I first heard from God on the subject of clutter about the time my son, Brian, was born. I forget (and sometimes remember, but forget again) whether it was before or after he was born. However, it was either when my wife, Suzanne, was pregnant with him or shortly after she delivered him to me.
What He said was: "Michael, you need to unclutter your life." I took that to mean that I had to clean up our house and get it ready to house an infant. That was part of it, certainly, but not nearly all. He was telling me to simplify my life and get rid of things and activities that do not serve to speed me toward my goals.
He told me, in another time of greater clarity, to be more like a river than a pool: "Don't hang onto your ideas or your creations. Give them away. Don't hold onto your wealth. Give that away as well. If you try to save your life by hoarding it, you will find that it decays when you are not watching it. If you give it away for My sake, you will find that it lasts forever. This is what is meant by "ever-lasting life."
In the narrative that follows, I refer to "SUDs". This is a therapeutic term that is actually an acronym for "Subjective Units of Distress". While removing clutter from our homes, we participants are asked to record our SUDs every five minutes. That way, we are constantly aware of just how much anxiety we experience while attempting to discard belongings that have outlived their usefulness to us.
When I began attending the Hoarding Disorder treatment class at the VA, I didn't know what to expect. After my first session, I was a bit puzzled. “If my problem arises,” I questioned, “from anxiety associated with getting rid of things, how can raising my SUDs level ameliorate it?” I figured that the way to treat the Disorder must be somehow getting rid of my anxiety, not increasing it.
I am happy to report, having attended for twelve (12) sessions now, that I have turned a corner in my treatment. I understand the premise of the class. It is not simply a matter of reducing anxiety associated with discarding hoarded clutter. It is more a matter of reducing the clutter itself, thereby experiencing the anxiety, and getting used to experiencing it.
By becoming habituated to experiencing—and surviving—that “loss anxiety”, I learn that the anxiety itself is neither crippling nor fatal. I can both survive and function although anxious. What I cannot do is continue to function in a cluttered home.
The clutter in our home both incapacitates me (mentally) and stresses me (emotionally). If I am to grow personally and professionally, I must have an uncluttered home.
Moreover, I have learned that exiting the cycles of rationalization that led to our clutter problems in the first place has forced me to confront some uncomfortable truths. Perhaps the greatest of these is the fact that getting rid of stuff that I never use anyway does not result in a loss of value. Inversely, not getting rid of it results in a loss of value.
I decided to purchase a home for two reasons:
a. to hold onto more of my money's value, rather than pass it on to a landlord;
b. to have a place where I can entertain friends and minister to my community.
As it is, I have neither of those things because my house is occupied by clutter. Instead, I provide housing for junk and never invite anyone over because I am ashamed of the clutter. My home consists of 1,034 square feet of living space. For that, I pay a mortgage payment of $705.01 and a Homeowners' Association fee of $307.00 per month. That's an average cost of about 98 cents per square foot per month. Of those, about 400 square feet are occupied by junk. That means that I am paying an average of $392.00 each and every month to store items that neither I nor any member of my household ever uses! Talk about losing value!
We have lived in this house for just over fourteen (14) years. That is equivalent to 168 months. In that time, we have paid more than $65,856.00 to store junk mail, toys our son has outgrown, books we never read, movies we never watch, kitchen- and table-ware that we never use, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In truth, we easily could have purchased many times the value of the stuff we could toss without ever missing it for that much money.
Moreover, had we just tossed the superfluous stuff, we easily could have held onto jobs that we have lost, attended functions that we missed, and saved untold opportunities to earn more spending power than we have saved by refusing to toss it. Had we saved rather than squandered that value (arguably, we wouldn't have actually saved the money, just its value), we might have even managed to remodel and refurnish our home!
Instead, endlessly bickering about the relative worth of the stuff versus the space it occupies, we are on the verge of getting a divorce and having to replace our one cramped, common home with two even-more-cramped, separate ones. To me, the solution to this dilemma is so obvious it bites. Just get rid of the junk already and we'll each have more room to ourselves! It's a no-brainer! Once we simplify our lives and learn to live within our means, we will be better able to acquire—and keep—jobs that will enable us to purchase, not only a bigger home but whatever furnishings we had to sacrifice in order to attain that self-sufficiency in the first place. Hopefully, in that process, we will discover that we don't really miss the “stuff” after all.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
What Am I, Exactly?
I preached my first public sermon this past Saturday. It was fairly well received, all things considered. As I hit the high points of my message, a number of “Amen”s and similar grunts of affirmation could be heard from the crowd. I say “crowd”, but “small gathering” would probably be closer the mark. There were only a few people in attendance, with several others within shouting distance. I did have to raise my voice a bit, as I was preaching outside, in a park.
A friend of my previous pastor has sometimes preached in parks. I’m not sure about why he and his wife were removed from the church staff. I know they have started a few businesses, mostly of the “pyramid” type. I don’t know whether that had anything to do with it. My wife and I had just started attending a class they were presenting, having to do with leading small groups. The next thing we knew, they were gone—apparently “invited” to leave by his “friend” the pastor. Odd, that.
But I digress.
I had a conversation with a celebrity of sorts recently. He is known to be an atheist, or “areligious”, as he calls it. Someone who knows me from another setting mentioned to me that he (the celebrity, that is) is an “unbeliever” and asked me what I thought of it. I felt a bit odd. The celebrity, whom I am not naming on purpose, has made clear that he considers “religious people” closed-minded and that their ideas of a created universe and intimacy with its Creator are absurdly self-centered. Being from Europe, he finds it ironic that, while many European countries actually have governments that collude with state-sponsored religions, Europeans as a group tend to regard religious belief as personal. This, while Americans, whose Constitution claims to separate church from state, tend to politicize religion and to invite religious debate into the public square. I felt odd because, while I certainly believe that the celebrity shall go to hell unless he acknowledges the sovereignty of God, I simultaneously agree with him about the irony of American religiosity.
As we had been having a spirited conversation about the directions in which technology seems to be heading, the celebrity now scoffed, “Am I to understand that you are one of these Christians?” No, I replied. A Christian is one who imitates Jesus Christ. My behavior is so far from His that I really don’t deserve that designation. “But you are religious,” he pressed. Again, I demurred. I don’t consider myself religious, I replied.
The celebrity confessed to feeling a bit confused. “You believe that Jesus Christ is God, right?” I confessed that I do. “So, you’re a Christian. Christianity is a religion, right?” I disagreed. That depends on how you define religion, I said.
The word “religion” is from Middle French. It means “the act or process of tying back together what has become detached”. “Reconnecting” to one’s “roots”, for example, could be called “religion”. People striving to establish a connection to the Almighty through observation of rituals or other means could be called religion. Even “getting in touch with” one’s “inner child” could be called religion. However, Christianity is not a matter of Man trying to restore his relationship with God. Rather, it is one of God trying to restore His relationship to Man.
Christian faith does not depend on any particular belief system or ritual behavior. Magic is not a part of it. It is purely a matter of accepting that which God has already done to restore His relationship with His creation. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believed on Him would not perish but inherit everlasting life.” Nowhere in that narrative does Man do anything to restore his relationship to God. Man’s role is completely passive, whereas God’s role is completely active.
So, if I’m not a Christian, and I’m not religious, what exactly am I? Good question. When I have a good answer for you, I’ll post it.
Ever since I preached that sermon, I’ve been troubled by an assertive spirit. Or, perhaps I should say “an assertive Spirit”. I am fully aware of Who the Spirit is who won’t leave me alone. He says that, now that I have preached in public, I must maintain a consistent witness so that “my public” will not receive a “mixed message”.
What have I gotten myself into? Before, I readily confessed that I am an asshole. Unwitting and unintentional, but an asshole nonetheless. Now, I have to actively strive to behave above my base tendency. I’ve always believed that doing so would be phony or inauthentic. I’ve always believed that only a hypocrite would pretend to be better than he is. God says it’s not pretending if you’re truly trying to turn over a new leaf.
I have decided that this process of collaborative sanctification will ultimately result in my becoming a Christian. However, I have also decided that even then I will not be religious. After all, my relationship with God is already established in that He has entered my being and has taken up residence in my soul. My Christosis is less a matter of my striving to become more like Christ than it is one of His Spirit striving within me to transform me into His likeness.
A friend of my previous pastor has sometimes preached in parks. I’m not sure about why he and his wife were removed from the church staff. I know they have started a few businesses, mostly of the “pyramid” type. I don’t know whether that had anything to do with it. My wife and I had just started attending a class they were presenting, having to do with leading small groups. The next thing we knew, they were gone—apparently “invited” to leave by his “friend” the pastor. Odd, that.
But I digress.
I had a conversation with a celebrity of sorts recently. He is known to be an atheist, or “areligious”, as he calls it. Someone who knows me from another setting mentioned to me that he (the celebrity, that is) is an “unbeliever” and asked me what I thought of it. I felt a bit odd. The celebrity, whom I am not naming on purpose, has made clear that he considers “religious people” closed-minded and that their ideas of a created universe and intimacy with its Creator are absurdly self-centered. Being from Europe, he finds it ironic that, while many European countries actually have governments that collude with state-sponsored religions, Europeans as a group tend to regard religious belief as personal. This, while Americans, whose Constitution claims to separate church from state, tend to politicize religion and to invite religious debate into the public square. I felt odd because, while I certainly believe that the celebrity shall go to hell unless he acknowledges the sovereignty of God, I simultaneously agree with him about the irony of American religiosity.
As we had been having a spirited conversation about the directions in which technology seems to be heading, the celebrity now scoffed, “Am I to understand that you are one of these Christians?” No, I replied. A Christian is one who imitates Jesus Christ. My behavior is so far from His that I really don’t deserve that designation. “But you are religious,” he pressed. Again, I demurred. I don’t consider myself religious, I replied.
The celebrity confessed to feeling a bit confused. “You believe that Jesus Christ is God, right?” I confessed that I do. “So, you’re a Christian. Christianity is a religion, right?” I disagreed. That depends on how you define religion, I said.
The word “religion” is from Middle French. It means “the act or process of tying back together what has become detached”. “Reconnecting” to one’s “roots”, for example, could be called “religion”. People striving to establish a connection to the Almighty through observation of rituals or other means could be called religion. Even “getting in touch with” one’s “inner child” could be called religion. However, Christianity is not a matter of Man trying to restore his relationship with God. Rather, it is one of God trying to restore His relationship to Man.
Christian faith does not depend on any particular belief system or ritual behavior. Magic is not a part of it. It is purely a matter of accepting that which God has already done to restore His relationship with His creation. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believed on Him would not perish but inherit everlasting life.” Nowhere in that narrative does Man do anything to restore his relationship to God. Man’s role is completely passive, whereas God’s role is completely active.
So, if I’m not a Christian, and I’m not religious, what exactly am I? Good question. When I have a good answer for you, I’ll post it.
Ever since I preached that sermon, I’ve been troubled by an assertive spirit. Or, perhaps I should say “an assertive Spirit”. I am fully aware of Who the Spirit is who won’t leave me alone. He says that, now that I have preached in public, I must maintain a consistent witness so that “my public” will not receive a “mixed message”.
What have I gotten myself into? Before, I readily confessed that I am an asshole. Unwitting and unintentional, but an asshole nonetheless. Now, I have to actively strive to behave above my base tendency. I’ve always believed that doing so would be phony or inauthentic. I’ve always believed that only a hypocrite would pretend to be better than he is. God says it’s not pretending if you’re truly trying to turn over a new leaf.
I have decided that this process of collaborative sanctification will ultimately result in my becoming a Christian. However, I have also decided that even then I will not be religious. After all, my relationship with God is already established in that He has entered my being and has taken up residence in my soul. My Christosis is less a matter of my striving to become more like Christ than it is one of His Spirit striving within me to transform me into His likeness.
Saturday, December 28, 2013
A Disclaimer For Disturbing Disclosures
It has been brought to my attention by a longtime friend (and new reader) that I have made a number of "disturbing" self revelations in my posts on this blog. Reading them over objectively, as though reading someone else's blog, I agree with her evaluation.
I have decided, therefore, to post this disclaimer:
I am not now, nor have I ever been, criminally inclined. Only twice in my life have I knowingly inflicted pain...no, make that three times...on another sentient creature.
Once, I threw a rock at a bird to see if I could hit it. I succeeded, and the poor little thing fell dazed to the ground. A moment later, it woke up, shook its head, and flew away muttering something about never falling asleep on a telephone wire again.
On another occasion, I had a disagreement with a younger neighborhood child and, having nothing persuasive to say, kicked him in the balls. I never saw him again after that. I have prayed without ceasing that I did not thereby end his bloodline.
Finally, I caught and killed a fish once while I was backpacking in the mountains. I was hungry, so I hunted for food. A poor, innocent trout died so that I could live. Sort of like how my poor, innocent Savior died so that I could live. The very thought sickens me.
I am an omnivore, not an herbivore. I eat meat, including fish, several times a month. I am complicit in the deaths of several animals, probably under horrific circumstances, and several people will, no doubt, find that disagreeable. However, buying "meat" or "seafood" in a deli is usually not perceived (or, at least, I don't think it is; being autistic, I never know how I'm being read) as violent behavior.
I do not now own, nor have I ever owned, any firearms. I used them while serving in the military but only under duress. I do not believe in capital punishment, abortion, or warfare. Euthanasia and medically-assisted suicide I'm undecided about, as they are intended to relieve rather than cause suffering.
Many people I know vehemently defend both militarism and gun ownership. These people, in ways which I will never comprehend and with which I will never concur, manage to reconcile Christian faith with their political beliefs. Impossible, I say. Jesus taught us to love our enemies, not to kill them. In that case, why do we need guns, or armies for that matter? We should be rejoicing at terrorism, not decrying it. We should be "counting it all joy" when beset by slavery and other tribulations. The problem with most Americans is that they have NEVER SEEN, let alone experienced, tribulation. Moreover, they seem to think that--if they profess to "believe in" Jesus as the Son of God--they should not HAVE TO experience it. The Tribulation, they say, is for the Reprobate, not the Saved. That is bullshit.
If the Church was never to undergo tribulation, why would she be exhorted to "count it all joy when you are beset by various trials"? What trials, if we are never to undergo tribulation? Of COURSE we are to experience tribulation! It is God's Plan to save the world through us! Faith consists of making yourself available to His purpose, not of cutting a deal to rescue yourself from it! This is our job, for which we will be rewarded with Everlasting Life.
No, it's not "works": we can never do such a good job of loving God or one another that we will actually "deserve" Heaven. Grace is still in operation here. My point is that simply believing that Jesus is the Christ is not sufficient to save you from your sins, nor will any amount of faith save you from The Tribulation. Remember that the Devil and his demons also know who Jesus is...and shudder. You have to love God with all of your being and also love your neighbor--including your enemies--as yourself. That is the true nature of Christian faith. If you're not doing this, you're not a Christian.
So, as I write this, I am screaming at my wife. No, I'm not angry with her. I'm venting. She knows that, God bless her long-suffering heart. She is not screaming back; she knows that I'm mad at the assholes at Sprint and Asurion who have taken my money and keep sending me "refurbished" phones that don't work.
My most recent fantasy was of marching into the Asurion office with a katana and decapitating the CEO. Of course, I would never do that. But I THINK about such things all the time. Think of it as going to see "Rambo" without having to buy a movie ticket. If such fantasies were not mainstream, Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't be the richest man in Hollywood. He is.
I have decided, therefore, to post this disclaimer:
I am not now, nor have I ever been, criminally inclined. Only twice in my life have I knowingly inflicted pain...no, make that three times...on another sentient creature.
Once, I threw a rock at a bird to see if I could hit it. I succeeded, and the poor little thing fell dazed to the ground. A moment later, it woke up, shook its head, and flew away muttering something about never falling asleep on a telephone wire again.
On another occasion, I had a disagreement with a younger neighborhood child and, having nothing persuasive to say, kicked him in the balls. I never saw him again after that. I have prayed without ceasing that I did not thereby end his bloodline.
Finally, I caught and killed a fish once while I was backpacking in the mountains. I was hungry, so I hunted for food. A poor, innocent trout died so that I could live. Sort of like how my poor, innocent Savior died so that I could live. The very thought sickens me.
I am an omnivore, not an herbivore. I eat meat, including fish, several times a month. I am complicit in the deaths of several animals, probably under horrific circumstances, and several people will, no doubt, find that disagreeable. However, buying "meat" or "seafood" in a deli is usually not perceived (or, at least, I don't think it is; being autistic, I never know how I'm being read) as violent behavior.
I do not now own, nor have I ever owned, any firearms. I used them while serving in the military but only under duress. I do not believe in capital punishment, abortion, or warfare. Euthanasia and medically-assisted suicide I'm undecided about, as they are intended to relieve rather than cause suffering.
Many people I know vehemently defend both militarism and gun ownership. These people, in ways which I will never comprehend and with which I will never concur, manage to reconcile Christian faith with their political beliefs. Impossible, I say. Jesus taught us to love our enemies, not to kill them. In that case, why do we need guns, or armies for that matter? We should be rejoicing at terrorism, not decrying it. We should be "counting it all joy" when beset by slavery and other tribulations. The problem with most Americans is that they have NEVER SEEN, let alone experienced, tribulation. Moreover, they seem to think that--if they profess to "believe in" Jesus as the Son of God--they should not HAVE TO experience it. The Tribulation, they say, is for the Reprobate, not the Saved. That is bullshit.
If the Church was never to undergo tribulation, why would she be exhorted to "count it all joy when you are beset by various trials"? What trials, if we are never to undergo tribulation? Of COURSE we are to experience tribulation! It is God's Plan to save the world through us! Faith consists of making yourself available to His purpose, not of cutting a deal to rescue yourself from it! This is our job, for which we will be rewarded with Everlasting Life.
No, it's not "works": we can never do such a good job of loving God or one another that we will actually "deserve" Heaven. Grace is still in operation here. My point is that simply believing that Jesus is the Christ is not sufficient to save you from your sins, nor will any amount of faith save you from The Tribulation. Remember that the Devil and his demons also know who Jesus is...and shudder. You have to love God with all of your being and also love your neighbor--including your enemies--as yourself. That is the true nature of Christian faith. If you're not doing this, you're not a Christian.
So, as I write this, I am screaming at my wife. No, I'm not angry with her. I'm venting. She knows that, God bless her long-suffering heart. She is not screaming back; she knows that I'm mad at the assholes at Sprint and Asurion who have taken my money and keep sending me "refurbished" phones that don't work.
My most recent fantasy was of marching into the Asurion office with a katana and decapitating the CEO. Of course, I would never do that. But I THINK about such things all the time. Think of it as going to see "Rambo" without having to buy a movie ticket. If such fantasies were not mainstream, Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't be the richest man in Hollywood. He is.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
People Are Like Machines, Only More Delicate
One thing I used to tell my computer technology students is:
“Be especially careful when working on the
machines. They are delicate. If you break
them, they will not heal as you can.”
Boy, was that a load. Machines are much tougher than are people, as it turns out. True, our bodies may heal themselves—to a point—when they become damaged. But our souls are brittle to the point of being destroyed by very modest insults indeed.
As I stated in an earlier post, I destroyed my new smart phone the other day. It wasn’t intentional. In fact, I actually thought that I was being very gentle with it. I wasn’t. When an image wouldn’t move in response to my hand motions on the touchscreen, I tried to push it a bit more forcefully. That’s when I discovered why it’s called a “touchscreen”, and not a “pokescreen”. It doesn’t take any pressure. It only takes a touch. The device responds to the galvanic index of your skin. That’s why you can’t operate it with gloves on.
I’m reminded of a woman in my neighborhood who stands on a particular corner of a local street intersection. She presses the button to cross the street. If the light doesn’t change immediately, she presses it again. And again. And again. One time, as I sat in my van waiting for the light to change, I counted as she pressed that button twenty-two times. I wanted to roll down my window and scream at her: “Hey, you stupid bitch! You’re going to wear out the damn switch! Then we’re going to have to pay more taxes to replace it! Just press it once and wait!” I didn’t do that, of course. I just waited. As I waited, I imagined the “WALK” signal changing from a red hand, extended palm outward, to a white hand, extended finger upward, instead of to a white image of a walking person.
But I digress. What God showed me today is that I injure the people around me in much the same way that I injured that phone. I get impatient when they don’t cooperate with me. Then, having said something to them calmly, I repeat it a bit louder. Or I add an expletive or two for emphasis. Before I know it, I’m screaming away, insulting as I go, at the people who matter the most to me in this world. Pathetic. Really.
The worst aspect of this is neither the misbehavior on my part nor the damage it does to the relationships I share with those people. No, as I stated at the top of this post, the worst aspect is the fact that people are often more delicate than machines, not less. The harsh words can cause damage to their souls that no amount of apologizing or psychotherapy can ever heal. Their interfaces will be forever broken and not only will I be unable to relate to them as before but neither will anyone else. They will spend the rest of their lives painfully bruised and unable to relate to other human beings in a healthy way. All of this because of how I spoke to them. Had I slapped them, their cheeks might heal without visible scars. However, slaps leave spiritual scars also that no amount of time will heal.
In his song, Gossip, Gossip, gospel great Jester Hairston wrote: “If you can’t say somet’ing nice, don’t talk a-tall is ma a’vice.” That’s great a’vice…er, advice. The Bible says that man’s tongue is a flame, ignited by the fires of hell. It is humanly impossible to control. For those who have God’s Spirit indwelling them, however, it is divinely possible to control. All it takes is faith. I’ve already promised to be more gentle with my next smartphone. It remains to be seen whether I will keep that promise. A better promise would be to treat my fellow human beings more gently. However, as people often tend to piss me off, it will prove a harder one to keep. It will take faith: trust and obedience.
The Bible also says that Satan comes as an angel of light. He fools the unwary who fail to discern his lies. Sometimes, I open my fat mouth because I think that God put a word in it for another person. Only later do I realize that it wasn’t God at all but the devil. I’m reminded of the good-angel toon and the bad-angel toon on the two shoulders of Eddie Valiant as he sat in a cab in the film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Each is trying to persuade him to follow a certain path. In the end, he brushes them both off and makes up his own mind.
Sometimes, however, God does have a word that He wants me to speak. A Word of Knowledge; a Word of Encouragement; a Word of Admonition—prophecies all. He tells me to be brave and speak when I ought to. He also tells me to be patient and remain silent when I ought to. Often, it’s hard to tell the difference.
Sometimes I fantasize about hurting other people. I imagine myself using my Boy Scout pocket knife to cut their throats, or a machete to decapitate them. I only do this when they have behaved badly toward me or toward someone else about whom I care deeply. To my credit, I have never acted on these temptations. Perhaps where I need to start is with replacing these violent daydreams with intercessory prayers. If I pray for opportunities and other resources to bless others in Jesus’ name, perhaps Our Father will provide them. Then, I’ll be a part of the Solution rather than a part of the Problem. Won’t that be a change!
“Be especially careful when working on the
machines. They are delicate. If you break
them, they will not heal as you can.”
Boy, was that a load. Machines are much tougher than are people, as it turns out. True, our bodies may heal themselves—to a point—when they become damaged. But our souls are brittle to the point of being destroyed by very modest insults indeed.
As I stated in an earlier post, I destroyed my new smart phone the other day. It wasn’t intentional. In fact, I actually thought that I was being very gentle with it. I wasn’t. When an image wouldn’t move in response to my hand motions on the touchscreen, I tried to push it a bit more forcefully. That’s when I discovered why it’s called a “touchscreen”, and not a “pokescreen”. It doesn’t take any pressure. It only takes a touch. The device responds to the galvanic index of your skin. That’s why you can’t operate it with gloves on.
I’m reminded of a woman in my neighborhood who stands on a particular corner of a local street intersection. She presses the button to cross the street. If the light doesn’t change immediately, she presses it again. And again. And again. One time, as I sat in my van waiting for the light to change, I counted as she pressed that button twenty-two times. I wanted to roll down my window and scream at her: “Hey, you stupid bitch! You’re going to wear out the damn switch! Then we’re going to have to pay more taxes to replace it! Just press it once and wait!” I didn’t do that, of course. I just waited. As I waited, I imagined the “WALK” signal changing from a red hand, extended palm outward, to a white hand, extended finger upward, instead of to a white image of a walking person.
But I digress. What God showed me today is that I injure the people around me in much the same way that I injured that phone. I get impatient when they don’t cooperate with me. Then, having said something to them calmly, I repeat it a bit louder. Or I add an expletive or two for emphasis. Before I know it, I’m screaming away, insulting as I go, at the people who matter the most to me in this world. Pathetic. Really.
The worst aspect of this is neither the misbehavior on my part nor the damage it does to the relationships I share with those people. No, as I stated at the top of this post, the worst aspect is the fact that people are often more delicate than machines, not less. The harsh words can cause damage to their souls that no amount of apologizing or psychotherapy can ever heal. Their interfaces will be forever broken and not only will I be unable to relate to them as before but neither will anyone else. They will spend the rest of their lives painfully bruised and unable to relate to other human beings in a healthy way. All of this because of how I spoke to them. Had I slapped them, their cheeks might heal without visible scars. However, slaps leave spiritual scars also that no amount of time will heal.
In his song, Gossip, Gossip, gospel great Jester Hairston wrote: “If you can’t say somet’ing nice, don’t talk a-tall is ma a’vice.” That’s great a’vice…er, advice. The Bible says that man’s tongue is a flame, ignited by the fires of hell. It is humanly impossible to control. For those who have God’s Spirit indwelling them, however, it is divinely possible to control. All it takes is faith. I’ve already promised to be more gentle with my next smartphone. It remains to be seen whether I will keep that promise. A better promise would be to treat my fellow human beings more gently. However, as people often tend to piss me off, it will prove a harder one to keep. It will take faith: trust and obedience.
The Bible also says that Satan comes as an angel of light. He fools the unwary who fail to discern his lies. Sometimes, I open my fat mouth because I think that God put a word in it for another person. Only later do I realize that it wasn’t God at all but the devil. I’m reminded of the good-angel toon and the bad-angel toon on the two shoulders of Eddie Valiant as he sat in a cab in the film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Each is trying to persuade him to follow a certain path. In the end, he brushes them both off and makes up his own mind.
Sometimes, however, God does have a word that He wants me to speak. A Word of Knowledge; a Word of Encouragement; a Word of Admonition—prophecies all. He tells me to be brave and speak when I ought to. He also tells me to be patient and remain silent when I ought to. Often, it’s hard to tell the difference.
Sometimes I fantasize about hurting other people. I imagine myself using my Boy Scout pocket knife to cut their throats, or a machete to decapitate them. I only do this when they have behaved badly toward me or toward someone else about whom I care deeply. To my credit, I have never acted on these temptations. Perhaps where I need to start is with replacing these violent daydreams with intercessory prayers. If I pray for opportunities and other resources to bless others in Jesus’ name, perhaps Our Father will provide them. Then, I’ll be a part of the Solution rather than a part of the Problem. Won’t that be a change!
A “New” Form of Idolatry
God has just impressed upon me—in a most painful way, I might add—the fact that I am an idolater. No, it’s not my van. My wife claims that my minivan is a god to me but it isn’t. It’s a valued servant, nothing more. It was…my smart phone. It is…my computer. Actually, they’re the same thing.
I think it was Karl Barth who defined a god as “that to which a man clings for salvation when he perceives that all is lost”. My phone—my palmtop computer—was my alarm clock, my calendar, my confidant, my entertainer, my informant, my…the list goes on. I used that device for everything from finding my way around town to staying in touch with friends, family and coworkers. I relied on it for practically every detail of my daily life. That was the problem.
I say “it was my smart phone” because today my electronic god died. It took a lot of head scratching and soul searching to find out how this terrible thing happened but figure it out I did. I killed it. It was not responding to my fingertip commands—my prayers, as it were—and, poking it a bit too hard, I cracked the screen. When I tried to turn it back on, after having a medical procedure, all I got were a series of broken, multicolored lines. No pictures, no videos, no icons. My alarm clock, calendar, map, telephone and teletype is dead. To use my wife’s terminology, “it’s a paper weight”. Oh, fuck.
The phone didn’t know that it was dead. It kept on beeping, and ringing, and whistling. It kept on vibrating every time a call, a message, an email, or a Facebook post came in. The alarm kept going off on schedule but I couldn’t turn it off. I couldn’t snooze it. I couldn’t answer it or read its output because the interface—what enables it to talk to me and I to it—is broken. It’s kind of how my relationship with the Real God was before I was saved. I was on earth and He was in Heaven. I ached and I longed and I craved. He may have been aware of my aches, longings and cravings, but He never said so. I never told Him or asked whether He heard me. That’s because our interface was broken and we therefore had no relationship. Then, one day I asked Him to reveal Himself to me. I promised to always seek the truth and to always do what I knew to be right. Soon, He revealed Himself and His will. I haven’t exactly kept my word but He has always kept His. I have had a reliable interface with Him ever since.
It was only when my phone broke that I realized that I had been using it as a substitute for God. Whenever I wondered about something, I would ask my phone. If I was lost, I would ask my phone where I was and where I should go to get unlost. If I wanted to contact someone or help someone or ask someone for help, I would reach for my phone. All of these things I used to pray to God for. That all stopped when I got my smart phone.
At first, my phone was like my van: a loyal and reliable servant. I still took my marching orders from God and got up each day intent on doing His will. I used my phone but I didn’t rely on it. Gradually, I began to rely on my phone. I stopped making paper shopping lists and started making them on S Memo. I stopped using my computer and used my phone to surf the Internet. I stopped talking to my wife and started sending her text messages instead. She hated that. I stopped marking my wall calendar and started using my phone for planning and scheduling.
When my little household god died, my first thought was “can I preserve my text messages?”. If I can’t recover the data stored on the phone, I thought, I’m screwed. All of the conversations that I’ve had with so many other people, all of the statements and promises that I want to hold them to, are gone. No record. Phht! Swept away like a fart in the wind. I always preferred them to telephone conversations because, a day or two after they took place, a permanent record still remained. If someone said, “I didn’t say that; I said this,” I could point to the text on my phone and say, “No, you said this,”. Now, they can claim to have said whatever they want. I have no evidence upon which to convict them.
The good news is that I can get a new phone and I won’t have to pay full price for it. It was insured. The bad news is that the insurance cost $11 per month and the deductible is $150. That means my new phone—the replacement one, that is—will cost $264 + $150, in addition to the $100 that I originally paid for the first one. The full price was $600; the actual cost is $514. Not much of a savings after all. Even if I cancel the insurance after I get the new phone, it will wind up costing me $250 + $(11 5) = $305. Of course, if I do that, I’ll have to pay the whole $600 the next time I kill my phone.
I had planned to go out to dinner…a Porterhouse steak dinner…to reward myself for surviving my second colonoscopy. I had also planned to buy a new computer—maybe two computers—for Christmas. That way, Suzanne and I would each have his or her own computer for the various things we use computers for. I could keep the desktop unit for writing and such, and back up my data offsite. Not now. Now I have to spend the steak dinner money and the new computer money on a new smart phone instead.
This time, I’m going to do things differently. I’ll back up everything I do on the phone. I’ll be more gentle with the interface, and touch rather than tap the screen. Mainly, I’ll pray a lot more to the Real God and a bit less to the fake one. In other words, I’ll use my phone but I won’t rely on it.
I think it was Karl Barth who defined a god as “that to which a man clings for salvation when he perceives that all is lost”. My phone—my palmtop computer—was my alarm clock, my calendar, my confidant, my entertainer, my informant, my…the list goes on. I used that device for everything from finding my way around town to staying in touch with friends, family and coworkers. I relied on it for practically every detail of my daily life. That was the problem.
I say “it was my smart phone” because today my electronic god died. It took a lot of head scratching and soul searching to find out how this terrible thing happened but figure it out I did. I killed it. It was not responding to my fingertip commands—my prayers, as it were—and, poking it a bit too hard, I cracked the screen. When I tried to turn it back on, after having a medical procedure, all I got were a series of broken, multicolored lines. No pictures, no videos, no icons. My alarm clock, calendar, map, telephone and teletype is dead. To use my wife’s terminology, “it’s a paper weight”. Oh, fuck.
The phone didn’t know that it was dead. It kept on beeping, and ringing, and whistling. It kept on vibrating every time a call, a message, an email, or a Facebook post came in. The alarm kept going off on schedule but I couldn’t turn it off. I couldn’t snooze it. I couldn’t answer it or read its output because the interface—what enables it to talk to me and I to it—is broken. It’s kind of how my relationship with the Real God was before I was saved. I was on earth and He was in Heaven. I ached and I longed and I craved. He may have been aware of my aches, longings and cravings, but He never said so. I never told Him or asked whether He heard me. That’s because our interface was broken and we therefore had no relationship. Then, one day I asked Him to reveal Himself to me. I promised to always seek the truth and to always do what I knew to be right. Soon, He revealed Himself and His will. I haven’t exactly kept my word but He has always kept His. I have had a reliable interface with Him ever since.
It was only when my phone broke that I realized that I had been using it as a substitute for God. Whenever I wondered about something, I would ask my phone. If I was lost, I would ask my phone where I was and where I should go to get unlost. If I wanted to contact someone or help someone or ask someone for help, I would reach for my phone. All of these things I used to pray to God for. That all stopped when I got my smart phone.
At first, my phone was like my van: a loyal and reliable servant. I still took my marching orders from God and got up each day intent on doing His will. I used my phone but I didn’t rely on it. Gradually, I began to rely on my phone. I stopped making paper shopping lists and started making them on S Memo. I stopped using my computer and used my phone to surf the Internet. I stopped talking to my wife and started sending her text messages instead. She hated that. I stopped marking my wall calendar and started using my phone for planning and scheduling.
When my little household god died, my first thought was “can I preserve my text messages?”. If I can’t recover the data stored on the phone, I thought, I’m screwed. All of the conversations that I’ve had with so many other people, all of the statements and promises that I want to hold them to, are gone. No record. Phht! Swept away like a fart in the wind. I always preferred them to telephone conversations because, a day or two after they took place, a permanent record still remained. If someone said, “I didn’t say that; I said this,” I could point to the text on my phone and say, “No, you said this,”. Now, they can claim to have said whatever they want. I have no evidence upon which to convict them.
The good news is that I can get a new phone and I won’t have to pay full price for it. It was insured. The bad news is that the insurance cost $11 per month and the deductible is $150. That means my new phone—the replacement one, that is—will cost $264 + $150, in addition to the $100 that I originally paid for the first one. The full price was $600; the actual cost is $514. Not much of a savings after all. Even if I cancel the insurance after I get the new phone, it will wind up costing me $250 + $(11 5) = $305. Of course, if I do that, I’ll have to pay the whole $600 the next time I kill my phone.
I had planned to go out to dinner…a Porterhouse steak dinner…to reward myself for surviving my second colonoscopy. I had also planned to buy a new computer—maybe two computers—for Christmas. That way, Suzanne and I would each have his or her own computer for the various things we use computers for. I could keep the desktop unit for writing and such, and back up my data offsite. Not now. Now I have to spend the steak dinner money and the new computer money on a new smart phone instead.
This time, I’m going to do things differently. I’ll back up everything I do on the phone. I’ll be more gentle with the interface, and touch rather than tap the screen. Mainly, I’ll pray a lot more to the Real God and a bit less to the fake one. In other words, I’ll use my phone but I won’t rely on it.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Baby Steps Get You Nowhere Fast
Can you believe that I actually ARGUED with the Holy Spirit? Playing back the conversation in my mind, I sounded exactly like a cranky kid whose mom is telling him to clean up his mess, do his homework, get out of bed, etc., etc., etc.. The conversation went something like this:
HS: Go take a drink of water. You're dehydrated.
Me: I will! Just not now!
HS: It's only going to get worse until you take a drink. Why are you being so stubborn?
Me: I'm still sleeping! I don't want to be fully awake yet! Leave me alone!
HS: Don't go there, Michael. I'll NEVER leave you alone.
HS: (Some time later, after I've risen for the umpteenth time to go number one) NOW will you get a drink?
Me: I'm going! See? I'm walking to the kitchen now!
HS: (After I've taken the water bottle out of the fridge and taken a few sips, then put it back) No, drink it all. Or, if you prefer, take it back to bed with you. But fill it up first.
Me: Not now, okay? I will! I'll do it in a hour! I want to go back to sleep!
HS: (After I've gone back to bed and begun to have leg cramps) That's because you didn't drink enough soon enough. If you'd done as I told you, you wouldn't be having cramps now.
Me: I know.
HS: Don't start swearing...you brought this on yourself.
Me: (Swearing) I know! (Then, getting up again,) See? I'm getting up! See? I'm bringing the water bottle back to bed with me!
HS: Fill it up first.
Me: Not now!
It went on like this for another half-hour, at the end of which I was fully awake and decided to write this blog.
This is pretty much, in a nutshell, the story of my life--since I met God. Before that, it was even worse because I had no one to tell me what to do. Well, there was my mother, but...when I was grown, I mean.
Any time I start to kvetch about how slowly I'm evolving or how little I've accomplished with my life, I need to go back and read this. I need to be reminded that God is doing HIS part...it's MY part that isn't getting done on time.
I've spent my entire faithwalk taking Baby Steps. Baby steps and baby talk. And baby backtalk. I need to get my [stuff] together and change my diaper. Then I need to start following Him a bit more readily. Only when I do that will my life finally begin to evolve.
HS: Go take a drink of water. You're dehydrated.
Me: I will! Just not now!
HS: It's only going to get worse until you take a drink. Why are you being so stubborn?
Me: I'm still sleeping! I don't want to be fully awake yet! Leave me alone!
HS: Don't go there, Michael. I'll NEVER leave you alone.
HS: (Some time later, after I've risen for the umpteenth time to go number one) NOW will you get a drink?
Me: I'm going! See? I'm walking to the kitchen now!
HS: (After I've taken the water bottle out of the fridge and taken a few sips, then put it back) No, drink it all. Or, if you prefer, take it back to bed with you. But fill it up first.
Me: Not now, okay? I will! I'll do it in a hour! I want to go back to sleep!
HS: (After I've gone back to bed and begun to have leg cramps) That's because you didn't drink enough soon enough. If you'd done as I told you, you wouldn't be having cramps now.
Me: I know.
HS: Don't start swearing...you brought this on yourself.
Me: (Swearing) I know! (Then, getting up again,) See? I'm getting up! See? I'm bringing the water bottle back to bed with me!
HS: Fill it up first.
Me: Not now!
It went on like this for another half-hour, at the end of which I was fully awake and decided to write this blog.
This is pretty much, in a nutshell, the story of my life--since I met God. Before that, it was even worse because I had no one to tell me what to do. Well, there was my mother, but...when I was grown, I mean.
Any time I start to kvetch about how slowly I'm evolving or how little I've accomplished with my life, I need to go back and read this. I need to be reminded that God is doing HIS part...it's MY part that isn't getting done on time.
I've spent my entire faithwalk taking Baby Steps. Baby steps and baby talk. And baby backtalk. I need to get my [stuff] together and change my diaper. Then I need to start following Him a bit more readily. Only when I do that will my life finally begin to evolve.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
I'm Just Me--Unique and Wonderful Me
A little update on what's been going on with me:
1. I still haven't found a job;
2. I missed my opportunity to get the classes I needed to get into the Rad Tech program at Mesa College;
3. I'm scheduled to take the PTCE on September 25th.
Instead of studying for the PTCE, I've been reading a book that has had my head spinning, my heart pounding, and my blood boiling. It is about IQ tests: how they came about, why they came about, and what they historically have been used for. As I currently understand it, I have no IQ. No one has an IQ. IQ is a failed construct that should have been discarded along with the categories of feeblemindedness that it once engendered: idiocy, imbecility and moronism.
Now my thinking has taken a new turn. What if Hans Asperger's ideas concerning autism are as flawed as are Francis Galton's concerning intelligence? If that is so, then I am not autistic, and neither is anyone else. What has been called "autism" is merely an arbitrarily selected portion of a universe of human diversity. Galton and his many philosophical descendents are essentially eugenicists. They believe that some human attributes are "better" than are others. For example, it is better to be white than black; it is better to be tall than short; it is better to speak English than to speak some other language. People who know how to live in a wealthy enclave of an anglophone country are apt to be judged more intelligent than are those who grew up in a poor, agrarian, non-English-speaking backwater. Even though Asperger never wrote that poor children were more likely to be diagnosed autistic than were wealthy ones, the same psychologists who applied Alfred Binet's and David Wechsler's ideas--without their reservations--have served to identify, and to describe, those on the so-called Autism Spectrum in this country. Since our penchant has been to identify and weed out undesirables, and since our ethnocentric perspective has tended to identify as undesirable those who least resemble us, it stands to reason that those attributes least contributing to a mainstream identity are most apt to be labeled "disorders".
It is undeniable that my natural bent is toward big-picture thinking and excelling in tasks of a technically- rather than a socially-demanding nature. Does that mean that I am “autistic”? Not necessarily. The lines are drawn somewhat arbitrarily between alleged “disorders”. What can be said with relative certainty is that each person is unique and so comprises a unique set of attributes. Some of those attributes will prove advantageous in adapting to certain environments (be they social or physical) and some won’t. The fact that certain of my attributes make social adaptation difficult as opposed to easier does not mean that I am “sick” or “malformed”. It simply means that I am presented with certain challenges in life that certain other people aren’t. Chances are that they are presented with certain life challenges that I am not.
God has promised that we will never be “tempted” beyond what we can endure:
“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”
(1 Corinthians 10:13 NIV)
He has not, however, promised that we will not be challenged by circumstances beyond what we can bear. That is simply a part of life.
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