Life

I came into the ol' orifice today (Michael Scott reference), which I have been doing less frequently as of late. Sometimes, I find the office comforting. Other times I find it lonely, so I stay away. One of the great advantages of being at a large church–and the great disadvantages of being at a small church–is that at a large church, there are other people around all the time. Other staff that you work with; probably other pastors. Other people just walking through the office! Even for introverts, having people around is typically a comforting thing, even if you don't want to necessarily engage them. I don't know the statistics but I wouldn't be surprised if the burnout rate for pastor's of small churches is far higher than the rate of burnout for pastors at larger churches. Some of that has to do with unrealistic expectations of what one person can accomplish, but I also think it has to do, at least a little, with the loneliness. If burnout isn't higher, I bet you depression is.

In any event, I don't feel burnt out or depressed, which I am thankful for, but that wasn't why I started writing in the first place. The reason I was writing was the stack of very old sermon manuscripts on my desk from some Pastor I've never met, and the wind howling past the window, and the radiator that bangs when the heat comes on and then never really heats up quite as well as I wish it would, and the carpet that is falling apart so that little carpet balls form that look like little fabric tumble weeds that get kicked across my office floor, or the half-empty cup of water and the Dunkin' Donut's cup that was left in here this past weekend by someone–a teenager? someone on the worship team?–who was using my office, and the broken furniture and the many, many books I will never have time to read that are nevertheless on my shelves so that, in the event of an argument, I can simply wave my hand at the bookshelf and, without lying, give the subtle reminder that I may have actually acquired all this knowledge, and if so, perhaps it would be silly to argue with me after all.

It's just life.

Life that has ups and down and joy and depression and answers and usually more questions than we care to admit. Life that sometimes seems like it makes sense and other times seems like there is no rhyme or reason; life where some people prefer platitudes and others people prefer to just sit in the silence and wait it out. Life where some people try to escape, and others try to engage it, and in the end, we're all just doing the same thing: trying to make sense of life.

There are those who view life through the lens of meaninglessness; those who view all situations as if they are predetermined by a cold and uncaring biological steamroller. The heat, broken as it might be, is nevertheless an accomplishment of man that keeps us from the cold wind outside; it's a testament, at least, to how far we've come and how much we can get done and how much better life is because we, the human, the biological marvel and miracle that we are, have evolved not just to give ourselves heat in the cold but to actually sit and wonder about having heat in the cold.

Others view life through the lens of God; my pastor-friend I have never met was one of those men. Here he is, writing sermon after sermon year after year, telling whoever will listen that there is more hope than they may see now, that there is another way to make sense of things, another way to interpret the events of the times, another moment that we can look forward to that will make sense of all of the moments that don't make sense. He preaches that sermon, and then finds, many years later, that the same sermon he once preached is apt again. "The times", "the events that are unfolding", the "wonders", the "mysteries"...a decade later, they are still the same. Different on the surface, but the same underneath. The same struggles, the same need for hope.

Life. 

Fatigued

Yesterday, my wife and I started an herbal cleanse. I think we're at that age where your body starts to deteriorate in a noticeable way and bouncing back to "healthy" form, however you define it, isn't as easy. We were both athletes and played on teams up through college, so maybe we're more mentally in tune with how our bodies feel, but when they just don't feel right, it's time to do something different.

My sister (and many friends) sell the products we're using. They're Advocare products and we are champions. We like the products, and full disclosure, that link on that sentence will make them money if you go buy some stuff from them, but that's somewhat irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make. For a while, my sister was touting "how much better we'd feel" if we took the products, or did a 10 day herbal cleanse, or whatever. She knew that I was out of shape and overweight. The problem, I told her, was that I didn't feel bad, so feeling better wasn't much of a motivation. I knew I didn't look that great compared to my former physique, but I didn't feel bad, so if I didn't care that much what I looked like (or how my clothes fit) the motivation to eat and live healthier because I'd feel better didn't really work.

So maybe it's my age that's made me just not feel that great recently. Maybe I finally got to the point where I started to notice that I wasn't being as healthy as I could be. For example, coffee never used to bother me other than waking me up when I was a little sleepy, but then more recently I noticed that after drinking it I would start to experience increased anxiety. Or lack of sleep never used to impact me in the middle of the day, but then I started to notice that I was having a tough time staying awake in the afternoons, especially when I was trying to study or do something else that required little physical activity or energy.

In any event, we've been doing this cleanse since yesterday, and everything I've said up to this point was actually intended to be just an introduction to say that I'm feeling fatigued, and I think I have the cleanse to thank for it. Just not in the way you might think.

Two things happen on the cleanse. Well, maybe more, but these are the two that are relevant to what I'm talking about. The first thing that happens is that you are supposed to cut out a bunch of stuff that's not very good for you while you are taking it. That includes but is not limited to coffee and alcohol. If you drink a lot of coffee or have even just a drink a night, this is going to make a huge difference in how your body feels. But it's also going to lead to the second occurrence: you are going to get more sleep.

When you stop drinking as much coffee, and you don't have that nightly glass or two of wine, you end up getting a much better night sleep. So the next day, you wake up, and your body doesn't need the same level of caffeine or it doesn't need the stimulants to keep itself going. Our bodies are fully capable of keeping ourselves moving, awake, and alert without chemical stimulants to do the job for them.

As a result, since you aren't battling the effects of caffeine or alcohol, and you are fully rested, you can actually focus on the other things in your life that are impacting how you are feeling. For example, many people deal with stress by eating or drinking. That masks the stress for a while, and you can at least endure it. The problem is, the stress hasn't actually gone away, you've just hidden it or masked it or put up some sort of facade. The stress is still there, though, eating away at you, and now even worse, since typically the eating and drinking binge doesn't consist of celery and water.

In my case, the fact that I'm off caffeine and fully rested has made me realize that I'm fatigued. Coffee masks it for a time. You start getting mentally exhausted, so you have a cup of coffee, then one leads to two and over time you are drinking way more than you think you are. At least, that's what happens to me. So now, I'm two days into a cleanse, and I feel good and I'm not drinking a bunch of coffee and I still feel tired but I'm not tired. Something else is causing the tiredness that I might not have known about unless I got on the cleanse.

That's why I say that I'm fatigued, and I have the cleanse to blame. The cleanse didn't cause it, it just revealed it.

All of that got me thinking about healthy outlets to relieve myself of fatigue or to reinvigorate myself to gain energy. Some people regain their energy by being with other people. Some people do it by being alone. Some people do it through hobbies. There are a lot of different ways to make sure that you are taking care of yourself.

For me, I think it might be writing.

I read something a popular pastor had said once about how he finds that his best moments of thought come not when he is studying or reading, but when he is expressing those thoughts in word. In other words, it was his habit of writing that actually reinvigorated him. I think I understand that. I also think I understand why it gets squeezed out: it takes time.

On the contrary, the things that cause me fatigue, or the things that rob me of mental energy, happen all the time. As an introverted person, dealing with people takes a lot of mental energy. And I actually like people! If I have to be relationally on, though, without a break, it robs the energy. Case in point, I coach basketball. Practices are fine. Game days are long. I'm at the gym for nearly four hours. At the end of it, I'm mentally exhausted.

So, here is the reason that something like writing would get squeezed out: writing requires mental energy, and when your reserve is depleted, you've got nothing left to get you started. If writing both replaces mental energy, but also requires it, you can end up in a conundrum where you don't have enough mental energy to get started, but if you don't do it, you won't be able to replace the mental energy that you've lost.

In that sense your mental energy is like the battery on your car. If it gets too depleted, you can't start the car. But unless you start the car, you can't recharge the battery, at least without some external assistance.

So after eating lunch and feeling mentally fatigued and exhausted, I decided I needed to do something that would be a good use of my time and would help me regain a handle on the day. Should I read a book? Should I work on an upcoming retreat?

No, I should write.

So I did.

Credit Card Fraud, Go Daddy's Bad Service, & The Internet

January was a pain in the butt month that was made worse recently by bad customer service from Go Daddy. Recently, things got a little better because of the Internet.

Let's start with the problem. On New Years Eve, my debit card was declined at a grocery store. No big deal, I thought. Must be a problem with the system, because it wasn't a no-funds issue. The grocery store couldn't give me a reason that the card was declined, but I paid a different way and went about my business. (It was New Years Eve! Who cares about credit cards! I'll deal with it next year!)

When I got back home the next day (we were visiting family when it happened) I tried to use my card again to no avail. Finally, I called the number on the card who directed me to fraud prevention and they informed me that unless I was trying to make a large purchase at a Toy's 'R Us in Toronto, (which I wasn't) my credit card number had been stolen. No big deal, head out to the local branch and they can whip me up a new card with a new number.

The worst part, of course, is that now you have to go and figure out the recurring monthly transactions that are hitting your card, and go and change all those services. My wife does the bills, and I have had the same card for years, so it was basically a waiting game to see when we'd get notifications that the payment didn't go through and we needed to adjust our billing information. Steadily they came in...Netflix, Hulu, my Gym membership, etc., and as they did, I changed the number and called it a day.

Some of these children aren't ours.

Fast forward three weeks, day off of school for the kids, we go to the Museum of Natural History, my wife gets a text message from the bank about my card: "did your card just get declined at a grocery store?" Nope, it hadn't. I call them immediately, and they inform me that once again, my credit card had been declined, this time in West Virginia. Here we go again, I thought.

Two notes as an aside: first, I do my banking with Chase and they were top notch in handling both of these situations. They caught the fraud right away and no money left my account at all. Excellent service. Second, I don't use my card that much so I looked at my purchase history to see if there was any place I was using the card where it might have been taken. Because it happened so close to one another, it clearly wasn't a case of it being hacked into through an electronic/computer based system, or it would have been a part of a huge data breach that hadn't been reported. It was most likely somewhere that I went relatively often and actually handed my card to the cashier, where they would walk away with it and could transmit the information somehow. The only transaction that matched: the gas station. Here in New Jersey, all the gas stations are full service. Our little town is a small one, so there is only one gas station I go, and I like the guys there. So while I'm not convinced (I have no evidence) that someone at the shop was taking my credit card numbers, it certainly looks suspicious.

In any event, now I had to go and change all those recurring payments again...arghh.

GO DADDY's BAD SERVICE

One of those recurring payments was to Go Daddy for web hosting for my wife blog. For about four or five years she's had a blog that she doesn't update very frequently but we maintain because there's always the dream. (See the previous posts about restarting & the Christian life...) When I set it up for her, I used Go Daddy to purchase the URL and to Host the blog because that's what I was familiar with. She was familiar with WordPress, so that's what we used. We set up an economy hosting package and basically that was it. We didn't have to think about it from then on.

Until, of course, my credit card got declined and they couldn't charge us the recurring monthly fee.

The first email I got alerted me to the problem. Unfortunately, it was right around when my credit card got stolen for the second time so I didn't have the new number yet to enter. At some point, I got a second email. On that email, it informed me that the next billing attempt would be on February 3rd, but that's all it said. Good, I have time to get my card and fix the billing, I thought. Even though the blog isn't updated much, I know my wife wants to keep the stuff that is on there. 

On February 2nd, I finally get my new card. February 3rd, I get the email that they attempted to bill me, and it didn't go through again. I immediately login to the Go Daddy website, and find that there is no where to renew my hosting. In fact, it's not even listed as one of the products that I purchased. I check the email again, and there's the small print: f an item is listed as cancelled, it can no longer be renewed. It has been deleted.

What?!?

So I call Go Daddy and tell them what happened. Now, I know that although that is their policy, it's extremely unlikely that they just automatically delete all the data the second that the third attempt at payment doesn't go through. It's been less than three weeks since the initial email alerting me to the problem. I get that they may turn off access, or something, but deleting is pretty severe and, if this was anything other than a personal home-cooked blog could cause serious problems. So I know the data is around somewhere.

The gentlemen on the phone confirms this, and he begins to tell me that there is good news, they can recover the data! But since I don't have a backup, it's going to be a full-recovery which costs $150. But the good news was that if I sign up for hosting again, I could get their introductory pricing! I suggested to him that given the extenuating circumstances, it seemed like maybe they could help me out a bit more. Nope, he said.

Well, I guess I'll take my business elsewhere.

The bummer was that there were a bunch of posts that I know that she didn't want to lose. The good news is that the internet exists.

THE INTERNET

I woke up this morning trying to figure out what to do about this situation, because I wasn't going to pay $150 dollars to recover however many posts were there. It occurred to me that Google kept a cache of many websites. Unfortunately, not thishappymess.com.

In process of searching that out, however, I came across the Internet Archive, which does have bots that go around and take snapshots of web pages, and lo and behold, they had taken a few snapshots of my wife's blog. It's not the same thing as totally recovering the content, but it did allow me to save a dozen or so posts. The key was that, on her main page, she had each entry in their full format, one after the other, with maybe 10-15 posts per page.

So that's the good news. I end on somewhat of a happy note. I got some of her stuff recovered. And Go Daddy stinks. Don't use them.

Best Advice & The Link

My last two posts have mentioned this article, so I went and tracked it down again. The downside of using multiple devices for web-related stuff is that sometimes, the stuff you read gets lost in transition. In any case, this is the link to the post I have been referencing.

The best advice on getting started in blogging:

Instead, this is what you do:

1. Sign up for a new blog.
2. Start writing.

That’s it. You do this as quickly as humanly possible.

http://john.do/today/

The Great Hurdle of Perfectionism

It's hard to blog when you are a perfectionist. If you have been afflicted with this God-awful disability, you know the problems associated with it. One of the challenges is the inability to get started on something if you know it's not going to be done right.

The advice on blogging (still have to find the article again and link to it) was to just start writing; don't be concerned with grammatical error or with the perfect sentences or saying everything in the best possible way. Just start writing. Write, write, write. Perfectionism stands in the way of doing just that, however. "Just get started, don't worry about the outcome" is not a tool of the perfectionists trade.

The perfections wants to figure out the best thing to blog on; the best topic to write about. They want to reserve their words for something truly worth expounding upon. Then, when that thing comes to mind, and that moment is there, they want to delicately massage out the words so that they say exactly what they want to say, without there being hardly a trace of potential that someone may misinterpret what they said. Since this is nigh impossible, the perfectionist then is continually frustrated with their efforts–someone misunderstands what they have said, and so the perfectionist internalizes and promises to not make the same mistake the next time. 

The next day, the blog takes a little longer to develop; there is more at stake this time around. The perfectionist has already failed to meet his or her goal once, and they cannot have it happen again.

It doesn't take long for those piles of fails to build up so that beginning to even write at all is perceived as a chore too great to undertake. The outcome can't possibly live up to the hope. And in the face of this flies the advice, "just start writing". Just put something down on paper. Just go for it.

Case in point, I've already edited this very post. Of course there is the occasional deletion of a sentence that failed to formulate in a cohesive manner or the deletion of a word that was tragically misspelled so that even the brain in the computer couldn't decipher what was intended to be said, but this is something different. This is going back and correcting the "to's" and "too's", or the "your" and "you're"'s because you want to make sure that no one might assume that you don't know the difference; the assumption is that no one would have the grace to realize that, since you are just writing, occasionally the signals from your brain to your fingers as you type might get crisscrossed with the unintended consequence being that when your brain says "you're" you type "your". But there is no room for that type of imperfection in the life of the perfectionist.

And then there is the issue of time. The perfectionist wants the perfect moment. The thing that may have stood in the way of me blogging today was the fact that I believed that a more opportune time would present itself, whether because of the pace or schedule of the day or because a topic might arise that inspired me more than the one at hand. Typically the perfectionist waits for that moment, like a surfer passing on 15 good waves for the one wave that blows them away. If a surfer were to do that, I can't help but think that there are many sunny days he would simply be floating in the water, before the sun goes down again, and he goes home having never actually surfed.

So it is with the writer who doesn't capture the moment that he has, right as it comes, as the opportunity to put thoughts to paper unfolds and he takes the chance, no matter how far short of perfect it may be, no matter how imperfect the content or the writing or the whatever-else-might-matter may be, but instead just says, "I'll do it." And he writes.

Restarting & The Christian Life

The Christian life is a life of restarts.

I read or heard something recently that put the lie to the old adage that God is the God of second chances. Now that I'm thinking about it, I believe it was in a sermon from Tullian Tchividjian. He said that to believe that God is the God of second chances is to believe that there is still something of our own effort that is at play in the Christian life. That somehow, God is judging us by our mess-ups, but thankfully, he gives us another chance. Tullian (or whoever it was) said that God is the God of one chance and a second Adam. That is, Adam had a shot, and he blew it. But Jesus is the second Adam, and he succeeds. Speaking in biblical terms (and Gospel terms), we are all going to either be judged by the first Adam and the second Adam. Jesus wasn't really a "second chance"; he came to fix the problem that occurred when God gave us a chance at all.

In any event, this is the Gospel: that because God's love for me is not dependent on me at all, I can continually repent and just start over. God's not waiting for me to mess up. He's not waiting for me to succeed. I already have succeeded because of Jesus. So whatever I do, whether I do it well or poorly, I do out of a genuine freedom that I've found because of God's love for me in Jesus.

I say all that for a couple reasons. First, because I read a blog just recently about how to start blogging, and the author said, "just start writing." Stop thinking about the design, what you are going to say, whatever. Just start writing. He's right that during my days of journaling, which I've mentioned before, when I was writing 1500+ words a day and did so for more than a year, I didn't ask myself each morning what I was going to write about. I just got up and started writing, and out it came. So, he said, most bloggers get caught up wondering what they are going to write about when most times, the solution is just to start writing. (I ought to add here that I'm hoping to go back and find a link to his "10 things I would tell myself if I restarted my blog" or whatever it was titled, but to do that right now would be to defeat the purpose of just starting to write...)

The hope by even stating that is to maybe get my head in gear to actually start writing again. Also–don't worry about the audience. That was sort of his advice, I think. Or another piece of it. I can't remember. If not, I think maybe he intended it to be. The point is that I'm not entirely sure that you could know who the audience is when you begin; also, you might find (as I often do) that you are so beholden to who is reading it and what they might think or not think or whatever, and thus create what psychologists/sociologists call the "invisible audience" that you don't actually write what you want to write or even think, but you write with this invisible audience constantly in mind. How many more people would write world and life-changing things down if they weren't concerned about what their invisible audience thought about it before it even got onto the paper?

Secondly, I was struck by this idea of consistent restarts as I was preparing a message for a youth retreat I'm leading in a couple of weeks. I was reading from the Gospel Centered Life curriculum, and it mentioned the two sides of the Christian life that we tend to default towards: either legalism, which is assuming that we can meet all the criteria of God's law (usually by bending the law to make our actions seem less bad), or license, which is the assumption that since we can't meet God's law, and yet he forgives us anyway, we may as well go on sinning. In either case, it's a failure to understand the Gospel. Again, the Gospel is that God loves me in Jesus Christ, and I find my identity in Him. Not through my good deeds (where I might, in some miraculous alignment of desire, will, and action actually succeed in meeting God's law) and not through my bad deeds (where I constantly believe that I am a failure because I can't attain God's law.) Instead, I am confident that since Jesus has fulfilled the law, I am perfectly covered by his righteousness and thus, I am now free to do God's law (freedom=free from guilt, shame, the burden of the thought of failure, freedom from the eternal consequences). 

So there you have it. When you understand the Gospel, the Christian life becomes less about missed opportunity and failed chances and much more about just saying, let's try that again. Let's restart. The past can actually remain in the past. The future is wide open. Let's give it another go.

Tullian Tchividjian on His Old Sermons →

“So, if we read (or preach) the Bible asking first, “What would Jesus do?” instead of asking “What has Jesus done” we’ll miss the good news that alone can set us free. Evangelicals desperately need to recover the truth that the overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. This means that the Bible is not first a recipe book for Christian living, but a revelation book of Jesus who is the answer to our unchristian living.”

— Tullian Tchividjian on pastortullian.com

The second time I've come across WWJD this week, and thankfully, the same result. Stop it.

Jesus Birth is No More Miraculous than Mine

"I have still less trouble in believing in the miracle of the virgin birth because for me to become a son of God is a human impossibility; this event, this miracle must be repeated in my life if it is to be at all! To be a Christian is not to subscribe to some code of ethics. It is certainly not to subscribe to the law of Moses. It is not to have one's name on a church roll. Is it not to take Jesus as my example and to seek to answer every day the question, What would Jesus do in these circumstances? That is not being a Christian.

Being a Christian is to be a new creation in Christ Jesus. It is to be born again. It is a miracle as great as the virgin birth of our Lord and Savior. If Mary in utter skepticism says, "How can this be?" – that is, the thing is biologically impossible; it can never be – it is equally true that for me, a sinner, to be made a child of God, for me in all my human depravity to have the nature of God Himself imparted to me so that at last, when His work is finished, I shall be holy as He is holy, lovable as He is lovable, beautiful as God is beautiful, is a miracle! Only the omnipotence, the infinite power of God can bring this about. "How shall this thing be?" Gabriel's answer to Mary was, "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee"; therefore the child to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God."

The House of Christmas, p. 42
H. Harold Kent

So it was published in 1964. A few thoughts.

30 years later, give or take, the WWJD craze took off among Christian youth groups. Is there merit in reminding ourselves what Jesus would do in any given situation? Sure. It's just not the point. If you could do what Jesus could do with any reliability whatsoever you wouldn't have needed Jesus to begin with. We love to focus on what we can do for God; we fail, almost always, to realize that for us to do anything for God is a miracle in and of itself. It requires a complete transformation of our soul, a complete renewal of our old selves. We are made as new. Sinners made holy. It's a miracle, and we didn't do anything to deserve it, earn it, or make it happen.

I read a recent philosophical statement regarding the existence of God and the chief proof of the article was the experience of those who believe. Part of me felt like this was shaky proof; to be sure, our experiences or what we perceive to be true can lead us astray. On the other hand, one's own experience is undeniable; it is irrefutable; this happened, and I know it happened. So it is with the Christian faith. The transformation is so great and so undeniable that we can only say, "this is true. I believe."

Perhaps it's this low view of our own salvation–in essence, that we don't think it required that much to make it happen–that makes us minimize the true nature of the Gospel. I think it's the reason that the Gospel, the good news, doesn't take root as the life-giving message that it truly is. We're still hanging on to the old mentality that tells us that surely there is something we did to deserve whatever has transpired in our lives. Surely, belief was just the next step on the journey. Surely, there must be an explanation, and it must have something to do with me.

There is an explanation, of course, and it's the same one given to Mary. The difference is that Mary knew the thing was impossible, and therefore must have nothing to do with her. "The Holy Spirit will come upon you", was the angels' response. This thing is not of your doing. It's of God's.

That's how you know it's legit.

Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love

Annual "Christian" events are tough when you are a preacher. Christmas, Easter, Good Friday...everyone knows what you are going to preach on.

I remember one Easter Sunday back when I was a kid when the Pastor preached on something from the Heidelberg Catechism. My mom was ticked. Jesus rises to life and we open the dead catechism.

In any event, it also means that I spend more time thinking about the events themselves. What is fresh to me this year? What is new that I can share?

Our advent series in 2014 is called "the Canvas". The idea is that our lives are a canvas upon which and through which God is going to paint the story of salvation. He is going to use our very lives to demonstrate to the world what life in his Kingdom looks like; what faith looks like. I'm beginning to notice a theme as I consider the four topics of advent–hope, peace, joy, and love–and it's not necessarily an encouraging one. The theme that these traits have in common is that they require a corollary to truly be seen.

That is, if God's going to paint a picture of Hope on the canvas of your life, he's almost always going to do it by walking you through a period that would otherwise be hopeless. You have to need something or desire something to have hope. And it can't be something that is easily attainable. It's almost always something that is out of reach. "Who hopes for what he already has?", asks Paul in Romans 8. If you already had it, it wouldn't be hope. Which means that if Hope is going to be painted on your canvas, it's probably going to require that other things are stripped away. Most of that stripped-away-stuff is related to false hope; it's the stuff that might fool us into believing that something else can save us. Our money, our relationships, our comfort, our health, or whatever. When all of that is gone, why does the Christian still have hope? Because our hope is not in the temporary or the fading, but in the unchanging and unfading and unfailing God of the universe. Hope usually requires calamity if it is to be clearly seen.

Peace requires turmoil.

Joy requires trial.

Love requires the unloveable; it's seen most clearly when we love our enemies.

But then salvation requires a baby and forgiveness requires a cross and life requires death.

The Lion Aslan told Lucy and Susan that when a willing victim took on the death of another, the stone table would be cracked (the law) and death itself would begin to work backwards. I guess that's our story now. Everything is being reversed. The curse is being re-written into blessing.

Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love share another common bond, though. When you really have them, you wouldn't trade them for all that you have lost. Calamity, turmoil, trial, enemies. They are worth enduring if in the end you have Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. We'd love to have each of them without their corollary, of course, and someday we will (with the exception of hope! Someday, our hope will be fulfilled and will be no more.) Until the day we have perfect Peace, Joy, and Love, however, more often than not the way they will become evident in our lives is when they are held up against their alternative. The Christian's Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, are all more powerful than the forces that work against them, because they are rooted in the goodness of God himself.

That's the promise of the good news.

Personal Conduct, The NFL, and Why We Need the Law

I don't know why I find the NFL's personal conduct policy–and lack of outstanding personal conduct–so fascinating. Maybe I view it as a problem that needs to be solved. Maybe it just happens to be what the sports guys are talking about on ESPN Radio. Whatever the reason, I've spent more than a little time pondering how they can fix the problem that they've made for themselves.

One of the challenges they are facing currently is that it appears they have no clearly spelled out guidelines for dealing with players who have been charged with a crime. Drug policy? Fine. But criminal policy? It doesn't look like it. Consequently, they are all over the map when it comes to handing out punishments. Some players can play through the trial until they are convicted. Others, like Adrian Peterson, has to sit down while the trial pans out. And then, even when an official punishment is given from the NFL, they have been wildly inconsistent.

So let me make a few points to help out the NFL, even though no one is asking.

First, focus on crime, not specific crime. Domestic abuse is wrong, and while it's terrible that the NFL had to deal with a couple of players who got caught, it's great that they've funded the PR campaign to end it. It would have been much more effective and genuine had they done it before their players got caught, but hey, you take what you can get. 

Here's a better option, though. It's not just domestic abuse. It's all crime. Let's stop picking and choosing which crimes are bad enough to get suspended for and maybe just put a general, "here's what happens if you break the law" clause in their contracts or in the NFL, generally. Let's not wait until there is a public outcry before we do anything about it. Decide that you aren't going to employ criminals, and start from there.

I understand that not all crimes are equal. Take that into consideration. But be clear about what you are really looking for: players who model good citizenship by following the law.

Second, clearly draw the boundaries. Who gets suspended, and when? Is it when they are accused of a crime? Or when they are indicted for a crime? When they are formally convicted? When does the NFL suspension and personal conduct policy kick in?

It certainly needs to be more formal than a simple accusation. Otherwise, you'd have people start making accusations just because they held a grudge. How about a formal, legal indictment? Now maybe we're on to something.

I think the conduct policy should kick in the moment they are formally charged with a crime. We need to respect the legal process and surely we don't want to go beyond it by assuming guilt when there may not be any. On the other hand, I'm perfectly comfortable telling a football player that if they are charged with a crime, they can't come in to work. The commissioners list seems like a reasonable option. The player gets paid, but they are not allowed to play. It is paid leave. The company is asking you not to show up for work while the criminal charges get worked out.

Third, put more pressure on the teams. Make the crime policy so stringent that teams will second guess drafting or signing a player who might potentially break the law. Obviously, you can't always predict when someone will break the law, but knowing that the policy is tight and strict means that, if I know that one of my guys could be ineligible to play football because of his off-the-field activities, I'm either not going to sign that guy, or I'm going to provide him with some life-training while he's a part of my organization so that he doesn't ever get taken off the field because of a stupid decision. 

Yes, players need to take responsibility for their own actions and choices, and it's not fair to blame someone else for decisions that they made. But as long as they think that they can get away with it, or that teams will help them cover it up rather than deal with the root of the problem, they are going to keep misbehaving. If you make it so that a football player can't get a deal with a team unless he's living by the rules, you might find that the player in question starts to shape up.

Fourth, be consistent. When you don't have a policy clearly spelled out, you're liable to operate out of fear or popular opinion. Roger Goodell seems to be doing both. After screwing up the Ray Rice punishment by giving him only a two game suspension, he evoked such outrage among the general populous that he went in the extreme opposite direction in the suspension that followed, and then did the same with the suspension of Adrian Peterson. In the case of the latter, he had theoretically already put in place the personal conduct policy which said that the first offense of domestic violence was a six week suspension. Apparently there was some wiggle room in there, but in general, six weeks was what was articulated. Peterson has already functionally served an 8 or 9 week suspension (with pay), and yet, he was further suspended for the rest of the season. (For the record, even if he got "time served" for those 8 or 9 weeks on the commissioners list, he still should have had to pay back a majority of the money that he earned during that time, since he would not have gotten paid the full amount had it been an official suspension.) My issue isn't that the suspensions are or aren't justified, good, bad, or whatever. It's just that they are inconsistent. If a first offense is six weeks, then make it six weeks every time. And if six weeks isn't enough, then change the policy. But don't arbitrarily hand out punishments without the ability to be consistent across the board.

The last thing I'll say is that playing football is a job for these players. As such, they should have very similar workplace employment policies that every other company does. But it's also more than a job. It's a privilege. These guys get to play the game that they love, and get paid a ton of money to do it. Good for them. For me, that sets the bar higher. If you really love this game, and you want the privilege to get paid to do it, that ought to be motivation enough to act like a normal person and not break the law.

Denominations: God's Hilarious Joke, Part Three

I was asked to write a post about "getting along with your denomination", and this is what came out. I'm presenting it in three parts, because it's too long for one post. This is part three. (Read Part One and Part Two.)

Opportunities for Grace

I wanted to close with what I think is probably the most important reminder that's needed when dealing with a denomination: it provides us an opportunity for Grace with other brother's and sisters that can demonstrate what unity looks like in the church of Jesus Christ.

When I was outside of the denominational context, I thought just the opposite. I thought that denominations were proof that Christians were divided. And it's true that historically, denominations have often formed because of disagreement over various theological issues large and small. The solution to that problem, however, is not an even greater fragmentation of the Christian church; the solution is greater unity. And that unity is often most clearly seen in the denominational context, particularly when variety and loving disagreement continue to exist within it's ranks.

My denomination allows for the ordination of women, but also allows local bodies of Elders in a particular local church to decide for themselves based on their theological convictions. I am convinced that the Scripture is clear on the issue of eldership, and that elders (and therefore ordained Pastors) are supposed to be men. That creates a tension that I and my church have had to navigate.

On the one hand, I wish my denomination took a more definitive stance on the issue. I wish it was something that all the churches agreed upon, so that I didn't have to handle it on a local level. (It'd be nice to simply refer to "official policy" and avoid a debate!) On the other hand, it has offered me far more opportunities to have grace for my brothers or sisters in disagreement than I would have had otherwise; the fact is that if they did take a definitive stance, it would have led to the departure of some significant portion of the churches.

I'm reminded when I see my ordained sister's-in-ministry that even though we disagree on the issue of Eldership, we agree on the issue of Jesus. I'm reminded that they are lovers of Jesus like I am a lover of Jesus and they desire that people come to know him like I desire that people come to know him. I'm reminded that one of us might be wrong and the other one might be right but even if I'm right on this doctrine, I'm probably wrong (or at least incomplete!) on another one. And yet, at the end of time, we're both going to stand before our master and he's going to say, "well done, good and faithful servant". The Christian life is a life of grace–for the sinner, and for the "righteous". 

CONCLUSION

I'm still not a denominational apologist; I don't think you have to be a part of a denomination in order to have a proper church, nor do I think that denominational churches are necessarily healthier spiritually or organizationally (in fact, a cursory glance at the church in America would indicate that they're not!) What I've learned, though, is that we're often too quick to reject them and reject many of our brothers and sisters in the process.

Several years back, as I was exploring my call to plant a church, I read the church profile form of a church that was searching for a Senior Pastor. They were one of several churches from that denomination in the area, and it was evident to me that none of the churches were doing very well. This church profile form in particular indicated some frustration. It said something to the effect of, "we want to move forward, but we want someone who is going to lead us and not just push us around."

What they meant was, "we want someone who will love us." 

I wondered to myself, with all the talk of church planting, who will love these people? What leaders and pastors will love these saints, who have endured the hard road of the faith for many years, who established churches long ago, and may have lost their way? Who will endure the red-tape, and the hoops, to re-introduce these saints to Jesus and remind them of the beauty of the Gospel?

I said to myself at the time, "I guess someone else will have to do it." And then God pulled a fast one. And we've been laughing ever since.