Simplicity

Having just returned last week from the mission trip to Costa Rica, I was reminded of what a refreshing thing it is to experience simplicity. There is nothing like waking up each morning with only one clear objective and one priority, which is to glorify God and to serve him wherever we are. On a mission trip, this is made even easier, because we have pre-arranged for things like meals so that all we're really having to concern ourselves with is the work for which we've prepared. There are no competing schedules or priorities. Beyond this, I can't express how much I enjoyed not watching the news for a solid week. I never had to hear the words, "Trump", "Russia", "Fake News", or anything else like that and I didn't miss it a bit. I got on social media once each day to post an update with pictures, but very little other than that. Once again, I didn't miss it a bit. 

It's not possible always to be so undistracted in our normal settings. There are work and family schedules and obligations, and current events which affect us. Even though we cannot achieve perfect balance in our lives, we will still benefit from the effort to live in a way that is more simplified and focused. I wanted to share a list with you I came across a few years ago by Richard Foster. Foster has written some enormously helpful books on practicing spiritual disciplines, and these are his guidelines for simplicity. They are worth considering. 

Richard Foster's Guidelines for Simplicity:

1. Buy things for their usefulness rather than their status.

2. Reject anything that is producing an addiction in you.

3. Develop a habit of giving things away.

4. Refuse to be propagandized by the custodians of modern gadgetry.

5. Learn to enjoy things without owning them.

6. Develop a deeper appreciation for the creation.

7. Look with a healthy skepticism at all "buy now, pay later" schemes.

8. Obey Jesus' instructions about plain, honest speech.

9. Reject anything that breeds the oppression of others.

10. Shun anything that distracts you from seeking first the kingdom of God.

Have a great week...and keep it simple!

35 Things I've Learned

Today is my 35th birthday. I think it's important to reflect on your life experiences, so here are 35 things I've learned along the way.

1. There is no more important set of skills you can possess than people skills. Likability opens doors and builds bridges. Many a career has been built on a person’s ability to get along with others. You’ll be your future’s worst enemy if you don’t learn to value people, and to make them feel valued. 
2. Every person is in some way superior to you. If you approach every person in terms of how you could be blessed by their skills and understanding, you’ll find it easier to care for them genuinely, and to overlook their shortcomings.
3. Never stop cultivating yourself as a person. Try new things, especially when they are hard. Spend your life preparing yourself so that some of the best things you’ll ever do will be when you’re in your 60s and 70s as culminations of the person you have spent your life becoming. People who reach for superstardom in their 20s and 30s can easily exhaust their wells of wisdom and experience.
4. Remember that you’re going to die. Don’t be found anywhere doing anything that you wouldn’t want to be remembered for, in case you make an earlier-than-expected departure.
5. There is no greater peace you can leave behind to your loved ones than their ability to genuinely say of you, “They loved God with all of their heart, and it really showed in the way they lived."
6. Everyone understands that change is necessary, but almost no one enjoys it. If you are the one implementing a change, don’t take it personally at first when people react. Much of what they’re doing is just acknowledging that a difference exists. If you’ve been patient with them, have listened to them, and are clear in your reasons and your motives, a lot of them will extend to you the same courtesy. Of course, this won’t always be the case; particularly if you haven’t put effort into #1 on this list.
7. In dealing with people whose age or health has largely confined them to their home, never make an off-handed promise about something you intend to do for them unless you are absolutely going to follow through quickly. They often have nothing better to do than to sit around remembering what you said you were going to do, and they’ll think less of you for failing to follow through.
8. The best question for getting to know a new person is: “How do you like to spend your time?” To ask a person about their job or career can make a stay-at-home parent feel you are belittling them, an unemployed person feel embarrassed, or an independently wealthy person feel awkward for having to explain why it isn’t necessary for them to work. Asking how they like to spend their time allows them to tell you what they care about most, or at least what they are comfortable revealing about themselves.
9. Being fluent in sarcasm is not something you should value. Having a refined ability to cut people with your words does not make you a wise person, and it seldom makes any situation better.
10. If you are making a speech, it is better to say a bit less than you know, making people wish that you would have spoken longer, rather than to say all that you know, making people hope they will never have to hear another word on your subject; especially from you.
11. As you get to know someone, there will be scripts that show up in their conversations. Especially when seeking a spouse, pay attention to how they talk to people behind counters and serving at tables. Pay even more attention how they speak to their family. Eventually, every way they speak to other people, they’ll speak to you once they feel like you aren’t going to go away. Everyone can put a good foot forward when they want to make an impression, but what’s more important is that a person you’re committed to shows genuine kindness and patience with everyone, because they’ll be more likely to show it to you. 
12. Telling someone the truth with a spirit of love and gentleness might not always be received well, but it is never the wrong thing to do.
13. Don’t allow your critics to take away your joy or your resolve to work with excellence. At the same time, there is usually some grain of truth to what your critics say. If you know someone to be your critic, make a deliberate effort to get to know them better, not for a counter-attack, but to learn what’s driving their concern. They might be giving you a valuable gift, just presented in ugly packaging. Former critics can make some of the best allies if you are able to win them over.
14. When a person is tense about their life and they come to you as someone to talk to, the best thing you can give them is your non-anxious presence. Take slow breaths, look them in the eye, listen to them without reacting strongly to the things they’re worried about expressing and without interrupting with quick solutions. Just look at them, listen, and be truly present. A person can solve a majority of their own problems when they have a safe space to verbalize and process what they are experiencing.
15. If you are married, make it your daily goal to invest in your relationship with your spouse. They’ve given up a lot to dedicate themselves exclusively to you and deserve your best efforts to know and love them. One day your children will move on, and one day your career will end. But aside from unfortunate circumstances, as long as you’re both living, your spouse will be with you. No investment will pay you greater dividends than the efforts you make to build your marriage.
16. Most of the best ideas you’ll encounter in life won’t come from your head. Make wise and talented companions, and form a habit of asking questions and listening well. 
17. If you desire to strengthen your moral character, it is better to attempt a difficult path than to walk without a path. If you buy into the belief that morality is always subjective, you undermine the possibility of moral growth. Growth requires a steady target toward which you are moving. This is a harder way to live, but choosing to submit yourself to time-tested moral standards will guide you to a much better life than just doing what feels good, or trimming your conscience down to whatever is currently fashionable. 
18. Greatness and fame can overlap, but are not the same thing. If you have to pick one, strive for greatness. Striving for popularity will always leave you raw and hungry, dependent on people’s approval to have personal validity. 
19. Everyone is a jerk some of the time, including you. Fortunately, God still loves and accomplishes great things through people who have acted like jerks. If God can value and work through me in spite of myself, I should extend the same grace to others. 
20. You’ll solve most arguments in life by taking time to understand what people mean by how they use the terminology involved in the discussion. If you don’t mean the same things with the same words, this clarification might reveal that you don’t actually have a disagreement to begin with.
21. Pain is a powerful teacher if we have a mindset to learn from it. Don’t assume everything that’s unpleasant is bad for you. When difficulties come, the right question to ask is, “How might God be trying to shape me through allowing me to experience this?"
22. Be sure that when you praise people, what you are praising is what you are actually wanting to see them value. Telling a young person they are pretty or handsome or smart is a nice thought, but when you see an opportunity, a better compliment is, “I’m really proud of you because I saw you make an effort to do this when you could have done that instead. It’s great that you’re trying to be this kind of person, and I hope you’ll keep trying."
23. You can’t really know that you love a person until they’ve wounded or disappointed you, and you’ve chosen to work things out with them. The same seems to be true of how you relate to God, who doesn’t always give you what you want. Genuine love and trust has to be built on the cooperative overcoming of shared difficulties. 
24. You can’t do more for a person than they are willing to do for themselves. Even though it hurts to see them make poor decisions, until their desire or pain is great enough that they’re willing to change, you can’t change them against their will. 
25. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is apathy.
26. When making a major life transition or significant move, it’s a good idea to pretend you are preparing for your own funeral. Say all the things to as many people as possible that you’d want them to know. Express as much love and gratitude as you can find time to express. Err on the side of generosity and appreciation.
27. You don’t control your circumstances or what you’ve been given to work with. You can’t control what others do or how they respond to you. The only thing you fully control is your own actions. Make choices that you can feel peace about, regardless of how people respond to you. 
28. In trying to sort out major life decisions, assuming that you live to see your 70s or 80s, ask yourself, “Which of these things would I be most proud to tell people that I tried to do with my life?” “If I were to develop scars or to wear out my body in some task, what would really be worth the sacrifice?"
29. We naturally care more about things into which we have poured energy, time, sweat, and blood. If you find yourself apathetic about things which you believe should seem important, examine how much of yourself you’re really investing in these things.
30. Make sure you are always doing some good things that can’t possibly be traced back to you. It's especially rewarding to do this for your  enemies, because it means at some level they are wrong about you, and it helps you to practice loving them anyway. 
31. In a difference of views, it is likely that you misunderstand your opponents as least as much as they misunderstand you. Never portray another person’s position for the purpose of critiquing it until you have first listened to them well enough that you could describe their position and concerns in such a way that they would hear you and say, “Yes, you get where I’m coming from, what I care about, and how I’m understanding this.” Only at the point that you’ve listened sincerely can you really have a productive conversation about your differences.
32. If you want to become more like Jesus, try treating every person you encounter as if they are Jesus. 
33. Churches spend much time in tension about the value of following rules and principles in opposition to the practice of extending grace and freedom, often using one as an intended antidote for the other. The solution to legalism is not lawlessness, and the solution to lawlessness is not legalism. God has given us both: solid principles upon which to build a meaningful life, and the experience of grace for when we have shortcomings. Both law and grace are gifts to help us grow into the likeness of Christ, and neither should be neglected or devalued. The solution to either lawlessness or legalism is fundamentally a need to know God more deeply, and to become more like Christ.
34. It is a mistake to assume whatever is new is intrinsically better than what has already been. Likewise, just became an idea has come into popularity does not make it automatically superior to less popular ways of thinking. Chronology and popularity do not always determine value. Things that are true, beautiful, and loving have always been significant, regardless of when or where they have occurred. There is value in knowing about new things, but make time in your life to focus on truly good things. This is part of why God gave us the church; that together we can learn to see what good things transcend time and culture and therefore not waste our lives on lesser things.
35. Show mercy and forgiveness to people in your life, not only because they need it, but because you need the experience of giving it. Life is too hard to continue shoving stones in your bag of bitterness. Forgiveness must work as a process, acknowledging the painful realities of your experiences while simultaneously reaching for peace and healing. Commit yourself to the process, because in trying to forgive, you become more like God, and it will lighten your soul. 

Hitler, Dante, and the Insufficiency of Tolerance

Lately I've been a bit consumed with eschatology (the study of last things). This has been in part because I've been teaching Revelation to the teens class on Wednesday nights for the last quarter, and have had to seriously examine a lot of passages that describe the return of Christ. A relevant issue to all of this is the issue of Hell. 

Hell's pretty unpopular these days. Nobody wants to believe anybody will go to Hell, except for a few choice people like Hitler or Hussein. Those guys could sizzle like bacon for a pretty good while before it would start to bother us.

So I've been thinking about Hitler, and in the spirit of Dante, I've been pondering what his punishment might be like. Dante's Inferno is a fascinating read, and a quite imaginative work. Dante holds strongly to the idea that punishments will somehow correspond to crimes. For example, in the second ring of Hell, Dante describes people being punished who are guilty of lust. Their punishment is to have strong unceasing winds that blow them violently about, taking away their ability to ever get rest or relief. This corresponds to their unwillingness in life to control the desires that they chased in a number of ungodly directions. 

I was wondering what sort of punishment would be fitting of a man like Hitler. He was hungry for notoriety and power. He dehumanized his enemies and treated them as trash. I thought about someone as infamous as Hitler, and wondered what sort of fitting spectacle would be his punishment. And then it occurred to me that perhaps nothing would be more fitting than to see him quietly enclosed in a lonely place and punished secretly, with no pomp or circumstance; to abandon him with no sign at all that suggested this man was in any way worth remembering or acknowledging. 

Up until around the end of chapter 20, I understand Revelation to be a book that is similar to the scene in the Wizard of Oz where the curtain is pulled back so that Dorothy can see what is going on that no one else can see. John is in exile, when suddenly the heavens open up, and he is invited to see what God and his allies are up to while Christians are dealing with oppressive and bestial world powers. We hear Angels shouting victory and singing new songs. We see martyrs and leaders reigning with Christ, and we smell the incense of their prayers. But one group is strikingly absent. 

The lost are kept outside of the New Jerusalem. They are sent to a "second death" in the Lake of Fire. But in all the discussion that goes on for pages and pages of the action and excitement that happens in the presence of God, the lost are completely absent. They aren't protesting, banding together, or knocking on the gates. They simply aren't part of the future that God is bringing into existence. If their souls continue to exist, it is only in that they are tolerated to exist, but no value is attached to them once they've been cast aside to be discarded.

All of this led me to think about the great clamor we all hear these days about the importance of tolerance. In every setting, people are pushing for the perceived virtue of tolerance. (Tolerance isn't always virtuous.) But when you listen to what people are really wanting, tolerance isn't it. Tolerance means I let something exist, despite finding it a total bother. Many of the people I hear shouting for "tolerance" are themselves quite tolerated. They are allowed to exist, so why keep asking for it? The deeper thing I believe people are begging for is to receive respect. Respect goes beyond tolerance. Respect dignifies and acknowledges where it can. 

I read an excellent book a few weeks ago called Leadership and Self-Deception. The book is all about one important principle in dealing with people: no matter what people do or how they have disappointed you, always continue to treat them as human beings. The place we so often fall short is that we allow people to become nuisances, obstacles, or burdens, and in doing so, we cease to acknowledge the value of their humanity. This is why we will chew out a co-worker, we will humiliate a clerk behind a counter, or we will have no patience or second chances for someone who has disappointed us in any way. We mentally categorize them as less than human so that we can treat them as such. They become something we tolerate instead of someone in whom we see value. This is a Hellish way to live.

I believe God will have painful judgments for many people who have lived far beneath what they were created to be. But he will wait until the end of their days to deliver his verdict. A challenge for me is not to be a merely tolerant person, but to be a loving person. It is ok to acknowledge when someone has annoyed or frustrated me, but I can express this in a way that simultaneously acknowledges that I believe they have intrinsic value, having been made in God's image. I can express disappointment for people or condemnation of their behavior in that they were created to do things much better than what they've chosen to do, and with God's help, I know this is possible for them.

I don't know what God will do with Hitler. I don't fully grasp how all things will unfold as the Kingdom of God continues to break through into the corrupted world we're living in. But I do know that for my part, it is my job to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to the oppressed, freedom to those who are captive, and the year of the Lord's favor to all who are willing to accept the good news. To love people in the way that God loves them goes beyond tolerance, because in every person it sees their value and seeks their redemption. 

May you live today in a way that God would deem worth remembering,

Mark

God only knows where your life can take you

I got to speak at chapel at my alma mater, Ezell-Harding, a few weeks ago. One of the points I made to the kids is that you simply have no idea where you could end up in life. When I was a senior in high school:

- I had no girlfriend, and no prospects.
- I had never been out of the country.
- I thought I was going to be a business major, or maybe an accountant.
- I didn't own a car, as I had spent as much money as possible on guitars and home entertainment equipment.

Exactly 5 years later:
- I was married to a girl from Durango, Mexico
- I had been out of the country to Mexico and Honduras multiple times
- I was a preacher for a church in Rose Bud, Arkansas (which I would have never heard of otherwise).
- I was a home owner, and had a dog and a cat.

I'll never forget the first time I went to visit some of the members at Rose Bud, and I ended up driving on dirt roads for the first time in my life. I was smiling to myself, talking to God, saying, "Where in the world are you taking me? How did I ever end up here?" When we were in Arkansas for the funeral this weekend, on the way to visit the family, we stopped to take some pictures of this road. Rose Bud brought me so many new experiences in so many different ways.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined my life the way it has turned out. I'm confident I will experience a lot more twists and turns as life continues. But it's all been good, and as I look back, I can see that God has been with me the whole way.

We are all shaped by our experiences. The good memories and positive examples give us something to treasure and to strive for. The bad experiences and hurt leave us with scars that persist and affect us. I continue to be amazed at just how much we grew to love the people in Arkansas. They will forever be a part of who I am. Relationships are an amazing gift from God.