intentionally.

January 31, 2004

Last night I had a conversation with a girl.

I told her that I'm trying to stop deriving my energy or my happiness from other people. I told her that I'm trying to derive my happiness from...

She cut me off and said "yourself."

And I said, "No, from God."

She didn't understand. Thought I was strange. And I am.

But I've become more and more convinced that God is the only person who can be there for us with the consistency and magnitude we need. Other people let us down. Without fail.

We're all deeply flawed. Most of us won't admit it, but it's something we know. In the deepest places of our hearts, we know that everyone is just like us. Which means that everyone will let us down at some point, because we let ourselves down.

Our happiness won't come from them, and it won't come from us.

She didn't understand why I felt that way. We share a mutual friend, and my reputation for ambition and drive and taking risks might have preceded me. Maybe because she saw me as many people do, as a man powerful in spirit if not in stature, she was surprised when I confessed that I'm not enough.

But it's true. All the self-help, power of positive thinking, unleashing the power within talk is worthless. Don't get me wrong - I believe man can and does accomplish tremendous things. But they are still the things of the world, and the world is flawed.

So that leaves me with one answer; the answer which, when thought about at 3 in the morning lying in your bed with no one to put a face on for and no one left to make excuses to, is the only thing that comforts me. God is enough.

What's more, God probably designed it that way - created us so that He's all that could be enough.

There's so much unhappiness in this world. There's so much pain and remorse and hurt feelings and shattered dreams. Very few of us make it through life's journey without getting broken, beaten up, and chewed up by the world. Those that do still feel a malaise about their lives - though they have everything and have never been hurt, they still deal with the haunting feeling that it's all meaningless.

I see these broken people all the time. I met one last night. I'm one.

This is a difficult post to write because it literally makes me cry thinking about it. When I met this girl I immediately had two feelings - an intense desire to get to know her more, and an uncontrollable sadness. I wanted to help her. To try and be there for her where others haven't.

But I can't. I couldn't do it for the girl. Thought I could, and failed. And I know I can't do it for her either.

But I know who could. And it drives me nuts that I'm too afraid to say it. Too afraid to make people think I'm a "weirdo religious" type who just does what he's told from some big church.

The truth is that Christ didn't spend his time with the pious. He didn't spend his time with those who sat on their high horses and praised themselves for how "godly" they were.

He spent his time with the criminals, the lepers, the prostitutes. He spent his time with the people who were broken. He spent his time with people who, on some level, were exactly like us. And he didn't do so to reprimand them.

He did so because he loved them. Because he did what his Father did, and loved who his father loved.

We're told that only those who approach God like a child are going to be able to enter the Kingdom. What has a child done to earn anything? They haven't diligently tithed. They haven't gone to Bible study. They probably never pray. But they're saved not because they love God, but because He loves them.

Yes, he is able to be there for us. He pursues us relentlessly. He looks down at us and accepts us as we are. All he wants us to do is trust in him.

When the Bible was written, the world was not a product of college philosophy classes, of individual spirituality. The question wasn't whether or not you believed there was a God - everyone believed that. The question was whether you trusted God. That is, whether you believed that what he says is true. Whether you believed that he truly will be there for you with the capacity, consistency and magnitude that we all require. And that it didn't require any effort on our parts - it only required that we trust him and pursued an open and honest relationship with him.

It's a tough thing to do - to believe in your heart that there's this big huge God who still really loves us. It's hard to believe because he feels so distant. It's hard to believe because he doesn't make our lives perfect and easy and hunky-dory. It's hard to believe because he wants more than anything to pour his love out on us, but wants us to choose to want it. To choose to love him back.

He wants to love us. I've become more aware of that in the past few weeks than at any time in my life. And it makes me openly weep. To think that I've spent years trying to be happy with people and with myself, constantly dealing with the hurt that comes whenever they let me down, whenever I let myself down.

All I needed was to surrender. Open my heart up to be loved by someone who knows everything about me and loves me anyway. Someone for whom I'm a cherished creation. Someone who gets infinite joy out of my loving him.

I find myself praying more often lately. I find myself no longer trying to transform myself into someone who's perfect. I'm not perfect, never will be. I'm broken, hurt, and weak.

And I'm loved.

So is that girl I met last night.

So are you.

I'm sorry if that offends you.

January 23, 2004

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world.
The unreasonable man insists on adapting the world to himself.
Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.
-George Bernard Shaw

Throughout time there have been men who have shaken the world from its foundations.

Men who have been thrown into the same world as everyone else, yet see it in a different way.

Where others strive to make it through another day, these men can't avoid throwing themselves into what appears, at least to them, to be an epic drama.

Where others spend their times watching what everyone else is doing, these men are busy making up their own stories.

They're called dreamers. They're called arrogant. They're called crazy.

And yet they seem to succeed in the face of obstacles. They seem to create amazing, beautiful things through the sheer force of their will.

People are drawn to them. They might not be the most attractive men in the room - they don't have to be. They have a certain magnetism about them that compels people to come closer.

They are narcissistic to be sure. They battle pride and ego their entire lives. They wrestle with their intense fire and confidence, feeling at the same time thankful and sorry that they've been given the gift.

But try as they might, they can't get rid of it. Everything they take on they must transform. They have an insatiable desire to take what is normal and mediocre and turn it on it's head, rip it apart, and make it breathtaking.

They take risks, sometimes crazy risks. They are willing to throw everything into some endeavor, knowing full well that the likelihood of success is dismal. When their project or enterprise comes crashing down around them, they don't call it failure. They don't even think of it as failure. They simply get up and try again. And again. And again.

These are the men you read about in history books. These are the men you hear about who start tiny companies in their dorm rooms and become billionaires by age 30. These are the men who change the world.

Men of such power and magnitude don't turn their passion off when they leave the office or get off the stage or finish writing. They can't turn it off. It translates into every facet of their lives.

These men believe, above all, in the power of love. They can kill themselves all week, drain themselves in their work. And at the end of the day they can go home and love with the same passion and fire.

These men are chalked up as the supreme egoists. But surprisingly, they don't do these things for themselves. They possess a haunting feeling that they're supposed to be doing these great things, moving these mountains, for someone else.

They need a muse.

Every single one of them.

They need to know that through it all, there's someone behind them.

They need to know that when they succeed someone will be there to share in their excitement.

They need to know that when they fall on their face they can come home at the end of the day and feel as though all is right in the world.

Without a muse they feel incomplete. Their fire wanes. They don't seem to have the same spring in their step, the same force of personality. They seem...normal.

The church has been terrific at getting rid of these men. It's true, these men are constantly struggling to control their confidence, thinking there is something wrong with them. And self-pride is wrong.

But these men can't control it. They can't fully convince themselves that their gift is wrong.

Because it's not. It's a gift. God put their fire inside of them. They are meant to accomplish great things, and to draw people near them.

But they need a muse.

The problem with these men is that they are still a product of the world, and the world tells them that the world is all they need. So they look for their muse in the love of a woman, or two women, or a hundred women.

But it's not enough. No woman can provide them with the kind of support that they consistently need. It's too much pressure to place on the woman - eventually they fail the man. And the man is devastated.

And they beat themselves up about it. In the rest of their lives, the world failure is not in their lexicon. But when their relationship falters, when their muse is ripped away from them, they feel incomplete. They no longer feel as though they can move mountains.

God made these men with a fire that can't be contained. The church condemns them for it. They look for their muse in the world. They get hurt.

What if the church realized that these men were created that way on purpose, to fulfill a certain purpose? What if the church put their time and energy into helping these men realize who their true muse is? What if the church helped them discover that they are indeed supposed to be moving mountains for someone else? And what if the church made them realize that this muse will be there for them, won't let them down, desires above anything to have the kind of passionate relationship they feel designed for?

The apostles had that fire. And they had their muse. Imagine how different the world would be if our men today believed in their muse the way the apostles did?

January 17, 2004

"We look for rest and if we find it, it becomes intolerable. Incapable of the divine activity which alone can satisfy, fallen man flings himself upon exterior things, not so much for their own sake as for the sake of agitation which keeps the spirit pleasantly numb. The distraction diverts us aside from the one thing that can help us to begin our ascent to truth - the sense of our own emptiness."
-The Ascent to Truth

There are times when your heart aches for something, and you can't decipher what you're longing for.

I've felt it while hiking in the Rocky Mountains, gazing at enormous waterfalls and thousands of Aspens covering the hills like sheep's wool.

I've felt it many times in my life while staring into the eyes of a beautiful girl.

It's as if we feel at home. For only a brief moment, it's as if the sky was opened up before us and we were able to feel what heaven was like.

It's there for a second, and then it's gone.

And we ache.

We ache because we want to be able to keep that feeling with us forever. More than that, we wish we could be "in" that feeling forever.

We've all felt this feeling, and it leaves us with a longing. A desperate feeling for something we can't explain or describe. It comes into our lives unexpectedly, and leaves with the same spontaneity. And we ache.

We don't know how to get the feeling back, and so we go one of two directions. Some of us simply kill our hearts, sedate them with activity and busyness. We join endless non-profit organizations, spend hours caring for our houses, host elaborate parties, memorize Bible verses, attend Bible study or church five nights a week, amass and digest a small library of self-help books. We become the men who live our lives through sports figures on television, who come home from another 60-hour work week and crack open a beer to "take the edge off." We become the women who spend our days cleaning the house and driving the kids to assorted extracurricular activities. We become the couples who kiss each other quickly on the cheek before rushing to make dinner or help the kids with the homework.

We grow older, and remember fondly the passion and excitement that was present when the relationship started. We remember the nervousness of the first date, the elation the first time we gave or received flowers, the first kiss. We remember the night we asked or were asked to get married, wondering if it were really happening. We remember the stress leading up to the wedding, wanting this one day to be perfect. We remember the honeymoon spent in some exotic location, and the fact that we spent very little time actually seeing the exotic location. We remember the first house, the first few years of the life spent together, and we ache. We ache because we're deeply sad - sad that this amazing relationship we once had has left us.

What's worse, we don't know how to fix it. The moments of complete joy didn't come often enough. We don't feel the constant euphoria we desired - the feeling we felt in the beginning. And it kills us. So we sedate our hearts by filling our days with busyness - as long as we're moving, as long as we're doing something, we can't think about what our heart is missing.

Many of us can't kill the heart enough, can't get rid of the ache. So we leave our spouse or loved one, because we "love them, but aren't in love with them." We think it will solve the problem, kill the ache for good. We choose to avoid any kind of real love, the kind that requires engagement and passion and a certain amount of wildness and unpredictability. Rather than fix what was once amazing and could be again, we choose to move on. Of course it doesn't help, so we make ourselves even busier.

Others of us, instead of killing the ache, constantly search for it. We feel as though we find it in parties and drinking and encounters with numerous members of the opposite sex. Some of us feel like we feel it through our talents and abilities. So we do it more and more. We get a sense of satisfaction out of our work, or our possessions, or the dozens of one-night-stands.

The problem is, it's not the same. It's not the pure feeling of euphoria we felt before. We tried to deceive ourselves into thinking that the feeling was in these things, but it's not. They serve as a reminder of the longing, but they can't quench it. Even worse, their effectiveness continually diminishes. We have to do more to get the same feeling. We know it's not what we're really looking for, but we also don't have a clue how to find the thing we are looking for. We feel it's a good enough substitute.

Many of us jump into one of these two lifestyles. And we do so because we are deathly afraid of confronting our real problem - that we're empty inside. We faintly feel as though there's something out there that our lives are missing, but we can't describe it, can't imagine it. We just feel it.

It's not in work. It's not in sex. It's not in busyness. It's not in liquor. It's not in sports. It's not in church. It's not in Bible study. It's not in a spouse or a relationship. It's not in our friends. It's not in our family.

"Tis hard for us to rouse our spirits up
It is the human creative agony
Though but to hold the heart an empty cup
Or tighten on the team the rigid rein
Many will rather lie among the slain
Than creep through narrow ways the light to gain-
Than wake the will, and be born bitterly."
-Diary of an Old Soul.

Many of us would rather lie among the slain than rouse our spirits up. We kill or distract our hearts rather than confront its emptiness. Rather than holding the heart an empty cup, we try to temporarily fill it with anything we can.

What if we did finally give up all of these distractions? What if we admitted that our hearts remain empty, in spite of our best efforts?

What if I admitted that no matter what, a girl won't be enough? What if I admitted that the sarcasm and constant jokes are nothing more than another way of trying to fill myself up? What if I admitted that the business, no matter how successful, will never fulfill me? What if I admitted that my friends, my family, and my future lover will not be able to be there for me the way I need?

But I can't do this - not on my own. I need help. I need help from the One in whom that feeling does rest.

"Batter my heart, three personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend.
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new,
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but, oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend;
But is captive and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you and would be loved fain;
But am betrothed to your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that know again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me"

-John Donne, "Batter my Heart"

January 08, 2004

Truly believing in forgiveness of sin is a tough thing to do.

Some of us, no matter how many times we ask for God's forgiveness, still feel as though the things we've done are unforgiveable. We feel as though a just God wouldn't be able to forgive our most heinous and agregious acts. I've been struggling with this myself in the past few months, repeatedly feeling the need to ask for forgiveness, as if there comes a point where God says, "Okay, he must really mean it since he's asked me 10 times."

For these people, the struggle lies in our inability to forgive ourselves. We should feel terrible about the things we've done, but we also must recognize our human frailty and the fact that no matter how hard we try we'll continue to sin our entire lives. This is tough for me to do, and I imagine many others feel the same way.

There are others who bring their sins before God, but don't really ask for forgiveness at all. What they really do is ask for their behavior to be excused. Whereas the first group focuses so much on the horror of their sins that they are unable to get over them, the second group gets over their sins too easily. They focus on the fact that they are flawed, and reason that many of the things they do can be excused due to their sinful nature. They spend very little time focusing on their sin at all. They reason that since they'll be sinners their whole lives anyway, their sins should be acknowlegded briefly, and that he will excuse us since he knows that we'll always be sinners.

Up until the past few months, I lived in this way, casually mentioning to God the things I had done but not really thinking about the gravity of those sins. It was almost as if I would think to myself, "I know I did this horrible thing Lord, but look at all the good things I do!" I made light of my sin and convinced myself that the good outweighed the bad.

I'm not sure which is a more difficult problem to deal with. Is it easier to take your sin more seriously or to learn how to forgive yourself? I have no idea - I didn't learn how to deal with my first problem before I swung to the other side of the pendulum. I think understanding of true forgiveness comes with the realization that our sins truly are horrible and offensive to God, and the knowing that we need to honestly bring those sins before him and admit how flawed we are. But then, once the realization has been made and we've truly asked for forgiveness, we need to be able to move on. We shouldn't necessarily forget, and must try to avoid doing the same things over and over again. But we also need to live without feeling sorry for ourselves, without beating ourselves up. We need to live with the joy and peace that comes from knowing that our sins truly are forgiven.

I'm not there yet. I hope you can forgive me.

January 07, 2004

If you were in love with a woman because she had the good fortune of being wealthy, would you really be in love with her? Or would you (at least partially) be in love with the money? Even if you fell in love with her at first for her character, and were only later made aware of the reward you would receive if married, would you be able to say that you were marrying her solely for who she was?

It would be a difficult assertion to make. For most of us (myself included,) the money would have to be at least a marginal factor in the equation. Money has the power to compel people to do pretty awful things - it's influence is indeed great upon us. We pursue careers and promotions for money. I'm pursuing entrepreneurship partially because of the unlimited earning potential. For most of us, the money would at least be a factor, would most likely provide an added incentive to pursue a long-term relationship.

If we were in love with a woman, and were guaranteed a tremendous lifestyle if married - a reward of sorts - it would be hard to say that the reward wouldn't interfere with our love. We would run the very real, very likely risk that our love for the woman would not remain pure in and of itself. Our love would be divided - we'd continue to love her for her, but also love the reward that we'd be blessed with.

The woman might similarly love the man, but her danger might be loving the power that the money would afford her. The knowledge that she was able to make him rich might compel her to believe that he had an obligation to her - a reasonable assertion. But would her love continue to be pure? Would her love for him become tainted by the love of the obligation - that is, the love her power over him might afford? If he were not there for her in every way she desired, when she desired it, is it not possible that she might feel betrayed? Might she feel as though he owed her for the reward she had given?

It would seem as though the wise thing to do would be to come together and give the money away to something good. The reward would then no longer be theirs to keep, but simply something given back to the people, some of whom might have even played a role in making her wealthy in the first place. The couple would then be free to love each other without reservation. The influence and the power that the money would present is no longer an issue. The man could give his whole heart to her without even thinking about the reward.

The Bible says our Earthly rewards belong to God, and we're meant to be good stewards of those rewards. That means we're not to think of our money or possessions as ours, but rather as tools that can be used to advance God's kingdom according to his will. But how many of us do that? I'm still struggling with the idea of giving a tenth of my income to God. The money represents a barrier in my life. The wise (some might say foolish) thing to do would be to simply give any earthly award away, freeing me from the bondage of money and allowing me to love him purely.

But even if I do that, I'm not sure if I would be loving God purely. I don't know if I can. James writes about double-mindedness, and about how Christians should only will what the Lord wills. Kierkegaard wrote at length about how willing only one thing, God's will, was the way to a pure heart, and that anything that gets in the way of that represents double-mindedness.

There are obvious barriers to willing one thing - money, pride, determination to live for oneself, pain caused by the world, unbelief, etc. But one that doesn't initially come to mind might be the reward that is associated with belief.

If we believe in God, and live our lives according to his will, because of the reward associated with it - that is, eternal life - are we being double-minded? Are we simply continuing the process of doing things for what we can gain out of it? Does our love for God represent eros love and not the selfless agape love we're supposed to possess? Does loving the Lord because of his mercy towards us and because of his gift of salvation - the reward - represent pure love? Is it yet another barrier to willing only God's will, without regard to the reward we'd receive?

Is it even possible to will God's will without the reward we receive? Is that why we live our lives according to God's will? Is it pure love? If we were never informed of God's gift, would we be able to live according to his will? Could it be done without the reward even entering into our minds?

Sorry, I'm not about to suggest an answer this time. I don't have a clue.

January 06, 2004

I'm 23 today. My knees were achy when I got out of bed. I forgot where I left my car keys. I think some of my hair fell out in the sink. I'm tired, and it's only 4:00.

Youth was great while it lasted.

Why are these words so small? Don't people realize that some of us have bad eyes?

January 04, 2004

Why does evil exist?

Why would an all-powerful, all-loving God allow such terrible things to happen? This problem of evil is behind many of our questions and doubts about the existence of God.

Each of us has had some pretty terrible things happen to us. Each of us, in one way or another, have had our innocence taken away from us. We've each received tremendous wounds at the hands of other people, at the hands of this world. We handle these wounds in different ways, but the end result is always the same.

Some of us just avoid danger. We build walls around our hearts - big, stone walls with archers on top, ready to shoot at anything that has the potential to hurt us. We live our lives within these walls, inside a nice chamber that we've decorated with every comfort imaginable. We feel safe, far away from danger, and we are. And we stay safe because we never venture beyond our imaginary chamber, and certainly not beyond the stone walls.

Others of us choose to try and manage the danger rather than avoid it altogether. We construct rules and guidelines for moving about in the world, most of which are designed to try and reduce the probability of being hurt. We create rules about relationships, about work, about our lifestyles. If we're unable to come up with these rules ourselves, we enter into an organization or an institution that will hand us our set of rules. We join fraternities or sororities, we sign up for addiction groups, we join a church. None of these are bad things in themselves, but we become dependent on them to make decisions for us so we don't have to risk getting hurt again. The true beauty of these groups is that if something does hurt us, we can blame the group and find another one.

Still others of us simply kill our hearts. We decide that the easiest way to avoid getting hurt by the world is to become like the world - cold, bitter, ambivalent. We engage in any kind of debauchery we can find. We hurt others before they can hurt us. We close our hearts to the possibility that there's still good.

Many of us find that distraction is the easiest way to avoid the hurt. Rather than dealing with it, we simply fill our lives up with busyness. We work 60 hours a week, we set little goals for ourselves and choose to "take each day as it comes." We spend our nights playing video games or watching movies. Even our time in the car is spent tuning out with the radio blaring. From morning till night our days are full of noise, which is a terrific way to keep from thinking about past hurts or the potential for being hurt in the future.

We all believe that evil exists in the world - we've felt it. And we all know that because of the horrible offenses that have been committed against us, we've found ways to deal with it. We've managed to create a separate self, a self whose heart is protected or busy or simply cold and lifeless. It keeps us from getting hurt again, but it also keeps us from living with total abandon for anything. We become, slowly or not-so-slowly, puppets of ourselves. We're the ones pulling the strings, but we know the things we say and do are not who we really are.

Which brings us back to the point - why would God allow evil to exist? Why would he allow us to get hurt in the intensely traumatic ways that we have? Why would he allow us to receive wounds that don't heal? And why would he allow us to construct puppets of ourselves and live our lives largely out of fear? It doesn't seem like an all-loving God would do such a thing, and so many of us decide that God must not exist.

Most of us have been in love before. And many of us have known the sadness, the tremendous heartache and loss that comes when the love isn't returned. Despite our best efforts, they leave us and run to someone who obviously isn't right for them. They leave and run to someone who's heart is cold, who deals with their wounds by displaying a false sense of pride and arrogance. What if they left for someone who's goal was to hurt your love before they were hurt themselves? What if they left, and were indeed hurt? Physically? Emotionally? Sexually? Spiritually? It absolutely destroys us to see our love get hurt like that, and yet we allow them to do it because we do love them.

We sometimes wish that we could just force them to love us, but we realize that that's the one thing we don't have the power to do. Even if you held your love at gunpoint and made them spend the rest of their lives with you - even if you made them sleep with you, cook you dinner, do your laundry, and bear your children - you still wouldn't have the power to make them love you.

And what if you did have that power? What if you could forcefully make your love interest love you back. I'm sure on one level it would feel great to have your love returned. But when you stopped to really think about it, you would most likely find the love to be hollow, empty. If they didn't love you out of their own will but out of your own, would that be fulfilling? Doubtful.

What if the same is true with God? What if God really was all-powerful, but chose not to exercise some of that power and give us free will to make our own decisions? What if God put us on Earth for the purpose of loving Him, but knew that if he forced us to love Him it wouldn't mean anything? What if he gave us the freedom to not love Him, to reject Him outright, to pursue other loves? What if he gave us the freedom to hurt each other and to commit sin, even though he knew it would hurt us and even though he knew it would tear Him up inside to see it happen, because He loved us?

What if evil existed because God loves us, not in spite of it?