Liminal Life

I had coffee yesterday with Jim Thomas, my pastor from The Village Chapel. He’s taking the church through the Sermon on the Mount and has hit the section where Jesus says several times “You have heard it said… But I say to you…” Jesus takes concepts like murder and adultery and says that we better not feel any spiritual superiority if we haven’t committed these acts because anger and lust are just as bad.

So is Jesus just proposing a stiffer form of legalism? Not only do I have to make sure I don’t kill someone today, I’ve got to make sure I don’t call anyone an idiot. Is he just setting the bar higher? In a way, yes. But I think he’s setting it so high that no one can reach it. And that’s the point. In 5:20, he says that we aren’t getting through the pearly gates unless our righteousness is greater than the world’s most extremely religious people. In other words, we might as well give up because we’re never gonna be holy enough. The only option is to get humble and broken and throw ourselves on God’s mercy. As Steve Brown says, “Cheer up, you’re worse than you thought.”

This is pretty counterculture stuff. Our society tells us every day to be strong and get our act together. Even the Christian bookstores are filled with books on seven steps to being better. And don’t even get me stated on Oprah and her new guru…

So raise a glass to the broken and sing a song for the losers. I’m thankful that I’ve found a community with a bunch of worn out people who don’t have what it takes. I hope you’ve found one too.

I’m reading UnChristian. A book I can’t recommend highly enough. The premise of the book is that Christians have alienated ourselves from the rest of the world by acting in ways that can only be described as UnChristian. Where in the world would they get an idea like that?

My buddies in Manchester Orchestra have a video for the song “I Can Barely Breathe.” I like it a lot. Very surreal, but very beautiful. Looks like it was made by Clay Lipsky, who appears to have RED camera. Cool.

Click here to check out a great collection of behind the scenes photos from the video shoot.

This so called Wall Street expert says Jobs needs to put either Blackberry or Windows Mobile on the iPhone if he wants it to succeed in the business world. Quick, somebody buy this guy a clue…

Betsy and I were married in Gainesville, Florida 29 years ago today. I was a soon-to-be-graduate of the University of Florida. She was a nurses aide in a labor and delivery unit. I was headed towards ministry. Campus ministry with InterVaristy to begin with, but eventually looking towards heading overseas to save the world. Betsy was planning on becoming a Nurse Midwife.

Neil Young said that he wasn’t happy to have ended up in the mainstream after Heart of Gold, so he “headed to the ditches.” We were full of youthful idealism and the ditches seemed pretty romantic to us. We lived in a house in the ghetto for our first year together. There was a detox center on the next block and a biker gang behind us. Betsy called for a cab one day and they said they didn’t send cabs to that neighborhood. But we loved it.

InterVarsity sent me to Pensaconservacola, Florida the next year and we started moving to the middle. We spent the next 28 years in the burbs and suburban evangelical churches. Betsy helped me discover my inner parent and we eventually discovered that adopting a bunch of kids was a way to change the world while living in the burbs and working for the man.

So here we are, twenty nine years later, living in the city and looking for ways to save the world. Betsy and I are more in love today than we were when we stood in front of our family and friends at the Community Evangelical Free Church. It hasn’t always been easy, but we’ve stuck with it and we’re really happy to be together.

Happy anniversary Betsy. I love you.

Joe

Still don’t know why I’m having problems with my blog, but it has nothing to do with the WordPress Theme, so I’ve moved back to the old theme.

Several friends have offered to help me figure the problem out and I will be reaching out to them soon.

I’ve been getting intermittent server errors lately. I finally realized they started after I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. It looks like there is an incompatibility in either my theme or one of my plugins. I don’t have time to figure it out right now, so I’ve changed the theme to one that is compatible with 2.5.1. I’ll make it look better later. I seem to have lost my widgets in the process, so no links to Compassion, The One Campaign or Blood Water.

Technology stinks…

I’ve already posted the story of our adoption here. But I have to write a bit more about it. Today is the fifteenth anniversary of the day we saw the picture of the four children we adopted.

Fifteen years. A lot has happened in that time. Think of it this way. A few months earlier, the first attack on the World Trade Center occurred. It’s easy to forget that event, since it was a failure. But it was intended to have the same impact that eventually happened on 9/11. It was the moment that the radical Muslims declared war on America, and our lives have never been the same.

On April 17, 1993, God drew a line in the sand and our lives have never been the same. On that day he asked Betsy and me if we were in or out. Did we really want to follow Jesus or did we just want to be a nice family. As the poem says, we chose the road less travelled. And it has made all the difference.

In the movie Three Days of the Condor, Cold War CIA Operative Cliff Robertson asks John Houseman if he misses the action of WWII. Houseman replies, “I miss the clarity.” Most of our life is gray with unclear guidelines for who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Houseman looks back at the horrific time of the second world war and remembers it fondly, because there was no ambiguity about who the bad guy was.

The day God told us to go get those kids was that moment of clarity for Betsy and me. Life has been pretty gray since that time. Sometimes, it has been completely dark. But we can look back at that day and remember that there is a God and we are his.

Communion, Passover, 12 stones from the middle of the river, wedding rings. Stuff that makes us remember. God gives us moments in the light to keep us on course when we are in the dark. That’s what today is for me. A time to remember God is there.

Last month, I wrote about being allergic to my home. It’s true. But it turns out that it wasn’t my primary problem. I got a toothache a few weeks ago. Suspecting a cracked tooth, I went to the dentist. Sure enough I had a cracked molar on the upper right and it had infected the root, so I needed a root canal. The dentist asked if I was having any problems with my sinuses. He explained that the x-ray showed that my sinus cavity was below the end of the tooth. The infection in the root was keeping me sick. He said I would feel better once the root canal was done and that my sinuses would start clearing up immediately.

It worked. It’s still Spring and Nashville is in bloom, so I’m still struggling some. But I feel tons better. Looks like we should have been listening to our dentists after all. Gotta go floss my teeth…

This is just too cool. It is painted on the side of a building in downtown Nashville. I have no idea why. For now I’m assuming it is talking about me.

Lindy took the picture while roaming around downtown, so I haven’t even seen it yet. Gotta get down there this weekend and see it for myself.

I need this on a t-shirt.