...of a child

The passage I want to look at today I have heard taught many times, and I have always felt slightly uneasy about the way it was taught. I think I was always a bit insulted by the simplicity of the message, but I never really articulated why that was a problem. It did not bother me too much, but just a little. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all cover the passage, so I will include the version from Mark below.

"People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.' And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them."- Mark 10:13-16

Every time that I can recall that I have heard this taught it has been about the faith of a child. The lesson is on how children don't question things and just accept them, so we should accept God in the same way. While faith is important, I feel that the more important and challenging lesson has been dropped from this telling of the passage, which is humility.

There are two hints to what the actual point of the passage is. The first hint is that the disciples find it necessary to rebuke people who are bringing children to Jesus. Why do the disciples feel the need to specifically keep children away from Jesus? It doesn't have anything to do with the children's faith. That would make no sense.

The reason that the disciples would have rebuked those bringing children to Jesus is that in Jesus' time in the Middle East there was no honor in being young. Honor was for the aged. In this patriarchal society the dishonorable youths were managed by the women, and for a male teacher to be wasting his time with kids when he could be teaching those who were older would have been a dishonor. That was a woman's work! Therefore, the disciples believe they are protecting the honor of their teacher. Furthermore, when Jesus tells the disciples that they will have to receive the kingdom of God like children he is telling them that they have to dishonor themselves to become a part of this kingdom.

The second hint is a bit more straightforward, but you have to look in a different passage to find it. Not long before this exchange in Mark 10 (also in Matt 19:13-15 and Luke 18:15-17) Jesus had already told the disciples that they would have to humble themselves like children. Notice this in the passage below.

"At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, 'Who is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven?' He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: 'I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.'"- Matt 18:1-4

It is good to have the faith of a child if it is truly faith and not a show, but in the passage where that phrase originated God is instead asking for your humility.

my time

Pretty much the theme of my life over the last few years has been me not wanting to relinquish control of my time and my time being wrested from me. That is kind of expected when you have small children, but it is something that I in particular struggle with. Even when I had more free time the biggest fantasy I had for where I wanted my life to be was the ability to enjoy time-consuming pleasures (games, books, movies) without concern for the opportunity cost in time or money. I don't know that I articulated that this was my biggest life fantasy, but it was.

The problem with this fantasy is the problem with any fantasy. It places me and my wants ahead of everyone else. It also represents something that I have a hard time giving to God. This is evidenced by the fact that I have really struggled with having a good attitude about my accelerated Bible reading plan over the last month. I had grand plans for my limited free time January through May and this pretty much shot those down. If I can't make a real time sacrifice to read Scripture, though, something is probably wrong with my life.

I don't really have much more to say about this other than I think this is something that I will always struggle with. God is going to work on this during my life, but this is something that does not change easily.

what's important in life is...

Over the past couple of years I have heard a few random people start a sentence with words like, "What's important in life is," then complete the sentence with something like, "family," or, "giving and receiving love," or something of that nature. I always hate when I hear that because it could either be something that is mostly true or it could be self-serving garbage, and it is hard to tell which. I tend to think that the person making the statement is being self-serving without realizing it. Fair or not, that's where my mind goes. The following are the arguments the statement being true and for the statement being hooey.

Why it may be true

The reason a statement like, "What's important in life is family," sounds noble is that it implies loyalty and sacrifice. While family should not take the place of God, the family unit is the main means that God has chosen to illustrate our relationship with Him. Furthermore, leading or caring for a significant other and/or family represents the greatest responsibility most people will ever have. For many people the purpose of their lives is tied up in their family.

Likewise, I believe that love if it is defined properly is more or less synonymous with sacrifice. God is love and God showed His love in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners. Love isn't about emotional responses, but about what I am willing to do for someone else. I love my family because of what I would sacrifice for their well-being rather than because I get the warm fuzzies when I think about them.

If you say that the important thing about life is love, and by love you mean selflessly sacrificing yourself for the cause of Someone greater than yourself, then I agree. If you say that one of the most important things about life is growing in your relationship with God through your relationship with your family and the sacrifices that entails, then I agree.

Why it's probably hooey

The problem is that a lot of people determine things are important because they desire it for themselves. If someone said that the purpose of life is sex (forget the reproduction argument for a moment), most would assume that person was allowing his or her own desires to mess with his or her sense of proportion. This would be the same if someone decided that the purpose of life is notoriety, wealth, good looks, or excitement. They are all so obviously self-serving that, while anyone is free to believe that one or more of these things are the central focus of life, society will not let them act noble about it. That's kind of how I feel about putting love or family in this list.

If someone says that love is what is important in life because they desire love from others, that is a bit self-serving. If family is important, not because they are worth sacrificing for, but because it looks good when you show up to church or other social events together as a cohesive unit, that is a bit self-serving.

If you are a Christian who believes in and agrees with what the Bible says, you do not have the option of making the purpose of your life be self-serving. The common thread in the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments is that those who God accepts are those who surrender, sacrifice, and humble themselves out of fear and reverence. Therefore, what is important in life is the opposite of satisfying our desires. It is rather surrender, sacrifice, and humility before God.

structured learning

This past week I joined a few people in my church in starting a schedule of chronologically reading through the Bible in 112 days. This is something that I resisted at first, but that I decided I would start with the caveat that I would drop it if it became too much of a burden. So far the reading has been less involved than I expected, and it has required less time overall than the reading and homework I had to do most semesters when I was taking MBA classes. Life is busy, though, so I am not entirely convinced I will complete this.

The last time I tried a structured Bible reading program I was in junior high. I don't believe I finished, but my memory of the process is spotty. I have never been an extremely fast reader, and it was very hard to catch up when I got behind (which will happen at some point during every reading program if you don't read ahead). It was hard enough to focus on the content of what I was reading when I did a day's reading, but if I tried to read multiple days' worth of reading speed was a higher priority than understanding what I was reading. Even then I knew this defeated the purpose of reading through the Bible. This is a big reason why I am wary of structured reading plans.

The first time I actually read all of the way through the Bible and understood most of what I read was around my sophomore year in high school. I took more than a year going through it at that time and I used a study Bible so that I would have a better context for what I was reading. Furthermore, when I did spend a large block of time reading the Bible it was because I was interested in what I was reading rather than because I had to complete the scheduled reading for last month, so I retained what I read better. The success I saw with the more unstructured reading further influenced my opinions regarding the best way for me to read the Bible.

Because of this experience, I am actually a bit wary of the other ways that I have heard pushed to read the Bible as well. Reading the Bible a little each day is a great way to stay on top of reading if your life can be structured in that way. I think that saying that that is the standard for Bible reading is ridiculous, though. Bible reading is important if it is effective, and if a specific structure or plan for reading the Bible does not work for someone then pushing it on them is not helpful. It will only discourage them from reading Scripture in the future.

Ultimately, the reason I decided on this Bible reading plan was that I found I was coming up with excuses not to read a lot of the passages in the Old Testament, so I figured if I had the motivation of discussing what I was reading with others who were reading it the reading might not be so much of a burden. I do not want to diminish the value of the Old Testament, but much of it can be dry and difficult to trudge through, such as Exodus, Leviticus, and stretches of the two books of Chronicles (which open with nine solid chapters of genealogies).

I found a story in the New York Times today that I felt paralleled this a bit. The College Board is in the process of revising the coursework associated with advanced placement classes because some of the classes had so much material the classes were more focused on memorization than discovery. If you know my philosophy on education, which was formed based on experiences like what I just described, you know that I like these changes. Allowing the student to learn through self-directed means rather than forcing him or her through a rigid set of steps will ultimately cause that student to retain more knowledge and discover how to learn new things. For people like myself, if you take the discovery process from Scripture reading, then they will not want to read it and they will only learn what they have to. That is true for all other learning as well.

julie and julia?

Netflix has a section in their site called "Top picks for..." where it lists ten movies, TV series, or whatever that you might like based on your ratings for other movies and recent movies that you have added to your queue or rated. When I visited this section in my Netflix page tonight noticed that Julie & Julia is listed. That makes no sense. I am the first to admit that there are "chick flicks" that I like more than Golden does (What Women Want, Hitch, and Little Black Book to name a few), but those movies all have things that a standard genre piece doesn't have. What Women Want is appealing because I appreciated the insight it brought, Hitch was genuinely funny, and Little Black Book dared to break the standard formula for how a rom-com should end. Julia & Julia, though? What could possibly be in that movie that I would find appealing? This is especially odd because I have been impressed lately with how accurate Netflix is in predicting movies that I would like compared to Blockbuster.

I double-checked the filmography for the director, the genres that the movie is listed under, and the movie description, and there is nothing there that should appeal to me in any way. No offense to those who like the movie. It just doesn't sound like my thing. To be fair, the rest of the recommended movies are more up my alley (three comedies, three sci-fis, two animated, and a psychological thriller), so it's probably a simple miss.

I said all that to ask a simple question. Have you ever been recommended a movie (either through electronic or interpersonal means) that in no way matched the sort of movie you would be interested in? I'm not really asking about a movie you didn't like but you normally like the genre. I mean there was no possibility you would have ever liked the movie because you don't even like the genre. Did it impact the way you thought about that person or electronic system?

my good name

Minor spoiler alert regarding The Dark Knight. In one of the closing scenes of the movie Batman has to decide whether or not to allow the inhabitants of Gotham believe that he committed murders that someone else committed. He has to make this decision because he believes that if the citizenry of Gotham found out who actually committed the murders they will be disillusioned and unable to stand up to corruption in the city. This concept has stuck with me.

I mentioned in my last post that it is a little rough sitting through sermons on the same passages every year. That is probably not entirely fair because there are always new things to discover in worn passages. They just don't jump out at you. This year I spent some extra time contemplating the following passage from Luke 1.

"'How will this be,' Mary asked the angel, 'since I am a virgin?' The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.'

"'I am the Lord's servant,' Mary answered. 'May it be to me as you have said.' Then the angel left her."- Luke 1:34-38

While I have heard sermons and lessons allude to the fact that infidelity was a serious matter in Palestine at this time and that Mary could have been stoned to death, I don't think the sacrifice that Mary made is fully appreciated. Even though she was a virgin, everyone she knew would believe that she was loose or weak-willed at best, or an adulteress if Joseph decided to keep his name clean at her expense. For a woman in a culture where family honor is so tied to the woman's sexual purity that it is considered acceptable to kill her to restore that honor, Mary had to understand the gravity of telling the angel that she was God's servant. Even if she were not stoned to death she in all likelihood was accepting the life of a social outcast over something that she did not even do.

It sounds trite or even sacrilegious to compare Batman to the mother of Christ, but both situations illustrate a concept that has been on my mind. I care about my good name enough that it would drive me absolutely insane if everyone mistakenly thought that I had committed some misdeed. I would spare no energy in defending my name and this fact illustrates one of my spiritual weaknesses. This is just one more thing that can and will stand between Christ and me unless I let Him change that aspect of me. Having a good reputation is fine, but if I'm not willing to sacrifice that reputation I have not given God everything I am.

thoughts on the holiday

As it is now Christmas season I have been enjoying the downtime, but also contemplating a few things about the holiday.

First, I really do not like most Christmas movies. I have known this for a while, but I have only recently taken the time to figure out why. It's because there are only two or three potential plots to a true Christmas movie and they almost always attempt to compensate for a lack of quality with saccharine-sweet sentimentality.

Second, I wonder if the appeal of the holiday to some people is that Christ is depicted as a baby. We went through a major lights display a few nights ago and I was struck by the number of baby-laying-in-a-manger scenes, even in situations where there were no Mary and Joseph depicted. Kind of like Ricky-Bobby, do a lot of people prefer not to think of Christ the adult if presented with the opportunity to think of him as a baby? If so, this cannot be healthy. There's a reason that the Gospels focus on the adult Jesus far more than the child Jesus.

Third, I think that Easter should be more important than Christmas to Christians. From a practical perspective the resurrection is the fulfillment of the Old Covenant and the initiation of the New Covenant. Easter represents the most important event that ever occurred, and Christmas represents an event that was necessary for the resurrection to occur. That said, Christmas is the more important in our culture because of the consumer aspect and because it conveniently splits the school year in two. I don't really see this as a soapbox issue for me, so I'll drop that specific issue here.

Fourth, while I'm on the topic, Christmas and Easter sermons are generally the worst sermons of the year. You do not have to have attended church at all to know the stories of Christ's birth, death, and resurrection. These are the foundation of the Christian faith, but they are also milk rather than meat. A sermon should teach the congregation something that they do not know or do not know well. It is frankly hard to do that when your source text is Matthew 1-2 or Luke 1-2, which everyone in the congregation has heard taught one month out of every year for their entire lives.

Fifth, the above points made, the idea behind the virgin birth and Jesus' very existence on this earth is pretty spectacular. The unpredictability of everything Jesus did and how he fulfilled the Law, even when so much of how this would go down was prophesied, should give pause to people who read prophesies into modern-day events. The methods that God uses to do what He is going to do are unpredictable even when God has provided prophesy about what is going to happen, because God operates more spectacularly than we can imagine.

Sixth, buying and wrapping gifts for the holidays is the most inefficient means of giving someone else something ever dreamed up by mankind. I know that is part of the value of giving and receiving gifts to many people, the knowledge that it requires some effort. In an already busy season, though, is it wrong to long for some efficiency?

One very good thing about the holiday is that I usually take quite a bit of vacation time. I do enjoy taking multiple weeks off from work. It provides a nice way to de-stress. No doubt about that.