taking responsibility

Since most of you will read this before or after worship, I guess it’s a good time to offer a confession: I got a ticket this past week for not wearing my seat belt. I had just left the Spring Street trolley station and was on my way to Hope’s softball practice. A La Mesa police office on a motorcyle spotted me and pulled me over.

I have to admit to not being happy about it. In fact, I was a bit ticked off. I thought to myself ... Don’t they have anything better to do than drive around looking for seat belt violations? Shouldn’t they be out fighting real crime?

My fuming continued as he asked for my driver’s license, registration, and insurance. I had been hoping for a warning, even a stern warning, instead of a ticket. As I watched in my rear-view mirror, he began writing the ticket -- something that made me squeeze the wheel a bit harder.

For a fleeting moment I thought of asking him, “Weren’t you in that show called Chips?” I may have been upset, but I wasn’t going to be stupid.

But here’s the reality: I deserved that ticket. One hundred percent guilty as charged. There was no misunderstanding, no differerent interpretation. I wasn’t wearing my seat belt. End of discussion.

Isn’t it ironic that we often get upset when we get caught doing what we know is wrong? We take moral indignation and turn into immoral indignation. “You can’t tell me what to do” is often our angry reaction to being called out or told the truth.

Parents, teachers, coaches -- anyone who works with young children -- know that the hardest part about raising children is getting them to take responsibility for their actions. It wasn’t the imaginary ghost who made the mess. It was me. “I did it” are three of the most difficult words to say.

And that’s just as true for adults as it is for kids.

You have passed a major milestone on the path to spiritual maturity when you are able to take responsbility for your actions. It wasn’t the devil who made you do it (he may have contributed to it, but you made the choice).

And watch out for those cops on Baltimore Avenue.

Bono's op-ed piece

It’s 2009. Do You Know Where Your Soul Is?

By BONO

I AM in Midtown Manhattan, where drivers still play their car horns as if they were musical instruments and shouting in restaurants is sport.

I am a long way from the warm breeze of voices I heard a week ago on Easter Sunday.

“Glorify your name,” the island women sang, as they swayed in a cut sandstone church. I was overwhelmed by a riot of color, an emotional swell that carried me to sea.

Christianity, it turns out, has a rhythm — and it crescendos this time of year. The rumba of Carnival gives way to the slow march of Lent, then to the staccato hymnals of the Easter parade. From revelry to reverie. After 40 days in the desert, sort of ...

Carnival — rock stars are good at that.

“Carne” is flesh; “Carne-val,” its goodbye party. I’ve been to many. Brazilians say they’ve done it longest; they certainly do it best. You can’t help but contract the fever. You’ve got no choice but to join the ravers as they swell up the streets bursting like the banks of a river in a flood of fun set to rhythm. This is a Joy that cannot be conjured. This is life force. This is the heart full and spilling over with gratitude. The choice is yours ...

It’s Lent I’ve always had issues with. I gave it up ... self-denial is where I come a cropper. My idea of discipline is simple — hard work — but of course that’s another indulgence.

Then comes the dying and the living that is Easter.

It’s a transcendent moment for me — a rebirth I always seem to need. Never more so than a few years ago, when my father died. I recall the embarrassment and relief of hot tears as I knelt in a chapel in a village in France and repented my prodigal nature — repented for fighting my father for so many years and wasting so many opportunities to know him better. I remember the feeling of “a peace that passes understanding” as a load lifted. Of all the Christian festivals, it is the Easter parade that demands the most faith — pushing you past reverence for creation, through bewilderment at the idea of a virgin birth, and into the far-fetched and far-reaching idea that death is not the end. The cross as crossroads. Whatever your religious or nonreligious views, the chance to begin again is a compelling idea.

•

Last Sunday, the choirmaster was jumping out of his skin ... stormy then still, playful then tender, on the most upright of pianos and melodies. He sang his invocations in a beautiful oaken tenor with a freckle-faced boy at his side playing conga and tambourine as if it was a full drum kit. The parish sang to the rafters songs of praise to a God that apparently surrendered His voice to ours.

I come to lowly church halls and lofty cathedrals for what purpose? I search the Scriptures to what end? To check my head? My heart? No, my soul. For me these meditations are like a plumb line dropped by a master builder — to see if the walls are straight or crooked. I check my emotional life with music, my intellectual life with writing, but religion is where I soul-search.

The preacher said, “What good does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” Hearing this, every one of the pilgrims gathered in the room asked, “Is it me, Lord?” In America, in Europe, people are asking, “Is it us?”

Well, yes. It is us.

Carnival is over. Commerce has been overheating markets and climates ... the sooty skies of the industrial revolution have changed scale and location, but now melt ice caps and make the seas boil in the time of technological revolution. Capitalism is on trial; globalization is, once again, in the dock. We used to say that all we wanted for the rest of the world was what we had for ourselves. Then we found out that if every living soul on the planet had a fridge and a house and an S.U.V., we would choke on our own exhaust.

Lent is upon us whether we asked for it or not. And with it, we hope, comes a chance at redemption. But redemption is not just a spiritual term, it’s an economic concept. At the turn of the millennium, the debt cancellation campaign, inspired by the Jewish concept of Jubilee, aimed to give the poorest countries a fresh start. Thirty-four million more children in Africa are now in school in large part because their governments used money freed up by debt relief. This redemption was not an end to economic slavery, but it was a more hopeful beginning for many. And to the many, not the lucky few, is surely where any soul-searching must lead us.

A few weeks ago I was in Washington when news arrived of proposed cuts to the president’s aid budget. People said that it was going to be hard to fulfill promises to those who live in dire circumstances such a long way away when there is so much hardship in the United States. And there is.

But I read recently that Americans are taking up public service in greater numbers because they are short on money to give. And, following a successful bipartisan Senate vote, word is that Congress will restore the money that had been cut from the aid budget — a refusal to abandon those who would pay such a high price for a crisis not of their making. In the roughest of times, people show who they are.

Your soul.

So much of the discussion today is about value, not values. Aid well spent can be an example of both, values and value for money. Providing AIDS medication to just under four million people, putting in place modest measures to improve maternal health, eradicating killer pests like malaria and rotoviruses — all these provide a leg up on the climb to self-sufficiency, all these can help us make friends in a world quick to enmity. It’s not alms, it’s investment. It’s not charity, it’s justice.

•

Strangely, as we file out of the small stone church into the cruel sun, I think of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, whose now combined fortune is dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty. Agnostics both, I believe. I think of Nelson Mandela, who has spent his life upholding the rights of others. A spiritual man — no doubt. Religious? I’m told he would not describe himself that way.

Not all soul music comes from the church.

Bono, the lead singer of the band U2 and a co-founder of the advocacy group ONE, is a contributing columnist for The Times.

at the swap meet

Kobe’s Swap Meet is an adventure. Part garage sale, part living infomercial. In the early 90s I bought a pair of Hawaiian shorts there that last all of about six weeks. But I loved those shorts!

My parents never went to a swap meet: they went to flea markets. Is there a difference? Not that I know of. But it’s little wonder that flea markets became “swap meets.” Most people try to get rid of fleas, not buy them.

The beauty of a swap meet is the “deal.” It’s finding a treasure that isn’t found in stores (think the early days of the Salsa Master). It’s the joy of bantering and bargaining with the seller. It’s getting to poke around in other people’s stuff and not get in trouble for doing so.

Is there a spiritual lesson to be learned from the swap meet? I don’t have any particularly deep, penetrating observations. No brilliant insights.

Maybe that in and of itself is the spiritual lesson. Not every experience has to be the biggest, the brightest, the most sensational. If we’re not careful, we can become spiritual thrill-seekers and miss God in the ordinary experiences of life.

perspective

This morning while getting out my vitamins, I dropped one of the chromium picolinate tablets (400 mcg, for those who keep score). As is usually the case, it automatically disappears. After spending a few moments looking around, I decided I needed to change my perspective if I were to find the tablet. Squatting down, I found it rather quickly.

Life is like that. Sometimes we can't see problems or opportunities because we're looking at life from the same perspective we always have. That's when we need to bend down (or over) and get a different angle.

I came across this quote that fits well: "Calling attention to consumerism, materialism and capitalism in America is like telling a fish to notice the water." (Kyle Osland, Icon Church).

inexpensive postcards

I've used Vista Print for a number of print projects throughout the years. Spring Clearance Sale at VistaPrint! Save up to 90%

cruel and unusual punishment

The girls have gained control of the big screen and are forcing me to watch American Idol the "country version." Doesn't this qualify as cruel and unusual punishment?

overcoming addictions

Anna Nicole Smith is back in the news. Well, sort of. Jerry Brown, our Attorney General, has decided to pursue charges against three people who supplied Ms. Smith with the drugs that eventually contributed to her death.

The three people include her boyfriend/attorney and two doctors. In counseling terms, they served as her enablers. They were the ones who enabled her addiction and kept it alive.

For people battling addictions, the co-conspirators are all around us. Marketing messages tell our young ladies that they must look a certain way, encouraging eating disorders and other harmful habits. These same messages encourage our men to look at women as objects rather than human beings made in God’s image. We are told to take a pill if we’re sick or want strong bones or a healthy sex life.

Credit card debt continues to mount. A Blackberry phone becomes a Crackberry. Kids watch increasing amounts of television because it’s the electronic babysitter.
Technololgy serves us, then becomes our master. As a society, we have surrounded ourselves with enablers who will feed our addictions.

Addictions are no respector of persons. Young and old battle addictions. The rich and poor, black and white, male and female. Some addictions are physical; others are emotional or relational.

But there is hope. The fundamental message of Christianity is this: you can be changed. Words are used like transformation, renewal, rebirth. Words that speak to the fact that you don’t have to stay the same person you’ve always been.

May that message become reality ... in your life.

battling addictions

Part three of our “Held Hostage” series at LifePoint Church focuses on how Jesus can enable us to deal with addictions. You don’t have to be held spiritually captive – there is hope. And that hope is found in Jesus Christ. Join us this Sunday (March 15) as we explore what the Bible says about living victoriously over addictions.

strong fathers, strong daughters

Over the past two weeks I have had a number of conversations with parents, particularly dads, who are having a tough time with their daughters. Not in a run-away-from-home-get-pregnant kind of way. More like ... helping them deal with bullies, disappointment, motivation. Typical things that every kid goes through but not every parent is prepared to deal with.

Several years ago I read the book Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters and it has helped me with raising our own two daughters. The basic premise of the book is that strong dads will raise strong daughters. To help your daughter grow and mature, dads must focus on their own behavior, values, and example. It's a great book and one I highly recommend.

what, me worry?

What, me worry?

Most of us know we shouldn’t worry. We know full well about the ill-effects of stress on the mind, body, and spirit. We don’t like living fearfully, wondering what’s around the next corner.

It’s also a fact that most of us worry from time to time. What we worry about may change, but the results are the same: worry doesn’t solve a thing.

Irritability is a sign that worry may be lurking beneath the surface. If you find yourself snapping at those you love, ask yourself if there’s something you’re worried about. When we choose to hold on to our worry rather than deal with it, those negative feelings and emotions will find a way to be released -- often in ways that only cause more problems.

So what do we do? One common response is medication. We are an overly medicated society, much of it due to the increase of stress and worry. Another option is to do nothing. Or, even worse, to feed our worry by worrying even more.

The best response is found in God’s Word:

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

Worry is a symptom that we are focused on our ability to handle a situation. The way to handle worry is to know when to hand a problem or a decision over to God. When you do, you can have confidence that he is able to make your path straight. In other words, God is able to handle whatever may come your way.

kid's album by the barenaked ladies

The Barenaked Ladies have been one of my favorite groups for about 10 or 15 years, I'm not quite sure since time flies when you're having fun. A few days ago I found out they had released a children's album and bought it today. It's a blast! As fans of BNL know, they can twist a great phrase and are also talented musicians. Here's a link to the album:

Snack Time by the Barenaked Ladies

seeing with new eyes

It’s been one year since I had Lasik surgery performed on both of my eyes. That’s twelve months without glasses, not having to worry about walking in the rain, and being able to read the clock while lying in bed. I spent thirty years wearing glasses. To tell the truth, it still seems hard to believe.

At first, it was strange to not have glasses. I would put on a t-shirt and reach for my glasses -- and they wouldn’t be there. But after a while, old habits begin to loosen their grip as they’re not needed anymore.

The same is true in our spiritual lives. We form habits which have the potential to enslave us. Many people are held hostage by the sins of bitterness, worry, addictions, anger, or lies. We become used to having them around, so much so that we adapt the rest of lives around them. It’s like a person wearing glasses -- we instinctively reach to take them off without even thinking about it.

But now that I’m one year into a new set of eyes, I can say that habits can change. A person in spiritual captivity doesn’t have to remain a captive. Jesus Christ has the power to set the captive free.

As we study the five areas of captivity this month, my prayer is that you will experience the life-changing power of Jesus in a way you’ve haven’t before.

roasting coffee beans at home

In my life with coffee, there have been several significant hinge moments. The first was being given my very own Mister Coffee maker when I went away to college (thanks to my brother, Rod). I could brew my own coffee in the convenience of my dorm room. Thankfully the water from the sink wasn't toxic. The second hinge moment came when I discovered a coffee grinder and began grinding my own beans - first with the aforementioned Mister Coffee and then with a Krupps machine. The next hinge moment in my coffee story was the birth of the coffee shop and espresso drinks.

Thanks to a friend of mine (Tina), the most recent improvement in my quest for the perfect cup of coffee has been the use of a french press. She came to a Bible study at our house for LifePoint and nearly fainted when she saw me using a regular coffee maker. The next week she brought over her french press and I've not used a coffee maker at home since.

So ... today I'm reading our local paper and there is a story about local coffee roasters. I've been to one -- Caffe Calabria. But what caught my eye was the mentioning of a man who has developed a home roasting machine. It's the Behmor 1600 and it was invented by a local San Diego guy. You can roast up to a pound of coffee at one time.

Now all I need is $300 and a way to find green coffee beans ...

held hostage

I was a youngster in elementary school when several Americans were taken hostage in Iran. It was the late 1970’s and I didn’t pay much attention to the news. I was drinking coffee, but watching the news was not high on my list of things to do.

But I do remember when the hostages arrived back on American soil after being freed by their captors. I remember watching them and wondering what it must have been like to have been help captive for so long -- and then to be set free.

There are hostages all around us. In fact, you may be a hostage and not know it. Or maybe you do ... but don’t know what to do about it.

The type of captivity I’m talking about is spiritual captivity. Although there are no visible chains around our ankles, the captivity is just as real. That’s why we’ll be starting a new teaching series on March 1 entitled “Held Hostage: How to be set free by the power of Jesus.”

We’ll walk through together what the Bible says about five common battles that have the ability to hold us hostage:

• bitterness
• worry
• addictions
• anger
• lies

The message of Jesus is one of hope and redemption. The power of the Holy Spirit is available to help us overcome the chains that seek to bind us. The Word of God not only offers encouragement but guidelines as well. The bottom line: there is hope.

If you or someone you know struggles with one or more of the above topics, then make sure you’re at LifePoint over the next five weeks.

hulu dot com

OK, maybe I'm a bit slow but I finally visited hulu.com today after our drummer at church told me that's where he watched episodes of shows he missed at their regular schedule. Last Monday we flew back from Denver and I was a bit wiped out ... hence, I fell asleep before 24 came on. No worries -- I watched the entire show (and only about 2 minutes of commercials) this afternoon on my laptop. The sound and video were excellent. Next step? Buying an S video cable to run from the laptop to the HDTV. I may be hooked on hulu.

In the spirit of Guy Kawasaki ... I may become a hulu.com evangelist.

more thoughts about the kidney

As a pastor and a Christ-follower, I’m generally not a fan of pre-nuptial agreements. To enter a marriage with a pre-arranged exit strategy seems to undermine the whole “till death do us part” business. In my mind, a pre-nuptial agreement seems to presume failure -- that the marriage won’t last.

Having said that, if you do decide to craft a pre-nuptial agreement, you might consider putting in a few clauses concerning organ donation. Not in the end-of-life-become-a-donor sense. More like: what if your husband or wife needs a kidney and you decide to donate one? Should you get it back if the marriage ends in divorce?

One husband thinks so. Richard Batista, a Long Island doctor, donated a kidney to his now estranged wife back in 2001. After a long divorce battle, he has decided to ask for his kidney back.

I’ve heard of couples arguing over jewelry, paintings, houses, even pets -- but never have I heard a couple argue over a kidney. One of the best lines I’ve read in news reports comes from Lisa Bloom, a legal analyst for CBS News:

“She ripped out his heart, but he doesn’t get to rip out her kidney.”

Pardon me for being insenstive, but that line would make a great country song. You might have to shorten it a bit, to something like: “You tore out my heart, now gimme my kidney back.”

Left to themselves, grievances will only fester into something worse than the original offense. That’s why Jesus tells us to be proactive in settling matters with those who have offended us:

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24).

Holding grudges and exacting revenge may provide a temporary sense of relief but in the end only do greater damage to ourselves and others.

Put another way, if you give someone a kidney, let them keep it.

kidney follow-up

Writing that last post about the custody battle for the kidney reminded me of something I overheard on the trolley a few weeks ago. Riding home from work I hear this lady say right out of the blue: "Would you hold my liver?" I didn't look because I didn't want to know. Remember, it's the trolley.

kidney: common property

Has anyone else heard about the couple that's getting divorced and the husband wants some of his property back from his soon-to-be ex-wife. He wants his kidney back. It seems that prior to falling out of love he donated a kidney to his wife. Now he wants it back. Can you do that? Here's a blog post from the New York Times.

change your tv, change your life

Has anyone else seen the new commercial for Sharp HD televisions? The tag line is "Change your tv, change your life." I wish someone would have told me that years ago ...

old high school friend on cnbc

Here's a video of Jeff Ostrowski, a fellow East Peoria Community High School graduate, on CNBC commenting on the Bernie Madoff scandal.