Where’s this thing going?

An update on my project with a story in the middle of it.

I haven’t been keeping a very tight schedule with posting things, and I wanted to give an update as to the reasons why.

The genesis of this project was a personal reflection on my own journey, and an examination of the things that helped me get where I am. It’s a combination of good influences and opportunities, bad advice and mistakes made, and in some areas, figuring things out from a place of total ignorance. 

“Where I am” is reflected in that whole mess of experience. I am extremely grateful for where I have ended up, and I know that I have avoided a lot of tragic outcomes. On the other hand, I could easily imagine having achieved greater success (depending on the metrics used to measure success) if I had received a bit more or better guidance in some areas. 

The fact that so much of my success seems like a divine blessing in the form of where and when I was born, who my parents are, what happened in their lives and the opportunities that sprung out of their decisions makes it difficult to hold myself up as an expert of any kind. 

That’s why when I look to forge a path forward for my own kids, and the young people I have the opportunity to minister to, I draw far more from my failures, my near misses, and my areas of lack. 

Starting to document this process led to some very easy starting points on how to formulate a better way to approach the topic of discipleship, particularly towards young men. In an effort to prove my work, I started articulating a lot of these ideas, and traced their roots back to my own understanding of the Bible, History, and the other various fields I’ve come to learn a bit about. 

Approaching the topic from the perspective of a trade apprenticeship, It would have been really easy to write a book that produced discipleship programs similar to the ones I attended and worked at, simply covered with an aesthetic veneer of a trade school. 

That would be to miss the point entirely. As I began to delve into the issues of our day, trying to answer questions about where things have gone wrong, and how they need to be redirected, it became important to answer questions of a more philosophical nature. How do we trust the knowledge we receive, and how can we evaluate our tools and solutions to problems? 

This led me to reflect on my own tools for answering these questions, and I ended up reflecting on the type of thinking that has helped me adapt to new and strange circumstances. The basic thing I came up with was the type of worldview examination that Francis Schaeffer covered in his ancient video series How Should We Then Live?, which must have sunk in a lot deeper than I realized as a kid. 

Paired with C.S. Lewis, some other apologists, and early exposure to Christians outside my own Church tradition, this freed me from the kind of rigid thinking about the Bible and faith that caused so many of my peers to deconstruct later on. 

Not that I didn’t have plenty of doubts - in fact, my understanding of things led me to realize that if there was anything I could be certain of, it was my own fallible understanding. But those tools gave a little insight about how things work, and when examining a lot of mutually exclusive claims, a pattern begins to emerge. 

There’s a quote I can’t find, I believe from Jean-Paul Sartre, that said something to the effect of “If God exists, he is the devil.'' and to a certain extent, I think he was right. A world controlled by a spirit of absolute malevolence seems to fit the evidence much more neatly than a benevolent God. But that’s only true on the surface. 

Those mutually exclusive claims were not derived from any clear reading of the Bible, but seemed to be logical deductions calculated to enforce a certain kind of behavior. That’s the kind of thing that causes many people to walk away from church altogether. But then the events of 2020 revealed that the religion of the atheist materialist had the same dogmas of control coded into their worldview, and far stronger than seen in most churches. 

In many ways, it was the inconsistency of Christians that reinforced my belief that the Biblical claims of a good and loving God were true. Despite doctrines that cause crippling doubts in a handful, or convince others to do outlandish things in an attempt to be “literal”, most Christians act to reinforce the overall message of the Bible, of forgiveness, redemption, and grace; that life is good, God is good, loving your neighbor is good. Though people are fallen in nature, the image of God still shines through. 

The final crisis occurred for me during the final months of 2020, when I began to suffer severe anxiety about the events occuring in our nation and the world. This caused me to really examine the more subtle effects of uncritically accepting the conclusions that permeate the culture of the church. Though I had always been skeptical of those with extremely developed systems of eschatological prediction, I was steeped in the general milieu of premillennial dispensationalism, and its pessimistic conclusions about the end of the world. 

I first became skeptical of too much trust in the rapture, because the effect of certain belief in it seemed to create an escapist fantasy for some, and a bunker mentality for others. The long term effect of both ways of thinking was a withdrawal from the responsibility of Christians towards their neighbors and the communities they live in, with the possible exception of trying to get them to make a spiritual commitment. 

This leads to almost the same form of conversion as was practiced by the Islamic caliphates at the point of the sword, except here the sword was a threat of tribulation and hellfire, and instead of proclaiming Allah and his prophet three times, they only had to accept Jesus in their heart once, and they were good for life. 

This changed the way I viewed evangelism and discipleship long ago. But some of the other assumptions about that form of eschatology remained, mainly that despite my doubts in a miraculous escape valve, the fear of great tribulation remained. The far more sobering reality on this topic was that despite mistaken claims about THE tribulation, many tribulations have occurred throughout history, and many Christians have suffered and died. 

So as the events of 2020 unfolded, I had great fear and anxiety about the future. I was the father of two very small children at this point, and felt almost completely helpless about how to ensure their safety and wellbeing.  What if widespread persecution broke out? What if christian parents were deemed unfit by the state? 

Perhaps this was the time when my big picture way of thinking was far more of a curse than a blessing, because I saw so many “big pictures” overlapping in contradictory ways, that it became impossible to chart a course for the future. Later I would learn the term to explain this experience as the problem of “combinatorial explosiveness” - far too much information to synthesize into a cohesive and understandable pattern that can provide a path forward.

Most people reading will of course have some memories of the time period in question, but memory is funny, and sometimes it’s very easy to forget the more unpleasant aspects of what went on in our heads.  

A brief attempt to summarize what was going on was trying to find the balance or truth about:

• The contagiousness and lethality of the virus

• The efficacy of the measures being put in place

• The extreme overreach and imposition on public life, including the church

• The widespread acceptance of conspiracy in some circles of christianity

• The widespread denial of any possible conspiracy in others

• The salvific hope, distrust, and hope placed on the arrival of “vaccines” by different political parties pre and post election

• Questionable Election practices

• severe economic impact of policy decisions

• A bunch more that I probably HAVE forgotten.

Finally, a pattern emerged out of this chaos. Nothing like certainty, but a clear indication that there was one hopeful path forward. Certainty in particular doctrinal beliefs, political beliefs, or scientific beliefs gave people different ways to navigate life, yet almost all of these different ways resulted in the same thing - selfish or fearful inaction on the part of many, or angry and spiteful reaction on the part of a few. Purposeful action was very hard to find. This was the path forward. 

I started trying to think of ways that could demonstrate this distinction. My personality is high in politeness, one half of trait agreeableness, but low in compassion. I think this terminology is a misnomer, because I do consider myself to be compassionate, but I have an extremely low tolerance for people who think they deserve pity or preferential treatment. 

In line with my personality, I tend to go along to get along. I might think you are full of BS, but I’ll usually hold my tongue. Personality wise, the mandate to wear masks everywhere was one I would tend to just put up with patiently. The problem with this was that no one else could interpret how or why I was complying. 

For those like me, they may have seen it as another person just trying to put up with the nonsense until it was over. But for those who were deathly afraid of getting sick, or those who liked virtue signaling, my compliance would reinforce their erroneous views as well. The virtue signaling seemed to emerge later, as mask wearing became optional in many places. But seeing the power of fear in demoralizing everyone around me, I did not want to do anything to reinforce the validity of those fears.

On the other hand, everyone refusing to wear a mask in public seemed to be doing it as an act of angry defiance. Many of them seemed intent to push for confrontation, hoping to get kicked out and arrested. People were even organizing events to de-mask en masse. This approach seemed like it would not be productive. It would give the fearful something else to be afraid of, and create a self-authentication persecution complex on the side of those claiming rights and freedoms. 

In the ways that God seems to motivate us to do good, irritation often seems to serve a vital role. Personally, I hated wearing masks. I have a beard that interferes with wearing them, and I also wear glasses. The glasses were an intentional choice made long ago, because I am a woodworker and I don’t want sawdust in my eyes. Rather than wearing contact lenses and forgetting to put on safety glasses, sticking with glasses makes it easy. But they always fogged up. This irritation caused me to not want to go anywhere a mask was required. Of course, this was the opposite of purposeful action, it was selfish inaction. I had to change. But I didn’t want to give people the impression that I was an angry protester either. 

I settled on a solution. The most demoralizing aspect of the whole mask thing was that people never saw a smiling face. I am not a smiley guy by nature, but this gave me an opportunity to be intentional. Every time I went into a store, or knocked on someone’s door for work, I would try my best to maintain a big friendly smile. I stopped bringing masks with me, I just pretended like they weren’t a thing (as I had for the previous 35 years). When someone asked me to wear one, I would graciously comply, but as long as they were still more afraid of personal confrontation than they were of the virus, I would force them to endure my awkward cheesy smile. 

The first time I did it, I was pretty scared. I follow rules because I don’t like being called out. But on a particular day not long after formulating my little plan, I had an errand to run, and something I was listening to (an audiobook) seemed to shout “now is the time!”. It was a tiny test of obedience. I actually went into a Home Depot through the garden entrance, skipping the enforcers at the front door, got what I needed, and left through self checkout. No one said or noticed anything, but I felt a huge burden lift when I came out the door. 

There were times when I was tempted to just put on a mask when I really didn’t want a hassle, and I am sure I relapsed a bit. But I kept sticking to my plan, and by and large, nothing terrible ever happened. I would even compliment other people when I saw another maskless face (not normal for me). If people offered me a mask I’d say no thank you, and if they asked me to put it on I did. This only went on for a couple of months before the mandates were lifted, but the experience was invaluable. 

Someone of a particular political bent may read my story and think that I am simply saying “the conservatives were right!” but that is not the point. To prevent confusion, I want to tell someone else’s story of purposeful action. 

My friend Chad decided at a certain point to get the jab once they became available, like millions of other people. However, when he explained the reason why, it was because it was a purposeful action to go against his natural instinct to say “don’t tell me what to do! You aren’t gonna stick that in my body!” Whatever medical consequences came from that decision, good or ill, the spiritual benefits were likely very similar to what I experienced after the first time I decided to trust God more than my own fear of being confronted.  

These decisions became the lens through which I began to reevaluate many other fears, anxieties, and the decisions we make about them in our 21st century modern American lives. There was a phrase that kept ricocheting around the world, the internet, and would even make its way into churches, with slight variations. “Why would anyone want to bring a child into a world like this?” More and more people have concluded the best answer is “Not I!”

Yet that’s what God did. Learn a bit about the culture of Ancient Rome at the time of Jesus’ birth. The odds of any child's survival or happiness were extremely low; and Mary’s baby did not have an easy life. Jesus’ death was the ultimate eclipse of evil overshadowing the good. But on the other side of that event, a new dawn broke through, and His mercies are still new every morning. 

Nothing changed my life more than becoming a father, and nothing else has had quite the impact in moving me past fear and selfishness toward purposeful action. But I cannot ensure a better future for them on my own. I need to trust that other people are doing the right thing, taking purposeful actions to make things better, to displace fear and encourage hope. 

That hope, and that trust means I must act the way I hope others will. For the good of my own family, to make sure my daughters are the kinds of people that will take purposeful action to bring hope and dispel fear, I need to reach out to the hopeless and needy around me, and offer more than just a smile. What I’ve discovered is that it’s not grand gestures or massive institutions that make this difference. It’s spending time with fatherless kids, teaching them stuff I know about life, not just the trades, but common sense. Giving them some hope and encouragement. 

But at the end of the day, simple answers seem to annoy people. Like when Naaman went all the way to Israel to be cured, and the prophet didn’t even open the door, just told him to dunk himself seven times in a crummy river. His servant wisely said, “If the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he tells you, ‘wash and be cleansed’!” 

Naaman still had to make a journey to hear the simple advice, and in case there was something magical about the river jordan, it made sense to try it when he was there. If the healers in Damascus had told him to bathe in the Abana, he probably would never have even left his home. God or Elijah could have done the same miracle in damascus, or anywhere else. 

But when he was in Israel, the Jordan was the river that was there - and that’s the only place to start. First with our own willingness to take a little step of faith, in our own home town, and the people in our neighborhood. It’s not a sexy answer, but it has great results. 

All this is to say that since people ignore good advice that’s too easily attained, I have been working on hiding this simple strategy in the form of a book. Much of it is similar to things that have been shared on here before, but I’ve shown a bit more of the work, and I’ve expanded it to some other areas of life. 

Once I realized that it was a worldview kind of thing, I figured I had to touch on several topics, not just the nuts and bolts of discipleship, but things like stories, and music, and money. Which means that it’s been taking up a bit more of my time. Originally I thought I would finish the devotionals first, and put a little essay on the front. But now it’s going to be a book, and a devotional will come later on. So posts may be a little more infrequent until it’s done. Right now it’s probably close to 75% 

But I don’t plan on going through a lengthy editing process. It’s going to be released as a draft, worts and all. I figured that if another version does get finished, people can see the progression from rough draft to finished work. It’s a peek behind the scenes; the kind of thing that people used to be afraid of, but now might have some utility. 

This was way longer than intended, but I guess that’s just the way it goes.