Hop-A-Long-Holiday

Thanksgiving started off with a bang - a really loud bang!
Late Wednesday evening Kari and the kids had stopped over to drop off some food and supplies for our Thanksgiving dinner. About midnight, as they were leaving, I heard a loud bang and a terrifying scream. I ran to the back door to see Kari lying in the mud at the bottom of the stairs. Her leg was twisted in an awkward manor beneath her. At first glance, in the dark, it appeared to be a serious fracture.

There were at least 4 factors that lead to the accident:
1. Kari had four year old Emily Klair in her arms. (Emily Klair was not hurt)
2. Kari was wearing old cheap flip-flops
3. It was pouring down rain.
4. The stairs have the reputaion of being too slick.
The combination of these factors led to a 3 hour trip to the Emergency room.

After all the screaming, crying and panic (mostly from us, not Kari) it turned out that there were no bones broken. Just a long laundry list of torn ligaments, sprained joints, and lots of cool bruises. She will be limping long into the new year. She spent Thankgiving day on our couch.

All in All it was a great Holiday. Any excuss to be with our family and friends is always great. As a matter of fact, If I could gauge our family holiday gatherings simply by how much weight I gained, then I would have to say that the Anderson Thanksgiving was a grand success!!

An Interesting Theory

I ran across an interesting blog article the other day. It was written by a guy from Texas named Richard Beck. He refers to himself as a professor and experimental psychologist. You can read the entire article Here

The article uses a bunch of big words like thanatocentric and ante-mortum salvific self-verification (I think words like this are lovingly referred to as psycho-babble) But once you get past the big words, his theory is really rather interesting. I usually don't pay much attention to this type of stuff. Mostly because I have such trouble understanding it. (it makes my poor little head hurt) But this one caught my attention because it addressed a question that has really been on my mind lately: Why do some good Christian people become so unreasonable, defensive, harsh and down right un-Christ like anytime their particular religious views or practices are questioned or challenged? Why do reasonable people become so unreasonable when religion is involved?

Richard says that this behavior is a defense mechanism. It stems from having a thanatocentric (death centered) faith.

"If my faith is thanatocentric then faith becomes fundamentally about where I stand at the moment of death. Am I with the saved or with the lost? How can I tell? Well, you can tell by drawing ecclesial lines in the sand and then check--self-verify--where you stand. And you keep checking, almost daily, because death can come at any moment. Faith becomes a kind of obsessive-compulsive salvation check: Am I in? Yes, I'm in. Am I in? Yes, I'm in. Am I in? Yes, I'm in. Doctrine becomes about existential self-soothing.

In my tradition, being saved was defined by being a member of the Churches of Christ. And one of the defining features of that church was non-instrumental music. For better or worse, that issue became a means of ante-mortum salvific self-verification. But what happens, as is currently being done in progressive Churches of Christ, if that line in the sand starts getting rubbed out? Blurred? Well, you start robbing people of a mechanism for existential self-soothing. You've taken away an existential security blanket. If you start rubbing out all those lines of demarcation how can you tell who is or who is not going to hell? More vitally, how can I tell if I'm going to hell? That's the real issue. Where do I currently stand? Saved or Lost?

Death is a terrifying prospect. This is exacerbated if one also believes there is a hell of never-ending torment. Thus, faith, belief and doctrine begin to cluster around defining the Saved versus the Lost. If the church is our lifeboat then we become very invested in making a clear demarcation between church and non-church. I need very clear lines in the sand so that I can self-verify, over and over, that I'm on the right "side."

So, according to Richard, this harsh unreasonable behavior does not stem from malice, hatred, anger, or feelings of superiority. These behaviors simply come from fear - terrifying self limiting fear.

If Richards assumptions are correct, and in at least some cases I suspect that they are, then how should I respond to someone who has just chewed me a new back side for dissagreeing with their particular religious views?
If I truly believe that my faith is "Grace Centered" (I don't know a fancy psycho word for that) and not thanatocentric or "Death Centered" then how should I respond?

Eph. 4:2
With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;
Eph. 4:32
And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

This of course is much easier said than done.

Frustration (revised)

(I published this one earlier, but Lynetta told me it was too vague and didn't make any sense. so, here is the revised version. Maybe this one will be better)

It's not really a matter of ignorance (that is such an ugly word). It is more a matter of capability.


It is obvious that a 6 year old child does not possess the life experience and prerequisite concepts required to understand the intricate concepts and formulas of college algebra. Everyone understands that. There are however, many adults (me included) who have never learned enough of the basic foundations of mathematics to understand even the first thing about solving a quadratic equation. And although my 6 year old grandson would probably have a better shot at understanding it than I do, it would really be futile for anyone to attempt explaining it to either of us.

But this article is not about college algebra. It is about the frustration of trying desperately to get someone to understand something that they simply do not have the capability of understanding.

I received a letter last week. The letter, though kind, was not meant to flatter me or encourage me. It was quite the opposite. The letter was was written in plain English. However, the words and thoughts contained in the letter were as foreign to me as if they had been written in Greek.

The letter claimed that I had been brainwashed by evil misguided people. The letter writer pleaded with me to give up my sinful beliefs and to renounce my warped views of grace, acceptance, tolerance and unity. The letter conclude with a tearful prayer that I would return to my senses and to the “one and only true church” before it was everlastingly too late. It asked for a response.

How do I respond to that? How could I even begin to explain? Are they even capable of understanding?

Or, perhaps it is me who is incapable. Should I be so arrogant as to think that I am much wiser and above such drivel? No, that would put me on the same level as the letter writer. I am sure of two things: First, I am convinced that the letter writer was sincere. Secondly, I am convinced that the letter writer thinks that they are at the top of the religious learning curve and somehow I have fallen or been led off of the curve completely.

Part of my frustration lies in the fact that I am so easily drawn back into these old useless arguments. I have this terrible tendency to want to criticize the criticizers - denounce the denouncers – and condemn the condemners. I can tolerate anything but intolerance!

By the way, I did respond to the letter. I wish now that I had not.

Our Wonderful Weekend in Gatlinburg

To celebrate our 32 anniversary Lynetta and I enjoyed a great weekend in Gatlinburg. We went hiking, climbed on the rocks, and went shopping. The leaves were beautiful.The weather was perfect. The hiking was refreshing. The Outlet Malls were crowded, but our cabin was quiet and miles away from everyone. It's nice to get away every once in a while and just relax. It really is nice being married to your best friend too.

OOPS!

My cousin Roger should love this one. (He is a lineman for the power company in Arkansas)

It was simply too beautiful a fall day to stay inside and watch football. I needed action, adventure, fresh air, and exercise. I needed to do something manly. So I sharpened up my old chainsaw and proceeded to cut down the old dead tree in my back yard, the one that has been threatening to fall on my neighbor's power lines. I did everything right. I studied the angles - adjusted for the wind - cut the notch just right - rechecked the distribution of limb weight to trunk mass - and then - convinced and proud that I had done everything according to the Manly Man's Hand Book - I made my final cut.
Apparently I forgot to figure in the rotation of the earth....
The Picture tells the rest of the story.

Meaningless, Meaningless

"Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?

I meet an interesting old man last week. He was facing the end of his days here on earth. His lungs were diseased and scarred beyond repair - his heart was in even worse shape. He lacked the strength to even lift his head off the pillow. The doctors had done all they could do.
It wasn't his physical condition that made him so unusual, nor the fact that he only had a few days left to live. In my line of work I meet people like that every day. It was his dying wish that caught my attention.

He told me that all he really wanted was what he called a "temporary patch job". He only needed enough strength to make one last trip to the Casinos in Tunica Mississippi. That was it - that was his dying wish! He had convinced himself that all of the answers to all of his problems could somehow magically be fixed by one lucky tug on a slot machine handle.

His words really caught me off guard. How could anyone be so foolish? How could anyone really think that money was the answer for anything? It sounded so absurd coming from the lips of a dying man.

God has a subtle way of using the people around me to sometimes remind me of my own faults and my own insanity. It occurred to me that in reality the only difference between this poor misguided man and the rest of us, is the time he had left to live. We all waste our lives working hard and chasing after the things that are really meaningless. We neglect and misuse the truly important things in life because we are too busy working for the useless stuff.