Scott Stilson

You want to know something amazing? Doubting God has made more room in my mind for me to actually follow Jesus. Like, with my actions. I come from a tradition that doesn’t emphasize that.

And I am part of the body of Christ. If someone needs empathy, help, listening ear, money, websites, whatever—if there is a need, let me fill it. I am His hands. (Cue St. Francis prayer.) Jesus doesn’t usually ride in on the clouds and save the day that way. He saves the day through us.

Today I am grateful for Richard Biever, who works an awful lot under the auspices of his proprietorship FUSE Productions to bring the joys of taking in—and participating in—high-quality theatre to State College. I visited his house midday today to run through “O Holy Night” and suggest that I also sing “The Restroom Door Said Gentleman.”

I am also grateful for Carla, who continues to apply herself assiduously to making a happy Christmas for everyone in her social circle. Unfortunately, she said on our midday drive to HobbyTown USA today that she feels like she is losing God through it all.

Maybe Paul tells us to pray without ceasing because without prayer, it’s hard to believe in God. That’s my experience, anyway.

Since I have decided to concentrate my life so locally, my locality matters. It’s Houserville for now, but I can envision wanting to live in a neighborhood that isn’t in a place that’s already called ‘Happy Valley.’

I got chills thinking that while driving to Giant this evening on my way to buying a pink hedgehog Beanie Baby for Éa and a big-eyed monkey Beanie Baby for James.

Don’t worry about the obvious physicality—and thus susceptibility to brain damage—of the mind, and therefore the self. God, the one who created everything from nothing, can surely un-disease those who have sustained brain damage.

I found great relief on this question as I started my evening walk by asking myself two questions:

1. How do we humans take care of the brain-damaged among us? (We care for them and, as much as is in our power, we try to reverse the effects of the brain damage. God will do the same thing in the life to come.)
2. Is there any kind of brain damage, disorder, impairment that we don’t think of as being just that: damage, disorder, or impairment? (No.)

I am grateful today for a son who grows in maturity and relatability. It was my honor to bring him to Panera this evening to share in a cherry pastry with him. We agreed it’d be good to learn computer programming together as father and son. I set a reminder for myself to look into the best, most child-friendly among the free starter courses that are cropping up seemingly everywhere online these days. We also played chess with a Super Mario set that Schlow Library had on hand.

I am grateful today for the evening of dress-up, make-up, dancing, and bathing together that Carla tells me she and Éa shared. I am glad they got to enjoy one another.

I am grateful for Greg Boyd, whose God at War Travis is reading at my recommendation while I re-read Satan and the Problem of Evil. Travis texted me this evening to chat briefly about how much he enjoyed Boyd’s use of quantum theory in the opening pages.

Why have I decided against eating farmed mammals?

• Mammal husbandry is ecologically expensive, and
• mammals are almost certainly sentient.

I will eat game mammals because they are not as ecologically expensive. Plus, by hunting myself, I am staying more in touch with what eating mammals entails for the mammals.

I am grateful for our good friends the Potters, with whom we shared a dinner and an evening today. (I told Josh about my pollo-pesce-venatarian tonight.) I am grateful for our good friends the Rookes, the Matt of which I raced and competed on pull-ups with today. I am grateful for the rest of our good friends at church, with whom we shared a park walk today. I am grateful for our good friends the Wendles, who gave us two deer worth of meat today after we butchered them.

I am grateful for the loving effort Carla is putting forth these past few days into making Christmas cheery for us all by overcoming her distaste for shopping and spending the better part of today and yesterday shopping. We had decided after last Christmas that we would do 100% of our Christmas shopping locally. We probably won’t end up doing 100%, but the decision does mean Carla has been all over town: Jo-Ann Fabrics, Goodwill, Ross, and Target, to name a few.

I am grateful for our tenant Apoo’s eagerness to share Indian dishes with us. We had her, her husband Vijay, and her father Raju up for dinner this evening so we could meet her father. We shared garden vegetable quiche; she shared chicken biryani. Carla and I overate because everything was so tasty.

I am grateful for the culturally show of fatherly tenderness Raju made by touching Éa’s face when she caught her hand in the globe while fighting Sullivan over it. Perhaps it is purely cultural and doesn’t carry the same meaning in...

Brandon and I swapped photos of our standing desks today.

You may laugh that I write about my standing desk so much. But my body—and I hope Brandon’s back—will be much healthier because of this switch.

“Where God closes His holy mouth, I will desist from inquiry.”

— John Calvin

Now there’s a thought.

Hanging out with people is the only way to save the poor in spirit. Do I remember the two wall-to-wall days I spent with Uncle Chris? What a joy, and it touched his soul. It’s the only way—at least, the only way conceivable for me—for people like him and César to make their way out of moral and circumstantial poverty. But what am I to do? If I were a single man, I think I’d keep my job at DiamondBack and take it with me as I went on medium-term mission trips to live with César in Callao and with anyone I met who was a pariah, and I would hang out with them.

My journal app’s daily prompt is prompting me to describe my cooking skills. I can:

• cook breakfast foods, like eggs, bacon, and pancakes, and
• follow recipes.

Grilling is something I know the movements for but have no deep knowledge of (so don’t ask me to grill your chicken).

Baking is a foreign land. I leave exploring it to Carla.

I’m sorry, posterity. I feel no urge to journal these days. And that’s despite many interesting things happening these days, including:

• Christmas,
• the apparent rise of islamophobia and the specter of fascism in America,
• hunting and butchering in College Township with Ethan,
• questions and answers about the problem of evil and what Jesus accomplished the Cross,
• my old Peruvian pal Cesar living homeless with AIDS on the streets of Callao.

By 10:15 at night, I find little interest or strength for journaling.

I have spent thought and lament the past several evenings trying to understand what exactly Jesus accomplished by dying on the Cross and, more acutely, how He accomplished it. And as if prompted by my worries, one of my favorite bloggers wrote a piece called, “Why Did Jesus Have to Die?” In it he provides the most comprehensive list of understandings of the Atonement I’ve ever seen in one place before.

And none of them are striking to me as it.

Still, there’s enough there to go on, I guess. And more important, I believe Jesus is the promised Jewish Messiah and the living lord of all. And I am going to follow Him.

This is how I feel.

Here is a list of things from today that were gratifying, and which, therefore, because by some strange extension You are the giver of all good things, I thank You, God:

• tapas dinner with the Wendles at Barrel 21,
• deer hunting scouting time on the far bank of Spring Creek,
• agreeing with Ethan to meet him tomorrow morning at 5:45 to make use of said deer hunting scouting time,
• my beautiful wife who sat next to me at Barrel 21,
• my inventive Sullivan who made some Legos light up today at the Wendles’ house (while being babysat by Jeff and Denise), and
• my standing desk.

I am a flexitarian, or a reducetarian, or a pollo-pescetarian. But I also think I’ll keep hunting deer.

Quick brainstorm of everything that I enjoyed about today:

• sitting on Matt Rooke’s dad’s old tree stand behind their old house hunting unsuccessfully for whitetail deer, being distracted by squirrel and chipmunks,
• Matt’s oatmeal with apples and cinnamon,
• Lara’s cookies,
• Aunt Allie’s chicken-sausage-and-bean-and vegetable soup,
• the fact that Matt’s Aunt Diana shot a buck and a doe today,
• the conversation with Matt and Lara on the way home, which ranged all over the place (and during which I probably talked too much),
• the understated gratitude I was able to express to You today throughout the day,
• the safe ride home,
• the service Aunt Allie and Lara provided us by preparing our food.

Doubt baby review:

• empathy
• action-orientation (Jesus' main thing)
• final marginalization of Teen Mania-esque emphasis on making converts
• metaphysical flexibility (for me and for others)
• humility
• pluralism & ecumenism
• lightheartedness
• reset for my fight against sexual sin
• reset for my distraction at work

I think we could resolve some problems if we simply renamed the secular holiday, so that there’s the Christian holiday, “Christmas,” and the secular, gift-giving holiday, “Festivus”.

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 that today I worked on DiamondBack’s new website from the living room of the house of Carla’s Aunt Laurel (actually her cousin once removed). I made my own tea and found some penne and pasta sauce that I made for myself for lunch. It was pleasant.

Scott: Are any of my accents good?
Éa: Well, I don’t like them, so I don’t know.

I am less self-disciplined, less loving, and less diligent whenever Carla leaves.

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).