City Blog

It wasn’t easy, deleting my Facebook Account. The actual technical act of deletion, I mean. I don’t imagine that it is in Facebook’s best interest for users to go deleting their accounts all willy-nilly. So those savvy FB designers buried the Account Deletion instructions away… maybe somewhere far beneath Farmville…. and made it difficult for me to find them. Users can “Deactivate” their account relatively easily, which, as far as I can tell, is FB’s way of a slow-burn approach to cutting the FB habit. No, I wanted cold turkey, so I googled and found the link (in a bit of chuckling irony, someone has created a FB group called “How to Permanently Delete Your Facebook Account”). Even still, FB tells me that it won’t actually delete accounts unless the user doesn’t log in for 2 weeks, thus ensuring that the addict has access to the drug to the bitter end.

The idea that I should tell Facebook to talk to the hand has been dancing on the outskirts of my mind for a while. I recall a conversation with friends just prior to Christmas, when he detailed the fact that his mom had a tagged a particularly hideous photo of him on FB, and he didn’t have the heart to untag it, but then worried what others, particularly people who hadn’t seen him in years, would think when they saw it. And we all said with such bravado, “Who needs FB anyway, really? Maybe we should delete it. Yes! We should!” and then we immediately scurried back to our respective smart phones to check the latest status updates. Then, last week, I stumbled across this article about people who were choosing to give Facebook the cold shoulder, and then I laughed my head off at this video, and I made my decision.

And you’re wondering why.

Facebook Stole My Blogging Mojo*
*I can’t take credit for this phrase. Diane said it to me first.
Remember when I used to write? Complete thoughts? More than just a snarky sarcastic comment? (See?! I still can’t do it. Case in point). Facebook stole my blogging mojo. Posting a phrase in a status update is so much easier than fully thinking something through and crafting coherent communication of that thought. I know that I’m no Shakespeare, but I like writing. I like spending my spare moments thinking of analogies and turns of phrase. And with FB, I grew lazy, relying on short bursts of words to communicate. Add to that the fact that I spent my spare moments FB stalking rather than thinking of writing topics or word choice, and, well, you saw it. My blog disappeared. I want it back.

The Great Time Suck
Honestly. How much time did I waste on Facebook? I cringe to think of it. Scrolling around aimlessly, looking at random photos, clicking through to other random photos, somehow ending up on pictures of people I don’t even know. Gross. And it happens in small increments, so the actual accrual of time goes unnoticed. Sneaky, sneaky Facebook. And guys? I don’t care what virtual animal you just adopted or how many Swag bucks you’ve accumulated or what you had for breakfast. Really. So why was I spending my time looking at that?

The Lurk
I was lurking. Who doesn’t? But I was lurking too much. Call it nosy. Call it voyeurism. Call it unhealthy. Is there a positive word to describe it? Not so much. So I don’t want to do it anymore.
I love to hear about friends’ and families’ lives. Yes. But that’s different than skulking around the pages of people I once knew or hardly know, developing opinions and judgments based on small snippets of information that certainly don’t portray the full depth of that person. Speaking of that…

The Facebook PR Campaign
My friend Michelle blogged about this once– how people use Facebook (and blogs) as one giant public relations platform. And, based upon what I said before about making snap judgments of people I don’t really know because of a single Facebook photo, they’re probably wise to do it that way. But authenticity suffers greatly. I’m not asking that people spew their dark and dirty all over their status updates. Heavens to betsy, please don’t. I just decided that I didn’t want to play the PR game anymore, at least, not in that realm. If we’re truly friends, then let’s be true friends. I recognize the irony that I’m stating this in a blog, which could be its own PR platform.

So it’s been a week of Facebook-free for me, and there are times when I miss it… I find myself wondering if my friend who was pregnant has had the baby and posted the news on Facebook, assuming all would see it there, and I didn’t… or those downtimes when I’m waiting for something and peer at my iphone, wondering what’s on there to hold my attention. But the craving passes after a few moments.

And I can always contact my friend directly. How ’bout that?

Jesus comes off with a serious edginess in the Gospels.  This is ironic given that the entire point of the Incarnation (the coming of the Son of God into the world as a man) was God coming to us on our level.  He became Man that we might have a connecting point with God, namely, the Son, the God-man, the perfect mediator who is intimately familiar with both humanity’s weakness and divinity’s glory.  At Christmas, what is particularly appealing about God is his vulnerability and approachability.  Yet his words and teaching - they cut. Jesus the baby is cuddly.  Jesus the man is prickly.

One particularly cutting teaching is recorded in Luke 9:57-62.  Jesus tells a man to follow him. The man asks for permission to first go and bury his father.  Jesus says to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”  He tells another to follow him, and the man says he first needs to say goodbye to his family.  Jesus replies rather harshly, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

These words are virtually impossible to take at face value because they demand too much from us.  Jesus sounds more like a drill sergeant than a savior.  Where’s the compassion and empathy?  You can’t bury your father?  You can’t say goodbye to your family and explain why you’re leaving?  What is Jesus’ problem and why is he demanding so much from his followers?

Here again, the immediate urge is to soften Jesus’ statements by claiming that he was exaggerating to make a point, speaking specifically to make general points about the importance of him coming first in our lives, even before family.  But let’s for one minute consider that Jesus was speaking seriously, that he was not exaggerating.  Then what?

In Jesus’ time, rabbis like Jesus had a following of disciples who went wherever the teacher went. It was like a traveling classroom with the teacher teaching as he led the way.  The disciples owned little and would eat whatever the locals provided them.  It was not a particularly glamorous way of life.  Jesus’ invitation to follow him was an invitation for these people to become his disciples, to leave their occupations, their families and homes, and to come with him on his itinerant journeys.  No small sacrifice was expected.  To be a disciple required total dedication and commitment.

Nevertheless, it was considered a great honor for a rabbi to choose you to be his disciple.  Since a rabbi’s greatness would one day be measured by his successors, a rabbi would only choose a disciple whom he considered to be extremely apt with great potential for learning everything the rabbi would teach and then spreading this doctrine to future students.  I have to think that to turn down an invitation to be Jesus’ disciple was an incredible insult in this time.  Considering how highly the rabbis were regarded, if one had the opportunity to study under a great rabbi, one did not turn this offer down lightly.

In this context then, it is not surprising that in vs. 57, Jesus turns down an eager disciple-to-be, dissuading him by suggesting that the life of a rabbi’s disciple is rather bleak: “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”  But imagine with me now the audacity of the following two men.  Jesus invites a man with great potential to be his student - a high honor.  The man, instead of gratefully accepting this privilege, makes an excuse: “I must go and bury my father first.” The second man also makes an excuse. He wants to follow Jesus, but there’s things he must do first.  He must say goodbye to his family.

In both cases, the would-be disciples use familial responsibilities as excuses instead of immediately dropping everything and following Jesus.  It seems strange if not harsh that Jesus would insist that to follow him, these men ought even to forgo their familial obligations.  Is there any possible scenario in which it would be excusable, if not commendable, for a person to leave his family without saying goodbye or explaining?  What if the fate of the world hung in the balance?  The invitation to become Jesus’ disciple was not an invitation to study calligraphy, nor was it a Bible study. The invitation to be Jesus’ disciple was and always has been to carry the priceless message of salvation that Jesus brought and to mimic his teaching so that all people everywhere might be reunited with their Heavenly Father.  Jesus’ earthly ministry was a mere three years. If there was ever a time to drop everything and follow one man, to soak up every word he said, to watch and observe his every move, this was it.  In retrospect, no matter how noble the intentions of these two disciples, they will go down in history as having passed up the greatest opportunity-and having shrugged off the greatest responsibility-they had ever been offered.

What lesson can we take from this?  All who have ever thought seriously about what it means to follow Jesus will eventually realize that truly following Jesus requires significant sacrifice.  What have we given up to follow Jesus?  The reason we mute Jesus’ teaching is because we want to believe that Jesus isn’t seriously asking us to give up everything.  To some extent, we’re afraid of what kind of people we’d become if we took the call of discipleship seriously.  Would we become distant husbands, consumed in ministry? Would we become irresponsible children, leaving parents far behind to go to the distant ends of the earth? Would our friends think we were crazy?  But very few of us, myself included, have given up anything of significance.  If work and career get in the way of following Jesus, we chose work over him. If lifestyle poses a potential barrier, we go with lifestyle.  If saying something about our faith would cause us the slightest embarrassment, we recoil in fear.

When Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” I don’t think he literally meant that this man should not bury his father. I think he was suggesting that our decision to follow Jesus is a matter of life and death.  It is that serious.  There will always be a reason for us to hesitate to follow Jesus. There will always be an excuse. Jesus is asking us: “Do you find your life in me or not?” It’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. Where do we find our life?  In him? Or in things?  If we find our life in Jesus, then lots of things die to us - human desires, material lusts, selfish ambitions.  We are invited to let these things die.  Don’t bother to bury them.  They can bury themselves.  But you, go and be Jesus’ disciple.

Many apologies for the long delay between posts.  I will carry on where I left off, on the subject of taking Jesus at face value.

Matthew 4:17 records Jesus’ first exhortation in his public ministry:  “From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’”

The very first thing Jesus told people was to “repent” - not exactly the most endearing thing he could have said to harken people to his message.  Nevertheless, it was the first thing he said.  You can’t hear the rest of what Jesus has to say without first understanding the need to repent.  So what is this word, repent?

The word “repent” in Greek is the command form of the word metanoeto, meaning “to change one’s life, based on complete change of attitude and thought concerning sin and righteousness” (Dictionary of Biblical Languages).  A common misconception about repentance is that it is merely refraining from doing something, namely some sort of moral sin.  But repentance is not about refraining from sin.  Repentance is a complete reorientation, a change of direction.  If repentance is tied closely with one’s concept of sin and righteousness according to this definition, then repentance is a reorientation with regard to what we consider to be good and bad, a reversal of priorities and beliefs about how we live our lives.

Considering that Jesus’ message was both to the unrighteous “sinners” and to the “righteous” Pharisees, the invitation to repentance is one extended to you no matter where you fall on the religious spectrum.  To hear Jesus’ teaching and understand his message, we must be prepared for the reality that what we think is important is not, and that what might seem ludicrous or absurd will soon be the dominant reality for us in the coming kingdom that Jesus is bringing.

Taking Jesus at face value means preparing to be knocked down and spun around.

I’ve been realizing lately that part of the problem with present day American Christianity is that the original gospel message which Jesus proclaimed has lost its power to modern hearers.  Why? Because we don’t take what Jesus said at face value.  If you actually read the gospels, you realize that Jesus never walked a fine line.  People either hated him or loved him.  He was a lot more like Imus in the Morning than Larry King Live.  And it seems pretty clear to me that the call to follow was not one Jesus expected to elicit halfhearted commitment.  You couldn’t follow Jesus and keep part of your life to yourself.  Following Jesus meant giving up everything.  Jesus never acted as if he was the kind of savior you might be partially interested in serving.  He demanded everything.  His ethical teachings were equally exacting.  “Be perfect,” he said.  “Sell everything.”  “Let the dead bury their own dead.”  “Pick up your cross.”  “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.”  Well, Jesus uses hyperbole, we say.  He exaggerated in order to make his point.  The call to radical discipleship, well, this just isn’t realistic in our modern day and age. We want it both ways.  We want our cozy comforts and we want to be good respectable people. Follow Jesus? Yes.  Go to church?  Usually.  Give to the poor and homeless?  Sometimes.  Love our enemies?  Ummm…  Forgive each other every time? No.  Forsake everything that comes in the way of wholehearted commitment to God?  Forget about it.

I’m becoming convinced that if we soften Jesus’ teachings, it must only be an absolute last measure concession.  We’ve made it the rule.  In fact, I don’t think we ever take Jesus seriously if it means that it’s going to cause us even an ounce of discomfort.  But the crazy thing is that instead of just admitting that we’re a far cry from what Jesus wanted, we’ve stopped taking the text seriously.  As a result, the gospel has lost its power.  If we can’t take the Bible seriously that it does in fact tell us to die to ourselves and to live for Christ, then can we take the Bible seriously when it says, “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die”?

Sometimes I watch a movie and I come away feeling like it took something out of me.  On rare occasion, I watch a movie and feel edified, as if the experience of watching the movie changed my perspective, or made me more capable of joy and love.  I was pleasantly surprised yesterday to watch a movie that I believe has the kind of impact that a Braveheart or Shawshank Redemption might have had.  If you haven’t seen it and can stomach some sci-fi violence (mostly people getting zapped and splashed apart by electric bolt-emitting alien guns) you need to see it.  The genius in the film is the way you come to have compassion on the alien creatures (derogatorily called “prawns”) as if they were human, but realize, of course, the unnatural effort it takes to think of those who are different from you with the same compassion and sympathy that you’d treat your own.  In the end, you’re left not only hating the bad guys, but also hating that part of yourself that you see in the bad guys who are not exceptionally cruel, but normal, human.

I have been thinking about whether my friend is right, whether we have free will or not.  If he is right, then we are merely following a script. Choice is an illusion; our lives are the outcome of various forces that exercise their dominance over us.  Our upbringing, our natural inclinations, our experiences, societal pressure, and all other such things shape us and cause us to make the decisions we do.  Even when we do things that might seem harmful to our own persons, noble sacrifices for example, we do these things for a greater concept of “good” which we’re trained to think is in our best interest despite whatever pain these decisions might incur.

I have maintained the opposite, that we are free agents, that we can and do assert our wills and can make independent decisions and are therefore responsible for our actions.  I can’t prove this.  In order to disprove my friend’s theory, I’d have to provide an example in which someone acted independently of the forces that determined his actions.  However, even if someone were to act in a way which might seem out of keeping with the forces that were at work in a person’s decision, clearly, there are always other forces which played into that decision, such that the forces to do what was unusual or unexpected were in fact more powerful at that point in time.  For example, to disprove my friend, I might try taking his coffee cup and slamming it against the wall, something I would never do.  But even then, my natural inclination to self-justify and my winners’ instinct were at work, in that instance overcoming my normal inhibitions.  I can’t really help that I am arguing with my friend — I need to be right and I just can’t let it go.

I can’t disprove that we don’t have free will.  Nevertheless, I don’t believe that my friend can disprove that we have free will either.  I maintain that we are in fact free agents who are at liberty to make independent decisions, decisions not determined or scripted in advance by the various factors and forces at work on us.  In order to prove me wrong, my friend would have to come up with an example in which human agency was not at work in making a decision.  Can you prove such a thing?  For example, if I decide to skip a meal because I am busy and don’t want the extra calories, can you prove that I did not will myself to skip lunch?  In order to prove that there was no independent human agency whatsoever, you would have to prove that every factor that contributed to me skipping lunch was something outside of my control.  The factors are limitless.  That there are not independent factors that I determine is impossible.

In the end, both perspectives are ideologies based on what we believe, not what we can prove.  So maybe the question of whether or not we have free is not really all that helpful.  Maybe a better question is which belief leads to greater happiness and greater joy?  Which ideology is more useful?  Which is more true to human experience?

A friend of mine and I had a debate about this topic recently.  Let me try to summarize his position as well as I can.  He argued that we do not in fact have free will.  He said that we make decisions, but the process by which we make decisions has already been predetermined by various factors that have made us into who we are at any particular moment in time.  These factors include our social conditioning, our upbringing, our education and training… According to my friend, we are incapable of actually exercising free will, and that when we do something either particularly noble or surprisingly heinous, we are in fact following a script that has already been laid out for us.  So, for example, if I “choose” to help an old lady cross the street, it’s not because I “chose” to do so, but because given my conditioning and upbringing, I am led to believe that I will feel good about myself if I do the “right” thing, and  also am conditioned to want to feel good, so I instinctively help the old lady.  On a subconscious level, it is not a “choice” because I am merely doing what I was programmed to do.

If I understand it correctly, the result of this philosophy about human will is that I am not ultimately responsible for my actions.  I’m only ever responsible in the sense of someone who trips is responsible for tripping.  The floor was slippery, and given where I placed my foot, the conditions were such that I tripped. I didn’t choose to trip, but I did trip.  It was me who tripped, and not somebody else.  So I am responsible for tripping.  But you would never blame such a person for tripping and say, “You are foolish for tripping.”  You can’t help that you tripped.

Because of my upbringing and training, I instinctively disagree with this philosophy.  I have no choice but to argue it.  And so I demonstrate the truth of it unwittingly.  But this has gotten me to thinking.  Is everything we do pre-programmed? Are we merely following a script?  Even when we break the mold, even when we buck the system, even when do what people least expect us to do, are we only doing what we’ve been conditioned to do?  Is my entire life laid out before me, my actions simply part of an irrevocable chain reaction that brings me from life to death? Does fate look at me and call me a foolish prat for thinking I actually decide what I do?  Do we actually have freedom?

An increasing number of people I know find themselves unemployed with few to no prospects. Just a few short years ago, college grads were weighing which job would bring about the most satisfaction and fulfillment.  Now, they’re spending hours scouring the internet, submitting resumes into a merciless black void, hoping against all odds that somebody somewhere recognizes their desire to work, their qualification for a job, their willingness to do just about anything if only given the opportunity to make some money.

The church may have to step up to the plate in the near future.  In Rome during the early church times before Social Security and Unemployment and Medicaid/Medicare, if you had no income and no family to take care of you, you fell through the cracks and ended up begging on the street.  The church stepped up to the plate then and began caring for these unfortunates, especially for widows and orphans.  The book of Acts records the collections taken to spread the wealth, to make sure everybody in the church had enough.  In America, there are systems in place to provide for many in need.  My concern is that as the economy worsens, the systems will not be sufficient to provide for the “unfortunates.”  It is time for the church to begin thinking seriously about what sacrifices it is willing to make to ensure that none are forgotten.

In addition to taking care of our jobless’ physical needs, there are important emotional needs that the jobless have.  Joblessness can take a toll on marriages, especially when all the financial responsibility falls on one spouse, and the other finds his or herself home, bored, antsy, and unproductive.  Furthermore, prolonged joblessness takes a toll on one’s self-esteem. Many jobless wonder why they can’t get a job and begin wondering whether it’s due to some personal fault. Besides the self-doubt, there is also the unsettling feeling of being unproductive.  You’d never believe how much you actually want to work until you find yourself in a position where you have no means of making an income for yourself. What can the church do to support the unemployed?

The church, as always, bears the responsibility of proclaiming the gospel.  As I see it, the Gospel in this context is twofold — a cup of cold water and a word of encouragement.  The cup of water is the physical help, the living embodiment of the gospel in the hearts of those who are willing to put the needs of others above their own.  This means literally making sure that everyone has enough, the basic necessities to live.  The word of encouragement is the truth of the Gospel - that a person’s ultimate worth does not come from what he or she does, but from the fact that each person is of precious value in the eyes of God and has eternal security through Jesus even in the face of overwhelming adversity.

Finally, the church must not give way to the fear that pervades this culture.  Will things get better?  We don’t know.  But we do know that whether they do or not, God is with us and will provide. “Be still and know that I am God.”  Psalm 46:10

The last piece of this good news is about you and your purpose in this world.  First of all, you have a purpose in this world.  Your life is not meaningless.  There is a reason that you’re here, and there is job that has your name on it, something that only you can do, something which was planned in advance for you to do.  It might not be entirely clear what exactly it is that you’re supposed to be doing.  But that’s part of the good news too, because figuring out how you can contribute is half the fun when it comes to following and discerning God’s role for you.  It’s not a static process of God said this, now do it.  It’s more like following vague directions in unknown territory, but not being afraid to get lost and stumble upon something exciting.  But is there a general direction that you’re supposed to be headed?  A constant?  I believe there is.  Your particular purpose, whatever it is, is to take part in a great undertaking that is already under way, the renewal of the world.  Your particular role is to aid in the renewal of some part of the world.  This might not be helpful because all of the world is being renewed, which means that everything in the world will be renewed.  Systems will be renewed. Governments will be renewed.  Businesses will be renewed.  Economies will be renewed.  Relationships will be renewed.  Environments will be renewed.  Hearts will be renewed. The way you can tell something is being renewed is that when it happens, there is an increase of peace and joy in the world.  Renewal happens when corruption, decay and death are replaced with flourishing, healing, love and life.  To the extent that the world is being brought into God’s order, it is being renewed.  And when you help to make peace where there was none, or bring justice to an unjust system, or when you repair a relationship, when you forgive someone, you are adding individual bricks to the only building that will ever stand the test of time.  Your purpose is to do things of eternal value.

Central park was a zoo today.  As a biker, there’s nothing more frustrating.  For whatever reason, once people enter the park, they are lulled into an absentminded loftiness as they float around the park, quite unaware that central park drive is an actual road with legitimate lights and bikers flying through at top speed.  What the floaters don’t realize is that the bikers have no intention of stopping even if they did have a red light.  Alas, when there are this many of them out there, they have the advantage of mass and there’s nothing we can do…  Bikers have always wanted more rights in the city, but the problem is that we’re not willing to make any sacrifices. We want our own bike lane, but we also want to be able to cut across traffic, weave in and out, breeze through red lights and generally own the road.  Instead of having bike lanes, they should just make whole streets that are dedicated strictly to bikes.  No pedestrians. No cars.  And for goodness sake, no bloody roller bladers.  Actually, I’ve often thought, and this is an actual legitimate idea, Central Park should be banned of cars.  I don’t understand why they let cars on central park drive.  It can’t possibly be to save congestion on other city roads because there aren’t enough cars that actually use the drive–just enough to make riding in the park hazardous for all of us.