Monday, July 23, 2012

Past My Prime

I'm out of shape.

This morning I went to a nearby park and shot baskets for a while. I played basketball all the time when I was in high school and college, but since I moved to Cincinnati last year, it's an activity that I have sadly neglected, mainly because I haven't had anywhere to play. In fact, this morning was the first time I've even taken a shot in six months or so, and the results were...saddening. I quickly realized that athletic ability has a way of deteriorating if it goes unused, and I had very little such ability to begin with. I was very thankful that there weren't too many other people at the park to witness my airballs and tears.

As I continued to chase my basketball around the court off of long rebounds, I thought about how doing well in something like shooting a basketball requires consistent effort and dedication. My problem isn't just that I've lost my shooting touch, but that I haven't done much of anything physical for ages. Today was the first time I had moved faster than a brisk walk in a long time. After just five minutes, the muscles in the legs ached, my knees were stiff, and my back, neck, and shoulder all hurt. I haven't felt so physically weak since I had knee surgery several years ago.

In college, I tried to stay pretty active. I played all of the intramural sports, I played pick-up basketball when I got a chance. Even a good game of ping-pong could be physically exerting. (I know that sounds ridiculous, but you haven't seen some of my ping-pong games.) Since then, however, I don't do these things. Instead, I lay around on my couch with my computer and TV.

Being in good shape physically takes effort and training, and today I realized that I need to give more attention to this part of my life. After all, I'll never get a date as long as I have the physique of Gumby. I also thought about how this same principle is true in other areas of life as well. Physical well-being requires upkeep, but so do other things. For example, it takes effort to remain mentally sharp. If you never challenge your mind, it atrophies just like a muscle does. Relationships are the same way. A healthy relational life requires work just like anything else.

The same is even true of your spirituality. A healthy, vibrant relationship with God doesn't just happen. Just like any relationship, it requires your involvement. A robust spirituality comes from spiritual training. 1 Timothy 4:7-8 says, "Train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come." In several other places, the apostle Paul compares the Christian life to an athlete competing in the games or running a race. If athletic ability deteriorates by inactivity, so too does spiritual health.

I think that these four areas of life--physical, mental, relational, and spiritual health--are especially important for a person's health as a whole. What is interesting to me is that when one of these four is neglected and begins to atrophy, the others easily follow suit. I haven't lost my physical strength because I've been so busy nurturing my mind. My mental agility has also waned. So too have my relationships, and, if I'm to be honest, my spirituality. When you lose discipline in one of these areas, it's easy to abandon the others as well, and instead of growing, challenging yourself, and remaining disciplined, you find yourself sprawled out on your couch with White Cheddar Cheez-Its crumbs on your chest, rewatching the same old YouTube videos and commenting on every profile picture of the hot girl that sits in front of you in class.

By the time I got this far through this thought process while I was shooting baskets, I was really starting to "feel the burn," as they say. The day was growing hotter and my muscles had just about had enough. It was at that time that I started thinking about how to reverse the lazy, apathetic trend that has developed in my life in each of these four areas. I started thinking about how purposeful training is needed physically, mentally, relationally, and spiritually.

A successful athlete has a training regimen. He gives attention every day to growing stronger, faster, and more skillful. We need this physically. But we need something similar in these other areas of life as well. My encouragement to you would that, every day, you make it a habit to do something that will enrich your life in each of those four areas--physically, mentally, relationally, and spiritually. I want to do the same. And I'm still thinking about what that might look like, trying to put feet on this idea, so I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts.  This is all an idea that is an embryonic stage, but I was excited about it today and wanted to share, as well as to hear some helpful response.

I shouldn't be having so much trouble shooting a basketball. I'm 24 years old. I feel like I should be in the prime of my life. The world is open and exciting before me. And I hate to think that I've already passed my prime. But the prime of life doesn't just happen. It's worked for.

I've become lazy, sluggish, procrastinating, weak, and safe. It's time for that to change. So I'm going to start working on getting back into my training. I think it will help me have better blog posts, better conversations, better sermons, deeper relationships, bigger faith, more honest prayers, and a sweeter jump shot.

Then maybe that 12 year-old-kid won't dunk over me next week.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Dependence Day

It's amazing how readily available food is in the United States. Whenever I'm hungry, I can just walk over to my cupboards and can usually pull something out. If I'm out of food in my cupboards, I then have a couple options. I can hop in my car and go through a nearby drive-thru to get my snack fix. If I don't want to do that, I can drive to a grocery store and buy what I need to restock my cupboards. The grocery store Kroger is headquartered here in Cincinnati, and there are at least four Kroger stores within five miles of my apartment. Or, if I'm feeling especially lazy, I can call up any one of the multitude of pizza places in the area, and they'll bring it right to my door. (I always hope that the delivery pizza will be an attractive woman who has time to share my pizza with me while watching episodes of Community, but it always ends up being some college-aged dude who smells like mushrooms. It's a similar situation when I think about who might be in the seat next to me when I go to baseball games or get on an airplane.)

This morning I read about how the Israelites got their food while they were traveling to the Promised Land in Exodus 16. There weren't any Kroger stores on the road through Sinai, and it was a little too far for Pizza Hut to deliver. So when the Israelites began to grumble about not having anything to eat, God himself stepped in and provided. Every morning when the people woke up in their tents and stepped outside to stretch their legs, they found the ground covered with bread. Each person would take what their family needed for that day, and then the next morning God would provide again.

The Israelites were completely dependent on God for their sustenance while in the wilderness. They didn't plant crops at the foot of Mt. Sinai, going out to water them and....mulch them, or whatever people do to make things grow. They only had to trust that God would take care of them. Rather than working for their food, they only needed to receive it as a gift from God.

In Matthew 19:13-15, people start to bring their little children to Jesus so that he can bless them. The disciples decide it's a good time to act like Jesus' bodyguards, so they start to shoo away these parents and their kids. But then Jesus reprimands the disciples and welcomes the children to himself, saying, "For to such belongs the kingdom of heaven."

Jesus expects his followers to be like little children in some way. I suppose there are numerous understandings that a person could have about what exactly Jesus means in this passage, and perhaps his intention isn't meant to be narrowed down to one specific quality. Children can represent innocence. They can represent trust. They can represent wetting the bed and watching cartoons all Saturday morning. But I think that one of the most important qualities of children that Jesus may be pointing to in this passage is that of dependence. A child is unable to adequately care for himself; he is dependent on the provision of his parents.

As an adult, I have several ways to "help myself" when I get hungry, as I have already mentioned. But when I was a little kid, my options were limited. I had to ask my mom for something to eat, and it was because of her care and love for me that she would provide for me. My responsibility as a child wasn't to get in the kitchen and whip up something for myself. It was to receive what was given to me.

The Christian life is a life of dependence. The Israelites needed to depend on God to take care of them in the desert, and we need to depend on God to provide our needs. Being a Christian is about recognizing your need and your ineptitude and receiving what God gives you. It's about understanding that you don't have the power to save yourself but that you need to be saved by another.

In our country, independence is perhaps the most emphasized characteristic of what it means to be a fulfilled person. This doesn't just apply to how we understand ourselves as a nation, but also how we live as individuals. We want to control our own destinies. We want to earn we we get. We'll say, "Man, what do I look like a charity case? I don't need your handouts. I'm an adult!" Because in our minds, that's what adulthood looks like--a lack of reliance on others. Maturity means to be financially, socially, and spiritually independent.

But in Jesus' way of looking at things, true maturity is to recognize your dependence. It's to see that you need a Savior, you need a Provider, you need a Father. It's to recognize with Paul in Romans 7, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" And then it's to see that God has already taken care of it, and that all we need to do is receive it.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

How Just is War?

When I was a student at Ozark Christian College, there was a debate that seemed to rise up among the student body every once in a while (and by that, I mean every few hours). This running debate centered on the ethical issue of how Christians understand violence and war. To be honest, I had never really considered this question before my time at Ozark, and I did my best to avoid the issue for my first few years there. Over the past couple years, however, I have tried to think through this topic and formulate my own beliefs regarding a Christian response to war, so maybe now is the time to share my thoughts with you, my faithful reader.

I've been very hesitant to write this post for some time for a number of reasons. For one thing, I'm aware that my views are probably out of line with what the majority of American Christians believe, and I'm also aware that this can be a very sensitive topic, especially for those who have fought in our military or who have military personnel in their family. My intent is not to offend anyone in any way, as I too have friends and family who have served in the military, and all of them could easily kick my tail. I also realize that for those who have been in the military, their time of service can be a core aspect of how they identify themselves, and so for me to question the legitimacy of Christian involvement in war can seem like a personal attack. Again, this is nothing that I intend. And finally, I hope to not over-simply the issue, because I know that it is a complex one. Whenever I'm faced with a difficult question, my response is usually to just side with more mature Christians who I feel have life more figured out than I do, but my problem is that in this case there are Christians I respect a great deal who fall on both sides of the issue, so that doesn't help me out at all. My purpose in pointing this out is simply to state that I hope to write from an attitude of humility. My thinking regarding this issue is still developing, and I may very well be wrong about some things, and I'm open to opposing viewpoints as long as they aren't hostile, and as long as they include a handshake, side-hug, or Wendy's gift certificate.

I'll also point out at the start that in this post I am considering a Christian response to war, not to the use of force in general. The question can be raised, "But what should a Christian do if he comes home and discovers an intruder attacking his family?" That's a different discussion for another day.

In conversations I have had with people, when it comes to the debate about Christian involvement in war, there are two main camps. On the one hand are those who advocate pacifism and completely reject any sort of Christian involvement. On the other hand are those who advocate a "just war" theory, claiming that war is acceptable when it is for a just cause--defending the lives and liberties of a nation.

After thinking through this for a while, I don't think I can agree with the pacifists. I would really like to be a pacifist. I think pacifists are cool. But there are times I think a war can be just. There are times when a maniac rules a nation and begins to use his power to throw the world into chaos, and such times may be instances when warfare is necessary as an absolute last resort. There are indeed "just wars."

However, I also believe that those instances are very, very, very rare. I think a problem may just war theorists have is that they begin to see any war that their nation is involved in as "just." Many American Christians would probably fall into that camp. We are brought up believing that the United States is always right. We are told that we are God's nation, so whatever military campaigns we undertake must be good and just. We are the "good guys," regardless of the situation or time in history.

If this is true, though, it means that the United States is the only nation in the history of the world to always go to war justly. That is simply unrealistic. Propaganda and an instilled sense of nationalism lead us to think that our nation is always in the right, but to believe this is perhaps naive. It would make us unique in the history, because I don't think we can find any other nation to which we can apply the same qualification, especially since we ourselves have been at war with many of them at one time or another.

When considering the justice of a particular war, there are a few scenarios that may be played out. First, it could be that both sides in the war are just in their actions. This, of course, is ridiculous. Second, it could be that one side is just while the other is not. This would be the "just war" mentioned earlier. Third, it could be that neither side is just, and sadly, I believe that this is historically the most common type of war.

I think it's a good exercise to sit down and think through each of the wars and conflicts in which the United States has been involved in its history. Think about the circumstances and reasons that drove the U.S. to go to war, and ask, "How many of these wars were just from a Christian perspective." In elementary school history class, we were taught that we were always in the right, but that may be true far less often that we had believed. Most wars aren't fought to protect human lives. They are fought to protect national interests, economies, and ideologies.

Ultimately, these sorts of questions come down to the question, "Is it okay for a Christian to serve in the military?" To be frank, if a fellow believer were to seek my advice about whether or not to join the military, I would strongly encourage him to stay out. Not because there aren't any just wars to be fought, because I believe there are. But as I understand military life, a solider doesn't get to choose which wars he does and does not fight in, and it may be that a nation will send the Christian off to fight in an unjust war, or even in a just war, that person may be ordered to engage in unjust actions. When a person joins the military, he is signing over some of his freedoms to people who typically make decisions on national, not Christian, principles.

Of course, there are many Christians who have fought and who are fighting in our nation's military. In expression my views, my purpose is not to say that such people are evil or anything of the sort. This group includes people within my church, my friends, and my family. People who I love and respect greatly. I simply think it's time that the American church pays closer attention to how ready we are to jump on board with our nation's program. Our lives ought to be geared first and foremost toward emulating the character of Jesus.

The church as a whole has had far too uncritical of an approach when thinking about how we deal with war. There have been times in war that Christians have killed fellow Christians in the name of their countries. And somehow, I don't think that's what Jesus had in mind when he told us to love each other.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Wrecking Ball

Life isn't easy.

I would really like it to be. Things would be so much....easier. But sadly, that's just not how things work, and sometimes (or oftentimes) we are faced with difficult situations that we have to deal with. The circumstances that we face aren't always ideal, and when we encounter such situations, we have a choice about how we're going to handle them. Will you just accept things as they are and do your best to get by, all the while grumbling about how life is unfair? Or will you change the situation? Will we use your creative abilities to find a solution so that you can function outside of the circumstances?

My mother died of cancer when I was a young child. That was a situation that no one should have to deal with so early, and it has presented the most difficult set of circumstances with which I've ever had to contend.  When I was young, I suppose I had every excuse to use my situation as an excuse and a crutch. But I didn't do that, largely due to the supportive family I had around me and because of God's watching over me. I was certainly sad, and the grieving process took a long time, but I never despaired. I never blamed God for what had happened. I accepted that sometimes really bad things happen, and you can't let those things keep you from living life. I remember thinking even at an early age, "There are two possibilities: You can either be overcome by your circumstances, or you can overcome those circumstances." And I tried my best to do the latter.

For most of my life, I've had a pretty positive outlook on the world. I tried to find the good in what appeared to be bad situations. I believed that life can be better than it looks, and that I didn't need to be defined by things that happened to me.

But then my thinking changed. A few years ago, I went through a difficult period in which a couple relationships didn't pan out the way that I had hoped they would, and I began to feel that my life was outside of my control. I began to believe that good things just weren't supposed to happen to me, and that there was nothing I could do to change this. I slipped into a form of fatalism--this was the way life was, and I just had to live with it. I was a slave to circumstances, so I might as well get as comfortable as I can and not worry about changing things for the better.

But that's not the way humans are designed to function. We have a unique capacity for changing our circumstances. We don't have to just play the cards we're dealt; we can get new cards. And that's something that separates us from animals. At a zoo, regulations require that the fence for a lion enclosure be at least 12 feet high, because the lion is unable to jump over that tall of a fence. So the lion lives with these circumstances, believing that there is nothing he can do about it.

But do you know what a human being does when he's in a cage with a 12-foot fence? He builds a ladder so that he can climb over it.

When we're run up against a wall, we wheel in a wrecking ball to knock it down. We're not captive to our circumstances because we have the ability to change them. When we build cities where there's not much water, we build pipes to bring it in. When there's a river we can't swim across, we build bridges. When one city isn't working for us, we pack up and go somewhere else. When our jobs are bogus, we find new ones. Life doesn't have to remain how it is, because we have the God-given ability of creating and bringing change.

Far too often, I live like the lion in the zoo. I want to get to the world outside my cage, but I just stare up at that 12-foot fence and stay where I am. I focus more on what life is rather than on what it could be.

But we're not designed to be fatalists. We're made to be changers and creators. The world is made by people who see beyond their circumstances, who don't take "No" as an answer, and who know how to work the wrecking ball. And that's what I want to be like.

I mean, have you ever seen those wrecking balls?! How much fun would it be to swing one of those things around?

A lot of fun. That's how much.

Monday, July 2, 2012

From the Sidewalk

We here at A Chicken in a Cage with a Ferret have several traditions that we hold to rather stringently. They are as follows:
1. Be awesome.
2. Go on lots of hot dates.
3. Write a post every July 2nd to commemorate the anniversary of beginning the blog.
Since I've already been doing a pretty good job with the first two traditions, all I need to do is make good on the third to be in good shape for the next year. And so, today we pause to celebrate the blog and hopefully to write something that is just a little less crappy than the drivel that is normally here.

Last week I did something that I had not done yet since I moved to Cincinnati last August. I went for a walk in my area. I should have done this a long time ago. Since moving, I've become very...boring. Even more boring than I was before. When I'm not at school or work, I spend my time watching TV shows on Hulu or....well, that's about it. And because of this, my environment has become restricted to my 500 square foot apartment--made up of Bible commentaries on the shelves, empty Coke cans on the coffee table, and dirty laundry laying all over the bedroom floor. It's pretty small, and there's not much going on.

But the world outside my walls is much bigger, and last week I decided to go check it out. It was a little bit of biblical misapplication that inspired me to do so. I came across Proverbs 26:13: "The sluggard says, 'There is a lion in the road! There is a lion in the streets!'" The sluggard remains home because he imagines some danger waiting for him outside, and I realized that maybe I stay home so much because, well, the world out there can be scary! You could read the verse today by saying, "The sluggard says, 'There is a drug dealer outside! There are gangs roaming the streets!" Maybe that's what kept me indoors. And so, I decided to put my imagined fears aside and take a walk.

What I noticed on my journey was how different the world looks from different perspectives. I walked along a street that I drive down almost every day, but this time I saw it differently. I noticed little things that I had never seen before. I experienced sights and sounds that I have been immune too in my air-conditioned car with the radio bumping. By slowing down and walking rather than zipping by in my car, my perspective of the route totally changed.

The world looks different from the sidewalk.

I heard people's conversations who were talking on their porches. I felt uneveness of the sidewalk under my feet. I smelled the raccoon roadkill that had been pushed into the gutter. I saw closed-down businesses that I had never noticed before. I had to duck under low tree branches than hung over the sidewalk.

The way our world is structured today, it's easy to isolate yourself from everything outside of your little bubble. You can separate yourself from so many things. And this is a tempting way to live because it's so safe and comfortable. But it can also get boring really fast. Great ideas and great lives don't often come from people who spend their entire week watching reruns on TV. They come from those who are observing and engaging with the world around them. They come from people who slow down their pace to take note of the world as it exists.

So don't just watch the world through a windshield. Encounter it from the sidewalk.

And now, before I go, it's your turn to join in the blogiversary fun. Here's how you can participate. Leave a comment with three parts: (1) Congratulate me on my four-year run blogging and give me a nice compliment; (2) Let me know what kind of dessert you're going to send me; (3) Let me know what you'd like me to write about in a future post.

In all honestly, the third part is the one I would be most grateful to hear back on, so don't worry too much about the first two.

But seriously though, you should probably send some dessert.