What will 2012 be all about? It’s a more important question than you might think.
As I approached 2010, I had this epiphany that I my year was not going to be about accomplishing my great life goals. Instead, I decided to focus on a few small things that I knew I would be able to well. So I aimed for those dreams that you never really get around to, the “bucket list” kind of things. I set twelve goals, and used this blog as a means for enforcing accountability. I did things like run a marathon and pay off all of my debt. It was a very difficult year, but I’m proud of it.
For some reason, I didn’t approach 2011 with the same attitude. Maybe I was just tired. Maybe I felt like I had accomplished enough and didn’t need to try. Maybe I was more concerned about maintenance than accomplishment. 2011 was mainly about riding my bicycle and doing well in graduate school and surviving the summer heat. The end result was a good year, but not one I look back with the same kind of pride I have about 2010.
Perhaps the difference is that early on I decided what 2010 was going to be about. I made some goals, and a plan to accomplish them. The end result was that I did some cool things, specific, that I can point to.
I want to have more years like that. I want you to as well.
So now is the time to decide: What will 2012 be all about?
2. How Facebook Causes Depression Inspired by pictures of ex-girlfriends, people acting like they’re having fun, and friends I haven’t seen in 8 years having babies. This really seemed to resonate.
7. Three Things Twenty-Somethings Need from Church When I posted on another blog that churches didn’t know what to do with 20somethings, somebody asked what exactly they should be doing. My answer.
These didn’t get the traffic my other posts did, but they’re a few of my favorite things I wrote this year.
How Osama bin Ladin Led Me to Anabaptism After listening to a This American Life episode, my parents asked me how Bin Ladin’s death had affected me. The conversations inspired this series.
Advent is almost over, and Christmas is almost here. Maybe it’s Austin’s general lack of four seasons, but I’m just not feeling it. I’m not sure how, but I have the sneaking suspiscion that I did Advent wrong, and Christmas will suffer.
If Christmas is the great celebration of Incarnation, Advent is the bated breath that waits for his coming. And waiting is what makes so much of life worthwhile. The problem is, we don’t have to wait in our culture.
Today we get our meals by driving through, or zapping something in the microwave. We forget what it means to be hungry, or how to salivate at the smells wafting from a kitchen. You don’t have to drive to a record store, you download your new favorite album on your phone. You don’t have to write letters or travel miles to hear from loved ones on other continents, you just send a text message or get on Skype.
Following Christ is about learning to live in the “time of God’s patience,” this strange age between the coming and the coming again. It’s all about waiting. And in that way, it’s probably the most “Christian” of all holidays.
Waiting isn’t fun. Actually it’s pretty boring. Which is another problem. There’s very little opportunity to be bored today. Think about the times you might be bored: waiting in line or traffic, a slow day at work, listening to a bad sermon. But today, we’ve exchanged boredom for distraction. All I have to do is press a button and I suddenly have fresh news feed of articles, tweets, instagrams and gifs. We’ve exchanged boredom for distraction.
For me, my Advent has been filled to the breaking point. My days have been packed with school projects, new websites, networking events, holiday parties, on top of my fourty hour a week job. Advent requires space to be quiet, to wait, reflect, and yes, get bored.
Ignoring Advent is like ignoring the light that comes on when your car is low on gas. The light will have it’s way, and you will find yourself on the side of the road. We have fill our lives with a million little things to distract us from the big things. Then one day we wake up with a road crew and yield signs in our path. Life will teach us to wait, whether we want to or not.
What if, in these last days before Christmas, we turned off the feeds and the notifications. We powered down the devices. We could bake things in the oven, write notes by hand, and walk to our destinations.
Maybe we’d get bored, and in our boredom, remember how much we need him to come back.
Just a few decades ago, it would have been unspeakable to mock someone for a public act of faith. But the severe reactions that have been inspired by Tebowing show just how uncomfortable America is with the Christian religion. Not that long ago, declarations of faith were a required part of the school day. But just a few weeks ago, the New York supreme court decided to kick out churches that rent school cafeterias on Sundays.
There’s no denying it-
American Christendom is dead.
Here’s a rough history/definition of Christendom:
Constantine begins to make Christianity a national religion with the Edict of Milan in 313.
With the fall of the Roman Empire, the structures of Roman Church try to hold Europe together.
Catholic/Protestants further the Christendom model by carving Europe, and eventually the world in to state run religious kingdom.
In the US, Christendom is more subtly spread through civic institutions use language that propagates the idea of the U.S. as Christian nation.
In short, by Christendom, I mean the idea that the Church is a ruling socio-political entity, whether by official statement or unofficial social expectations.
So, for a very long time this “Christianity” has been the litmus test of one’s American-ness. But recently, a combination of forces including everything from post-modernism to birth control to globalism has knocked Christianity from it’s position as the bedrock of America. Europe got there about 40 years earlier.
And while it spells the death of Christendom, it could very like be the best thing that could happen for the movement of Jesus in the US.
This past Sunday was the first of Advent. As I have in past years, I’m planning on continuing a tradition of blogging through the season. To give you some background, here’s a description I wrote a few years back:
