“Rule of thumb for my life: When God seems absent, or there’s not enough God, I’m on the verge of finding more God than I could have imagined.”

— Mike Friesen

Baby, I need your lovin' Got to have all your lovin'

— The Four Tops

I woke up with these lines in my head yesterday morning. They were not accompanied by any assurance that they were from God. Perhaps I should stop noting the ones I’m not sure about, lest I give the impression that I’m suffering from severe confirmation bias.

Yet there is no reason to not make something good of this delivery from my subconscious mind: God wants all my loving. Actually, to be more precise, my first, most prophetic-sounding idea from this lyric was one of keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead, not frittering my attention on wasteful, lustful, unloving. It’s basically a reiteration of [1 Corinthians 16:14](1 Corinthians 16:14).

“Don’t judge me” is, hope, something you’ll never hear me say. I, for one, look forward to being judged. I hope you do, too. Most of us here on Twitter judge every day. You can’t have justice without judgment, by the way. (HT Dale Allison). If you must defend yourself against judgment, perhaps it’s better to say, “Don’t misjudge me” or “Don’t condemn me.“

“Let the seasons begin,” sings Beirut in my head as I wake up. A fair enough piece of advice for a time when I’m upset that I’m not doing anything with my life after Dylan and Noah leave.

For posterity, I’d better explain: Fostering Dylan and Noah lent me noble purpose. Sending them back their parents removes that purpose, which sends me reeling. It doesn’t help that my friend comes over last night with a young man who is determined to build physical environments conducive to the formation of Christian community, after spending the last few days touring the town talking to community-minded folks like Christian Baum of co.space, Joel Martin, and the staff of the College Township government administration, so as to pick my brain about Christian community, something about which I don’t know much. I leave that conversation and go to bed angry that I’m not doing anything “kingdom-minded” or noble.

You, God, or my subconscious mind tells me as I wake up, “Let the seasons begin.” For goodness’ sake, it’s only been two days since the boys have gone home. Give it a break. Let the seasons, the natural turn of time and the changes it brings, begin. Plus, you know you want to focus on the family these days anyhow.

It may help in interpreting Jesus’ parables to picture Him saying them to people, or perhaps to picture yourself saying them to people. That clarified the Parable of the Wedding Feast for me today.

“God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false” (2 Thessalonians 2:11).

This evening, I am uncomfortable with men ascribing action to God. It makes me want to throw out all of the parts of the Bible where that happens. Why would God send a deluding influence on anyone?

Since the parousia has taken so long, It is functional to replace “the day of Christ,” and other such phrases with “the day you die.”

The Bible is very clear about condemning sexual immorality. But there is but one moral absolute: love, that is, self-donation for the benefit of another motivated by a view of that other as wonderful. While that pole means a lot of human-facing behavior will remain classified as immoral in almost all situations (adultery [although not, perhaps, consensual extramarital sex], stealing, killing), some behavior, like same-sex sexual activity, will be reclassified over time. Culture will condition to what degree a specific act is immoral.

We rehabilitated the doctrine of the Final Judgment today in church. That’s nice.

I don’t always mind the aches and pains and the memory glitches that attend aging. They remind me that night comes. My hope is that light shines in the darkness.

— Dale Allison, “Heaven and Experience,” Night Comes (2016)

I don’t care what you think about sola gratia. If you don’t do what Jesus says in the Sermon, you’re building on sand.

I want include idle solitude in my life. I also want to read Richard Foster again.

I must remember that friendship is the gift I am most able to give the world, and that it’s people that matter most before anything else earthly.

I rode my rented bike today from the hotel to Kerry Park Overlook to the Fremont Troll to the Chittenden Locks to West Point at Discovery Park.

I sent a message to Carla upon watching the sunset from West Point saying, “If God is only as beautiful as this, He is enough to hold my attention for eternity.”

After returning the bike to Velo, I spent the entire walk back to the hotel worrying about where to put my stickers—the place stickers I get for my bike and the Restoring Eden stickers—in a place where they can be on display forever (so my computer, water bottle, and bike, which I think I’ll be replacing in the next ten years) but not call too much attention to myself or violate the virtue of humility.

As I read again a few reviews and the publisher’s description of Alan Jacobs’ The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, this time from the corridors surrounding the escalator well at the Washington State Convention Center, I teared up in gratitude as I concluded, tentatively as always, that You, God, had once again spoken directly to me for my good.

The message: You and those around you will be enriched if you heed Jacobs’ advice about reading, which Oxford University Press outlines as:

• read at whim,
• read what gives you delight,
• and do so without shame.

I’d add to this, as I’m sure he will in the book: read deeply and at length.

Why so grateful to God? Well, first of all, because You continue to speak to me in these little words and names I remember upon waking from a night’s sleep. I think I can tell the difference between a random surfacing of my subconscious mind and when You are speaking. But also because this speaks directly to an inner predicament I have felt acutely since having children, namely, that I want to read, but find it such a chore.

Relatedly, I delight so much more in the children’s books I’ve read than in the “adult” books I’ve set before me to read. Books are not to be broccoli.

For movies, I have no illusions: It is for beauty and entertainment and admiration. Same for music. But for books, I absorbed the idea that you should read in a utilitarian fashion.

Problem number 352 with Christian worship music: too much singing about the relationship and not enough singing about the ones who we are related

friend:

So have you seen your “Kings have no power other than what their subjects give them” anywhere else? Thinking more and more about it in light of 1 Corinthians 1:18 and the Cross being the demonstration of the power of God—precisely because it is the means by which he frees his subjects to become like him.”

me:

I’m not aware of anyone who formulated that thought before I did, although I do connect the highly circumscribed nature of human kingly power to the highly circumscribed nature of divine kingly power posited via the theodicy work of Greg Boyd, Thomas Jay Oord, Christopher McHugh, and John Caputo via Richard Beck. That last link you may find too progressive and deconstructed (as I do), but nevertheless useful. That last link is especially useful because come to think of it, Beck isn’t doing theodicy work with that blog series: He is formulating a rally cry for action. And so are you.

friend:

Hmmm interesting. He is using 1 Corinthians 1:18.

me:

Indeed. Caputo’s ontological assertions aside, Beck’s point sticks.

friend:

Ahh the age of “everyone’s a theologian.” I suppose I’m in that now, too. I think it’s good to have so many eyes on the thing, eh? It just makes for some fun googling—oh, wow, he’s saying angelic beings don’t exist?

me:

Beck is agnostic on the question. He doesn’t think it matters. He wrote a whole book about Satan and purposely plays cagey the whole time about whether he actually believes Satan exists.

friend:

Interesting…where did you come upon him? Now that I consider it, if the whole thing is summed up in love God and love my neighbor, I could be agnostic. Of course, I would have to account for what Jesus was doing and saying all the times he was casting demons out. Hmmm…we should be monks. Then we could just read and contemplate all day.

me:

A friend of mine from my Teen Mania days referred me to him when I first started my soteriology project. For a good understanding of why he doesn’t think it matters whether they’re real (or even, when push comes to shove, whether God is real), see “Is Santa Claus Real? A Parent’s Epistemological Meditation.” As for me, the historical facts before me, both ancient and modern, are easier to explain if there are such beings.

friend:

Yeah…woah this is a rabbit hole…

me:

’Tis. Anyway, yes, let’s be monks. Then we could read, meditate, pray, discuss, eat, and serve. And that could be it. It’d be great. There’s Franciscan monastery in Hollidaysburg. Screw it all. Let’s go.

We are ready to send Everett and Oak home. But we’re not. I’m sure these are the typical feelings of a foster parent. Life is going to be different. Quieter. This evening without them because they’re with Mommy and Daddy makes that sure. But as Everett would surely reciprocate, “I will miss you, Everett.” And I will miss you, Oak. We still have three weeks with them, so let’s make them count.

We asked Éa and Sullivan today whether they’d like to foster again. Sullivan said, “I’d like a year.” And Éa said, “Yeah, in like, five thousand weeks.”

A home is fuller if you’re stretched for the sake of relationships. Let us dig in to more people. Let us “love [our] enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35). Then I will live without regret.

I’m in no mood to journal: I feel disappointed in myself today for underaccomplishing, mostly because I didn’t make time to exercise today and haven’t managed to wheel back to get any post-launch work done on Frank’s website.

But Ethan and I had a stimulating conversation about how to live our lives following Jesus while we watched Sullivan and Everley take swim lessons and Éa and Anthem clamber around the bleachers. Unfortunately, it makes me want to get Carla to quit her jobs so we can more readily foster children.

Being a Christian family man can be confusing (see 1 Corinthians 7:32–35).

For this reason we don’t lose heart. Even if our outer humanity is decaying, our inner humanity is being renewed day by day. This slight momentary trouble of ours is working to produce a weight of glory, passing and surpassing everything, lasting forever; for we don’t look at the things that can be seen, but at the things that can’t be seen. After all, the things you can see are here today and gone tomorrow; but the things you can’t see are everlasting (2 Corinthians 4:16-18, KNT).

We look at the things that can’t be seen. That’s a religious paradox strict empiricist might choke on. But besides being poetic, it’s true, and whether the objects of our gaze are real or not, our hope in them has real sustaining power.

It’s also leads to a thought we as believers ought to remember: We are, in the end, talking about Someone invisible. Why balk at the idea that some folks don’t believe?

As this first day of my sprint toward getting a minimum viable website up for Frank and PolyGreen America ends, I am reminded that hobbies are happiest when they are not only enjoyable, but also seen as a form of generosity. In the case of web-development-on-the-side-that-disturbs-my-schedule-equilibirum, the enjoyment is possible only when I view it as such.

So Lord, let me renew that vantage on this work—and all work, really.

If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you it was I day I think—I hope—I turned a corner in my character. You see, since screening the finale of the second season of Gatiss & Moffatt’s Sherlock this past Saturday, entitled “The Reichenbach Fall” (and probably a good bit before then), I had been obsessing over the show: obsessing about its plot, obsessing about its characters, obsessing about its actors, and obsessing about its writers. I was obsessing about my decision to stop watching it because of my obsession.

I needed to be rescued from all this.

And it’s more than Sherlock: In recent months, I have spent far too much time and attention setting up operating systems, selecting an iPhone case, and other such minutiae. I prioritize trivialities. And it robs me of life (and steals from DiamondBack).

We have overcome perfectionism. We have overcome stoniness. We have overcome self-distraction at work. We have overcome religious doubt. (All of the above are still works in progress, but they are works well on their way with clear paths to completion.) Perhaps now we can take on obsessiveness and the resulting misprioritization.

Deliberation, yes: You do that about problems and decisions. Cogitation, yes: You do that about profundities. Obsession, no: You do that, by definition, with things you ought not to. And I know what it feels like.

If you’re going to obsess about anything, do it about giving yourself for the benefit of other people.

“Now you together are the Messiah’s body” (1 Corinthians 12:27, KNT). In other words, I extrapolate, we are how Jesus acts on this earth.

As much as I’d like to start posting about what is lost when we use transliterations like ‘baptism’ and ‘apostle’ instead translating them “immersion” and “emissary,” I am inspired to start thinking in terms of positive formulations of my faith, rather than critical ones. OK, Scott, we know what you don’t believe: What do you believe?

Clinging to a Man who is no longer perceptibly with us is not a sufficient ethic, as the very fact that we have the term “aberrational Christian or Bible-based groups” attests. It’s too loosy-goosey. People can make stuff up about what He is saying. Therefore, we must hermeneutically extract principles from His biographies.