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We Are Becoming Who We Are

January 18, 2011

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s the go-to adult question for children  – especially adults who aren’t very comfortable with children. Or are meeting a child for the first time. Implied in that simple, innocuous interrogative is the skeletal structure of a system of values. It assumes first that you are not anything now – merely a possibility, a hope, a beginning. It presumes you will grow into some thing – a career, a pursuit, maybe even a position of influence or authority. It infers that the meaning of every human life is inexorably linked to the things we do – especially the things we do for a living.

No one ever asks “Who do you want to be when you grow up?” In fact, we seldom ask ourselves who we are becoming.

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Of Magic and Miracles

January 6, 2011

"You'll shoot your eye out!"To put this all in context, we’ve just come through the Christmas and New Year celebration seasons. Having four girls under the age of five makes Christmas a fun and magical time.

I’m a bit of a late bloomer in the realm of parenting, so this is my first set of urchins to awaken to the ever-increasing wonderama that is Christmas in America. The oldest (four year old twins) are now fully engaged with the “I am getting presents” thing. This year they realized for the first time that the cookies they were decorating were good eatin’, and the desire to consume copious amounts of sugar quickly overtook the urge to open gifts, to the point that cookies were the only topic of dinnertime conversation for three days leading up to the blessed event. Our goal of convincing them that Christmas is all about giving to others is lagging behind a bit, but we’re making progress, despite the inherent narcissism that marks the toddler to preschool years. They now at least acknowledge that the baby Jesus is somehow connected to the chaos, and will tolerate other people getting presents without protest.

And then there’s Santa. I have to confess here that I have always had a dualistic relationship with the hoary elf. On the one hand, I never recall thinking Santa was real. On the flip side, I distinctly remember my Dad, with a wry wink, advising us to listen for reindeer on the roof of our mobile home on Christmas Eve. When it came time to educate our spawn regarding the ubiquitous December icon, we took a somewhat similar approach, albeit attempting to infuse a sense of theological accuracy. We teach that Santa is a fun story – a parable of sorts that teaches us about giving to others and doing the right things for the right reasons (by illuminating all the wrong ones, like “be good to get stuff”). With this approach, we get to pretend and play the Santa game with no jeopardy attached. I think the twins get it. On Christmas Eve I told them they had to go to sleep or Santa wouldn’t come. The red-head said “Oh – you won’t come with the presents if we’re awake?” Perfect.

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We told him to stop, because he was not one of us.

August 31, 2010

I’m probably going to regret posting this. I have wrestled with it, but in the end, it was in my heart struggling to get out, and that is what this blog is for. In case you’re wondering, I think I could argue with myself about a few of the things I am about to write, so I welcome your disagreement without taking any offense. You should also know that I am the chief sinner in this post. Many of the things I am calling out I have been most guilty of.

We live in a country sharply divided along cultural, political, racial, socioeconomic, and religious lines. I’ve only been around 35 years, but it seems like we are more polarized than ever. That’s not the worst thing that can happen – a homogeneous, single-minded people can sometimes be more dangerous than warring factions (see the Tower of Babel, Nazi Germany…the list is endless). But this kind of climate can be exhausting sometimes. You never know what small thing – a movie you watched, a word you say, an opinion you have – might permanently alienate you from someone else.

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Your Mind is the Scene of the Crime.

July 21, 2010

I’m not given to reviewing movies here on ViralJesus.org, but I’ve been thinking a lot about a film I saw over the weekend – Inception. I was putting together a post on this very subject, and the movie had an oddly crystallizing effect. I was gripped by the tag line used in promotional materials:

Your mind is the scene of the crime.

Woven into the writings of the Scriptures we find the concept that the mind is a battlefield. The epic wars between good and evil, better and best, the flesh and the spirit – all rage in our inner thoughts. The fight begins in our center of consciousness, but its outcome has the power to determine our destiny and expresses itself in our words and actions. Jesus addressed the legalism of His generation this way:

20He went on: “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ 21For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’ “  -Mark 7