Polygrafik

January 28, 2010

Never About The Sex

A Preface
Throughout this journal, I will be using the term “idol.” An idol can take on many forms; forms that extend beyond golden sculptures of ancient gods of wisdom. An idol in this journal is anything and everything except the proclaimed God of Heaven and Earth. It can be food, sex, television, Twitter, etc. These are all good and glorious things – seriously, glorious. They become “idols” when a good thing like these is taken and made ultimate in a person’s life. It’s fairly simple to spot idols in people’s lives; we call them “addictions.” This act is referred to in scripture as “idolatry.”

The difference between the way that holy scripture and our society view idolatry is the degree of sensitivity. It’s typically not until a man is writhing on the floor, foaming at the mouth that society will say that he has an addiction to drugs. The bible begs us to check our heart out constantly and question what our lives revolve around. The writers of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and 1st & 2nd John who warn us about idols were in affectionate relationships with God and He sent them to inform us about keeping our guard up against these sensitive addictions for the sake of our fragile, wayward hearts.

Understanding The Idol

The idol brings about slavery … We cannot help ourselves – we must follow our god. They poison the heart into complete dependence on the idol for salvation and hope (Is. 44:17) and yet, when we are in trouble, they cannot save us (Jer. 2:28). In Ezekiel 14:1-11, we have the unique term “idols in their hearts,” which the people “set before their face” (v.3, 4). God says that we set up idols in our hearts, but he will seek to “recapture the hearts of the people” (v.5) This means that an idol is not primarily a material image, but some thing or relation or person or cause that we make the center of out hope and affection.

Dr. Timothy J. Keller

Idols do not rule over us. To clarify, an idol within itself does not maintain the capacity or power to exclusively rule over a particular group of people. Rather than recognizing that we are a people created in God’s image, we make our idol a god created in our own image (Isaiah 2:8). Keller clarifies that it is only, in a sense, “worshiping ourselves, or a reflection of our own sensibility” (emphasis added). This is the only way that one may understand the possibility and reality of a Christian tragically making Jesus Christ an idol.

Making Jesus Christ an Idol
You might ask yourself: isn’t Jesus Christ being our idol the whole point of Christianity? In a word, no. When Christ becomes a part of a person’s life, that person recognizes his finiteness, his inadequacy, his foolishness, and his desire to be loved, and he can’t help but surrender to God through seeking to comprehend Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross; he is surrendering to Who is now his Father and understanding that he was created in His image. He can’t help but find joy in showing love to Him and pleasing Him wholeheartedly.

Making an idol out of Jesus is the exact opposite; in Jesus idolatry, man takes the historical person-hood of Jesus, makes him into the man’s own image – taking and leaving whatever characteristics that he may like – and serving this idolized Jesus for some type of reward or fulfillment in return. This man may serve in his church, memorize the bible, drive people around, but all only in vain. There’s no affection, nor understanding of affection from God. Ultimately, he doesn’t feel loved because he has his eye on something else to fulfill him, let it be praise, poise, pride, or prosperity. The real God doesn’t work like this. We can’t make him owe us through multitudes of good works. The idea is that we’re broken as we are, and that we need a mighty rock to hold onto in a sea of enveloping sand.

What Truly Enslaves
I don’t believe that idols are what enslave us. We enslave ourselves to idols, but in search of something else. When a man overindulges in food habitually, I don’t believe that there is merely an addiction to food. When a man overindulges in video games, I don’t believe that there is merely an addiction to video games. We give the idols power over us because we believe that if we worship it, it will give us the thing that we want. Paul Tripp – a man who makes me feel extremely awkward as I read his books, because most of what he writes on the page is something I’ve mulled over in my head at least 10 times – brings the greatest amount of clarity in his message at the 2008 Desiring God Conference: “The War of Words & The Wonder of God.” We live in a world of “I want.” It’s all about what “I want” and we will step on whoever we need to step on and twist whatever we need to twist to secretly get what we want. All of us.

Last year I lived by myself in a spankin’ new apartment near the “Main Street” of my town: Olden Avenue. In this town, Olden Avenue was pretty much the hotspot for everything fast food and bargain Italian, among your local Blockbuster and Shop Rite. The thing about living in my apartment was just that; I was living in my own apartment with my own kitchen and I was fully capable of cooking myself healthy, hardy meals. I gained a lot of weight that year. My relationship with fast food is pretty intimate. I actually blame it on Evangelicalism and it’s love of discussing, planning and doing everything ministry-related over McDonald’s or Applebee’s. It was only when I became a Christian that I ate out almost every day of the week. I pretty much stayed inside all week before that transformation. However, that year in my new apartment was different. I was eating more and putting on more pounds. I made a real idol out of greasy food. Funny thing is that I didn’t even realize it until this past Sunday.

Finding My Comfort
That year I found myself constantly coming home stressed out. Closing my apartment door behind me was like finally taking the pieces of tape holding my smile up. Just as I put my stuff down and thought about how I could remedy myself, I could only think of one thing:

Taco Bell.

I found myself needing it. At first it was just like “Wow! This tastes really good. I’ve found a new restaurant to add to my library.” But my context of desire changed those nights that I came home. I said to myself “This food will satisfy me, it will fulfill all of the expectations that weren’t filled all throughout my day. Things sucked today and … I’m entitled to this.”

That’s where it was. That’s where it lay: my entitlement. This is, by the way, one of my biggest problems. Who cares that it’s unhealthy? Who cares what it will do to me? I’m entitled to this. And this will fill in the blanks of my life if I can just have it, with a strawberry slushie, and an episode of House M.D. playing in front of me until I pass out on the couch.

This was indeed my plan of salvation, people.

What was my idol? Food. Was it what drove me? No, not really. I wanted painlessness, healing, and comfort. Taco Bell didn’t call my iPhone. I wanted to use it to get what I wanted. And I worshiped it. How? Not by getting on my knees and bowing to a burrito. That’s not how today’s Americans worship. Americans worship in another way: I kept giving it money to it in desperate hopes of salvation. I got no such thing. All I got were false hopes and enough juice to give it another go the next day. Keller points out that idolatry is “a way to perform and appease a god so that it will give you security, influence, comfort, and power.” I wanted it all, and I wanted it all right now.

It’s All Over a Man’s Life
This goes on today in my relationships. Over and over, I do the same thing: I take my faith, this faith that always gives the benefit of the doubt, always assumes perfection in knowledge and action, and always takes everything with a whole salt-shaker, and I invest it in a man who I want to be like. Then the reality of their imperfect humanity hits: they sin. And it hits hard. It takes months for me to recover from disappointment and hopelessness. I stubbornly refuse to give it to God; it’s as if I’m asking to get hurt every time. And time and time again I demand that God be someone I can see, converse with, and hug. Unfortunately, in my travels, I never try to heighten my senses in our relationship so that I’d realize that He is all I will ever need to be and that He can be felt if one seeks wholeheartedly. I fall back down into the world of “I want.”

I want painlessness.

I want male affirmation.

I want the childhood that was taken away from me.

But I think I really just want God.

So what do you say to your obese best friend who is addicted to food? I don’t know. Hopefully you know him or her well enough to find the heart of the issue. Maybe the issue isn’t that they’re hellbent on screwing up their health. In that case, sharing with them the reality that they may have serious medical problems in a couple years may not do much but spark an initial knee-jerk reaction. That may not keep them in a gym if their heart issues have to deal with loneliness or abandonment. Maybe if they could be counseled and shown that God can fill that specific cup to an overflow – and how exactly that can happen – then food wouldn’t seem like much of an escape. The idea is that the light of God is so bright, that everything else appears dim and frail. We’ve all got idols blinding us. Ever thought of searching for yours? How empty does your life look without it?

More to come. This is always on my mind.

This might be too late, but I truly am so, so sorry for the people I’ve trampled along my path towards realizing all of this.

January 20, 2010

Ephraim

I resonate with David when he said “God has made me fruitful in the land of affliction.” I never really got into poetry as much I’d like to, but this piece got to me.

Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move,
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart of Spring
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.

Written by Christopher Fry

December 24, 2009

Why I’m Enrolling in CCEF for Certification & Counseling

The following is an excerpt from Paul David Tripp’s War of Words

Recently I watched my sons argue with each other. This was nothing new; they are two years apart and have had many arguments. In fact, this particular argument is one they have had many times before. Yet this time it captured my attention. Their words were laden with accusation. Their tone was angry. No one stopped to listen as the volley words escalated and the volume increased. It wasn’t long before they had abandoned the issue at hand to hurl hurts from the past at each other. They both spoke out of pain, frustration and anger, impatience and jealousy. They weren’t speaking to solve problems or listening to understand. Their words were simply weapons in a war. Each of them wanted to silence the other and win …

As I listened, two thoughts gripped me. The first was that I didn’t want to have to deal with this “war” the first thing in the morning. But the second thought was more theological and more gripping. I realized that I had never taught my boys how to argue and fight. I had never taught them how to wound each other with words, I had never lectured them on the right moment to dump a record of wrongs on another person … Yet my sons fenced with confidence and skill. They had a natural talent to use words to do exactly what their angry hearts desired …

As I began to intervene, my heart was filled with sadness. I could stop the argument, but I could not change what really needed to be changed. Moreover, I was powerfully aware that what needed to be changed within them still needed to be changed within me … I spoke to my boys with tears that morning, because for once I was more gripped by the gravity of our spiritual need than by my frustration over another petty quarrel to solve.

There is something incredibly real and nearly breathtaking about this insight. The emergence of a “heart issue” mentality is what captured my heart (no pun) about Christianity and Jesus Christ in the first place. The idea that God was in the business of transforming hearts said something to me. Not only did the promise of a changed heart mean something to me, but so did the idea that I could be used to get to the meat of what pains my friends and family. The objective wasn’t to be Mr. Fix-It – you can’t be. And it wasn’t to make converts either – I alone am not capable of doing that. It was, however, to make disciples and get to the heart of our issues. I’m going to be using the word “heart” a lot.

“I spoke to my boys with tears that morning, because for once I was more gripped by the gravity of our spiritual need than by my frustration over another petty quarrel to solve … The war of words that morning went so much deeper than [learning better communication techniques or a better sense of location and timing]“

Brian Hall, the man who for whatever reason was blessed by God with the patience to put up with me and have serious 1-on-1 conversations with me until I understood this Gospel message, understood this idea above all things. It is undeniable that his knowledge in the field of Sociology served him well in trying to figure out how people operate. The issue of the heart couldn’t be ignored and it couldn’t be silenced.

I Am Messed Up
In the midst of all of the craziness going on in my house I’ve realized something deep and true: I have major issues. Issues that can’t be addressed with a slap on the wrist and a fortune cookie bible verse. Issues that probably aren’t addressed with just a really good dinner; eating a lot of food with Christians until I forget; having a lot of “fellowship” events until I forget. If the function of fellowship within the church in the midst of the darkest nights of the soul were to oversaturate damaged heart-issues with clean fun, it does about the same amount of transformation as just hitting up the bar after a day of stress.

Don’t misinterpret; fellowship has a biblical function and purpose, it just extends far beyond fun events.

You Don’t Just “Wake Up on the Wrong Side of the Bed”
I’ve seen people lash out at others with bitter attitude and explain their bitterness by saying “I woke up grumpy.” That’s honestly a load of hogwash. There is no such thing. Something happened, someone did something, you thought something yesterday or over a decade ago, and there’s a serious heart issue going on. And that doesn’t just mean “Yeah, I’m prideful.” Confessing “I’m prideful,” is an amazing first step to understanding our brokenness. Unfortunately, it is also the vaguest understanding of what’s going on in your mind and triggering your thoughts. Pride is always the beginning: thinking “I can” instead of “God can. Healing can start from understanding where that pride trickles down to in our lives. From what I read in these books and articles and what I hear in these messages and conferences, CCEF is all about figuring out how to get to the bottom of this.

I could genuinely use the guidance of leaders with this vision in my life and I could also use a heads-up on what they believe and hold true to through scripture for self-examination and help for others. I don’t see myself being a counselor behind a desk as much as I see myself wanting to be a useful help to my friends.

Fear of Hate
One of my troubles is being able to share what I’m currently going through. I think the reason I don’t like sharing is because I’m afraid that I will hate the person I’m telling for not caring. I fear that I’ll hate them for not extending a hand in their actions. My father hates the world of talk; he always talks about how his life on earth has been filled with people talking about all that they’re going to do for him, how much they’re going to care about him, and none of it manifesting itself into real action. I share in his pessimism quite a bit. It gets to a nasty level of selfishness, though I’ll also say that it never arises unaccompanied. Though this is an issue of mine, I do always end up telling someone eventually. This is where trouble arises.

I’m always told that if someone comes to you with an issue, you don’t have to scramble for an answer. I believe in that. I’ve been the victim of terrible advice. What’s bad about terrible advice is that if you don’t realize that it’s terrible, you may actually follow it and end up in a world of hurt after. Anyway, the idea behind “just” listening to someone is that listening in itself is an act of love. I think, in the life of a Christian, it’s more than that though.

Yes! please don’t rush premature advice. Maybe it’s not your role to give advice at all. But people wear their pain like battle scars – especially from childhood – and the scars will continue to resurface in different little ways as long as we live in this world of sin. It may be in a feisty attitude here and there, meta-social anxiety from sensitivity to rejection, a distrust of authority from being wronged by a parent, anything. The leaders at CCEF seem committed to getting to the bottom of where this pain is coming from. But they do it in the best way: they use the eyeglasses of Christ to get there and His atoning sacrifice as the foundation for healing. There is no one method to loving someone. There are so many different issues that people have. But one thing that Brian communicated to me in his actions – he never verbally said it to me – was “It is so important that you learn, grow, and repent. This world is not going to be given to you on a silver platter. You’re going to have to be a leader. However, in this battle, in your struggle to run the race, I will fight with you to get to the bottom of this.”

This made Christ’s power to transform people feel so real to me. I don’t know where it has been recently, but I hope to find something like it where I’m going.

3 Comments

Filed under Contemplative

December 23, 2009

A Native Gmail App for iPhone

I’m a geek. I tinker with and develop things on your LCD. After waiting and eventually getting tired of waiting, I figured out a neat little way to get a “native” Gmail app on your iPhone.

The Problem:
What’s the problem? If you want Gmail, you can enter all of your SMTP/IMAP information into the Mail Application on your iPhone. But what do you miss out on by doing that? Everything that makes Gmail the most superior email client there ever was (seriously). For one, you lose the threading of emails into one email “conversation.” What does it look like when you’ve replied back and forth with some friends in an email? An organized conversation on Gmail. But an absolute mess on your iPhone app.

Why don’t you just navigate to Gmail on your iPhone’s Safari browser?

Ew. Why?

Yes, you get all of the advantages of Gmail. If you save the website as a favorite on your Home Screen, you even get a nifty – yet somewhat aesthetically unsatisfying – icon with your other apps. However, what happens when you tap it? It opens through your Safari browser; if you’ve opened it before, the phone could forget and open another tab in safari with the same Gmail website, leaving you with 10 Gmail tabs on your Safari at the end of the…hour; You lose about 40% of your screen real estate with the address bar and the bottom options bar.

Plus, it just feels ghetto.

Now why does using Gmail on Safari trump the Mail app?

HTML 5!

The UI is interactively brilliant. And best of all, it operates like a real native app because HTML5 allows it to store information (up to 10MB) locally on your iPhone storage for offline usage. Suppose you were reading an email that contained an address for a party. You’re on your way to the party and need the address, but your AT&T 3G connection sucks (as it typically does). You can view that email again in an automatic offline mode.

The Solution:
A Gmail app that’s really the web Gmail app, minus the loss of screen room with Safari UI junk and the unending sea of new tabs. Using my brain for about 5 seconds and little-to-no elbow grease in Dreamweaver got this to happen beautifully. A tutorial for this solution is below:

Let’s Begin!

Here is my home screen with my Gmail shortcut. I favor this logo rendering to the default. Maybe that's just me.

Let’s do this people. Here’s the app icon on my home screen. If you’re wondering what the heck is up with my home screen, I have a custom sense UI running on my iPhone. I’m a big fan of Android and especially of what HTC has done with the UI on the HTC Hero/Eris. That’s actually not the main screen. Like Android, there is a home screen with a vintage clock, weather, and a gray pullout to this shelf of apps.

The Boot Screen

Do you like?

When you boot the app, you will even be welcomed by this neat boot screen as the site loads in the background. I’m a big fan of the Gotham typeface lately, so it naturally became the weapon of choice.

Step 1:

Feel free to check out satchelldrakes.com!

Point your browser to “http://www.satchelldrakes.com/gmail”. Pay very close attention to the next steps before doing this. They must be executed with tact!

Step 2:

Your skills must be like that of a rogue for this part.

Okay, here is the part that you need to do quickly. This app is nothing more than a portal to the Gmail website. In the HTML file that ports you there from my website, I have offset the loading time by approximately 4 seconds so that you can execute this next step. Once you hit “Go” for the website I’ve provided, quickly tap the “+” icon on the bottom bar of your Safari app. Next, hit the “Add to Home Screen” button and save it to your Home Screen.

Step 3:

If you see this screen, you have succeeded!

This is an image of success. Once it’s saved, boot up the app to your new, functionally native, full-screened Gmail app!

The new app icon should load correctly, though if you didn’t choose to save it quick enough, you may have to try again. I got it on the first try.

3 Comments

Filed under Geekery

December 14, 2009

Litres of Love

You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.

Psalm 4:7

The taste of this verse should be likened to crystal waters in the dismal, gaping chasm of desert surrounding you. I felt the need to say that despite how kitschy-Reformed-blogger-John-Piper-mini-me it sounds, because this is what it really feels like. I am on a deep, dim road of understanding just how loved and saved from darkness I am with nothing but a candle before my feet to see the next step.

Until my day of completion, I may never completely understand the depth of love lavished upon me nor the caliber of salvation given to me through the litres that Christ shed from Calvary to the Cross for me. From gazing at The Road to Calvary by Herri Met de Bles for a half-hour only thinking to myself “that was a long walk,” to completely forgetting the joy that was made available for me as I wade in a bout of depression. Nothing can quite take me from the reality that this taste – the taste of the Lord as my celebratory feast and raised glass of aromatic wine – is nothing like anything that I have ever experienced in this world even at the mountaintop of pleasures that are willingly offered. The prize is elsewhere.

Some Christians may not see it like this. Not everyone is the same (which is beautiful, believe me). During my freshman year of college, it manifested itself a lot differently. I hadn’t wholeheartedly read the bible yet, so it was hard to articulate my thoughts or feelings towards God. In a valley of discouragement, I decided that I would “reject” God and go back to my life without Him. It was oddly the most awkward week of my life. I couldn’t leave him alone, and not in a weird, stockholm syndrome type of way. Rather, even when I rebelled, after every action I thought:

“I’m doing this because you abandoned me. I’m doing this because Your way is not worth it. This is me forgetting about you…You gone yet?”

God never really left my side. He was always in my thoughts even when I wanted to believe that I hated him. Even in my hate, I couldn’t actually ‘leave’ him per se because I wanted him to know how I felt. I think I wanted him to care. I know that I’m not the only one who has had an episode like this in his past. So to anyone out there who has shared these thoughts: If you don’t believe in the power and work of God and you don’t want him as a part of your life, why are thoughts towards him still in your head? Why do you want him to care?

For me, I wanted him to care, but I didn’t want him to move furniture around in my life. To our benefit, God is in the business of rearranging everything, even our fears.

There’s a hymn that I think a decent amount of more traditional churches sing, called “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,” written by Helen Lemmel. Don’t quote me on this: I haven’t been in church that long and definitely don’t study church history for a living. At any rate, the climax of the piece (for myself) goes like this:

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of His glory and grace.”

How does Psalm 4:7 – a reminder of the seemingly inescapable taste of this freedom – encourage us to change, repent of our old ways, and grow in our relationship with God? When we turn our eyes to Jesus and recognize the genuine joy in our hearts brought from his love and atoning sacrifice, it outshines everything else.

A lot of Christian men struggle with pornography and have been trying to stop for years. They want to take up a wife and be able to look at her without attaching or cycling through images of other women. They want her to be the one and only. They have tried white-knuckling restraint and have fell. Terribly. Possibly even deeper than they had started. Lemmel’s hymn brings a real truth to fore. Sexual pleasure will always be pleasurable. Physical interaction will always be stimulating. And praise God for the gift that he has given us in that! A man should never wish that God would take such a blessing away. How foolish. However, if this man comprehends the wonder, power, and immense capacity of grace God has for him and had upon him one Friday afternoon two-thousand years ago, it will outshine any chemical rush of dopamine outside of the context of a Holy matrimony.