Linear Rankings, Interconnected Spheres, and Reconsidering My Priorities

During my recent foray into my first year of seminary, I've been challenged to reshuffle my schedule, and in doing so, have been reconsidering my priorities. Not questioning them necessarily, but examining if my schedule actually reflects my stated priorities. In other words, does the way I live match up with what I say is important to me? I've had several reflections during this process.

My first observation considers how I think about priorities compared to how I've heard other people talk about it. At camp and Bible College and anywhere else it has come up, they always seem to challenge me to do something like rank my priorities on a list. The expectation is that someone's list would look something like this: 1. God 2. Family/close friends 3. Work and/or school 4. Church/ministry 5. Hobbies and/or social activities. I'm not sure how this is helpful. These things are not equal or directly comparable to each other. For instance, nearly everyone I know devotes the largest portion of their time (not including sleeping) to work/school, number three on the priority list I gave. In comparison, even the person who is most devoted to having a consistent and committed relationship with God will only give a fraction of that amount of time to regular Bible-reading and prayer time or the like. (I'm not saying, by the way, that it isn't useful to have a method of resolving conflicting priorities in such a way that keeps one truly committed to the most important things in his life, i.e. the husband getting off work early to have a date night with his wife one night a week or the father clearing his schedule to watch his son's baseball game.)

I think it is more helpful to abandon strict linear thinking (just look on any major sports website to see how prevalent our culture's obsession with numbers, categorization, stats, and rankings has become) and imagine a different mental exercise. A piece of paper or a whiteboard are both good images. I write God in the center and put a circle around his name. I then start writing other priorities around the middle, leaving space in between. Some circles are bigger, and some are smaller, which for me is determined by some combination of importance to me personally, and the time and focus required for them. What I get is a bunch of interconnected, and potentially overlapping, spheres. Here are some personal examples of what this exercise allows:

• My part-time job in the mornings can be in the sphere titled "Work", but riding my bike to said job can be in the sphere titled "hobbies" or "health"; I can then draw a line connecting "morning job" to "biking". This flexibility and interconnectedness is completely lost in a linear system.
• I don't have to rank activities like prayer and Bible-reading, but they can be of equal importance with their roles represented by their place in the spheres; for me, prayer might be connected to "God", "Bible", "reading books", "biking", "church", etc.
• Blogging (which I talked about on my other blog today) is an activity that bridges my relationship with God with my hobbies, my thought life, my reading, and whatever else I happen to be inspired to write about.

My other observation is what I learned from doing the previous exercise: That my relationship with God should be the center around which my life revolves. Every activity I do must fulfill in some way my stated intention to love and glorify God in my life and accomplish his mission for me. Every activity must be connected to the center. This doesn't have to be interpreted strictly, or overspiritualized. Rather, I've begun to realize the value of things like hanging out with people everyday, like hobbies that help me have a richer life, and perhaps above all, knowing that God is ready and waiting to show up in the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday of my life. God doesn't need me to schedule events or time with Him so He can show up. He just wants to fully be a part of everything I already do.

Train Crossings, Fifteen-minute Delays, and the Dangerous Prayer for Patience

On Monday I was biking back from morning work and I found myself waiting for a freight train for about 15 minutes right by First St. on Van Buren in Eugene. Every time I've been stopped there it's taken a while, and I think that's because they're always doing things with the trains because it's so near the train yard. A train will be moving right along, then grind to a stop and not move for two, three, even five minutes. It'll start going, then stop again a couple minutes later. You get the idea.

At any rate, I didn't mind waiting for it, but I was obviously in the minority. I personally think it's kind of silly to pray for patience (which, admittedly, is a prayer you shouldn't pray if you don't want your life messed up) and then turn down opportunities to develop it into your character.

As I was standing there, taking drinks from my water bottle, singing softly, and resisting the Arnoldian urge to count the freight cars as they went by, every car that had been waiting for the train on my side of the tracks turned around and left, one by one.

Now, mind you, they probably weren't going to get to their destination faster by leaving. It's a significant little detour to go back up to River Road/Chambers, and it's even farther to get around the tracks in the other direction.

So I got to thinking about it: What's so important that we have to do right now, that we can't wait ten or fifteen minutes for a freight train? Even though most if not all of those drivers had to be at work in a few minutes, didn't they know that by crossing the train tracks they were likely to be delayed? What boss out there is going to fire someone because they showed up ten minutes late to work, with possibly the best excuse besides a family emergency that an employee will ever have to be late to work? (Sadly, there probably are a few bosses like that out there.)

I didn't really come to any conclusions, save this: Those drivers probably didn't think their decision to turn around was a deeply personal one, born out of their inner convictions, priorities, and values. They probably didn't give it a whole lot of thought at all. In fact, they probably had a sense of inner compulsion driving them, a compulsion affected by stress, impatience, societal and cultural expectations, and whatever else. However, if someone wants to truly go against the grain, enjoy the moment, and see an opportunity where everyone else sees a nuisance, then they must make the decisions of their lives based on those inner intangibles rather than on outward circumstances and influences, or even emotions.

Perhaps the most telling maneuver of all on that morning, was made not by a driver, but by a fellow bicyclist who I was riding just behind as I came up to the First and Van Buren intersection. He stopped at the red light, hit the bicycle crossing button, then rode through the red light anyway after the intersection cleared, despite knowing that he would have to wait for the train anyway.

Are we, like him, in a hurry to go nowhere at all?

Picket Fences, Mid-Life Crises, and the American Dream

In light of my work situation, I've been rethinking my philosophy of life as it has to do with work. This is a tricky subject for me, because I myself have originated from a white, middle-class, suburban family, that is not the exact template of the American Dream, but not far removed from it either. My dad, whom I greatly respect, is to some degree a workaholic, though he has never let it remove him entirely from interaction with my family.

My question is, is the American Dream really worth it? Think for a moment with me. The white picket fence and the front porch have been replaced by hedges and fences too tall to see over and a garage door opener that makes it possible for us to drive into our house without ever having the opportunity to say hello to our neighbors. No wonder so many of them are strangers to us (how many of your neighbors do you know by name??). Longevity in one job or career has given way to a mid-life crisis which seems to be commonplace; the age of taking care of your parents and extended family has become an age of retirement homes and nursing homes, where the elderly, the wise, the experienced are separated from the rest of society as if they're actually more a burden to us than a blessing.

It gets worse. Now could be called the age of divorces and broken families; kids are babysat by TVs and video games, rather than exploring the world. Debt is even more commonplace than the mid-life crisis. With our culture's unprecedented emphasis on individuality and independence, community and interdependence is suffering. Often, the only thing people worry about is "my problems", failing to see that the biggest problems and obstacles we will face in life are always "our problems". Because if we can't learn to help each other overcome problems together, aren't we missing the whole point of what God wants life to look like?

To be blunt, I'm not intending to make any clear conclusions at this point: All I want for me -- really, for us -- is to rethink our value system. What drives how we live, in reality? If the gospel calls us to be unselfish, do our actions, our giving, our time management, really reflect it? When we break it down, who does our life speak of? Is my life doesn't shout loudly of God and Jesus, then how can I claim to be truly living for Him? What's really important to me? When God asks me to give an account of how I lived while on earth, is He going to care about salary or hours or status? Or maybe, just maybe, He'll measure my life by an entirely different standard: If I was a lover of people, and if I worked for Him and for others rather than working for myself.

Rain, Mud Puddles, and the Nuisances of Life

The rain finally broke the dry silence here in Oregon yesterday, which got me to thinking about how much of a blessing it is. How we let the weather affect us emotionally is, I believe, a good example of how much we let our experience of life be affected by circumstances. Even the most hardcore optimist has trouble seeing silver lining in mud puddles.

I suppose, if you've ever been walking on a sidewalk or in a parking lot and had your way completely blocked by an enormous puddle, you've been faced with a choice. That choice has much more to do with what your attitude about the puddle is, than how wet you happen to get. What happens in becoming an adult that makes our attitudes so muddy, that we can't choose to romp through a small lake of dirty water like a five-year-old?

What I'm saying is, how we handle the nuisances of life will be the same way we handle the "really big" problems. When it rains, do we notice that it got warmer and it's not freezing anymore? Would we really appreciate the sunshine if there were no clouds? Is it really a coincidence that rain is one of the commonly used biblical metaphors to describe the presence of God coming down to earth?

So the next time it pours here in Oregon, look outside and you might see me jumping through mud puddles.

Saying Grace, Special Occasions, and Jesus' Take on Prayer

Recently, I have been reading and memorizing the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. I was wondering this week what Jesus would say if He gave that sermon again, this time to those of us in the 21st century. I think I have some ideas, so I'm going to attempt some creative rewriting of Scripture and put forth a series of excerpts in my next few blog entries, in no particular order.

"And when you pray, do not pray only before meals or on special occasions, as the complacent do; for they do not honor me with their actions, and their words are empty as a result. Instead, pray silently on all occasions and for all things, and show your obedience in this, and every word you pray will be heard by the Father. Draw no attention to yourself when you are praying, but bring the Father into the spotlight, so all people may remember Him and not you.
And do not make long-winded prayers, as the religious people like to do, using words that many of their hearers do not even understand. Rather pray simply, clearly and briefly, for the Father does not need things explained to Him in complicated language (see Matt. 6:5-8)."

Fair Use, the 8th Commandment, and Why I Don't Burn Music

Having recently bought new music (see my antiquus postremo blog, the first link on the right sidebar), I was thinking about my convictions regarding using, loaning, and burning (or otherwise copying) music. I have never been prone to do it, nor to loan my own cds to others, but I thought that I would read up on it so as to know where I stand morally and legally and whether I should revise my own views.

Legally, it is a tricky and complicated bunch of laws regarding copyright; the part that is most relevant to this discussion is what is called Fair Use (if you want to read it, search for "Copyright Infringement" and/or "Fair Use" on Answers.com or Wikipedia). I won't summarize it all, but will suffice to say, the copying of whole cds or even whole songs for personal enjoyment is illegal, according to the letter of the law. The gray area, I suppose, is if you would actually get sued or penalized for it. In that sense, some might say that burning music while not profiting financially from it is akin to, say, going faster than the speed limit but not driving recklessly or endangering others.

If you know me, you know that I am not as concerned with these arguments as I am with what the Bible says about the matter and what God wants of us as His children. In this matter, I can't help but go back again and again to the 8th commandment: You shall not steal (Exodus 20:15). Did we forget about this, or do we just file it away as irrelevant when we consider things like these? It disturbs me, the relative ease with which some people seem to disobey commandments like this one, and those concerning the Sabbath and tithing (see Link below for a related post). In all good conscience, if I am going to enjoy an artist's music but do not pay for it, how am I not stealing from them? This is especially true if I add the hypothetical (and admittedly tricky) element of whether I would have paid for it if I hadn't burned it, in which case I am directly robbing them before the actual payment is made.

On top of that, I would add as an extra measure of conviction that the music business, for most, is not a lucrative career, and the exorbitant amount of burning and copying taking place is making it increasively difficult for musicians to make a living doing what they do. If you, like me, listen to Christian artists and bands a great deal, it would make sense that we would support them financially by buying their music and allow them to continue their ministry and further their impact.

As a last thought, I remind you of Romans 14:12 -- "Each one of us will give an account of himself to God."

Core Beliefs, Simplifying, and Why I Question Everything

I've been going through a process recently of 'simplifying' my faith. This means that I am unraveling, and unearthing what I believe and the reasons I believe it. This is not for the purpose of throwing anything out or becoming a doubter, but rather to know what the most important things are in my belief system -- my core beliefs -- and know exactly why I believe them.

I would like to emphasize that if I encourage you to challenge what you believe, it it not because I want you to throw out your belief system. But I do want you to question everything. God is truth, and gives truth and wisdom to those who seek it and ask for it (Matt. 7:7-8; James 1:5). So if we question for the purpose of finding what is really true, God will honor that process. God doesn't hoard everything to keep it from us, but for some reason waits for us to take initiative in seeking what comes from Him and what He has the ability to give. God doesn't want spiritual drones who believe and obey mindlessly, because such people lack conviction and passion and, ultimately, love. God created us with the ability to think on our own and interact and question so that we would do just that in relation to Him.

The Bible talks about a great many things, practically all of which people have opinions on. But the Bible is also very clear about what are the most important things to believe in and base your life upon. Sometimes we ignore this in all our doctrinal studies and sermons and books. The Bible is very unified as a whole, which many people miss because they are never looking at the Bible as a whole but as the sum of its individual parts. The most important things in the Bible are attested to by both emphasis and quantity. I encourage you to join me on my journey of finding these things. If all Christians can agree on what the most important things are, and live our lives based on those things, then we will be a long way toward being the Church Jesus Christ intended to found.