Embracing the Moment When Apathy and Analogy Collide.

I didn't very much feel like writing this week. Wait, no, I'm lying to you, which is bad. I felt like writing. The issue more fell into the realm of I didn't feel very inspired to write. Usually, I have a pretty clear idea as to what it is that I need to say. Half the time, the Holy Spirit takes over and I end up looking back over my post thinking to myself "I don't really remember writing most of this, but it's good so I guess let's keep it." This week, however, when thinking on what my topic would be, I got a great big pile of "meh" dumped in my brain. I found myself with a distinct lack of desire to engage.

This lack of desire eventually got me thinking, however. How often do we let the lack of inspiration prevent us from doing something? I don't think I can count the number of times I've let this happen, with examples found in a myriad of different situations. From playing Rock Band because I just didn't feel like doing that reading, to failing in sin because I just didn't feel like resisting a temptation, I find it's a fairly common experience to let a lack of inspiration be my driver in life. A driver who, though very friendly (and quite dapper in his neat little hat), is on a prolonged course for an epic crash into a brick wall.

Wait, what!? I don't see any brick wall, this guy is crazy, let's go ride bikes.

Now you stop right there ambiguous other voice which sometimes appears out of nowhere! Think about it, of course we can't see that brick wall. In the midst of out apathy, we don't really care enough to look around, and in my experience it tends to be pretty hard to find things which we aren't truly looking for.

So just where is this wall? It's in a different place for each of us. For some, it's right around the corner. It's that paper you've forgotten about, that presentation you haven't prepared for. For others, it's way down the road. The wall isn't even in the metaphorical distance right now. These farther away walls tend to be of greater importance than the closer ones, yet we still don't pay attention to them. I think we get an idea in our heads that somewhere down the line, we'll clean up our act and everything will be better. The wall will just somehow magically disappear.

To be honest, that's crap.

We need to think about the kind of precedent we are building here in the present. I think it is pretty silly of me to think that I can just bum around now and somehow be able to be all that I need to be in the heat of the moment. If I don't feel like doing my assigned work now, what happens when I have people depending on me and I get fired because I didn't feel like doing my job? If I don't feel like managing my money now, what happens if I get a family some day and I don't feel like saving for my kid's future. If I don't feel like sacrificing my time and freedom now for the sake of someone else , what happens when I don't feel like sacrificing my freedom by being faithful to my wife? I know this might sound a little over the top and maybe a bit judgmental, but please know that anything I post here is first a conviction of myself before it is a comment on anyone else's life. I honestly think this is something that is extremely dangerous if left ignored.

All this to say, we have to recognize that we are building our futures right now, in this moment. We can't expect to cave to apathy and lethargy now and somehow be able to not do it in the future. In light of all this, I invite you to join me in telling the apathy driving our life to pull over, right this very instant (do it in an English accent if you like, it makes it more fun). Next, tell him to get out of the car. Finally, get out, walk up to him, punch him in the face, and then walk away.

Once we've been able to deny that lethargy, I believe we're going to find another person trying to influence us. I haven't lied to you all before, and I won't start now, I honestly believe that person is God. He's been telling us to do stuff all along, we've just been too wrapped up in our "meh" to pay attention. Sometimes, He will tell us to do things that we really don't want to do. This, however, is where trust comes in. It's not easy, but there are an endless number of examples of people who have given their lives over to God and seen amazing things happen. Go check some of them out. He's been doing it right for a long time. I encourage you to let Him give a try with your life.

With His love and hopefully His grace,

Taylor

More From That Tall Skinny Guy Who Talks a lot.

I had a friend share an interesting word with me recently. Over breakfast, we were talking about something I had said to our congregation one Friday night. I don't remember all of the details of the conversation, but there was one which jumped out at me.

Quick background; I generally think of myself as a person who is fairly well liked. In fact, I struggle a lot with people not liking me. It has always been an issue for me, trying to avoid finding my worth solely in what other people think. Keep that in mind as you read the word that my friend shared with me.

"Some people just think of you as that skinny guy who talks a lot."

I think we all have some sort of image we try to put forward. Be it the confident leader, the enigmatic loner, the slightly-out-there bundle of fun, we all have something we want to put forward. For myself, if you took that first and last one and mash them together, I think you would gave something somewhat close to how I would like to be seen. In particular, I like it when people see me as someone who generally has something encouraging to say, who works to support our community by sharing what is on my heart. I like to think that God has made me a pretty articulate person, and I hope that I use that gift to enrich the lives of those with whom I live.

The idea of me being just another skinny guy who talks a lot doesn't really have a place in that ideal image of who I am. So how did it feel to receive this word from my friend? How did it feel to have what I think of as a unique and special identity condensed down and written off as a physical description, lightly sprinkled with a verb and a qualifier?

It felt absolutely wonderful, and I mean that in all honesty.

Before I go any further, I want to say to those who may think of me in this way (though I doubt you would be reading this) that I'm not mad. I think we all need people in our lives to help shrink our egos a bit, to remind us that not everything we say is so incredible that people are drawn to us like aquarium goers to a manatee (you know you can't help looking at them).

This ego shrinking is something which I think we all need more of in our lives. The trouble is, it isn't always easy to receive. In the spirit of full disclosure, it wasn't until recently that the healing has really occurred to allow me to receive this word as anything but a biting critique of all that I am. If I had heard this even at the beginning of this year (think school year not three weeks ago), I probably would have demanded names from my friend, then gone looking for each of these people in the hopes that I could heal my rift with them and in turn make them love me forever (which, in my mind back then, would have been the unavoidable result of that conversation). There would have been anger. There would have been pain. More importantly, there would have been desperation, a desperate drive to reaffirm my identity by ensuring that there were none who would speak ill of me.

There is plenty of scripture I could pull from at this point to drive home the danger of this line of thinking, but suffice to say, there is a fundamental flaw with trying to find our satisfaction in the opinion of others. The fact of the matter is that some people in this world are going to see us as idiots, as people who are so fundamentally wrong that there is no hope for us anymore. If you're looking to experience this, just go find an opinionated op-ed piece online and comment on it, then watch the ensuing firestorm as people who have never met you make you feel like less of a person.

This has been a harsh reality for me to come to terms with. I'll make no secret of the fact that I like to be liked. However, a couple very encouraging things have come from me being able to recognize that I won't be liked by everyone. First, I'm incredibly grateful for the supportive friends and family in my life. Knowing that there are people who see me as just another skinny talking guy makes me appreciate those who really care for me all the more.

The second major thing that came from this realization, and I think easily the most important, was a reminder. A reminder that, though there will be people in this world who run the gambit from loving me to not really knowing I exist to hating all that I am, I'm called to love everyone. Not just tolerate, but love. There will be those who scorn us in this life, those who seek to belittle us and cause us pain. It is in the moments which they choose to do this that showing them all the grace that we have to offer can have a greater impact than we could ever imagine.

With His love and hopefully His grace,

Taylor

Pop That Bubble

I live in a bubble.

It's a nice bubble, don't get me wrong. It's in a great bubble neighborhood, and it has all the things one would want from this particular type of accommodation. Safety, security, a lack of desire to look at the world around me, a wet bar, you know, all those things a bubble really needs. I've found recently, though, that I'm becoming less and less comfortable in here. You see, the issue with bubbles is that they tend to be clear, so no matter how hard you try not to, every now and then you end up taking sidelong glances at the world outside. With each of those looks comes a pesky desire to go out and do something in that often-terrifying outside world.

I think we all have bubbles like this, especially Christians. The walls of these bubbles, rather than being made of soap, are made of people (not unlike Soylent Green). We enjoy surrounding ourselves with those who make us feel safe, who make us feel as though our ideas are accepted, our opinions appreciated.

If these were normal bubbles we were working with here, this wouldn't be such a bad thing. However, we, through years of training, have learned how to construct super bubbles, near impenetrable yet often invisible barriers which separate us from the oh-so-scary world outside. We can still see the world, and thus claim to interact with it, but we really have very little to do with what goes on outside our sphere of exclusivity.

For Christians, these bubbles can prove to be particularly dangerous. How so, one might be wondering. They're making the environment in which we live disgusting.

Think of what happens when you close off a room from the outside world. You shut all the windows, close the doors, shut off any ventilation, and just let the room be. After a while, the air becomes stale, a stench invades the place, a heavy, uncomfortable heat fills the room. Yet we don't notice any of this. If we stay in that room, the changes are completely unknown to us. The effects are compounded even more when you cram a bunch of people into the space. The more people, the faster this stagnation occurs.

Now think of what it is like to walk into a room like this. We're shocked by all of these offensive things hitting us at once, and wonder how anyone could stand being in a place which has become so revolting. This is the image that I think a lot of people get when they enter into the social circle of Christians who have long ago closed themselves off from the rest of the world. Quite frankly, it's repulsive.

God has been talking to me a lot lately about this bubble, how dangerous it is, how though it is good for us to be in community, it is so easy to stagnate as we sit in our little groups, ceaselessly encouraging each other and forgetting that we are called, that I am called, to go and love a world (and as the wisdom of DC Talk teaches us, "love is a verb").

So I've been trying to be more faithful in this way. At first it's scary, sure, but along with that twinge of fear comes something that I can only describe as a refreshing of my very soul. To go back to the room, I've found that I've finally been compelled to go and open up the door. As soon as I did, a wave of fresh air crashed into me, surprising but welcome. Sure, there are plenty of scary things waiting beyond the confines of my happy little bubble. The Truth, however, is that I'm wasting my time if I've got a gift which has the ability to change this world for the better and bring healing and restoration we could never fully comprehend and I simply sit in a room and stare at it.

Community is an amazing gift, and I would never seek to undermine that fact. Another fact which we have to realize, though, is that we as humans are all too willing to sit in our own filth, content with the comfort which we have found, as our lives become less and less attractive to those who don't share our worldview. So as I encourage myself, I encourage each of you, get outside of that bubble. Go and be the love that is supposed to be invading this world. As you do, watch as your life is renewed in a way you never thought possible. Rediscover the purpose behind why God did what He did on the cross.

With His love and hopefully His grace,

Taylor

But I Don't Wanna go to School!

Here at Western, a new quarter is upon us. There is a bubble of excitement which begins to creep up as people prepare for new classes. Students wait with anticipation to see what this new time of learning will hold. The air is electrified with a thrill for knowledge.

There is a heaping helping of whining.

For those who don't know, I've moved back into the dorms for this, my last year as an undergrad at Western. I try not to rag on my younger "housemates" too often, but in this case I need to face facts, those facts being that freshmen are very, very, good at complaining, particularly about the classes they don't want to take. As many of us remember, the early years of college are rife with courses which are required of us, but that we have no real interest in. During my time working the front desk, I sit in the midst of a veritable hurricane of lamentations about how horrible it is that someone has to take *insert name of class here*. Before I go any further, let me say that I know your pain. GEO 101. I've been where you are. I'm here for you.

The fact that I'm old now (in college student thinking), however, has made it so that I don't have to deal so much with taking undesirable courses. My left hook o' credits knocks out most of my competition, and as such, I'm left looking to other areas of my life to find things that I don't like to learn. Why do I spend my time actively looking for things that I don't like, one might be wondering? Because the things we are least excited to examine have just as much to teach us as the things which we absolutely love.

Par exemple, I love me some Jesus. Based on this, I really enjoy learning more about Him. Naturally, I'm drawn towards things that allow me to learn more about who Jesus was, why He did the things He did, and how His life and death effect the way I am to live today.

On the other hand, I don't so much like learning about hard sciences. Admittedly, I'm picking something from kind of a long list of things that I don't like to learn about, but there it is. I find that hard sciences leave starkly little room for academic wiggling, something which I enjoy immensely. I find equations and formulas restrictive, like an uncomfortable hug that you have no way of escaping. You just have to sit there and take it. And cry.

In the past, my immense dislike of hard sciences has resulted in me simply ignoring them. Scientists can have their fma and dirt and exhaustive lists of data, and I'll keep my freedom to wildly speculate about what occurred in 7th century England. I've recently been convicted that simply ignoring that which we don't want to learn isn't good enough, however.

It was a blessing that this conviction came from someone who I love very much, that being Jesus (He tends to show up a lot in my thinking). Jesus has a lot to say about all that the Jewish religious elite of His time were doing wrong. He describes the religious authority of the day as pitiless brutes, harassing God's children. And yet, despite this immense dissatisfaction with the way in which they lived their lives, Jesus knew, to a letter, the law which was so very important to this religious elite. Jesus learned the very thing which was being used to oppress the people which He spent the majority of His adult life ministering to. Why did He do this? Because, quite frankly, if He had not, Jesus would have been completely irrelevant to a significant portion of the population to which He was ministering.

Much of the time in today's culture, we like to tell people that "we understand," that "we know where they're coming from." I feel like I lie to people the vast majority of the time that I say that. Until I take the time to examine how a person thinks, what forces structure their world view, I have no place saying that I understand what someone is saying or feeling. I need to engage with what they think before I can claim to be able to engage with how they feel.

This is easy to do with the things that we love learning about. I don't have any trouble taking the time to learn how to best engage with a historian or a theologian. But what about a radical feminist marxist who just got her masters in evolutionary biology? Am I willing to do whatever I can to be able to effectively relate to that individual? Do I care about that person enough to do that?

That is how I think we need to look at the process of intellectually engaging with things we don't like, as an act of caring. I'm not saying we need to go and learn everything. I am saying, however, that it is an incredibly loving act to sacrifice our own comfort to go and introduce ourselves to some new ideas. As we do this, we gain the amazing gift of being able to do more than appease our cultural norms by half-heartedly saying "I understand." We get to mean it.

With His love and hopefully His grace,

Taylor