Subversive Galatians
In my sermon on Galatians 2:1-10 for Sunday I’ll be reading one of my favorite quotes on Galatians:
When, from time to time, someone appeared who understood and proclaimed the genuine message of Galatians, he was liable to be denounced as a subversive character—as, indeed, Paul was in his own day. But the letter to the Galatians, with its trumpet call to Christian freedom, has time and again released the true gospel from the bonds in which well-meaning but misguided people have confined it so that it can once more exert its emancipating power in the life of mankind, empowering those who receive it to stand fast in the freedom with which Christ has set them free. -F.F. Bruce
Wordpress Spam Help?
Since switching my blog to Wordpress life has been full, I haven’t had the time to learn the ins and outs of Wordpress. There are a number of tweaks I hope to make to the blog in the near future once I get the time to do so. In the meantime, I need some help with comment spam. Ever since switching to Wordpress I’ve been getting a large number of spam comments. If any of you know how I can remedy this, please let me know.
A Conversation at the Park
Blog readers, I haven’t blogged much in the past two weeks because life/work has been very full. At least my wife hasn’t forgotten about the blog. This is the kind of post that is likely to stir up some strong opinions, especially here in the Bay Area. Please exercise humility in interacting with this post and comments on this post.
A guest post from Taylor Buzzard:
I present you with another one of those once-in-a-blue-moon, sporadic posts from me, Justin’s wife!
Today I was at one of the parks in our city. I struck up a conversation with another mother while our young sons played on the slide. She shared with me that she is a school teacher, and that being separated from her son caused her to cry every morning for the first six months of the school year. Now it is summertime, and she is overjoyed to spend every day with her 12 month-old.
She looked at me and said with a bit of longing in her voice, “Do you get to stay home?” I replied, “Yes, I get to stay home with my boys, I’m very grateful. But, well, you know, actually, it’s probably more accurate to say, I choose to stay home. My family lives in a small 2 bedroom condo without a yard. So the trade-off is obvious. But I wouldn’t change my situation for anything.”
I seem to get into this type of conversation semi-regularly. Whether it is someone saying, “We both have to work, there isn’t an option,” or, “I’m so jealous that you get to stay home,” I do my best to gently and humbly correct them. Yes, I am privileged to stay home to raise my children. And, yes, you probably have an option.
In most instances, two full-time incomes are not mandatory. What it primarily comes down to is lifestyle. In America, we are bred to live beyond our means. We are almost brainwashed to believe that children must be raised in a large home, with an expansive yard, with 2 luxury vehicles, with the gamut of extracurricular activities available to them, with a private university tuition covered; and if we don’t provide the aforementioned amenities, we are depriving our children.
But, wait, is it really deprivation not to provide these things to my children? If I re-entered the workforce full-time, we would be better positioned to provide the American-dream upbringing for our children. But, what would the cost be? Everything has a cost, as one of my pastors, Mark Mitchell, recently taught the twentysomethings of our church. The cost to my young children would be spending the majority of their time without either parent in their most formative, impressionable years. I physically carried these children in my womb, and I want to carry them, literally and figuratively, through their childhood years as well.
I am aware that this article taps into a controversial topic, and I understand and respect the fact that in some instances there truly is not an option to be home with your children. But, we must remember that in most cases, it truly is a choice that we are making. And might we make that choice with full understanding of the cost at hand.
New Surfboard
Fellow surfers (I’m a really bad surfer), a Bay Area surfer/designer has reinvented the longboard. From today’s Chronicle:
The first thing you notice is the shape. It looks like a tadpole. Maybe a duckbill. Yet there’s something feminine about its curvy waist and tapered end.
The Swedish designer responsible for Apple’s first translucent laptop has gone outside the box again to deliver what he calls his best - and most personal - product to date: a makeover of the classic long board.
It does not look like a surfboard, which explains the dubious looks Thomas Meyerhoffer gets when he totes his around.
Read the whole thing. I want to give this a surf.
3 Paragraphs for New Fathers
For my fellow new-ish fathers out there, these three paragraphs are must reading. They articulate and name the deep transitions that come with becoming a dad. As I near three years of being a dad, these paragraphs nail it for me. From Andrew Peach, via Justin Taylor:
Most fathers-to-be suppose that their old ego-centered lives will continue more or less unabated after the child arrives. With the exception of a few more obstacles and demands on their time, their involvement with their children is envisioned as being something manageable and marginal. Nothing like a complete transformation—an abrupt end to their former life—really enters men’s minds.
But then the onslaught begins, and a man begins to realize that these people, his wife and children, are literally and perhaps even intentionally killing his old self. All around him everything is changing, without any signs of ever reverting back to the way they used to be. Into the indefinite future, nearly every hour of his days threatens to be filled with activities that, as a single-person or even a childless husband, he never would have chosen. Due to the continual interruptions of sleep, he is always mildly fatigued; due to long-term financial concerns, he is cautious in spending, forsaking old consumer habits and personal indulgences; he finds his wife equally exhausted and preoccupied with the children; connections with former friends start to slip away; traveling with his children is like traveling third class in Bulgaria, to quote H.L. Mencken; and the changes go on and on. In short, he discovers, in a terrifying realization, what Dostoevsky proclaimed long ago: “[A]ctive love is a harsh and fearful reality compared with love in dreams.” Fatherhood is just not what he bargained for.
Yet, through the exhaustion, financial stress, screaming, and general chaos, there enters in at times, mysteriously and unexpectedly, deep contentment and gratitude. It is not the pleasure or amusement of high school or college but rather the honor and nobility of sacrifice and commitment, like that felt by a soldier. What happens to his children now happens to him; his life, though awhirl with the trivial concerns of children, is more serious than it ever was before. Everything he does, from bringing home a paycheck to painting a bedroom, has a new end and, hence, a greater significance. The joys and sorrows of his children are now his joys and sorrows; the stakes of his life have risen. And if he is faithful to his calling, he might come to find that, against nearly all prior expectations, he never wants to return to the way things used to be.
Certain Psalms
I’m continuing to find great refreshment through my Psalm meditation/prayer method (see Living Psalmically). I’ve been especially invigorated through soaking in Psalms that center on God’s detailed care and oversight for his people, God’s total trustworthiness: Psalm 23, 46, 62, 91, 104, 121, 139. You might find it helpful to spend some time camping out in these Psalms too.
Unwillingness to Respond to the Knowledge We Have
I’ve been greatly helped and greatly convicted lately by the reality that most of my problems are not lack of knowledge problems, as I often assume:
We do not, therefore, need to fret when we have to make big decisions about the future, worrying about the terrifying possibility that we might miss God’s will for our lives. We simply need to do what we already know in the present. God has been clear where clarity is most needed. The choices we make everyday–to love a spouse after an argument, to treat an unkind coworker with respect, to serve food at a soup kitchen, to pray for God’s help when we do not feel much need for it–determine whether or not we are doing the will of God. If we have a problem, it is not lack of knowledge; rather, it is our unwillingness to respond to the knowledge we have.
Gerald Sittser, The Will of God as a Way of Life, p. 19
Knowing God
How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.
Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously perfromed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God.
J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 23
