Viking Restaurant

Some Perspective

I was pretty harsh on life in my last blog post. Sure things can be bad sometimes, but I think I was putting things in the worse possible light in order to overcompensate for my frustration. Church, family, community: yeah, these things can be frustrating but there is a lot of good there too. I was pretty convicted by Phillipians 4:4-7 yesterday:

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

I realize that where I have been dropping the ball first and foremost is in the area of proactively rejoicing and praying about my anxieties. I let the church down, my family down, and my friends down more than they could ever let me down when I refuse to pray for them and when I refuse to rejoice for them. And you know, I really do have great reasons to rejoice in all three of these areas. I wouldnt want to suggest otherwise. But I do get overwhelmed sometimes by the the things that dont work, so much so that I forget about the things that do work. I guess the holidays just intensify this problem. But yeah, feeling better and feeling thankful.

Thoughts on Thanksgiving

I hate to admit, but I think at the end of the day it was a pretty wretched Thanksgiving weekend. I havent felt thankful all weekend. For some reason, Ive been overwhelmed by opposite thoughts: bitterness, frustration, exaspersation, and just a general, all-encompassing feeling of being ticked off.

Dont get me wrong. It was a great weekend in many ways with a lot of great things to be thankful for. I got to see a lot of good friends. I went to Birmingham to see my friends Matt and Brae at Matt's family's house. I spent Thanksgiving there with my mom and we had a great time. Then I had two good friends from California, Jeff and Faith, come into town and we did some really fun things together along with my friends John, Jade, and Jana. We went to the Mountain Opry, did some karaoke, and ate breakfeast together at the Cracker Barrel the next morning. And then yesterday evening I got to hang out with my friend Cole from Boston. It was the kind of weekend where I truly had a lot to be thankful for. I didnt have to work and I got to spend some time with good friends doing fun things.

But I just was not feeling thankful about life this weekend. I struggled pretty much the whole time to keep my spirits up. Even at church this morning, as people got up to give testimonies about what they were thankful for, I just wanted to leave.

It sucks to be in a pissed mood when the weather is so nice. I'll probably feel better in the next few days and then the weather will just get rotten. The last few days the weather has been amazing. Crisp, cool air with just enough sunshine and beautiful fall leaves. I should have spent every moment of it outside. Instead, with the exception of church today and a half hour run, Ive spent the entire day indoors. I havent been in the mood to go outside. I havent been in the mood to do much at all.

It all comes down to the fact that I am sick of dysfunction in my life and in the lives of those around me. Im sick of pretending I have a family that deserves such a name. Im sick of pretending the church can work for me and this so called family when it consistently lets us down and says nothing and does nothing to intervene in our lives. Im sick of hearing the word "community" spoken of and touted by my peers when all I see around me is self-satisfied laziness and a refusal to truly edify and speak the truth to one another. I've seen "community" in this town operate as nothing much more than a refuge for sinners who want to continue in their sin and have others allow them to feel good about it. There are Christians in this town who are destroying one another's lives, refusing to forgive each other, and continuing in a lifestyle of absolute, unrepentant selfishness and there are no Pauls out there to write letters to our churches to admonish us and to command us to repent, to forgive, and to love. Im so frustrated that nobody will say what needs to be said or do what needs to be done, including myself. And thats how I feel this weekend. Not thankful. Just pissed off.

Of course, I dont actually mean what I say. I dont feel this way all the time. Tomorrow, you could refute me on the entire last paragraph that I just wrote and I would probably agree with you. But I do feel this way sometimes, and sometimes I am just dying to be able to say it to somebody. But I honestly do not know when I should say it, how I should say it, or who I should say it to. All I can do is throw it out there on my blog to be misunderstood by people I dont even know. But I'll post it for now, and see if it helps. Its certainly good to write it out and work through my thoughts.

With all of that said, I do want to ultimately confess, even when I dont feel it, that my heart should overflow with thanks to Christ, who is real, who is Lord, who will reconcile all things to Himself, and who does offer us a hope and a future. Basically all of my thoughts previous to this paragraph are mere hot air when you account for the fact that all things, even the things that seem so dyfunctional to us now, will ultimately work together to bring glory to Christ and peace to His creation.

To Live Is To Fly

I've been meaning to post these lyrics on my blog for some time. Now is as good as ever. I sang this one year at the Catacombs Folk Festival. I didnt do it any justice, but somebody was asking me about this song last weekend because they remembered me singing it, and so its been on my mind. Great song.

To Live Is to Fly
Written by: Townes Van Zandt

Wont say I love you, babe,
Wont say I need you, babe,
But Im gonna get you babe
And I will not do you wrong.
Livings mostly wasting time
And Ill waste my share of mine
But it never feels too good,
So lets dont take too long.
Youre soft as glass
And Im a gentle man;
We got the sky to talk about
And the earth to lie upon.

Days, up and down they come
Like rain on a congadrum
Forget most, remember some
But dont turn none away.
Everything is not enough
And nothin is too much to bear.
Where you been is good and gone
All you keep is the getting there.

To live is to fly
Low and high,
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the sleep out of your eyes.

Goodbye to all my friends
Its time to go again
Think of all the poetry
And the pickin down the line
Ill miss the system here
The bottoms low
And the trebles clear
But it dont pay to think too much
On things you leave behind.
I will be gone
But it wont be long
I will be a' bringin back the melodies
And rhythm that I find.

We all got holes to fill
Them holes are all thats real.
Some fall on you like a storm,
Sometimes you dig your own.
The choice is yours to make,
Time is yours to take;
Some sail upon/dive into the sea,
Some toil upon the stone.

To live is to fly
Low and high,
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the sleep out of your eyes;

Shake the dust off of your wings
And the tears out of your eyes.

Busy Weekend

I feel like Ive done a ton this weekend. Thats primarily because it was another wedding weekend, with a lot of people rolling into town, and a lot of activities to be a part of. Here are some things that I did:

1) John's bachelor party on Friday night: It was held in a warehouse, which made it particulalry memorable. Try to imagine a big room with all kinds of random items stored away on metal shelves, and then imagine the lights being dimmed down and somebody cranking Michael Jackson's "Thriller" on the imported stereo system. Add a bunch of Belz cousins dancing the night away and you sort of get the idea. I have to hand it to John for throwing a party at his workplace. Makes me want to have a dance party in the Probasco building where I work.

2) The Ohio State/Michigan game at Hoppy's: Im not a huge sports fanatic but I had been hearing about this game all week as being "the biggest single game of the decade" and so I felt compelled to join my friends at the local pub on Saturday afternoon fully expecting to see a crowded room of people with their eyes glued to the screen for this singularly spectacular college football event. Much to my surprise and to the utter disappointment of my friends, the local Southern bar crowd had already decided that the Auburn/Alabama game was more significant than the Ohio State/Michigan game could ever hope to be. Lets just say there was a lot of tension in that room. We were able to watch the game on a separate screen but we werent allowed to have sound. I sensed some serious Civil War after-effect in the whole thing.

3) Mary Catherine and John's wedding: It was really beautiful. One thing that really impressed me was watching Mary Catherine's dad perform the ceremony. Part of me wonders if we should let all dads do that for their daughters. It was a really cool thing to see. The Belz family choir in the balcony was quite impressive as well.

4) The reception: More Belz family dancing, which is one of the most hilarious things to watch. It makes me want to have the entire Belz family come to my wedding, just so I can have them around to sing and dance. I dont know why you would ever want to have a wedding without dancing. And now that I have seen the Belz family dance, I dont know why you would ever want to have a wedding without Belz's.

5) Infradig concert: Imagine a good chunk of this wedding reception crowd heading over to one of the dingiest little rooms in town to hear one of their cousins play bass for Infradig Ensemble. Thats pretty much what happened. Great show!

6) New James Bond movie: Saw it today with some friends. Definitely one of the best Bond movies Ive ever seen. Not that I can remember too many of the ones that I have seen. But yeah, this one was pretty intense and enjoyable.

Just a few highlights of the weekend! Was certainly a fun one!

Be Invincible and Lift Weights

I just got back home from working out. I started working out twice a week at the end of the summer and its been a great experience, but I go through these weekly cycles of utter soreness that have started to become a regular part of my life. While i was traveling, I didnt get to work out at all, so coming back into it for the past couple weeks has been tough. I did these deadlifts on Tuesday night and now my back is killing me. It all reminds me of a Bagpipe article that I wrote back in the day on working out for the glory of God. Now you have to understand that Ive worked out more in the past few months than I have in the rest of my life put together, so this article was a little bit tongue-in-cheek for me. I was just feeling really "pumped up" that week I guess. I certainly didnt apply it at the time. But you might enjoy reading it. Its entitled "Be Invincible and Lift Weights" and it was written by a 155 pound weakling who spent more time reading 18th century Scottish philosophers than he ever did in a gym.

Be Invincible and Lift Weights
By Todd Willison

One thing that most college students seem to suffer from is a lack of exercise. During my first few years as a college student, I rarely exercised. I often set big goals for myself at the beginning of a semester, but I quickly buckled under the pressure of studies and an overactive mental life that caused me to find more pleasure in a comfortable room where I could contemplate my existence than in a gym.

I could attribute my avoidance of the gym entirely to work overload or to unsharpened life management skills, but I know in my mind that another factor was at work: the factor of fear. Let s face it. I still have nightmares of the sixth grade when going to gym class meant two things: humiliation and pain. Yes, I was a skinny geek and the bigger kids in the class discovered that quickly enough to pinpoint me as the locker room punching bag. I have just recently realized that my years of seeking bodily protection from the principal indeed had a prolonged effect on my mental conception of physical fitness. In my mind, to be physically fit meant to avoid the gym at all costs so as to avoid any risk of bodily harm. Needless to say, I did not try out for any sports in high school.

I wish I could say that my middle school fear of exercise was wiped away by the time I reached my early twenties, but that isn’t the case. Last year, I was twenty-three, five years out of high school, and entering the gym still felt like having a cross-cultural experience. But, thankfully, things have started to change. As of this semester, I have reached a point where I can walk into the gym and face the iron. I still struggle with my fear of the iron. I hear the iron trying to intimidate me, saying, Run away, fool, before I beat you up like the big kids in gym class!
But my perspective is changing. I am beginning to realize that the iron’s opposition to me is actually its most benevolent gift. Henry Rollins points out this insight, saying "When the Iron doesn’t want to come off the mat, it s the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling it wouldn’t teach you anything. That which you work against will always work against you nothing good comes without work and a certain amount of pain."

I find this perspective to be Biblical. Hebrews 12 says, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.”

We often apply this verse to the spiritual life, what Charlie Meadows calls the life of the mind, but I believe it can also be applied to the physical life. In fact, the two are so intertwined that I don’t believe that one can improve in one area without improving in the other. There are numerous passages in the Bible that call Christians to a lifestyle of spiritual discipline by using physical imagery. In II Timothy 2, Paul calls Timothy to be a good soldier, a committed athlete, and a hardworking farmer. Hebrews 12 uses the imagery of laying aside every weight to win the race. Most notably, Paul says in I Corinthians 9:27, “Therefore I run thus, not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.” In each of these passages, imagery of physical laboring is used to express what spiritual labor should look like in our lives. Spiritual discipline is hard work. It takes labor and extreme dedication of the mind to devote oneself daily to the activities of prayer, Bible reading, and acts of mercy. So how can one expect to understand how to discipline oneself spiritually in these areas without having a corresponding understanding of physical discipline, which is the descriptive mirror of spiritual discipline?

I am trying to make the following point: If you are having trouble committing to spiritual disciplines, try lifting some weights. If you have difficulty delving into the Scriptures on a daily basis, get out and run the cross-country trails. Put yourself in the mindset of discipline. Face your fear and feel the pain. It is quite amazing to cross a personal threshold and see results.
All of a sudden, you have perspective, a point of reference for what discipline looks like. Remember my fear of the iron and how I thought the iron only wanted to hurt me. I allowed my misconceptions of the past to affect my future. It is the same way in our spiritual lives. We allow guilt, regret, and hatred of our past failures to keep us from exercising our souls with the tools of grace that God has given us: the bench press of prayer, the ab machine of faith, and the treadmill of the Word of God. Remember, that when these tools work against us it is actually for our good. We do not have to be afraid.

II Timothy 1:7 says, For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind, and I John 4:18 reminds us that perfect love casts out all fear.
It is true that our spiritual condition should be the primary motivating factor for taking care of our bodies. We take care of our bodies because we are a temple of the Holy Spirit. But it works the other way around. Facing the gym now and confronting the iron head on will help you in developing the Iron Mind, the mindset you need to be one who takes the act of discipline, physical or spiritual, very seriously. Don’t be like me, avoiding the gym out of fear or laziness. Remember Proverbs 12:24, which says, “The lazy man does not roast what he took in hunting, but diligence is man s precious possession.” Remember that by God’s grace you are invincible, for if God is for you, who can be against you? So be invincible and lift weights. Run the race, fight the fight, and have a little bit of gusto. Strengthen those feeble arms and weak knees. The iron is calling you and to refuse it now is to flee from faith into fear. Just remember. The iron can never hold you back. It can only take you forward.

No Penetration Without Procreation

I went to Dr. Kelly Kapic's Tuesday night class on Christian Ethics last night, up at Covenant College, to hear a debate about birth control, or as Kapic put it "the use of contraceptives." It was a particularly rousing debate leading Kapic to say at one point "You guys really are passionate....passionate about sex!" One side argued that the use of contraceptives (not including the rhythm method) was wrong because the ability to procreate is a gift from God that we should never selfishly deny. Their mantra was "no penetration without procreation!" This was by far the harder position for the rest of the class to accept, so Kapic really challenged the class to see the position in a more positive light. There are some really strong arguments in favor of this idea. 1) There is something wrong and hurtful to society about the modern notion that sex is a purely recreational activity. We treat sex too casually when we take the primary function of sex, to procreate, out of the equation. 2) While there are other purposes for sex (the consummation of love between two people, mutual pleasure, the development of deeper intimacy), the fact is sex will very likely produce life when allowed to take its natural course. Kapic made the good point that the burden of proof in this debate should be on those who want to interfere with this natural course, with creation's design and function, not the other way around. 3) I think there is something to the fact that Christians really are not having enough babies. Richard Pratt was at Covenant last week, and he made the point that the primary reason that Islam is growing so much as a world religion is not conversions. It is due to the fact that Muslims have a lot of babies. Christians, who in the western world are typically the more affluent individuals in society, tend to have less children so that they can enjoy the niceties of life more. But if Christians dont watch it, we could see a major diminishing of our numbers just by the fact that we arent having enough kids. There is something to the fact that we need to take the command "to be fruitful and multiply" a lot more seriously.

On the other hand, I dont think we can take the position that we should never self-consciously deny procreation in sex. There is a little thing called "wisdom" in the Bible that is supposed to help us make good decisions without having to resort to formulaic mandates. We have the ability as human beings to carefully weigh all the factors in any given situation and make the decision that best glorifies God given the set of circumstances. And I do think that there are probably scenarios where it is good for a couple to continue to have marital relations (it would be unhealthy to deny each other) and yet prevent procreation. We arent bunny rabbits. We are humans with rational and moral faculties and we have to use them constantly. There is probably no easy rule in this debate. I wouldnt say "no penetration without procreation" but I wouldnt say "prevent procreation as much as you want." There is some middle ground in there somewhere.

Goodbye Aaron Mesh!

I stole this pic off of Kiko's blog. We sent Aaron Mesh off to Portland, Oregon this weekend, and anybody who knows him should know what a significant loss this will be to our community. Its truly the end of some kind of era. At least he will still get syndicated in The Pulse so I can continue to read his great film reviews.

Calvin on the First Commandment

Im going to teach the adult Sunday School class at my church this Sunday and I am supposed to speak on the first commandment. Ive been reading John Calvin this morning to get some ideas, and I really like some of the things he has to say. In his sermon on Deuteronomy 5:4-7, which includes the first commandment, he chooses to place a lot of significance on the fact that God, in delivering his law to Moses, spoke to Moses "face to face." Now I have been sitting here all morning trying to think of a uniqe angle on this topic, something I can say about the first commandment that would stand out and would really get to the heart of the matter. I mean try walking into a library to research a topic like the first commandment. There is no end to the amount of research and commentary that has been devoted to this simple phrase: "you shall have no other gods before me." But I think Calvin really does cut to the core of the issue by not focusing so much on what the commandment says but on how it was delivered. This commandment comes to us from the Lord, who brought Israel out of Egypt and out of the land of slavery, and who spoke to Moses "face to face out fire on the mountain." So the significance of the first commandment is that it is preceded by what is possibly the most powerful and unique declaration of God to man in the history of this world: "I am the Lord your God!"

When I really think about it, I dont think there is any other time in the Bible that God reveals himself so directly, so forcefully to man. God made similar statements to Abraham saying things like "I am the Lord who brought you out of the land of the Chaldeans" but we dont really know a lot about how God spoke to Abraham. It seems that God spoke to Abraham through visions and through theophanies, but we dont ever get a real clear account of the Lord speaking to Abraham "face to face" the way the Moses encounter is described.

When Christ came to earth, it can of course be said that many people spoke to God face to face, because Christ was indeed God, but it was a different kind of thing. Christ never once stood up in a crowd and shouted to them "I am the Lord Your God!" He often spoke in parables, and he used Scripture a lot to speak of himself, and he associated Himself a lot with the Father declaring that He was "one" with the Father, but He never just downright declared Himself to be "the Lord Your God."

So what is so unique about the delivering of the first commandment is that it represents one of the most concrete acts of revelation of God to man. God declares "face to face" that He alone is God and He alone must be worshipped. Think about what the Bible would be without those few verses. Jesus never said anything so declarative about Himself. We have to learn to associate Jesus with the God of Exodus by the connections He Himself made. But without God declaring Himself at some point in history that He is indeed the Lord, the one and only true God, the rest of the Bible would be like an intricate web of truth without a center to hold it all together. We need that fundamental revelation, that central moment in time when God actually told us who He is, to serve as the basis for all of the revelation that comes after it.

These are just a few thoughts for now. Hope Im not way off, but I have to go now!

We Must Go Through the Cross

My friend Jason was talking to me last night about the cross of Christ, and about how any true joy in this life must flow from a true understanding and acceptance of the meaning of that cross. I dont want to get too abstract here, but to put it simply, Jason seemed to be saying that we have to first be really consumed by death in order to really gain the joy of real life. I think there is a lot to what he was saying, and it coincides with a lot of my thoughts about the Christian life in the past year. I think a lot of Christians, American Christians particularly, want to be happy and they want that happiness to be immediately accessible. They love hearing about the resurrection and the new life and the new heavens and new earth and they want to be able to rejoice in those things and feel good about them immediately. But they dont want to take the time to really mediate on the cross, on death, on the fleeting nature of this world and all that is around them. That kind of thinking just depresses them and most people in my day and age dont like to be depressed. Ive often thought there is something wrong with being depressed if Im a Christian. If I go to a big charismatic church where everybody is jumping up and down and singing really upbeat songs and raising their hands in the air, I always find myself asking "What is wrong with me? Why cant I feel that happy? Why cant I let myself go more and experience that kind of jubilation?" But Im beginning to think its not necessarily wrong to feel a certain kind of healthy depression in this life. After all, we are carrying around a body of death that is constantly being mortified by the Spirit. Death is in the very air we breathe. It constantly surrounds us. We dont like to look at it very much. Thats why we put our dying in hospitals and nursing homes where we dont have to look at them. But death is everywhere. All that we have or have hoped for in this life will ultimately fade like the grass of the field. It will whither and there is only one real hope we have for anything beyond this temporary life: resurrection. But how do we get to the resurrection? Well, how did Christ get to it? Christ's resurrection came through the cross. He had to die so that he might live again. And He was the firstfruits of our resurrection so that if we want to live as Christ lives, we must die His death. This is something we must do every day and it will of course affect our mood. Death hurts and it saddens the soul. And so Christians bear that sadness in their daily being. But that death and sadness results in the one kind of true joy that Christians can and should experience each and every day of their life, the joy of ressurection from the dead. I think a lot of Christians want to be resurrected but they dont want to die. They want to experience joy but they dont want to experience pain. And they dont understand that the two are inseparable as they are in Christ. We are a dying race, but a chosen race who hopes in the resurrection of Christ guaranteed to us through His Word and by His Spirit.

The Last Days Are Here

The last days are here. So let us abase ourselves and stand in awe of God's patience, lest it turn out to be our condemnation. Either let us fear the wrath to come or let us value the grace we have: one or the other. Only let our lot be genuine life in Jesus Christ. Do not let anything catch your eye besides him....You will not overlook any of this if you have a thorough belief in Jesus Christ and love him. That is the beginning and end of life: faith the beginning and love the end. And when the two are united you have God, and everything else that has to do with real goodness is dependent on them.

-Letter of Ignatius to the Ephesians

Dear Rock Creek Fellowship,

I am writing you today to request that you would consider taking me under the care of your session for the purpose of providing me with spiritual guidance, confirmation, and prayer as I begin to pursue a perceived calling in my life to gospel ministry in the church or in some church-related setting. The desire to pursue this calling through seminary studies has been a persistent one in my life ever since my eighteenth year when I first discussed my sense of calling with my former church leaders in southern Florida. Since that time, I have made most if not all of my major decisions in life with a view toward preparing myself for this work. Over the years I have encountered various levels of doubt and confusion concerning this calling, but presently my desire in this area is stronger than ever. I have come to realize that this desire to preach or teach the gospel in some church-related setting is the foremost vocational desire in my life and I can think of no other alternative that has so forcefully pressed itself upon my heart.

I completed my undergraduate degree at Covenant College over three years ago, and I have not yet been able to enter seminary. I would say that this has been most primarily due to two main factors: financial need and spiritual unpreparedness. I have never wanted to go to seminary "just to go," and so I could never justify the financial expense, especially in light of my current indebtedness from college, if I did not feel wholeheartedly prepared to pursue seminary studies and spiritually confirmed in my decision to do so. I have rather spent the past several years gaining a variety of vocational experiences and learning to handle deeper levels of responsibility. I have been tested in many ways, and I have become more acquainted with my own sense of spiritual giftedness in certain areas.