Waiting For Sunday

When I was young, adults I cared about lied to me. These adults weren’t my enemies. They were friends, teachers, church folks, relatives, people who cared.

The lie they told me: “You can be anything you want to be.”

It wasn’t true. I wanted to play shortstop for the Cleveland Indians, or quarterback for the Browns. I couldn’t do it, and no amount of positive thinking or even practice could have made it so (although with the Browns’ record, what difference would it make?)

The fact is, I was made for certain things and not for others. So were you. Your natural abilities, your temperament, and the spiritual gifts God gives you make you unique - different than me, different than your sister, different than your Dad’s expectations of you, different maybe than your own dreams and desires.

This point was driven home to me recently by Parker Palmer’s book, Let Your Life Speak. Palmer, an educator and a teacher of teachers, reminds me to “listen to my life” to hear God’s calling on me. He says: “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.” (p. 3)

And: “Engineering involves more than telling materials what they must do. If the engineer does not honor the nature of the steel or the wood or the stone, his failure will go beyond aesthetics: the bridge or the building will collapse and put human life at peril…The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. If you seek vocation without understanding the materials you are working with, what you build with your life will be ungainly and may well put lives in peril, your own and some of those around you.” (p. 16)

This may sound like advice suited best for young people who are choosing a trade or a college major. But Palmer speaks and writes to teaching professionals who have been at their life’s work for some time, whether they entered it for good reasons or poor. He helps them learn to teach in ways that grow out of who they are. That’s encouraging to me, because at this stage in my life, I’m probably not going to head off into nuclear physics, diesel mechanics or stand-up comedy no matter what my life tries to tell me (well maybe stand-up comedy). What I CAN learn is how to live, minister, preach, write, visit and care about people in ways that are true to how God has made me.

One of the themes we’re stressing at church this month is discovering how God equipped you to serve. “We have different gifts, according to the grace given us”, Romans 12:6 says. And in Christ’s Body, the church, “God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be” (1 Corinthians 12:18).

So let your life speak. Or, more accurately, let God speak through your life. Maybe it won’t change what you do for a living. But it could change the life that flows out of you.

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What, Me a Priest? - Dennis Mullen - 10.29.06
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Series: Living Beyond Myself (part 2 of 4)

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Ever read anything by Flannery O’ Connor, a “southern-gothic” fiction writer who died of lupus when she was 39 and I was two months old? Philip Yancey refers to her a lot, so I have always meant to get to her books. Recently I have.

Flannery O’ Connor was a devout Catholic from Georgia (huh?) who became one of the best writers America has ever produced. In her brief career, she wrote two short novels Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away and a sizable collection of short stories. O’ Connor’s characters, especially in the two novels, are often described as “Christ-haunted”. That is, you get the idea that they’d rather Christ didn’t exist, but he does, and there’s no point fleeing to Tarshish to escape Him.

That may not sound very uplifting, but the fun of Flannery O’ Conner is in the reading. In interviews she admitted to making her “heroes” grotesque and even crazy in their religious affections in order to shock us into seeing how radical this whole Christ-idea is. She’s good at it too.

I got my O’ Connor books at the used book store (and I’ll loan them out) but they probably have them at the library too. Well, maybe.

Her BEST story: Judgement Day (her spelling). The best one to start with: Revelation. Her best novel: The Violent Bear It Away.

One of my friends recently commented that not all good “Christian” literature is sold at Lifeway. Flannery O’ Connor is exhibit A.

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The Great Gamble (audio only) - Dennis Mullen - 10.22.06
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Series: Living Beyond Myself (part 1 of 4)

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ChristianityToday.com recently published a list of the Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals. The idea is that these 50 books have been extremely influential whether we like it or not. I’m currently reading #46 (which I’ll write about sometime) and if this were a list of the 50 BEST books, it would be in the top five. I would never have heard of #1 were it not for one of our secretaries who said it was a favorite of hers many years ago, but if CT’s summary is correct, it has been very influential. There’s a lot of quality in this list and a few embarrassments. I won’t say which is which.

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If you’ve got some time and patience to invest, here’s an extremely enlightening article by New Testament scholar N. T. Wright called God, 9/11, the Tsunami, and the New Problem of Evil. Wright challenges prevailing views on war, God’s role in the world, and interpreting evil in light of the gospels. Well worth the time. (Thanks to David Osborn for pointing me to this article).

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A. W. Tozer said that every Christian must learn to bear one of two pains; either the pain of double-mindedness, or the pain of the crucified self. The pain of double-mindedness is the pain of a tooth-ache that lasts a lifetime. The pain is always there, filling you with resentment, anger, and envy. The pain of the crucified self, on the other hand, is a deep, terrible, surgical pain. But once it’s over, it’s over.I’ve had this quote from Tozer laying around on my hard drive for many years, and I’ve used it in sermons before (and I used it this Sunday). In all honesty, though, I haven’t been able to trace it down via Google, and I’m starting to wonder if he really said it. Like I said Sunday, I agree with all of this quote except the last line: “Once it’s over…” Surgical pain fades away, but I think I was the reason Jesus told us to take up the cross DAILY in Luke 9:23.

Yet I can’t quibble with the underlying truthfulness of Tozer’s words about double-mindedness. I find myself seeking God in the morning, and looking out for myself by lunch. I pray and I count my money; I worship and I assess the honors people give me; I call myself a servant and then get angry when people treat me like one.

And it’s an awful way to live. O wretched man that I am!

How many Christians do you know who REALLY practice dying to self? I DO know a few. I work with at least two. I know a few others in church, and most of them are older. Is it their life-and faith-experience that makes them as they are? Or is it that my generation and the younger ones are failing to produce that kind of Christian?

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Christianity - Self Improvement or Discipleship? Dennis Mullen - 10.15.06
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Series: Total Commitment (part 2 of 2)

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“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” T. S. EliotI just finished reading a book my brother loaned me called Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All Night Runner by Dean Karnazes. What an incredible life this guy is living!

Karnazes showed promise as a distance runner in high school, but he quit running after a conflict with his coach. On his thirtieth birthday, Karnazes experienced an “early midlife crisis” partly caused by personal tragedy. He told his wife: “I’m confused. I feel trapped by my routine of twelve-hour workdays. I’m not sure what’s important anymore. My fear is that I’ll wake up thirty years from now and be in the same place, only wrinkled and bald…and really fat. And bitter” (p. 51) Tell me about it, brother!

Later that night, Karnazes walked home from a party, put on some old sneakers, and began running. He ran all night long and wound up 30 miles from home with his feet bleeding but his spirit fully alive. Karnazes has been running since that night (it’s almost no exaggeration to say that). His book recounts in fascinating detail his first 100 mile ultramarathon (not to mention the 50 mile qualifier) and his first attempt at the Badwater Ultra in Death Valley (135 miles in 120-degree heat). He collapsed and passed out halfway through this race and didn’t finish, but has successfully run it many times since, and he won it in 2004. The climax of the book is his account of a 199 mile run at a relay race designed for teams which he ran alone to raise money for a girl who needed a liver transplant.

Today (and I do mean today, Monday, October 9, 2006) the 43-year-old Karnazes ran the Route 66 Marathon in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A 26.2 mile marathon is no big deal for him, except that this was his 23^rd marathon in 23 days, and he is almost halfway through a spree of 50 Marathons in 50 States in 50 Days!

Karnazes doesn’t write from a Christian perspective. Running is his religion (and take note that his book does contain a moderate amount of foul language). But Karnazes offers a challenge from a seemingly decent guy and family man to those of us who get discouraged too often, quit too easily, and make excuses for ourselves. Even if I never run another 5K, I’d like to learn a lot from his example.

Here are some more Dean Karnazes links:
Dean’s blog for the 50 marathons…
Karnazes Completes 350-Mile Run on 10.18.05
Dean’s web site

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Christianity - Self Improvement or Discipleship? Dennis Mullen - 10.08.06
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Series: Total Commitment (part 1 of 2)

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“Human beings are explanation generators.”

So says Daniel Taylor in his book The Myth of Certainty (p. 22). He says that we generate explanations about what life means to give us security, and that (and this is the interesting and scary part) all explanations for life are self-verifying. That means that they all seem to be true, that we can find “evidence” to back them up.

Our house is currently under the attack of fruit flies. There used to be a theory that said that fruit spontaneously generated fruit flies. It isn’t true, but if I hadn’t been taught otherwise, I would THINK it was true. It’s an explanation that works. All I have to do is leave an apple out and I’ve got fruit flies.

People used to think that the universe revolved around the earth. It seems to do just that. If you picture the night sky as a black globe enclosing the earth with the stars painted on it, that works as an explanation for most of the universe. Only a few objects mess up that theory by moving against that black globe, including the sun, moon and planets (which is why they’re called “planets” or “wanderers”).

Explanations of all kinds “work” to explain life, and everybody has one - from staunch young-earth creationists to strict Darwinists, from radical Islamic clerics to shouting fundamentalist Christian preachers to left-leaning atheists, from the Amish in Lancaster who stoically mourn the recent school shooting (and put it in God’s hands) to the baffled worldly reporters who sip Starbucks Chai Tea Lattes in front of their farmhouses…we all know how to explain the world and we all have a group of friends around us who will affirm our explanation.

Doesn’t make it true, though.

I see these life-explanations at work in Christians around me:

• Money doesn’t buy happiness. Money and Christ buy happiness.
• Pursuit of pleasure is empty…unless you go to church every other Sunday. Then pursuit of pleasure is quite admirable.
• The greatest commands of the faith? Learn to love yourself so you can love your neighbor and give ten percent of a tithe to God’s work.

Daniel Taylor: “Once in operation, a belief system processes all information, all evidence in its own terms, appropriating that which verifies its outlook and defusing or ignoring anything else” (p.23).

Remember, friends…there are many people who will affirm your version of the truth, for now anyway.

And then there is One who is Truth Himself.

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HP is promoting a new slimming feature on their digital cameras. The before-after pictures are impressive, but when you watch the demo at HP’s site, you can see the distortion take place. CBS took flak in late August for slimming down Katie Couric in a publicity photo.

I learned of the HP camera feature at Church Marketing, er, Stinks, a site devoted to evaluating and improving the way we promote churches. This is a good, short article on how dumb advertising campaigns may generate buzz but they hurt more than they help.

BTW, HP has been in the tech and business news lately for an unethical and probably illegal leak probe conducted against journalists, employees and HP directors.

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Gifts (audio only) - John Pryor - 10.1.06
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