A common Lie

Yesterday was a great day. Not only because it was a day that I set aside for God but because I was able to see God working in the life of a young man. It is always a privilege to be a part of what God is doing in the lives of others. To see a change start to happen, to see a person start to ask questions is the most exciting thing. In the midst of this excitement I was hit with something that I found to be a lie that many of us find ourselves believing. Many people feel that it is better to protect others by perpetuating a lie or by not sharing relevant information than to share the truth. We want to protect others from getting hurt. Guys are especially bad at this because we are fixers by nature. We don't want others to be hurt by our actions. When someone feels hurt we always ask, what can I do? So lying sometimes seems like the best way not to hurt someone. But we have to remember that it is not our job to protect others from the truth. It is required of us to be truthful. Their is a right and a wrong way to share the truth. But when done with love and humility it is the right thing to do. The lie we get sucked into is simple. "If I tell them it's going to cause them pain, or let them down, or hurt their feelings." The reality is that a lie, no matter how good our intentions are, not only hurts our relationship with the person but it also strains our relationship with God. Putting a strain on our relationship with God gives Satan a foothold in our life. Where God is not, Satan is staking a claim. Don't make the truth a thing to hide out of a concern for others. If we value our relationships with others and with God, we will always speak truth in Love and humility because we know it is the right thing to do.

THE DEATH OF A LANGUAGE

I remember when i was growing up my mom would make my sister melissa and I attend what she called "Family Meetings". My sister and I would have described it as torture in disguise. But the reasoning for it was based on something that seems to be a fading part of our american culture. My mom wanted us to communicate what we were going through in life and she wanted us to share our feeling on things that were going on in the family. I hated this process almost as much as my sister did, probably more now that Ithink about it. My mom grew to hate these family meetings, mostly because of our obvious distaste for them. I know this because they got called less and less. So in my family and the many familys I get to work with I often wonder why we don't communicate better. What is it about talking with those that are the closest to us that keeps us distant emmotionally? Why do we tend to make close ties with people we have never met before like in chat rooms and social connectors like facebook, but fail to do this with the ones we sit next to every day? I think it is really very simple. Every person wants to feel loved and accepted by someone. A face to face encounter puts us at a high risk of rejection. It's like fishing. If were to go out and bait a hook and cast it into the water the amount of time it would take me to catch something might be 45 minutes. And at the end of 45 minutes I would have one fish. Impressive right? Well lets say I took a bigger boat out and fished using a drag net. After 45 minutes I pull up the net and find that I have caught not just one fish but 385. What sounds more impressive, 1 or 385. Duh!!! So we network looking for the status that likely would elude us if we made friends the old school way. But what is lost? What are we giving up by saying it's ok to exist on the computer but not in the world? Is a sense of committment to friends a sacrifice? Is a loss of accountability diminishing? I watch kids text faster of their little flip phones than I can type on a keyboard the size of a countertop. But these same kids struggle to write a paper using correct english. No wonder people don't know how to act and behave in so many situations. No wonder it seems that there is a growing number of people who crave personal attention to the degree that they will committ crimes to get it. Lets get in their face and make it personal.

Conformity is the root of all progress

Ok. I have never really got into blogging. Mabye it's because it takes time, a commodity I seem to have less and less of these days. Mabye it's because I wasn't sure about the idea of splashing my inner thoughts on the web for the world to see. But as is now obvious, I have decided to conform. So what am I going to be talking about? Excellent question. I don't have an answer for that but I can assure you it will be weird, crazy and often times just plain stupid. So if you want to read the meanderings of a 30 something guy with three kids I invite you back to join in my embarasement. Talk at ya soon.