Oh Colorado!

I'm posting my photos from the Hermit Basin retreat with Skillman Bible Church. My fiance and my youngest sister came along. Beautiful weather, beautiful mountains and two beautiful women. What a week!

I discovered it's much easier for me to worship in Colorado. I'm trying to figure out how to view Dallas in the same light...

Crazy Good

The title of this blog is the over-simplified and vague description of my life right now. The past two weeks have been both crazy and good. Which is why I have not made the effort to post to my blog in that time frame. I will have more to come soon, but for now the only thing I want to do is introduce the dominant reason for the craziness and especially the goodness. The future Mrs. Jenni Neffendorf, formerly (well, and currently) Miss Jenni Wilson.

God is always good. He gives and takes away but for now He has just been giving. I will remember this time.

Okay, without further ado... (She's the one on the left)

Disappointed but not Surprised

The reactions that I have received from my article were almost inline with what I had expected. The one unexpected response came from, ironically, a filmmaker. I was pleased to see that, even though he disagreed, he chose to accept a challenge and not to scoff. The overall reaction has been not to stop and think but to defensively reject.

To stop and think would mean we might have to consider giving up something we truly adore. We have so much time and money invested into theater, movies and television that we view calling into question the industry as a personal attack and the responses have displayed this reaction. This is sad, but I cannot be too discomforted because though I would like to think better, I know that I am susceptible to this type of misplaced response in other ways.

So I cast no stones; I just ask people to question and think for themselves. But that's like asking a sheep to not be a sheep.

For those interested in seeking truth wherever it may be found:

This is Tozer's essay that I quoted in the article : "The Menace of the Religious Movie"

I also came across a blog by Ryan Martin that researched some opinions on acting and theater from the early Church. I would like to add that I attach this blog merely for the research he did and I am not advocating his opinion and I haven't read his entire blog to ensure no theological differences.

I especially found this excerpt interesting in Augustine's Confessions. Read Chapter II.

June Article on the Brew...

My June article for the Brew Magazine is posted. I'm very interested to see the responses I will get. I pray that it is found to be thought-provoking.

Am I a Fascist?

Fascism is an ideology that believes that the world and humankind can be perfected with the sovereignty of a nation or race. The modern origin of this came from Mussolini who believed that he could, for the greater good, restore the ancient Roman Empire. Of course, we know where Hitler and the Nazi party took this form of government and the destructive path they followed.

Why did this ideology fail? The answer is simpler than you might think. It failed for the same reason all ideologies and governments will fail: this world is fallen. This world is not stumbling or tripped up or looking for its footing. It is fallen and all its inhabitants are depraved. It’s a done deal, this place is forsaken, and evil permeates every crevice. Girls get abducted in open day-lit parking lots; students get murdered on campus and genocide shares equal news coverage with basketball games. None of this is new to us, it is obvious and saddening.

When I viewed local and world missions, it was my perspective that we could improve this state we're in and become, on the whole, a more prosperous place with less oppression and poverty if we could only spread the gospel, in truth, to the ends of the earth. We could achieve a better world with the truth of Christ, and the reason that this hasn’t worked perfectly thus far is because various denominations and Christian cults alike distort (to varying degrees) the truth of the freedom that is found in Christ. I value truth and freedom above all things and I was certain this was the answer. To some degree, I still believe that this works and I think history has plenty of evidence to support this.

However, I grossly missed what God is wanting and expecting from me, and in my arrogance I exalted my own potential. God is not wanting me to feebly attempt to repair the sinking ship. What He wants is simply for me to let people know that their ship is sinking and there is only one way off- His Son.

I’m still not sure how I had been so oblivious to this. I had been going about doing the right things with the wrong aim. I've been immersed in World War II history lately, and I began to realize that when you boiled down my ideology it frighteningly had a lot in common with fascism. I was seeking to make this world better by attempting to institute a Christian nation (with more of a grass roots and peaceful approach).

The only hope for anyone is to be woken up and rescued and only God will do it, but he has asked me to be a part of it (that itself is amazing). A better world is a great thought, but it is only a temporary solution. It’s like using planks to try to patch up the Titanic when we should be building a life boat.

War and Peace

"The steadfast of mind You will keep in perfect peace, because he trusts in You."

This stood out to me this morning as I was reading through the song in Isaiah 26. It probably caught my attention because peace is one of the most elusive of the fruits of the spirit to me. Ok, well let me be honest, rarely can I say that any of them define me, but peace likes to keep a little extra distance from me.

“I was born to go to war, it comes so natural to me…” as Derek Webb sings “I’ve got a poison conscience telling me to go with that.” Is it funny, sad or both that this is the connection I made as I was thinking about the Isaiah text? I think a poison conscience and a disposition to war pretty accurately describes me much of the time. Perfect peace does not.

The peace that eludes me, Isaiah says, is directly related to the steadfastness of my mind. Steadfast - I am a word freak and this is a term that I use but that I wasn’t sure if I had a precise definition. So I sought advice from two dear friends, Merriam and Webster, and they said that it’s being firmly fixed in place. It’s a true definition but as I thought about it, it seems the word is sold short by it.

The definition makes it sound easy, but we know that it’s not; it’s the opposite of easy. This is why Cal Ripken is a baseball hero and marathons are a celebrated accomplishment. And it’s the reason people are in awe of a couple that has been married for 40 years.

To me, steadfast not only connotes being firmly fixed in place, but also what it takes to remain firmly in place. To resist against the things that challenge your ability to remain firm. To be steadfast is to be focused on a goal, but also having broad vision and an engaged mind in order to know what to resist against and how to resist it.

Without effective resistance stamina fails. I have run some marathons and done some things that might prompt people to think I am a man of endurance. But steadfastness is beyond me. My mind is not steadfast on the Lord. This type of steadfastness is as much related to endurance as it is the sober mindedness that Paul speaks of in his epistles.

Without a steadfast mind by way of endurance and sobriety, there is no rest for me. I don’t allow God to fight my wars for me. I don’t trust in God enough to relinquish my command to him. The wars I do fight are in large, causeless.

I must learn to engage my mind more consistently. I must learn to push my thoughts to Christ continuously, so that I may know the battlefield that I am in and that I may know where victory is found. This is what will bring me peace. I have a long way to go.

Eliminating Space and the Guadalupe Mountains

My first article for the Brew Magazine has been posted. If you want to read it, it's on Space and Freedom, you should check out the rest of the magazine while you're there.

And if you're really in need of something to do, I have my photos online from my camping trip to the Guadalupe Mountains over Memorial weekend.

Wants and Hopes

I recently had a friend ask me what it is that I want. In the sense of, if I could paint a picture that is my life, how I want it at this moment, what would that look like. I failed to the think about the question with sufficient depth (a common occurrence), and I answered the question in a dishonest way. Not dishonest in the sense that I was lying, but dishonest in a sense that I was forgetting who God is and what it is He does and why He does what He does, and I wasn't true to God and who I am to Him in my response.

You see, I rattled off some things that I thought would be great in a perfect world, what I thought would be great for me in the future, things that I hope for in this short life. But, she didn't ask what I hoped for, she asked what I wanted. There is a vast difference I think. A want or a desire is attainable to right now, while a hope is something looked forward to at some future point.

When I confuse my hopes and my desires, I am rejecting the plan that God has laid out. When I think that a hope for a wife and a family is good because God said it's not good for man to be alone, then I have distorted the vision that God has given me. God has already told me what I should put my hope in. My hope is Jesus Christ. My hope is not a family, not a wife or a child, nor a house or job. My hope is Jesus Christ... I hope that He continues to not withhold His mercy and His grace from me, I hope that He is looking out for my ultimate good, I hope that He is granting me provision every minute of every day, I hope that He will return and make this sad and painful world right one day, I hope to spend eternity in His presence and learning about Him and loving Him more and more every moment of this infinite life.

Hope in its truest sense, goes hand-in-hand with trust. I hope in these things because I trust what God has told me and what He has showed me. So why do I put desires in the place of hopes? I do this because I don't trust God, I don't know in my heart that He'll follow through even though He always has thus far, and I don't believe that someone like me is truly lovable by a perfect and infinite Being.

So what are wants and desires in light of hope? The psalmist says that God gives us the desires of our hearts. I don't understand this to mean that because I want something God will give it to me, even in the sense that the desire is good. I don't believe this to be what is being said. I think He is saying that as we understand God more and in a deeper sense, He will create within us desires that are of Him. Our desires become godly.

If this is the case, that our desires become godly, a true definition of a desire is not an object. It cannot be a person or an achievement. God doesn't command to achieve anything or attain to anything, and He doesn't promise us anything tangible. A true definition of desire is an emotion or passion that moves us to action. This is the type of answer that I should have given when the question was posed to me.

So here is my answer rethought to anyone who cares...
I want to love God.
I want to love people.
I want my heart to break when a friend hurts.
I want to serve people.
I want to hold other people's babies (because I have none of my own)
I want to impact someone in a way that exalts Christ.
I want to learn.
I want to learn more about the depth of my God and how He works and the way He thinks and loves.
I want to learn more about the plights of international cultures that are not born into the privilege and comfort that I was, so that compassion boils within me until I do something.
I want to learn more about the communities of these same cultures that I can understand how very poor people do and love so much more than I do with seemingly so much less to offer.
I want to read more... More Bible, more classic fiction, more world history, more biographies, more about coffee.
I want to write more... more than just a blog.
I want to know my friends so well that I can always guess what they're thinking, but I would never let them know I know.
I want to be silent.
I want to eat and drink foods that I've never had before and I want to do them while immersed in the culture from where they originated.
I want to pray. To pray for friends that I know and brothers and sisters that I don't know. I want to pray big and I want to pray small.
I want to live every day of the 29 or 95 years that this great God has granted me on earth.
I just want to live and hope that the way that I do it glorifies God.

Depravity and the Mavs

I have finally seen it. I have seen the lowest, most humiliating and shallow point that our society can reach. Well, I’m sure that we can and have gone much lower, but this is the lowest I have witnessed first-hand in recent memory. As I diverted myself last week for a few hours to watch a greatly competitive basketball game between the Mavericks and the Phoenix Suns, I witnessed new depths to our depravity as a society.

As has become popular at most sporting events these days, there were confused and scantily-clad young women doing something that I cannot call dancing in between whistles. I would categorize these young women as prostitutes, as they are being paid for nothing more than to stimulate the lust in the hearts of men. I understand this may come across as harsh, and assuredly they do not view themselves in this manner, but I cannot see this any other way. However, I might think more highly of prostitution on a street corner as opposed to this type of prostitution because this is done solely for the reason keeping our attention during a 60-second timeout, but I digress…

Now, I try my best to keep my eyes fixed on the floor or in the opposite direction when these young women prance to the court, but depravity has a diabolical way of bringing other depravity to the surface. As I glanced up from the roster in my hand about midway through the fourth quarter, my eyes witnessed one of the most pathetic sights that I can ever recall. The Mavericks have what are called MAAniacs. These are the exact physical opposites of the young dancing women, all done for the sake of humor. They are a group of mostly middle-aged, very overweight men with not a lot to do otherwise. Evidently nothing could be more humorous in Dallas than these men. Then add in a midget and we have non-stop laughs and entertainment for the entire evening. The best way I can describe this group to you is to picture in your head the combined epitome of sloth and gluttony and pull that across 40 years.

So now on the court, I stared as if watching a train wreck, and I see the dozen falsely attractive prostitutes doing a semi-clothed strip tease and they are surrounded by the dozen aging obese couch potatoes and a midget who are doing their best to imitate that strip tease, and all of this done to worthless music and to 14,000 cheering and laughing fans whose cheers and laughs get heartier when the fat men shake their rear in the air.

One of the saddest parts of this observation is that, if I’m on honest, on another night, perhaps I’m one of the laughing fans and in my mind I’m eerily aware of that fact. But last night I couldn’t laugh, I was saddened and angry. I was saddened by observing what these people were ignorantly flaunting, I was more saddened by observing how the crowd was so pleased to have them make subhuman spectacles of themselves, and I was angered by the fact that the producers of this debauchery is what they thought we paid to see, and I was more angered by the fact that they were right.

Please keep in mind; this is that Dallas in the home of the mega-church, and its smack in the middle of the Bible belt. This is not New York or Hollywood. How can we have so much knowledge and awareness of Christ surrounding us and yet still praise such debauchery? What is it in us that makes become like dogs that will bark at anything? How can we be blind to the way we seek to consume in anyway we can? How can we forget that we are humans and not dogs? The answer is not as much that that we are blind to our consumption as we are content with it. We know that we are humans but choose willingly to equate ourselves with the dogs.

Outside of perhaps Steve Nash in between dance routines, there is not one creative act going on. The music is that of consumption and not creativity, the clothing (or lack thereof) on the young women is that of consumption and not of beauty, the dancing is not of artistic expression but of consumption, all of this is consuming the women in the stands as they take note of what they need to strive for to gain the attention of a man, the obese men with bellies hanging out and over have seemingly known nothing outside of consumption their whole lives and this is obvious to any observer, the men in the stands consume further as they laugh not because of true comedy (which can be creative) but mostly because they have found someone they are in their minds clearly superior to and that is hilarious, and I need not comment on the midget. This is something truly pathetic and sad. It is worth grieving over.

Coffee and Worship, Part I (Introduction)

Now I am not much of an ‘artist’ by the world’s standard. Sometimes I’ll write a bit, maybe even a little very rough poetry, I can pluck about 3 songs on my guitar, I can doodle some recognizable cartoon characters, and I can carry a tune provided that tune is kept within an octave. I know what you’re thinking… ‘How can I get in touch with his booking agent?’ I must apologize for I have retired from public performances. Despite all of this there is one craft that I would categorize as my art, and that is the craft of coffee.

Most people would not think of coffee as a whole a craft but it is. From consuming, to drinking, to brewing, to grinding, to roasting and to creating, all of these are within the craft of coffee. The reason I mention this is that due to my overall lack of talent, it has become my standard for comparison when people talk about various talents and arts. I think there is much to learn in understanding a good ‘craft’ and seeing our worship of God as that (although it also much more that). I think many comparisons can be made but the comparison of coffee rests most closely to my soul and beckons better personal perspective of my worship. As I have become impassioned for coffee, so I am impassioned for God. As I have grown into a ‘coffee snob’ desiring only a high qualityand an ever-increasing knowledge of coffee, I am becoming a ‘worship snob’ desiring only the highest attainable depth of worship and an ever-increasing knowledge of each Person of God.

I use the term snob, only because that is the term that our society has labeled what is properly defined as a purist. They have expanded the word ‘snob’ out of the boundaries of its definition. Society has labeled purists, such as myself, as snobs as an effort to shame us into submission in the name of equality. Society strives for equality by attempting to devalue anything until everything that is within it is virtually worthless. However, I argue that the term ‘purist’, instead of being blanketed as a snob, is in actuality a praise-worthy title, especially when it comes how you view an utterly perfect and beautiful Lord and Savior.

Jesus was a purist (and much more that) when He drove the money changers from His Father’s temple. He was a purist when he told the rich young ruler that there was a cost to being a disciple and inheriting eternal life. Although Jesus was a seeker and healer of the lowly, he was a purist in regards to matters of His Father and His Father’s kingdom. The Word of God has a different term for the word ‘purist’ and that term is ‘holy’. Jesus drove out the money changers because he had to, he could not allow something as sacred as His Father’s house to be contaminated, he turned away the rich young ruler because there was no choice, and he couldn’t allow self-love and love of treasure into His Father’s kingdom. No matter how hard we try to bring our crass worldliness into His presence, He was, is and always will be holy.

There is a common thread between the agony of purity of a coffee-lover, and the sacred holiness of true worship that I strive to attain. I make this comparison with fear and trembling, in the hope of giving depth to our vision of the Kingdom, while recognizing that the analogies drawn will prove a shallow insight to truth.

Webster defines a creature as ‘a created being’. We cannot be created without having a Creator. The Creator is greater than the creature. If the creature is greater or equal then it would not need the creator to create it. This is the difference between reproducing and creating. The creature reproduces something that is (or will become) equal to it, but the creator creates something that is not as great as itself. Francis Schaeffer expands on this concept:

"…every man must be a creature. He can be nothing else but a creature I this life or in the life to come. Even in hell, men will still be creatures, because that is what we are. Only one is self-sufficient in himself, and he is God. But now as Christians we are introduced to the great reality: our calling is to be creatures in this high, tremendous, and glorious way, not because we must be, but by choice… I am a creature, it is true, but I have a calling to be the creature glorified. I must be the creature, but I do not have to be the creature like the clod in the field, the cabbage which is rotting in the field as the snows melt. I am called to be a creature by choice, on the basis of Christ’s finished work, by faith: the creature glorified."

Schaeffer designates two distinct types of creature. The first type, which we all are, like it or not, is a creature in its natural state which we will call creature natural. The second is a creature submitted (Romans 6:16-19) to our true authority. This creature is one that contributes and not merely consumes, and Schaeffer terms it ‘creature glorified’. Through its contributions and not its consummations, the creature finds joy.

The creature natural is our natural state. It is not above the other animals of the earth, it is within them. It is our instincts to eat, to mate, to fear, and to defend our territory and all other instincts that we share with animals. All of these instincts simply consume and contribute nothing.

The creature glorified is our original state. It is the state of man when he was whole. Though now he is the creature natural he was once the creature glorified. In speaking of what we are calling the creature glorified, Pascal notes:

"The greatness of man is so obvious that it can be deduced even from his misery. What is natural in animals is seen to be wretchedness in man. From this we can recognize that since his nature today resembles that of the animals, he has fallen from a better state, which in former times was more appropriate to him. Who does not feel unhappier at not being a king except a king who has been deposed? Did not people think that Paulus-Emilius was unhappy at no longer being consul? On the contrary, they all though he had been fortunate to have been consul at all, because it not an office one has for life. Yet people thought Perseus was unfortunate when he was no longer king, because it is natural for a king to remain so the whole of his life, and it was strange that he could bear to go on living without kingship. Who considers himself unhappy because he possesses only one mouth? Yet who would not be unhappy if he had only one eye? No one, perhaps, has ever taken it into his mind to fret over not having three eyes. But man is inconsolable if he has no eyesight."

The creature glorified is not natural but it is original. The fact that we are no longer in our original and whole state is what drives us to consume, to fill the hole. But the creature glorified is whole and has peace and joy (though it is not permanent until death) and with that wholeness it sees beyond the desire to consume. The creature glorified, does not envy and does not seek to hoard this peace and joy; it seeks to share this fullness and is thereby led to contribute and create and not to seek his own in consumption.

Everywhere we look in our society we see it screaming at us as that we are consumers. They tell us that that is how we are designed and that it is what we are meant to do. Advertising is based completely on consumption. The marketers have preyed on innate animalistic selfish desires. I think most of us recognize this and can give lip service to it. However, it seems we either do not necessarily disagree that we are meant to be consumers or we do not fully understand the how deeply this consumption disease has contaminated our blood.

We have moved past complacency and into acceptance of our lust to consume. It’s this disease of consumption that’s steadily turning us into animals with nothing other than instincts to lead us. The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to reason, which allows for our capacity for communion with a higher being. This ability to reason is what enables us to make decisions for our overall good as opposed to what can satisfy us, to our detriment, in the immediate moment. It’s how we know to take an longer alternate route, in order to make it to our destination on time, when our physically fastest passage is jammed with traffic. It’s what allows us to decide whether to eat the second piece of cake or eat the carrot because it will improve our overall healthy thereby producing greater benefit in the future. Either we choose to be humans or revert to animals.

These luring mirages of fleeting satisfaction cause us to forsake our overall health (physically, mentally and spiritually) for what we want or think we need for an immediate happiness boost or to anesthetize ourselves to a greater problem. There is a hole of fulfillment that we try to fill or cover up. Society promises us that they have the answer to fill the hole. We instinctively follow like sheep being led to the slaughter. We indulge every urge with what appears may satisfy our soul and give us pleasure. One might begin to think with trial and error we would try a new process to fill that hole, but instead we keep trying to quench our thirst with a different flavor of salt water. The more we try to pack in the void, the larger the void becomes.

Consumption has consumed our society. As a human being you only have two options of your behavior, whether conscious or not. As human you either consuming or you are creating. In every second of every moment you are doing one of the two (sometimes both). You either consume lusts of the world with food or sexual urges or drugs, etc., or you consume people with your conversations about yourself or about nothing more important than sports or television and or you consume your time with laziness.

Everyday is a natural flow of consumption if we don’t find away to get out of it. Our other behavioral option is to create. Mostly we associate creativity with some sort of art, but it runs so much deeper than that. We also think that creativeness is a quality that you’re either born with or your not, but it’s more complex than that… or perhaps is simpler in its own paradox. We have wrongly defined creativity as some intangible artistic flare, but it is simply the capacity to create. To understand what it means to create we must go back to the original act of creation, to the genesis. God didn’t randomly create, trying to perfect his artistic flare. The art of nature and humanity came from His creation. Taking that a step further, He didn’t just make something blindly and move on, He asked the questions "Is it good?" He knew that a true creation must contribute something, if it doesn’t then it is a consumptive act and not a creative act.

Now that we have defined creativity outside of the realm of typically defined ‘art’, we must seek to define how one creates. We create when we contribute something to someone or something. If your music or painting creates in others a sense of value in a person then it is creative. If it guides or encourages or enlightens or inspires it can be considered creative. Creativity is when you seek to know someone and to understand their thoughts and feelings, when you serve someone without selfish intent, when you care in a tangible for another human being and when there is purpose in the way you respond to something. One way this is accomplished is music, painting and other arts, but this is also done in a conversation or in a simple act or simply choosing not to fear to encourage someone else. There are no special skills required to accomplish this. Present mindedness and an outward non-selfish focus are the only things required. Creativity will flow from that. What we boil this down to is that as we walk around in life, we are either consuming or creating.

Most of us, most of the time are merely consuming people, time and oxygen. However when you learn to step outside of your selfishness and vanity you can begin to understand creativity and being to create more than you consume. If everyone is consuming there will be nothing left to take in but trash, but if everyone is seeking to create there will be an overflow of goodness. Those of us who aspire to a higher calling from God can give assent to this, but therein lies the problem. We are the problem when we acknowledge this with our lips but still consume with our lifestyle. We justify it because now we altered our appetite to consume different things than we did before and people tell us these things are good and that we are okay. But God never meant his gifts for consumption, he meant them as tools of creation.

If we don’t seek to use God’s gifts for creation then our broken cisterns will run dry with everyone else’s’. We are the problem. We should be the one’s who point the way for others, but instead we wallow in the mire with them.