Inner Child

My inner child has gone and left no forwarding address. I'm not sure if he will come back this way again. I have been so busy and distracted that I never saw him go. However, until this moment, I felt certain he and I would be together forever as I always saw myself as a young person, with a child-like spirit and a simple, perhaps naive, way of looking at the world. Now it seems that things are noticeably different. I guess in most ways, I have finally grown up. This thought kind of makes me blue. You know who I blame for this? Justin Bieber. Well, maybe it's not his fault that I grew up, but it is his fault that I suddenly came to see myself this way.

I used to say that I had the musical tastes of a 14-year-old girl. Michael Jackson, I stared gooey-eyed at his posters. Backstreet Boys, dreamy. Their songs used to send tingles up and down my spine. I even have an album by Don Johnson as his style and swagger from Miami Vice made me want to grow stubble and wear a pastel blazer with a T-shirt. But something inside me is different, and it has taken me until my mid-40s to recognize that I'm not a little kid. I finally recognize myself as an adult.

My realization occurred when I considered the brouhaha caused by the latest teen-beat craze du jour, Justin Bieber. I look at this little whimpy, slightly effeminate boy and scratch my head. I hear his strained, thin wheezing and tinny voice and I am lost. He is all manufactured image and no substance. The other day I passed by a radio playing one his songs and all the teenage girls were there singing out loud, swaying back and forth, all with their hands on their hearts and tears in their eyes. I really don't get it. Not this time. I miss my inner child and worry that I will be left alone from this point forward. Will he be back? I would guess never, but "The Biebs" told me to never say never.

Desiring God

"Delight yourself in the Lord." is a verse from the Old Testament book of Psalms (37:4) that represents a command from the Word of God. It means that we should pursue joy in God. The Bible makes it clear that God created humanity to rejoice him, to make it our central purpose. Thus it stands to reason that the more passionately we pursue our purpose, i.e. delighting ourselves in the Lord, the more we will glorify the Lord and the more we will fulfill what God has designed us for. Such is the basic tenet of the book Desiring God by John Piper.

The book has chosen to make its arguments in the areas of worship, love, money, marriage, missions, and suffering from the standpoint of what Piper is urging us all to become, that is a "Christian hedonist". Of course, many folks are very uncomfortable with the term hedonist. A hedonist is someone whose life is devoted to seeking self-pleasure by whatever measures and means are necessary. Hedonism is the doctrine that the pursuit of pleasure is the highest good. I am sure that Piper chose this terminology purposefully to make folks uncomfortable and uneasy, to be provocative. To make them shift in their seats and shake their heads. The term hedonist is unequivocally linked with gluttony. All of these images have strong negative connotations.

Yet contrary to how we think about this label, Piper implores us that unless we approach God as a hedonist, then we aren't truly worshipping Him and giving Him what he desires and commands of us. If he could boil down his entire message in a single sentence it would be that "the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever". The more zeal and passion that we devote to this task, the more we will glorify God. Such is the notion of being a Christian hedonist.

The Bible plainly teaches that the goal of all we do should be to glorify God. But it also teaches that in all we do we should also pursue the fullness of our joy. Some theologians have tried to force these two pursuits apart. But the Bible does not force us to choose between God's glory and our joy. Many people mistakenly feel that if they experience joy or enjoyment or pleasant feelings in their work for the Lord, then they are not doing the work for the right reasons. Piper would argue to the contrary and he backs it up with fastidious attention to what the Bible actually says. So, go ahead, live hedonistically for the Lord, just make sure that you really understand what this means. Oh, and don't dive into this book unless you are willing to deal with a fair level of complexity and bloviation for a few relatively straightforward nuggets.

Prune Juice

One of the main reasons that getting older sucks donkey lips is that we are forced to carefully consider every last thing that we put into our bodies. We can't just plop down on the couch with a tankard of Mountain Dew (in Latin translated as ambrosia) and a king-size bag of cheesy poofs. Ahh those good old days of sprawling out on the couch in our underwear in the fog of nap-itude with our chest and hands covered with a fine dusting of cheese-like particles. But I digress (and apologize for the images that I have placed into your brains). Not only that but we used to be able salt our french fries and steaks like we were curing cod fillets. Now the second we come within 50 feet of a salt shaker our blood pressure goes off the charts and we have to start taking pharmaceutical-ish pills the size of jumbo jelly beans. Oh, and did I mention sugar? Nothing with a single crystal of sugar is allowed or we are inundated with a flurry of medical issues like immediate weight gain, high flammability, stinky feet, painful intestinal cramping, along with diarrhea and constipation at the same time. The list goes on and on. Not only do we have to sacrifice taste and enjoyment of our food, we are forced to subsist on a diet of acorns and prune juice. Man, does getting old bite.

Of course all of this means that a trip to the grocery store that used to take 15 minutes, now takes half a day because I have to read every stinking label to check for lethal levels of riboflavinoids and any substance that ends with -ose (literally in english, yummy goodness). Folks like me have become pathetic. Oh and we are not hard to miss, with our bifocal glasses perched as far on the end of our noses as possible as we try to read the small print on the labels, we get frustrated because, besides our irritable bowel syndromes, we are all blind as a bat. Jeez, who was the sick biscuit who even thought of inventing prune juice? It just sounds villainous. Man does getting old stink.

Choose Already

Let me take a little informal poll of everyone out there. How many times has this sorry little scenario played out in your life? You are with a friend or two or with your family and you are planning to go out to dinner. The question is floated, "Where do you want to go to eat?". The only answer that emerges and bounces around the room from every pie hole in the place is, "Oh, I don't know. Where do you want to go?". Of course from time to time there is that one wing nut who earnestly pleads that everyone head to the nearby Korean restaurant where every dish is either some unrecognizable meat-like burgoo or some bowl of slop with flagrant suckers and fish eyes bobbing at the surface and where everything smells like a used diaper. Let me tell you now, if I had a rolled up newspaper I would swat every last one of you across the back of the head. You all really make me feel like gnawing on a ball of wadded up aluminum foil.

From now on, when the question is asked about where to go, make a freakin' suggestion. Now, for the love of Pete's sake, let me be perfectly crystalline here. I am not talking some namby-pamby answer like, "Well we could go to that Italian place, or to the seafood place, or to the docks where they are dumping the left over chum, or ..." This type of response is divisive and simply means that you should immediately lose your privilege of hanging out with friends for at least 30 days. You are all worthless and weak. You want to see how a real caring and honest man behaves in these situations? I invited my friend to lunch the other day. Because I took the time to pick the meeting time, I gave my friend the honor to choose where we would eat.

Answers May Vary

Being a student for as long as I was and then being a University professor for nearly 10 years, I have been witness to students who cheat. Some cheat in obvious ways, like looking over the shoulder of the student in front of them during an exam, or plagiarizing someone else's work verbatim off the internet, or copying another student's homework. Some cheat in more clever ways by using PDAs, or copying notes onto their bodies, or hiding books in the bathroom and then excusing themselves during an exam. I have seen students who could not be more blatant in their cheating, and students who are caught red-handed but swear upon their grandmother's grave that they are innocent. I guess that I could prepare a fairly amusing handbook on cheating given what I have come across over the years.

However, my favorite story on cheating was told to me all the way back in elementary school. It was such a great anecdote that I just could not forget it. Surely a classic in the annals of cheating. The story goes as follows. A young whippersnapper boy in the third grade was acting up during the time when he should have been concentrating on his work. He was warned, but continued to disrupt the class. Finally, the teacher reached the end of her tether and decided to punish the boy in the most henious way possible (at least to an 8 year old). He would not get to join his classmates at recess, but instead have to stay inside and complete the work that he had not done. Oh, the humanity.

The assignment was reading comprehension. It involved reading a short story in a workbook and then answering some questions about the story. When the teacher came back in from chaperoning the students on the playground, she found a contrite boy sitting quietly at his desk. She asked him if he had completed his work and he nodded his head yes. The teacher opened up his workbook and inspected his answers. She praised him for getting every single one of the answers correct. Yet she knew that he had cheated by copying directly from the answer key on her desk. How could she have known? Well, across the bottom of the page he had written the sentence, "Answers may vary." Busted. Off to the principal's office he went.

The Journey

Johnny Cash sang a song titled "I've Been Everywhere" that became widely known as the background jingle for a hotel chain. I kind of feel like I sometimes channel the man in black as I get on yet another plane bound for yet another city. This time I am traveling to Houston, Texas (also known as The Bayou City, Baghdad on the Bayou, H-Town, Magnolia City, Capital of the Sunbelt, Clutch City, The Big Heart, Screwston, Hustletown, City of Syrup, and Space City). Some folks love to travel, I guess it is that Charles Lindbergh or Amelia Earhart spirit of adventure gene that some come pre-packaged with. I missed out on this personality trait and tend to look forward to travel with all of the unbridled glee as one might have planning a visit to a thick-fingered proctologist.

Today I am making the full round-trip journey to Houston. Back and forth. To and fro. I will cover nearly 3000 miles. Up early and back late. Non-stop action, no time to take a breath. Ugh! But I am traveling for an important meeting. My graduate student is defending his Ph.D. thesis and it is a pretty big deal for both of us. Three years ago his research advisor died after a long battle with health issues, and I ended up taking over. For three years we have worked side by side to bring this project through to fruition. Along the way we have gotten to be friends. In addition to spending countless hours discussing and reviewing and critiquing the analysis details and results in all of their gory detail, we have also talked a lot about chess and baseball and life. I guess this too is all part of the process of mentoring and advising. Likely just as important as the research training itself.

So today I will see a bit more of the city of Houston than just the inside of its airport. Actually, I will really only get a chance to see the inside of a University conference room for two or three hours before I start the return trip. It will be a long day. That's fine. This trip is more about the journey that I took to get to this point.

Insights on Romans

I think it demonstrates my deep hunger for unpacking and understanding God's word that, after completing a ten volume series investigating great lives in the Bible, I immediately turned my attention to a series that serves to give verse by verse exegesis of each of the books of the New Testament. I also think that it goes to show my fondness and respect for the author of all of these books, Charles Swindoll. My journey into the New Testament began with a recent work by Swindoll entitled Insights on Romans.

My interest in diving into the book of Romans was borne by an invitation of a friend of mine to study this together. However, he moved away before we could ever get started. Beyond this, my feeling is that the book of Romans contains the who, what, why, where, and how for the Christian faith. It really represents required reading, and more importantly, required understanding. Without understanding what Romans has to say, you can easily misunderstand the critical notions of grace, salvation, justification, and sanctification. Insights on Romans represents a detailed exposition of the epistle to the Romans, a letter written by the apostle Paul around 58 A.D. in the Greek city of Corinth. The letter is called Romans because Paul was writing to the Jews and Christians who lived in Rome, prior to his planned visit to minister to them. The book of Romans is a critical and essential element of the Bible that contains the central doctrines of Christianity. It tells us about God, who He is and what He has done. It tells us of Jesus Christ and what His death accomplished once and for all. It tells us about God's grace and that salvation is given and not earned.

However, despite the importance of this letter to Christians everywhere, many view Romans as unapproachable due to its style and its density. This is no quicky read or "Christianity for Dummies" brochure. This is precisely why Swindoll's Insight text is so very welcome. Swindoll fulfills my role of a scriptural sherpa. Theme by theme, section by section, chapter by chapter, and verse by verse, he slowly, patiently, and methodically walks us through the book of Romans. Along the way he provides relevant background information on society, geography, politics, and government to fill in more of the details to help us develop a clearer interpretation of the words and their context. Then he makes it clear what this 2000 year old work has to do with our lives today. Absolutely wonderful reading.