Invitation to beauty

-Sky Rift by Nicholas A. Tonelli

Over the past week, I've been buffeted by this idea that NOT complaining is a part of gospel living. We've been trained to think that sharing the gospel is about telling people about creation, the fall, and redemption through Jesus.

But I was reading a book with some friends, and the author pointed out that after the Apostle Paul, writer of many New Testament books while sitting in a drafty prison, says, "Do everything without complaining or arguing," [WHAT!!] Paul explains the reason this way:

 "so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life. (From Paul's letter to his friends in Philippi, chpt 2)"

First of all, I get that "good" people, "nice" people should not complain or argue. I just don't always want to be good or nice. But Paul claims that this not complaining, not arguing does two things: 1) It shapes who we become. 2) It attracts people to the word of life.

Just as pianists practice scales in becoming pianists, children of God who are blameless and pure, or innocent as one translation puts it, train for it by practicing not complaining or arguing. When we choose this path, we are changed.

This change is beautiful. Think about the night sky with the stars twinkling out of the darkness. On a warm summer night, it's a wonder to behold. As the practice of not complaining or arguing takes hold, our lives light up with beauty like the night sky, and this is an offering of the word of life.

A friend recently blogged this : "There’s a mother of two I’ve gotten to know, and for a long time I felt like something was weird about her until I realized that I’ve never heard her complain. About her kids. About anything." You don't have to wear a sign that says, "I've given up complaining." People will notice because it is attractive, because it is light in a world of darkness, because it is life in the midst of death.

But let's say you don't care. You don't care about other people, you don't care to become an innocent child of God. Fine. How about this: Complaining and arguing are making you miserable.  Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, a therapist lays out the 14 habits of highly miserable people.  Stuff like, "Be critical. Make sure to have an endless list of dislikes and voice them often, whether or not your opinion is solicited." or "Pick fights. This is an excellent way of ruining a relationship with a romantic partner. Once in a while, unpredictably, pick a fight or have a crying spell over something trivial and make unwarranted accusations. The interaction should last for at least 15 minutes and ideally occur in public."

The church women's study this semester is reading through Calm my Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow. The first couple chapters go back to Paul's letter to his friends in Philippi. From prison, he tells them that he's learned the secret of being content in any and every situation. Who doesn't want that? I think about my life; I think about the lives of my friends; I want peace, contentment for all of us. And I think many of us, if we were promised eternal peace and contentment at the top of a mountain, we would climb and drag ourselves up the mountain, we would walk over broken glass, we would give up our last cup of water.

After Paul says that he's learned contentment whether hungry or full, rich or poor, then he says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." The miracle that Jesus did for Paul, that He can do for us, is that He can train us in the practice of not complaining or arguing. It will take a miracle. Thankfully, Jesus is in the miracle business. Let us join Him in His work.

Why I don't study the Bible (much anymore)

Short answer: Stalking is not friendly.

Long answer:
Without going into details other than that I an a sinner saved by the grace of God, I was a stalker for a while. Not in a call-the-cops kind of way, but definitely in a that's-kind-of-creepy kind of way. And when I think about why I, as a bona fide nerd, have turned away from study of the Bible, the best answer I can come up with is that stalking is not actually the same as friend-ing.

I love to stalk ideas. Right now I'm on the hunt to find out what the latest and greatest is on multilingual brains. Exciting stuff. But when it comes to God, at some point I realized that rather than stalking God, I should accept the invitation to be his friend.

In my stalking God phase, I could geek out on Greek verb forms and textual criticism and commentaries and translations and I could tell you a lot about some passage or idea in the Bible, but there was a disconnect between that and submitting my life to Jesus as King. Kind of like knowing when someone would wake up and waiting for the light to go on in their window versus actually, I dunno, meeting up for breakfast.

Eugene Peterson writes books with provocative titles including Eat This Book about which I remember just about nothing except the encouragement to be nourished by the word of God. This for me is the much healthier way to engage the Bible. The Bible is not a mysterious text that I need to intellectually know and master. Instead, it is one way that the infinite God has chosen to reveal his work and nature to me.

First, there are other ways to interact with God; prayer, service, the sacraments like baptism, marriage, and communion, signs and wonders, the list does rather go on. As a cerebral person, I had to learn that God is in my life not my head. Second, God is beyond our comprehension so "mastery" of the Bible will not lead to mastery of God or mastery of our understanding of God. Instead, as the Holy Spirit guides our reading we can be drawn to know our loving Creator in an intimate, meaning close to our hearts, fashion.

This is not to say that no one should study the Bible ever. I have benefited greatly from reading the work of Bible scholars past and present. I assume they have been given a different grace than I and are not creepy God stalkers.

And I think that all believers would benefit from having a few tools to help them understand the Bible which was written long ago for a culture rather different from ours, and that's before you even step foot in the translation wars. A few tools is a world apart from having a dedicated detached workshop.

The great commandments are to love God with everything and to love others as ourselves. This may require the occasional in-depth study, but I think more often it is staying near God, saying yes to Jesus in big and small ways, day after day.

The gear and the goods

So recently our church changed the translation of its pew Bibles which reminded us that we needed to figure out what Bible to get our children which reminded me of what the point is.

When I was learning about photography, I stumbled across this phenomenon where some people love photographic gear more than they love making beautiful pictures. They get huge thrills out of the engineering of the thing that makes pictures, that's their interest. And that's great and it takes up a lot of pages on the internet, but it's not photography. It's gear.

I did my senior thesis in college on Bible translation, and I'll say that for 99% of people any Bible translation done by a committee is fine. The issue, particularly for the big English Bible translations, isn't which translation? The issue is do you read the Bible? For 99% of people who are thinking about picking one translation over another the only question that needs to be answered is, "Will I read this?" The 1% are people who study the Bible. And honestly, for people who study the Bible, they need many translations including the Greek and the Hebrew.

So if you love the King James Version because Grandma always read to you in the KJV, if that's what'll keep you reading the Bible, read the KJV. If you are a nerd who likes awkward phrasing that reminds you that you're reading a translation from Greek and Hebrew, knock yourself out on the New American Standard (NASB) or English Standard Version (ESV). I'm a nerd, I like those versions too. If you gravitate to a version that's more like what you encounter in everyday language there's the New International Version (NIV) and the New Living Translation (NLT). Biblegateway.com and The Bible app are great places to review the same passage in many translations. Pick the one that you're ready to read a lot of.

Currently, I'm doing my daily Bible reading from a devotional called Seeking God's Face (my review of the book). I didn't even know what version I was reading until I looked it up today. Wouldn't have been my first choice (TNIV), but it's still be a great resource for daily Bible reading.

A second consideration is what are your friends reading. If you're in a situation where you're reading the Bible with other people, depending on the circumstances you might want to have the same version they do. Alternatively, you might be in a group where it is beneficial to have a few different translations on hand.

From there, onto children. For our kids, I'm looking for a sturdy Bible with large print that is easy on young eyes. That would be my primary criteria except that these are my kids. So it would be also nice for my kids to use the version that we're most familiar with and the version that I did most of my scripture memory in.

This is where things become tricky. I have done almost all Bible memorization from an out-of-print version of the NIV. It went out of print two years ago, before my kids started reading, before I knew to care about this. So now I'm stuck between learning verses with my kids in a new version or hunting up old versions of the NIV on ebay. What a pain.

If you're not in my boat, I would probably recommend the latest NIV version because it's a nice compromise between oddly contemporary and oddly archaic. (And it's in print.) If you want to see some kids' Bible verses in different versions, here's a pdf of Awanas verses for 3-4 year olds.

Little habits

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, all!

I haven't been writing here because one of my new habits has been doing some daily personal writing and that kind of wipes out my writing tank.

A couple big changes are in store for 2014. Last year, I really took a hiatus from something that had become routine in my life. Two big things were 1) leading a women's Bible study and 2) writing a paper with my old research group. I've picked both of those back up for this upcoming year and that in order to accomplish those I've had to re-order a few things.

First, for the past 17 days, when I wake up I write 750 words. It takes about 15-20 minutes to do during which my kids are usually downstairs playing with or screaming at each other. I write about anything I want. For the first week, I used 750words.com, but I realized I could do the same thing using WriteMonkey which is a program I usually use to write papers with.

 In the past, writing has been a slow process for me and I've tended to turn things in late. Right now, my goal is to have a draft together by March. That is exceedingly fast turn around for me (because I am slow), so I thought this little habit would at the least prime the pump for writing for real. I usually do a bit of stream of conscious about stuff that happened the previous day, maybe some thinking about stuff I need to do that day, and if I've read some research articles, I summarize what I thought were the important findings and my thoughts on the issues raised. I've found the little habit useful so far, but the jury is still out on whether it will help me write this research paper.

Second, I cancelled my gym membership. Last year was my first year of gym membership, and it was great but devoting 90 minute blocks of time to travel to the gym and workout is a luxury. In order to take back on writing and leading, I gave up long gym sessions. Instead of 90 minutes 2-3 times a week, I aim for 15 min of weightlifting in the garage 5 days a week and two sessions of of loaded carries (take a heavy weight and walk around with it.) 15 minutes a day is very doable. I do it during the kids' quiet times. Even if the kids aren't being quiet, we all can live with me being unavailable for 15 minutes. There is, of course, a limited amount of work that I get done in 15 minutes, but for now, it's a compromise I can live with. And notice, there's no cardio. That's bliss.

The first two habits are well on their way to being established. The third is something that I've been a lot more hit or miss on. I'm trying to read two research articles a day. I was doing well for a week and then I kind of fell off the horse. It is a very productive speed to read at.