Mere Reflections

So, this is something I have been working on mentally for a month or two. The bible verses were something that hit me really hard at camp and the actual design is something I’ve been pondering for a while.

“Father, Glorify Your Name” Acrylic, ink and string on canvas. 18″ x 24″.

Sorry about the reflectiveness of the ink.
The text is from John 12:24-28.

It’s nice to have something to post on here in my ‘native tongue,’ so to speak. Please, offer up your critiques!

I seem to be especially pitchy on this recording. But it’s probably because the key I like playing it in is slightly too high for me to sing. Anyways, take a listen, if you like. And if you can judge it on the songwriting, not the performance, that would be cool. Lyrics below.

This evening I’ve been hit with a feeling
I’m not sure I like
And it’s leaving, leaving me weak
From the bleeding inside
But this feeling ain’t all bad ’cause it’s bringing
A change in my life
And the stinging is almost relief
‘Cause it’s healing up right

It’s the bittersweet pain of humility learned
When my self-esteem’s bane brings me down to the dirt
But the sharp pruning shears spare the harvester’s axe
And the crucible’s flames save from burning at last
(So thank you for the pain)

I’m losing all my rights to assuming
I’m doing just fine
I was fooling, fooling myself
And excusing my pride
Now You are removing all the thoughts I had of choosing
What I did and didn’t do with my life
Now Your love’s abusing all the sin that had been ruining
Every good thing that I’d tried

God, You are destroying all my arrogance and foiling
The confidence I put in myself
Like a snake You’re coiling I know there’s no avoiding
That you’ll choke out the flesh before it chokes out my joy

[This, of course, is my response to the question raised by Eric in the directly preceding post. Please feel more than welcome to join our conversation. But in the comments, of course. Please don't try to hack our blog and create an account for yourself. Unless you're Andrew, in which case you should feel free to do so. Anyways, back to the article.]

In the previous post, Eric asked “What is the purpose of Social Media?”* And just to clarify, I think that his question was not meant literally, but was rather asking, “In light of the chief end of man (to glorify God and enjoy Him forever), to what extent ought the Christian participate in social media? Can it be edifying and beneficial, or is it inherently pointless?”** So that’s the question I’m going to attempt to answer.

In my response to Eric’s original post (see the first comment), I established that I don’t believe any of the social media to be inherently wrong, or even inherently frivolous. However, I believe that Christians who choose to engage in social media on the interweb*** need to be careful to not fall into several of the traps that Eric listed–namely, the addictive, self-promoting, and time-wasting nature of many forms of social media. We must make sure that in all our actions, including what we do on the internet, we are living out our purpose (soli deo gloria), and not just doing stuff because we want to. Jonathan Edwards wrote when he was still young, “Resolved, Never, henceforward, till I die, to act as if I were any way my own, but entirely and altogether God’s”–we have been bought with a price. I don’t think we fully realize the seriousness and totality of this call, but if we have resolved that we don’t want to waste our lives–that we want to give God glory with our lives–then we must lay hold of that principle. Edwards’ Resolutions can once again be helpful to us here: he also wrote, “Resolved, Never to lose one moment of time, but to improve it in the most profitable way I possibly can”. If we take serious the call of Christ to take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow Him, we must adopt a similar attitude to what Edwards expressed.

Now, I want to make a slight caveat at this point to keep from erring on the side of radical asceticism. I am not proposing that Christians can never do anything simply “for the fun of it”. I am not suggesting that all forms of entertainment are inherently wrong. I am not even implying that we should always have spiritual thoughts forefront in our minds. I believe there is a place for doing crazy and/or somewhat pointless stuff for the sake of fellowship and building relationships. I believe there is a time to just kick back and watch a movie or read a book because you’re stressed out and need to just wind down. And I certainly believe that it’s possible to honor God in all things without actually consciously thinking the thought “God, I give you glory in this”. But here’s what I am saying: if we really believe that true joy and true satisfaction and ultimate fulfillment are found in Christ alone, then we must determine what it means to abide in and treasure Christ in the midst of ordinary, everyday life that goes beyond just “having a quiet time”. We must be intentional about what we do with our time and energy and resources, asking “how will this enable me to better love God with my heart/soul/mind/strength?”

Okay, so now to get to the question of social media. Here would be my rule of thumb for the use of social media (and time spent on the internet in general for that matter): am I using this _______ as a tool for the development of the kingdom in my life and/or others’ lives, or is it simply something I do for the fun of it? And if the answer is the latter, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should cut it off altogether, because like I said earlier, I believe there is a time for doing stuff for the fun of it. But I would submit that that amount of time should be severely limited. And I mean pretty severely. I remember in perhaps the best Piper sermon I’ve heard****, he says “If you watch TV and don’t read biographies, then you’re…making a mistake” (he wanted to say worse, I think, but managed to restrain himself). So I think that a decent test to see if we are spending too much time in leisure–just doing things for the fun of it–would be to consider what we are or are not doing, like reading, spending time in serious prayer, carving out intentional time to evangelize, etc. And if we aren’t doing those things, but are spending three or four hours a week on social media just for the fun of it, we might be wasting our lives.

Now, if the answer to the question (tool or pleasure) is that we are using the social media as a tool, then I think we are on the right track to being good stewards of the time God gives us. What remains to ask is how effective we are being with our time, how pure our motives are, and how important the “work” we are doing on said social media needs to be in our priorities. I really appreciate Eric bringing this question up, because those of us who blog and tweet and facebook need to stop occasionally–often, actually–and reevaluate what exactly we are doing and why we are doing it, to ensure that we really do love God with all our hearts, and all our minds, and all our strength, and all our time, and all our resources, and all our blogs, and all our words. Let us not waste our lives, but press on toward the goal, which is to know Christ more.

Soli Deo Gloria

*By “social media”, I’m assuming that he is referring to social networking sites (facebook, twitter, myspace, etc) and the blogosphere. Perhaps this is a slightly flawed definition, but it’ll have to do for now.
**I’m assuming that this was really his question. If not, then I guess you’ll get a nice little unasked spiel from me for free. But I guess everything on Mere is both unasked and free, so it wouldn’t really be anything new.
***I’m pretty sure that at some point, this word originated as an inside joke somewhere, but from what I can tell, has passed into common usage to refer to the internet. Also, I’m trying to jack up my footnote count.
****It’s called “How to Fight for Joy”, I believe. In other news, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that I’ve reached the point with asterisks that it’s starting to look like I wanted to cuss but edited myself. Which is awesome. #excessivefootnotesftw

What is the purpose of social media?

Let me begin with my initial ideas:

Social media is addicting. Apparently, activity on your wall or blog causes a reaction similar to feeling affection, which therefore causes addiction (see this). And addiction to anything isn’t terribly good (quite the contrary, I’d argue).

Social media is inherently self-promoting. This is and the previous point are similar. As men, we can easily want to be more in the opinion of others, and social media can so cause self-centeredness, which is absolutely contrary to the way God wants us to live. Trevin wax makes this point here.

Social media is time consuming. To this I’m sure we can all testify first-hand. How long do you spend blogging, tweeting, or Facebooking? And what fruits do we bear? In Trevin’s post above, he writes that he needs to “take a step back and evaluate the spiritual effects (both good and bad)” of social media. Does the time we spend justify our use of it?

I see these three points primarily as results of using social media, and I make them without regard to [social media's] actual purposes. So, what is the purpose of social media? How would you reconcile these three points with social media’s real purposes?

And specifically, how would you reconcile these three points with a blog’s purpose? Facebook’s purpose? Twitter’s purpose?

So for some reason or another Bebo Norman’s most recent album (which, oddly enough, is self-titled even though it’s his third) has really rung true in my heart/mind/soul, and I can really seem to connect with what the songs are saying, more so than with most whole albums from artists I like. Anyways, I wanted to share one of the songs that I’ve found especially true for me. It’s called “The Only Hope”.

I want to run, it’s my nature to run
And I want to fight, it’s my nature to fight
And I want to live, but you tell me to die
I have resolved that I’m much better off in your hands than mine

I’m begging you to hold on tight
Begging you to hold on tight
Begging you to take my life from me

I want a crumb, but you are a feast
I want a song, but you are a symphony
I want a star, but you are a galaxy
And I have resolved that I’m much better off in what you have for me

I’m begging you to hold on tight
Begging you to hold on tight
Begging you to take my life from me
So tell me you won’t let go
Tell me you won’t let go
Cause you are the only hope for me

Take my life from me, It’s the only hope for me
Take my life from me, It’s the only hope for me
And I’ll never want for more
I’ll never want for more

I’m begging you to hold on tight
Begging you to hold on tight
Begging you to take my life from me
So tell me you won’t let go
Tell me you won’t let go
Cause you are the only hope for me

You’re the only hope for me
Yeah, you’re the only hope for me

…cats are evil. Jared Wilson said so. On twitter. It must be true.

But in case you need any more proof, here’s a picture. Case closed.

Well, I got a camera recently that takes HD video, and the sound is pretty decent quality too, so I decided to maybe start posting an occasional video to break the monotony of plain text from musings and quotes an such. Whether I do this with any consistency or not is yet to be seen. Mostly I’ll probably post songs through this medium, since it’s much less work than trying to record and edit demos in ProTools. However, this means that all the songs you hear will be complete with voice cracks and pitchy-ness and wrong chords/notes. So give me some slack when you listen to it. Anyways, here it is.

This quote from Chapter 14 of the biography of Hudson Taylor (written by his son and daughter-in-law), is I think a verse to live by. It’s especially meaningful to me, because it aptly sums up what I have been learning in my life. The quote is from a letter that one of his friends sent him, which God used to illuminate this profound truth about faith in his life. I highly recommend reading the entire chapter, as it is profoundly encouraging, but this little snippet capture the main point very well.

“He is most holy who has most of Christ within, and joys most fully in the finished work”
How then to have our faith increased? Only by thinking of all that Jesus is and all He is for us: His life, His death, His work, He Himself as revealed to us in the Word, to be the subject of our constant thoughts. Not a striving to have faith . . . but a looking off to the Faithful One seems all we need; a resting in the Loved One entirely, for time and for eternity.

I told Andrew that I didn’t like The Idiot (by Fyodor Dostoevsky), which I believe is one of his favorite books (or so I understood), and he asked me to explain. So here it is.

The reason I didn’t like The Idiot is this: it paints a hopeless picture of the world. After finishing the book, I was left with a sense almost of despair. It left me not wishing that the story hadn’t ended, but with a feeling of relief that is was done, although it was a bittersweet relief, because the ending is so depressing that it doesn’t even feel right to end it there. I understand the Dostoevsky was an existentialist, and so this is what I should expect, but even in the extremely dark book Brothers Karamazov, there was at least hope in the end. Things started toward a path of redemption: Characters grew better, not worse; their struggles and conflicts and mistakes ended up being redeemed, not culminated in destruction; the moral of the book seemed to be one of faith and perseverance, rather than emptiness and perversion.

(At this point, if you haven’t read The Idiot, you can probably skip this paragraph and not really miss anything.)
Maybe I’ve misunderstood what Dostoevsky was saying in The Idiot, I don’t know. I’m not very experienced in interpreting fiction or picking up on what the author was really trying to convey–I’m very willing to admit that–but the primary feeling I got from reading the book was simply depression. I mean, everything just seems to go horribly wrong. The main character goes from healthy to sick again, form totally innocent to morally confused, from simply naïve to socially embarrassing, from in love with a either a madwoman or a whore (it’s hard to really say which–even the characters are quite undecided on this one) to in love with a spoiled brat, and in my opinion from mostly likeable to completely incomprehensible. And you know, I never really understood how Mishkyn (the main character) is any sort of Christ figure at all. I just don’t see it. Oh, and another thing: I feel like Dostoevsky’s portrayal of humanity is even worse than we actually are. I mean, everyone (with the exception of Ganya’s family) is totally absurd. I know (God is great, beer is good, and) people are crazy, but I feel like he’s pushing it a little too far. Some of the things his characters do and say are so off the wall it’s hard for me to relate.
(End rant about everything I didn’t like about the book. I’ve already covered way too much for Andrew to respond to at once.)

I guess this is what it boils down to: when I picked up the book, I expected, as I do with all (fiction) books, to be caught up in the beautiful language, captured by the depths of the characters, engaged by the twists and turns of the plot, and overall–this is the main one–encouraged by the essence of the story. When I read a book, I want to be transported to another place, which perhaps is not always easier or more pleasant or nicer or “better” than the real world, but at least is a place where things go right. If I want to see things go wrong, I don’t have to look very far: the news, the world and our country and our city and the Church and my own heart are full enough of prime examples of things going wrong. When I read a story I want to be reminded that things won’t always be this way. That one day, when the King returns, all things will be made right, and the ground will yield fruit and crops instead of thorns and thistles, and the lion will lie down beside the lamb instead of eating it, and the son will love his brother instead of killing him. That one day, there will be no more tears caused by suffering and grief, that there will be no more scars left from hurt and pain, no more destruction caused by wicked people (us) doing wicked things. That one day, things won’t be broken anymore.

I know I’ve probably said before (and I probably said it in a really snobby, arrogant way–sorry for my stupidity) that “I hate cliché stories, where the good guy always wins and gets the girl, and that I prefer more realistic books, where bad stuff happens and sometimes the bad guy wins, because that’s how it goes in the real world”. I sincerely apologize if I said something like that to you. I see the error of my ways, and I understand now why so many stories end in that “cliché” way. It’s because that’s how they should end. If this world was how it should be, the good guy would beat the bad guy and get the girl. And so we keep reading those books and watching those movies because it reminds us of the world how it could be, and should be, and will be one day.

So the reason why I didn’t like The Idiot is that there was no hope. And because of God’s grace in Christ Jesus, there is always hope for us. So while I appreciate a realistic view of man’s depravity, a story is not realistic that does not include hope. Because “hope does not disappoint”.

So there you have it, Andrew. Feel free to rebut any and every part of this post that you see fit.

Today marks the three week mark without a post from anyone here at Mere. Just so you know.

In other news, GO USA!

In other other news, I’ve started a blog series on the Sermon on the Mount, which all of you probably already know about, since I’m pretty sure the readership between my personal blog and this one is the exact same. But I feel like I should say something, even though I actually have nothing to say.

Really, the only reason I’m writing this is so it can count as activity so we don’t get kicked off the very prestigious position (which we were incredibly surprised at, but equally proud about) of being on the Thinklings blogroll. Hopefully Jewel doesn’t actually pay close attention to the “activity” to see whether it’s “quality activity” or not, or else wee might be doomed to lose our blogrollship. And that would be bad, because I think it’s probably “impossible, in the case of those who have once been blogrolled, who have tasted the joy of the Thinklings sidebar, and have shared in the exclusive membership of the Thinklings blogroll, and have tasted of the honor and power that comes from being recommended by Thinklings, and then have fallen away, to be restored to blogrollship, since they are calling into question once again Jewel’s initial judgement and holding him up to contempt”.

Hm. That might be awfully close to blasphemy. Feel free to take this post down, Riley or Zach, or JM or Brian or Eric, if y’all even remember that this exists.

Okay, that’s enough. Even I can’t take anymore. Somebody please give me an interesting topic to write about, and maybe I’ll post on it.  For now, just go watch some World Cup soccer or something.  It’s a better use of your time, I promise.