Category Archives: Personal

Our Values & Hypocrisy

Personal

Our values are our most cherished ideals, our firmest foundations, an expression of our core convictions. Every decision we make can be traced down to a foundational value that caused us to decide one way or the other. The tricky thing for us is that we are very good at misunderstanding our OWN values. We often have a mental list of what we say & believe our values are, and that list can often, without even noticing, not actually reflect what we truly value. With this dichotomy, we become unwitting hypocrites who may even be undermining the very values we are championing.

To help frame this discussion, let us differentiate between a Stated Value and an Actual Value. Our Stated Values are what we say, and believe, to be our values. We fight for and are convinced these are our values. Our Actual Values may or may not be the same. We may have Actual Values that we don’t know we hold. The discontinuity between our Actual Values and Stated Values is often covered by Rationalization that obscures an Actual Value overriding a Stated Value.

Let’s use a simple and convicting example. I believe both as a conservative and a Christian that the law is to be obeyed, and that to break the law is a sin. That Stated Value becomes something I fight for politically, especially in regard to crime or immigration. Then I get in my car to go somewhere and while the speed limit is the law, I hold allegiance to that law very loosely. My Actual Value is that the law should give way to personal decisions, at least for me. I would never publicly embrace this value, nor usually admit it to myself. I’m a Law and Order man!

This tendency to fight for values, especially in the political arena, while not actually holding those values has become almost a feature of much of modern politics in the American Church, especially what we would call the Republican Right Church. The discontinuity has become so stark, that the rationalizations have had to become explicit as well. Phrases like, “we aren’t electing a pastor-in-cheif” or “I vote for the policy, not the person” can be true statements while also serving to paper over the difference between a Stated Value and an Actual Value so that we don’t have to admit the Actual Value.

The question really becomes, can you separate a Person from the Value? Yes, people of poor character can cast a vote for a good thing, that is clear, but when it comes to championing & spreading a value, can values be saved, transmitted, and made transformative to society by those who do not hold those values?

For the Christian, the Biblical answer is, NO! The Bible makes it clear that how we live is inseparable from what we believe. It goes so far as to make the point that if your life is consistently out of step with your beliefs, your belief is invalid.

(Jas 1:22)  But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.
(1Jn 2:9)  The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now.
(1Jn 4:20)  If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.

A pastor who preaches against adultery, yet commits adultery, should not be tolerated in a church. This isn’t simply because he’s a pastor, but because as a Christian, the deeds matter. Now when we step out of the church into the world, do our values change? We do understand that many of our politicians do not share our values, and yet we vote for them. This is a normal part of living in a pagan society that is a participatory democracy, and there is no hypocrisy in that simple act.

The problem becomes when we try to use our values as weapons to accrue political power while trying to pretend that we are merely defending our values. This leads us to divorce our Stated Values from our Actual Values, and to do so in front of a lost world that is not deceived by our rationalizations.

The greatest value that has been weaponized in our culture is the incendiary area of Abortion. If we hold that abortion is the death of a child, no matter how unformed, then we have to be against it. This simple formulation has been the political framework for most of the Republican Christian Right. This value overrides all others, sometimes creating what is called a “single-issue voter.”

Within the Pro-Life/Anti-Abortion movement, there have been two centers of thinking. Incrementalists seek to take a step-by-step approach to try to remove abortion from the culture. Abolitionists hold that embracing the step-by-step approach is tantamount to pro-abortion, with the only right way to fight the evil being full abolition as step one, no matter how possible that is. Both of these approaches have appeals based on how one understands their Values.

Let’s take for a moment the Abolitionist stance as it seems to take a stronger Moral Value position. Now if I am offered a candidate that will vote to ban all abortions, but who has in their personal life, embraced abortion as a choice, how do I vote? I vote the policy, not the person. In other words, I’m against abortion for society, but not for certain individuals. I’m willing to look the other way on an individual abortion situation to champion the value that EVERY LIFE must be saved.

Thus the hypocrisy is exposed. Every life is valuable except the ones that must be sacrificed for the value. I may be a Stated Value Abolitionist, but I’m willing to ignore some incremental abortions to get there. It is this discontinuity that is undermining the witness of Christians in the public sphere. To champion truth, but willing to support lies to get there. To champion life, but willing to see death to get there. To champion sexual morality, but willing to embrace the immoral to get there. When we say we are voting our principles BY ignoring those principles, we reveal what our Actual Value is: Power.

The point of politics is to establish governing power. For many of us these days, that is the Actual Value that we are trying to hide from our own eyes. No longer in the majority of our nation, we want to try to hold onto control of the public morality and laws, and if it takes immoral people to help us keep that power, then that is ok because our Actual Value is: that power.

Our ends are good. The question we must wrestle with again and again Biblically is: do those ends justify the means and do we Actually Value what we say we do?

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The Weakness of My Love

Life in Christ, Perils of Shepherds, Personal

I am a junkie. My drug of choice doesn’t appear on any government list of controlled substances, but my addiction is long and well documented. Although I am by nature an introvert, I am a people junkie. When I take those little tests that measure your ratio of Task Oriented to Relationship Oriented, I bury the needle in Relationship. Its long been true that if there are things to get done, I should work alone. Otherwise I’m going to visit more than work.

My entire life, including my “career” choices have been guided by only one thing, wanting to minister to people, especially the left out who don’t have a seat along the sides of the beaten path. This is what brought me back to Maine, led me into the Western Maine mountains, and finally, against my will, led me into the pastorate.

As we come up one the one year anniversary of the Great Social Distancing due to Covid-19, I find myself struggling with new weaknesses that I’m not sure yet how to overcome. A weakness that so far has played a better chess game than I, cutting off each move I make before I even finish making it. I’m struggling with the Energy to Love.

The Bible warns that in the last days, because of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold. That is not my struggle. My love has not grown cold. If anything, the burden of my heart has never felt heavier as I see so many hurting, lonely, angry, scared, and confused. You can’t dip a toe into social media and avoid the extreme unhappiness of so many people. I see a great need and want to help show them the Love of Christ.

I’m not struggling with feeling loved. God has given me many brothers and sisters in Christ who are dear friends. Sarah and I are best friends and share with openness and honesty, supporting each other.

There is no lack of opportunities to love others. The sheer number of messages, phone calls, letters, and visits that I need to make far outstrip the hours available to me.

So with no lack of people to love, no lack of desire to love them, no lack of compassion for them, what is my problem? That is the question. A question that is haunting my days. I’m not sure when I’ve ever felt such a weariness, not of love, just of the energy to execute. I bought a new book on boosting willpower which was an awesome book and gave me some new strategies. I’ve reworked and reworked again daily habits seeking the right combination of self-discipline and planning (never my strong suit) to overcome a repeated failure to practically execute loving others.

I got my mom’s van stuck in the driveway the other day. I couldn’t figure out why it kept spinning. Yes there was snow and ice, but I’d cleared most of it away. I couldn’t figure out why I was so stuck. It turns out she had put on the emergency brake. No matter what else I tried, that brake kept me from moving. So what is holding me in this stuck position?

My ratio of success to failure isn’t encouraging. So if you read this, I covet your prayers. I strongly suspect I am not alone in this, and all things considered, I believe I am in far better shape than many of my fellow pastors who are either getting done or desperately want to. I don’t want to quit, I am hopeful for where God is going to lead Bean’s Corner, and despite the difficulties of this moment, I am confident in God’s leading of us.

I’m just really tired of failing so badly to do what I desperately want and need to do. As Jesus observed in Gethsemane, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. I’ve never found myself quite this weak, at least in this way.

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When We Are Home

Life in Christ, Personal

Sarah and the kids had traveled to a wedding while I stayed back to attend to some ministry duties. It had been a busy summer with travel, ministry, and moving from place to place. During the summer, “home” meant Camp Berea. Then we would head off on vacation to the family camp which would be home for two weeks. Finally, we would return to the parsonage, after more than two months away. Would we finally be home?

My second son, four at the time and the youngest for a little while longer, had figured out what it all meant in a way that caught his parents off guard and amazed. “When we are all back together, then we will be home because home is wherever we are all together.”

Such a simple calculation and yet all these years later, I am still stunned by the depth of his child-view. Already at four years old he had learned that home was less about which building we were dwelling in at the moment.

The spiritual application writes itself at this point. The Bible calls us aliens and strangers, using the language of the Hebrew exile to remind us where home is. So often when we talk about our spiritual home, we talk of heaven. We begin to talk about what the place might look like. Sometimes we might even wonder whether we will like it there if it is just a bunch of clouds and harps.

There are few descriptions of what heaven will be like, especially once you strip away the metaphorical devices often employed. Furthermore, the Bible speaks of a new heaven and new earth in the future, which is not described in detail, but offers a tantalizing hint of new creation experiences beyond the puffy cloud pictures held by our classic culture.

What the Bible does emphasize is togetherness. Paul writing to the Thessalonian Christians sought to reassure them as they worried that perhaps their loved ones who had died had missed out on the return of the Messiah. Paul assures them that not only will those who have died not be left out, but that will actually be the first to experience resurrection. He continues,

Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.
(1 Thessalonians 4:17)

Often we focus on the timing of this event, or what the trumpet will sound like, or all the other details that often capture our attention when we think about the end times. The focus of the text seems to point more toward the people than the time or place. Paul emphasizes first that we will be “together with them” and then concludes, “so we shall aways be with the Lord.”

One of my favorite quiet places is the Mount Auburn Cemetary in Auburn, Maine where Nana is buried. My mom’s mother was a devout believer who loved Jesus. She died when I was eleven, and I often think about how excited she would be if she knew I had grown up to be in ministry. I love to visit her grave and think about the day when I will see Nana again, and get to share with her all that God has done.

This isn’t home. It can’t be home. We aren’t all together yet. There are dear believers who have gone on. We miss them. There are more goodbyes and separations in our future, but as one music artist said, heaven is a long hello. Or in the words of my young son those years ago, “When we are all back together, then we will be home because home is wherever we are all together.”

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Alone

Personal, Writing Challenges

The empty woods were full of small sounds.  The unending rows of towering pines groaned and creaked as the wind whispered through its tops.  My footfalls were silent on the blanket of needles as I hiked alone through the woods.  Pine gave way to hardwoods as I climbed the gentle slope of the small mountain, soon standing solitary atop the forested peak.

A still breeze quietly roared while the waves churned over the rocks and sighed up the sand at the silent lake.  All the camps were boarded up, their owners off to warmer houses and fall obligations.  The summer sun and vacation exploits now a memory.  I stand in the wind exulting in the loud silence and full solitude.

The house is still with only the quiet hum of a dutiful appliance and the crackle of the woodstove.  The children away at activities and nothing to interrupt the quiet of an empty room.  I listen intently to the silence and breathe deeply in the peace of the moment, alone with my thoughts.

I love people and treasure relationships, finding great joy and fulfillment in connections and friendships.  I relish my children, celebrating family and friends.  I love the bustle of a busy Sunday morning as well as the joy of summer activities.

Yet I find the silence of solitude to be a sweet and wondrous experience.  It is both made sweeter by the time with people before, and enriches future times of fellowship by recharging my heart and mind, preparing me to once again invest life in others.

Being alone is not a retreat from others, nor an experience of absence, but instead, a fulfillment of those experiences by giving me room to reflect, to listen to the quiet, and to fully enjoy the fullness of nature and time.

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Light Escaped

Personal, Writing Challenges

The darkness was as deep and uninterrupted as the silence that accompanied it.  Visual & auditory absence that was amplified by the coolness of the enclosure.  The dimensions of the room were impossible to ascertain in the complete absence of illumination.  Whatever the size of the room, it was capacious in what it held for others.  This space held immeasurable sadness, hopelessness, fear, and even despair.  It contained the ruined dreams of many and the crushing disappointment of a committed few who had thought that this shadowed space was an impossible likelihood.  Its darkness seemed the full antithesis of all that it now concealed.

It had begun in light.  A need for light had drawn it, a call for light had predicted it, and its arrival had repeatedly been announced by light.  Those who did not understand nor appreciate it had nonetheless had found their attention captivated by the light.  The light had demonstrated such power that even those who lacked any capacity to see the light had suddenly and joyfully beheld it, forever changed by its entrance into their lives.  Others, who had prided themselves on the appreciation of light had found this too bright and had embraced a blindness that was more comforting than its piercing brilliance.

Whether they embraced it or resisted it, none could deny the presence of something that seemed to hint of the first light ever to shine into a void.  There was a timelessness, an ancient quality to the light that yet seemed to announce newness and birth.   No one encountering this light was left unchanged or unimpressed by it.  Men and women were driven either to joy or to madness by the gentle relentlessness of its power.

Suddenly all those who had basked in the glow found themselves stumbling and crying, unable to see ahead.  Their disorientation all the worse for having seemed to see so clearly before.  The one thing that had been clear in the light now was clouded in uncertainty and defeat.

The light had passed away with the setting of the sun and had not returned with the dawn.  Night had become permanent behind a large stone, blocking out not only light, but hope and victory.

Another sunset confirmed the finality of the darkness over the light.  As a third day dawned with sudden truth for those who beheld a not-final resting place.  In victory, Light had escaped.

This was inspired by a writing prompt: “Light Escaping” in the GCD Writers Guild. If you are a writing & interested in joining the Guild for encouragement & challenge in being a Gospel writer, click the badge on the right.

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Caring About Life

Life in Christ, Personal

When I was a little boy, I would never take the last cookie in the jar. Up until then, I was fine eating them, but once it was down to the last cookie (or cracker, or other food item) I didn’t want to finish it because I was afraid my Mom or Dad would want one later and be sad and disappointed. I think this tendency amused my parents.

From early on God gave me a soft spot for people. Now I am not saying that I can’t be stupid, and act in uncaring and inconsiderate ways. Much the opposite! But over all I have a soft spot for people. My wife will gently chuckle as I cry while watching “Undercover Boss.”

The term “pro-life” has become so political, that I struggle to use it now. As my wife became pregnant with each of our children, I couldn’t imagine ending the small life growing within her and I’ve always mourned the act of abortion in our world. I’ve also struggled with seeing others suffer, whether it be someone sick, old, poor, or otherwise in trouble. I remember a magazine article I saw when I was 17 about a rural area. It had a picture of an old man next to his farm stand. A crude hand painted sign on the stand said, “Please blow horn. I am old & cannot stay out in the cold.” I hated that picture & didn’t want to see it or think about it, yet I couldn’t stop looking at it and over thirty years later I can still see it with crystal clarity in my mind. What upset me was I was so worried that people would take his produce without paying since he couldn’t stay outside. I felt sick.

These days I feel sick and upset a lot. As a virus races around the planet and through communities, people struggle and some die. I have been told by fellow believers that I should not be overly worried about this, that it just happens and “oh well.” That only makes me feel sicker. If even one baby dying in the womb is too many, how is it that we who are called by the Name of the Lord of Life find it so easy to dismiss the death of so many, especially the elderly among us. How can we be cavalier about a death toll in our country alone that rises well over two-thousand a day?

I cannot. I just feel sick. I’ve done too many funerals, sat with too many grieving families, and been at the bedside too many times as a person took their last breath, to be able to step back and just accept death so easily.

I hate death. I hate seeing people lost. And I especially mourn the loss of life of those who may be lost.

Don’t ask me not to worry or be concerned about that. Whether it is someone dying of Covid, of neglect, of abortion, of poverty. The rich person, the celebrity, the immigrant, legal or otherwise. The baptist pastor and the Muslim. There is no room in my personal politics to become callous to the suffering and loss of those made in God’s image.

If that makes me wrong, then I’m wrong, but I hate death.

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Stuck

Personal

I’ve been struggling for awhile with a form of writer’s block. Not the kind you might think of, where you can’t think of anything to write. That has never been my problem. My problem is that there is too much going on in my head. My mind has always moved fast & in several directions at once. Its always given me a form of ADD where different thoughts compete for attention and I follow trains of thought around and around.

This is one of the reasons why talking to me can be a danger, because I begin to verbally express all the things going around in my head, often times processing them by talking.

When I first started my first blog, one of its purposes was to help drain out all the things going around in my head by processing them out in writing. I often found that I had an easier time working on sermons after blogging because I had cleared out so many of the “voices” running around in my head.

In the last few years, I’ve stopped writing, but not stopped thinking. I’ve turned often to social media to verbally process, but repeatedly gotten myself in trouble because when you share unrefined and raw thoughts (and feelings) you can end up saying things that cause hurt or offence, which I have found myself doing.

Yet the various thoughts, ideas, trains of thinking, and musings continue to swirl until I can’t do much of anything. It becomes like a mental hurricane where so much is happening you can’t do anything.

So I’m back on my blog today. And I’m going to go back to my roots. If I end up writing something that I feel like sharing, I will. If you follow this blog, you’ll hear a bit of what is chasing around in my head. It may be a thought thread that I don’t end up believing, it may be random ramblings, but it will be honest. I’ll apologize in advance if the picture you get is of an incredibly flawed man who doesn’t always think, feel, or speak as he should, especially as a “pastor.” That is what I am. I deeply flawed man trying to trust Jesus, live in His love, love others, and be wise in a world that is quite the big hot mess.

I’m tired of being stuck in my head. I need to write. You don’t need to read, but you are welcome if you choose to.

Onward & Forward.

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Dry

Life in Christ, Perils of Shepherds, Personal

The tree planted by the water does not wither when the drought comes and the desert winds blow.
It doesn’t mean it’s not pretty dry out.  
After another weekend of pandemic preaching, wandering through an empty building that seems to get quieter each week while the outside voices get louder and hotter, I can feel the grit of the blowing sand.


My bark is dry.
Life is sustained and I am not withered.  My soul sits intact and secure, yet that’s not what it feels like.
It feels like dryness and wind.

Sitting in heaven, you never knew that feeling, did you?  But you came down, took on flesh, and experienced the best and worst of what it means to be human.
You got tired, so tired you slept through a storm.
You got lonely enough that after years of praying alone, you couldn’t bear to be alone on that terrible night and asked your friends to be with you.  
You got dry enough that you cried out to your Father and expressed your feelings of abandonment.
It wasn’t a sin, and it wasn’t a sign that you weren’t abiding in God.
You were just dry.
My bark is dry.
Its Monday and the deserts been a bit hotter lately.   My roots are ok, my leaves are green but
my bark is dry.

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Together in Solitude

Personal

I walk down the center aisle past silent rows of crimson seats.  Their very emptiness reminds me of the faces, families, and fun times that we have shared in this building as we have worshipped, worked, and loved each other.

Now walking into this building Sunday is an exercise in solitude.  No children are running the halls, in and out of classrooms, snatching donuts from the table in the fellowship hall.  The hubbub of voices is replaced by my echoing footfalls as I hurry to the “streaming studio.”

The stream is over and I go online, I see the comments.  “We are here!”  “Glad to ‘see’ everyone this morning!”   “So excited to connect!”

Although they are simple typed comments, they resonate with a joy and excitement that is familiar.  It is the digital analogue to what used to happen among the rows of crimson chairs.  It is joy in connection, shared moments, corporate worship, and being known.

Parents send me pictures drawn that morning, or post pictures of the kids interacting with me on the screen.  I didn’t see them, but they saw me and knew that I loved them and were excited. 

We were together even in our solitude.

Suddenly the large empty room down the hall is less haunting.  Love has been communicated back and forth.  Connection has been reforged and friendships not only maintained, but strengthened and broadened.  We have not become less connected although the sensations are lesser.  We have, in a strange and spiritual way, become more bonded.  Our shared experience has boiled away the diluted moments, causing us to pack more joy even into a small Facebook comment, “we are here!”.

The moments of solitude have made me so much more aware of the value of our togetherness.  We’re alone, but alone here together.

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Jesus is Asleep

Life in Christ, Perils of Shepherds, Personal

Several of them had been out on this water since they were boys. As men they had earned their livelihood navigating these waters, through calm & storm. Sure, Matt was not great with boats as he’s always had an office job, but that was ok.
This time was bad. This was a tough situation. There were a bunch of them all in this fishing boat and the storm was intense. Even with their experience, they were losing control of the situation and they realized they were facing a life or death moment.

And Jesus was asleep.

He’d been really busy lately and had just come off a major time of teaching. Physically exhausted, he was actually sleeping through the calamity. He was their leader, and although their full understanding of what it meant would take more time, they knew He was of God. So they woke him up, rather upset. “Don’t you care what is happening to us!?!?”

Fear does that to us. Jesus seemed to not care. The reality actually was that he just wasn’t afraid. He could sleep because he was at peace. He knew perfect security in the hands of God. They should have known that too, but they were overwhelmed with the knowledge of their circumstances rather than their knowledge of Him.

So he calmed the storm.

He didn’t calm it because the storm was their problem. He calmed it to show that HE was the answer to their security; that he had greater power than the storm that they thought was a threat.

Peter had his own lesson on this as his very accurate awareness of a dangerous situation out on the water overwhelmed his awareness of his Savior. He sunk into the water after a few steps. Jesus pulls him out reminding him to trust him, not the situation.

I have asthma and am not as young as I used to be. I fear dying less than I fear leaving my family without a father, but the fear is real.

And Jesus is asleep.

I have to remember this so I can sleep too. Jesus is not asleep as in displaying a callous disregard for my situation. Far from it. He is actually far greater than my situation and I have no more to fear from it than from any other threat. No one can touch me because I am His for all eternity.
I am seeing waves, and hearing the howling of the wind and it tries to demand my attention, insisting that I dwell fully on what is truly a scary and dangerous situation. Jesus reminds me that he is at peace, and he has offered that peace to me. He never said the storm wouldn’t come or that it wouldn’t be scary. He just reminds me that even the wind and waves obey him and I need to be more aware of HIM than I am of the storm.

“Fear not,” is a phrase God loves. Jesus said it a lot. These days I am discovering again and again how much I need to focus on Him in order to obey that simple request.

I’m praying for you. Pray for me. I pray we can all know the peace that goes beyond the understanding of this world.

Blessings to you.

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