It’s not so much for the sake of my husband or myself but for our young children. We found by experience that if we were truthful about not being regular church attenders, the play dates suddenly ended. Thus started the faking of the religious funk.

This is a quote from the Freakonomics blog (link above -- great book) that highlights a recent internal debate of mine: Am I being too overtly "Christian" or not nearly enough?

As I searched my own heart, I quickly realized that the word "Christian" can be used to describe both a belief system and a social culture, and that those two things aren't even remotely the same in many cases. The situation outlined above proves the point. It could be argued that Jesus would encourage his followers to mingle freely with others, as he often did (friend of sinners and all that). The counter argument is to be "in the world, but not of it", to keep oneself pure of the polluting influences of the world. I don't think I am going to resolve that tension in a blog post.

But I am curious: am I the only one who struggles with these thoughts and feelings? When I "play down" my beliefs and act as if "it's no big deal" what others believe, guilt creeps in as I wonder if I am, in fact, ashamed of the gospel. And yet, when I am more outspoken I feel very much like a Pharisee and fear that I have missed the heart of God.

I am grateful that I go to a church that is trying to be more about the heart of Jesus and less about "Christian culture", but this article got me thinking. Are there areas of my life where I am pretending so that I can make my life easier? Is the solution to find my own individual way and live it with courage, consequences be damned?

I'm still thinking and wondering. How about you?

 

I just couldn't say a thing and he began to tell me how important my role was, what an inspiration it was. And you have to understand we were in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, people were regularly being attacked by dogs, and marchers were being hosed on the television every night, real life things, and here I am in this futuristic thing on TV and he was so complimentary, he told me "I was so important and the way you have created this role," and I am just looking at him and looking at him and I remember I just kept hoping he'd never stop talking. Because his voice is just... you know the voice. And I finally just start saying, thank you so much Dr. King and I am shaking his hand and still shaking from nervousness and I said thank you so much and I am really going to miss my co-stars.

And at this his face totally changed, and he said "What are you talking about?!" and so I told him I would be leaving the show, because; and that was as far as he let me go, and he said, "STOP! You cannot! You cannot leave this show! Do you not understand what you are doing?! You are the first non-stereotypical role in television! Of intelligence, and of a woman and a woman of color?! That you are playing a role that is not about your color! That this role could be played by anyone? This is not a black role. This is not a female role! A blue eyed blond or a pointed ear green person could take this role!" And I am looking at him and looking at him and buzzing, and he said, "Nichelle, for the first time, not only our little children and people can look on and see themselves, but people who don't look like us, people who don't look like us, from all over the world, for the first time, the first time on television, they can see us, as we should be!
As intelligent, brilliant, people! People in roles other than slick tap dancers, and maids, which are all wonderful in their own ways, but for the first time we have a woman, a WOMAN, who represents us and not in menial jobs, and you PROVE it, this man [Gene Rodenberry] proves and establishes a precedent that validates what we are marching for because three hundred years from today there we are, and there you are, in all our glory and all your glory! And you CANNOT leave!"

And I did not leave.

First, you must read this article from scifiwire.com: http://scifiwire.com/2010/01/the-true-story-of-how-dr.php

Don't worry.

I will wait.

As a white, middle-class, college educated, science fiction loving, God following man born in the early 1970s, this article leaves me tangled. My heart is humming in resonance with the core of the message here, but the details are historical fact rather than personal experience. Still, there are a few themes that stick with me.

First, I have a deeper appreciation for the work of Dr. King. That he loved Star Trek humanized my imagination of him. That he saw the gender issue as well as the racial issue deepens my appreciation for the breadth of his vision. Speeches and newspaper articles have taught me the historical detail, but an anecdote like this one reveals the heart of the man. Dr. King seems less distant in history to me now.

Second, it reminds me of C.S. Lewis' beliefs about story: that themes and ideas that are too big for this world are better played out in another. When the current world could not accept the simple truth that God made us equals, Star Trek painted a future where everyone knew it. Yes, Star Trek still held on to some female stereotypes (hello crazy uniforms and alien ladies for Kirk to conquer), but it is good to know that the vision was Equality and the rest was probably a cultural vocabulary coloring the telling.

The truth is, my cultural context distances me from the reality of the Civil Rights movement. I have understood it, in part, and related to it as historical fact, not a front row seat to what long-coming, long-overdue justice looks like. Any discrimination I may have experienced in my life doesn't even register on the scale of what the Civil Rights movement resisted. It is a world I can barely imagine, but know to be true.

In the same way, fairy tales and science fiction open my eyes to a world where justice prevails, good triumphs, evil is vanquished, and truth is real enough to hold in your hand. I can barely imagine it, but I know it to be true.

So for those of you who think that Science Fiction is all about robots and lasers, please understand that there can be so much more to it. Good writing and great stories give me handles for ideas too big for this world. What does it mean to be equals? What does courage look like? Is there any cost too great for seeing justice done? I can wrestle with these thoughts because of great stories.

And for those of us who love to do the thinking part, but fall short on action, I hope we find the courage to let the big ideas of our favorite stories spill over into real life. I hope that we can dare to try and bring that idealized future one a little bit closer to today's reality.

As a great man once said, "I have a dream..."

As I brace myself for the onslaught that is Black Friday through Christmas Day, this little video has made me pause and think.

I realize that I don't have a real grasp on the world economy and how I impact it.

I realize that I am, indeed, soaking in a culture that cries out for "More! MORE!"

I realize that I want to change, but that I always don't know how.

This little video has got me thinking.

This picture has sparked a heated conversation between my heart and my head.

Not everyone knows that I was once an admin guy at a soup kitchen - my first real job out on my own. It was a good job for me to have because I was a college educated, suburban, white kid that needed a clue and needed one badly.

The reality of the problems of homelessness and poverty is far more complex than I want to admit. I knew people who were trying to play the system and get a free ride. I knew people who were working hard in a system that was, at the time, rewarding "not working". I knew folks who were homeless because of addiction. I knew folks who were homeless because of mental illness.

And I don't know what to do with the guy above. What's his story? Is he a professional panhandler? (yes, they exist. Yes, you can make a living doing it) Did he get hooked up with PayPal at a job training class? Or is this just the future? Online transactions for everything?

I'm not sure, but it sure has me thinking.

The stereotypical library is dying -- and it's taking its shushing ladies, dank smell and endless shelves of books with it.

Libraries are trying to imagine their futures with or without books.

Books are being pushed aside for digital learning centers and gaming areas. "Loud rooms" that promote public discourse and group projects are taking over the bookish quiet. Hipster staffers who blog, chat on Twitter and care little about the Dewey Decimal System are edging out old-school librarians.

And that's just the surface. By some accounts, the library system is undergoing a complete transformation that goes far beyond these image changes.

I just finished this thought-provoking article about the future of libraries. As the printed book becomes less ubiquitous -- A fact that terrifies, excites, and saddens me all at once -- libraries are having to make choices about how they will handle the future and answer teh question: why do I exist?

It reminds me of conversations I had with a former boss. I don't recall if I had read it somewhere, or if he had, but we were discussing two contrasting stories. The first story centered on a manufacturer of high quality drill bits and parts. They were an American company that was at the top of their game. When it came to high quality precision drilling, everyone thought of them. Until someone overseas started o move in on the market. Using the same high quality materials and processes, this overseas competitor was able to sell a comparable product at a lower price. Even when this American company cut out all the fat, the fact remained that even if they sold their parts at cost, they simply could not compete with this new player in the market.

So, of course, they had a meeting.

And in this meeting, an amazing thing happened. What was supposed to be the meeting to find a way to keep selling drill bits or get out of the business became a meeting about what the company really did for business. Did they sell drill bits? Or did the sell high quality, precision holes? Realizing that they were beat if they only sold drill bits, they decided to stay in the hole making business and became a world-class manufacturer of laser drills and cutters.

To some, it would seem that they gave up on their original plan. To them, they were just finding a new way to do the business that they were really about.

Contrast that attitude with those of the locomotive companies in the early 20th century. At one point, trains carried over 90% of inter-city travel, but with the advent of cars and then passenger airlines, these train companies were in crisis: Are we in the train business? Or are we in the transportation business? Most, if not all, of these companies decided that they were train companies and eventually failed. How could their stories have been different if they had expanded their offerings to include something else?

As interested as I am to find out how the library answers these same fundamental questions, I also take these stories as a reminder to myself: Know who you are, know what you do, but don't define yourself with language that limits. Change will be devastating if my present situation is the best realization of who I think I am. But ideas about myself that can fit what I am doing now and leave room for what I may be doing tomorrow will not only keep me sane, but they will keep me moving forward.

... the bigger issue might be what keeping a Doesn't Count List reveals what I believe about God. Apparently, in my heart, God is still up in heaven keeping a massive list of things that count and things that don’t count. He’s Santa Claus and I’m a kid trying to hide the pieces of a broken vase under my bed in the hope that they don’t count. Christ’s death must not have been enough, because in my mind, there are still two lists going.

I get this wrong more often than I want to admit. God isn't a score keeper. I have often imagined taht his primary job has been to keep up those lists: the Book of Life, all those commandments, fruits of the Spirit, etc. And that led me to the conclusion that my relationship with God is based on the report card.

Did Bill improve over last semester? Can he play well with others? Is he meeting the class average in compassion?

I can relate to those feelings even more now, watching my kids bring home their school report cards. The question on their faces is "How am I doing? Am I doing well enough to stay loved?" As a Dad, I've recently made the choice to not talk about report cards with my kids much. I'll regularly tell them I am proud of them, that I love them, that I love being their Dad. I'll ask them how they think they are doing. I'll let them know when they cross a boundary.

Would God be any different? Would He be so much better at it than I am? I think so.

Click the link at the bottom of the quote to read the whole article and discover on of my new favorite bloggers.

Like many guys who link to this post, I too am just finding the value in "Early to bed, early to rise." A typical awake hour between 10P-12P would be filled with TV or a movie. Between 5A-7A, a typical hour is filled with writing, journaling, prayer...

Why is the obviously self-evident so hard to do?