It's Your Move

The theme of River of Life this year was “It’s Your Move.” What will you do (after River of Life) to be more Christ-like, to serve others, and to be good to society? Will you be sucked in by bad influences or will you continue to strive to make the world a better place? Each year, speaker Brian Loper has a good message. He started out Wednesday spending 10 minutes teaching the proper way to side hug. Then he proceeded to say that he hates side hugs. It was a funny bit. Brian’s inspirational talks at ROL and videos from the work sites can be found at http://www.foresthillsmacon.com/media.php?pageID=66. 

 The other part of his talks that I remember vividly is that he claims “the greatest contributor to atheism today is Christians to profess Jesus with their mouth but deny Him with their lifestyle.” I used to have a rather negative opinion of religious people who would talk about going to church and Jesus but then be rude and sinful, seemingly not even trying to apply the lessons from church to their life. My opinions wavered throughout high school and college but when I met Hillery and started going to Forest Hills in January 2008, I realized a lot of good that comes from going to church and saw a group of people that has a good balance between work, service, family, fun, and faith.

It’s always good to see all these upper-middle class kids and young adults have so much fun, be silly, and still serve God and serve others. I’m not one for being silly and loud and talking a lot so I frequently found myself standing back observing, which is fine. And after a day of working/supervising/directing painters, I wasn't much in the mood for more social activity anyway.

 It’s a humbling experience and so good to help us all, especially the kids, get a perspective on life. My group included 12 kids and 2 adults and we painted 3 houses over the 3 days of work. Seeing the home owner’s appreciation was priceless. Many of them are elderly or disabled people who can’t do the home repairs themselves and can’t afford to pay for someone else to do it. Working with the kids and being outside lifting ladders and paint cans all day makes me thankful for the job I have, but also kind of sad that my regular job isn’t so fulfilling. I mean, it’s a lot of fun for a few days to paint but I never get so exhausted in my regular job. Kids are great and it feels so good to see them grow and learn, especially when you have a part in it, but I’m thankful I don’t have to be responsible for kids all day every day. Sitting at a computer writing computer programs (or just writing), while I am good at it, is not exhausting and leaves me craving some social activity. Where is the happy medium?

July is always my favorite month of the year. It starts off with the super sectional bridge tournament in Atlanta over the July 4^th weekend, a week or two later is River of Life, my birthday is the 22^nd, and the North American Bridge Championships are at the end of the month. It’s a close call as to whether I look forward to ROL or the NABC the most. They are vastly different events. River of Life is all about service, giving back to the community, leading children, and it is very fulfilling and emotional, but fairly stressful because it really brings me out of my comfort zone. It kind of justifies the week-long trip I will take to the NABC, which is a whole lot of the greatest card game in the world, eating, drinking, and socializing with people I relate to best.

"If you don't step out of your comfort zone and face your fears, the number of situations that make you uncomfortable will keep growing." In order to grow, we need to try new things because the old things (at least some of them) will inevitably go away. If we stay within our comfort zone all the time, we won’t be ready to get out into the rest of the world when our comfort zone is no longer or temporarily unavailable. Comfort zones are good to have but we also should be expanding our comfort zone. The only way to make a new comfort zone is to be uncomfortable.

Humans are creatures of habit. We like talking to familiar people, doing familiar things, going to familiar restaurants. But every time we move, start a new job, graduate, breakup with someone, or have a best friend move away, we lose one of our comfort areas and may be afraid of what will happen. Building that kind of situation or relationship again takes time and certainly requires enduring some uncomfortable situations. It is inevitable. Don’t shy away from something simply because you might be a little uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable sometimes is healthy and is a sign that you’re growing.

In the last couple of months I’ve seen myself in several uncomfortable positions including dinner and bridge with Richard whom I had only briefly met once, when he was passing through Atlanta, that Braves game I went to a few weeks ago with Laura and one of her friends, playing tennis with new people, starting a job in a new office, sharing a room (but not a bed) with Meg at the Richmond tournament.

River of Life starts today at Forest Hills UMC. For the next 4 days, 200 middle and high school students will be staying at the church, going out during the day with about 30 crew leaders and assistants to repaint, reroof, and do minor carpentry work on some houses for the less privileged people in Macon, come back and listen to an inspirational speaker and listen to the wonderful FHUMC band. It is totally funded by donations and the students pay around $100 to come sleep on the floor for 4 nights and work in the sun, and people like me use vacation days to supervise and lead them.

For many, it will be a very uncomfortable time due to being around lots of different people and in different places, being in the sun long hours, and sleeping on the floor, possibly next to several unfamiliar people. The kids will be fine – they can handle change and uncomfortable situations better than older people. The older you get, the more difficult it is to try new things. For all of us, it will make us stronger and feel better about ourselves for doing this volunteer work.

Texting in Church

For people in my generation, I was one of the last to conform to the fad of texting. I’m still not a big fan of it as a primary means of communication but I suppose that if my friends want to communicate this way, I will too.

Sunday at church, our pastor encouraged us to send text messages during the service. Don’t get the wrong idea, though. He wasn’t saying it’s good to chat with friends, thereby ignoring the sermon. He was making the service interactive. He had us text in what we thought about certain things and display the results of a poll on the screen for everyone to see. The band had us text in what we wanted them to play for the closing song. It looked like about half, maybe a little more than half, were participating. It was kind of neat. This was the 9:45 contemporary service at Forest Hills UMC, by the way, which has a more technologically advanced and much younger crowd than most other services. This certainly wouldn’t fly in the 8am service.

Only recently did I get an unlimited texting plan. Well, 1500 per month, which for many 20-somethings and late teens might not be enough, but this is still more than enough for me. I still have a tendency to call people, leave a message, but get a text in response. This trend has increased tremendously over the last few years. Texting is too short and impersonal to suit me.

Yes, I know it is strange that I feel this way because I am generally kind of frugal with words and don’t like to be close to many people. Somehow, I like the formality of calling someone and talking on the phone, at least for personal things, and until the relationship becomes so informal that you communicate through whatever medium happens to be most convenient at that time, whether it be phone, text, email, face to face visit. For business things and things that might require extensive thought, email is probably best because it is easy to maintain a record and review things later. Texting should be reserved for urgent communication when one person is in a situation where talking on the phone is not convenient.

Ephesians 4:26

"Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully for we are all members of one body. In your anger, do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry..."

Whether you are a Christian or not, this is good advice for you. There are few worse feelings in the world than ending the day in a fight with someone. There are very few if any fights or arguments or things that cause us to be angry that should not be resolved by the end of the day. It's hard to rest when there's a lingering question of whether he/she is even upset with me and if so will he/she forgive me. This goes not only for family but friends and colleagues as well.

Many a time I have irritated a friend during the day and tried to make amends shortly thereafter only to find that the other person wants to let this little problem linger on and on. When the opposite occurs, I an typically very quick to forgive and forget as long as I see the other person wasn't deliberately trying to hurt me.

Basically, just keep communications open and honest with everyone with whom you have a personal relationship, and resolve all conflict before going to sleep and we will all be happier, well-rested people.

Interfaith Relationships

Today's post deals with interfaith relationships/marriages. Clearly there are widely varied opinions on this. There are traditionalists who would disown a child for marrying someone of a different religion. There are modern theists who are open to the idea of possibly marrying someone of a different religion, but know that it will inevitably create some extra conflict. Then there are the agnostics/atheists who could give a hoot about what religion their partner is.

I’ve searched a lot for statistics about this. But for the most part, experts seem to think atheists and agnostics have a lower divorce rate and born-again Christians have the highest divorce rate. Does this surprise anyone? I’ve seen many interfaith marriages work out well. And I’ve seen many marriages within the same church crash and burn. I’ve seen people go through a relationship for y ears only to realize that they’ve been wasting their time because they could never marry each other due to their religious convictions. I think a big reason the non-religious people may have more successful marriages is that they are more open-minded and their judgment is never clouded by the notion of God and what He wants and trying to idealize things.

I suppose I fall into the category of a very liberal born-again Protestant. I say liberal in the sense that I totally respect all religions and am open to learning about them and possibly changing my faith someday. But my set of morals and values are as strong as anyone’s, and they are mostly independent of religion. Back to the topic at hand. All religions teach basically the same things. They may have different Gods, different prayers, different holidays but all religion is essentially the same. And which religion we are is largely based on where we grow up or where our parents grew up. The goal of all religion is the give us an explanation for the unexplainable, to guide us to be better people, and make the world a better place. Even the extreme Islam groups have this as their primary goal - they just have a very radical idea of how to achieve that.

So, interfaith relationships are totally fine. Religion is not what keeps us apart. It’s the morals and values that we often associated with religion that are the crucial issues. There are many Christians who, when you evaluate the way the live and their personal values, are very non-Christian, while some atheist may have a lifestyle and values that are equivalent to a good Christian. And to me, a good Christian will be better off with the atheist than a Christian with different values.