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Premeditated Ignorance

July 2, 2011 in church, Daily Life, God and us, Parenting with 0 Comments

When our oldest child was a toddler, my wife and I were baby bodyguards – never more than a leap away from rescue if she were approaching something potentially harmful.  My wife still has that instinct (she’s a mom).  I, however, have become a bit slower in my response time. Our 3rd child is now a toddler and if he is approaching something potentially harmful or messy, I first observe, assess, play out the possible outcomes in my mind, and THEN determine it’s worth getting up for.

Every now and then I pretended not to hear my kids speaking out of line or see them acting out of line.  This way I figure I cannot be held accountable for correcting them.  For example, if I leave the room at just the right time, I can plead ignorance when asked “Did you know the baby was in the cupboard?!”

You could call it pre-meditated ignorance. You can’t be held accountable for what you didn’t know, right?  And as long as you are NOT in the right place at the right time, you may experience this bliss of ignorance (for a brief time).

I have been faced with a challenging reality in my life.  In my church experience, I have not been held accountable.  How many sermons have I sat through, books have I read, prayers have I prayed, without being held accountable for the action steps I was compelled (or commanded!) to take?  When I go to church on Sunday morning and sit through a sermon and jot down some notes (assuming my notes are action steps, not interesting info points), who asks me later how I am doing on those things I wrote down? What consequence do I face if I fail to address problems in my life that God brings to my attention?

How many small group sessions or Bible studies have I sat through without anyone asking me “What are you going to do about it?” And then making me feel like I BETTER do something about it.

I find myself premeditating my ignorance.  If I never tell anyone what I think I should do, I don’t have to be accountable to take that step.  If I pretend I don’t hear God (or willingly plug my ears to Him) I don’t have to be held accountable to a command I never heard.   I think that’s probably a dangerous way to live.

I may premeditate my ignorance in order to dodge accountability.  But in the end, I will have to give an account for every deed and every word that came from us.  At times I think I am clever when I dodge accountability.  But I will one day find out it was not dodged, merely delayed. Accountability is inevitable.  I would be wise to take advantage of it now while it still has an opportunity to influence positive change in my life.


Not Enough

March 7, 2011 in Daily Life with 1 Comment

Last weekend my wife and I had the great opportunity to go to a Family Life Ministry Weekend to Remember marriage getaway. We had an awesome time of fun and focus on our marriage relationship! It was also a much needed break from our busy 3-child family and work life. We stayed 2 nights in the same hotel the conference was held.

While relaxing one of the evenings in the hotel room, we were enjoying the complimentary cable TV. This in itself is a treat for us since we don’t have cable at home.  After flipping channels, we settled on HGTV to watch a show called House Hunters. Now, there are a few TV shows we keep up with (usually by watching them on hulu.com) but none of them are reality TV shows. And since we watch hulu.com we don’t see a lot of commercials.  So after a few minutes of watching this reality show about purchasing up-scale homes and watching commercials selling me things like teeth whitener, a tiny feeling began to well up within me.  I’m not sure how to describe it but it was an uncomfortable feeling.

Well, I figured this was a good sign – a sign that God has been changing my heart. That I have been somewhat REsensitised to the self-indulgence we see in our culture.  Granted, this was only a hint of a feeling and I continued eating my junk food and watch the show until it was over – causing me to stay up way too late. :)

Knowing what I know now about the world, poverty, child mortality rates, living conditions, etc., it was amazing to me to see a couple on this show in agony over which $900,000 home to purchase.  But you know, that mentality is not that much different than the mentality which causes my family to agonize over which restaurant to eat out at.

I wish I had time to pull off a video idea I had.  What I really WANTED to do was create a video using images of poverty but with the audio from House Hunters.  I thought it would make for an interesting artistic statement.  Since I don’t have the luxury of time to put that together, I thought the next best thing would be to share two videos.  Here’s the first one.

Again, I don’t mean to put down anyone on this video – or anyone on the show.  I’m sure many or most of us are guilty of pursuing the higher life.  Like my pastor said once, when we compare ourselves with someone with LESS than us we feel blessed.  When we compare ourselves with someone who has MORE than us, we are left wanting more.

When you look to the right and see a gaping resource gap in humanity and you look to the left and see a towering mountain of excess resources, you can’t help but feel the tension – internally and externally.  What is it in us that prevents us from giving our extra to those who have nothing?  I’m working on a song on a similar theme.  One line in it goes like this: “Not Enough”…Said from the lips of greed AND the lips of need…

We have enough.  We have the food.  We have the money.  We have the ingenuity.  We have the means to ship around the world (just look at amazon.com).  Yet, somehow, part of us are still dying while part of us  continue to live.

Are We Going To Die?

December 15, 2010 in church, Daily Life, Missional Living with 1 Comment

What Dreams May Come

October 6, 2010 in Daily Life, God and us, Parenting with 1 Comment

There are many messages out there for our kids. Some align with our values, some we hope they never cross our kid’s ears. These messages come through the media, peers, and parents, among other sources.

Lately I’ve been wrestling with choices in my life. I imagine this is a common struggle among men who are balancing their career pursuits with family. My life was thrown out of balance due to my recent growing passion that could easily develop into a side business. Now, if you looked at either my schedule or my to-do list, you’d think there’s no way you would be able to pursue a side venture! (unless it only required 5 ½ minutes a day)

I’m glad my conscience is active and I was sensitive to the imbalance which enabled me to make efforts to put things right. But this has gotten me thinking about the Christian life. Many things somehow keep boiling down to the simple concept of submission (or you could use the word obedience) to God.

Some messages in our culture can seem innocent. There’s a message in our culture that you might call the American gospel. It’s called “Follow your dreams” or “You can accomplish anything you want to”. I’m glad for this, in some regards, because it has probably advanced society and made things easier for us. But from a Christian perspective, this has a subtle and possibly undetectable pull away from God.

As Christian parents, we know that the best thing we can do for our children is to teach them to obey everything God commands. It would be very tempting to be lazy and default to the “Follow your dreams…follow your heart…You can be anything you want to be…” attitude. Won’t it create conflict to tell a child to obey God AND follow your own plans for your life? In the end, they will have to choose one or the other (or continue to live with an internal struggle.)

I suppose this is just as loud of a message for myself. It’s almost cliché anymore for a father to sacrifice his family relationships in order to provide for them through his career. I think it is necessary for Dad (or Mom) to work in order to provide for the family. But there comes a tipping point when it’s not worth the relational sacrifice.

I want my children to learn to obey God and follow HIS plan for their life. How will I ever teach them that if I am caught in the struggle?

Oh, the pull the world has on us! May God’s pull be stronger!

(And may my arms not get ripped off in the battle)

(Above Image Provided by: br3akthru / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Sell! Sell! Sell!

August 18, 2010 in Daily Life, Kingdom with 0 Comments

I have some further thoughts following up from my previous post.

I remember one day sitting in our worship service listening to the message about tithing.  I leaned over to my wife and asked her how crazy it would be to give away one entire paycheck.  My thinking was, we wouldn’t be totally hurting to be out half a month’s pay and we could see what God would do.  Would God meet our needs?  Would we be full of joy to give so much away?  Of course, being the one who manages our budget and money, this idea stressed her out and she thought I was crazy.  I may be crazy, but I still wonder about that.

Here’s a good question.  Which scriptures are for us today and which are for us to learn from?  In other words, when Jesus tells someone in scripture a command, is that command also for us?  Generally The Church takes the Great Commission to be a command to all of us even though Jesus was only speaking to His disciples.  So if that is a command that is given to all Christians of all times, what about what Jesus told the rich young ruler?  He told the rich young ruler who had done everything else right in his life to sell all his stuff.  So what do we do with that?  Are we supposed to sell our stuff as well?

There was this amazing story about this guy from Cincinnatti – from the DVD Ordinary Radicals.  There was a young man who was living in one of the richest communities in America (Orange County, CA).  He was reading through Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne and was being challenged with the question – would you really give away all your possessions?  The very next day his friends ended up taking him to the Price is Right game show.  This guy actually got on the show and ended up winning the whole show!  Over $60,000 in prizes! But then he said he remembered the words from the book.  He ended up selling the two cars he won back to the dealership and used the money to go to Uganda, Africa where he decided to live for a while in orphanages and give all the money to them. What?!  I love that story.

I heard of another man who used his retirement savings to start a new church in an inner city neighborhood.  Would you cash in your retirement that you worked your whole life to accumulate?

What if we really lived as if we believed the words of Jesus?  He tells us not to store up treasures on earth but store up treasures in Heaven.  We are really caught in a trap here.  I can’t point you to one message I hear from our culture that tells you to give it all away (or don’t buy it in the first place!) Yes, there are good organizations and good campaigns that encourage you to help others out.  But no one is asking you to make a large sacrifice.  There’s so much in the bible about possessions and money and I don’t see an overarching theme being – collect all you can.  But rather, don’t get caught up in the trap – get rid of as much as you can.

I want to promote an awesome resource.  If you want to know what the Bible says about money and possessions, check out David Platt’s Secret Church teaching on the  Gospel, Possessions and Prosperity.  David pretty much covers every part of scripture that mentions money or possessions and then gives some commentary at the end.  Now, be warned, this is a long teaching – about 4 hours.  But they have it broken up into chunks.  I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this resource.

Click HERE to check it out.

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