Thoughts

If there's one thing I've found in the last week, it's that my world is smaller than I thought it was. Sickness will do that to you, you know. I've had a cold for the past week, a cold that's halted my normal routine and forced me to understand myself in a different light, if only for the duration of a week's time. Having your ability to work taken from you, or at least hindered, and being compelled to rest, has forced me to stop and think about why I do the things I do. I've found that my very identity comes in large part from what I do, and losing the ability to continue in that mode has ushered inside me a sense of confusion and disillusionment. Some would shrug with a deprecating gesture and wonder why I even bring up the point. "Aren't all males like that?" they might respond. Many are, I'm sure, but not all; and even among those for whom it is true, it doesn't have to be that way. Many men find that their value isn't defin...

One of the most challenging disciplines in all of Christendom is, when practiced, perhaps also the discipline that offers the deepest change: confession. Unfortunately, there is a tragedy about this aspect of our faith; that although it is a practice so freely open to us, there’s something about it that leads us to destroy, not build, intimacy with God. Admitting you’re wrong is probably the hardest thing in the world to do, but it’s something that furnishes real change in our lives, if it’s sincere. Just as importantly, confession is an invitation of truth to inform your life. Over and over in the Bible you see the knowledge and life of God in our lives compared to light and darkness. John says that “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed” (John 3:19); Jesus calls himself the “light of the world” and promises that those who follow him will “never walk in darkness” (John 8:12); Paul laments to the Corinthians t...

Most of us at one point or another have heard that love is not as much a feeling as it is an action or a choice. Although this must be true for anyone to possibly love those different from us, it doesn’t really reveal how we are supposed to make that choice. What I’m learning is that loving others means learning God’s perspective of ourselves and of others. I say learning, instead of, say, adopting, because ultimately we aren’t the ones in control of that perspective. It’s not our own perspective, it’s God’s. He has to teach it to us. Our role is to be willing to learn it. I think it’s very natural for us to be protective about our ideological space, to cut ourselves off from certain types of people because they threaten our beliefs or morals. When our perspectives shift, though, from one that sees people as a threat or a bother, to one that sees them as people with real fears and needs, our treatment of them begins to change. We become willing to drop our guards, to listen. There’s a ...