This is a story I shared with a good (atheist) friend of mine and it's an interesting story, so I decided to post it here. Weekend before last, Emily and I were at Walmart and they had a DVD player for $30, so we got it. Her old television has been sitting unused at my house for a while and we were kind of tired of watching movies on her laptop or my desktop (neither of us have or want cable). When we got home we discovered that the DVD player won't plug into her old TV since it only has a cable connector. Then we thought that maybe we could use her old VCR, which has cable connectors and others. It won't play videos, but if it let us run the dvd through it, the old thing might be worth keeping. So in the middle of the week, she brought it up for me to try fit into the system. It did have the right connectors, but apparently won't transfer between them (cable in goes to cable out, rca in goes to rca out).
We looked into getting a box that would convert the signal, but it wasn't cheap and would lower the quality of the video, so we started looking into TVs. We also contemplated just taking the dvd player back and continuing to watch movies on the laptop, but wanted to see if we could find a better TV.
Now at church we've been talking about stewardship and something that the pastor said stuck with me. His reasoning was something like this: If God created everything, including the resources from which we get money and possessions, then it's all ultimately His. So when we encounter unexpected expenses (for which God is also ultimately responsible) then we should let God spend his money or resources how he apparently wants to spend them rather than grumble about "wasting our money" as if it we really had control over things.
With that in mind, I prayed about it and Emily looked on Craig's List and sent me a couple of ads. There was only one that was listed anywhere nearby and it was in my town, so I gave the guy a call. It turns out he lives in the apartment complex right behind me. In fact, when I walked into the apartment, I could see my bedroom window out their back door and it would have been about the same distance to carry the TV out their back door and to my house as it would be to carry it to my car. We did carry it to my car since there is a small embankment and a sizeable brush pile out the back, not to mention a deck railing to climb over. In any event, I figured that if God made it that easy to get a TV, that must be how he wants to spend his money (and I'm certainly not going to object to His buying me a television).
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Disappointment
Disappointment is a strange thing. Our church is seven years old and seeking to build a building (currently we meet in the local middle school) and recently had some major setbacks with the town. We have a contract on a piece of land, but needed to get a zoning variance from the town to put a church there since it is zoned “office/laboratory”. We pursued both a variance to allow us to put a church in this specific location and a zoning law change that would let a church be a permitted use in that zone. A couple of weeks ago, the zoning board denied the variance and last night the planning board voted not to recommend the ordinance change to the town. I was at the planning board meeting last night and was surprised at the opposition to our proposal. The board itself did not seem overly opposed to it, but there was some very vocal opposition about putting a church on that particular property from several members of the community. In retrospect, none of their arguments were very good and all very site specific (traffic concerns, environmental concerns, obscuring the scenic view of the neighbors). All of these concerns would be things that would have to be addressed much later in the process by our church anyway and a church certainly wouldn’t be any worse (and in many cases better) than an office building or a laboratory of a similar size. In any event, I think what the board found persuasive (aside from the fact that there was loud opposition) was that there is a traffic problem in the area that is currently being investigated and that investigation might shed further light on the development potential of that area.
I was pretty disappointed. I wish I had had more presence of mind to say the things that I think now and to clarify misconceptions about the size of the church. I wish someone else had spoken in favor of our church (a couple did, but certainly not as vehemently or eloquently as the opposition). I wish someone could have given our reasoning as persuasively as I can now that I have time to think about it. I think disappointment is in large part also a sense of betrayal. I feel betrayed by myself because I wasn’t able to stand before the board and clarify our arguments. I feel betrayed by the town for opposing it. I feel betrayed by the planning board for not seeing through their poor arguments. I feel betrayed by our church and pastor for not representing our church better and for getting our hopes up about this piece of property. I feel betrayed by God for the very same reasons.
Ay, there’s the rub, as Hamlet (3:1:73) would say. I feel as if our church has a right to that property; as if I had the right to hope. A moment’s thought would render absurd the idea that I might have any right to even suggest to God how to do his job (even something as small as who should get a little plot of land in New England). As for the right to hope, “I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in” (Ibid. 134). Property and hope are not rights; they are gifts. This whole world was created through Christ that He might give it to us as a wedding present, not because it was ours by right. On top of that, Jesus died so that He could purchase hope for us to add to that already abundant gift. I guess that is something that we need to be reminded of now and again.
I was pretty disappointed. I wish I had had more presence of mind to say the things that I think now and to clarify misconceptions about the size of the church. I wish someone else had spoken in favor of our church (a couple did, but certainly not as vehemently or eloquently as the opposition). I wish someone could have given our reasoning as persuasively as I can now that I have time to think about it. I think disappointment is in large part also a sense of betrayal. I feel betrayed by myself because I wasn’t able to stand before the board and clarify our arguments. I feel betrayed by the town for opposing it. I feel betrayed by the planning board for not seeing through their poor arguments. I feel betrayed by our church and pastor for not representing our church better and for getting our hopes up about this piece of property. I feel betrayed by God for the very same reasons.
Ay, there’s the rub, as Hamlet (3:1:73) would say. I feel as if our church has a right to that property; as if I had the right to hope. A moment’s thought would render absurd the idea that I might have any right to even suggest to God how to do his job (even something as small as who should get a little plot of land in New England). As for the right to hope, “I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in” (Ibid. 134). Property and hope are not rights; they are gifts. This whole world was created through Christ that He might give it to us as a wedding present, not because it was ours by right. On top of that, Jesus died so that He could purchase hope for us to add to that already abundant gift. I guess that is something that we need to be reminded of now and again.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Famine, Persecution, and the Like
I know it's been a while since my first and only post, but life is busy, especially while planning a wedding. In any event, I thought I'd put up a quick post on this chilly New England night. Every other Wednesday morning I meet with some guys from my church to pray. And before we prayed, we talked about the end of Romans 8, where Paul about writes tribulation, persecution, famine, and sword. These were probably pertinent issues for the church in Rome to which Paul was writing and that seems a little foreign to us in our safe little New England world. Yet we know that there are still those in the world for whom those issues are very much a reality on a daily basis. When we started praying, we prayed for those Christians and other people who find themselves in places where they have to deal with hunger, war, or persecution. And what I want to encourage you to do, is to pray for the church in such places and for those people. A couple of places that spring to mind quickly are Iraq and Sudan.
There is something simultaneously terrible and divine in hunger, pain, and persecution. It is terrible for the obvious reason that it is hurtful, damaging, and evil. It is divine because God himself subjected himself to it and so clothed that evil with grace incomprehensible. Now He invites his church to participate in the divine activities of being hungry and yet fighting against hunger, of battling with weapons and yet laying aside differences, of being persecuted and yet opposing persecution. God took on pain, hunger, and persecution so that even though these things are evil, they now have divine significance. If Jesus Christ is found in these things, then there really is no separating us from Him.
There is something simultaneously terrible and divine in hunger, pain, and persecution. It is terrible for the obvious reason that it is hurtful, damaging, and evil. It is divine because God himself subjected himself to it and so clothed that evil with grace incomprehensible. Now He invites his church to participate in the divine activities of being hungry and yet fighting against hunger, of battling with weapons and yet laying aside differences, of being persecuted and yet opposing persecution. God took on pain, hunger, and persecution so that even though these things are evil, they now have divine significance. If Jesus Christ is found in these things, then there really is no separating us from Him.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Confession and Concession
I did not want to start a blog. I didn't want to start a blog in the same way that I didn't want a cell phone and I am giving in to blogging for much the same reason that I gave in and got that first cell phone. It's not that I am wary of technology; I love tinkering with computers and electronics and anything else I can take apart. It's not even that I don't like accessorizing (in a manly sort of way of course); anyone who has seen my camera bag with its lenses and filters, my homemade meat smoker, my pair of guitars hanging on the wall, or even my very full clothes closet and shoe rack will know that I like my toys. The best way to explain my ill feelings towards blogging is to say that I don't like fads. In fact, I would probably go so far as to say that I hate them to a fault. I will often do the very opposite of what is currently "in" for the very reason that "in" is "in." However in some rare cases, I will eventually discover that the object of some fad is actually a useful thing and will begrudgingly concede the fight. Such was the case with the cell phone and such is the case with this blog. I will probably use this blog with much the same attitude as my cell phone; with a very slight disdain and not a little negligence.
Now I want to make it clear that I have no problem with blogs or bloggers. In fact, part of the reason for this acquiescence is the number of my friends and my family who have good blogs, from my fiancee to numerous aunts and uncles to my grandmother. It is mostly that I don't want to do anything that might make me look unoriginal: It's a pride thing, really. At some point in school I realized that as a redhead, fitting in was too hard. So, being the somewhat apathetic and more than slightly lazy young man, I decided to be different. I wore goofy t-shirts and suit coats over them to high school; I spent a large portion of my time in college barefoot, wearing a fedora or golf cap; in grad school I decided to start wearing dress shirts and vests most days; twice I grew my hair for two years and donated it to "Locks of Love;" I did not want to start a blog.
C'est la vie (that's "this is life" in French or your cue to say "la vee," your choice). I am starting a blog for three reasons. First, it has been far too long since I had a good outlet for creative writing. My parents are both writers and many forms of communication run in my family (writing, preaching, teaching, etc). I grew up in a house full of books and pencils and imagination and I have long enjoyed reading and writing. However, as God would have it (and perhaps partly as a result of my principles of nonconformity), I am not a writer by profession, but rather a scientist, and a government scientist at that. This is not a profession that is conducive to creative writing. In fact, it is pretty blatantly hostile to it. It is a profession in which A is done, resulting in B, as prescribed by C and D, respectively. No intricate syntax. No ambiguity. No artistic license. Even though I know this is how science works, I have to cringe every time I have to repeat my pronouns again and again in the same sentence structure with so many passive verbs. In fact I am often tempted to dangle a participle or preposition just out of spite (and to see if anyone would actually notice). This blog will be that creative outlet that I need to keep me from such temptations to poor writing.
Second, this blog will serve as a welcome distraction from the regular internet procrastination to which I am prone. I have realized that I spend a lot of time in front of this computer screen, much of it just down time for me to rest and relax. It is a good and healthy thing to have some down time to relax and rest, but I don't really need to be ogling over classic cars on eBay or watching yet one more Arsenal-Liverpool highlight reel on YouTube. It is better to be tinkering with something at least potentially useful.
Lastly and most importantly, growing up in a house full of writers, I learned to process my thoughts in words on paper or a computer screen. Typing these words out helps me clarify my thoughts and ideas and prayers. In reality, there is one great thought, idea, and prayer that I am forever trying to work out: The meaning of the full deity and humanity of Christ as it should play itself out in my life. Now mind you I don't mean that I am trying to figure out the details of how Jesus could be both God and human: I don't really think there is any understanding that. I mean rather that I am trying to figure out how that mystery can be applied to my life. The more I think about that mysterious fact, the more I am convinced that really applying it to my life is the single hardest yet most powerful thing I can do in life.
Now this isn't something that I have dreamed up on my own. It comes from many sources in Christian literature, family, history, and personal experience. Most notably is the fact that the church spent the first several centuries struggling with, arguing about, and excommunicating heretics over the issue of what it meant for Jesus to be both fully God and fully human. They didn't seem to spend much time debating anything else and yet they transformed their culture in an unprecedented way. The last of the pagan emperors of Rome wrote these two things about the early church:
"These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agape, they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes."
"Whilst the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity, and by a display of false compassion have established and given effect to their pernicious errors. See their love feasts, and their tables spread for the indigent. Such practice is common among them, and causes a contempt for our gods." (reference)
It's true that you won't really find the early church discussing how to care for the poor, how to set higher moral standards, or how to transform the pagan world around them, but they certainly did these things with remarkable success. I would argue that they did this by really grappling with the humanity and deity of Christ and what that meant for their lives and that is the greatest purpose of this blog.
The word "alethinologia" means, "to speak truth" in Greek (from aletheia, truth and logos, word) and that is what I intend to do here. I chose this word partly because all the other names/words I thought of were already taken, but also partly because a linguist friend of mine once gave a talk about truth. In it he said that in Greek, truth could be an active verb, yet we do not have that option in English. The closest we have is to "be true" or to "act truly." This blog is an attempt to be truth in an active way. Perhaps it is a lofty goal, but it certainly isn't "in."
Now I want to make it clear that I have no problem with blogs or bloggers. In fact, part of the reason for this acquiescence is the number of my friends and my family who have good blogs, from my fiancee to numerous aunts and uncles to my grandmother. It is mostly that I don't want to do anything that might make me look unoriginal: It's a pride thing, really. At some point in school I realized that as a redhead, fitting in was too hard. So, being the somewhat apathetic and more than slightly lazy young man, I decided to be different. I wore goofy t-shirts and suit coats over them to high school; I spent a large portion of my time in college barefoot, wearing a fedora or golf cap; in grad school I decided to start wearing dress shirts and vests most days; twice I grew my hair for two years and donated it to "Locks of Love;" I did not want to start a blog.
C'est la vie (that's "this is life" in French or your cue to say "la vee," your choice). I am starting a blog for three reasons. First, it has been far too long since I had a good outlet for creative writing. My parents are both writers and many forms of communication run in my family (writing, preaching, teaching, etc). I grew up in a house full of books and pencils and imagination and I have long enjoyed reading and writing. However, as God would have it (and perhaps partly as a result of my principles of nonconformity), I am not a writer by profession, but rather a scientist, and a government scientist at that. This is not a profession that is conducive to creative writing. In fact, it is pretty blatantly hostile to it. It is a profession in which A is done, resulting in B, as prescribed by C and D, respectively. No intricate syntax. No ambiguity. No artistic license. Even though I know this is how science works, I have to cringe every time I have to repeat my pronouns again and again in the same sentence structure with so many passive verbs. In fact I am often tempted to dangle a participle or preposition just out of spite (and to see if anyone would actually notice). This blog will be that creative outlet that I need to keep me from such temptations to poor writing.
Second, this blog will serve as a welcome distraction from the regular internet procrastination to which I am prone. I have realized that I spend a lot of time in front of this computer screen, much of it just down time for me to rest and relax. It is a good and healthy thing to have some down time to relax and rest, but I don't really need to be ogling over classic cars on eBay or watching yet one more Arsenal-Liverpool highlight reel on YouTube. It is better to be tinkering with something at least potentially useful.
Lastly and most importantly, growing up in a house full of writers, I learned to process my thoughts in words on paper or a computer screen. Typing these words out helps me clarify my thoughts and ideas and prayers. In reality, there is one great thought, idea, and prayer that I am forever trying to work out: The meaning of the full deity and humanity of Christ as it should play itself out in my life. Now mind you I don't mean that I am trying to figure out the details of how Jesus could be both God and human: I don't really think there is any understanding that. I mean rather that I am trying to figure out how that mystery can be applied to my life. The more I think about that mysterious fact, the more I am convinced that really applying it to my life is the single hardest yet most powerful thing I can do in life.
Now this isn't something that I have dreamed up on my own. It comes from many sources in Christian literature, family, history, and personal experience. Most notably is the fact that the church spent the first several centuries struggling with, arguing about, and excommunicating heretics over the issue of what it meant for Jesus to be both fully God and fully human. They didn't seem to spend much time debating anything else and yet they transformed their culture in an unprecedented way. The last of the pagan emperors of Rome wrote these two things about the early church:
"These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agape, they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes."
"Whilst the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity, and by a display of false compassion have established and given effect to their pernicious errors. See their love feasts, and their tables spread for the indigent. Such practice is common among them, and causes a contempt for our gods." (reference)
It's true that you won't really find the early church discussing how to care for the poor, how to set higher moral standards, or how to transform the pagan world around them, but they certainly did these things with remarkable success. I would argue that they did this by really grappling with the humanity and deity of Christ and what that meant for their lives and that is the greatest purpose of this blog.
The word "alethinologia" means, "to speak truth" in Greek (from aletheia, truth and logos, word) and that is what I intend to do here. I chose this word partly because all the other names/words I thought of were already taken, but also partly because a linguist friend of mine once gave a talk about truth. In it he said that in Greek, truth could be an active verb, yet we do not have that option in English. The closest we have is to "be true" or to "act truly." This blog is an attempt to be truth in an active way. Perhaps it is a lofty goal, but it certainly isn't "in."
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