I need not fear the prospect of my children deciding against following Christ. It may happen. But it should not cause fear, apprehension, or anxiety. Sadness, yes, but even that the sadness of someone who can’t share a specific joy with someone else, not the sadness of a man robbed of his heart and soul. I will still be Christ’s, and Christ will still be mine. And the Christ I know these days doesn’t bar people from eternal life on the basis of their professions of specific faith, anyway.
But if I do experience such emotions, as yesterday after Carla pointed out that I answered a question Sullivan had not asked (Sullivan: “I wish the Lundins came to our church.” Me: “Well, they don’t go to church. Tom doesn’t believe in God.” Sullivan: “Really? He doesn’t believe in God?”), I need not be ashamed of them. It’s my shame about those feelings that causes me to clam up and act out rather than speak plainly about them.
Another Saturday, another end-of-day ambivalence about how I spent my time: Today is the kind in which I wish I spent more time accomplishing things and less time socializing. Often it is the reverse.
“Paul wanted [Timothy] to go with him; and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those parts, for they all knew that his father was a Greek” (Acts 16:3). Now that’s dedication.
A slight feeling of stomach-drop creeped into me this evening as Sullivan came out of his bedroom after bedtime to talk through the disappointment he was feeling about how his “splat ball” that he had earned during this “cookie dough” fundraiser at Lemont Elementary was only intact for about an hour and a half this afternoon before it burst or leaked or something. He had worked relatively hard to get that splat ball, and he was sad, either that he had abused the ball so as to break it, or that it was of such poor quality as to break so easily. Carla handled his disappointment with aplomb, as you might imagine.
What is this feeling? It’s like I fear he is not going to be able to handle his disappointment and thus somehow let them lead him to despair and religious doubt.
I also felt it last night when Éa offered at the end of A Picture Book of George Washington, where it mentions Washington’s death, that our first president is now alive again. I replied that some people think so, yes, in...
— William Makepeace Thackeray, as quoted by Laurence Hutton as quoted by The Boston Herald, cited here in my journal with some emphasis on the “whatever” part
New protocol: Whenever I lend something, I will note that I have done so as a task to get it back, not in a standalone list of things lent, which never gets looked at. Similar thing for borrowed items.
Finding Christian music I like is harder than finding non-Christian music I like because the lyrics matter more: You not only have to find music you like, you also have to find a theological bent you agree with. And you’re working with a smaller subset of the populations, so the pickings are slimmer.
Could a fellow charismatic humor my perhaps fussy inner lexicographer? I’m looking for a definition of “enter in.”
I ask because I’m generally suspicious of phrases in Christian circles whose meaning would not be immediately apparent to outsiders. “Enter in” strikes me as an example of the clichéd, mystical argot that helps to maintain power structures and in-group, out-group distinction in an organization. The first way to neuter such a phrase’s abusive possibilities is to provide a clear definition for it.
As far as I can tell, among Bible translations the phrase is unique to King James, and it never occurs in the context we hear it now: Congregational singing. What’s more, it’s redundant—that is, drop the word “in” and the phrase would, at face value, mean the same thing. The problem with that, however, is that we often use “enter in” without prepositional object, and if the guy at the microphone were to say simply “Enter!” during singing time (pause for a moment to picture it), the mysticism of the directive would, I think, be even more apparent.
I spent the entire afternoon torpid. I mean, I took a nap on a picnic tabletop today during a church visit to Talleyrand Park. What is it about Sundays? Is this a lethargy I can end by flipping a switch in my brain? Tea this afternoon didn’t help.
The best solution is probably to just go ahead and take the nap.
Some tired thoughts on this Swing Time (1936), which is the first film Carla and I have repeat-watched from the greatest lists. Is Swing Time worth watching? Yes. Like we did with Top Hat, we shared some of the dance numbers with the kids. We weren’t sure what to do with the Bojangles number at the time; Wikipedia now tells us that the Bojangles is a real person to whom (with one other guy) Astaire was paying tribute, not aping. Carla and I agree it’s the better of the Astaire-Rogers films we watched, although I’m more tickled with the dancing in Top Hat. It’s the faces, though, in this one, like Ginger’s when she comes to plant a kiss on Fred in his dressing room, fails, and then they kiss behind a closed door. Close-ups of Fred toward the end when he finds out Ginger is going to marry the Metaxa character. Fred Astaire looks more like JImmy Stewart in this one. We shared the dance numbers with the kids. Interesting how central a role cheating plays in this one. More believeable, this one. Again, those dresses. Must’ve been quite the pick-me-up during the Depression. Worth watching.
I enjoy watching my family do things I suspect other families do not but which I consider healthy. In this photo, all three of them are leaning out or about to lean out past the boardwalk rail in searching of jewelweed pods ready to pop.
“Who is there among you who is wise and intelligent? Then let him by his noble living show forth his [good] works with the [unobtrusive] humility [which is the proper attribute] of true wisdom…But the wisdom from above is first of all pure (undefiled); then it is peace-loving, courteous (considerate, gentle). [It is willing to] yield to reason, full of compassion and good fruits; it is wholehearted and straightforward, impartial and unfeigned (free from doubts, wavering, and insincerity). And the harvest of righteousness (of conformity to God’s will in thought and deed) is [the fruit of the seed] sown in peace by those who work for and make peace [in themselves and in others, that peace which means concord, agreement, and harmony between individuals, with undisturbedness, in a peaceful mind free from fears and agitating passions and moral conflicts]” (James 3:13,17-18, AMP).
Thank You, God, for reinforcing the lesson: If you think you’re wise, you’d better be able to prove it with deeds.
“Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed” (Jesus, as reported in John 20:29).
I’ve always taken this saying of Jesus, along with several other beatitudes, as being some kind of moral judgment, in this case, that folks who trust Jesus without having to see Him are better people than those who need to see Him to believe. But that’s not what He is saying: Instead, it’s that the more credulous among us are happier, to be envied, as the Amplified Bible puts it. It’s true: If I didn’t feel impelled to study and intellectualize and apologize God, I’d be a much happier man.
I worry some my wanting to be the answers to my own prayers rather than merely praying them will be one of those revelations that doesn’t stick because I don’t implement it fast enough. But God, let it not be so. And it seemed to me to be the Holy Spirit who just said to me, “Hook your well-established system of doing it or queueing it to the impulses that come to you as you massage this new mindset into yourself.”
Current interpretation of the bits in James 1 and Romans 5 about persevering through trials: Perseverance through trials, even those that come in the form of intellectual challenges to the faith, breeds perseverance.
A locus of my anxiety about my religious doubt is my children. I have previously been so sure of God that I never worried about passing my faith on to them; I had what was in my mind a 100% sure platform on which to stand and call to them to join me. The thought of not being able to pass on to them something I know is true makes my stomach drop.
