Relationships

So I need to clarify something from my last post--my wife is awesome.  And I'm sorry that she doesn't exactly look awesome as portrayed by my previous post.  Know that this is not a confession.  A confession is something you give after doing something wrong.  I don't need to confess, because I've never felt that my wife is anything other than awesome.  The only thing I'm guilty of is bad writing that didn't accurately communicate what I wanted to.  Anyway, I'm sorry.

I'm sure you remember my description of marriage, the words that every good Christian couple read right before feeling a profound nauseous shudder--"It's hard, but it's great."  For most people, the word 'hard' conjures up ideas of suffering and pain and guilt and regret.  The definition that I had in mind was something more like: "Not easy, in the sense of requiring genuine effort."  Actually, I wanted to just write, "Not easy," but I'm pretty sure I would have faced the same fallout as the last post.

In rewriting that section, I would say, "Relationships are hard, but they're great.  And the deeper the relationship, the harder it is.  But the more effort you apply, the greater the reward."  And keep in mind my definition of 'hard.'  

Every interpersonal interaction we have every day is in fact a relationship.  But the shorter the interaction, and the more superficial your knowledge of each other is, the more likely it is to continue without conflict.  For example, my relationship with the cashier at our local supermarket is great.   We've never disagreed about anything.  Ever.  We exchange our obligatory "Bonjour," she checks my food items (usually apples for Valérie and cookies for me), I give her money, and we say our obligatory "Au revoir."  That's it.  

But it's only that easy because of how lame it is.  If I really cared at all about her, I would invite her to eat dinner with Valérie and I, and after she left we would both give a huge sigh of relief and say to each other, "She's got problems," or, "She is SO annoying," or, "Do you think she is on drugs?"

Now, increase the level of intimacy to solid friendship, or even further, to marriage, and you have multiplied the complexity and delicacy of the relationship by a million.  I don't have to do a whole lot to convince the cashier that I'm a nice person, but my wife and my closest friends have seen me be a complete jerk.  The likelihood of hurting the cashier's feelings is a lot lower than that of hurting my friends' feelings.  And I'm a lot more likely to say or do something that upsets my wife than my friends, and it's not as though my wife is overly sensitive.  In all reality, I'm the super sensitive one who takes everything way too seriously.  Anyway, the closer the relationship, the more maintenance it needs.

This is because there is more at stake.  We've got more to lose should this close relationship turn sour.  So I say something stupid to the cashier and she thinks I'm an idiot.  Big deal.  Our entire interpersonal world is built on saying "hello" and "goodbye" to each other, and that's only because we're expected to be polite.  So I'm having a bad day and I'm rude to her even though I know it's wrong.  In the long run, who cares what she thinks about me?  I don't have to prove anything to her.

But the deeper the relationship, the more we've got to prove, or at least that's how it feels.  I guess it is unfortunate that we think of it that way.   We spend all this time and effort to get close to people, earning the right to be comfortable being ourselves around them, and when we get there, we find out that it's not true.  We can't be ourselves, because we are the problem laden annoying drug addict cashiers that we can't stand.  And it is only in these relationships that we come to this hard realization.

The shocking revelation that we are complete losers is accompanied by a call to vulnerability.  It isn't enough that through relationships we come to see our own faults, but God doesn't want us to cover them up.  This goes against everything in our nature.  Everything about our world seems to revolve around saving face or making ourselves look better than we actually are.  When I see pictures of smiling celebrities I think about how much their life must suck.  It must be awful to wake up with a huge zit on your face and know that you can't leave the house without covering it up because millions of teenage girls' hopes and dreams and ideas about beauty depend on your pretending to be perfect.  There really isn't any difference between that and Adam and Eve covering up their mistake with a fig leaf.

But why does God want us to be vulnerable?  First, because only when we're honest and vulnerable with Him does He get all the glory He deserves.  To the extent that we try to make ourselves look good to God, we steal the glory of His victory over sin.  Second, because only when we are vulnerable with God do we begin to realize how truly great our salvation is.  As I begin to understand how terrible a person I really am, the good news that God's mercy and grace are infinitely greater than my sin increasingly looks like "Good News."  Third, God wants all of our human relationships to reflect the first two reasons I gave.  In relationships, this means that when I cover up my sin I'm actually stopping my friend, wife, etc., from seeing the worth of God and the magnitude of His love for them.

Depression and Marriage

Lately I've been feeling pretty depressed.  I don't mean like indie-rocker write songs about how much the world sucks-depressed, but more like a general feeling that God and the world are out to get me and that in response I should stay in bed all day.  I mean, what's the point if I'm just going to be disappointed all day anyway.  Of course, this isn't a possibility because I'm married and my wife would never allow it, but nevertheless that's how I've felt.

Actually, my wife is the one who made me feel guilty about being depressed.  She didn't say anything like, "Get your lazy @$$ out of bed!", in fact, she didn't really say or do anything.  She understands that it is part of life, and especially when you are adjusting to a new country.  What made me feel guilty was that as the days passed and my sulking increased, Valérie started to feel the same way.  The more I became quiet and withdrawn, the more sullen and hopeless she felt.  Of course, she would never use the word hopeless.  It's too extreme for her.  But she started to see everything turning black along with me.  

I just finished a facebook chat with a teenager here in the village.  He asked me what marriage is like and if I had any advice for him.  Online chatting is hardly a medium worthy of such a sacred topic, but I wrote back, saying "It's hard, but it's great."  He was confused by this.  "What do you mean, 'hard'?"  

Only since I've been married have I begun to see the depths of my sin and selfishness.  Everyday there is some small revelation about how I'm failing to die for my wife.  After all, the apostle Paul tells husbands to love their wives, giving themselves up for her as Christ did for His church.  I'm part of Christ's bride, the church, and everyday I act like I'm the most important person in the world.  And what does Jesus do?  He pays for my sin.  No matter what.  There is nothing I can do or say that His blood can't cover.  

It's this same selfless love that God teaches us through marriage.  When she doesn't want to go for a walk because "there's a lion in the streets," or leaves the cap off the toothpaste, or seemingly complains about everything (which I'm slowly learning is part of being French), God is giving me an opportunity to love her and give myself up for her--to overlook her sins the way God overlooks mine.  Sadly, I usually hold it against her and grumble about in my mind, but I'm learning.  When you're single, there is a real freedom to sin that isn't there when you're married.  As a single, you can take refuge in the fact that nobody really knows you.  It's pretty easy to keep the facade and portray yourself to the world as you want to be seen.  But when it comes to your husband or wife, you're naked.  Every blemish is visible.

What does this mean for me as a husband?  It means that when I see all of Valérie's imperfections and shortcomings, I have a choice to make.  I can either focus on those blemishes until they are all I can see of her, or I can be like Christ and see her as she should be, as she will be.  This is very difficult.  The more I can criticize her faults the more I can convince myself that I'm good, or at least better than her.  But God designed marriage to show me my utter failure in loving my wife, because that's how we learn about His love.

So, Valérie, I'm sorry that you have to suffer, but I hope you are learning as much as I am.

Valérie is Pregnant, or, I Knocked Up My Wife

Just covering all my bases.  Email, facebook, and now the blog.  Valérie is pregnant, and so by God's grace we will be parents by the end of August.  Words can't really describe the roller-coaster of feelings that I've been riding about all of this.  I've never felt so out of control and preoccupied for someone's health in my life.  And I don't even know the one that is growing in my wife as I write this.  But it is also driving me to seek God.  

My feeling completely out of control is only compounded by the importance of the situation I find myself in.  It's one thing to not understand what the cashier says to you at the grocery store, but to watch a doctor in a medical system that you don't understand hurriedly mumble and point at things in a fuzzy picture that you don't understand, and all of this in a language that you don't understand, is a lot more stressful.  Sometimes my stomach hurts because of it all.

Right before Christmas Valérie had to go to the emergency room for something about the baby.  Here is part of a journal entry I wrote while waiting for her:  "Right now I can only find comfort in God Himself.  In His love, His sovereignty, His character.  I know the God who created the universe, in all his power and majesty, yet here my only resort is begging.  I've got no eloquent prayers or reasons why He should be merciful; just begging.  'Please, God.  Please.'  It's my heart's cry."

It's stressful, and I imagine that won't ever change, no matter where I live, but I'm thankful that it all points to something bigger than myself, and that it's all heading somewhere.  I trust Him.  We humans are a hopeless cause in ourselves, but in Him we have everything.  And that's enough.

Stories Part I

Stories are something that I really enjoy.  I don't know why.  And the closer they get to being unbelievable, the better.  Forget the ones about having to pee in the woods because you were camping.  After all, everyone's done that.  But tell me more tales about my Grandpa evading the police.  Tell me them all, and tell them to me over and over again.  I love 'em.  But why?

Stories scratch the age old itch of communication.  They connect us to other people and other times, and even other worlds.  They give us messages in a way that is both informative and normative.  That is to say, it gives us practical examples of how we should live, and why we should live that way, or how we shouldn't live and why we shouldn't live that way.  When I think about the best books I've read, they have been the ones that made me 'experience' whatever it was that the characters were experiencing.  When the characters were tempted, I felt the temptation, and when they reaped the fruit of their actions, I felt the stinging consequences, and therefore understood the error of their ways and changed my life and made decisions accordingly. 

However, in this current period of human history, stories and myth are shunned for 'facts' and information.  The Enlightenment and the resulting victory of Reason over human experience has left us with few sources of truth and beauty.  We can only believe what dull textbooks and boring geniuses tell us, and our only justification is that they are smarter than us.  The average person can no longer trust his feelings and justifications regarding what is Beautiful, he has to double-check it with the definition of beauty that comes down to us from the ivory towers of the critics.  Even in the Church, especially my beloved Reformed churches, stories have been abandoned for point by point logic, as if the Apostle Paul were a robot and not a man.

This is a mistake because we as humans don't live in a world of abstractions and theories.  We live in the real world--one of flesh and bone and tears and sweat and blood and sin and broken relationships.  For the past 150 years we have heard about the progress of mankind, and how science and knowledge is directing us toward a better life.  But we haven't seen increases in the quality of life, just the quantity.  Sure, we live longer and are more comfortable than ever, but that just means we have more time to hurt each other.  There as many wars today as there were then.  It's obvious that this method of communication isn't sufficient by itself.  Alright, enough science bashing for today.  I'm just a little prejudiced, but trying to remain objective.

That's where stories come in.  They take all the abstractions and theories, and give them hands and feet, flesh and bone.  Instead of just reading the book of Romans in the New Testament, filled as it is with tight arguments, we can see that theory worked out in Paul's life.  They are complementary.  We read a commandment and know that we should obey it, but when we can read stories about what happens to people who disobey, or the pain God feels when we disobey, we have a more human reason and desire to obey.  It's like 3-d morality.

For example, the Hebrews taught their children to say something called the Shema every day.  It was something like, "Hear O Israel, the LORD your God is one."  It was a commandment that they teach it to their children, just it was commanded that they teach the law to the next generation.  But, these mandates were always accompanied by stories.  Why should you believe that the LORD is one, or not worship idols?  Because He is the only God who could send the plagues down on Egypt, lead the Hebrews out of slavery and through the Red Sea as if it were dry land.  Only the true and living God, the God of the Bible, could lead his people through the desert forty years and provide for them miraculously.  Only He could drive out the nations before them as they headed toward Canaan.  

And so it was these commandments, coupled with the stories that reinforced why they were trustworthy commandments, that have given all of us a reason to keep believing, even in the face of trials and persecution.  So don't be like so many Christians today who say, "the Old Testament was for the Jews and the New Testament is for us."  Learn about who your God is and how His power, mercy, correction, and love have guided His people since the beginning of time.  Read the Old Testament and remember that God still moves teenage boys to slay giants, and closes the mouths of lions--be they physical, spiritual, or emotional.

Hear, O Christians!  You who are the children of Abraham by faith: The LORD your God is one.  He wants to do great things with your life, and he wants you to tell His stories and give hope to the world.

Just in case...

...you were wondering where the title for my "Books! Check 'em out!" post came from.  It sounds a lot like Sir Mixalot's voice.  I guess "Baby Got Back" wasn't his only contribution to society.

"Fellas, Fellas, has your girlfriend the books?"

Pictures

Here are some pictures from the past few months.

Vancouver, Canada.  I can't even mimic a stupid bear.  Idiot!!

Los Angeles sucks on the whole, but the beach was cool.

A Tyrannosaurus Rex trying to eat my wife.  Soon after, I regulated.  If you think he looks bad in the picture, you should see him now.

San Francisco.  I got my Visa and spent a day in a really cool city.  And ate with Roland Cabral, Sheila Brown's brother.

Brugges, Belgium.  It's pretty.

Books! Check 'Em Out!

Lately, I haven't been able to sleep.  Most nights I lay down only to stare at the dark ceiling, a million thoughts running through my head at a million miles per hour.  It's pretty frustrating.  I finally fall asleep somewhere around one or two o'clock every morning, but I'm tired all day and can't think as clearly.  Some good points are that I've been able to catch up on some long overdue phone calls.  I've had a lot of good conversations that remind me that God has blessed me beyond what I deserve in my friends and family.

Don't worry, I'll get to those questions  from Psalm 78 soon enough, but I need a little more time to better shape my thoughts.  For now, I'd like to write about a few books I'm currently reading.  The first is The Reason for God by Tim Keller.  He is the pastor of a presbyterian church in New York city, a tremendous preacher, and an equally talented writer.  The book is really philosophical, but completely accessible.  He is able to write about complicated things in layman's terms, which makes it a lot easier to follow.  And, in my opinion, that much more useful for the church.  But his book isn't meant to be "Christian", at least in the sense of just being for christians.  Instead, it is a book for skeptics, addressing the most common objections that he has encountered during his time in New York City.  

I'm not very far into the book, just a few chapters, but it is amazing.  Thanks go out to my friend who gave it to me this summer while I was in Laramie.  He really reminds me of C.S. Lewis, which makes sense since Keller himself says that there isn't a chapter he's written or sermon he's preached that doesn't borrow from Lewis.  I hope this book finds its way into the hands of many honest skeptics.  People who really care about truth and are willing to question and test their own beliefs, not just secular fundamentalists.  After all, we're all religious when it comes to our most basic and foundational beliefs, right?

Normally, I'm skeptical of these types of books because christians tend to use them as ammunition against their neighbors and classmates without really understanding what they read.  I think that in order to worship God rightly, we need to understand him, or at least the little that he has revealed to us in his word.  Or better put--begin to understand.  He is complicated and beautiful enough that even an eternity of revelation won't exhaust our thirst and hunger to know him.  But I'm not elitist about the academic aspect of christianity either, though  I used to be.  Fortunately, as time has gone on, I've learned that I'm not nearly as smart as I once thought, and that it isn't nearly as important to God as I had originally thought.  Loading your Gospel Gun with skeptic-atheist-agnostic killing silver bullets isn't what God is after, but he does want you to learn about him.  That's why I recommend Keller's book, and would recommend it to any truth-seeking, honest person I know.

Also, I'm reading N.T. Wright's Simply Christian.  Like Keller's book, it's written for those outside of the faith, and more particularly, those who know nothing about Biblical Christianity.  No christianese.  No alter calls.  His premise reminds me of how I tell people why I became a christian and not a Jew, Buddhist, or Muslim--when I read the Bible, the world started to make sense.  Evil.  Sin.  The complexity of nature.  The fact that even the 'purest' of us think the most unimaginable thoughts.  The entire human experience was explained.  And not like a "Get Saved!" baptist handbook, but like a collection of books from different genres and time periods that make a 3-d image of life.  Where it came from, where it's going, why it sucks, how it will be fixed, and what that means now.  Not just for me, but for the whole world.

Wright starts the book by reminding us that everyone is born with a longing for justice, and that we live as if we'd just woken up from a vivid dream.  We can't remember what exactly the dream was, but it's effect and message remain with us nonetheless.  In that way, every person has the knowledge of the Creator, even if they don't remember how they got it.  

N.T. Wright has some unorthodox beliefs regarding the specifics of salvation, and is a proponent of the New Perspective on Paul (maybe even the first?), but as far as I can tell, the book is neutral and unaffected by these beliefs.  As Wright says in the introduction, he means the book to be a basic guide, not to what christians believe, but to the questions that all humans should ask about their existence, and how the Bible addresses all those questions.  It's great so far, and I would recommend it as well. 

Caribbean Queen

If any of you were wondering what it's like to be married to a West Indian girl, just watch this and listen to the lyrics.

Right now my Caribbean Queen is sleeping on our folded out futon because she's sick. I

think I'll join her.