I Am Going Way FURTHER Out Onto Thin Ice Here

In response to one of the comments by Matches on my most recent post, I found myself actually writing another post. So I decided to copy it here. So in its entirety and in its original form:

“Matches, you bring up a great point on the war and abortion thing. You could add in capital punishment too, which it seems to me is more about vengeance and revenge than it is about punishment. It seems that the family’s of victims always speak about the death penalty with a tone of hatred and anger and bitterness toward the convicted. Certainly this would be a very human reaction, and I am not in any way trying to make light of it.

Another area where I see similar conflict is with in vitro fertilization. I know a lot of Christians who are very much in favor of this practice while they vehemently oppose abortion. I even had one Christian physician tell me that the greatest thing we can do as Christians is to create life. I am not sure where he gets that from. I don’t understand this. If the pro-life way of looking at things is that life begins at conception, how can one knowingly create 10-15 or 20 little lives in a dish by uniting sperm and egg and then put 8-10 of them in the uterus hoping that one will take hold and turn into a pregnancy. How can you know from the outset that you are going to sacrifice 8 or 9 of those lives? Or how can you run the risk of all 8 or 10 of them taking hold and ending up with one of those stories. Most of those pregnancies end in the death of some or most of the babies. Only the few successes make it into the news. And then how can you know that there is a problem with what to do with the remaining 8 or 10 lives that are left in the dish and then frozen indefinitely until somebody decides what is best in the future.

It just seems like such a double standard, to be against destroying life by abortion but to be for destroying life by in vitro fertilization. Please do not misread me here, I am not passing judgment on in vitro, I am just pointing out the inconsistency of having a pro-life view and a pro in-vitro stance. It seems to me that the pro in-vitro stance is actually more in line with a pro-choice view.

Well now it seems I have put another post in my comment section. Maybe I will link to it.”

Again, just because I am posting on very sensitive topics here, I am not passing judgment on anyone on either side. If you have had an abortion, I offer you grace and love and will do anything I can to ease your pain. Or if you feel alright about it, great. We can be friends and have different views. If you have had in vitro and I have stepped on your toes, please be at peace. I am not passing judgment. I am just putting things out here that I have been thinking about for an awful long time and have not had the opportunity to discuss. My intent is in no way to judge, it is only to have open discussion.

I Am Going Way Out Onto Thin Ice Here

OK. I’ve been thinking about it for awhile, and I’m going to do it here. Post on abortion. For most of the last 2 decades, since I have been aware of this issue, I have said nothing. Nothing. My stance has been probably one from the strict pro-life side of things although I would never picket a clinic or put up crosses or go to pro-life meetings or all that stuff. My stance was really just be default. Well, I have gotten more and more irritated with the way most seriously pro-life groups of which I am aware (important distinction here as I am not trying to lump all groups into one description) seem to be at least slightly militant and slightly obscene in their methods of opposition. Please, please, please keep in mind that I am treading very lightly here. I do not want to tick anybody off, make enemies, end up with toilet paper on my yard, and all that stuff. Everybody play nice please. I am just making observations and asking questions and finally saying something.

What has finally set me off is receiving an email from someone with which I am slightly acquainted. This email dealt with a local provider of abortion services. It suggested that pictures be taken of the smoke stack at his clinic and then used in material talking about how babies were being burned. Of course this was supposed to be used in support of Christian anti-abortion activity. And this email struck me as being rather judgmental of people who are pro-choice and rather judgmental of abortion providers. This person who sent it has put themselves out there as a grace offering follower of Christ. It struck me that the grace she offers may only stretch far. So I am through being silent.

Now don’t get me wrong. I think abortion is a tragic thing. And I am not in support of it. But I am also not in support of the way the current pro-life movement opposes it. I think it is geared in completely the wrong direction and starts in the wrong place. Instead of focusing on babies, I think it ought to focus on the mom’s and dad’s.

It is a horrible thing that babies are being killed. It really is. But, they cannot be brought back. They are no longer hurting. They are with God. And what better place is there than that. But the pro-life movement seems so intent on showing what happened to those babies. What if we were instead to focus on the moms and dads? They are the ones who are really hurting. They are the ones we can actually help. They are the ones who need grace. They are the ones who are having to live with the decisions that were made. They are the ones who need love.

I understand that whole point is to prevent from happening to more babies that which has happened to previous babies. But is it working? Have the abortion laws been overturned? Have people moved closer together? Or have they grown farther apart? If abortion laws are overturned will it really stop abortion? Do people go through with abortions to actually spite the militant pro-life movement? Is the current path really doing anything at all? I can tell you from where I sit, it looks as if it is accomplishing nothing.

But what if we were to focus on the parents? What if we were to switch gears and meet them with grace in the places where they hurt? What if all the pro-life movement put all their energy into helping the hurt and offering alternatives and gave up on the angry opposition? I know that there are places where alternatives are offered, but that is not what is in the media as the face of the pro-life movement. What if that became the face of the pro-life movement, grace, love, help, instead of anger? Would that start to bring about the moral change in our culture that will be needed make abortion rare? Changing the laws won’t really work. Legislating morality has failed time and time again.

I am no longer going to vote for public office based on this single issue. Before now, I was told that I didn’t have a choice. To vote for someone who was not pro-life was sinful. I do not believe that to be true any longer. There are many moral issues that can be traded back and forth and none of them is any more or less moral than the others.

I am not certain that this needs to be the decisive issue of our time. We act as if abortion has been occurring for 30 years. Like it was something new. Like America created it and so we are going to burn in hell because of it. It has actually been around for thousands of years. It is not a new issue to God. He has seen much more of it than we. I think he probably has a handle on it without us interfering with it in a hateful manner.

One last item. I think the hate against the physicians performing abortions also needs to stop. It is not the way Christ would treat them. I have met the local provider for these services, and he truly believes that he is providing a service that is much needed for women. He is passionate about it. I certainly think his passion is misplaced, but fighting him with anger and hatred and threats will not change his mind. Maybe love and grace will. That is what Jesus offers him. I have heard some say that they just wish that God would strike him dead. Well, God isn’t going to do that. God will forgive him.

So I think that is what I wanted to say. I welcome your comments, but I am not trying to tick anybody off or start a fight or make anybody feel bad. I am just putting some thoughts out there. If I have pushed your buttons or offended anyone in any way, I sincerely apologize. My only intent is to have a different kind of discussion about it.

“…must deny himself…”

At church last night, in our observance of Lent, we focused on what I understand to be the traditional 2nd Saturday of Lent scripture (I may be wrong about that traditional part, this Lent stuff is so new to me). As part of the discussion, we talked about the passage of Mark 8:34-9:1. Within this text is the statement,”If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Paul asked for examples of denying oneself both in the correct sense and in the improper sense. The contributions were very good. Tithing and time were both given as ways we can deny something for ourselves and instead give it to God. But my brain went in a completely different direction.

I saw that the “deny himself” phrase seemed closely tied to the “take up his cross” phrase. That connection said to me that this denial must be a very profound thing, not just me denying myself desert or baseball cards or 100 watt light bulbs. It said to me that this denying myself must be more of a complete life change, a paradigm shift, a different way of relating to God. Denying myself meant to me that I have to live like the Lord’s prayer where I ask God this day for my daily bread. Where I ask God to sustain me for this day without yet regarding tomorrow. All God has promised is to sustain me for this moment. And to me denying myself means that I quit planning so far out, that I quit trying to fix the future, that I quit living out there in front of me so much as I am living right here and now. That I trust God to sustain me for this moment, and then worry about the next moment when it is here.

So the next question I have is this: what is my cross? Is it the same cross that Jesus carried? Is that what he means? Or is there a different cross for each of us? Is my cross something that Christ asks me to do or is it some burden I carry or is it the same burden he carried? I don’t think I have a good answer for that yet. Obviously he is not expecting each of us to be physically crucified. What does he mean? And is my cross something that does something directly for another or are others indirectly affected because of what my cross does to me?

Another question I have is this: does denying oneself mean that it has to involve a suffering of some sort? Or can denying oneself be something that we enjoy? Or if it does mean suffering can it be joyful suffering that I actually am eager to do?

So I guess it appears that I actually have more questions than answers. I though I was going to put down answers here, but most of what I see is questions. Interesting.

Why Our Hearts Continue To Beat

I was asked by Matches in a comment a few weeks ago to post on this topic. So I have been thinking about it. Wondering from where the curiosity comes. Wondering why this topic. Wondering why this title because this was the specific wording which was requested. It is very curious. He asked for both my professional and personal opinions, and I will oblige.

The human heart is very complex as we are all aware. But under normal circumstances it continues to beat for a rather simple reason. Our brains tell it to do so. God’s amazing process of evolution included progressive stages of brain development from very primitive reptilian type brains, to the more complex mammalian brain, to the rather highly complex human brain. As more complexity in the brain is gained, the more primitive parts are still retained. So what we have in the mammalian brain is complexity that is built on the reptilian brain with the primitive parts retained, and what we have in the human brain is complexity built onto both the mammalian and reptilian brains with the primitive parts also retained. So why is this important to why our hearts beat.

Reptilian brains are built to regulate necessary bodily functions. Heartbeat, breathing, food finding, water finding, fight or flight responses, temperature regulating behavior. There is not much else to reptiles. No one has ever had an interactive meaningful relationship with a reptile. Reptiles are very serious. They just exist. This corresponds to the brainstem of mammalian and human brains. Reptiles are just a brainstem.

Mammalian brains though are a step up. Mammals can actually interact in a more meaningful way with what surrounds them. They play with each other. They at live in and for the here and now. Sure there is some instinctual stuff that they do which appears to be planning ahead, but they do not know why they do it. And people and mammals establish all sorts of relationships. They still have a brainstem regulating all that serious stuff, but they also have a cortex which makes them seem more human-like.

The human brain goes one step further with not only a cortex but a large frontal area of neo cortex. Humans can not only interact with their present environments. They can plan into the future. We still retain our serious brainstems and our more interactive cortices, but we add that very human front part.

So the reason why our hearts continue to beat is because our brainstems have an area that sends a signal to our hearts to keep beating (There is a whole bunch of cellular level physiology of sodium and potassium and calcium and ATP and ion channels which actually leads to the nerve impulse and the timing of the impulse, but I don’t think anyone including myself is interested in that here.). When that area of our brain is damaged due to a stroke or infection or some sort of trauma, our hearts stop beating.

But it is a little more complex than that because our hearts have an intrinsic ability to beat on their own. If the nerve signal is lost and the heart muscle itself is healthy, it will beat on its own without the nerve signal. This is because the heart muscle is of a type that can generate its own electrical potential and initiate its own beating. It is sort of a built in redundancy. But it won’t keep you alive indefinitely. You still need your brain.

So with the easy part out of the way we can proceed to the more curious part of the question, that being my personal opinion which implies to me that Matches is after a spiritual or psychological response or possibly both or maybe I am way over reading it. So I will begin here.

It certainly is true that after one spouse dies the second spouse can literally lose the desire to live and find themselves dead rather quickly. This is very interesting and would seem to indicate that the reptilian part of our brain can be essentially dominated and shut down by the human part (although it is impossible for your children to seriously injure themselves by holding their breath as kids throwing a little fit are often fond of doing in an attempt to generate leverage). But I think this may give a clue to what Matches is after.

The question, “Why do our hearts continue to beat?,” (I have no idea if that combination of punctuation I just laid down there is proper, but it seems to work for me at this juncture, and I am a firm believer that I ought to be able to throw around commas and other forms of punctuation where I see fit rather than following all those proper rules and such.) seems to come from the beginning that our hearts should probably not continue to beat. That it may be surprising that our hearts actually do continue to beat. We already know what will cease the beating from an anatomical or physiological position. That is being cut off the signal to beat. But what if considered from the spiritual or psychological side. What would cease the beating there?

The answer is pain. Emotional, spiritual, psychological pain. If intense enough, it can cease the beating. It has been known to occur as we have already established. And it occurs, however rare it may be, when that emotional, spiritual, psychological pain is derived from a relationship source. In our example someone we love has been taken from us. I do not know of any instances where someone inflicting emotional harm or pain to another has resulted in death, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t or doesn’t occur. Maybe it does. And maybe it does a lot. Maybe it is fair to say that this type of pain leads to anxiety and depression which leads to increased all cause mortality and even to specific causes of mortality such as suicide.

So why does all emotional, spiritual, or psychological pain not kill us. Why do our hearts continue to beat? I think it is because we long for relationship. God made us for relationship. Relationship with him and with each other. It is a continual drive that we are not easily willing to give up. We continue to seek it when we lose it. We try to fill up the empty spots with other stuff. We don’t let God fill the places he is supposed to fill, and we look for it everywhere else. But the point is that we are always looking to fill that drive for relationship somehow. It is one of the drives coming from very human part of our brain, and our hearts don’t stop beating until we have totally utterly given up on finding it.

I hope this sufficiently gets at what Matches was looking for. Thanks for reading.

Lent

Two posts in one night. In my previous post I explained that I was going to start using my blog to just get my thoughts and feelings out because I think I have discovered about myself that I have trouble doing that for various reasons and instead hold a lot inside. That is not very conducive to relationship with others or God so I am using this vehicle to change that about myself. So I have had a thought that I want to share.

My church is making a deal out of Lent. I have never been to a church that made a deal out of Lent. It didn’t seem odd to me until now. Why was that? I went to a Catholic high school for boys for about 2.5 years. They really celebrated Lent, and I participated from afar. I think that I just always thought it was a Catholic thing, and since my denomination was Protestant, then we just didn’t do that. But my current church, Wheatland Mission, is not Catholic either. So why Lent?

I am fully participating in Lent this year, ashes and fasting and all, and am feeling some sort of depth in me that I haven’t quite known before. I can’t really describe it much better than that yet. It just feels deep. Maybe it is the solemness off it all. I am not sure. I think I feel a new kind of connection with Christ. Maybe that is it. That depth. I am recognizing, during Lent, that I am broken and that despite this, God loves me enough to redeem me along with all that he has created. Christ’s work on the cross displays that love for me. And I am haunted by that fact. Humbled by that fact.

So why did the denomination of which I was a part not see the value in emphasizing Lent? I wonder if it is the focus on our brokenness. This denomination preaches “entire sanctification” as a second point in time, after a point of salvation, where one becomes without sin and able to live without sin. This is the way I have understood what was taught to me. Now it is sure possible that I misunderstand it, but I know of at least two individuals (not relatives), one older than me and one younger than me, who are as commited to that denomination as it is possible to be, that I know have stated that they live without sin. Also, I sat in a class at one of the largest churches in the denomination taught by one of the professors at the nearby denominational university who himself was a graduate of the denominational seminary during which he fashioned for the class a diagram that showed how when one sins after being sanctified, salvation and sanctification are then lost and have to be resought. So it seems to me that while the actual beliefs on paper may not state it so clearly, the culture of the denomination states it very clearly.

In that sort of culture, I don’t think it is possible to have any sort of meaningful focus on Lent, where we recognize our brokenness (much different that worthlessness by the way) in a sort of mournful stance in honor of the work that Christ did. In that culture, our brokenness is spoken of on paper, but I don’t think it is really believed because of the emphasis on sinlessness, an emphasis which further implies that a state has been reached where grace is no longer needed.

 So maybe I am way off base here. Some of my denominational friends may rise up against me here. But maybe I hit on something too. Just putting my thoughts out there. Thanks for reading.

Real

I don’t know that I have been using my blog properly. Most of the time I am trying to put something down with the idea that it needs to be inspirational, and I don’t think that is the best way for me to approach it. Here’s why.

Looking back on my life I can see that I have been conditioned to keep things inside of me. My family moved around quite a bit because of my dad’s profession as a clergyman. And I don’t regret that at a ll. In fact I would say that I have mostly liked it. It has taught me a lot of good stuff like how to be resilient, how to work hard, how to start over, how to wander (and I do love wandering), how to have inner strength, how to persevere through hardship, etc. But I think there are some other things I learned that make life difficult for me sometimes.

You would think that I learned how to make friends easily since I moved to 8 different schools from kindergarten to college, 10 if you count grad school and med school. And I did make friends at all those places. But I think that I learned mostly not to get too close to those friends because I would soon be leaving them. And because I did not get too close to anyone I kept most things, most of those important things, inside of me. So I didn’t learn how to share any real part of me with another person. And now I find that I think I still have trouble getting those important things outside of me. I don’t even think I have been able to get some of those important things outside of me to share with my wife. I just hold it all inside. And that, I feel, is finally beginning to make me lonely. So I think that instead of holding it inside, I need to use my blog as a way to get it out. To say what I am thinking. To say what I am feeling. To let other people see inside of me. To try and be real. And maybe that is not inspirational most of the time.

I am working a schedule and a job right now that is very demanding for me. It feels like I have to constantly attack it with a club and beat it back to keep it from devouring me. I actually have come to realize after Paul’s words last Saturday that it is a desert experience for me, if you will allow me to make an analogy to Christ’s 40 days in the desert. But Paul presented us with the idea that instead of Christ being weakened and strung out at the end of that trial and barely able to battle Satan (the picture I had always had in my mind that Papa- read The Shack to understand my using that word- had really depleted him before his battle with Satan just to make it extra difficult) that the desert days were exaclty what he needed to perpare him to be strong for the battle that lie ahead. That is an amazing way to think about it. I felt like a light bulb popped on in my head.

There have been a few times in the last year that I feel God has almost audibly spoken to me, and last Saturday night was one of them (see I haven’t even shared that fact with Karmen yet, holding it inside). My current circumstances, which seem so overbearing to me, are preparing me for what lies ahead, for what I am doing in April. That dovetails so nicely with another “God moment” I had about a year ago when I was trying to decide if this path was God’s leading or not. That moment led to this job at this time (see my last post on pairs) to have the time to prepare for April. I have called it my Ironman job. And now the desert that I find myself in the middle of I see as part of that training. It is helping me be mentally and emotionally tough, things I am really going to need at about 2 PM on April 13. But it doesn’t end for me there.

I have hope too. I can see the edge of the desert. This Ironman job and this desert before the battle will be ending. Wrapped up in all of this is God working in another way to give me perspective into what I really love to do in my field, and that is teach. I was in full time teaching for 5 years and doubted if I could do it for a career. Now I know that I love it and have a new eagerness for doing it. And I will be going back to it on July 1.

 So I think that is all real. It is at least as real as I know how to be right now. And I am going to start blogging what I am thinking and feeling. Which probably means that I will posting a lot more than I have in the last couple of months. Thanks for taking the time to read.