Rescuing Andy

My friend Trey did some work for this website called Yonder Journal which looks like what would happen if National Geographic met Field & Stream in an Alaskan hookah hut near the end of a long winter night that had left them both a little raw and vulnerable and … well … you know. In other words, it's awesome. I recommend it.

Reading through some of the stories there made me want to write about other adventures. I don't have many such stories to share (I live in Dallas for crying out loud) but here's one that's fun to tell.

/// \\\

In the autumn of 2011, I climbed a Colorado mountain, sat on the ground with my back against a log, and stayed there for nine hours in the snowfall watching for elk. I was camped with four other men — my father, brother, uncle and cousin. We were on a seven-day hunt in an area called Unit 80 near South Fork. We camped just below 9,000 feet and my predawn hump had taken me well up toward tree line. I watched for movement along the remains of a long-forgotten logging road and whispered a dozen prayers of thanks that my brother was still alive. Twenty-four hours earlier, that had been in doubt.

Unit 80 is a jagged swath of public land between South Fork and Wolf Creek in the Southwest corner of Colorado. Two tributaries of the Rio Grande descend steeply through its pines below sweeping meadows of alpine tundra.

My brother's name is Andy. On the evening before our first day of hunting, Andy had scurried to the point of a little rock outcropping not far from camp with a pair of binoculars. From there, he could see the length of a deep valley stretching at least five miles toward the south. Several parks on the far side of the valley looked like good places to take a stand and glass big chunks of land. That night around the campfire, Andy claimed his hunting grounds. Come morning, he was headed across the valley.

My father's name is Bary. That same morning, he and I left camp in the opposite direction via truck, toward a cirque at the top of the same valley. We had plenty of room. Our 10-mile radios couldn't always  span the distances we created; messages had to be relayed through Uncle Lynn who had stayed behind as camp cook. We stayed out all day. When it was too dark to shoot, we started walking back toward the road, and we started to hear radio chatter.

"Andy dislocated his shoulder," Lynn was saying. "He's stuck on a cliff."

7:45 pm
I catch up with Dad less than a mile from the pickup. He's standing at the apex of a bend in an abandoned logging road, holding up his handheld radio, trying to hear Uncle Lynn clearly.

"He did what to a cliff?" Dad is shouting. "You say he fell off a cliff?"

We get the message that Andy is safe for now, then we hustle back to camp for the rest of the story. Here's what happened:

Andy's descent to the valley floor that morning had been treacherous. He had to scoot down much of the slope on his butt, and that was with a good view for wayfinding. When he returned in the evening, it was nearing dark and he had trouble finding the same route. He knew he had descended somewhere in a narrow gorge cutting into the west side of the valley, but the farther he walked into the gorge, the steeper and more narrow its walls got…and the deeper became the shadows. He spotted a place where he thought he could scramble to the rim of the gorge. It was a climb of about 100 feet and it would be a challenge carrying a day pack and a rifle. He made good progress but then, 30 feet from the top, his right foot slipped. Because of his stance at that moment, most of his weight fell against his left handhold in a violent jerk. Andy has a bad left shoulder, an injury from high school basketball, and the jerk was enough to separate the ball from its socket. Frozen by pain and an awkward stance, Andy radiod camp and asked Lynn to send help. Then he waited, legs locked against narrow footholds and his good arm
— clinging  to a ledge above his head — quickly falling asleep.

Over his shoulder, Andy sees the valley below giving way to shadow. The sun is well below the horizon now. Twilight is fading. And Andy realizes he can't ascend the last 30 feet of gorge with his shoulder out of socket. He will have to set it himself, but he can't maneuver to a position to do that.


8:00 pm
The fifth member of our party is Whit, Lynn's son. Whit is 22 years old, six-foot-two, lanky and athletic. He is just arriving in camp when Andy's first radio calls for help come through. Whit had seen the gorge where Andy said he was going to descend that morning. He drops all his gear in the tent and races into the forest to help. It takes him only a few minutes to find the canyon rim above Andy. What he does next is remarkable. (Later, when the search and rescue team is unpacking ropes and harnesses to descended the same cliff Whit had, they are more than a little skeptical of his story.) Whit manages to clamor to a ledge just above Andy. From there, he lowers a length of "mule tape" which is, providentially, the only provision he happened to bring with him, to Andy whose clenched calves and forearms are shaking and weak with fatigue. Andy isn't sure he can hang on to the mountain much longer. Whit pulls him to the ledge and then hustles back up to the rim, but this time when he lowers the mule tape, Andy isn't biting. He tells Whit he doesn't think he can climb the remaining section. So Whit sits down to mark their position and wait for more help. Andy finally unshoulders his gear and goes about setting the socket. There is only the faintest blue light in the western sky.


8:45 pm
Dad and I arrive at camp with a lot of questions. Lynn has already called search and rescue. There is much debate about sending one of us (probably me) through the dark to find the other two men. Whit left without a coat and now that the temperature is dropping, he's getting cold. Luckily, he also has a radio. We eventually decide to wait for search and rescue, but since we can't risk losing their position, we tell Whit to stay where he is and tough out the cold.


9:00 pm
Andy settles in, sets his shoulder, and makes himself at home on the ledge. It's about the size of a sheet of plywood; if he sits with his back against the mountain, his feet dangle over the edge, but he can lay prone if he turns sideways. We radio Andy that a search and rescue team is on the way and Andy decides that's enough reason to give up on climbing. He won't test his shoulder again; he'll wait for the cavalry.


9:45 pm
A Rio Grande County sheriff's deputy arrives at our camp. His name is Russ. He seems only mildly perturbed at being called out late on a Saturday night. He cheers up considerably when offered a cup of coffee and some of Lynn's venison chili.


10:15 pm
Rio Grande County Search and Rescue is a volunteer organization and our campsite is remote. It takes almost two hours for the first of the team to arrive. Slowly, several others trickle in. One of the first to arrive is Bill, the group's leader. Bill steps over to a folding table under a tarp and lamp where we've spread out a map. Andy has given us his longitude and latitude which his GPS can pinpoint to within 15 meters. He has also given us a verbal description of his location. He has the same map we're using which is also helpful. Bill is impressed. Andy might have been foolhardy to attempt that climb, but at least he was prepared and he's managed to keep his wits. He's cracking jokes about helicopters and insurance over the radio which, it's obvious, is new to Bill's search and rescue experience.


10:45 pm
As his crew arrives and the rescue nears, Bill assumes command of the situation. There's another abandoned logging road that circles nearer Andy's position than our camp. Bill decides that's a better place to start the hike toward the gorge. The team members all get back in their vehicles and head to a rally point on the road. There are more than a dozen of them now. Bill turns to me and says, "I need you to come with us. I want you to be our radio contact with Andy. He's comfortable talking to you. We'll relay all of our instructions through you."

We leave Dad and Lynn at camp. I ride with Deputy Russ whose classic rock Sirius station provides a bizarre soundtrack for the whole bumpy drive.

The team stops at a wide spot in the road while Russ and I drive farther east. If we're right about Andy's location, we should be able to drive to within a quarter mile of him. We're hoping Whit will be able to spot the light bar or hear the sirens from Russ's truck. Russ and I drive until the road gives way completely to forest. No luck. Whit never sees us. He can hear the sirens but can't tell which direction or how far they're coming from.

This is bad news.


11:00 pm
The senior members of the rescue team gather around a map laid out on the hood of a Tacoma pickup. They are debating whether we have Andy's location correct. It's colder now; the other members of the team build a small fire and stand around it rubbing their hands. Somewhere to our east, Whit builds a fire too. He's wearing only insulated pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. But the wind is fierce across the rim of the canyon and Whit worries about losing control of his little fire. He puts it out and shivers.

11:15 pm
Our plan was to have Whit walk out to the road, then turn around and lead us right back to Andy. But now the plan isn't so simple. We ask Andy to fire a shot while we all watch and listen. The report seems to come from the direction we expected but it sounds much farther away than we thought. There is confusion among the team about where Whit and Andy are.


11:30 pm
Bill asks me to tell Whit to walk uphill to the north until he hits the logging road.


11:45 pm
Whit has walked for 15 minutes and seen neither us nor the road.


Midnight
Whit still hasn't found the road. He has no provisions save the radio — no water, no flashlight, inadequate clothing. It begins to dawn on the team that we now have two rescues to execute.


12:30 am
Whit appears. He gave up on finding the road and started heading west toward us, fighting blindly through thick brush and steep terrain. When he appears in someone's headlamp beam, he gets hugs and handshakes all around, from people he has never seen before. Whit probably saved Andy's life when he pulled him to the ledge. And he certainly saved himself; before he appeared, the rescue team was at a loss as to how to find him.


12:45 am
Andy is relieved to hear that Whit is safe, but there is bad news to follow the good. Bill leaves his huddle around the Tacoma and walks out into the dark where I'm chatting with Andy on the radio, trying to keep his spirits up.

"I've made a decision not to go after Andy tonight," Bill tells me. "I need you to tell him that we're delaying the rescue until daybreak. It's too risky for me to send my team out there in the dark if we don't know where we're going."

I can hear something in Andy's voice when I give him the news. Maybe it's fear. Maybe frustration. Maybe it's some of the self-recrimination that kept popping up and I would have to beat it back and tell him he made an honest mistake and we needed him to keep his head and not descend into despair or panic. His voice cracked and he asked about another scenario, but he knew Bill was right. Within seconds, he recovered and said he could tough it out. But when I suggest that we turn off the radios to save battery and just check in every hour on the hour, he responds with, "How about every half-hour?"


1:30 am
When an emergency call goes out, all the available volunteers are expected to respond. Tonight there are more volunteers available than usual. By the time Bill calls it, there are 17 of them stomping their feet around the little fire on the logging road. Bill selects four of them to perform the rescue and tells them to be at our camp at 6:00am. The rest he dismisses. Two of the select crew — a boyfriend and girlfriend who had driven all the way from Del Norte — head home to get a very short night's sleep. Bill and the other two accept our invitation to crash at camp. One of them takes my bunk, another takes Andy's, and a third sleeps in his truck. I lay a sleeping bag next to the campfire but only spend about 30 minutes in it that night, none of them asleep.


2 am
Andy has plenty of water and a little food. He has firestarter, but no fuel on the rocky ledge. He has the radio and GPS both with plenty of battery. Most importantly, since he has been out since early morning, he has warm clothing. All-in-all, he is well-outfitted to spend a night outside, which is good because the forecast is chilly. October at 9,000 feet is never balmy. I tell him the low will be in the teens, but no precipitation is expected.


2:30 am
Andy checks in. He has an update on his gear and the temperature. It's windy on the ledge.


3 am
Andy checks in. Doesn't say much.


3:30 am
I can't raise him on the radio. When he checks in he says he dozed off for a few minutes.


4 am
One or two words about the cold.


4:30 am 
...


5 am
Coldest part of the night. I remind Andy that we're an hour away from assembling the team.


5:30 am
Two of the guys wake up. Andy sounds more lucid.


5:45 am
The couple from Del Norte arrives early, which is remarkable since they couldn't have slept for more than two hours.


6 am
There's a faint light in the sky. Lynn is up making breakfast but no one is interested yet. Bill takes another look at the map and decides not to drive down to the logging road. We'll walk from camp following the route Whit took when he ran toward Andy the evening before.


6:30 am 
Seven of us set out — five rescuers, Whit and I. It's a relatively easy hike and we take it fast. Eager.

7 am
The sun has broken wide and warm over the mountains across the valley by the time we get to Andy. It takes the rescue team less than 15 minutes to rope up, rappel to the ledge, put a harness on Andy, and help him to the top. There are deep sighs and a few tears. We send the news back to camp via radio and Lynn invites the whole crew back for biscuits and gravy.


8 am
The couple from Del Norte are both uber-fit marathoners from Wisconsin. They have never had biscuits and gravy. Lynn shames them for this and piles their plate with enough calories to take them to Kona and back.

Andy is effusive. The team soaks up the gratitude as quickly as the biscuits soak up the gravy. Then we pose for a group photo, shake hands all around, and say good-bye.

/// \\\

No one got a shot at an elk that trip. Andy didn't hunt very heartily after that. On the afternoon of the day Andy was rescued, it started to snow, and by the time we broke camp, Unit 80 was buried under three feet of it. We sloshed off the mountain with broken gear, wet clothes and wasted elk tags, but grateful that the weather held, that Andy kept his wits, that Whit turned adrenaline-powered-mountain-goat for a few minutes, that God seemed to be watching over us, and that Rio Grande County Volunteer Search and Rescue comes through in a pinch.

Agency

In this story we are telling, we have agency. God calls us to be his intimate allies, his ambassadors in the world. But allies and ambassadors aren't just lackeys; they think for themselves. The common Christian self-image of a sheep, a servant or "clay in the hands of the potter" is incomplete.

Sometimes our churches work so hard to encourage obedience to law of God that they leave little room for intimacy with the Spirit of God. This week, I was reading Thomas Merton's treatise on spiritual direction for religious and came across this sentence:

We should not flee from responsibility, and we should not make such a fetish out of spiritual direction that, even though we are mature and responsible clerics, we refuse to move an inch without being "put under obedience" — in other words without someone else assuming responsibility for us. 

We have agency. It is not usurping God to use it; it is glorifying him. Like a son, it disappoints God when we don't rise to opportunities to reflect him well without being told.

For a nice, clean-cut church kid, this can be a hard lesson to learn. If you make a habit of obedience, you can also make a habit of acquiescence. You can live half your life without making a hard decision — college, major, job, home, even spouse can all be chosen from "approved lists", from a pattern of living up to expectations. How many coming-of-age stories have we heard about this? How many more must we hear to realize the importance of claiming agency?

The story worth writing — the Christian who is serious about his commission — takes initiative. He leaves Ur, risks death in the face of the giant, sails to Cyprus, dances before the ark. He takes actions that are his own idea and reflect his unique identity and calling.

It is not the mark of a mature Christian that he must always be told what to do.

Tour de Life

For most of this month, I was among the few Americans who paid attention to the Tour de France. On Sunday, I watched the 100th tour speed to its colorful finish under the iconic Arc de Triomphe, the sprinters hammering their pedals with superhuman strength and balance to win the final stage while the overall winner coasted smoothly across the finish line with his hands on the shoulders of his teammates, the yellow jersey spread proudly across his narrow chest.

The Tour de France is never won on the final stage. There are no buzzer-beaters on the Champs-Elysees. This year, at Briton named Chris Froome won. He did it with a victory on Stage 8 on a relatively obscure day to a seldom-visited mountain called Ax-3 Domaines. He did not win the Tour on the final day or on the iconic, pressure-ridden climbs of famous mountains like Alpe d'Huez or Mont Ventoux. When he peddled his heart out in Stage 8, he didn't know he was winning the Tour de France; he just knew he was doing his best.

I like that because I think that's how life is. We don't count it a beautiful or successful life if someone hangs around and goes through the motions for eighty years and then literally throws up a Hail Mary just before they run out of time. Life is won or lost in the middle, in the day-to-day, on the weekdays, under the weight and pulse of breathing and working and loving and eating and cuddling for a few minutes before you tuck the kids in.

This year, like almost every other year, the final stage of the Tour de France was more of a parade than a race — a victory lap with lots of smiles and photos and handshakes and champagne and pats on the back. That's how I want to finish. I don't want my last years to be a race to make up for lost time. I want to put in the hard work now, to win in the millions of little peddle strokes that happen in the mundane and obscure, so I can finish my ride with peace and celebration.

I'm a cycling fan. Thanks to Lance and the rest of the dope-heads in the pro peloton, I sometimes feel like I'm the last one on the planet, but I still love the sport. And I think it still has something to teach us about teamwork, fair play, and life.

Exclusive Love

I've been thinking about loving well lately. There are some people in my life who are hard to love. This morning, it occurred to me that love is exclusionary by definition, if not of people then at least of circumstances. To love is to place value in and have affection for. I do that to Christine to the exclusion of others. I love my kids equally, but I exclude other kids from the level of love I give to my own. Even if Jesus loves "all the little children of the world" he excludes something. He doesn't love poverty or injustice. In fact, the Bible says God hates those things. So there's an interesting logical loop —

God is love …
God hates injustice …
Love hates.

As with every other virtue, love is meaningless without its antithesis. You can't have love without hate. Christine hates cancer because she loves me; she hates cancer because it threatens her beloved.

This would be easy to live out if we could always separate the people God loves from the things that threaten their wellbeing, but of course we can't. We are a messy, idolatrous species; we marry our identities to things that destroy us. So to follow Jesus' example of loving others, do you love their addictions? Their character flaws? Their generational curses that they have come to see as as much a part of their identity as their own name? Do you hate the drunk as well as his bottle? Or do you love them both? And even if you can separate them, will he be able to?

Of course, there's another danger here which is summed up in that terrific line from Anne Lamott: "You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

What if I got really good at loving people? What if we all did? What would that do to our relationships? (Would deep love actually end some relationships?) What would it do to our churches? To our world?

Be Loved

In my last post, I said that the purpose of the Bible is not to stymie us with rules but to woo us with love. I think that's an easy distinction to forget. As Mark Matlock's message reminded me so powerfully yesterday, the purpose of any rule of life is to help us hit the target, not just to keep us from veering off course.

My reading plan had me in Revelation this week. There's an interesting sentence in Jesus' letter to the church at Philadelphia. At the end of all things, when Jesus comes to set all things right, he intends to include an awareness campaign about his love. Verse nine says:

"I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who cain to be Jews though they are not, but are liars — I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you."

At the end, the enemies of the church won't come and acknowledge that we were right, that our politics made sense, that we were smart or righteous or had the right answers. The thing about us that they will recognize — the thing that will identify us — is that Jesus loves us. That is your identity.

Think about that.
Let it sink in.

Your deepest, truest identity is that you are God's beloved. Whatever cinders you are raking, whatever kitchen you are slaving in, whatever clock you are punching, whatever heartache you are facing, whatever failure haunts your past, whatever worry darkens your future, those things do not define you. Your deepest and truest identity is that you are a child of the King and you are loved.

That's what the Bible is about. That's what I want to be about.

Polyester Piety

Stop the presses! Call the pope! The atheists discovered the "polyester clause"!

Twice in the last few days I've watched internet videos from people seeking to discredit Christianity by pointing at polyester-wearing believers and crying "hypocrisy!" Let me see if I can put this to bed.

The issue here is with the Old Testament verse of Leviticus 19:19 which says, "Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material." The YouTubers I watched read that verse and surmised that any Christian who wore clothing made of mixed materials was a raging hypocrite and therefore disqualified to speak on any other religious topic.

We'll get to some basic Bible interpretation in a minute, but let's start with the most obvious problems with these tirades. Does anyone really think that Christians would hesitate to rid their closets of polyester if they believed the Bible forbade it? Really? So Christians are willing to forgo sex, drink, gambling, and rated R movies. They're willing to be shunned and made fun of. Some in other countries are even willing to be beaten or martyred, but DON'T ask them to part with those polyester pants! Trust me, if an honest reading of the Bible even remotely hinted that wearing polyester was sinful, there would be churches and rallies and prayer vigils and all manner of crusading against such fabric evils.

Clearly, there is more going on here. That brings me to my second point. It's insulting to presume that someone's first reading of this verse could unearth a centuries long scandal in the church. Assuming Christians aren't just flippantly disregarding the word of God (Christians aren't good at a lot of things, but we're world-class at taking God seriously.) Then such a view assumes one of two things.

1. Christians have known about the polyester clause for lo these many centuries and have covered it up via Da Vinci Code conspiracies in a rebellious, Templar-supervised, campaign to keep hold of our wide-collar polyester shirts. 
2. Christians don't read their Bibles and don't know how ridiculous some of its content is. Again, hardly believable. What do you think we do in those churches every week? Trust me: Christians read their Bibles. We've been doing it for a looooong time. Some of the greatest minds in the history of the world (I am not exaggerating here) have spent their lives in pursuit of studying the Christian scriptures. Literally millions of scholars have poured over Leviticus down through the ages. We are not surprised by polyester. 

So what's up with Leviticus 19:19? If you're interested enough to have read this far, you must really want to know, so here goes. In the Old Testament, God gave the nation of Israel a LOT of laws. Really, it's staggering. There were laws about what to eat, what to wear, when to work and rest, what to sacrifice, when to sacrifice it, how to sacrifice it, what to call the sacrifice, yadda, yadda. In many cases, the Bible is clear about the reasons for the laws. Some laws are given for health reasons and the Bible says as much. (Ancient Israelites may not have known about E. coli, but God did and he protected them from it in the cradle of civilization; much like parents protect their kids.) Some laws were given for ceremonial purposes, so that Israelites would always be reminded of the greatness or holiness or mercy of God. And some laws were given on moral basis: don't kill. Killing is bad. (As an aside, the laws given on moral basis reflect some character of God. Killing is bad - life if good - God is life. Lying is bad - truth-telling is good - God is truth. Hate is bad - love is good - God is love.)

Many Christians and Jews alike believe that many of the health-related laws were meant for a certain time in Israel's history either as protection during a time of primitive health care and food storage, or as a testimony to surrounding nations about Israel's special status.

Christians also believe that ceremonial laws no longer apply because of the sacrificial death of Jesus. We don't kill lambs at church to atone for our sins because Jesus, the Lamb of God, serves as the once-and-for-all sacrifice.

But both Christians and Jews agree that moral laws still apply because they appeal to unchanging moral realities.

Now, here comes the tricky part: which laws are purely ceremonial and which are seriously moral? The Bible isn't always clear. Some cases (like murder and polyester) are easy. Others are murky. That's why intelligent minds have argued these issues for centuries and will continue to do so.

And that's the most important lesson in all this: the Bible isn't a rule book or a series of math formulas. It's a story: an epic, cosmic, fantastic tale of beauty and loss and deception and pain and redemption and joy. It's not meant to be easy to obey or even understand. If God wanted to give us a rule book and make us sit down, eat our broccoli and behave, he could have. Instead, he wants to woo us. He wants us to see him for all his grandeur and goodness. He wants us to fall in love.

And you don't do that by niggling over polyester.

The Price of Luxury

There's a car commercial that's been driving me nuts lately. Here's the script:

You wake up in your luxury bed and slide out of your luxury sheets. You get into your luxury shower and dry off with your luxury towel. You put on your luxury suit and your luxury watch. You grab your luxury coffee from your luxury coffee maker and add some luxury sugar. You step out of your luxury house and step into your luxury car…which makes everything else seem ordinary. Introducing the Acura RLX...

It's amazing to me that any ad agency was able to talk a client into producing this spot, and than any client was shallow enough to do so. I'm sure all the market research pointed to the fact that their target market loves luxury, but at what point do you say, "You know what? We're not going to give them what they want. We're going to appeal to the better angels of their nature. We're going to be that kind of car company."?

Maybe this commercial sticks out to me because of its similarity to an example I heard Donald Miller use recently. He suggested that we imagine our lives like a movie. We get to decide what kind of movie we want to make. Now imagine that our greatest ambition is to buy a nice car, retire early, and go snorkeling. Imagine watching a movie where that's the climax. The hero drives off the lot in his new Acura and the credits roll. Does that story move you? Does that story matter? Is anyone in the audience touched by that story?

No.

But we let ourselves believe that a little more luxury will bring us a better story. Instead, it just brings us a comfortable chair in which to live out terrible stories.

I know wealth is relative. I realize that I am more wealthy than 90 percent of the people on the planet. I'm writing this post on a $2,000 computer, for heaven's sake! So I see the potential for hypocrisy in decrying someone else's love of luxury. But I can't help but at least mention it, because I think our luxury is robbing us blind.

Our family supports a little girl named Sabrina in Tanzania through Compassion International. Here's what I keep hearing when I watch that Acura spot:

Sabrina wakes up in her dirty bed on the dirty floor of her dirty hut. She walks dirty streets to her dirty school. After school, she plays with her dirty doll. Then she washes down dinner with dirty water and flashes a smile at her grandmother framed by dirty cheeks.

The question is: which story is better? The Acura story or Sabrina's? And the surprising answer is: neither. Both are rife with poverty. Both are ruining lives. As World Vision President Wess Stafford likes to say, "The opposite of poverty isn't wealth. The opposite of poverty is 'enough'."

Conflicting Idea

Here's another way communication technology is hindering communication — it makes it easier for us to demonize our opponents.


This week I have had disagreements with political opponents and with my homeowners association. Neither disagreement happened in person. Neither included a handshake or a cup of coffee. And both have led to significant stress and tension. I just can't help but think that those discussions would have gone better if I could have sat down with the other party and looked them in the eye. It's easy to deny requests, suspect motives, and even call names when there's no relational impact to those actions, when you don't have to face the person you're insulting. Facebook, email, telephones, even postal mail are all poor forums for conflict.

So are passing lanes. I know a young man who lost his sight and almost lost his life because of the road rage of someone he had never met. Would that angry driver have shot someone who cut in line at Starbucks instead of on an exit ramp? Probably not. Like communications media, cars make us anonymous and therefore more easily "othered".

Maybe Jesus had it right when he said, “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you."

Resting

I love this description of Sabbath so I'm going to write it again: Sabbath is a reminder that we are human. Psalm 121:4 says that God never sleeps. But we do. We have to. Have you ever known anyone who never slept? I have. They were called architecture majors. They weren't human. But for the rest of us, we have to rest. Every night we get this reminder that we aren't God. And once a week we need to purposefully rest.

That's harder than it sounds. The age-old temptation — the one that tempted Eve in the garden — is to pretend that we are God, to behave like we don't have those limitations. So we work seven days a week. We work nights. We refuse to be quiet. We think, "I'll just get through this busy time and then take a break" while we ingrain the habit of ignoring our nature and God's design.

Sabbath is a discipline that saves us from that. Sabbath is codified humility.

What about you? Are you practicing sane rhythms or work and rest?

Underground, Overcrowded

My friend Shawn Small is a master traveler. He's so savvy, in fact, other people pay him to help them travel well. Last week, a shortened version of my most feeble travel story appeared on his blog. If you want insightful thoughts on God, travel and culture, you should follow Shawn. If you want an extended laugh at a travel novice, read on.

Some lessons are best learned in solitude. Some are best learned through failure. And some come most clearly while stranded in a dark subway tunnel under Paris. 

When Christine and I were 25 — still acting like kids and newlyweds — we made our first visit to Europe. We had a friend, Selena, doing graduate work at the University of Liverpool and we decided that was as good an excuse as any to visit the UK. Selena was also friends with Christine's sister Ellen, so we decided to take her along. Of the many mistakes that colored this trip, that was among the biggest. Do not go to Europe with your sister-in-law; I don't care how nice she is. You will find yourself watching other couples stroll romantic cobblestone streets in the City of Light while you eat at Chili's and carry extra bags. 

The second mistake we made on this trip was to overbook it. We should have been content with Liverpool and London. Instead, we crammed in Scotland and Paris. I would have traded all of the latter for more of the former, but it's the latter that taught me the lesson of this story.

A third mistake (the list of mistakes could go on for pages but I'll stop at three for now) was that none of us spoke French. Christine's French was the best among us but it was still shaky. We were staking our travel on the language skills of a 25-year-old who, when worried about making a flight on time, asked a cabbie, "How many minutes does the airport have?" 

On the penultimate day of our trip, a Sunday, Christine, Ellen and I awoke in the center of Paris, two blocks from the Champs-Elysees. Thirty-six hours later, we were supposed to be resting on our own beds. Between Sunday morning and Monday afternoon, we were scheduled to catch a subway train out of city center to a station named Laplace, transfer to an airport shuttle in the suburbs (we weren't flying from de Gaulle, of course, because we were 25 and trying to pinch every penny possible), catch a flight to London, ride a bus back to Liverpool where we could stay with Selena for free, and get up early for our low-fare-no-refund flight back to the states. If any of those transportation dominoes failed to fall in line, we would be stranded in Europe. Stranded in Europe with your vivacious young wife isn't a bad prospect. Stranded in Europe with your wife and her sister is completely different. 

Ellen has severe allergies and asthma, so Paris was hard on her. Our Sunday had an ominous beginning when she threw up in a subway concourse and had to explain it to police. We hadn't even touched the first domino in our journey home when we found ourselves huddled around a garbage can in an empty subway corridor, patting Ellen on the back and hoping not to be delayed too long. Just then, three men in fatigues and berets walked around the corner. Two of them were carrying assault rifles. I still don't know if they were police, military, or terrorists but they seemed to think we were a threat to public safety, or just Americans which, I came to believe, were synonyms to most Parisians. They asked us, "Is there a problem here?" We did our best to make them understand that we were only sick and weary travelers, a communication that failed until Christine, our language expert, used the universal sound and sign language for vomit, at which point they retreated. We managed to buy train tickets and hop aboard just in time. We were headed home. 

The streets and subway in Paris are largely vacant early on Sunday mornings. There was little conversation as our train clattered through its tunnel. Ellen was still feeling sick and the rocking of the train didn't help. There were only two other people on the train with us. At one stop, two stations ahead of Laplace, the doors opened, a voice made an announcement in French which we did not understand, both of our fellow travelers got off, and the train sped away again. It seemed like every other stop along the line. But then our train halted. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. In the tunnel. In the dark. Not at a platform. Turns out, that announcement we didn't understand was explaining that we had reached the end of the line for shortened Sunday service. Our train and its conductor were ending their shifts and we were stranded somewhere under Paris contemplating the very real possibility of hiking through dark subway tunnels in search of escape. Ellen barfed again. 

Apparently, thanks to previous traveling American idiots like us, or due to admirable French foresight, there is a rule in place for Parisian train conductors that they have to sweep their train for stowaways before they park it for good. We were in the last car and, eventually, the conductor found us, fidgeting and worrying next to our puddle of American vomit. He was unhappy. We got a tongue-lashing that I'm certain would have been offensive if we knew what he was saying, and eventually understood from him that we should not exit the train and walk aimlessly through the tunnels under Paris. We should stay put. He would take us back to the last stop. 

That was a help but not as much help as we needed. We were still two stops away from our transfer point at Laplace and time was ticking. In a mad rush, we read time tables to find another route to Laplace, dashed up and down stairs to the designated platform, jumped aboard, and hoped that this line, too, wasn't shortened for Sunday service. This was the long way — it would require an extra transfer — but we were back on our way to Laplace, and to Texas.

Our train was now above ground and we were happy to see the warm, golden hue of sunlight splashed against the graffiti-ridden sound walls that lined our new route. We made several stops, inching closer to Laplace and hoping to fell all the dominoes just in time. And that's when Christine's French kicked in again. We stopped at a station called Maison Lafitte. An announcement came on and Christine shot up from her chair. With a look of terror in her eyes she gasped, "He said…he said…it's-a-no-good!" Then she grabbed her bag and bounded off the train.

Christine had recognized an important word in the announcement; something that sounded like "terminus". Her communique, "It's-a-no-good!" was meant to convey that we had to get off the train or risk another delay and another tongue-lashing from an angry conductor. Ellen and I didn't interpret as quickly as we should have. We did our best to follow Christine's lead but Ellen was groggy from nausea and I was carrying my bags as well as hers. By the time we gathered ourselves and moved toward the exit, the doors were closing. There was a moment, forever seared in my memory, when I lunged my luggage-laden hands toward the doors, seeing my young wife on the platform outside, still with terror in her eyes, mouthing the word, "Noooooo!" 

Too late. The train was moving, leaving Christine behind. Through the windows, I managed to send her one final message. I pointed to the platform and shouted, "Stay here!" 

Ellen and I sped away toward the "terminus" which, this time, was an enormous train yard above ground. We knew the drill. The train stopped. The conductor ambled aft. We stood in the doorway of our car, rather proud this time to know our way around "terminus" and not to have soiled his train with the waning contents of Ellen's stomach. We had the pleasure of meeting two conductors this time — one ending his shift and another beginning his. The two stood on the ground next to the train and spoke in angry tones while making animated gestures toward us. Then they shook hands, said good-bye, and the new conductor mounted his train and drove us back to town. 

On the ride back in, Ellen and I did some math. We expected to get back to Maison Lafitte just four minutes before another train that could still deliver us to Laplace in time to catch the shuttle in time to catch our flight to London. From here on out, we needed everything to go right or all was lost. I gave something of a pep-talk, encouraging Ellen to fight through her nausea. 

We arrived at Maison Lafitte and saw Christine across the station. Now that we were in-bound, our train was on a different set of tracks, one removed from the platform where we left Christine. To get to her, we had to race up stairs, across a street, and back down to ground level. We had no time to spare. We shot up the steps and raced to the turnstile that guarded the steps down to Christine. This particular turnstile wasn't just the people-counter version you cross to get on roller coasters. It was a fortified gate built into a chain link fence. I slid my paper train pass into the automated turnstile, and it popped back out at me. The gate stayed closed. I tried again. Nothing. Ellen tried. Same result. Then it occurred to me that our tickets wouldn't work at Maison Lafitte because we were never supposed to catch a train here. Just then I looked down the tracks to see our train chugging into view. I grabbed Ellen's bag and threw it over the fence. I shouted, "Climb!" and started to hoist my sister-in-law over a chain-link fence in an effort to trespass on French mass transit. 

It didn't work. Ellen couldn't make the climb and I realized we were too late anyway. We watched the train pull to a stop and load several passengers who would have preferred to stay and watch the desperate American sideshow. Christine came to the turnstile, eyes red with tears, grabbed the bag I had thrown over the fence, and exited the Parisian train system for the last time, defeated. 

We had one final course of action and we took it. There was a cab stand outside Maison Lafitte and, even though we were far from the airport, we asked a cabbie if he could get us there in time for our flight. He saw it as both a challenge and an opportunity. I am certain of two things about that cab ride: we did not pay the standard fare, and we got to the airport in time. Thirty-five hours later, we were home. 

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from my experience in Paris. Probably the most obvious is this: Don't go to Paris. They speak another language there. Also, sister-in-law-vomit isn't charming even in the most romantic city in the world.

But the more subtle and more personal lesson for me had to do with my heritage. I grew up in a rural Texas town of 1,200 people. I like to visit cities and I can make a living in suburbs, but I am most deeply at home in locales where people are sparse. A week before the debacle at Maison Lafitte, Christine and I had enjoyed a lovely, relaxing overnight in Fort William, Scotland. We met some locals who did us a favor. We explored a highland walk dotted with sheep. We sampled haggis. It was quaint and pastoral with no drama and no angry train conductors. I'm not sure that the difference between our Scottish and French experiences can be attributed entirely to language (some of the brogue spoken is Scotland was as hard to understand as French). In France I realized my fluency in a language whose alphabet is solitude and whose grammar is neighborliness. In the immortal words of John Denver, "I'm just a country boy." It took being stranded in the Paris underground to learn that. 

SportsCenter Losing Center

SportsCenter has jumped the shark. I hate to say that; SC has been a part of my life since high school when it looked like this:

SportsCenter was a groundbreaking program then and has continued to be the worldwide leader in sports journalism for more than 30 years. These days, my SC viewing is less frequent than it used to be, but I still tune in regularly to keep up-to-date with Stuart Scott's wardrobe and the latest SC anchor catch phrases (Yahtzee!) But my two most recent virtual visits to Bristol left me disappointed, not at the quality of the prose or presentation (I still love to hear Scott Van Pelt intone "useful"), but with shifting SC journalistic standards. I think SportsCenter is failing in two areas: hard work and fairness.

Work Ethic

I tuned in SC one weekday morning several days ago expecting to see an hour's worth of game recaps, highlights, trend stories and maybe some colorful commentary from irate sports figures. Instead, I watched at least 15 solid minutes of Robert Griffin III stretching at Redskins OTAs. Stretching! While I watched RGIII touch his toes, I listened to a team of "experts" talk about the physical, mental and relational aspects of his return to action which is expected to happen in August. I was watching in May.

I realize the NFL is the biggest of big sports and that RGIII's injury is a big story on a big stage, but I couldn't help but wonder, "Weren't there any baseball games last night? Aren't NBA and NHL playoffs going on? Wasn't there tennis or cycling or curling or cheese-wheel-chasing to discuss? And even if there aren't game stories, wouldn't this be a good time to unveil some stellar reporting from some of the best and highest-paid sports journalists on the planet? Instead of any of those options, SC is giving way to Pundits-On-Parade and I think the reason is simple: it's easier. It's much cheaper and faster to bring an "expert" in studio and let him blather on for five minutes over B-roll of stretching exercises than it is to send a reporter into the field to conduct interviews, research information, gather quotes, look for themes, and dig out real stories. I think we're seeing ESPN's journalism getting soft.

Fair Play

And now SportsCenter is choosing sides. One of the most important and nuanced responsibilities of any news outlet is gatekeeping. Fair and balanced reporting isn't just about how stories are reported, it's about which stories are reported. The second discouraging experience I had with SportsCenter happened yesterday when I watched a six-minute segment in which SC anchor Hannah Storm interviewed Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brandon Ayanbadejo about his political views. The news peg for this interview was that Ayanbadejo and his teammates visited the White House this week to be congratulated by the president on their Super Bowl victory. It's a time-honored tradition and a worthy news story. I broke down the interview topics below:

• Ravens visit to the White House - one question, 30 seconds
• Ravens receiving Super Bowl rings - one question, 15 seconds
• Ayanbadejo's career - one question, 45 seconds 
• Gay rights - six questions, four minutes

In fairness, I will point out that this turn of events may have caught my attention because I happen to disagree with Ayanbadejo. I like to think that I would see the bias in SC's approach even if I agreed with the agenda they were promoting, but I will acknowledge that I'm human and less prone to cry "foul" when the foul supports my position.

But my beef with SC isn't which political agenda they are pushing, it's that they are pushing one at all. By any journalistic standard, this was ideological gatekeeping. Here's why: Google "Ravens visit White House" and eight of the top nine results will be about the team's starting center. Matt Birk declined the White House invitation as an act of protest against the administration's support of state-funded abortion. That's news. When a prominent sports figure (the starting center for the Super Bowl champion team certainly qualifies) declines an invitation to the White House as an act of civil resistance, it's worth covering. Every major news outlet in the country agreed. They all covered Birk's absence: CBS Sports, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Yahoo! Sports, Baltimore Sun, USA Today, MSN, Sporting News, and dozens more. But in an hour-long program whose purpose is to cover the major sports news of the day, ESPN couldn't find the time.

And this wasn't an accident. There was a conversation somewhere in the Bristol newsroom to highlight the gay marriage issue instead of the abortion issue. How do I know? Because those are exactly the conversations that happen in every newsroom. It's what newsrooms are for. To suggest that such a conversation never happened is to suggest that SportsCenter producers are completely inept. There are two scenarios here: In the first, ESPN hadn't heard about the Birk boycott, or didn't grasp its news peg that every other major news outlet acknowledged. In this scenario, SC journalists are just bad at their jobs. The second scenario is that they had the conversation and decided to ignore the Birk story and replace it with manufactured news - a four-minute segment about a political position completely unrelated to any news peg. In this scenario, SC journalists are putting their own politics ahead of the news. As the old saying goes, "never let the facts get in the way of a good story."

Of course, this isn't new. For years now, news organizations across the country have been fleeing the fair-and-balanced center in a race to political extremes. It's nearly impossible to find journalists making an honest effort at balanced coverage whether they work at Fox News, CNN, major networks, or - sadly now - the worldwide leader in sports.

I'll still watch SportsCenter occasionally. I like to watch the Top 10 and roll my eyes at Steven A. Smith. But I'm afraid the Halcyon Days of Bob Ley and balanced reporting are fading like Joe Theismann's memory. If they can just get Jon Anderson on waterskis, SportsCenter might actually jump the shark soon. For now, I guess we'll have to tune in to Wipeout for that.

Following Fairness

In 2006, writer A.J. Jacobs endeavored to spend a year following every rule he could find in the Bible. Yes, even the Old Testament rules about sacrificing pigeons and stoning adulterers. He wrote a book about his experience called The Year of Living Biblically. My friend Julie gave it to me and said, "You have to read this." So I am.

I'm only a third of the way through but I can already recommend this book. It's clever, funny, thoughtful, and honest. Jacobs is an unbeliever from a Jewish family and he approaches his project with no little skepticism and misunderstanding of religious traditions. I find myself reading about his experiences in month three of his experiment and hoping desperately that he'll see the truth of the gospel by month twelve. I have even considered praying for such an outcome, but then I get bogged down in mental back-and-forth about praying for something in the past and God being outside of time and yadda yadda. It's hard to keep from skipping ahead. But the thing I like most about Jacobs and his book isn't his appreciation or affirmation of my beliefs. It's his fairness.

When he's not writing books about self-imposed herculean projects (his first book was about his experience of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica) Jacobs writes for Esquire magazine. He's a journalist, even if his current employer is as much a purveyor of entertainment as reporting. His treatment of the biblical texts shows that he's capable of appreciating and presenting disparate beliefs without espousing them. He can think critically without criticizing. He can suspend judgement long enough to research an opposing viewpoint; in this case, an entire year.

It's refreshing and rare to find that quality in today's media. And it's ironic, I think, to find qualities in a writer for a lifestyle magazine that are often lacking in reporters attending "hard news" beats.

But this isn't an article about journalism. A.J. Jacobs isn't just an anomaly in his field, but in his culture. We seem to be losing our ability to weigh arguments objectively.

Donald Miller wrote about this recently.

A few little buttons on the internet have created an entire new way of seeing the world...These days, you can opt in or opt out, agree or disagree, be a follower or an unfollower, a friend or foe. But what gets lost is something dramatic: nuanced thought. We are no longer able to separate the baby from the bathwater. If I write a blog that has one point people disagree with, they unfollow, they are against. It seems in our rush to create tribes, we’ve created exactly that, tribes. But sadly, we’ve created tribes at war with each other.

I think this dynamic was at play in the recent testimony of a Planned Parenthood spokesperson against a proposed Florida statute that would require health care for any infant delivered as the result of a botched abortion. I do not believe that Planned Parenthood is an evil army of Satan bent on killing newborns. But I suspect that Planned Parenthood is an organization so defined by opposition (we will oppose anything proposed by pro-life organizations) that they are willing to literally throw babies out with bathwater. Ask any Planned Parenthood staffer whether it should be legal to kill Americans without a trial and they'll likely say no. Ask them whether they oppose a bill supported by pro-lifers to that effect and they're much more likely to say yes.

The difference is about tribes, and what's missing is fairness.

But before we start to feel too "holier-than-thou" about Planned Parenthood, maybe we Christians should take a look at our own fairness. Do we engage in knee-jerk opposition to anyone not affiliated with our tribe? Do we believe they're not trustworthy if they're not Christian? evangelical? conservative? pro-life? pro-gun? Are we willing to grant that those with whom we disagree can make valid, even strong, arguments? Are we willing to suspend our judgement long enough to explore issues from their worldview? And to do so long enough and with an open mind rather than just as an exercise in rooting out the weakest links in their position? Are Christians known for walking a mile in others' shoes the way A.J. Jacobs did in 2006?

Too often we reflect the culture of the "unfollow generation" when we value tribe over truth.

Sears, Roebuck and King David

My dad hates Sears. I don't remember why. He once got a bad product or bad service there and now he refuses to shop there. I do remember the first time he told me that, though. I'm pretty sure his exact words were, "We don't shop at Sears," as if this was a family dictum passed down from father to son since the days of Roebuck. If I asked him about it now, he probably wouldn't remember his vendetta against Sears, but it made an impression on me years ago.

I remembered the Sanders / Sears Feud this morning when I read King David's dying words to his son Solomon in 1 Kings 2. In just of 12 verses, as David feels the pull of eternity and struggles to deliver one last admonition to his beloved son and heir, the Great King of Israel, the man after God's own heart leaves Solomon with two important tasks:

• Kill Joab.
• Kill Shimei.

Seriously, that's it. Verse 1 says, "When the time drew near for David to die, he gave a charge to Solomon his son." Then he tells him who to bump off. I had to double-check to see if I was reading out of the Martin Scorsese-edited version (The Freakin' Message). Suddenly, I pictured David with an Italian accent and Solomon in a double breasted suit and fedora.

"Hey, Sol. Come over here. I got a job for ya. I got two wise guys I need yous to whack."

There are probably lessons here about Machiavellian power struggles or just getting bitter in our old age, but the question I landed on had to do with Sears. While I was patting myself on the back, ("At least my family isn't that bad") I wondered, "What vendettas am I leaving to my son?" What subtle messages am I sending? We don't associate with those people. We don't behave like those people. We make fun of these other people.

Mind you, I don't think that's all bad. I don't think it's immoral for me to inherit my dad's disdain for Sears. I'm sure my son will inherit some of my biases as well as some of my good qualities. I just want to be careful. I just want to be aware of which family feuds I'm fueling.

"See how these people oppress others and violate human rights? We don't approve of that, son."
"See how these people celebrate sin? That's a shame, son."
"See how these people wear saggy pants? They are evil and stupid, son."

It may be harder than we think to edit our parenting messages and deliver them clearly. Somewhere between my dad and king David, there's a balance to strike. I hope I'm finding the right center point.

What about you? What biases did your parents pass on to you—good or bad? What vendettas are you passing on to your kids?

Painkillers

My life has been focused on pain recently. Pain pills. Pain management. Pain reporting. I had surgery a week ago that left me with a healthy amount of pain. A significant portion of my waking hours is dedicated to preventing, avoiding, chronicling and treating that pain. And although the pain medication keeps my thoughts in a bit of a knot, here are some things I've been able to tease out of the experience.

Pain Consumes. It eats up everything around it. When you're in pain, the pain becomes the most important thing in your world. Pain is always urgent. It demands your attention. And in doing so, it consumes hopes, comforting thoughts, relational connections, and faith. I know many great heroes of our faith have encountered God most intimately in their suffering, but I seem to find only one thing in pain — a desire to escape pain. Pain makes it hard to plan ahead, to enjoy beauty, or to listen or empathize with others. Pain is the ultimate trigger for selfishness.

Pain Gets Lonely. It wants to spread. It longs to be shared with others. When we hurt, something in us longs for someone else to recognize our hurting. I don't know if this is primarily about our selfishness or about our deep need for connection, but I think we all instinctively understand that enduring pain alone is pitiful. That's why pastors make hospital visits. It's an act of compassion and sacrifice to expose yourself to someone else's pain.

If Treated, Pain Is Temporary. My pain is an effect of my treatment. Actually, my ailment (papillary thyroid carcinoma) didn't cause any pain at all; it's the treatment that brought me pain. But my pain is temporary. Eventually, the wound will heal and I'll be better off for having endured the pain. In other cases, the ailment causes pain and the treatment relieves it. It occurs to me that the only pain that endures is pain that is ignored. Pain that's being treated (assuming a treatment exists) or pain caused by treatment are temporary. They are hopeful. Pain that is ignored continues to hurt precisely because of its hopelessness.

You may not know anyone recovering from surgery, but these pain points are worth noting anyway. The pain I'm dealing with is physical, but these axioms apply to all pain — emotional, relational, psychological, physical. If there are people in your life, your family, or your workplace who seem to always be focused on themselves, who complain a lot, or who have a nagging negativity that won't go away, it's likely because of pain in their lives. People in pain are hard to deal with (just ask my wife!) The question is: how can we help relieve, share and treat their pain? How can you, as an ambassador of Jesus, help people experience pain in heathy, hopeful ways?

The Church of Cultural Interpreters

I recently heard journalist Cathleen Falsani speak. Penning under the nickname "The God Girl", Falsani is possibly the most successful religion reporter of our time. Now on staff at the Orange County Register, she was the lead (read: "only") religion reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times from 2000 to 2010. In 2004, she conducted an interview with then-senator Barack Obama that remains the most in-depth audience the president has ever granted regarding matters of faith and belief. She has written four books, the most recent one — Belieber! — about the faith of Justin Beiber, and one I'm dying to read called The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Cohen Brothers.

So I was eager to hear her speak. Unfortunately, to be honest, I wasn't impressed. She seemed self-conscious, distracted, and maybe even a little pandering to the audience. But this article isn't about Cathleen Falsani's speaking abilities, nor even her writing. It's about her title. As a Christian in a staunchly secular business, Falsani has carved a niche for herself as a "cultural interpreter" — a translator in the halting conversation between Christians and American pop culture. When I first heard her say that, I thought, "How cool is that? What a great gig!" And Falsani certainly seems to be doing a good job with it. But the more I considered her self-proclaimed office, the less I liked it. It represents, I think, a failure on the part of the church.

Have we really become so insulated from our culture as to need a translator? I imagine a sort-of tour guide for Christians in years to come...

"Howdy Christians! Welcome to the Secular America Tour! I'm Simon and I'll be your guide. Glad to see so many of you coming out of the church building to see more of the sights today! Now, a few ground rules before we get started: here in secular America, we drive on the right side of the road and we all watch cable TV. Also, please refrain from any laying-on-of-hands while we're together. That's cause for a lawsuit out here."

I guess we're not that bad yet, but the need for a "cultural interpreter" seems to have us pointing in that direction.

Decades ago, Christians started to retreat from politics because of the corruption and excess there. Then there was a swing back toward involvement in an effort to bring a "Christian voice" to the political square. Something similar has been happening with pop culture, specifically the arts.

I read a quote somewhere that I can't seem to find again so I'm going to give you the meaning but butcher the prose. It was about how to conquer a culture, sort-of an apolitical Machiavellian scheme, and the author, the would-be conquerer, said "If you want me to change a nation, you can keep its politicians. Give me its songwriters." If the soul of our nation is going to change, it will happen because it has been captured by the beauty of the gospel. It will happen as we reach the songwriters and storytellers of our age. And I doubt that will happen if we can't speak their language.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get to work finding a way to keep my nine-year-old daughter from knowing that Belieber! exists.

Fighting For A Good Story

I remember a Saturday Night Live sketch from years ago. It was an Irish talk show co-hosted by two guys named Patrick Fitzwilliam and William Fitzpatrick who did nothing but drink, then fight, then hug and make up in an endless loop. I searched for it online and couldn't find a trace which means either a) it has been scrubbed from the web because it was offensive to Irish, or b) I never saw it but only dreamed I did, in which case I should stop writing this blog and call Lorne Michaels right away. In any case, it was a funny premise — the prototypical Irishmen drinking, fighting and remaining best friends. I wonder if there's a lesson in that as well as a laugh.

I spent most of last week at the Storyline Conference in San Diego. Storyline is hosted by author Donald Miller and it's about the story God is writing with each of our lives. Miller walked us through a process of identifying their own character and ambitions in an effort to help us live a better story. It's really a terrific exercise. I recommend the conference. I also recommend hanging out in San Diego, but that's a different story.

A big part of the conference was about conflict because, frankly, that's a big part of any interesting story. Miller asked us to think of our lives as a movie. If the highest ambition of our lives is to make a comfortable living, send our kids to college, and buy a Volvo, that doesn't make for a very good movie. When the hero drives off the Volvo lot in his new ride, having achieved his ambition, and the credits roll, no one is reaching for the Kleenex. Too often, our lives get hijacked by small stories. And the reason that's true is that we tend to avoid conflict. We want a story where everyone gets along, but that's not a very interesting story, so it's not a very ambitious life.

Imagine your friends at your funeral one day. What eulogy would you like them to give?

"Ryan was a swell guy. We hung out a lot and had lots of laughs. We never disagreed and never failed at anything. I never saw him tested or stirred. Just calm and comfortable, just the way we wanted it."

or

"Ryan and I laughed, cried, prayed, confessed, fought, and served together. We sweat and bled together. Sometimes we disagreed but the disagreement made us better. I always knew he wanted the best for me. I always knew he had my back. And that was good because we tried some pretty impossible things together — some might say foolish things."

I'd take the latter any day. We have to learn to love one another, but not for the sake of loving one another. Our purpose is that the world will know us by our love, that we will unveil the kingdom reign of God by our community. Sometimes that means persevering through conflict. Sometimes that means fighting fair with your brother and then making up, instead of choosing to be martyred for your convictions and giving up on the relationship.

What story is your life writing? What story is your church writing? Is it a story about making schedules work and figuring out what to do with the kids? Is it a story about Bible knowledge? Or is it a story about transforming lives, bringing shalom, iron sharpening iron? The best way to write a good story is to imagine the climactic scene — the consummation of the story just before the credits roll — and then address every decision along the way through that filter. Is this a scene that fits with the end of the story I want to tell?

Cancer & Community

I have cancer. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to tell people that. There probably isn't a good way. But there it is. As cancers go, I got a good one: Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma. It's very treatable. I should be fine in a few months without ever sniffing a chemo needle. Last week, I visited MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston where I met Dr. Perrier who talked about my upcoming surgery like it was the oncological equivalent of removing a splinter.

"We'll remove the thyroid and several lymph nodes," she said. "You'll be released the next day. You'll be right as rain in no time."

"Right as rain" is officially termed "cancer survivorship" by MD Anderson and it's at least six months away at this point. But it certainly sounds like a wonderful place. I'm hoping to get there as quickly as possible.

If you want to gauge the sincerity of your friendships, get a dread disease. There's something about hardship that brings out the better angels of our nature. Like a big kid plopped in the middle of a trampoline that brings other kids rolling in toward him, the heavy stuff of life draws friends closer. Christine and I have never felt more loved and supported by our church family than we do now.

Recently, Jen Hatmaker blogged about taking a meal to one of her hurting friends. In her own pithy way, she expressed a profound truth about caring relationships: "When you can't fix a thing, you can show up. And bring good food."

It really is just that simple. My friends know they can't fix this, so they've decided to show up. They are calling and texting. They are praying their knees off. We've gotten offers for meals from church friends, college friends, old bosses and PTO moms. We're getting offers to watch the kids, mow the lawn, and nab free Rapid Rewards flights. I'm pretty sure we almost crashed Facebook when I first posted a photo of my hospital wrist band. None of this is about me or Christine; it's about the good people we've been blessed to know. They haven't jumped off the trampoline; they're rolling in close.

I've always felt that a big part of the reason God called me to this job was my community. We were part of a small group before small groups were an "official" IBC ministry, and our small group has banded together through some pretty tough stuff. Now I wonder if God is allowing me to experience illness so I can better identify with other hurting members of our congregation. After all, I know IBCers who are enduring hardships much worse than mine: terminal illness, death, divorce, grief, betrayal, addiction, abuse. For those members of our body, nothing — no sermon, no song, no class, no program — will ease the burden like a friend.

Christine and I have started a list of "blessings of cancer" — things we would not have gotten to experience if not for this trial. The most important entry on that list is the care of our friends and family. Not only do I have an easy cancer burden, I have great friends to help me carry the load. I'm grateful for both.

More Newtown Musings

It's amazing how quickly we forget. In my last post about the Newtown, Connecticut massacre, I promised a few more articles. I had a lot to write back then — a lot of angles and ideas about evil and society and gun control and culture. There seemed to be too much to write; too many thoughts too deeply disturbing to sort them all out in one or two blog posts. We probably all felt that way. I would stand in the shower (read: writer's refuge) and bullet point the issues.

Now I've forgotten them.

But here are the last two things that stand out about those musings.

First, I wonder if America has just proven that we're no longer mature enough for guns, like a child given a new responsibility for which he isn't ready, except that rather than growing up, we seem to be pooling down, regressing to the lowest, basest, most animalistic forms. It seems pretty clear that our nation is regressing in terms of good behavior. Remember, the trigger for these ideas was a mass murder of children. We certainly aren't advancing virtue. And as important as the Second Amendment has been in the founding and flourishing of our democracy, I wonder now if we're regressing to the point where we can no longer handle either privilege. Charles Colson, who understood both government and human nature, used to say that people must be controlled, either by self or by force. If we're losing our capacity for self-control, then we are necessarily abdicating that control to government. As our second president famously said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Again, I'm not opening the gun control debate here. I'm not proposing any new restrictions on guns. I am pointing out that gun ownership is as much as privilege as a right and that the best argument for removing that privilege is the one no one is making: namely that we can't handle our guns. We seem to believe that responsible and well-trained individuals can be trusted with firearms (police, military, hunters) but that those are exceptions, and gun ownership is an entirely individual status. That brings me to my second point.

Whether or not we're responsible enough to own guns, we are inexorably responsible for one another. The massacre in Newton wasn't just a failure on the part of Adam Lanza's parents, Adam Lanza's teachers, gun dealers in Adam Lanza's community, or the system of mental health screeners available to Adam Lanza. Violent death of children in our society represents a failure of our entire society. Certainly only Adam Lanza is ultimately responsible. Only Adam Lanza pulled the trigger. Only Adam Lanza could have stopped it before it started. No one else will face criminal charges in this case, and no one else should. But Adam Lanza is not an island unto himself, and while some in his family and community certainly had more access and opportunity to positively influence his troubled mind, all of us have some level of access and opportunity to do the same. We are each responsible for the influence we have on our society. And just as we all feel some level of emotional wound from the Newtown injustice, we should also feel some level of responsibility. Together, we have built a society in which children are gunned down in cold blood. The lesson of the first homicide rings out unheeded through thousands of years of human history: we are indeed our brother's keepers.

To the extent that Adam Lanza didn't feel that he was hurting himself when he hurt those children, to the extent that we don't feel we are hurting ourselves when we allow violence to shade the minds of our youth, we have lost touch with what it means to be human.

These problems — radical individualism, lack of empathy, violence, moral ambiguity, contempt for life, relative truth — these are deep, personal and profound issues. These aren't issues we can understand quickly or overcome easily. These are prehistoric and primary concerns that we must approach with humility, concern, and resolve. We're in a deep hole. Let's not forget that because we're distracted by a new episode of Breaking Bad.

Sunday School Christmas

Merry Christmas! Here's a recycled gift: the script of a sketch we did in my class at church several years ago. Our class is called Crossroads and it comprised 40 or 50 couples so it was hard to get to know everyone. We used to invite one couple each week to tell a little more about themselves. Here's the class intro scene from a special new couple. 


JOSE: Gosh, where to start? I'm Jose and this is Maria. We've been coming to IBC for a little while - like since the summer.

MARIA: But this is only the second or third time we've visited Crossroads. We've had trouble finding appropriate child care for our son—

JOSE (to Maria): They don't care about that. We're supposed to tell about our past, like our testimony.

MARIA: Ok, well you go.

JOSE: Ok, well we both grew up in believing homes. We met in college. At A&M. I was construction engineering. She was fine arts. We dated for a couple of years.

MARIA: Seven and a half months.

JOSE: Ok, so not quite a year. And then we decided to get married. And then—

MARIA (interrupting): I was visited by an angel.

JOSE (to Maria): I thought we weren't...

MARIA : And I got pregnant.

JOSE (to Maria, surprised): Wha? I thought...

MARIA (to Jose): Well, they're nice people. I just...
(to class) See, that part of our story is pretty unique. It's kind of hard to tell.

JOSE: So sometimes we just sort-of gloss over that.

MARIA: And let people think he knocked me up.

JOSE: Well, sometimes it's easier that way, especially with church people. They'll forgive you for sin, but not for being weird and talking about the Holy Spirit. I mean, not you guys. Er...

MARIA: Anyway, so there was all kinds of weirdness. This angel told me I was pregnant with God's son.

JOSE: Mine too. I got an angel too.

MARIA: But all our friends were like "Yeah, right" and my Dad completely flipped out.

JOSE: Yeah.

MARIA: I seriously thought he was going to kill Jose. Or get arrested. Or both.

JOSE: Yeah.

MARIA: So we decided the best thing might be for me to disappear for a while. So I went to Austin.

JOSE: The hill country.

MARIA: My cousin and her husband, Lizzy and Zach, live down there. She was pregnant too. And she had seen an angel too, so she believed me about my angel.

JOSE: I know it sounds like everybody in our family talks with angels and then gets pregnant all the time.
(to Maria) Let's get past this part.

MARIA: So I stayed with them for a while. That was great. I wrote a song then.

JOSE: Don't sing the song.

MARIA (glares at Jose)

JOSE: I stayed in College Station. I was working for my dad's construction company and just trying to save some money for doctors and hospital costs and baby stuff. She was gone for a month or two.

MARIA: Three and a half.

JOSE: Something like that. That was kinda hard. To be honest, I didn't really think that was fair at first. I didn't want any kids yet and then I find out I've got to raise somebody else's kid before I get to have my own? I mean, even if it was God's son, sheesh!
But then she finally came back.

MARIA: By then things had settled down and Dad had stopped making threats.

JOSE: Yeah.

MARIA: And it was finally going to be somewhat normal. Like I could finally plan the wedding and stuff.

JOSE: And then the stupid census thing happened.

MARIA: Stupid.

JOSE: Some stupid politician got it in his head that everyone needed to go to their home town for this census.

MARIA: I was like, "Couldn't we just do this on Facebook or something?"

JOSE: Yeah it was stupid.

MARIA: I mean: Census page — "Like" — done.

JOSE: Yeah well they said something about travel stimulating the economy, yadda yadda. But it was stupid.

MARIA: So we've gotta drive 16 hours in his 1981 Chevy pickup. Wouldn't go over 50 miles an hour. I could see the road through the floorboards. We may as well have been riding a mule.

JOSE: That was a great truck.

MARIA: Not when you're pregnant. It was awful.

JOSE: Anyway, this is taking too long. So we went to my home town. I'm from a town called Breadsville, Arizona.

MARIA: Two words: Po - dunk.

JOSE: It's pretty small.

MARIA: One hotel.

JOSE: And a bed-and-breakfast.

MARIA: Like anyone would want to stay in a bed-and-breakfast in Breadsville.

JOSE: Anyway, Breadsville used to be a lot bigger and there's kind-of an influential family from there so there were a lot of people in town for this census thing and we couldn't find a place to stay. The hotel was full. The B&B was full. And so it was pretty late at night and we had tried all the people I knew and even called some motels in other towns around there and there was just nothing. We were gonna have to sleep in the truck.

MARIA: There was no way I was sleeping in that truck.

JOSE: So I went back to the guy at the B&B and pretty much just begged him if we could crash on his couch or something. Told him we would get up early and leave before the breakfast and everything. And he said no, but that we could stay in his garage.

MARIA: Tool shed.

JOSE: It was his garage.

MARIA: It was tiny. Not like an attached garage with a floor and drywall. It was a shack with no floor and a bunch of tools and boxes of D-Con rat poison.

JOSE: He had an old car in there under a sheet. He helped me push that out to give us room and he brought us some blankets, and we made a pallet on the ground right next to this puddle of oil from his old car.

MARIA: It stank.

JOSE: Well, and it got worse because I don't know if it was all the excitement or the rough ride in the truck or what, but she hadn't had a single contraction before that night and all the sudden, she looks at me with big eyes and says her water just broke.

MARIA: Did we mention that Breadsville doesn't have a hospital either?

JOSE: So I go running up to the house and bang on the door and the guy doesn't answer! I guess he was tired of dealing with us. So I run back to the garage.

MARIA: Tool shed.

JOSE: And there's Maria...

MARIA: That's good, dear.

JOSE: She's sitting on this old seat from a riding lawnmower.

MARIA: You can stop, dear.

JOSE: With her legs spread apart and a blanket in front of her—

MARIA (gritting teeth): Jose, I said that's enough!

JOSE: Um...so...she had the baby.

MARIA: Jesus ... our son's name is Jesus.

(Pause here.)

JOSE: Nasty. I had not intended to cut the cord or any of that.

MARIA: He's a wimp.

JOSE: Yeah, when it comes to blood. It was nasty.

MARIA: He was beautiful.

JOSE: Well, I had to clean it all up, which was nasty. And I just about get done and somebody bangs on the door of the garage.

MARIA: Tool shed.

JOSE: And I figure it's the B&B owner because he probably heard the noise and we're waking up the guests or something. And I go and open the door and it's Paul Teutul.

MARIA: It was not Paul Teutul.

JOSE: The dude from OC Choppers. Anybody watch that?

MARIA: It was not Paul Teutul.

JOSE: It looked exactly like him. He had two other dudes with him. They were riding Harleys. I'm telling you it was him.

MARIA: In Breadsville, Arizona?

JOSE: For the census, maybe.

MARIA: Why didn't you get an autograph?

JOSE: I was ... distracted.

MARIA: So anyway, these biker guys come in and they're carrying boxes. I mean presents. Gift wrapped. And they put them down next to Jesus who is burrito-wrapped in a blanket and laying on the work bench. And they tell us that an angel - a whole bunch of angels - appeared to them—

JOSE: I know. More angels. Sounds crazy.

MARIA: And the angels told them that Jesus was special and where to find him.

JOSE: In a tool shed in Breadsville, Arizona.

MARIA: We stayed there for almost a month. Eventually got in to see a doctor. Took Jesus to church for the first time there. Some other visitors showed up too. Big wigs of some kind.

JOSE: Limos this time instead of Harleys. And they saw a star, not an angel.

MARIA: They told us the same thing the biker guys had. Jesus was special and they had come a long way to see him.

JOSE: And apparently stopped by their bank on the way because those boxes were full of cash!

MARIA: Very generous.

JOSE: I was afraid it was stolen.

MARIA: If it hadn't been for those gifts, there's no way we would have made it to Mexico and back.

JOSE: Yeah, but that's a different story.

MARIA: Yeah, so that's us. We have two boys: Jesus is six and Jaime is three. They're both precious.

JOSE: They're out of control.

MARIA: No. They just keep us on our toes.

JOSE: Our number comes up on the screens in service just about every week because Jesus is talking back to his teachers.

MARIA: Correcting his teachers.

JOSE: It's back-talking. But he'll learn.

MARIA: Yeah, so we're here now and we're very excited about getting plugged in to Crossroads.

JOSE: Yeah, I guess that's it. Thanks for letting us join you.

MARIA: Merry Christmas.