are?
no. Jesus frees us to settle into our true selves. he is renewing God’s image in mankind. rob bell says that Jesus invites us to die, because when we die life springs up, real life. die to ideas about how others should perceive us, what i look like, ulterior motives, etc. to take up our crucifix and brutalize our fallen nature, to lose our lives that we hold so dearly,to let it go, to be found in Christ where life is.
aren’t you tired of living under an alias? of keeping up false portrayals of “yourself”?
my friend roger came across a site the other day called mybrute. its an awesome little game where you create a character of your own and enter them into fights. these characters develop different special skills, carry different kinds of weapons, and sometimes they even have attacking pets. there are a plethera of characteristics that your little brute may develop. for instance, my brute has a sweet beard and sexy head of hair like me (you can also personalize them), and he carries a bow staff and a hatchet, where as some of the other people i fight have an attack dog or panther and a large wooden club, broad sword or knife. as you win and fight you get more and more special stuff.
the thing is, you have no control over the outcome of any of your matches, except for who you choose to fight. the brutes fight on their own. there is a thrill in playing a game that you only have small control over. i think it’s the exhilaration of having to let go of control. the fact that you’ve done all you can do and from here on it’s out of your hands is something i’m addicted to.
this happened this year with fantasy football. all i could do was make my line up and the rest was in the hands of these millionaire players (who constantly let me down, by the way).
could this desire to be out of control be a sign of a deeper desire? could it be that we are built to do what we can and leave the rest in the hands of another? i think so. as a christian, i read Scripture that says that there is a sovereign God, who is genius. he created the universe and keeps it spinning. he created plants, insects, animals, and humans and put them in the environment they could survive in. he is king and i am made to let him take the reigns to do my part and throw my hands down and say it’s yours, God.
read some of matthew 6. or even proverbs 3.
quick note:
i become stronger if you become my pupil so click this link and make a brute. there is no email address or anything needed to make it. absolutely no commitments and who knows? you may even enjoy yourself and find it freeing to be out of control:
you know these kind of people and so do i. these are the people who hate everything! i’ve got friends like this. when i say i like something, they automatically voice how they hate it. me: “i like this!” them: “oh yeah, i can’t stand that.”
my friend roger came across a site the other day called mybrute. its an awesome little game where you create a character of your own and enter them into fights. these characters develop different special skills, carry different kinds of weapons, and sometimes they even have attacking pets. there are a plethera of characteristics that your little brute may develop. for instance, my brute has a sweet beard and sexy head of hair like me (you can also personalize them), and he carries a bow staff and a hatchet, where as some of the other people i fight have an attack dog or panther and a large wooden club, broad sword or knife. as you win and fight you get more and more special stuff.
