Don't be Stupid, Don't be Dangerous

Tonight I went to get a tattoo…

It’s kind of a story, but the short of it is that the artist was ill and so he left early and so I ended up sitting around for 3-4 hours and NOT getting one. But! There is a bright side to this story and so I thought I’d share it with you…

I have several ideas for tattoos all of which I may eventually get. As of now, I have approx. 10 depending on what you count as “1”…

But tonight as I went in to get one, I was undecided walking through the door. Thanks to my long wait, I had plenty of time to think about what I wanted. Now, if you know me personally, you know that 4 hours sitting in a chair is not really boring to me. It’s more like “me time”. I am very much an introvert and so just being alone for a while was nice. In fact, I didn’t even really get on my phone. 

The design I decided on will complete the inner portion of my left arm half-sleeve. What’s currently there is a piece for my second son and a sugar skull; both of which are kind of in the traditional tattoo style. So, in keeping with that theme, I decided on doing a serpent and a dove (neither pictured) in the same color scheme and style. The serpent and dove are a  play off of Matthew 10 when Jesus tells those he sends to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” or, as the message version puts it “be as cunning as a snake, inoffensive as a dove”. And this got me thinking…

Are we, who are called to ministry in whatever form, wise as serpents and harmless as doves?

I fear the reputation that we get is often the opposite.

Too often Christian leaders are guilty of being as cunning as doves and as harmless as serpents…

Have you ever seen a dove in real life? When I was a kid, we bird-sat for some friends and they had a dove.  The one thing I remember about that bird was that it was stupid. I mean bad. It would let you hold it but would make the most irrational decisions. Like flying into the window or fan…it survived :)

Have you ever come across a serpent in the wild? Growing up in western Kansas, it was no joke when you heard a rattle while walking through tall grass. I spent a portion of my childhood in a farm house (though we didn’t work the farm) and my siblings and I spent much of our time outside. I distinctly remember watching out for snakes as I knew the potentially deadly repercussions of carelessness.

I guess my point with this blog post is simply that I, as a Christian with influence, want to be sure to keep the combination correct: wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove. 

It’s interesting that without the animal symbolism, that doesn’t sound weird: be wise and harmless. I feel like most people would say “yeah, wise and harmless, those seem to go together”. Somehow, though, it doesn’t seem to be the common worldview where I’m from. Most people who are deemed “wise” are often proponents of violence in some way or another. There’s food for thought. 

So, the bottom line is this: let us self-examine regularly. Are you being the correct combination of serpent/dove? Or are you being stupid and dangerous with your words and ideas. Not trying to attack people, but let’s be careful with the roles we’ve accepted in life.

Post your thoughts to the comments!

Pax,

The Dread

Unicorns, Rainbows, Germans and Inconsistent Living

I have decided to commit to my blog. In the past, I have been hit and miss with posts, sometimes going months without ever writing. Recently, I have been considering writing more seriously and so I feel this is a good way to practice that.

Today’s topic comes from a couple of college buddies who answered my posted request for topic material….I’ll try and do their suggestions justice. Here we go:

Inconsistent living

It has been brought up that many people go throughout their lives with a habit of philosophical compartmentalization. For simplicity sake, I’m going to call this “inconsistent living”; this is where people foster inconsistency between their proclaimed beliefs and their actual behavior. This idea can also be extended to include people who live inconsistently between their beliefs and their actions around different people. I would think that this latter kind of inconsistent living is more extreme as the person is split in multiple ways, both internally and externally.

I think that the issue is most prevalent among younger people because they are still trying to figure out “who they are”. By this, people generally mean that they are undecided what kind of values they want to devote their lives to. Most of our values are inherited from our parents or whoever raised us; as adolescents, people go through a period of bio-chemical and psychological fluxes in which we unavoidably evaluate those values and decide which we want to claim as our own and which we would prefer to discard. This is an important process because it moves societies forward. As more technology is developed and the world becomes a different place, socially speaking, dropping certain values can be important ( a good example would be the first few decades after slavery had been abolished). While there are intrinsic values that should not be discarded by any generation, that discussion is a bit beyond the scope of the present one.

While it is acceptable and even necessary to figure out “who you are” during your adolescence, it is important to do so with some consistency and to strive to be critical enough so as to not allow this period to influence your personal and professional life too much (though some effect is unavoidable). Unfortunately, adolescence can now be defined as late as a person’s 30’s due to the society we live in. Whereas it was common to be considered an adult by society and oneself at the age of 18, our college systems and other social factors have allowed people to remain in flux. Without spending too much time here, I’d just like to point out how several students go off to college being given all the freedoms of adulthood with few if any adult responsibilities.

So the fall-out is often a compartmentalization of personal philosophies; specifically, people act differently in front of certain people or people claim to believe one thing and then act contrary. A little of this is ok, but too much is, well, too much.

Unicorn living

In order to demonstrate, I will use the up-coming holiday, Halloween. My wife and I have been going round and round about what we will dress up as (and we’ve not gotten far). One thing she thought about doing was dressing as a unicorn. Now, I don’t think this is weird for the season, but it made me think about how people do not act this way in their daily lives. She is not weird for considering being a unicorn, but I wonder if she would dress up like a unicorn on just any day of the year. Please keep in mind that this is a limited analogy. So when we live inconsistently with our beliefs, we can parallel it with wanting to be a unicorn all year long, but only living it out one day a year or in private. Or (to flip the analogy), it could be like wanting and claiming to be a person who dresses normally all year long when you really just want to be a unicorn. The inconsistency between your internal life and your outward actions essentially leave you as a fragmented person; even when you do get one day a year of relief (which would be analogous to your private behavior).

German political sufferers

Another example can be seen in the Anabaptist tradition. For those of you who are unfamiliar, this is the Christian belief system of which traditions like Mennonite, Amish and Brethren in Christ are descendents of. During the Protestant reformation, this group was considered radical because they took the reform of the church farther than the Protestants. Specifically, they bravely took ALL church practice under scrutiny instead of just some secondary doctrine and procedural practices. Because of their “underdog” place in history and their basic doctrine of pacifism which they derived from Jesus’ explicit teaching, they were persecuted from all angles of the reformation. In Germany, where the movement took most solidified shape under Menno Simons, the tense political atmosphere allowed for Roman Catholics, Protestants and secular authorities to capture, torture and kill Anabaptists at will – needless to say, this was a dark period in the history of the church.

What I want to point out about the Anabaptists and the strained, inter-believer relations is that throughout it all – even when being tortured and killed – the Anabaptists generally lived consistently with their radical proclaimed beliefs such as their refusal to join the military or simply fall in line with commonly accepted church practice. This, to me, is a great example of maturity: to find faith in a belief – or rather a person – that you would give your life for the sake of letting that belief/person pervade every compartment of your life.

Rainbow consistency

So, to round this idea off, let’s look at how God goes about his interactions with us. I want to look to the rainbow. In the story of Noah’s Ark, God seals his promise to never destroy the world again with a rainbow. Now, without getting into exegetical arguments about whether or not we ought to take this story as literal or allegorical, I think we can learn one important truth from the story: God does it big. Now, I think that God also does signs and wonders in small ways, but one thing is certain that when he makes a promise or decides that things should be a certain way, there is no fudging. God doesn’t say “I’ll never destroy the world again…unless I’m having a bad day, in which case look out!” This was how the Greek gods behaved and they were more often projections of how humans act. The God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, however, doesn’t do this because he’s not human. He perfectly lives consistently with what he claims as truth – how could he do otherwise?

                                

Concluding thoughts

From this assertion, we who are made in his image and striving to become more like him ought to lay aside the immature practice of philosophical compartmentalization and start living consistently. This is simply the honest way to go about life; no “hidden me”, no quiet fudging about what we believe, but the bold proclamation that we believe life is to be lived a certain way and a commitment to intentionally act accordingly. This isn’t easy, but it is necessary to a mature spiritual life.

Peace,

The Dread.

The Benefit of Dissonance

So earlier I tweeted this: “As one with Anabaptist colored beliefs, I benefit from never lacking in ppl who disagree with me... Blog post coming on?”

Soooo I figured I’d follow up on it J

Here was my fully fleshed out thought and I shall call it “The benefit of dissonance”

Face the music

One of my favorite things in life is music. It has been a staple of my reality since I can remember. I grew up with my father playing in Tejano bands and as a young boy I’d go to his gigs. As soon as I could, I began playing percussion in school. This led me from concert band to jazz and rock in middle school and on to marching drum corps style percussion in high school. After roughly 9 years of playing drums, I decided to broaden my horizons and pick up guitar; this was mostly out of boredom. There is much more I could say about my musical past, but what I specifically want to say is that I was steeped in music as a child and have remained immersed ever since.

Through my more formal encounters with music, I have learned a lot about the mechanics of what usually sounds so organic. It is paradoxically beautiful. One of the most beautiful things that I have learned is that sometimes the most interesting, moving and absolutely incredible moments in music happen when there is dissonance. Yes. Dissonance.

What is dissonance, you say? Dissonance is that moment in music in which the tones seem to fight each other; almost as if they both want to occupy the same space and thus clash leaving both notes with less than all of the space. It is discord. It is harshness of sound. Chaos and longing. Unsettled.

Dissonance can be the most awkward and off-putting part of music when done accidentally. 

Fortunately, many brilliant minds throughout the history of man have harnessed the inspired power of dissonance and have learned how to position it in such a way that it communicates truth about our lives. This is doable because the truth about our lives is that it is unsettling. It is unruly. It is: dissonant.

What makes our lives dissonant?

Conflict. By and large, over and against all things, conflict is the one thing that creates tension in our lives. What is incredible about conflict is that, like music, it can lead to some of the most incredible revelations we have yet to experience.

Conflict pushes us; it drives us. It is the thing that necessitates evolving our world views and our societies. Conflict is of God because it is creative.

Tragically, conflict – thanks to man – is fallen. It is bent; twisted; perverse.

And so the conflict that we see ravage our world is one that reflects the brokenness of the Kingdom of Darkness as opposed to its intended reflection of God’s creative glory.

But, like our human condition and like the cleverest of lies, there is a nugget of truth; a fragment of God’s intended reality remains.

Growth

There is this funny thing that comes of conflict: resolution. It is the same with dissonant music, it resolves. It settles and somehow, on the other side, we’re changed. We’ve grown; we’ve evolved.

I submit that the beauty, the creativity and the nuanced divine purpose of conflict is the fact that we are stretched, pressed and molded into a different person in some way. That is why I welcome arguments. Now, I should be clear: I don’t mean fruitless squabbles over petty opinions – this is foolish. I mean well-informed, well-argued and well-reasoned positions being held up next to each other by mutually respectful people in order to examine wherein truth might lay.

This was the idea behind my tweet. As a person who has what I like to term as “Anabaptist-colored beliefs”, it never fails that I find myself surrounded by Evangelical Christians who see my world-view as ludicrous or out of touch with the realities of America (which I find ironic).

However, I call this a benefit; even a blessing. Because through these discussions, I find myself either more convinced of the beliefs I hold or (at the very least) I find a different perspective for examining issues that I have already hashed over in my mind.

What a trip

The reality is that we’re all on a journey – even if you don’t realize it. We’re all that devilish red loading bar that sits on your screen or the spinning blue wheel of frustration that mocks you while waiting for a YouTube video to load. We’re in process.

Once we grasp this concept, grace extended and grace received seems to make more sense.

That is, when I realize that I don’t have it all figured out, that my beliefs (though I am undoubtedly convinced of them) really could be completely shifted, I finally find the capacity to acknowledge people as also on the journey.

As such, we should be charitable to each other in all things and in all situations consider others as in process like ourselves.

What we should not do is avoid the conflict or dissonance that will happen when you spend time with people. This is where we develop. This is where we purge ourselves of biases and false pretenses. This is why we need each other – why the human animal is a social creature. It’s in our nature.

A hope

It is my hope and prayer that we embrace the dissonance. That we reach out to connect, rub shoulders with and wrestle with those who disagree with us. In these relationships we can find growth. We can find the true purpose of conflict. We can find beauty and music.

Let us conflict so that we may reconcile. Let us cause friction that we may be polished. Let us clash so that we may belong to each other.

Thanks for reading,

The Dread