So happy together

In a recent comment on Lyn's blog, I wrote:

Per people who can’t stand silence or being alone, I think that’s the classic extrovert/introvert difference, as described in an excellent Atlantic article some years back. FWIW, I am an introvert, which as the article points out, does not mean “shy” or “reticent”. Instead, the article defines extroverts as people who get energy from being with other people and introverts as those who expend energy in the same situation.

[Go read the above-linked Atlantic article now. It's worth it. I'll wait.]

[You've read it? Good. Let's continue.]

"Hello, I'm Jim, and I'm an introvert."

That leads to an interesting dynamic in regards to my faith. I am called upon to be part of a community. To be in fellowship. To engage, befriend and love all I meet. And yet, at the end of the day, I am not "a people person". I am a natural friend, and have more friends I count as "true" (as in "tried and true", as in "tried" and found "true") than I deserve. But I am much more comfortable in one-on-one situations than in group gatherings. I tend to be the kind that doesn't like parties, and when I go to one I try to find a small group somewhere in a corner and hang there. Or else I busy myself with helping with the infrastructure of the party - cooking, serving, cleaning up. Gee, I seem to do a lot of the same things at church and in volunteering.

I am terrible at small talk. I don't like nor follow organized sports, so right there I can't talk to 93.756% of all men, American or otherwise. My political, social, religious and even musical likes and dislikes range between esoteric and scandalous, so most of those are out as topics of conversation, too. Especially in a church setting. Plus, through genetics, upbringing and disposition, I am, er, um, "blunt". Sarcastic (although I'm fighting that). Cynical (fighting that, too). Direct. But since I know (usually...sometimes) when to keep my mouth shut, I spend a lot of my time in gatherings keeping my mouth shut. Which doesn't help much with that fellowship thing.

Even when I am with my best friends on the planet, I tend to need "time outs". Some examples:

• Our family occupies a "two office, three bedroom" house. What that means is that my wife and I have offices that are at opposite ends and different floors of our suburban split-level. We talk every night; however, since both of us are introverts we each can hole up in our offices for long periods of time, emailing each other to communicate (beats shouting upstairs and down the hall :-). That may sound pathetic to an extrovert, but to two introverts it means we are still engaged in communicating while we are "recharging", each in our own cave.
• I used to live in Colorado (three different times actually). Now I live in Missouri (for a third time as well). When I lived in Colorado the last time, between 1995 and 2000, a friend of mine and I got together to play chess and discuss philosophy, politics and other puffery once a month. Since I moved back here that tradition has gotten harder to keep. So we meet about three to four times a year in Ellsworth, Kansas (geographically equidistant between the two of us - and if you're ever going to be near Ellsworth, drop me a line, and I will tell you about what we've found to see and do there). Anyway, when I meet one of my best friends on the planet after long periods apart, we spend two days talking, playing chess and driving all over central Kansas looking for new things to see and do (and there are some pretty cool things, actually - if your definition of "cool" is relaxed and in a "Well, I'm here anyway - so that is cool" vein). Yet by the time Sunday comes, I am ready for a break, to drive the six hours back home alone listening to music, thinking and being in blessed solitude.
• My longest running friendship is with Mike. I have known him since we were both eight. When I still lived in Colorado (the last time) we did a lot of hiking, backpacking, snow shoeing and climbing together. We would spend upwards of a week at a time alone together in the wilderness. And after a day or two, we would enter into a routine where we might only say 20 or 30 sentences to each other - just enough for the functioning of the camp. And that was enough. Not because we were sick of each other, but simply because we were talked out. It was time to let God's creation talk to us. To recharge. To be alone, together - weird as that may sound.

Well...If that's how I am with friends, how can I take all of that and then jump into community? How can an introvert join in fellowship when, out of all of the spiritual gifts we may have, natural "people skills" aren't one of them? I dunno. I can make myself do it sometimes. I've taken the Dale Carnegie course and even won awards. In fact, I was a graduate assistant there for three course terms and a lead graduate assistant for one. And all of that was good to learn the tools of the trade of fellowship, but none of it made it natural. I find that I can turn those tools on and care on a case by case basis with ease. All I need is that connection, that attraction, that spark. As the apocryphal saying goes:

"Sincerity is key - once you can fake that, you have it made!"

But...I am commanded to love all people - whether I feel that connection and spark or not. That is the hard part.

So, here I am, commanded to commune, when all such interactions suck energy from me (that sounds so new-agey, doesn't it?) and leave me wanting to hole up alone to recover. But perhaps that's the wisdom of the Bible, because it also talks about the importance of time alone, praying in our inner room, fasting in the desert. Perhaps God's challenge here is for both introverts and extroverts. We introverts are commanded to get out there and mingle - actively care for, love and interact with others - whether it's natural for us or not. Just do it. And you extroverts are told there are times when you must go be by yourself, stop talking and sit still to know God. Maybe that's even harder for some. It's a stretch for all of us, no matter how we're made. Which always seem to be Christ's way, doesn't it? :-) Isn't that how we really know our Master's voice, when He is commanding us to step out of the boat of our comfort and onto the water of the world around us?

"Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."

"Come," he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"

Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?"

- Matthew 14:28-31

(I don't wanna be) A macho man

Tom Datema has written a great post on what being a "real man" following Christ is all about. Take a minute to read it. It seems Tom has disabled comments - too bad, I'd like to tell him directly that I enjoyed his post and agree completely.

"I said, Oh Lord, I'm frightened, but I also said Amen."

Pride (Not) In The Name Of Love

"Pride only hurts, it never helps."
- Marsellus Wallace

[Another confessional post.]

It is becoming more and more apparent to me that pride is at the root of almost all of my problems and sins. I am nowhere near humble enough. I do not trust Christ's forgiveness enough and hence keep repenting for sins past and repeating them as sins present. I do not ask for God's help nearly enough, and not about the things that count. I do not trust the Spirit enough to lead me. I am like a three year old insisting "I can do it myself!" Which is cute at three (sometimes, not necessarily when you're trying to get out the door to be somewhere on time). It isn't cute at forty six, when I have shown myself, family, friends and the world at large over and over that I can't do it myself.

That isn't to say I am not "successful" at those things the world considers important. I am happily married. I get along with my parents and most of my children (my eldest is currently not happy with me, and some of that can be attributed back to my pride as well). I have more friends than I deserve, a nice place to live, a nice truck to ride around in. I volunteer at both church and in the community at large. I have a good career. "All's right with the world", so to speak (which terrifies me, because I don't want that to be my only reward).

All that, and yet (or because of it) I consider myself for the most part to be a failure. Because I am one prideful, conceited S.O.B. Because on the things that count, I fall down, over and over. Because I get angry over something or other every day, multiple times a day. And when I pick at that anger and hold it up to the light, in each and every case it always comes from feeling that someone is not treating me right, is not holding my opinions in high enough regard, is not listening to me, is taking advantage of me, is threatening me. It's all about me, me, me. Bleah!

So I end up having to ask the Lord for forgiveness for all the anger I feel, over and over and over again. But I've come to realize that is because I am not asking Him for the right thing, which is help with controlling the anger in the first place, and more importantly, help in controlling the pride from which that anger derives. The hardest thing about turning the other cheek is always that feeling of self-righteousness, holding myself up as the thing of ultimate worth. "Do you know what he did/said to me?" Except I am really not worth much at all. I am not worthless, because Jesus loves me, but I often don't feel worthy of His love because my pride separates me from it.

Instead of stewing on what someone else did to me, I need to continue to ask for the Spirit's help in remembering at all times what Christ Jesus did for me. There is a reason pride is considered the worst of the seven deadly sins, and it is precisely this point - that pride places ourselves first, before Jesus. Whereas He died for us, for our sins, including our pride!

I am currently reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. One of the points he makes is against the concept of "cheap grace", counting on Christ's forgiveness over and over and over again (which we can) while not changing our actions to obey and follow our Saviour's commands. This is not a message of salvation through works, but instead it is a stern reminder that Jesus Himself said, "By their fruit you shall recognize them." Right now my "fruits" feel more like thorns and thistles rather than grapes and figs. And even then, to fix it my pride wants me to try and be more humble on my own! "I can do it myself!" Argh!

So, I have been praying for relief from my anger, for the death of my pride and most of all for help from the Spirit in both. I would appreciate your prayers for me on this, too (if it isn't too prideful to think I might be important enough to deserve your prayers! :-).

Fab Four

I don't casually link to other blog postings for mere linking's sake, but the following four posts in the last two days have all made an impact and have my mind racing.

Unprotected Church (from Brain Twitch) - I totally agree with this! I was brushing up against this here, under the section on "Systems tend to grow and as they grow they encroach".

Jesus Blew Their Minds (from Jesus the Radical Pastor) - If we aren't being completely and totally amazed, bewildered and scared by what Jesus represents and wants from us, we're missing the point and are too complacent. God is in the boat with us. Do we even begin to realize what that means?

Reckless Love (from We are in Jesus) - Umm, wow, Tina! Once again, you've hit it right out of the park. As someone who is very private and introspective by nature, I read this and realized "This is what I want, but it scares the hell out of me." Here's to hoping I can take that leap, and thanks for the inspiration.

My Vision is to Have No Vision (from nakedpastor) - This relates to something I've observed in my own life, which is that each and every single time I've sat down and laid out a "Soviet Five Year Plan" for myself and my life, within three to six months circumstances have changed so dramatically as to make those "plans" look laughable. Let's let God plan, eh? That's what He's good at.

"Consider the lilies of the goddamn field or... hell! Take a look at Delmar here as your paradigm of hope."
- Ulysses Everett McGill

All good. Joe Bob sez "Check 'em out!"

Watch what you pray for, but know the team that you play for

I wrote a comment today on a programmer's blog that was inviting everyone to submit their favorite quotes about programming. I raved about a book that's had a huge influence on my thoughts about programming and more importantly systems (computer and all others, including systems of people) since I first read it in 1987. Following is an excerpt from my comments to the blog:

A boss gave me a book years ago called Systemantics (now unfortunately renamed to The Systems Bible) by John Gall, a pediatrician of all things. It used to be you'd order it from the good doctor's office personally, but now it's on Amazon and available to all. Anyway, this is a tongue-in-cheek-but-still-quite-worthy look at systems theory, including how systems are built, work, and more importantly, how they fail. And we're talking all types of systems, of which computer systems are only one small part. I have passed on this book to more people than I can count.

Afterwards, I started looking through the quotes I selected and thought, "You know, church is a system, and denominations certainly are." So I want to take a bit of time and examine some of the same quotes from the standpoint of church as systems theory. See if any of the following ring true to you.

Cherish your exceptions.

When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"

On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

When people arise/arrive in our churches who don't fit, we shouldn't cast them out, we should make sure we figure out how to bring them into the kingdom. At some point in our faith journey someone made just that effort for us. We need to return the favor.

Systems tend to grow and as they grow they encroach.

We are supposed to be "in the world but not of it", yet I see so many churches trying to replace the world, not be in it. Christian singles groups and dating sites. Christian bowling and softball leagues. Christian concerts. Cool Christian t-shirts. Christian this, Christian that. If we separate ourselves off from the rest of humanity, how will the Spirit ever move them to approach us? When do we become the Christian in the "Normie" bowling league, as opposed to waiting for the Normies to join our league?

Systems attract systems people.

The minute the Gospel became "the Church", it began to attract people for whom the Gospel was secondary, the Church (or system) was primary. Any time tradition (human-created rules) are elevated to be equivalent to Christ's words, that is evidence of "systems people" at work. Systems people want everything to be part of the system, and if you are not "in the system", you are out of it (and in this case, by their definition, damned). Except here's the problem - the Pharisees had a system. And Jesus seemed pretty particular about calling them out, over and over, for relying more on their system than on God.

People in systems do not do what the system says they are doing.

We are all supposed to be living without a care for tomorrow. Loving others as we would be loved. Yet how often are we building empires of ecclesiology? How often are we mired in our mere humanity? Exercising rules of exclusion? What did you do for Christ today? What did I do? Those are convicting questions.

The system itself does not do what is says it is doing.

So, we have large, complex systems of belief and tradition built up upon Christianity. And not just one, but many. Legions. Supposedly we are bringing people to Christ. Instead it looks to me like mostly we're reinventing the Inquisition.

In complex systems, malfunction and even total non-function may not be detectable for long periods, if ever.

The Western Church(TM)(All Rights Reserved) is failing and losing members. Ever wonder why? I think it's because we've complexified our Savior's words with ever more man-made systems on top of systems. When I wrote what should have been called We are the Prodigals, I said, "When we read of the Pharisees, we think of you." What I think when looking at all of us, myself included, is "When I read of the Pharisees, I think of us." Mea culpa. Christe, eleison.

Experience isn't hereditary - it ain't even contagious.

Everyone has their own path to God. This isn't to say that all paths lead to the top of the same mountain (a belief I used to hold), but it is saying that what worked for you doesn't necessarily work for me. God made us all different, so why does anyone think any one person's conversion experience or faith life will be identical to anyone elses? If God wanted uniformity, He wouldn't have allowed free will. God is infinite. We are made in God's image. Hence, we are infinite, each in our own particular (peculiar) way. Rejoice in that, don't shut it down!

The message sent is not necessarily the message received.

See my review of I'm OK - You're Not.

You can't NOT communicate.

When we raise our noses and walk away in quiet clucking condemnation, that sends as much of a message as if we pointed right at someone and shouted "Blasphemer!" The only message we are required to give is unending love. And for that, all of us, myself so included - fail. Where did we lose the following?

So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?

She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

In my own personal journey to Christ I feel like weeping every time I read this. Besides the verse this blog is named after, this is my favorite in the whole Bible. Am I the only one that holds the Gospel of John as their favorite? THE WHOLE BOOK OF JOHN IS ABOUT LOVE. Don't we all yearn to be "the disciple He loved the most"? If so, then we must love as He loved.

The meaning of a communication is the behavior that results.

We Christians think we proclaim "Love!", but we so often spew hatred instead. If what we say is turning people off, is it their fault, or ours? Sure, the world is fallen, we're all sinners, and only Christ can heal us all. But really, how much of the modern world's antipathy toward Christianity is because of our own strident shoutings, our own power grabbing, our own failings? We need to replace our "Thou shalts" with love.

And my personal favorites:

Systems develop goals of their own the instant they come into being.

So, the minute we developed churches with formal rules, admission standards and most importantly, their own job postings and pay scales, that was the moment that "intrasystem" goals sprang into being. Which leads us to:

Intrasystem goals come first.

Indeed. This is my favorite point of all of those made in Systemantics. It is actually a real eye-opener, worth a lot of consideration around its simplistic (not to say unsophisticated) premise. Any time we notice actions in ourselves, our churches or our denominations that don't seem to fit with what we read in the Bible, we should look here first. What "intrasystem goal" is being satisfied by the action? What ego or empire building is occuring? How can we make our intrasystem goals become God's goals? Only by prayer and humility and prostrating ourselves over and over again to the Spirit.

That's it. I don't have any overarching wrap-it-up theme to tie all of the above together. I just wanted to get out of my head all the things that leapt to mind when I started applying systems theory to the church. I would appreciate comments on how we can use the above for good, how we can self-examine and with the Spirit's guidance always make sure that the systems we build are doing God's work, not ours? Because I believe humans are systems-builders. God wired us to be so. So it's not like we can escape "the system". Instead, like all tools available to us, we must make sure it is working as intended, and in this case not as we desire, but as God wants it to be.

Comments appreciated.

I never said nothing

A coworker today sent out the following email to everyone in our office (about 40 people).

Back in March, the TODAY show highlighted a Kansas City church that was spearheading a project to encourage folks to take a more positive approach to life. Their website is www.acomplaintfreeworld.org and upon request are issuing bracelets for folks as a reminder to cut down on negative habits - like complaining.

Since we are in a stressful time right now – rapid growth, rapid technology changes, etc. it’s easy to fall into the habit of complaining and taking a “doom & gloom” outlook. So for anyone wanting to take the Complaint Free World challenge, bracelets are located on the bulletin board in the downstairs kitchen. I knew I personally needed to concentrate on being more positive, and ordered extra bracelets just in case anyone else wanted to give it a try.

The suggested rules (taken from the website) are listed below. Thanks!

"How Does it Work?"

Scientists believe it takes 21 days to form a new habit and complaining is habitual for most of us. As Twain said, we must coax our old behavior down the stairs. The bracelet(s) you receive are a powerful tool(s) to remind you of how well you are creating your life with positive intention. Here are the suggested rules:

1. Begin to wear the bracelet, on either wrist
2. When you catch yourself complaining, gossiping or criticizing (it’s ok, everyone does) move the bracelet to the other arm and begin again.
3. If you hear someone else who is wearing a bracelet complain, you may point out their need to switch the bracelet to the other arm; BUT if you’re going to do this, you must move your bracelet first!
4. Stay with it. It may take many months but when you reach 21 days you will find that your entire life is happier, and more positive.

It turns out I was one of the few people in the U.S. that hadn't heard of this before today - I was informed by a friend this had even been on Oprah, as if I were culturally illiterate for not knowing that! (I admit it, I am culturally illiterate - on purpose. Of course, the fact we don't watch TV in this house may have something to do with that.) Interestingly enough, my coworker brought in enough for the whole office, but by the end of business today I bet only five or six had been taken. So I cadged some for family and friends. :-)

So, here I sit, typing this with one of those ever-more-popular what's-the-cause-this-week rubber band thingies on my wrist (it's purple - woohoo! What must Jerry Falwell think?) I've switched it to the other wrist a few times today (some for calling out complaining in others, some for my own rants, including at least once where I switched it in advance of what was going to come out of my mouth). I've noticed that it has cut my verbal output by about half as I adjust, which, pushing my ego aside, may already be seen as a direct boon by those around me.

As much as these sorts of things go against my general contrarian nature, I am giving it a try. Why? Because I complain, whine (whinge), rant, moan and gossip - a lot. More than I want to. And I am not real happy about the effects of that on me or those around me. So I am willing to try a little psychological self-manipulation, coupled with some prayer for the Spirit to help me, to see if I can't make a bit of a change, if not in my attitude, at least in my presentation. I expect I'll always be a curmudgeon, but perhaps I can be a mellowing curmudgeon as I age. Or not. We'll see. I'll try and keep you posted on how it goes.

These are days that you’ll remember

[Note: With this post I've decided to uncloak my identity. First, I have been sharing it with people as I comment on their blogs anyway. Second, it was getting tedious to keep it hidden. Third, I doubt it will cause problems with my church, but if it does, I'll deal with it then. Finally, what I am sharing today has my name embedded in it, and rather than change that, I decided it's time to drop the anonymity. There are lots of people whose blogs I follow who are saying things way braver than anything I've written and they are using their real names, so I will now follow their example. And now, back to our regular programming...]

Warning: Today's post is about computer programming, but it is also related to the Bible. If you are a church Webmaster or a programmer, you may find it interesting and hopefully useful. If you are not technical, then this is your "geek alert", and you may want to stop reading now, before your eyes glaze over and you cut your nose when your sleeping head crashes into your keyboard.

As I've mentioned before, I am a programmer by trade and also volunteer as our church's Webmaster. I am not very good at that, because programming uses a different set of skills and abilities than design, as any good Web designer will tell you, and so most professional shops break Web sites down between the 'bits' that get programmed and the pretty stuff that the users actually see. And that's a good thing. Let the nerdy programmer do all the drudge work, and let some artistic person with an actual eye for color and layout make it look good. But our church isn't that big, and I'm the one who volunteered, so they're stuck with me. While it may not be the prettiest site, I've done a decent job at getting the site back to being current and have even increased our search engine optimization rankings on Yahoo and MSN/Live dramatically (Google is a tougher nut to crack). So I am happy enough with what I've done.

Anyway, we use forministry.com as our hosting service. I picked them not because they were free (we made a donation anyway as it was the right thing to do), but because they had a content management system (CMS), which is a fancy way of saying Web-based editing software, much like a blog. I wanted to use a CMS because I had a dream (soon squashed) that there would be others in the church helping to produce content for the site besides me and now my wife, and since they presumably wouldn't be technical I wanted something that would be somewhat intuitive for an average person to use. The CMS system forministry.com uses isn't great, but it gets the job done.

However, it presents one problem, which is I have no way to do server-side programming to generate dynamic content. And the thing I wanted to dynamically produce was the daily Bible reading according to our denomination's yearly lectionary. So I ended up writing the whole thing to be calculated client-side in the browser using JavaScript. The biggest issue wasn't handling the normal calendar year readings, but instead the Eastertide readings, since of course they all "float" from one year to the next. I appropriated some excellent code that was posted for the taking to get started with the Easter calculations, simplified it down and refactored it to suit my needs, and then added the logic and data to produce both a daily reading and a yearly lectionary page.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, you can check it out by viewing some sample pages on my personal Web site:

Daily reading

Yearly lectionary

If you view the source code for those pages, you'll see that the script is really pretty easy to use (the lectionary page has extra logic in it so that you can use a pick list to select which year you want to produce the lectionary for - it defaults to the current year). If you want to view the script itself, it's here:

simpleeaster.js

I have completely open-sourced the code in regards to intellectual property, so feel free to use it for your own sites. My only requests are that you copy the script and serve it from your own site (to avoid the traffic on my personal site) and that you keep the copyright notices and other attributions in the code comments intact.

If you use it or have suggestions or corrections to make, I'd love to hear from you. You can simply comment back here. And if you are a fellow forministry.com Webmaster just drop me a line here and I can help you get it set up on your pages there. This is made easier because the script has been shared to the public there by the admins as a reusable page element. If your denomination's lectionary readings don't match ours, it is easy enough to change the data in the script to map to the appropriate verses for you.

I hope this helps someone besides just me - it took me quite a bit of time to get the date handling correct, and I'd like to spare someone else the effort.