You Know What I Mean?

I want to change things up a bit. In other posts, I have written about stepping away from my conservative Evangelical past (what the kids today call deconstructing). I do not think doing so was a mistake. There are a lot of things I look back on and wince at. “Did I really do that?” “What was I thinking when I said that?” “Boy, I was weird.” In hindsight, believing I had absolute certainty on complex issues led to some now‑embarrassing stances. For example, believing that rock music, by its very nature, is spiritually and possibly physically - oh yes, you read that right - harmful, led me to take some pretty staunch and, in retrospect, cringe‑worthy stands. (What’s worse, it kept me from discovering the genius of The Talking Heads until I was in my 50s. Such a waste.) To be fair, not everyone who grew up with a similar background had the same hang‑ups that I did. Some people were even more extreme. I knew people who thought every bad thing that happened to them, from a common cold to g...

  I grew up in a cuss free home. I never heard either of my parents swear even once. (I did hear my mom say crap once. It was in reference to Redbook magazine. She didn't like it.) I never heard my siblings swear. (My sister once called me "toilet face" but I don't think that counts). My dad was very uncomfortable with any words that could be considered "dirty". We didn't say butt, we said bottom or maybe behind. We didn't say pee, we said wet. We didn't say poop, we said (wait for it) stinky. It was an atmosphere of pristine audio hygiene. (The one exception to this was me at age three, after discovering my Cracker Jack prize in the trash but that's a story for a different day)  My lack of exposure to colorful language extended beyond just my family. Starting in the first grade and all the way through high school, I attended a small, Christian school that was sponsored by our church. This was an environment where saying, "T...

I have a complex relationship with the Bible. As a child I sang, “Jesus loves me this I know”. And how did I know? “For the Bible tells me so.” 2 Timothy 3:16 says that all Scripture is inspired by God (literally God-breathed). I took this to mean that God is the source of the Bible’s contents. Since God cannot lie and cannot be wrong, the Bible must therefore be without error in all that it teaches. This belief is known as the doctrine of inerrancy. There is more to it than just that, but I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds here. For a more detailed definition of inerrancy, I suggest reading the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy . Suffice to say, this belief was a cornerstone of my faith. For me, the Bible was the final authority for faith and practice. More than that, I interpreted it literally whenever possible and believed what I read in its pages. If it said that a particular person was at a particular place at a particular time, that was the truth. It was God’s Word. It w...

I am beginning to think I have been a bit of a curmudgeon in my recent posts. So, in the hopes of releasing a bit of positivity into the universe, I have compiled a list of small things that make me feel quite happy.   Watching the people I love, doing the things they love. My dog cocking his head to the side when I talk to him.  Pulling a weed and having the entire root come out of the ground in one shot. Leaves blowing across the road when I'm driving during the fall.  Realizing I no longer have the hiccups. Seeing my granddaughter sitting in the window waiting for us to get to her house. Dozing off unexpectedly while sitting on the couch. Fresh, minty gum wrapped around a piece of nugget ice. (Just try it!) A stowaway onion ring hiding in my fries. A cool musical cue in the background of a song. (Check out the piano run around the 2:20 mark in the video below.) A particularly clever or especially cringe-worthy "dad joke". That feeling right after a satisfying snee...

Maybe I'm fooling myself, but I think I'm a nice guy. I have no sworn enemies, that I know of. I make an effort to be pleasant when I am in public. I wait for my turn at four-way stops and I don't ever take more than 10 items into the Express Checkout Lane. However, beneath this calm and seemingly pleasant veneer, lies a potential for rage that can be triggered by the most seemingly innocent of transgressions. When confronted by a certain behavior, my good nature takes a back seat to a far darker part of my psyche. There may not be any visible signs (possibly a slight narrowing of the eyes) but my mind will become both judge and jury for the culprit, declaring both verdict and sentence on the offending party. Mind you, I am not talking about some heinous crime, but rather, a small thing that most people would probably hardly notice. What is this travesty of which I speak? People who dilly-dally getting themselves a self-serve drink. One of my favorite developments over the...

In Christ alone, my hope is found He is my light, my strength, my song This Cornerstone, this solid ground Firm through the fiercest drought and storm What heights of love, what depths of peace When fears are stilled, when strivings cease My Comforter, my All in All Here in the love of Christ I stand The song above was one of my favorites to sing in church. It has a beautiful melody that is complex, yet easy to sing. If you are not familiar with it, you can listen to it here. Lyrically it is both poignant and succeeds in avoiding the sappiness found in many church songs. It has theological depth but is still accessible. It almost seems like a creed. In my opinion it is the best church song from the last 30 years. I would even argue that it is one of the top 10 hymns of all time. I thought about this song one night a while back while driving down the interstate. It popped into my head out of nowhere and I started humming it to myself. Nearly 20 years ago I stepped away from active invo...