Monthly Archives: October 2011

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Justin Timberlake is the Eye to My Little Toe

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Apostle Paul used to be one of my least favorite writers in the Bible. I think I was kinda using him as a scapegoat. I could just kind of pawn all of the stuff that I didn’t like about the Bible off on him. That wasn’t very fair of me. Paul didn’t have it all that well. He was kinda being attacked wherever he went, and he had multiple parties trying to kill him. He was imprisoned a seemingly infinite number of times, and he lived most of his life alone with very few companions. But through all of that, the man is still one of the most loving and gracious writers that has ever lived.

I am finally starting to build an appreciation for this incredible man. It’s through no action of my own. A lot of people have been graciously walking me through it. But I was with a group the other day and we were talking about this passage Paul wrote, Romans 12:3-21. I don’t know if you are religious or whatever or how you feel about Jesus or whatever. It doesn’t really matter. Romans 12:3-21 is still just amazingly good. It would take me like centuries to talk about the whole thing, but I do want to talk about 3-8. So that’s what we are going to do.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

This is one of the most comforting passages I have ever read. Paul is telling us that we don’t have to do everything. We just have to do the stuff we are good at doing and then do it really well. I often get it into my head that I need to do everything. When I see people doing things that I can’t do and doing them really well, I get jealous. For instance, I want to be a performer sometimes. I fantasize about dancing, playing music, or acting in front of thousands of people. I really really really want to be Justin Timberlake.

The truth is, though, that I’ve not been blessed with the performance gifts. But what I can do is talk about complicated things in a way that a lot of people can understand and jive with. (Although, JT can probably do that as well. At least, he makes people jive.) While that may not be as glamorous as bringing sexy back, Paul says it is just as important.

Paul compares the Church to a human body. None of us is all of the body, but we are all a part of it. Just because the eyes get to see the world doesn’t mean that the little toe is any less important. Do you think the little toe ever gets jealous of the eyes?

What do you bring to the table? Tell me what you think. Would you like to see more posts where I talk about Apostle Paul and Justin Timberlake?

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A Blog Post In Which I Over-think My Tendency To Over-think

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I think far too much. Ask anyone who even knows the first thing about me, and they will all say the same thing. Thinking too much isn’t always a bad thing. I think it might be connected to my need to listen to jazz music while I study and my love for reading and my general ability to sometimes make good decisions. And all of those things are good.

But sometimes, it is a very bad thing. There are several reasons for this.

1) Thinking too much paralyzes. It keeps you from actually doing anything. Sometimes I get so caught up in the theoretical components of an activity, that I never actually do the activity. I am guilty of this in responsibilities as small as reading e-mails. I think about how great it would be if I set a little time apart each day to answer all my e-mails. And while I am thinking about this, my inbox piles up and my time disappears. But if I answered e-mails as they came in, I would have plenty of time for them.

2) Thinking too much leads to bad thoughts. When you think too much, it is impossible to think good thoughts all the time. Invariably, then, less than good thoughts creep their way into your mind. Often, I find myself thinking about how I am going to fail at something. And even more often than that, I find myself thinking about how I compare to other people. Spending time comparing myself to others is probably the biggest time-suck I engage in. It makes no sense. As I am thinking about how I measure up to other people, they are getting even farther ahead. Some people might argue that I shouldn’t think about it like that, but I do. And it is helpful to think that if I just did the work, I would stand a much better chance of measuring up. You can’t do anything standing still.

3) Thinking too much causes a decrease in self-confidence. If I listened to my head all the time, I would really hate myself. My apartment is rarely clean, my inbox rarely empty, my work rarely done, my dreams rarely achieved, and my relationships rarely deep. But what my head doesn’t tell me is that all of those things are within my ability to change. I just need to stop thinking and get up and do them.

What are you thinking about? How much you hate these questions? Leave a comment anyway. I would love to hear from you!

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The Rhetoric of Evil

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Evil is around. A lot of people say that. Enough people say it that I think there’s probably some truth to it. But I often feel like I’m not actually understanding what’s evil. If you are liberal, you learn that conservatives are evil. If you are conservative, you learn that liberals are evil. And if you are in a class about rhetoric, you learn that institutions are evil.

I can speak to that last one because I am in a rhetoric course this quarter. And every week we learn how evil the American government and Hollywood are for misleading the public. Now, I’ve never been in the American government or Hollywood so I don’t know if I’m allowed to say what I’m about to say, but I’m gonna go for it anyway. I don’t think they mean to full us. I don’t think all of the producers in Hollywood get together at biweekly meetings and decide that this week they are going to use war-time propaganda to encourage war. And I don’t think the American government wastes meetings on how to best use domestication as a form of nukespeak.

I think sometimes we criticize others too harshly. How many times do we sit down and say, “I’m going to use rhetoric today to get my way?” I know I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t use it. It just means that the study of rhetoric is a useful tool for studying human behavior after the fact. It’s not predictive.

Evil exists, but it doesn’t exist in the places we most think we can identify it. It lives in all of those places where we convince ourselves that we are different than other people. It thrives on us believing that being conscious of rhetoric means that we should be put in charge of the world.

I was talking with a friend the other day, and I asked, “Why are people so confusing?” Instead of answering me (she never answers me), she said, “Isn’t it interesting that we always say that people are confusing. But it’s not like we are simple not-confusing people. I wonder what it would be like to not be confusing.”

Of course, she was correct. When a government uses seemingly rhetorical devices on its constituency, it’s doing so because it thinks it is somehow helpful. That doesn’t make it right. But it’s human. It’s something I can relate with.

Jesus said it really well back in his day and luckily somebody had the foreknowledge to get that stuff down on papyrus. “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye ” (Matthew 7:5). Why do we ever think that we have removed the log? That’s not the point of this verse. Evil laughs when we think we have removed the log.

What do you think of rhetoric?