heath's blog

"For this slight momenary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." 2 Cor 4:17-18

This was a scripture in our small group bible study this week. It prompted some good discussion, and I have not stopped thinking about it. I don't think Paul's point here is to urge his readers to live for unseen things. He does that elsewhere. By this point in 2 Corinthians, it is an assumption that the Christian is looking to unseen things.

Here Paul argues that he is able to overcome his current suffering for Christ by looking to eternal things rather than transient things. Similar principles may apply to general suffering if we can understand it in light of the seen/unseen dichotomy. However, sometimes it is our focus on transient things that causes us suffering. This is particularly true of psycological suffering such as stress or anxiety. We worry about the opinions of others. We stress about the level of education our children are receiving when they will almost certainly be in the top 10 percent. According to Matthew 6:25-34 even our fear about where our next meal will come from is misplaced. And these are probably the most important things that take our energy. Paul, however, is suffering because of the rejection of the Gospel. His suffering is both psychological and physical, but he can overcome because he looks to unseen realities for his true identity and comfort. He knows God is his father, and he trusts that whatever happens, it is the result of God's care for him.

This prompted me to wonder about what makes me think I suffer, what I spend my money on, and what I spend my time doing. Could someone look at my life and say, "He is living for unseen things?" I am not sure. I think this may be the true mark of the Christian. It will look different at different times and in different people's lives, but I think it is the difference. Do I live out of fear an anxiety that comes from living for transient things or out of the confidence that comes from living for eternal things?

In my discussion with my small group, I said that maybe we should pray for opportunities to suffer as Paul did. Thankfully, some of them pulled me back from my asceticism. Instead, we should pray that the Holy Spirit will not leave us alone living for seen things. As we are driven to live for unseen things we will inevitably suffer because we will be running contrary to the world.

If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. John 15:18

Recently I was listening to the soundtrack of O, Brother, Where art Thou? and heard a very interesting song. The song is entitled The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Basically, it is a hobo ballad about a hobo paradise originally recorded in the 1930's.

It mentions a lake of whisky, streams of alcohol, cigarette trees, jails of tin, policemen with wooden legs, and various other questionable attributes of paradise. It really shocked me to find out that it was written in the '30s.

Even though I reject the typical conservative idea that things have been getting worse since the founding fathers, I am still surprised to find a song like this. About the only vice it doesn't mention is illicit sex. And, supposedly the original version was about luring boys to become hobos only to be abused. It reminds me of Pinocchio, another surprisingly dark piece.

I think we are deceived about the decay of the world because we forget two things. We forget that sin entered the world in Adam and that it has been bad for a very, very long time. This basic sinfulness is always present in every culture no matter how nice it appears on the outside. Secondly, we get wrapped up in our own time and place and forget that God is doing something much bigger than our country and our lifetime.

These confusions are further complicated by the prevalence dispensational premillenialism which teaches that the world will get worse and worse until Armageddon. I believe that it is a misunderstanding of scripture and has been detrimental to the spiritual life of the church. Its rise at the same time as the fundamentalist-modernist controversy served to turn the church inward. This exacerbated the average church-gowers myopic vision of the world.

Only in the past couple of decades is the church emerging. Even still, there are decades of ingrowth to overcome and a lot of bad attitudes toward the church from without. It would do us good to concentrate on the ingrowth first. Unfortunately, many of those that are ingrown are leaders. Only God's spirit to turning the church back to the Gospel and away from its various forms of legalism will save true Christianity in America.

Psuedo-christian legalism is as bad if not worse than pagan hedonism. At a worldly level pseudo-christian religion, it is better, but spiritually, it is worse. It is the religion of the Pharisees, which Christ rejected 2 millennia ago.

A friend of mine has a shirt about "LABS", that is Like A Brother Syndrome. He says that I have it. I have certainly never had that bad boy appeal. I have always been a "nice guy". For better or worse, I have learned to be extremely diplomatic. In contrast, however, God is freeing me more and more to not just be a nice guy. I can actually voice my opinion and join the argument.

What does God have to do with this? I used to think that I had to be a nice guy in order to be a Christian. I am probably still hypersensitive to being considerate to other's feelings, but am able with at least some people to be down-right obnoxious. Courtney praises God for it.

Sometime when I was a Senior in high school my personality underwent a big change. I don't know if that is when God really saved me or what, but things really changed. I really became my own man. However, it has taken close to 10 years for that change to work itself out to the surface.

I do occasionally leave a discussion wishing I had said what I was thinking, but now I am probably in danger of saying too much instead of too little. Some might still say I am too reserved, but am working toward the Golden Mean.

This is a concept in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics where he claims that there is a sweet spot for every virtue. For my example there might be the poles of "obnoxious" and "wall-flower". The Golden Mean might be "forthright". Anyway, Aristotle's idea is that whichever side of forthrightness you are on, you should act in accordance with the principle opposite the side you are on.

His idea is that habits produce character and that habits are only produced by action. In my situation, this means that when I am unsure of whether or not I should speak up, I should just do it. Odds are I would err on the side of caution, so I should just go the other way. Aristotle, unfortunately, did not know God's grace. However, God's grace frees us to abandon our sinful patterns because we are free to worship Christ. We are not dominated by the legalistic taskmasters we so slavishly serve without him.

Christ frees us because we see that we are sinful in almost every action. We are constantly depending on his grace. Being afraid to sin or holding back because we might sin just shows how much we are deceived about our current condition. The worst thing I can do is to refuse to act out of fear. This is unbelief out of pride and arrogance. In a sense, this is the only sin. God wants us to make the leap of faith. He wants us to step out on his grace. He wants us to jump up and down on his grace and prove that it will not falter. Then he wants to us to go where he tells us and not look back.

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Courtey put a new theme on her site. Check it out. It looks pretty cool. The header image is from one of my favorite pictures. You can see the whole thing here.

Ain't she gorgeous. I can only take credit for the shot and the cropping on the header image. :-( But on the upside, I get to enjoy her beauty every day.!

Pax's First Haircut

Originally uploaded by bheathr.

Tonight I gave Pax his first haircut. It is probably pretty unusual to get your first haircut at 2 months, but he has quite a mop.

In typical Robinson fashion, it was completely spur of the moment. Following our normal stupid pattern, we decided to give him a haircut right in the middle of the boys' bath at 8:00, their bedtime.

We ended up finishing at 8:40 or so after cleaning up, as best we could, the mixture of hair and water on the floor. It would have been so much easier if we had just waited until we put the older two to bed, but, no, we had to do it right then.

Both Courtney and I have a problem with patience and discipline. We get an idea in our head and can't just finish what we are doing and move on.

I haven't quite figured out our idol(s) with respect to this problem. Please let me know if you have any ideas.

You can only truly love someone when you have extricated all necessity from the relationship. You can't really love someone that you need because it is not free. Freedom is often linked to love in that you must have a free choice in order for love to be free. However, I would say that even if we were theoretically free, we still need God so much our love could not be free. Instead it is in bondage to necessity.

Christ, however, freed us to love him the way he loves us. When he freely died for me, he freed me to freely give love to him. Before I ever wanted anything from God, he died to give me everything I needed. Now, I need nothing. I have been given everything. I am a son of the Most High God. What could I need? I have a right to everything that is Christ's as a heir to God. Now I can love God because he is just beyond wonderful. I can enjoy him, his character, his word, his creation as it was intended, as a gift.

A friend recently emailed me the words from a Casting Crowns song that said, "How refreshing to know you don't need me; How amazing to find that you want me!" They understand the true nature of love. Real love is the desire and enjoyment of another that you do not need.

How do we "need" people? We need people when we seek their approval over God's. We need people when we use them to improve our status. We need people when we use them to manipulate them to do our bidding and make our lives easier.

I would also argue that true love is not "a decision" anymore than it is an emotion. True love always involves the emotions, but much of the time, especially at the beginning, it takes a conscious effort. It is contrary to scripture to say that God loves us with no emotion. Song of Solomon and the Minor prophets show that God's love is full of emotion. However, It took the most extreme act of service on earth for God to demonstrate his love. Sometimes it is difficult for us to love people because they run over our idols: it is difficult because we need them to not offend us. True love is a genuine affection for someone because of the beauty that God has put in them as his image. We let their offenses between them and God and love what is there to love. There is something in everyone.

How can we do this? If we direct our worship toward God, and not idols, we really will need nothing. Why would we do this? We see our father doing it, and we admire him. We want to be like him because he is so cool.

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Courtney and I, along with Courtney's mom, have noticed that women are growing less and less fond of marriage. You might call it the "Sex-in-the-City" effect. Women are waiting later and later to get married. And, more and more women seem to be having children outside of marriage or even outside of a stable relationship with a man.

So, as usual, I am trying to come up with a theory that might help explain this. I believe we can find important clues in Genesis. First of all, I believe that men and women were made for marriage. Genesis 2 is clear that men need women. Women were made to satisfy that need that Adam experienced before Eve was created. It is also clear, then, that women need men. In fact, their satisfaction of their man's need of a "helper suitable" is part of their identity. God reflected this in the way he created man and woman. Man and woman historically have had a relationship of interdependence. Each was suited to a set of particular roles within the family. Society as well reinforced those roles. These functioned as "plausibility structures" for the idea that women really needed to be married to be complete.

However, these plausibility structures have been eroding rapidly since the 1960's. More and more women are highly educated, and the workplace has become very open to women. In addition, society has whole-heartedly accepted the idea of singleness and even single-parenthood. Much of the media encourages people to remain single. Since the idea that being a wife is integral to being a women is less and less plausible, women are reconsidering whether or not the relationship is one that benefits them. Outside of this premise, the answer they are coming to seems to be no at least while they are young.

Part of the curse in Genesis 3 is that women will desire the place and position of their husband, but that he will wrongly use his more dominate position in their relationship. No doubt being married in a fallen world has its problems. Courtney has a counseling degree, and we are both mature Christians and we still struggle to the point of exhaustion at times. It is understandable that someone would want to avoid the situation of having to share everything they have with another selfish human being. Having children is a whole other realm of insanity. The curse on women makes these realities especially poignant for women.

The sad part of this situation is that women will be living more and more unfulfilled lives. That is, they will be living outside the God's design for their lives. For most, this also means living outside the protection of God's laws. And perhaps even worse, more and more men are frustrated that they cannot find a worthy woman for marriage. I think this trend will ultimately feed into the transition of our society to the neo-Victorian society I alluded to in an earlier post. I think it will push men to break out of their doltish habits and return to a manliness that is more in line with godliness. They will reject feminism as a whole, but be reformed by its valid criticisms. And, with better men, women will again begin to see their need for men as intrinsic to their created existence.

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I have been listening to a new band as of late called The Postal Service. It is sort of a neo-techno 80's sounding band that sounds quite original amid the hundreds of same-sounding bands out there. Don't get me wrong, I like some of them, but it is nice to hear something different. In fact, it is a creative tributary of Death Cab for Cutie, another interesting band.

I would say that both the sound and the lyrics are whimsical and charming. For the most part, they are light, unusual for me, but well formed with near-perfect rhythm and rhyme. They are like a clean Eminem with a better vocabulary.

One song, called Recycled Air, which denigrates the fine dried, heated, and cooled air which we breath most of our lives. Now, I understand their sentiments. I too love to step outside an take fresh air into my lungs. In fact, I am trying to develop a habit of getting out of my seat at work and walk around the building every two hour or so. So far, I have found it difficult to interrupt the flow of my work.

However, I have lived in apartment with no central heat or air. Let me tell you it is not particularly pleasant. It gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter. We did have radiators, but we found the temperature difficult to regulate. Poor as we were, we were also forced to dry our clothes on racks in the house. Clothes take a while, like two days, drying in a damp, unairconditioned house. I particularly remember the bed always being slightly damp.

Sometimes I am tempted to overly-romanticize an adventurous life without the creature comforts to which I am accustomed. I won't take those statements back, but it is good to remember why our forefathers might have taken the steps they did to get us to this materialistic, consumeristic culture we have ended up in. They did what they did because they were living a hard life and they wanted things to relieve their suffering. They were very successful in inventing, manufacturing, and marketing these inventions until they are basically assumptions to the generations since.

I suppose I should be thankful and use this reflection to push me to find ways to relieve the suffering of others.

It is not uncommon at work to get an email that a customer is coming through to view our operations. We are advised to clean up our work areas and look tidy. Many times the email includes an admonition to "put your best foot forward."

As you might imagine, I bristle a little at this thought. I think, "How hypocritical!" I should just act the way I normally act. Corporate America is so fake. We have to put on a show for the customers, but we can slack off the rest of the time. I smugly reflect how if I ran the company things would be different.

However, when I look for evidence to this effect, I must admit I come up wanting. While I do try to be as honest as possible, I do, at times fail. Many times I hold my tongue when I should speak because I am afraid of what others might think. I am probably the worst at managing my image. I am, and have always been, very conscious about how my actions appear to others. I kick myself when I say something stupid. I am especially irritated when I do so in front of a person I respect or, gasp, with whom I wish to make a good impression.

Nor is this isolated to the public realm; I have recently realized over the past few months how many of the conflicts with my wife are due to my own hypocrisy. Sometimes, I get angry and defensive because I am afraid Courtney will see how I am deficient in some way. Other times, I get angry or defensive because I think she is putting pressure on me to do something I don't really want to do. I don't like the implication that I am a bad husband, so I fight vigorously to not be seen as such. Why not just be honest? More often than not, she didn't even mean to imply that I needed to do something.

So, Is my CEO wrong for asking us to dress up pretty for the customer? I still don't like it, but it appears that I have my own problems to worry about, so I'll just clean up my desk and move on.

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I am a critical person. I am an open-minded person. For better worse, there are very few thoughts that I have not entertained. This includes serious doubt about my Christian faith. My most recent bout with doubt was probably about a year ago.

In my regular Bible-reading, I read Hosea 11:1. The phrase, "out of Egypt I called my son" rang a bell, so I read more closely. The "son" described was very clearly Israel. It seemed as thought Matthew was employing some fancy hermeneutics that I considered at the time almost lying. I could I trust a this saying when it was so obviously manipulated.

This is when the real doubt set in. What if I can't trust this verse? Can I trust the rest of Matthew? Can I trust any odd-seeming application of OT scripture? If I can't trust these verses, what I can I trust. With this, I was catapulted to a height of doubt I rarely face. The free-fall lasted about two days. I could barely think about anything else. I got advice from friends, but nothing seemed to satisfy my questions. I clung to this one verse, John 6:68, "To whom shall we go, Lord, you have the words of life." Peter expressed my desperation. Everything in me was causing me to doubt, but when I looked beyond Christ's words, there was only an abyss. I had looked other places. There was nowhere to go.

The reality was that his words had changed me and brought new life to my broken spirit. The last three years are a testament to God's grace in my life. I could not ignore this. One night I broke out a commentary and some theology books and decided to see if anyone else had ever faced this.

Not surprisingly, they had. My premillenial dispensational history had influenced my understanding of the limits of he interpretation of prophecy. I obviously had not fully integrated the reformed perspective. I learned that references to the Messiah and Israel were often conflated. In a real sense, the Messiah was Israel. One writer puts it that OT prophecy is not literal but Christological.

My mind was satisfied with what my heart knew. The words of life come from him who lived, died, and lived again for a people that he would draw to himself. Thanks be to God, I am one of those people. Repent and believe, and you will be too.

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