Author Archives: Dave

I stumbled onto a new perspective on screwing up this morning.

I was reading Romans 6 and 7, trying to break out of the mode of looking at the Scripture analytically and theologically, and reading the flow of thought about us in relation to messing up, our old selves, our new selves in God, and the inability to reconcile the two. I guess I was thinking about habitual hang-ups (which all of us have at some level), and pondering the question that many Christ-followers ponder: if I know Him, why do I keep (insert repetitive problem here)-ing all the time?

A few weeks ago, I read part of Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy. Not a great book, but he does make a point about the habits of our physical selves opposing the desires of our spiritual and emotional selves. Exactly what Paul speaks of in the Romans passage. Willard interperets it (Paul’s langauge is difficultly phrased even for seminary grads, depending on how formal a translation you read) like this: our spirit hates whatever this hang-up or bad habit or addiction might be, but our physical selves (what Paul is describing as “the flesh”) returns to it habitually. It’s almost dissociative, like the dream where you’re standing outside of yourself watching yourself screw up.

And it occurred to me that God sees us in much the same manner as I used to see my clients when I was in the counseling field. They kept messing up, but I kept encouraging and supporting, hoping that they would have more and more time between the mess-ups. Eventually they did. I guess I had never seen God this way before. I’ve always seen Him pounding His desk in rage everytime I would drop the ball in this way. He’s not, though. He’s disappointed, certainly. But He’s encouraging, supporting, moving me along in successive approximations.

I suppose that, because I came from a denomination, I was so steeped in concepts of God’s wrath and subcultural exclusivity that I’ve never seen God as loving me and being in my corner on things. Makes me want to try harder.

Part of my church baggage, I guess. It’s amazing how our perspectives can be slanted away from the truth when church is done wrong.

For those artistic thinkers out there, I’ve stumbled onto this great podcast called The Kindlings Muse. Typically it consists of interviews with great thinkers and cultural innovators. Right now the series is a Dick Staubs interview with the late Stan Grenz.

I was listening to the latest installment today (occasionally groaning because Grenz was a theologian…let’s not go there again), and I was struck with this idea of being “someone who transforms culture.” As a writer, as a communicator, that’s my goal…to effect and infect our culture for the better, for God. But I’m trying to understand what that looks like. I’m trying to reconcile that with writing for money. Certainly, one must make a living, and my perspective on that has certainly changed now that I have a wife to support, and at some point (although the idea scares me beyond belief) will have children in the picture as well.

So, how am I influential? I’ve always enjoyed helping people. I’ve been a youth minister, I’ve been a counselor. I enjoyed all of the above. Somehow, though, working with people directly has lost its appeal, at least in those settings. Perhaps I don’t want to be encumbered by titles or positions. I think, though, that, if I have a calling from God, it is to be a communicator of truth. That communication can occur in many forms, whether interpersonal or as public address. But I know that I am drawn to do that, that I have a passion for it. I know that I will have a hole inside if I don’t.

Now, I just have to discover how…

I’m beginning my new year by taking advantage of the coolest gift I received for Christmas…inspiration.

I could attribute it to a couple of specific people, but I’ll instead say it was God giving the gift through them.

I met some really cool people in New England this Christmas…extended family, friends of my wife. One of them in particular brought the inspiration to a climax. It came in the form of drumsticks.

No, I’m not talking about chicken, I mean literal drumsticks. Size 7A, to be exact…those are lighter sticks, typically used to play jazz and so forth (and you all know how much I love jazz).

This new friend has a couple of drum kits in her basement. Well, it’s a little known fact that I entered the world as a drummer. It’s something I left behind in my early college days, and have mourned and secretly yearned for ever since. So I immediately had to get behind the kit and play. Karen was caught somewhere between shaking her head at me (“Boys and their toys”) and smiling, because she (like most of my friends today) has never heard me play.

Well, rusty and clumsy as it was, it was no end of fun. See, I left behind the concept of being a musician long ago. It was one of the things I felt I had to sacrifice in order to do the things that I had to do. Writing fell in the same category. Ironically, two of the things I have always been most passionate about, things that made me who I am, things that God used to sign His signature on me, I’ve left behind for the trappings of professional success.

So, my New Year’s resolution? Screw success!

I tendered my resignation from the side job that has faithfully brought me income through grad school to leap out into the unknown, hoping He will take over. I’m planning to make a living writing instead of doing it as a hobby, and now is the time to make that experiment. I’ve met so many people recently who don’t hold to the concept that you have to sell your soul to a corporation for 40 hours each week in order to live. That pioneering spirit has proven contagious. Granted, I may end up writing for a corporation (God does have a sense of humor), but I’m hoping I can cut it as a freelancer.

And I’m buying a drum kit. Why not? Everyone needs a hobby. Who knows…

Oh yeah, and I made resolution to get into the gym again…we’ll see how that goes…

I said a few posts ago that this year I plan to focus on my spirituality, to find out where God is taking me on my life journey. I think that it begins here. I’m inspired, to leave the things that have bogged me down, and to become who He really made me to be. I think that it is only then that I will discover my true niche in the world.

And, hey, the most interesting people in the world are the ones who don’t know what they’re going to do next, right?

2007, here I come!

I have to say, it wore off a long time ago.

The adrenaline rush of Christmas, that is. I don’t get the thrill of anticipation that I used to get on Christmas Eve as a child, barely able to sleep as I wondered what would show up under the tree the following morning. Even long after I surrendered the Santa Claus mythology, I still continued to eagerly await the gifts that I knew would materialize in various wrappings the next morning.

As an adult, though, the excitement and wonder of it disappeared years ago.

We still put up trees. I’m still around people I love (this is my first Christmas with my new in-laws, as well as my first New England Christmas…very different this year). But the wonder is gone. Not so much the happiness, because I understand now that what brings that happiness has changed. It’s no longer about receiving gifts, it’s about other things. The happiness has remained, but not the wonder.

Until tonight.

Tonight, I was at a Christmas Eve service singing Silent Night by candlelight. Much more traditional service than I’m used to, and not altogether my thing, but I enjoy new experiences. If you’ve visited here very often, you know that I shy away from tradition altogether, so hymns and traditional Christmas carols really aren’t my thing. But when I end up somewhere singing them, I like to ponder the words, to make it an act of worship instead of an act of repitition. So I was focusing on the words to the song tonight, and I couldn’t help but to wonder at what that night must have been like.

If you permit yourself a real picture of what must have happened instead of the sanitized and commercialized manger scene that dominates our Christian pop culture, and imagine a teenage mother giving natural birth to a child in a stable that smelled like crap, it sort of boggles the mind. See, there’s no historical argument that Jesus was a real person. But if you choose to accept that He was God, then the fact that God would allow Himself to arrive in such un-assuming circumstances, a birth unknown to the world and even the town around Him, you can’t help but wonder.

A town full of people blissfully unaware that the God who created them had suddenly shown up in a rank and stinking stable without immediate fanfare or proclamation. As a writer, I must appreciate the irony.

Even aside from why He came, the fact that He came amazes me. And therein lies the spirit of tonight and tomorrow, the “spirit of Christmas,” if such a trite expression must be used.

Therein lies the peace, the reason for the celebration.

And therein lies the wonder.

Wow, I can’t believe that Christmas is in like four days. Karen and I are bustling about trying to take care of Christmas cards we still haven’t gotten out, packages we still haven’t shipped, and buying odds and ends, including travel-sized stuff so that we can get through the insane security for our Saturday morning flight and appease the TSA gods.

I had to think last night that I am so thankful for her this Christmas, and that there are gifts under our tree, and that we have family with which to spend Christmas. But I’m disillusioned, nonetheless. Not about us, but about what I see around us.

Now, I suppose I should confess that I actually enjoy Christmas shopping. I like the electricity in the air at the malls as people rush around, attempting to find the perfect gift. I had that look on my own face as I attempted to find the perfect gift for Karen this year. I enjoy the Christmas music I’ve recenty been loading onto my iPod, and I enjoy gingerbread lattes from Starbucks (I certainly don’t miss the snow, although we’ll probably see that when we fly north this weekend…groan!).

Every year, though, it’s bittersweet because I see people obsessed with the materialistic drive to give and receive the coolest gifts. I’m confronted with the media blitz of a country driven by a “whoever dies with the most toys wins” mindset. I’m all too easily caught up in this if I’m not careful. My goal for myself over the next couple of days is to focus on the purpose of the celebration. The gift-giving, while a wonderful thing, isn’t the ultimate reality here. The violent sport called last-minute shopping certainly is not. There’s a much deeper reason for all of this, a turning point in history, a moment when God intruded into our space-time flow and physically moved in with us, for just a few years. A few years that altered everything. A few years that began at an unlikely time, with the unexpected fulfillment of a prophecy, and has altered the course of every life at this time of year ever since.

Pondering that, if only for a little while, will change your perspective about all of this.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.