Mudshot Eyes

“Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don’t believe in God and they can prove He doesn’t exist, and some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it’s about who is smarter, and honestly I don’t care.”
– Donald Miller, in Blue Like Jazz

I love this comment because I have felt this way many times. When someone presents an opposing view on God and reality, we quickly become defensive and move quickly to get our point across, sometimes with a lot of anger (or more likely, fear).

Instead of moving in for the argumentative kill, we can defuse a combative discussion if we ask questions to understand what a person is saying and to discover what life experiences led them to their beliefs.  We would be more closely imitating Jesus if we sought to know a person’s story instead of seeking only to disassemble their argument. 

“But doesn’t the Bible say to always be prepared to give a defense?”

Actually, the verse in 1 Peter 3:15 says that we must be “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (ESV).   This is from the disciple who was known for his “defense” of Jesus in an olive grove where he cut off a man’s ear with his sword.  Like Peter, our efforts to defend Jesus sometimes end up leaving someone wounded, in need of the touch of Jesus to heal them.

Peter’s letters show that his approach to defending the faith had radically changed since that day in the olive grove.  There are no complicated arguments about proving God’s existence to someone and no martial arts training to learn how to cleanly cut off an opponent’s ear.  Peter’s school of faith-defense requires the answer for only one question: “Why do you have hope?”

What would your answer be?

I’m sitting near the magazine section at Border’s Bookstore right now and I’m noticing how important it is to be liked by a large numbers of people who don’t really know you. It’s not important in any real sense, but in the world of magazines, entertainment and politics it is very important.

I have a few friends who say that they have already decided on who they are voting for in November’s presidential election. When I dig a little deeper to find out why, I discover that they simply “like” one candidate more than another.

A survey I recently heard about asked which candidate would be more enjoyable to hang out with at a bar-b-que. What a ridiculous question! When voting for a person to be the new leader of the most powerful free country on Earth, it is important to have more reason than the question of who would be nicer to hang out with on July Fourth.

This won’t be the first time our country has turned the presidential election into a likeability contest and it won’t be the last. Perhaps we could begin to turn the tide by examining what we believe about how our country was founded and how it should run. Likeability contests are fine in high school, but for a presidential election they just won’t cut it.

(For the record, I’m not sure I “like” either of the two major candidates.)

whether it be Barack Obama or John McCain

I remember birthdays as a kid, and how it always felt so good to add one year to the scorecard that was my age. The bigger the number got, the closer I thought I’d be to the day when someone important told me that I was OK. I was just waiting for someone to say, “You are grown up now, and you are going to make it on your own––you’ve got what it takes.”

I continued that pattern through college and graduate school. I was still trying to figure out if there was any built-in purpose to my life, but I acted like I had it all together, like I had all the answers. While I waited for some final word on my worth, I treated relationships with the carelessness of a teenager, and did very little growing up in my twenties.

When my 30th birthday came, I was still just like that little kid, marking a number on his scorecard. Secretly, I marked this one down darker than the others. I just knew that 30 would be the one. This was the year that people would treat me like a grown up and finally start telling me those magic words: “Congratulations on turning 30. You’ve finally got what it takes now.”

It never happened. I was older, but in many ways still foolish, immature, and unable to see it. My birthday had absolutely nothing to do with my true maturity.

At some point I had to acknowledge to myself and to God that I was waiting on other people to provide only what He could. My shallow way of measuring my worth had left me confused and insecure, so I began to face how weak my crutch was.

I’ve quit using a scorecard to count birthdays and I have become increasingly convinced that God doesn’t give a damn how old we are. His desire for us is to “go on to maturity,” as the book of Hebrews puts it. The Message version is especially colorful:

Milk is for beginners, inexperienced in God’s ways; solid food is for the mature, who have some practice in telling right from wrong.

So come on, let’s leave the preschool fingerpainting exercises on Christ and get on with the grand work of art. Grow up in Christ. The basic foundational truths are in place: turning your back on “salvation by self-help” and turning in trust toward God;

(Hebrews 5:13-6:1)

Since my number of calendar years doesn’t reflect my spiritual maturity, I’ve decided that my age is a meaningless abstraction for me, having no bearing on my present course. I still have a lot of growing up to do, including more scorecards that need to be burned.

(By the way, I turn 37 years old today, but who’s counting?)

Last week, I saw Expelled, the new movie from Ben Stein.  It has stirred up a mostly negative response from all sides. Here are a couple of quotes from recent reviews:

Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown University, was particularly harsh in his Op-Ed piece in the Boston Globe:

“Expelled is a shoddy piece of propaganda that props up the failures of Intelligent Design by playing the victim card. It deceives its audiences, slanders the scientific community, and contributes mightily to a climate of hostility to science itself. Stein is doing nothing less than helping turn a generation of American youth away from science.”

The review in Christianity Today recognized the limits of what the film tried to accomplish:

“The film succeeds in making the point that Intelligent Design should at least be on the table for discussion. But if you’re looking for ammunition to argue your Darwinist friends under the table, you may want to look elsewhere.”

I’ll put together my own review in the next few days and let you know if I agree with the comments above.  In the meantime, you can see what some are saying by Googling “Expelled reviews.”

Krista’s post from Tuesday is terrific. Check it out HERE. I’m highly biased, but I think it is a great piece.

The Mighty One, God the LORD,
speaks and summons the earth
from the rising of the sun to its setting.
~ Psalm 50:1

Most people remember Jonah as the one who was swallowed by a whale and then burped up like a bad yam. But there is a fascinating scene at the end of the story where Jonah finds a nice spot to rest for a while under the shade of a tree, protected from the hot sun. Overnight, God decides to send a worm to bore into its trunk and cause it to wither by morning.

This left Jonah in the sweltering heat, cooking his temperament to the boiling point. I CAN RELATE. In the lower right hand corner of my computer screen I have the current forecast: “Tue: 98° F”, followed by the ominous red thermometer icon. Sorry for being such a wuss, but I hate this weather! Typically, have glowing reviews of nature’s ability to point us to the glory and character of God, but I have to say that I struggle with that when we are knocking on the 100-degree mark.

However, God’s words to Jonah bring me back to center:

The sun came up and God sent a hot, blistering wind from the east. The sun beat down on Jonah’s head and he started to faint. He prayed to die: “I’m better off dead!”

Then God said to Jonah, “What right do you have to get angry about this shade tree?”

Jonah said, “Plenty of right. It’s made me angry enough to die!”

GOD said, “What’s this? How is it that you can change your feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that you did nothing to get? You neither planted nor watered it. It grew up one night and died the next night.”

Even though it’s not the main point of this passage, I am reminded that God is the One who lit the fire of the sun when it first came into being. It is a picture of God’s untamed power, even when it is hot as hell (perhaps especially then).

Before I run and hide into my air conditioned office tomorrow, I’m going to try and pause my grumblings to see God’s character through the sweat. It may be just the relief I need from the heat.