Tag Archives: faith

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Trusting Authority

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When I was applying to college, my mom made me go talk to people from a really boring small honors college at a university nationally known for being a top party school. I had my sights set on higher things, more studious places. I was going to be a real academic.

But I went, and after my first meeting with the assistant dean at the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University, I knew it was where I needed to be.

A little over three years later, I can’t imagine being anywhere else. Most of who I am today has been dependent on being part of the HTC or being a student at Ohio University. Sometimes, parents really do know what’s best for us.

When someone really cares about us and has more information than we do or a wider world view, they normally make decisions for us that we would make if we had all the information. That’s why I think my failure to not trust God is almost humorous.

God knows infinitely more than me. God cares about me infinitely. Why, then, would God want anything less than the best for me?

Sometimes I perceive God the way I perceived my mom when she was trying to get me to visit Ohio University. God wants me to give up what I really want in order to do something the way God wants it. But that’s not the way it is. God wants to stretch me so that I can consider the kind of options God considers for me.

Jesus said some stuff about this (Matthew 6:25-34):

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith? So do not worry, saying “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the pagans run after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

God is going to dress us in clothes brighter than the flowers. We have only to let Her or Him.

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God’s Eternal Relationship

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Surprisingly, I’m incredibly stubborn from time to time. This frustrates my friends to no end because often, we will have long discussions in which I refuse to change my mind about something only to change my mind several days later when I have had time to read, write, and think about the subject in question. That’s why before I write this post, I should apologize to a couple of people who have been trying to tell me the following conclusions for quite some time.

I just finished this book called I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris. The argument of the book is that dating is a broken vehicle for finding real love and romance. I’m still not sold on that whole idea. But I must say that the alternative Harris gives is very very attractive. He says if we actively stay away from dating, if we fill our time with other things glorifying to God, then God will take care of the rest.

A couple of nights ago I had a very long argument with a couple of good friends about this concept, though. If I choose to actively ignore romantic relationships with members of the opposite sex, how am I ever supposed to meet anyone? My friends accused me of not trusting God. I do struggle with trusting God. I struggle with trusting in general. But I can at least intellectually and rationally understand trusting someone or God when their behavior follows the rules of logic.

I can trust God with my career because while I am waiting for it to become obvious what I am supposed to spend the rest of my life doing, I can go to school and learn. And at the end of my time in school, I am going to apply to a bunch of different grad schools and jobs and see where God and life take me. But I don’t think that’s what I am supposed to do with dating.

So I was about half way through Harris’s book; I was thinking about quitting it because I didn’t think I would ever figure out how to properly think about what he was saying; and then I thought about Boethius. Boethius is kind of a strange writer to think about when you are thinking about romantic relationships.

Boethius was pretty wise.

Boethius wrote a book called The Consolation of Philosophy in the 6th century. In it, he gives a pretty famous argument for reconciling free will with God’s omniscience: he calls it God’s eternal moment. For Boethius, God experiences and sees all of eternity in one moment, in one snap of His Almighty fingers. Boethius is important to dating because to God, everyone who is single is also already with their spouse. For God, there is no waiting. Everyone is already in the arms of people who love them.

So that’s how it works, maybe.

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The Real Question About Naming and Identity

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A long long time ago, my main source of social interaction online was AOL Instant Messenger. IM was a big deal. It was where all the cool kids were. I remember eighth graders talking about it on the school bus and me thinking, “Dude, I really need to be a part of that.” The best part about IM, like most online interactions back in the day, was that you got to choose your name. You didn’t have to be boring old Spencer. You could be anything you wanted! The purest form of self-expression was now open – choosing your identity.

Choosing your screen name was a bit like getting to choose your own nickname. For people who talked to strangers in chat rooms in those early days, your screen name could be a way of making other people like you – if it was edgy enough, smart enough, witty enough, or cool enough, people might like you better. At least that’s what we though.

It’s really interesting to go back and think about what we thought was important back then. My screen name was golfhawk09. ’09 was my high school graduation date. Golf was my big extracurricular activity and place where I could express myself. And hawk was a way of remembering my recently deceased grandfathers. Obviously, I would never choose golfhawk09 as a screen name today. But it still says important things about my identity even now.

I am always concerned with the next chapter of my life. In junior high, that meant high school graduation. I like to believe I am dedicated to the things I do, so much so that they are synonymous with me. And I like to believe that I am aware about other people.

The thing about names and identities is that when you choose one, you are choosing a story. You are saying to the world, “This is how I want to be seen. This is the story I want to occupy.”

The other thing about names and identities is that when you choose one for someone else, you are choosing how you hear his or her story. That’s why labeling someone by his or her race, gender, sexuality, politics, or church/theology is bad. You are limiting that person’s whole existence to one label. It’s as if all of the Conservatives in the world chose to have their screen names be Conservative1, Conservative2, and so on. That’s not true. Let everyone choose his or her own screen name.

How do you name yourself? How do you identify others?