Pressure is on the Korean kids

An article in the New York Times talks about the pressure on Korean kids who want to attend University in the U.S.  They study 15 hours a day in prep schools to get in the top American Universities.  At what price?

Anger management or repentance?

In reading IMonks posting of April 26, he provided a couple of links from previous posts he had made about anger. Very interesting and they deserve a link. In one from April 29, 2006 called, Anger: What Can I Do?, he challenges us to consider Paul’s exhortations in Colossians 3:5-13 in relationship to anger. Spencer writes in response to this passage, “The majority of the rational, willing acts of changed behavior are within the choices of all of us who have the capacity to comprehend the language of scripture.” My initial reaction was to ask where is the Spirit of God that leads us to repentance? Paul is telling us to make choices here to “put off” and “put on” as he does in a similar way in Eph and ? I don’t want to diminish the power of our choices to bring about change but at the same time, I don’t want to depend upon my power to make those choices and to live the life of the Spirit. I suppose this is where “divine-human cooperation” comes in which Gary Thomas wrote about so well in his book, The Beautful Fight–very attractive to me what he writes–perhaps that is why I made so many posts about his book.

I so like what IMonk says next in his post on anger.

“These choices are made in the context of seeing ourselves in Christ. Paul addresses anger as one of those things that should be renounced in the old life, and replaced with the virtues of the Spirit. These are choices made in the community of Christian disciples, seeking to help one another along the path of life in Christ. These are changes saturated in worship, prayer and honest relationships. We are pursuing all the implications of belonging to Jesus Christ in a new world on the other side of his resurrection. This is a community project, a spiritual project, a Biblical project.”

He then makes six comments about anger that are well worth your time to read in full.

1) Anger is often one of the “icebergs” of the human personality. We have to find what is under the surface, and not just deal with the last blow-up.

2) Every Christian man needs to be in an accountability relationship/group where his life story can become part of how other men help him see his own behavior.

3) Truthful, responsible restitution is important.

4) Anger often dwells in patterns; often in trigger behaviors that cause us to react far beyond the rational.

5) Many of us are quite aware of why we are angry, but we can’t be honest about it.

6) As I said, consultation with a doctor or counselor is a wise choice.

7) Read Andrew Lester’s books on Anger and the Christian. Very helpful. C.J. Mahaney on humility won’t hurt you either.

There are a lot of guys out there with anger issues–from my observation, we are often reluctant to share what our anger looks like inside our family with other men and if we do, the other guys mumble something about relating to the “anger” thing but how often are we willing to walk together with one another.  In my own case, it took me a loooooong time to see that I was angry and then once I realized my anger, it has been a longer journey addressing the underlying causes.  I could not have done that without others and am now able to see more easily my own anger.  However, at the moment, I find myself quite isolated and wonder if there is anyone in my life right now that knows me well enough to see when I get angry (besides my wife), much less who will speak to me about it.  How sad and how wrong.

Prayer for the Poor and the Marginalized

Following is the prayer that our pastor’s wife prayed during a recent Taize service.  Sorry, I can’t remember her name at this time!

Dear Lord,

We lift up to you the poor and the marginalized.

We know that these are your cherished ones, that you are a God whose heart cries out for justice, that you are a God who longs to feed the hungry. We ask simply, Lord, that you give us your heart.

Fill us Lord with your compassion, give us your eyes to see, give us boldness and selflessness and wisdom, so that we too might cry out for justice and feed the hungry, so that your light might shine throughout the earth.

Lord, we especially life up the children among us who are poor and marginalized, finding themselves in circumstances they did not choose and helpless to change. We lift up AIDS orphans, children of war, children suffering abuse and neglect, children smitten with malnutrition an disease, lacking education, housing or the most basic of life’s necessities. Might they somehow come to know the love of their Creator, who knows each hair on their head and collects their tears.

Lord, you know every wretched tale. Every overwhelming statistic, you know personally, one by one. Thank you that one day you will make all things right through your Son, Jesus Christ.

Until that day, let us be tireless in doing what is good and what is right unto the least of these, knowing the Father’s love for them.

Amen

Hitting the wall

Michael Spencer over at Internet Monk had a great post about what he is learning about the ministry, about God and about himself.  It is an honest examination about life and some will not like his admission that everything does not fit into the neat, tight, clean box that Christians try to present to the world.  I have been thinking similar things.  I have come across some situations in the last few months and I have realized that there may never be resolution on some of these difficult situations–at least in my life and in this world.  I have never doubted God is in control but I do question some of my understandings of how God’s control looks.  Here are a few paragraphs from Spencer’s post of April 26.

A significant place in the life of faith in God is coming to the place of abandoning any sense of control, outcome or insured result. Why is that so significant? Because for many of us, in some measure and in various ways, we believe that God’s promises in scripture add up to God guaranteeing the GOOD outcomes that will honor him.

To the extent that the church is presenting the God who takes my list and makes things better, I don’t believe in God. And to the extent that the church says I need to support a message about God and the “blessed life,” beyond what Jesus describes, teaches and models, I have no need of the church.

(Don’t get me wrong. I need the church that tells me the truth DESPERATELY.)

I join Job in his ignorance, his outrage, his faith, his longing for Christ and his humility.

I long to know other Christians who have watched their concepts of God vaporize when they hit the wall. I want to connect with them.

I have no expectation that my anger, knowledge, efforts at communication, attempts at persuasion, manipulations, works or pleading will change anyone or anything. God doesn’t need to be reminded of what’s going on.

Suffering as means of grace

Just finished my final paper for my most recent class on Readings in Western Sprituality.  Did a paper on Spirituality of Hudson Taylor.  A lot of material–too much for one paper. Here is one paragraph on his view of suffering as a means of grace.

Taylor suffered a great deal as a missionary (his first wife and three of his first four children died) and yet he saw the testing of his faith to be “among the chief means of grace to my own soul, . . .” (Wigram 72) Sacrifice brought a level of intimacy with God not previously experienced. Yet, for Taylor, God always acted as a loving Father, “who only permits that which for the time being is grievous, in order to accomplish results that cannot be achieved in any less painful way.” (Job) In Retrospect, Taylor said that he had expected (“highly probable”), that the work to which God had called, would cost him his life. In a meditation on Psalm 54:11 (“The Lord God is a sun and a shield”), Taylor reflected on the protection and safety that God provided, whether in England or in China. He would write, “Only when our work is done will He take us home; and this He will do whether we serve Him here or there. To know and to do His will – this is our safety; this is our rest.” (Great Father) Taylor would later die at the age of 72 in his beloved China.

The Lord’s Prayer from the mouth of a child

Don’t know if you have seen this video but I just saw it when a friend put it on my facebook wall.  Didn’t Jesus  say, “Do not keep the little children from me said.”

the second plane

Dead Zone of the Human Spirit

Martin Amis looks unflinchingly at Islamic terror 18 April 2008

Reading The Second Plane is a bracing experience. The anger and upset that I felt on September 11 and the days that followed simmered again. Especially powerful was Amis’s review of Paul Greengrass’s 2006 film, United 93, about the doomed 9/11 flight whose brave passengers crashed it (at over 600 miles per hour) into a Pennsylvania field before it could obliterate the White House or the Capitol. For all his wrenching realism, Greengrass spares us something, says Amis: United 93 has no children in it. Yet when was the last time you boarded a plane that had no children?

“It is hard to defend your imagination from such a reality (and the Internet will not willingly tell you about the children on the planes of 9/11),” Amis notes. He then brings us where Greengrass and the Web don’t:

“‘What’s happening? Well, you see, my child, the men with the bloodstained knives think that if they kill themselves, and all of us, we will stop trying to destroy Islam and they will go at once to a paradise of women and wine.’ No, I suppose you would just tell him or her that you loved them, and he or she would tell you that they loved you too. Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black. We can’t tell if it will survive us. But we can be sure that it’s the last thing to go.”

Brian C. Anderson is the editor of City Journal

Human or a person

From Peter Lawler in A Human Person, Actually

A powerful philosophical case for protecting embryos  18 April 200

An embryo—the organism that comes into being as the result of fertilization, the union of sperm with oocyte—is in fact a human being. And that means that an embryo has “absolute rights.” An embryo should never be used as a means to pursue someone else’s ends, however laudable or life-saving, they say.

The more precise version of this objection is that the embryo is human—not a fish or a member of some other species—but not yet a person.

Is the embryo a “who”?

The evidence that George and Tollefsen present suggests that there are only two non-arbitrary ways to consider when a “what” naturally becomes a “who.” Either the embryo is incapable of being anything but a “who”; from the moment he or she comes to be, he or she is a unique and particular being capable of exhibiting all the personal attributes associated with knowing, loving, and choosing. Or a human being doesn’t become a “who” until he or she actually acquires the gift of language and starts displaying distinctively personal qualities. Any point in between these two extremes—such as the point at which a fetus starts to look like a human animal or when the baby is removed from the mother’s womb—is perfectly arbitrary.

The authors’ arguments don’t necessarily have to be right beyond all reasonable doubt for us to endorse their policy prescriptions. When in doubt, shouldn’t we then choose life—meaning the being of “whos” or persons?

A failure to love

I went into a meeting yesterday, thinking someone else needed to be broken, but discovered this morning, I was the object of the Lord’s affections and I was the one who needed the breaking.  Although it is deeply painful, at the same time, the Lord’s love for me is so evident and intimate.  His grace will be sufficient and He will be the one loving others through me.  Trusting that He will give me opportunities to make appropriate apologies and to love those who He showed me this morning that I have failed to love.  A key verse was in 1 Cor 13:2, reading from the New Living, “If I know all things about ________ but didn’t love _________, what good would I be?”

Show me how I have failed to love

My Psalm for the week has been Psalm 136.  After reading several hundred times in a week, “His faithful love endures forever”,  even I start to remember these words.  And begin to believe and experience them?

I am in the middle of some challenging relationship/ministry issues and so as I opened the Word this morning for my reading for the day I should not have been surprised to see that it was 1 Cor 13 (using A Guide to Prayer, I am on the 5th Sunday after Easter).  My prayer this morning: “Lord, show me how I have failed to love.  Allow my words and actions to communicate love this day.”

Two Gifts of Love

This morning I received two gifts of sweetness.

Love of the Father

This morning, I was reading in Romans 5:1-11 and my attention focused on verse 5. I know God loves me but too often my experience is lagging far behind and I struggle, wanting to experience His love. Romans 5:5 tells me that it is the ministry of the Spirit to fill my heart with His love; there is no need for me to struggle with this. How beautiful!

“For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.” Romans 5:5 New Living Translation

Love of the daughter

About 4:30 a.m. this morning, our 20 year-old daughter called (unprompted) from the U.S. and had a long talk with her mom (Dad was deep asleep). She told her mom, “You know, I really miss Dad.” Trust me, this is no small thing to hear her say! Later, as they were ending the conversation, she reminded her mom, “Be sure to tell Dad that I love him.” Double Wow!! How grateful I am for these two sweet gifts of love on this day.

Serving one another in love and the spirit-flesh battle

Reading in Galatians 5:13-24 this morning.  What an internal battle is going on–between flesh and spirit.  I think I like flesh rather than sinful nature for the translation of sarkos.  Maybe it is my theological background? Maybe it is because I see us as having a new nature in Christ!  Of course, that leaves the problem of defining what is the flesh?  The old way of doing things?  My own self-reliance?  An attempt to please God by keeping the law or a set of rules?  In any case, Paul says we have been called to freedom–empowered to make choices whom we now serve?  Freedom to obey God?  Paul warns us not to use our freedom to indulge the flesh.  Interesting, why would I do that?  Because I can???  Instead, our freedom should be used to serve one another in love!!  Yes!  In reading in Ken Collins book, ?? , last night, he commented how self-denial can lead us to spritual narcissism if we forget that our self-denial is to serve others in love.   In our Taize serve last night, one of the brothers encouraged us to allow the Lord to reconcile our hearts and then use those reconciled hearts as we left the building to love those we will encounter in the world.  Could be a theme here.  After all, says Paul, entire law is summed up in Love your neighbor as yourself!

So, what do i do about this flesh-spirit battle?  Pauls says

Live by the Spirit–you won’t gratify desires of flesh

Be lead by the Spirit–not under law???

Possess the fruit of the Spirit–fruit are given to love others–against fruit–no law??

Live by the Spirit

Keep in step with the Spirit

Crucify the flesh

Finally, v26 “Don’t become conceited, provoking, envying one another.”  Now, why would this be a problem if we are walking by the Spirit.  And what would we be proud about?  Our freedom?  Our fruit?  It seems that a life journeying withe the Spirit is a life lived in humility and in service of others in love.

What may no longer be free in air travel

Airlines are charging more for a second bag, more to book on the phone, more for excess bags and lots of less. Enjoy. Since on my spiritual journey, flying is involved, I can justify putting this on my blog. Plus, laughter is a spiritual discipline that I need to work on. Thanks to YapUpdates

“Christian faith is not neurotic dependency but childlike trust.”

In my last post, I mentioned how Eugene Peterson encourages us to pray Psalm 131 as an antidote to pride (“unruly ambition” to use his words) in verse 1. He says an equally dangerous mistake as Christians is to think “too little of ourselves.” He says that we should neither try “to be everything” nor should we pretend “to be nothing.” Writing about verse 2, he writes.

“Christian faith is not neurotic dependency but childlike trust. We do not have a God who forever indulges our whims but a God whom we trust with our destinies. The Christian is not a naive, innocent infant who has no identity apart from a feeling of being comforted and protected and catered to . . . We do not cling to God desperately out of fear and the panic of insecurity; we come to him freely in faith and love.” 157

“. . . God does not want us neurotically dependent on him but willfully trustful in him. And so he weans us. ” 159

Quotes from A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. This book is one that was recommended to me during our first months as missionaries (20 plus years ago) and it along with Run With the Horses (also by Peterson) were extremely significant to me.

Found this quote today from Dawn Eden at Dawn Patrol that seems to relate with the above post.

“The people of faith I know don’t ‘cling’ to religion because they’re bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.”

— Sen. Hillary Clinton, responding to Sen. Barack Obama’s comment that “bitter” small-town people “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

“While I don’t believe Hillary bears more respect for small-town America’s churchgoers than does her opponent, I give her credit for having an excellent speechwriter and for realizing—in her words if not in her policies”

Ambition is aspiration gone crazy.

Eugene Peterson sees Psalm 131 as a “maintenance Psalm, one which all Christians need to pray on a regular basis to maintain a healthy spiritual life. He says this Psalm is one which helps us to prune away “‘unruly ambition and infantile dependence.” 152 In this post let me give some quotes about “unruly ambition.”

Why is it difficult to recognize pride in today’s culture, asks Peterson? He says, “It is difficult to recognize pride when it is held up on every side as a virtue, urged as profitable and rewarded as achievement.” 154

He says it is also difficult to recognize “unruly ambition as a sin because it has a kind of superficial relationship to the virtue of aspiration–an impatience with mediocrity and a dissatisfaction with all things created . . .the hopeful striving for the best God has for us. Peterson says that when we remove God from the picture of our aspiration, “we end up with ugly arrogance.” 155 He writes,

“Ambition is aspiration gone crazy. Aspiration is the channeled energy that moves us to growth in Christ, shaping goals in the Spirit. Ambition takes these same energies for growth and development and uses them to make something tawdry and cheap.” 155

Quotes from A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. This book is one that was recommended to me during our first months as missionaries (20 plus years ago) and it along with Run With the Horses (also by Peterson) were extremely significant to me.

Trying to figure out how to pray Psalm 131

I don’t know about you but if you have ever tried to pray through Psalm 131, it is not easy. How can I say in verse 1, “My heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or awesome for me.” I want to pray these words—I want them to be true but if I am honest, I can’t really pray them.

Not on my own. That is where verse 2 comes in. As I still and quiet myself before the Lord and enjoy Him for who He is and not for what I can get, is there not a movement away from dependence on myself and to Him?

How do I maintain this trust and dependence on God and not myself? Verse 3 “Put your hope in the LORD, now and always.” God alone is my hope. Remember that, David!! Read 2 Cor 4 after spending some time with Psalm 131 and what a wonderful fit it is. Over and over, Paul writes that it is all about the glory of Christ—beginning at the end of chapter 3. So, says Paul, “we never give up” (4:1)—because we have a New Covenant ministry in which we reflect His glory (3:18); “we don’t give up and quit” (4:8) so that the life of Jesus (4:10) and the glorious power of God is seen in us (4:7); “we never give up” (4:16) because in doing so “God will receive more and more glory.” (4:15)

Reading in the New Living Translation

“You can’t be proud and live a life worthy of Jesus.”

Found this note from a sermon by our pastor, Steve Reuschel about Eph 4:7-12

“You can’t be proud and live a life worthy of Jesus. A life lived worthy of your calling in Jesus is one which is humble, gentle, patient and forebearing.”

I like this but “forebearing” needs some translation.  I am not sure exactly what it means. Suggestions for a different word?

Stewardship is not about my comfort

Thanks to Austin Pryor at Sound Mind Investing, where I found this challenging article on stewardship–Terry Austin suggests, an understanding of stewardship from God’s perspective, would turn the world upside down again.

It is a totally new way of thinking to assume that God is just as concerned about our comfort as we are. If we are not careful we will find ourselves believing that the world revolves around us and our needs. This leads to a Gospel of success instead of sacrifice; it is the broad way that leads to destruction rather than the narrow way that leads to life.

This notion that God’s purpose is to help me have a better life is especially prevalent in the way we do stewardship. When you read much of what is taught as stewardship today, you come away with the idea that the goal of stewardship is to become a debt-free member of the middle class with a well funded retirement account. In other words, the goal of stewardship is our comfort.

In reality, the goal of stewardship is to bring glory to God. With that purpose in mind, many of our decisions about the way we handle the world will radically change. If enough of God’s people could grasp this concept, we might see the world turned upside down once again.

A book on chastity for women that men need to read?

La Shawn Barber blogs about a new book on Chastity. The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On by author Dawn Eden. Barber explains why her faith in Christ has been instrumental in her own committment to chastity. She writes, “By chaste, I mean voluntarily abstaining from sex until marriage and from extramarital sex while married.” It looks like a book written for single women but it might be a insightful read for men to see the other side of the story and for any of us who are parents. Reminds me when I asked my wife to read, Arterburn’s book, Every Man’s Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation so that she would understand what was going on inside me as a man.

Editorial cartoons worth thinking about

I had promised myself that I am going to avoid doing any more posts about politics but when Michelle Malkin provided this link to an archive of the political cartoons of Michael Ramirez, I could not resist.  Warning: some of you may be offended by his cartoons.  He is a conservative but does manage to make fun of all the candidates.