For us who are heterosexual, the task as it regards the sexual behavior of our brethren who are homosexual or bisexual is to support their clean conscience. If I am open and affirming of chaste homosexual expression but my gay friend is not, I will not try to persuade my gay friend toward my point of view. I will support him in his efforts to keep to the ethic he thinks is right. See Romans 14.
Smattering of recollections from venison roast dinner this evening with Sauders at their house: I got to share my Alan Jacobs story. They were delighted at God’s activity. They remarked that we’re funny—like, make-you-laugh funny—something they don’t have enough of among their friends at University Mennonite Church. I surmised that social justice warriors have a hard time smiling. Ruth insisted that people ought to grow more idiosyncratic as they age, as long it’s not grumpily idiosyncratic. As such, in reply to Carla’s question about whether the Sauders think I’m weird, her answer was a very positive affirmative. I picked up Ta-Nehisi Coates’ letter to his son as my next book. The kids made Ed the Rabbit some things to chew on. It was a delightful evening.
Here are my notes on Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates:
On reading at Whim:
“The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free” (p. 48). Reading these sentences was electrifying to me coming off of Alan Jacobs’ The Pleasure of Reading. It also captures some of why I don’t read the news: I don’t wish to be subject to what people I don’t know, who are paid to write, say is important.
A double standard:
“…they understate the task and allow the citizens of this country to pretend that there is real distance between their own attitudes and those of the ones appointed to protect them…” and so on through the paragraph (78–79). Earlier in the book, he calls Samori to respect the story of each individual, to not let the experience of single souls get wiped away by the necessarily generalizing statements of history. But here, he pins the blame for the “sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects” on me. It’s wrong to conflate an individual’s helpless inaction with his will.
On the burden of “television”:
It occurred to me reading page 82 that we think that because we can see something, we can do something about it. But in these days of telegraph, tele-audio, and television, we still haven’t invented teleportation or omnipresence. We are closer to omniscience than ever before, with omnipresent eyes, and perhaps omnibenevolence, but we have neither true omnipresence nor omnipotence.
On godless holiness of the human body:
“And hell upon those who shatter the holy vessel” (87). What makes vessels holy if not the imago dei?
On personal moral fatalism:
“But you are human and you will make mistakes. You will misjudge. You will yell. You will drink too much. You will hang out with people you shouldn’t. Not all of us can be Jackie Robinson…” (95). I do not understand moral fatalism. I agree that sin is inevitable. But I disagree with anyone who says so. How anti-inspirational can you get?
On grand change:
“’It only takes one person to make a change,’ you are often told. This is also a myth. Perhaps one person can make change, but not the kind of change that would raise your body to equality with your countrymen” (96). RIGHT!
On the good old days and wicked men:
“…I raise it to show you that there was no golden era when evildoers did their business and loudly proclaimed it as such” (98).
On the myth of race:
“’Race’ itself is just a restatement and retrenchment of the problem” (115).
Finally, at the end of the book, Coates takes an unexpected environmentalist turn that inspires me.
The politics of Jesus: serve widows & orphans. Welcome foreigners. Prefer outsiders over insiders. Be kind to sinners and tough on saints.
If “faith in Christ” should sometimes be re-rendered “the faithfulness of Christ” (e.g., Romans 3:22), should “believe in Him” be rendered “be faithful to Him”? That’s no minor soteriological point.
Lord, I find your commands in the Sermon on the Mount to be empowering.
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).
I am most comfortable in situations where I feel the superior. This is probably true of most people, but I noticed it this evening when my friend and his new squeeze came over with his sons at Sullivan’s request.
Would that I would take that comfort in my own skin with me in all social settings.
“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.
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.
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.
Feminism is chivalry.
This spoken after I saw a gal at Torta’s wearing a “Girls to the Front” jacket, which has something to do with Riot Grrrrls, which is a feminist music movement out of the Pacific Northwest.
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.
You’re more helpful than a rabid dog!
— Sullivan, thanking a friend who was helping clean up
I am less self-disciplined, less loving, and less diligent whenever Carla leaves.
Carla has been peevish recently. But so have I. It’s a cycle. I realized one way to break the cycle is to drop my expectation that anyone, including my wife and kids, act perfectly lovingly all the time. I don’t, so why should I expect them to?
I’ll go further: When a demand is made of me or a disagreement voiced, let my first instinct be to satisfy the demand or come to accord quickly and happily. Obviously, I won’t be a pushover, but I will be a volunteer, a happy second-miler.
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?
With apologies to philosophers and neuroscientists who believe there is no such thing as free will, we humans are the only (or perhaps one of just a few) species capable of choosing what we consume and how. We have a huge responsibility.
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.
The important thing is not to obsess.
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.
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 we had our 72-year-old next-door neighbor Janet Donald over for leftover Stilson rotini dinner, homemade quick bread, a thirteen-year-old shiraz Janet had donated to us a month prior for Carla’s birthday, and some after-dinner Dixit at the kids’ prompting, all while piano jazz played on Spotify and the thermostat was set to a balmy 67°F.
I told her I love having her over.
Did I say it because I love the feeling of moral pride it gives me to know I have my aged next-door neighbor over for dinner and counter her as a friend? In part, yes. But I also said it because I really do like her.