Doing Nothing

For the past two months, I have had the opportunity to do absolutely nothing. I came into this experience after being a Summer Camp Counselor for two and a half months, so I certainly needed rest. Secondly, I needed a space in which to live. As I have not yet started my post-college, "real" job, I am still residing in my parents' house. After four years of moving in and out of college dorms, two of those without any real residency in this house, my room had become a complete mess of boxes, clothes and other unsorted items. This was more than just a cleaning effort; I had to reorganize and reevaluate my possessions, throwing some away. I did this at what can probably be best described as a snail's pace, my unfortunately natural laziness no longer motivated by any known timetable. After I finally put everything in its proper place and vacuumed the long-unseen floor, I began to move into other parts of the house.

My family is just as naturally lazy as I am, my family falls into the terrible pit of the internet just as easily as I do, my grandmother died, my sister started college and my other sister started High School. So I began to move through the house, cleaning and reorganizing various areas as the impulses took me. I believed I was doing a good thing, and I still do, but I am also an arrogant jerk. Can you tell someone they need to be more conscious of how they take care of their living space, when you suck at it too? Can you tell someone that you "fixed" a mess without believing terrible things about yourself? Probably not. The garage is still a mess, but I am not sure I have the power and authority to fix that.

There are many, many ways a man can distract himself. I feel like the internet has increased these ways tenfold. I have played with Desktop Tower Defense Pro more times than I know, but I still can't beat the last two Scenarios nor most of the Sprint Modes. Thankfully, eventually the vast void of entertainment and idle distraction proves fruitless, its pleasures and flashing lights no longer enjoyable but instead feeling hollow, the truth. I'm not saying that recreation doesn't have its place in life, but such things should serve as an enjoyable rest from work, and I have not been doing a whole lot of work.

When I was at Camp this summer, Allan, the Men's Director, sometimes talked about how we're meant to work six days a week and rest on a seventh, the model outlined in the very beginning of Genesis. Camp works you hard, for the most part, because kids are a handful, loving them can be very tiring, and Camp is designed to challenge the Staff as well as the kids. When your day off comes around each week (whatever day that turns out to be), you love it, you enjoy it, because you need it. You don't do nothing, either, because there are things you want to do that you haven't had time to do the rest of the week. You rest by doing things, just not the same things, not the work things. Rest is good, so good, when it is preceded by work.

There's been some progress on the whole "starting that real job" thing, lately, although I still don't actually know when that's all doing down. Until then, though, I need to work. I tried to get hired as a substitute teacher, but it seems like the nearby school districts are pretty full up on those, probably thanks to the recent events in our economy. My recently deceased grandmother's house needs a lot of work done to it, but I don't know what to do and I get a crazy headache when I go there because she smoked like crazy and it reeks. The garage isn't finished, but I already mentioned how I may be at impasse there. I don't know what to do. But I sure can't do nothing; it's neither right nor healthy.

Reasons

I want to do the right things for the right reasons. It's not enough for me to just do the right thing, it's gotta have the right reasons. I want to give the homeless man money because I love him, not because I feel guilty or ashamed of having wealth when he does not. Does feeling bad about my money and his lack and the disparity between the two count as love?

It gets worse. I don't want to not do wrong things for the wrong reasons. I don't want to not have sex because I am afraid of getting the girl pregnant, but I want to not have sex because I love God, want to obey his commands, and love this hypothetical woman enough to wait 'til we're married. Does being afraid of the consequences count as love?

The Bible says we're supposed to fear God, most famously when the Psalms tell us that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. Everyone today is hasty to point out that it does not mean the sort of cowering fear that we think of, but instead a healthy awe and respect. On the other hand, I would be afraid to meet a tiger in the wild, because that thing can tear your face off, and God can do much the same.

Jesus says that all the Law can be summed up in "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." I've often been taught and taken this to mean, probably after a lot of theological inferences, that we should obey God because we love him. If you love him as your God, you will do what he says. He knows best, and you love him and his ways and his attributes, so you want to do what is best according to his instruction. Okay, so far, so good, I think. But what if I am obeying him because I am afraid he will bite my face off? Is that love?

Jesus tells us that being angry at someone is the same as murder, and lusting after someone is the same as adultery. So not having angry thoughts is a good thing. But he doesn't say we have to not have angry thoughts because we love God; he does make sure we're aware that insulting people could land us in hell. Does it matter why you do something?

Homosexuality, Gay Marriage, Christianity, etc

A friend of mine recently asked me for my thoughts on "homosexuality, gay marriage, etc". This is what I wrote in reply.

No matter where one stands on the factuality of the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis in the Bible, and I am pretty sure dinosaurs and people were never around at the same time, the intention and meaning of the story is fascinating. God makes the first man out of dirt, and the first man is lonely, and needs a "helper-partner" (I've been told that the Hebrew is "ezer-konegdo" and that's what it means, but I don't speak Ancient Hebrew myself), and so God goes and makes his wife, thus completing the species. Now things get messed up a little bit later on when they start disobeying God, but that's besides the point for this discussion. My point is that I'm pretty sure one of the first things that the Bible talks about (after it makes some statements about which kinds of creatures have dominion over which parts of the planet) is that men and women are meant to be equal partners in marriage, and that's the intention for us, as humans. Lots of other things in the Scriptures agree with this, and so we have homosexuality as sin.

I have no idea why men fall in love with men and want to marry them, and likewise with women, but apparently they do it. They then raise the objection that they did not choose to be the way they are, etc, and I see no better choice but to believe them. But there are two thoughts I have about that: First off, it's not genetic, as far as I know. Second off, there are lots of things that people didn't consciously choose that aren't genetic. Furthermore, they say that because they didn't choose it, they can't change it. I, frankly, have no idea if this is true or not, but I do know that there are things about people which they didn't choose but can change, and there are things which they can't change. So that's about all I've got on that one; it is not a settled matter in the least.

Concerning "Gay Marriage", that hot political debate of our day:
First, it's going to happen. Second, I don't really care, with one exception. This is not "A Christian Nation", as if such a thing could even exist, and the majority of people in America are okay with it, so it ought to happen. That's how Democracy, or whatever our system of government is, works. The one exception is the administering of marriage or whatever you want to call it. If there comes a day when churches are not allowed to refuse performing a marriage ceremony for a homosexual couple, on the grounds that such a thing is discrimination, then we've obviously got a problem. I mean, honestly, I am not sure the government should be involved in deciding who can and can't get married at all in the first place, but that's not a very likely situation.

The other thing I've got on my mind is the way that Christians treat homosexuals. Far, far too often, we do a really horrible job of loving them, which is lousy, because Jesus tells us to love everybody. Now, if homosexuality is a sin (is it just the gay sex? is it the attraction? this gets complicated and I'm not sure anyone has the answers), then God wants to save people from that too. How the heck God does that, I don't know. How we (and by we I mean Christians) are supposed to tell people that without their thinking we hate them, I don't know if people have figured it out. But it's a big problem, you know?
A guy who makes music and is also a Christian (but don't tell him he makes Christian music; he gets angry) named Derek Webb, whose music I really like, came out with a song recently called What Matters More, and it's been on my mind a lot recently. You'll find the video below.

Time keeps on slipping into the Future

I ought to write another post, a followup to the Trash one, about how the Trash one was pretty silly, but that won't happen right now.

Some Christians often talk about being good stewards with their money, because God gave them their money. This is very Biblical; Jesus tells us the parable of the Talents to tell us to use our money wisely, and the parable of the Shrewd Manager to tell us to use our money for the Kingdom,. I will refrain from utilizing the Talents-talents homonym found in English, but I will say that God gives us Spiritual Gifts as well as not-spiritual gifts (Don't ask me what those mean!), and we should use those the same way that we use our money: for the Kingdom. Money is a material possession, even if people forget that sometimes, and the best use of it is the same. But recently I have realized that God also gave us Time, and the best use of it is the same. This may sound like I am saying that God gave us our lives and therefore we should use our lives for the Kingdom, for the glory of God, but I don't use "My Life" as a unit of Time, whereas I think about how I am spending my time pretty frequently.

Several times, people have told me that if I used a planner, I would be able to manage my time better, spend my time better, and generally make myself a better person as well as a better Christian. I won't even bother explaining that, but I can tell you unequivocally that it did not work. I never remembered to look in the thing, even if I remembered to write things down. The idea of planning out how I would spend each minute of the day was incredibly difficult for me, and I would not have stuck to such a schedule even if I had succeeded in creating one. Instead, where the pro-tight-schedule people would have had me block in time for homework, time for this thing, time for that thing, I have free-form whatever time.

This freedom is so easily abused, and so my free-time all too often becomes my lay-around time, or my read-blogs time, or my play-computer-games time. None of those things are wrong, in and of themselves, but they cease to be relaxing activities of respite and become holes in which to laze away my day, depriving me of both the joy of accomplishment after hard work and the joy of a well-earned break after hard work. The transformation of what was meant to be joyful into meaningless boredom is a good sign of sin, I think.

This makes a lot of sense, to me. The best way we can use the time God has given us is for his glory and his Kingdom, which are really one and the same, I suspect. The question, then, is whether or not I can use my free-form time properly.

The Summer of 2008, Ligonier, PA - Part 5

I grew up in a Presbyterian Church, going to Sunday School every week, with a pastor practicing good, exegetical preaching. I think, in terms of theology, I had a pretty good education, although theology isn't everything. In high school, NavYouth taught me a lot, but the Christian Fellowship that met weekly at my High School is what forced me to quickly learn how to lead Bible Studies. Looking back, I can see that Joy, who led the fellowship until I was in 11th grade, would pick topics and then find related verses, and attempted to teach me to do the same, but when John, Ariell and I took over, we consciously. yet with stated reasons, switched to picking a book of the Bible and going through it, learning what it had to say. Then I went to college, and InterVarsity taught me more about how to lead a Small Group Bible Study, again by examining a passage and seeing what it has to say, though IV calls it the Inductive method. But how much of this taught me how to lead kids, ages 9-12, in Bible Study?

I started out the summer with a core belief: Kids are stupid. This isn't true, and I knew it then, though less than I do now, but it was sort of a useful thing to start out with, in terms of expectations and view of discipline. On the other hand, it was also a discouraging thought; how could kids do any sort of Bible Study that I don't think is a dumb waste of time? We can talk about how that's arrogant later. I was wrong about kids, and I was wrong about the Bible Studies.

During training, the Executive Director's wife, Sandy Meyers, came in and talked us through the Bible Studies that they'd already written for us to do with the kids: A series of various stories and passages illustrating the life of the apostle Peter, tying his redemption to the redemption of the world. They did a really good job writing them, but my previous experience inclined me to not follow their questions exactly, which worked out pretty well. But being able to rephrase questions isn't everything, and Bible Study was not without its challenges.

Most kids don't like sitting down and reading and listening and thinking and talking. This isn't really all that bad, I can't fault them for wanting to run around or throw pinecones or stare into the distance, but it can be a little frustrating. This is what I expected kids to be like, really, yet there were plenty of surprises.

One time, in discussing the fact that we all sin, I said "Nobody's perfect". As soon as I did, several of the boys launched into a Hannah Montana song featuring that line. Another time, one of the kids asked "What if God hadn't made Eve?" and another said "Then being gay would be okay!" Some of the higher-ups at Camp had definitely suggested that sometimes it helps if kids act out a Bible story. This did not go well.

I feel like this is a very undirected and messy post that doesn't communicate quite what I want. Let me give it one more shot:

There is something absolutely incredible in hearing 12 year old guys make the connection between Luke 5 and John 21, or to hear them try and dig through the layers of meaning in Peter's epistles. There is something incredibly frustrating in telling kids about Jesus only to realize they're not paying attention. Even more so is watching a kid go through his week at Camp only caring about himself, hurting those around him in a struggle for dominance, or watching a kid stop and think about how his place as de facto leader of his friends impacts some of them. I say witnessing those is a better experience because you haven't lost the connection of the Gospel, but instead of words, it's deeds. One week, after we were given the job of explicitly preaching the gospel to our cabins instead of the Camp Executive Director doing it, because the threat of a tornado had messed up the entire evening's schedule, and after it seemed like they didn't listen at all, one of the Wilderness Staff, Matt, said that all we could do was pray that they heard something true about Jesus tonight and that someday it helps. Frankly, that's how it is with all of Camp.

I don't do what I want to do

I have had a lot of schoolwork to do this past semester, and a lot of extracurricular activities to accomplish as well. Some of these extracurricular activities are things like leading a Bible Study, and that involves Jesus, and I try and put Jesus-related-things at the top, never mind the confusion of what is Jesus-related, what isn't, and how everything really is and ought to be. This has, however, left me with even less time to do my schoolwork than I normally have. To make matters worse, I have frequently found myself lazing about, talking to people, playing computer games or doing other things, instead of doing my schoolwork, which really does need doing. My Biology TA and my Russian Professor can attest to this, as I have not turned in a whole lot of homework in those classes. One of my friends has been constantly talking about terrible this semester has been, and I am apt to agree, at least on this front.

I said that I try to put Jesus-things at the top. Yet at the same time, how often do I read the Bible? Let me explain, for those not in the know. Christians think that regularly reading the Scriptures is a good idea. We think that "all Scripture is God-breathed, and thus useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." God says to Joshua, after Moses dies, that he should meditate on "The Book of the Law" day and night, and it should never depart from his mouth, and he should be careful to do what it says, so that he will be prosperous and successful. Jesus says we should build our lives on the foundations of his teachings, like a wise man builds his house on firm rock, not on shifting sands. We take things like this to mean that reading the Scriptures regularly is a good idea.

The thing is, I don't read the Scriptures regularly, but I say that I want to. The same goes for all kinds of things. I say that Jesus is right, I should pray, fast and give to the poor, but I only do one of those with any frequency, and that's because praying is easy. (If praying is easy, am I doing it wrong?) These are all very concrete things, almost a check-list. Let me go on, then. I'm supposed to love God above all things, then love everyone else, even my enemies. I agree that this is how I should live, yet my deeds do not match up with this. There are definitely people in this world that I dislike, there are even people I like to some extent that I don't treat the way I should. I look to other things for satisfaction; I don't find satisfaction in God. I don't live the way he wants me to live, I don't love the things he loves, and in general I find that I do not love God with all my heart, soul and might. But I say that I believe that I should.

Do I not believe, then? They say that actions speak louder than words, and I think it's true that your actions betray what you truly believe. If you ever find a church that says all the right things, then acts in a lot of wrong ways, you might want to think about leaving. They might say the right words, but that doesn't mean they believe the right things in their hearts. The problem here is that sometimes I do the right thing, so it is not as if I can claim to clearly be believing the opposite of what the Bible teaches. The very fact that I care what the Scriptures teach might be a good indication that my belief is not all a lie, a sham to trick Christian girls into dating me or something.

I used to only think about Romans 7 in the context of lust and, in particular, pornography. This is understandable, because that is a big issue to try and think about and deal with, and one that sometimes seems to have no hope. But if that is all I was applying it to, I was missing out on a lot. The Apostle Paul is wordy, as usual, but here he's talking about how Christ purifies our hearts, yet we still sin. In verses 15 through 23, he says the following.

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Well now. That is pretty much a description of the problem I outlined above. As much as it seems a little thing, I really do think it is wrong of me to not get the work done that I'm supposed to get done. Sloth is one of the traditional seven capital sins, and for good reason; it's easy. Furthermore, it's easier in today's society, as I can attest. Paul, however, does not leave the issue here. He, and I read this as a cry of desperation, says:

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

That is quite a statement, I think, calling himself "wretched", but I also think it's accurate. To find yourself doing the things you do not want to do and to find yourself not doing the things you want to do is pretty shocking, worrisome, gut-wrenching, etc. It feels awful.

One time, I talked with my friend Alex about this. I don't remember why, the context, or anything like that. I think we were in his car, maybe. Either way, we did talk about how long Paul goes on and on about his problem, the problem of sin, yet doesn't provide a very lengthy explanation of the solution. He says one sentence in answer to his cry for deliverance, then moves on. Alex said that Paul does this because the solution is very simple, at least in the basics, the part that you really need to know. So who will save me and you and Paul from this body of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

That is a great comfort, and it's true too.

Home

Although my family lived in two different apartments for the first two years of my life, and although we lived in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England from when I was 3 til I was 6, the earliest firm memories that I have associated with the term "home" are of our row house in Woodlawn, Maryland, about 3 blocks away from the official city, where we lived for a little before England and then afterwards until October 2002, my 10th grade year. Despite being residents of Woodlawn, though maybe the Post Office was confused about this, we always wished we lived at least in Catonsville just to the south, home of a lower crime rate, or, better yet, Howard County, the next county to the south-west of Baltimore County. Howard County contains Ellicott City and Elkridge, where my Mom lived during her High School years, and thus my gradnmother's house; as well as Columbia Presbyterian Church, in Columbia, and thus the majority of our closest friends. We tried to move away for years, but it never really came together until 2002, when we ended up in a single-family home in the southern end of Columbia, right in the very midst of some of the people we had been friends with since before even England. Despite having wanted to leave Woodlawn for years, I distinctly remember sitting alone in the tiny room I had called my own since sometime in middle school, still painted a pastel yellow from when my sister, Elizabeth, picked its color at a very young age, and, on the day of our moving out, crying.

After we moved out, we lived with our friends, the Springs, for a week, waiting for the contract on our new house to be finalized. This sticks in my mind as an incredible act of love and hospitality, allowing a second family to share their home with them for a week, and a really good example of how Christians ought to treat each other.

Then we moved to Columbia, as I said, where my family still resides to this day. This was where I first became really aware of my issues with comfort in new situations. When I first arrived at Atholton High School, as well as at my simultaneous introduction to NavYouth, a Christian youth group and High School ministry of The Navigators in Columbia, I was very quiet. Three years later, by the time of my High School Graduation, this was not nearly as true, and I was generally a much friendlier person for it. I guess it took a long time, but I had become a lot more comfortable in Columbia.

In August of 2005, I became a student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), living in Patapsco Hall, among a lot of people I had never met. Though incredibly near to the familiar places of my youth, it was still assuredly a place I had never been before, and I found myself, for the most part, just as quiet and seemingly unfriendly as when I moved to Columbia. It took me a year and a half, or thereabouts, to find myself comfortable, talkative and at home at UMBC.

This summer, I am a Summer Camp Counselor at Ligonier Camp & Conference Center, in the Ligonier Valley, 40 miles east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I remember, just 5 weeks ago, moving into a cabin in a place I had never been before, among people I had never met, and being very quiet. This past Saturday, at the Staff Say-So, a time, after the kids leave, for the Staff to stand up and tell stories about the past week, I told about a revelation I had had concerning my attitude and the nature of what we do here, and a lot of other things. I had this realization while sitting on the toilet, so I made sure to tell them this, and that that place is where I get some of my best thinking done. This was the Next Level Counselor's final week here, Next Level being a semi-simultaneous camp run out of the Lodge, and later someone told me that that was how the Next Level crew would remember me, as talking about the toilet. Though I'm not sure this is true, as I hung out with them several times, I realized I wouldn't be disappointed if this turned out to be the case. My standing and telling them story in such as fashion is a pretty good indicator that I am comfortable here. But unlike UMBC, I am not sure I would call this "home".

Living as a Counselor here means that I'll only have slept in Columbia, Maryland for 12 nights this summer, if my count is accurate. Though many of my possessions still reside there, it becomes increasingly difficult to think of it as home. The dishes aren't even kept in the same places anymore, making it incredibly frustrating any time I am asked to help unstack the dishwasher. When the few other staff from Maryland ask where I'm from, I tell them that I grew up in Woodlawn, my parents live in Columbia, and I live at UMBC most of the year. Sometimes I feel like a nomad, like Abraham, other times I feel a permanent resident of a college campus. The latter is clearly not true, as my approaching graduation will no doubt reveal. American Christians have been known to affix trite bumper stickers to their cars, warning you that the rapture will severely impede traffic, or that their home is a mysterious place called "heaven". While I think the theology behind the first is wrong, the second is a lot truer. We, as Christians, are told to live as foreigners in this world, in it but not of it, something like Israel those 40 years in the Wilderness. While I suspect the more accurate term for our proper dwelling place is the New Jerusalem, while will descend from Heaven (the third one, if we go with the old and wrong understanding of celestial spheres which Paul held) onto the New Earth, this is not of much importance. Why is this place, which I suppose Jesus is preparing right now, and has been for some time it would seem, to which I have never been, my home?

One of the reasons I am able to think of UMBC as home is because it contains a sizable collection of people I know well and love, who have become something like family to me. I have only known many of them for two years, three at the most, yet it feels like much longer, and I will be grieved at the parting of our ways.

That which chiefly holds me back from calling Ligonier home is familiarity. Despite being on staff for several weeks, there are many places on Property to which I have never been, and simply so many things which I do not know. Maybe this will change by the end of the summer, and though I can walk around to many places in teh dark of night, it still carries that air of unfamiliarity which repulses the name "home".

The issue of why it becomes increasingly difficult to refer to the home of my parents as "home" is a tricky one. Are there not people whom I know well and love? There are: my family. Is it not familiar? Admittedly less and less so, as the example of my mother rearranging the kitchen cabinets demonstrates, but it is still no foreign land. I think, instead, that the difficulty arises in the amount of time I actually live there each year, a decreasing number to be sure, and the amount of time that I anticipate living there in the future. A few days after Camp but before School, Winter Break, Spring Break, and then I graduate, shortly after which I really ought to depart.

These three, then, may reveal just how I can call heaven (or the New Jerusalem, rather) my home. The place will be packed full of those whom I know and love, for we are all grafted into one vine, adopted into one family, heirs of the King, our Great and Glorious Father. It will be familiar, I believe, as God will make all things new, the world free of sin, how it ought to be. Lastly, the days we will live there are countless, and not just because it becomes difficult to count days when there is no more night, thanks to the light of the Lord God dwelling among his people.

Let me tell you, "home" is a tricky and meaningful term.

I don't know anything

At the risk of sounding a little bit like Donald Rumsfeld, I want to tell you about the things I knew that I don't know, the things I thought I knew but I don't know, and how I don't know anything.

There's a lot of things that I definitely don't know. I don't know what grades I'm going to get this semester. I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. I don't know who I'm going to marry, and that assumes that I will. But worse than all those things, I don't know how to make myself do what's right, and that assumes I know what the right thing to do is.

When I was a child, I would not eat red fruit, whether or not I had actually ever tried them. A few weeks ago, I had some strawberries, and they were pretty good. I used to be confident that I was really smart, and really good at Computer Science on top of that. I have a GPA of 3.28, which, while not bad, is less than I used to have, I assure you, and I rarely get As in CompSci classes anymore. It's hard for me to admit, but I thought that I had a lot of things all figured out, that I knew what to do, when to do things, and all about myself and the people around me. When I am alone, walking to and from various places, or on the toilet, or in the shower, I will frequently imagine future conversations I might have with my friends, even predicting what they will say and coming up with responses, so that I can come across as eloquent and clever when we do talk. Sometimes I'm right about what they'll say, I won't deny it, but I'm never all right and my predictions are pretty weak to begin with, never mind that it says some pretty weird and potentially bad things about myself that I do this. I like to think that I have my closest friends all figured out, and I put the people I don't know as well into neat little categories, stereotypes, which strongly affect how I think about them and how I treat them. Not only do I suspect that this is morally wrong, but it doesn't work. I don't know everything about the people I think I've got all figured out, and they constantly surprise me with revelations about themselves, and I am surprised even more so with the process of opening my eyes to the people that I've filed away into stereotypes. I went for a long time not realizing this, and that's the way it goes with lots of the things I do that are wrong, and even some of the things I think are right; I don't know that they're wrong. I don't know all of what is right or wrong, all of what is good or bad, or anything even close to that. I thought I knew, but I've become convinced that, when you get down to it, I don't know anything.

I have, for better or for worse, in my mind, an idea of what is my ideal future. In my ideal future, I am married to some beautiful woman with whom I make several babies, and I suppose this is all well and good in the eyes of the Noahic covenant. Most importantly, however, is that I own a farm, most likely a potato farm. A discerning mind will guess that my ideal future is me in the idealized world of my ancestors, the old Ireland which is apparently after we've gotten potatoes from America, but before there was a Pototao Famine, and definitely not the Ireland that existed with high infant mortality rates and low life expectancy. I'm sure it's not entirely Ireland, I really like Maryland, but that's the image that I've got in my head. I also have ideas about other ideal versions of things. I think that if the history of the Church had gone how it should have, there would have been no Catholic-Protestant schism in the 1500s, and there would have been no East-West schism in 1054, and we would have a parish system with bishops and all, with a whole bunch of patriarchs, and every Sunday I would go for a liturgy that had a time for prayer where everyone in the church prayed all at once, out loud, for awhile. But why stop there, with church history? Why not just dictate how the entirety of history should have gone? If I had my way, sin would have never entered the world.

Can I say that that's wrong? Sin is wrong, and the cause of many evils. Wishing that it had never happened, how can that be wrong? But on the other hand, God is sovereign over everything, not just over the here and the now, but He has been sovereign since before there was time. He allowed sin to happen, and none of his deeds are ever wrong. A paradox? Maybe. I don't really understand why God allows bad things to happen, though I've heard some people say that it's so that he can fully demonstrate his love through the death and resurrection of Christ, and that starts to make some sense, sometimes.

I am not going to own a farm in the future, or at least it is not looking likely. We Christians talk a lot about what God is calling us to do, even if some of us are really terrible at listening. Terrible at listening though I may be, I don't think God is calling me to own a farm and all the rest of that idyllic, agrarian fantasy. I do not know what he is calling me to do with my life, though I wish he would tell me, but I don't think I'm called to own a farm. Now, I could go off on my desires and do all the right things that would result in me owning a farm, but that's not the point. People in the Church did what they wanted and look where we've ended up. Adam did what he wanted, and look where that's gotten all of us. My desires, though sometimes rooted in good motivations, do not always yield good results. Wanting to provide food for others is good, but that doesn't necessarily imply that I should go own a farm. I hope you don't think I'm saying that all my desires are good, that all my motivations are good. I'm only realizing that even the good motivations don't always yield good actions.

This has gotten way too long, so I'm going to wrap it up. What I've been trying to get across is this: I do not always know what is the right thing to do. I am fully capable of tricking myself into using good reasons and intentions to support wrong actions. I don't like this, because I still want to do the right thing, but this implies that someone has got to tell me what to do, and I don't want that at all. This is where those bad motivations start becoming really apparent. I don't want to listen to God, because I want to do whatever the heck I want to do. It's my life, who is He to tell me how to live it? This is starting to sound awfully familiar, like one of those sermons where they talk about why Adam and Eve ate the fruit, or like C.S. Lewis's Perelandra, which is the same thing. I think that doing what is right is really important, and not doing what is wrong equally so, so the idea that I don't know how to do that is frightening. If I don't even know how to do that, I don't know anything! Thanks be to God, then, that He is willing to tell me. The next trick is remember to ask Him, and then listen, but that is not something I am prepared to write about yet.