Worth the fight.

I was the most obnoxious kid in existence during the 90's (this is quite the bold claim considering I'm putting myself above Steve Urkel in this category). Yet while many children command their reigns of terror with arsenals of temper tantrums, whining, and crying, mine was completely different. I was an expert liar as a kid, and I was always conniving up some big, believable plot to get what I wanted. Often times I would stoop to using reason, figuring adults wouldn't be able to outwit my logic. For example, in kindergarten, the teacher made all of the pupils put their chairs on top of their desks at the end of the day. It wasn't a very big chore, but nonetheless I sneered at the thought of doing manual labor for free, so I began a reasonable dialogue with my teacher. "Mrs. Fleming, are you paid to be a teacher?" I inquired. "Well, I don't teach for the money, I teach because I love..." I could see she was going down a rabbit hole, so I pressed her: "but you do receive some form of compensation, do you not?" "Well, yes, I do" she relented, clearly lost on where I was going with this line of questioning. "Then why do I have to put my chair on top of my desk?" I responded with a straight face. With this she went into a fury, calling me an "ungrateful little devil" and spouting off a few new vocabulary words I had never heard before. For the rest of the year, other students would put my chair on top of my desk before I even had a chance to - I think they were deathly afraid of seeing Mrs. Fleming so angry ever again.

About 2 years after my dad passed away, my mom remarried, and I wasn't too keen on the idea of a stepfather. It wasn't even personal - I had just worked out a system for getting what I wanted from my exhausted mother, and I knew a stepfather would disrupt my nice equilibrium. Yet up until their wedding, he had only seen my scheming ways in small doses. Surely once we were under the same roof, he would truly understand just how much of a hellion I was and go running for the hills. I would be back to spending my afternoons eating Cheetos and watching Nickelodeon in no time. Boy, did I bring out the big guns, too. My stepfather drove an old, beat up, 2-door Chevy Blazer with the ceiling liner held together by thumbtacks. When our next door neighbor bought a nice car for his 16 year old son, I saw my opportunity and pounced. "How does it feel to have a high schooler who makes straight D's be driving a nicer car than you?" Burn! This was it - surely he would blow up, just like Mrs. Fleming. I rubbed my hands together like a praying mantis and enjoyed an internal sinister laugh. Yet his response completely bucked my expectations - he didn't even get angry. He just looked me in the eye and said very calmly: "I don't compare myself to other people."

My Step-Dad, Peter, Me, and my Wife

I have no doubt that my words were extremely hurtful, and I am ashamed of myself when I think back on all of the stupid, malicious things I said. In fact, I think part of the reason I'm so scared of having kids is I'm afraid they'll turn out like me, and I don't have half the patience of my stepfather. Yet for some reason, my stepdad thought I was worth fighting for. He thought I was worth driving an old car and working strenuous hours so that he could provide endless opportunities for me. Even though I wasn't his own flesh and blood, he thought I was worth loving unconditionally - even when I was the most ungrateful of little devils. He never tried to appease me, but rather loved me in the way he knew I needed - forcing me to do yard work and chores around the house, prohibiting me from being inside on sunny days (I literally wasn't allowed in the house - even if I was bleeding. "It's just a flesh wound - keep on playing!" he would say). I may have loathed these methods at the time, but the older I get, the more I appreciate the way he loved me. When the Bible refers to God being our Abba, our Father, our Daddy, the only reason I can even comprehend the analogy is because of the way he loved me fiercely. His love wasn't kind and rosy, it was the kind of love that put on boxing gloves and was willing to fight to the death for a lasting relationship with me.

This crazy, reckless kind of love wasn't limited to my stepfather, either - his whole family seemed to have the same disease. They loved me abundantly, and welcomed me with open arms. I was surprised most by the oldest of the cousins because I had officially taken his spot as the eldest of the clan, and I guess I thought we'd have a sort of Game of Thrones battle for who would be greatest of the cousins. Yet he didn't seem to care about this at all, and just loved me. It's quite an odd feeling to be told a bunch of strangers are now your family, but he made everything feel right by just being a fun, close friend all the time. As much as I tried to push them away, these people seemed to see through my obnoxious ways and pernicious words and fought hard to show me love. Before then, I didn't think I was worth it.

I thought I looked cool, but really I was just annoying

My friend Peter leads a weekly Bible study of local business leaders, and last week he brought up Proverbs 1:08: "Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching." It seems like a simple concept, but we all kind of struggled with it because, well, all of our family situations are messy. Our parents don't always seem to give the best advice. Every single person I know has been painfully hurt by a divorce in some way (no exceptions). I personally know pastors who have broken up their families because of extramarital affairs. I know a father who gave up a relationship with his child because he preferred the taste of cocaine. So my instinct is to chuck this verse out the window out of cultural irrelevance. Sure, during biblical times when family life was A-okay, I'm sure this proverb made sense, but not now. Yet the more I read the Bible, the more I learn the family situations were just as messy then, if not even more so. Absalom raped his dad's wives on the palace roof for everyone to see (seriously, read 2 Samuel). In 1 Corinthians, we read about a guy who is sleeping with his stepmother. The list is endless! Yet Paul still has the gall in Ephesians 6 to reiterate Old Testament scripture and command "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right." God knows family relationships are messy, then and now, and yet He doesn't let us off the hook - He says they're worth fighting for. The fights may be vicious, they may be painful, but they are worth it.

Family worth fighting for

A few years ago, my favorite cousin, the one who loved and welcomed me so dearly, stopped speaking with our family. He speaks with his father, but he disowned his mother, sister, stepfather, aunt, uncle, grandparents, and me. I don't really know why, but I'm sure he has his reasons - families are messy. Yet no reason could keep my heart from being mangled and torn - I miss him. I've seen the tears flow on Mother's Day, I've stared at the empty space at the Thanksgiving table, and I've witnessed the lack of Christmas cheer. Last Saturday, I signed on to Facebook and discovered he had gotten married that day, and well, I guess my invitation got lost in the mail. As I gazed at the wedding photos, I began to wail. I wanted to be there to support him, I wanted to welcome his wife to the family with the great love he had shown me. I wept as I thought of his mom not being there to kiss him and make sure his tux looked just right. I cried through the night, longing for restoration. Yet this week my sadness has transformed into a fierce desire to fight. I just sent him an e-mail congratulating him on his nuptials, and invited him and his bride to Atlanta for an all-expenses paid trip. Tonight, I go to bed praying he responds. I know I may end up hurt, bloodied and bruised, but I don't care - I'm ready to fight. I know he's worth it.


What I'm listening to during this post:

I am a broken man.

Me and my Dad

I'll never forget the first time (and only time to date) I rode in a police car. I was six years old, and it was a cool autumn Sunday night. As I walked out of my church's weekly gathering for kids, I was greeted by Dave, a close family friend who was also a sheriff's deputy. Dave told me my parents weren't able to pick me up, so he would be giving me a ride over to my friend Gregg's house to spend the night. It seemed like an odd scenario, but somehow Dave's familiar and soothing smile resting underneath his bristly Tom Selleck mustache told me everything was going to be alright. I hopped in the front seat (it was okay for 6-year-olds to ride shotgun then) and imagined I was Dave's partner, off to help him apprehend the dangerous criminals of Williamsburg. I asked him if I could turn on the siren and flashing lights; he nodded and showed me where the switch was. I saw him smile at the sight of pure joy on my face, but I could see he was holding something back. He already knew what I wouldn't find out until the following day - my dad was lying in a hospital bed, dead from a heart attack at age 32.

I've always known I wouldn't live to see 30. That firmly held belief at the back of my mind has been the longest-standing effect of my father's death. Sure, he had lived to 32, but he also finished the New York Marathon the previous year. The chances of me finishing a marathon are about as good as the Pirates winning the pennant, so I knocked off two years (I'm quite the armchair actuary). While such an outlook on life may seem morose, I never thought so. To me, it was just a fact to be dealt with, and I dealt with it by packing as much life as I possibly could into an abbreviated lifespan. I first piloted a plane at age 14, and had soloed one by 15. I enrolled in my first college math course at age 16, and by 17 I was studying full-time at the university, sacrificing the fun that accompanies high school senioritis. I was engaged by age 19, and by 21, I had graduated from university, gotten married, went on a honeymoon, moved 600 miles away from home, started my career, and purchased my first house (5 of those 6 events all occurred within a period of 6 weeks). I travel to new, exciting places as often as possible, I have a life insurance policy 5 times the size the average for my age so my wife won't have to worry, and I share everything I own with my friends because I'm keenly aware my stuff has an ever-approaching expiration date.

Getting married, exactly one month after turning 21

My acute awareness of my mortality never seems to dissipate because every day I am reminded of how I share my father's thorn in my side: I am an admitted glutton. The glorious aroma of juicy hamburger meat combined with sizzling bacon and thick cuts of cheddar cheese, accompanied by a heap of fried potatoes, is intoxicating to me. With popular shows such as Man vs. Food and The Biggest Loser, we've made a spectacle of overeating in this country, but I have nothing but empathy for obese people. It's a nasty addiction, and it takes incredible willpower to overcome it. I begin each day with utter depression when I see the girth of my belly in the mirror, then somehow can't manage to stop my car when it steers itself into Chick-fil-a for a healthy breakfast of fried chicken - fully aware of the latter causing the former. Last week I went to Wendy's with some friends, and after scarfing down a double cheeseburger and fries (with a Diet Coke, of course), I had to ask them to physically remove me from the restaurant because I was still hungry and desperately wanted to go back to the counter to order a baconator. Sure, I'm overweight, but it's only by the grace of God that I'm not 400 pounds (yet). As I constantly struggle with and frequently succumb to this intense desire to consume disgusting amounts of the kind of food Michelle Obama warns us about, I can't forget my looming pre-30 death sentence.

Me in my natural habitat

Perhaps this twisted worldview of fast living is most pronounced in my career. When it became clear my first employer out of college valued years of service above performance when it came to promotions, I resigned immediately. Once I began working in more of a meritocracy environment, I incessantly sought new ways to add value to the company, never paying any mind to what my actual job description was, which led to a slew of promotions and new opportunities. Surprisingly, this progression wasn't driven by greed or blind ambition, but rather my desire to pack a full career into the 9 years I'd have after university. Now I find myself responsible for business development across 2 continents - not a bad gig for a 27 year old. My favorite part of the job is mergers and acquisitions, and being able to manage an acquisition from valuation to integration over the past 10 months has been the greatest experience of my career.

Anything Chrysler touches turns to crap

M&A is one of the strangest concepts in business, and economic history is filled with epic acquisition fails (Daimler-Benz and Chrysler, AOL and Time Warner...need I continue?). Imagine a courtship where one party woos the other, explaining how they can't live without the other and how they're willing to pay an enormous dowry just to be together forever. Then, when it's time for the wedding, the party paying the dowry becomes completely dominant, explaining to the other how everything about them is better, and how their new spouse must conform to their standard in every way - from the color of their shoes to the type of paper they use. It sounds like a recipe for a tumultuous marriage, but this is how most acquisitions work. It's my job to navigate these stormy waters without ending up shipwrecked and bankrupt.

Somehow, Chris seemed to make it all a little easier. As the CFO & COO all-in-one at the company we were acquiring, he ran a damn good business. Yet he was a team player from the start, acknowledging the great potential of what our companies could only achieve if we were combined. I was astounded by his willingness to sacrifice his autonomy, his title, and his position atop the food chain, all for the good of the business. He was always quick to provide any needed information and would offer up fresh ideas for success. We ensured he would stay on after the deal was finalized because we knew with him at the helm, our little marriage was bound for greatness, standing in stark contrast to all of the acquisition failures of the past.

Sharing laughs on the day we signed the acquisition

However, what made Chris truly unique was his ability to form friendships. He took a genuine interest in me on a personal level, and we became fast friends. Chris always had a way of making integration meetings less stressful and more enjoyable by bringing up our shared love of motoring and lightening the mood with his quick wit. We'd laugh heartily over dinners, even debating the nuances of African Cameroon versus Connecticut Shade cigar wrappers. He noticed I always wore french cuff shirts, and knew of my affinity for firearms, so one day upon my arrival at the office, he handed me a gift: cufflinks made from genuine .40 cal casings. His thoughtfulness bowled me over, and I never could figure out how to thank him properly.

Last night I received a tragic call - Chris had died, suffering a massive heart attack at a very young age. I spent all of last night and most of today trying to wrap my head around it, to no avail. I'm trying to pick up the pieces of our business and figure out what it means to be a leader in this kind of situation, but I have no answers. I miss my friend. I wish I could pull an anecdote from the Bible to make everything feel better, but I can't.

I went to the gym today for the first time in a long time, thinking that if I just tried a little harder, perhaps I'd be able to thwart the disease that took the lives of my father and my friend. Yet as I lifted weights until my skin turned as red as a Maine lobster and swam laps until I wheezed like an 80 year-old smoker, I couldn't help but think my efforts were in vain. I realized my lust for greasy foods and my irrational desire to cram 70 years of life into 30 were merely symptoms of a greater problem - I am a broken man living in a fallen world. I may eventually obtain a body figure I can be proud of, and maybe I'll even manage to cross everything off my bucket list before the undertaker shows up at my door, but I don't think there's anything I can do to actually save myself.

Bebo Norman

My mind keeps going to a line from a song written by Bebo Norman following the death of one his friends: "'Cause 'it was not your time' that's a useless line; a fallen world took your life." Whether Chris died yesterday or 30 years from now, it would've caused the same amount of pain for his loved ones. It's not an issue of timing, it's an issue of living in a fallen world that isn't as it was meant to be. Creation is beautiful and good, but it has run amok and is in decay. And there's nothing I can do to stop it.

Tonight, I cling to the hope that this is temporary. I long for the day when things are returned to the way they're meant to be. Tonight, my soul cries out for restoration.

What I'm Listening to During This Post:

You have to do both.

I grew up going to church with an expert winemaker. Granted my knowledge of vinification as a child was quite rudimentary, but somehow I thought he spent his days stomping on grapes barefoot in a big wooden barrel - just like I had seen on "I Love Lucy." Nonetheless, he was passionate about his craft, and was a brilliant vintner. I read an article about him recently, which praised how he employed an old technique from the Burgundy region of France which called for using the froth of beaten egg whites for the fining of red wines. I assure you this kind of creativity was not common in the renowned wine region of Virginia, yet he brought excellence to the vineyards of Williamsburg.

However, his profession was not widely celebrated in our conservative church. I recall one instance as a teenager when he spoke to our group of pubescent youths after some bratty church kid had been arrested for consuming alcohol at an out-of-hand high school party. He tried to explain to us how alcohol was a beautiful gift to us from God, but like so many other blessings from Him, from manna to sex to cheeseburgers, humans have a tendency to muck up its beauty by putting our gluttonous desire for pleasure over our thankfulness to God for all that is good. One of the adult men sitting in on the discussion became furious at this (how can creating alcohol be good? Surely Jesus would never do something as sinful as making wine!), said a few words insinuating the vintner was to blame for the aforementioned teenager's indiscretion (surely he was consuming fine, locally-produced wine at the party), and stormed out.

A while later, the vintner felt called to full-time ministry, and left winemaking in favor of preaching. I remember him struggling to find his place as a preacher, and while I mean no disrespect, I always thought he looked like a fish out of water when he was behind the pulpit. During this time, I was preparing to matriculate to university, and one day after a church service, the winemaker-turned-preacher asked me what I was considering for a vocation. "Oh, perhaps I'll go into engineering, or maybe even politics" I responded. "Have you considered full-time ministry?" he questioned further. "Well, regardless of my profession, I'm sure I'll be ministering full-time" I said with a nonchalant shrug. The look on his face personified being perplexed, kind of like that Jackie Chan meme, as if I had just made a ghastly contradiction.

Jackie Chan meme

I was reminded of this dialogue recently when a friend of mine told me about a paid ministry position he was trying to obtain. The just of it was he would be compensated for living in an assigned apartment complex, where he would welcome new residents to the neighborhood, baking them cookies and inviting them over for dinner and such. Essentially he was just describing to me what it meant to be a good neighbor. The last time I checked, "love your neighbor as yourself" was a commandment (the one Jesus referred to as being the second greatest, in fact), not a vocation! What's next, we pay people to sit around and love God with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength because the rest of us are too busy with our real jobs to be concerned with such trivial matters?

Lately, I've noticed Christians lumping professions into two broad categories: the money-lusting, high-paying, yet morally bankrupt capitalist jobs, and the sacrificial, low-paying, yet righteous ministry jobs. Often times I've witnessed members of the latter group guilt-trippingly explain to members of the former how it is their duty to support the "ministers" financially in order to atone for the capitalists' greediness. Such a view is absolute bullocks, and I have yet to find a biblical basis for it. Paul constructed tents for a living, Luke was a doctor, many of the disciples were fishermen, and even Jesus had a day job as a carpenter. Clearly these juggernauts of faith (and even God Himself) saw the value in an honest day's work for pay.

Timothy Keller

Some friends and I have been reading through Timothy Keller's Every Good Endeavor together recently, and in the book, Keller points to God's blessing and charge for humans to "fill the earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28) as evidence for his view that work is a good, God-mandated, and God-glorifying thing. "The material creation was made by God to be developed, cultivated, and cared for in an endless number of ways through human labor. But even the simplest of these ways is important. Without them all, human life cannot flourish" Keller says. I tend to agree with Dr. Keller.

My friend Mark sues corrupt cops so those who have been denied due process get their fair day in court. My friend Dave is an architect who designs beautiful homes where people can raise healthy families. My mother-in-law provides healthcare services to people who desperately need them. My wife and my mother both educate children so they can thrive in this world. My friend Marcus extinguishes pests from people's homes and businesses. My friend Peter helps businesses run more efficiently and reach their full potential. My friend Brett prosecutes murderers. All of these vocations are good and an act of worship in themselves - they're not just ways of fundraising to support "full-time ministers." If you try to tell me that how they spend their careers is somehow less God-glorifying than being a paid neighbor greeter, it will take every ounce of self control I have to not openly mock you.

Martin Luther

This view is not a new one, and Martin Luther's words on the matter are harsher than mine and Keller's combined. In To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Luther writes: "It is pure invention that Pope, bishops, priests, and monks are called the 'spiritual estate' while princes, lords, artisans, and farmers are called the 'temporal estate.' This is indeed a piece of deceit and hypocrisy. Yet no one need be intimidated by it, and that for this reason: all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them except that of office...We are all consecrated priests by baptism, as St. Peter says: 'You are a royal priesthood and a priestly realm.'" Yet I don't get the impression Luther is trying to dog paid pastors here, and neither am I. I see this more as a call to action than an accusation.

Paul didn't just make tents. Luke didn't just heal patients. Peter didn't just fish. These men also dedicated significant portions of their lives outside of their vocations to sharing the Gospel. Through writing, through preaching, through sharing meals with others, through traveling to different cultures, they told the epic story of God's creation, the fall of creation, the redemption of creation through Christ's sacrifice, and our continued restoration. I'm sure they did these activities at great cost to the advancement of their careers and bank accounts, but somehow they struck a balance between compensated work and ministry. It's high time for me to recognize I need to do this as well. It's high time I acknowledge that the reason my friend wants to be a full-time neighbor is I'm failing to love my neighbors as myself. The reason we have to hire more paid youth pastors is I'm not investing in the youth in my community. The reason we have to compensate more speakers to present the Gospel in an auditorium is I'm not spending enough time engaging my friends in real, honest discourse.

If you teach, if you make wine, if you build computers, if you manufacture mining equipment, or if you clean houses, know that your work is good, is God-designed, and is God-glorifying. You shouldn't feel guilty about your job or how much money you make - you should be thankful and proud of helping the world flourish. Yet be aware - it will never satisfy you. Just like the vintner, you will feel the tug to ministry. This doesn't mean you need to quit your job and replace it with a paid preaching gig. Nope, you have to do both.


What I'm Listening to During this Post:

I don't like Aretha Franklin.

Aretha Franklin

I'm not a fan of Aretha Franklin. Her voice is whiny, and she sings with the kind of back-talk sass typically reserved for bratty teenagers. She sings songs written by others without grasping their true context, and thus mucks up the songwriter's original intent. Some may call her the Queen of Soul, but I think she's grossly overrated. Yet mostly, my distaste of Aretha Franklin stems from her ruining one of the greatest American soul songs ever written.

A while back, my wife and I were in a funk. Not the kind of funk where you're constantly at each other's throats and incessant quarreling ensues. No, we were in a funk much worse than that - we were in a funk of complacency. I thought I had laid out a clear vision for where our family should be heading, but I felt my ideas had been rejected by her, leaving me feeling disrespected. When I don't feel respected, I respond by holding back affection - sometimes to the extreme of offering nothing but a cold shoulder. In all fairness, it was probably the other way around - I likely neglected to show my wife love and affection (simply because I was too busy pursuing my own interests), which made it extremely difficult for her to hold me, my ideas, and my words in high esteem. When she doesn't feel loved, she responds by distrusting my leadership (perhaps rightfully so) and holding back respect. Chicken and egg argument aside, this imbalance of love and respect sent us into a downward spiral of complacency - leading us into living lives more and more independent of each other, as if we were merely roommates instead of husband and wife.

Otis Redding

In 1959, a nineteen-year-old Otis Redding met and fell in love with the fifteen-year-old Zelma Atwood. By the summer of 1960, Zelma had given birth to their first child, and she married Otis in 1961. At the time, Otis was just a poor, unemployed soul musician crashing on his sister's couch in Los Angeles, spending his days writing brilliant songs for the Chitlin' Circuit. Yet Zelma served as a muse for Otis, spurring him to write some of the most genuine, beautiful love ballads ever written - songs so amazing, so true, they broke through the heavily fortified rampart of racial segregation and deeply resonated with their listeners, regardless of their skin color. Yet as Otis's fame and wealth grew rapidly, he realized there was something missing.

In 1965, Otis Redding penned and recorded the song "Respect." It was a huge hit in its own right, and it stands in stark contrast to Aretha Franklin's horrible cover version. In the original, Otis sings as a desperate man, offering up everything he has to his wife - she can have all of his money, he will give her everything she wants, he even gives her permission to talk poorly of him when he's not around! - all he wants is for her to heed his advice, to listen to his ideas, to follow his lead, to value his opinion, to ease up on the criticism, to respect him. Unlike Aretha, who belts out her demands with arrogance and praises the sweetness of her cash, Otis offers up a humble admission - in the same way a man stranded in the desert longs for water, he can not survive without respect from his spouse.

Zelma Redding

I can empathize with Mr. Redding, and every man I've ever met is in the same boat - for some reason, our need for respect is hard-wired in our DNA and is critical to our being. I've often met men who do not receive respect from their wives, and each one has fallen into two categories. Either he has become completely emasculated - walking around like a beaten puppy, tail between his legs, scared to so much as buy a pack of gum or comment on the weather without first seeking his wife's permission, or he responds with wanton arrogance - shoving his opinions down other people's throats, acting like he's an expert in areas he knows nothing about, bossing around anyone he thinks he can control - all in an effort to gain just an ounce of respect. I've worn each of these hats myself at different times in my life, and can say firsthand both scenarios are a ghastly sight.

I think this is why Paul writes in Ephesians 5:33, "the wife must respect her husband." Yet he doesn't let husbands off the hook, either, telling each one he "must love his wife as he loves himself" in the same breath. What I've learned in the past 7 years of marriage is husbands naturally give respect to their wives, and wives naturally offer up unconditional love to their husbands (hence Paul not ending his sentence with "and vice versa"). Yet we both have a difficult time giving what the other so desperately needs, and thus the necessity of Paul's command.

This is really weird.

What I like most about Paul's charge in Ephesians 5:33 is one is not a precedent for the other. Husbands aren't permitted to use the excuse "I am not showing my wife love because she does not respect me," nor can wives hide behind the inverse. This point was not lost on Otis Redding, who in 1966 released his version of "Try a Little Tenderness." Redding implores husbands to love their wives tenderly, even when they're "weary" and may not be showing the most respect. He boldly claims "love is their only happiness" and promises husbands "won't regret it" because their wives won't ever forget the tender love they show them. He knows this doesn't come easy for guys, and finishes the song with a loud, begging cry: "You've gotta know what to do, man, take this advice."

My wife has shown me respect even when I didn't come close to deserving it, not out of reverence to me, but in obedience to Christ, and it's had a profound effect on me. My love for her has grown exponentially, and it's made it all the easier to heed Paul and Otis's command to "try a little tenderness." Otis's method of trying tenderness even when his wife was weary and humbly asking for respect from her must have some truth in it - for even though they wed as naive teenagers, they remained married until his death. As for Aretha, who chose to demand respect in exchange for money, her love life has consisted of tragedy after tragedy. Oh, how I prefer the ways of Otis.

The Original Version of "Respect"


Otis Sings "Try a Little Tenderness"

I asked to be fired.

my favorite author, Brennan Manning

Anyone I've ever admired has been absolutely ridiculous, and all of my heroes are crazy. My favorite author spent years shoveling poop on a farm by day and washing dishes by night in France, and voluntarily incarcerated himself in a Swiss prison - just so he could better understand what Jesus was talking about in the beatitudes. My mentor abandoned a lucrative career in Hollywood in order to move to Atlanta to become a pastor for no pay, and through his obedience became the catalyst behind the greatest Christian community I've ever known. My Christian hero was hanged naked at a concentration camp for starting illegal churches, smuggling Jews out of Germany, and organizing a secret plot to assassinate Hitler. My step dad is the most selfless person I've ever met; he sacrifices everything in order to see his family thrive and raise up the next generation of Christian leaders (which means dealing with middle schoolers, yikes). My dear friend spends all of his vacation and leisure time (and much of his discretionary income) helping street kids in Nicaragua gain an education.

My Pops

The famous Joe Braun

These are the people I look up to, the ones who I hold in high esteem, the folks who I aspire to be like. They live epic stories and they espouse a big Gospel. Let me give this to you straight, no chaser - if you're someone who works a corporate job, living for incremental pay increases and pretentious title promotions, all for the end goal of buying a retirement home in Florida where you'll spend your last days hitting a white ball around a patch of grass while just waiting to die, then you are not someone I admire. In fact, I think your life is a damn waste of time, and I pity you.

Dylan & Ben in Nicaragua

I say that, and yet here I am. I'm in Amsterdam this week, hobnobbing with executives while continuing to infuse my 401(k) with cash so I can afford a lush funeral waiting room (err, retirement home). At times I embody everything I despise and look like a person whose mediocrity makes me nauseous. The cognitive dissonance is so overwhelming it's like having my head jammed through a garlic press. So I prayed. I got on my knees and asked God to have me fired. Surely my newfound poverty would bring me great spiritual self actualization, and lead me to living a life more like Bonhoeffer or Manning or Braun. Yet God refused to convince my boss to lay me off. I even tried to quit the rat race, but every time I began to type my letter of resignation, the words of 1 Peter 4:10-11 reverberated in my heart:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen."

This is what happens when you give your house away

I have no clue what plan God has in mind for me tomorrow, but for this season He's made it clear I need to stop pursuing my own version of a grand story for my life. Instead, I had to learn how to use the current gifts He has given me to serve others. So we began to give money away. We set up direct deposits so the money doesn't even hit our bank account - it just goes straight to people who need it every payday. We loved being a part of the huge narrative God is writing - helping those living in physical poverty, and spreading the good news of a God who loves you, who created you to live an epic life, who redeemed you from the mess in your life, and who is restoring you, to those living in spiritual poverty. We kept increasing our biweekly giving incrementally, until soon enough it was our second largest expenditure each month - only our mortgage payment was higher.

Believe it or not, I really wrestled with this. By spending more on my house each month, was I saying my kingdom was a greater priority than God's? We're completely underwater on our mortgage - I couldn't sell the place if I wanted to - we were stuck. Yet my heart was tugged back to 1 Peter 4, this time to the verses directly preceding the ones quoted above: "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling." The verses gave me a vision of giving our house away without signing over the deed. Wonder if our house became a place of refuge for those stuck in poverty of relationships. Imagine if we constantly swung open our doors, and welcomed all with extraordinary love - treating every guest as a king. How amazing it would be for our home to become the place where strong friendships are forged and iron-sharpening-iron relationships are built. Our house has been filled with a constant stream of new friends ever since, and our cheap berber carpet is now covered with stains, but the mortgage cheque has never been easier to write.


I used to think my job was just for fundraising, but now I know Grace calls me to lead a much bigger story. Giving away a portion of my income isn't enough - I want every red cent I spend to give glory back to Christ and proclaim an epic Gospel. I want all of my possessions to be a tool to "love each other deeply" and offer up the richest hospitality ever known. For all I know, God could change His mind tomorrow and have me unemployed next week, and I've come to peace with that reality. Yet regardless of how little or as much as I have, "me and my house, we will serve the Lord."


What I'm listening to during this post:

This is an illegal post.

View of Shanghai from the Bar Rouge rooftop

I'm breaking the law as we speak. With each keystroke, I'm committing a crime in this country, and by reading these words, you're my accomplice (kinda). In order to even access this website, I had to sign in to a virtual private network and connect to a proxy server that routes my IP address through Singapore. These are the lengths I go to in order to circumvent the efforts of the Party to keep its citizens from knowing the truth. Perhaps they know truth is accompanied by its close cousin, freedom, and they certainly don't want that cat out of the bag.

Chinese dissident and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo

I have a friend here who's a dissident of sorts, and he's so vocal with his beliefs I get nervous being around him in public in China. I've never seen the inside of a Chinese prison, but I can't imagine it's very pleasant. Last night, the two of us were riding in a taxi, and when we passed a billboard, my friend exclaimed: "Bullshit! Those signs make me so angry. They're lies!" I asked him what the sign said, and he told me they were propaganda, proclaiming the greatness of the Party and how everyone in the country is blissful thanks to their leadership. When I realized my friend had just cursed the Party in front of our taxi driver, I immediately began to urinate in my trousers. My friend assured me the driver didn't speak a word of English, but I wasn't willing to risk it. Call me paranoid, but I envisioned a hidden microphone in the car transmitting my friend's words of blasphemy to Party headquarters, and was convinced they were sending soldiers to intercept our taxi and haul us off to a prison for dissidents. I wondered if Bill Clinton would come to free me the way he had with those journalists in North Korea a few years ago. 

Clearly it's not as bad as I'm making it out to be, but the stories my friend told me stoked the flames of my fear. He constantly talks of freedom, berates the state-controlled media, and asks me for the "real" world news. He certainly doesn't let me forget how lucky I am to live in the USA. While he admires the States, he's still on the fence about our access to guns. On one hand, he hears the reports of deadly shootings of innocent people in the USA (he says the state-controlled media are always quick to politicize those stories into a justification for his country's policy, which not only bans gun ownership for its citizens, but also gives the death penalty to those caught possessing illegal guns), but on the other hand, he sees how it'd be more difficult for a government to take away the rights of a well-armed citizenry. I could hear in his voice how seriously he'd considered this dilemma and knew his opinions were driven by what he believed would bring the most freedom to his people.

View of Nanjing from my hotel room

We were back in a (different) taxi during this whole discussion tonight, and again I was looking over my shoulder for the police coming to arrest us for speaking freely. Trying to lighten up the conversation a bit and move away from politics, I made the joke: "Well, hopefully you'll be able to come visit me in the US soon, and we'll do all sorts of stuff you can't do here - like shoot guns or go to church." His response was immediate: "Yes, we could go to church. I don't believe in God, and I'm ashamed of that." I was perplexed by why someone would be ashamed of not believing, so I asked him: "Why are you ashamed of that?" His answer made me realize he was ashamed because he didn't feel he had made his own choice, but rather someone else had made it for him."I've been brainwashed" he said. "For 18 years in school, I was fed lies, and I'm just now trying to find what is truth. I don't expect you to understand, but right now the brainwashing is keeping me from believing." He was right, I didn't understand - not at all. I gently prodded a little more - "What do you think it would take for you to overcome the brainwashing?" I didn't even understand my own question, yet he still replied: "It'd take a miracle...I need to see the water turned into wine." This was my opportunity - my chance to share an intriguing piece of apologetics or some profound argument to make him believe, but the only words I could muster up were: "He's real." An expert orator, evangelizer, or theologian I clearly am not.

All night, our conversation has been racing through my head, and I'm reminded of this story about Jesus my friends and I discussed the other week. In John 8, the people are openly debating with Jesus about who he really is. Is he a prophet? a teacher? the son of God? Or is he demon-possessed? They're trying to decide if they should follow him or not, so it's the time when you'd expect Jesus to give his biggest sales pitch. Yet instead of a long list of features and benefits, promising health, happiness, and wealth, all he says is that if you follow him "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." I love how Jesus is all about truth and setting us free from the brainwashing of our youth - the lie that money, sex, and stuff could truly satisfy us. Jesus goes on to challenge the crowd to prove him wrong - I think he knows they had been brainwashed to believe the Messiah would look and act a certain way, and he wants them to go back and actually examine the evidence.

Century Eggs!

In my own life, I've had to go back and examine the evidence. For a long time, I questioned how the Bible was written, and if I could really trust what it says. So I studied its history, found out when its books were written, and learned why some Christian writings were included while others were not. I took university courses on religious history taught from a secular perspective so I could understand and wrestle with scholars' arguments against the Bible's authenticity. In my quest for truth, I was constantly pointed back to Christ, and that's the only place I've been able to find true freedom. But please don't take my word for it.

Tonight, I'm praying for a miracle for my friend. I'm praying for him and his fellow citizens to have the opportunity to examine the evidence for themselves. I don't want to just give him my perspective in the back of a taxi cab, I want him to pursue truth and in Christ find the freedom he so desperately seeks. 

What I'm listening to during this post:

One hell of a wrestling match.

Note: Unlike my other posts, the names in this post have been changed to protect the innocent (and not-so-innocent).

Have you ever sat in a boardroom full of executives in finely pressed suits, wielding more power than Gordon Gekko, then have your eyes fill up with tears? You fight them back as hard as you can, but eventually your eye lids become so pregnant with the salty solution you can't help but release it, like a huge white pimple on your chin you succumb to popping. Unfortunately, I got to experience this feeling firsthand last week, and it was brutal. To save face, I chalked it up to the rapid weather change (Canada was being Canada, and went from 75 degrees one day to a squall of snow the next), and the excuse seemed to appease my colleagues' curiosity.

Yet the real reason I was wrestling back tears was found in my email inbox. I know, I know, business etiquette 101, don't check your personal email during meetings, but I couldn't help myself. The subject line was one word: Frank. Frank is a high schooler I've been investing time in - I don't know what you call it, mentoring, maybe? All I know is Frank has had one messed up life, and I wanted to spend time with him out of the hope I could convince him he's meant for so much more than what he even believes is possible.

Winnipeg's first snow of the year...on October 3.

Frank is a prolific liar - if he told me the sky is blue, I'd have to go outside and verify it before I'd believe it. His home life is a wreck - his mom lives close by, but she never spends any time with him. He lives with his dad, who encourages him to make wise decisions such as skipping court-mandated drug rehab to go work at the car wash instead. Frank has more than his fair share of scars, and he's learned to protect himself from getting fresh wounds by coating himself in a teflon shell made of deception, keeping conversations at surface level, smoking dope, and maintaining a face more stoic than John Wayne. He's been in and out of different schools, and in and out of different jails. Recently he's been on probation, which has kept him out of jail and in school, but then there was that email.

How Canadians stay warm

The message was from my friend,  who had just spoken with Frank's probation officer and learned Frank had violated the terms of his probation. He had failed a drug test, which meant he was going to back to jail, and back to see the judge. My friend had no clue what the judge would do - would he make an example out of him? Would he be lenient on him? Would Frank spend the rest of his adolescent life in prison? She didn't know what to expect - she was just asking me to pray. While the request seemed simple, praying is actually quite difficult when you're seething with anger - anger at Frank, anger at his parents, anger at the whole system - all combined with an overwhelming sense of helplessness. So came the tears, accumulating faster than the snow outside.

Of all the high schoolers I spend time with, Frank is the most intelligent. Lately I've been teaching the students fundamental economic theory, and Frank is always the first one to grasp the concepts and churn through the math in his head. One day he told me he learned more from my lectures than all of his classes in school combined, and wanted to learn more. I couldn't believe this group of teens, many of whom have no ambition and don't seem to even want to graduate from high school, were voluntarily showing up to hear me talk about supply and demand curves, Giffen goods, and how GDP is calculated. Yet Milton Friedman seemed to be the only tool useful in piercing Frank's shell, so I continued. Frank told my friend he's now interested in a career in finance, and I fully believe he has the capabilities to succeed wildly. Yet these positive drug tests tell me he's not quite ready to give in to God's epic plan for his life.

Frank reminds me a lot of a guy I read about in the Bible named Jacob. Like Frank, Jacob was an expert liar (in Hebrew, the name Jacob is actually an idiom for "deceiver"). Jacob's brother, Esau, wanted to kill him and his father-in-law swindled him into a sham marriage and into working for him for 14 years, so I think they had the messy family situation thing in common, too. Once Jacob was completely fed up with his father-in-law, God called him to pack up his 2 wives and 11 children and head back to their homeland. Sounded like a good idea, but it meant one big issue for Jacob - he'd have to confront Esau.

In anticipation of Esau meeting him on the road, Jacob lined up his servants, wives, and children in order from least favorite to favorite so that if Esau came with soldiers and swords, at least his favorite kids would have a greater chance of surviving (what a great dad!). Even then, Jacob wanted an extra layer of protection for himself, so he sent the whole crew out ahead of him and decided the spend the night on the opposite bank of the river. There on the bank, God appeared disguised as a man, and wrestled with Jacob (weird, I know). Jacob must've put up a hell of a fight, because the 2 of them wrestled all night. Perhaps they were wrestling over Jacob's refusal to submit himself to God's will, or over him being such a pansy he put his family in harm's way before himself, I don't know.  Yet finally, God put the Mortal-Kombat-style "Finish Him!!" move on Jacob when He jammed his thumb into Jacob's hip socket, causing excruciating pain. At that, Jacob relents and submits to God's amazing plan for his life - a plan which included him becoming the head of a nation that exists to this day. Sometimes it takes a swift blow to the hip to make us drop the useless crap we're wrestling for and start living a grander story.

This is how I picture Frank right now - on the bank of the river, wrestling fervently with God. He's hell-bent on maintaining the sorry excuse for comfort he currently has, while God is determined to show him His magnificent plan for his life. One of redemption, one of restoration, one of epic adventure. I don't know how or when God is going to deliver the crippling blow to Frank's hip, but I know I want to be there when it happens so I can help him across the river and into the adventure.






Where this story came from:
The story of Jacob wrestling with God comes from Genesis 32, but to get a better idea of the bigger story, check out chapters 27-33.

What I'm listening to during this post: