Author Archives: Dave

About one day every week, I wear my glasses instead of my contacts. It was my optometrists’ recommendation…it’s healthy to give your eyes a break from having a piece of plastic stuck in them. I joke with my friends that it’s my “intelligent writer look.” I really do look different with glasses.

I never did this until the last six months. I wore my contacts every day. Now, one day a week, I have a different appearance. Kind of symbolic, I think, of the internal conflict with which I’ve wrestled over the last year or so.

Can a Believer come to a point where he doesn’t even want to read the Scriptures? Doesn’t want to go to church? Where he views what he once saw as holy piety as overzealous hypocrites engaged in worthless traditional repetition? I arrived there some time ago. To some degree, I’ve recovered. To some degree, I’m liberated. I’m not burned out on God any longer. I’ve just come to realize that it hasn’t been Him that I’ve really been focused on in Seminary.

I’m taking a course in integrating psychology with theology right now. It’s beyond fascinating, and a relatively recent endeavor of scholarly study. The idea is to go to a middle ground on the continuum between nouthetic naivete and scientific humanism. Both psychology and theology are useful, but both end in nonsensical heresy if you follow either to their obvious conclusions. One observes what we can about man, the other observes what we can about God. Both end up arrogantly drawing conjectures when they run out of observable facts. Therein lies the nonsense.

I just finished reading this great book by Mark R. McMinn, however, that introduces spirituality as it’s own discipline. It’s not a discipline that is indicated by credentials, he argues, but is gained by just spending time with God. Talking to Him. Listening to Him. Not over-engaging, not studying, not analyzing. Reflecting, and meditating on Him. The thrust of the idea here is that theology is focused on analyzing Scripture (seminarians call it “exegesis;” it’s really a horrid practice), while spirituality, McMinn says, is focused on meditating upon Scripture. Huge difference. I’ve come to realize that the past two and a half years have given me a lot of the former, and none of the latter. So I plan to change that with a “discipline” that is oddly lost in the maze of academia: I’m going to enjoy God again. I haven’t done that in far, far too long.

I just finished reading an essay in Image Journal about a man who forsook his evangelical beliefs because he found a greater love in literature. He seems to have come from a overly religious background. I can relate, because I came from the same. I’ve recovered nicely. Or at least I thought that I had. But at least now I have an epiphany to work with. God’s not to be found in the analysis of theology, the same as man’s soul is not to be found in the analysis of psychology. Both are great tools for observation, to glean information about someone. There is an enormous difference, however, in knowing about someone and truly knowing someone.

I know a lot about God. But I don’t know Him nearly as well as I would like. I plan to turn my acquaintance into a lasting friendship.

A new step in the journey, I suppose. I just know that I’m approaching my old Love with a brand new perspective. I suppose you could say, an artistic perspective, instead of a scientific one. I was never really good at the scientific thing anyway.

I think it was Augustine who said that the one who is seeking is not lost. There’s a lot to that.

It’s amazing what you can see through glasses.

At the risk of ranting and raving, I’m being driven near the brink of insanity.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have far to go to start with. I had a friend once that said, “you don’t have to drive me crazy, I’m close enough to walk,” and that’s probably me, especially as I near the end of my master’s degree. But right now I can actually articulate what is driving me crazy.

Part of it is my job. I had a professor that deliniated a difference between your job, your career, and your vocation. The job is the least of the three, it’s what earns your paycheck, and ultimately is very different (usually) from your vocation, which is your calling, what makes you tick. Well, I suppose, at it’s core, I’m merely struggling with what every creative person struggles with, balancing paying the bills with creating what you want to create, and wondering why what you want to create can’t pay the bills. I feel so much of the time that work and school just suck out my soul.

It occurred to me that work was originally a curse, right? I mean, Adam and Eve were told that they would have to work because of the Fall. Up until then, nobody had to work. So my conclusion is that my inner being rebels against the concept of having to work because having to work is not the way God intended it to be.

Right?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. At least I’m not doing that, because I know that this curse of working and finishing school is temporary, and that, in a few months, what I create will (hopefully) pay the bills.

Wow, that would be euphoria.

Some time ago, Franky Schaeffer wrote about being addicted to mediocrity. I think it remains an addiction for us today. Music has always been an enormous part of my life. In college, I fancied myself a bit of a musician, and actually played a few instruments. I haven’t touched them in years, but hearing music actually became more of a catharsis for me than playing it. When I look back over my music library from my late high school/early college years, however, it cracks me up.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against 80’s music in general. A few months ago, I went on this binge of buying all of this old 80’s music that I listened to back in the day and had lost or never bought. I was putting all of this White Lion and Cure and stuff like that on my iPod. But a lot of the stuff that I listened to then (I won’t share or you’ll laugh) was just bad music. It was popcorn. It was…well, it was crap.

Listening to that kind of stuff when you’re in middle school is one thing. But eventually, we have to grow out of it. I think that’s the point of music and art and drama appreciation courses in college. I think there may need to be more, though, because we still listen to a lot of stuff that has absolutely no substance whatsoever today. Taking into account that tastes are different, we really are addicted to music and art that has no substance, or that is just a collection of wild images or words strung together for the shock value. Colors are thrown together and called art, violence and sex are thrown together and called story, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake whine and grind and call it music. How did we get such low standards??? When Beethoven and Bach were composing, standards were high. When Picasso and Van Gogh (my personal favorite) were painting, standards were high. Certainly, there are a lot of artists that carry very high standards today, and produce high quality work. There are others that don’t even try, because art and entertainment have become confused. The integrity of true creativity has become tangled in our perception with the figures on the red carpet that keep producing the same thing, like a factory. Less than half of what we see, hear, and read is truly fresh and different.

Infuze Magazine carried a great interview last week with Andrew Beaujon, who had done a piece on Christian musicians, and how audiences seldom want to listen to them because their quality is so poor. So often things that are done for God are second best, because we love to claim that He appreciates the effort more than the product. That’s why a lot of musicians that make music of the Christian persuasion do a mediocre job. It’s not horrible, but it’s the same quality as a lot of the other stuff we listen to. A lot of artists are painting beautifully creative portraits of their faith, but they are in an unfortunate minority. The ones who do it well are few, and it gives our faith a bad name (I have friends in an underground band called My Epic, and their debut album is a beautiful idea of how to do it right).

I’m not advocating that those who produce mediocre art not be called artists. They certainly are artists. But being called and gifted to be creative is to have a perspective on life and culture that many others don’t. It is to have the ability to communicate things that others can’t. It is a call to excellence. Artistic personalities frequently drive themselves crazy because they cannot reach the excellence for which they strive. Still others have given up, and decided that the insanity isn’t worth the price paid.

In whatever case, we will be known in historical annals as a culture that loved mediocrity, that accepted anything shocking and called it art, that clung to quantity over quality.

That’s really too bad.

I think we’re lying.

Not just to others, but to ourselves. I think we’ve compartmentalized our lives into something they were never meant to be…a series of isolated rooms that desperately need to be interconnected but that aren’t allowed to be, and therefore throw us into a state of frustration and angst.

I used to be a huge fan of compartmentalization. It was the way I kept my sanity for a while…I had to be able to “swtich off” the office when I came home and not think about it. But, as with any coping skill, there is the potential for things to go wrong. I eventually became good at it. And, as a result, I’ve spent the last few years with frustration and angst.

We have to look at ourselves and others holistically. Moreover, we have to look at life that way. We have to get rid of the lines we’ve drawn between aspects of our lives. No more lines between work and home, no more lines between family and friends, no more lines between sacred and secular. They’re all one. Am I saying bring work home with you? No. Am I saying try to prosleytize everyone at the office? No. I’m saying, be you. Be who you are created to be. Because that is’t a fragmented person. You were created to be a whole person, and that whole person should go with you everywhere, to everything, even if they do seem contradictory.

Because let’s face it, in today’s world and lifestyle, there are contradictory elements. I’m a counselor and an artist. I’m a Seminary student, but I have no desire to be a professional minister. I have a logical and diagnostic side, and I have a creative and tempramental side. But they all form me. We all have contradictory elements in our lives. But the source of frustration is when we attempt to isolate them from each other, to let them form almost different personalities for different days of the week, or different times of the day. That’s just dissociative. It does so much more harm than good. It prevents us from being real.

We do the same thing externally. We view life in fragments instead of as a whole. That’s why we don’t take God with us through the week, we leave Him at church on Sunday. There is no “personal” and “professional,” there is just us. There is no “Christian art” and “secular art,” there is just art. There is no “religious time” and “me time,” there is just time. There is just you. No Clark Kent/Superman split, it’s just you. And you’re a wonderful you. You were created to be you, and there is a purpose for you being you.

So go do that. View the world as a whole, and go change it.

We would all be better at that if we would just stop lying to ourselves.

There’s something to be said for anonymity.

I’ve lived in small towns, rural areas, and urban areas. I know what it’s like to bump into 5 people you know at the local supermarket, and I know what it’s like getting lost in the crowd running to the corner drugstore. I have to say, I like getting lost in the crowd much better.

But I think that is true in every area of my life. I’ve been to small churches, and I’m currently in a very large church. I like this one much better. I don’t like running into people I know all the time. I don’t like everyone knowing my business, and somehow thinking that what goes on in my life is their problem. There are certain people I let into my “inner circle.” I trust them, and I surround myself with them, my family and friends. I don’t need a thousand other people around that know who I am. Close friendships are of enormous importance to me, but when I’m walking down the street, I have no desire to know everyone that I pass, or what their story is. I just don’t want to know.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a compassionate person. I’ve worked as a counselor for some time. I care about people…I just don’t want to be intimately connected with everyone. But, I suppose, writers are, by nature, a bit reclusive.

I think we all have some of this lurking inside of us. A frequent topic on one of my favorite podcasts is privacy in our technology. When I think of people having the ability to monitor where I go on the internet, it irritates me. I have nothing to hide, but they have no business knowing. When I think of the government being able to monitor my phone calls, I’m furious. I have nothing to hide, but they have no reason to listen. We all like our privacy. That’s why a home is such an integral part of the American dream…it’s our own place to do our own thing with no one to complain or barge in.

No matter how public we are, we need privacy. We need our own time. I just finished reading a chapter in John Ortberg’s “The Life You’ve Always Wanted” about solitude. He makes the point that we all need time every day to be alone, away from phones and faxes and email, to just meditate and be still. In our hectic lives, there’s just too much going on to make this practical, though. The “to-do” list on my Palm Pilot today was close to infinite, and it looks worse for tomorrow. Yet I have to make that time. I fear insanity for us all if we don’t take that time.

It’s critical to be quiet.