scattered thoughts

So many things I'd like to write about... (i originally wrote "thing's." i blame my bad grammar on too much grading of munchkins' papers... [note the CORRECT apostrophe use; although i am in 4th grade for the 5th time, i did graduate a couple of times.] )

~ (When) is violence justified for Christians?
- loving enemies... can violence be loving?
- turning the other cheek... metaphorical. suffering dishonor.
~ Old Christians... heck. 30 something year old Christians
~ Friends make a Christian? a vibrant Christian?
~ reaching the younger gen.
~ controlling my anger!!!! better yet, defusing it to death.
~ Matisyahu needs Jesus and 2 of the saddest songs i've ever heard. ("silence" and "temple"?)
~ hiding old entries...
~ Christian temperance: pros and cons
pro: less drunkenness= probably some kids didn't get abused. less fights? less shame? less bad decisions?
con: Bread and wine central (?) to Scripture... rep God's providence. can be metaphorical, as long as we get the metaphor... God gives sustenance and joy. (Blessed is He.) Jesus is our bread and wine of a New Covenant (pact, agreement, relationship) with the Almighty.
~ Mormons mormons mormons mormons...

Workaholicism v. vocation

Originally published 6/9/14

Full disclosure: I am a workaholic, albeit an oft procrastinating, occasionally lazy one. If I am idle without even the pretense of work, I get depressed. I can take about 48 - 72  hours of relaxation, then I need to be doing meaningful activity. Usually, that meaningful activity is my profession. Since teaching is one of those "obviously beneficial" jobs, I can vary from a little sanctimonious to a little neurotic about it. Relationships, necessary housework, and errand-running also count as “work”. Art, writing, and amusement do not qualify as meaningful activity (MA) for me at this point in my life. (I'm not sure about whether study does or not.) They have to be wedged in to the intervals of relaxation, or I start getting anxious for M.A.

thought one: 
Problem with idols is they don’t help you serve them. “Must… work… harder!”

thought two:
What is workaholicism? Work at the expense of health and good... physical, mental, spiritual, relational.

Why do we overwork? In general, because work is a good. It's satisfying to exert force x distance. We like to order, create, and... stuff. Rest is sweeter. Food is more appreciated. The paycheck is affirming. We are of worth to others, obviously, because they give us money for what we do. That's not insignificant to us homo sapiens. Maybe that tie in to worth has a lot to do with why we end up working too much. We get a little intense, obsessive, sacrificial. Maybe we have to do so to keep our job, to get a better one, or to keep up with our coworkers. Nothing like a high achieving coworker to light a fire under us.

Chesterton: that fierce loyalty of women, instead of being applied to a pretty much helpless child and the fragile familial bond, is applied to a firm, an office, a spreadsheet. That sacrificial love that brings unreasoning infants to become firm, critical thinking and principled men is applied to to-do lists and memos from the boss.

Thesis: Unless your job is advancing the Kingdom of Heaven, your need to sacrifice for it is questionable. I'mma revisit this one, 8 years later to questions: When should we sacrifice for our jobs? What is more important than work? (And, for another day, What does a life of healthy, worshipful work and rest look like?)

By “questionable,” I do not mean “wrong.” I mean, you ought to question it and come to some sort of calculus/ philosophy to guide your commitment to it.

1) Sometimes making a living is hard and requires a lot. Maybe you will have to contribute almost all of your energy and health just to putting food on the table. However, there is a large difference between putting food on the table and keeping up with the Joneses (no offense, Joneses). I feel this is an old idea, (all the more why I should repeat it) but we need wisdom to figure out, “What’s the threshold where I can still have a profitable job that’s meets needs/ provides extras WITHOUT sacrificing my energy and excessive time to it?”

2) Hopefully, our job does serve our fellow men in some way, shape, or form. If it does not really better others, and we can find a job that does and still pays our necessary bills (is emphasis on “necessary” overkill?), we probably ought to switch. From where I sit, more discretionary income WILL NOT compensate for meaningless (sorry for my bluntness) work. By serve, I mean, helping humans to live as image bearers (thinking, just, relational, creative) of God, whether they realize it or not, provide for real human needs (distributing the provision of God, promoting a healthy society), or promote the values of God (justice, mercy, redemption) to make His Kingdom more realistic to our fellow men. Trash pick up, sure. Advertising, not so much. (This is not to say that, for example, an otherwise “meaningless” job in advertising can’t be good if 1) it is inevitable, and 2) it is exploited for other higher priorities. These are meant for consideration, not condemnations. Input would be appreciated.) But, for goodness’ sake, YOLO! How do you want to spend your one and only life?! Meaning trumps money. Service is more important that status. People are eternal, society is not. “Seeing that all these things will be burned, how ought we to live?” “The visible things will perish, but the invisible things are eternal.”

3) So, given that our jobs serve our fellow men, how much ought we give them? Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. I don’t think I’m wrong by saying: 1) family, 2) brethren, 3) needy. Pretty much clear cut if we’re talking about the same need for the three. Now, things get tricky when we start dealing with triage: an urgent need of the needy (eg: for counsel) versus relational needs of our family (eg: to attend a family member’s achievement ceremony). I dunno how to deal with those issues. A lot of times, hopefully, one can compensate family’s “lesser” need at other times and “leave not the rest undone.” (One issue that challenges me is the value of creating a family at all versus the value of caring for those who have no family, but most peoples’ life circumstances make that question moot.) Competing values need more input than our own. We need wisdom from on high delivered throughout the ages and applied by the wise and godly around us in real time. May God give us the wisdom we need!

3) Vocation: how to love/serve God and our fellow men. Sometimes we get paid for it; often we do not. As Eve Tushnet stunningly wrote, it’s basically what the “single” era of our life ought to be about discovering. It is relational, self-giving, God-inspired, and thus, ought to be joyful. Each person ought to ask: How can/should I minister God to others via myself? For most, their families (parenthood) will be their main vocations. Their churches and neighbors ought to be considered “extended family.”

The beautiful thing? Since “others” are pretty much everywhere, and God definitely is, one can be fulfilling vocation just as much by being full of life in a wheelchair in a nursing home as by being a heart surgeon in Africa. God is great. People are everywhere. Christ is enough. The Holy Spirit is very creative and unconcerned with glamour.

thought three: sources
Eve Tushnet: Breaking the Rules
Marvin Olasky: How to decide to move
a) Where can I be most useful to the Kingdom of God?
b) Where will I be most challenged to live and think as becomes a follower of Christ?
c) What will I love doing?

Leah Libresco, The Sad Secular Monks in First Things' On the Square:

There’s a word for people who turn over their entire waking life to one cause, and willingly sacrifice the possibility of a family for the opportunity to serve: monks (or, more archaically, oblates). Just like the driven twenty-somethings of Rosin’s article, monks and nuns have made a commitment so total that it precludes marriage. But in the case of vowed religious, the form of their service is meant to be elevating, not just useful. I seldom hear people claim that spreadsheets are good for the soul. Even for people doing high intensity work for the public good (the teachers, the social workers, the public interest lawyers, etc.), the form of their work may still be deadening.Most careers aren’t vocations, so we need space outside them to grow and love. It’s possible to make a short-term decision to put life and relationships on hold, in order to make a high-intensity commitment to a cause (this is the model for the oft-touted national service draft), but it’s unhealthy to let these crisis-mode jobs give shape to your life.

….
from her blog entry: What good is sitting alone at your desk?

So, although you may carve out time for people you have an obvious obligation to (family and work), weak connections of friendship and proximity get neglected. With fewer non-job connections, you may experience evaporative cooling of beliefs (including the belief that this is a natural work schedule!). There’s less cross-talk to push your ideas and philosophy, less chance of correcting errors, and less chance of inspiration.

***
Tim Keller on work 

On knowledge, addendum

So seek knowledge, yes.
But what to do when we've found it?

It's a process, agreed, but it is possible to really know stuff. I mean, I know people who know stuff, so I know it's possible.

What then, ennui?

That would be the worst: the weariness that comes from having been there, learned that, can expound upon it from memory. I know the right answers; I have the right angle.

How do we keep from that tired sense of accomplishment?

Having not quite gotten anywhere close, I can't tell you. But I can talk about Christmas.

When I wrote this, I was approaching my 25th Christmas. Not a huge span of time, but O Come, O Come doesn't thrill like it did the first times I really listened to the lyrics. I've thought a lot on the significance of Christmas. I've read articles, essays, heard sermons-- not exhaustively, but enough that Christmas doesn't make my intellectual pulse race like it would if it were new.

So. Now what? Resign myself to a wonderless, forced smile, mental channel changing celebration?

Or be glad for the small things? That the cold, dark night is decorated by little lights? That people sing more at all? That the season with the least sunlight has festivities to break up the monotony? (Can you imagine a post-Christian, non-celebratory winter? ugh.) That children have something to get excited about? That someone can learn a lovely old tradition for the first time?

I furthermore suggest...
For those who really are knowledgeable:
1) teach- pass it on. Be a means of grace.
2) apply- live it... and live it well till the end of your 80. THAT's an accomplishment.
3) defend- fight for it. (eg: Athanasius contra mundum)
4) create- for the propogation, study, admiration of truth- make it beautiful, make it accessible (i'm reminded of a comment I read once saying that growing up, the hymnbook was their catechism. i'd say Michael Card and Dennis Jernigan were some of my early catechists. Lewis and GK and other masters of language my latter ones.)
5) be humble.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than men. Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. God is not impressed with worship-less wisdom. ...the world did not know God through wisdom. It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. All the knowledge we can gather does not make us more saveable- its purpose is to make us more glad, more wondrous that we are being saved!

6) be humbly grateful. What do you have that you have not been given? Misusing God's gifts is worse than never having received them. Knowledge- in a vacuum, as an end, not means- puffs up, but love edifies.

TEACH! Joyfully! Exuberantly! Seriously! Freely you have received; freely now give.

So,
Knowledge is a great thing, but it's not the only thing, the main thing, either. It's a means. It's a means. It's a means.
...for worship.
...for right service (worship).
...for right faith/ thinking about God (worship).

It will not be based on our knowledge that God divides us- sheep and goats- at the end of the age, but on how we applied that knowledge. [Do I forget grace?]

Knowledge is a gift... but not a casual trinket. It is, better said, an investment. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power.

The goal of every Christian, especially as regards the "little ones," is to be able to live (even if we couldn't conscientiously say it): "Be imitators of me, as I imitate Christ." And Christ did not stop with speaking wisdom- He was the wisdom of God- for us.

Yeah. That'll deflate your puffed-upness real quick. Be imitators of me...
...as I study and question (like Christ in the temple)
...as I rejoice and teach (like Christ schooling the disciples on boats, mountains, and country roads)
...as I wash dirty feet (like the Rabbi in a certain upper room.)