Gilligan's World

In the wake of our culture’s shift away from the church, various new tactics have been applied to cut it off at the pass. Experiments in church architecture, music style, sermon subjects, etc. are just a few ways the church has changed to meet new appetites. While these tactics were moderately successful for a time, now they set off the “manipulation” siren in the mind of Gen-Xers. Like the kid who tries too hard to make friends on the playground, the church’s attempts to accommodate to today’s culture have made the other kids suspicious. Change isn’t inherently bad. Often change is good. But attempts to meet the changing appetites of our culture appear superficial and suspect. Sarah Hinlincky illustrates what the Gen-Xer might say to the church today (Read the full article here),

We know you’ve tried to get us to church. That’s part of the problem. Many of your appeals have been carefully calculated for success, and that turns our collective stomach. Take worship, for instance. You may think that fashionably cutting–edge liturgies relate to us on our level, but the fact is, we can find better entertainment elsewhere. The same goes for anything else you term “contemporary.” We see right through it: it’s up–to–date for the sake of being up–to–date, and we’re not impressed by the results. In any event, you’re not doing us any favors by telling us we’re so important that age–old prayers and devotions can be rewritten to suit our personal whims. We know intuitively that, in the cosmic scheme of things, the stakes are too high for that.

On the other hand, you shouldn’t be excessively medieval and mysterious, either. Mystery works up to a point, but it’s addictive, and once we get hooked on it, the Church won’t be able to provide enough to support our habit. We’ll turn instead (many of us already have) to Eastern gurus and ancient pagan pantheons to satisfy all the esoteric delights our souls might desire. The human lust for secret knowledge should not be underestimated and certainly not encouraged. The Church has fought against that gnostic impulse from the start: Christianity is explosively non–secretive, God enfleshed for everyone to see, the light shining in the darkness. We’re much too comfortable alone in the dark; we need the light to shake us up.

Then, of course, there is the matter of telling us that the Church possesses the Absolute Truth. Gen Xers doubt the very existence of such Truth with a capital T. We’re much more comfortable with the idea of a multiplicity of little truths than one single unifying truth. But even if universal truth does exist, we are extremely skeptical that you–or anyone else–can possess it. Admittedly, this skepticism is a bit puerile. All the more reason not to use “the Truth” as the basis for evangelizing us, because it will backfire. And when your evangelizing attempts do fail, don’t let the word “Hell” cross your lips. That’s another thing we don’t believe in.

Our stumbling block is Christianity presented as panacea. You’re right that we are looking for healing, and usually in all the wrong places. When we’re at our worst, we turn to drugs to numb the pain, cure the boredom, and escape the nothingness that haunts our lives. At our best we try alternative medicine, psychology, meditation, yoga, diets and exercise, successful careers, or falling in love. We invest ourselves in these things, and they inevitably fail. Which is what we expected anyway. We have learned that nothing can be trusted, so we’ve given up on trust altogether. Don’t tell us that the Church can be trusted because, frankly, we doubt it. Don’t tell us Christianity is the answer to our problems, because nothing but death will take them away. (Ever wonder why our suicide rate is so high?)

So you’re in quite a pickle: you can’t tell us that the Church has “the Truth,” and we know that the Church won’t miraculously cure us of our misery. What do you have left to persuade us? One thing: the story. We are story people. We know narratives, not ideas. Our surrogate parents were the TV and the VCR, and we can spew out entertainment trivia at the drop of a hat. We treat our ennui with stories, more and more stories, because they’re the only things that make sense; when the external stories fail, we make a story of our own lives. You wonder why we’re so self-destructive, but we’re looking for the one story with staying power, the destruction and redemption of our own lives. That’s to your advantage: you have the best redemption story on the market.

Perhaps the only thing you can do, then, is to point us towards Golgotha, a story that we can make sense of. Show us the women who wept and loved the Lord but couldn’t change his fate. Remind us that Peter, the rock of the Church, denied the Messiah three times. Tell us that Pilate washed his hands of the truth, something we are often tempted to do. Mostly, though, turn us towards God hanging on the cross. That is what the world does to the holy. Where the cities of God and Man intersect, there is a crucifixion. The best-laid plans are swept aside; the blueprints for the perfect society are divided among the spoilers. We recognize this world: ripped from the start by our parents’ divorces, spoiled by our own bad choices, threatened by war and poverty, pain and meaninglessness. Ours is a world where inconvenient lives are aborted and inconvenient loves are abandoned. We know all too well that we, too, would betray the only one who could save us.

One more thing. In our world where the stakes are high, remind us that all hope is not lost. As Christians you worship not at the time of the crucifixion, but Sunday morning at the resurrection. Tell us that the lives we lead now are redeemed, and that the Church, for all her flaws, is the bearer of this redemption. A story needs a storyteller, and it is the Church alone that tells the story of salvation. Here in the Church is where the cities of Man and God meet, and that is why all the real spiritual battles, the most exciting adventure stories, begin here. We know that death will continue to break our hearts and our bodies, but it’s not the end of the story. Because of all the stories competing for our attention, the story of the City of God is the only one worth living, and dying, for.

While I was working on some stuff for a sermon in Colossians I was reminded of this quote I read a while ago in Tim Keller’s The Reason for God. I have often heard friends say that a relationship failed because they had to give up too much.

This quote by C.S. Lewis was on page 49.

 Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglement; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. (The Four Loves, p. 123)

Love is not expressed in absence of sacrifice, but through sacrifice. If one is not willing to make sacrifices for anyone, then the only one they love is themselves. The deeper the anchor of the Christian heart is sunk into the knowledge of Christ’s ultimate love, the freer they are to love all people. It is the security in Christ’s unshakable love that grants a Christian the freedom to love others recklessly. 

I found this article on the history of Covenant Theology helpful. It is only a brief sketch, but it does hit the high points and is a good starting point for further study. I hope you enjoy :) 

http://clark.wscal.edu/briefhistorycovtheol.php

More links can be found at: 

http://www.monergism.com/directory/link_category/Covenant-Theology/Covenant-Theology-in-History/

“Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others … but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God “sending us” to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.”

From: Tim Keller, “The Reason for God,” p. 81. Quotes from three sources: “Mere Christianity,” p. 59; “The Great Divorce” pp. 71-72; “The trouble with X” in “God in the dock: Essays on Theology and ethics,” p. 155

Last weekend I gave Brian a hand installing a new air conditioner in his living room. I was excited to help Brian out. Since I have felt like a bit of a free-loader these last two weeks, it was nice doing something useful. The old AC unit was an old, inefficient window unit that Brian put through the wall.

By noon on Saturday we had removed all of the old AC and bricked up the hole.

Down here if you want to hold on to something it is a good idea to tie it down. There was a metal cage around the old AC unit, and Brian wanted to build one around the new one, and he asked me if I could weld something together. I thought it would be fun to practice some of my fabrication skills, but it had been so long since I built anything I didn’t want Brian to get his hopes up. That afternoon we went over to a friend’s place to borrow a welder. Brian warned me that the welders down here are not like any welder I’ve seen in the states… He wasn’t lying! I’ll explain in a minute :) Once we got back to the house we took a survey of all the tools we would need to get the job done.

Fortunately, Brian has a lot of tools, and with the old AC enclosure I figured we had enough metal to make something work. We pretty quickly agreed on a plan of action and began hacking away. It didn’t take us too long to get to the point that I could start welding a couple things together, so we turned our attention to the welder. There were a number of things that made me nervous about this welder. First off, the wires that connect the welding leads to the welder were barely holding onto the machine.

They were kinda melted and weren’t making much of a connection. Normally a welder will have crimped connectors on the end of the leads that bolt to the welder. Well the connectors on this welder were long gone if they were ever there in the first place.Brian and I fixed up the frayed wires and tried to make a little stronger connection with the machine. Brian then showed me how you “plug in” a welder in Mexico. Well, there is no “plug.” There is just two bare wires…

I was a little unsure how safe it was to “plug in” the welder… So I told Brian I would turn off the welder until he had it connected. Brian responded, “There isn’t an on off switch on the welder.” I may have been nervous before, but at that point I was beginning to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Anna will kill me if I got electrocuted in Mexico! Well nothing unexpected happened. A few sparks and a sigh of relief later we were in business.

It took me a while to get the hang of welding with this machine, but eventually I got to where I could lay a pretty decent weld, all things considered.

By the end of the day on Saturday I was able to get the major structure attached to the frame, but I was also beginning to feel the effects of heat stroke. So Brian and I decided to call it a day.

We went back to the project early Monday morning. By about noon I finished the fabrication of the cage, and we set out to attach it to the roof.

Brian’s roof is concrete, so we had to drill holes into the roof to attach the anchor bolts that would hold down the cage. Brian didn’t have a real good hammer drill, so drilling the holes was pretty difficult. After some struggling with the first hole with minimal progress, we tried a second spot. Brian drilled down an inch or so then the drill dropped in like it found a soft spot in the concrete. That gave us a hole nearly two inches deep, which was our goal. I went ahead and drove the anchor bolt into the hole, and we began planning where our next hole would be.

About that time Amy came out and told us that her ceiling fan quit working and was about to fall down. Brian went down to see what happened. We found out that it wasn’t just Amy’s fan, but the power was off in nearly half the house. We figured out that we didn’t find a soft spot in the concrete, but we found the electrical conduit. The conduit that the house wiring ran in was hidden in the concrete. If we had been only an inch in either direction we wouldn’t have hit the conduit. But no, we hit the conduit dead center severing the two wires that were in it. After we finished our work on the roof, Brian and I went into El Carrizo to pick up some wire and talk to an AC repairman.

We needed a professional to do a couple of things before we could turn on the AC unit. When we got back to Jahuara the main objective was to fix the broken wires. Without too much trouble we were able to get the old wires out and the new wires in place.

We then worked on reinstalling Amy’s ceiling fan. Brian had battled with this fan in the past, so he knew that we were going to have some trouble. The main bracket that holds the fan to the ceiling was cheaply made, and that is why it began to fall in the first place. Brian was able to temporarily tie everything together and had the fan sitting in place. While he was working on a stronger fix the fan suddenly slipped from its bracket and fell to the floor with a crash. Fortunately it didn’t fall on anybody, but the fan was damaged beyond repair. Uggg!!!   Fortunately at the end of the day, the fan was the only real collateral damage. Later that evening the AC repairman came out and finished the installation, and everything worked great. Even though there were a few hiccups along the way, we were able to justify the collateral damage as we enjoyed the now nicely air conditioned living room!

Friday night was my first experience playing spoons with the Warnes. Two friends from Jahuara, Kimi and Lucilia also joined in on the fun. Like any game of spoons it was pretty intense, but there was a twist. If you don’t get a spoon at the end of the round you are not eliminated, but you get a letter on your arm (with a sharpie of course). Once “Spoons” is spelled out on your arm you are eliminated. I was the second person eliminated :) 

Earlier on Friday night I went with Brian into Los Monchis. He was invited to speak to a group of AWANA kids. I didn’t think I really stood out that bad in a crowd, but I guess I’m about as American as they come. All the kids wanted to know who the new gringo was. It was fun trying to talk to the kids, but I am still really limited in speaking and understanding Spanish. But even as limited as my Spanish is I can already understand a lot more than I could when I first arrived a week and a half ago. 

Why am I in Mexico.

There are only a couple of reasons why I am in Mexico so this should be easy to answer.

First, the purpose for my trip to Mexico is to learn Spanish. I covered some of my reasons why I am learning a second language in my last post. Primarily I hope to eventually be fluent in Spanish so that I can better serve those who don’t speak English.

Second, I want to learn a little more about what life as a missionary is like. I don’t think the Lord is calling me to be a missionary outside of the US, but I think this experience will be invaluable.

I have participated in a number of short-term missions, but I don’t know if I really like how they work. Of course some short-term mission strategies are more effective than others, but I think many of them benefit the person going on the trip more than anyone else. I hope that through spending a little more extended time with a missionary family, experiencing the day to day life on the field will help me better support missionaries in the future. I have no illusion that I am a godsend to the Warnes, but I hope to be some sort of an asset while I am here.

What are some of the challenges I foresee?

1. Pride. I have had many people tell me this can be a challenge. When we begin to learn to use a second language we often make mistakes, sometimes very entertaining mistakes. This can also be very embarrassing. This fear of making mistakes and looking like an idiot can be a big roadblock to learning a language. I know I don’t want to look like an idiot in front of everyone, but I need to learn to be willing to step out, make an effort and lave my pride behind.

2. Time. I know it takes a lot of time to really learn another language. I have already spent a lot of time trying to learn both Greek and Hebrew and I can’t speak either. I don’t have some dream to be fluent in Spanish before I leave Mexico, but I know the more time I put into the language the more I will learn. My goal is to be able to function in an average conversation in Spanish by the time I leave.

3. Effort. Learning another language is exhausting. It is much easier to communicate in my first language rather than struggling to get a thought out in a second. I will need to consistently force myself to try to function on a basic level in Spanish, and then slowly build from there.

4. Culture. Learning another language also involves learning a culture. Just like learning a language I will probably make a lot of embarrassing cultural mistakes. Hopefully in two months I will learn how to live a little more like a Mexican :)

How do I plan to learn the language?

1. Rosetta stone. I am trying to use Rosetta stone on a regular basis. Hopefully I will get into a habit of spending around 2 hours a day on it.

2. Read Spanish. I have a Spanish bible and I have access to a number of Spanish resources on the Internet. I hope to regularly work on reading and pronouncing Spanish by reading different articles and stories.

3. Listen to Spanish. Since I will be surrounded by Spanish speaking much of the time here I will make an effort to listen in on conversations, and try to understand what is going on. It is easy to drift when I am not engaged in a conversation, so this will quite a bit of mental discipline.

4. Speak Spanish. I will try to make the most of every opportunity to speak what little Spanish I know. It is only through repetition that things will begin to sink in. As I learn a little each day, I will be able to function just a little bit more. Though I feel like an idiot, I need to make a concentrated effort to speak Spanish.

Ok, now that I have written down what I expect from this experience and hope to accomplish, we will see what the Lord has in store. By the end of two months I may look back on this post and say, “Man I really didn’t have a clue then!” I guess we will see. :)

Several years ago Myspace was all the rage. All of my friends were getting in on the social network, and after a while I finally gave into the pressure and signed up. Since then Facebook has pretty much taken over. Also in the last several years new ways of communicating and connecting have developed. Twitter, which didn’t make any sense to me when it came to be,  and blogging have become incredibly popular. 
Blogging of all things seemed like the most narcissistic thing a person could do. Who wants to read random rants written by people that have an ax to grind and have little or no credibility? Though this may be the case in many blogs, today there is a huge number of blogs that are really helpful. Many authors, teachers, scholars, pastors, etc. have unleashing a huge amount of helpful information. I  now try to follow several blogs, but I often fall behind.
Since I am beginning my own blog I’ll take the time right now to explain why I am beginning a blog of my own, and what you can expect from it. 
The thing that finally pushed me to take the plunge into blogging is my trip to Mexico. I am currently in Mexico with some friends who are missionaries here (the Warne family). Why am I in Mexico? Ever since I spend a semester in Israel with the Master’s College I have been acutely aware of the fact that I only speak one language. I guess if I only knew one language English would be a great choice, but I really wanted to be able to communicate with people that didn’t speak English. Since the Yakima Valley (Washington) has a significant Hispanic population it only made sense to try to learn Spanish. A couple of years ago the Warne’s invited me to come down so that I could learn Spanish through immersion. Last year I figured I could make it work and I started making plans. 
Since this is the first time I have tried to learn a language this way, I thought it would be interesting to blog through the experience. That way I can keep friends and family up to date with what I am doing and learning. 
There are a few selfish reasons that are motivating this blog too. The process of developing a thought and explaining it in a clear concise manner is something I need to develop. Hopefully this blog will challenge me to develop this skill, but it will probably come slowly. :) 
Also, I am thinking through a number of issues concerning ministry, faith, theology, and Christian living. By blogging through some of these issues I hope to clarify my thoughts on some of these issues, or maybe just explain why I am struggling with them. I don’t intend to use this as a platform to tell everyone what they ought to think, but maybe reading about my questions and how I answered them (hopefully answered anyway :) will be helpful to you too. 
Finally, I hope by continuing to maintain this blog I will be challenged to keep learning. We all should continue to learn and be teachable. Now that I have finished my undergraduate degree I don’t have assignments or deadlines and it is incredibly easy to fall into lethargy. Hopefully this blog will challenge me to find answers to questions that arise in my mind rather than allowing them to drift off into the back of my mind, forgotten forever. 
I hope you enjoy the updates, pictures, and thoughts that will follow.