Devil's Advocate

One thing I learned in college that has stuck with me -
I mean, become an instinctive part of my brain/heart wiring - is this:
If there is an unrepresented side, take it.

Call it antagonism, or devil's advocate. Call it justice, or balancing the scales. Or just call it contrarianism (i made up a word). Things are rarely cut and dried, black and white, without nuance. It's important to me to side with those who have nobody on their side. That's why conservative people sometimes get the idea that I'm liberal (or a heretic), and liberal people pretty much ignore me because they don't like to fight as much as conservatives.

For better or worse (I think better), that part of me flows out of my faith, and what I believe God is like. I don't really think he's all that concerned with how correct we are on issues. I don't think there's going to be a test on that stuff. We simply can't be right enough for God's taste, so he has decided to cease grading that way. Does it mean I don't have opinions? Of course not. There are some things we can know for sure - but that is a very short list. (Maybe that will be my next post (in 6 months or so).)

When it comes to politics, I have had a long slow evolution from one extreme to the middle. I actually think that it's very important for Christians to be involved in politics. The Bible is political. Jesus was political. Just count how many references there are to the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, and aliens. How we treat or punish these people is still part of our political discussion TODAY. If you don't think the gospel writers and Paul had a stance on Rome, or an agenda in their writing, I'd love to sit down with you for a couple of hours.
That being said - what stance should followers of Christ take today? With the right? With the left? As with most things in life, my faith forces me to ask - is there a "third way"? Is it possible not to be red or blue but... yellow, I guess? (Yes, I know it is a synonym for cowardly)

A friend linked me to an article today that i think perfectly articulates where I currently stand. And since it agrees with me - I am going to post it here, so that you can agree with me too. See what I did there ;-)
I don't know who Jen Hatmaker is. I've never read any of her stuff. I haven't seen he blog before. But I know that she has put into words exactly what is wrong with me, and what an increasing number of people of faith have been thinking:

Jen Hatmaker: Thoughts From A Christian Independent

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

ELCA Youth Gathering - Day 1

Whew! Rough day today. After an early start and a long bus ride, we arrived at the Ritz Carlton at around 5pm. After clearing some things up with the hotel and getting settled into our rooms, we realized 2 things - we were super hungry, and we still needed to check-in/register our group at the Gathering office! After walking the world's longest mile to the Morial Convention Center, we arrived at 6:45 to find that registration had ended early, instead of at 8pm as had been widely publicized. So, with no small amount of frustration, we set out in search of something nearby to eat. We finally landed in an empty little Italian place that Tandie remembered from last time. The place was great- and we ended up stuck there while it rained like the End Of Days outside.

It finally slacked up a little and we were able to make a break for it in the rain for about half a mile back to our hotel, where we decided to stay in for the night.

Keywords for today include: Bus, Ritz-Carlton, walking, sweat, pizza, rain, zzzz.

Internet access is turning out to be tough to come by at this hotel- so I apologize in advance if these posts aren't as elaborate as we had both hoped. I'm posting from an iPhone app.

Tomorrow: We take another crack at registration, celebrate our Practice Peacemaking Day at the Convention Center, have Johnnie's Poboys, and get our worship on in the Luther-dome!

Grace + Peace,

ELCA Youth Gathering 2012 - The Vow

Welcome parents!
I hope you'll watch this space in the next week for updates on our time in New Orleans. I'll post pictures, videos, and commentary on our time there so that you can experience it with us!

I'll admit, I'm pretty excited, and I don't know exactly what to expect. I don't know what's going to happen in our group while we are there.

But I will make this vow:
EVERYBODY GETS A STUPID NICKNAME!


That's right. Nobody is safe from my superior nicknaming skills. As a person who has gone by a nickname nearly all their life, I can tell you this - nobody chooses their own nickname, and hardly anybody ever likes the one they get stuck with!

Just another service we offer at Living Word!

The Curse

(Pardon these rambles, please. I'm not really interested in polished essays. My whole objective is to barf my thoughts out of my head and onto this blog before they disappear forever.)

Cheerwine: Born in the South. Raised in a glass.

Yesterday was Easter. Resurrection Sunday. In a fit of seasonal mirth, I tweeted:

THE TOMB IS EMPTY! So today we go from darkness to light; from mourning to laughing; from fasting to feasting! Jesus lifted the curse!

Never have I felt more involved and engaged in the celebration of Resurrection as I did this year.

We spent the morning celebrating with Ecclesia at Jones Plaza in downtown Houston. It was a huge celebration where people filled the air with their voices, shared amazing food, listened to teaching, made art for worship, and celebrated communion and baptism together. Like families do. All at an outdoor pavilion under a partly cloudy sky and an amazing breeze. It was one of the best Easter Sunday experiences of my life. But I don't think it was the reason I understood Easter better this year.

I think the real reason is Lent.

This year for Lent Abby and I gave up drinking anything but water and brewed coffee. I wanted to give up something that would hurt. Since I really hate drinking water, but know I need more of it, I decided that eliminating all my other choices would be both beneficial and sacrificial for me. The coffee thing was because - COME ON! (It's not like it's a competitor with water. You want them at separate times to accomplish separate things.)

If you're unfamiliar with Lent, it's the 40 day season of fasting that Begins on Ash Wednesday and leads up to Resurrection Sunday. Christians give up doing or eating something they love.You're smart if you realize that between Ash Wednesday and Easter there were (are) actually about 46 days. That's because Sundays (technically speaking, Sabbath days) are considered celebration days, feast days, or mini-Easters. You break your fast on those days. (By the way -if you're the type of person who brags about how they don't observe the celebration days during Lent, then I don't want to know you. You are clearly missing the point, and probably the thing you're giving up clearly doesn't hurt badly enough.)

In the past, I had always played fast and loose with celebration days. I would make bargains like, "Well, I have a friend in from out of town on Friday and we're going out to eat. So I'll make Friday my Sabbath, and use my "celebration day" to have a Dr. Pepper at Chili's/ Sweet Tea at Cracker Barrel/ Bellini Peach Tea at Olive Garden. Then I will fast on Sunday while everyone else is celebrating."

What a loser thing to do. It's completely self-serving, and is probably worse than not celebrating the feast days at all. So this year - I decided to actually employ some self-discipline and sacrifice (a novel idea) and play by the rules. And THAT has made all the difference.

Drinking water at a restaurant SUCKS. Not because their water is bad, but because Dr. Pepper and Sweet Tea are SO GOOD. If they weren't, free refills wouldn't be so expensive. Some things you eat are just meant to be paired with something specific to drink. My wife says that for me, this is all-too-often chocolate milk. (My inappropriate use of chocolate milk is another blog post altogether.) But this year, there were days when I would sit drinking a nice tall glass of water and think - "Man, Jesus, I love you so much!" with a really sour, crappy look on my face. Which, I guess is kind of the point - to allow me to participate with Christ in suffering and death, so that I can more fully participate in his resurrection!

But what struck me yesterday was this:

For 40 days I lived under a law. A (if you ask me) needlessly oppressive law. A law that I was pretty sure was actually good for me to follow. A law that I was sure would draw me closer to God. Well, guess what? Life under the law SUCKED. Meals became mundane. Thirsty was a feeling I actually came to dread because of the resulting anti-climax. But I kept telling myself that I was pleasing God because of all the things I didn't do. But I felt like I was under a curse. I was suffering. And suffering for righteousness is good, right? It builds character. Makes you a better person than you were before. Right? RIGHT?

I don't know, but I do know this: Suffering is the mother of hope. What suffering did for me was cause me to look forward to Sundays in a way I never ever ever had before (Yes, I realize I am a Christian, a minister, a pastor. Just never a very good one.) I couldn't wait for those little glimpses of freedom that rolled around every 144 hours (but who's counting?) Not only that - it created an ABSOLUTE LONGING for the day when I was rid of the law once and for all. When yesterday finally arrived, and the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ threw open the doors to a freedom I had been hoping for and expecting - I got absolutely staggering, stumble around, take my car-keys drunk on NOT-WATER.

(Disclaimer: No, I didn't actually get drunk on anything that could get you drunk. Seriously - you have GOT to know me better than that. Also, it kind of pisses me off a little that I have to write something like that, or that I think I have to write something like that. NEUROSES!)

In 46 days I lived a little microcosm of all of human history. I lived a life that was under a curse (that I, directly or indirectly, was responsible for), and bound by a law because of it. I longed for someone who could come and take it away. I saw occasional glimpses of an impending hope that it would one day be removed. And finally, miraculously, gloriously, through no work of my own -one day the law no longer applied, and I went from accursed to completely free forever.

The final, interesting thought about it is how I instinctively responded to this freedom. In addition to drinking freely from it in huge, choking draughts, I felt compelled to share it. For the Ecclesia Easter Celebration, Abby and I loaded a cooler full of all kinds of soft drinks and gave them away to anybody that walked by. Now that we were free to drink all the soda we wanted, we resolved that nobody who crossed our path would ever have to be deprived of it either. And now every time I drink it - It's a celebration, and a remembrance of exactly what it took to win that freedom for me.

And that, my friends, will preach.

.

Regrets

Talent Show

Went to a talent show tonight to see the daughter of a friend of ours perform. This girl LOVES Abby and we love to support her. She goes to a little charter school near our house that is really quite cool. Here she is singing a song by Bruno Mars.

As you can see, she's quite sassy. She actually took 2nd place for this performance.

Which means BOY OH BOY do you want to see the video of the first place kid. You are definitely NOT going to be disappointed with this:

Right? RIGHT!?

New Leaf

Go brain, go! is back. No more layout changes for a while, I promise. Unless, of course, I find out that some famous pedophile or politician has the same one. Then maybe. Maybe.

The truth is, I need to start keeping track of my thoughts again. I would really love to do it in pencil in a cool leather-and-hemp-bound journal, but i think faster than I can write, so typing is more honest. And that's the direction in which I want this thing to head. I want to live life with more transparency. I want to integrate my two selves. I'm not saying there's a version of me that has been keeping disgusting secrets from all my friends and family for years. But there are little things that I think we all need to be more honest about. Little ways in which we all need to stop pretending. For example - it's a little suspect for a 33 year old man who is unemployed and keeps a blog to call himself "theboy1der". Yet there it is in my blog address, my Twitter ID, and my email address. Anyway - it's not like I'm about to change all those things, I just need to be honest about it. I need to talk about the things that sometimes people are reluctant to talk to people about. Confession being good for the soul, and all. Sunlight being the best disinfectant, you know.

I realize that being honest and vulnerable opens you up to being taken advantage of by less scrupulous people. It's happened to me before. It will likely happen to me again. I don't consider that a reason to be less honest. The fact is, every time we lie (to ourselves or others) we create an alternate reality. We add another reality to actual reality, and we have to live in all those other realities with their troubles, too. Frankly, I'm too lazy for that. I have enough trouble with the world that's actually real to worry about the troubles in all the worlds I made up. Actual J.T. doesn't want to have to be bothered with the problems that fake J.T. presents.

What that means is that I'll probably say some things here that you probably didn't know about me. Maybe even some things you don't agree with. But sometimes putting them on the record is my way of seeing whether I actually believe them or not. I pick up ideas. I play around with them. I put them back down. Sometimes I keep them. This is annoying to some people. But I want to "be ready to die today for what I know to be true - and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood." And to do that, I need to start working through what I think is true about me, and the world.

This should be fun! Either that, or it could be Sheen-style self-destruction. I guess we'll have to see!

Grace + Peace

The Great Christmas Caper 2010 - Eve

Part the 6th:

Abby made a video - Christmas Eve Errands.

The Great Christmas Caper 2010 - Anniversary

Part the 5th:

Our date night, and first-impression reviews of True Grit

The Great Christmas Caper 2010 - Arrival

Part the 4th:

The Great Christmas Caper 2010 - Dallas!

Part the 3rd:

My favorite video so far.

Great Christmas Caper 2010 - Buc-ees!!

Part the 2nd

Take 1:

Take 2:

Man, I love me some Buc-ees!

The Great Christmas Caper 2010!!

Part the 1st - Departure!

Brought to you by Flip!

(brought to me by Mom and Dad Thomas!)

Guatemala, Day 1 - Vista Real Nice

9:15 p.m. - Landed in Guatemala City, Guatemala with a great group of folks from Lead 222 and Compassion International.  Flight was pretty bad, for the same reason I hate roller coasters. Turbulence, some zero gravity moments - no kidding.

Man, if you ever get a chance to take a trip with Compassion International - DO IT.

They really do things right! You should see this hotel they've put us up in!

In fact, take a look.

Seriously. I don't think I've ever set foot in a place this nice - EVER.

I don't think I've seen a place this nice on TV or in movies, either.

This is my room:

 20 foot ceilings. Hundreds of pillows.

That guy over there? That's my roommate, Taco. Yes, TACO.

He's a youth guy in Magnolia, TX. We're just about the only 2 guys from the Houston Area. Some folks are from as far away as Traverse City, Michigan and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Here's some schwag that Compassion had left for us in our rooms when we checked in:

That's a sweet handmade journal, a weird cloth lady, and some kind of candy. Oh, and some bottled water (not pictured) because, you know.

They also had all our room keys ready for us, with a sticker right on it that had our pre-paid wireless internet username and password! Thanks Compassion!

I wish I could get Compassion to plan and book my next vacation! Get right on that, guys...

Well, I imagine tomorrow's visit to a Compassion Project will be in stark contrast to the luxury we are enjoying tonight. Here's hoping there's some joy to be had with the arrival of 20 gringos.

More to come...

*slurrrrp* Ahhhhh!

This is my coffee cup.

Ain't she a beauty?

As you can see - it's a Batman coffee cup.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

It lives on my desk at work, and helps me get through the hours by providing a more-than-average-amount of hot, black, sweet coffee a couple of times a day.

Sometimes I don't finish all my coffee, and I leave it sitting on the desk overnight with cold coffee inside of it.

Sometimes that leaves a ring of coffee around the bottom part of my cup, but I don't care.

I rinse it out with cold - yes COLD - water. I don't even use dish soap.

It's like how when you get a new cast-iron skillet, it's not really good for cooking until it's been seasoned - until it's gotten the crusted crud of a hundred meals burned into its bottom and sides.

It gives the coffee a flavor all its own.

A flavor that can't be reproduced in a stupid styrofoam cup. (PLEASE.)

I'm convinced that's why my grandmother's coffee tastes better than any coffee I've ever had.

It's not the coffee - it's the cup.

I've had this cup for quite a long time now.

Almost 10 years, I'd say.

If I remember correctly, Abby bought this cup for me after we had broken up the first time, and we were just friends.  I think she got it at Astroworld in Houston which doesn't exist anymore. 

This coffee cup is a freakin' one-of-a-kind unique collectors item, man!

In it's 10-year tour of duty with me, this coffee cup has seen some stuff, man.

If this coffee cup could talk.... well, I'd probably be a rich man, because hey- a talking coffee cup!

But seriously, it'd probably have some really great stories.

Sure, I've used other coffee cups from time to time.

At other people's houses, and at my own.

But no coffee cup has ever been so singularly mine as ol' Batman.

Since I'm clumsy and tend to knock stuff over and drop stuff - I rarely keep breakable things for very long.

Which is why I'm proud to extol the virtues of Batman - the miracle cup.

Here's to 10 more caffeinated years old chum!

Jonah - Parable, Myth, Allegory or Truth?

I'm not saying it couldn't happen.

I'm not saying it didn't happen.

Alls I'm saying is - there's no way to prove it happened or didn't happen.

And all things being equal - isn't the simplest explanation the best one? (Thank you, Mr. Occam)

It seems more likely that a man was NOT swallowed for 3 days by a big Mediterranean fish and subsequently vomited up onto dry land.

The only defense ever offered by my Seminary professors is that Jesus mentions Jonah - rather the Sign of Jonah - in Matthew 12:38-41.

Since Jesus mentions it, he says, it must have happened.

He says that if Jesus had compared his resurrection to a fable, or a fictional event, it could be argued that the resurrection itself was a fictional event.

(Surprise! This is what some people say anyway.)

Well, I'm not buying it.

Jesus could just have easily cited a fictional situation with which his audience was already familiar.

What if I say - "Man, seminary is tough for me! I feel like Sisyphus, who every day pushed the boulder up the steep hill, only to have it roll back down again every night. Every semester I do all this work and finally finish, only to have it start all over again the next semester."

If I say that seminary is like Sisyphus - who is clearly mythological, does that my work at seminary is mythological? Of course not. To say so would be ridiculous.

Jesus could just have easily have said, "I'm going to be like Rocky! I'm gonna take such a beating that you'll think it's all over - but you're not going to believe my comeback after that!"

Rocky is fictional. Does that mean that Jesus took fictional beating? Of course not.  To say so would be ridiculous.

Likewise, if Jesus compares himself to Rocky, it doesn't make Rocky an actual guy, or his story a true story.

It seems more likely that Jonah was an actual prophet, who likely prophesied to the people of Nineveh, possibly even leading to their repentance. But around the actual prophet Jonah - there sprung up a legend that through the oral tradition (that we KNOW existed) became bigger than the man himself.  Like Paul Revere. Or Johnny Appleseed. Or maybe like George Washington chopping down the cherry tree.

Did it happen, or didn't it?

Does it really matter? Don't you kind of get the point either way?

From Jonah's perspective - Don't try and ignore what God's asking you to do. Also - go out of your way to love the people you ought to hate the most.

From Jesus' perspective - Things are going to go from bad to worse - and then your mind will be absolutely blown. Also - go out of your way to love the people you ought to hate the most.

It's things like this that drive me crazy. It's insisting on sticking to a literal interpretation of stories like this that make us look ridiculous to perfectly intelligent people, and encourage them not to engage with Christ-followers.

Thirsty

I hate water. Drinking it, I mean. I would rather drink coffee, or Dr. Pepper, or Drano.  If I absolutely HAVE to drink water, I'll mix it with some of that powder flavoring or something, so that it's like drinking water without actually drinking it.  Recently, for Lent, I gave up drinking anything but water for 40 days.

I hated it.  

Rather than bring me closer to God, or cause me to contemplate my lack, or give me a sense of sacrifice, or that I was identifying with Christ in his sufferings, it mostly just pissed me off every time I sat down to a meal.  After 40 days of fasting (and on those blessed 6 celebration days during Lent), I immediately went back to drinking other stuff.  Much to my surprise, in the days following Lent, I have often had cravings for water.  Serious ones.  So bad that I've actually had entire glasses or bottles of plain water (the HORROR!) to drink.

They (whoever THEY are) say that most people walk around functionally dehydrated.

None of us is drinking enough water.  Sure, we get some in our coffee and our juices and stuff like that, but there's no substitute for clean, clear, pure water.  And sometimes we don't know how thirsty we have been until we start to drink.

-------

I hate the Bible. Reading it, I mean.  I would rather read websites, magazines or shampoo bottles.  If I absolutely HAVE to read the Bible, sometimes I'll read what Max Lucado, Rob Bell, or Donald Miller wrote about it, so that it's like reading the Bible without actually reading it.

Most of us walk around functionally deprived of this, too.  Oh, we might get a little bit of it in church or small group or something on TV, but there's no substitute for sitting and reading the wild, raw, naked words of God.

So yesterday I committed myself to a new system for reading the Bible through.

It calls for me to read 10 chapters a day by reading 1 chapter from a series of 10 "lists"

List 1 is the gospels. List 2 is the Torah. List 3 Romans, the Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Hebrews. List 4 is the Thessalonians,the Timothys, Titus, Philemon, James, the Peters, the Johns, Jude and Revelation. List 5 is Job, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon. List 6 is Psalms. List 7 is Proverbs. List 8 is Joshua - Esther. List 9 is the rest of the prophets. List 10 is Acts.

When I reach the end of a list (Acts, for example, only has 28 chapters), I just start it over, because I'll still be reading through the others (List 9, the Prophets will take 250 days).

In the end, I'll read through all the gospels 4 times, the Torah twice, Paul's letters 4-5 times each, the OT Wisdom Literature 6 times, the Psalms at least twice, the Proverbs and Acts a dozen times, and all the way through the OT Historical and Prophetic books about 1 1/2 times.

10 chapters might sound like a lot, but it never takes me more than about 30 or 45 minutes. When reading about the Creation story, Job's trials, Christ's birth, the Day of Pentecost, and Paul's introduction to Romans all at the same time, you start to really get a holistic sense of scripture.  Scripture commenting on and interpreting itself.  I used to marvel at guys I knew who taught from the Lectionary.  A schedule that assigns to each Sunday a series of Scriptures that often seem completely unrelated?  An OT reading. A Psalm. A Gospel reading. An Epistle.  I thought, "How do they write one homily or sermon on 4 unrelated texts?" But in just two days I can see harmonies developing between one or two or three or more of these lists that are just beautiful.

I didn't know how thirsty I was until I started to drink again.

Free Comic Book Day!

Today is FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!

Get on down to your local comic shop for a free issue of a comic you would never read otherwise!

Seriously, though - it's always fun, and sometimes my comic shop will give away free movie passes to upcoming movies. I gotta think Bedrock City Comics in Houston is going to have some tickets from Iron Man Screenings locally.

Today we're going to the Post Office to get Abby's passport.

Could be tough - she still hasn't gotten her name changed on her Driver's License. It's only been 3 and a half years. I gotta go and vouch for her. Maybe knock some heads or something.

If she can't get her passport pretty soon, there's no way she's going to be able to get her Brazilian Visa in time for our trip at the end of June.

As I write this, I'm watching Star Wars Episode I: the Phantom Menace on SpikeTV.

I just watched the part where Qui Gonn asks Anakin's mom who his father was.

"There was no father." she says.

"I carried him. I gave birth. I raised him. I can't explain what happened."

That's a part of the mythos that I remember made me think, "Say whaaa!"

I guess he was conceived by midichlorians? A child of the force?

I wonder if Lucas ever wrote Shmi Skywalker's Magnificat?

Anyway - I did a google search and found a bunch of people who think Anakin was "conceived" by Darth Plagueis, who, according to Palpatine's testimony to Anakin in Episode III was the only Sith who was powerful enough to "create life".

This may be the geekiest post I've ever written.

Either way - Soccer!

A few weeks ago, I was planning a Mission Trip to the eastern coast of Brazil with a group from Copperfield Church - the same trip I went on last year.

To be honest, I wasn't all that excited about going to Brazil again. From the looks of it, hardly anybody else was, either. Only about a dozen people signed up, and even fewer were coming to the prep meetings.

Then, out of the blue, 2 weeks ago our church was invited to bring a group of college students to serve 2 weeks in Haiti as part of the relief efforts going on there through IMBstudents and Mission-Serve. Abby and I would lead, with possibly another adult. Now THAT was something I could get excited about. I scrambled around trying to gauge interest among our college students locally, and those who'd be coming back to town this summer. There was some real energy behind a trip like this. Everyone involved was really inspired. Students were committing right and left to spend 2 weeks sleeping in a tent in the heart of Port-Au-Prince in 90-degree weather and 100% humidity. This mattered.

Two nights ago I got an e-mail from the Project Coordinator for the Haiti trip saying that they had suspended all their operations there, and canceled all the scheduled trips, including ours. Bummer. Apparently, it's really sexy to go to Haiti right now, (which is probably why we were so excited to go) and the place is saturated with volunteers. Not that there's no needs there or anything. There's just no infrastructure for short-term-ers. Which I understand. Security and lodging were issues, as well. I hated having to let everybody down who had been so excited. I wondered if they would think it was my fault for not making it happen. It seems like a disproportional amount of things I try to plan around here end up not making it. Add this one to the list.

So now I'm back on the Brazil-train. Literally, training our students and adults to minister to the students and adults in Maracanau. The Haiti thing was disappointing, but just what I needed to remind me why we were going to Brazil in the first place. We have relationships there. We have boots on the ground already. And having been before, I can help shape the experiences of those who haven't. That should be pretty cool. Oh - also, the church is going to send my wife with me. So that's going to be awesome.

Now, if they would just send my dogs...

New blog rule #1

All blog posts must be 500 words or fewer.

That last one was 1 word short of 800 words.

If you can't read it without scrolling, I shouldn't be posting it.

Or you should get a bigger monitor.

One or the other.

For example, this one's only 49 words.