Just another WordPress site

Category: relationships

  • Midlife Reset (Part I)

    I recently talked with a student I mentored years ago about some mid-life course corrections he was considering. This prompted me to think about my mid-life transition in 2011-2012 as I grappled with losing Libby to cancer. The follow is a remembrance of what changed then, and how I think about these issues ten years later.

    TL;DR

    • Live in the now. Leave slack and hold your plans lightly.
    • Take care of your health. Life is more enjoyable and you are more able to care for others
    • Prioritize loving people. Initiation and be present
    • Simplify! Focus on the essential so you don’t waste your time on lessor things
    • Spend time in nature to have your perspective adjusted and experience awe.

    There is also a part II about perspective on money 10 years ago, and part III what I am thinking now.

    Live Now, Hold Plans Lightly

    In 2009 my wife was diagnosis with breast cancer. We knew she wasn’t going to beat the cancer, but we had hopes (plans) that she would be able to see our junior high aged child graduate high school and successfully launch into life. Unfortunately, Libby’s health declined  more quickly than we expected.  After a couple of years we knew that Libby wasn’t going to be able to see our child finish high school. In the spring of 2011 we thought we still had a few years.  We made a plan to proceed with a “normal life” for our child’s sake, and that when there was around a year left for me to stop work and doing whatever would be most meaningful to Libby.  We did decide that all our vacations would be to places on Libby’s “bucket list”. That summer we took the one and only such trip: Alaska. In September Libby’s health took a sudden turn for the worst and we realized we didn’t have a year left, likely just a few months. I took a short term leave of absence from work to care for Libby. It turned out we had just a few weeks before she died.  All my plans fell apart.

    After a few months my short term leave was ending and returning to work was looming.  I wasn’t sure how to hold everything together when I returned to work. I shared my feelings with a  friend. He asked “Are you going back to work now because you need the income or just because that was your plan?” I indicated that finances didn’t force me to immediately return to work. He encouraged me to take a year away from work and not worry or plan for the future. I immediately I felt a huge relief. I contacted my boss who graciously accepted my resignation.  Over the next year I was free to attend to daily life. I enjoyed the time so much that I extended my break from work into a three year sabbatical.

    I decided that during my break I wanted to step away from the “go go” Bay Area culture. When I moved to the Bay Area in 1992 I noticed that that people overfilled their calendars with a heavy bias toward succeeding in their career. A response to “Want to get a beer / ice cream / whatever this evening?” was “My daytimer has a 90 minute slot open 3 Thursdays from now at 7:30, should I pencil you in?”. I tried to resist the drive to be consumed by activity and leave time to care for others. I set aside a couple of evening each week which I won’t pre-schedule, so I could have slack to response to unexpected needs or opportunities. Over the years I had allowed the slack time to be filled up, often by work that wasn’t completed during the day. I also noticed that I was so intent on “making a difference” that I experienced what Watchman Nee called “The Thing in Hand”: being over committed and unable to response to an opportunity which were infinitely better.

    I decided that I wanted to be quick to respond to immediate needs and slow to make long term commitments. I was inspired by the story of the “good Samaritan”. I felt challenged to think about how to engage the world around me. In the story a number of people were too busy, or maybe too callus, to care for someone in need, while the hero of the story took the time to care for a stranger. During my sabbatical I committed myself to be  open to whatever opportunities that came up.

    I was deeply moved by the book A Praying Life by Paul Miller and inspired to cultivating a more contemplative life rooted in prayer. This seemed like a great antidote to the over committed lifestyle. I signed up for a nine month  Ignatian Exercises program at the Mercy Center. As a result of these influences I found that I was more grateful and more accepting of others. My perspective had shifted from asking the  question “What do I want to happen?” to “What is God doing? How can I participate?”

    In the following 10 years I got pulled back into the frenetic bay area lifestyle working for start-ups. I filled my calendar with more activities than was wise and found myself trying to figure out how to have the most impact in the world. Alas, I stopped looking to see what God was doing. I am striving to move back to a more contemplative life that is committed to loving my neighbor without an agenda, being less planned and more open to what God is doing.

    Take Care of Your Health

    Early in my sabbatical by son was concerned about my health and said he didn’t want to become an orphan. This broke my heart! The issue that concerned him wasn’t major, but I was stressed, overweight and out of shape. I knew this would ultimately shorten my life and reduce what I would be able to do.  I decided I needed to take better care of myself.

    The video 23.5 Hours produced by Reframe Healthlab motivated me to walk rather than drive whenever possible.  I walked for at least an hour each day. My walks often combine a bit of exercise, completing an errand, and maybe talking to a friend, listening to a podcast, praying, or just enjoying being outside. I found that besides  improve my fitness, walking encouraged me to slow down and be more connected. I found the time helped me be more mindful.

    I joined a gym and started working out,  improved my diet, and worked to get more sleep.  I found that as  my strength increased and my body composition improved that I felt better, had more energy, was sick less, able to take on all sorts of challenges that might have seem “too much” in the past.   I also came to recognize that I function very poorly when in pain or sick. When I am healthy it is much easier for me to care for others. I have written up some details about having a healthy and fit life.

    Today I am over 60, and am still gaining strength and continue to have small improvements in my body composition. I am a fan of Dr. Peter Attia‘s take on optimizing for healthspan and training for the  centenarian olympics. I believe It’s well worth spending 1-2 hours per day in physical activities that promote health. This might seem like a lot of time, but the benefits are well worth the time, even for people who are “very busy”. I have let busyness impact my sleep, not been as careful to avoid foods I am allergic to, and allows stress to build which has resulted in me experiencing migraines. I am developing some new habits that will ensure better sleep and avoiding health issues brought on by my food allergies.

    Prioritize Loving People: Initiation and Presence

    Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love God and to love others. If this is the greatest commandment, then we won’t go wrong centering our lives around building loving relationships. Articles about regrets people had at the end of their lives highlighted that most people work too much, and love too little. I have so much I would like to share about the nature of love, but that will have to wait for another day. For now let me provide a basic definition. Love is  willing  good toward someone else, independent of what you get in return. Love doesn’t have room for “keeping score” or taking revenge. Love is about caring for another person.

    Libby’s and my relationship was far from perfect, there was genuine love in both directions. Losing Libby was a huge blow. On top of this, many of Libby and my friends pulled away after Libby died. I guess they weren’t sure how to relate to a young widower. Very few people initiated time with me. I wondered if this was because they saw me as too needy.

    I discovered that the lack of initiation had nothing to do with me, it’s a common experience in the Bay area.  I asked 47 people how many times someone (besides me or a family member) had initiated personal time with them in the past month outside of a work context. Only 2 people could identify this happening more than once! Several people then said “I haven’t initiate time either.  I want to change that.” This led me to conclude that initiating time with others is vital to building loving relationships.  I made a goal to initiate time with at least one person each day: share a meal, take a walk, work out at the gym, or just connect over the phone.

    I found that  presence is the greatest gift we can offer people. When we are with someone  they are our focus. We aren’t thinking about what opportunities we are missing. We are attentive to the person we are with without any second thoughts. Recently a friend noted that being present with others in the midst of difficult situations was often the path to finding “Hidden Gold”, where we discover something amazing that we won’t have seen unless we were with people in the midst of difficulties.

    Over the last ten years my initiating with others had wained and really dropped during COVID. There are a number people that I call at least once / week to catch up and a few people I regularly get together with in the area. In the last several years my amazing wife Jackie has kept me engaged with other by initiating gatherings, reminding me to initiate with others, and her engaging spirit whenever we are out. Jackie and I try to have others over at least once a week, mixing old friends and new acquaintances. We have found that having 6 people together is a really great dynamic. More than 6  always end up with multiple conversations happening at the same time. During COVID we set up our back patio so it was possible to have people over for a meal, talk, and maybe watch a movie while maintaining physical distance with good air flow. Of course I try to spend time with my family. My favorite time during the week is Saturday morning when Jackie and I hike together for a few hours and have an uninterrupted time to share our hearts with each other. I still recognize the value of being presence and strive to deeply listen. I am working to break my tendency to lookup information on my phone related to the conversation. 

    Simplify

    My dad taught me to appreciate simplicity in all things. During my mid-life reset I decided to simplicity my life. To focus on what was important and strive to remove what wasn’t adding value. I tried to apply this in all areas of life. I started by adopting a minimalist approach to my possessions. Holding on to what added value and getting rid of what wasn’t useful or life giving. I then tried to apply this same approach to many areas of life along the lines discussed in the book Essentialism. I worked to simplify my theology, or more exactly, I focused my thinking on key truths and chose not to be so sensitive to the things of lessor weight. No exactly compromise, but to be less insistent. I have regularly seen the benefits of subtraction and also seen how hard it is.

    Today I see many advantages which have come from embracing simplicity as a value. I see the freedom and ease of life that having less stuff has provided. We have watched several friends spending a number of painful months figuring out of what to purge and downside in preparation for moving. We have seen other friends whose weekends are often filled with chores to care for their home, cars, and stuff. Largely due to embracing a more minimalist life, Jackie and I were able to easily move our entire household over a weekend with just one day of preparation, and later to do experiments as a digital nomad with just a couple of days preparation (packing and prepping our home to be used by someone else via AirBnB). A focus on what is most essential and looking for simple answers has brought more peace into my life, and I think has enabled me to work well with a larger group of people.

    Spend time in Nature

    I have written a page about how it’s extremely beneficial to spend time in “nature”.  I have little to add here. My mid-life reset included make time each day to walk, run or ride my bicycle among trees and nature. To be refreshed daily, rather than only making time on the weekends for outdoor activities. I have continued to keep this practice and am incredability thankful that I live in area that natural beauty is so easily accessed. When I feel stuck, frustration, when I am facing what seems to be intractable problems, I found walking among the trees in a local park helps me reset my perspective and gives me hope. When feeling completely overwhelms, seeing the powerful and untamed waves on the coast settles my heart. I often experience a sense of awe and wonder.

    Read midlife reset part II

  • Respectful Presence

    TL;DR

    Treating others as valuable by taking the time to really listen and to be present in the moment is one of the most impactful practices anyone can engage in. Not thinking about what’s next. Not thinking about how to respond, but giving people our whole attention.

    A friend was telling me about how he had been learning to be present with others. Rather than trying to arrange his life so that he only had “pleasant” experiences, he was taking on whatever circumstances came his way. He was  finding “hidden gold”  nearly every day in his encounters with family, friends and coworkers. The hidden gold was the opportunity to be present, and really listen to people. Often these opportunities existed because there was some difficulty that he wished the other person hadn’t experienced but if the unfortunate circumstance hadn’t occurred, they likely wouldn’t have been talking. These encounters resulting in a feeling of connectedness, with others feeling that they were cared for, that they were loved. In the process he was discovering amazing things about other people’s lives. As he was describing this experience he asked the question:

    Is it really this simple? Just to be with people and listen to them? In my personal and professional life no one ever told me how powerful this is.  Do people just not see it or is it so obvious that no one thought to tell me?  No, that’s not it, because so few people do this.

    My answer was that it really is that simple. I noted that I have encounter material advocating the importance of presence and listening, but that it is something that seems to be under appreciated, and practiced even less than it is acknowledged.

    The first time I remember being challenged to be more present was when I read the  Oswald Chambers biography Abandoned in God which described how he was present with people even when “better opportunities” showed up. The book suggested Chambers was present with Jesus which led him to be attention to others. While I was inspired by the description of Chambers, I was had little success being so focused on others. 

    Igantian Exercises. These exercises were designed to help people experience Jesus in a real and personal way.  Along the way, we were taught how to be present with the other participants. Each week  we were reminded that besides our journey with Jesus, that we were there to witness the journey others were on which required us to avoid  interfering with or commenting on someone else’s experience, to avoid crosstalk. I chafed under the no crosstalk rule but in the end I came to see how powerful it could be. Rather than imposing what I thought someone should attend to, I got to witness God doing amazing things in someone’s life.  I described this in my post about nature of truth and progressive revelation:

    Early on in the Ignatian exercises, a dear lady shared something that “God had showed her”. I wanted to jump up and say “No, that’s not possible. Here are five Bible passages that clearly show what you said is wrong.” During these exercises we don’t engage in “cross talk” (e.g. don’t comment on other people’s experiences) but rather stand in witness to what God is doing. Several months later, at the end of the exercises, this women’s life had changed more for the better than any of us. Her sharing at the beginning was what she was able to understand where she was at then. The following months God continued to moved her, showing her more and more truth, growing her understanding. I would bet at the end of the exercises, she would disagree with her earlier statement, yet it was a stage she had to pass through to her greater understanding.

    For several years after doing the Ignation exercises I kept being present with others at the forefront of my mind and tried to practice it each day. I still failed, sometimes spectacularly like when I found myself speaking rather than listening and when I was more focused on my plans than being present. Alas, I got busy with work and forgot to stay focused on listening and being present. There was so much that I “needed” to get done. I didn’t “have time” to listen, to slow down and be present. During this time I found my life became poorer, and I didn’t have a sense of excitement, looking forward to what I might discover each day. Thankfully, I have once again been reminded of how important it is to respectfully listen and to be present. I am once again finding life a great adventure. Some material that has really helped me:

    Stephen’s Ministry Training. Stephen’s ministry is a global which trains people to “walk along side” people in need. The program emphasizes not “fixing” peoples problems but being with them. Much of the training is about how to listen well and help others find their own answers.

    Karen Seidman‘s training offered to some of the leadership team when I was working at 23andme. Karen models effective listening, showing respect, and being present. She had excellent material about trust, growth, listening, and providing effective feedback. Along the way she shared her experiences with how deep listening – listening for the values/positive intent under the surface can enable effective engagements and significantly increase the likelihood of being able to influence people who would normally dismiss your concerns. She encouraged us to listen for understanding, getting to the “Yes! You Understand!”, which is best accomplished when we assume good intent: looking for shared values, and with a desire to bless others. Side note: She reminding me of  Chris Argyris’ ladder of inference and introducing me to David Rock’s scarf-model which I have found very helpful. Finally, I will comment the short meditation The Moment of a LIfetime.

  • Against Contempt

    TL;DR

    Contempt is extremely corrosive and will destroy relationships and society if not countered. Rather than encouraging people to repair a breach, contempt encourage people to separate, widening the gap. The solution is to truly listen to people you disagree with, looking for how you share values “the why” even when you disagree about what’s the best course “the what”.

    When an issue comes up repeatedly via multiple sources I take it seriously and strive to figure out what I can do.  Contempt is the most recent issue that has surfaced in my life. I am striving to remove contempt from my life and encourage people I am interacting with to do the same. This post is an attempt to take the battle against contempt beyond the people I regularly interact with in person.

    Often I will read a book which leads me to other books. It is not surprising that common themes emerge for books which are clustered together in this way. However… when I find a common theme emerging from multiple books which I came to from different sources I take notice. This suggests that either the issue is quite common, or that it is an issue that providence, fate, God, (whatever you want to call it) is asking me to pay attention to.  Contempt has been a significant feature in several excellent books I have read in the last month which came to me through varied sources:

    • A Freakonomics interview of Arthur Brooks  prompted me to read his book Love Your Enemies. A call to not just be tolerant and be polite, but to actively care for others and to look for shared values. Reading this book helped me recognize spots of contempt in my life, which ironically included the organization that Brooks was the president of for 10+ years, the American Enterprise Institute. Learning something of Brook’s values has me taking a second look at their materials. I don’t necessarily agree with their positions, but I am learning from them rather than dismissing them.
    • Many people in my church are reading Saving Us, Katharine Hayhoe’s book about climate change. In this book Katharine suggests that only 7% of the US population are hard core climate change “deniers”: people who have taken a stand based on identity, and will be very hard (if not impossible) to effectively engage with. She encourages her readers to engage with everyone else by finding common values, and then show how those values naturally lead to working on the issue which have beneficial outcome rather than focusing on “climate change”. The book also touches on  the science of climate change, and actions people can take.
    • For years I have intended to read Miroslav Volk’s writings due to Tim Keller regularly citing Volk. I found an audio version of Volk’s book Flourishing freely available  from Mountain View public library’s digital service.  In this book Volk discusses of how all the “universal” religions, and especially Christianity, call followers to treat everyone well, not just their “tribe” because our values are universal, not just for our people. As he noted from the Bible, rain falls on righteous and the wicked, so we should shown respect  and  embrace “the other” recognizing God created and cares for all people, not just “our people”. I really appreciated his description of how religious identity can be weaponized by taking something universal and shrinking it down to serve a “local” cause in a process that Os Guinness called “cultural containment” in the book The Gravedigger Files.
    • A conversation with a friend as he was wrestling to assess his marriage encouraged me to re-read John Gottman’s  Seven Principles Making Marriage Work which has an extensive discussion of the corrosive impact of contempt on relationships, and identifies contempt  as the worst of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.  A brief summary of Gottman’s work.

    Contempt has become increasingly common since the 2016 presidential election season. I see people not just disagreeing with each other, but going a step further to attack each other and attribute bad, immoral, or evil motivation to people taking a different perspective. As this has continued I have seen the “middle” get hollowed out and people going to more and more extreme positions. Many people who I considered “reasonable” are taking increasingly extreme positions.  Especially heart-breaking is to see people attributing terrible attributes to the  opposing side, which then excuses them from doing exactly the same thing.  The short version of this is “They hate people, so I will hate on them”.  I have heard people I know and love say:

    • All republicans are liars. They are all racist at best, Nazis at worse. Well, except the 14 that voted to condemn Trump…. but the rest of keeping quiet. I can’t trust anyone who is a republican.
    • The liberals want to turn us into a socialist society which would rob  us of our freedom and remove God from society. We have to stop them by any means necessary.
    • The core of the media and Hollywood are part of the Illuminati. They have literally sold their souls to the devil (a real being) in exchange for success. You can’t trust anything they say and resistant anything they advocate. One encounter like this prompted me to write about Bono. 

    When discussing COVID related issues like masks and vaccines are not approached as a matter of science, but have become a marker of identify, with hatred if not violence flaring up when people from the two different camps encounter each other.  I have seem people who have been friends for 10-20 years stop talking to each other because one voted for Trump and the other opposed Trump. I have heard stories of this happening within families. I know several churches that are being torn apart by the forced described in the article the evangelical church is breaking apart.

    If you want to have an impact rather that merely feeling smug and self righteous I would encourage you to join me in the struggle to respectfully listen to “the other”, assuming they have good intent, even if their ideas are different from yours. Find common ground and work to solve problems! Beside the books above I would recommend the following resources could help develop your listening skills, resisting contempt, and to be more present with others:

    • Communication Skills Workbook
    • Nonviolent Communication – Marshall Rosenberg suggests that more conflicts can be resolved if all the parties take the time to understand what the other person‘s needs are and clearly explain their needs. Marshall explains that once all parties understand the others needs, they are willing to find accommodations so that the other parties can meet there reasonable needs.

    Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.”

    Romans 14:10-11 ESV (read the whole chapter)

  • Build Your Life on Truth

    Objectivity is your friend –Dennis McCallum

    I was born during the transition from modernist era to postmodernism. Like a modernist I believe there is truth in the world which is discoverable and that there are absolutes. Yet, the uncertainty of our postmodern age requires me to acknowledge that knowing what is an absolute rather than situational “truth” can be difficult, if not impossible to determine. I have tried to live an examined life and regularly revisit what I belief in the light of evidence. The last forty years has greatly reduced the number of things I am certain of. I like to say I have many strong beliefs, most of which are loosely held.

    Truth is worth pursuing though it can be threatening and uncomfortable. Truth can demonstrate we are wrong or show we are failing.  Ignorance doesn’t make us less wrong, nor does it save us pain in the long run. It is far better to know for certain what is true, even when unpleasant, because that gives us an opportunity to go in the right direction.  Proverbs 27:6 says “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.”

    [toc]

    True Truth

    While it is not a popular viewpoint today, I believe in absolute truth, what Francis Schaefer called “true truth”. There is only one reality, one true morality, things are either truth or false. If two people hold conflicting views, they aren’t both right, though both could be wrong. The challenge is discovering what is true. This takes work and humility. Even if someone works to discover what is true, it doesn’t mean they will succeed.

    Some things might be so beyond our ability to understand that we will never really know the truth, we will see only a small portion of the truth and come to an incorrect conclusion. This dilemma is captured in the classic parable describing three blind men who encounter an elephant. Each man touches a different section of the elephant (leg, trunk, side of the body) and comes to a different and wrong conclusion about what the whole elephant looks like. This parable is a call for humility, and also for dialog. If each of the blind share their experiences with others, together they might have a more accurate sense of what the elephant is. We should seek to grow our understanding by listening to other faith / traditions and ask ourselves if they have insights into areas that we have a blindspot.

    Sometimes I hear people use this parable to suggest that all faiths or religions lead to the same place and are equally valid. While this seems like a position of humility, it’s actually the height of arrogance, because the person is assuming they can see the whole and the communities of faith and religion are the blind who can only see a small part of the truth, not realizing they are no different from each other.

    Just as the sighted man is the only person who can tell the story of the elephant,  God is the only one who can fully tell the story of our world. That’s not to say that we can’t use our senses and mind figure things out, but what we discover will be an incomplete and often misleading.

    This brings up an even more unpopular belief. The Bible is true and trustworthy. I reference some of the evidence for this in my post about faith. The ultimate author of the Bible is God who knows more than us. It’s very common for us to favor our experience and beliefs over the Bible, yet God know more than us and loves us more than we love ourselves. When our experience and beliefs disagree with the Bible it’s appropriate to ask if we were misreading the Bible or if we are misinterpreting our experiences or failing to see long term results. 

    The Bible is God’s self revelation and is able to give us insight into things that are either so important to Him that He wants to be sure we know them, or things we wouldn’t be able to discover if we reasoned just from our own experience. The Bible is like a letter from a dear friend. It can inform us, but we have to read the letter in the context or our relationship, based on what we know of our friend. The Bible is wholly true, but it is not a comprehensive textbook or an encyclopedia. For example, I like to say that Genesis is about home, not the house. The stories of a house would talk about how the walls are constructed, list materials and a floor plan. When people talk about their home, there may be some allusions to it’s construction, but the focus is typically on how it was a space that felt safe, a place you long for.

    Love Truth

    I find myself emotionally affected when people purposely attack truth by direct denials, though distortion, or suppression. I am encouraged when I see truth “win out”, especially truth spoken to power. I have come to realize that I view “truth” as being personal, not just objective facts. I believe Parker Palmer has wonderful captured this perspective in the book The Courage to Teach. Rather than seeing truth as a fixed object to be discovered and controlled by a detached observer, Palmer envisions truth as something that emerges within a dynamic relationship—between the knower, the subject, and the surrounding community. In his view, truth is not simply found but is experienced through dialogue, presence, and mutual engagement. Knowing becomes a spiritual and ethical practice, not merely an intellectual one. The subject of study is not a passive object to be dissected but an active participant in a conversation, something that “speaks” when approached with humility and care. Everyone can have something to contribute, not just an isolated expert or the “scientist as high priest” who bestows knowledge to the masses.

    Palmer offers a “community of truth” as a rich metaphor—one in which all participants stand in a living triangle of relationships: knower, subject, and community. Each is essential, and none dominates. In this space, learning is not a matter of accumulating facts but of entering a shared search for meaning. It is a space marked by curiosity, openness, and transformation, where knowledge grows not from authority but from attentiveness and presence. This model invites both teachers and learners into a more humane and holistic vision of education, where the pursuit of truth becomes not a solitary endeavor, but a shared journey.

    How to Seek Truth

    I believe that the Bible is fully true, but just because it’s true doesn’t means that it’s easy for us to understand. The Berean Christian set a good example for all of us:

    Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. Therefore many of them believed, along with a number of prominent Greek women and men.

    Acts 17:11-12

    The Berean Christians were devoted to studying the Bible together because they believed it to be truth from God’s lips. While the Bereans had a belief, a faith, the Bible was God’s true, this wasn’t a blind faith. The things they learned were put to the test and examined to see that it was true. This is different from classic utilitarianism which believes something is true because it works.  Rather, things work because they are true. So what did the Bereans do? They did their best to read and understand the Bible. They would then put their understanding into practice and then see if it “worked”, the way a scientist tests a hypothesis. The Bereans not only gained knowledge by faith, but put that knowledge to work which made the truth personal, experiential, the sort of truth that transformed their lives for the better. This sounds like an exciting and wonderful community to have been part of.

    The Bible authors make it clear than we should have a strong foundation, an examined faith. Paul wrote that we should be the most pitied of men if our faith isn’t based on truth (I Cor 15). Peter calls all of us to have a ready defense, that is to be able to explain what we believe and why  (I Peter 3:15). When I first created my website I posted a description of my faith.  Decades later I find that I am every more sure of my core beliefs, but I have become much less certain about many of the beliefs which aren’t at the core of my faith. The next sections explain why that is.

    Truth… not lies, half truths or secrets

    Truth is the only thing worth standing on.  Lies, falsehoods, secrets, excuses, might seem expedient, but they are like quicksand.  They will drown your life if you walk in them.  Lies can only hurt people and will rot away your heart and conscience.  Secrets limit your ability to share fully with others and damages your inner life until exposed by the healing light of truth and honesty. In recent times stories about superheroes often demonstrate how deadly lies and secrets can be. Secrets and lies used to “protect” a loved one end up hurting more than the truth would have.

    Ultimately, lies and falsehoods will be revealed and brought to light because the Lord knows all. So live your life as if everything you do and say will be broadcast for everyone to see and hear.  Live in the light.  In the end you will give an account to the Lord, and you won’t be able to fool him.  Indeed, many secrets and cover-ups are exposed in this life.  Don’t compromise the truth today because in the face of eternity it is foolish.

    Consistency Between Truths and Life

    If it is foolish not to live based on the truth, why do people live any other way? Sometimes being committed to the truth seems too hard or too polarizing. It seems like it would be easier to stick with “truth” that doesn’t offend others, that everyone is comfortable with, that seems to remove unwanted conflict. Sometimes we do this by ignoring something that is true. Sometimes we do this by telling lies, often small one, that we don’t think will hurt anyone.

    Of course, sometimes we aren’t being purposefully dishonest, we are honestly wrong. We have thought about an issue, maybe studied the particulars and have come to the wrong conclusion. The solution for this is to be willing to honestly look at the facts and be willing to change our position if we find we are wrong. We must not let our pride stop us from admitting when we are wrong. Another common issue is when someone hasn’t thought through a issue, they merely follow “traditions.” This as an unexamined life. The solution is to examine life. Look for facts and data which actually speak into whatever you care about. It is amazing that people who are willing to spend hours researching a purchase or a sports team spend very little time examining their assumptions about life.

    Often times people’s day to day conduct seems to contradict their stated views. This is especially common among religious communities. While some of these people are blatant hypocrites, their actions showing their true hearts, often times people like this do “intellectually” believe their high sounding words even though it doesn’t come out in day to day life. Why is that… are they completely irrational? Typically no. What’s going on is that over time their experience has led them to use ineffective method to get some result. This has resulted in deeply held misbelief that contradicts what some philosophical position they express.

    It is very easy for us to lie to ourselves, to choose to believe something that we should know is not true.  The prophet Jeremiah observed “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?”  Jeremiah goes on to observe that only God can cut through the deceit, and know what is true.  Thankfully, God’s Spirit has given us a new heart and is happy to help us understand what is going on if we are willing to ask him. 

    Limits of Examination: Some Mysteries Can’t Be Uncovered

    When the Bereans’ experiences differed from their understanding of the Bible they didn’t throw out the Bible, nor did they ignore their experiences. Rather, they used the apparent conflict to examine their understanding of the Bible as well as examining how they were evaluating their experiences. Sometimes this sort of careful examination would allow them to resolve the issue.  Sometimes, they would find themselves facing a paradox or a mystery, something that seemed beyond their ability to know. While difficult, these sort of issues did not result in the Berean’s giving up on thinking or trying to understand.

    Os Guiness’ excellent book In Two Minds (an abridged and slightly updated version was called Doubt and then released as God in the Dark) examines healthy and unhealthy ways to examine faith and resolve doubts. Guinness point out that rationality is not in conflict with mystery. Mystery is when we encounter things that are beyond human reason, but it is not against reason. It is a mystery to man and not to God.  In these places the challenge for us is to suspend judgment and not press human reason to answer questions when it has insufficient information, but to trust God because He has shown Himself trustworthy in the areas we can understand. Guinness observed that rationalist (rather than rational examination of faith) result in one of two errors. Either “knowledge without experience” or “experience without knowledge”.  Genuine understanding generates genuine faith, and genuine faith in turn generates genuine experience.  without genuine faith, experience can be easily counterfeited by emotionalism.  Without genuine understanding, what passes for faith can be a counterfeit confidence of purely human origins

    Limits of Knowing: Uncomfortable Truths and Paradoxes

    There are a number of things that make me uncomfortable as I read the Scripture. For example, I am uncomfortable with God apparently ordering genocide. My modern sensibility says this is wrong, always. Yet it seems like God told Israel to do just this.  It doesn’t seem like most of these genocides occurred. One way to resolve this dilemma is to figure out a way that God wasn’t actually telling the Israelites to do what it seems like He was. There may, or may not be merit in a number of these arguments. I am not a Hebrew scholar, nor have I attempted to study this issue in great detail, so I am not comfortable judging these explanations.

    But I think there is an uncomfortable explanation.  What is recorded is exactly what it appears to be. That God did order genocide, and the only reason it didn’t happen was Israel was disobedient.  Can I explain why God would order something that seems to me so wrong? No. Do I think innocent young children should be killed? No. And yet, who am I to stand up and judge God. Do I know more than Him? Am I more good? Do I truly understand what love is, and the consequences of every act and action?  What if a child that God ordered to be killed would have driven a society to depths worse than Hitler, and that killing him would have prevent a greater evil? When God does something or says something that doesn’t make sense to us, we need to remember that we have a limited understanding. Rather than passing judgment, maybe we need to take a step back and let God be God. To let these apparent differences between what we think we understand, and what we see in the Scripture bring us to God in prayer and stretch our hearts. Asking in humility for understanding, but knowing that in this life, there are many things we will not understand. I think the Steve Curtis Chapman song “Questions” does a nice job capturing this stance.

    Progressive Revelation

    Progressive revelation is when truth is revealed in an incremental way. Rather than getting everything at once, things are learned in steps. Sometimes the steps are too large for anyone to make. In these cases, sometimes God, or our chemistry teacher will tell us something that moves us along the path of understanding but isn’t the full truth. Rather, it’s something that has been simplified for us. Once we master the truth in simplified form we can take the next step. I saw a great example of things with a women who was doing Igantian exercises with me.

    Early on in the Ignatian exercises, a dear lady shared something that “God had showed her”. I wanted to jump up and say “No, that’s not possible. Here are five Bible passages that clearly show what you said is wrong.” During these exercises we don’t engage in “cross talk” (e.g. don’t comment on other people’s experiences) but rather stand in witness to what God is doing. Several months later, at the end of the exercises, this women’s life had changed for the better more than any of us. Her sharing at the beginning was what she was able to understand where she was at then. The following months God continued to moved her, showing her more and more truth, growing her understanding. I would bet at the end of the exercises, she would disagree with her earlier statement, yet it was a stage she had to pass through to her greater understanding.

    The Two Books

    the Bible is filled with passages which talk about examining our world can help us understand what is true. Not just facts about the material world we live in, but also more ethereal truths like the nature of God. Theologians called this general revelation. It’s often said the Bible is one book, and the world we live in is the second book. Both books should be read and understood. If they conflict, we should reread both and figure out what we have mis-understood. Maybe it’s a paradox, but it is just as likely we are reading into one of the books rather than letting it speak for itself.

    Unconscious Bias

    Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow explores how we use two systems when thinking. The “fast” system is much easier for us to use and is faster… but it is driven by broad generalization. As a result, it’s very easy for us to jump to wrong conclusions and to be influenced by others without even knowing it. There is a nice interview with Dan Ariel about Irrationality, Bad Decisions, and the Truth About Lies. At some later time I will do a stand alone post on what I have learned from Kahneman and other researchers working in this area.

    Application

    • Take time and examine what you believe. If something isn’t working take the time to reflect on your life and your beliefs. Be prepared to admit you are wrong and consider a different perspective.
    • Have the humility to admit you could be wrong. Always consider if your beliefs are falsifiable. Live an experimental life, testing what you think is true.
    • Be willing to speak the truth, even if it is unpopular, or you will be persecuted for speaking the truth.  If you aren’t willing to pay the cost for saying something that needs to be said, who will?
    • Don’t pretend you have everything together.  People often do this because they think people will respect them more.  This is not effective because people can sense you are living a lie.  Be honest and vulnerable.  An authentic life is very attractive.
    • Never assume you know everything and disregard other people’s perspectives. Take the time to really listen to other people… not just prepare your response. See my post about the 5 minute rule.
    • Don’t make people second-guess you.  Make sure people know where you stand, what are your concerns, etc.  We are called to speak truth in love as if seasoned with grace.  This means temper what you say based on what the person needs to hear.   Don’t use the truth as a weapon.

    Further Investigation

    • The God Who is There – Francis Schaeffer
    • God in the Dark – Os Guiness
    • Courage to Teach – Parker Palmer
    • Thinking Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman
    • Honesty, Morality & Conscience – Jerry Bridges
    • A Circle of Friends – Robert Wicks
    • Telling Yourself the Truth – William Backus
    • Basic Biblical Counseling – Larry Crabb
    • Lessons from Life – Mark Verber

    Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another

    Ephesians 4:25

  • The Evolution of Cooperation

    Last night I had a spirited discussion with some friends about US politics. One of our friends was expressing a concern that historically the US has been too “nice”, hopeful, helpful. We have created a culture people want to enjoy, but now we will be taken advantage of and ultimately destroyed. We need to be tougher and not be pushed around. I am not sure I would characterize the US as being “too nice”, but I contest that being collaborative is a liability.

    My counter argument is that people are made to collaborate, and maximum value comes when people work together rather than engaging in a winner take all competition. It’s possible for a nation to be collaborative but still thrive even when facing bad actors.

    Brief Update (2021): I recently finished Adam Grant’s book Give and Take which I think is excellent. He argues that often we are not in a zero sum game. and that cooperation can often “increase the size of the pie”. He has a nice section where he describes how effective givers can minimize the impact of people who attempt to take advantages of their cooperative nature.

    The theoretical underpinnings of this viewpoint comes from game theory which is extensively discussed in the book The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod. For people who aren’t into books, Leon Seltzer’s article The prisoner’s dilemma and the “virtues” of tit for tat provides a good summary. My super short summary: in a world ruled by selfishness with no central authority or rule, enlightened self interest can lead to effective cooperation in any situation where the participants believe that they will need to interact with each other in the future. In situations where there will be multiple interactions Tit for Tat ends up having the best long term payout. The algorithm is simple. Start by cooperating, and then mirror back the behavior of your competitor. That means “discipline” bad actors, but also “forgive” them if they are willing to cooperating. [A slight variation has a small random probability of cooperating even if the competitor has defected which can break retaliation cycles which out performance pure tit for tat.] Axelrod found that when facing numerous other algorithms, some of which were designed to take advantage of “cooperative” partners, that tit for tat consistent had the best over all returns when playing in multiple round competitions.

    I believe that silicon valley culture is a great example of how this works. In the mid of the 20th century, there were several places that arguably were better positioned than silicon valley to dominate the technology landscape. For example, the Boston area had more capital and a larger educated workforce. Unfortunately for Boston, they also had non-compete employment contracts and people and institutions which were not inclined to collaborate with competitors.

    The former dean of Stanford’s School of Engineering Fred Terman was instrumental in shaping the Bay areas technology landscape to be an open system which welcomes people in, encourages collaboration, and allows many people to succeed base on their merits. Terman later tried to help the research triangle in North Carolina and the area around Austin, TX replicate the successes in Silicon Valley. These effects fell far short of the results in the Silicon Valley. I believe this was primarily due to less willingness to collaborate. A secondary issue was that people were more oriented toward large organizations and struggled to take risks (e.g. less entrepreneurial). Other factors that might have contributed was less access to venture capital and a lower density of talent. I actually think access to capital wasn’t significant, because in the early data of Silicon Valley capital was not established… the east coast had much more.

    A great example of this culture can be seen in the early days of semi-conductors. Competitors gathered weekly at the Wagon Wheel to swap stories and brag about their successes. Sharing took away some competitive advantage, but everyone benefited because really hard problems only had to be solved once, and everyone could move on to the next challenge. One of the best stories from those days was went Intel was having a serious issue. They were betting the company on a new chip. The chip looked good in prototype form but when they went to mass production the yield rate was extremely low. They spent several months trying to figure out what was going wrong. They couldn’t figure it out. In desperation they shared their difficulties with others at the Wagon Wheel. Engineers from Fairchild, arguably Intel’s biggest competitor of the day offered to help if Intel would provide the beer. The engineer sat down discuss the issue. In the end the engineer’s from Fairchild laughed and then said “Find out who on the line is using hairspray, and get them to stop”. Intel did as requests and their yield rates became viable. It turns out Fairchild’s engineers had chased almost an identical problem for a year before they finally narrowed it down when their yields became acceptable when one of their workers was away from the line for several days. The hair coverings both teams were using weren’t fine enough to contain the micro particles from the hairspray escaping.

    For more stories and analysis, check out Steve Blank’s secret history of silicon valley. Technology Review Article Silicon Valley Can’t Be Copied is one of the best articles summarizing what has made the bay area so unique and the home of so many successful startups and Anna Lee Saxenian’s book Regional Advantage identified many of the same characteristics nearly twenty years earlier. Booz-Alan’s analysis identified a Culture of Innovation as being a differentiator, and Accenture attempted to Decode Contradictory Culture Aspects in Silicon Valley.

    It’s worth noting that the Silicon Valley has become a magnet for ambitious, highly skilled individuals. As a result there is a higher density of people who can be the core of a successful start-up than anywhere else in the world. These days it’s not that Silicon Valley grows the people who make amazing start-ups, but rather it has an environment that makes it easier than most places to build a start-up, with a huge number of people who have moved into the area to build the next great startup.

    There is a nice evolution of trust simulation if you want to experiment with different strategies.

  • The Joy of a Good Argument

    Jackie says “Weee….”, Mark says “Whatever”. We are different

    Not a week goes by when Jackie and I don’t have a serious argument…. and I am so thankful for this because our arguments grow our understanding and character. The root of our arguments is often that we see the world from different perspectives.  As we argue, we learn more about each others life experiences, cultural background, and personality. I am learning how ego-centric my perspective is, and sometimes learn that what I think is true is merely an opinion, or worse, plain wrong. Together we are learning what is truth and good.

    Sometimes I discover an apparent disagreement isn’t a disagreement. Rather, we are talking about the issue from a different perspective. In these cases I learn that I am being too sensitive and/or too narrow in how I think and talk. Sometimes I am jumping to conclusions and misjudging what Jackie is saying. Sometimes the argument reveals how one of us (or sometimes both of us) are wrong. We find that our biases or fears were making it difficult to see the truth. Often we find a viewpoint we can agree on. Sometimes we agree to disagree. In these cases we have struggled through the issue enough to recognize and respect each others perspective, but have not been persuaded to adopt the other’s perspective.

    Myers-Briggs classifies me as a “J”, while  Jackie is a “P”.  I like plans, closure, and certainty. Jackie likes freedom, experience, and possibilities. There are strengths and weaknesses to each of our approaches. By working together we help each other have a richer and more balanced life experience.

    Jackie Helps me Let Go of the Illusion of Control

    I want a safe life which I control. I know that this is an illusion, that there are many things outside my control, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to keep life safe and controlled.

    Jackie pulls me out of my safe comfort zone. She is always after me to try new things even when the outcome is uncertain or could be embarrassing. Jackie encourages me to take risks. This is not something that comes to me naturally. I don’t like failing or doing things poorly. I don’t want to look silly or foolish. While this is “safe”, it often means there are great opportunities that I would miss with my risk adverse approach. G. K. Chesterton wisely noted that “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”

    Jackie reminds me to live in the present and trust God’s provision. She tells me to not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matt 6:34).

    Finally, Jackie reminds me that no matter how carefully I plan for the future, I have little control over what will ultimately happen. That planning 5-10 years in the future is great hubris and typically a waste of time, just as  James 4:13-16 says Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

    I Help Jackie Hold Course

    Jackie is much more impacted by her emotions and immediate circumstances than I am. If things get uncomfortable, or seem not to be working well, she is very quick to change direction. If a new opportunity comes up, she sometimes forgets promises or commitments that were made earlier.

    I help keep Jackie anchored and moving forward when things get difficult.  I remind her that just because things are getting uncomfortable doesn’t means she is going the wrong direction. I help Jackie practice what Ignatian exercises refers to as the discernment of spirits,  When it’s “dark”,  be patient, don’t change directions, keep going the same way until there is enough light to adjust direction.

    My role is often to help Jackie not feel overwhelmed by her emotions, but to hold firm to what she knows.  As Eph 4:11-16 states: And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,  to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

    Additional Thoughts

    TED Talk by Margaret Heffernan entitled Dare to Disagree.

    Iron sharpens iron, one man sharpens another.

    Proverbs 27:17

  • Christian’s Second Most Important Book

    The dominate culture in the US prizes freedom and choice above all else which has led us to have one of the most individual oriented cultures. Garret Kell’s article entitled The Second-Most Important Book for Every Christian is a great antidote to the individual focus we are exposed to. What is the second most important book? Your church directory. The directory represents a vital community of belonging and service.

    Do not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
    –Hebrews 10:25, ESV

  • Hospitality Delivered: Hints When Providing Meals

    I have written early a bit about the important Christian practice of offering hospitality. Often this hospitality is in the form of opening our homes to others. We we can also extend hospitality beyond our homes by providing meals to others.

    In the last 30 years I have been both a recipient of, and a provider of meals delivered to the home. Reasons have varied, the joy of a new birth, the pain of losing someone dear, a life overwhelmed by chemotherapy or other trauma. Providing a meal to doesn’t have to be complicated, just do whatever you can. That said, I think there are a number of things we can do to make the providing a meal deliver the most benefit.

    0) When dropping off a meal, be sensitive to the family needs. Sometimes the very best thing is to hand a bag/box filled with the food you are providing to the family at the door, not even go inside. Sometimes when dropping off food, the family would like nothing better for you to come inside and spend some time with them. Take your lead from the family. Make it clear that it’s a priveldge to provide a meal and they are under no obligation to ask you in. but if you don’t have another obligation that you need to get to, that you would happy to spend some time with them.

    1) Make sure you know of any dietary restrictions or food allergies so the people you are providing food to can eat it.  Some people might need you to avoid peanuts, food containing gluten, foods that have a high glycemic index (diabetics) etc.

    2) Deliver food in “disposable” containers. Best if the containers can survive microwave and/or oven use. This saves them the hassle of having to clean the dishes and the sometimes difficult chore of returning the dishes. Extra points if the containers are “re-usable” or compostable.

    3) Consider bringing the main dish in two containers. One that is for the first night, and a second which could be used the first night if they are extra hungry (or have a guest), put in the refrigerator to use the following night, or can go strait into the freezer. [Put a date, and name of the item on the container so it’s not a mystery in the freezer.]

    4) Select food which doesn’t have to be eaten immediately. It’s great to deliver a hot meal, but sometimes the recipients aren’t able to enjoy it immediately. So make sure the food will be good reheated. Even better, select food that will freeze well. For fresh items that won’t freeze, make sure that it will do well if stored in the refrigerator for a day. For example, if you provide a salad, provide salad dressing in a separate container which can be added just before the salad is eaten so the greens don’t wilt.

    5) Within your knowledge of the family and what food others have brought, bring something a bit different that you believe the family will like. Getting lasagna or a casserole every night will get tiresome.

    6) Leave a card with a description of the main dish and the recipe (or a URL to the online recipe) or the name of the restaurant. If they really like it, they don’t have to track you down.  Having the list of ingredients is also helpful to people who have food allergies.

    7) If you have the privilege of bringing food more than once, ask “Would you like the same thing again, or try something new?”

    8) Consider bring a dessert. Yeah, it’s not healthy to eat dessert every night, but when we are bringing food, there are other considerations. Home made is nice, but store bought is just fine. Ice cream is always a legitimate dessert 🙂

    9) Consider bringing flowers, wine, nuts, cheese, fruit, or something else that compliments the food. You will need to know the people to have a good idea of what would be appreciated.

    For some additional ideas, and especially for people coordinating meals, check out Bethany’s tips for bringing new mom or anyone else meals.

    Christine Pohl has written several books which explore the interaction between community and hospitality.

    Meal Train provides an online system to coordinate the delivery of meals.

    Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

    Romans 12:9-13

  • Rule of Reciprocation

    A month ago I happened upon a short story on NPR about the rule of reciprocation. The human inclination to reciprocate has been used by canny individuals and organizations throughout time to extract factorable actions from others. Over the years I have worked for companies that have different standards about gifts received from vendors and business partners. Some employers forbid any gratuity. At the time I thought this was extreme and unnecessary, but I now have an appreciation, even respect for such a firm policy.  I find myself wondering how much an inexpensive meal might have influenced my decisions. I want to say it hasn’t, or only minimally, but how can I know?

    One of the examples cited in the NPR story was the Hare Krishna passing out “free” flowers and then asking for a donation. I can still remember the first time I saw a Hare Krishna doing this in an airport: a tired traveler was trying to get through the airport as quickly as he could, a Hare Krishna moved to block the traveler’s path, nearly forced a flower into his hand and then requested a donation. What happened next surprised me, the frustrated and angry traveler pull out his wallet and gave a donation even though he clearly didn’t want the flower nor did he want to support Hare Krishna.

    Yesterday we were walking in Haight-Asbury district and a “monk” told my daughter that he liked her haircut, placed several books in her hand saying they were a free gift of enlightenment, and then asked for a donation. She wasn’t carrying any cash and said so. He turned to me, and asked for a donation. I said I had no money for him. He tried to guilt me into giving him money suggested that I likely drove a Volvo and had plenty of money. I was unmoved. He took the books back from my daughter and looked for his next victim. It wasn’t a free gift or a genuine desire to share a blessing. This is an attempt to manipulate us into giving him money. Shame on him. 
    I started to think about other encounters I have had over the last few years and realized that I have become much less influenced by reciprocation. It used to be that when I was given a gift and I didn’t have a gift to give in return would often make up an excuse, and then as quickly as possible go out and purchase a “gift” to return. I rarely feel that today. I used to fight for the bill when sharing a meal with a friend. With some friends and family members it was a competition to see who could get the server to give them the bill. In the last year I have lost most of this compulsion. Most meals I still offer to pick up the tab, a way to demonstrate my appreciation for the time we shared, but if my dining partner suggests splitting the bill or offers to pick up the tab I don’t fight about it. Am I becoming someone is so selfish that reciprocity has not impact?  I don’t think so.

    Gifts seem to have an increasingly small influence on me, but I am also finding myself feeling freer to give gifts. I find myself worrying less about how people will perceive me, and more on my attitude when receiving and/or giving a gift. I wrote a bit about the dynamics of giving a couple of weeks ago in the post Compassion or Control.  Today feel less guilt when I don’t offer help to someone on the street than I did a couple of years ago, but it’s not because I am becoming more uncaring, just that I don’t feel called to help that one person at this time. That isn’t to say that I don’t offer help. Fairly frequently when asking “Can you spare a dollar so I can get something to eat” I will pause and offer a quick prayer for the person and their situation. Often I will be moved to say “I don’t have a spare dollar, but I have a debt card, lets take you to XYZ and I will buy you a meal”.   But if I don’t have a sense that I need to do something, I am content.

    After years of studying the Bible, learning from Jesus’ life, learning more about God, I have come to truly believe in grace. That is unmerited favor. That there is NOTHING I can do to make God love me. That anything good that has happened to me is not because I am good or done something “right”, but because God is good, kind, merciful.  So when I am given something “for free”, I receive it with thankfulness, without the expectation that I can pay the person back. Likewise, I am feeling increasingly free to give where I feel led, be that my money, time, energy, and attention and to not worry so much about the response I get. I think this is a good thing, even if it sometimes violates others expectations.
    If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
    Luke 6:32-36

  • Attitudes & Dating

    The following is part of a series of posts sharing what I have learned about dating and marriage which is to complement the teaching series we are doing at Young Adult Fellowship. While this post specifically addresses dating relationships, the core principle is equally applicable to platonic friendships or relationships with coworkers.

    I have had countless conversations over the years with friends about how hard the “dating dance” is and how there are so many potential pitfalls. From these conversations it is clear that my friends so much want someone who will cherish them, someone to share the joys of life with, but finding that person is so difficult and painful they sometimes wonder if it is worth it.  I encourage them to seek to understand how God wants bless them, be it though  singleness or marriage. What’s most important is to be open to what God is doing.

    I have often noticed my friends struggle more than is necessary because they are seeking romance but really want intimacy. But even when my friends have known what they are looking for, there are still plenty of struggles. I often hear my friends wrestling with:

    • Why can’t I find someone I want to date?
    • Why don’t people want to date me?
    • How can I avoid being taken advantage of, how can I be sure I don’t give away too much?

    Often I suggest to my friends that they need a mind shift, a new approach to dating. An approach that moves from the realm of chemistry and instant connection into the realm of intimacy and friendship which can be the basis for a wondrous relationship.

    Listening to Unlock the Secret to Building Strong Relationships, a podcast interviewing Logan Ury, a behavioral scientist and the Director of Relationship Science at Hinge would be a great follow-on to this post

    Don’t Be a Consumer…

    The question “what are you looking for?” in relation to who to date is understandable, but can put us in the wrong mindset. I have noticed some people looking at potential dates almost the way they would look at cars. Comparing price, features, style, etc. I believe the advent of online dating services have fueled this tendency. Statistics from For Love or Money: Does Online Dating Really Work? indicate that 73% marriage partners still meet the “old fashion way”, but I think online dating services have changed many people’s expectations, even those who don’t meet their future spouse through a dating site. There are countless profiles one can peruse. These sites give the impression that there is a huge, an almost unlimited number of possible dating / marriage partners. These sites provide an illusion that if we are willing to wait, we will be able to find exactly what we are looking for.

    Most of us believe the more choices we have, the happier we will be, because we will be able to choice what is perfect. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Barry Schwartz throughly explores this issue in his book The Paradox of Choice. What he, and a number of other researchers have found is that if you give people more choices, they tend to make worse choices, and they tend to be less content with choices they make… especially if they believe the will be able to change their mind in the future. This was nicely summarized in Dan Gilbert’s talk Why are We Happy. Applied to dating and marriage, if you are getting involved with someone, but are thinking in the back of your mind, “Maybe this is the right person, maybe they aren’t, there are other people if this doesn’t work out” you are less likely to see the relationship go well. I am not advocating to going back to arranged marriages, or that you have to marry the first person you date, but I will suggest how you approach the relationship may have much more to do with how successful the relationship is than picking the perfect person.

    The final way a consumer orientation will lead you wrong is that it can set your expectations too high. You start to have an expectation that this wonderful person you have found will make your life better, they will fulfill you. The relationship will go well because you found someone great. This is doomed. No matter how special or wonderful the other person is, that if you are looking to them to complete you, to meet all your needs and desires, you will be sadly disappointed. You are designed for life in a community. You are designed to be in relationship with God. There are many things that only God can provide. You will get nothing but grief if you decide to remove all the other avenues God might use in your life by saying “my date or my spouse, they are my provision”. Furthermore, if you have troubling finding that one person, or the person you found fails you, it’s very easy to turn the consumer thinking around and wonder if the reason you have having trouble is because you aren’t a good “product”, e.g. that you aren’t worthy of love. The best ground to start a relationship with someone else is to be confident in God’s love for you.

    … Be an Investor

    A very common issues I have seen a number of friends struggle with, especially though who are trying online dating, is a fear that they are going to be taken advantage of, that they will give away things while dating that they shouldn’t. One response to this in some Christian circles toward avoiding “dating”, and to embrace “courtship”. I have often seen people taking a “courtship” approach avoid some pitfalls of modern dating run headlong into others. A fear of being taken from, of lose, demonstrates a perspective which is rooted in taking rather than giving. People can’t steal something you are freely giving. I have seem people (typically men) who are reluctant to invest in a relationship unless they are sure that the other person is going to reciprocate their interest. This self protection almost always results in a failed relationship because it shows a lack of courage, and an unwillingness to love unconditionally. I think the secret to good dating relationships is to be focused on giving rather than taking.

    I encourage my friends to ask the questions “What am I bringing into this relationship?” and “what am I investing into this relationship?” This is a focus on service, and looking for opportunities to grow, to learn, to care for someone else. My experience is that relationships where one or both of the participants viewed the relationship as a context to learn and grow in love did well. That’s not to say that the dating led to marriage, or marriage didn’t have their struggles, just that if the dating relationships ended, both people tended to part as friends, that the marriages were able to push through the tough times, and that the couple would say that the dating relationship was a force of good in their life. For me, this perspective was instilled by the teaching and example of the leaders of the church I attended in college and as a young adult. Much of what I was taught got turned into the book Spiritual Love which was written by two of our pastor / elders. If I was to select a single sentence from this book, to extract the key to a successful relationship, it would be “… is not to find the right person, but to become the right person: a person who has learned to practice Christian love at the most intimate level”. Note: the content of this book is valuable, but it’s not as balanced as I would like, there are other books about dating and marriage I would recommend.

    Rather that viewing dating primarily as a way to determine if a person is your future mate it is much better to view your dating relationship as an opportunity to learn to love someone, to grow, and to help your date to grow. Dating relationships provide wonderful opportunities to develop relationship skills. Dating provides opportunities to influence each other. To encourage each other, to challenge each other to grow. Dating provides time to learn about someone. During the early stages of a dating relationship I would suggest that we need to strongly resist the tendency to ask “is this the person I will marry?”. Rather, just enjoy learning who this wondrous person is. They are fearfully and wonderfully made. God is doing something special with them. What an adventure to get to see the arc of their life. Maybe you will get to share life’s journey as a spouse, maybe as a friend… but whatever the outcome, the time spent dating someone isn’t wasted. The time will come when you will have to decide how a relationship will evolve, but there are many good outcomes, several of which don’t involve marriage. Even chance encounters with people you will never see again could be a blessing.

    When we feel attraction toward someone else, it’s hard to know if we are actually investing in them, loving them, or if we are largely being driven by our emotions and desires. Our hearts are best revealed when what we desire is denied. Our response to a relationship ending truly reveals our heart, but that’s too late. I sometimes encourage people to do a thought experiment. Lets say a young man is struggling through his feelings toward a young lady. I ask him to consider how he would response if after a bit the women he is attracted to shares that she feels that she has been called to go to Siberia as a missionary in the next year, and he didn’t. I will ask the young man “If you are confident that she is called to this ministry could you set aside your personal desire for her as a romantic partner, join with others to provide financial support, pray for her daily, encourage her to follow strongly after the Lord, even though that takes her to a distant country?” I might even challenge him to imagine he knows a godly man who was also called to Siberia. I ask “Could you introduce them knowing they might get married which would be a blessing for them, giving both a partner in a tough ministry.” If the answer is “I don’t think I could do that” I ask the question “Why not?” This is the sort of love we are called to have.

    Earlier I recommended several books about dating.  The two books that I think are particularly relevant to this post are  The Marriage Builder by Larry Crabb and The Meaning of Marriage by the Kellers. These two books explore the issues I have raised in much more detail.

    As for me, this is a season of singleness. A time to take care of my daughter and to figure out what’s next in life. Of course not dating doesn’t mean you can’t invest in other people’s lives.  I still get the pleasure of  spending time with new and old friends, hearing their stories, and maybe helping them along the way. Being in community is precious. My final encouragement is to practice love in all your life.

    Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, [dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

    Philippians 4:8-9