Camping Alone

“Oh… that’s weird… What did you do?”

A few weeks ago, I went camping all by myself. I paid for my campsite, I backpacked to my site, set up my tent, collected fire wood, and built a fire all by myself. Not only was I by myself on my campsite, but I was the only person in the entire campground for both nights.

The reason I’m posting about this is because when I tell people about it, the response is usually, “Oh… that’s weird… What did you do?” Now, if you are a contemplative introvert like I am, then you will realize how bizarre a statement and absurd a question that is. You are probably thinking, “You think that’s weird? That sounds like paradise!”

And for me, it was.

The very afternoon I left for my trip, I had just finished the last of my major, pre-finals assignments and submitted it online. The previous week had been extremely stressful, and I wanted to go be alone to pray, journal, and think. It’s my way of unwinding. While I don’t feel the need to justify my trip, I would like to answer the question: what did you do?

First of all, I fasted. My camping trip began Sunday and ended Tuesday morning. I started fasting on Saturday and ended my fast Monday afternoon, so I fasted a total of two and a half days. It was a great and tangible way to humble myself and acknowledge my dependence on God. He is my true and only sustenance; and nourishing my soul is, in the most literal sense, infinitely more important than nourishing my body. The spiritual food of Christ’s body offered on the cross is all I will ever need, and without it I am utterly incapable to have any lasting joy or satisfaction.

Also, I did a great deal of communing with God through His creation. I looked for the best spots to watch the sunrise and the sunset. As I laid down and watched the trees blow in the breeze up high above me, I admired God’s creativity as I thought about the beauty of the changing light throughout the day as the sun slid across the sky. At night, when I felt spooked, I thought about how the good and knowable God who created the day is the same good, and unknowable God with frightening, hidden aspects who created the night. God created my eyes and He created the trees, so I thought about how God tenderly cares for us in the way that He gave us a soul that sees the beauty of the trees.

In short, It was a time to refocus my heart on the things that are truly important before I allow the merely temporary things to hammer me into the ground and smother me. It was a time for me to reorder the priorities of my heart and mind by prioritizing the Gospel and my Creator.

Chasing Boxes and Chesterton

Today, while wheeling the trash bin full of cardboard boxes and pieces of boxes to the dumpster at work, the wind started blowing. Several boxes flew out of the bin across the parking lot. Chasing them allowed me to provide some entertainment to all the passengers in cars in line for the drive-thru. At first I was angry, but I thought of this essay “On Running After One’s Hat” by G.K. Chesterton and smiled:

I feel an almost savage envy on hearing that London has been flooded in my absence, while I am in the mere country. My own Battersea has been, I understand, particularly favoured as a meeting of the waters. Battersea was already, as I need hardly say, the most beautiful of human localities. Now that it has the additional splendour of great sheets of water, there must be something quite incomparable in the landscape (or waterscape) of my own romantic town. Battersea must be a vision of Venice. The boat that brought the meat from the butcher’s must have shot along those lanes of rippling silver with the strange smoothness of the gondola. The greengrocer who brought cabbages to the corner of the Latchmere Road must have leant upon the oar with the unearthly grace of the gondolier. There is nothing so perfectly poetical as an island; and when a district is flooded it becomes an archipelago.

Some consider such romantic views of flood or fire slightly lacking in reality. But really this romantic view of such inconveniences is quite as practical as the other. The true optimist who sees in such things an opportunity for enjoyment is quite as logical and much more sensible than the ordinary “Indignant Ratepayer” who sees in them an opportunity for grumbling. Real pain, as in the case of being burnt at Smithfield or having a toothache, is a positive thing; it can be supported, but scarcely enjoyed. But, after all, our toothaches are the exception, and as for being burnt at Smithfield, it only happens to us at the very longest intervals. And most of the inconveniences that make men swear or women cry are really sentimental or imaginative inconveniences – things altogether of the mind. For instance, we often hear grown-up people complaining of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train. Did you ever hear a small boy complain of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train? No; for to him to be inside a railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a palace of poetical pleasures. Because to him the red light and the green light on the signal are like a new sun and a new moon. Because to him when the wooden arm of the signal falls down suddenly, it is as if a great king had thrown down his staff as a signal and started a shrieking tournament of trains. I myself am of little boys’ habit in this matter. They also serve who only stand and wait for the two fifteen. Their meditations may be full of rich and fruitful things. Many of the most purple hours of my life have been passed at Clapham Junction, which is now, I suppose, under water. I have been there in many moods so fixed and mystical that the water might well have come up to my waist before I noticed it particularly. But in the case of all such annoyances, as I have said, everything depends upon the emotional point of view. You can safely apply the test to almost every one of the things that are currently talked of as the typical nuisance of daily life.

For instance, there is a current impression that it is unpleasant to have to run after one’s hat. Why should it be unpleasant to the well-ordered and pious mind? Not merely because it is running, and running exhausts one. The same people run much faster in games and sports. The same people run much more eagerly after an uninteresting; little leather ball than they will after a nice silk hat. There is an idea that it is humiliating to run after one’s hat; and when people say it is humiliating they mean that it is comic. It certainly is comic; but man is a very comic creature, and most of the things he does are comic – eating, for instance. And the most comic things of all are exactly the things that are most worth doing – such as making love. A man running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a wife.

Now a man could, if he felt rightly in the matter, run after his hat with the manliest ardour and the most sacred joy. He might regard himself as a jolly huntsman pursuing a wild animal, for certainly no animal could be wilder. In fact, I am inclined to believe that hat-hunting on windy days will be the sport of the upper classes in the future. There will be a meet of ladies and gentlemen on some high ground on a gusty morning. They will be told that the professional attendants have started a hat in such-and-such a thicket, or whatever be the technical term. Notice that this employment will in the fullest degree combine sport with humanitarianism. The hunters would feel that they were not inflicting pain. Nay, they would feel that they were inflicting pleasure, rich, almost riotous pleasure, upon the people who were looking on. When last I saw an old gentleman running after his hat in Hyde Park, I told him that a heart so benevolent as his ought to be filled with peace and thanks at the thought of how much unaffected pleasure his every gesture and bodily attitude were at that moment giving to the crowd. 

The same principle can be applied to every other typical domestic worry. A gentleman trying to get a fly out of the milk or a piece of cork out of his glass of wine often imagines himself to be irritated. Let him think for a moment of the patience of anglers sitting by dark pools, and let his soul be immediately irradiated with gratification and repose. Again, I have known some people of very modern views driven by their distress to the use of theological terms to which they attached no doctrinal significance, merely because a drawer was jammed tight and they could not pull it out. A friend of mine was particularly afflicted in this way. Every day his drawer was jammed, and every day in consequence it was something else that rhymes to it. But I pointed out to him that this sense of wrong was really subjective and relative; it rested entirely upon the assumption that the drawer could, should, and would come out easily. “But if,” I said, “you picture to yourself that you are pulling against some powerful and oppressive enemy, the struggle will become merely exciting and not exasperating. Imagine that you are tugging up a lifeboat out of the sea. Imagine that you are roping up a fellow-creature out of an Alpine crevass. Imagine even that you are a boy again and engaged in a tug-of-war between French and English.” Shortly after saying this I left him; but I have no doubt at all that my words bore the best possible fruit. I have no doubt that every day of his life he hangs on to the handle of that drawer with a flushed face and eyes bright with battle, uttering encouraging shouts to himself, and seeming to hear all round him the roar of an applauding ring.

So I do not think that it is altogether fanciful or incredible to suppose that even the floods in London may be accepted and enjoyed poetically. Nothing beyond inconvenience seems really to have been caused by them; and inconvenience, as I have said, is only one aspect, and that the most unimaginative and accidental aspect of a really romantic situation. An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. The water that girdled the houses and shops of London must, if anything, have only increased their previous witchery and wonder. For as the Roman Catholic priest in the story said: “Wine is good with everything except water,” and on a similar principle, water is good with everything except wine.

Waiting on the Lord

A couple of years ago, I was reading through a psalm every day, and I had never given much thought to what it means to wait on the Lord, but I was struck by how many times the psalmist vows to wait on the Lord and encourages the reader to also wait on the Lord. The words created images in my mind of passivity, someone waiting to be rescued. This isn’t entirely wrong I suppose, but it’s incomplete. The more I studied, the more I realized that waiting on the Lord is not passive like waiting for the bus. It’s an active waiting. It’s an act of faith where we trust in God’s faithfulness, love, justice, mercy, grace, etc, even though not everything has been tidied up like it will be at the end of time. What this means is that we are to live in a way that shows that we believe in the justice of God and His promises for His Children even though we are mistreated and hungry today. Waiting on the Lord involves remembering the faithfulness of God in our past and present and living in a way that believes in His faithfulness for tomorrow. Waiting on the Lord is active believing that God has given us all we need for today by not turning to other gods for fulfillment, or whatever your spiritual drug of choice may be. Waiting on the Lord is doing what is right and holy even if doing what is right and holy feels like it is starving our bodies or souls. If we truly believe that God is going to come through either in this life or the next for His children and Christ for His bride, then we would gladly starve today for God’s faithful promises of tomorrow. What this means is that if we believed that God has truly given us all we need for life today, then we would wait on Him by not sinning because sin shows our lack of trust in God’s promises of provision. It shows that we believe there is something else that we need right here and right now other than what He has provided.*

*I hope to unpack this a little more in the future. 

 

Pressing On

What is the purpose to pressing on in the face of suffering? Or what is the reason to continue to subject myself to suffering by pursuing good and forsaking all that is wrong? It’s not that I simply think Christianity works or that I think God is going to make my life better, but I simply believe it’s true.

So many times, my future seems so bleak and pointless. This is especially true when I see the reality of my own suffering and my inevitable future struggles and pains. That is when I am discouraged and stagnant. Maybe my focus is wrong, and I worry too much about my temporary happiness. Death cannot be the end. It can’t be! If it is, then all of my life is nothing more than a vain attempt to distract myself from its meaninglessness. And I fear that my religion is only this as well: a desire for meaning out of meaninglessness. When I step back and look at things, I think, “Well, there is no way to know for sure if there is a God or not, but believing in an all good God makes life, or its suffering followed by its inevitable end, an easier pill to swallow, so that is what I will believe.” I won’t lie and say that isn’t a motivation at all, because it does motivate me to believe somewhat. But I don’t want to believe something simply because it works for me. I want to believe something because it is true.

Christianity seems too good to be true sometimes. Everything being made right and death not really being death at all but simply the passing of my spirit to a new home. That I will continue to live, but free from agonizing contradictions in the way my belief meets practice. Freedom from suffering and pain and looming bodily death. It seems too good to be true.

But the alternative is to believe that things will not be made right and that all that really matters is my present moment. Everything would mean nothing. The question of whether or not there is reality outside of my own experience would mean nothing. It will all end when my bodily senses die, so it wouldn’t matter.

I don’t think that that reality is livable. I’ve heard it said that death and the ending of existence altogether makes us appreciate the present. I agree somewhat. But I believe that takes our appreciation of the moment to the extreme. If all that exists is what I see, touch, and feel, then what I take  in temporarily becomes of infinite importance. If there is nothing better than this coming, then I might as well take it all in. Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!

But the question then is what do I do with suffering? If my temporary moments are all I have, then what do I do when they are filled with pain and suffering and heartache and struggle? I would sink to despair, and I would simply want to die. If I were terminally ill, and my purpose was found in the degree of pleasure I derive from my experiences, then I would no longer see purpose, and I would desire death. The reason I wouldn’t be able to live with this system is because I can’t help but see the truth that all of humanity is terminally ill. We are all on our deathbeds. In 150 years, none of us will be living any longer. There will be new generations and a new set of families, hopes, and dreams. We might as well all die since everything we fight for will die with the death of humanity.

So, without some kind of underlying truth or meaning holding all things together, my temporary moments are ironically both infinitely important and meaningless at the same time.

With all of that being said, I don’t believe in Christianity because of what it can do for me or because I think it’s going to fix my life. I believe it because it’s true. I follow Jesus because I believe He is a real person, and He was telling the truth. I’m not going to go into an apologetic of why I believe Jesus, but if what Jesus said is true, if He died for us and raised himself from the dead, then my life is swallowed up in the shadow of Christ’s cross. What I mean is this: there is a bigger story than mine. I am a small part of something greater, and I am more than happy to submit to the greater story whether that means I suffer or not.

Christ said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die – ever. Do you believe this?” And I do believe this, but there is a battle at my core where I feel belief in Christ is constantly occupying only 51% of my heart while death and unbelief rage over the other 49%. Half of my heart believes Jesus, and I push forward with hopeful assurance and anticipation while half of my heart believes there is nothing more than my present moment and fearfully worships my present experiences.

I fight on because I believe God is winning the battle for my heart. And I can move on in spite of struggles and pain because I am okay with my life being lost in a bigger story than myself. The truth of Christ is worth it. Even when God calls us to suffer, it’s okay because His story has a good ending and the stories of His children all have good endings even though we die.

The Church and the Gay Community: My Two Cents

In case you didn’t know, Chick-fil-a has been involved in a controversy. Something about Dan Cathy being vocally opposed to gay marriage and Chick-fil-a donating money to Christian family organizations that happen to be against gay marriage. I work for Chick-fil-a, and all of this makes me tired.  I was partly happy about all the support for Chick-fil-a on Wednesday because they pay me.

To be honest, I think boycotts are silly. I know Christians who won’t eat at Ben and Jerry’s and now other people who will not eat at Chick-fil-a. I think this is silly because boycotters on both sides don’t think about the fact that Ben and Jerry’s employs conservative Christians and Chick-fil-a employs gays and liberals. Anytime I buy anything anywhere, my money is going to the employees, and I am sure they don’t all spend it in ways that I think are acceptable. People will profit off the poor by buying cheap foreign-made products but then abstain from a cup of ice cream or a sandwich because so-and-so donated money to this-or-that political organization. It’s all kind of silly. With that being said, I will continue to buy Ben and Jerry’s and Chick-fil-a and be thankful that I live in a country where the people (or most of them) fiercely care about protecting free speech.

With all of that being said, that isn’t the heart of what I want to write about. I really want to write about the issue of homosexuality. My fear is that most Christians went to Chick-fil-a on Wednesday, Aug 1 to simply show their stance on homosexuality. I completely support you if you went to Chick-fil-a to support freedom of speech (in light of mayors attempting to ban Chick-fil-a from their cities) and the employees. But I think Christians showing up in droves to Chick-fil-a simply to show their stances on homosexuality is a little too “us versus them”, and I don’t think that is the type of attitude Christians should foster.

Christians are relatively silent on the issue until something political happens. We had a marriage amendment passed here in NC not too long ago, and I wanted to write something like this, but I never got around to it. I simply didn’t vote. I wasn’t against the marriage amendment, but I didn’t have enough concern to go out and vote for it. Maybe I’m a bad Christian. But here is what I didn’t (and still don’t) like about all of this: the politics always seems to precede the love. The only interaction the majority of Christians have with the gay community is political followed by a “I have gay friends” or an exhortation to interact with and love the gay community. As much as I love my church and the pastor of my church, my church encouraged us to go out and vote for the amendment. It was after the amendment passed that my pastor put out a blog about loving our neighbors (gay or straight).

I’m not trying to be a grump. I loved and agreed with my pastor’s blog posts on this issue!

And before I get into this paragraph, you need to know that I know that we shouldn’t simply allow emotion to make all of our decisions, but I do think our hearts need to be engaged when people are involved. Let’s say you have a boy who is a young teenager, and he then realizes he is attracted to men. He spends years terrified and lonely trying to keep this huge secret wondering who he can talk to. He struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts because he feels there is no way out. His family and church are silent about it except for that time they voted against gay marriage. Finally, one day, after spending months gathering courage, he comes out to his family. All of his relationships are strained, and even though his family doesn’t ostracize him, there is a lot of added stress and pain because they don’t like his decision. He finds the friendships and support within the gay community that he’s been looking for all along, and he finally feels like he belongs somewhere. And how does the church respond? They vote in a way that bars him from marriage. Years of struggle, followed by gradual ostracism from the church, followed by loving acceptance by the gay community, followed by the church voting against the very community in which he has found love and acceptance. Then the church wonders why the gay community doesn’t feel the love.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not believe men having sex with men is morally right; so, obviously, I will not go out and march for gay marriage. I’m not sharing a sad story to get you to change your mind on the morality of the issue. What does concern me, however, is if your only interaction with the gay community is political. Christians feel they are doing their Christian duty by voting against gay marriage and then feel like they are sharing in the sufferings of Christ and being persecuted when they are accused of hate. While I do think the word “hate” is thrown around way to much (so I’m not going to accuse anyone of hatred), I do not think Christians are exactly “loving” toward the gay community. “Extreme neglect” or “nearly absolute carelessness” would probably be a better word or phrase than “hate”. Very little time is invested in relationships with the gay community, and there is very little concern for the stories and lives of gay people from Christians.

That’s my two cents.

Potato Faces

I am so funny!

One of my roommates bought some potatoes a while back that he never got to. Last night, I discovered an entire bag of sprouting potatoes in the bottom of my pantry! The parts that were sprouting reminded me of hair, so I decided to be creative. I drew faces on several of them with a sharpie, and Nick and I put them in different places around the kitchen and waited to see the response of our other roommates and to see how long it would take them to notice.

In the pantry:

In front of Cliff’s dishes (in the cabinet):

On top of the freezer:

In the freezer (Nick’s and my favorite):

And a different angle:

And the window sill above the sink:

Anyway, I’ve been slow on blogging, and I’m hoping to blog more this summer now that school is winding down.

My Greatest Good

Romans 8:28-30
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

I can’t understand or know the details of my greatest good. I am very small, and all of creation and time is too much for me to comprehend. Yet I still try to understand it all. I am tempted to ask endless strings of unanswerable why’s. I suppose they are not unanswerable, only the answers are incomprehensible in my little mind.

Demanding to know what I want to know when I want to know it is incredibly arrogant, and it is an attempt to put God, the creator of the universe and author of all life (including mine) under my feet. It is the creation demanding the submission of its Creator. While there are many things I do not know, there are two things I do know which make all the why’s insignificant.

1) God is good and I am not. God is infinitely righteous and holy, and I see my own wickedness in contrast. I am bad to my core. I see it clearly in my gut reactions.

2) I belong to God. Though I have become worthless, God didn’t simply overlook my sins; He has already punished Christ instead of me. My sins were not overlooked; they have already been paid for. And I have not only been adopted, but I have been born into God’s family. I now belong to God forever.

God is good; I am not. And by His grace, I am in His gentle and unyieldingly persistent hands.

So what is God’s greatest good for me? He wants to bear His image in me. It is restoration to my original purpose which I have ignored and rebelled against my whole life. Living for the creator of life is true living even if my body dies in pursuit of Him. It is that I will be turned from chasing death and chase after life no matter how painful it seems at the time.

My greatest good is not to be pain free and comfortable, or disease free and healthy, or to have all the money I need, or all the food I need; my greatest good is to learn the sufficiency of God’s grace and for my heart and soul to cling to the eternal Giver of Life.

If God is good, and I belong to Him, then I can trust that He is after my greatest good. Sometimes this comes through pain and other times through pleasure. And many times the pain seems disproportionate, so I find myself thinking that God is cruel. Of course, that is only because I don’t understand my sinfulness or the extent to which I chase after death daily, hourly, or even minute by minute, and I don’t understand how much my gracious, loving Father does not want that for His children.

For His children, God’s grace, because of Christ, is found everywhere: in pain and pleasure, friendship and loneliness, and wealth and poverty. God loves His children very much and has promised from before the beginning of time to conform them to the image of His Son.

One day, things will be restored and perfected. None of this is in vain. God works all things together for the good of His children. Do not waste your pain on hopelessness and fear, but use it to cultivate hope and faith. God actively cares for you minute by minute and by His grace gives you all you need for every moment to become a lover of Him, and He gently and persistently steers us away from death toward life.