Larry, Linda, and Michael Chabon

A lot has been on my mind, but what else is new? I'm usually mulling something over in my head like a cow chewing cud over and over again until whatever I was thinking about takes shape or gets swallowed with everything else. Sometimes I'm able to get it down on paper, sometimes it may just end up as voice memo on my iPhone that I never revisit. I've got a lot going on upstairs today... I've been thinking specifically about my life and my relation from where I am to what I want. But what do I want? Interesting question. A home? A person to share my life, such as it is, with? A job that makes me feel like I am doing something of value and helping not only myself but others? The answer is suppose is yes to all of the above, but on top of that I have been thinking about family. I thought a lot about my brother today. I'm currently reading Michael Chabon's sort of autobiography Manhood for Amateurs. (On a side note if you have never read anything by Michael Chabon do yourself a favour and pick up a copy of the book I just mentioned or The Yiddish Policeman's Union, or Gentlemen of the Road. Chabon is such a good writer, his prose is so evocative, it makes me want to cry or laugh or both. Maybe it's because his characters are mostly Jews and I've always felt since I was small that it was a part of my heritage that I wish I would have learned more about. Apart from my Nana sending me Hanukkah presents every year and a few books about the Maccabees, I never learned anything about my culture. Maybe these books help me reconnect with that part of myself. After all if we don't know where we come from how can we truly know ourselves?) Anyways.. back to my brother and family.

In Manhood for Amateurs, Chabon relates a story of how he and his brother shared a corned beef sandwich and reminisced about times when they were children and how the younger brother would follow him even if he was wrong and would trust him even if they didn't know where they were or what they were doing. It made me think about my little brother, who is now a not so little 26. Like Chabon's brother, my brother looked up to me quite a bit. As a result I felt like I had to be the kind of brother that was worthy of being an example, which of course is ludicrous as I couldn't be an example to a blind squirrel much less a flesh and blood relative. So like Chabon, I faked it. If I told my brother a story he would believe it, if I asked him to do something he would do it no questions asked. If I told him to fill his mouth with strawberry jam and spit it out as I shot him with a toy Beretta, he would do it and enthusiastically show it to my parents just for good measure. "Hey look at what Michael showed me how to do." Then I left for Africa. I don't know what kind of effect that had on him. He wound up coming to South Africa too a few years later but I wondered if it was for the experience or if he just wanted to follow his older brother. I wonder how he was treated at home if he didn't measure up. My parents aren't idiots and they are great parents and would never tell him, "why can't you be like your older brother?" But I always wondered that whenever he got in trouble even if they didn't say it if he could see it behind their eyes? I do not think that was the case because we couldn't ask for better parents but kids see what they want to see sometimes. I have always had this underlying pressure to be a good older brother and this has only increased with age. The older I get the more I want to strive to be a better brother, a better example but this is not healthy I think. Firstly I don't feel like I'm worthy of being emulated. In fact I hope my brother does not make the same mistakes I did, I hope he does the opposite of what I do, I pray sometimes he makes choices completely antithetical to mine. My life isn't a great example and I don't want to be one, but regardless of what I want I always will be because I'm the older brother.

My sister and I are a different story, we never saw eye to eye on anything. I suppose it is the typical thing for an older child to believe that having a little sister is more of a nuisance than anything. But that's a lie, she wasn't a nuisance and we got on very well until two things happened: My brother got old enough to play with me, and my sister became a teenager. Sometimes I wonder if she resented the fact that I transferred a large part of my brotherly affections to my little brother. My sister had a rough teenage experience. Lets just say it was difficult on my parents but not so much on me because I didn't really care because when she was a teenager I didn't like her at all. I thank God that our relationship is good now and we have a great rapport. She's given me 2 adorable nieces to spoil rotten and I do whenever I see them, but Amanda just a little bit more because she was first. The repair in our relationship began when I went to Africa again, this time for her wedding. We had a great time and I saw for the first time the woman my sister has become because she finally realized her worth and saw the kind of woman she could be and is.

This whole blog has been a massive departure from my usual navel gazing about God and faith and how it all fits in with my life. I've had it on my mind though all day and it feels good to get it out and down. Hopefully if Larry and Linda read it they'll both see something good in it and the love it contains and remember an easier, simpler time when I was still the older brother but we were still just kids playing in my sandbox in the back yard.

Pad Thai faith

Everyone's favourite Thai place makes the best Thai food. Ask any one of your friends and they all will give you a different place to eat. I happen to like Pilin Thai in Altamonte Springs, Florida the best. Their chicken Pad Thai is nothing short then a gastronomic miracle. Add some chilis to the dish and it transcends the material plane and becomes divinity on a plate. High praise indeed. When I bring people to Pilin I tell them to order the Pad Thai, and they normally do, and then after they finish they all say the same thing, "Well i really liked it but the Pad Thai at Sea, or Napasom, or Thai House is better." Now I want my Thai place, Pilin, to have the best Pad Thai so I inevitably go to one of the Thai places my friends prefer. Usually I leave disappointed. I have had some truly disappointing Pad Thai at some of these places. Sometimes the sauce is too sweet, sometimes it is too thick, ands sometimes the flavours don't combine right. This never happens at Pilin. The bean sprouts, egg, chicken, chilis, rice noodles, garlic, and tamarind all combine perfectly into a harmonious whole. Always cooked well, always cooked right and always delicious. Pilin works for me. Sometimes I have Pad Thai, sometimes I have masaman curry, and sometimes I order something else I can't spell. The point is whatever I order there is always good, always satisfies, and always makes me leave with a smile on my face. There may be better Thai place out there some where but I haven't found it yet.

I can't help but compare my Thai food experiences with church and faith because I try and relate everything I come across to faith and church because that's just how my mind works. Sometimes when looking for a body of believers to join with in worship things just seem to fit. The messages seem to always hit home, the music never fails to move the soul, the sense of community the congregation fosters as they break up and begin to leave after the benediction is one of acceptance and love. All these parts combine to form a harmonious whole that doesn't satisfy the needs of the body but rather the needs of the soul. (Now I know a few of you may say now Mike you mean it meets the needs of our spirit, but the New Testament writers use soul and spirit interchangeably so I think I can get away with it.) Some other people's church may be bigger or flashier, it may have resources beyond what other places may have but is it the right place for you?

I think the key to finding a good church is to find a place that not only meets your needs but also prompts you to tell others about it, not out of duty or because the pastor has asked, but rather out of genuine love for the people there and to spread that camaraderie and community to those who need it. Like my Thai place churches come in different sizes and flavours, made with different ingredients, comprised of different peoples with differing levels of theological training and experience, but all united in one common cause: to help carry each others burdens and to take the love of God and the good news of Jesus to people out there who need it and not only to people in need of a message but people looking for a place to belong. So if you are involved at a church that meets your needs and that fosters a deeper faith and love for God and others, tell people about it. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your co-workers spread it around. After all, churches are there to spread the message of Christ and to foster community, some may do it better then others but find the one that fits you the best, and then tell others.

Noble savages

In environmental activist circles, and others, there is a belief that all pre-industrial primitive peoples lived within a state of complete harmony with the Earth. Many believe that pre-industrial man used every single piece of every animal they killed for food, knew how to farm without damaging the environment, lived in a complex balance with the ecosystem knowing how much to take and when to stop, were not warlike and did not kill or war unless it was to defend themselves, and had a mystic spirituality that reinforced those behaviors. These views are widespread and many believe them without bothering to test their veracity. In movies you'll see the noble savages teaching the ignorant Europeans how to live in harmony with nature until the villains come and destroy it all. This sort of romanticized image of primitive man sounds too good to be true and as it turns out, it is completely incorrect. This myth started in Europe and the idealized version of the savage became romanticized until it stuck in the general consciousness and has been there ever since. Research though has shown us the absurdities of these ideas and has highlighted information such as that murder rates in the Middle Ages were higher then they are now, 100 for every 100,000 people as opposed to 1 in every 100,000. It has also shown that primitive peoples were not as peaceful as we assume, aggressively and preemptively attacking and massacring enemies even selling other tribes of peoples as slaves to the Europeans. The point is people idealize the past and make assumptions about how things were and apply those assumptions to how they want things to be. Funnily enough this trend is not limited to the studies of history and the environment but also is widespread in Christendom.

Every new Christian movement attempts to gain legitimacy by claiming an affinity to the early church, the church that existed right after the ascension of Christ. In many people's minds the early church made no mistakes: they operated perfectly free from the strictures of dogma, open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, unbound by years of tradition flowed with supernatural displays of divine power daily, unburdened by structure able to flow organically and meet whatever needs they saw, and able to communicate the truth of the Gospel pure and undiluted. The problem is this is just as much of a myth as the noble savage. Both may have some grains of truth to them but both are patently untrue. I am always coming across sayings like, "More Jesus less Christians" or "No churchianity just Christ." or "No religion, only Jesus." or "More people would be Christians if it wasn't for the Christians." These sort of sayings sound good and sound well thought out, well one is because Ghandi said it, but they aren't. They are pop sound-bites that have little merit. I am getting sick and tired of Christians being the greatest disparagers of Christianity. I am tired of Christians being the most vociferous detractors of their own faith. The early church was constantly fraught with financial difficulties because everyone sold everything to live in a community. Sure everything was shared equally among all but if everyone is sharing equally but no one is making any money to keep everyone fed and clothed then what good is living in community? The Apostle Paul in his surviving Epistles is always mentioning that the church in Jerusalem needed financial support. The Bible records the beginnings of the church and the powerful displays of miracles wrought through the apostles but it is far from a day to day account. Acts is an overview, a brief history of a movement that spread like a wildfire. Just because people were healed and miracles took place does not mean that people were seeing miracles every single day. We cannot assume just because there were mighty displays of God's power that this was something that they continually experienced 24/7. Day to day life goes on. Somehow we have in our minds this notion about how pure and how perfect everything was in ancient times. Why do you think the church has evolved the way it has in terms of structure and organization? The early church had no structure or organization so they had to create those structures and organize things so they could continue to be effective. Why do you think doctrine had to be codified? In oder to combat the rise of sects and heresies that arose because the people didn't know the teaching of the apostles.

Now do structures and organizations need to be reformed from time to time? Yes. Have Christians at many times throughout history lost their focus and needed to be brought back into order? Yes. But how? Through structure. Through doctrine. Through right dogma. Through evolving methodology to reflect cultural shifts. Organization and structure can be a curse but they are also a great blessing when used correctly. Our methodology and liturgical forms have changed not because they've lost potency, but because they've had to change. So what if people meet in churches instead of homes? So what if one Pastor has oversight of one flock? So what if people baptize by immersion or by sprinkling water on your forehead? Many of these things have come about because of profound changes in societal structure and the way we live and how we live. So what if people started gathering in synagogues and the synagogues became churches? All the first Christians were Jews so now they should have stopped going to synagogue and started going to home churches? So what if people choose to worship at a church with 40 or 40,000? As long as their spiritual needs are being met and as long as they feel like a part of a community, who cares if they're not meeting at a home church? Who cares if their structure is different. One thing we all should keep in mind about structure and organization is that nowhere does Jesus or the Apostles lay out any sort of outline as how they thought things should be run. The only thing they do highlight though is correct doctrine, but that's something for another time and a clarion call to return to an imagined past is just as stupid as refusing to adapt to the future.

Less is more

Why are we always unsatisfied? We, well maybe just me, are always unhappy with our lives. We want a better girlfriend/boyfriend, we want better pay, a better car, a better relationship with God, a better house, and the list goes on. I blame this on our culture. Our culture, and this is the understatement of the century, is quite materialistic. When did the American dream turn from work hard and you can have a good life to make as much money as possible so you can buy everything you want thus ensuring happiness? This attitude has spread into religion as well. People say things like, " I want to have a deeper relationship with God. I want more out of my spiritual life. I want more of Jesus and less of me." Now these statements sound awesome, very spiritual, but are actually as vapid and superficial as a Rob Schneider movie. It sounds good to say I want more of God, but is it even possible? How much of God is enough? How can you tell if you need more God? I heard some one say the other day that a relationship should come to an end if the relationship doesn’t have the relationship with God as the primary focus. These sort of statements are thrown around all the time and sounds Christiany but are devoid of serious meaning. It’s a Christian catch phrase that you'd expect to hear at youth group when they’re talking about the "dangers" of premarital sex.

We are supposed to strive after God, to pursue God, but shouldn't contentment with where we are in our relationship with God also be a good thing? Isn’t there such thing as contentment with godliness? I understand we need to pursue God, but we should also be happy where we are with him. I'm not talking about complacency in our spiritual journey, but when we are constantly talking about pursuing God and wanting more it creates in us a profound dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction is dangerous because we may never get to the levels of spirituality that we struggle to attain, and if we do not arrive at the destination we pursued disappointment can set in. Being disappointed is equally dangerous because disappointment comes from unmet expectations, and if that disappointment becomes rooted in our hearts it can grow into a cancerous bitterness and cynicism which, like cancer, is difficult and painful to treat and remove. We hear stories of saints and giants of our faith who met with God in powerful ways and we aspire to that. The problem is that’s the reason why they are saints or giants of our faith because they met with God in powerful way that most of us will never experience. Most of those people gave up everything and devoted their lives completely to God. For example St. Francis gave up wealth and comfort to embrace a life of poverty and ministry to the sick and the poor. Because of that complete devotion he had powerful experiences with God. Most of us will never get to that place because most of us cannot give up our lives to that degree. Many of us are too selfish to take an extra step that may remove us from where we are comfortable even though taking that step may mean we might have powerful life changing encounters with God.

Unmet expectations is also a major reason why many Christians are dissatisfied with their spiritual journey. Many have heard all their lives to pursue God, to want more of God, to keep pushing in their spiritual walk, but they are rarely taught to enjoy where they are at the moment. People may hear wonderful stories or powerful testimonies of God coming through in the clutch with blessings or healings or encounters. Some of us yearn and hope and expect these things to happen, and if they don’t happen we begin to wonder if there was something wrong with us and may even get to the place where we question God’s love for us. I'm not saying that we should be devoid of spiritual passion or desire-less, we should yearn for more because like Ecclesiaties says God has placed eternity on our hearts. What I'm trying to get across is that we need to stop sometimes, look around, smell the flowers, and be content where we are because God may hold us at certain places in our lives so he can develop something in us, and if we are always trying to keep pushing we may miss good opportunities that are divinely appointed.

Bumper-sticker faith

The bumper sticker read, "Try Jesus." The sticker was on the back of a minivan, a Grand Voyager to be specific. Looking at that bumper sticker got me thinking about just that, trying Jesus.

When I was a kid, Pepsico started the Pepsi Challenge. Booths would be set up all over America and people would be allowed to choose their favorite beverage, Coke or Pepsi. The twist was people were blindfolded while sipping their Pepsi and Coke samples. I guess Pepsico thought if people were blindfolded they would use their taste buds and realize how much better Pepsi was than Coke. I choose Coke, unfortunately for Pepsi so did 200 million other Americans because Coke is the superior beverage. The point is the people could try Coke and Pepsi and decide which one they preferred. In America today we have the unparalleled ability to choose anything. Need a fridge? Go to an appliance warehouse. Need a car? Choose from dozens of makes and models at the nearest local dealership. Want a Coke? Choose from 8 different kinds. We can choose anything based on our preferences. The problem is out preferences are always changing daily. One day I want cool ranch Doritos. The next day I may want nacho cheese Doritos. This attitude makes the slogan, "Try Jesus" a very dangerous one.

See faith is supposed to be something that affects the way we live. I heard someone say, If what we believe doesn’t change who we are and what we do, then what good is it what we believe?" It is something that requires our attention and our energy. One cannot just try Jesus. There is no Jesus taste test challenge. He isn’t a free sample at Costco or Wegmans. We who name ourselves his followers have done us and the world a disservice. We say that if one just tries Jesus then they will gain immediate, eternal, sunshiney, feel good happiness. All your problems will just go away. Unfortunately this isn’t true and we are guilty of peddling this instead of teaching people how to be his disciples.

Jesus is not Prozac. He is not a drug we take when we are depressed to make us feel better. He came to reconcile fallen humanity to God, not reduce his life to bite sized sermon bits. He came to teach us a revolutionary way of life. He taught us that the kingdom of God is present here and now, and that if we believe in him we can be a part of this kingdom. Not only can we live in his kingdom but we can share it with others. Jesus never said, " Try me." He didn’t say to dabble in his teachings and pull out ones that will make a nice secular philosophy. He said things like, "The kingdom of God is within you." and "Take up your cross and follow me." That means work. That means putting forth an effort. That means we are to be devoted to his teachings, follow them, and show others how to do the same. That means a lifetime of practice and discipleship.

Presently we have relationships without commitment, intimacy without love, and a faith devoid of power to change our world if we continue to take the life and teachings of how to be his disciple and advance the kingdom of God into snack portioned, sugar coated pills which read, "Try Jesus." He died to show us the way to God, he lives to help us get there. We need to take it a bit more seriously.

Heart surgery

I have heard several ministers talk about having a head change or having a heart change. When I think about my life I have probably had a few million head changes but very few heart changes. Sometimes I even wonder if I ever have had a genuine heart change. Often I've come to the place where I realize a change is necessary and decide to do something to make the change stick. Usually I'll get through a couple of weeks, after that I lapse right back into whatever I was doing, feeling, or experiencing previously. A perfect definition of a head change if there ever was one. Head changes are easy. They can be brought on by a fiery sermon, contemplative music, or solid advice from a trusted friend. Heart changes are much more difficult to live out. The difference is head changes can be affected by us and by external stimuli, heart changes can be brought on only by God through the Holy Spirit working in us.

Well then what can we do make it happen? How can we get it done? What can I do to get this change started and working in my heart? Nothing. Nada. Zero. There is nothing we can do to make a true heart change happen for ourselves, it is something we have to completely rely on God to perform. I like to see it as surgery in a sense. God has to constantly remove our hearts and replace it with one that is closer to his own. To do this he must re-open our wounds. This is another major reason why a heart change is so difficult, we try to hold on to the heart we have, with all its faults and deformities, and hide it. But why do we try and hide what God longs to heal? If we try to re-open our wounds on our own it causes more damage to our heart and soul then when the injury first occurred. Our operating theatre resembles those from the Middle Ages: crude surgical instruments, dull blades covered in dried blood, unsterilized so when we make an incision we infect ourselves further. Many times we don't even anesthetize ourselves when we try to operate. No wonder the pain is so intense, no wonder we have hardened hearts and why so few of us survive our own procedure thus ensuring we never heal properly.

God's operating theatre is a stark contrast to ours: The room is spotless and clean, the instruments are new and sterile, the blades sharp, the procedures are all state of the art, and like some procedures there may be some pain after we are groggy after waking up but we do not feel the actual surgery being performed. When we re-open our wounds it is usually to dwell on those wounds and how they were given to us. When God re-opens our wounds it's to heal them. His spirit is the salve that heals our souls. It is the only thing known to cure the ails of our hearts. You may be reading this wondering, "Well great Mike that's wonderful. Only God can, I can't. That still doesn't help me though. when will he do it? How will I know?"

Those are good questions but if you are asking those questions he has probably just performed a procedure on you already. You are just feeling the after pains of surgery. When you are having surgery you are unconscious so you do not feel anything, but when you wake up it hurts. Sure it hurts, but it hurts far less then the actual surgery itself. This is our road to understanding what has just happened in us. I'm not sure what the next step is because I feel like God has already done something in me but I don't know what it exactly is and what it is for, but as I walk and trust him I will begin to understand. Perhaps the second step is hope, but real hope not manufactured presidential hope; a hope that God is faithful, and that he will continue the work he started in us. One of my teachers, Dr. Bekker, once said that sometimes the Holy Spirit has changed us and we haven't yet become aware of it, but we will as we continue our walk and trust in him.

Open books with dirty pages

Introspection is a loaded word. We mock people who are too introspective and want them to be more outgoing. Some aren't introspective enough and we ask them to take some time and think about what they may be doing to their lives. For some that would be like asking Bill Clinton to not cheat on Hillary with trashy women but for others it may be as difficult as figuring out the physics of the unifying theory of everything. Introspection is necessary and I think too few people take time for themselves to think about what they feeling and doing and how it makes them feel and what they could do to feel better if they weren't doing well. Introspection though can also be dangerous. Really? Dangerous? I can hear you asking that question aloud in your mind as you read this blog. Yes dangerous.

The reason introspection is dangerous is because if done too often for too long it can begin to some across as a self-serving ego trip. People who are too introspective pour out their deepest darkest feelings on their blogs, Facebook pages, or journals replete with the complete inner and outer goings on of their lives leaving nothing to the readers imagination. It can become a sort of twisted status symbol: look how broken, hurt, and troubled I am and as you read look at my questions and thoughts and marvel at my ability to put into moving prose the deepest thoughts of my heart and mind. It turns into a focused spotlight, illuminating a self serving cliche that leads people to form opinions about you that you yourself want them to think. It is shaping what you want people's ideas of you to be, and that my friends is pride, and as C.S. Lewis reminded us, pride is the chief of sins because all sin stems from it.

Well what am I doing then sharing what I think about a topic like this? Am I being prideful since I am assuming there are people who are curious about what I have to say on matters pertaining to spirituality and Christian spirituality in particular? Possibly, but I think that intent plays a great deal of weight. If someone is giving their opinion on something whether it be a blog or forum it isn't prideful to share that opinion. When a person is going through a difficult time and posts thing on blogs and Facebook about some struggles is that prideful? No. If someone is open about their shortcomings is that prideful? No. Pride steps in when you intend to elicit certain responses from your peers. Pride rears its ugly head when you intend for others to pity you or to talk about you when you're not around, to try and make yourself the center of attention. Is that pride? Yup. So beware of people who are willing to share everything too quickly and who spare no detail; introspection is good and sharing with others is good and healthy.. but not always. C.S. Lewis (again) said, "The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this (pride) does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly."

Reformation

In the 1500s the Catholic church was rocked by an event that changed the course of Western civilization: the Reformation. A monk named Martin Luther in response to the practice of selling plenary indulgences, which is paying to have a persons soul removed from purgatory, posted the 95 theses to the doors of the church at Wittenberg. This act sparked a revolution in theology whose aftershocks still reverberate down through the ages to our own time. Luther did not intend for the Catholic church to splinter like it did but when the splintering began he saw no other choice but to continue shedding the light of the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith. The official Catholic position was that good works ensure salvation because good works show faith and paying the church money to free souls was a way to do good works to save a soul. Luther wisely pointed out the error in this and in doing so changed the political and religious landscape of Europe.

Today there are many people who draw on the legacy of the Reformation, usually because it's to lend an aura of legitimacy to a movement they are involved with or are promoting. It's easy to refer to a movement as a continuation of the Reformation or as a new Reformation, but just because they claim such a thing doesn't make it so. I do not believe that a new Reformation is possible due to a wide variety of social and cultural factors and referring to a movement that broke the dominance of Catholicism and using that paradigm to break away from doctrinal Christianity is dubious at best. You cannot call people involved in Emergent,Word of Faith, or any other group that claim to be enacting another Reformation reformers because the Reformation was primarily against a corrupt and oppressive religious institution, medieval Catholicism, that when it hit swept across Europe like an out of control wildfire. At the time everyone was Catholic, you were Catholic because they did not allow other denominations like we have today. You were Catholic or else you'd probably be killed as a heretic. The Reformation changed that. What it won for us wasn't another a system of belief but it caused the church to constantly revise and reevaluate its theology and relationship to culture. We already had a cultural revolution, sure it was in 1500s but it paved the way for us and how we see things today. It took a static institutional dinosaur and changed it into a constantly evolving and shifting church . The Reformation brought back into focus doctrine that had been de-emphasized for so long that it seemed to have been forgotten. We are not at that point now because there is no one institutional church controlling and ruling on all things theological. Scripture ever since the Reformation has been constantly reviewed and interpreted so the primary doctrines of our faith are no longer hidden from view, no longer dependent on specific people to share it because scripture is available to all.

There are many things wrong with the church in America today: Hyper-prosperity, televangelism, ultra-fundamentalists who apply the letter of the law not the spirit of the law, and people who de-emphasize so much of our faith that it becomes nothing more then just a story of Jesus or a dialogue with people about where they are and why Christianity sucks and why it must change drastically. There is a lot of American culture that has become tied into Christianity. There is a lot of cultural garbage that does at time need to be filtered out but don't use the Reformation as a beacon to radically change something that has already been radically changed and tested and strengthened throughout the past 500 years. The Reformation that we should be focusing on is not one of doctrine but the reformation of the heart. David wrote in the Psalms for God to create in him a clean heart; the prophets said that God would take the law and write it not on tablets of stone, but on our hearts. The reformation we need is the one we must try and live out: our ongoing process of sanctification. We need everyday to turn our hearts to God, to hear what he is saying to us through his word and through his children and to let his spirit renew us and keep us focused on the things that matter: doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.

Sola gratia, sola scriptura, solus Christus, sola fide.

Watching From the Fence

While I was working today I came across a book about South Africa. It was about how Nelson Mandela brilliantly used the national rugby team, the Springboks, to help unite the country recently mashed together by the election of the ANC government thus ending years of government sanctioned racism: apartheid. It was an incredible moment and I am glad I was in South Africa to witness it. The memory got me thinking though about something that has been gnawing on my mind for some time. I cant help but compare my life in South Africa with my life in America. Sometimes I feel like I am split in two that one part of me, a vital part of me, is still thousands of miles away separated by the vast Atlantic. I left behind a life that I built on my own. I had friends, surrogate family and a place where I felt like I belonged, and I left it all behind.. but I had to leave it all behind. It doesn't make a lot of sense and I can barely explain it myself, but I know leaving there was the right thing to do. I am convinced of that. Something in my soul was lost while I was there and I feel like I have been unable to find it.

It is a crazy disconnect. I can empathize with Abram, I mean when God tells you to go, you go but it doesn't mean it's easy. Sometimes the decision makes no sense, but deep inside you know it's right. I feel like that a part of me is gone. I don't know what it is or how it happened, I just fell it, and I've felt it for years. Like Baudolino I go from one path to the next, seemingly lying my way from one spot into another, and seeing where the path leads. Sometimes I like the person who I was in South Africa more then the person I am now here in the USA. The Michael in South Africa was cocky, somewhat abrasive, but his naivete about life and the church and spiritual matters are at times a better person then the Michael here in the USA who is less cocky, still somewhat abrasive but tempered with a better understanding of himself. The SA Michael was sure of himself, knew where he stood in his relation to others, grew and matured in the things of God and everyday life, gave himself wholeheartedly to the things he was doing because he believed in them. What a far cry USA Michael is from that person. Always thinking. Always questioning. Always wondering if things will ever turn in a direction that seems more favourable to him. I don't believe in what I do any more. That naivete is gone.

So I stand on the fence looking at the person I was and the person I am, always testing, always comparing, and always wondering what might have been, unable to focus on what is and what should be done. Don't get me wrong I learned some valuable lessons and am grateful but I can't help but wonder what it was all for and what is it worth. I know God has a plan, at least I believe he does. I may not see all of it or even know any of it, but it does not mean it does not exist. I'm just tired of the unknowing and the questions and I want to know the answer to the questions in my mind that spring up from time to time. Maybe I'm being too harsh and to hard on myself, but hey, it's a blog after all and these are the thoughts and feelings I'm having at the moment.