Hello to anyone who still reads this blog. As you might have noticed, this blog has taken a backseat to pretty much everything in my life. But then I got comments from Stephanie Yu and Sam Chen, so here I am again. I’m that easy.
Don’t really have anything fun to talk about these days, so I’ll go with something serious. If you’re new here, trust me, I don’t usually do write about this kind of stuff.
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I watched this video online yesterday, and it kind of bothered me. It’s nine minutes long, and I understand that that’s a lot of time these days, so I’ll try to sum it up for you.
It starts with an exchange between a reporter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. The reporter is taking a look at Facebook’s news feed, and asks Mark Zuckerberg, “Why is this so important?” The dude has a point. I love reading my wall, but it’s not what you would call “essential.” For every post telling me that someone’s gotten engaged or had a kid, there’s ten posts filled with videos or photos of cats.
Quoth the Zuckerberg:
A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.
It’s an incredibly cold thing to say. The scary thing is that it’s true.
The video goes on to explain that Web companies have started to personalize the pages that we peruse on the Internet. For example, Facebook has a filter that shows us the most relevant news items. Netflix and Amazon have algorithms that show us the movies and items that we would probably be most interested. Great. Saves us time, right?
But apparently this is happening with Google. Turns out, Google’s search results are personalized to you too. If I search for “basketball”, I will get different results from when Joe Sixpack in Alaska searches for “basketball.” In this case, I doubt Joe would get the link that I get for purchasing San Diego State basketball tickets.
Still, this doesn’t seem so bad. I really am interested in San Diego State basketball tickets (as long as they stay good). Why am I so worried about this?
The problem is when we merge these two facts:
Web pages are becoming personalized to me.
In my spare time, I like to look at funny pictures of cats.
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Basically, the Internet is starting to pander to us, a society that cares more about the dying squirrels in front of us than the dying people in the world. And by doing so, it is effectively filtering out all the stuff that doesn’t already fit our own comfortable, predefined worldviews. Which is scary. We disparage the Internet censorship that happens in other countries all the time. Well, as it turns out, we’re also being censored. By our own stupidity.
I think what bothers me the most is that there’s no one in this situation that I can blame other than myself. I can’t blame Google or Yahoo News (yeah, the news are getting personalized too!), since it’s my own choices that define what I see. If I click on links to games more than I click on world stories, well, it’s my own fault if I just get more games in my searches, right? I guess I could get mad at them for using those algorithms to “help” me, but oh wait, those algorithms are what I’m studying in college. Oops.
I dunno. I think I might be overreacting, since I can still get to the news I want to. (I think.) But it’s frightening to see some of the results. In the talk, the dude has two examples that kind of scared me. The first is where a guy types “Egypt” into Google, and doesn’t get a single link to a news story about the protests while they’re going on. The second is in Facebook, where eventually, all the conservative viewpoints disappeared from the speaker’s wall since he clicked on their links less often than the liberal ones. I think we’d kick up some controversy if this happened elsewhere, right?
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Well, I’m done. Sorry to come back with such a downer. I know I’m starting to get on my high horse once I start using words like “society.”
There’s this one famous quote by Oscar Wilde that goes something like this: “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” I can see why the quote is famous; it just sounds deep. Too bad it’s also completely wrong. Wouldn’t that man be closer to a “miser”? What I’m trying to say is…Oscar Wilde, you stink.
Let’s go back to the original definition of cynicism. According to Webster, a cynic is “one who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest.”
Before I became Christian, I would gladly have called myself a cynic by Webster’s definition. (I would also have to call myself cynical by the Oscar Wilde’s erroneous definition, but that’s another story.)
Here was (is?) my reasoning:
Fact 1: There is a reason behind every action that every person does. Like Hercule Poirot once said, “Without a motive, there is no murder.” I know absolute statements are tough to justify, so if you really want to quibble, I can change Fact 1 to “There is a reason behind 99% of the actions that 99% of the people that you know does.”
I think I can defend the absolute statement pretty well though. Let’s dream up some hypothetical boogieman that could exist who does things without reason. Personally, I don’t really care about the hypotheticals; I’m more concerned about our actual lives. But since I’m already here, let’s take a boogieman who’s already been created: the Joker.
I’m no Batman buff, but I remember hearing once that the Joker’s main strength as an antagonist is that his actions are completely irrational and motiveless. But is this really true? Let’s take this exchange from The Dark Knight:
Aside: Michael Caine is AWESOME.
Alfred Pennyworth: A long time ago, I was in Burma, my friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never found anyone who traded with him. One day I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away. Bruce Wayne: Then why steal them? Alfred Pennyworth: Because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
The thing is, I don’t think we’ve proved that the Joker is irrational or motiveless by this exchange at all. All we’ve shown is that the Joker has perverted reasons for what he does. We might not be motivated by the same things that motivate the Joker, but we can certainly understand the things that drive him. You can use many words to describe sadists, but “irrational” isn’t one of them.
So there’s my defense. If you don’t buy it, you can come up with a better hypothetical boogieman. But I don’t think you can disagree with the fact that most of the people you interact with on a day-to-day basis are boogiemen. So in the cases that you should care about, Fact 1 holds. I don’t think I’m saying anything too crazy yet. Certainly it is no stretch to say that 99% of all people around you act rationally.
Phew. Didn’t want to spend that much time on that point.
Let’s move on to the next and final step. Fact 2: All actions are performed out of self-interest.
Since we have established that most actions have motives, we can start to classify them. I separate motives into three categories: actions done for the self, actions done for others, and actions done for a cause. Let me define these categories more clearly.
Actions done for the self are those actions which obviously benefit the performer of the action. A man is hungry, so he eats. In this example, the man’s action of eating is clearly done for the gratification of his hunger. A more difficult example are those actions which seem to lack a certain amount of intentionality. For example, I can choose to wave my hand in the air right now without any seeming benefit to myself. Ignoring the obvious motive that I have (disproving my theory), I could justify my action by a simple phrase: “I just felt like it.” I claim that any action that can be justified by “I just felt like it” is an action done for the self. By performing the action, I have gratified some feeling inside me. Obviously, these actions are done out of self-interest, so I don’t need to justify the cynic’s view on these actions.
Actions done for others are actions that benefit others without benefiting the self. I add the second clause because if an action benefits the self as well as others, a cynic can easily say that the action was performed out of self-interest. The benefit to others can be dismissed as a side-effect.
But let’s say an action seemingly has no benefit to the performer. Now here’s where it gets hairy for the cynic. The cynic basically argues that these actions still are performed out of self-interest for one or more of the following reasons:
Building a relationship (to get something out of the other people, or to avoid the pain of being alone)
Building a reputation as a good person
The warm fuzzy feeling that appears from helping others
The flipside of the warm fuzzy feeling: the avoidance of feeling guilty
…you get the picture
You can think that this is terrible. You can think that I am a terrible person. Both true. But let me just say: I used to believe that this was true. So let’s move on.
Actions done for a cause are pretty much the same as actions done for others. These are the actions that don’t benefit specific people around you, but rather a cause like PETA or women’s rights or whatever. The same reasoning applies.
So that was my reasoning. A really long-winded way of saying “No, you’re not nice, you’re just trying to feel good or make yourself look better.” (Come to think of it, I probably could have just written that. Oh well.)
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So what’s changed, now that I’m a Christian?
Well, I was presented with two issues. The first was that I needed to throw away my cynicism. In my classification system, I had forgotten one possible motive for actions done for others (or causes). Namely, love.
You see…I made my classification system based off of my own experiences (don’t we all?) And since I’d never done anything out of a truly selfless heart, I assumed that all people were like that. It’s no stretch to say that I had never loved before.
Once I understood what love meant (wow, I’m starting to sound like a cheesy song), and what it meant to do something selflessly…well, accusing others of doing things for themselves just seemed ridiculous. I don’t really know how else to describe it. How could one actually perform selfless acts just for the warm fuzzies? I can’t believe I thought that.
The second is a problem that’s just recently come up in my mind by three things. First, playing Mafia. Second, the numerous Agatha Christie mysteries I’ve been reading. And finally, Pastor Pat’s messages on love. (Um, not in that order. Really.)
This might sound strange at this point in the post, but I’ve always steered clear of judging people’s motives all my life. Even as a cynic, I tried to avoid judging people 1) it seemed polite to take people at face value and 2) I’d go nuts if I judged everyone. It’s a little like Locke’s social contract: we assume the best of each other to avoid tearing each others’ throats out. Of course, being a cynic meant that I was always on my guard just in case the other shoe dropped. My motto was to assume the best of others, but to prepare for the worst.
Now that I’m a Christian, I don’t know if I should modify my motto. After all, if I prepare for the worst, aren’t I just assuming the worst in general? That does jive in part with the Bible…after all, the Bible tells us that all men are wicked and depraved (Rom 3:10-18, 23). On the other hand, 1 Corinthians 13:7 tells me that “love believes all things.” NIV says “always hopes.” Is this calling me to always take people’s intentions at face value? Would that be wise?
I really don’t know where to go with this…I’m going to go ahead and continue with what I’m doing because it seems like the best course of action. But if anyone (*coughPastorPatcough*) has something else to say, I’d be open to listen.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve had a couple of blogs before this one. My first one was the eponymously named “xanga.com/timpaik”. I have a pretty good way to describe it, but it’s not fit for polite conversation. Let’s just say it was really emo for lack of better terms.
Like any good emo boy, I used a black background and white text to symbolize the bitter pain of a comfortable middle-class existence. Boy, am I glad that I outgrew that phase.
*looks around*
…hm.
Well…after that I got saved…so I started the EXTREMELY shortlived “White As Snow” blog (terrible URL), then the Cheese’N'Stuff blog, and then my fortyeightminutes blog. This one makes five.
The last one was different from the rest in that more than two people actually read it. (Thank you, GMail status space.) And with the audience came a realization: people are busy. They don’t want to read about your innermost thoughts unless you’re a cute girl. Like Pastor Pat said today in Sonlight (Children’s Ministry) training: if you’re not interesting, it doesn’t matter WHAT you have to say.
So the flavor of my blog changed. And since I’m not especially interesting by myself, I started trying my hand at this thing called humor.
Now, at a certain level, humor is kind of like attractiveness or rhythm: you either have it or you don’t. There are certain people who can say ANYTHING, and you’ll bust out laughing. I envy them.
On the other hand, there are certain things you can do to look more attractive or become funnier. And I believe that you have a better chance at learning to be funny than you do at becoming more physically attractive.
I hope you don’t have the impression that I think I’m funny (after all, no one is less unfunny than the person who thinks he/she is funny). I also hope that you don’t get the impression that I’m trying to be funny. I’m just trying to segway into the next paragraph, since I’ve been trying for the last thirty minutes to write an intro to my pre-written post which starts there explain when I started valuing humor and share certain thoughts about humor. (Did I make it?)
Here’s why it’s so great to be funny: you can get away with anything. Let’s say you’re out with your co-workers, and you forgot to bring your wallet. (Totally cribbing this from The Screwtape Letters. Did you know that I really like that book?)
Now this is a crucial moment. If you just let them pay for you, you’re a freeloader. If you possess some tact, you might be able to get away without tarnishing your reputation. But if you can manage to turn it into a joke (“boast in a jocular manner and twit your fellows” in C.S. Lewis’ words)…people will completely forget that you’re actually costing them money…and like you MORE.
This works for any social faux pas. Let’s say you tend to say mean things to people. If you just say them, people will consider you a jerk. But if you can get people to think that you’re being funny when you say them…well, you can get away with saying anything.
It’s a whole different world for funny people. It’s like what I imagine being good-looking would be like.
(Not that being funny and being good-looking are exclusive. In fact, being good-looking increases the chance that other people will consider you funny.)
The only problem I can see with being funny is that it’s even more fleeting than attractiveness. The funniest person in the world can be a has-been in the blink of an eye. We see this all the time with funny celebrities. All it takes is one person to think, “hey, XXX isn’t really that funny.” One becomes two, which becomes ten, and then boom, you’re not funny anymore. Worse, you’re annoying.
As you know, I’m both a guy and a nerd. As a guy, I saw the aforementioned problem with humor, so I felt a need to fix it. As a nerd, I actually started analyzing humor to see if I could try to figure out how one could become or stay funny. (There’s no joke here…I really am this weird.)
The way I see it, the key to being funny is getting the opposite gender to think you’re funny. If you’re a girl, I think this is more of an end than a means. As far as I can tell, if a girl can make a guy laugh, she can probably make girls laugh too. (Please correct me if I’m wrong. I am not an expert on this and would be thrilled by new input.)
For guys, it’s more a means than an end. The way I see it, guys aren’t considered funny unless they can get girls to laugh. It’s the whole herd mentality: if you can get a girl to think you’re funny, other guys will see it and think you’re funny too. Or think you’re a jerk if they like the girl in question, but that’s a different story.
This quarter, my Tuesdays and Thursdays are practically free, except for a class from 2-3:30. I love it. Of course, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are kind of crazy, but you have to take the good with the bad.
Now, on to our normally scheduled program:
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Yesterday, Cesar posted a link regarding Rick Warren speaking at the Desiring God conference. I don’t think I’m qualified to comment directly on this: I know way too little about Rick Warren’s ministry, and what I know is only second-hand. However, from what I have heard from other people (who I trust), the main knock on him is that he waters down the gospel in order to attract more people to the church.
I don’t think they are alone in believing this – when you type “rick warren” in your google box, the fourth option that comes up is “rick warren critics.” I went ahead and clicked on a few sites, but I still have a tendency to distrust any critics that I read on the Internet.
Well, if I have nothing to say, why am I bringing this up?
Throughout my life, I have witnessed many church splits. Most of these weren’t of my own volition: it just so happened that a majority of the churches my parents attended ended up splitting for whatever reason. As far as I know, most of these splits had more to do with power or culture than than they ever had to do with theology. This led to my (perhaps unfair) childhood belief that “all Korean churches split.”
But as I grow older, I find that the tendency to split seems prevalent throughout the church of Christ, not just the Korean branch. My favorite commentary on church division goes something like this (taken from The Believer’s Chapel):
According to a certain parable. two men met a great many years ago at a church convention. To their mutual surprise. they discovered that both had formerly been completely blind and that Jesus had opened their eyes and given them sight.
“Isn’t it marvelous,” said the one, “how the Master makes clay, puts it on your eyes and tells you to go and wash? Then, when you wash, your eyes are opened and you can see.”
“Mud? Jesus doesn’t use mud. He just speaks a word, and you can see.”
“Jesus does use mud!”
“He does not. I ought to know. I was blind and He just spoke a word and my eyes were opened!”
“He does use mud. If He didn’t use mud, He didn’t open your eyes. You’re still blind. You just think you can see. I’ll have nothing more to do with you. You have denied one of the fundamentals of our faith.”
Presently those whose blind eyes Jesus had opened with mud came together in an exclusive group. They excluded all others and they called themselves “The Muddites”. And those whose eyes Jesus had opened without the use of mud joined together also. Of course, they were called “The Anti-Muddites”. These two groups spent their time in rivalry between themselves while the blind all around them groped through life not knowing that Someone had come to bring light to all who walk in darkness.
The point is, we fight over the stupidest things sometimes. And I’m going to be honest, I really wish that we could just learn to get along. I don’t think I’m wrong in wanting this; I think God wants this for His church as well. Paul argues that there is already a unity in Christ among all genuine believers in Ephesians 4:4-6. Disputes and dissensions are counted among the deeds of the flesh in Galatians 5:20. And of course, the Bible is full of imagery that depicts the church as one entity: the church is a family, like branches on a vine, a building, and of course, the body of Christ.
I think my favorite call to unity is in John 17:20-21, where Jesus prays that we will be one. I mean, if Jesus wants us to be one…can’t we be one?
(By the way, I’m grabbing all these references from Grudem and Culver. I can’t pull all this stuff off the top of my head, though I wish I could.)
But at the same time, it is important to ask ourselves one question: “At what cost unity?” I mean, if the Reformation hadn’t happened, we might still be trying to buy our way into heaven (or out of purgatory…whatever). I think I have three different questions right now:
How much in agreement must we be in order to fellowship/worship together? Or, to be more negative, where is the line drawn before we cannot worship/fellowship together?
Along the same lines: how much in agreement must we be in order to minister together? Or, where is the line drawn before we cannot minister together?
Does the type of ministry affect the answer to number 2? For example, would you be more lenient with care-type ministries as opposed to going on oversea missions?
I’ll post my personal opinions on each of these questions at a later time, partially because it’s getting late, and partially because it’s probably wise for me to sleep on these issues before committing my answers to the blogosphere. But if anyone wants to go ahead and talk with me about this, I’d love to chat. =)
Went on Singles’ Retreat over this last weekend, and it was really good. I learned a lot during this retreat…
On Sunday, we had a chance to share something that we learned on an open mic. I’m not fan of microphones in general, so I didn’t go up. So maybe this is a little late, but this is what I learned:
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Jesus/God is big. This is probably the biggest thing I took away from this retreat (I know, it’s weird.) When Pastor Nam was talking about the Deity of Christ, and all the attributes of God, I realized that my perception of Jesus, indeed, of God, had become limited to that of a cartoon superhero, some sort of being with godlike powers. I think that by telling myself the truth that I could never hope to understand the full and infinite greatness of God, I fell into the trap of limiting His greatness, His power, His omniscience, His omnipresence, and even His holiness.
Here’s a quote from The Screwtape Letters that I think is relevant. (emphasis added) Once again, this is from the point of view of the Devil, so the Enemy here is God, and the patient is a human:
But of course the Enemy will not meantime be idle. Wherever there is prayer, there is danger of His own immediate action. He is cynically indifferent to the dignity of His position, and ours, as pure spirits, and to human animals on their knees He pours out self-knowledge in a quite shameless fashion. But even if He defeats your first attempt at misdirection, we have a subtler weapon. The humans do not start from that direct perception of Him which we, unhappily, cannot avoid. They have never known that ghastly luminosity, that stabbing and searing glare which makes the background of permanent pain to our lives. If you look into your patient’s mind when he is praying, you will not find that. If you examine the object to which he is attending, you will find that it is a composite object containing many quite ridiculous ingredients. There will be images derived from pictures of the Enemy as He appeared during the discreditable episode known as the Incarnation: there will be vaguer—perhaps quite savage and puerile—images associated with the other two Persons. There will even be some of his own reverence (and of bodily sensations accompanying it) objectified and attributed to the object revered. I have known cases where what the patient called his “God” was actually located—up and to the left at the corner of the bedroom ceiling, or inside his own head, or in a crucifix on the wall. But whatever the nature of the composite object, you must keep him praying to it—to the thing that he has made, not to the Person who has made him. You may even encourage him to attach great importance to the correction and improvement of his composite object, and to keeping it steadily before his imagination during the whole prayer. For if he ever comes to make the distinction, if ever he consciously directs his prayers “Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be”, our situation is, for the moment, desperate. Once all his thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with a full recognition of their merely subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible Presence, there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it—why, then it is that the incalculable may occur. In avoiding this situation—this real nakedness of the soul in prayer—you will be helped by the fact that the humans themselves do not desire it as much as they suppose. There’s such a thing as getting more than they bargained for!
I think I need to break the composite image I’ve had in my mind of Jesus.
One last thought. You know that song “My Glorious” by Chris Tomlin? Here are the lyrics. I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of Chris Tomlin, and if you were to ask me why I’m not, I’d probably point to this song. You know how Will can’t sing Hillsong’s “Worthy is the Lamb” because he couldn’t hold a straight face while singing “Darling of Heaven”? This song has like three of those phrases for me. But at least I can kind of understand the “God is bigger than the air I breathe” line now. He really is bigger than everything, on a far greater scale than I can possibly comprehend.
It still is a really lazy rhyme though. Not as bad as “All you ever do | Is change the old for new” though.
We sing better than we live: Pastor Nam has the gift of wrapping profound truths into succinct one-liners. I think this is the one that hit me the hardest, partially because I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but partially because it’s true. Do you know that song “Amazing Love” by Chris Tomlin? (See, I like some Chris Tomlin songs.) I still have trouble singing the last words aloud sometimes: “In all I do | I honor You”.
I don’t know why it’s those lines in particular that I can’t sing. I think I make just as outrageous claims in other songs: “Jesus, I my cross have taken.” “I surrender all.” I don’t know why, but whenever I try to sing those words, I’m reminded of some past sin, and then I can’t sing them anymore.
It’s mistaken, I know. Pastor John explained it last night: we CAN say that we do all things for the glory of God when we recognize the Giver of all good things in everything that we do. (At least, I hope that’s what he said. I wasn’t taking notes since my laptop’s on the fritz. Someone straighten me out if I’m wrong. At least I can go back to Romans 11:36.)
But still…as I love to worship God through song, I hope that I can live a life where this will not bother me. And I hope that if I am not living such a life, I will remain convicted by the words that I sing.
You start to hate sin when you love Christ. Maybe it wasn’t this line that hit me so much as the next one: And if you habitually sin, you will hate Christ, whether you like it or not. That really hit me.
I think the first line was still really good to remember though. I think I have been trying to fight sin through my own willpower alone, and I know I’m not powerful enough to conquer my own sin. It’s really easy for me to try to fight sin for my own personal self-glory instead of a genuine love for Christ.
The parable of the wedding feast. I don’t know why I never saw the things that Pastor Nam pointed out during the retreat, but I’m glad I heard them from him. The things that the people skip out on the wedding feast for are not particularly bad things in themselves. But when they come before the kingdom of heaven…they are sin. And I think I have to say…as sad as it is to say, there are days that my heart wants to see before the Lord’s Day. Which I really need to fix.
I think that’s the main things I learned. I’d be amazed if anybody made it this far.
We watched “Collision” last night at Lighthouse. For those of you who don’t know, Collision is a documentary about a series of debates between atheist Christopher Hitchens and pastor Douglas Wilson.
I wanted to produce a link to a trailer or blog post about it, but I can’t find one that isn’t blatantly one-sided or inundated with comments from people who are one-sided. It’s hard enough to have a honest conversation about this in real life. I would venture to say that it is nearly impossible to do so over the Internet.
Anyway, when I saw the video, there was one particular exchange that particularly intrigued me, mostly because I had never considered the idea before. Hitchens starts by saying that it is incredibly presumptuous and unsafe for anyone to say that he has discovered absolute truth, as Christians say they do. He then connects this to the stars, and the universe as a whole, to make a point about how little we know about everything. Agree with both points, heard both of them before, still don’t agree with him. Moving on.
He then goes on this minute-long tangent about the beauty of the pictures that the Hubble Telescope has produced. That’s where Douglas Wilson chimes in, saying that without God, there would be no way for any of us to recognize the beauty of the cosmos, for they would just be the random workings of a chaotic process. For a thing to have beauty, the thing must have a designer.
Of course, I’m Christian, and agree with Douglas Wilson’s general position. I don’t agree with everything, but I think we’re pretty much aligned for the most part. But this last statement…well, I don’t know what to think. Can something be intrinsically beautiful without a creator?
I guess the point is moot for a Christian. In the Christian worldview, everything in the world has been created, so there’s no point in really thinking about the question, as we’ll never come across something that is not created.
Even so…I dunno, the question intrigues me for whatever reason, and I’d like to find an answer somewhere. However, I have not studied philosophy, so I’d embarrass myself if I tried to start defining “beauty” or whatever. I also have no time to look into this. So if anyone can start me on the right track by thinking about this, I would be much obliged.
A while back, I found this post in my RSS feed, and since then, I haven’t been able to shake out of my head.
For those of you too lazy to click the link (don’t worry, I totally understand), it’s a commentary on Matthew 5:42: “Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” And for those of you too lazy to read the entire thing, here’s the part that really hits me:
I’ve thought a lot about this command of Jesus over the years. I’ve discussed it with many. I think I know all the major reasons why not to give when someone asks. You don’t want to encourage deception. You don’t want to feed a chemical addiction. You don’t want to contribute to someone’s cycle of poverty. And there are many others.
But still this text unnerves and convicts me.
The reason is that Jesus doesn’t give this command in the context of addressing how I can best facilitate transformation in someone else. He is telling me how I should respond to those who are making demands on me, either from explicitly evil motives or just plain out of their difficult situation. He is telling me how I ought to respond even when being taken advantage of.
Full disclosure: I haven’t given a (monetary) handout to anyone in five years. My first two years in Berkeley cured me of that. Well, actually, it was just this one guy that I met sophomore year. I can’t remember the name he gave me, but I’m pretty sure it started with a vowel, so I’m going to call him “Ike.”
The first time I met Ike was in front of Dwinelle Hall, near the benches where Stoney and the Dave Matthews guy usually stand around. (Looking back, I think that’s why my guard was down: most of the panhandlers usually stay off-campus.) I must have looked like an easy target, because he singled me out of a whole mess of people. He spun me this story about how he was about to take some accreditation exam at the DMV so that he could support his family…and how a few dollars could really help him out. Touched by his honest, heartfelt demeanor, I gave him $15 and wished him good luck.
The next time I met Ike was in the exact same place. I was a bit confused, since it was about a month later. I figured that he would have been gone by then. I asked him about the DMV. He gave me this split-second look of confusion, but quickly recovered and said something like, “Oh yeah, man, it didn’t go through, but, you know, next month, Imma try again.” And in my head, I was like, “Wow, I am a sucker.”
The last time I met Ike was in the hall between Yogurt Park and Sufficient Grounds. That time he didn’t even bother with formalities. I was carrying a whole bunch of orange juice cartons that I bought using my soon-to-expire meal plan points, so he was like, “Hey, man, gimme one of those.” I didn’t feel like I had a great reason *not* to give him one, so I ended up giving him one. “Alright, here you go.” I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you.
After Ike, I stopped giving homeless people stuff, if only because it reminded me of how gullible I was. So you can imagine my sense of relief when I started learning the socially acceptable reasons not to give to people: “It only feeds their addictions.” “Those who don’t work shall not eat.”
But I’m starting to see now that I was merely repeating excuses to avoid caring for those in my sphere of influence. Ironically, I was using the words “true love” to excuse my own lack of love for those around me.
I dunno. I know the Bible tells us to care for/give to/remember the poor. I don’t think the Bible means that we should just help the poor who are easy to help…or those who are grateful for our help…or just the Christians…
At the same time, I know that we have to be wise in how we help. I can’t be hard-hearted, but I can’t be gullible either. I…I just don’t know…all I know is that I need to pray.
I am not good at praying. Given a choice between staring at a brightly shining rectangle and talking to Almighty God, I will invariably choose the rectangle.
That being said, the last month or two have found me talking to God far more frequently than usual. I’d like to attribute these times to some spiritual growth, but that’s not true. It’s just that recently I seem to have so many requests for God…and they’re all things that even my prideful self realizes that I cannot affect on my own.
This is well and good, and perhaps this is God’s way of bringing me back to dependence on Him. If so, I’m thankful. Unfortunately, this newfound dependence on God also made the whole problem I had with prayer all the more apparent.
Here’s the problem: God is sovereign over all things, and has predetermined everything according to His sovereign plan. God does not change, and my prayers don’t change His sovereign plan in the slightest. I keep praying, not to change God’s plan, but because 1) God tells us to through His Word and 2) God’s sovereign plan includes people’s prayers.
In theory, this all works out, but in practice, I find that these convictions make my prayers ineffectual. Let’s say I don’t take the previous facts into account, and I pray believing that God will be more likely to effect change in my life if I pray. Firstly, I will be motivated to pray more, and secondly, I can honestly pray “God, grant X” and feel like my prayer made some difference.
When I add the absolute sovereignty of God into the picture…things get muddier. Sure I’ll pray, at least in the large situations. After all, what else can I do? But look at my reasons to pray in the previous paragraph. If my only reasons for doing X are 1) someone told me to do X, and 2) I am assured that doing X will have a nebulous effect on someone else’s master plan…well…I find that I am less than motivated to do X. Not only am I less motivated, my prayers become really weirdly worded. “God, please grant X” becomes “God, I know that You are master of all things, and that You have already predetermined what’s goin got happen from before the foundations of the world, and (I don’t know why I’m really doing this), but I mean, come on, do X, would you? It’s in accordance with Your character, and as far as I can see, a really good thing. So please?” Not quite as pretty.
Wow…that was kind of a long intro. Anyway, I received an answer today in today’s excellent message by Matt Hauck. He presented Daniel, in Daniel 9. Daniel 9′s more well known for the prophecy, but it starts out like this. Daniel’s reading the book of Jeremiah, and he realizes that Jeremiah prophesied that the exile would last 70 years. He also realizes that seventy years are almost up. So he starts to pray.
Now let’s say I were in that situation. (Highly unlikely, as this would require me to open the book of Jeremiah.) But for the sake of example, if I were in Daniel’s shoes, my prayer would either be one of thanksgiving (“Thank God, we’re free!”), or a subtle kick in the shins to God (“Hey, God, remember what You said seventy years ago? Yeah, it’d be great if you allowed us to go back to the home of our ancestors now. kthxbai!”)
What does Daniel do? First off, he starts by doing the sackcloth thing, which is puzzling, since he’s probably read the best news of his entire life. Then he prays…first, praising God, then confessing his sins (the sins of his entire nation!), then asking for forgiveness for said sins…then finally, prays for God to do exactly what was already prophesied seventy years ago. Nothing snarky about the last request either, he asks God to do it…out of His own great compassion, and for His glory.
I think my answer lies in Daniel’s attitude in this prayer. He has an extremely high view of God, and an extremely accurate view of his own sin. In my case, my prayers are ineffectual because I see prayer request X, as noble as it may be, to be the greatest priority. In my mind, if prayer request X does not happen, I have failed. In Daniel’s view, God’s glory is the greatest value, and prayer request X merely plays a part in God’s master plan to glorify himself. Let’s say X doesn’t happen. Well, then it didn’t happen because God was glorified even more, so no big deal.
This is kind of hard for me to realize right now, since I’m only praying in the first place because I really want these prayer requests to happen. But…I think I need to understand this before I can pray effectually at all.
Phew…I dunno, there’s so much in this prayer, and I’m definitely not the person to be expositing it, but I think this prayer is the answer to my prayers. I think I’ll have to spend a lot more time here…So uhh…thanks Matt.
