New Year’s Resolutions

The most popular New Year’s Resolutions are – lose weight, stop smoking, and get out of debt.

I found this in the New Yorker:

“Resolution #1: I Will Quit Smoking. On New Year’s Day, I started using nicotine patches, nicotine gum, and nicotine lozenges but stopped when I began to hallucinate that I was a Lucky Strike. January 2nd brought a new, less arrogant resolution: “I will smoke only cigarettes I did not pay for.” Unfortunately, I hadn’t anticipated how easy it would be to steal them at the 7-Eleven, especially when the girl behind the counter was on her cell phone trying to cast a vote for “American Idol.” Seven months later, I’m actually smoking slightly more than I did last year, but that may be because I’m more focused on trying to quit stealing.” (New Year’s Resolutions: 7 Months Later, August, 2004, Andy Borowitz)

Funny. Also painfully true. It’s a pretty good commentary on our inability to overcome all that plagues us. We get good at one thing and then realize another fault has formed. It all points to the condition we are in, broken. The theolgoical term is depraved. We can aim to self improve, or we can accept our condition and look for help outside of ourselves. This is the message of Christianity: we are broken – through Jesus, God came to rescue – despite our fallenness we are made new.

The key here isn’t to wake up each day to attempt to prove your standing with God. Your standing is already secure by the finished work of Christ – this is what grace means. Let this grace give you your validity and fuel your pursuit of wanting to become a less broken person. Just wake up each day to become what you already are, and when you fail it won’t be as devasting because you already are that which you want to become.

Christmas Break

I’m going on Christmas break, no more posts till New Year’s. But first, check out my baby girl with Santa. She can already spot something about this whole Santa thing is wrong.

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Amy Adams on Freedom From the Self

Amy Adams, the actress from Catch Me if You Can, the thought provoking film, Doubt, and the upcoming boxing movie, The Fighter was recently on Tavis Smiley.

Tavis asked Amy about having a new baby. She responded,

“I like the world more now. The focus is off of me, and that is freedom. That I no longer am the most important thing in my life. As much as I didn’t want to admit it before I was self-centered. I didn’t even realize how self-centered. My small day to day drama is now so different.”

All us parents, say, “Yep, uh huh, yes maam. Preach it, Amy.” We know what she speaks of. I’ve always said I realized how selfish I was when I got married. Then I had a child, and I realized even more how selfish I was. Five weeks ago we had our second little girl, and I realized again, to a greater extent, how much I mainly think about and concern myself with myself.

Seeing all this depravity is a gift, for then you are ready to look beyond yourself. You are prepared for freedom. This looking beyond yourself is needed for both our standing with God (namely the sufficiency of Jesus’ forgiveness and imputation of righteousness) and our ability to truly love anyone.

Here’s the complete conversation between Tavis and Amy over on PBS.

Santa and His Payments

I wrote this last Christmas. I thought about it this morning, just after remembering God’s goodness to me:

“We say Santa brings gifts. But then we say Santa is watching to see if you are good or bad, if you are pouting or crying. Then we say if you are good, and stay off the naughty list, Santa will bring you your gifts. But that’s not a gift. That’s payment. Payment for good behavior. A gift is something you don’t deserve, something you receive whether you are good or bad. Those kinds of gifts reveal the generosity of the giver not the work of the receiver.

There are gifts in this world that we can receive no matter our moral failures or apathy or laziness.”

(Hint: think about the gift of faith, forgiveness, peace, and security.)

Begin with Chapter 1

I’ve been studying the book of Colossians. You should sit down a read it, the whole thing in one reading. Here’s what you’ll see:

Chapter 1: Jesus is supreme.
Chapter 2: Gospel of grace frees us from rules-oriented life.
Chapter 3: Do things – obey, put sin in our lives to death.
Chapter 4: More rules for living.

Here’s the key: become what you already are. Meaning, begin life in chapter 1, not chapter 3.

The Movie Crash: Prejudice and Love

The conferederate flag man (see my previous post) got me thinking about the movie, Crash. Each character in the film is of a particular race and prejudice towards a person of another race. So a given character is mistreating someone and is also being mistreated themselves. The film shows the downward cycle of it all, and the need for us to kill our prejudice. The film is about depravity and love.

The story reveals the humanity behind any race, the families and hearts we don’t consider when we treat people poorly.

Crash reminds me that there is something horribly wrong with this world. There’s something wrong in me, and I need redeeming. While the brokenness in me creates brokenness in the world, the realization of the brokenness creates gratitude for the healing and redemption made possible by Christ. We have the tendency to think less of people, yet we can die to that bent and love instead.

Hatred and the Confederate Flag Man

I guess he lives in my neighborhood, that’s where I see him. He’s old with a long gray beard. He runs, but barely makes any progress. He always wears a light gray sweatsuit. And in his right hand is a four feet pole with a Confederate flag flying at the top. Not a normal thing to go jogging with.

I live in a demographically diverse area, so a mix of black and white people see this spectacle. People give him bewildered looks, some people honk. I’ve heard people yell. I think someone is going to eventually run him over or shoot him.

At first I thought the guy may just be a crazy history buff, but then I noticed when he runs by black people he twirls the flag. He flings it around, making sure they see it. It’s all hatred. Why would you want to remind people of slavery and mistreatment, of a period of history when people like them were devalued as human beings?

Last night I saw this man as I was throwing the frisbee with my dog, Thomas. I saw the man twirling his flag as he ran by a black couple walking their dog. I felt hatred towards him rise up, that he would be so racist and insensitive to people. I wanted to grab the flagpole and shove it through his eye socket, but I knew I had a choice, to hate him or hate what he was doing. This matters greatly, for hating the one who hates only perpetuates the cycle. This is why Jesus taught to love your enemies. It breaks the cycle.

I’m also reminded that I’ve done hateful things. I’ve thought and said judgemental things before. I’m not proud of this, and I don’t like that a spirit that devalues people can live in me. But I am joyful that the Creator of all people doesn’t shove something through my eye socket. I’m thankful a just God sees me through the righteousness of Jesus, so the cycle stops, because Jesus even loves those who hates.

Control

We can’t control much. We try to. We fail often. We struggle the most with self-control – lust and greed, selfishness and patience, but that is not what I’m speak of. I’m speaking of the likelihood of a car crossing into your lane, or the economy crashing again. Cancer or a fire. You can only control how you react to everything you can’t control.