insidious

I was sitting at Starbucks today (I wonder how many entries in the blogosphere start with that phrase?  Hold up, brb . . . okay, a quick Google search for the phrase "I was sitting at Starbucks today" turns up 784 results.  "I was sitting in Starbucks today" gives us an additional 212.  Great, almost 1,000 people have started a blog with the same phrase I just did.  Way to be original, Ken.  Let's start over.)

I was reading Catch-22 today (0 hits on Google.  Much better!), at Starbucks, when I came across the word insidious.  The reference was to some type of insidious disease.  I had a vague notion of the connotation of the word, but I wasn't sure I knew exactly what it meant, so I plotted my cursor down to it on my Kindle and used the handy-dandy, built-in dictionary feature.  A definition magically appeared at the bottom of the screen:

Proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects.

I was immediately struck by the beauty of this word.  (I studied linguistics in grad school, and I've long been fascinated with words, language, communication, etc.)  How marvelous, I thought, that this word, already quite sonorous in its phonetic qualities, with its efficient compaction of four whole syllables into a relatively small verbal space, and not too shabby-looking on paper either, could have such a precise meaning.

I clicked to view the full entry for the word and learned that it came from the Latin parts in-, meaning "on" and sedere, meaning "to sit".  In exercising some etymological imagination, I thought about how this elegant English word apparently evolved from the simple idea of something sinister just sitting and waiting patiently to strike. I was all the more amazed.

I think I have a new favorite word.

Be Careful

This two-word imperative, "Be careful," is shorthand in the world of Christian jargon.  It's what one Christian tells another when they believe that the other is on the vaunted "Slippery Slope."  It means, "I can't say what you're doing is wrong, but I don't like it, so what I'll do is tell you that it might eventually lead you to do something wrong."  There is an implication that one wrong will lead to more and more wrongs, until the poor slippery-footed Christian is accelerating down the slope, aka "backsliding," until one day they are no longer living for Christ and most likely are on their way to Hell.

Be careful.  Two words,  well-intentioned, but full of heavy implications incongruent with the ease with which they're spoken.

Most Christians, if asked, will say they are okay with people asking honest questions.  What they often mean by that is, they are okay with the kinds of questions that kids ask in Sunday school.  But ask a question like, "How do you reconcile an eternity of conscious torment with the idea of a just God," then you might be told to be careful.  The message is that some questions are good, but others might lead us to heresy, backsliding, bad doctrine, or maybe even Hell itself.

This also leads me to wonder, why do we rarely see the 'danger' of becoming too conservative?  Was that not the problem of the Pharisees, that they were unable to stop exalting their own ideas to the status of holy writ?  And yet, rarely does anyone say, "Be careful there brother.  If you become a pre-Millennialist, you might find yourself on a slippery slope to being a crazy religious zealot."

This baffles me.  Why do people think that it rains only on one side of the hill?  It almost seems that we have this underlying assumption that of the two choices, it's obviously better to become too conservative than too liberal.  I disagree.  I dare speculate that Jesus might have disagreed also, judging by the severity of his warnings to the religious establishment of his day.  But that's somewhat beside the point.  I'm not trying to debate which side is more slippery so much as I am advocating getting rid of the slippery slope rhetoric altogether.

The Apostle Paul told the Phillipians to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling."  This encourages me to believe that it's okay that I am working things out, as long as I properly revere Christ and his teachings.  Until I lose the fear and trembling, I will reject the notion that I am in danger because of my questioning.

How Stories Make You a Better Person

You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! ~John Waters

The waters saw you, God,
   the waters saw you and writhed;
   the very depths were convulsed.
 The clouds poured down water,
   the heavens resounded with thunder;
   your arrows flashed back and forth.
 Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind,
   your lightning lit up the world;
   the earth trembled and quaked.
 Your path led through the sea,
   your way through the mighty waters,
   though your footprints were not seen.

 You led your people like a flock
   by the hand of Moses and Aaron. (Psalm 77:16-20)

The author of Psalm 77 understood very well the power of stories.  He writes in a  time of great despair, wondering if God has abandoned him.  The verses quoted above come after he makes a deliberate choice to recount the faithfulness of God in the past.  Retelling this story gives him enough hope and strength to press on through his moment of despair.

We do this all the time.  We are shaped by our experiences.  We can feel overwhelmed by the various struggles that arise in our lives, until a close friend is good enough to say, "Do you remember that time when you were sure you were going to fail, but you so admirably pressed on, and you succeeded?"  Or until we remind ourselves, "I've been here before.  I can do it again."

Often times, it's other people's stories that give us strength.  As the Psalmist shows us, remembering God's faithfulness can inspire us.  Similarly, a hero is someone whose story motivates us to make our own stories better.  Like people in extreme cold who share each other's body warmth, we are permitted to share in each other's stories, so that even when our own experiences and memories aren't sufficient, we are not doomed to utter self-reliance.  This is part of the in-built grace of existence.  When we make bad decisions, we don't have to be fated to increasingly bad character.  We can be rescued.

The beauty of fiction then is that great stories don't even have to have actually happened.  We have a trove of "experiences" that we can draw from, even where we lack personal experiences, and even where we lack real life heroes.  As long as we have access to these stories, we are never abandoned.  There's always something "out there," telling us, "You can do this."  "It's not impossible."  "This is the right thing to do."  "You have what it takes."

My favorite stories all serve this purpose for me.  For example, (at the risk of oversimplification), The Lord of the Rings is my bravery.  The Narnia books are my sense of wonder and awe.  Lost is my sense of the power and value of community.  The Catcher in the Rye is my compassion.  Harry Potter is my belief in sacrificial love.  The Gospels are my faith and hope in the victory of God over evil.  The list could go on.

Read.  Read books that matter.  Watch movies and TV shows that tell great stories.  Pure entertainment is fine on occasion, but challenge yourself to seek out the good stuff more often than you gobble up the lowball stuff.  Do it to make yourself a better person.

iPod Education: TapQuiz Maps

If asked, could you pick out the country of Qatar on a map of the Middle East?  What about the province Nunavut on a Canadian map?  Or the nation of Belize in Central America?

I can!  And no, not because I'm smarter than you.  It's because I've recently discovered the power of apps for the purpose of self-education.  If you have any type of portable Apple device, there are some great apps you can get that will enrich your life much more than Angry Birds.  One app in particular that I've found to be very effective is called TapQuiz Maps.  You pick a region of the world you want to learn, and it quizzes you by naming a country and then letting you point to where you think it is. 

The best part is, this app is free AND contains no ads! (At least none that I've noticed thus far.  If they are there, they're very non-intrusive.)

I've only had this map app for a few days, and I'm already able to identify all the countries of the Middle East and Central America, and all the provinces of Canada.  Next challenge:  the vaunted Eastern Europe!



Most of us have had the embarrassing experience of hearing about a war or natural disaster in some country or another and realizing you have no idea where in the world that country is.  Comedian Paul Rodriguez once joked that "war is God's way of teaching us geography."  With this app, you don't have to wait until war breaks out in Estonia to know where it is.

Quick Quote

Just a quick post for now.  I was reading the March edition of Christianity Today and there was an interview with a religion professor named T. David Gordon, who recently authored a book titled, Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns: How Pop Culture Rewrote the Hymnal.  There was one quote in the interview that really stuck out to me.  Gordon is essentially asked, what's the problem with church music sounding like modern pop if it helps bring people into church?  His response was

". . . it's like reaching the rich young ruler by throwing money at him."

He says much more in the interview of course, but that particular line really arrested me.  Gordon is comparing the music played in contemporary evangelical worship services to something as superficial and dishonest as bribery.  Something to think about . . .