Every night before our children go to sleep, my wife, Ashlie, and I sing and pray with our children. Sometimes, there’s a story about three princess, one for each of my children, but not always.

We sing the same song and we pray the same prayer.

Now, being raised Pentecostal, there was an unspoken idea that ritual was a bad thing, at least ritual in the church. I heard several sermons about how we shouldn’t just “go through the motions.” I found myself agreeing with the message but for different reasons. I was never able to explain why – it was just a gnawing feeling, a thought: the preacher is right but also not all right.

Then, I listened to a Liturgist explain why repetition is a good thing; that ritual is just routine with meaning. .

Ritual is routine with meaning.

It was in that moment when I understood why “just going through the motions” is bad: the meaning is missing, the purpose is presentless, the goal is gone.

Ritual is good as long as it has meaning. Ritual creates habits that inform everything else. Ritual helps us sort out life; when everything is chaos, ritual brings back stability and equilibrium.

My family ends everyday the same: we sing and we pray.

We sing The Doxology and we pray The Lord’s Prayer.

When we’ve had a bad day: The Doxology and The Lord’s Prayer.

When we’ve had a good day: The Doxology and The Lord’s Prayer.

When there’s been shouting and fighting: The Doxology and The Lord’s Prayer.

When there’s been anger and tears: The Doxology and The Lord’s Prayer.

When we’ve been unkind and mean: The Doxology and The Lord’s Prayer.

When I’ve had to apologize: The Doxology and The Lord’s Prayer.

When I’ve had to forgive: The Doxology and The Lord’s Prayer.

When there’s been laughter and joy: The Doxology and The Lord’s Prayer.

When there’s been warmth and love: The Doxology and The Lord’s Prayer.

When there’s been defeat and confession and repentance and healing and wounding and hugs: The Doxology and The Lord’s Prayer.

Regardless of the type of day, of the attitudes, of the sins and forgivenesses, we always return to the God who animates us by his Spirit. We do this by singing and praying.

 

Praise God from whom all blessings flow…Our Father who is in heaven…

Let your ritual’s have meaning.

“I afflicted myself with fasting;
I prayed with head bowed on my chest.” Psalm 35:13b

This was the first time I have participated in a food fast.

It was immensely difficult.

As Foster writes, the purpose of a fast is to know God deeper. Fasting is a form and expression of worship. God delights when we fast, but only when we fast for the right reason.

I have a few observations about my own spiritual wrestlings as I come to the end of this fast. This is not meant to be a boast – that is not my intent. If this blesses you: wonderful. If it does not: read something else that does.

1. When the fast began, my thoughts towards others was the first area that I experienced conviction. Through fasting a non-essential thing, God reinforced the truth that all people are of concern for God; every person is a potential adoptee into the Kingdom of God. While it is true that God knows who will accept or reject his mercy and grace, I do not: therefore, let me love all as I would want to be loved.
2. I was reminded that rest is a source of energy. To not rest is to sin. While coffee and carbs can only go so far, rest replenishes and restore body and soul in a manner that food does not. While fasting, the need for more rest became apparent. I then reflected on my wife and her “restlessness” stage of life: she is home with our three daughters, all three years and younger. My compassion for her grew.
3. Fasting has caused me to slow down my day. Since I was without as much energy as I was used to, I had to intentionally plan my day to accomplish my tasks and responsibilities without all the “fluff” and empty time. I became more productive (at least at work; at home, I was taking naps. My wife was very gracious). This does not mean that I see myself only as a worker – rather, to my surprise, I delighted even more in the accomplished tasks and participated even more intentionally in conversations and pleasant exchanges with strangers.
4. Because fasting removes a thing you think you depend upon, two wonderful things happen:
   1. you start to trust God to supply for you what you are fasting once did, only to discover (or be reminded) that God is far more intimately involved with his children than just with their supposed needs – he is present, always;
   2. Prayer becomes a place: yes, we do pray, as an action – but as Paul says to pray without ceasing, then we arrive at a moment when we are intentionally in communion with God always. We learn that we end prayers just to begin another, as though passing from room to room, but never leaving the house. It could be expressed this way: prayer is a reality that we never depart, for if prayer is a dialogue between God and man, then the conversation never truly concludes since God is always speaking to us at all time, whether we are speaking to him or not.

As you fast (as we should), may we keep God at the center. Blessings.

 

Everyone has doubts.

I have them constantly.

How do you live with constant doubt?

I seek out answers.

Where do you find your answers?

Many places. Books. Music. Friendship. Conversation. Nature. Thinking. Food.

How can you trust those things?

What do you mean?

I mean, how do you know you can trust those things and not others for your answers?

It depends on the question(s) I’m asking myself.

How do you know you’re asking the right questions?

I don’t. But they are my questions. If the questions are wrong, then perhaps my bad questions will guide me to better ones.

Then how do you know where to look?

Look for what?

Your answers.

The answers aren’t mine.

What do you mean?

I mean that if I ask a question and the answer is not clear to me, I search it out. When I find it, the answer, I submit myself to it, even if I do not like what I’ve found. The truth isn’t something you get a hold of; rather it gets a hold of you.

Kiergegaard?

Yes. He influenced my thinking a lot.

Why?

He was a man of doubts and he wasn’t afraid to share and explore those doubts. He wrote in such away that his doubts made perfect sense, but his answers, or the answers that found him, made more sense, more sense than the questions.

What doubts do you have?

Depends on the day.

What about today?

Am I a good father.

Are you?

That’s a bad question: Am I a good father. The better one is “Am I fathering?” You are either fathering your children or you aren’t. It makes more sense to ask if you actually doing something before you ask how you are doing it.

So, are you fathering?

I am.

How did you do today?

Better than yesterday. Or worse. Depends on the area of focus.

Any other doubts?

Yes. That I’m unlovable. I’m no good to my family or my friends. That I only make things worse by being here. That I can’t do what I’m doing, or at least they will soon see that I have no idea what I’m doing despite the appearance I’ve worked really hard to maintain.

Is it hard?

Is what hard?

Wearing a mask.

I’m not wearing a mask.

But the appearance?

The appearance is more my covering my face than wearing a mask. A mask can just hang from your ears. Hiding behind my hands is more poetic and raw. I am constantly walling my face with my hands.

But if you’re using your hands to hide your face, your hands can’t do what they are supposed to do.

I know. That’s the struggle. To show my face in all emotional terrains. That’s where most of my doubt is produced, the emotional terrains.

Why is that?

Because emotions are your honest self emerging through the filter of your conscious. There are no bad emotions; just bad responses. Emotions are powerful things. Deadly, even. And yet, they make life far more experiential. We connect with other emotionally for more easily than we do ideologically.

Really?

No. Any emotion that isn’t ours is hard to understand. That’s why conversation and friendship is good: no man is an island.

Merton?

Merton.

You like a lot of outcasts, black sheep.

I find myself alone often, intellectually and theologically.

How do you cope?

Reading. Praying. Playing with my children. Making love to my wife. Eating good food.

Do you not deal with it?

That is dealing with it: sometimes you have to enjoy life to deal with doubt. By doing something productive in one area, you fix a problem elsewhere. Doubt is often rooted in emotion rather than reason.

Do you think you will ever not have doubts?

I don’t think so.

Why not?

Life is doubting something.

Does that bother you?

No, not really.

Why not?

Why does it not bother me?

Yes.

Because if doubt is my default worldview and I should doubt everything, then by default, I should also doubt my doubts, since doubts would be included in the “everything” category.

I don’t follow.

What does it mean to doubt?

To not be sure of something?

Sure. Lack of conviction, some say. But primarily it is a feeling of uncertainty: the very definition provides the human experience of doubt – a feeling. To live a life dictated by feelings is…

Is what?

…I was going to say dangerous. But that’s not the best word for it.

…Daring?

No.

…Risky?

No.

…I don’t know.

Impractical. That’s the word. If everyone did and said what they felt, unheeded, all the time, the world would be chaos and madness. No order, no justice ( no one would be wrong), no real sanity to compare the madness to.

I see your point. But you haven’t answered by question.

Oh, I apologize. What was the question?

How do you live with doubt?

How can I not?

The look on my student’s face as I informed him that Robin Hood, the “steal from the rich and give to the poor” character didn’t exist. I only delighted more to inform him that King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were also fabrications. His look was that of shock and confusion. But the one that “blew his mind” was that George Washington never cut down the cherry tree. Then something happened – his face went from shock to almost sadness.

“I’ve been lied to my whole life.”

“No, you’ve just been demythologized.”

This encounter ran through my head as I watched “First Man,” directed by Damien Chazelle.

Those who know me, know I love Chazelle’s films. “Whiplash” is one of my personal favorites. “La La Land” isn’t bad either. But “First Man” was something of a departure form Chazelle’s musical laden filmography. It was…mature.

But I’m getting distracted.

Growing up, caricatures are the means by which we learn the world. Good people do good; bad people do bad. There are heroes and there are villains. There are those who start fires and those who run into them. Perhaps it is one of the reasons I intentionally talk to my children in “messy terms.” It’s not always black and white. There are things that are – but there’s a lot that isn’t. Children ask hard questions automatically – I will not train my children to embrace easy answers.

And yet, I find that even as an adult, it is hard for me to see people rightly. Caricaturing is still a passive hobby. We are all expert caricature artists: we live on a diet of the broad brush strokes of idioms and sound bites because they are easier to digest and pass. They may even be sugar coated, hiding the razor that slices our throat as we swallow.

Chesterton was right in his biography of Saint Francis of Assisi: he could either paint him as the king of saints, second to Christ, or as the tyrants of demons, second to the Devil. However, Chesterton selected the narrow path, the middle road: he strove to present St. Francis as he was: a man, fallible and flawed as the rest, and yet, distinctly unique for how else would history have remembered him for so long?

That is the beauty of my student’s face: the middle ground had been provided – the myth shattered. Evidence. History. Reason. And maybe a little common sense.

This was my delight in viewing “First Man.”

The myth is destroyed.

The curtain was drawn.

The pain was real.

The deaths were tallied.

The widows wept.

The fatherless hardly understood.

The risk was great, greater than I realized.

This was my delight in viewing “First Man.”

It is an excellent film. The craft is well done. The acting is engrossing. The score enthralling. The set pieces almost touchable. The editing crisp. The costuming fit. The story, captivating.

The story, captivating.

Too often we intentionally choose the caricature over the portrait because it is easier to remember: a large nose, bushy eyebrows, cartoonish breasts, squinty eyes, a smile three sixes too large. But a portrait, that’s hard to remember because every is so…believable, ordinary, realistic.

I believe people prefer a caricature simply because lying to ourselves is easier than telling the truth, and since we are expert liars already, it is only natural that we would lie to ourselves about others.

“First Man” reminds us to “see people rightly.”

As a Christian Apologist, I repeatedly encounter and meet unbelievers whom I also agree with about the non-existence of god, primarily because they aren’t worshipping the god the same god I’m not worshipping. I am often confronted with a caricature of the Christian God, not the one presented in the Bible, but an odd amalgamation of some hippie, new age, homophobic or homosexually affirming, cool, boyfriend, crazy man. And that’s not an exaggeration.

I love the demythologization of “First Man,” but I love the demythologization of Christ even more.

Ravi Zacharias once stated that it is not the similarities among religions that is important but the difference: the differences make all the difference.

I would suggest that the same is not true about denominations. This brief blurb will be about Protestant denomination: the differences (heresies/errors) between the tree branches of Christianity would take two long for the purposes of these thoughts.

I have experience many sermons where 1 Corinthians is quoted to say that denominations are an evil, wicked things that harm the kingdom and cause strife among believers.

And they are right, if they emphasize what makes them a denomination and not what makes them Christianity.

The ultimate difference between denominations isn’t disagreements on whether or not there is a God, if Scripture reveals Jesus Christ to us, if the Holy Spirit is within the believer, if the Bible is the primary source of The Body’s Doctrine and Dogma; rather, it’s about hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is the sole dividing line between denominations.

The difference between heresy and error is that error is still found in the church: denominations see other denominations to be in error. Heresy on the other hand rejects foundational Biblical teachings and hermeneutics.

I disagree with how Baptists interpret such and such passage. And Presbyterians. And Methodists. And Lutherans. And Episcopal. And Pentecostals. And so on.

However, there is not much that I would call heresy. There is some, and most of that comes from a misrepresentation from my own tribe on what the other tribe believes.

It may very well be that denominations are a sin; however, if that is the case, then we should be repenting for being apart of not some other church. Which would be ridiculous and unhealthy.

Additionally, we tend to demonize those we disagree with. This is more harmful than anything else the Church does to herself. Explain the difference; call out errors; demand hermeneutical accuracy and integrity; but never demonize the opposition (especially if the opposition are your Christian neighbors who believe in the same God you do, albeit expressing it differently) – they will do that all on their own if their hermeneutic is off.

So yes, Paul didn’t baptize in his name, or his church’s name: I suggest we do same.

 

As a parent, there are certain scenes in film that speak to me more loudly than they did when I was younger.

One such scene is from The Sound of Music. Which I hate. I can’t stand movie musicals. Which is strange that a scene from any movie musical would linger in my thoughts after so many years. Even as a child, the scene resonated with me. It was only when I had kids that I understood why.

The scene:

Captain Von Trapp returns home to find his children changed for the better, but he cannot see that they are better. He sees chaos, confusion, and a circus. His immediate response is discipline and the firing of Maria, the Nun wanna be, who’s influence has brought out such a delightful and good change in the children.

However, Maria, in a subversion of the norm that Captain has created in his home, rebukes him and tells him he doesn’t even know his won children because rather than love them, he has caused them to fear him. The children are desperate for love, but the Captain only shows control. He will not listen to criticism about his own children, or rather about his knowledge of his children and who they truly are.

---

 

As a parent, this haunts me. I do not wish to be a Captain. I want to be a father. However, it is so easy to be a Captain, especially in times of stress, insecurity, tiredness, and personal sin.

This is why to us Captains of the world, the Maria’s are so important.

Like my heavenly Father, I wish to know my children.

Eugene Peterson is dead.

I was reading his book, The Pastor, as possible replacement for an out of date text for the School of Ministry for New Horizons Ministries, of which I am the Director.

I had just finished reading the section where Peterson recalls his mother being scolded by a man from their church for telling the men who came to their house stories from the Bible. The man silenced her but stirred in Peterson’s soul, a step towards whet he would ultimately become: a pastor.

For me, this experience is full of tension: while I am reading the book, the author dies. As I grow to know this man through his reflections and summation of his life, his life ends.

I feel as though I have lost a great friend I’m just now getting to know.

However, I know of many who he touched: either in his literary works, his ministry, ministers who talked about him as if they knew him just by reading his material. It’s as if I am finally meeting the man who I only knew through others for the first time. And now that I have just now shook his hand and introduced myself, just as his lips had parted, before the breath leaves his lungs, his grip slips through my hand. The man I had started to know is gone.

I’m only fifty pages into The Pastor, and already, it has changed my life. His insight and humor is alien in this atmosphere of political chaos, moral collapse, and marketable minsters and their churches. And yet, his words bring comfort, solace, encouragement, just what a minister’s words should do.

I am writing this upon just hearing of Peterson’s death so that the emotion and immediacy of my feelings can come through this glimpse of how much a man I never met has changed me, has made me a better man, has helped me love God and my neighbor more truly than I had before our brief encounter.

I look forward to truly meeting him, to complete our introduction, and rejoice in Paradise at the Great Things our mutual Triune God has done.

Now that Eugene Peterson is dead, I shall finally meet him.