It was at or near 100° Fahrenheit all weekend long, but we had the best and most relaxing weekend in a long time. Saturday morning we ran down to Stephenville to see a little of the very beautiful Tarleton State University campus. Today, after our worship meeting, we ran down to the Kroger grocery store (founded in 1955, the year of my birth) and had a piece of fried chicken–the best in town and way cheaper than a restaurant. After lunch, I drank a couple glasses of Bread and Butter Pinot Noir and worked on the GRIME3 water level measurement software package that now has a couple of places waiting on it in both Nebraska and Idaho. Then I took a nap and now I am waiting for the steak Lorena is cooking for me. Life is good today.
Lorena and I have been talking about how important it is to follow Christ. We have one God, Father, Master and we are not to be called that. It makes me wonder what offices in the church are official. When it talks about apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, is it talking about official positions specific people are to fill in the church with specific tasks or is it talking about abilities and inclinations. One thing that seems more clear all the time is that assuming one of those titles on one’s own authority and assigning authority to one’s self might be a dangerous game to play.
I am currently reading through the minor prophets in the Old Testament. The thing that came to me, a literal epiphany, is how much I have invested in conformance to and association with specific church traditions, not unlike probably the most visible example being the traditions of the Pharisees and the Sadducees in the New Testament. It is like, intellectual, I understood (understand) the concepts and try to practice them, but have given precedence to the traditions of my community over and above those things that God so clearly revealed in scripture. The further I get down this path away from those presume authority authority that is wholly unwarranted to enforce community traditions, the more I realize that it is only those things God demands and Jesus articulated that should hold sway in my life. Finding those of like mind, giving precedence to God, is what will lead Lorena and I into the kind of fellowship God wants for us.
It is easy to be judgmental about the people Jeremiah was sent to tell that they would be killed and taken into captivity if they did not repent or just go to Babylon, build houses and live their lives for 70 years because God would then bring them back to Jerusalem. I wonder whether the United States and even the whole world is in that same current state. There seems to be an ever decreasing number of people in our society who hold to Biblical truth and morality. The societal mores of my youth we arguably pretty bad, but they are nothing compared to what they are today in terms of the acceptance of what God clearly delineates as evil throughout the Bible. It is not manifested just in things like theft, false gods, and sexual morality. What is most shocking to me is the enforcement of human tradition and non-Biblical authority even in the church. Of course, I bought into a lot of that through most of my life and I am sure my hands are not clean even now. But it is on my radar now and, by the grace of God, I propose to resist it with every fiber of my being. And exhibit charity while I am doing it.
I bought two books from ThriftBooks.com that I hope are a lot meatier than the last two novels I bought. I did enjoy the novels, but not as much, I think, as I have enjoyed that kind of thing in past. It was not so much the quality of the novels–they were OK, but I think I have changed and want to read things that make me think a little more on things that are of higher importance. And it is not that I think novels cannot do that. I actually think they can. But there are spiritual and operational questions with which I struggle at this stage in my life for which I want answers and getting them a little more directly rather than through story seems a good place to start.
The first book is a popular level book on the soul and how its existence gets in the way of materialism as a worldview. It was recommended I read that before I try to tackle any of his more technical works on the subject. The second book is on what the church should be and maybe how the institutional church has lost its way or maybe even never found its way from the beginning. I like the premise, but am a little wary of the authors who might not be that well equipped to address that topic given their backgrounds, but I am going to give it a try.
I made it to Psalms in my current read through the Bible. Psalms 1:1-2 says “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.” I am starting to have a new understanding of the the times and a sense for my place in the world. I hope I am not too far off base or too cynical about the world or both. It does not seem like an accident that this Psalm follows the book of Job where Job’s friends were, in some sense, speaking for God and completely missing their responsibility–well not completely, they did sit in silence and mourn with him for seven days. The thing, though, that seems obvious to me that somehow evaded my understanding before that Job captures very well and the verses above spells our specifically is that our allegiance is to the Lord and the Lord alone. I take two things from that–my job relative to those around me, especially my friends and fellow travelers, is to show charity to them and not speak them like I am speaking for the Lord.
The other thing is that no one is good, no not one. Our righteousness is as filthy rags. I feel very much estranged from the institutional church in general and the institutional church where I was a member in particular. I have no doubt there are Christ followers in at least some of those churches, but it feels like most church culture, no matter the denomination, is driven by the spirit of Job’s friends. Psalms 1:1-2 says to stay away from that and obey the Lord. The problem is my awareness of my own sin coupled with the knowledge that fellowship is essential when it is available. Is our culture such a fellowship desert that we are all essential in the same boat as Elijah when he thought he was the only one? Of course he was not the only one and neither am I. I just am more and more aware that there are no institutions that will alleviate these feelings. Maybe that applies to the church, especially, but it certainly also applies to government, academia, business, and society at large.
I am not sure what I am supposed to do about this, but it feels correct to me and good that it has been brought to my attention. I guess the thing to do is just keep reading and praying. One thing for which I am eternally grateful is a wife who does that with me.
We had a showing at our house yesterday and the buyer said it was situated wrong on the property, was priced way to high, and gave it a rating of only three out of five. Lorena and I have been putting way to much stress on ourselves about this sale. We want to get on to the next phase of our lives where we settle in to what is our version of retirement, but we do not even know what that is. I did not sleep much last night just laying there thinking about it all. Lorena and I had a super healthy talk about it this morning. We do not know where we should be or what we should be doing, but we spent the last several months reading about what made the good kings good in the Old Testament–all of them were blessed when they threw themselves at the mercy of God, asked his direction, waited for the answer that often came from one of His prophets (they did not hear from God directly, but through the prophets), then did or did not do what God gave them to do. We decided we need to quit stressing, wait on God, and leave it completely open with respect to where we should go next or what we should do not. One answer might even be “stay where you are” and “do not do anything different.” We DO know that we do not know, so we will do our best to be happy, patient, and at peace until we know.
After that talk, we got a text saying we had another showing in 40 minutes, so I am now sitting at Panera again, still with no Wi-Fi, but that consolation. It is not lost on me that Lorena and I have values that are very much aligned and very much centered on following Christ. For that I am eternally grateful.
We are in a period of lives where there are lots of things we (Lorena and I) would like to be doing, including taking time off to smell the roses. It does not make a lot of sense to start most of those things that attract us until we sell our current house and relocate closer to Lorena’s family. Both of us realize that is a ridiculous way to think about our current situation. There is really not much stopping us from doing all of those things right now. Maybe the habits we have picked up during our marriage and the raising of our kids has us handicapped with unnecessary anxiety about paying the rent and putting beans on the table when those are no longer problems of high importance. So, we are going to continue working on getting the house sold, but also plan a trip or two starting in the fall. The time we have spent where we are right now has been spiritually profitable for us and maybe God, in his mercy, is keeping us where we are. We are thankful for that.
Lorena is reading in Genesis this morning about when Abraham was asked to take Isaac up a mountain to sacrifice him. Of course our lives have never had something as difficult as that, but now is one of those times when we wonders why everything seems so difficult. We are sinners and know we deserve nothing, but have received so much blessing over our whole lives in spite of that. Right now, though, is a confusing time. The hardest part is watching our kids suffer. As in every case with humanity, some of it is of their own doing, but a lot of it was foisted on them through as a result of their upbringing in a toxic church culture from which they were strong enough to remove themselves before Lorena and I saw the light and left, too. On the outside, they are great. The have insanely good jobs and a level of education par excellence. Still they struggle and the larger culture is not much help. All we know to do is pray for them and be available–I am not even sure we do that well, but we try. There is no point to this blog post other than to mark this as part of our family history and to acknowledge that the answers to these things only comes from God. May he help us.
Lorena and I have less to worry about in our personal lives that just about any time since we got married back in 1992. Nevertheless, we worry needlessly a lot. I am not talking about worries about our children and extended family because that is always going to be there. I think it might be because we have never been in a situation where we had enough to live through the next paycheck or two without me working. We are certainly not rich, but where we are going to sleep, whether I will keep my job or enough to eat, and all those categories of daily challenges have been so much a part of our lives that they are habits that we are going to have to learn to break. Well, at least we have identified that now and we have decided we are going to try to be better about living in the day and thanking God for it without such focus on extraneous goals and the stresses that come with that.
