I was thinking the other day how disenfranchised I am with all the “fall in love with Jesus” talk. Church songs carry that flavour, truisms in books hold it dear, and I just don’t. (I know I’m not alone in this!)

I need to make this point first: there are nearly 7 billion unique people in the world. Each one of those people can have a different but valid take on the nature of God. Put another way, God is so complex that he can reveal himself in 7 billion different shades simultaneously. So for some people the romantic thing with God may be legit, and there are Biblical metaphors that clearly lean that way. It just doesn’t do it for me. And truthfully, a lot of guys are going to face this issue. So I was imagining a new way to conceive this ‘love’ thing. I landed on the idea of a buddy movie. (Did I just use “buddy” to refer to Christ? Stick with me: I’ll fix this!)

Think of the epitome of the genre. It’s never the driver who instigates; the guy in the driver seat is always far too responsible for that (and the car is usually someone else’s so messing with it is pretty high stakes). It seems like it’s always the slightly off-kilter guy sitting in the passenger seat that suggests all the crazy stuff. (Did I just suggest that Christ is the co-pilot? And off-kilter too? Am I just digging myself into a hole here!?)

Check it out: in the Bible, Christ walks up to these regular schmoes who are going about their daily routine, and he says “Follow me.” Who does that? Who walks up to somebody obviously immersed in the stuff of life and says “Let’s have an adventure together!” Could you do that to your mechanic? To your plumber? I’m almost sure that that wouldn’t go well. (It would be kinda fun to try!) However in those stories, it seems like the disciples just go with it. (Now who’s crazy, amiright?)

Check what they got up to. They drew huge crowds. They witnessed (and even performed!) miracles. They saw Jesus face off with the most influential leaders of their day. It was like a 3yr road trip, and they got up to all kinds of shenanigans. A few times, they had to run for their lives! It all ended with the big showdown: Jesus vs. the religious institution, the legal system and the military weight of the government. Jesus was executed. And he still won!

I work with someone who doesn’t want me to present missions as an adventure. I sometimes wonder what his beef is. Because it really is! It really, really is! Jesus is still the instigator. He’s still stirring dissent, wreaking havoc on assumptions, and working to illuminate truth in hearts and minds. He is the perfect counter to evil, however you define it, in every form that it exists. He constantly invites people to follow him into all kinds of far-out, zany stuff to build their communities and change people’s hearts. He’s in it the thickest when the stakes are highest. When I see it that way, I think: man, I love this guy!

Human nature tends to head for the ditches. It is very hard to live in the kind of balanced tension it takes to keep the car on the road: when faced with people, circumstances or stuff, we tend to veer to one side or another. They are either blissfully wondrous, or monstrously villainous. It’s hard to hold that people are complex beings, and no matter what you expect from them (good or bad), and no matter how often they deliver it, they will inevitably surprise you with the opposite.

It doesn’t just apply to people though. It’s also their creations. The internet offers great social potential, but there are great social costs. Cars offer great benefit to our lives, but have a cost on our environment. Everything we do has an intended benefit and an unintended cost. This type of evaluation is critical, but is woefully underdeveloped in our culture. In fact, most people actively head for one ditch or another.

Nothing is all good. Nothing is all bad. Being ready for the inevitable surprise will help you deal with it when it comes. If you’re not, the shock of it may throw you long enough to miss the opportunity to capitalise on it.

Back in the infancy of online video, I saw a clip made by videographers on a road trip in a VW van. Along the way they solicited advice from just about anyone they could get access to, from celebrities to life-dropouts. I can’t remember the name of the clip, the name of the video team, or even who they interviewed, all of which is complicated by the fact that the site it was posted to doesn’t even exist anymore (go figure, after ~11yrs…). There is however one answer someone gave them that has stuck with me: “Trust the process of your life unfolding.”

That rings so true for me. An answer like that has to come from a place of faith (though I’m not claiming any specific faith on this person’s behalf). To me, my faith in God promises meaning, orchestration and fulfilment. He gives eyes to the soul, strength to the heart, and salve to the hands. I’m not called to just live in a bio-mechical way that can be tracked with heart monitors and brainwave-scanners. I’m called to live!

It’s about living with urgency tempered by patience, and active consecration tempered by inner peace. It’s about decluttering your life with everything that isn’t the most you that it can be. Some people have a sense that living with Christ means obeying so many “thou shalt nots” that you don’t actually do anything. The reality is that the closer you get to Christ, the busier you get! So figure out what’s important to the essential you; that will make it easier to toss aside everything else that isn’t.

I’m indexing this particular post here mainly for selfish reasons — I need a place to put this to reference it easily. There are some terrific idea-kernels in here that I think I’m gonna try to implement in the near future.

Obviously, if they go well, they’ll get some airtime here.

(You might want to check out some of the other things going on on that blog. There’s a lot developing in Anne’s heart and mind.)

Here on LivingMartyrs, I have often referred to ideas or information that I’ve picked up from Collide. It comes with my heartiest recommendation. Clever, witty and engaged, Collide Magazine is an inspiration for how we can corporately and individually live out our calling in our contemporary culture. For this price, it’s a no-brainer!

I’ve poked postmodernism with a stick a few times on this blog. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really have a good handle on it. Moreover, I don’t think anyone else does either. I’ve got some good news and I got some bad news.

Good News
I don’t have to worry about it any more, because a new paradigm is asserting itself.

Bad News
This one is even more baffling!

Check out the multitude of multisyllabic pontifications at this heretofore unlinked location.

This post is a follow-up to a previous one.

So here’s the deal about lingering on the shoulds. It never goes anywhere. We should reach out to our community. We should make a contribution to our local foodbank. We should tithe. Etc. It’s all just so much talk!

The more I think about it, the more I hate shoulds. So either shoulds get turned into musts, or they get actively chucked. And if they get turned into musts, it’s got to go further than lip service, or adding it to the core values document. (I can’t be the only person in the world that deeply abhors core values documents!)

There needs to be a model, a goal, a game-plan. It takes investment, imagination and loose-gripped, ego-free experimentation. That might be you on your lonesome, or it might be with a team of collaborators. That  direction is sometimes hard to determine at the outset, but it becomes abundantly clear when other people start to act…or not.

I don’t know who Venn is, but he (or I suppose, she) has certainly made a significant contribution to diagrams. This blog would make him (or her) very proud. It condenses complicated ideas down to diagrams which are simultaneously simple, insightful and funny. I’m a fan!

Who is ‘them’? What is this internal pressure to address ‘their’ needs? I’ve been in several planning meetings that have no clue who ‘they’ are, but endlessly cow-tow to what this hypothetical group theoretically needs. This at the cost of the us that we know and love. I’m incensed!

These meetings have given lip service to out-moded traditional ideals that their presenters have no interest in pursuing. They are the ‘right’ answers, except for the fact that they’re untenable (made obvious by the fact that they aren’t being ‘tenned’). How can you make a decision to pursue something that you don’t believe in? Pretty easily it turns out; people do it all the time! And then they express consternation when the wheels fall off: “But we did everything right!”

Here’s my point: If you’re going to make decisions based on what other people want and need, you’d better have done your homework. Acting on external assumptions is foolhardy, misguided and stupid. And I mean that on any level. From countries making decisions for other countries, to family members making decisions for other family members — if you don’t get it right, it’s going to go very, very wrong.

So rather than leaning on the shoulds, we need to spend more time in the musts. Don’t simply state that people need to exert more commitment. Or that it’s people’s own fault that they’re not properly engaging with your communication efforts. Those are totally useless shoulds. Instead talk about what we can make that will inherently compel people to be a part of it. Show them how their personalities and skillsets fit. Get it to them on their level, addressing what they need to be excited (or at least convinced that it’s workable). Figure out what they need to hear before they’re capable of buying in, and give it to them!

Don’t lean on stock answers to fix current problems. Your stock answers have already failed you! (Duh!) It’s time to imagine, create, experiment and, if need be, fail (actively not passively — there’s a big difference!). Pro-actively addressing what you know (do I need to emphasise ‘know’?) needs to be addressed will speak more loudly than words, and will almost certainly garner more pre-emptive forgiveness than you need. In fact, doing this step well will mean that you might even generate more than enough momentum to propel the idea to success. Compared to harping on a tenuous should, focusing on a must that we all fundamentally agree with, means that your first hurdle is already hopped. Then your job is to just keep running and jumping as fast as you can!

Nike released this ad featuring Tiger Woods, and it has lit up the internet.

I saw a blog post (can’t find it right now) that was asking for a personal reaction to this clip. Here’s mine:

Brave!

Nike has no real idea how this is really going to be received. I don’t read this to be manipulative or choreographed. It’s not glossy, or slick or smug. It’s presented in stripped-down humility. It’s sad and fractured. It doesn’t resolve. All of those thing strike me as pretty honest. It’s certainly a welcome departure from typical advertising.

How does it strike you?