Posted by Jonathan Wise on Oct 30, 2008
So yesterday’s post rankled a few visitors, and hopefully got some people thinking. Politics have never really been that interesting to me before say… 2001, but lately I find myself pretty passionate about what’s going on in the world. Here’s another thing I’ve found I’m pretty passionate about: what’s going on in the Christian world.
Politics aside, and the fact that the “Christian” right sometimes makes me a little ashamed to be associated with them, I’ve observed some pretty bizarre non-political Christian behavior in my time, and I think I’d finally like to say a couple things:
#1 - Church is for non-Christians. Church is also for Christians.
I’ve heard, and been a part of both sides of this argument. There is one camp who holds that church should be accessible to seekers, to people interested in finding out more about what we believe, so the weekend experience should cater to those folks — at the expense of everything else a church typically does. There’s another camp that believes church is some kind of holy huddle, where we should stick to our comfortable, and to the outsider, often bizarre little rituals, because those make us feel righteous.
The truth lies in the balance.
Church should be accessible to seekers. Guests should feel welcome walking into our meeting place, not intimidated. They should find things there that are familiar to them, and comfortable. Church should be culturally relevant, and the message should be offered in a way that the average person can understand and relate to.
However, to do so at the expense of the existing believer is foolish. Christ told us to go and make disciples — not converts. It is not enough to stop at milk — church needs to offer meat to those who are growing. Serving is not discipleship. Its an important part of becoming a disciple, but there is much more to a relationship with God then having the basics down and serving somewhere.
I realize this can be a difficult and expensive balance to find. How do you keep your message relevant to seekers, while guiding existing believers to new depths in their faith? The answer isn’t that hard, so I’ll give it to you:
The weekend is not enough.
It is not all about the weekend, its all about every single day of the week, walking in faith together with each other and with our savior.
How that takes shape is up to each church and each community, but you can’t stop at the basics, nor can you skip them. Maturity requires both.
#2 - Your church is not the Church.
Our pastor said it well this weekend: each church building, and each body of attendees is simply a localized expression of the Church. Your church and the people who attend it may prefer a traditional worship service with hymn books and wooden pews, and the community in which God has placed you may respond to that. Conversely, your church might want to worship with videos, moving lights, and arms waving to choruses led with electric guitar and drums. Neither church is right, neither is wrong.
God is interested in what’s in your heart. If, in your heart, Amazing Grace on a pipe organ is the most meaningful form of worship you know how to give, then its beautiful to Him. If, in your heart, rocking out to Kutless truly brings you closer to Him, then that’s beautiful too.
You have no right to go around and tell other churches that they’re wrong because you don’t like their music, or their worship style, or their failure to find meaning in some obscure punctuation in the book of Numbers. God is sufficiently equipped to dissolve any organization that He feels is not honoring to Him. Observe point number 1 and have the maturity to put the effectiveness of a given church above your own personal preference.
Here’s another interesting fact: your church contains members of God’s Church!
Each member of your church is uniquely made by God for a specific purpose, and as such, is a member of the global Church body that is His bride. Within your church are people who God has called to a specific ministry — and that ministry may not be something your church offers. When that happens you have two choices, church leaders:
1) Encourage them, disciple them, affirm them, support them and release them to do the work God laid on their hearts — whether its in your building or outside of it.
2) Get the heck out of their way.
Your local church has responsibilities and goals it needs to pursue, but if those responsibilities and goals preclude the possibility of an individual member of the body of Christ pursuing their God-given responsibilities or goals, then you have a serious problem with your organization. Your local church is not the Church. The Church is a world-wide phenomenon with God at it is head, and each of us as members of the body.
#3 - Get out of your church
Seriously, just shut up and go help someone. Us Christians love to feel important while we sit in our comfy buildings, and our like-minded communities, passing judgment on the world around us, but here’s an interesting fact: Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus instruct us to judge non-Christians. God reserves the right to judgment, because He knows that no matter how pious you are, there is horrible, ugly sin in your heart, and it precludes you from that job.
What Christ actually told us to do is to help the hurting, feed the hungry, speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. You can’t do any of those things locked up tight and safe in your nice-looking, mortgaged-to-the-hilt church buildings, or in your self-righteously separated-from-the-world homes. You’re going to have to get outside your Home Team, your Prayer Meeting and your Sunday Evening Hymn Sing, and actually demonstrate Christ’s love — with your hands, your feet, your money.
No, it is not enough to pay tithe on Sunday, and give a little extra offering to a missionary. That is relinquishing your responsibility to someone else — and its no wonder so many of us turn up our noses at people who’s world view is different than ours. We have no “world view” — we only ever see the inside of our sanctuary or our house.
Your local church is a great place to learn and to serve. It should also be a great place to bring your non-Christian friends. But its not “going.” Jesus said “Go and make disciples.” He didn’t say “stay where you’re comfortable and hope seekers stumble upon your meeting place.”
So many Christians rant about how they don’t like things in the world, but all they do is rant, and vote for the person ranting about the same things as them. We have, as a resource, the example of Christ, and letters written by people who walked with Him and who actually worked with Him. We should be the ones with answers to our society’s problems — not the ones causing those problems. And sometimes — most of the time, actually — the answer will be to shut-up, roll up your sleeves, and dig in next to the non-Christians around you who are trying to fix things.
These are not random ramblings. These are observations from our lives and experiences. Claiming Christ obviously doesn’t mean any of us claims to be perfect. But we could still do a lot more good if there were more of us in soup kitchens, on missions field, and in our world and our communities demonstrating God’s love in earnest, before we open our mouths or target people with our wrath and vitriol against the world.
Posted by Jonathan Wise on Oct 29, 2008
I hear something like this all too often: I want to vote for the party (/candidate) who is most in-line with my values.
Putting aside the fact this is probably not true about either candidate — McCain is an awfully liberal Conservative, and Obama is a pretty conservative Liberal — what really bugs me, especially about the Christian view point, is that this ‘values based’ voting isn’t working.
As someone raised with Christian values, I can say definitively that the “values” espoused by the most recent Republican president were not similar at all to mine. Rather, it is the “party line” that claims to be Christian in nature.
What’s clear is that this party line does not necessarily produce a Christ-like result.
Here’s a tremendous example: Most evangelical Christians hold the belief that sex is for marriage. Because of that fact, Conservatives would prefer to teach abstinence-only sex education. We’ve had a Conservative in power in the States for 8 years now, who’s party holds firmly to that line.
What’s interesting is that the approach — the purported “value” — has failed to make any difference. Teenage pregnancy continues to soar, and in fact, is higher among evangelical Christians than any other religious group.
The value may be a good one, but the method of communicating it: fear, disinformation, threats… these things aren’t working. It turns out that a much better approach is to teach teenagers the reality of the decision — to teach them about the risk and responsibility that comes along with the act, so that they’re equipped to make the right decision.
You can’t teach a value without passing along the reasoning behind it — failing to do so makes the assumption that people are stupid and will follow blindly.
And this, I believe, is the central assumption in the Neo-Conservative movement. We, the people, are expected to blindly follow our government because they’ve claimed the moral high ground. Because their stated values are conservative, every decision they make must be equally righteous.
But they’re not. Liberals do a far better job teaching children about the risks involved in pre-marital sex. We may claim to have the better position, but the fact is, we’ve failed to communicate it. Similarily, we can claim to have the better position on abortion — surely killing babies is a horrific thing to have happen. But we can’t legislate it out of existence. Even if it were illegal, it would happen. Isn’t it much better to, as a certain candidate recently advocated, try to educate and protect people better so that no one ever has to be faced with that choice?
The reality is that voting Conservative does not guarantee that your values will be applied to your country. It guarantees that the candidate who claims to share those values will get to leverage his claimed moral high ground to back his decisions in the press, and on the world stage… but look where that’s gotten us…
Isn’t it better, then, to vote for someone who will put into place a process which will result in your values being applied? If your goal is to see less teen pregnancy, maybe its not better to vote for the gal who says “pre-marital sex leads to damnation… and by the way, you’re not allowed to ask me any questions about my unmarried teenage daughter who is pregnant, because that’s private.” Maybe its better to vote for the guy who teaches his children “teen pregnancy has the following observable and detrimental results…”
Burying sin underneath a facade of moral values doesn’t do anything to improve the state we’re in. Burying greed underneath a facade of (self-)righteous capitalism doesn’t do anything to fix the economy. Starting oil wars while claiming you’re on a mission from God doesn’t do anything to communicate the love of Christ. And espousing hatred and fear at your political rallies because you like your voters ignorant and afraid won’t fix a nation on its knees.
God gave us brains — they’re a special gift from Him that allows us to reason, understand and discern — that we can use to teach other. God gave us His Word because it contains the best plan for His kids. Everything He asks of us makes sense. We don’t need to follow it out of fear or out of a desire to be holier than those other guys. We should follow it, share its principles and apply them to our government because they make sense. Doing so does not require everyone to believe the same thing as us — but we sure could share it a lot better if we didn’t push everyone into one of two obscenely polarized camps.
The New Yorker has an excellent article full of some of the sad facts behind this rant: that we, as evangelical Christians have, at best, failed to impact the world with our values… at worst we’ve become pharisees: talking a righteous talk, judging everyone around us, but forgetting the message and not doing a lick of good for the world we’re in.
Posted by Jonathan Wise on Oct 17, 2008
Yesterday I went shopping for jeans. All of mine have holes in them, so it was time for a new pair. I hit a couple malls, and went from store to store, trying to find a pair that weren’t ugly, or crazy expensive. Mind you, my idea of “crazy expensive” is more than $50. When I went into Jean Machine, or some such store, I turned over a price tag, and nearly puked right on the spot: $119.95 for a pair of jeans!
Who in their right mind, would ever pay $120 (plus tax!) for a pair of jeans? What is wrong with our society when pre-faded blue jeans, which likely cost around $5 to manufacture, actually sell for over $100?! Seriously, do people realize that for the price of 3 pairs of these blue jeans, you could fly to Paris and back?
And its not like these are dress clothes, or something nice you’d need for a wedding — these are casual clothes for every day life. I can’t fathom ever spending $120 on an entire outfit, let alone the part of it you put on your butt! Where are your priorities if you go out and spend that kind of money on jeans?!
Let me suggest some other things people could do for the price of 3 pairs of blue jeans (plus tax):
I solemnly swear, before the whole Internets, that if either of our children ever ask for $120 for blue jeans, I will tan their hide and stick them on a plane to Bangladesh for a week so fast their heads will spin…
Posted by Jonathan Wise on Oct 08, 2008
Now that their last President has the lowest approval rating in recorded history, the Republican party is doing their level best to lower the bar of political discourse, and distract voters from the crippling problems that began plaguing their country since W. came into power. Aside from referring to his opponent, standing next to him on stage, as “that one.” McCain couldn’t muster up the respect to shake his hand after the debate.
What blows my mind is that these people are the “Christian” party. I’m trying to keep my mouth shut about U.S. politics, now that we don’t live there any more, but its really hard right now. The economy is in shambles, the war to nowhere still has no end in sight, the Constitution is in shreds, and no one’s even trying to find that terrorist guy any more — they’re too busy calling each other names.
Meanwhile, the “free market” hasn’t been able to balance itself, so the tax payers just forked over $700 billion to bail out the greedy capitalists who drove the country’s economy into the ground. And what did AIG do after receiving their $85 billion cut? Sent their executives on a corporate retreat to the tune of $440,000. Check the actual invoice…
How is this a self-regulating free market? And besides, how is what has become of capitalism a Christian concept to begin with? Doesn’t the Bible say “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another…?” Well, the U.S. currency is based on debt, and now the economy is being propped up by it — with no evidence in change of behavior.
Now I know Fox News spins all of this a vastly different way, and sources like Huffington Post can spin things their own way, and the real truth is really hard to find. But even if you strip out all the opinions, and out of context sound/video bites, the reality has to be in there somewhere: we’re not winning a war or terror, just a war on people bring water bottles onto airplanes; the economy is not improving, its collapsing; the party currently in power hasn’t solved any problems, they’ve overseen some of the darkest times in recent history.
Gah! I should just stop reading news until the election is over. Its not like my opinion matters anyway. So, in conclusion, I leave you with this great moment:
Note: “That One” picture blatantly stolen from this guy.
PS: If you’re still pro-McCain, try reading his abbreviated history. If you’re still pro-Palin, ask yourself if baptism at your church included this.
PPS: GAH!!
Posted by Jonathan Wise on Sep 10, 2008
This list will be short, and strangely there’s some overlap with yesterday’s list. Some of the things that frequently bug me about office life are still advantages over working from home. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far this week…
Nice Clothes: I’m sure the novelty would wear off in a week or two, but after 3 months of working in whatever I clothes I pull out of the closet in the morning (ok, 1 month of staying in my pajamas, then after the realisation that I felt like a total bum, 2 months of wearing whatever clothes I pull out of the closet) it feels kinda nice to put on a good pair of pants and a shirt with a collar. I just feel more professional and effective.
Stand-up Meetings: While it may be annoying to over-hear these meetings, its often fun when you realise you’ve fallen into one. You get up from a frustrating problem to get some caffeine and bump into someone else who’s been pondering the same issue. Before you know it, you’ve deep in an impromptu brainstorming session in the hallway, and you’re having a grand time debating potential solutions. You don’t get that working from home.
Regular Meetings: 95% of meetings are a waste of time, with too many heads and too many egos present to actually get anything done. But there’s that other 5% where you actually solve something or come up with a good plan of action, and it feels great. You can have these kinds of meetings over the phone, but you miss out on a fair bit of the comradery — on seeing the smiles on your co-workers faces.
Social Interaction: Its definitely great to be able to see my family during the day. I usually start work at 7am, catch up on my e-mail and other administrivia, then head up stairs for a quick coffee run at 8, and get to say good-morning to my wife and kids. Lunch time is just as nice, because I actually get to sit down with them and see them. But sometimes its nice to have mostly adult conversation — even if it is often lame and awkward. I’ve been unusually friendly this week, just because its nice to talk to people that don’t smell like puke or dirty diapers. I’m sure that’ll wear off soon.
Free Food: Usually once a week some department has some meeting or customer visit that provides an excuse to order in catering. I’ve become an expert at surreptitiously snagging some food as I stroll by. And during the summer there’s usually some kind of staff BBQ a couple times a month. Free food is the best kind.
Tomorrow’s my last day at the office, likely for the rest of the year. Over all, I still think I prefer my home office set-up — I have a better desk, a better chair, a better network, and a much better place to sit during conference calls. But its been good to be back in the cube farm for awhile. Plus the TV show starts back up again soon, so I’ll get my fix of office life from a much more entertaining source.
Posted by Jonathan Wise on Sep 09, 2008
Its odd how easily I slipped back into the office routine. After 3 months of working from home, there were a couple hours where people dropped by to say hello, and then it was like I never left. Of course, I know the difference, so here are a few things that I don’t miss, now that I work from home…
Commuting: bumper to bumper traffic on the highway along-side hundreds of other bleary-eyed office workers.
Office banter, first-hand: making lame small talk about the weather/sports with people you don’t even work with, but share a cube-farm with, so feel obligated to talk to.
Office banter, second-hand: listening to the awkward small-talk made by people who don’t really know each other, but feel obligated to talk to.
The loud guy: I’ve never been in an office that didn’t have at least one. They’re the people who, for some reason, believe you need to shout into a telephone, that swearing loudly so the whole office can hear you is OK, that laughing uproariously at anything and everything is normal, that we all want to hear them snort/clear their throat/hork/burp…
The retro guy: Tight jeans, 80s hair, half-opened shirt with chest-hair billowing out, giant tinted glasses, cigarette stained teeth/breath because he still thinks smoking is cool, jokes/catch-phrases that are ten years old, may or may not drive a Camero.
The fashion victim guy: Gold chain, bluetooth headset, designer jeans, expensive shoes, name-dropping, awkwardly obvious cultural references, trying desperately to look 10 years younger than he really is, probably has a RAZR. Knows something about everything, but is knowledgeable about nothing.
(Ok, those last two don’t actually exist as a single individual, but are an amalgam of stereotypes I’ve collected having worked in various offices over the past 10 years)
The stand-up meetings: when a members of a team meet on their way to the coffee-machine and somehow fall into a heated debate about the design or implementation of their latest project… and they happen to be standing right outside your cube.
Superfluous meetings: maybe we should get Bob’s opinion on this… and Joe, Frank, Harry, and Bill should probably be here too… I’m going to conference in Edmonton…
The interruptions: that no matter how busy you look, or if you’re clearly rocking out to music on your head phones while writing your most righteous code ever, people still believe they have an open invitation to stroll in and start-up a conversation — naturally assuming you can/want to hear them.
Fire drills: AKA the “business continuity plan”
Lunch hours: the only thing more depressing about working in a cubicle, is eating a sad little sandwhich, while sitting alone in a cubicle…
Cubicles: enough said.
Stay tuned tomorrow for things I actually like about working in an office :-p
Posted by Jonathan Wise on Aug 20, 2008
When we finalized our offer on our place, our real estate agent asked us if we had a lawyer in mind. Being (re)new to the area, we didn’t, and asked for his recommendation — aside from closing on a house, we need to get our will/power of attorney crap done, so we told him we were looking for a lawyer who did more than just real estate, that we could start a business relationship with.
He recommended someone named Cal Johnson.
After today, I would not.
A lady at Cal’s office drew up our paperwork for us, and we set an appointment to go in and sign everything. Both of us needed to be there, which is something of a trick, since I work full time, and Nicole has two kids to manage, but we figured we’d get in, sign our lives away, and get out.
Cal Johnson had other ideas.
We arrived 2 minutes early, at 1:58pm, where we were told that Mr. Johnson would be right with us. So we sat down with our two kids, both of whom needed to be napping, and we waited. At 2:30 I asked how much longer we’d have to wait. He’d be right with us, we were told. At 2:45, with both kids now over-tired, and me having been away from my job for over an hour (it takes a half an hour to get there) the receptionist finally arranged for us to see another lawyer.
He pulled out the giant folder of paper work, and started handing us papers to sign. For most of them, he offered no explanation, simply pointed at the line we were to sign on. The only form he went over in detail is the one where he explained that their legal fees were in excess of $1000.
One thousand dollars for them to provide escrow service and fill in our name on a dozen different forms, and hit print. They didn’t even do a title search — they just insisted that everyone just buys title insurance these days, since that was cheaper.
For one thousand dollars, you’d think we’d at least get some reasonable customer service. Instead we were treated like a chore — a nuisance. Made to wait in the hallway for nearly an hour, until they got around to letting us sign our paper work.
I’ve got a new business idea: I’m going to start an organization called Important Services You Can’t Buy a House Without. People will have to pay me $500 to hit them with a hammer for 25 minutes before they can have the key to their new house. This will cost less than a lawyer, and probably feel better too.
Our kids are good kids. If we’d had to wait 15 minutes, and then sign papers for another 15, there wouldn’t have been a problem. But by the time we got out of there, Ben was 2 hours late for his nap, and obviously turning into a little terror. I knew how he felt, because I was inclined to throw a temper tantrum myself.
Obviously we’ll be looking for a different lawyer to draw up our will. At one point, Cal himself bustled into the room — silk shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, with thick white hair poofing out. Clearly his time was too important to actually deal with us. How do people like this stay in business? How do you keep any customers when you treat them like they’re beneath you.
I seem to draw out these incompetent people who aren’t interested in actually doing their job. Thank goodness this process is almost over — I’m not getting enough catharsis from this blog, and sooner or later I’m gonna have to let some of these people know what I really think of them!
2 days left…
Posted by Jonathan Wise on Aug 06, 2008
I think most introverts know that they are. Most extroverts I’ve met, on the other hand, don’t seem to be aware of the two definitions at all. They assume everyone is like them… which is not entirely unfounded. 70% of people are extroverts — using the proper definition of the term.
For those who’ve never heard the proper definition, here’s a great article highlighting some of the differences in personality types. Its a useful read, and as an introvert, I wish more extroverts took the time to understand the subject matter. Here’s one of my favorite lines:
Perhaps the hardest thing for extraverts to understand about introverts is that someone could actually want to be alone. Not because they don’t like to have fun, or because they hate people, but just because they prefer their internal world, and they need to return to it to be energized.
Posted by Jonathan Wise on Aug 03, 2008
I have no idea what “playing conkers” is, but I couldn’t agree more with this article. (And also this video, if you have the time.)
This is easily one of the largest problems with (many) parents these days, and we’re very determined that our kids will get a fair chance at skinning their knees, breaking their arms, and everything else that comes with the adventure of growing up. Kicking Benjamin out of the house to play in the backyard is one of the many things we’re looking forward to about having our own place.
On an unrelated note, why are open source/free software project leads so frequently ignorant, self-important jerks? I released a couple projects to the Internets for free, and I can’t remember “act like a douche” or “verbally assault anyone with a suggestion” as being part of the process.
Posted by Jonathan Wise on Jul 20, 2008
So, I saw Dark Knight this afternoon. I’ve been looking forward to this movie for a long time, and its been hugely successful on this, its opening weekend, so I had to get to see it. My opinion?
Its ok, but not great. It left me feeling unsatisfied.
Don’t get me wrong, Christopher Nolan is a brilliant filmmaker, Christian Bale can do no wrong, and Heath Ledger was the Joker… it just offered nothing new.
It could be because Batman Begins was the best re-boot of a franchise ever, and the sequel had too much to live up to. It could be because the hype was too much for anything to satisfy. But it just felt like this movie had no style. There was nothing in it we haven’t seen before…
Batman was the same as the first movie, only his suit was a little sillier looking, and his gadgets a little less impressively derived from the plausible.
Gotham was too normal a city. In Batman Begins it looked like a normal city, but with just a hint of story-tale too it — a little bit of surreal.
And Heath Ledger really only offered a slightly more mature interpretation of Jack Nicholson’s Joker. He was adequate to the task, but brought very little that was new to the table. Certainly he doesn’t deserve an Oscar (posthumous, or otherwise) for the job.
And the story line was just… uninteresting. If you’re going to make people sit through two and a half hours of film, you should at least have a good reason. There seemed to be no reason here, except that Christopher Nolan doesn’t want to do yet another sequel. By the end of the movie it was clear that he’d lost interest in the franchise.
Which is fine. Its a passable follow-up to Batman Begins, but a third movie would likely sink the series right into mediocrity.
Oh, and I couldn’t escape this nagging feeling, that struck me about 1.5 hours in, that Nolan is a Republican, and he’s trying to draw some misguided parallel between Batman and George W. Bush. Watch it, and see if you don’t catch on (Hint: listen for the part about “A real hero is someone who isn’t afraid to be hated so that the terrorist doesn’t win!”)
In contrast, let me tell you about the other movie we saw in theatres recently: Wall-E. I know this may seem like comparing apples to oranges, but I can’t help it — I don’t get to go the movies that often these days, and its inevitable that I’ll have to decide which was a better waste of my time and money.
Wall-E is full of things we’ve never seen before. Its completely creative, beautifully presented, and loaded with characters who drawn you in emotionally (without even speaking a word.) If Batman is a traditional tale of good vs. evil, where most of the characters (save for the “bad guy”) are drawn as essentially good, Wall-E is a non-traditional tale that more accurately depicts reality: most people are essentially stupid and self-absorbed. It doesn’t need a good guy and a bad guy to drive the narrative — in fact it suffers from almost none of the crutches of the simpler stories that Hollywood-produced drivel is usually hobbled by.
I’d like to go on about it longer, but I think you should just go see it yourself. If you have a choice between Batman and Wall-E at the theatres in the next couple weeks, go see Wall-E. Its altogether more satisfying, original and enjoyable than the half-hearted sequel to a good re-make of the decades-old Batman franchise…
The new Bond looks good, though!
