Posted by Chris on Jan 3, 2012 in
Life Here’s my To Read list for 2012. It’s far from complete. What would you add?
Academic
This list will grow through the year, but here’s what I have for the spring semester of the MAGL:
Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch
Shaping of Things to Come, The: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost
The Meeting of the Waters: 7 Global Currents That Will Propel the Future Church by Fritz Kling
The Invisible: What the Church Can Do to Find and Serve the Least of These by Arloa Sutter
Public Faith, A: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good by Miroslav VLF
Theology & Spirituality
Freedom of Simplicity: Finding Harmony in a Complex World by Richard Foster by Richard Foster
The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited by Scot McKnight
Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions by Rachel Held Evans
The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder
Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
Life, Relationships and Vocation
Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself by Daniel H. Pink
Keith Ferrazzi, Never Eat Alone
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question by Po Bronson
Fun
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
The Walking Dead: Compendium One by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn and Tony Moore
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
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Tags: books, Church, Jesus, leadership, MAGL, sci-fi, Science Fiction
Posted by Chris on Oct 3, 2011 in
Life 
Life is Good.
It’s true that life is tough. And when you realize that it’s tough, it gets a little better. It’s hard not to get lost in the darkness. Suffering is immediate rich and important in a way that our small daily joys pale against.
Which is why it is essential to remember that life is good.
As I was leaving the Emmanuel Orphanage in Delhi, Lakshmi, a six year old girl with piercing blue eyes clung to me and cried “Uncle, Uncle!” She, and all those around hre had been abandoned and persecuted their entire young lives, but they still knew how to love deeply, in a way I struggle to remember. Life is good.
I know a guy who begrudgingly gave the keys of his car to a single mom he barely knew for two weeks. They are good friends now. Life is good.
A friend of mine has often thought that the only way he could ever get a “good girl.” He felt like the only ones interested had different values and would treat him poorly. Then he met a girl, and has been attached to her at the hip ever since. Seeing them together is life seeing something that was always meant to be. Life is good.
Another friend of mine went to a foreign country to work with an NGO. His work was interupted when his teammates were captured, and he had to spend to next few months there negotiating their release. As heartwrenching as that was, he also sees it as the most important thing he has ever done. He took a furlough to recover, and is returning calmer, closer to God, and more excited about discipleship than ever. Life is good.
I get depressed sometimes. This summer was one of those. In the midst of that, I got a small, unexpected gift that helped shake me out of my myopic viewpoint. Life is good.
The scriptures teach when God created the world he called it good. When he created man, he called man really good. Then, sin wrecked all of that. Twisted and misshapen, like a fun house or a computer photobooth. But when we look behind the brokenness, we get to see that there is a heart wrenching beauty to it all.
The scriptures teach that this is not the way it was meant to be. Life is meant to be good. God has restored, is restoring and eventually will restore in full.
In time, the heartwrench will be over, and all we will see is that Life is Good.
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Tags: Community, depression, doubt, Faith, global journey, God, india, Jesus, Peace, Relationships
Posted by Chris on Sep 6, 2011 in
Life 
All the writing textbooks say that you should write even when you don’t have anything to say. Force yourself. Write about how you don’t have anything to write about. Use a prompt. Tell a story. Just write.
(This is just such a post.)
There’s some wisdom to that, and it applies to more than just writing. I think life is the same way.
I know a guy who is tired to living. He’s not suicidal. Just tired. Tired of doing the same thing again and again with the same result. Not sure what to do different.
A friend of mine has reached his job’s ceiling. He’s good at it, but isn’t making a living, and doesn’t know where to go or what to do differently.
Another friend has realized that he is in a cycle of bad relationships. He likes the girls that are bad for him. At his most cynical, he thinks it is his fault, and these are the only kinds of girls he has a chance with.
Perhaps this advice about writing is just advice about life. When you don’t know what to do, you should just do something. Find a prompt, something to get you moving.
Tired of life? Don’t get caught up in the Meta, and just get through today. It won’t always be this way.
Hit your ceiling? Keep working really hard. Jesus said that to he gives more to those who have been faithful with a little.
Can’t find the perfect relationship? Try something different. Not solely for romance, but for the chance to learn about yourself and make a new friend.
Life is a blank paper. You are a genius with writer’s block.
Just write.
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Tags: depression, Faith, Jesus, Life, Peace, Relationships
Posted by Chris on Aug 22, 2011 in
God,
Life 
This past Sunday Don Vanderslice of Mosaic Austin visited us at Vox and shared this classic quote from a commencement speech that great American novelist David Foster Wallace gave before his suicide. DFW had uncovered the lies, and, I have to hope, found the truth. Think about what you’ll worship this week.
Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
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Tags: Faith, Jesus, worship
Posted by Chris on Aug 12, 2011 in
God,
Life
One time I moved across the country for something that didn’t pan out. Another time I threw myself into developing a community that never knew how to welcome me. Those were dark days.
A friend’s husband just passed and left her with a baby. Another friend is suffering multiple miscarriages. Another friend was denied an interview for a job they deserve.
Some friends of mine back in Denver spend every day with homeless teenagers. Everyday with heroine addicts and drug dealers and occassionally, murderers. Two families I know are waiting for years to adopt while the kids they love are stranded thousands of miles away.
The kids I met at Emmanuel orphanage in Delhi are sleeping three to a bed in 110º. If things go well, they might get some chicken this week.
One guy I know is losing the battle to control both his mind and body. Another just got dumped…again. Another buried both parents the year he graduated high school.
Life is really tough.
To be honest with you, mine feels pretty rough right now. But not as tough as many I know.
Although I am often depressed and even despair, it hasn’t shaken a few basic hopes. They are:
1. This world is not all. Even when science explains how everything works, it will never answer “why?” The very fact that there is an unanswerable why question is all the proof I need to know that this world is not all.
2. We humans refuse to except a reality with no justice. Hindus count on Karma. Atheist fight against oppresive religion. Christians are holding out for a new heaven and new earth, and if necessary, a hell.
3. If there is more to this world, and there is justice, then there is a point to my story. To our stories. This is all going somewhere.
But none of this changes the fact that, in the meantime, life if tough.
So today, be kind to those you see. Chances are, they’re going through a lot.
And if you hope in Christ remember that
“ In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
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Tags: depression, Faith, global journey, God, india, Jesus, Peace, Relationships
