Ode to the Best Dog I've Ever Known

Today... is a sad day for my family. We lost a favorite family member, a Miniature Schnauzer named Sam. Like a lot of dogs, Sam was very friendly. He loved everyone he met. He rarely barked, unless someone was visiting- in fact, for awhile we wondered if he would ever bark. The truth is, Sam had no enemies. Sam was so gentle, you could take his bone or his food away from him and he would just look at you, is eyes saying, "why are you doing this to me?" Sam was as good a pet as we could have asked for. He wasn't a fetcher, but that was only because he liked keepaway more. I've spent hours, over the years, playing with Sam, and I don't regret a single minute of it. Sam was one-of-a-kind. We got eight years with Sam, and my only regret is not getting any more. We all miss Sam like crazy. It was really hard to say goodbye. I hope I see him in heaven. Sam, if you can hear me, thank you for your years of time as our pet. We are so grateful to have had such a fine dog. If you read this, please pray for our family- we are all taking his loss quite hard. We won't be the same, now that he is gone.

No Title

My mom says she thinks blogs are mostly just... public diaries. When I started this blog, that was far away from what I wanted it to be. I did not want my blog to just be a public diary. Honestly, my journal was never really a journal anyways. In it, I just let God speak to me. He's said a lot of things to me, like telling me my wife would be smarter than me. Some of the things he's said, I thought were a load of bull. Anyhow, for good or for bad, today's entry... is a bit of a journal entry, a regular journal entry. My heart is sad. I feel... I made a commitment, a long time ago, to love people. To follow God wherever he wanted to send me, and to do whatever he told me to do. I thought... I was going to make a difference, for good. I was going to help people. I was going to show people what love looked like. That was my heart. I've always wanted to be a difference maker. I wanted to pour my life out and be a blessing to everyone I knew. I wanted to speak words that healed people. And my hope, what I wanted in return for this, was to have a modicum of respect. I know... it's wrong to have expectations about how people would respond. However, at this moment... I don't feel respected. Actually it is worse than that- somehow, I've become the villain. My heart aches... I'm broken. I'm less than a man. Hell, I'm not even providing for myself. The damn government takes care of me. I can't even respect myself. I lost one of my closest friends, and I don't see most of my other friends nearly as often as I would like. I'm some kind of pariah. I don't know who I am anymore. I've lost a large percentage of what motivated me to live. And I feel like nobody gives a damn about me. People care more about what I do than how much I hurt. I'm lost. I wish I had answers. I wish... I wasn't so alone. I wish... someone really understood what it's like to go through what I've just been through. You know... I'm convinced answers don't exist. I'm hurting... and nobody has the slightest clue how to bandage my wounds. I'm broken... and nobody has any idea how to put me back together again. I'm angry... because people don't know what to say. I never thought I would regret "trying to love perfectly." I was crazy, sure... but bent on helping people, not hurting them. Now I've lost my place. I've lost my identity. I try not to hear from God. I hardly pray, except out of desparation. I'm not broken... I'm destroyed. I'll never think of ministry the same. I'll never look at myself the same. I'll never hear God the same. I have no answers. Graham Cooke once said that if a person has a high call in God, that first God has to put you in a dark closet and beat the living daylights out of you. I think I know what that feels like. Now I just need to figure out how to walk again.

To all those out there who feel irrepairably broken, I know how you feel. I just don't know what to say to help you get put back together again... I have no idea...

Drugs, Video Games, and Raw Materials

Tonight, while I was hanging out with someone who I'll affectionately call "The Pal," I had a very interesting conversation. See, The Pal believes (or did believe- I don't know whether I changed his mind or not) that video games are intrinsically evil, and should basically always be avoided. I know he isn't that extreme, because he and I play Monopoly, bowling, and pool on my Wii when he comes over, but his beliefs are pretty close to that. Now, The Pal is about to go to college, and I'm concerned that he might miss out on social opportunities and possibly alienate himself from his peers by his video game convictions, so the goal of this conversation was to show that maybe it wasn't video games themselves that were bad, nearly so much as how they are used. CS Lewis says, in the book "The Screwtape Letters," that nothing in itself is good or evil, but the question is how it is used, and how it affects a person's relationships around them, and whether it produces disobedience to God, and so on, that makes something good or bad, so if a person played video games in moderation, that might be okay. The Pal, being the very smart person that he is, then asked me a very difficult question- what about pot?

Now, to be clear here, in a lot of ways this question is fairly hypothetical/theoretical, because neither myself nor The Pal are ever likely to use marijuana- I can speak confidently about The Pal here, because I know him very well. However, this was an interesting topic for me, because it hit upon a subject that I have strong feelings about. When I was a kid, during the short time I was in Cub Scouts, I was given a poster that named most of the drugs in existence at that time, and next to each drug was a cartoon/picture of a demon and a list of all of the negative health side effects associated with each drug. For me, that pretty much did it. I never wanted anything to do with any drugs. Alcohol was included on that poster, and it took me awhile before I was okay with having a drink (I've never had more than two in an evening, so I'm definitely NOT an alcoholic), but other drugs... no. Honestly, I've never really even been around drugs. To this day, I'm not exactly sure what pot smells like when it's being smoked. And to top it all off, for reasons that I don't understand, I once "failed" a urine test for pot, and was accused by a doctor who did not know me at all of using pot. Fortunately, my parents knew that I was innocent, but I consider that one of the worst insults anyone has ever slung at me (particularly, since at that time, I wanted to be a DEA agent when I grew up). All this to say, I probably wouldn't "take a hit" unless someone put a gun to my head. Inspite of what I've heard- that pot isn't much worse than alcohol, and it is even legal for some people to use to handle the pain associated with certain medical conditions, honestly I could never see myself smoking a joint, and truth be told, I don't think I really ever want to even be in the presense of someone who is while they are smoking it. So, The Pal's question was challenging to me. I'm trying to ask myself, is there a situation where the need to socially bond with the people around me trumps the potential harm I would be doing to my body and the risk of becoming addicted? Of course there is also the question of legality, but I think the argument could be made that loving our neighbor might trump that. To me, though, that leads to a scary slippery slope- how far do we go down this path? What about drugs like heroine, cocaine, methamphetimines? Are these just "raw materials" as Screwtape says everything is? That is a tough question- I don't think I could ever love another human being enough to have anything to do with drugs like this. Maybe I could learn to be around drug addicts while they used- that in itself would be uncomfortable. Actually using myself- I can't see that ever happening. Maybe it isn't necessary. I just know that people often bond while doing an activity- and for me, playing a video game or having a drink, I see that the social value is worth it, and the harm to the body is negligible or possibly even beneficial. This assumes that you can do these things without becoming addicted (whether or not I'm a video game addict, that's a whole other question...) but otherwise it's fine. Honestly, from what I've heard, pot isn't much different from either of these, but it is to me. I wonder if that is okay. I wonder how much I really love the people who are prechristians. I wonder if I'm hypocritical here. In theory I could see a situation where I might agree that taking the hit would be the right thing to do, but in practice... for me, I just couldn't do it.

I wish that I knew what to make of all this. I guess, everyone has things where we have strong feelings about this or that. The good news is, I've spent time with alcoholics and drug addicts, and I have no trouble loving them. Maybe that is what they need, more than me "using" along with them. Maybe I'm not ready to be around them while they are using, but we all need to grow in one way or another, right? I've just got to give it time. Meanwhile, I have to keep thinking about "raw materials"... Was CS Lewis right? I don't know...

What We Can Learn From The Joker

To be clear here, I'm talking about the villain in the most recent Batman movie "The Dark Knight," and I'm not at all saying that being a murderous psychopath is a good thing. However, for those of you who have seen the movie, hopefully this post will make sense by the time I'm done.

I had to watch "The Dark Knight" several times before I realized something of great significance. The Joker had something good that many of us lack. Don't get me wrong- he's the closest I've ever seen to the devil himself. Nevertheless, he has a couple of attributes that are worthwhile, and without which, he'd be just another villain. See, the Joker had a cause. Now this cause is a cause of mayhem and destruction- his cause is as far away from anything good as we could possibly imagine. However, he was totally devoted to his cause. He had courage- something, without which no great man, for good or for evil, is ever made. There are many slimeballs out there who have no courage, and others who in a sense mean for good, but have no real backbone to make it happen. Courage is something we all need, and say what you want about the Joker but he certainly was courageous. Anybody who puts a gun in the hands of an enemy and puts his mouth around the barrel- that is courage. And to be truthful, he wasn't suicidal, he just cared more about his cause than his own life. How many people can you say that about? That they "did not love their lives even unto death"? According to The Revelation, that is one of the marks of genuine faith. I don't know if I have that kind of courage, but the Joker did. Also, I love the scene where the Joker is burning millions upon millions of dollars. I like it, because it is the ultimate sign of someone who did not love money, which Paul claims (depending on which bible translation you got) is the root of many evils. See, the fact that money meant nothing to him, made him all the more dangerous. If we as believers cared as little about money as the Joker did, we might be dangerous in a different kind of way- a good kind of way.

I know it is weird to speak admirably about a villain, but most villains that we think of have nothing admirable to them. And in most ways, the Joker is about as evil as they come. I would argue though, that these characteristics- his devotion to his cause (the corruption of the soul of Gotham), his courage in the face of death, and his complete disregard for money- he had no price- these characteristics were what made him a world shaker. The cause was as evil as they come, but the characteristics I just outlined were what made him successful. As believers we need to be like that. We need to be fearless. We need to be priceless. We need to have a cause greater than ourselves that is worth dying for. That is what we can learn from the Joker.