"I see men like trees, walking."

song post #8-- "1967 rebel"

2012-01-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

a good number of you have heard my song "1967 rebel" over the years, and if you haven't now is your chance. This is a live version from the house show that Nick Flora did back in November. For those who are wondering, it is safe for little ears (which it wasn't about to be, but then I realized halfway through the song that there people there that didn't know and didn't want to accidentally hurt the feelings of.

1967 Rebel

my brief opinion on how to be a good intern, for anyone wondering

2011-11-16T19:25:00.001-08:00

1. Just write the damn note. The time spent trying to get out of doing it probably isn't worth it.

2. Do unto others, especially your fellow doctors-- but this also extends to nurses, techs, other hospital staff, and even patients.

3. Pay attention-- it's easy to get overwhelmed by the number of details you'll hear that are unnecessary, but often there are gems for listening closely.

4. Listen, then speak.

5. Tell a story-- don't just regurgitate information.

6. Help the nurses and support staff-- this is kind of like #2, but more specific. There's no law that says that you can't change a bedpan or help a patient out of bed.

7. Ask why if you don't understand. I'm really bad at this one.

8. Ask for help if you need it.

9. Stand up for your patients. Sometimes you might be the only one to do it.

10. Listen to people who are standing up for your patients. Sometimes you might be tempted to ignore complaints or concerns. You may be right in doing so, but it never hurts to double-check.

follow-up: what is an autoimmune neutropenia, anyway?

2011-10-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

I realize that for folks who read my previous post about my low white blood cell count, there is still perhaps some mystery about what's going on (especially if you're not friends on facebook or twitter or whatever.) Or if the whole subject is just still confusing for you and you're too polite to ask me directly, here's what's going on!

I have a specific deficiency of one particular variety of white blood cells called neutrophils. My bone marrow biopsy did turn out to be negative, which of course was a huge relief. However, that simply ruled out any problems in the bone marrow, that is, it is clear that the deficiency was not a problem with producing new neutrophils as much as it was a problem with neutrophils dying or being destroyed. The first possibility is almost certainly ruled out by normal neutrophil counts before, the latter is the diagnosis that we've rested on.

What would destroy these poor, innocent neutrophils? Well, without going into the fascinating world of immunology too deeply, I will briefly say that sometimes other parts of the human immune system get confused and think that your own cells are invaders. This is called "autoimmune disease" and it's the phenomenon responsible for lupus, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, immune thrombocytopenic purpura (what I had last year), and, apparently, what's going on now. My Absolute Neutrophil Count (which they figure out by counting how many neutrophils they can see on a sample of my blood) has been in the "severely low" range for a while. Any particular reason for why this happened is pretty much unknown; sometimes this can happen after a viral infection when a pumped-up immune system confuses something in your body with the virus.

My counts have been up and down the last few weeks, and because technically that means I'm more at risk for infection, I haven't been allowed to see patients. We've tried a few things to treat it; nothing has really worked. Fortunately, though, things are coming back a little, so I'm allowed to see patients again!

Thanks to all who have been praying for me through this or have sent me notes of encouragement. I'm really thankful for y'all and I am so glad that I didn't actually get sick while I was at this "severely low" neutrophil count. Hopefully that updates you appropriately?

in response to "john brown's body"

2011-09-13T06:10:00.000-07:00

Graham Andrews is a gentleman and a scholar, and I was gonna write a long facebook comment but just decided to make it a blog post of my own in response to his rather thoughtful post, "John Brown's Body."

So, here's my thoughts: violent revolutions and wars to correct injustice have been happening since as long as we could figure out that if Urg stole our goat, we could take a rock to his head (unsurprisingly, we all learn this behavior without much guidance around age 2.) They are usually unsuccessful in achieving their desired aim. I know you're obsessed with the glory of violent revolution to the point that you have to change your pants when you spend too time thinking about it, but I don't think that violent revolution has an awful lot of show for itself. Most violent revolutions create societies that are not particularly more just than their predecessors (America 1776, France 1793, Cuba 1959, Iran 1979, etc.)

Even the Civil War, which, as you noted at the beginning, was in some senses just retribution for the horrors of slavery and crucial turning point in achieving justice, was still not particularly effective in actually changing the economic or social situation for a lot of African-Americans. That took the Civil Rights Movement, which was a militant, fire-breathing, Bible-thumping group of preachers & political agitators who wouldn't take no shit from nobody. And they also wouldn't fight back. I'm sure there's some pithy quote from Martin Luther King Jr. about nonviolence and justice that's appropriate to squeeze in here, but I think it's fair to say that the most lasting change for justice tends to come from the long, slow, hard work of sacrificing yourself and the needs of your community for the needs of another whilst defiantly and militantly defaming the lies of the overlords who try to keep you in line.

In a world where every ideologue is waving guns and money and power around trying to prove that their dick is bigger, laying all of those things down for the good of others (in a way that actually disadvantages yourself) is the only truly radical thing left to do. It may be loving, every now and then, to kill someone else in order to save a few people (John Brown is a particularly controversial example.) What is definitely loving, though, is spending your whole life dying for other people. It takes a lot of people doing this to change a society, but it has happened. I see it in Sandtown every day, and I think that sort of ethic has done far more for folks in my neighborhood than years of people doing good from a distance. John M Perkins is another great example, as is this dude, who is pretty hilarious to listen to even if you totally disagree with him.

There's obviously a lot of human failure and selfishness that stands in the way of this. You and I both know the dismal record that people have with helping others or sacrificing anything for anyone else. That's why Jesus is important-- He suffered the greatest injustice so that those of us who act unjustly could be called just, and those of us who suffer injustice can be restored and reconciled. As Tim Keller says, "So the gospel has got enormous social justice ramifications. It’s there, in Luke 1: 'He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble.'" And that sort of change-- not forced by some revolutionary gun, but by a tremendous, deep inner transformation-- lasts and endures, even to death. You mentioned in your post about how John Brown loved black people enough to kill some slaveowners. But "greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." The greatest revolution in history took place when a peasant king got lynched-- and then lived to tell about it.

If you're ever curious to see this in action, I'd invite you to come visit New Song, where people are doing the slow, humble, militant work of loving people every day. Come on the first Sunday of the month so even if it's a total drag and you can't even write an incisive blog post about it later, you can at least get some good fried chicken and curry.

the hurricane and the healer

2011-08-26T15:22:00.001-07:00

"Leukemia."

It is not one of those words that you ever want to hear from your doctor, even if it is only a possibility among several others that he lists off. By the time that he says it, though, you usually know something is up. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't have come to see your doctor. It may have been the night sweats, the weight loss, a weird pain that was diagnosed and treated elsewhere. For me, it was an abnormal lab test, done on a routine follow-up for another little hematologic problem (which has been stable for months now.) I spent a couple of days wondering if that could be one of the causes before the word was spoken.

Most of us, I think, have given at least a moment's thought to what our lives would be like if we had some horrific disease (or maybe it's just a doctor thing.) It's different when there's a needle scratching the insides of your bone. It's different when your white blood cell count is so low that the smallest infection could cause some real harm.

It could be something totally harmless, or it could be something very harmful. It is only a small comfort right now that I don't know what's wrong with me and that numerous tests are pending. I'm thankful that God has blessed me with all the resources I need to have experts analyzing my bone marrow. It's a big comfort that I only have very minor symptoms that I wouldn't have been worried about otherwise. It's a big comfort that I have a doctor who is thoughtful and compassionate and was very careful to say the word "leukemia" when I was ready for it, after he had listed off a few other common causes of my lab values that were entirely benign.

The uncertainty, though, is no fun.

It's almost like a hurricane. You know it's coming. It's all over the newscasts, the information I've been taught to trust. It's all over my lab tests, the ones I order everyday. I don't know if the hurricane will divert and pass back over the ocean, or if it'll come right for me. I don't know if it'll hit others worse than me. I know that it has. I have my nice, cozy house and the nice, cozy life I live inside of it, but that could always be torn apart with me inside. Or the storm could come and I'll rebuild. I don't know.

It goes to show a lot. Having the best health insurance in Maryland, a healthy diet, graduate education, and a great paycheck didn't protect me from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and they sure as hell can't protect you.

I don't mean to be too dramatic. But I do have a very bad diagnosis floating over my head, waiting to either disappear or fall like a foot of rain. I face the very real possibility of losing everything that I enjoy in this life, from the wife I am just starting to learn how to love to the work that I enjoy so much to the dreams for my future career that I've nurtured for years to the friends who are just so much fun to be around to the goatee I've worked so hard to enjoy (chemotherapy alone will steal that last one!) This isn't a certainty even if I do have leukemia, but it is certainly a thought that frequently crosses my mind as I wait for the pathologist to analyze my cells.

I think the temptation to furious despair is certainly a logical conclusion. We can stay there and wrestle for a while. I sure have today, and I'm sure I'll keep going back there, especially if the diagnosis is as bad as I'm afraid it might be.

There's something worse going on, though. I have always had a war in my blood, a malignancy down in my very marrow that you don't need a needle to scrape out or a lab test to ascertain. It's a mutant perversion of what I was meant to be. I won't go into the details, but I have done some very bad things and struggle with very bad thoughts on a pretty regular basis. If you think this is just verbal exaggeration to make a theological point, go ahead and e-mail me and I can tell you what I won't share on my blog. It's the moral equivalent of leukemia.

But there is a Great Physician, and to ignore His presence is foolhardy and disappointing. Beyond all the good things in this life is a better life in Him, and it was the shedding of His perfect, untainted blood that enables me to live. Even if I lose everything, I have an eternal joy and an everlasting satisfaction in Him. This is real and it cannot be taken away from me by any hurricane inside or outside. And even though the shadow of death hangs over my next few days, I am confident that even death itself will be destroyed, and that beyond death communion with Jesus in a new body borne out of the seed of this clumsy, gangly, aplasia-prone body will be sweeter than any earthly joy, even as my earthly joys have pointed me to the heavenly ones.

I hope you have this confidence, too, and if you don't I have a lot more time on my hands now that I'm not really allowed to see any sick patients. Let's chat.

Your prayers and love are appreciated in this time. We will be having the usual New Song prayer time on Sunday evening at 8pm at our house, which will also double as a prayer time for me. I will let everyone know what's going on via facebook/twitter (follow me here if you wish)

important dates in the near future

2011-08-11T18:19:00.001-07:00

so I figured I should make a list of all the cool stuff that's happening in the near future so you can keep track for yourself. Also, your chances of seeing me otherwise are low, so take advantage of these opportunities!

Sunday, August 14th @4PM-- Music Day
We are having people over at 4pm tomorrow to play music, eat some good food, and in general have a good time. Bring an instrument, a dish to share, and a friend!

Thursday, August 18th @6PM-- Jenny and Tyler House show
I really like Jenny and Tyler. They're funny, they're sincere, and they're damn good musicians. They will be playing in our living room, which is always an awesome experience. If you've never come to a house show at the Loftus house, now is your chance. We will be cooking out starting at 6, then music starts at 7pm with a few songs from me. After that, prepare yourself for the thoughtful, beautiful, and fun music of Jenny & Tyler! The show is $10, which includes free dinner!

Sunday, August 21st @8PM-- Leagues show
If I could be a full-time musician, I think I'd most want to be like Thad Cockrell. One of his stated goals is to "put the hurt back in country," and his debut album "To Be Loved" did that pretty perfectly. He has a new band, Leagues, and I am very excited about going down to Virginia to see them play. It's only $12, and it will be awesome.

Saturday, September 3rd @7PM-- Dinner at the Loftus Family House
A lot of you haven't met my whole family yet, nor have you experienced dinner at the Loftus house. It is not to be missed, and so there's an open invitation to eat at my parents' house on Friday, September 3rd. Show up when you can, RSVP as you can, and just be prepared to be someone's new best friend. E-mail/call me for details.

September 16-18-- Spaceship Building Weekend
This is not relevant to most of you, but I will be part of the Leonard the Lonely Astronaut spaceship building weekend in Nashville, TN. If you live in Nashville (or nearby!), this would be a great opportunity for us to see each other, especially since I don't get down south as nearly as often as I'd like.

November 10-12-- Global Missions Health Conference
The Global Health Missions Conference is my favorite conference I've been to, and I'm always really glad when I get the chance to go. If you are in some kind of medical field or interested in ministry & health-- which I think covers a lot of people who read my blog-- you should think about coming. It's not too expensive if you're a student and you can get housed for free!

well, that's about all. There may also be another end-of-summer cookout coming up, and we haven't confirmed it yet but you should probably not schedule anything important for Saturday, November 5th because someone awesome might be playing a house show then.

song post #7-- "tasted twice"

2011-07-10T16:50:00.001-07:00

there is a pretty funny story I like to tell about God's sense of humor. this is a song about that story.

tasted twice

Thanks to some of my fellow Presstman Preachers-- on this track, Tim Milligan plays bass, Evan Tice has the keys, & Mike Uhl steps out into new territory on drums!

intern year, here i come!

2011-06-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

for any and all who are curious, here's what's happening with the whole residency thing:

I'm at Franklin Square Hospital's Family Medicine Residency, which, as far as I can tell, is pretty awesome. I'm going to get a solid Family Medicine education encompassing all aspects of primary care and basic hospital care in medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics, gynecology, geriatrics, and more. Plus, there's a strong emphasis on preventive medicine and public health among the faculty, so I will get a lot of great experience there. Medical students rotate through the program frequently, so I'll also have the opportunity to teach (which I would love to have as part of my future career in medical missions! I'll get to work at Baltimore County's Health Care for the Homeless, which is located right above one of the biggest shelters in the county (which happens to be on the FSHC campus.) Our patient population is apparently "very diverse" and "interesting"-- drawing on Baltimore City and the various counties surrounding the hospital.

The program is 3 years long, but I am considering adding an extra year for more obstetrics training (wherein I'll transfer over to the OB/GYN residency for a year.) They are also very close to adding a preventive medicine/family medicine combined residency, and I will have a hard time saying "no" to that when it comes around. I'm also thinking about about Via Christi Family Medicine's International Medicine Fellowship, where I'd get 6 months of training in the U.S. and 6 months of training overseas in preparation for medical missions.

A few frequently asked questions: "Residents" are folks who have graduated from medical school and have their M.D., but are not licensed in a particular specialty (and thus are pursuing their specialty training.) "Interns" are first-year residents. I do get paid (not much), and I am allowed to work a maximum of 80 hours a week, 16 hours per shift (I get to work up to 24-28 hours next year.) Most of my shifts will be 12 hours. I get four days off a month, although looking at my schedule I'll probably have closer to 5-6 days per month on most rotations.

My rotations are 4-week blocks as follows (block 1 started on 6/20, if that helps...): Nursery, ICU, Family Health Center (clinic), Night Float, FMI/Adult Inpatient Medicine, ICU, Musculoskeletal clinic, OB nights, Pediatrics Inpatient, Geriatrics, OB, amily Health Center (clinic), FMI/Adult Inpatient Medicine. More details about each rotation can be found here if you're curious.

We're still living in Sandtown and trying our best to be involved in New Song Community Church, which is downright awesome and a lot of why we chose to stay in Baltimore. We are working hard on something cool we plan on doing within the community that we'll tell everyone about soon! We still intend to do long-term medical missions to unreached peoples in Africa or the Middle East, doing clinical work and indigenous leadership development as part of a church-planting work.

So far, everyone that I've met at the Family Health Center is pretty cool. The faculty are all genial, intelligent folks who love to teach and are very open to us residents. My fellow residents are all cool, interesting people with a bunch of different interests and a strong commitment to helping the underserved. I start at 6:30am on Monday morning with Nursery, and I am very excited! This is gonna be a big change in a lot of ways, but I am eager to be challenged to my limits and learn all I can about medicine. I'll try not to totally drop off the face of the earth (at the very least, you can probably still expect some witty tweets every now and then.) Thanks to everyone who's been an encouragement or has prayed for me over the last few years-- Maggie & I have appreciated them and will still need them!

Here goes.

something else to listen to

2011-04-18T20:32:00.000-07:00

I know I post a whole lot of links. Articles, videos, pictures, sermons, etc. etc. However, I would urge you guys to listen to this message given by a friend of mine who's been a missionary in the Middle East and was kicked out for refusing to take a bribe. It is at once a stunning testimony from someone who has suffered for the Gospel, a touching retelling of a well-known story, and a powerful look at one of the biggest frontiers in missions today. Enjoy.

Ben Smith: Rescued From Shame.

Originally from Faith Christian Fellowship.

[cross-posted on facebook.]

a heritage to be thankful for

2011-03-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

I matched at Franklin Square Family Medicine Residency! I am very excited to be a part of their program and looking forward to a lot of hard work & learning over the next few years. My family medicine residency will be 3 years and I'm hoping to do an additional year of obstetrics (the "OB fellowship") while there. It's been a long road to get here with a whole lot of school and a whole lot of money.

I'm thankful. I say that a lot, but I wanted to write this post to trace that a little bit and hopefully nurture my appreciation for how thankful I am for so many people. After all, on a day like Match Day, most people end up celebrating my work and what I've done to get here. My contribution was significant, but it is far outweighed by what others have done.

I don't want to be trite, but I am thankful that I was born in a place, culture, and family where I had the opportunity to become a doctor in the first place. All the intelligence and hard work in the world wouldn't have gotten me to medical school if I had happened to be born at the same time in Somalia. And even that has been shaped by my ancestors, from the crazy bloodletting grave robbers who founded University of Maryland and the soldiers who fought to protect America, to the slaves who helped build our country's economic strength and the victims of various diseases that provided the medical research I later memorized. Even the people whose bodies I dissected to learn anatomy passed a gift on to me. The hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships that I got from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation used to belong to one hard-working individual who got it all from other hard-working individuals. The good and bad have become my heritage, and I can only be grateful even as I still try not to repeat history's mistakes.

I have had many teachers along the way-- my parents, my friends, my martial arts instructors, my professors, my attendings, my residents, and quite often my patients. There were some that just did their job, there were others who didn't even make it that far, and there were many who gave above & beyond what I expected or asked of them. Most did more than they were paid for. There were plenty of things that I looked up in books for myself, but even how to do that well I learned from others. Along the way I picked up bits & pieces of different ideologies, made some terrible arguments, and perhaps even time from others who needed it more than me. he good and bad have become my heritage, and I can only be grateful even as I as I look to give good things to others.

Many of you know a little something about my family and the fact that I was born into the sort of family that most of us wouldn't bet on for success and born to the sort of people that few of us would characterize as "the parents of a future doctor." Yet, somehow, they changed. They grew up. They took responsibility. They chose, despite the opportunities otherwise, to sacrifice their desires to raise me and my siblings. Especially after they came to know & love Jesus, He began to change them. Faced with a school system that they felt was not best for me, they even gave up more income and more time for themselves to homeschool me, which I think played a huge part in shaping me academically and personally. There was good and bad in this, too-- while I avoided some of the drudgery of the public school system and learned a lot of things more quickly, I became one of those "homeschooling-is-awesome" conservative Christian assholes that now make me twitch uncontrollably. I learned passion, dedication, and perseverance by watching my parents love us, but I also learned overbearing attachment and codependency. The good and bad have become my heritage, and I can only be grateful even as I try to hold on to the good and reject the bad for my own children.

Lastly, even my life is a gift, as are many of the things about me that have helped me to get to where I am. Regardless of my relationship with Jesus, I think I'd be pretty driven, thoughtful, and compassionate. I might have even become a successful doctor. Yet, when I pay attention, I see that my heart is simply brimming over with selfishness, anger, and pride. I end up lifting myself up at the expense of others a lot already, and I know I'd do it a lot more if I didn't have the Holy Spirit. If Jesus hadn't given up His life for me, I wouldn't have any motivation to give mine up for others. With this faith comes many challenges and opportunities to fail, which I seem to jump at. It also brings many hard questions. Yet, at the end of the day, the most important thing that it brings is a radical perspective on myself and my work. As exciting as it is to have a picture of me smooching my wife in the Baltimore Sun, that'll pass away. So will my medical knowledge and the work that I do. I am, ultimately, a pretty insignificant human being. Yet God's grace says that I was loved infinitely and bought with the blood of Christ. That not only overcomes the heart that frequently bubbles over with selfishness against others, but it gives me an unshakable identity as His child over & beyond anything else. I am thankful for all that I have and all that's been given to me, but one day what I give and what I've been given will pass from my eyes in death. And then what I will behold with my eyes will be even more glorious.

As Eugene Peterson says, "We wake and are called out to participate in God's creative action. We respond in faith, in work. But always grace is previous. Grace is primary. We wake into a world we didn't make, into a salvation we didn't earn."

So for that I am thankful. Thank you-- if you're reading this, you probably did something to help me get to where I am today. Now I gotta go write some thank-you notes for everyone who doesn't read my blog.

brave and bittersweet

2011-01-26T08:44:00.000-08:00

Alex once again has a very well-written blog post, but I disagree with it entirely. I could leave a really long comment or just write myself a new blog post. Andy Crouch took up the secular hope vs. spiritual hope compare & contrast and you picked it up, so I will add my thoughts (mostly restating Crouch, honestly.)

A secular hope is a great thing for educated people who have the resources to avoid most of the pain and insecurity that come with disease, hunger, war, and oppression. In fact, a sense of self-sufficiency and self-determination permeates most atheistic discourse that I really don't think can be extended to those who are suffering around the world. Even Steve Jobs, confronted by a horrific medical fate, was able to game the system in order to get a liver transplant that anyone in a similar situation in his part of the country wouldn't be able to get. The sad part is that this is only a mild example of the sort of injustice that allows the rich to live well at the expense of the poor across the world. To say to the billions of people who do suffer around the world and will continue to suffer until they die that we can have hope in this world really is a cold comfort.

I would argue further that a secular hope is not much of a hope at all, even to the educated and wealthy. Any part of life that gives us meaning can be taken from us at pretty much any time, no matter how hard we might try to protect it. Our health, our intelligence, our friends, our financial or physical security-- all of them are guaranteed not to last, and most of them will pass from our hands before we die. You can plan to die well and you can satisfy whatever meaning you've picked out for yourself before then, but it's still a crap shoot whether your kids will turn out alright, your work will be used for good, or your love will mean something to another person. And that's just in this life. If there is a world to come, then such a hope and the meaning we derive from it is laughably insignificant.

Furthermore, you can't know that the meaning you choose for yourself is truly... meaningful. We look with pity on, say, the people who died fighting to preserve slavery or the Tuskegee researchers, but we can't know if perhaps our choices will be just as harmful to others. Lots of people, regardless of class or religious preference, choose terrible meanings for themselves to actualize, most of which are oblivious to the needs of others or contravening them entirely. You say, "Which is the better source of hope: this world, small, and often backwards as it is, but certain, or transcendent meaning and eternal life, known by invisible evidence? What can comfort?" I would argue that the hope of this world is not in any way certain and it is the security & comfort that we have bought for ourselves that deceives us into that certainty.

Now, turning to spiritual hope. I don't think that you can have hope without faith. After all, on a superficial level, hope is simply wanting something good or better to happen in the future. Like buying a lottery ticket. No one is going to buy a house beyond their means expecting to pay it off when they hit the mega millions. But if you've got hope that isn't just what you want to happen, but something that will happen-- then that's the sort of hope will motivate you and give you security. You might buy a house beyond your current means if you know your trust fund will start paying out in 6 months. So a truly substantial hope will lead to truly substantial things. A temporal, worldly hope is always tenuous, because you can never actually give yourself to it with reckless abandon. Yet spiritual hope allows you to give yourself to others, to pour yourself out in love knowing that even if you lose everything else, you have the treasures of heaven. This hope is born out of faith grounded in what we can see & feel but not limited by it. Secular hope is a like buying a lottery ticket in the expectation you'll hit it big; spiritual hope is like being adopted by a rich man with a huge trust fund in Switzerland knowing that you'll get it the day you turn 21. Even if you can never see the millions, you have his constant reassurance and testimony in the past and today that he's taking care of you.

Starting from the Resurrection of Jesus, we see God showing us that we can have a true hope. Jesus, the firstborn from the dead, gives us a meaning that is far more powerful and beautiful than anything we can come up with ourselves. Anything else is like buying the lottery ticket: false hope that's a waste now and foolish in the light of eternity.

also regarding that xkcd comic

2011-01-15T17:53:00.001-08:00

Alex recently wrote a good post about a recent xkcd comic that I found rather annoying; he and I talked about it together and decided that we would write separate blog posts. He wrote first, so I am sort of responding to what he wrote as well but mostly responding to the comic.

The comic annoyed me primarily because I'm almost a doctor, and I feel like the comic really misrepresented medical science. Quick caveat: I am really thankful for medical science and everything that $100 billion a year in R&D has gotten us. I'm alive because of it, and so are a lot of patients that I've taken care of over the years.

That being said, I think that there are a lot of things that $100 billion a year in R&D hasn't gotten us. It hasn't done much to help us talk to a patient who needs a drug that cost millions of dollars to develop because he smoked for decades. It hasn't stopped us from giving people million-dollar drugs that don't need them. It keeps some people from dying, but it leaves us speechless when we try to talk about whether or not to let them die. It sure hasn't figured out how to give people the fruits of our labor without the possibility of harming them further (one could argue that I was nearly dead because of medical science just as much as it saved my life.) There isn't a huge list of medical treatments that work with p <0.05 confidence, and most of what we do is based just as much on experience, intuition, and conversation. A gentle touch, sitting down, or listening without interruption are often more valuable than million-dollar drugs. And that's not even touching how much of that $100 billion a year is spent trying to reformulate drugs we've had for decades so that they can be re-patented and resold for higher prices.

So I was bothered by that aspect of the comic. A little. But I was also bothered by another thing-- and that is the pitting of a worldview that isn't looking for answers beyond science against one that does. To me, this is the more dangerous fallacy. It's been noted before that generally, only atheists perceive that there is an impassable conflict between science and religion; most religious folks are very willing to say that science and the scientific method have their place in our worldview. There is intense debate among Christians about what that place is, but they all have a place. Furthermore, I doubt many atheists would put science on such a pedestal that it ought to somehow define all of our lives and livelihoods-- there are far too many failed attempts at this in the last century that would stop such a suggestion dead in its tracks. Science is a like a set of woodworking tools: incredibly useful in their place and powerful in their own right. But take them into a machinist's shop and they're dangerously useless.

Science is really great. It's done a lot of really spectacular stuff, especially in the world of medicine, and I'm thankful for it. But it can't give us answers to a lot of the questions that really bother us, which is why the person in the comic answering the question didn't say anything about what else beyond science. He seemed very content with a system that has given us 20-40 more years of life and made the other 40-50 years of life more comfortable. I am pretty happy with that myself, but certainly not anywhere near satisfied. And if you are genuinely content with the power of science, I have to ask: Is that what you'll settle for?

The question asked in the comic is, I think, a reasonable one. Assuming that the two dudes are friends, I think there's grounds to ask it. I might compare it to a doctor asking a patient if they had thought about reconsidering their own diet after the patient's dad got admitted for a stroke or a heart attack. I do not think that all suffering comes with a built-in meaning that will reveal itself to us if we would only have enough faith. However, that is a totally different proposition from the one that says that your suffering might be entirely meaningless. Both of those extremes-- that suffering always has a meaning that you can perceive if you're strong enough, or that suffering is meaningless-- are incredibly callous, especially to people who suffer a lot. When we experience tragedy and suffering that overwhelm us, it's an entirely normal impulse to ask, "why?" Furthermore, I think its an entirely reasonable response to say, "Because."

The practice of medicine, to me, has a lot of similar to the practice of believing. Day after day when a doctor sees his or her patients, he or she encounters questions that don't have double-blinded randomized clinical trials to answer them. A lot of a doctor's decisions are shaped by evidence, and when something is crystal-clear then he or she does it without hesitation. But practicing well-- and living well-- takes a lot of careful thought in weighing the evidence we've seen, the reason we've been given, the experience we've had, and the intuition we nurture. Science has done a lot in the last 100 years, and I hope that we see even more in the next 100 years. God has given us incredible blessings through science that we ought to be thankful for. But there are things that I don't think we'll ever answer with science, and we should not be so hasty to assert that the progress science has made somehow makes those questions irrelevant. Because they still are, and the God who gave us the power to investigate the world also gave us a way to learn some of those answers.

updating

2010-11-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

I updated a bunch of my links today while I was taking a little break from working on my lecture for New Covenant's Biography Buffet. You can peruse my sidebar for anything interesting. Also, if you are my friend and your blog is not up there, it is probably because I didn't know your blog exists, and you should leave a comment so I can find it and subscribe to it.

In other news, I have been quite busy lately with said lecture, tutoring at New Song, and trying to decide about where to practice residency. There are a lot of really great options, but it seems as though there are just as many good reasons to stay in Baltimore.

That's all for now. Back to work!

song post #6-- "summer storm"

2010-08-31T15:34:00.000-07:00

This has been a pretty awesome summer with a lot of firsts: my first summer of being married, my first summer nearly dying of an autoimmune disease, my first summer trying to run a VBS type thing in my living room, and my first summer for quite a while when I wasn't working a lot. It would be tough to sum it up in a decent blog post, so I wrote a song about it. My good friend and extraordinary human being Peter Gaultney is singing.

Summer Storm

song post #5-- "gravity"

2010-08-24T17:33:00.000-07:00

Are there a lot of folk-pop songs out there called "gravity"? Yup! Does that one make mine any less special? You be the judge. Wrote this one last summer when I was pining for a certain young lady up in Maine.

"gravity"

song post #4-- "kofi's song"

2010-08-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

This latest song is a song I wrote about a little boy I met in Ghana. He had been abandoned at the hospital (there had been a doctors' strike at every other hospital, leading the military hospital to be the only one open, and in the chaos his mom had somehow left the hospital.) The chorus refers to the Akan system of naming. This song was also part of the almost concept album.

Two versions of this song!

Acoustic (recorded with some help from my friend Liz.)

Electric (recorded by myself and my little Blue Snowball.)

war in my blood

2010-06-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

So, many of you been asking lately and I have been really bad about putting out everything in a nice, simple public post. So here's the scoop: About a month and a half ago, I got some vaccines in preparation for our trip to Ethiopia. I had had most of them before, but I got a new one because apparently Ethiopia is one of the few countries where there's been wild polio in the last few years and adults traveling to such countries need an adult booster. About three days later, I broke out in a curious rash. I realized that it was clearly a drug reaction and called the place where I got the vaccinations; they told me not to worry about it. In my incredibly poor clinical judgment did not realize that it was in fact, a possible sign of something very bad going on. I am further kicking myself for this because I could have gotten out of one of my harder surgery rotations for a couple days, but that is not really the point.

In any case, I then started to notice some easy bruising. So I went to a doctor, got some labs, and found out I was severely thrombocytopenic (which means my platelets, the cells that help your blood clot properly, were dangerously low.) In fact, I was so low that for weeks I was at risk of spontaneous internal bleeding. I rode my bike (with a helmet) every day and went about my daily business; my brother Noah accidentally hit me in the head really hard with a frisbee. I could have died from that. So the first thing about this whole experience is that I'm really thankful for God keeping me alive the last few weeks.

When I got admitted to the hospital, they gave me platelets and this neat stuff called Intravenous Immune Globulin that is basically purified antibodies collected from the blood of thousands of donors. I was officially diagnosed with Immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), which is basically a fancy way of saying that my immune system freaked out at my vaccine and started attacking my platelets. If you want to read more about this, I have a very thorough .pdf that explains it all in some fairly technical language.

After a few days in the hospital, I was sent home on some more medications, which seemed to be doing well-- last week my platelets were completely normal! I was, however, strongly discouraged from going to Africa, since oftentimes adults with ITP have recurrences. We have successfully rescheduled our trip to December-January of this year and we're very thankful that everything has worked out for that so far.

Unfortunately, I have not yet reached a remission yet-- they tried to start tapering me off the medication last week and my platelets went down. So Maggie & I would really appreciate your prayers as they continue to treat me; we're optimistic about eventually getting a good response, but it's certainly discouraging to see that things aren't working right away.

God clearly wants us in Sandtown this summer, hanging out with the kids on our block and having you over for dinner. So we're heartened to have that leading, and confident that He'll continue to provide for us & protect us in the time to come. Feel free to ask questions here or via e-mail; I will be sharing more thoughts about what I learned through the experience as time allows. Til then, thanks for reading and praying. We have felt an overwhelming amount of love and support from our friends and family during this time!

P.S. If you gave to our trip and didn't get a thank-you note, we're really sorry and we're working on all those right now. Don't worry, we didn't forget about you and don't appreciate you any less!

introducing The Milliliters

2010-05-31T08:04:00.000-07:00

as you know, I'm pretty asinine when it comes to having a moniker to record under. This had led to a plethora of terrible band names, and this one representing me and my wife is no exception. The Milliliters (get it?!) proudly present two songs, one of which is an original song about one of the few things dumber than a name like "The Milliliters." hope you enjoy!

Memo to the Sheep

To Be Alone With You (Sufjan Stevens cover) [original]

top 10 LOST mysteries that I'm pretty sure weren't answered

2010-05-28T15:54:00.000-07:00

(but correct me if I'm wrong!)

I really enjoyed the LOST finale and feel pretty okay understanding the whole story, but I am still lost on a couple of points. Any help would be appreciated.

10. Why did the pregnant women from the Others all die, and why did Claire (and Sun, for that matter) do okay?

9. Was The Sickness just the Man in Black's power to influence people, and if so why were only certain people susceptible? Was it only that he made ridiculous promises that people believed? Or was The Sickness something else entirely?

8. What was up with the metaphysical Calvinball? People kept making up rules, but we never got to figure out how or why they could do so.

7. In the same vein, why couldn't Ben & Widmore kill each other?

6. Was there ever any significance to the characters of Nadia, Helen, Kelvin, Sun's father, Sawyer's baby, Sawyer's baby mama, or Christian Shepherd (besides the fact that he was in the alternate universe somehow)?

5. What's the deal with Eloise Hawking? Seriously.

4. How did the Dharma food drops happen?

3. What was the point of the Temple or the Statue, who built them, and what function did they serve?

2. Why was the Man in Black/Smoke Monster so arbitrary in who he killed or didn't kill? Eko survived a few encounters, but later got axed. It tried to get John Locke once, but failed, and throughout the seasons it has had many opportunities to kill various non-Candidates but simply didn't. Furthermore, considering

1. Most importantly, why on earth did Lapidus never get a flashback episode?

why i believe what i believe

2010-04-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

I feel like it would be good for my friends and community if I briefly explained why I believe what I believe here on Easter weekend. Or probably a better way of phrasing it is "how do I know that I'm not deluding myself?" A friend recently asked me that question, and it is a good one to ponder. All are welcome to comment. I will obviously be touching on things very briefly, but I would like to start a conversation in this direction, as many other people have recently started other conversations in other directions.

In summation, I believe what I believe because the Holy Spirit has enabled me to trust in Jesus for salvation and has taught me who Jesus is and how He died that I might live through the Bible. I can trust the work of the Holy Spirit in my life and the words of the Bible because of reason, history, experience, community, and hope.

Reason
If you take the Bible as it is and believe that Jesus died and rose again for your sins, you wind up with a fairly self-consistent worldview. There are innumerable variations on this worldview, of course, with varying degrees of difficulty therein. Yet the answers to the biggest questions humans have always asked-- why are we here? why do things happen the way they do? how ought we to live?-- are answered in a pretty satisfying way. There are logical arguments for God's existence that may be helpful to some people, but I don't think they're particularly useful except as interesting knickknacks within this worldview. You cannot start with or end with reason when it comes to believing in God, but I don't think starting with or ending with reason gets you anywhere. However, I don't think it is a stretch to say that just about everything within this framework is reasonable & self-consistent; very few ways of understanding the world meet this very basic test.

History
This is a point wherein one could spend days and days arguing about archaeology, textual criticism, and who knows what else and get nowhere, but I will simply say that there is ample evidence to suggest at the very least, that Resurrection of Jesus happened like the Gospels said and lots of other things about the Gospels are trustworthy. If that really happened (and that's a big if), there's good reason to take the rest of the Bible seriously, since that's what Jesus did. There are lots of difficulties with taking the Bible seriously, and while I cannot say I have thought about them all, I've encountered quite a few. I would be happy, either publicly or privately, to discuss them. The big thing, though, is (again) it is still reasonable to subscribe to the theory that the Bible was inspired by God, that Jesus rose again from the dead, and that you do not have to abandon your intellectual credibility to believe in Jesus.

Experience
Oh, what a nebulous entity, our experience! While I do not think it should get as strong a value as reason would in processing life, I think it is still important that what we believe correlates with what we have experienced. And in this regard, I will say that unless my mind is oriented with Gospel thinking-- that is, that I am a sinner saved only by grace and transformed by love-- then I will either think too highly of myself or too low. I will either be faced with the horrors of my selfishness, pride, and condescension towards others or I will lie to myself and allow those things to consume me until those things define my interactions with others. And the more that I trust that Jesus has looked at all that ugliness and chosen to exchange that ugliness with His beauty, the more that those things lose power in my life. I am able to forgive, sacrifice, and love over and over because Jesus does, and He has shared His strength with me. Living in a "dangerous" neighborhood, moving to Africa, and dealing with annoying people are all so much easier when I consider the weight of glory that comes with knowing and loving Jesus. Furthermore, I cannot love by myself-- usually what comes out then is just my selfishness looking for more attention or, if it approaches being genuine, it is quickly exhausted when I run out of energy. But if I connect myself to the wellspring of love and receive from Jesus' love, I can continue to love even when it hurts.

Community
This is really an extension of the last paragraph-- over my short years on earth and over the centuries, communities of Christians have done incredible things. This is not to say that you have to be a church to do good for others, or all communities are a blessing to their neighbors. Lots of non-Christians do way more good than other Christians, and some churches are simply poisonous and wicked. Yet I think that across the board, when you encounter groups of Christians who take the entire Bible seriously, they are not only accepting enough to take in any sinner, they are also challenging enough to transform any such sinner. Their love leads them to sacrifice in ways that others don't do on nearly the same scale, sacrificing their lives in many cases for the sake of lifting others up. I can meet a woman with AIDS in Kenya of a different nationality, language, ethnicity, and background than me-- but the Gospel brings us together and we can rejoice together. I have been hurt, loved, built up, challenged, forgiven, and shown grace by these communities in many different ways, but it has all, in the end, been good.

Hope
We live in a world of evil, injustice, oppression, and sorrow. If you don't know this, you will eventually. Whether it is internal, external, or both, you will be wounded deeply as you live. And you will always be able to find someone else whose suffering was both less deserved and more horrific. For some, this is reason alone not to believe in God. For me, it is impetus to believe-- for if God is not sovereign and is not going to bring justice to all those who escape it in this life, nor is He going to make all things right in the end, how much more horrifying is the world we face! For those of us who have the privilege of wealth, friends, education, and other resources to deal with tragedy, we can eventually shrug off the harm that has been done to us. But for those who have no such recourse, it is unimaginably cruel to imagine that there is no justice or vindication whatsoever for them, that in this life, thieves and rapists and murderers will have the last word. We cannot comprehend how all things work out, and we should be careful not to treat such a matter with triteness. But I think there is a way of confidently saying that God's love is beyond our imagining and His plans beyond our realization, and in the end our feeble understanding will be overwhelmed with the beauty of His work.

So that's it. I have found that listening to Tim Keller has been very helpful in processing these issues, and as I mentioned, I am hoping this sparks conversation. Thanks for reading and participating.

[cross-posted on facebook.]

the Andrew Osenga House Show recording!

2010-04-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

There is now a recording of the whole Andrew Osenga concert we held at our house last week! You can download it all in one nice neat zip file, or download the individual tracks as you please. Standouts include story right before "Hold the Light" (and the accompanying song), "All the Wrong Reasons," "New Beginning" and its story, and "Early in the Morning."

Some notes:

-As of right now, there's an extra track 7. One of them is 128kbps, so just delete it when you download.

-If there's clipping or something else terrible on a track you can't stand, leave a comment or e-mail me and I'll try to fix it. Other feedback is also appreciated.

-If you want the lossless version (I promise it's not that different), you can also contact me.

-If you like this and want some more, you can buy some more of his music! If you kinda like this and want to hear some more before you pay anything, you can download more free music directly from him. If you didn't like it, you should probably download the free stuff anyway and give it another chance. If you just like house shows and live recordings, you can go here.

-I also made a youtube playlist of live video from Andy's old band, The Normals.

-If there is no other way for you to listen, I will gladly make you a CD of this show.

Other important points to help understand what happened if you weren't there:

-On track 2, when he stops playing right at the beginning of the second verse, two of our friends walked in. There was not much room in our living room, so they were walking single file, when one of them sat right down in front of the other, thus blocking her friend from walking any further. It was funny, I promise.

-I made all the dumb requests on track 11.

-On track 13, Andy mentions Ellie's Run for Africa, which helps out schoolkids in the slum of Kibera where I worked for three summers.

-On tracks 13 and 15, there is some discussion about a particular song. What I meant to say was that it was a contender for our first dance song, but we ended up using a Weepies song. We still danced to "Dance Away the City" during the regular old dancing portion of the reception. I still embarrassed myself in front of Andy and the whole concert, but I wanted to clarify anyway.

-Peter is the one singing along on track 6.

my schedule for the next year

2010-03-27T11:59:00.000-07:00

First off: my wife has a blog now. It is pretty cool, and it is written more for her benefit than yours, so you won't see the shameless pandering to the masses that you might here at I See Men Like Trees Walking. She's also funnier, or least in our house she laughs more.

In other news, things are pretty exciting as far as fourth year goes! I have to get through three months of my surgery clerkship, but after that I have some very awesome electives and sub-internships. The way it works is that we had to fill our fourth year from July 2010 to May 2011 (which is when we graduate) with two sub-internships, two weeks of AHEC (explained below), and four electives. I did some extra work my first and second year that counted as an elective, so I only have to do three electives.

July: Missions trip to Ethiopia
I already told y'all about this, so I won't belabor the point. But this is still really, really, really exciting for Maggie & me, so please pray for us!

August: Studying for (and taking) USMLE Step 2 (and some other stuff)
aka "the boards" part 2. It's a two-day test; day one is sort of like Step 1, that test I took last year where I studied every day for 6 weeks, except it's not quite as hard. Day two is where you interview a few actors pretending to patients and prove that you can speak English well enough to tell someone that their appendix is about to explode and they need to go to surgery. I also plan to spend some time just fooling around doing nothing and possibly visiting Tennessee with friends.

September: Family Medicine Sub-Internship
As you might have assumed, a sub-internship is where they treat you like an intern (1st year resident), except you don't work quite as hard because they assume that you're still a living, breathing human being (plus, you are still technically paying the hospital/school roughly $10/hour for the privilege of working there, instead of them paying you roughly $4/hour like a resident.) The Family Medicine inpatient service is run by the family docs at Maryland; they are very good at primary care so the only patients in the hospital are the ones who are really, really sick. Thus, it's quite a challenging service! Looking forward to this month, even though it'll be one of the hardest in fourth year.

October: Western Maryland AHEC (Area Health Education Center)
I don't know where exactly in Western Maryland I'll be, but the basic story is that the University of Maryland has decided that seeing a bunch of underserved patients in the inner city isn't cool enough, so we should see a bunch of underserved patients way out in rural areas of Maryland. Most people have to do two months of this, but I got them to count Ethiopia as one of my months so I'm cool with that. Other med students are going to Southern Maryland, Eastern Shore, etc. and a few people get to stay in Baltimore and do public health.

November: Program of Assertive Community Treatment Psychiatry Elective
This sounded like a really cool elective, and hey! I enjoyed Psychiatry so I figured I'd check it out. Basically, we drive around and help people get the psych treatment they need. Should be interesting.

December-January: Off for residency interviews and hopefully going to Haiti with our friend Kez!

February: Maternal-Fetal Medicine Subinternship
This is really a fancy name for the only Obstetrics & Gynecology sub-I, which is to say you get treated like an OB/GYN intern except with more clinic. Still, I really like both obstetrics and gynecology, and since I had to do two sub-Is in 4th year I picked this one.

March: OB/GYN outpatient
I'll see OB/GYN clinic patients. Not too too much to say about this except I enjoyed it before, so I might as well do it some more.

April: Diagnostic Radiology
I slept through most of the radiology teaching sessions during my Medicine rotation this year, and they were a joke anyway. I'm still not all that great with basic radiology stuff, so I figured this would be a valuable experience. I am still thinking about maybe doing an ER month in April instead. For those of you wondering, the image is of the infamous Throckmorton Sign.

May: Graduation!

fistulas and faith

2010-03-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

For a long time, women's health issues have been an important part of shaping what I want to do and how I feel like God has called me to serve God. I wanted to publish this post to briefly provide some more information about women's health-- especial maternal-fetal health-- for those who are interested or just don't know much.

Here is a good introductory article from the BBC.

The Fistula Foundation helps to tackle an enormous problem in women's health, obstetric fistula. As you may have surmised, it was learning about fistulas that first really captured my heart and made me think, "wow! I could really do something about this." There is no way that I will ever be a gyn surgeon and fix fistulas (ask me to tell you sometime about how I know I'll never be a surgeon at all), but I trust that God will be able to use me to be His hands & feet in the world.

And finally, in case you were wondering, we will be serving at Soddo Christian Hospital this summer. Paul and Becca Gray will be our supervisors, and we will be working with a number of other health providers both foreign and national. Check it out!

a new layout and a new song

2010-03-13T06:34:00.000-08:00

decided to change some things around here-- mostly I just felt like the text area of the blog was too narrow and it made the sidebar links go way down to infinity. I have updated said sidebar links, for the four of you who are curious about what I read now. Also, two of those four now have their blogs on my site. There is also a category for The Milliliters, the new band I started with my wife the other night. We wrote a song called "memo to the sheep" together (our second one!), though it is pretty much what I imagine a 14-year-old who really enjoys listening to Glenn Beck would write. I hope you enjoy it, and the blog. I appreciate your feedback.

This reminds me that we should have another music-playing day sometime soon.

Did I mention that Andrew Osenga is coming to my house on the 22nd? And that he is really cool? And you should come, and if you can't come, you should download his music (either from his site or full live concerts)? I have also been streaming the album Coming to Life from his old band, The Normals, and it is quite good.

the exhaustive list of foods i don't like

2010-03-07T14:05:00.000-08:00

1. cheese (except for pizza. and cheese-filled tortellini.)
2. eggs (okay as an ingredient, but not directly)
3. sour cream
4. ketchup
5. mayonnaise
6. pickles
7. barbecue sauce
8. lima beans
9. ranch dressing
10. cream soda
11. olives
12. custard
13. tapioca
14. artificial banana flavor

it is very, very sad that this could not fit as a twitter post. feel free to judge me now.

Andrew Osenga House Show Information

2010-02-27T12:36:00.000-08:00

Andrew Osenga, of the bands Caedmon's Call and The Normals, will be coming to our house for an intimate evening of story and song on Monday, March 22nd, at 7pm. If you don't know much about Andy or how awesome his music is, just go to the website to download some of his free EPs-- they're really really good, I promise. We won't be charging for tickets, but we will be happy to take your money to help defray the cost of bringing him to Baltimore (although we encourage you to buy a CD first if you only have $10 to spend.) We'll host as many people as can fit in our living room! (about 50 max) and we will also have snacks and beverages.

We will be selling beer and coffee as well. However, if you buy an Andy O pint glass, CD, or t-shirt, we'll fill you up for free all night!

We pretty much live in the 'hood, as my neighbors like to say. You might think you got horrifically lost while driving to the house, but you're fine! There is ample parking and the area is relatively safe if you are conscientious, but we often escort folks to/from their cars after dark if they so desire. So if you want, you can call my cell phone. Try to come early-- show will start at 7PM but it would be great if you could be there at least 10-20 minutes beforehand.

Please e-mail me at loftus dot matthew at gmail dot com for our address and cell phone number.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions. We're (obviously) pretty excited about this-- just bring your own pillow to sit on! And feel free to invite other friends, too, whether they've heard of Andy or Caedmon's or not. Please come early!

a tale of two weddings

2010-02-25T20:52:00.000-08:00

Since most people have probably only heard this story secondhand, Maggie & I figured it would be worthwhile (and fun!) to recount the tale of our crazy wedding weekend. This is incredibly overdue and we apologize! If you want to get right to the pictures, you can go straight to my parents' site to see 'em all or to the site of our awesome photographer, Josh Harris, who has a bunch of the best shots. We start on Friday the 18th...

I took my psychiatry shelf exam on Friday morning and only made it through once before my mind was completely occupied with thoughts about the wedding-- whether or not we'd be totally snowed out, how awkward I would look with my first dance, and whether or not the 4.5-hour schedule from the first few notes of Pachelbel's Canon to driving away would work. So I turned in my test, rode my bike home, and cleaned my house in preparation for the arrival of its new occupant. I then drove up to Harford County, receiving text messages from friends asking if we had a "contingency plan" for a foot of snow. Of course we didn't! We had had bigger fish to fry; having only just figured out how to get pinecones to adhere to the bottom of vases without shriveling or bobbing up to the surface of the water. Besides, all week the snow forecast was predicted to be six inches. No big deal.

But as the forecast grew more and more treacherous-sounding (I say sounding because I wasn't particularly worried), it became clear that we'd have to be open to other options. Yet we pressed on, and on Friday evening as the first few flakes began to fall we still told everyone who asked that the wedding was still on for the same time and same place. Various parental units and the pastor officiating the wedding (who lives way out in the woods with a half-mile gravel driveway) were concerned, but we were so enthralled with the idea that we were getting married! that we figured it would be alright. Of course.

Saturday morning we woke up to a landscape whiter than the Lands End catalogue. Maggie had stayed the night with some friends in a house, richly decorated for the holidays, on a hill in Fallston. A friend who was coordinating sanctuary decorations and the walking down the aisle called up with what sounded like a case of laryngitis and reported that the roads were in terrible condition. After speaking on the phone, we decided the best thing would be to postpone the wedding until Sunday. Though this was going to be pretty tough logistically, it would be the best way to celebrate with friends because, quite frankly, not even the entire wedding party would be able to come on Saturday (one of the groomsmen had to get his neighborhood to help him push his car out to come to the wedding on Sunday!) My mom then suggested that, since a pastor had offered to perform the ceremony on Saturday, that we go ahead with the wedding, but not quite as planned-- rather, we would hold the ceremony at the Loftus house! My mom immediately started cooking a lot of delicious food. I was shuttled down to the basement to avoid seeing my bride, where I watched funny YouTube videos with the other groomsmen.

Maggie's Turn: When April, Kez, Hannah, Nicole and I arrived to the Loftus house, I was immediately sent upstairs, to avoid being seen by Matthew (I was even chided for hugging a small Loftus child for a bit too long). We spent about an hour getting ready in the master bedroom while the baby slept. Our good friend Kez took charge and started organizing the event, running between the pastor and parents and me (her perspective on the events is here). I borrowed a dress and an ivory rose necklace from my future mother-in-law, and my mom brought my veil. Shoes were contemplated, but I had always said I wanted to get married barefoot, and here was my chance. Besides, with the shape and size of the living room at the Loftus house, the fact that most of the girls wore shirtdresses, jeans, and tiaras, things were beginning to look hilarious. We all queued in the upstairs hallway and waited for Kez to motion us down the stairs. The groomsmen escorted the bridesmaids down the zigzagged, makeshift aisle, with one person leading because it was so narrow. Then it was my turn. As I headed down the stairs, my father looked at me and began laughing. "This is so classic you," he reported. I, now catching sight of the stolen pointsettias lining the stairs, Matthew, and the forty people crammed into the living room, started to laugh as well. It was funny and heartfelt, and kind of perfect. The girls had scored enough decorations to make a small table with a unity candle set on it, and the tree was decorated to coordinate. I had been holed away for the hour while the setting up was going on, and now, realizing the effort that had been made to making the most of what we had on short notice, started to laugh and cry, all the way down the aisle.

After the ceremony, everyone was treated to a buffet in the Loftus dining room. Lydia sat on Maggie's lap the entire time, demanding salad. And Potatoes. When Keller sat next to Maggie, Lydia looked at Maggie and asked, "Why does Keller get to sit next to you?" (Be warned, gentlemen-- some females are truly never pleased!) Eric Cabell led some dancing in the living room after dinner, and a good, snowed-in time was had by all. At the end of the evening, the newly married Loftuses escaped to a hotel room, which a friend had generously purchased.

Matthew again: Emma picked us up the next morning and awkwardly stared at her bagel while we talked, and then we were off to our separate locations. I was ferrying stuff from house to church to church and trying not to forget things (like my tie-- good thing Joel was still back at the house) and after a couple of trips back and forth between churches and houses (including a few times running through foot-high snow with a vegetable platter in my hand) we all got to church on time. One of the groomsmen, who owns a pretty sweet car that is also very close to the ground, had to get his neighbors to help him push it up the hill to get there!

Of course the ceremony was wonderful and every Loftus kid got to be involved one way or the other, even if it was just sitting there looking cute (Julia was still recovering from the chickenpox but still made it!) It was way too hot inside the sanctuary but we dismissed everyone, took our pictures, went out into the snow, took more pictures, and then went to the reception! I doubt our friends will ever forgive us for making them go out into the snow when only Maggie had adequate footwear, but that is another story for another day.

We were so happy that we got to have two weddings-- one a small, intimate family affair and the other a huge party with all the friends that could drive there! And boy was it a party. Despite the lack of alcohol, we still had a massive dance-off and plenty of people dancing for hours, an incredibly embarrassing best man speech, and an Arrested Development imitation that you had to be there to see.

The only other recent event in human history so well-documented was the Obama inauguration, and they had no breakdancing 6-year-olds. So you can look at all the pictures any time you want:

Wedding #1 (December 19)

Wedding #2 (Dec ember 20)

Reception

we were not born to be niggers

2010-02-20T07:58:00.000-08:00

If it was us, if it was our lonesome ass shuffling past the corner of Monroe and Fayette every day, we'd get out, wouldn't we? We'd endure. Succeed. Thrive. No matter what, no matter how, we'd find the fucking exit.

If it was our fathers firing dope and our mothers smoking coke, we'd pull ourselves past it. We'd raise ourselves, discipline ourselves, teach ourselves the essentials of self-denial and delayed gratification that no one in our universe ever demonstrated. And if home was the rear room of some rancid, three-story shooting gallery, we'd rise above that, too. We'd shuffle up the stairs past nodding fiends and sullen dealers, shut the bedroom door, turn off the television, and do our schoolwork. Algebra amid the stench of burning rock; American history between police raids. And if there was no food on the table, we're certain we could deal with that. We'd lie about our age to cut taters and spill grease and sling fries at the sub shop for five-and-change-an-hour, walking every day past the corner where friends are making our daily wage in ten minutes.

No matter. We'd persevere, wouldn't we? We'd work that job by night and go to class by day, by some miracle squeezing a quality education from the disaster that is the Baltimore school system. We'd do all the work, we'd pay whatever the price. And when all the other children are out in the street, learning the corner world, priming themselves for the only life they've ever known, we'd be holed up in some shithole of a rowhouse with our textbooks and yellow highlighter, cramming for finals. Come payday, we wouldn't blow that minimum-wage check on Nikes, or Fila sweat suits, or Friday night movies at Harbor Park with the neighborhood girls. No fucking way, brother, because we pulled self-esteem out of a dark hole somewhere and damned if our every day desire isn't absolutely in-check. We don't need to buy any status items; no, we can save every last dollar, or invest it, maybe. And in the end, we know, we'll head off to our college years shining like a new dime, swearing never to set foot on West Fayette Street again.

That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores--when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters--when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we can glimpse the spectacle of the corner and manage nothing beyond loathing and contempt, then we've arrived at last at that naked place where a man finally sees the sense in stretching razor wire and building barracks and directing cattle cars into the compound.

It's a reckoning of another kind, perhaps, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies a well-planned and well-tended life. We know ourselves, we believe in ourselves; from what we value most, we grant ourselves the illusion that it's not chance in circumstance, that opportunity itself isn't the defining issue. We want the high ground; we want our own worth to be acknowledged. Morality, intelligence, values--we want those things measured and counted. We want it to be about Us.

Yes, if we were down there, if we were the damned of the American cities, we would not fail. We would rise above the corner. And when we tell ourselves such things, we unthinkably assume that we would be consigned to places like Fayette Street fully equipped, with all the graces and disciplines, talents and training that we now posses. Our parents would still be our parents, our teachers still our teachers, our broker still our broker. Amid the stench of so much defeat and despair, we would kick fate in the teeth and claim our deserved victory. We would escape to live the life we were supposed to live, the life we are living now. We would be saved, and as it always is in matters of salvation, we know this as a matter of perfect, pristine faith.

Why? The truth is plain:

We were not born to be niggers.

-from The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, by David Simon and Ed Burns.

you can read a decent chunk of the book here, thanks to Google Books!

International Rotation/Medical Missions Trip

2009-11-21T21:00:00.000-08:00

Here's the scoop (also on our wedding website): We have officially been accepted to go with INMED (Institute for International Medicine) to go to Soddo Christian Hospital next July! We will arrive on 7/1/10 and leave on 7/31/10. We'll both we participating in medical education at the hospital with Ethiopian students and doctors-- this is part of my 4th year clinical medicine curriculum and an additional learning experience for Maggie in nursing practicum and public health. We will learn more in the days to come about more specifics, but we will also be blogging about our experiences!

For those of you curious, I will be academically attached to Dr. Ruth Droppers (http://www.soddo.org/ruthdroppers.asp), a Netherlands-trained internist who has some additional training in geriatrics but usually serves as a general practitioner in both inpatient and outpatient settings. I will be working direct supervision of her and the other physicians there (American, British, and Ethiopian.) My expected clinical responsibilities will be 45% inpatient hospital care, 45% outpatient visits, and 10% operating room. Portions of the inpatient time will most likely involve being on the obstetrical ward. There will be call responsibilities, as well as an online course in international medicine to complete before I start the rotation and several presentations on various medical topics to the house staff while there.

We would really appreciate your prayers for us for the wedding & marriage, but please keep following up to pray for our service in Ethiopia! We are very excited about this opportunity to learn and prepare for a lifetime providing medical care in underserved areas. We are also looking forward to being mentored by strong leaders in the faith from many different national backgrounds who have been serving in cross-cultural medical ministry for a long time. As part of our wedding registry, we are also raising funds for this trip, and you can contribute in three different ways:

1. Go to http://inmed.us/donate/student_scholarships.asp and make an online designation (tax-deductible.) You can also go to this website to print out a downloadable form to make a donation by check.

2. Talk to Matthew or Maggie to get a mailable form to designate your gift so that it can be tax-deductible.

3. Send a check directly to us at 1819 Presstman Street, Baltimore, MD 21217 and just write "missions trip" in the memo line so we'll know.

Thanks so much and God bless! Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

what used to be my favorite songs

2009-11-12T07:34:00.000-08:00

While unpacking a box from my parents' house (hooray for having enough room in the new house for all my stuff!), I found a mix CD from when I was 14 or 15 containing "my favorite songs." They are, in order that they were found on the CD:

With Arms Wide Open- Creed
Deeper- Delirious?
My Friend (So Long)- dc Talk
I Could Sing of Your Love Forever- Delirious?
Sick Cycle Carousel- Lifehouse
My Own Prison- Creed
River Constantine- Jars of Clay
Grace- Jars of Clay
Alive- P.O.D.
Joy- Tree63
Unfazed- The Waiting
No One Loves Me Like You- Jars of Clay
A Million Lights- Tree 63

my very first show!

2009-10-14T18:07:00.000-07:00

I am opening for (and helping to play a few songs for) the band moron at Maple View Baptist Church on Friday, October 23rd. It's a benefit concert for Harford County Right to Life, which is a pretty cool organization helping women & children in Harford County. I have shared my thoughts before about the weaknesses of the pro-life movement, but I am still very glad to support this cause with the extra three or so people that will come to hear me play.

More information here.

Also, if you have requests or a good idea for a setlist, I'll consider them. For now, possibilities include (but are not limited to):

emerald eyes

the botanist

July 14th, 2006 (kofi's song)

[cross-posted on facebook]

top 6 words that i have learned in the last year, mostly in medical school

2009-09-28T20:38:00.000-07:00

1. Marsupialize-- To create a pouch and then have something slip inside that pouch (apparently intestine can do this to themselves.)

2. Invaginate-- To fold in such a way that an outer surface becomes an inner one.

3. Pedunculated-- Having, growing on, or being attached by a peduncle.

4. Pendulous-- Suspended as to swing freely.

5. Tumescent-- To be swollen or engorged.

6. Evancalous-- Pleasant to embrace.

honorable mentions that are not words but made up of them nonetheless:

I. The Mongolian Epileptic Gerbil, which is incidentally an awesome band name.

II. The Throckmorton Sign, which a real live radiologist told me about.

pacifism by default?

2009-09-03T14:13:00.000-07:00

I have been wondering a fair amount lately about the sanctity of human life and war. I am totally okay with killing the guilty-- God tells us that it's okay in Genesis 9 and then clarifies that the government has that power nowadays in Romans 13, and I don't feel like that needs to be any more complicated (though I am sure that some of my readers will disagree with me there.) However, the difficulty comes in considering the question of war because in nearly every war ever fought, innocent civilians die. Perhaps they are supporting the military, or perhaps not. If one nation is justified in going to war against another, perhaps the civilians on the immoral side are participating in something immoral and perhaps they are not. I don't think that's particularly relevant. The traditional position of most Christians seems to be that war and the death of civilians therein is justified because of some combination of "the-ends-justify-the-means" and the fact that civilians often die "unintentionally" in the pursuit of the higher cause. This latter fact is, I must admit, practiced admirably by most Western nations nowadays and is flagrantly violated by most of their enemies.

However, I would argue that this still doesn't really cut the mustard. I think it is clear in the Bible that God is meant to decide who lives and who dies, and He specifically extends that authority to humans on a very limited basis, and even then only specific people may die as the result of God-given human force. In every case, these are people determined by God to be guilty before Him. In the OT, this involved the nations around Israel who had been found wanting in their worship of idols; war against them by Israel was then a particular aspect of God's judgment against them and righteous solely because of God's command. In the NT, we see that the power of the state has been diminished only to "punish the guilty" when it comes to the use of the sword. Thus, there is absolutely no positive command in either the NT or the OT that allows for the killing of innocent people, in war or elsewhere.

What about the negative commands? Well, I don't think you have to look far for that. In the Ten Commandments, God tells us that murder is a sin against Him, and while there is certainly ample Biblical evidence that not all killing is murder, there is simply none that the death of an innocent falls into this category. We must also reckon with Jesus' words to us to love our enemies and not to return evil for evil. While I think that this does not entirely apply to nation-states, I think that this very clear command cannot be ignored except to our moral peril. We cannot evade the words of God with worldly wisdom that seeks to justify the actions taken for our safety or even for the ostensible safety of others.

It may seem tempting to say that it is "loving" to kill others that we might save more, but isn't this the same logic that applies to stem-cell research? God has never given the state the power to kill anyone but those who have already proved themselves guilty, and we should not presume to say otherwise.

This is has been batting around in my head for a while, and I wanted this post to be shorter in order to more adequately spark discussion, but I wanted to explain the reasoning that I run up against. Thoughts? Specific Biblical passages would be very helpful.

a kick in the pants

2009-08-11T17:01:00.000-07:00

“Our young men are going into the professional fields because they don’t ‘feel called’ to the mission field. We don’t need a call; we need a kick in the pants.

We must begin thinking in terms of ‘going out,’ and stop our weeping because ‘they won’t come in.’ Who wants to step into an igloo? The tombs themselves are not colder than the churches. May God send us forth.”

-Jim Elliot, in Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot (New York: Harper, 1958), 54.

how do you love God in abundance?

2009-07-15T18:06:00.001-07:00

much is written about how to live & worship God through earthly suffering, as it is obviously a difficult road to walk. And many lies have been told about how to obey God in order to achieve earthly comfort, security, and abundance (none of which the Bible values very highly.) But when your life is filled up with blessings, how should we then live?

[cross-posted on facebook]

calm before the storm

2009-07-05T14:49:00.000-07:00

it's been a ridiculous amount of time since my last blog. not the longest hiatus nor the most prominent, but it's been a while. and I can't make any promises that it's going to start up again with any reliability, but I'd figured I'd shoot something out there what with my old friend Dr. Tim rejoining the blogosphere and whatnot.

Tomorrow I start my third year of medical school at Mercy Medical Center. I'm on my Internal Medicine rotation, which is going to be intense but very rewarding. I have call every 4th or 5th day (!), which means working from 6:30am-11pm twice a week or so... but I came to medical school to work with patients and this is all I have been waiting for (school-wise, anyway) for the last two years, so I am still quite excited.

what have I been up to lately, you ask? Well, in the last several months I:

-got engaged! Went up to Maine last weekend and on June 27th, 2009 I asked the lovely Maggie Burns to be my wife. She said yes before I could even get the ring out of my pocket. :) We're thinking December for a wedding date, but haven't set anything in stone yet.

-took Step 1 of the USMLE (aka "the boards.") After a brutal month of studying all day every day, I answered 336 questions in 7 hours. I don't know how I did, but I probably passed and that is all that matters, quite frankly.

-have been listening to A LOT of Andrew Osenga. Holy cow man, this is good stuff and he gives away two awesome EPs away for free on his site! check it out.

-went to Maine twice. New England is gorgeous-- I wish I could conveniently discover an unreached people there.

-have been following the controversy and craziness about Derek Webb's latest album, downloading each stem of his latest controversial new song. I have weighed in here. More appropriate to the topic at hand is the fact that everyone thought that Derek couldn't do electronic music well, and what we've heard so far kicks ass. You can listen to everything released so far here.

-have not recorded or written too too much music except for the song that I proposed to Miss Burns with. But I'm working on it...

another post coming soon with other great sermons that I have greatly enjoyed lately!

more sermons!

2009-05-30T12:20:00.000-07:00

hey everyone,

i put up some more sermons from Tim Keller that I think you might all enjoy or benefit from!

Commitment and Priority-- this one is a sermon about marriage, but don't let that fool you! The first 20 minutes are the best explanation about how one ought to be transformed by the Gospel and how that affects relationships. You don't have to listen to the rest if you don't want to, but if you've got 20 minutes free you should definitely check this one out.

Not By Bread Alone-- this one talks about life in desert times and how God shapes us through them. Another one of my favorites.

white as for harvest

2009-05-22T07:49:00.000-07:00

got this from a missionary newsletter that I receive. Thought it looked worthwhile to share. cross-posted on my blog.

Current Trends in Medical Missions
by Harold Adolph, M.D.

When I arrived in Ethiopia in 1966, I found that the OR table was an old metal examination table with only three legs. The fourth leg was made up of various segments of scrap lumber. To gain the height I needed, I placed this contraption on four unusually designed wooden stools.

The OR light was a remnant from someone’s garage and hung on a rusting coat hanger from a sagging ceiling with beams that had almost been completely eaten away by the African termites of the neighborhood. In order to have the light in the area of the surgery, the four stools and table with the patient had to be moved.

Once when I reached for a sterile pack at 2 a.m. for an emergency surgery my hand came down on a large hairy "pack-rat." He showed signs of wondering why he was being punished.

The single World War II sterilizer blew up during my third month and my mentor doctor who had been there twenty years, with whom I hoped to work with for five years, left after just six weeks. I still wonder what I might have said to scare him off. The first drug order I placed would not be filled because the hospital was said to be $9,500 U.S. dollars in debt.

The first five patients on the male ward had all been bitten by various wild animals--a lion, hyena, leopard, snake and wild dog. Ninety-one of my first 105 patients on the ward had conditions that I felt sure had never been described before. When skin tests were given, the control, myself, was the only positive one. Pathology reports were never helpful.

The electric generator had Noah's fingerprints on it and seemed to have been constructed before the discovery of electricity. Its crank had a three foot radius. The challenge was to let go of the crank handle before you - became the blade of a propeller.

The primary form of revenge was to burn the neighbors’ thatched house down while they were sleeping at night, so we always had about twenty severe burn patients in the hospital. During my first days I ran into a bull while I was making rounds and had a chance to practice the gladiator maneuvers. The bull obviously thought that the new ward was still part of his grazing area.

Gourds hung from some of the nails on the walls. These were filled with goat blood, the vitamin mixture recommended for speedy recovery by the witch doctors. Kerosene lamps hung from the ceiling so the nurses could see where they were going for patient care at night. A donkey with four kerosene tins on his back secured water for the hospital from five springs located in a nearby valley.

The autopsy room was a separate building located fifteen feet behind the operating room. Whenever a patient died, this area was full of vigorously wailing relatives which made it hard to concentrate on the work at hand, the saving of the life of another patient in a delicate balance between life and death. The X-ray machine was a 15mA unit rescued from the jungles of the Philippine Islands after World War II.

When I went to the clinic, ten patients had a soiled rag in their hands. They wanted me to count the number of human teeth and compare them to the holes in their own lineup of remaining teeth. Then they wanted a "police letter" so that they could get financial remuneration for their losses. The teeth in the cloth usually outnumbered the vacancies in the mouth.

Thirty-two years later there are more than 700 churches among a tribe of about 5 million people. The New Testament, and most of the Old Testament, have been translated into the tribal tongue. Solar-powered tape recorders play the Bible for those who will listen. The churches have sent out 120 missionaries from their group to other tribal groups in Ethiopia that did not have a clear presentation of the Gospel before. The president of the leading seminary in the country was one of our patients. The current CMO and Chief of Surgery of the hospital was a student among 490 others who were trained in evangelism and as nurse practitioners to work in their own communities. During the time of the revolution many had patients who came to them, even when there were no medicines, just to have them pray and lay their hands on them.

What are the Current Trends in Medical Missions today?

First of all we see the sad disappearance of the career medical missionary.

* Thirty mission organizations have thirty-three hospitals and clinics without a single doctor or nurse.
* 178 mission hospitals in Africa are all crying for more doctors.
* 50 percent of the present missionary force will reach retirement in the next ten years; there are very few replacements.
* The gap between training and technology in the home countries and overseas is widening.
* By the time educational debts are paid off, the missionary fire has gone out.

Only 20 percent of doctors who have felt the call of God to go as missionary doctors still have that interest when their training is completed and their debts have been paid off. This last requirement usually takes five to ten years. By then the family and practice are well situated. The imagined work and call schedule in the mission hospital produces only panic.

The second trend is the shortening of the medical missionary career from the former thirty to forty years to less than four years.

There seems to be a loss of a certain level of commitment. No desire for sacrifice is apparent. The vision of what can still be accomplished by the mission hospital in world evangelism, especially in the 10--40 window of opportunity, is gone. In some ways the short-term service and short-term teams have killed long-term service. The question may be asked: If I can fulfill God's requirements for my life for world evangelism by a two-week commitment per year, why should I consider a lifetime commitment?

One survey found that of a hundred feeling the definite call of God to missions, only twelve completed training for this calling; only two actually went, and only one stayed.

Third is the actual closure of mission hospitals because of the expense, the lack of key medical staff, difficulties in running a mission hospital and sometimes the lack of vision from mission leadership. At a time when there were 12,000 Americans earning good oil money in a certain near-east country, six medical personnel could not be found for a mission hospital that had been there for forty years. The mission hospital was closed despite the pleading of the government to keep it open.

Fourth, even though the need for the mission hospital is actually greater now than ever before to meet medical, surgical and spiritual needs, it is sometimes proposed that this is not so. Because of medical missions, Nepal has over a half million Christians today. Eighty percent of the Christians in India relate their conversion to a Mission Hospital experience. If you inscribe a circle with a fifty mile radius around each of the 272 mission hospitals in China, you find that these are the areas for revival today. As much as 90 percent of the medical needs of some countries are met by mission hospitals. When you think of the government hospital in a poor country giving their patients a list of items such as gloves, syringes, needles, medicines and intravenous supplies to pick up from a local pharmacy, you know that the need for mission hospitals is not past.

The fifth trend is the acceptance of certain myths of theology such as "the lost are not really lost and therefore don't really need to be saved." This myth ignores the Luke 16 story told by Jesus, Himself, where the tormented of hell are even pleading for someone to tell their friends about the good news so that they can avoid the same eternal fate.

The mission hospital has been painted as a "sunset ministry" even when we know that only one surgeon works in the country of Mali, a country of seventeen million people while the Chicago area has more than a thousand surgeons.

Loving and compassionate in-hospital care coupled with the spread of the Gospel is still the domain of the mission hospital where the "Jesus video" can be shown to a thousand people every day. We should not be deterred by the idea of hard work, a less than ideal location or a poor on-call schedule.

Personal peace and affluence have become dominant values or our culture. The Public Broadcasting Society had a full program on the terrible epidemic in the USA called "affluenza" where we work so hard to keep up with "the Jones" that we have almost no time for our family and friends, both husband and wife must work, frugality is a thing of the past, recycling is insufficient and repairing items broken is a lost art. The audience was admonished to get their lives back into line with their life purpose and take up voluntary simplicity.

A.W. Tozer said, "We see the world not as a battleground, but as a playground. We are not here to fight; we are here to frolic. We are not in a foreign land; we are at home. We are not getting ready to live; we are already living. We don't realize that we are in a life and death struggle!"

How can we free ourselves from our present slavery to managed care with its bottom line and productivity, to giant debts, to another vision, and another king but not King Jesus, to physical fitness over spiritual fitness, to ourselves and our own needs instead of the 3.4 billion without health care? In Africa only one in twenty women needing a C-section for obstructed labor can get their operation. Only 15 percent of patients with hernias in Africa can get the operation they need during their lifetime, even if their hernia is strangulated.

The greatest deterrents to medical missions today are:

1. The desire for equity for retirement and "affluenza;"
2. The absence of prayer, and holiness;
3. The resulting loss of vision.

Is it so bad that your children will become missionaries? In God's mercy He blessed us with having both our children return to career missionary service in Africa.

Is it so bad that you can have almost all three meals with your family every day even if you are the only mission doctor for a 105 bed hospital?

Is it so bad that you can have your wife and children actively participate in the ministry as a family? Our daughter started making Sunday rounds on the non-infectious case when she was seven. She worked as a circulating nurse at the age of ten. She first assisted at the age of thirteen. Our son was fixing the evangelist's gospel recorders at the age of ten. By the time he was fourteen he was overseeing hospital maintenance and engaging in public health out-clinics with a jet injector inoculating hundreds of babies, with his sister’s help.

Is it so bad that your children must attend home school where the Bible, memorization, dedication to Christ, prayer and The Ten Commandments can be joyfully followed?

Is it so bad that your family must enjoy wonderful exotic vacations together in Africa, Europe or the U.S. National Parks because you have nine months off night call every three years?

There is no "call":

1. To be interested;
2. To good intentions;
3. To be almost persuaded;
4. To partial priority, and lukewarmness.

When you obey Him, He will do great things beyond what you could imagine. Perhaps God planned for you to reach a tribe and language group with the Gospel through the gifts He gave you. But instead you used them for yourself. Now over 100,000 people will be forever lost in the fires of hell.

Love always means sacrifice. Sacrifice always means death. Ninety percent of the Christians in Cambodia lost their lives in the most recent upheavals there. It is estimated that today seventeen believers will die as martyrs for the sake of Christ somewhere in the world. Death means death to selfishness. Death means conformity to Christ's image. My father’s favorite verse was, "Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die it abides alone."

For you and me today missions demands a work of faith by God in each of our hearts so that:

1. We will hear the voice of God to us amid the clamor of other voices;
2. We will obey the voice of God however contrary to human reason;
3. We will go on with God's work in the face of every opposition and discouragement;
4. We will realize that God's work done in God's way secures God's reward.

There are still five good reasons to go into career missionary service:

1. The story of Noah and the coming judgment;
2. The story of Ezekiel and the responsibility of the servant;
3. The story of Jonah and the overwhelming advantage of obedience;
4. The story of Nehemiah and God's empowering and enabling;
5. The story of Paul and the prize, because the prize is worth the price.

In the book, Of God and Men, A.W. Tozer says," We languish for men who feel themselves expendable in the warfare of the soul, who cannot be frightened by the threats of death because they have already died to the allurements of the world. Such men will be free from the compulsions that control weaker men. They will not be forced to do things by the squeeze of circumstances; their only compulsion will come from within - or from above."

When God called me back to Africa more than ten years ago for ten more years of overseas service, I had ten good reasons for staying in my comfortable surgical practice in the U.S.A.

1. "Think of how much I could give if I stayed," I said. But God said, "I own the cattle on a thousand hills. You cannot have two masters."
2. I said, "It is cruel to make my wife move." But God said, "All these things shall be added unto you."
3. I said, "Our home is so nice." But God said, "There are many homes up there. I am your inheritance."
4. I said, "Think of all the internationals in the U.S.A." But God said, "I am sending you."
5. I asked, "How can I live in a communist country?” But God said, "I will go with you." He helped me study the theology of suffering.
6. Then I said, "No one will go with me because of AIDS, starvation, political unrest, persecution and suffering." But God said, "There are windows in heaven."
7. I said, "How can I find a suitable doctor to take over my practice." Guess what? God showed me the perfect person for the job within two weeks.
8. But I said "What is wrong with where I am?" To which He replied, "This is your new assignment."
9. But I said, "I don't want to beg instead of give." God said, "I am your great reward. Is my hand short that it cannot save?"
10. I said, "I'm 55 going on 65. You need someone young and strong without physical limitations." But God said, "I will do a new thing. Be strong and of a good courage. Fear not, nor be afraid of them. For the Lord thy God, He it is that doth go with thee. He will not fail thee nor forsake thee."

The Adolphs are now retired after long careers in overseas ministries, the last eight of which were spent in Galmi, Nigeria. They often travel the United States and other countries speaking and recruiting for the mission field. If you would like to reach the Adolphs you may email cmm@cmda.org for assistance.

social networks

2009-05-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

I realized last night that I have med school friends, undergraduate friends, friends from my old church, friends from my new church, neighborhood friends, family friends, and then even a few random friends from the internet.

I'm not sure that this is the way that human relationships were meant to form and flourish.

discuss?

[cross-posted on facebook]

i am finished with the preclinical years of medical school!

2009-05-12T10:59:00.000-07:00

I should probably be studying for USLME Step 1 (the big honkin' test I take on June 17th), but I was just thinking-- yeah, wow. I've made it through. God has been really good to me the last few years, and I'm thankful for everyone out there who supported, encouraged, and prayed for me through it all. I've still got two years left-- all in the hospital or clinic, thankfully!-- and I am now just that much closer to my dream of doing frontier medical missions.

Still working on more songs and posts about excellence in mediocrity, discipline, etc.-- the next month I'll be studying all day every day for the boards, but I should have a little time now and then for fun pursuits. We'll see. And if anyone wants to have some kind of jam session soon, I would very much be in favor of such a thing...

top 6 songs that i want to write but just can't find the time or inspiration for

2009-05-08T12:21:00.000-07:00

I actually have titles for them all, too.

"tasted twice"-- I have a great and meaningful story about the only time in my life that I threw up on an airplane. but it would take a lot of work to get the song right, and probably i'd need a lot more instruments.

"the end of an era"-- when I graduated from UMBC, I wanted to write a song about how I felt. I only had one phrase, though, and it didn't really work all that well anyway.

"the kid in the cafeteria"-- I wrote a really terrible poem once about a person very close to me whose life was changed dramatically by the selfless love of others, most especially Jesus.

"please come true"-- I actually wrote a bridge for this song and have a neat riff, but for some reason verses just never come.

"the moon is round"-- it's a sentiment about faith from Jim & Elisabeth Elliot, and one that has been helpful to me throughout the years. nothing has ever come to me. someone else wrote a song on the subject and I think they did a better job than I could ever do, but I still feel like I would have my own part to say.

"if we are the body"-- I started this one in Ghana and wanted it to be a song about social justice and the church. Like most songs on the subject, it sucked hard and so nothing ever came of it.

song post #3-- "the botanist"

2009-05-01T10:45:00.000-07:00

I have been recording a bit more (off and on) since getting my new microphone for my birthday, and it's been a lot of fun. I'm still just as mediocre as ever at writing, singing, playing, and recording, but it's fun, y'know?

In any case, I have been surprised by the reception that this song has gotten when I've played it so here it is for all the internet to enjoy.

on being awkward and more thoughts about excellence in mediocrity

2009-04-25T07:14:00.000-07:00

I have been realizing more and more over the past few years just how awkward I am. In every possible sense of the word. Physically, not only I am pretty tall but my arms & legs are not really proportional to my torso. So I slouch and sit in weird positions in class, or just fall asleep. I'm pretty ADD and don't exercise enough, so I'm always fidgeting or scratching or whatever. I watched a video of myself interacting with friends and I was struck by just how much I looked like my autistic brother as I played with the buttons on my shirt. I have more bad habits of that sort than I can count.

I am socially and emotionally awkward, too, though this is not nearly as bad as it used to be. I talk too loudly, I don't pay attention to who is talking to me, I tell off-color jokes in inappropriate situations, and miss social cues. I'm almost better at interacting cross-culturally because there's a certain amount of awkwardness expected in such situations. I'm definitely better at formalized social situations like patient interactions at school because I know the rules for those and I have to think about how I'm acting. I can be really good at reading other people and sensing their emotional state, but only if I'm paying attention. Otherwise, ADD takes over and I just crack jokes.

I shudder to think what my class superlative will be this year. But my friends still seem to genuinely enjoy being around me, or at least they're polite enough to keep inviting me to hang out. So I'm okay with being awkward, especially when a certain someone has nicknamed me "twitch."

I'm a really terrible person. If you don't believe me, go find my xanga. I want people to look at me and think I'm good, and sadly that's often why I do the good things I want to do. But people are fickle and I'll always doubt their affirmation one way or another. I will spend the rest of my life with an urge to make myself matter in the world to overcome the fact that I know that inside I am broken and the only way that I know to do atone for that in my own soul is to help people. But I doubt I'll ever be able to make the balance swing in favor of doing more good than bad, and even if I do I don't think that would really satisfy me. Other people can't affirm me, and I think I would have to lie to myself a lot to affirm myself.

I want to do good in the world in a big way, like the sorts of ways that I kinda disparaged in my last blog post. If I could work hard so that ten of thousands of people who didn't have health care would get it like Paul Farmer has done (and then on top of that, inspire thousands of others to do the same work), I would be very pleased with myself. That would be greatness for me, or at least the way that I think about it. As it is, though, my blog has about 20 subscribers on RSS and I like playing computer games or recording mediocre music on my computer. I get mostly B's in school. These are not promising signs that I am destined for Farmer-esque greatness in the long term. If I want to be Paul Farmer, I should probably be starting a health awareness organization in my neighborhood or handing out clean needles or doing research at school. But I'm not doing those things now. Even when I'm older and I replace lame things like playing computer games with good things like playing outside with my kids and good things like recording music with better things like making more with my wife, I'll still be who I am and I suspect that I will be as happy with myself then as I am now.

If I spent my life trying to be Paul Farmer so that I could "make a difference in the world," I don't think I would be happy and neither would the people around me.

One time Freeman Hrabowski wrote me a recommendation letter (it was for the scholarship I won that got me in various papers and such, which is probably the closest I'll ever come to being famous and cool like Paul Farmer. It is probably very good for my soul that my fame peaked at age 20.) We had a meeting, and it was cool because Dr. Hrabowski is a genuinely nice guy, and clearly he works a lot harder than I ever will. He inspires a lot of people to do good and great things, and probably a lot of people to do things that they just ought to do. For example, he encouraged me to iron my shirt collar the next time I had a meeting with someone, which was a very important reminder that I appreciated. He also told me that I shouldn't be a doctor in clinical practice like I said that I was planning to, but that I should go into research and find a cure for AIDS or something like that. I politely told him that that was a good idea and that I would look into it. I was pretty much lying to him, because I hate research and I'm fairly certain that research hates me (or at least doesn't agree with me.) I don't think like a researcher, work like a researcher, or even enjoy it when my work in research produces something (which has only happened once in all the years I've been doing research.)

I told you that story so I could tell you this one: My little brother is autistic. Anyone who has met him knows that he can be very, very funny and very, very awkward and sometimes downright difficult to deal with. Somedays I wonder if I'm on the same spectrum as he is and just got lucky when I was 4 when I sounded out my first word correctly. Probably not, but still. His prospects for the future probably do not include multiple graduate degrees like mine.

The other day my brother said to me, "Matthew, when I grow up I want to be a janitor." And I said, "Phillip, if you would be happy being a janitor, I think that would be very good for you and for the rest of the world." The world needs janitors like Phillip who want to be janitors and would be happy doing that. I don't know if any janitors read this blog, but I hope none of them are offended or anything.

Each of us has our limitations and strengths, and we are always tempted by the seductive promise that if we just worked a little harder, donated more money, volunteered more, wrote more letters to our congressman, or joined this "cause" on Facebook (really?), we would suddenly change the world. Frankly, I think that is mostly pride motivating us to do things that our culture values as good to make ourselves feel better about what terrible people we are.

I think the way to be free is in Jesus, unsurprisingly. Jesus really was good through-and-through, and He did way more good than I ever could have done but he still had time to party and I think He might have played computer games with His friends if they had StarCraft back in His day (not as often as I do, but hey.) We do know that He drank and partied and had fun, but He did so in a way that was perfect. And then at the end of it all He died so that I could have all the good things that belonged to Him, and He suffered for all the evil things that I've done. And now, I don't have to be great because I am great in Him. And that leaves me free from the burden of having to affirm myself, so all the good that I do is good.

I will probably never be as cool or productive or save as many lives as Paul Farmer. What I would much rather do is find one place that needs a doctor and has never heard of Jesus before. And then I'll live there for a few decades and teach them about both until my job is irrelevant and they can live with better health and a relationship with God without me. And if I've got time, maybe I'll do it in another place for a while. To some, this might seem mediocre. And perhaps it is. But I think a lot of people today need to be happy with being excellent at being mediocre, and a lot more need to set their sights on at least being meaningful in mediocrity. And if we did that, I think we'd all be a lot happier and a lot more good would get done.

[cross-posted on facebook.]

Darfur, Abortion, Activism, and How the Way We Do Good... Doesn't

2009-04-22T10:32:00.000-07:00

It is pretty hip nowadays to support whatever social justice cause is out there having its awareness level raised, especially if Bono is saying something about it. Everyone thinks it's a good thing to do good and save the world. The ONE campaign, Darfur, land mines, malaria, war... whatever. The problem is that few people (myself included) have anything approaching a good idea about how to do anything to address any of these problems, and even fewer people have actually inconvenienced themselves on behalf of any of these causes. The people who would really suffer or be inconvenienced or have to drastically change their lives to actually make a difference in any of these causes are pretty distant from us. I think that the most I've ever physically done for the people of Darfur was going to DC to chant with a bunch of other socially conscious young people and listen to celebrities pat us on the back. I have also prayed a lot about the situation, and I think you can guess which one was more effective.

The thing about justice is that while many issues are black and white, not all are simple. Most of the time, you are weighing the rights of one group against the rights of another, and usually you have to make the law automatically protect the group that is historically or currently less powerful so that they are not abused. This is often not very convenient, which is why people in America are very willing to protest injustice in other countries (or protest injustices our own country perpetuates as long as the results don't inconvenience us.) If we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only way to save Darfur was to send American troops-- and have some of them die-- I doubt saving Darfur would be nearly as popular.

The causes that require greater personal and corporate sacrifice are not nearly as popular. Abortion is just as much an issue of human rights and social justice, if not more, than the other causes out there-- where else are innocent human beings being torn limb from limb or poisoned by the thousands every day? The only difference is that the people who would be most inconvenienced by the change necessary to produce a more just situation are closer to us, and so we are not as willing to support the cause. Perhaps the reason why white evangelical Christians are very willing to speak out against abortion and make it a much stronger political cause is because white Christians, by virtue of the fact that they don't face unintended pregnancy as often, simply don't have to deal with the situation as often and thus the personal and political cost is not as high. Other people do, though, and so are less willing to stand up for a cause that they know will be costly to them or their friends.

But this simply isn't right. One should stand for what is right no matter what the personal cost is, because when we allow our own comfort level or the comfort level of our community to dictate our stance on moral issues we often perpetuate injustice. Some stances are costly, because the world is crooked and living by moral standards hurts. There are many children who would be born into destructive families, but that does not make it right to kill them before they enter the world. There are many terrorists who would relish in the opportunity to do more harm if we do not torture them, but that does not make it right to torture. On and on it goes. Things that are wrong must be opposed no matter the cost, and when we look to the cost that Jesus paid for us I think that we can find the strength to take a hit for whatever it is we believe in.

However, these big-picture things are not really the most important thing, no matter how much they occupy our attention and time. Rather, I think that the best way to live is to daily inconvenience yourself on behalf of others for their benefit. To love them. Every day, you and I are confronted with decisions about how we will spend our time, money, and energy. These individual decisions to share, love, or listen add up to change the world day by day. We glorify the power in the UN Security Council, the trillion-dollar budgets, and the grand structures of human authority. But in the simple rhythms of life, I believe, there is more power to change the lives of others and to bless the world.

So while there is a place for activism, for beseeching the powers that be, and for rallying for a cause that doesn't affect you much-- but we must live day by day in a sacrificial activism, shining a light wherever there might be darkness and loving wherever it is needed.

[cross-posted on facebook.]

top 10 things i want to do before i die

2009-04-10T13:13:00.000-07:00

1. Learn how to tie a full Windsor.

2. Get married & have kids.

3. Play in a real concert of some sort that is not a coffeehouse and not a student recital.

4. Travel overland from Cairo to Cape Town (or vice versa.)

5. Get published in a book.

6. Learn to dance.

7. Explore the Amazon.

8. Learn at least one other language fluently.

9. Tell a group of people who have never heard of Jesus before about Him.

10. Learn to play steel guitar.

top 13 things that i know how to cook that involve more than one ingredient

2009-04-07T03:11:00.000-07:00

[this doubles as an exhaustive list of all the food that i can prepare if you add orange juice from concentrate, fish sticks, hot dogs, rice, and salad.]

1. Chicken Curry (I actually have 2 recipes for this, so it probably ought to count as two.)

2. Ginger Glazed Mahi Mahi

3. Spaghetti Sauce

4. Chili

5. Tacos

6. Baked Potato Soup

7. Cream of Broccoli Soup

8. Baked Chicken

9. Italian Sausage and Peppers

10. Split Pea Soup

11. Pad Thai

12. Mashed Potatoes

13. Roast Potatoes

things i still need to do over spring break

2009-03-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

-change the oil in my car

-clean & vacuum the car (it's that time of year!)

-practice my physical exam skills on my little siblings

-hang out with Maggie some more

-get in touch with Ben & Amy

-study a little for USMLE Step 1

-do my taxes

-shadow an OB/GYN at the hospital

-write some letters

-record some songs

-read Eat This Book, Why Haven't You Left?, and The Irresistible Revolution.

-plan the diabetes seminar at church

-go to the doctor for this sleep problem

-get my white coat dry cleaned

-hang out with friends that I don't get to see enough. this probably includes you, so give me a call or leave a comment.

peter bothered me, so here's a post

2009-03-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

not a great one, just a rehashing of something I've been discussing lately with a friend of mine.

It has been noted lately I am to listen and perhaps give even more credence to people that I disagree with than I am to listen to the voices from my own background. Part of this is that I've heard enough from my own background to know what I believe and what evangelical Christians think, and frankly some of the loudest evangelical Christians are some of the most ignorant and unhelpful (see "Letter from 2012" and anything on talk radio.) I blame this tendency a lot on the fact that I've been listening to a lot of Tim Keller in the last few years, and he is always very generous to non-Christian worldviews and philosophies whenever he can be, because he can use the truth he sees in them to eventually undercut their worldview 5 minutes later. Also, I have learned that someone is more likely to listen to you if they feel like you've listened to them. This is, I think, a basic principle of communication, but it's one that we forget a lot of the time.

It seems to me that everyone who believes anything passionately treats their opponents like they are reprobate, twisted, evil, or out to ruin other peoples' fun. If you think you're right, somehow that gives you the right to be obnoxious. But Christians are the only group who don't have a right to be obnoxious (especially if we're Reformed!), and if we live that winsomeness out consistently I think it would have the power to make a difference. We as evangelicals should also be our own harshest critics-- this is why I'm often harder on Christians than on unbelievers on my blog and in my speech-- because Jesus & Paul & the Prophets are all harder on God's people than they are on non-believers. Why? They (and I) are jealous for the reputation of Christ and the purity of His Bride. Also, our words will have the most effect on people with similar beliefs, and it doesn't do us much good to spend all day talking about how our opponents need to change because that doesn't really get us anywhere. It could be entirely true that all the problems in America are caused by stupid liberals. But if we can acknowledge the problems within ourselves and our own tribe, we can (a) deal with the problems that are actually our fault and (b) be listened to more effectively by people who think that we are the problem. I certainly don't want us to be groveling about how terrible we are all the time-- but even the pagans spend all their time talking about how everyone who believes differently is the cause of all our problems.

If we can't vigorously condemn inappropriate rhetoric in our own camp (in a loving way, of course), the world isn't going to take us seriously. If we don't acknowledge how we've made politics an idol and desired to have power over others inappropriately, no one is going to listen to us because we aren't addressing the concerns that drive people to ignore us. We can talk 'til we're blue in the face about human dignity and civil rights for the unborn, but we'll be talking past our opponents-- heck, we'll be talking beyond them, really-- until we meet them where they are stuck: concern for the health of women and fear about the misuse of politics to exert power over sexuality. You could call that kowtowing to the other point of view (and some of you probably will), but I want to say something and have it be heard. Otherwise, I might as well not say anything at all.

Reputation is the next point I wanted to make. Reputation is what other people think of you; it is not what you think that you do well. Our political rhetoric still overshadows the good that is done in CPCs and the like; I don't think that we can drown out the political rhetoric and I certainly would never say that we need to do whatever it takes to be liked (we have had this argument before and don't need to have it again.) Evangelical Christians don't need a PR campaign, but they need to repent and be faithful. And if we are willing to do that publicly, I think that will be better than talking up all the good works we already do (do you believe non-Christians when they talk about the good that they do and the evil that Christians do? exactly.) Most of you have already heard my rant about the crisis of faithfulness and discipleship in the American church and the scandal of the evangelical conscience, so I don't need to reiterate that.

Someone recently pointed out to me that most people need to hear 8 positive things about them for every 1 negative thing. Let's face it: Satan hates the church and there are plenty of his shock troops out there denouncing us. But we won't do any good by yelling back (as some conservatives do) or by pouting about how dreadfully unfair it is that the sorry excuse for a mainstream media simply won't ever tell the story from our perspective with their terrible bias. Oh, woe is us! (Or so it goes for other conservatives. And it certainly won't do us any good to play along with the culture like many liberals have done. Instead, I think we can do a lot to make Christ glorious and beautiful in the eyes of those around us by being faithful to Him. If we can do 8 good things that bring glory to Jesus for every 1 thing that brings His name shame (and that'll be tough, there are a lot of wingnuts out there), I think we'll do well.

To summarize: basically, I think that being winsome will go a long way in engaging with people that disagree with us, and it doesn't matter how right we are... until we can find a way to communicate with the culture and uphold the truth about abortion in a way that meets people where they are, we're just going to be a bunch of clanging gongs.

grace & responsibility

2009-02-24T17:40:00.000-08:00

Things have been really, really good for me lately. It seems that every time I've screwed something up, God has clucked His tongue and said to me, "Gee, Matthew, I didn't realize you could suck so hard and screw up something that simple again. Here, let me bless you with something better than you've had before because you clearly don't deserve it!" There are the simple things like family, friends, food, beer, my house, the opportunity the study-- and God has been more than generous with those. But also in the things where I deserved to be rejected because I failed, God has chosen to respond with blessing. And that is at once terrifying and emboldening.

For all the religious games that we play, there seems to be a pretty strong disconnect between how we think about God and how He acts towards us. (Seriously, click on the article-- Tim Challies is really good at exploring this.) So there are two sides to this prodigal grace: the best works that we do cannot earn His favor (though I think that He smiles when He watches us live out His love), and the worst things that we do cannot shake Him from His love for us (though it certainly saddens Him and invites His wrath that was poured out on His Son.)

So the two terrifying aspects of this are that we can never put God in our debt like we want to so often-- that is, the things we do cannot "earn points" with God and make Him owe us anything-- and that God can feel free to bring us to places of terrible suffering even if we have been on our best behavior. And yet at the same time, we can always trust that such suffering is meant to be a blessing and we know that for all that we do wrong, God still longs to bless us and longs to be gracious to us. And I guess that's where I am right now.

So the final aspect that I want to touch on with this (and this is sort of what I was getting to all along) is that I have been bought with a price, namely, the blood of Jesus. And this means, then, that while the things that I do now cannot change God's love for me, I still owe all that I have to Him. I didn't make this trade-- offering all of myself for the best that He can give, rather, I submitted myself to His mercy and found myself with a new master and a new heart. But it is terrifying some days to think about all the blessings that God has given me and how now my role is to use all of them to glorify Him. So I am thankful, yes, but now praying more and more that everything that I steward well everything that God has given me.

And I guess that's how we always ought to live, whether in seasons of sorrow or gladness: as grateful, joyful stewards.

a question about God and suffering

2009-02-14T09:21:00.000-08:00

What is it about the nature of love, suffering, and God that bring them together?

One time I went to a really trippy wedding. It was held in a Mason Hall and I remember being a little unnerved by the weird pictures on the ceiling in a room that was way too huge for us. There were maybe 80 or so people at this wedding and the hall was probably build to hold at least 400. The bride had told me about 2 weeks beforehand that she was getting married because "it felt like true love" and she wore a dress that was so revealing that it was kinda gross. She was a pretty cool person otherwise, but the wedding was pretty weird, probably the weirdest (although the wedding that involved the puppet and the cap guns was a close second.)

Perhaps the part that unnerved me most about the wedding was the homily. Now, I have mostly been to weddings of good Christian friends at this point, so I'm quite used to hearing mostly pretty good thoughts about marriage and love and God and whatnot by whoever was officiating the ceremony. This did not happen at this wedding, as the dude (I have no idea if he was a real pastor or not, if he was then somebody in charge somewhere needs to be shot.) This guy opened his homily by talking for what felt like five minutes about how scientists have isolated a force beyond gravity and the weak nuclear attraction. I was homeschooled, so I knew what he was talking about and was intrigued. He went on and on about science and math et cetera et cetera until he declared that scientists that love is the force that binds the universe together. I may have only been a stupid 12-year-old, but I knew that was ridiculous when I heard it.

Now, 10 years old, I've come to agree with him. Sort of. I think he was speaking the truth about the nature of love, but he didn't need to bring in gravity (the only reasonable comparison, in my mind, is that both cause me and my roommate Alex to be extra clumsy.) But love is so important, so unifying, so powerful, and so ubiquitous that the only reason why it's inappropriate to say that it binds the universe together is because Obi-Wan Kenobi took the line. What else do we write as many songs and books and movies about? What else do we celebrate, joke about, worship, or chase after so desperately?

But if we dissect a lot of those songs and books and movies and jokes, we find something deeply disturbing: love is, as Derek Webb once so wonderfully put it, "you're so great, I'm so great, so we're so great together." Anyone who has sustained a loving relationship with someone else for more than 3 weeks will immediately see the problem with this, and if you don't please call me right away so I can help save you from a lifetime of disaster.

So we have a deeply false concept of love, and yet we hunger for it so badly. Indeed, one of the reasons why we spend so much time trying to get love and affirmation from others (be it a romantic partner, friends, family, and even people at work) is that we have such a twisted concept of love, one that relies entirely on how we feel and how other people feel about us. Yet if we dig deeper into the vast library of human creativity, we find more art that has been created about love. But not the sappy, sentimental, vacuous kind of first-crush love (though sometimes it starts like that), nor the warm, tender, caring kind of mother-and-child love (though sometimes it works like that), nor even the passionate, exclusive, brazen man-and-wife kind of love (though sometimes that comes in its time.) No-- if we look at movies like Gran Torino and The Dark Knight, or books like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter we see that there is a more meaningful sort of love. Self-sacrificial love. Even though our culture isn't particularly fascinated with the cross of Jesus anymore, we can't stop telling stories about Him.

We can't stop.

It's unavoidable.

Some readers might give me a hard time for being so bold as to assert that Harry Potter and The Dark Knight are about Jesus. Awfully self-centered of me and my religion to do that, right? Yeah, well, too bad. There is no more perfect story of self-sacrifice, because Jesus had more than any other lover in any other story ever had and gave it all up for people who did more to not deserve it than any other beloved in any other story. And He did so in a way so painful, so trying, and so... well, excruciating that it still makes you shudder when you read about it. And what He accomplished for His beloved-- transformation! Even if you think that the stories about Him were made up, I would posit that His story still licks all the rest (and thus you should give whether or not they were made up a second thought.)

So this finally gets me to my question. Since love seems to be the fragile string that holds the fabric of humankind together and suffering is probably the thickest thread in that string, what does this say about God? After all, the Bible says that God is love. What does that mean?

In Hebrews 2 it says that "...we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor( because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering." (emphasis obviously added.) What does this mean? Is it in God's nature to suffer? Would a universe without suffering be a universe without true love? Would God be love without suffering?

What is it about the nature of love, suffering, and God that bring them together?

go ahead and comment, I want to hear your thoughts.

[cross-posted on facebook]

it takes two when it used to take only one

2009-02-14T05:10:00.000-08:00

sorry the posting has been light as of late. anyone who has run into me and my shit-eating grin lately (i'm afraid i can't apologize for it) is probably not surprised.

but yeah. i wrote about a month to a month and a half ago about how everything in my life was really awesome except for two small things, and even those have changed a lot in the past few weeks. it is exciting to see what God is doing, and although i am still very much convinced that God works predominantly through suffering and sacrifice, it is good to have a season where i'm being taught through overabundant blessing.

more music is coming down the pike, i promise. being a little more disciplined about my computer is giving me more time to write and play with my instruments (which seem to be multiplying way too fast.)

sometime soon i was thinking of doing a series of lists-- the books that have influenced me the most, stuff like that. i know that that is the exact same thing that i complained about with the whole "25 things" meme, but oh well.

if you don't read Baltimore's City Paper regularly, this probably won't be funny

2009-02-05T19:49:00.000-08:00

As a regular reader who reads Ms. Butler's rantings routinely, I found great joy in reading this letter, although I am not sure why.

Ms. Butler, as a Eurocentric Darwinian Leftist, I am compelled to let you in on a little secret that has served the forces of white supremacy and white privilege well during our reign in America. It is our policy that any prominent white man or woman who embarrasses us with acts of brazen criminality, stupidity, or immorality is taken and thrown under the bus ("Dixon a Victim," The Mail, Jan. 28). Now and again, some escape punishment. Occasionally, we allow some offenders back into our ranks. More often than not, when an elite white man does something stupid, he goes under the wheels of the bus. In this way, our precious time, money, and effort are not dissipated on defending them, but are instead invested in maintaining our iron grip on power.

Ms. Butler, there are only so many African-Americans, with only so much money and so much available time. If you truly believe that Sheila Dixon is innocent and more importantly have concrete evidence that the charges against her are motivated by "the ultimate meanness of racism, and gender institutional racism" and being propagated by a wide ranging conspiracy plotting "to take a 'bitch' down from the high tower of administrative government" then by all means go out and rally community support behind her. If my belief is correct and you do not have any evidence (real, documentary evidence) then I advise the African-American community of Baltimore to simply ignore you because every dollar your actions direct toward Dixon's legal defense fund (when and if she establishes one) is a dollar that could have been spent on funding Baltimore City schools or other projects and institutions that serve the African-American and Baltimore City communities, and every minute spent defending Dixon is a minute wasted that could have been used to mentor a wayward child, lobby for additional funding for the Algebra Project, or report criminal activities.

Matthew Hood
Baltimore

grace & discipline

2009-02-03T14:50:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about grace and discipline the last few months. I need both in my life a lot; I think the lack of both has contributed to a lot of the bad things that have happened in my life the last several years, and just about all of my readers have been on the receiving end of me not being disciplined in my words or actions.

At the start, grace and discipline seem diametrically opposed, and in many ways they are. Discipline gives you a structure and a set of rules to live by, and grace gives you freedom to do as you wish. But you have to walk the line between the two just as much as you have to let both work very hard.

God hates religion. He desires ourselves and our love, as Peter has been working out so eloquently the last few days. Our faith in God is not a series of payments we make to earn our way back to God, but it is a gift that God blesses us with. Yet the temptation to talk to ourselves in terms of moralistic works-based theology is overwhelming, as Tim Keller brilliantly expounds on. The temptation to treat ourselves moralistically-- to say, "Matthew, you screwed it up again and you just need to try harder to make it right,"-- is always lurking below the surface. Keller often says that you can disobey God in two ways: the traditional hedonistic way, or the way in which you do good works but you trust in those works rather than in the grace of the Gospel.

But grace needs discipline to work well, and this is the mystery I've been exploring lately. Discipline represents the deadest of dead works, the self-flagellating moralism that cannot save you. Yet, as Eugene Peterson says:

Frederick von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree. There's no life in the bark. It's dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within. And the tree grows and grows and grows and grows. If you take the bark off, it's prone to disease, dehydration, death.

So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive. And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn't last long. It disappears, gets sick, and it's prone to all kinds of disease, heresy, and narcissism.

Peterson is specifically referring to the complaint that the church is "dead" and thus worthless for us to bother with, but I still really like the idea of bark to understand discipline and grace. The disciplines that I take part in-- prayer, fasting, reading the Bible, going to church, singing to Jesus-- are structures and bark that protects the grace of the Gospel growing within me. And with that understanding, I think, grace can have the power to penetrate the deepest parts of my life.

At the heart of things, I sin because I don't believe the Gospel. When I let my desire to be liked by others or my desire to control my own life take precedence in my life, I worship an idol and don't trust the grace of Christ to save me. I can even commit idolatry when I rely on my good works, my good image, or my desire to earn my salvation. But when I repent and trust in Jesus, I can admit without fear where I am broken because my hope, my identity, and my salvation are all found in Him. And from that grace, then, I can build up disciplines.

"The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer"

2009-01-29T19:28:00.001-08:00

I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my
inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven's favor,
in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught
so often laughing at funerals, that was because
I knew the dead were already slipping away,
preparing for a comeback, and can I help it?
And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed
my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom
had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not
be resurrected by a piece of cake. "Dance" they told me
and I stood still, and while they stood
quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
"Pray" they said, and I laughed, covering myself
in the earth's brightnesses, and then stole off gray
into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.
When they said "I know that my Redeemer liveth,"
I told them "He's dead." And when they told me
"God is dead," I answered "He goes fishing every day
in the Kentucky River. I see Him often."
When they asked me would I like to contribute
I said no, and when they had collected
more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.
When they asked me to join them I wouldn't
and then went off by myself and did more
than they would have asked. "Well, then" they said
"go and organize the International Brotherhood
of Contraries," I said "Did you finish killing
everybody who was against peace?" So be it.
Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
I say I don't know. It is not the only or the easiest
way to come to the truth. It is one way.

-from Farming: A Hand Book, by Wendell Berry

Since I was just discussing poetry earlier today, I couldn't help but put up something by Mr. Berry.

Also, I have used some of my precious bandwidth at box.net to put up two of my favorite Tim Keller sermons:

Praying Our Tears

Praying Our Fears

have fun!

because i will mow your lawn if you tell me what i'm doing wrong

2009-01-26T18:36:00.000-08:00

The Fiction Family concert was way better than I expected, and in far more many ways than I expected. They played some sweet covers, including "Keep the Car Running" and "The Man in Me" (which is the 2nd time that I'd heard that song covered at Messiah, since David Bazan covered it back when I saw him there 2 years ago.) They even broke out some of their own songs, like "Your Love is Strong" (which I'd really wanted to hear) and a couple of Nickel Creek standards. All of the songs from the album were performed very well, too, and they had noticeably awesome rhythm section. I have high hopes for future collaborations between Mr. Foreman and Mr. Watkins.

My friend Alex and I have only one code word, and that is for when we see an awesome moustache in public and want to point it out to each other without being rude. Apparently girls have far more code words, and for far more complicated expressions.

My sister was telling me about this earlier and also discussing the ability that she has to have coded conversations with certain friends-- sometimes they are able to cut out important words like verbs or nouns. Or they can apparently just use body language? My sister was a bit cryptic on this point. Alex and I can have meaningful theological conversations just by referencing quotes back and forth from South Park, Arrested Development, or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but I do not think that is the same thing.

in which Matthew displays his complete lack of tact and then rambles on about some other things

2009-01-24T11:23:00.000-08:00

I checked and double-checked, and I'm pretty sure no one else has thought of doing what is basically a carbomb with Amarula instead instead of Bailey's (FYI, it doesn't taste a whole lot different than a carbomb with Bailey's, although I haven't figured out what a good liquor to replace the whiskey would be.) Since Guinness is very popular in Africa, I figured why not? Now I just need to come up with a name for it... I have thought of African Car Bomb (not really appropriate), African Embassy Bomb (not really offensive enough), South African Tire Necklace (but I feel like it ought to be a flaming shot then), or the African Child Soldier (which, I think, reaches the appropriate level of horror and offense.)

Opinions?

I listened to the entire Fiction Family album online today, and I am quite excited about the concert tomorrow night. Plus, I didn't really get to hear much about some recent mission trips that went on whilst I was gallivanting across the Mediterranean, so I'm looking forward to that, too.

speaking of traveling and things that I'm looking forward to, I might be going from Mauritania to Morocco or perhaps Syria-Lebanon-Jordan after I take the boards? (Official test date is now June 16th, by the way.) Anyone interested in joining for the 9-day journey can apply within.

Also, I apologize for the post on Thursday-- it was rather hastily assembled and not particularly well-thought-out. I will probably post something a little more refined sometime in the near future.

This winter has been a really good time for a lot of things. Between the IV community dinners, Bible study, my family, and other random friends to hang out with, I've stayed incredibly busy and been in some good community. I've been learning a lot about discipline & grace (another blog post, I promise), and God has been very good in a lot of ways.

Now back to studying for this monster test on pulmonology, hematology, and gastroenterology... the end is in sight!

Roe v. Wade Anniversary-- A New Way Forward?

2009-01-22T05:51:00.000-08:00

Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and I wanted to mark it on my blog by asking "how do we move on from here?" Right after Obama was elected, I wrote a post with what we ought to do, and I think most people who read that post got the point (not so sure about comment #2, but I guess that's alright.)

"Abortion fatigue" has beendiscussed before, so I don't have to talk too much about that. I imagine that most of my readers feel the same way that I do about abortion politics in America-- incredibly dissatisfied with a party that has produced little significant progress on ending abortion in America and increasingly disheartened with the prospects for change. I'm a recovering conservative and I feel used.

One could argue that the Republican Party's issues with abortion are just one part of its troubles. After all, in the past 8 years the Republican Administration & Congress has reneged on its historical tendency to favor small government, more privacy, less interventionism, and less federal control over just about anything. I have argued before that Christians in America have chased after other lovers and justified their idolatrous pursuit of political power with real issues that need to be addressed by the government. I also believe that these issues have been used to manipulate Christians into sticking with a party that they might otherwise find distasteful, corrupt, and/or wrong.

But where do we go from here? Abortion is still the most important justice issue in America today. No other group of people has to worry about being violently killed by the thousands every day; being alive and hungry or homeless or lacking health care is better than being ripped limb from limb. It's an ugly and barbaric practice that denies a fundamental right to a human person and discriminates unfairly against them. Yet, 36 years later, we've seen little progress.

Again, I'll refer you to my former post for my suggestions, but I wanted to zero in on one in particular that we might even see during the Obama administration: Reducing abortion by increasing social services. I am not in a place to rigorously evaluate the statistical analyses here, but I think it's reasonable to conclude that they're on to something: when women feel more secure financially, they are less likely to choose abortion. Obviously, this conflicts with certain economic principles that most anti-abortion conservatives hold-- but how tightly will we hold these principles when lives are potentially at stake? I think that this is one big concession that conservatives can make to help end abortion in America.

At the same time, liberal opponents of abortion ought to be doing more to demand legal opposition to abortion from their political candidates & parties. I think a lot of progress will come from reducing abortion by means other than outright bans, but it is abhorrent to suggest that basic protections for unborn children might not be a part of our law. Too many Christians, I think, for fear of looking bad in front of others or getting pushed out of way, have stood up and agitated for the rights of the unborn. If liberal politicians never feel pressure from their liberal supporters on this liberal issue of human rights, then I fear that little progress can be made.

Also, I really like the design and attitude of Abort73 more than National Right to Life Council-- and I think that this cultural sea change will come through dialogue, discussion, and slow political progress.

I could write more (and perhaps I will, tomorrow) on this issue, but hopefully there's some thoughts out there already with those two suggestions. Please feel free to comment, suggest, argue with me, or whatever.

[cross-posted on facebook]

and we for the sake of Christ all things bear

2009-01-21T14:45:00.000-08:00

I read this poem in a recent Voice of the Martyrs magazine (which you can get for free! it's cool!)

This was written by a young Saudi woman who converted to Christianity and mostly fellowshiped with other believers by phone and internet forums. She was murdered by her brother, a Muslim cleric, but just a few hours before her death she posted the following poem:

And We For the Sake of Christ All Things Bear

...There are tears on my cheek, and Oh! the heart is sad
To those who become Christians, how you are so cruel!
And the Messiah says, "Blessed are the Persecuted"
And we for the sake of Christ all things bear
What is it to you that we are infidels?
You do not enter our graves, as if with us buried
Enough-- your swords do not concern me, not evil nor disgrace
Your threats do not trouble me, and we are not afraid
And by God, I am unto death a Christian-- Verily...
...As to my last words, I pray to the Lord of the worlds
Jesus the Messiah, the Light of Clear Guidance
That He might change notions, and set the scales of justice aright
And that He spread Love among you, Oh Muslims

-Fatima 2008

remember all those songs and the way we smiled

2009-01-19T20:12:00.000-08:00

dang. that was a lot of fun recording with Tim & Peter. We only got through 2 songs, but we had a blast. You can listen to one of them here, and more will come later. hopefully we can do a lot more over spring break...

we had to stand up the mattress and hang a blanket so that we could record two tracks at the same time without too much overlap. yes, that is duct tape on the ceiling.

we just used the guitars, mandolin, djembe, and Peter's voice this time around, but future recordings will hopefully include other voices, the egg shaker, harmonica, and who knows what else. i'm still on the lookout for a lap steel or a banjo...

song post #2-- "cairo traffic/sex drive"

2009-01-17T17:37:00.000-08:00

for the longest time, i was trying to write a song about a disastrous relationship that resembled a car wreck in several ways. it wasn't until i studied abroad in Cairo, Egypt and experienced the pollution & the traffic that i had the inspiration that i needed. hope you enjoy it-- click away.

if anyone objects to any of the songs on here at any time, just let me know and i'll take it down.

down here where we all scrape to find the faith to ask for daily bread

2009-01-15T06:38:00.000-08:00

The answer of the righteous man to the suffering that the world inflicts upon him is called blessing. That was the answer of God to the world that slew Christ on the cross-- blessing. God does not repay like with like, and neither should the righteous man do so. Not to condemn, not to curse, but to bless. There would be no hope for the world if this were not so. The world lives from the blessing of God and of the righteous and by this blessing it has a future.

Blessing means to lay the hand upon the shoulder and say, "Despite everything you belong to God.” That is how we deal with the world that inflicts so much suffering upon us. We don’t give it up, reject it, or despise it; we do not damn it; we call it to God; we give it hope; we lay our hand upon it and say, "May God’s blessings come upon you, he will renew you, blessings on you, you were created by God, to whom you belong, for he is your Creator and your Redeemer."

We have received God's blessing in joy and in sorrow. But we who have been ourselves blessed can do no other than pass on this blessing. Yes, the righteous man must be a blessing, there where he is. Only by the impossible can the world be renewed and God's blessing is the impossible.

-from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's meditation on Psalm 34:19-- "A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all."

When faced with the trials, suffering, and evil of this world, it is far too easy to stand back and condemn, or else to ignore and insulate ourselves from them. In fact, we live in a culture that elevates the avoidance of suffering as one of its highest goals or else makes it a god unto itself in art, music, film, and literature. Christian churches, I think, fall into the former category more often than the latter, and we assume that God's special blessing on us is meant only for us and our community-- the people who look like us, believe like us, and love us first. But Jesus point out that this is what the pagans do, and that is wholly a pagan way of thinking. In the Gospel we find abundance in Jesus that transforms us and gives us more that we may bless others.

I was really struck by Jesus' words in John 7 when I read them last night: "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within him." I don't think of myself as someone who could ever have rivers of living water flowing out of me-- but, as one of my good friends pointed out, our potential is really just limited by how much we are willing to yield to God. And this is how we can bless.

[cross-posted on facebook]

why not?

2009-01-13T06:37:00.000-08:00

since Peter mentioned it, does anyone want to get together to play (and possibly record) some music together on MLK Jr. Day? I'll have to study, but I don't have school... so we could get together at 4 or so, play some music, eat pizza, drink beer, etc. I don't know if my house is the best place-- there's a lot of noise from the furnace and the street. But we could certainly meet there and then go to a bathroom at school or something.

song post #1-- "emerald eyes"

2009-01-12T05:51:00.001-08:00

Peter asked for it, so I'm going for it. this is a song that i wrote back in Kenya in 2006, at the beginning of the summer. it is the first song on the "african romance"/"it happens" album, which is the sort of concept album that i wrote & recorded from june to september of that year. i'm not sure if i'll ever release all the songs from the album on here, but you can e-mail me for the whole thing if you'd like.

it was recorded at my friend Liz's house using her 4-track. i will probably re-record it at some point with the sweet new microphone that I got for Christmas at the recommendation of my friend Joe.

i'm not exactly sure how this'll work, considering that i've written songs about just about all of my regular readers except for Tim & Ryan. but if the masses hate the whole concept, i'll stop. just say the word.

I can't figure out how to make the widget in the post work (help?)-- I can see it in the RSS feed but it doesn't work, and it can't be seen at all on the site directly. for now you can just click the link.

do you like the new picture?

2009-01-11T06:23:00.001-08:00

it's kinda big. but i'm not geeky enough to know how to fix it, and blogger doesn't give me a whole lot of options. your honesty is appreciated (no hard feelings about zero comments on the music post), although on that particular post silence meant one thing and here it means another. so speak up!

I have also filled out my profile by copying all my favorite music/movies/books from facebook. I feel like this will now give me the freedom to say snarky things like my friends while having the enormous lists that strained the patience of my facebook friends still safely tucked away on the internet where no one except the bored ones and the stalkers can see it (not that I am arrogant enough to think that I have any stalkers, but one day I might do something important and attract one.)

you should read a lot of things that you disagree with

2009-01-09T07:48:00.000-08:00

When I was in community college, I took a class called "Perspectives in Humanities." It was a pretty general survey class looking at art, culture, religion, and philosophy throughout time & history, covering up to roughly 1000AD. It was a fun class and my first serious introduction to the study of the humanities in general and it definitely got my brain thinking quite a bit.

In this class, we talked about a number of different religions. I didn't notice because I sat in the front of the class (and I am also an airhead, so I don't always notice things I should anyway), but some students in the class got up and left or turned their chairs around when Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, etc. were discussed. My professor gave a 5-minute rant about this at the end of the semester, and it made me really sad and kinda angry because I imagine that most of the people who chose to be ignorant did so out of a Christian religious conviction (there aren't very many others in Harford County.)

If you spend a significant amount of time on the internet (and I spend too much), you run into a lot of stupid people. You also run into a lot of otherwise smart people who say things thinking that they are effective arguments for what they think, feel, or believe when they are not. I'm sure that you can all think of your own experiences with this, so I'm not going to bother providing examples. However, if you've never groaned when someone made a lame argument against what you think or believe and you've never winced when someone made a lame argument for what you think or believe, let me know and I'll gladly find a good example for you.

The only way that I've found to deal with this tendency within myself at all is to read things that I disagree with and have discussions with people that I disagree with. I had one of the latter the other night-- and while I offered him some good points, he still asked me a few questions that stumped me. It's not like I hadn't heard them before, but they were phrased in such a way as to really get to the heart of some of the deep inconsistencies of my theological & philosophical position, and I'm still thinking hard about them. It's tough, but it's really good.

Your thinking on a particular subject will usually improve only if it is challenged or if you read someone who thinks similarly but has another layer of nuance or meaning to add to it. And the other person that you read probably got to where they are by having their position challenged. So you ought to read and listen to people that you disagree with to sharpen your own convictions and change them where you need to.

Now, you have to choose the sources of opposition in your reading material and discussions carefully-- if you are an atheist and you only read Dr. James Dobson's dispatches to understand how Christians think, you are probably not going to get any benefit out of it. In fact, you will probably only become more of smug asshole. The same goes for a Christian who decides that they know how atheists think just because they've argued with a few teenage atheists on an internet forum. I think that it's probably most important to read a lot of things written by people that you agree with on the most important things in life, but differ from you slightly-- yet just enough to be annoying. You have to be sure to include people that you disagree with totally, too, but not too many of them. If you always read a ton of very smart people that you disagree with, you'll probably just get tired of it and stop.

Right now my own internet reading material take splits roughly something like this:

20%-- Stuff I totally agree with wholeheartedly and almost never disagree with
30%-- Stuff I mostly agree with on general principles, but still disagree with enough for it to be interesting
40%-- Stuff that's general or harmless enough to not be a big deal
10%-- Stuff that I disagree with strongly

and this works for me. I don't apply the same to books because since med school started I've only managed to read about 10 books a year and so I want to make sure that a book is going to be really worth my while before I read it, and I haven't judged a lot of books that I disagree with strongly to be worth my time (duh!)

So this post has been full of a lot of "you ought"s and "you should"s, but I think you know that I'm not dumb enough to tell you what you ought to read. Unless, of course, it's Wendell Berry, in which case I'll say that OF COURSE YOU SHOULD AND YOU OUGHT TO READ IT.

[cross-posted on facebook.]

which one keeps me up all night and into the day

2009-01-08T03:01:00.000-08:00

so it's 6:17AM... and I have been up for 2 hours already. I listened to more Tim (and Kathy) Keller-- they are very funny together. I wrote some music for the song that I wrote when I was in Turkey on another sleepless night. I played "Table for Two" a couple of times, because it is pretty much the greatest song for nights when you're pretty sure you could sleep if you weren't thinking about someone else. If I have time before class, I may try to do some recording, which brings me to a question: any readers interested in hearing some of my music on this blog? I got a sweet new microphone for Christmas, and I want to play around with it.

You don't have to feel obligated to say "yes" (as anyone who has heard it before can attest, it's not exactly about going to win a Grammy or get a high score on Pitchfork.) But then again, I don't think y'all come to my blog to read high-quality writing (unless, of course, you only read the posts with long blocks of text that appear to have been written by someone other than me.) Really, what I need to do is join another group of musicians somewhere so I can actually be challenged...

Also, I've been updating my links on the right-hand side. There are new photo albums from Turkey (plus some old pictures from Kenya 2004), new sites that I read religiously and highly recommend, and I updated my own list of favorite posts. Because I am lame like that.

My sleep's been kinda wacky for a couple of years, and I have to work hard to practice good sleep hygiene. I probably shouldn't expect to sleep well at all after drinking alcohol, period, but last night was Yukwan's birthday and we had to celebrate. Still, as much as I hate suffering through the next day being really sleepy, I've come to appreciate the times when I wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep. When my anxieties and neuroses stack up against me, I can have long and fairly undistracted times of prayer. I read, I listen to good sermons or music, and sometimes (like tonight) I cook bacon and blog some random stuff.

I brushed off some studying to party last night, so I think I'll go deal with that now. I'm still working on some other posts that are mostly other people's thoughts, so you ought to appreciate them. 'til then, stay classy and say "no" when I ask if you want to hear about what I did on Monday afternoon for school.

some things that are very underrated

2009-01-06T05:17:00.000-08:00

(among evangelicals, that is...)

Persecuted Church Weblog is one of my favorite blogs and one of the best on the internet in my irrelevant opinion. It doesn't seem to get a lot of love in the blogosphere, though, and that's just wrong. Glenn Penner and Adele Konyndyk consistently report on important news about the persecuted church around the world and offer great analysis on the related issues. Read it!

Andrew Osenga is an awesome singer-songwriter who lives in Nashville (duh) and writes incredible, thoughtful songs about life, love, longing, and alien abductions. He also has given away two FREE EPs, so you have no excuse not to listen to them. The first one is here and the second one is here. And you should listen to them. Today.

Fasting is totally underrated nowadays. I'm not very good at doing it regularly, and I've only been encouraged to fast by a few people and only one Christian teacher. I'm making my own rhythm of fasting for this year, and I encourage you to do the same. If you don't know much about how or why we fast, John Piper has a fantastic series called "Hunger for God" on it.

Frontier Missions/Missions to Unreached Peoples is a term that not nearly enough Christians understand, and that makes me sad. The need is great (just click on that link and add up the millions of people who have never heard about Jesus), the calling is real, and we have more resources than ever to learn, pray, support, and go! I've gotten suspicious of the value of "raising awareness" in recent years, but this is one area where a lot more awareness would help. Once again, Piper can fill you in if you're not sure what's going on.

Additional resources:

International Journal of Frontier Missions

Mission Frontiers Magazine

there is nothing that the road cannot heal

2009-01-03T13:30:00.000-08:00

whew! It's been an exhausting three days and I think I have managed to feed the wanderlust beast enough to keep it in check for a few more months. We'll see how I feel after the onslaught of school (starting back on Monday, of course. At least they're starting at 9AM instead of 8 like usual.) I'm already plotting out my next adventure, though, and I think it's pretty much either going to be Damascus to Tehran, Damascus to Alexandria, Nouakchott to Casablanca, or perhaps Mexico City to Panama City. There's my spring break (roughly March 14-22) or after I finish the boards (roughly June 20? to 28?)

I read some great books on this trip (in fact, I just finished the last one... so I will probably buy a new one.) I will blog about them later, I promise. For now, let me say that Peace Child by Don Richardson is an awesome book, and once again I am energized and inspired to do frontier missions... if only I could get to it sometime sooner that 6 years. : ( )

Anyway, on to the last part of my adventure in Turkey! On Thursday afternoon, after unsuccessfully attempting to bring along some of my new friends along with me, I set off for Izmir by bus. I took my friend Onur's recommendation and used Varan, which did not disappoint. There was free tea! And snacks! And water! The driver and the dude who brought me stuff were both very nice. Part of the journey also involved a ferry ride across the Mediterranean at sunset, which was freakin' awesome. Pictures forthcoming.

After such a lovely ride to Izmir that involved a lot of good reading and praying, I was pretty happy and excited. My shuttle from the bus station even went right by the Hilton where I was supposed to meet my couchsurfing host! Everything was going so well...

Unfortunately, then all of my worst faults combined to form a perfect storm of terror: clumsiness, poor planning, lack of common sense, and horrific handwriting. I mistranscribed my contact's phone number and managed to screw up the dialing process at the pay phone, which required a credit card. Apparently I made enough failed calls that my bank cut off my debit card right then and there, meaning that I was unable to call my friend. I left a message for some poor Turkish person who is probably still wondering why someone called them at midnight from the lobby of the Izmir Hilton. I tried to see if the problem was with the phone or the debit card, and got really lost in an abandoned shopping mall looking for an ATM to test it out. Fortunately, I was able to still use the ATM for some reason, and had just enough cash to last me for the rest of the trip. Faure's Pavane was playing in the empty mall, which was strangely comforting and unsettling at the same time. After waiting for a while longer, I decided to strike out on my own. I once again got lost looking for a cheaper hotel (I obviously couldn't stay at the Hilton with a bum debit card.)

At this point, I was wandering around the streets of Izmir at 1AM. DON'T WORRY MOM TURKEY IS A VERY SAFE COUNTRY I WASN'T IN ANY DANGER. I decided to try to ask a taxi driver to take me to a cheap hotel, but the driver I found knew as much English as I knew Turkish (which is 5 words, in case you're wondering. I felt very, very helpless knowing some Arabic but no Turkish.) Fortunately, my taxi driver found another taxi driver who knew what "cheap" meant and we made it to a hotel where I found "House" playing on TNT and then slept in.

I finally called my host at an internet cafe and met him, his friend, and two other American couchsurfers. We wandered around Izmir together and had a lot of fun seeing the sights, etc.

The next day, I managed to follow my host's instructions carefully enough to make it to Ephesus, which is a pretty awesome set of ruins. Again, pictures will be forthcoming. I got lost trying to get out and ended up walking 3km with my full backpack on until I got a ride back to the bus station, which took me to the airport with time to spare. I probably could have spent more time in Ephesus, but it was cold, windy, and raining moderately hard. And I had already stepped into a huge puddle and my right foot was soaking wet.

So ends this meandering blog post. Thanks for following, everyone, and keep checking back for reflections on all the good things I read on the trip!

like a deer pants for flowing streams

2008-12-31T16:55:00.000-08:00

My renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system is out of whack or something. Or maybe it's just the winter. I wake up with dry skin and dry mouth just about every night, and I just need to keep a water bottle by my bed so I can gulp down a liter of water throughout the night.

Tonight I wandered out to Taksim Square-- we'd had quite a lot of buildup about it from the expats we're staying with about the drunken revelry we'd be seeing out there. I fully expected to have to fight for my life to escape after a loud countdown to the new year and many illegal explosives. Pretty much none of those things happened-- it was just kind of busier than usual, and then people cheered a little after counting down the last 3 seconds. A few fireworks went off in the distance. Alex described it as "very UMBC."

The last two days have been quite busy-- we've been running around hitting up a lot of the tourist sites like the Hagia Sophia and the Grand Bazaar. I found a few things for my little sisters, but nothing for my brothers. Oh, well-- it's just past Christmas, so hopefully no one will notice. We also got to see the church where the Council of Chalcedon met, visited a sweet archaeological museum, and took a ferry ride over to the Asian side.

Tomorrow I'm heading down to Izmir, and then hopefully from there I can arrange a day trip to Ephesus before leaving on Saturday. I still don't have exact plans for my overnight stay in London, but I hear you can see plays for pretty cheap on the South Banks, so I'm going to give that a try. After that, I shall return exhausted just in time for school to start on Monday!

I guess this is the point at which I would write some reflections about 2008 or how I'm looking forward to 2009 or some garbage like that. And I still have a lot of figuring out about 2008 to do, so I don't think I'm going to bother here, because it would probably just be a repeat of a lot of other things I've said before. I came to Turkey hoping that I would satiate my wanderlust temporarily and briefly get a break from all the things that have been wearing me down the last few weeks as I got some space to come back to the rest of my life reinvigorated to fight. I accomplished the former, but not the latter. I guess you take your problems with you wherever you go. Especially torsade de pointes, it seems. If it beats irregularly within your heart, how could it not?

In any case, God has been here with me in Turkey, too, and teaching me the same lessons over and over. John Piper's recent messages on Job have been quite helpful, though it always feels awkward listening to them when I am constantly reminding myself that I'm not actually suffering all that much now and that life is still very, very good for many reasons (and in case you were wondering, many of those reasons are those of you reading this blog.)

So I'm not really "suffering" too bad so much. I'm just in a dry place. Waking up in the middle of the night dry and desperate, and that's just where I'll be for a while. I'm digging in my roots as deep as possible and taking in as much of the Living Water as I can. I hope that you, dear reader, are too. I know of nothing else that really satisfies.

mother forget me now that the creek drank the cradle you sang to

2008-12-29T13:04:00.000-08:00

so, let's see:

about all that I can come up with at the moment is a litany of what we've been up to lately. haven't hit up a lot of the touristy stuff yet, although I have taken some pictures that'll be up on facebook eventually. We climbed Galata Tower and took some shots, but unfortunately it started snowing really hard just as we got up there. So they were not great pictures with all the snow flying around. Tomorrow we'll be hitting up the big mosques, palaces, and bazaars.

But yeah. Yesterday-- Sunday-- was really awesome because we went to the international church and met people from all over the world-- Slovakia, Turkey (obviously), Iran, the US, the UK, and even Madagascar. We played foosball & billiards with them and maybe we'll figure out something fun to do with them on New Year's. We'll see. I'm having a great time with Alex, Paul, and all the other cool expats that we're staying with. It's been a great first half of the trip and I can't wait to see what's in store for the second half.

the whores all seem to love him and the drunks propose a toast

2008-12-28T17:06:00.000-08:00

dang.

today was pretty awesome-- wandered into church and found ourselves hanging out with fellow believers from Turkey, Iran, Madagascar, the UK, the US, the Philippines, Romania, Slovakia, and who knows where else.

the fellowship of believers is fascinating and beautiful.

more later. miss you all.

having fun in London & arriving in Istanbul

2008-12-27T17:34:00.000-08:00

well, um, we made it! Alex & I left Christmas night around 9pm EST, touched down 9am GMT, and procedeed to explore London during our short layover. Everything was either too expensive (Westminster Abbey) or closed (the British Museum) or too far away for us to reach (Mornington Crescent Underground Station), so mostly we ended up wandering around and then having an Old Peculier ale, which was grand if I may say so myself.

After that, we flew to Istanbul and then spent 15 minutes trying to find a real pay phone. We then spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to operate it (it was a credit card machine with a computer screen giving you instructions... in Turkish. 10 of the 15 minutes were spent figuring out how to press the "L" button to get the instructions in English.) We then came to an apartment here at Bilgis University, where our friend Paul made a friend on couchsurfing.com to find us a place. We're mostly hanging out with expats who teach here at the university so far, meaning that Alex is as pleased as punch (as this is pretty much exactly what he wants to do when he's all grown up, only probably involving a little more interaction with Turks and less with just other exapts.) I'm having fun, too, although when I go to meet this sweet luthier who makes guitars and fidlles out of table legs and the like I imagine I'll probably be having more fun. Pictures, terrible video, and more are forthcoming-- looks like we'll have pretty reliable internet while we're here in Istanbul anyway.

And I feel like mentioning that right now, at 3:42AM here, it's 8:42PM back home. And 7:42PM somewhere else, somewhere that I can't get out of my mind on today of all days. And that's all I'll say about that, although I guess you can praying for me about that if you'd like.

two other favorite christmas songs

2008-12-24T19:18:00.000-08:00

Tom Waits:

David Bazan:

isn't it strange...

santa vs. jesus

2008-12-24T14:52:00.000-08:00

So I read this article today, and it really rubbed me the wrong way. It wasn't so much the fact that the author was gleefully celebrating a Christless Christmas (plenty of Christians do that, I know that for many years I definitely wasn't excited about Christmas because of the renewed opportunity to contemplate the fact that the Savior of the world and our Lord was born in a barn among "shit and straw" as Bono says.) And I'm sure that there are things that Jesus is angrier about than the fact that the pagan holiday we stole to celebrate His birth was stolen back by the damn pagans and they've decided to leave Him out of the festivities entirely. No, I think it was the values they've decided to replace Him with.

I was stuck on what I was going for, and then I found this great video from John Piper wherein he talks about Santa and Jesus. And I think he's really on to something there.

From the article: "Santa doesn't check church attendance to decide whether he's going to give a child a present—he checks whether she's been naughty or nice. He's the perfect secular judge of moral fiber."

Here's the real War on Christmas: Replacing the Gospel of grace with a vaguely benevolent Santa Claus, who rewards the good little boys & girls and then he punishes the bad little boys & girls. But how good (or bad) do you have to be to please Santa? How does he decide between the good and bad, when each one runs through everyone's heart? Do we really want a perfect secular judge of moral fiber? If so, by whose standards would he operate?

One of the reasons why I love nihilist art like Watchmen or Fight Club (or Calvin and Hobbes, for that matter) is how it shows us that no one is really good. At the end of the day, we have to face the fact that if Santa really only brings presents to the good little kids, we're all getting coal. Or, as Solzhenitsyn says, "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

The Christmas story tells that God was willing. He was born in absolute poverty and humiliation to us on the first Christmas, trading His glory for our shame. He eventually took this to its completion on the Cross, and there God the Father was cut through His heart as He condemned His Son for our sins. And so we no longer have to fret over whether we've been been naughty or nice-- rather, we can humbly admit the truth and know that God will always extend His greatest gift to us regardless of how good we've been all year.

one of my favorite Christmas songs

2008-12-21T13:17:00.000-08:00

from Tim Keller, "To An Unknown God"

2008-12-21T05:41:00.000-08:00

"What is this argument? It's extremely important to Paul-- "Proof!", he says. Here it is: If Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, declaring Himself to be the Son of God, then you realize it doesn't matter if you understand why God allows evil and suffering in the world. It doesn't matter if you don't understand what happens to all the people who die not knowing about Jesus. It doesn't really matter that Christianity doesn't work for you, or that you've been turned off by so many hypocrites. It doesn't really matter that Christianity seems to ask of you things that don't really fit in with your deepest desires and wishes. It doesn't matter what you feel, it doesn't matter whether it works for you, it doesn't matter whether you have all the answers or not-- if He's standing there risen, you've got to believe in Him! You can drop all your problems, drop all your objections, all the things that bother you about Christianity. Did He rise from the dead? If so, you have to submit to Him and believe in Him. Now some of you will say, 'I'm not sure that I do believe in the Resurrection.' And that's fine, but you have to have a historically possible alternative explanation for how the Christian church started. The Church lived in a time where the two worldviews-- the Greek worldview and the Hebrew worldview-- were so utterly opposed to the very idea of a physical resurrection [...] nobody could imagine a personal resurrection in the middle of history with all the rest of death & destruction going on. There were tons of messiah types around Jesus' time, and no one ever breathed the idea of resurrection about any of them-- why? Because it wouldn't have occurred to anybody. Because it was unthinkable and absurd. [...] You have to account for the fact that immediately after His death, hundreds of followers claimed to have seen Him-- dozen of times to hundreds of time. It happened overnight, and they spent the rest of their lives proclaiming it and dying for it. You have to explain then, a historically possible alternative explanation. Go ahead and try."

you'd think after 22 years i'd be used to the spin

2008-12-20T08:22:00.000-08:00

wow.

last night was wonderful.

i continue to suck at abiding in Jesus.

but still He has been very, very good to me.

the older i get, the more that i realize this.

especially in regards to the awesome friends and family that bless me with their love (both of the phileo and agape sort, although a little eros wouldn't hurt in a few months or years.)

so thanks everyone, you've been too good to me. especially i'm obnoxious or awkward or talk too much or whatever. i've got a long way to go, but God has been very good to me through you.

now it's back to work for this test on monday...

i've got a really good heart. i just can't catch a break.

2008-12-18T17:29:00.000-08:00

i think that i persist under the delusion that if the circumstances around me were a little different, i would:

-sin less (specifically, i would not be as lazy, lustful, or proud)

-be friendlier to my neighbors

-be more social-justice-y and serve the poor more often

-study harder

-waste less time

-be more in control of my thoughts & emotions

-practice spiritual disciplines more frequently & fervently

-be more generous

-do more about the gazillion different causes that i'm aware of

-share the Gospel with friends

-be less selfish

-do more creative things (playing & composing music, writing poetry, essays, etc.)

this is just a partial list i came up with while avoiding studying for this huge cardiology test on Monday. i'm sure that you guys can think of more.

just about the only thing that i'm convinced that isn't dependent on my circumstances is my social awkwardness. i feel incredibly powerless over that, though, and a cute girl once told me it's endearing. so as embarassing as it can be for me and as awkward as it can be for my friends, i'm just going to roll with it.

related to this is the "My life will finally begin when I finish school/finish residency/get a job/get married/get on the mission field" syndrome. but they are also different. perhaps this will be the subject of a later post, when i'm a little better at using my time so i have time for more substantial blogging.

"Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense."

2008-12-17T08:48:00.000-08:00

man, i love Watchmen.

...but I totally don't get the whole "Nostalgia" thing. In rereading it this past week, I saw that in just about every chapter-- but I don't understand the symbolism at all.

Also, I noticed (and maybe this is just an Alan Moore thing) that The Comedian is very similar, philosophically, to The Joker. What is the philosophical significance of jokes, clowns, comedians, etc.?

torsade de pointes

2008-12-15T11:07:00.000-08:00

it's your new clue, if you're still trying to win the beer.

i could be anything, nothing, whatever, oh well

2008-12-14T19:48:00.000-08:00

...so that last post actually wasn't anything like Mr. Gaultney or Mr. Adams. Sorry for the false warning. It could still be coming, though.

y'all can feel free to let me know when i'm pushing it, by the way. we wouldn't want to have anything like the days of the ol' xanga.

i have no fear of drowning, it's the breathing that's taking all this work

2008-12-14T19:25:00.000-08:00

Tim wrote a great post about following Jesus, and I guess I had a few spinoff thoughts.

My blogging style is now being informed by Life is Like an Analogy and Foggy more than anything else. So look out-- when I feel like I'm self-aware that my blogging sucks, I'm more apt to say dumb things. Because somehow awareness makes everything better?

I've been wondering about that lately. I took a little break from computer surfing (I didn't last long before I cracked, maybe if I hadn't quit all my other vices simultaneously I could have held up) and now I have 100+ unread articles in my RSS reader. Most of them I wouldn't read anyway; I'm subscribed to a lot of prolific blogs on Christian persecution, world events, etc. etc. mostly to catch the few interesting things that I haven't heard before about those parts of the world and to raise my own "awareness."

But getting my own awareness of different situations raised hasn't produced a big change in my life. I haven't become an ascetic, voted differently, or even lived a whole lot differently since learning about the slaughter, rape, and oppression of innocent human beings in Zimbabwe, D.R. Congo, or Sudan. In fact, being barraged with information about these situations (and others) hasn't done a lot to change my lifestyle. I can't really change my future goals; I'm already pretty much dead-set on medical missions in the place that needs me the most.

Awareness of the Law hasn't helped me a whole whole lot, either. I've known since I was 13 that I shouldn't be lustful, lazy, or proud. Yet the older I get, the only thing that has changed since I was 13 is that I'm more aware of how often I commit those sins (and others.)

What has changed me is knowing Jesus and experiencing His faithfulness. When I went to Africa and saw other people walking faithfully with Him and giving up the lives they could have had to serve others in His name, that shook me to the core about how I ought to live. When I suffer through a long night desperate for some kind of chemical shock to deal with whatever's ailing me at the moment (internally or externally induced), I can trust Him and know His peace. When I read His Word or hear it preached (through this dude or that dude especially), I find myself understanding myself and my world better.

I read a great interview with Ron Sider back in January and he talked about knowing Jesus. And that's about all I have to say tonight.

Spurgeon says:

[Paul] not only believed in Christ's death, and trusted in it, but he actually felt its power in himself in causing the crucifixion of his old corrupt nature. When he saw the pleasures of sin, he said, "I cannot enjoy these: I am dead to them." Such is the experience of every true Christian. Having received Christ, he is to this world as one who is utterly dead. Yet, while conscious of death to the world, he can, at the same time, exclaim with the apostle, "Nevertheless I live." He is fully alive unto God. The Christian's life is a matchless riddle. No worldling can comprehend it; even the believer himself cannot understand it. Dead, yet alive! crucified with Christ, and yet at the same time risen with Christ in newness of life! Union with the suffering, bleeding Saviour, and death to the world and sin, are soul-cheering things. O for more enjoyment of them!

found at the library today:

2008-12-13T14:38:00.000-08:00

Emmylou Harris: Spyboy, Profile, and All I Intended To Be
Feist: The Reminder
Death Cab for Cutie: Plans
Cheap Trick: The Essential Cheap Trick
KT Tunstall: Drastic Fantastic
Meat Loaf: Bat Out of Hell

I grew up cleaning the house to the lattermost CD, as it is my mother's all-time favorite (or is that Black Sabbath's self-titled? I'm never really sure. Either, she can recite all the lyrics to both from memory.)

This was not nearly as awesome as last time, when I found Johnny Cash's American I and American IV CDs.

Thank you, Harford County taxpayers!

on being me

2008-12-09T20:40:00.000-08:00

man, I'm so glad that untied this from Facebook. Now there will be 13 people (that's the number of RSS subscribers) seeing it instead of 300+, and so I can feel just a little more free.

I have gotten three parking tickets since moving to my new house. This isn't too bad; I've been here 15 weeks and I have to move my car at least twice a week to avoid a ticket. So right now I've got roughly a 90% success rate, which is pretty darn good. Better than my medical school average by far.

On being me, part 2: The other night Alex and I were having a deep philosophical discussion. It had started out as a specific accountabilitime about a specific young woman, but somehow it morphed into a discussion about morality & the nature of God centered around one of Graham's recent posts. You have no idea how often this happens in our house.

Alex asked me a question, and it was a good one. I stood there and pondered for a few minutes, scratching my head and thinking hard. I started to speak a few times, then stopped myself to cogitate some more before coming up with an answer. Finally, Alex interrupted me.

"Matthew, your fly is down."

"Oh. Yeah. I guess it is. Thanks."

which one breaks a window

2008-12-09T17:28:00.000-08:00

I drew a rough sketch of this graph in my journal today. Anyone who can guess what the x and y axes of this graph are gets all the beer left in my fridge. hint is in the post title.

HT: Create A Graph

there is a line that must be walked

2008-12-08T10:50:00.000-08:00

I went to a lunch talk today by the Baltimore City Health Department's Needle Exchange Program and STAR. You can read more about these outreaches in this story.

The work itself is fascinating and (of course) controversial-- harm reduction work is not exactly glamorous, and successes are often measured in terms of overall health statistics and the program leaders that were there today admitted that they don't often see a lot of people totally escape. Even those that make it to treatment more than once (and even that in and of itself is tough with the limited number of free spots in treatment.) More about the complicated issues around harm reduction programs can be found in this excellent City Paper feature.

The curious thing that stuck out to me about the session today was how many times that the speakers talked about the power of "relationships" with clients. This is a term that, oddly enough, I have rarely heard outside of an evangelistic/missions context; even when building relationships with patients is discussed as a positive or negative attribute of different specialties (e.g. family practice vs. emergency medicine), it's mentioned more as an incidental benefit for people who like that sort of thing. But the needle-exchange people get it-- as one of the speakers said, "Coffee goes a long way." Perhaps some churches could do to learn this.

The power of building relationships and trust with people that you're trying to trust is an intriguing theme and I have no idea what to make of it. Maybe I'm just writing because the juxtaposition of a frank, sober public health program with strong relational language was weird for me and I'm trying to shake it off. Maybe the theme of addiction hits home harder than I'd like it to. I don't know, but I do know that relationships are good, and they have been more meaningful to me than anything else in my battles over the years. Especially my relationship with Jesus, ever faithful and patient to me. Just letting me and other sinners live is harm reduction almost incomparable with needle exchange or condom distribution, but His love goes far beyond that to save me.

i am wrong and of these things i repent

2008-12-07T12:10:00.000-08:00

"When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said 'Repent,' he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance." - Martin Luther's first thesis of the 95.

I'm learning a lot about repentance these days. Over the last month, I had very little emotional energy to obey, so I have a lot of repenting to do. I guess normally this would be cause for great anxiety, but when I think about how much repenting I'll have to do for the rest of my life, I think I might just be more honest with myself than usual.

A brother asked Abba Sisoes saying, “What should I do, Abba, since I have fallen? The elder said to him “Get up again”. The brother said, “I got up again and I have fallen again”. The elder said, “Get up again and again”. Then the brother said, “Until when?” The elder said, “Until you are seized either in goodness, or in falleness. Man journeys on in the state that he was found in”.-- Abba Sisoes, Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

The Christian life isn't a 100 meter sprint, it's a marathon with hurdles. I think John Piper first said this; it certainly helps me feel better about how difficult the narrow road is. I cannot simply make a simple decision to repent and believe in Jesus; I have to wake up every morning and decide to repent & believe, slap myself in class and decide to repent & believe, come home and decide to repent & believe, and lay down in bed and decide to repent & believe. Day after day for the rest of my life.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and(B) let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted."- Hebrews 12:1-3

This decision-- day after day, moment after moment-- cannot be made from willpower, from self-motivation, or even from love for others. There isn't anything in this world that can give me the motivation or the power to repent & believe as often or as long as I need to. There is only grace, and that is all I can cling to for the rest of my life.

"We are beggars! This is true."- Martin Luther's last words.

one step program

2008-12-01T16:38:00.000-08:00

I opened up this post after trying to think about what I wanted to say all evening, and found myself at a lack for words (and if you've hung out with me, you know that's a rare occurrence.) But it's coming back now.

Somewhere in between listening to "How Do You Keep Love Alive?" and "Lover" over and over again, I've been thinking a lot about faithfulness lately. A friend of mine and I had an argument (really, a series of arguments) about our church, the church in America, and various other things years ago and something he said has stuck with me for a while.

I can't even remember the context of our argument; I think that for the most part he was arguing that the status quo was alright and there needed to be a strong focus on good theology, teaching, and discipleship while I was a little more dissatisfied and wanted to see more theology, teaching, and discipleship applied in the realms of mercy ministry, evangelism, and social justice. Or something like that. It was a long time ago. In any case, we went back and forth and called each other linguini-spined liberals and kooky konservatives for a good long while, but I'm pretty sure that the discussion ended with him talking about how the church doesn't need more relevance or more discipleship or more social justice or more good theology (although, to some extent, it does need those things, but that is not the subject of this post.) My dear friend pointed out that what the Church needs is grace to be faithful. And how do we do that? I could tell another long story, but I'll just share a great Derek Webb quote: "There isn't a 7-step program to living the Christian life... there's just a 1-step program: Repent and believe in Jesus Christ."

And really, isn't that what all of us need? I mostly struggle with lust, laziness, and pride; there are other sins that I know that I commit and other that I probably won't realize that I commit until I'm 40, but for right now it's those three that hurt me and hurt others around me the most.

So I have a choice: I can live by the law and die, or I can live by grace. I know Jesus has forgiven my sin, but how I go about living sinlessly can follow two different paths. I could beat myself up about how I give into lust in various ways, read comic books and blogs instead of working, and say things to other people just to make me feel better about myself. I could read stories in the Bible about how Jesus was holy, hardworking, and humble and make myself measure up to Him. That might work-- it has in the past, and plenty of Christians live by that.

But that isn't the Gospel. It's legalism. The Gospel is harder, more painful, and more costly-- but it is richer, truer, and far more beautiful. Tim Keller puts it like this (in the context of preaching, but you get the gist):

In every text of the Scripture there is somehow a moral principle. It may grow out of because of what it shows us about the character of God or Christ, or out of either the good or bad example of characters in the text, or because of explicit commands, promises, and warnings. This moral principle must be distilled clearly. But then a crisis is created in the hearers as the preacher shows that his moral principle creates insurmountable problems. The sermon shows how this practical and moral obligation is impossible to meet. The hearers are led to a seemingly dead end. Then a hidden door opens and light comes in. The sermon moves both into worship and into Christ-application when it shows how only Jesus Christ has fulfilled this. If the text is a narrative, you can show how Christ is the ultimate example of a particular character. If the text is didactic, you can show how Christ is the ultimate embodiment of the principle. Finally, we show how our inability to live as we ought stems from our rejection of Christ as the Way, Truth, and Life (or whatever the theme is). The sermon points out how to repent and rejoice in Christ in such a way that we can live as we ought.

So I need to repent and believe in Jesus; and as Keller goes on to explain, I need to dissect why I am lustful, lazy, and prideful. I'll use laziness as an example. When it's about 1:00 in the afternoon and I've finished lunch, I've got a choice: I can start working or I can start fooling around. I need study breaks, but I probably don't need to take one right after lunch. Now, I could say to myself, "Self, laziness is bad and you're being lazy. Jesus wasn't lazy, you lazy prick. You know that you ought to study because if you don't pass this class you'll never be a doctor and can't help starving African children. And God will be unhappy with you." And maybe some people need to hear a message like that. But what I need to say to myself is really: "Self, you don't trust that God will sustain you through your studying and that you won't be happy with what He wants you to do right now. So you'll settle for something lame like checking your RSS feed for the tenth time in the afternoon just so that you can have control of your feelings. You are lazy and you run away from the work you have to do, but Jesus went to His work on the cross for you so that you don't have to be lazy anymore. If you can trust Him and believe in His power in your life, you will be eminently more satisfied in holiness and you'll have way more time for the good things you want to do, like reading." So there I have my choice, and I'll tell you that beating myself up for being a lazy person doesn't help. Because I am a lazy person, but if my trust is in Christ I can live beyond what I am right now and instead live in who He wants me to be and who He's transforming me into.

And on and on it goes. Tim Keller gives more succinct examples, but that was the best one I could think of that didn't involve masturbation (my grandmother reads this sometimes and I don't think she particularly wants to read about why I masturbate; I guess if that example wasn't clear enough to you, you can always e-mail me and I'll give you some better examples.) But here it is: repentance & believing in Jesus, powered by grace. Over a long enough time, that becomes faithfulness. And if every Christian got up every day and lived a faithful life like that, I don't think we'd need to talk about the Need for Social Justice or the Crisis of Discipleship or Failing Families or Those Evil Liberals because the world would be a different place. Today is World AIDS Day, and if you don't know much about AIDS, for Christ's sake learn something about it! I thought about doing a special post on AIDS for the day, but I think this post is probably more important for how I deal with AIDS and I hope it might be for you, too.

I know that my life is different because of Jesus. My prayer is that yours will be, too.

playlists as of late

2008-11-28T10:29:00.000-08:00

the end:

1. How Do You Keep Love Alive- Ryan Adams
2. I Hurt Too- Katie Herzig
3. Shelter- Sandra McCracken
4. The Sun Also Sets- Ryan Adams
5. I Can't Even Lift My Head- Sufjan Stevens
6. Criticism As Inspiration- Pedro The Lion
7. Fix It- Ryan Adams
8. Oh, You Are The Roots That Sleep Beneath My Feet- Bright Eyes
9. I Taught Myself How To Grow Old- Ryan Adams
10. Standing in the Doorway- Bob Dylan
11. I Woke Up With This Song In My Head This Morning- Bright Eyes
12. I Believe In Symmetry- Bright Eyes
13. Devil In The Details- Bright Eyes
14. The Longest Winter- Pedro The Lion
15. Nothing Is Ever Enough- Derek Webb
16. Love Is Different- Caedmon's Call

comfort in sorrow:

1. Hold Me Jesus- Rich Mullins
2. God'll Ne'er Let You Down- Sufjan Stevens
3. Lullaby- Pedro the Lion
4. Jesus I Come (Out Of My Bondage)- Matthew Perryman Jones (Indelible Grace)
5. Lover- Derek Webb
6. Wedding Dress- Derek Webb
7. O Love That Will Not Let Me Go- Sandra McCracken (Indelible Grace)
8. Let Us Love And Sing And Wonder- Laura Taylor (Indelible Grace)
9. For All The Saints- Dan Haseltine (Indelible Grace)
10. Jesus With Thy Church Abide- Andrew Osenga (Indelible Grace)
11. swing wide the glimmering gates- Andrew Osenga
12. Lover Part 2- Derek Webb
13. What Is Not Love- Derek Webb
14. The Edge of Water- Jars of Clay

an international adventure?

2008-11-27T13:27:00.000-08:00

So I've been thinking about this winter break (December 22-January 5) and I'm thinking about going on some sort of international adventure. The dollar's getting better, fuel prices are going down... anyone want to join me? I'm thinking of maybe backpacking through Latin America, or perhaps a week in South Africa, Syria, or Jordan. Maybe Brazil? I dunno. I'm open to suggestions or ideas.

important questions

2008-11-18T18:14:00.000-08:00

-Does anyone know of some good writing about the interaction between the Church, government, and NGOs in fighting poverty and dealing with health? i feel like there are very few voices (especially conservative Christian ones) that have addressed this topic thoroughly. One of the GMHC speakers touched on it very briefly, and it made me realize that I get canned answers from both liberals and conservatives.

-Does anyone know where I can find some good African praise music? I could really use me some more.

-Has anyone ever sung a worship song based on Micah 6:8 that didn't suck? I feel like I've had to sing a lot of terrible worship songs that tried to incorporate this verse, and I'd like to find a good one.

-If you can't find some sort of RSS feed for a page, is there a way to force it? I have decided that I will find out about the concerts that I must go to before I die (Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Caedmon's Call, Gillian Welch, and Sufjan Stevens in case you were wondering) by subscribing to their feeds, but only a few bands that I love have chosen to do this.

post-GMHC: some thoughts, facts, and figures

2008-11-18T10:14:00.000-08:00

I wanted to briefly share a quick report after returning from the Global Missions Health Conference this past weekend in Louisville, KY. I went with other friends from Christian Medical Society here at school like last year, and we all had a great time learning, sharing, and hanging out while getting very little sleep. There was a lot to talk about and think about there and I wish that you all could have heard the passion and conviction that I heard all weekend, but I just wanted to pass on a few things that were emphasized there that I hope will be helpful to y'all.

1. Ensuring that missions, short-term and long-term, fosters indigenous empowerment and community development instead of dependency and "extractive" missiology

This was probably the point hammered home by most of the speakers, both in the plenary addresses and breakout sessions. It is very clear that in our zeal to do good and spread the Gospel, in many places we have done harm. This is reflected in both Christian and secular mission trips and in just about all areas-- evangelism, church-planting, medical work, food aid, etc. Often, due to cross-cultural issues and spiritual pride, those of us who go or support those who are going, we dictate the terms of our aid and mission service instead of seeking to partner with local ministries in a way that empowers them and encourages them to use their own resources to solve their problems and lending our support in helpful, sustainable ways. The problem is described very well in this article.

Some good questions that you could ask yourself and your church about all this include: Is there an established mission work there? If so, how are we contributing to it? What are our motivations to go? Will we have adequate training and orientation? Could our money be spent better elsewhere? Could we get the same sort of cross-cultural experience for our teenagers and missions-unaware adults with a missions trip in America? Could we find a way to engage in overseas service to a place that is not as "reached"? (more on this below.) Could we do something that will have a longer-lasting effect, like teaching or training?

At the conference, Steve Saint (son of Nate Saint, of "The End of the Spear" fame) talked about his ministry, i-TEC, which works with indigenous believers to provide technology that they can use to go on medical mission trips to other, unreached tribes, thus empowering them in missions. Another speaker shared about their HIV/AIDS program, which works in tandem with the government to provide necessary antiretroviral drugs but worked mostly to mobilize churches to work to address the HIV/AIDS crisis in Rwanda through visiting homes, providing supportive care, and evangelism.

2. Carefully thinking about where we are sending missionaries to

There are roughly 2.3 billion Christians in the world, and roughly 4 billion non-Christians. Of those 4 billion non-Christians, about 2.7 billion are in the category "Unreached/Least-Reached," meaning that there is little to no indigenous church-planting in the people groups that these people live in. There are hundreds of millions of people with no witness in their culture and they never get to hear the Gospel, and roughly 1.8 billion people have never heard the Gospel message. "Frontier Missions" is often used to describe missionaries to these totally unreached people groups, and it is my hope to eventually go to a people group in this category.

Of the 2.3 billion Christians, roughly 700 million (31% of all Christians) are considered "Great Commission Christians," meaning that they have some commitment to evangelism, discipleship, church-planting, etc. About 12 million (0.5%) are Professional Christian Workers (engaged full-time in ministry), about 6.7 million (0.3%) are missionaries, about 1.2 million (0.05%) are missionaries that go to a culture different from their own, about 460,000 (0.02%) are foreign missionaries, about 98,250 (0.004%) are missionaries specifically to non-Christians, and lastly 13,450 (0.0006%) are missionaries to an unreached people group-- a people group where there is currently no church-planting movement at all. Just 13,450 frontier missionaries.

That's a lot of numbers, but to summarize quickly: Most missionaries go to the 2.3 billion Christians in the world, and 0.0006% of missionaries go to the 1.8 billion people who have never heard of Jesus. As far as giving goes, 1 cent out of every $100 given by Christians goes to frontier missions.

A quick rundown of these statistics can be found here (PDF) and more information can be found at Joshua Project's Great Commission page.

While we certainly need to support ministry to Christians and missions in "Christian" areas where discipleship and teaching is desperately needed (and to a greater extent than we do now!), we ought to prayerfully consider more focus on the 1.8 billion totally unreached people in the world.

One ministry I heard about at the conference did this by changing their regular medical mission trips-- instead of going to Brazil and the Caribbean every several months, they began regularly going to Sudan, Somalia, and Afghanistan-- places of great physical and spiritual need!

3. Embracing a theology that recognizes the role that suffering, sacrifice, risk, and death play in the spread of God's fame to the nations

This was another point hammered home by many people at the conference. And it's been an annoying tic of mine for years, so I think you've already heard me rant and rave about it enough. I'll just let John Piper speak here:

"Christ intends for the Great Commission to be a presentation to the nations of the sufferings of his cross through the sufferings of his people. That's the way it will be finished. If you sign up for the Great Commission, that's what you sign up for."

(from Doing Missions When Dying is Gain.

A plethora of articles from thoughtful Christian writers and workers on the subject can be found here.

A lot of churches, especially mission-sending churches, have been courageous in preaching the Bible wherever it stands against the culture and and has called Christians to live holy, obedient lives. The cost of discipleship is not an unfamiliar theme, but its application in missions and ministry could certainly use to be drawn out. I pray that we can embrace this message that sees risk and suffering as one of the great means of proclaiming the gospel of our Lord and fight against a culture that tells us to seek comfort, safety, and security for ourselves and our families at any cost.

thoughts, post-GMHC

2008-11-16T12:13:00.000-08:00

“If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”- C.T. Studd

I went to the Global Missions Health Conference this weekend, and it was really awesome. There's a lot to process from it, and unfortunately I am so ridiculously behind on studying that I won't be able to share a lot. But it did do a lot of good things in my life, and it gave me a lot of good things to think about.

Once again suffering, sacrifice, and risk came to the forefront. One of the speakers, Admiral Tim Ziemer, talked about the President's malaria initiative and then shared from his own life about how God had used so many different things to bring glory to Himself. He talked his parents-- medical missionaries in Vietnam before the war there who came under attack from the Viet Cong. They were hiding in a bunker, but his father went to go ask the Viet Cong if he could care for the wounded on the mission hospital compound. He was shot in the head, and then the remaining missionaries hiding in the bunker were killed when hand grenades were dropped in. Only his mother survived (with 17 shrapnel wounds), and when she dragged herself to the nearest clinic the nurse who triaged her mentioned

You can read a more detailed description of this story here (PDF) and here.

the end of an era (ha ha)

2008-11-14T08:18:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to let you all know that I won't be cross-posting on facebook anymore except when I write something that I think everyone ought to read. You can still come to my blog and read stuff there (or put it on your RSS), but I won't be putting a whole lot on facebook anymore.

never in a song or on a TV screen

2008-11-09T17:21:00.000-08:00

did I say that I wasn't going to blog a lot of personal feelings or something like that? ha ha ha, sometimes I kill myself with these jokes! I guess it's obvious that once I didn't have the same outlet for the feelings and thoughts that struck me throughout the day that I once confided in a person, I would immediately start broadcasting these things to the rest of the world (and by "the rest of the world" I mean "the six people who read my blog.") Hopefully I'll avoid the pitfalls of when I did this on xanga, but you never know. Buckle your seatbelts, kids.

I have noticed a curious tendency within myself to draw the curtains around my feelings and thoughts in times of anxiety, trouble, or sorrow. I make my world smaller than it really is and magnify my pain; this is a bizarre paradox because it doesn't help things feel better, instead, usually it makes the whole problem worse. Yet I think it also helps me feel more important. I can be a very verbose person and if someone pokes me the right way they'll hear the whole story of my woes; but even in that regard my thoughts and prayers become very Matthew-centered.

Church today was very difficult for me; I found myself depleted emotionally and barely able to make it through the service and the relocation meeting afterwards. There were a few praise songs that reminded me of my joy in God and it was good to have to sing those (the fact that we sing a song that makes us do this every week is one of the reasons why I love my church so much.) Listening to this series by John Piper also helped. And then God totally kicked my ass with this story, which is just one story out of tens of thousands just like it.

On one hand, this story made a mockery of my pain. I was reminded that, as painful as a broken engagement is, there are pains much deeper and wider and longer that millions across the world suffer every day. And these people often don't have the luxury of (in order) knowing a compassionate God, having loving friends, going to a Christ-honoring church, listening to good sermons by John Piper, and owning lots of great music for when you're suffering (maybe I'll post the playlists at some other time.) So in this I was humbled and taught to pray for others. I cracked open that curtain a little bit.

On the other hand, this story gave my pain more meaning. Tim Keller has observed that our culture is unique in history as one of the few that considers pain to be avoidable and its incursion into our lives shocking (he discusses this and many other good things in his sermon, Praying our Tears.) So this experience of pain is part of what makes us all human and allows me, if I'll let it, to share more in the grief of the Congolese mother and the thousands more like her who live in anxiety, pain, and death.

And when you stare that down and realize how much of our life on earth is about sacrifice and whether or not it will destroy us or make us better, I think that you can take hold of the glory of Christ more fully. There is a time for selfishness, for not getting out of bed until the last possible minute, for making it through the day by taking bathroom breaks to go cry, for listening to certain songs over and over again, for sitting there and receiving love and support from friends. And I'm thankful that I can do all those things. But my prayer is that those times would exist not so that I could merely function, but so that as my fragile jar of clay is broken, God's light would shine forth out of me. And that is my prayer for you, too.

thanks as always for reading and humoring me.

p.s. check out Congocast for some more perspectives on the conflict in DR Congo and more stories. Episode 8 is particularly moving.

recent events

2008-11-05T19:51:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to say that while I won't be writing a whole lot of personal feelings on here about things that have happened lately (I try my best to save that for mission trips, though I have nothing against those that do), I do appreciate all the love and support from my friends in recent days. Thanks, everyone. I have good friends, and I don't tell you all enough how much y'all mean to me. Please pray for me, and pray for her, too.

Top 10 things that Christians can do to keep up the fight against abortion, even with a pro-choice President

2008-11-04T10:26:00.000-08:00

So it looks like Obama's about to win, and that is not good news for the unborn. Abortions will probably go up, so I'd like to lead a discussion about what we can do in response. I've included a Bible study or some sort of scientific study to support each point. Watch out, it'll be kind of angry:

10. Emphasize political power as the principal means of ending abortion in America.

Nothing is more important than the passage of federal laws against abortion, and if we can't get that far we might as well talk about the Supreme Court justices and get them to legislate from the bench. This is exactly how every other institution and interest group in the world gets their way, and if we want to get our way we have to play the same game that they do.

9. Continue to stigmatize pregnancy out of wedlock.

Shame is an incredibly effective means of getting people to obey, and the media has glamorized teen pregnancy too much. We have to stand against this and make sure that people know that getting pregnant outside of marriage is a terrible, awful thing so they won't want it and will do everything to avoid it (or the appearance of it.) This way, no one will ever have an abortion out of shame or fear of other Christians finding out.

8. Criticize and judge people who vote for pro-choice politicians.

Christians who believe that abortion is wrong yet vote for pro-choice politicians are either ignorant or disobedient, or maybe both. African-American churches and pastors especially don't have anything worth listening to, and if we try to dialogue with them we might give up the opportunity to tell them how they ought to vote and do church from the other side of town.

7. Continue to encourage abstinence-only sex education.

The public schools are already doing an excellent job teaching our kids math, science, reading, and critical thinking skills. Thus, they are in a prime position to tell teenagers especially not to have sex. If these teenagers don't hear about contraception, they won't think it's okay to have sex and thus they'll have less sex and thus they'll get pregnant less.

6. Support purity rings and abstinence pledges.

90% of abstinence pledges are broken eventually before marriage. This means that there's 10% of kids who probably would have had sex without them; so clearly they're working well. There really doesn't need to be much more teaching or encouragement in the church about this; as long as we tell teenagers over and over again that they shouldn't have sex they ought to get the message eventually.

5. Crank up the shock tactics.

Gory pictures and visceral impact is the most effective way to change the culture and help people realize how terrible abortion is. This strategy has led to lasting impact in other arenas: for example, awareness of conflict in Darfur and Eastern Congo was helped by ugly pictures of people being butchered and bombed, and that awareness has led to long-term policy changes helping millions of people be more secure. Loving others and changing the culture takes too long and it's dominated by too many liberal movie stars and professors, so it's probably not worth the effort.

4. Cut welfare, social services, and other similar programs. (PDF)

Women who get pregnant have to suffer the consequences of their own decisions and work themselves out of the hole they dug for themselves, and if they're really desperate they always know they can fall back on their church for moral, financial, and social support. The only reason that anyone ever has an abortion is for their convenience, and the more that we preach against this the less abortions we'll have.

3. Take what you can get.

When a political candidate comes around who has clearly evolved his or her position on abortion over time and doesn't fall in line with all life issues, talk him up like he's the best thing for the unborn since the invention of the placenta.

2. Get more people in the church doors and keep doing what you're doing once they're there.

Discipleship isn't nearly as important as increasing the number of warm bodies in a church service. People will figure out for themselves how to grow in Jesus once they're in the door. Equally effective would be not pursuing outreach and waiting for everyone to show up in church so you can tell them all about why they shouldn't be evolutionists and how to obey God better.

1. Piss and moan.

When all else fails, complain about how the liberals are ruining America and how if only God would only smite the wicked and give us some political power (see point #10), we'd be much better off. Let your love for the unborn twist into an obsession that colors everyone you see. Let your anger at injustice become hatred for those who commit it or allow it to go on. Let your faith in an all-powerful God become subservient to the view that government is the only one who can get stuff done around here. Put your trust in kings and princes, and throw a fit when you don't get your way.

(okay, everything but the first paragraph is a satire, and the take-home points are an exercise left to the reader, though there are other good and thoughtful things to read on the subject. feel free to comment.)

scared of their enemies and scared of their friends

2008-10-31T10:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, so John Piper says what I tried to say yesterday a whole lot better than I did:

"Let those who vote, vote as if they were not."

Let me also clarify real quick that while I do think that changing the Supreme Court to favor overturning Roe v. Wade is certainly important (and, Lord willing, it will happen in the long run) and I do think that abortion should be made illegal (for the same reason that I think that slavery, sex trafficking, and perjury ought to be illegal), I think that lasting cultural change worked out living Spirit-transformed lives is far more important. So if you are concerned about this issue, please (I ask this in love) stop running around like a chicken with your head cut off and stop sending me those e-mails.

as long as the lobbyists are paying their bills, we'll never have a savior on capitol hill

2008-10-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

So this has kinda been a heated election, huh? Both sides have traded accusations, barbs, half-truths, outright lies, and smears. At the heart of most of the really inappropriate attacks has been fear-- fear that a certain candidate will endanger you, make you poor, or take away your rights. Right along with this has been the name-calling and character defamation that's pretty inappropriate when you consider the two major candidates against the last two presidents. And Christians have been backing up this spirit of fear and slander on both sides.

Sadly, I probably don't have to give you examples of this. You've probably heard your own. But I'll point you to this one anyway, because it truly disgusts me. This is fearmongering at its very worst; a couple of Bible verses tacked on to the end doesn't demonstrate real trust in our sovereign Lord when you've been trying to give someone the heebie-jeebies for the last six pages. I can't find an example from the other side that's nearly as dramatic, but here is a sweet article where a pastor's position is summed by saying how afraid he is.

The other end of the axis of fear is power. For conservative Christians especially, the threat of losing power in this election seems especially terrifying. For liberal Christians, the promise of gaining power is making people downright gleeful. The Gospel third way recognizes that power, while useful, is just like sex, money, family, technology, or community. These are all things that are meant to be part of our lives, but they are not meant to be the ultimate thing that we build our lives around.

Yet clearly the Church in America has idolized political power. The sheer terror and angry defensiveness that come up whenever our power is threatened make this clear. Yet when we make power (especially political power) our goal and our god, we stray from the Bible and "put our trust in princes." This is the "curse of Constantine"-- for since the reign of Constantine, it seems, the Church has always struggled to not be corrupted by power.

Now, political power can be used for good things. It is meant to punish evil, and it is a great tool for the righteous in protecting the weak and oppressed. And Biblically, I'm not sure it should go beyond that-- conservatives want to use political power to enforce a personal moral agenda regarding things like gay marriage, and liberals want to use political power to enforce a social moral agenda about things like poverty. The teaching of the New Testament leads us to think that both of those are much more jobs for the Church than for Congress, and the more that we rely on political power to accomplish the Kingdom agenda, the more that we risk corrupting our souls with the political games that the world likes to play. It is a lie of Satan that tells us that abortion will end in America when we've got the right lineup on the Supreme Court, just as it is a lie that we will be free from hunger and healthcare injustice when we've got a sympathetic ear in the White House.

Instead, let us embrace that views political power as just another part of this world and a means to accomplish good things that falls far short of the power of Jesus and the transformation he can impart to us, our families, our communities, our nation, and our world.

in other news...

2008-10-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

you should totally listen to Andy Osenga and download his free EPs.

you should check out my favorite sermon ever by John Piper.

if you like my blog at all, you should check out my del.icio.us because oftentimes I find that other people write better than I do (surprise, surprise.)