change vs. more of the same

Change is the only constant.

This week, I have been thinking a lot about human relationships and also our relationship as humans to God.  I've been consciously pursuing a relationship with God for nine years now although he's been pursuing one with me for much longer.  (In fact, today marks the ninth anniversary from the day I walked forward in a church in Louisville, Kentucky as tears streamed down my mom's face on a Mother's Day that will probably always represent the best gift I ever gave to her.)  Like so many better men before me, that day I "admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps... the most dejected and reluctant convert" ever.

Nine years is a long time to hold onto a relationship.  In fact, other than the members of my family, there is not one person who has been constant in my life throughout all that time.  When I say that God knows me better than anyone, I don't just mean that he has more wisdom than anyone else could ever possibly hope to possess.  I mean also that He has been there through the good times and bad, the low points and high, the struggles, the celebrations, the hopeless nights, and the days that I thought I could take over the world.  God doesn't just know me because he knows everything.  There is nothing about myself, my thoughts, my motives that are not laid bare before Him.  I want to tell him everything there is to know about me because it is only in Him that I find acceptance even in my mixed motivations, my tendencies toward wandering, the cynical walls I build up around my heart for protection against unwelcome interlopers, and my sometimes seemingly unquenchable desire to fill myself with things that will surely end in my destruction.  My pastor said something this weekend that made a great deal of sense to me.  To be known but not loved is rejection.  To be loved and not known is superficiality.  But to be both known and loved, that is the thing.  God loves me like that.

As human beings, we are in a constant state of flux and change.  Everything around us is constantly changing.  Our circumstances, our preferences, our knowledge and ideas.  Our bodies are growing older, our hair and fingernails are growing longer.  Seas are eroding beaches, the earth is constantly spinning and making its way around the sun.  The moon waxes and wanes to mark the change of time.  In fact, change or variance is the only way we can measure time.  Without the alternating days and nights, or the rhythm of seasons, it is hard for me to imagine how life would continue or how we would mark the progress of our lives.

And yet constantly, we tend to live our lives in the constant fear of change.  We hold onto our notions that we are constant, that we never change.  We paint out own mental pictures that we are hunkered down as the world rages around us, rising and falling in an unpredictable rhythm and that if we can just hide ourselves from that oh so changeable world that somehow we can find bliss and protection in the serenity of sameness.  But the truth is there is not such thing.  Like sharks who must swim to live, change is to the human being as essential as breathing.  We evolve, we adapt, and we survive.  Change is our only constant.  It is unavoidable.  It is certain.  It is happening.

In my nine years of learning more about God and myself, I cannot tell you how many times I have felt distant from Him.  As if he had turned His back on me that He was somehow out of reach just beyond my grasp or that He just didn't care.  I have so many times grown bitter and disappointed and wrathful toward God blaming Him for changing and injuring our relationship.  But God doesn't change.  He always was and always will be.  He was in relationship with Himself by means of the mysterious Trinity long before I was ever created.  God is love.  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  His affection for me has not waxed and waned.  He did not pull back or hide Himself from me.  It's me who has run from Him, tried to hide when came to find me in the Garden, and allowed our relationship to become less than a priority.  His love has been constant.

Don't get me wrong.  I am not making the argument that change is bad.  After all, the title of this post comes from a meme created by a political adviser during Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign for the White House.  Almost every great movement in history and every political candidate who gets remembered is immortalized for bringing a desperately needed change to society.  As people, we need change.  That's why it is part of our basic natures and why God created us to experience change and growth and struggle.  Even in our salvation, we are changed from dead to alive.  "Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet."  "The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here."  The Bible is full of calls to change.  I feel like I've lived a lifetime of mistakes.  There are days when the only thing I want to do is start something completely new, rewrite the rules to everything I've ever learned, and embrace the change as it comes.  Sometimes change is just what we need.

But let me never put my faith and trust, hope and foundation in the changeable whims of other people.  No matter how important another person may be to me, no one else can determine my identity but the unchangeable, unwavering, unrelenting God.  The one who is called Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, the same from everlasting to everlasting.  For God, for nine years to eternity.

You are my only constant.

the end of the beginning

In the midst World War II, on the heels of an important victory for the Allies forces against the Axis, Winston Churchill took a moment to reflect.  It was later said that before the Second Battle of El Alamein the Allies had no victories and afterwards they had no defeats.  But at this critical juncture of history, among the shouts of glory and vitriol, Churchill cautiously reminded his people, "Now this is not the end, nor is it even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

The health care overhaul approved by Congress last night hardly matches the magnitude of that great war though its effects may linger with my generation much as the World War II lingered with the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers.

No, our great war is not against an Axis of Evil or a piece of legislation or a political party or a philosophy.  Our struggle is against ignorance and apathy.  It is against the manipulation of politicians bent on controlling not only our deeds but our thoughts as well.  Our weapons in this battle are information to diffuse the malaise of too many arguments and technology to free us from the quagmire of rigid ideological dogma.

You need to know how this health care overhaul will affect you.

You need to educate yourself.  A good place to start is with this article in the New York Times and another in the Wall Street Journal.  But don't stop there.  Keep researching and asking questions and learning.  Don't just trust me or the talking heads on television or the blaring voices on talk radio.  But decide for yourself what you want for yourself, your family, your friends, and the rest of this country.  I know not everyone cares about politics and most of it feels like it doesn't affect your daily life.  I promise you that won't be the case here.

You need to know that health care didn't become free yesterday because Congress said so.  Congress is a powerful force in American life but they are not omnipotent.  Doctors and nurses still must be paid; prescription drugs still cost money; medical research still requires the financial resources that underwrite every great discovery.  That's the way the world works.

That means that insurance companies now forced to cover individuals they normally would not choose to cover without being paid to do so will be forced to raise premiums on those who already have insurance.  The vast majority of you reading this article probably have health insurance through your employer and may not even know month to month what you are paying for that coverage.  You will soon as you see more and more money drained from your paycheck to cover the cost of other people's medical care.  Insurance companies aren't going to make less money because Congress is mad at them.  That's not the way the world works.

See, Congress chose the worst possible way to keep costs down by asking government to control them.  Don't believe me?  Just do a little research on the development of Medicare and Medicaid since their inception.  You'll find that costs have skyrocketed out of control on a constant trajectory since the inception of those programs.  Working in state government, I have seen up close and personal how North Carolina like almost every other state across the country is nearly going bankrupt paying its medical bills because of Medicare and Medicaid.  Government is not an organization that find efficiencies and pinches pennies.  It spends money like a 12 year old boy at an arcade.  Until it's all gone.  When you print your own money, those numbers can really add up.

But people shouldn't have to be without health insurance.  It's not a privilege, it's a right.  Putting aside the odd paradox of newly discovered human rights for a moment, if it is a right to have health insurance then surely it must be a right to choose not to have it.  However, under this legislation come 2014 you won't have that right anymore.  If the time comes between you deciding between owning a car, or buying a home, or paying tuition and purchasing health insurance, the government has already made that choice for you.  I'm all for charity.  But charity hasn't traditionally been something that government has forced us to buy for ourselves.

As Ronald Reagan once said, "We have long since committed ourselves, as a people, to help those among us who cannot take care of themselves."  That is a promise we ought to keep, a dignity that ought to be held in high honor in this country.  But at what cost?  Will we really allow the federal government to take over every aspect of health care and its delivery to ensure that no goes without?  There are only two ways to make health care "cheaper" under government control.  Tax more to make up the difference between what people can afford to pay and what it truly costs or offer less care and poorer quality so that no one has to foot a bill we cannot afford to pay. 

That's no way to run a health care system.

As a country, as a people, we have abolished slavery, invented the automobile, survived two World Wars, put a man on the moon.  We made snowboarding an Olympic sport.  You're telling me that we cannot figure out a way to make health care affordable and accessible to all who want it?  I don't believe it for a second. 

We can do better than what we did with this bill.  And I hope you'll help us do it.

Now, to my Republican friends, a couple reminders are in order.  This is not the end.  It's not the end of liberty or freedom or capitalism or our constitutional republic.  It is not the end of American exceptionalism or the American dream.  If the history of this country has taught us anything, it is that the idea that is America may be tarnished but it is never broken.  Our flag may tatter but it is never.  Just as our government cannot declare something, it cannot long enslave those who would be free.  We as a people are stronger and smarter and better than our representives and every two years we get to remind them of that.

There are no final victories and no final defeats.  There is only here and now and the fight that has been and the fight that is to come.  America is an idea perpetually in the pains of birth crying out, demanding both liberty and unity.  There is only perserverance and courage and idealism and strength and hope to come.  We will not survive.  We will not endure.  But we will prosper.  Freedom always does.

This not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.  But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

bees, liz, and the low anthem

Every person in Cat's Cradle was surprised by the first notes of music emanating from the stage as the opening act snuck onto stage with nary a word and began their set.

The band was Annie and the Beekeepers.  Annie Lynch is Lisa Loeb as a boxy-figured blonde wrapped in plaid, full of post-teen angst and folk music.  Hers is a band that could comfortably cover "Home on the Range."  And probably kill it.

As she grabbed a banjo and began tuning and picking at it three songs in, Lynch announced that the band had a rather unique brand of merch: beeswax lip balm and, of course, honey.   Her sales pitch included the name of the maker of the honey whom she thanked but I missed.  It was no matter because she was quickly greeted by a catcall from the tall guy playing an upright bass at the back of the stage, "Actually, the bees made the honey..."  Part of the beauty of listening to live americana is that vaguely anti-social people have to tell you jokes while they tune their instruments.  There is an unwritten rule of rock and roll that lead singers must be able to talk and find a G at the same time.  Awkward laughter is the sound of enjoying folk music.

The closest thing we came to a transcendent moment in a 30 minute set that covered the ground of what sounded like one EP was "Like a Dog" in which Lynch expresses the paradoxical loneliness of the artist up front entertaining while missing out on the life she's singing about only in songs.  "Someone Else" was also a standout simply for the opening lines of, "When it takes too long to look away/You might catch me staring at the sun with thoughts I entertain/Not supposed to look that way/But it tickles at my senses/Puts the pleasure in the pain."  As Annie and the Beekeepers exited the stage with the generic, perfunctory nod to the next bands, they gave kind of show that makes you look over at the people you came with and say, "They were better than I thought they would be."  And I did just that as Lissie prepared to take the stage.

As Lissie Maurus belted out an appropriately gender-tweaked version of Hank Williams' "Wedding Bells" to open her band's set, she reminded me of a post-Southern rock incarnation of Cherie Currie.  (But Dakota Fanning wouldn't be my first choice to portray her in a movie.)  Everything about Maurus, from the jeans and tank combo she was sporting on stage to her stringy unkempt blonde hair to the way she guzzled PBR out of a 12 ounce can between songs, alerted the audience to the fact that she spent an inordinate amount of time in her adolescence playing guitar in the greasy garages of guys who didn't shower much.  In a world of "Good girls rarely make history" and The Purity Myth, the new feminists have underestimated the power of the kind of equality that comes from sitting behind an electric guitar and wailing on it.  Maurus has not.  Mystique that, Betty Friedan.

Maurus' band was just as impressive as the frontwoman herself.  Eric Sullivan looks like he belongs in a Rage Against the Machine cover band but he's just too talented for it.  The hidden gem of this group, the moment he shined through the brightest was on Lissie's cover of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters."  I couldn't tell if hearing a woman sing the song made me believe that James Hetfield was really the pre-eminent momma's boy of metal but Sullivan sounded better than Kirk Hammett on that guitar solo.  Sullivan strikes me as a kid who could have went to space camp and actually become an astronaut or been the only stock broker on Wall Street to survive the financial collapse but instead he was gifted with the kind of skills you channel into a guitar.  There's probably thousands of guys like him on nameless tours across the country not getting their due but he got it that night before dozens of people whose respect for his artistry was tangibly present in the room as that song ended.

Yet the true baller of the group might be Lewis Kellar who plays bass, kick-drum and hi-hat... at the same time.  If this dude has an off night, it's going to be bad news.  As soon as Lissie finished their set, I looked over at a friend and said, "I hope he's getting paid double for this gig."  I'm destined to be an unimportant talent agent breaking up fledgling bands over frivolous contract issues.

I realized nearly as soon as the headliners took the stage that The Low Anthem is awesome not because they are maybe the most talented group of people to ever perform in the same room as me (though they are).  They are awesome because they wrote an album about Charles Darwin and when they play, they make you want to believe in God.  They opened their set with "Ticket Taker," and never has the life of a carnie sounded simultaneously so dull yet metaphysically important.  Everything sounds more important when Ben Knox Miller sings it.

The band began when a folk musician/painter from the Hudson Valley, Miller, met a jazz bassist/baseball scholar from Jersey, Jeff Prystowsky, when they were both on-air personalities for Brown University's college radio station.  (Prystowsky actually ended up being a slight, excitable man of unknown ethnicity with a funny hat and an excellent mustache who stood in front of me for the first two band's sets.  This is the kind of band The Low Anthem is.  Easy to miss but with an uncommon energy.)  Now they record music in an abandoned pasta sauce factory once owned by the nefarious mayor of Providence, Rhode Island.  The story of the group's genesis proved to be just as unpredictable as their set, which Miller at one point graciously described as "bipolar."  Multiple personality disorder would likely be the more clinically appropriate diagnosis.  I'm certain that every member of the band switched instruments between each song.  Which is quite possible because they use for instrumentation: voice, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, upright bass, electric bass, banjo, clarinet, violin, mandolin, harmonica, keyboard, piano, fun machine, casio, horn, trumpet, trombone, drum kit, tongue drum, cell phones, music box, zither, pump organ, Tibetan singing bowl, broom, shakers, tambourine, wood block, cowbell, filing cabinet, crotales and oil drum.

Using cell phones as accompaniment was one of the truly unique aspects of any live show I've ever been a part of.  I say "been a part of" because Miller actually implored the audience to participate in making the music by waiting until after the second chorus on a song from their 2007 album, What the Crow Brings, to call a friend they came with, set both phones and speaker, and let the feedback wail.  This is music to The Low Anthem.  I think anything is.  I only wish I could use words with the kind of versatility this band treats every object on earth when it comes to music.  The result was this incredible participatory experience between band and audience.  After all, it takes a certain humility to leave the sound of your concert up to the people listening.  But it also results in an experience no one in the room is likely to ever forget.

hater nation

hater (n.) - A person that simply cannot be happy for another person's success. So rather than be happy they make a point of exposing a flaw in that person.  (UrbanDictionary definition)

We are a nation of haters.

You want evidence for this claim?  Just look at the last week in the life of American pop culture.  How many stories have you heard about the downfall of Tiger Woods and the ugly details of his travails with toothless Perkins waitresses across the country?  All because we love to see the previously flawless superstar to fall from grace.  TMZ is a website entirely devoted to hating.  American Idol hosted their first voter elimination of the season last week.  The tweeny-bopper vote likely skews heavily female and immediately dispersed with the two most attractive young ladies on the show.  This comes as no surprise as we all know that the collective cattiness of American teen girls is channeled in making sure that none of their friends are ever hotter than them.  Hating is the new bra-burning for a 21st century revolution in feminist anti-solidarity.  Finally, though I would sooner endure countless hours of waterboarding that watch even one episode of The Bachelor, I couldn't help but be subjected to a torrent of statuses, tweets and buzzes about Jake picking Vienna over some other person I couldn't care less about.  All of them dripping with the pooled resentment of textbook haterdom.

Hate actually... is all around.

And here comes your objection: "But what about you Mr. Hatier-Than-Thou?  You're the one who spent half your weekend torturing poor, defenseless Canadians about a hockey game you didn't even really care about.  You hate Canada."

First, I don't hate Canada.  Saying I hate Canada is like saying I hate candy circus peanuts.  They're unpleasant.  I don't understand why any sane, rational person would enjoy them and it somewhat baffles me that we even allow them to exist on the Earth.  But I don't really think about them that much.  Canada is just circus peanuts to me.

As Bomani Jones of ESPN's Page 2 and HardcoreSportsRadio helped make clear to me the other day.  Many other countries in the world hate us.  But we don't hate other countries.  We just don't think about them that much.  Take, for example, a story he recounted about some friends from Canada who live in Toronto and were constantly being asked if they were going to be seeing any of the Olympics in Vancouver.  Now, Canada is fairly sizable land mass, third largest country in the world to be exact.  Vancouver and Toronto are not exactly close.  It would take about a five day trek to drive through the Canadian wilderness to traverse the distance from one city to the other.  Point is, even if 90% of Canadians live within 10 miles of our border secretly hoping to become Americans by breathing the same air we do, they are working with a pretty serious amount of land up there (mostly inhabited by caribou, beavers, and guys with odd facial hair).  Quick.  Name 5 Canadian provinces.  Are there five?  Who knows?  Did you know Michael J. Fox was from Canada?  No, why would I?  But I am rather disturbed that we have all these secret Canadians living among us.  I used to be one of the few people in the world who found Ryan Reynolds funny.  No more.  (Plus, Canada gave us Nickelback.  For that, we can never truly forgive them.)

As Americans, we just don't think about other countries that much.  But think of how weird it would sound if someone from another country just told you they were going to visit America.  Can I get a city, a state, area code, zip code, something?  Visiting Los Angeles and visiting Montana are two different experiences.  You can't just visit America.  Everything is different here.

A few years back, I had a friend who spent a few months in India (and rather impressively still maintained the roster of his fantasy football team).  Now wherever he went obviously had computer access but I still don't know what city or province he visited.  If it's not in America, it's all India to us.  Is that narrow-minded, jingoistic, uber-patriotism?  Maybe.  But it's also our God-given, American birthright not to think about other countries too much.  Let them think about us.

So hate is a worldwide phenomenon.  Americans hate other Americans and the whole world hates us.  It's the circle of hate. 

So what can we do to stop the hate?

Ironically, though it is probably our generation of Millennials more at fault than any other for the continued foment of Hater Nation, I think we are the world's last, best hope to end it once and for all. 

Recently released research from the Pew Research Center shows that Millennials are more like than other generations to list "helping others in need" as one of the most important things in our lives.  Also, for all the talk of Millennials shedding the ethics and mores of our parents' generation, 72 percent claim being a good parent and/or having a successful marriage as a top priority.  Our generation is also less likely to feel like it has the strongest work ethics or most righteous moral values of any generation.  That is not to say we aren't competitive.  We'll likely be the most highly educated generation in history.  But we are humble about who we are and what we mean in the world.  We don't look to cast judgment on our elders or on our peers.  But we're also not trying to live in our parents' world.  We're trying to create one for ourselves.

Our generation is the most open to change of any other and we are also the most optimistic.  In a country whose politicians most often define themselves by what they are against instead of who they are for, we were swept up by a campaign banking on "hope" and "change."  And although we may have been a bit naive and now have been somewhat disillusioned, it is important to remember that our faith is not in politicians or businessmen or leaders but in ourselves to make the world around us a better place, to recreate the American landscape in our image.  The economic, political, and social movements who begin to understand that will capture the hearts and minds of this generation for decades.

But please, just stop the hating.  We can all just get along.

only ashes

(Editor's note: I'm currently working on a couple things that are not ready for publication so I'm going to share with you a blog entry I wrote for Ash Wednesday last year. Also, I stole the title from this Something Corporate song that is awesome.)

Today is Ash Wednesday. I'm not sure that Baptists really recognize Ash Wednesday. I was baptized Catholic and once you get the holy water on you, you never really get it to completely come off. Even if you later become a Baptist. The point of the tradition is to mark a day of repentance before we transition into the season of Lent for the Christian calendar.

Christians celebrate Lent in different ways, but many of my friends and family choose to use these 46 days before Easter to either give up something or dedicate themselves anew to something. Think of it like a New Year's resolution but made to Jesus. Might be more fun, definitely more guilt involved. Anyway, so this year I decided to give up sweets for 2 reasons: a) I knew it would be hard for me to do with my massive sweet tooth and b) it doesn't hurt to live a healthier, more disciplined lifestyle. I am about 16 hours in at this point and I am gripping. I find myself equivocating on the commitment. Chocolate is obviously out but what about Pop Tarts? How sweet is peanut butter really? Can I put sugar in my coffee? Would Jesus be mad if I got all hyped up on Mountain Dew right now?

It occurs to me that I might be missing the point.

It reminds me of the story of the Transfiguration. Matthew tells the story this way is his gospel.

"Six days later Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Peter said to Jesus, 'Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.' While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, 'This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!' When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground and were terrified." Matthew 17:1-6

This is what it takes to get their attention finally. Really? All the healing and miracles and feeding of five thousands and raising people from the dead just didn't do the trick? God has to bring in the cameo appearances from Moses and Elijah and put the super glow effect on Jesus' face and clothes just to get them to listen!

That's me.

I'm that guy that has to go through every other option, to bargain, to cajole, and to doubt before I finally just stop and pay attention. It takes all that for me to realize that God really just wants to bring me close and teach me what it means to truly follow Him and become like Him. Yeah, it's supposed to be hard to give up something you love, even if just for a time. It drives you to prayer and reliance on Christ.

As we go through the Believe project together and as we progress through the season of Lent towards Easter, I hope we can let God show us again just how amazing and transformational is His mission to the world. I hope that when He asks us to make small sacrifices we realize that what we sacrifice today will be paid back tenfold in days to come. But most of all, I hope that when we doubt and when we wander and when we fall that we'll take the time to pray and to see Jesus for who He is once again.

my funny valentine or why valentine's day is corporate and that's ok

This is a defense of love.

Or maybe more appropriately "Eros." I will refer to it as such for the rest of this essay for simplicity's sake and also because this is how C.S. Lewis dubs it in his book The Four Loves, which forms the basis of my writing.

Every year as the calendar days begin to fall precipitously and dangerously toward February 14, Eros begins to take fire from all sides.

"Valentine's Day is so corporate and commercialized."  "It's nothing but a capitalist conspiracy among the greeting card companies to prop up a make-believe holiday to boost a slow month in sales."  (What?  So you're telling me I can't get a Black History Month card with a sweet picture of George Washington Carver recounting the numerous and glorious uses of the peanut?  And why is this the only thing I can remember from countless public school history classes taught during the month of February?)

So people declare their independence of the evil capitalist machinery, defy the man, and declare their own holidays.  Anti-Valentine's Day.  Ferris Wheel Day.  National Singlehood Awareness Day.  And on and on.  Mostly this is done out of the bitterness that one does not have an appointed valentine to celebrate the day with.  In my opinion though, the lady (or man) doth protest too much.  If anyone declares their worship for Eros, it is the unValentines.  There is no opt-out for love.  We will all love something.  The question is what.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Now I could devote several hundred words to debunking the myth that the evil corporate behemoths of Hallmark and Godiva have manipulated our emotions by forcing their black holiday on us all.  But that's what Wikipedia is for.  And a quick reading of the Valentine's Day entry will show you that the name originates with early Christian martyrs and draws its romantic roots from the days of Geoffrey Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales.

But skip that and let's use a little rhetorical device we lawyers refer to as "assuming arguendo."  So I grant your point: Valentine's Day is a corporate sellout of a holiday foisted upon us as a cruel hoax to convince us to buy copious amounts of greeting cards and chocolates.  My response: So what?

Have you ever noticed that corporations always co-opt stuff that is awesome?  Like Christmas and love and puppies.  We just sat a Super Bowl last week that half the people in the audience were watching solely for the purpose of being sold products through ingenious advertising.  Thousands of people tuned in via the internet for the Steve Jobs to unleash his brilliant move forward in technology for a supersize iPod touch.  When is the last time you saw a corporation spending $2.5 million for a commercial advocating the many desirable qualities of strained peas?  Corporations don't make us want things.  They find things we already want and find ways to make money off selling it to us.

One thing we definitely want, have always wanted, and will always want for as long as the human race subsists is Eros.

So what defines our love/hate relationship with Eros?  Fear.  We are afraid.  And, on the one hand, we have good reason to fear.  Eros is a fearful and brutal master of our emotions, our physical and spiritual well-being.  Never do we feel closer to the truly divine, the unconditional state of love reserved for God Himself then when we declare of our beloved, "anything for you."  We have a healthy distrust of such heavenly, eternal feelings expressed on the drab, mortal earth.  As Lewis writes, "When natural things look most divine, the demoniac is just round the corner."

Yet Eros, fickle Eros, the subject of countless songs and limitless reveries, of all the types of love is the most transitory.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  For no reason but with much protestation.  As easily as one can fall in love without realizing the event is even taking place, the sudden realization of being out of love may come as the even greater surprise to the afflicted party.  This is our second fear and is both unwise and unvirtuous.  While the first was prudent for protecting our right relationship and allegiance with Love Himself, the second fear is a betrayal of that relationship and turning away from the spirit-discerning fire that God presents in the form of Eros.  Again, Lewis explains it much better than I could ever hope.

Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as 'Careful! This might lead you to suffering.' ... When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ.  If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities.  I doubt whether there is anything in me that pleases Him less.

When I took my first job out of law school, I found myself for the first time with a 401k to manage and sitting in front of a financial adviser asking me the foreign yet primary philosophical question of my existence, "Would you like a low, moderate, or high risk of investment?"  You see, in life, there will be risk.  The only question is how much we will risk, how brave we will be.  There are more grievous sins in this life than cowardice.  Like foolishness.  The foolishness of believing that we can have one attitude toward Eros and our fellow human beings without having that attitude affect our relationship with God.  How can we ever lead ourselves to believe that we could take some safe route, low-risk strategy toward love in this life while expecting to be united to Love Himself in the next?

If a man is not uncalculating towards the earthly beloveds whom he has seen, he is none the more likely to be so towards God whom he has not.  We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour.  If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it. 

A survey of the biblical narrative leaves one thoroughly convinced that the story of human existence is the Love Story, the one of which all the Dear Johns and Valentine's Days of the world are but faint and imperfect shadows.  The mystery to which Saint Paul referred to as the fated marriage of Christ and his bride, the Church.  Love did not pursue us carefully but recklessly from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of Gethsemane, from Mount Sinai to Mount Calvary.

We should not turn our backs on Saint Valentine's Day.  It is truly a holy day.  And in this world of hate, we could use a few more days to celebrate Love.

(This installment is a second excerpt from my future book, How to Date an Unattainable Woman and Other Things I Don't Know.  Previously excerpted here.)

as freedom is a breakfastfood

I never thought of myself as one of those lock-yourself-away-in-a-closet-awaiting-the-end-times, conspiracy freak, fear-mongering, technology haters until I read the following passage from an essay entitled "FAIL" by Chuck Klosterman.

When it's warm out I like to sit inside air-conditioned rooms. ...

Yet what am I giving up in order to have a 70 degree living room in July?

Nothing that's particularly important to me.

For the air conditioner to work, I need to live in a building that has electricity, so I have to connected to the rest of society.  That's fine.  That's no problem.  Of course, to be accepted by society, I have to accept the rules and laws of community living.  That's fine, too.  Now, to thrive and flourish and afford my electric bill, I will also have to earn money.  But that's okay--most jobs are social and many are enriching and unnecessary.  However, the only way to earn money is to do something (or provide something) that is valued by other people.  And since I don't get to decide what other people value, what I do to make a living is not really my decision.  So--in order to have air-conditioning--I will agree to live in a specific place with other people, following whatever rules happen to exist there, all while working at a job that was constructed by someone else for their benefit.

In order to have a 70-degree living room, I give up almost everything.

Yet nothing that's particularly important to me.

The point is: "Technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom."

We don't value freedom.  We constantly make decisions that we know will result in the forfeiting of our freedoms and we do so for the worst of all reasons: comfort.

We don't value freedom and we will trade it for almost anything.

Our freedoms are daily, constantly under assault and almost never in the ways we would expect.

For a minor example, just take a look at the sports world.  This week all eyes are focused on Miami, the site of Super Bowl XLIV.  The Colts' quarterback, Peyton Manning, is the center of attention as he is the most talented player in Sunday's game if not in the game of football today.  Yet he has only won one Super Bowl in a career marked by statistical accolades and accomplishments.  If the Colts emerge victorious on Sunday night, almost every commentator on every sports station in the world will be anointing him as the greatest quarterback in the history of the National Football League.

This will happen for two reasons.  One, sports commentators need something to talk about and they always want to claim that we are watching the greatest player to ever play the game.  Historically great players sell out stadiums and lead to huge television contracts for the networks.  They sell commercials, they move merchandise, and they inspire us to greatness ourselves.

That is precisely why we should never proclaim someone the greatest to play their particular position until we are really sure about it.  There's more than just money on the line.

The second reason is because Peyton Manning fits a quarterback archetype that has been in place since long before he ever stepped on a football field.  Nevermind that he lacks the golden arm of Johnny Unitas or the charisma of Joe Namath or the grit and toughness of Terry Bradshaw or the cool demeanor of the ultimate winner Joe Montana.

After all, he comes to the line on each play screaming like a cracked-out paranoid schizophrenic with Tourette's syndrome.  That's got to count for something, right?

Color me unimpressed.  That's why I will never think Peyton Manning is the greatest quarterback of all time.  Because I don't buy into the hype.  Manning didn't invent the audible.  He's just a smart quarterback who has played on above average teams and won Super Bowl(s) in years in which there were no great teams out there to knock him out of the playoffs.

But commentators will anoint him nonetheless.  Because it is easier to join the chorus of the crowd than to risk singing off key.

We don't want freedom because we fear the burden that freedom carries.

In an example wholly foreign to discussions of football, consider the movement within young evangelical churches to rekindle the theology of John Calvin.

In short, the newly reformed evangelical movement takes the position that freedom is an illusion and that God in his sovereignty controls "even our smallest decisions."

This, of course, leads to a host of theological problems for people who are considering the existence of evil in the world and trying to reconcile that with the idea of a good and omnipotent God.  Why does God allow evil people to prosper while the virtuous continue to suffer?  Why did God even bother to create human beings at all if they were merely going to be automatons and pawns in a grander struggle ever frustrated by their inability to exercise free will?  How can a creation without the ability to make its own choices be held to the consequences because of sin?  Why create a world where Jesus Christ would have to suffer a horrific, undignified death on a cross if sin and evil could have been prevented if God was just more careful in His stewardship of creation?

As you might be able to tell, I'm no Calvinist.

But the question is: Why is anyone?  It is a completely unsatisfying theology ending only in fatalism and despair when put in the context of a world of suffering and in light of the inability of human beings to effect any real change in the world.

We're scared to be free.  We fear what the realization of our own freedom might be.  So we would rather have our theology dictated to us by John Piper than take the time to read the Bible for ourselves and draw our own conclusions.  Certainly, God never intended for Christians to bother with an original thought or a new theology after his greatest and final prophet John Calvin left the earth.

We don't want to think for ourselves.  It's easier this way.  For one, if we rely on our own thoughts, we could end up making mistakes.  We could end up being wrong.

Well, you can count me in the same camp as Galileo who said, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

I would rather take the risky, adventurous path of freedom and end up being wrong than be right but in chains.  I would rather worship a God who loves me than one who controls me.

Great theologians, quarterbacks, and commentators took risks and felt freedom.  We cannot abandon that freedom for a comfortable existence now.

And if we do, then there's no greatness left in us.