He probably wasn’t violent or dangerous, but I was cautious nonetheless. I always feel conflicted about these types of situations. Christ tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves and that he is the “least of these”. Where do you draw the line between being faithful and cautious. It’s not like homeless and/or poor people suddenly became dangerous in the past century. I’m sure there were some who were dangerous in Christ’s day. I’m pretty sure we did the right thing and we’ve subsequently prayed for the guy, but is that all just rationalization to make ourselves feel better about turning him away?

I could go on and on about this, but I think the point is out there. How and where do you draw the line between compassion and caution?

Caveats

• - You have to put the cursor in one item and then hit the ‘Update DVD Queue’ button for the shuffle to be finalized.
• - After shuffling, make sure that any TV shows or movies that are in a series are in the order you’d like them to be.

UPDATE [4/18/10 12:57 pm PST]: Updated the shuffler so it automatically updates your queue after the shuffle.

In the end it was a big event, but not necessarily historical – in the sense that it would be written about in history books. There have been several events like this one where I felt the need to be part of them because they would ‘make history’. Thankfully, I’m older and wiser now and the lure of making history doesn’t motivate my participation in events any longer.

As I have been listening to the back and forth banter regarding the healthcare legislation that is trying to move through Congress, I can’t help but be reminded of my former motivation.  If you listen to Ms. Pelosi speak on the topic, nearly every time she’ll mention that they’re going to make history with this bill – in fact nearly everybody that favors the bill will mention it. While it’s true that this bill will make history, not passing the bill would also be a historical event. In fact they could do they hokey-pokey and it would be historical.

The problem with this motivation is that it causes people to skirt their responsibility in favor of delusions of grander.  Just like I skipped out on my responsibilities in pep-band to be part of something that ended up being big deal for the 2 days following. The Congress by pushing, what pretty much everybody accepts as, a bad bill in order to make history is also skipping out on their responsibilities.  Responsible healthcare reform is a great idea, but the way they’re going after it in order to make history has dropped the responsible from the equation.

If they were going after healthcare reform to actually make things better rather than as a way of showing they’ve made history, then they’d be willing to slow down and focus on what is being done.  Back room deals and strange procedural hacks are not the sign of someone trying to be responsible, they’re the sign of someone desperate to make something happen no matter the consequences.  They need to drop the goal of making history and focus on making changes that everybody accepts will help.

(On a side note, do boycotts even work anymore? Especially when done by mostly progressives against a conservative talk show host they probably didn’t patronize in the first place? But that’s neither here nor there.)

The argument by these Christian leaders is that Jesus preached social justice and as such all Christians should support social justice.  I think this is a misstatement.  Jesus didn’t preach social justice, he preached justice and believe it or not there is a difference.  Social justice as a concept has only existed for about 150 years. When Jesus was teaching he was always pushing people to do what they should.  If he had been pushing only (or primarily) social justice he would have rejected that Jews give to the Romans because after all the Romans were occupying the Jews and were rather unjust about it. He would have agreed with the disciples that argued that Mary shouldn’t anoint him with expensive perfume and instead sell it and give the proceeds to the poor.  Justice seeks what’s right in spite of political persuasion or personal bias.  Social justice is focused on social equality and as such focuses on what is right in terms of achieving social equality. For example, social justice tells us that it is appropriate to tax rich people at a higher rate because they have more, while justice questions whether or not it’s appropriate to force that type of taxation upon someone.  Should rich people give more as a result of having more, sure they should – but should they be forced to is the question.  Jesus criticized rich people for giving out of their wealth, but never said they should be taxed more.

As Christians we should be looking to increase social justice in our world, but there are many churches where the term social justice is actually a front for a political persuasion and not a theological statement. This is where Beck makes a good point.  As Christians we should be aware of the beliefs of our churches and we should question them.  We should ask what our churches mean when they discuss social justice among other things and if we find those answers to be lacking, then leaving – in a quiet peaceful manner – is appropriate.  Beck misses the nuance – surprise – that needs to be made when thinking about topics of social justice, but for many – though not most – churches the statements he made were correct.

After all this, the point is that as Christians we should be pursuing justice, whether it be of the social variety or not.  There is massive overreaction on both sides – again, surprise – and as Christians we need to sort through the fray and ask whether we are pursuing justice or a political persuasion.

Recently I’ve been thinking about the development of the church in terms of open source.  Initially the two seem to be polar opposites, church and software development, but the more I’ve thought about it the more it makes sense.

The development cycle for many pieces of OSS is that they start as closed source software, which is to say that a company starts working on the project behind closed doors. Either the software doesn’t take off or only a small niche of people takes a shine to it, so the company stops development of the software.  At that point, if the company really believes in the software, but can’t financially rationalize maintaining the project or if the small niche that grew up around it starts making a fuss and asking for the company to release the software – then the company releases the software as open source.  Now the community can rally around it and make it into everything they want it to be.  Admittedly there are many projects that start as open source or they start closed source and the company opens it up because they see it as a good business model. Also admittedly not all OSS projects take off – in fact most don’t. But the lucky few that develop a strong community around them grow exponentially and have unlimited possibilities for what they can become.

What does this have to do with the church? If you look at the history of the church starting at the ascension of Christ as a concept then the picture starts to develop. If we consider the teachings of Christ and all the Hebrew scriptures to be a piece of closed source software, when Christ ascended the project was no longer closed source, now the project was in the hands of unprofessional, untrained people.  A caveat that needs to be fleshed out now is that the Holy Spirit is always at work, so even with the concept of open source and community based development I am acknowledging that God is still at work in the process, which actually works with the OSS model. Back to the church, now that Christ has physically left the earth, the church is now responsible for figuring out what it is supposed to be and how it’s supposed to work.  They start as a small group of 11 and grow exponentially within the first few months.  This brings on new problems that need to be taken care of and figured out, except this time there are more people to help figure it out.  Then God throws them a curve ball and starts bringing in Samaritans and Gentiles – what are they to do with this?  The leaders get together and figure out a way to understand it and make it work – they make a ‘patch’ to use a software development term.

Now the church is moving between lots of different places, with different languages and customs, so it starts to get localized and the bigger it gets the more disagreements start to arise and thus the project starts to fork, but still it’s community-based development. Every now and then someone comes along and tries to close source the project and take control of how it develops, but those attempts rarely succeed.  The Roman Catholic Church is the best example of this, for centuries they had the western church closed off from community based development, but then this pesky German showed up and ruined all their fun.

There is no need to go into a full history of the church, largely because that would be really boring but also because the patterns are pretty visible – at least from my vantage point.

One of the things that make OSS so great is its ability to adjust at a moments notice.  One of the most well known projects is the web browser Firefox. Every now and then a major security flaw is discovered in the browser.  In a matter of days – not weeks or months – the community can have a patch coded, tested and distributed to the entire community.  If you look at a similar closed source project, like Internet Explorer (IE), it can takes weeks and often times months to get a patch out.  The reason for this is because a company like Microsoft, which makes IE, has so many levels of bureaucracy to get through and other goals that need to be achieved that they are not able to stop and focus on a single problem.  With a community-based project, like Firefox, portions of the community will automatically stop and focus development to that problem and because they are focused on the problem immediately a patch is created sooner while at the same time maintain the forward motion of the project.

Similarly when the church is community based it is able to adjust to new and different problems quickly, but when an overbearing leadership is in place it can take centuries to fix. If we look at the issue of Arianism, when the community came together to make a decision on it a solution came rather quickly – albeit around 70 years, but for the church that’s pretty quick. In contrast the overbearing leadership, both papal and imperial (of the Holy Roman Empire), of the early Middle Ages were responsible for the travesty known as the crusades.  All of this isn’t to say that community based development is always good and centralized leadership is always bad.  There have been many community-based developments that have turned out horrible as well as strong leaders that have turned out to be positive.  But by and large the church has been better when the community has had a large say in its beliefs and direction. And ultimately the church or an OSS project is at its best when there is a centralized leadership that can focus things while allowing the community to push forward the agenda.

The question for us today is whether or not the church community is open enough to its own development or if we’ve given in the wills and wants of a leadership that isn’t as good as it could be with our input.  I fear that in much of the western church and especially in the evangelical wing that we’ve given up on the communal based nature of church. We’ve instead decided that a few highly visible people are all we need.  I wonder about this as people discuss who the next Billy Graham will be without ever asking the more important question of whether we need another Billy Graham.  Billy was and is great, but times have changed and the era of the stadium evangelical meeting has gone.  What happens when all our churches become ‘purpose driven’ and we’ve all found our ‘best life now’? Do we continue to push ahead as the reforming reformed or do we become drones to whatever teacher we’re told we need to listen to? These questions are important if the church is at its best with a vocal community pushing and pulling – looking at our source code for bugs. Again all of this isn’t to say that Joel Osteen or Rick Warren are bad people, but instead to say that I believe the church is better with a vocal community that can make Joel and Rick better as much as they try to help us become better.

Who defines the church? We all do. The question is whether or not we’re willing to do the work to make it better. Are you?

We sat on one couch in our living room while Stephanie (our social worker from Antioch) sat on the other one.  She opened up her computer and explained what was going to happen – in a very basic way – then she asked her first question: when did you become a Christian.  This was sort of a relief for me since I’ve been answering that question on applications for the better part of the last decade.  Jen explained her path to the Lord and I explained mine – with an excursion into the rat nest that is faith in my family with all the gory details of conversions from Roman Catholic to Protestant, people being disowned, removal from wills, youth pastor defections and church splits. My story took a little while to get through, but we managed.  With that done we went into what we would expect of our child in respect to faith and how we could foster a desire for Christian faith in the child.  Then there was the question about how we met and got engaged as well as the questions about dispute resolution and decision making.  These were all pretty simple, especially since we answered all of them on our homework that we submitted a few months back.Then came the question I had been dreading — have you ever had a problem with pornography?  Ugh!  I don’t like talking about my struggles in this area.  I’ll openly admit to it, but I’d rather not talk about it – heck I’d rather not think about it.  So we discussed it for the better part of a half an hour.  As much as I don’t like to discuss it, I understand why we had to and why it’s important for them to know about it.  Thankfully I’ve been through Celebrate Recovery and I’m doing well in this area, so it wasn’t as stressful as it could have been.

Once we got through the tough stuff we got on to the easier stuff ‘shopping’ for a kid.  I’m just kidding about the shopping part, but it sort of felt like that.  We had to list out what qualities we wanted and didn’t want in a child, actually she had a list and we had to decide whether it was preferred, acceptable, we’d consider it or it is not acceptable.  We’ve talked about this quite a bit over the past months so this went pretty quick.  It feels weird saying that you wouldn’t take a child because they have a particular malady, but it is important to be true to ourselves so that’s exactly what we did. I’m kind of glad that part is over simply because I don’t like to think about rejecting kids and now that it’s over we can just wait for them to present a kid that fits our criteria – which is pretty broad if you ask me. Once we got done ‘shopping’ we discussed the house and our situation here.  Then we did the house tour, which was the most painless thing ever – except for Jen having to show rooms that haven’t been cleaned, it totally freaked her out, but she handled it well.  After that, it was a little bit of scheduling and we were done.

All in all it wasn’t too bad.  There was the period in the middle talking about my stuff that really bummed me out, but that’s okay.  I need to get a couple more things to verify that I’ve been through CR and am doing better now, but it’s no big deal.  The next one could be harder as we’re split up and spend a while being interviewed separately – so who knows what will come up then. That will happen on June 11.  Until then, have a nice day.

]]> http://cteens.org/2009/05/30/home-study-part-i/feed/ 0 http://cteens.org/2009/04/22/in-praise-of-honest-questions/ http://cteens.org/2009/04/22/in-praise-of-honest-questions/#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:15:00 +0000 Sean http://cteens.org/wp/?p=35 No doubt you’ve heard about the kerfuffle surrounding Miss California in the Miss USA pageant on April 18.  If you haven’t then you are truly a blessed person and I’m going to introduce you to it – and thus remove your blessing I guess. Basically in the Q&A section she was asked whether she thought states should allow homosexual marriage.  She answered honestly and happened to say that she did not believe in homosexual marriage. She ended up as the runner-up – many people say she would have won has she answered the question oppositely. I really don’t care about her answer, which I thought was oddly phrased and not well thought out, but hey she was nervous and probably expecting a question about world peace or something. My problem is with the questioner, a well known tabloid personality, who happens to be very pro-homosexual marriage.  He asked the question thinking that he would get a particular answer based upon his bias and he didn’t get that answer.  Ever since he has ravaged this young lady at every opportunity, because she did not answer the way he would have liked.

There seems to be a prevailing thought in our culture that when you ask a question you deserve the answer you expect or want or at least a bland politically correct answer.  The idea that anyone would have an opinion other than ours is patently absurd. We proclaim the freedom of speech, but ravage people for not using that freedom to defend what we believe.  This is stupid. To be honest, I can’t stand it when people answer opinion questions in ways that I disagree with, but this is life – the way things should be.  Disagreement, cognitive dissonance, misalignment of opinion is what makes innovation and freedom possible. Asking questions and looking for unconventional answers is what provided the concept of the freedom of speech in the first place. In a society where all people think the same will not be unity but slavery to ideas.  It’s like in 1984 where all the people are told what to believe via their view screens, this is not utopia precisely because nobody is allowed to think.

When we have reached the point where questions are asked not to be answered honestly, but instead to make a political point we have lost some of our humanity.  There is an old journalism truism that says ‘don’t ask a question if you’re not ready for the answer’.  We need to embrace this ethic once again.  Our society will not progress if we’re heading toward a unity of ideas.  It is precisely the cognitive dissonance that occurs when questions are answered differently than we expect that provides us with the ability to move forward and find new, exciting ideas. So yes, Miss California should be praised for answering honestly, but the questioner should be ashamed of himself for asking a question and not wanting an answer but rather a political statement.

]]> http://cteens.org/2009/04/22/in-praise-of-honest-questions/feed/ 0 http://cteens.org/2009/04/08/marching-bands-and-parades/ http://cteens.org/2009/04/08/marching-bands-and-parades/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:43:56 +0000 Sean http://cteens.org/wp/?p=30 Who does not like a parade?  If you had asked me a couple days ago I’d say a lot of people.  In fact I was of the opinion that parades had gone out of style.  They just don’t seem like something that people are really into anymore.  I mean we have Twitter and text messages, movies and TV and a thousand other things that seem much more interesting that waiting on the side of the road to see endless numbers of floats, marching bands and who-knows-why dignitaries from who-knows-where.  Mark me as surprised on Saturday when I went to photograph the local Daffodil Festival parades and there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people along the parade routes to watch them.  I’m sure that, as an outsider, I don’t fully appreciate how big of a deal the Daffodil Festival is in this area.  Still, there were a lot of people out there at 10 a.m. on a Saturday to watch a parade.  The second parade was even more well attended – I had trouble finding a place to stand where I could take decent photos of the event. I don’t know why so many people like parades – they’re not my cup of tea and maybe that’s the point.  My own bias against parades prevents me from truly understanding why people enjoy them so very much.

The thing I noticed most during the parade was the marching bands.  Those who know me will not find that surprising.  In high school I was intensely invested in marching band.  I loved marching band – and we had a very good one, which is perhaps why I liked it so much. We were good and by and large our band took great pride in looking and being the best we could be.  The thing about the bands on Saturday that I noticed was how crappy most of them looked.  Sure there were a few that had obviously practiced and knew what they were doing, but there were so many of them that just looked sloppy.  I know that band uniforms are expensive and maybe unduly so, but is it so hard to have your band dress the same.  How hard is it to get the whole band to wear a particular color polo shirt and black slacks, shoes AND socks. We had this one kid in my high school band – Kenny – who somehow never figured out that he needed to wear black socks (and not the white ones he would always bring) with our black pants and shoes.  Nonetheless, just this one thing – dressing the same – would have improved the look of the bands by a factor of ten. The other thing was just how bad they actually played their music.  I have never been a master musician – like most things in my life my musical ability excels in the realm of theory – but I always did my best to sound good or at least not bad. Do these bands not practice at all? At this point it would be pretty easy to get into a discussion about arts funding at schools – which is at far lower levels in most school districts than it should be – but that’s not the point of this particular post. This is more about self-respect. Whenever I know that I’m presenting myself in public, be it an announcement at church, a full on sermon or addressing my co-workers about some tech thing in the office – I always try to make sure I look and sound my best.  Partially this is because I don’t want to make a complete butt of myself, but its also about presenting things in a way that they are appreciated and welcomed.  I just got the feeling on Saturday that a lot of these kids didn’t care about what anybody thought of themselves or their bands.  It was sad for me.  But, like I said there were a few bands that had it together and that brought me great joy.

The other thing I noticed – and this is completely shallow – is that a lot of these kids looked like dorks – for lack of a better word.  I know there is the stereotype of the band geek, and heaven knows I was one of them.  It seemed like well over 50% of the kids in several of these bands were the anti-social, live in my parents basement playing D&D types.  It just seemed strange to me because when I was in band I felt like there was a good percentage of our band that was part of the social fabric of our school.  Several of us had received varsity letters in sports.  We had the valedictorian in the band and I believe we even had some student council members.  Sure there were a few people in the band who were ‘socially awkward’, but by and large we were a pretty well adjusted group. Maybe there is something different up here in Washington that we didn’t have in Maine.  I don’t know, it just seemed odd to me. And perhaps my high school band that I keep comparing everything to was the odd one and these bands were the normal ones.  Who knows.  I do know that the most important thing to come out of my day at the parades was the warmth of cherished memories of high school and some great friends from band.

]]> http://cteens.org/2009/04/08/marching-bands-and-parades/feed/ 0 http://cteens.org/2009/04/05/the-process-continues/ http://cteens.org/2009/04/05/the-process-continues/#comments Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:15:24 +0000 Sean http://cteens.org/wp/?p=20 It’s been a long time since anything has been written about the adoption, so in this post I’ll try to update you with everything that has happened since I last wrote about it.

The PRIDE weekend was good.  I went in feeling a little nervous about what kind of people would be in the group.  Fortunately my worries were unwarrented. The people in our class were some of the nicest people – all of whom cared greatly for children and really wanted to be parents.  We covered a lot of stuff over the course of the weekend. I could barely start to tell you everything that was covered, all I can tell you is that there was a lot of scarey stuff that, oddly enough, made me want to adopt a child out of the foster system even more.  I can’t believe some of the stuff these kids come out of — and worse yet that the parents actually think it’s acceptable or worse yet the parents have no idea what’s happening because they’re too drunk or high or delusional to even realize.  The part of me that feels compelled to rescue people is so strongly activated that I actually ache for the kinds in the foster system. Anyway… the weekend was good and left Jen and me much more dedicated to adopting.

After the PRIDE weekend we had several weeks of classes – generally it was two classes a week, but on a couple of weeks we only had one.  These classes covered many of the same things we had covered on the retreat, but they were much more in-depth.  The nice thing about the classes was that we got to know our fellow classmates better – though, Jen obviously got to know them better than I did – we also were given the chance to think more in-depth about particular topics regarding adoption.  Jen had thought about a lot of these issues prior to starting the classes because she had read several books about adoption and I had not.  Nonetheless, we had some great conversations on the way home discussing the issues – the only good thing about the 90 minute drive home.

After we finished the class we went home to do homework, which we had actually received during the PRIDE weekend.  Some people had their homework finished the night we finished our classes – that was quite impressive.  Jen and I being the more…hmm…layed back type took a little longer.  We didn’t get our homework in until mid-March (we finished classes at the end of August). Now I’m waiting to hear back from Antioch Adoptions to verify that they have received all of our homework.

Make Mine a Double

Our class has gotten together a couple times since the end of classes.  We got together for a barbeque in early September.  One couple made up a bunch of shirts for us.  On the front they say Antioch Adoptions with the logo and on the back they say ‘Make Mine a Double’ – referencing a joke that we had in the class that almost everybody that adopts one child ends up adopting a second.  We got together again at Christmas time.  Both times it seemed that everyone had a fun time.  Hopefully we’ll get together again sometime this summer.

So that’s where we are.  Right now we’re waiting to hear from Antioch about a) if they have all our stuff (yes, I’ve called to check they just haven’t called me back) and b) when our homestudy will begin.  We’re estimating it’ll be 6 months to a year before the homestudy begins.

]]> http://cteens.org/2009/04/05/the-process-continues/feed/ 0 http://cteens.org/2008/10/01/some-thoughts-on-salvation-and-evangelicalism/ http://cteens.org/2008/10/01/some-thoughts-on-salvation-and-evangelicalism/#comments Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:24:40 +0000 Sean http://cteens.org/wp/?p=19 There are those who would like to say that Christianity is easy.  Receive Jesus into your heart and you will be saved!  That’s it all that is required to be a Christian.  There is very little indication that life change is required, that there is supposed to be a peculiar aspect to the followers of Christ.  Risk is not even considered when discussing the implications of faith.  How did this happen?  Suddenly, or not so suddenly, we’ve melted Christianity down to a short prayer and weekly church attendance – wait scratch that – monthly church attendance.  I know that many in the evangelical wing of the church would (and will) disagree with me, but I think that’s wrong.  How can Christianity be simply simple?

I have been in the conversation of “what is salvation” for a while now with various people – mostly fellow seminarians and professors – and I’ve come up with a conclusion that isn’t new – in fact it’s quite old – salvation is a process and not a moment.  The Greek/Russian Orthodox church has this concept called theosis, which is the process of continual purification that leads to greater and greater communion with God.  A person is not saved in a moment by a prayer, but over the course of a lifetime dedicated to greater fellowship with God.  Don’t get me wrong, I acknowledge that “man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved.”  I totally understand that, but it seems that Jesus wants more from us than simply a prayer and a bit of belief in our heart.  Just look at the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus wants us to be distinct in our levels of purity and grace.  We are to go the extra mile with those we despise, help those in need, bless those who curse us, not get violently angry or lust over others.  I think that true salvation is found when we start living like this and not because we went forward with 100 other people at some conference.  That prayer is a good start, but it’s not an end in and of itself.  We’ve been preaching this easy salvation thing for close to a hundred years now.  Meanwhile we’ve seen the name of Christianity get dragged through the mud, to the point where we are openly despised by much of society.  I know Jesus said that people would hate us for being followers of him, but I have this feeling that the reason people dislike us has nothing to do with Jesus.

What happened; why do people dislike Christians so much? I think that in the process of making salvation easy we expected everyone to jump on board – “see it’s easy, you can do it too.”  When not everyone jumped on board we came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with them and we needed to force them to see why they should jump on board – “I’ll beat the gospel into you.”  The problem is not that there is something wrong with people that aren’t evangelical Christians, it’s that as evangelicals we haven’t made a compelling case for why they should be Christians.  As Gandhi said, “I like their Christ, I don’t like their Christians.”  I’m pretty conservative on most things, but at some point we have to stop and realize that being a hard ass isn’t the only, or best, way of getting things done.

What would happen if we actually spoke the truth in love, rather than in spite saying that it’s in love?  What would happen if we actually started living with the courage of conviction that Jesus requires of us?    What would happen if we started to live out that conviction in our churches?  Strip away the prettiness of church culture, the continual talk of blessing and the Christian-ese.  We would be more real, with much less fakeness.  Our problems would be more visible, but I think there would be less of them because we would be more accountable to each other.  I think it would be distinctly different if people hated us for doing so much good in the world, for loving even when it hurts. I doubt we would be seen as heartless or hypocritical.

Our theology must always embody an ethic. That ethic must live in our lives for it to be relevant and right now it doesn’t feel like that ethic is present in our lives. It all comes down to felt expectations – if we don’t feel like we’re expected to do anything more than say a prayer and walk down an isle then that’s what we’ll do.  On the other hand if we feel there are greater expectations that come along with being a Christian, then that’s what we’ll do.

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