tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1524312884183135292024-02-07T10:25:51.184-07:00Bike BoyI used to ride. Now I write.James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-42340009941794353432019-10-18T16:06:00.002-07:002019-10-18T16:21:27.021-07:00Where I'm GoingI wanted to make you aware that I'm moving to Chicago in a little bit.<br />
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This is my best attempt at a life update after spending a year off the radar. I'll depart in six weeks after spending 10 years in Arizona. After a brief holiday stay in the Pacific Northwest with family, I'll settle in Lisle, Illinois to attend Northern Seminary.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi764KEeYmoa4wZXAdxEHtokUPQn3nUhNagA0fzSSvTeb6yzZD5D_RAKcCMc7ci-ic2u7gBQ2k8HWqTCPlqy5jmjuOq2bV3_uu8F3uITC-GjeqKEO1A2fI6LRZsF0Wkeswjv6Jcv9W6m1k3/s1600/070316_JJ_Kevin_Durant_Hamptons_802-copyBW-copy1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="1600" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi764KEeYmoa4wZXAdxEHtokUPQn3nUhNagA0fzSSvTeb6yzZD5D_RAKcCMc7ci-ic2u7gBQ2k8HWqTCPlqy5jmjuOq2bV3_uu8F3uITC-GjeqKEO1A2fI6LRZsF0Wkeswjv6Jcv9W6m1k3/s640/070316_JJ_Kevin_Durant_Hamptons_802-copyBW-copy1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is Kevin Durant sporting my seminary's logo. Here's <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/my-next-chapter">background on the meme</a> for those unfamiliar with it.<br />
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I'd love to stay connected with you. Send me a text at 602-663-8710 or write me at boy_on_bike@yahoo.com if you're so inclined. I'm really only on Instagram for the time being to avoid completely dropping off the face of the earth. I permanently deactivated my Facebook account, and it was an excellent decision. I smile when I consider all the anxiety-inducing political arguments I'm missing. Frankly, I think killing off my Instagram account will do wonders for my self-esteem once I work up the courage to unplug. Although social media platforms make it easier to create and maintain friendships, I don't want easy friendships. I don't want a platform to be the basis of our friendship. Friendships require initiative – the willingness to ask "How are you?"– and vulnerability and courage to answer honestly. I've settled for too many shallow acquaintances over the years and made the mistake of believing those were friendships.<br />
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All that to say: I'd love to keep in touch with you. And while we're at it, here's a brief, unsolicited FAQ:<br />
<br />
<b>What's your goal with seminary?</b><br />
I'm going to get a master of divinity degree, and I don't know what I'll do after that. Maybe go into the pastorate. Maybe do more seminary and research. Maybe try the nonprofit world. Joining a commune also sounds kinda fun. Maybe do all four of those things.<br />
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<b>Why Northern?</b><br />
I really love <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/">Scot McKnight</a>, who's one of the main teachers there. It's a small school that most people have never heard of, but my hope is to take full advantage of the intimate setting to build friendships with faculty and students.<br />
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<b>Where's your family?</b><br />
They've all moved up to the Greater Seattle region except for me and Abi. She's killing the game in Tucson right now.<br />
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<b>I heard you went off the deep end with your faith when you left Sovereign Grace. </b><br />
I learned this rumor not too long ago, and it really hurt to hear. I wish people had just asked me why I left instead of just assuming. If you had asked, I would have said something to this effect: I love Jesus and my greatest wish is to follow him. I don't have all the answers to faith, and I don't presume to be further along than anyone, but I left Sovereign Grace because of a calling I felt from God– not out of unbelief.<br />
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You're free to believe whatever you want about me, though.<br />
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<b>What happened after you left that church?</b><br />
I've been attending Trinity Mennonite in Glendale for almost a year now. Never in a million years did I think I would end up in such a place, but words can't express how grateful I am for it. I walked into the building <a href="http://boyonbike.blogspot.com/2019/02/rachels-tears.html">angry at the American church</a>, confused about God and full of <a href="http://boyonbike.blogspot.com/2019/04/unspoken-pain.html">pain</a> and self-loathing. Trinity Mennonite doesn't have the horses and buggies and head coverings that people joke about, but what it does have is a safe space where I can be utterly honest about where I've been and where I'm going. I am forever grateful for these wonderful, peace-loving Mennonites for sharing their community with me and giving me the hope I desperately needed.<br />
<br />
<b>So what's your long-term goal?</b><br />
I don't know, fam. I'm just trying to see one step front of me for the time being. My relationship with the American church grows more confusing and troubling each day, but I can't seem to shake the sense of purpose that I feel for the culture that raised me. I feel so much frustration and despondency toward the church. Whether we mean to or not, Christians have hurt people, and we seem to get more effective at hurting people when we gather in large groups. I see so much pain in those who have left the church, but also in those who have stayed and even in those in power who benefit from the system. I find myself grieving so many things that used to be and so many things that never were. But I've also seen the good things a community can do when it models the <a href="http://boyonbike.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-other-way.html">way of Jesus</a>. I've experienced the power of <a href="http://boyonbike.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-change-world.html">sacrificial love</a>, and I can't help but want to pass it on. It's a fascinating combination of naivety and disillusionment. Disappointment and hope play off each other so curiously.<br />
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The song below almost perfectly captures the feeling:<br />
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<br />
<br />
<i>Show me the race, I'll run the distance </i><br />
<i>Longing to give and taste forgiveness </i><br />
<i>Dying to live a pure religion </i><br />
<i>Settle the rush to chase submission </i><br />
<i>Open my eyes and soul to listen</i>
<br />
<br />
I don't know where this journey is going to take me, but I'm ready to take a risk. Maybe I'll come crawling back to Phoenix and <span style="text-align: center;">beg to stay on your couch because seminary was a bad gamble. I can't articulate my "calling" in the way many Christians seem to be able to do. I prefer to think of it as a song. This song </span>– though it is muffled and even muted at times– rises to my ears with great beauty and beckons me to follow. And I'm going to chase this song as far as it will go.James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-69048967469272085302019-07-07T08:22:00.002-07:002020-01-29T07:36:39.254-07:00The Other Way<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMgVmTyCvRZZBWs8u0qY6VYycHbYtR754d1lU8V8l3PixHBLAistj8zlFabEymvsOB8F8iikPRZlWNFgGCACvej4uVP60auPhveN_2LNOVCPOZe6x_cUnk4355jf7WBQv3ABZmgZcKENhE/s1600/ruthbetter2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="822" data-original-width="678" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMgVmTyCvRZZBWs8u0qY6VYycHbYtR754d1lU8V8l3PixHBLAistj8zlFabEymvsOB8F8iikPRZlWNFgGCACvej4uVP60auPhveN_2LNOVCPOZe6x_cUnk4355jf7WBQv3ABZmgZcKENhE/s1600/ruthbetter2.jpg" /></a><i>"If I therefore have washed your feet – the Lord and teacher – so too you should wash one another's feet. For I gave you a pattern, in order that as I did to you, you also shall do. Truly, truly I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master nor the messenger greater than the one that has sent him. </i></div>
<i>If you know these things, how enviably blissful you'll be if you do them."</i><br />
- John 13:14-17<br />
<br />
---<br />
Everybody wants to rule the world, as Tears for Fears eloquently put it. Americans scoff at the idea of kings and queens, but we crave power nonetheless. Some of us seek it in the business world, where the corporate ladder promises a prosperous, respectable life. Some of us seek it through the electoral process, in which political candidates promise safety in return for your vote. Some of us seek it through social media, where Instagram likes become invaluable social capital. Some of us seek it in the church, where a pious man can find himself entrusted with sacred responsibility.<br />
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Flourishing within these power structures comes, however, at the expense of other humans. You long for a promotion in part because your current boss is inflicting misery upon his subordinates. You campaign for your candidate partly out of fear for what the other party will do if it wins. You long to influence people on social media because scrolling through your friends' attractive beach photos make you hate your body and their engagement photos make you feel so alone. You long for respect in the church because its hierarchy has been crushing you all of your life.<br />
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This is the human cost. We live in a world of profit, and margins abound in a world of profit. Haves and have-nots. Subjects and objects. Winners and losers.<br />
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There must be another way to live in this power-crazed world.<br />
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It is worthwhile to ask if Jesus has any ideas. I think he does, and I think we should at least consider them. He offers an alternative – albeit a strange and challenging alternative.<br />
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I wrote the following paragraphs for a seminary application*, and it reflects my closely held beliefs. I found the biblical witness on this topic quite striking, and I hope I will respond in faith to its challenge.<br />
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The challenge is one word: servanthood.<br />
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---<br />
<br />
It's difficult to speak about authentic Christianity without talking about servanthood. The New and Old Testaments burst with imagery of humans who renounce worldly power and authority in favor of apparent weakness. The gospel story tells us that this presumed frailty is actually the most powerful and transformative force in the world. The prophets envisioned it, Jesus taught and embodied it, and the apostles proclaimed it. The modern church now suffers for its unwillingness to embrace servanthood. Christians have ignored the virtue, or worse, foisted the virtue on others in order to consolidate power. But there remains an invitation for God’s people to re-discover their roots. We can return to the practice of servanthood by observing and following Jesus, who offered his own life and death as the foremost example.<br />
<br />
The scriptures continually illustrate and explain what it means to be a servant, with Isaiah presenting a foundational image. The book references a servant chosen by God as his representative. This character ushers in God’s justice (Isa. 42.1) and shines light and salvation upon the nations (Isa. 49.6) doing so with such gentleness that not even a frail reed is broken (Isa. 42.3). The servant suffers on behalf of humanity (Isa. 53.4) despite facing rejection at the same group’s hands (Isa. 53.3). These passages drink from a larger narrative that pervades all of scripture. Walter Brueggemann writes that the battered yet victorious servant fulfills a longstanding Mosaic tradition, where God upends the social order in favor of the weak and downtrodden. Powerful, oppressive empires – including Egypt, Assyria and Babylon– crumble before the servant, whose exaltation comes after faithful suffering. The servant’s path is not violent insurrection but patient humiliation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Israel itself is to practice vulnerability and to be attentive to others who are vulnerable, ‘bruised reeds and dim wicks.’ Israel’s way of relationship is thus dramatically contrasted with the way of Babylon (or any other worldly power), which is to break such reeds and snuff out such wicks. Israel is to pursue a different way in the world – to refuse the modes of power mostly taken for granted.” (Brueggemann 42) </blockquote>
It’s no surprise that Jesus fit the mold of the servant for the early church, which was immersed in the Old Testament narrative. Matthew explicitly links the two figures in his twelfth chapter, quoting the Isaiah 42 description of a servant whose patient, calm proclamation of justice will finally lead to peace:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“He won’t argue or shout, and nobody will hear his voice in the streets. He won’t break a bent stalk, and he won’t snuff out a smoldering wick, until he makes justice win. And the Gentiles will put their hope in his name.” (Matt. 12.18-21)</blockquote>
A chorus of New Testament authors make their own connections between Jesus and Isaiah’s servant. Peter emphasizes the servant’s patient suffering (1 Pet. 2.24-25), Paul and John emphasize his rejection (Rom. 10.16, John 12.37-38), and Luke emphasizes his unjust death (Acts 8.32-35). Jesus also made the connection to himself, declaring that “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28).<br />
<br />
Servanthood in the New Testament does not stop with Jesus, however. The early church declared that it would follow in the steps of its teacher. Indeed, the Bible’s most quoted illustrations invariably link the servanthood of Jesus to the servanthood of his disciples. After Jesus degrades himself by removing his clothes and washing his disciples as a slave would, he declares that he has set an example – sometimes translated as a “pattern” – for them to follow (John 13.15). He declares, “If I, the Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash the feet of one another” (John 13.14). Paul’s beautiful poem about Jesus renouncing divine privileges to take “the form of a servant” came as the apostle exhorted the Philippian church to make humility their primary posture (Phil. 2.1-11). Jesus refused to “seize” power as earthly kings do (Fee 206). He told his disciples that his decision to serve and not be served paints a sharp contrast to the world:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“You know those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.” (Mark 10:42-45)
</blockquote>
His path of servanthood culminates by dying a criminal’s death on the cross, executed by those very rulers. Richard Hays describes Calvary as the ultimate refutation of the empire’s “domination and self-assertion,” and it is also an invitation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Those who are called into the community of Jesus’ disciples are to be servants, and the pattern for this servanthood is definitively shown by Jesus, who came to give up his own life for the sake of others. The full impact of this pattern will become apparent only in the detailed account of his passion and death, but his teaching about discipleship has now been set forth with all possible clarity: to be Jesus’ follower is to share in his vocation of suffering servanthood, renouncing the world’s lust for power.” (Hays 82)</blockquote>
This is not to say that faithful servants have no power, but it is power of another kind. We renounce the world’s power in order to harness a more effective, transformative force. The servant does not work as a spiritual caddy for evil – groveling alongside it and endorsing it with passivity. Those who turn the other cheek and walk the extra mile choose to discontinue a cycle of violence and in doing so absorb the injustice. Violence most thrives when it is reciprocal, but faithful servants jam a spoke in the wheel with their unwillingness to participate in a power struggle. The tyrant and the bully don’t expect this. Our defiant decision to feed and water the enemy is how we heap “burning coals of fire upon his head” and “defeat evil with good” (Rom. 12.20-21). Gregory Boyd describes this phenomenon as “power-under”:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“While we might regard this kind of power as weak by kingdom-of-the-world criteria, in truth there is no greater power on the planet than self-sacrificial love. Coming under others has a power to do what laws and bullets and bombs can never do – namely, bring about transformation in an enemy’s heart.” (Boyd 32)
</blockquote>
The power-under posture of servanthood flips the script. The gospel of a crucified messiah does not seek to stop or restrain its opponents; it seeks to change them. The writer of the Didache, an early church manual, sums it up best: “But love those who hate you, and you shall not have an enemy” (Did. 1.3).<br />
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A healthy understanding of servanthood will fundamentally reshape the church. We will embrace new leaders as our criteria for leadership shifts from magnetic personalities and persuasive rhetoric to “good conduct… in the meekness of wisdom” (James 3.13). Men will not lord power over their mothers and sisters in Christ but turn toward mutual submission in which “each works against the impulse to take control and impose my will on a situation” (Fitch 36). Teenagers will lay aside their reputations in school in order to associate with the outcasts and misfits (Rom. 12.16). We will refuse to engage in the American culture war that increasingly celebrates tribalism and self-protection, remembering that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over one another. I will model the way of Jesus when I handle conflict with co-workers, roommates and neighbors. Jesus offers a beautiful example and an open invitation for us to walk in his way. The church can once again participate in the peaceful but subversively powerful revolution of the servant-king.<br />
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<b>*(originally used for a Northern Seminary application)</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
Boyd, Gregory A. <i>The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church</i>. Zondervan, 2009.<br />
<br />
Brueggemann, Walter. <i>Isaiah 40-66</i>. Westminster John Knox Press, 1998.
Common English Bible. Common English Bible, 2011.<br />
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Fitch, David. <i>Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines That Shape the Church for Mission</i>. InterVarsity Press, 2016.<br />
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Fee, Gordon D. <i>Paul's Letter to the Philippians</i>. Eerdmans, 1995.<br />
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“Didache.” <i>In The Apostolic Fathers</i>. Glimm, Francis X., et al. Christian Heritage, 1947.<br />
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Hays, Richard B. The Moral Vision of the New Testament. HarperCollins Publ., 1996.James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-66694371456131706352019-07-02T22:21:00.003-07:002019-07-03T08:36:43.506-07:00I Pledge Allegiance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBGn3V_hAsbsw5Z6WbFaiqMiGjCsy8Bll-wk4TILDyDEwIqYBSsmsyKjbewi4zVj6pDJHcQmJ3qrvLHXeVbpIyZLMA2m40slN4P_IPpPV1Ma90LI9qOsmx9u9rQbRIyzM600b8mNmV-q8v/s1600/Anne_Hutchinson_on_Trial+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Anne Hutchinson" border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBGn3V_hAsbsw5Z6WbFaiqMiGjCsy8Bll-wk4TILDyDEwIqYBSsmsyKjbewi4zVj6pDJHcQmJ3qrvLHXeVbpIyZLMA2m40slN4P_IPpPV1Ma90LI9qOsmx9u9rQbRIyzM600b8mNmV-q8v/s1600/Anne_Hutchinson_on_Trial+%25282%2529.jpg" title="Anne Hutchinson" /></a></div>
<i>"In faith all these died, not having received the </i><i>promises but having seen them from afar and embraced them and confessing that they were aliens and sojourners on the earth. For those who say such things declare that they are seeking a fatherland, and if indeed they were remembering where they came from, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they strain toward a better one that is of heaven. Therefore, God isn't ashamed to be their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them." - </i>Heb. 11:13-16<br />
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<i>"Our citizenship exists in the heavens, from where we are eagerly awaiting a savior - Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our body of low estate, fashioned into his body of glory, according to the energy enabling him even to subject all things to himself." -</i> Phil. 3:20-21<br />
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<i>"I am a Christian; that is my name, my parentage, and my country; indeed, I am altogether nothing else than a Christian." </i>- Sanctus of Vienne<br />
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The quotes above can take you in very different directions. They could be a stimulant and they could be a tranquilizer. They could turn you into a revolutionary, and they could turn you into a gnostic. They could spur you to change the world and they could justify letting it burn. It is my belief that if we encounter them in their true context, we will discover a shocking new reality. You may find this alternative worldview offensive, impractical or even treasonous. You might think it's antithetical to your principals, and it very well may be.<br />
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I believe, however, that Jesus has uncomfortable things to say. You should feel no obligation to read any further. I do not recommend the Sermon on the Mount for everyone. I don't want to coerce anyone into this. But if you call yourself a disciple, please join me in this discussion.<br />
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<br />
Consider the commonly quoted phrase "our citizenship is in heaven." I often made it my refrain while growing up in the evangelical church. It conveyed my sense of detachment from worldly upheaval. When the world seemed to be moving backward, we'd remember our heavenly citizenship. 9/11 happens? Our citizenship is in heaven. Mass shootings? Our citizenship is in heaven. Obama (or Trump) gets elected? Thank goodness– our citizenship is in heaven. Philippians 3:20 functioned as a consolation for us. When our earthly world was crumbling, the spiritual was the only thing that mattered in the first place. And that sentiment, I must admit, comforted me at the time.<br />
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But I've learned that a very particular strain of theology supports this interpretation of Philippians 3. Tim LaHaye, the influential architect of the <i>Left Behind</i> series, called it a "rapture passage." Rapture theology suggests that the souls of faithful will be plucked from their bodies and into the spiritual dimension as the physical world deteriorates. The viewpoint is a step in the opposite direction from the puritans, abolitionists and social gospel advocates, whose postmillennial beliefs informed them that their efforts to improve society and change laws could <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanentize_the_eschaton">bring heaven on earth</a>. The early 20th century wiped away much of that optimism. Whether they were observing the two world wars, the evolution being taught in schools or the horrors of industrialism, liberal and conservative Christians alike refrained: "our citizenship is in heaven." The radio evangelist Vernon McGee famously asked <i>"Do you polish brass on a sinking ship?"</i><br />
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I'm not interested what postmillennials, amillennials and premillennials think about Philippians 3. I certainly have my opinions about eschatology (you can find a rough summation in Skye Jethani's lecture below), but I'm going to deflect the debate as often as I can. Its current focus grieves me.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c5vTMcYN6po" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Why? Because heavenly citizenship as Paul describes it is not a matter of rapture versus social gospel. Philippians 3:20 does not first and foremost declare an eschatology.<br />
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It declares <i>loyalty. </i>It declares <i>patriotism</i>. It declares <i>our allegiance.</i><br />
<br />
(And this is where things get weird)<br />
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Roman officials sentenced <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0102.htm">Polycarp of Smyrna</a> to death by burning in AD 155. He and fellow worshipers refused to do two things: swear allegiance to the emperor and offer a sacrifice to the gods.<br />
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Polycarp's refusal stoked the populace's rage. The people could easily tolerate the worship of Jesus, but denying the pantheon of gods undermined the civil religion of the day. The gods powered the military conquests that grew the empire. The gods sponsored the beloved festivals that celebrated harvest, fertility, war and anything else you could imagine. The gods' temples kept Roman cities "<a href="http://earlychristianwritings.com/text/octavius.html">both protected and armed</a>."<br />
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To withhold support for these gods wasn't theological blasphemy. It was social blasphemy. Even more so, it was economic blasphemy. Acts 19 tells how the spread of Christianity threatened to financially ruin idol-making silvermiths in Ephesus. One governor wrote that his crackdown on Christians was beginning to restore the businesses of livestock farmers.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>"It is certainly quite clear that the temples, which had been almost deserted, have begun to be frequented, that the established religious rites, long neglected, are being resumed, and that from everywhere sacrificial animals are coming, for which until now very few purchasers could be found." - </i><a href="http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/pliny.html">The Letter of Pliny the Younger to Trajan</a><br />
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You must understand that renouncing the gods was more than ideological dissent. It entailed a lifestyle of objection.<br />
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The early christians stayed home from national festivals. They withheld their money from Big Idol (get it, like Big Pharma?). They <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/keithgiles/2019/05/early-christians-on-non-violence/">denounced</a> the Roman military.<br />
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It is no surprise that the people of Smyrna vowed to punish the "atheists."<br />
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Even so, the officials did not want to kill Polycarp. He was well into his 80's and a respected member of the community. What a senseless death this would be. They pleaded with him: <i>"What harm is there in saying, Lord Cæsar, and in sacrificing, with the other ceremonies observed on such occasions, and so make sure of safety?"</i><br />
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They wanted him to call the emperor "Lord." <i>Kurios</i>. The word reserved for Jesus.<br />
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And if Jesus is Lord, Caesar is <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/04/26/if-jesus-is-lord-caesar-is-not/">not</a>.<br />
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The flames went up, as the multitude shrieked in unison: <i>"This is the teacher of Asia, the father of the Christians, and the overthrower of our gods, he who has been teaching many not to sacrifice, or to worship the gods."</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Truth is not the motivation for persecution. The pagan philosophers who critiqued the christian faith often didn't even believe in the gods. But that's because faith isn't so much about belief as it is authority. The christians were making a claim about who runs the world.<br />
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Did Constantine actually <i>believe </i>in the Trinity? We'll never know. He believed one thing though: that through the sign of the cross <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_hoc_signo_vinces">he would conquer</a> the world.<br />
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<img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Stanze_Vaticane_-_Raffaello_-_Apparizione_della_croce.jpg" /><br />
<br />
The motivation isn't truth. The motivation is power. And you dare not deny Caesar his power.<br />
<br />
-----<br />
<br />
Local officials in Gaul (France) conducted a vicious persecution in 177. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_in_Lyon">pogrom</a> was well documented. The body counted numbered 48 martyrs as well as many individuals who renounced their faith amidst torture.<br />
<br />
Church historians recount <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250105.htm">gruesome details</a>, but we read martyrs' fierce declarations of loyalty in between episodes of violence.<br />
<br />
Blandina was a teenage slave who seemed too weak to withstand interrogation. She remained steadfast and uttered words that martyrs would repeat throughout the centuries: <i>"I am a Christian, and there is nothing vile done by us."</i><br />
<br />
What does it mean to be a christian? I assure you that it meant something very different than it does today.<br />
<br />
The officials tortured a deacon named Sanctus, asking him for his name, parents and native country. He answered: <i>"I am a Christian; that is my name, my parentage, and my country; indeed, I am altogether nothing else than a Christian."</i><br />
<br />
Imagine saying such a thing in 2019. Even just saying a single part of Sanctus' three-fold declaration. Imagine saying that your country is not America. Yeah, yeah "Our citizenship is in heaven" and all that, but imagine telling your friends that you don't consider yourself an American. Do you think your admission would garner respect?<br />
<br />
Officials often offer leniency in the many martyrdom stories handed down to us. Just like in the case of Polycarp, they generally didn't want to execute people. They might reduce their requirements in hopes of making the christian relent. Forget about cursing Christ. Forget about sacrificing to the gods.<br />
<br />
Officials consistently asked one thing of the early christians: give a pinch of incense to the emperor. Christians weren't asked to call the emperor a god. They weren't asked to worship him. They weren't asked to renounce Jesus. They weren't asked to become polytheists. Only a pinch of incense. <i>Just a pinch</i>.<br />
<br />
Imagine what you might do if you were accused. What if they told you, <i>"You don't need to offer a pinch; all we need is for you to put your hand over your heart and pledge allegiance. Do you have a problem with pledging allegiance to a person? That's no problem. How bout you pledge your allegiance to a banner? There's nothing religious about the Roman eagle– just show some support!"</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Imagine saying "no" to them. Imagine the resentment you would incur.<br />
<br />
Americans, do we really think we're any different than the Roman empire?<br />
<br />
Do we want to be different?<br />
<br />
Is slapping the cross onto our military standard as Constantine did good enough for us? Would you pledge allegiance to that?<br />
<br />
<i>-----</i><br />
<br />
As I've already said, I am aiming this article at christians. I write this for the people who agree that<br />
"whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them is like a wise man who built his house on the rock" (Matt. 7:24).<br />
<br />
If you're on-board with that, we must deal with difficult truths:<br />
<ul>
<li>Jesus is Lord.</li>
<li>Our Lord surrendered his life into hands of his enemies and made his cross our primary pattern for life (Mark 8:34, 1 Cor. 2:22, John 15:13).</li>
<li>The previous point is horribly inconvenient, but it wasn't my idea.</li>
<li>We must always show purposeful, visible love for our enemies (Matt. 5:43, Rom. 12:16).</li>
<li>Vengeance is not our right and that violence cannot and undo the effects of violence (Matt. 5:38, Rom. 12:19).</li>
<li>Those who live by the sword will die by the sword (Matt. 26:52, Rom. 13:4).</li>
<li>We must first consider the most vulnerable members of our population in any decision that affects our community (James 1:27, Matt. 25:40).</li>
<li>Christians pray for God's will to be done on earth as it is done in the heavens (Matt. 6:10).</li>
<li>We are not to be like the nations, who associate greatness with "lording" power over others. (Luke 22:29).</li>
<li>Powerful human institutions are repeatedly toppled throughout history (Luke 1:52), but the New Testament tells us that the "lamb who was slain" is the only suitable replacement (Rev. 5:11).</li>
<li>The last point is horribly inconvenient, but it wasn't my idea.</li>
<li>Peace is not an end result, but a process (James 3:18), which means that peacemaking may be more complicated, drawn-out and self-sacrificing than we would like. Any christian community must therefore begin with leaders renouncing coercion.</li>
<li>Jesus cherishes the prophetic tradition of speaking against the power structures of the day, even if that gets you killed (Matt. 5:11).</li>
<li>Christians have at times non-violently resisted the authorities (Acts 5:9), often when they are pressed to the lordship of Jesus,</li>
<li>Resistance may result in our own injury (Heb. 12:4) but the only physical harm against our enemies that the New Testament prescribes is giving them too much water to drink (Rom. 12:20).</li>
<li>Christians have at other times submitted to authorities and subversively focused on "doing good" (1 Pet. 2:15).</li>
<li>The previous three points are confusing and concerning and horribly inconvenient, but we do well to wrestle with the tension.</li>
<li>Paul utilizes his Roman citizenship in various social situations (Rom. 16:37), but this speaks more to Paul's pragmatism (Phil. 1:18), and the New Testament does not entertain the idea of "dual citizenship" (Phil. 3:8, Phil. 3:20). </li>
<li>The New Testament recognizes a multi-ethnic, trans-national church (Rev. 7:9) and calls this church its own nation (1 Pet. 2:9).</li>
<li>The Bible does not command Christians to visit the DMV to revoke their citizenship. (although the anabaptists <a href="https://themennonite.org/feature/the-birth-of-anabaptism/">effectively revoked their citizenship</a> by refusing to baptize their infants into the state church).</li>
<li>Members of this nation do not demonstrate their membership to the outside world through any insignia, bodily marking or sacramental ritual, but by "faith working through love" (Gal. 5:6).</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
I pledge allegiance to Jesus. I pledge allegiance to the lamb that was slain and to his kingdom of love. I know no other kingdom than that. We live as residents, eager to make our world flourish, but we also live as aliens, devoted to an alternative lifestyle. I refuse to take the route of complicity. I refuse to join the powerful in their coercion. I refuse to bow to empire. I refuse to take any route other than Christ's cross.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I pledge allegiance.</div>
James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-79482391154246240282019-04-13T11:53:00.002-07:002019-04-23T19:11:13.484-07:00How to Change the World<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"It was only a cup of water, with a gentle
grace bestowed, </i><br />
<i>But it cheered a lonely traveler upon the
dusty road; </i><br />
<i>For the way was long and dreary, and the
resting places few, </i><br />
<i>And the sun had dried the streamlets, and
drunk up the sparkling dew. </i><br />
<i>None noticed the cup of water as a beautiful act of love, </i><br />
<i>Save the angels keeping the record, away
in the land above; </i><br />
<i>But the record shall never perish, the
trifling deed shall live, </i><br />
<i>For heaven demands but little from those
who have least to give! </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>It was only a kind word spoken to a weeping little child, </i><br />
<i>But the thread of its grief was broken, and
the little one sweetly smiled; </i><br />
<i>And nobody stayed to notice so tiny an
act of love, </i><br />
<i>Save the angels keeping the record in the
wonderful book above. </i><br />
<i>And she who had spoken kindly went on in
her quiet way, </i><br />
<i>Nor dreamed such a simple action should
count in the last great day. </i><br />
<i>But the pitying words of comfort were,
heard with a song of joy, </i><br />
<i>And the listening angels blessed her from
their beautiful home on high. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>It isn't the world-praised wonders that are
best in our Father's sight, </i><br />
<i>Nor the wreaths of fading laurels that
garnish fame's dizzy height, </i><br />
<i>But the pitying love and kindness, the
work of the warm caress, </i><br />
<i>The beautiful hope and patience and self-forgetfulness; </i><br />
<i>The trifle in secret given, the prayer in the
quiet night, </i><br />
<i>And the little unnoticed nothings are good
in our Father's sight." -</i>Anonymous poem, c. 1880<br />
<br />
I ran into this quote the other day and couldn't believe I'd never read it. I adore it. It's a beautiful retelling of <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A31-46&version=NLT">Matthew 25</a> and the call to serve "the least of these" for no ulterior motive other than love itself. The poem's greatest beauty is its anonymity – how it says powerful words without a name attached to them. No byline. No credit. Only the joy of blessing readers who will never know who wrote it.<br />
<br />
I don't want to be a nameless poet. I'd much rather see a statue erected in my name and dramatic biopics screened in my memory. Anonymity, on the other hand, has always meant insignificance to me.. St. Francis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and MLK are my three biggest heroes, and their names all made it into the history books. We know who they were and what they did. Francis was a joyful friend to the poor, Dietrich was a stubborn keeper of his brother, Martin was an agent of truth and peace. Now <i>those</i> were lives well lived. Those were lives that changed the world. At least I feel that way most of the time.<br />
<br />
But notoriety is not significance, despite what our culture, churches, schools, media, etc. tell us. If a tree falls in the forest and no one sees it, of course it still fell. If that tree were a blind and deaf man you picked up knowing he'd never know your name, of course you still picked him up. Love people for love's sake. Give not to receive a thank-you but for the joy of seeing needs met. Surrender power to others knowing that you are freeing yourself from power's chains. Francis, who hated the fame and power popes and followers lavished on him, would agree:<br />
<br />
<i>"Blessed is the servant who does not regard himself as better when he is esteemed and extolled by men than when he is reputed as mean, simple, and despicable: for what a man is in the sight of God, so much he is, and no more. Woe to that religious who is elevated in dignity by others, and who of his own will is not ready to descend. And blessed is that servant who is raised in dignity not by his own will and who always desires to be beneath the feet of others." </i>(Admonitions)<br />
<br />
The people who served me most in life asked for nothing in return. Popular kids in school downgraded their social status to associate with me. Youth volunteers gave hours of care to unruly junior highers, knowing full well that those kids might never comprehend the sacrifice. Parents understood that walking alongside me in humility, rather making me conform to their own image, was the best way to love. Pastors never stopped mentoring me even after they gave up their titles and went back to work in the real world.<br />
<br />
I want to be like those people. I absolutely idolized my first small group leader and figured that my life would be a success if I grew up to be at least half the man he was. I got into youth ministry later on life hoping to embody the care he and others gave to me.<br />
<br />
And sorry to Jesus-juke you, but I learned later in life that he and all of those other people were simply trying to be half the person Jesus is. I now know Jesus is the person I want to embody. It shouldn't be about rewards or even gratitude, but the pure beauty that I see and want to emulate.<br />
<br />
"What Would Jesus Do?" is as Sunday School as it gets, but it's amazing how I got away from that question growing up. Jesus was one of the most closeted do-gooders out there (Matthew 6:6) who encouraged his followers to not only serve quietly but keep their left hand from knowing about there right. I get the feeling (mildly heretical, I know) that he'd be peeved at his disciples for writing so many books about him. And maybe John understood and accepted that:<br />
<br />
<i>"Now there are many things Jesus also did, which, if every one of them were written, </i><i>I bet not even the universe itself could fit all the books written." </i>(John 21:25)<br />
<br />
The unnamed poet challenges me rethink my ambitions. He and Jesus call me to rethink what it means to change the world. I must start at the neighbor level. We love the person sitting right next to us, whether they'll reciprocate it or not. You want to change the world? Good. There's 7.7 billion worlds on this planet, each contained in a human life. To visit a prisoner or house the homeless is a therefore a revolutionary event.Your efforts are not in vain, no matter how small or anonymous they feel. You're changing the world.<br />
<br />
I love the song "An Act of Kindness" by Bastille.<br />
<br />
<i>"An act of kindness is what you show to me</i><br />
<i>It caught me by surprise in this town of glass and eyes </i><br />
<i>Kindness, so many people pass me by </i><br />
<i>But you warm me to my core and you left me wanting more </i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>And now it follows me every day </i><br />
<i>And now it follows me every day"</i><br />
<br />
Sacrificial love, like a mustard seed, works quietly but powerfully. Sacrificial love leaves an unforgettable mark on its recipients, whether we acknowledge it or not. And it's infectious. It leaves me wanting more.<br />
<br />
<br />James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-71876407343052034902019-04-02T01:28:00.002-07:002019-04-23T19:08:37.555-07:00The Loneliness of Pain<div style="text-align: left;">
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<i><br /></i>
<i>"Ivan Ilyich suffered most of all from the lie, the lie which, for some reason, everyone accepted: that he was not dying but was simply ill, and that if he stayed calm and underwent treatment he could expect good results. Yet he knew that regardless of what was done all he could expect was more agonizing suffering and death. And he was tortured by this lie, tortured by the fact that they refused to acknowledge what he and everyone else knew, that they wanted to lie about his horrible condition and to force him to become a party to that lie. This lie, a lie perpetrated on the eve of his death, a lie that was bound to degrade the awesome solemn act of his dying to the level of their social calls, their draperies and the sturgeon they ate for dinner, was an excruciating torture for Ivan Ilyich. And oddly enough, many times when they were going through their acts with him he came within a hairbreadth of shouting: 'Stop your lying! You and I know that I'm dying, so at least stop lying!
But he never had the courage to do it." </i><br />
<i>- </i>The Death of Ivan Ilyich<i> by Leo Tolstoy</i></div>
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>"No one stood with me in my first court hearing; everyone abandoned me." </i><br />
<i>- </i>2 Timothy 4:16
</div>
<i><br /></i>
Tolstoy's 1886 novella is bad reading material for a depressed person, but better than most reading material. A story with such soul-crushing anguish illustrates the reader's own pain and therefore simultaneously re-injures and relieves. Mentally stable people don't hang on to the negatives, but Ivan Ilyich's fixation was an overcompensation for something else, as it is for many sad folk. Tolstoy's character is wasting away from a physical malady, but that is not his greatest pain. He suffers more from his loneliness.<br />
<br />
Doctors, family members and friends assure Ivan that he is only <i>sick</i>. He feels himself on an inevitable downward trajectory, but they rebuke him for feeling that. Perhaps they inwardly share his fears, but for some reason – whether apathy or misguided optimism – they refuse to validate him. And a horrible sense of isolation creeps over him as he realizes that he is alone in all senses of the word.<br />
<br />
Depressed people understand this lonesomeness. They often point to it as the worst part. How strange it is that the effects of pain are also its cause.<br />
<br />
Doctors assure you that you'll be better. They say you'll ride again, so to speak, but you know in the pit of your stomach that they're wrong. You want to scream out, "Does anyone care about what's actually going on?" but you've probably been taught to think that's self-pity. So you bury your disappointment deep down like Ivan, and of course Tolstoy himself, whose cold isolationism wounded his wife emotionally:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>"After supper his friends went home, leaving Ivan Ilyich alone with the knowledge that his life had been poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that far from diminishing, that poison was penetrating deeper and deeper into his entire being. And with this knowledge and the physical pain and the horror as well, he had to go to bed, often to be kept awake by pain the greater part of the night. And the next morning he had to get up again, dress, go to court, talk and write, or if he did not go, put in those twenty-four hours at home, every one of them a torture. And he had to go on living like this, on the brink of disaster, without a single person to understand and pity him."</i></div>
<br />
We can't control genetics, accidents and most of all death. But isolation is on us. Pain, sadness and death are guaranteed, but there's no requirement that we walk through them alone. It doesn't have to be this way. Below are a three practical countermeasures for both the sufferer and the comforter:<br />
<br />
1) Acknowledge the shame cycle that I mentioned two paragraphs above. We feel ashamed to express our pain. I've spent most of my life conflating self-pity with self-care, and in my effort to be selfless I've actually managed to throw self-care out the window while giving self-pity free reign. I often think I don't deserve to talk about my pain to other people, but there's the conflation again. It's not self-pity to say aloud, "Ouch, that hurt when I stubbed my toe." It's nothing more than an acknowledgement that lends itself to a miniature form of closure, which humans so desperately crave. Human beings are expressers, and yeah, sometimes we express ourselves in unhealthy ways, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. You're not wicked for wanting closure. Talk to somebody about it.<br />
<br />
2) Please stop trying to fix things. They have therapists and nurses and IT guys and insurance agents for that. Ivan Ilyich's friends found their value in giving him medical advice and hounding him about his pills. The sick person also wants things fixed, but they know that healing starts with acknowledgement and closure. Your job, though you may find it deplorably unsexy, may be to just listen. Some people just need a safe place to be sad. We won't always need that place and we definitely don't want to stay there, but it's a necessary motel-stop on the journey for now.<br />
<br />
3) For the love of God, please stop forcing optimism on people. Friends in their attempts to encourage me in the midst of a hard transition tell me that things are still good and that I haven't really lost the things I think I've lost. One thing I've heard a few times is that people view me no differently than before. That may be 100-percent true and probably is, but it stings to hear. I know that you don't feel any differently about the situation, and that's one of the underlying problems.Things may not be different for you, but they're very much different for me. I can't operate from your perspective as much as you try to force it on me. Telling me that nothing has changed is a well-intentioned but apathetic pat on the head. It doesn't serve me to say that, but it does make you feel a bit better. Please don't conflate the two.<br />
<br />
<br />
Things aren't always going to suck, but right now they suck. And that's okay. We don't need to change the situation any more than we're capable of changing it. We have hope, but being hopeful and seeing the glass half-full aren't the same thing. <span style="text-align: center;">For now we have each other, and even just writing this is a weight off my shoulders. So thanks very much for reading.</span>James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-10664140584384139022019-02-25T22:22:00.001-07:002019-04-23T19:15:34.928-07:00Rachel Weeps<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: left;">"A voice in Ramah was heard.</span></div>
Anguish and loud wails.<br />
Rachel weeping for her children.<br />
And she would not be comforted,<br />
because they are no more." - Matthew 2:16-18<br />
<br />
---<br />
This blog post isn't for everyone. It may offend you and probably should. It's about horrible things that should make us angry and sad. We have been indifferent to them, and it will take a shock to the system for us to change. If you have eyes to read, please read. I believe these principles are true for all people, but I intend to shake Christians in particular.<br />
---<br />
The quote above is Advent's saddest story. The infant Jesus and his family escaped the clutches of a bloodthirsty tyrant, but not without collateral damage. As Mary and Joseph fled, Herod's soldiers entered Bethlehem with orders to kill every male baby. A scene of bloodshed concludes Matthew's Christmas story. It doesn't end with wise men or shepherds or angels or even the escape to Egypt. It ends with the massacre of the innocents.<br />
<br />
The greatest historians of the day paid no attention. You won't read about the Bethlehem slaughter through Josephus or Tacitus or any other work outside of the Christian Bible, and there's a perfectly logical reason for that: this sort of thing happened all the time, and it made no difference to the world. Rulers regularly ordered genocide to consolidate their power, and dispatching a couple dozen infants in a small Jewish town was small potatoes for Herod, who had already executed three of his sons.<br />
<br />
It was a blip on the radar.<br />
<br />
For that reason Rachel in Matthew's quote is a solitary figure. She weeps alone. Dismissed, ignored, abandoned.<br />
<br />
The quote originally comes from Jeremiah 31, which describes the exile of Judah. After siege and slaughter, the Babylonians gathered Hebrew prisoners of war in the city of Ramah before marching them off to captivity in the East.<br />
<br />
Rachel symbolizes a grieving people whom the world has forgotten. Her unceasing tears timelessly represent the person – the people – whom the cycle of human violence crushes. The Hebrew exile encompasses all the hallmark cruelties of war; men killed; women raped; children stolen. This is the reality of our world, of our history. The human race enjoys moments of peace and prosperity, but all the while a weeping Rachel lurks around a secluded corner.<br />
<br />
We don't hear her wails even now. America has for all of its history minimized the pain of its marginalized. Although I expect power-hungry politicians to tread over society's most vulnerable members for gain, it pains me to know that Christians – indeed, Christian <i>leaders</i> – are some of the loudest dismissers.<br />
<br />
<i>"A poor person never gave anyone a job," </i>says the president of a large Christian college in America, with respect to poverty. <i>"A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume."
</i><br />
<br />
<i>"There has never been a multi-racial society which has
existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world," </i>writes a prominent member of the Gospel Coalition with respect to American chattel slavery.<br />
<br />
But however much we deny her story, Rachel is still there. In the group homes, in the prisons, in the lynching fields. She's there alone, and she's weeping. We can plug our ears and say "la-la-la," but Rachel and her pain remain.<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
We understand how you feel. We didn’t want to know about sexual abuse either. <a href="https://t.co/HljXUmFREr">pic.twitter.com/HljXUmFREr</a></div>
— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) <a href="https://twitter.com/BethMooreLPM/status/1094720702190678016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<br />
I could harp on the specific travesties, but that's not the point. We are all guilty of minimizing our neighbor's pain. We rarely lie when doing so. In most cases we simply don't know about suffering that occurs outside of us and <i>don't want to know</i>. We have our own sadness to handle. The more a tragedy affects <i>us</i>, the more it grieves us.<br />
<br />
This is part of human nature. I don't mean to shame, but rather to demonstrate the challenge. Ignorance and self-protection dictate our baseline posture and behavior, the "animal urges" described by the Bible. Humans are by nature a self-preserving lot. If violence doesn't directly hurt me, the next closest victim I care about is a member of my tribe suffering.<br />
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But awakening to a stranger's sadness admittedly feels superfluous – an unnecessary burden in an already sorrowful world. Unnecessary, impractical, detrimental, and maybe even masochistic.<br />
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However, Jesus does not exempt those who would follow him. St. Paul exhorts them to "weep with those who weep" (Romans 12:15). This is an all-encompassing category. We cannot avoid the call to share our neighbor's suffering.<br />
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<b>So then, what do we do?</b><br />
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Don't despair over my heavy-handed, idealistic blog post. No one requires us to save the world or turn our consciousness into some echo chamber of innumerable wails. The calling is actually very simple, practical and unconventional.<br />
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You needn't scour the globe to find human sorrow and need (but of course, don't let me stop you if you'd like to do that). Unseen human sorrow is close to you. In your apartment complex. On the street corner. In your pew. We must recognize these sufferers as neighbors – <i>our</i> neighbors – before we can proceed.<br />
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<b>And how do we help them?</b><br />
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You may not like the answer, because the Christian faith first and foremost calls for <b>mourning</b>. Many of us would rather fix than mourn. After all, we grew up learning that it was wrong to cry over tragedies we can't reverse, let alone spilt milk.<br />
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A well-intentioned blog applies Matthew 2:16-18 in a natural fashion.<br />
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<i>"One barometer we should use in making our decisions is 'Will what I am doing make ‘Rachel’ smile or cry?' Let us all make an effort to dry her tears."</i></blockquote>
Well-intentioned and kind. That should be our end goal for those who suffer. We'll get there. But it's not the start.<br />
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Rachel does not ask for you to make her smile. She does not ask for you to dry her tears. Her request is painfully simple in this moment: that we recognize her pain and join her.<br />
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She refuses to be comforted. Jeremiah's version of the quote ends with the promise of restoration, but Matthew leaves it noticeably unresolved. Do you think the sound of weeping ever faded from Jesus' ears? No. He carried the sorrows of Bethlehem's mothers with him when he marched toward Jersualem.<br />
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My pastor in Michigan often described this mindset as a mixture of two postures: realism and hope.<br />
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Karl Marx called religion an "opium" because it used hope of an afterlife to ease the proletariat's misery and quiet their disenchantment with the status quo. Faith made them comfortable enough to never change the world. Marx might have properly described most of the American church, but he didn't describe the faith of Rachel. She acknowledges the true state of the world and refuses to shrink from its harshness.<br />
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But realism does not preclude the unwavering belief that love will have the last say in our world. And if love will have the last say, we aim to love others in the present. We can address the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of our world as clear-eyed yet inflexibly joyful people.<br />
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I believe, however, that this process must begin with mourning. Those who follow Jesus must <b>rediscover the spiritual discipline of mourning</b> and <b>join Rachel in her pain</b>.<br />
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God invites us to join her and share her pain in our own small part. We may not sit in the first row at the funeral, but we will attend even if in standing room. To do so is to express the deepest longings and exorcise the deepest fears of the human heart.<br />
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People can share your pain in the simplest of ways. They changed my life in 2015 just by listening to me and acknowledging me. Depression had sunk me into despair and shame. Despairing because I didn't know how to get better. Ashamed because I didn't feel that I could express how I felt, lest I be rebuked for a lack of piety. But the people who listened to me changed my mind. None of them parachuted into my life to tell me what I should do to fix things. But they did the simplest thing: acknowledging that my pain was real. However silent my pain felt.<br />
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Those friends forever impacted me. I could name ten people right now who gave themselves to hearing me and mourning with me. Some of them didn't even know me beforehand. They know who they are, and I hope they know that they changed my life for the better. How can I not pursue compassion in light of their influence?<br />
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I've come to believe that the only idea more crazy than Jesus' resurrection is the belief that self-sacrificial love will ultimately conquer greed and violence. I've come to understand that the two principals are inseparably linked to each other. Maybe I'll turn out wrong and learn that self-preservation is the ultimate power. It really does seem that way this month. Maybe we'd be better off desensitizing ourselves to human pain and distracting ourselves with empty things. Maybe mourning isn't worth it after all.<br />
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Maybe. But I'm with Rachel on this one. She understands the beautiful irrationality of this movement.<br />
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It's a movement that gives without asking for anything in return.<br />
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A movement that blesses its enemies.<br />
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A movement that does not repay evil for evil.<br />
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A movement that honors the outsider above its own members.<br />
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A movement that breaks down tribalism and nationalism to make one family.<br />
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A movement that actively surrenders the power and influences it holds over others.<br />
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A movement that practices repentance and forgiveness hand in hand, moment by moment.<br />
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A movement that seeks out the lowly and associates with them. And honors them. And learns from them.<br />
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A movement that unabashedly mourns what is wrong with the world. And then does something about it.<br />
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A movement that considers the failings of its neighbors to be its own failings.<br />
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A movement that considers the poverty of others to be its own poverty.<br />
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And the pain of others to be its own pain.James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-83675193680203619582018-11-27T18:07:00.002-07:002019-04-23T19:12:24.168-07:00Jesus Walks into Your Church<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
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I don't know if there's as popular a hypothetical in the church as this one:<br />
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<i>"What would Jesus say if he were here?"</i><br />
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It's effective. Pastors have posited the scenario to cause their congregations to contemplate. It's good for reflection. It forces us to examine our world – the spaces we've created – from a higher level and for at least a fleeting moment overlook biases and prejudices that keep us from truth.<br />
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I'm glad we're asking the question. I suppose half the battle of following Jesus is simply hearing his voice. And I think it's fair to say that the voices of American Christianity (the tribe of my upbringing) have sincerely done their best to answer the question.<br />
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Popular writer Lysa Terkeurst <a href="https://www.faithgateway.com/what-if-jesus-walked-into-your-church/#.W_2xlOhKhRY">writes</a> that it would be a happy day if Jesus walked into her church. She states that it is her deep longing to see him enter in grandeur:<br />
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"People would grab their friends with diseases and run toward Him. Parents would carry their hurting children to Him. Those with addictions, emotional hurts and illnesses would stretch out their hands just to touch Him. Others would drop to their knees in adoration."</blockquote>
Evangelical pastor Jim Martin <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2006/february-online-only/what-would-jesus-preach-telling-truth-in-church.html">imagines</a> the same excitement of the first crowd that flocked to Jesus of Nazareth:<br />
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"Oh I would like to say that it would be a wonderful day. I suspect our numbers would go up. Adult children would call their parents to come visit. Children of our members would drive in from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex to hear Jesus speak and then have lunch together afterward. I suspect our members would be a bit more eager to invite friends in our community."</blockquote>
Most Christians similarly long to see Jesus in person and encounter the subject of their faith, although not without a sense of sobriety. Terkeurst and Martin correct their own imaginations. Terkeurst concludes by saying that – spoiler alert – Jesus is actually already in your church according to Matthew 18 (<i>"Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them."</i>)<br />
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Martin expresses apprehension he would have if Jesus appeared: "<i>You've read the Gospels. You know how he could be very candid with religious leaders.</i>" But he adds that Jesus would bring an important third-party perspective and say,<i>"You do not evaluate your lives the way I do.</i>" Jesus would teach the congregation with impartiality, according to Martin.<br />
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Pastor Dan Delzell applies a <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/what-would-jesus-say-to-churches-today-115862/">sterner warning</a> to his church, referencing the seven confrontational letters of John's Revelation as an example. That is to say, Jesus would warn the people of their lax lifestyle and compromising sexuality and offer the reward for perseverance if he stepped into Delzell's church.<br />
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For Delzell, Jesus would come to give pronouncements. For Martin, Jesus would come to give us perspective. For Terkeurst, Jesus would come as something of an inspirer-in-chief.<br />
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They're not wrong per se. As I said above, I'm glad they're asking the question. I'm glad we are posing the hypothetical.<br />
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But the more important question here is the most troubling question for me and the question we don't want to ask ourselves.<br />
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<b>Why do we think this is a hypothetical? </b>Because it is not a matter of <i>if </i>Jesus walked into your church, but <i>when </i>he walked into your church. He has already entered our midst, even if we didn't notice.<br />
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Terkeurst gets a portion of this maxim correct when she describes the unseen presence of God within the congregation. This is a step in the right direction to acknowledge that Jesus is already present in the congregation, but she assumes too much: namely that Jesus being present means that we recognize him in our midst and truly encounter him. I submit that Jesus in many cases has slipped under the radar in our churches. We have not seen him in many, or even most, cases<br />
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<i>"But Lord, when did we see you attending our church and not encounter you?"</i><br />
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If you have your Bibles with you, please flip to <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25&version=RSV">Matthew 25</a>, where we see Jesus tell his disciples the uncomfortable truth about those who truly have experienced his presence and come to know him:<br />
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"Then the King will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’"</blockquote>
Jesus was present, and we overlooked him. And it's not so much about Jesus being invisible as it is about Jesus being present in the lonely. In <i>the least of these</i>.<br />
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It's clear from Matthew 25 and James 2 (and perhaps even the horrifying imagery of the rich man burning in Luke 16) that Jesus <b>explicitly</b> elevates treatment of the poor as the defining requirement for his followers and the ultimate criteria on judgement day. It's only logical if you follow the two premises. If the first commandment of the Christian is to 'love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with your mind," and God is present in the poor and lowly, we must then love the poor and lowly. God in the person of Jesus attaches himself to the victimized and the helpless and offers us a package deal. God has so intimately connected himself to the disenfranchised that it is impossible to decouple them. <b>If you don't accept them, you don't accept him</b> (and those are Jesus' words, not mine).<br />
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Now, love might sound like a vague term, right? And it's not like Christians are trying to shut down soup kitchens. It's not like there aren't prison ministries. It's not like we don't donate our clothes to Goodwill. So what do we lack? After all, we don't hate poor people.<br />
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In all of my life, I've heard only two sermons on James 2:1-13, one from an influential mentor and another from a dear partner in ministry. They stick with me. I've heard no shortage of pastors trying to explain the "faith without works is dead" passage in the latter half of James 2. People flip when they read that James views works as equal to faith with regard to salvation.<br />
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It has to be that James meant something else, right? He can't seriously mean that people will ultimately be defined not what they believe, but by what they do. If you grew up Reformed, the little voice inside your head is screaming "Legalism!"<br />
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Could Batman really be right?</div>
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Well he is, but not as you might think. Because the "works" James discusses are not a puritanical list of moral achievements or a record streak for how many times you didn't masturbate. That misses the point.<br />
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You have to actually read the rest of the letter for it to make sense. Then you see what these critical works really are.<br />
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You must remember the admonition of James <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+1&version=ESV">1:27</a>:<br />
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"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."</blockquote>
These are the works. This is the faith working through love that Paul so passionately proclaimed in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Galatians%205%3A6">Galatians 5:6</a> as superior to the empty rituals of tribal religion. Combine those passages with what we know about "the least of these" in Matthew 25, and we're starting to get somewhere. Gone now is the the legalism that frightens us so much, because to describe it in terms of legal requirements is to miss the heart of God. What makes the New Testament such an oddity is not just the radical life it prescribes for its adherents, but its call for love – not fear of punishment or the sycophantic pursuit of rewards – to motivate self-sacrifice and self-effacement. It's nonsensical, but the best kind of nonsensical.<br />
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<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+2&version=ESV">James 2:1-13</a> challenges us to tangibly practice faith working through love. Don't just talk about it; do it. The writer presents a scenario (a hypothetical if you will) for his readers to see if they have actually practice his teaching.<br />
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"My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, 'You sit here in a good place,' while you say to the poor man, 'You stand over there,' or, 'Sit down at my feet,' have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?"</blockquote>
As my friend declared about this passage, how you view God is inextricably linked with how you view the poor. And to deny the poor a spot at the table is to deny the redemption story God is weaving.<br />
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We want to know what would happen if Jesus walked into our church, but we ask the wrong question.<br />
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<b>Jesus wants to know what happens when the poor walk into our church.</b><br />
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Honestly consider the scenario. Have you ever seen a hobo sitting in the front pew? Have you shaken hands with an raggedy, alchohol-breathing vagrant during the seven-minute break? Do you greet the drug-addicted woman whose midriff might cause someone "to stumble." Do you sit alongside transgender woman whose parents booted her into the street, or are you afraid of "endorsing" her with your hospitality?<br />
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James had harsh words for his audience, but you have to give him credit. At least the poor were staying for the entirety of church service. Where I come from, they rarely make it into the sanctuary. I live one of the most unabashedly gentrified communities in Arizona. The middle class flocks here for its promise of safe confines to raise a family.<br />
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And safe works for them. But I don't want safe. I'm not a masochist, and I also know that I'm not practical.<br />
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I don't think following Jesus is practical.<br />
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I don't think the Sermon on the Mount offers a pragmatic approach to life.<br />
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Its very thrust is to imitate the teacher who voluntarily suffered injustice and abuse at the hands of a corrupt power structure. Understand that while Jesus' driving mission was in part to offer forgiveness, the overarching purpose was to identify with humanity's weakness. He in turn invites his follower to do likewise for the least of these.<br />
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If for us the Christian faith props up a life that is devoted to the pursuit of comfort and safety, then Dan Delzell is absolutely right: Jesus would take us to task if he stood up to give the homily on Sunday morning. But better now than later, as the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus would suggest.<br />
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The Evangelical church's recent embrace of "Biblical Justice" takes a hopeful but often misguided step. In our love of laws and technicalities, we have defined justice as even-handedness: the letter of the law balancing perfectly. That's correct to a limited point. Yes, Israel's prophets exhorted the people to renounce "dishonest scales," but the New Testament advocates a deeper, more extreme and profoundly uneven view. This is the view that God's heart is intertwined with and aches for the plight of the oppressed.<br />
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For that reason, Jesus far more frequently commands mercy than he commands justice. They are not opposed to each other, but the merciful understands the deeper meaning of justice. <i>'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'</i> is the refrain of Jesus and prophets, and it deserves our contemplation. We have ignored mercy at our peril. If we ponder mercy, it is only the mercy God gives to believers, and not the mercy they extend to their neighbor.<br />
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I blame this lack of vision for American Christianity's longstanding pattern of propagating culture wars and crusading against intellectual dissenters. Read just a few writings of the Moral Majority's leading figures, and you'll see that the phrase "law of God" is a consistent theme. Ever wondered why we want Exodus 20 inscribed on our courthouses and not Mark 12?<br />
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Gospel of Luke is not concerned with law but rather liberation. Jesus begins his ministry with the proclamation that he came to bring good news to poor people, release captives, make blind people see and set oppressed people free. This is not just a liberation of the spirit. It has a body. It operates in the real world.<br />
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Mary's Magnificat celebrates God for how he has"put down the mighty from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly," satisfied the hungry and banished the rich. If we are to take seriously the heart of God that is expressed in the Bible, everything is going to change.<br />
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The life-transforming message befell Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who called the first Advent hymn:<br />
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"...the most passionate, most vehement, one might almost say, most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. It is not the gentle, sweet, dreamy Mary that we so often see portrayed in pictures, but the passionate, powerful, proud, enthusiastic Mary, who speaks here. None of the sweet, sugary, or childish tones that we find so often in our Christmas hymns, but a hard, strong, uncompromising song of bringing down rulers from their thrones and humbling the lords of this world, of God's power and of the powerlessness of men."</blockquote>
There's a reason imperial Britain banned the reading of the Magnificat in India and authoritarian governments in South American forbade the passage.<br />
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It's subversive. It's revolutionary. And if the followers of Jesus understand that it reflects the beating, bleeding heart of God, everything is going to change.<br />
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Everything is going to change. Everything must change.<br />
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Karl Marx called religion the opium of the people, meaning that religion's purpose is to dull the pain of society's woes and subdue the people in order to maintain the present state of affairs. And sadly Christendom has largely agreed with him over the course of history. We have sacrificed mercy for comfort, and the consequence is an outpouring of hypocrisy and a functional denial of the Christ's teachings.<br />
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Our love of comfort has not ignored the cries of the hurting but trampled upon them. We've sacrificed so many people on the altar of our self-protectionism. I've spent time working with high schoolers and young adults who grew up in the Church, and I'm telling you – we have done deep harm to a generation of church kids. In many cases the harm is irreparable. How could I expect them to return as prodigals when it is we church-folk who must humble ourselves before them.<br />
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Hope remains. Jesus lives, and his resurrection rallies us. He calls us to touch our respective spheres with his merciful, self-sacrificial love. It's not loving simply because your God tells you to love, but loving because your God has taught you love.<br />
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Jesus did walk into our church. He's there. He stands at the door. And he bears the wounds and cries the tears of the destitute. He mourns with them. He sits with them. Will we join him?<br />
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May our eyes be open to all that he is and all that we are meant to be.James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-59907952492646272782018-03-08T13:51:00.002-07:002021-03-08T14:30:17.239-07:00Why Jesus Used the F-Word<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh87nxic-GOVEPWbNJAui8UXwUJDGdFZBueEW9Id_2xpfgmxgvzGQXGqujhdgDhIAmQHCqJqARHAzR4DpKo2y8IBXj_S-SCzGBQqG8Gha56fYU3Z3UG2P2uv7h7hYGL8xRfSSCRmHLVfSSj/s1092/Stephen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="1092" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh87nxic-GOVEPWbNJAui8UXwUJDGdFZBueEW9Id_2xpfgmxgvzGQXGqujhdgDhIAmQHCqJqARHAzR4DpKo2y8IBXj_S-SCzGBQqG8Gha56fYU3Z3UG2P2uv7h7hYGL8xRfSSCRmHLVfSSj/w512-h319/Stephen.jpg" width="512" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Stephen is Consecrated Bishop" by Vittore Carpaccio</td></tr></tbody></table></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table>[TW: Sexual Abuse]<p>Two years ago, I decided to stop using the f-word. No, not the actual F-word, but another f-word that had been causing damage: forgiveness.</p><p><i>Forgiveness: </i>the virtue that formed the foundation of my Christian youth. The concept I had learned about from countless Bible verses, Sunday School lessons and VeggieTales episodes. I had fully accepted the idea that I needed to forgive those who did wrong to me as God had forgiven me. And if I had wronged someone, I needed to beg them for their forgiveness. Those who refused to forgive denied the most core tenet of Christianity, and I felt little patience for such people. To abandon forgiveness was nothing short of heresy. You might as well be one of those jerks yelling at Larry the Cucumber.</p><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rtBjdIO4AnI?start=929" width="560"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: left;">Of course, I had formed these opinions years before the fallout. The Calvinist church of my childhood imparted to me great deal of theological and ethical indoctrination, but none of that was enough to keep me from leaving. None of it could prepare me for the child sexual abuse scandal that rocked my denomination. I spent 2018 coming to grips with my community's deep failure to defend the innocent. Our leadership had turned a blind eye to decades and decades of mistreatment, and now the news was coming out. I read story after story of awful trauma, wondering "<i>How could this happen?</i>" But in hindsight, it shouldn't have surprised me.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">What We Sowed</h3><p style="text-align: left;">I came to understand that this scandal had not occurred <i>in spite </i>of our ethics but <i>because </i>of our ethics. An idealization of forgiveness had directly caused the denomination to minimize the impact of abuse and protect the abusers. A running theme in these abuse stories was elders' attempts to make victims forgive those who had scarred them. This caused an even greater wound. We had bastardized forgiveness, employing it in pursuit of a 14-letter word that had become an obscenity of its own: "reconciliation." Reconciliation, once a beautiful concept in my eyes, played a key role in so many mishandled spousal abuse cases at my church. Pastors urged wives to sit down with their manipulative (or even physically violent) husbands in order to "save the marriage." So many awful things were done in the name of bringing people back together.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I found myself in a theological crisis. I sat dumbfounded a bar table one night, quietly listening to my friend explain that he didn't believe Jesus preached forgiveness. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>"You see, if we read Jesus from a Jewish perspective, we'll find that Jesus never called for people to forgive the people who hurt them." </i></p><p style="text-align: left;">I kept my mouth shut, because I knew what I couldn't tell him. He was emphatically wrong about the teachings of Jesus, who quite literally forgave the people that murdered him. But it didn't matter that my friend was wrong about Jesus, because he was right about our situation. Church leadership had used us, gaslighted us and alienated us, and it had done far worse to other people, who bore physical scars. As much as I believed that Jesus preached forgiveness, I knew I could never call upon these victims to forgive or reconcile.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I concluded that as a privileged person who will never fully understand or identify with the experience of the most marginalized, it served little purpose for me to pontificate about how they should approach forgiveness. That is a separate, sacred realm that I dare not touch.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I must instead work to deconstruct the systems that create otherness and have-nots, paying specific attention to how my own power and privilege prevent reconciliation.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Hindsight</h3><p style="text-align: left;">If I am to speak charitably about my old church, I will say they sought to embrace what Miraslov Volf called a "theology of embrace." The theology of embrace, according to Volf, seeks to make space for "the other" – the person whom we would typically view as an outsider to our social group– to view them and relate to them as a fellow human. He argued that we must first and foremost identify people "in their humanity" before making judgments about them (XXVIII). This was my church's intention: to break down walls of hostility. But the leaders made devastating errors along the way.</p><p style="text-align: left;">First, my church leaders appropriated a theology of embrace to the wrong context. Volf in his classic 1996 book <i>Exclusion and Embrace</i> was speaking to the problem of animosity between different people groups. For example, Volf struggled as a Croat with Serbian friends in the 1990s (5). His Croatian peers wanted him to cast off his Serbian relationships in the pursuit of an ethnic purity. In order to more fully grasp his Croatian identity, he would need to reject and demonize his Serbian roots. </p><p style="text-align: left;">My church was not working at all toward loving the outsider. In fact, my denomination's leadership spent much of 2018 promoting a slander campaign aimed at the whistleblowers who accused them of wrongdoing. They very successfully demonized any non-church members who criticized our handling of abuse, implying that we could not trust those who came from outside our walls. I began to understand why former members had described my church as a cult. My community did not value self-reflection. We immediately labeled negative comments from "the world" as the devil's attempts to erode the gospel. Instead of working toward reconciliation with "the other," we focused on on swiping our own problems under the rug. This leads to the other glaring problem of my church's theology of embrace.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Second, we had proposed solidarity without any acknowledgement of marginalization. This occurred when pastors encouraged, or even forced, victims of abuse to meet with those who hurt them. One commonly heard comments like "<i>Well, we all have things to apologize for,</i>" or "<i>Jesus has forgiven us, so we need to forgive each other</i>," which placed responsibility on the victim for creating reconciliation. In addition, it minimized the victim's suffering by claiming that the hesitancy to forgive is just problematic as abuse. We must flatly deny any comparison or equivalency. Of course, the victim may choose to initiate forgiveness and reconciliation of their own free will, but this process must occur in a special space. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">And What Sort of Space is That?</h3><p style="text-align: left;">Before forgiveness and reconciliation can take place, we must first create a space that values "the harassed and helpless," as Volf puts it (14). We must build an environment that listens to and responds to the voices of the needy first and foremost. That is the spirit of Acts 6, in which the apostles readily answered the petition of the needy Hellenistic widows. No negotiation, no qualifications. Just a response to needs. If we wish to embrace, we must address our power dynamics. If the rich person truly desires to reconcile with the poor, they must do as Zaccheus and pursue accountability (Luke 19:8). Embrace without accountability is no embrace at all, but a smothering – a stranglehold of coercion disguised as reconciliation.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I exaggerated in my first paragraph. I <i>do </i>still use the word "forgiveness," but never as a mandate. Of course, I would never rob a marginalized person of the freedom that comes with forgiveness, but this is a walk they must make without my coercion. As for me, I must evaluate my own actions and my role within the church community. What sort of spaces am I working to build? Does my community promote reconciliation without restitution? Does it promote forgiveness without fairness? And does the "reciprocal self-donation" that Volf so hopefully envisions (16), reign in our space?</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">Works Cited</p><p style="text-align: left;">Volf, Miraslov. <i>Exclusion and Embrace. </i>Rev. ed. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2019.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p>James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-16467466602869676532017-06-12T02:50:00.000-07:002019-02-25T22:27:26.465-07:00What Happened to Bike Boy (?)I've been meaning to write this for the last four years. Every time I log into Blogger (a rare event), I see that the vast majority of my posts are drafts. One is titled "Life," another "One Post, Eight Years."<br />
I got desperately close to finishing something about a year ago and typed up a draft that included about four pictures and 500 words. However, my creativity failed me, and my self-consciousness did not.<br />
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The thought has irked me for a while now that I need to put some sort of note on my blog. A preface, a disclaimer, so to speak. I would never delete my archived blog posts, but I rarely can bring myself to read them. It's as if a different person wrote them—someone with a completely different set of interests and motivations.<br />
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So I feel that an explanation of my life is order. Where I've been, what I've been doing and why I stopped blogging. Not because I need to apologize you, but because many of you read this blog faithfully and might enjoy the closure. Closure is a nice thing to share, I think.<br />
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My ability to write in lengthy prose has suffered significantly after three years of journalism school and inverted pyramids, so these bullet points—in the closest thing to chronological order—must suffice. I've also learned that readers are attracted to white space, hence the line breaks.<br />
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<ul><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger2/1337/18607335012001/700/z/703863/gse_multipart13145.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger2/1337/18607335012001/700/z/703863/gse_multipart13145.jpg" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="700" height="150" width="200" /></a>
<li>I started www.boyonbike.blogspot.com on May 17, 2007. That was the birthday of my elder sister, Maria, and if I did the math correctly, she turned 15 that day. I was nearing my 13th birthday. As a kid, I knew that I really liked two things: cycling and writing. Emphasis on the cycling. I had been reading other cycling blogs from local riders and thought it would be the coolest thing if I were to interact with them in the blogosphere. </li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>I raced my heart out while living in Michigan from 2007 to 2009 and made sure that I wrote about it as often as possible (while inserting as many references to Christianity as I thought would bring God glory). I loved this time of life, and I made several lifelong friends during it. There are too many people than the acceptable number of shout-outs would befit, but if you look at the comment sections of many of my old blogs, you'll see that much of my life revolved around those people. And that was not a bad thing.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I loved Michigan. My family, my neighbors, my youth group, my high school, my soccer teams, my cycling teams: essentially everything except the Winter-induced Seasonal Affective Disorder that so many Michigangsters— I mean, Michiganders — endure. But the Winter meant that the Red Wings were playing, and I freaking loved the Red Wings.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I was a really socially awkward kid going into Middle School, and many will say that I still am [a socially awkward kid], but I pretty much always felt welcomed. Lately, I've been remembering how Jim Hughes let me stuff him into a large, sealed trash bin for 2 hours as a White Elephant gift. To this day, I will never understand (1) why a person would be that gracious to me and (2) how Jim managed to survive 2 hours in that trash can with minimal air holes. Thank you, Jim, if you're there.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Alexey Vermeuelen was one of the biggest reasons for why my passion for cycling blossomed as a kid. You might not believe it, but I actually outsprinted him in a couple of criteriums back in the day, although the jury's still out on whether or not he let me beat him at the Kensington Road Race in 2007. But that's disingenuous of me to say, because Alexey is way too competitive for that. He helped me see how important teamwork is to cycling, and not just to cycling, but to all of sports and all of life. And to him and the rest of the AAVC and SLC gang, I'll always be fondly grateful.</li>
</ul>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ4jzYvChlx2CSmXndpacGYaKDKGaZ7RKFO8S2gLzW3_M4DE4QfIBPe6Tuz2wIDsHSocQb5fbE9oDCo3ZWjpKsg0XCBTddpT_cMrjnwa4XLaQNBmZBKM0ErXk0W6rdIXCtCa4TMyVyCvN3/s1600/1909780_1122602828048_1878303_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="404" data-original-width="604" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ4jzYvChlx2CSmXndpacGYaKDKGaZ7RKFO8S2gLzW3_M4DE4QfIBPe6Tuz2wIDsHSocQb5fbE9oDCo3ZWjpKsg0XCBTddpT_cMrjnwa4XLaQNBmZBKM0ErXk0W6rdIXCtCa4TMyVyCvN3/s320/1909780_1122602828048_1878303_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">ToKV Road Race, circa 2008</td></tr>
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<ul>
<li>I've forgotten how catastrophic the 2008 recession was for Michiganders. It sent my family to Arizona to start a new life. New house, new school, new church, new cycling scene. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I hated Arizona at first. Like, really hated it, but everything takes time. Soon enough, I was on the school soccer team, creating a role for myself as the Village Idiot in the "Robin Hood" play and training hard on the bike with my dad. When the old things go away, sometimes the new things arrive with a sense of familiarity.</li>
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<ul>
<li>For the next few years, I had a blast in Arizona. Jake Spelman and I befriended each other in late 2009 and went on to become a dynamic—if not zany—junior cycling duo. And the list of teammates and competitors that I got to know went on and on: Josh PF, Stephen M, Kenny P, Taylor S, and Owen G were just a few of the really cool junior cyclists that I spent time with, not to mention the fine folks at DNA Cycles Racing. Every ride, be it alone, with my dad, in a group, or at a race, was worthwhile. </li>
</ul>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/k36vm9rDerw" width="560"></iframe></div>
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<li>In 2011, I felt like I was on top of the world. I made the L'Abitibi team at regional camp, traveled North America for races and published a play at my school. From my perspective, that was what it was like to really live. My belief at the time was that God had made me to race my bike, and that racing it well would somehow make it happy. I now fail to understand how that all fit together, but it made perfect sense to me at the time.</li>
</ul>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXeGturZ1ZY4U7p8OzKSBSCMsNlM73yYe7IgMwQOW7niFOKjuXqJs3lvqBV_eGrC7qWufvenUvGt56WAR43mKMfFQ3SnX5N0NTQ6Rj7rZY-jxUJt4PQmfwD21OADjRDWoaTi-fck8ISici/s1600/389432_250499455008675_1993332208_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXeGturZ1ZY4U7p8OzKSBSCMsNlM73yYe7IgMwQOW7niFOKjuXqJs3lvqBV_eGrC7qWufvenUvGt56WAR43mKMfFQ3SnX5N0NTQ6Rj7rZY-jxUJt4PQmfwD21OADjRDWoaTi-fck8ISici/s400/389432_250499455008675_1993332208_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Our play, circa 2011. The death scene I wrote for myself was painfully long, according to my dad.</span></td></tr>
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<li>I sustained femeroacetabular impingement in both of my hips in 2012. That's the injury that just <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19431023/isaiah-thomas-boston-celtics-talk-specialists-surgery">sidelined Isaiah Thomas</a> from the NBA playoffs (prediction: he won't be the same player when he comes back, if he ever does). This really sucked, as I had signed up to race for a cool new cycling team (Winded) and was looking forward to my final year in the junior category. It also sucked not being able to run, walk or even sit without pain for a solid two years. </li>
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<li>I spent 2012 and 2013 pining over my cycling career that had been put on hold. When I wasn't going from physical therapy appointment to surgeon appointment to therapy appointment, I found that my former time spent riding my bike left a big hole. I decided to get more involved in church, seeing as my cycling friends were all out riding. I hate to admit that something as silly as a bicycle would cause this, but I was pretty depressed.</li>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7Uv3Y5stC7OxzXtsRMegiwctpV3px0xIfWUCL_GIR6DBFUIrXxT0zy2M4G407aD3qncwSQjdwLcowN8YG6h4i072bUFyjKFCixzl5mCFljNhDW4lxwUCkeKseqTtJqsjXsEktKkgiTDog/s1600/457032_454373771277073_736779621_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7Uv3Y5stC7OxzXtsRMegiwctpV3px0xIfWUCL_GIR6DBFUIrXxT0zy2M4G407aD3qncwSQjdwLcowN8YG6h4i072bUFyjKFCixzl5mCFljNhDW4lxwUCkeKseqTtJqsjXsEktKkgiTDog/s400/457032_454373771277073_736779621_o.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Church college group party, circa 2012</td></tr>
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<ul>
<li>I started college at ASU in 2012 as an English major. For a while I wanted to write plays or screenplays professionally, and I wrote almost as I often as I had trained on the bike.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I got hip surgeries in 2013 and successfully recovered. But I found that I didn't have the heart to return to racing. Many of my friends had moved on to different places in life, and pain still lingered in my hips (though perhaps it was just psychological). I still love cycling. I love to watch it and fondly remember my races, but the sport is no longer part of my life. It's just not the same as it used to be.</li>
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<ul>
<li>I quit the English department at ASU and decided to cut my teeth in the journalism program. This proved to be a great decision, one that taught me to be a more gutsy person and pay attention to detail. It also gave me an appreciation for how everyone has a story and that someone needs to tell those stories.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>My friends and I created a sport called Flappery. The sport is in someways a parody of itself, but we enjoy it, and I look forward to our fourth annual season this year. I've found some really great friends, and I wouldn't trade the times we've had for the world.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I found that following Jesus was not a matter of being a fast bike racer who happened to be a Christian. I believe it is, instead, a matter of knowing Jesus, and having him change and mold your life into one that reflects him into the world. I regret that I so often gave others a picture of my ego rather than a picture of Jesus. I used to be so afraid that people would judge me for being a Christian, but that's totally different now. I wish I had shown you more about Jesus than my political diatribes and more about Jesus than my self-righteous rants about religion. The more I learn about Jesus, the harder it becomes to think of a person that I would rather be like. Seriously. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Somewhere along the line, Michael Tait ran the <i>Newsboys </i>and their music into the ground.</li>
</ul>
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So where does that leave me now?</div>
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<ul>
<li>I graduated from Cronkite in 2016. I spent my last year and a half of school interning and contracting for the same company, which promptly hired me full-time. I write for a trade magazine. We cover <a href="http://www.channelpartnersonline.com/">business technology,</a> you know, like cloud computing, IT security and storage... all that jazz. I'm a tech journalist. The writing is dry, but my boss rocks, the company is full of solid human beings, and I get to work from home. And anyone who knows me well knows that I'm a bit of a homebody.</li>
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<ul>
<li>I haven't straddled a road bicycle in three years. Someone from church rides my Look 595, and my legs are hairier than a gorilla's. I still play fantasy cycling and recently re-installed my "Pro Cycling Manager" computer game. I created all of my cycling peeps as a custom riders, and we we had a few great seasons (Alexey recently won the Tour-Vuelta double, and I got to play the role of a superdomestique).</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I have enrolled in Southern Baptist Theological Seminary's online Master of Divinity program. I started a Greek class last week and find it fascinating. Although I was supposed to do homework tonight but spent my time on this blog post instead. The last few years have made it very clear to me that I would like to be a pastor some day. It's an excitement and at the same time a weight that I feel. I see the worlds of the sacred and the secular clashing, and I often feel stuck in the middle. And I jolly well think I could help other people who find themselves stuck there as well. I lead my church's college ministry, and the grateful doesn't begin to describe how I feel about the opportunity. The challenge of developing a mission statement and then getting people to buy into it is incredibly difficult but seems to be such an enjoyable challenge. All that to say, I'm really excited for the future.</li>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrhz0WSTwohcthucl-oqa5Ex09FA0auBy_Dcy8BgOOK3msg81BUwRAGwaCjx-IJI267XifKibc0IwLZiGzh_1rId4Z173Rkrq6oLnFU1p6eihRgHTeovPw7rseeSnAM87fhqk265HPJWfg/s1600/13497673_10209862537262874_7589363139852038061_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrhz0WSTwohcthucl-oqa5Ex09FA0auBy_Dcy8BgOOK3msg81BUwRAGwaCjx-IJI267XifKibc0IwLZiGzh_1rId4Z173Rkrq6oLnFU1p6eihRgHTeovPw7rseeSnAM87fhqk265HPJWfg/s320/13497673_10209862537262874_7589363139852038061_o.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ushering at a wedding in South Dakota, circa 2016</td></tr>
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<ul>
<li>2016 was the year when my friends started getting married. I traveled to two out-of-state weddings. Once I travelled with my family. The other time I travelled with a group of friends, including an optimistic fellow named Alex who would go on to marry my older sister. That was my first time as a groomsman, and not the last, I expect. Don't expect a wedding invitation from me any time soon. I'm not averse to the idea, but I've time and time again proven myself incompetent in the girl department. And, as Stuart Smalley would say, "that's okay."</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I was the assistant coach for a high school soccer team last Fall, and I will do it again this year. I loved practicing, scrimmaging and running with the team. Although I don't ride my bike, I haven't turned into a complete coach potato, although I'm sure my mom wishes I would play less EA Sports on my Gamecube.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>My friend Sam and I are looking to move out this summer. We have yet to see if I'm all talk, but I think the departure is quite likely. Things have been great with my parents, and I love living with them. But I think I'm nearing that next step in my adult life where I get used to being outside of my comfort zone. I am 22, after all.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>My little sister goes to school in Tucson, and my older sister lives in the The Bronx with Alex. My parents are great roommates, and my dad brews some of my favorite cider. My mom and I sometimes watch the Detroit Tigers together (I "borrowed" Alex's MLB TV account), and my dad joins in when he isn't threatening to become a D-Backs fan. My mom is a patient listener and one of the wisest people I know. My dad, in addition to being a major influence on me asa person, has an excellent taste in movies (notably, Wes Anderson's) and loves to make <i>Big Lebowski</i> references about me. This is because I work from home and often can be spotted wearing a bathrobe.</li>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.btchflcks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/43.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.btchflcks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/43.jpg" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">That's Jeff Bridges, not me.</td></tr>
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<ul>
<li>I remain an obstinate Detroit Lions fan.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>My friends think that I make too many <i>Lost </i>references. I started the show earlier this year, and am nearing its completion. It rocks. As do <i>Stranger Things </i>and <i>Prison Break </i>(but not the new season of <i>Prison Break,</i> of course). And <i>Twin Peaks </i>is showing promise. There's nothing like a good character-driven story. I also definitely had a <i>South Park</i> phase, but such a disclosure is not fit for public consumption. Or, whatever. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I went through depression a couple of years ago (unrelated to the cycling injury) but rebounded majorly thanks to an abundance of support and resources. Life often looks and feels (and is) grim, but light always shine through, be it ever so tiny.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I still use the word "pizza" as a profanity, along with words like "solid," "juicy" and "savage."</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I'm a big fan of <a href="https://youtu.be/c5vTMcYN6po?t=2m5s">Skye Jethani</a> and have always been perplexed as to why evangelicals don't know much about him. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I turned into a political junkie during the last presidential primary but now realize that to be a vanity and striving after the wind—so to speak.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Domenico Pozzovivo remains my favorite cyclist. Gotta love the little guys.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I became a big twenty one pilots fan three years ago, but I went into hiding when they hit massive radio popularity. I will rise some day. And you'll probably judge me for this, but Eminem and Kanye West have really grown on me over the years. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I often contemplate going through my Facebook and deleting all the rash things I said over the years. And then I remind myself that living in guilt is silly.</li>
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</ul>
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<ul>
<li>I don't use the Oxford comma any more. For many people, this is the most offensive thing about me.</li>
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Did I miss anything? If you were a loyal reader of the blog, thank you so much for your patience. To all, thanks for reading!</div>
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James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-1465612929987923452013-06-28T14:56:00.002-07:002013-06-28T15:14:50.637-07:00Le Tour de France 2013: Predictions<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<span style="font-size: large;">What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? An explosion. The 2013 Tour de France pits Chris Froome and his fellow Sky People against some of the strongest teams the Tour has ever fielded. There ought to be fireworks, and not the pathetic little sparkler show we witnessed last year.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: yellow;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: yellow;"><b>Yellow Jersey</b></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast">
1.<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span>Froome</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I cannot execute
proper reason without predicting Froome as the winner of the Tour de France. His
condition is just as good (if not better) than in last year’s race. Like the
Wiggins of 2012, the 2013 Froome has dominated the weeklong stage races, and
just like the Wiggins of 2012, the Froome of 2013 has not “peaked out”. He does
not need an army of Sky People in order to win. I believe that he is the best
climber in the race and arguably the best time trialer (certainly among the
contenders). <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Froome’s testing
ground will be in the “transitional” stages, not in the mountain top finishes. He
lost Tirreno-Adriatico on a hilly day, and Wiggins collapsed in the undulating first
week of the Giro. Katusha, Movistar, Saxobank, and Garmin need to attack on stages
2 and 3. The more entropy, the better.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
2.<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Contador<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>He’s strong and
feisty, and his team is better than ever, but I can’t see him winning. I think
Froome will mark him in the mountains, and the time trial is no longer an area
of advantage for Alberto. Contador will hold nothing back, and a second place
finish will not satisfy him. I’m so excited to watch the Spaniards throw
everything they have at Sky.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /> 3.<span style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-style: normal;">
</span></i>Rodriguez</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: .25in;">
<i>He is so underrated. He podiumed in two
grand tours last year, removed from the Vuelta win by one bad day. I expect him
to win a mountain top finish. I wish that there were punchy stages in the race,
but unfortunately, ASO (the people who make the route) don’t really understand
the concept of a punchy/hilly stage. J-Rod will get along just fine, however.
Katusha’s squad is built around him, and he is extremely motivated. I think his
time trialing will not bother him too much. The flat TT shouldn’t cost him more
than 2 minutes, he will go top 10 in the mountainous TT, and Katusha will
contend for the win in the team time trial. If he wants to win the Tour, he
will need to climb at an even higher level.
<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 4.<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Porte<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Last year he finished
30<sup>th</sup> in the service of Wiggins, but his job is different now. He’ll
be doing what Froome did last year, being the last domestique remaining to set
the pace on the final climb. I think Froome and his main challenger will put a
bit of time into Porte on the mountain top finishes, but Porte will consistently
finish in the top 10. His time trialing will restore him to a top 5 position. I
don’t think there will be a Sky controversy. In terms of strength Froome was
closer to Wiggins than Porte is to Froome. Richie accepts his place.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 5.<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Valverde<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I picked Valverde to
win the 2008 Tour and later vowed to never do that again. Last year, I picked
him to finish 8<sup>th</sup>, and he completely fell apart. He did, however, win
a stage and strut his stuff at the Vuelta. The Green Bullet has the support of Movistar,
and he should perform similarly to Rodriguez in the TTs. History has taught me
to distrust Alejandro Valverde, but the 2012 Vuelta taught me to never discard
him.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 6.<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Van Garderen<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I would first like to
say that winning the Tour of California means very little. Very very little. I’m
sick of the hype NBC Sports gives him, but I know that I cannot let my emotions
run me. Tejay has performed consistently this season (Paris-Nice, Tour of Cali,
Tour de Suisse, Criterium Int’l, etc.), and his 2012 Tour performance gives him
further credibility. However, when the
poop hits the fan in the mountains, he won’t hang with Froome.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 7.<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Quintana<i> </i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>A completely focused Nairo Quintana would podium
at the Tour de France. During the final week, he will be climbing and time
trialing with the best. The question is, will he do that during the second
week? I think he will make some sacrifices for Valverde.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 8.<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Schleck<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I believe in Andy
Schleck. His performance in the Tour de Suisse was the same as it always is.
Although he struggled to finish some races, Schleck’s 2013 season has been
similar to past years: based around the Tour. He will match the big guns in the
mountains, but I don’t think that will be enough for a podium.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 9.<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Pinot<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>He claims that he
cared more about Suisse than the Tour de France, but that is irrelevant. He was
a last minute call-up to the Tour in 2012,
and he still pulled off a top 10 and a stage win. He has a much shorter leash
now, so he’ll have to gain time by fighting mano-a-mano in the mountains. I
don’t think he will rise to the top this year, even though he may do so in the
future. The time has not yet come.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 10.<span style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span><!--[endif]-->Van
den Broeck<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>He has to be the most
underrated GC contender. He has finished 4<sup>th</sup> in two different Tours,
but people are embarrassed to support him. He focuses on the Tour like Andy
Schleck, so you can’t judge his season until July is over. While VDB looked
awful in the Daupine, I think there’s still something there.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 11.<span style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span><!--[endif]-->Talansky<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I believe that he will
be the most consistent rider on Garmin. While he may not climb as well as
Hesjedal or pack the punch of Martin or race aggressively like Hesjedal,
Talansky’s time trialing is superior to that of his teammates. His performance
in last year’s Vuelta assured me of his durability, and his exploits at Paris-Nice
and other shorter stage races have revealed his potency.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 12.<span style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span><!--[endif]-->Fuglsang<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>He time trials well
and climbs decently enough. Furthermore, he has a strong Astana team around
him. 12<sup>th</sup> place would be an incredible accomplishment for Fuglsang,
considering all of the strong riders taking the start. Ultimately, he won’t
climb well enough to make a significant mark on the race.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 13.<span style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span><!--[endif]-->Evans<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Cuddles will ride
safely in the first week and go into the first rest day incredibly close to the
Maillot Jaune. That’s how he always does it. However, I think Evans will fade
on Ventoux and following mountain stages. His Giro-Tour double won’t cause him
to fall apart as he did in 2010, but it certainly will limit him.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 14.<span style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span><!--[endif]-->Moreno<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>As the leader of
Katusha, he could ride into the top 10. However, he is perfectly content to
sacrifice for Rodriguez. The sacrifice may manifest itself in Moreno attacking,
leading to the possibility of Moreno winning a stage. We will see how Katusha
plays it, but they need to keep Moreno in GC contention so that his attacks
will put pressure on Sky and give J-Rod an advantage.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 15.<span style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span><!--[endif]-->Mollema<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I don’t trust him
fully, but I think he is improving as a GC rider. With the full support of Belkin
and the hopes of his country, Mollema will do his best to fight it out in the
mountains. However, I just don’t see him as a serious contender. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: lime; font-size: large;"><b>Green Jersey</b></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 1.<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Sagan<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>It’s simple. His
competitors can’t compete with him on the transitional stages. He’s going to
take the jersey by a landslide.<o:p></o:p></i><br />
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 2.<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Greipel<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>He was able to best
Cav last year, and this year brings similar circumstances. Greipel is far more
rested and focused. His leadout train is just as good.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 3.<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Cavendish<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>He will manage three
stage wins, but the thing with Cavendish is that he’ll either be first or
twentieth. That does not bode well for consistency. Plus, riding the Giro was
not advantageous to his Tour de France preparation.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 4.<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Kittel<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Kittel is due for a
stage win, but last year’s Tour reminded us of his fragility. He struggled with
a stomach bug, well before he reached mountains. This year, I believe he will
struggle to survive the time cut.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 5.<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Ferrari<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>He has demonstrated
the ability to knock off top sprinters (figuratively and literally). Lampre
will support him with riders like Malori, Cimolai, and Favilli.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b>Polka-Dot Jersey</b></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--> 1. Cunego<br />
2. Jon Izagirre<br />
3. Gadret<br />
4. Clarke<br />
5. Hoogerland<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Cunego needs to come
away with something. I think he can take this competition if he makes it a
serious objective. <o:p></o:p></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: large;">White Jersey</span></i><br />
1. Van Garderen<br />
2. Quintana<br />
3. Pinot<br />
4. Talansky<br />
5. Jon Izagirre<br />
<i><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></i></div>
James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-71542664370167125362013-02-24T22:05:00.003-07:002013-02-24T22:05:33.144-07:00An Update on 2013I decided to breathe a bit of life into this blog. If you look at its archive, you will see that my number of posts has been steadily decreasing since 2007. Last year, the amount dropped to 39. Because my blog's url is "boy on bike", my absence from the bike spurred me to a profound sense of "literary nihilism". Forgive me if that was a poor use of the word "nihilism". I tried my hardest.<br />
<br />
<br />
I suppose I'm not the best at self-disclosure, particularly regarding my hip. I'm often incredulous as to why so many people ask me how my hip feels. For some reason, I expect them to know my physical condition without being told. I don't self-disclose. My hope is that this blog post will partially remedy that issue. <br />
<br />
<b>Hips</b><br />
As I said in a previous blog post, I was diagnosed with femoroacetabular impingement in both of my hips. In December I had arthroscopic surgery on my right side. I will soon have the left side done. So far I'm not feeling much improvement, but the surgeon says that is normal. However, the right side clearly feels better than the un-operated left, and that's a good sign. I'm looking at 4-6 months until I can begin training/racing and a year until the symptoms go away completely. I don't have a complete plan, such as how I will prevent the injury from reoccurring, but certain things are out of my control.<br />
<br />
<b>School</b><br />
Last fall, I started at ASU Polytechnic as an English major. I commuted to school, thinking that I would be spending my free time on my bicycle. Regardless, there was an utterly miniscule chance of living in the dorms. Polytechnic was a convenient place to take care of my Gen Eds, but for the long term, it's just not the place for me. I came to the conclusion that I don't want to be an English major. I enjoy the English language and its products, but I hate how professors read into things. Learning about literary criticism made me want to gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon. There are no hard feelings.<br />
In the fall I will start in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Downtown Phoenix (ASU). I don't know all the details, but I know I have made the right choice. Because I hate change, a boatload of conviction is required in order for me to change my environment.<br />
<br />
<b>Cycling</b><br />
Personally, this year has been a huge improvement. Being at the races is actually enjoyable. I love being on Team Winded and having the position to influence my teammates. They are great kids; I can only imagine how enjoyable it would be to race with them (pretty enjoyable, I'm guessing). Since I've stopped racing, two cool things have come up for me: coaching and announcing. I train a handful of athletes (from Winded), and it has been a great experience. It makes me feel more invested in the racing. I've announced four races thus far. I enjoy it (not as much as racing), and find it to be a great excuse for going to a race. I'd like to pursue announcing further, especially if the hip thing doesn't work out. All-in-all, many opportunities I did not expect have come to me since I was injured. <br />
<b> </b> <br />
I don't know what my life will look like a year from now, but I will trust God. He cares for me. I really struggled with my injury and college last year, but God used those moments to teach me. Enjoyable circumstances, and good athletic performance are extremely fleeting. I will keep on saying that... because it is true.<br />
That's what I've learned. Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom of the page. Have a lovely day.James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-58615014505574419602012-11-28T19:25:00.001-07:002012-11-28T19:25:20.202-07:00Good NewsThe phrase "No news is good news" does not always ring true. For a year, I earnestly desired to know the truth behind my hip injury and learned nothing.<br />
I think I got the answer today.<br />
We saw an orthopedic surgeon who would hypothetically do arthroscopic surgery on me. I had come to give him the results of the cortisone recently injected in my hip joint. The results leaned to the positive side, but they weren't the diagnostic factor. He gave me my second X-ray of the year (in the same position) and found something. I have cam impingement in both hips. The picture below shows the femur head attached to the hip socket. There's a deformity.<br />
<br />
<img src="http://davidlasnier.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/femoroacetabular_impingement.jpg" style="-webkit-user-select: none;" /><br />
Because I could clearly see it on the X-ray, I don't doubt it. My condition isn't serious; however, it won't heal on its own, and it can lead to osteoarthritis. The bad news is that I've had a cam impingement for a year. However, the news is incredibly gratifying. Arthroscopic surgery in both hips should heal me. I might get to race in 2013, and the pain might soon be gone.<br />
I thank you for your prayers.James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-48189390771969319582012-10-22T22:47:00.003-07:002012-10-22T22:58:21.907-07:00ExternalizingI'll publish the first part of the Bike Boy Awards later this week. Because I am giving them more description than I normally give, they are taking forever to complete. Do forgive me for getting ahead of myself.<br />
<br />
As you can see, I've struggled to keep this blog updated. For a lot of reasons, I don't always see the point in blogging. I had a lot of followers when I raced, but now that this blog has been narrowed down to just the life of James, readership has gone down, and with that, my motivation. I am, after all, Bike Boy. Back in the day, I should have been more balanced with the content of this blog. Somewhere along the line, I removed my personal life from this blog to focus completely on bikes. This blog has become limited. In general, I am struggling to self-disclose to the cycling world and the world world for that matter.<br />
<br />
I often feel angry, for many reasons, but most often because of my ego. I think I'm growing a mild form of Turrets due to internalizing my angst for so long. I have accepted not being able to actually ride my bike. God took away the burning need to race. I'm free from that pain, and I love the liberation. If I heal, I will ride with the utmost fervor, but I know that I can live without the bike. It's just a bike. My identity is not in being a cyclist; it is in Jesus Christ.<br />
<br />
However, I still anguish over cycling. It's all about my status. It kills me to not be known by Arizona cyclists. I become angry when a rider does not know my name. I feel that I am entitled to having a reputation- I am wrong in this assertion, I know, but that doesn't make it easier to let go. I judge people to be apathetic because they do not know of my existence. I've been battling a puffed-up ego for the longest of times, and while my sensitivity to it has increased, the battle has ended not and will not end until my death.<br />
<br />
Perhaps there's no point in me telling you this. Perhaps you will read this and think I'm a nutcase, or worse, a diva, but you know what? I don't care.<br />
<br />
That's a lie; I <i>do</i> care. I care deeply and obsessively, and such a concern must die. Thanks for reading my attempts to express myself. I feel better now.James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-25279441193449689262012-09-02T19:13:00.002-07:002012-09-02T19:13:56.368-07:00Quick Hits- I started college. My classes are good.<br />
- This week I'm going to Michigan for my cousin's wedding.<br />
- I was killing it in Fantasy cycling until Rodriguez took the red jersey. I still haven't learned my lesson about not picking him.<br />
- I'm issuing a challenge to all 15-18 AZ junior cyclists. Register a team for the TTT championships. Team Winded is racing it, and we want to see you there!<br />
- The podcast is on hiatus. College has not been conducive to such things.<br />
- I really don't know if Contador can take time back on Rodriguez. Rodriguez is one of the few guys who can respond to those accelerations, and the days of doubting his sustainability are over.<br />
- I'm stuck in an dissatisfied state with my hip. I ride once a week now, partly because college is time-consuming and partly because the rides tend to not be enjoyable.<br />
-Thanks for reading. I will try to post more.James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-49597405396610296432012-08-03T15:14:00.001-07:002012-08-16T11:18:00.151-07:00Update-The podcast is still running. Episode 6 just came out, and I think it's a good listen.<br />
-I'm feeling less pain on the bike. When I'm off the bike, it's about the same, but the riding is good.<br />
-The Olympics is going on. I'm getting a little tired of the team USA spotlight from NBC, but it <i>is </i>American, I guess (and USA is killing it). I guess I just don't like being mainstream.<br />
-First Team Winded group ride tomorrow. I'm pumped! I look forward to seeing my old teammates and meeting new ones.<br />
-School starts in 3 months. I'm not pumped for it. The hope is that I will <i>become</i> pumped for it.<br />
<div>
</div>
<br />
<br />
BPR Episode 6<br />
<br />
<audio controls="controls" p="p"></audio>James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152431288418313529.post-24569494231930169102012-05-29T09:03:00.003-07:002012-05-29T09:03:36.979-07:00ShrimpShellfish and I never got along so well. In my early years I had a tendency to hork crab cakes. For that reason, we assumed I was allergic to shellfish; and so I abstained. For some reason, a reason I know not, shrimp is a shellfish. Over the course of my long withholding people told me of the excellent taste of shrimp. I believed them.<br />
Last summer things changed. I got an allergy test, and it came back completely negative. I was cleared to eat shellfish. It was with a certain satisfaction that I ate two shrimp(s). Internal affairs were going very well, until 4 hours later at Jake Spelman's house. I ended up absolutely spouting off in his backyard. There was a lot of puke. It was an interesting experience.James Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08689482911496950938noreply@blogger.com0