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I have a new favorite song to add to my list. I have to overlook the poor grammar, the fact that it’s sung by a guy with a double name, Philip Phillips, and that he’s an American Idol winner, but at least he doesn’t go by Philip². 

The song is Home, a fun little song to comfort a spouse/girlfriend/fiancee’ having doubts and fears about the future. Here are the lyrics:

Hold on, to me as we go
As we roll down this unfamiliar road
And although this wave is stringing us along
Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home

Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home

Aside from the fact that I, as a husband and father, want to be able to be the comforter and the steady, reliable constant in the life of my family, I believe this song highlights a deep felt need at the heart of many of the decisions we make as humans. This song speaks to our need to belong, to be cared for, to have an unmovable foundation to rely on when our circumstances and future seem to be in chaos.

I don’t know about you, but that seems to be a common experience in my life.

Too often, my response to chaos is to be carried along by the wave, subject to the fear of not knowing what the future holds. But in the midst of the uncertainty and the crowd of voices fighting for our attention, THE Constant, THE Unmoved Mover, THE Wonderful Counselor, THE Mighty God, THE Prince of Peace quietly reminds us that we are not alone, that He is here with us in the chaos like a mooring firmly anchored in His eternal character.

And He has given us a picture of this comfort. Emmanuel, God with us, was born, lived a sinless life, died, and rose again to make eternal life available to us, and much like Philip Phillips, he offers us this comfort:

Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.

John 14:1-4

Unfortunately, the Christmas season is one of the most chaotic on our calendar. I am making it my personal goal to take some extended, intentional time out of the chaos to dwell on the comfort Christ offers as the fulfillment of these words from Isaiah 9:6-7:

For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace There will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, To order it and establish it with judgment and justice From that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.  

Needing, Wanting, Getting

I was a runner in college. And when I say “runner”, I mean I ran 70 miles/week, 8k races at around 29 minutes, and twice daily workouts during the Cross Country season. I was 165 pounds of NCAA Division III scholarshipped Cross Country... mediocrity. Ok, maybe there are a whole load of people who can’t run 8k at any pace, but compared to even the other guys on my team, I wasn’t really a great runner. 

Maybe I could have been. Maybe if I trained harder or cared more or watched Prefontaine more often I could have brought my time down to 25 minutes. My real problem: I love fried food and I worked at Sonic Drive In. 

I love fried food. I love French Fries, Onion Rings, Tater Tots, Fish-wiches, Chicken Fried Steak, Chicken Fried Chicken, Donuts... the list goes on. And all of these things I had at my fingertips at any time for 25-35 hours/week. The problem with this is that these kinds of food wreak havoc on your body, and pretty much immediately after you eat them. So I was running hard and negating much of my work by the food that I ate.

My deeper problem was (and still is) a general lack of self-control, especially in the area of food. I think with all the media coverage on obesity in America, we are all aware of the national trend towards indulgence. Our lack of boundaries extends to other areas, as well: Need a new (fill in the blank)? Why wait? You DESERVE a new (fill in the blank). And you can finance it for 72 months with no money down!

Whatever the causes were, as a college student, I was spoiled. I still am in some ways. The easier it is to acquire that thing which is really not in our best interest, the harder it is to control ourselves. So when I had fried foods at my fingertips, my desires overwhelmed my reason and discipline. I think we can substitute any of our vices here.

Consider this:

All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. 1 Corinthians 6:12 

Sometimes we allow our habits to be shaped by things simply because they are there. Since I can have it, then I must necessarily need it and have the right to get it whenever I choose. So in Matt Parker’s case,  if he needs fried foods, he has the right to have Sonic at his fingertips whenever he wants it. Until 2 am, anyway.

And maybe I can. After all, all things are lawful for me, especially as a believer. I live in America where fast food is everywhere and often cheaper than buying and preparing healthy food. But that does not mean it is good or beneficial for me and those around me. 

Every day we face opportunities that will either benefit us or not. I wonder what would happen in our church if we all made this verse a daily reminder. What if we took seriously this idea of not being mastered by our desires and passions? 

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

On Heroism and Chuck

But the LORD said to me, "Do not say, 'I am a youth,' Because everywhere I send you, you shall go, And all that I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, For I am with you to deliver you," declares the LORD. 

Jeremiah 1:7-8

There is a television series that gives me hope as a man. It’s called Chuck. It’s about a regular old computer genius who mistakingly receives a supercomputer in his brain containing all the secrets of the CIA and NSA, along with some physical abilities like Kung Fu, sharp shooting, gymnastics, and Tango. The series explores how a regular guy becomes a hero, and it may be a bit different than you might think.

I am not your typical heroic figure. So you can imagine that stories of nerds and geeks who behave heroically are a serious draw for me. They show us what heroism truly is. 

http://www.kera.org/2012/05/22/truths-about-fear-and-courage/ 

I recently heard an interview with Dr. Gordon Livingston, a West Point graduate who has become a psychiatrist and author of the book The Thing You Think You Cannot Do. Above is the link to the audio of the interview. A statement Dr. Livingston made that caught my attention was his assertion that our idea of heroism has become skewed over the past 100 or so years. Instead of to truly great men who demonstrate moral and physical fortitude in extreme and dangerous circumstances, we attribute heroism to game players, strongmen, and the people who can take out a horde of bad guys with the flex of his bicep. Our heros tend to be terribly flawed characters who make awful decisions, or have the label of hero because of the uniform they wear.

Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them. William Shakespeare

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go." 

Joshua 1:9

Maybe our culture should reexamine our definition of heroism. Maybe courage and heroism are more about the right choices we make under duress than about our position, talent, abilities, or even the branch of the military we enter. Maybe the greatness to which we should aspire is allowing the Lord to work within our weakness to accomplish His purposes.

And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

2 Corinthians 12:9 

We see the antithesis of this over and over again in the book of Judges, which C.S. Lewis suggests should be renamed “Champions”. With each successive champion the Lord raises to deliver Israel, the choices they make are worse and worse, and the story becomes bleaker and bleaker. Then enters Samson, perhaps the most impressive and apparently heroic of them all, yet his choices and his story are the worst yet.

I am not a heroic figure by cultural standards. I am not physically impressive, athletically talented, or politically motivated. But if I, like Chuck, can work within the gifts I have been given to work for the good of those around me, for God’s glory to place the well being of my friends and family above my own, and commit to do what is right no matter what it costs me, I may just be able to become a hero to those I care about the most.

By the way, the actor who plays Chuck is a professing believer in Christ, living in Hollywood. So Zachari Levi may be even more heroic than the character he plays.

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/film/features/2830-qaa-with-zachary-levi

The Thing About My Folks

When I was a kid, my folks were completely unreasonable. I mean, they were horrible, really. It’s amazing I made it through. When I think back now, as a parent myself, I may have called CPS on my parents several times. You have no idea.

Oh, sure, in public they were all nice and respectable... Actually, now that I think about it, they were equally as awful in public as they were at home.

You would like a few examples? Here you go:

• My parents never had cable or satellite TV. It was embarrassing. I had to go to my friend’s house to watch MTV. I never knew anything about Beavis and Butthead or Ren and Stimpy. I was a dork and it’s all their fault.
  
  And it didn’t stop with TV. We barely had video games. When someone pulled out their Nintendo, I had no idea what to do with it. I’m an inept gamer and it’s all their fault.

• My parents forced me to wear hand-me-down clothes. Never mind that I was the youngest of 4 kids and they couldn’t afford Hilfiger, Gap, or Structure. My clothes weren’t from the mall, usually not even from Wal-Mart. Most of the time I got to shop in MY BROTHERS’ CLOSET! I was mortified every time I walked down the hall at school.
  
  So when I saw A C Slater and his awesome stone washed jeans, I knew it was only a dream. I was a fashion don’t and it’s all their fault.

• My parents always had to know where I was and what I was doing. And we lived so far out of town that usually all I had available was MY BACK YARD! And I had a curfew at least an hour ahead of everyone else my age. Some of my friends didn’t have a curfew at all. You can guess where I went to spend the night as often as I could. I was a dweeb and it’s all their fault.

So you can see just these few examples of how bad my parents were at... PARENTING! I haven’t even gotten to how few times we ever went to Red Lobster or Olive Garden. I didn’t mention how my first jobs were when I was 9 years old. I can’t even think about not getting to go to cool places like Walt Disney World or Las Vegas. And, ugh, all that time we spent at CHURCH! Well, I didn’t actually mind that part so much. AWANA was kind of fun.

But because they gave birth to me, I was FORCED to follow my parents’ instructions. Because I have their DNA, I HAVE to show them honor, which is hard for me, given how my dad worked 12 hour shifts (supposedly to put food on the table and pay the mortgage) and my mom was always teaching at the same school as I was attending (again, EMBARRASSING).

It’s amazing to me that I turned out to be so well-adjusted. I’m incredibly cool for how I was brought up, even though I never got to hang out with drunks, drug addicts, or gangsters.

So thanks, Mom and Dad, for being such awful parents. No, seriously. Thank You.

Confessions of Matt Parker

I have a confession to make. I read teenage girl novels. I read all of the Twilight novels. I’m working on Hunger Games. I am not a teenage girl. And, get ready for this, I enjoy them. I realize that they are not the best crafted stories ever. I know that they are predictable and often trite. But I like to read them. I don’t know why, but I do, and always have. I read Anne of Green Gables and Pride and Prejudice when I was 12.

I’m glad to get that off my chest. Now you know one of my deepest, darkest secrets, and one of Misha’s favorite things to tease me about.

Confession is good for the soul.

I’ve not really been all that good at confession. I’m a fairly private person, and I want people to think well of me, to a fault. So I try not to offend against your expectations, and when I do, I try not to let you know about it. It’s also tempting, if the offense comes to light, to pass the blame on to someone else, even the person I’ve offended.

The older I get, the more I have the opportunity to practice confession. And when I do, I get sweaty palms and that jittery feeling in my chest, because when I confess for real, it’s not about a silly book I’m reading, it’s about things that require the giving and receiving of forgiveness, things that have the potential to harm relationships and hurt my reputation. But these would be hurt so much more by keeping them secret.

I clearly remember a few years ago when I was irresponsible with another man’s tool. I had to look directly into the face of a man I admire and respect and confess, and then ask for his forgiveness.

Confession is good for the soul.

I think we make mental assent of the fact, but when it comes to practice, we determine to keep things hidden and try to cover the dark corners of our lives so that people will think well of us. We project an image of how we want to be perceived, and for many people, the image doesn’t look much like the reality.

Confession closes the gap between our reality and our projection. Wouldn’t it be great if we really didn’t have anything to hide? Wouldn’t we live less stressful, more peaceful lives? Wouldn’t we get more and better sleep?

I’m not saying we should shout all the sordid events of our lives from the rooftops. It’s just that we often act like we don’t believe that Christ covered all of our sin. We act like there is judgment reserved for what we feel is too icky to be touched by His grace. Usually these things are what we judge in other people, but that’s a different article.

Confession helps us to experience grace in a tangible, face to face encounter.

Here are a few notes I’ve made about confession. Feel free to add to them or argue with me:

• Find a few people you can trust to reveal your entire life to, who will keep the information to themselves.
• Try not to leave anything out. The temptation is to go halfway, and thus diminish the benefit of the exercise.
• Your confessors should be people who will encourage you to do what is right.
• Don’t confess cross-gender with anyone except your spouse. There is great danger in that level of intimacy.
• If you need to confess and seek forgiveness from someone, do it right away, see Matthew 5:23-25. The longer you wait, the harder it will be.

There is great freedom in a life lived with integrity, and confession can go a long way in fostering that in our lives.

Life and Pain

Life IS pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

Dread Pirate Roberts

I don’t like pain. I just want to be clear about this from the outset. In fact, I avoid pain at all cost. My heel hurts, I don’t run. My head hurts, I take an Advil. My tummy hurts, I eat something or take a Tums.

But pain is a part of life, it’s unavoidable. We come into life through pain, we often leave life with pain, and the living of life often brings pain. For something to which we are so averse, there is an awful lot of it. And we spend an awful lot of time and money avoiding something that is so sure to occur.

And it’s not just the physical pain we try to avoid, either. I, of all people, hate dealing with emotional pain, so I avoid confrontation, stuff negative emotions deep down inside, and try to help everyone around me get along. In spite of everything I know about human relationships and how to have healthy ones, my desire to avoid temporary pain trumps what I know to be true.

I guess you could say that I naturally tend to the comfortable. And you do, too.

Often my desire for comfort clouds my understanding of what God wants for me. The thought goes like this: God wants me to be comfortable, so if it hurts, then it must necessarily be out of the will of God. We talked a bit about this in our small group last night. When I think that God causes all things to work together for good, I act as if that means that I will be free from pain. And with plenty of funds to do the things that I would like to do. And with the new vehicle I have my eye on. And...(insert your own idea of comfort here)

Consider these words from guys much smarter than myself:

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. C. S. Lewis

I say this with care, but I wonder if a fierce, insistent desire for a miracle - - even a physical healing - sometimes betrays a lack of faith rather than an abundance of it. When yearning for a miraculous resolution to a problem, do we make our loyalty to God contingent on whether he reveals himself yet again in the seen world? Phillip Yancey

God does not promise to make bad things good, nor has He assured us that He will keep us from bad things. He has promised us that in all things--even those that are terrible--good can come out of it for all those who love Him. Neil Anderson

When it comes down to it, at some point my desire for comfort becomes an aversion to stepping out and enduring some discomfort, even pain, even suffering, for the cause of Christ. It is at that moment that I begin to live as if God is here for me rather than me for Him. He becomes my Santa Claus, existing only to fulfill my wishes and to swoop in to remove me from any and every uncomfortable situation.

I will continue to take Advil. I will continue to acknowledge my physical pain and try to alleviate it. But maybe instead of trying to avoid pain in favor of comfort, I will seek to understand what I can learn through the pain, and open myself up to what God wants to do in my life because of my circumstances. Maybe then I’ll experience a bit more of that completion that James talks about:

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

James 1:2-4

Bricked In

Last night I heard a radio interview of the author of a book who argues that humans were never meant to be monogamous. He says that since quite a lot of people cheat on their spouses, that it must necessarily be against our genes/nature as humans to remain committed exclusively to one person for life. Therefore, healthy partnerships and marriages must be “open” in order to be most fulfilled. He also says that people who do remain committed without cheating are either lying about the subject or don’t have the ability or opportunity to cheat because of age, looks, lack of sexual prowess, etc.

I suppose that this is the only logical conclusion of a certain worldview. IF humans are only animals, then our urges and instincts must therefore be our highest motivation and suppression of those urges will lead to an unhappy, unfulfilled existence. Fortunately for me, this has not been my experience.

In my experience, the people who live the most successful, happiest, most fulfilled lives are people who exhibit great self control and have a long-term, exclusive, committed relationship with their spouse. I’ve found it to be true in myself as well. The more self controlled I am and the longer I remain committed exclusively to Misha, the more fulfilling I’ve found our relationship, and not just on an emotional level, but a physical one as well. I can’t imagine a happier, more fulfilled existence for me.

Because when love is viewed purely from a physical cost/reward perspective completely removed from the metaphysical, then it becomes just an emotion, and I know all too well how fleeting and unpredictable my emotions are. Or it becomes just instincts and urges, and I know all too well how self destructive those can be when followed to their end.

So here’s what I’ll do: I will let this fella have his open relationship and let him remain true to his worldview, if that’s what he wants to do. And I will go right ahead and pursue all the things he says will keep me unfulfilled and restless in my marriage. At the end of our lives, maybe we’ll have the chance to compare.

I predict that my relationship with Misha will be unquantifiably better not in spite of self control and exclusivity, but because of it.

Why wouldn’t I remain exclusive with her? She is the one who knows me best and accepts me for all that I am, as imperfect as I may be. She is the one who is the mother of my children and the desire of my heart. She is the one with whom I made a covenant: No matter the circumstance, no matter the finances or health, no matter the place or time, near or far, I will remain committed to Misha Perkins Parker until I die. I have bricked myself in, and though the world may fly apart all around us, I will never break that covenant.