White Shoes

    I know I posted about my jacket a couple months ago, and now I’m talking about my shoes.  Clothing is not an intentional theme, but I guess I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.  Anyway, I hope you’ll bear with me.  Some people told me the jacket story was interesting, so hopefully you won’t mind a few paragraphs about a pair of white fabric Polo shoes.  Meanwhile, I’m struggling with the suspicion that if I keep talking about what I wear I will be suspected of committing vanity.  But then I realized it would be even more vain to avoid talking about clothes in order to keep you from noticing my vanity.

    When I was home over break, mom bought me a pair of shoes.  They fit well at the store, they look pretty nice, but the first thing I said was, “these might get dirty pretty quickly.”  Of course, I didn’t mean they will accumulate dirt or mud more quickly, I meant that any speck of dirt that they did pick up would be really noticeable immediately.  That’s the thing about white shoes, they’re spiffy and they stand out, but they also lose their pristine status pretty easily.  It doesn’t take much for white shoes to look like they’ve seen better days.  It’s like snow, when it’s freshly fallen, it looks clean, pure, undefiled.  It makes sense that it’s sometimes referred to as virgin.  After a few days, the snow looks like it got run through a blender with a mud-pie.  It doesn’t take much, just the decision of a few unholy feet trampling above it.

    Isaiah 1:18 says that crimson colored sins can be bleached, as white as snow.  As white as fresh snow, I hope.  Of course the problem that accompanies virgin, snow-like, whiteness is the tendency to expose impurities.  It’s the same problem that white shoes have.  I was at a men’s conference with my church in Wheaton last weekend and D.A. Carson spoke about a person he knew who was a Christian.  A student who was curious about Christianity said he didn’t get what was different about Christianity.  The man said, “watch me.”  He told him to observe his actions and decisions to see if anything was different.  That bold idea of living life on such a pedestal scares me, but that’s what Paul did in 1 Corinthians 11:1, and he wasn’t perfect either. 

    I’m afraid to wear white shoes.  I’ve noticed that I actually watch out for mud now.  I pay attention to dirty snow and walk carefully through or around it instead of sloughing carelessly through like I do in my black tennis shoes.  I like to hang with the cool crowd and pick up on the jokes and the innuendo.  I’ve never really wanted to have people think of me as the one who is always nice and polite and clean, because I worried it would seem arrogant or fake.  Maybe that’s okay though.  Maybe I should try to be an example by displaying purity and unashamedly claiming it.  We get to pick our shoe color.  We get to pick the background to display our lives on.  We can pick a dark, textured color that’s easy to hide in,  but if we’re following Jesus, we only have one option: white as snow.

Seasonal Folk Songs

    Back in the days before radio, or records, music was always live.  You can imagine how that might limit your exposure to musical variety.  Of course music could be written down and performed by different people, but still I’m sure people could only say they were familiar with a few “genres.”  I guess everything that was written down is what we would call “classical.”  Pretty much everything else would be folk music.  There weren’t folk music artists (like Bon Iver or Mumford).  No one knew who wrote the songs, but everyone knew the songs.  Of course not everyone in the world knew the same songs, but the farther you went from home, the more the songs changed.  If you came home from a journey and heard a song you were familiar with, then you knew you were close.  Folk songs had to be easy to sing and everyone knew the words.  If you sat at a campfire and started singing a folk song, everyone would start singing along with you.  I think most of them survived for a long time as children’s songs.  I’m sure I knew more when I was a child.  “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” “Yankee Doodle” or “Take Me Out to the Ball-Game” probably count.  I don’t think there are very many songs that everyone could sing together anymore.  Maybe there are a few from The Sound of Music.  Maybe there are a few songs we all learned as kids: “The Alphabet Song,” but it’s just not the same if you know what I mean. 

     Hymns and Spirituals have held that place for a while.  A hymnal was a collection of songs that everyone could sing.  Of course the division became denominational rather than regional, but if you looked through a hymnal you could find a lot of songs that the people around you could easily join in singing with you.  “Amazing Grace” has kept its place as a folk song since the golden era of hymns.  Negro Spirituals were a brilliant update to hymns in certain regions.  They tended to be even catchier, simpler and more repetitive so that they could be more easily sung without hymnals.  Modern churches still keep some songs before the common-folk.  Chris Tomlin, David Crowder, and Michael Gungor feed songs to churches around the country where they present to their congregations the kinds of songs that everyone can sing along to.  The difficulty with them is that they change pretty quickly.  Some churches are quicker to change than others (mine still sings hymns).  Many times I’ve been with a group of friends, started strumming some simple chords on my guitar and people quickly pick up on the tune and help to sing it, even if we have to remind each other of some words. 

    The really cool thing about Christmas music is that everyone knows the same songs.  There’s a particular canon of traditional Christmas songs that are known around the world.  We only allow people to sing them for one twelfth of the year, which probably keeps them from wearing out to quickly.  But think about this: you can start singing “Jingle Bells” or “Silent Night” in a mall or on the street with people who are nothing like you and they just might sing along.  I think my favorite Christmas song is “Welcome to our World” by Chris Rice, it isn’t as universally known as a lot of songs, but it does a great job of making you feel the emotional impact of the Christmas story.  I think there is a universal appeal in the Christmas story.  If all I knew about “the baby Jesus” was that he was born in a manger and shepherds and kings gave him gifts, I might be confused.  Actually, I’m pretty sure I was.  I wondered, if Mary and Joseph are so poor, why don’t the kings give them more money and they won’t be poor anymore.  How do people follow a star?  And how do you know you’ve arrived if you’re following a star?  Why did only a few people find out about the baby and get excited why didn’t other people get excited?  Why did the king get so mad?  Why did he think a baby from a poor family was a threat?

    I think the juxtaposition of the impoverished with the noble and miraculous is what gives most people the warm fuzzies.  Some of us know just how right they are.  I’ve always thought Emmanuel was the best single word for it.  God is with us.  God is in man’s flesh.  The noble has penetrated the ignoble.  The holy has infiltrated the corrupt.  The king is in disguise as a peasant.  It’s sort of funny actually.  His actual arrival was quiet.  Only a few people came to the first Christmas party.  Now we all make a big fuss and scurry around for a month making preparations and buying presents and throwing huge parties!  But those first shepherds, they came because an army of angels told them how important it was.  Why do we celebrate?  If you have some spare time, leave a comment about some favorite singable songs and check out my post from December last year: Emmanuel.

Sincerely Yours,

In my mind the concept of sincerity is deeply linked to Charlie Brown.  It might be particularly his Christmas tree.  The thing about Charlie Brown, is that he doesn't always do things particularly well.  He's outwitted by Lucy, outplayed by any opposing baseball team, and intimidated to the point of paralysis by a cute little girl with red hair.  If that wasn't bad enough, the Christmas tree he picks out is the most pathetic little piece of wood you've ever seen.  Really, it's embarrassing.
Sometimes it's hard to tell if rich people are sincere.  It's really hard to sift through their motives.  If a person has any financial gain from anything, we automatically assume that was their primary motive, which doesn't seem entirely unreasonable.  Money is a good motivation for a lot of things.  There are quite a few things I would do if I got paid that I wouldn't do otherwise.  On the other hand, I've also been paid for quite a few things that I would have volunteered for.  I have two jobs right now that I would still love to do even if I didn't get paid.  I also remember a time when I was working at a polling place campaigning for a really great woman who was running for a political office.  It was one of the few times that I actually was getting paid.  Some impertinent kid came up and asked me how much I was getting paid.  I gave him a funny look and tried to dodge the question.  I really would have been working if I wasn't getting paid.  Regardless, it somehow felt like my support for the candidate was diminished by the fact that I ended up with more money afterwards.
Some things would be easier as a Catholic, or at least a Protestant with a thicker liturgy.  Evangelicals have too many options.  We get to be cynical about everything our church does and criticize it all from our higher perspective.  If we only had one option for a church or denomination, we would have to submit to it, and sincerely follow its traditions rather than thinking, “well we do this well, but maybe if I went to that church it would be better.”  The same thing is true with the huge amounts of information we have about other cultures.  If we didn’t have Chinese restaurants in every mall, we would just assume that Chinese food was weird and sincerely hold to our belief that hamburgers are the perfect food.  But now we can see both and compare them objectively and rationally, so we can see the merits of both and pick one based on our mood.  The same thing goes for Western vs. Eastern philosophy and ethics and culture.  If we were more isolated, we would be jingoistic and xenophobic, but we could say with all sincerity that “the old ways are the best ways.”  And “everything our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents did was right and fit.”  Now we have so many reasonable options to choose from that to pick one and stick with it seems silly and naïve.  Real objects for comparison cause us to question the supremacy and dominance of our previous ways of thinking.  Every country had a self-centered map until a bigger army or an angry scientist forcefully enlightened them.
I think sincerity has become a sort of idol to some people.  You’ve heard the idea that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re sincere.  Well, an extension of that is basically that sincere people go to heaven.  Think about that.  When we try to come up with a feel-good religion, we feel pretty comfortable sending insincere people who believe the truth to hell as long as the people who believe in illusions sincerely get to be happy for eternity.  I’m not really criticizing that right now.  My point is just that our culture really really likes sincere people.  At the same time, we struggle with sarcasm, cynicism, and irony.
Here’s my theory about why everyone says they don’t like sequels.  Usually a movie, starts as a story.  A sequel usually starts as a budget.  Of course, all movies have stories and budgets, but in the first movie, the driving force is someone who wants this story to get onto the screen and to be displayed in a new medium.  Often for a sequel, the company says, we made so much money of these characters, settings, voices the first time, we can do the same thing with the same characters, settings and voices.  All we need now is to come up with some story to squeeze them all back into.
If you've seen the Charlie Brown Christmas movie, you know that the antagonist is commercialism.  Those big, nasty, pink, aluminum trees symbolize the commercial approach to Christmas.  They tower over the pathetic little conifer with its wooden stand that attracts Charlie Brown’s attention.  Well, I guess the little tree is like the first movie.  It stood alone.  It was just planted and grew and was the best tree it could be.  It didn’t really have a “purpose” it just was and then someone who respected that (good ol’ Chuck) decorated it and honored it.  The pink aluminum tree misses the point, because it skips all the in-between steps and goes straight to decoration, which is the “purpose.”
So what about Christmas itself?  Mary and Joseph “celebrated” Christmas because their “Christmas present” was a one-of-a-kind God-baby!  They didn’t have a Christmas tree, but they had Christ.  They were doing it for the first time, so they weren’t going through the motions.  I like Christmas trees, even fake ones (we’ve always had a fake tree at my house).  Shopping and music and presents and singing and cinnamon and gingerbread houses are fantastic.  At times though, I’m skeptical about pretty much every “holiday tradition.”  I’m a bit tired of most of them and a lot of them seem sillier to me than ever before.  I want to just enjoy them the way I always have, but I have all these doubts about whether these things actually have any meaning anymore.
So here I am in the midst of the holidays naïvely enjoying the pretty lights and festive colors but also chuckling at goofy lyrics and scoffing at premature Christmas decorations.  I desperately want to avoid the cliché answers (there’s the skeptic again), but others are difficult and complicated.  All I can think of is that maybe in order to be sincere, you have to risk looking silly to all the skeptics.
If you’re going to look silly though, it might as well be for a good reason.  Here’s a challenge: try to find a connection between every Christmas (or other holiday) tradition you have and the birth of Jesus (or whatever the cause for the holiday).  That way you can stick to your traditions, but you can keep them with a new level of sincerity.  I would love to see some examples in the comments.

Found: Lost for Good

    I just want to tell you a story.  It’s about my first experiment in stealing, and hopelessly lost things being found.

    Some possessions are just special.  Some things give you that little thrill of excitement.  Like a remote control car for the first two days after Christmas, except some other things give you the same feeling for a longer time.  Well, I had this one jacket that was just special.  Several years ago, Dad and I were walking through Sears (or maybe Penney’s)and I put it on. We both thought it looked pretty cool, but jackets aren’t that practical in AZ.  You might find a good reason to wear one about three times a year, and two of those are only if you go camping.  The brand of the jacket was U.S. Army, which I’ve never seen on a clothing label before or since.  I was tempted to buy it, but when I realized that I would probably only wear it twice a year, I decided against it.  I put it back with a shrug.  I was pretty sure I wouldn’t see this jacket again.  It was the last one on the clearance rack, probably the U.S. Army’s one and only attempt to enter the civilian marketing business.  So, then dad picked back up and bought it for me.  Sometimes, he just did things like that.

    Anyway, for some reason, I didn’t bring it to Wheaton my first year here.  I guess it was just lost in my closet somewhere, (which if you’ve seen my closet, might be hard to believe).  I had a bunch of other sweaters and hoodies and fleeces, so I was ready for this cold thing.  So I didn’t have this jacket at all freshman year.  Or maybe I had it at Wheaton and I just wasn’t sure when to wear it (it took me a while to figure out winter clothing, I’m still figuring out proper scarf etiquette).   Then, sophomore year, I started wearing it.  I wore it to a David Crowder Concert in October.  I wore it to HoneyRock on the Men’s Glee Club retreat.  And people kept complimenting me on it.  All that to say, I really liked this jacket.  I had only worn it a few times, but it was comfortable.  It looked cool, (apparently, other people thought so too) and I was finally in a climate that encouraged multiple layers of clothing.

      I know I just spent two paragraphs introducing an article of clothing, but the point is.  I liked this jacket.  I realized just how much I liked it when I looked in my closet and realized it was gone.  Suddenly, it struck me just what a great jacket this was, how special and irreplaceable it was, and how well it fit me.  Whoever ended up with the jacket couldn’t possibly appreciate it as much as I did.  I thought for sure that I had left it behind on the fall break retreat.  It was probably still in Wisconsin.  Entirely irretrievable.

    I hadn’t seen the jacket since last fall.  At the beginning of this year, I remembered it and was pretty bummed out that I knew I would never see it.  It stinks to know you had something pretty special and you lost it in some careless moment.  If only I had been paying attention that weekend and actually thought about hanging on to my jacket.  So then, I was sitting in Chemistry class, in the basement of the science building.  I haven’t spent much time in the basement.  The physics department is on the third floor, so I don’t go down there often.  After class ended, I was packing my backpack and I saw an identical jacket hanging on a hook on the wall.  There’s a little emblem on the left sleeve that makes it pretty distinguishable.  I was struck with mixed emotions.  Was this my jacket?  Did someone else have the same jacket?  Had my jacket been sold in the lost and found sale?  Or did someone donate it to the co-op where someone else found it?  I could go pick it up now and wear it right now, and it would be mine again, but what if someone else had a claim to it?  Would I be stealing it from them?  I decided to leave it for now.  I hadn’t seen my jacket in nearly a year, and there was no way it could have ended up in a classroom in the basement hanging on a hook on the wall.

    The next week I noticed it still hanging there.  Why was it still there?  Maybe the person who owned it worked in one of the basement labs and they kept it there.  They must wear it to school everyday and leave it there.  The next class it was still there.  This time, it was warm outside.  Why would anyone wear a jacket in 80 degree weather.  Maybe whoever owned this other jacket had forgotten it.  I left it again. 

    That afternoon, I came back.  To see if it was still there.  It was.  I struggled with the temptation to take this jacket which looked just like mine.  But even if it was my jacket, maybe someone else had a better claim to it.  Maybe the finders keepers losers weepers thing actually represented some kind of common law.  I envisioned myself picking  up the jacket and being accosted by an angry student who demanded to know why I was wearing their jacket.  Then they would bring a public safety officer with them and an rapid tribunal would take place: 

“Whom does this jacket belong to?”

“Me!”

“me”

“Did you place the jacket on this hook?”

“YES!”

“no”

    On the other hand.  This was mine.  My father gave it to me.  I knew that the jacket in front of me had been given to me, and somehow, I knew it was mine to take and keep, even though I had lost track of it for nearly a year, and I had no idea how it had reappeared in my Chemistry class.  I took it off the hook and stuffed it into my backpack.  It felt all wrong.  I felt like I was stealing.  I really didn’t want anyone to see me stuffing my backpack with this item that sure seemed like it was mine.

    The next day, I was in my apartment.  The jacket was in the couch next to me and I happened to be fiddling with an inner pocket.  Inside the pocket, I found a concert ticket stub.  It was from the David Crowder Band concert I had attended the year before.  With that last confirmation, I knew this was mine.  I knew that what I had certainly lost was once again in my possession.

    Ever since this happened I’ve been trying to think of some significant tie in or spiritual analogy.  There are lots of lost things in the Bible, especially people.  I guess it could be like Jesus, waiting for someone who looks hopeless to come back.  Maybe a tighter analogy would be someone who lost faith or hope or peace and they would never see it again.  But then there it is.  Right under their nose, waiting to be picked up.  The point is, that hopelessly lost thing.  It might not be.  If that’s not good enough for you, make up your own analogy.  (comments beneath =)

Disturbing Universe

    “Do I dare disturb the universe?”  T. S. Eliot mused in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”  I really don’t remember anything else about the poem, but it’s a great question.  I can be pretty shy, so I know the general feeling of “do I dare disturb” pretty well.  I hate disturbing people.  As a kid I was once in a relative’s car on some pretty windy roads.  I started feeling motion sickness, and an oncoming upheaval of my latest meal.  I decided to wait and hope it passed, but it didn’t.  I tried to act like nothing was wrong and just held it in.  Eventually, I knew that something was coming up and there’s nothing I could do about it.  I waited for a break in the conversation and said politely but very quickly that they might prefer to pull over and that I would appreciate it very much.  I’m the guy who will stand over your shoulder for ten minutes at a party, hoping to get in on the conversation, or I might have a great story to tell, but I’m not sure how everyone in the circle will react to it, or if the established members of the group are straining to tolerate my presence and the less words I say, the more accepting they will be of the intrusion.

    Disturbing a conversation and disturbing the universe seem entirely different, but they both help you know what Charlie Brown feels like when he talks about his stomach hurting.  Entropy is this crazy idea that certain things only go one direction.  There’s a certain amount of order in the universe and no possible occurrence can give us more order (it’s not exactly order the way most people think of it, there’s a very technical and mathematic definition).  That means everything you do is introducing a certain amount of chaos into the world and removing some of the order, in a certain sense.  Chemical reactions also have positive entropy.  That means that breathing is introducing a certain amount of chaos.  Of course, in scale with the rest of the universe, it’s not much chaos but still if your very breath is contributing to the perpetual collapse of order in the universe, you will disturb the universe whether you intend to or not, and the more you do, the more the universe will be disturbed.  Think about the people in history books.  Think about how different history might be if not for them.  They disturbed the universe and history and the course of your life.  The nerve! 

    There are a couple different philosophies that have a clear opinion about disturbing the universe.   There’s a school of thought that is very scared to disturb the universe.  For a naturalist (or environmentalist I guess), the world is in working order and operating well enough by itself.  We all know well enough should be left alone.  The idea of harmony with the universe doesn’t seem quite as silly in this context.  If you can make a smaller smudge on the delicately balanced world by behaving peacefully and thinking slowly and living simply, go for it.  On the other hand the humanist wants the people in the world to feel comfortable and for humanity to survive forever.  He knows that the universe is big enough to handle a few dents and scratches.  So we’ll disturb the universe as much as we need to in order to survive or thrive or improve every situation or environment we find.  Between these two options (which are extreme) I would personally pick the first.  For one, it’s more of an eastern idea which means I’m not very used to it, and I’ll probably err on the other side naturally.  Secondly, for pragmatic reasons, I would probably enjoy life more if I wasn’t obsessed with pleasure.

   I need a better reason than pleasure to do something really disruptive.  I’ve already disrupted the universe by being born in it with a sinful depraved nature.  Trust me, I’ve messed up some great stuff already.  I don’t want to be a net negative force on the universe.  I don’t have any brilliant plans to make improvements on the world.

    Some people don’t get the Bible.  It has scores of significances and a million applications.  One way that I like thinking about it is a guide to disturbing the universe in a good way.  OT stuff has some clear lists, biographical examples and poetic motivation.  The NT has essays and some fantastic speeches.  The thing is , within the universe, it’s been established that there are no net positives.  Everything goes downhill eventually.  That’s why the Bible works so well.  It considers consequences that aren’t under the sun or Alpha Centauri or the Milky Way.  Our actions might disturb some of the order in this universe, but there’s another one without laws of entropy.  I don’t mean that we should intentionally accelerate the erosion of the planet, or completely forsake anything enjoyable.  But if we can choose tradeoffs with eternal benefits, (no rust moths thieves or entropy) they’ll prove to be worth it every time.   

In Memoriam T.M.F.

    I’ve spent a lot of time asking “why?” in the last year. I have a few guesses, but frankly none of them are good enough for the part of me that’s still scarred. At least, I used to think those were scars. Days like today I realize that what I thought were scars were scabs and it doesn’t take much to break them back open and make them bleed. I can see how this might be good for me in some way. I can see I’ve gained emotional stability. I notice when people are hurting now. And when they tell me about it, I can feel their pain better. I don’t mind taking risks and making sacrifices now because I’ve already given up one of the most precious things in the world to me, but I still see value in those things so I don’t sacrifice them carelessly. I’ve learned my limitations better and I’ve pushed my limitations more. There’s just one problem. None of that is worth it to me.

    So now I’m looking at the future. I can see some good possibilities. I always wanted to be an inventor. Well, working as a physics researcher or an engineer is basically modern invention. Teaching is exciting and something I really value. Living in the suburbs, deeply involved in a community of believers, strengthening those who are struggling, building the body of Christ, raising a family would be enjoyable and worthwhile. Becoming a respected scientist who travels to conventions giving seminars, having conversations with brilliant scientists who are a step ahead of everyone else in their knowledge of how the world works would be thrilling, and if I was using that knowledge to help doctors beat cancer, I might savor some sweet samples of revenge. Travelling to a place where people are suffering and hopeless and bringing them a little hope would be uncomfortable, but entirely worthwhile. So now I’m sitting here in Wheaton, this place where thousands of people have branched out to the far reaches of the globe and carried out the great commission in thousands of different ways, and I’m realizing I don’t care that much. All my desire is for the past. I would give every dollar I have (not really that much, it’s not really hyperbole) for one hug from Dad. I would drop out of college and work at McDonald’s if I could bring him back. I don’t want to move on. I want to go back.

    I’ve been struggling for hope. Hope is about the future. Hope for the past doesn’t make sense. If it did, I would be fine. My hope in physical things has been at an all-time low, that means that most of what’s left of my hope is real hope. Unfortunately, I think that shows just how little real hope I had to begin with, but there are still these remnants of hope. Dad spent his time pouring into me and other people around me constantly. That’s the reason it hurts so much that he’s gone. While, the shock that people and lives are not safe is a temptation to live in fear, isolation, and inaction, it’s also proof that something more valuable can remain once life is past. I have hope that I will see him again. That’s enough reason to make him proud. Finally, I know he valued other things more than life. I know I should too. I want to live in safety from loss. Suddenly, safety seems silly to me. Anything we cling to under the sun can be pried out of our grip. We’re meant to be funnels, not buckets. Finally, I think God has a plan for me. And even though I’m numb to the excitement of that right now, I know that I should be and will be excited about that plan.

    Last year, dad kept talking to me about planning a Bible study. He wanted to study 1 Timothy, something about how it was Paul’s message to his son in the faith, Timothy. I’ve been thinking about 1 Timothy sort of like a last message, as if there was some secret message hidden in the text that he wanted me to find. Honestly, I don’t really understand 1 Timothy and I haven’t seen any passages that I remember him quoting regularly. But 2 Timothy has some. There’s a lot about pressing on under trial and maintaining confidence in the gospel.

    He left a lot of holes. I could make a long list of the parts he played in my life. Other people have filled some of those and I’ve appreciated that, but looking back over this last year, I can see a lot of gaps that he would have filled. Some really painful events, that would have been immensely more bearable with him around.

    I’ve been curious about the word spiritual lately. I really don’t know what it means, but it’s not quite cognitive and it’s not quite emotional, and I think it’s more important than either. There are three important things that I used to know on an emotional level, and now I’ve lost the emotions, but I know them better on a cognitive level. I constantly pray you and I will grow in our spiritual grasp of them.  Joy, hope and peace.

Romans 15:13

Confidence

    I've heard the word dogma used a lot of different ways.  A "dogmatic" person can be stubborn, tenacious, adamant.  You can spin it either way.  But dogma tends to have negative implications.  Instead of defining it with a dictionary, I think its actually more helpful in this case to see how people in society have used it.  Take a look at these quotes, at least the ones from the names you recognize (Steve Jobs, G.K. Chesterton, Thomas Aquinas). http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/dogma_2.html. Most dictionaries define dogma as unquestionable beliefs which are prescribed by a group or church, but for better or worse very few people accept entirely the dogma of any organization our group as equal to their own personal opinions.  So for practical purposes, in this post, I'm defining dogma on an individual level, as the beliefs which an individual holds and is unwilling to question.
     I've been thinking about the idea of dogma for over a year now.  At first I was trying to figure out whether it was a good thing or a bad thing.  I came to think of it as an antonym for open-mindedness.  But I had heard a lot of conflicting things about open-mindedness as well.  You know how they say if you're open-minded your brains will fall out?  But then in any movie where someone is trying to reform or invent or reconsider anything substantial and faces obstacles, they tell the habit following people not to be so closed-minded.  Well, then I was in high-school and I read London and Shelley and then I went to college and read Descartes, and I realized that some people questioned things that seemed pretty obvious to everyone else.  The thing is, once you start seriously questioning something, it's hard to stop until you find solid evidence for it ("you're waiting for a train").  I did some thought experiments with ideas about reality being an illusion, etc. and realized that those considerations simply weren't beneficial.  So for pragmatic reasons, I simply accepted the idea that our senses and experience are in some sense real, and questioning that could not lead to any benefit.  I memorized Hamlet's famous soliloquy about being or not being and pondered it for a while. Hamlet's initial argument: life is full of pain, death ends life therefore death is good.  He decided against suicide because he thought there might be something worse ("dreams").  That argument didn't really do it for me because I had read C.S. Lewis and he thought dying would be like waking up from a dream (Romans 8:18).  I figured though, if I was going to wake up from the dream eventually, then I really had nothing to lose and I might as well make it the best dream possible and let myself wake up naturally.
   So those were two questions which I settled for myself and decided that pursuing them was worthless.  If someone told me that life was meaningless, so I would be better off killing myself, I would resist the urge to ask why they hadn't taken their own advice and I would have to decide between Proverbs 26:4 and Proverbs 26:5, depending on the person.
   On the other hand, there are some things that I've ruled out that I probably shouldn't have.  In general, my friends are Evangelical, Republican, law-abiding, and the only R-rated movies they watch have Mel Gibson in them.  I remember in high school, a certain set of my friends started  making jokes about how stupid that culture was and they started rebelling.  It looked to me like they were rebelling for rebellion's sake.  I didn't buy it.  I actually thought there was a lot of value in those conservative values, and I didn't see any reason to ditch them unless I found something more valuable.  Then I came to Wheaton.  Wheaton, the town, is about as conservative as Suburban Chicagoland gets.  Wheaton College is pretty quiet itself.  The rebellion here is surprisingly quiet.  A slightly vocal minority complains about strict rules (they're really not that strict most of the time) a smaller minority breaks the rules, but for the most part people are really okay with mandatory chapel attendance and waiting for official dances to bust out their moves.  But I've encountered various perspectives on some subjects that I had set aside as settled.  Economic.  Scientific.  Theological.  There were stances that I never really considered.  I agreed with them because they were things that conservative, Bible believing people believed.  Not necessarily because they were beliefs that are in the Bible.  I hadn't realized that other Bible-believing people believed other things.  Don't panic.  Most of my opinions haven't changed.  Actually, I think the fact that I've seen other reasonable perspectives on so many things has allowed me to be more confident about less questionable things.  I've yet to encounter a situation, story, movie or argument that has caused me to think that my only responsibility or duty for my actions is to pursue my own happiness.  There is a core set of values and virtues that I have never found a good reason to question.  Passion for God's glory, love, humility.  There are other things that I almost put down like loyalty and diligence, but those depend on the prepositional phrases attached to them: Loyalty to what?  Diligence in what?
   When it comes down to it, I have a pretty short list of things that I'm not willing to question at all: axioms.  However, there are a lot of other things that are pretty closely connected to those that you would have to work pretty hard to get me to overrule.  I believe God exists.  It's hard for me to imagine myself sincerely questioning that.  I also believe that Jesus is God.  Based on those two things, it's not much of a jump to believe that I shouldn't be stealing or murdering.  Of course, there is a host of reasons why I could be wrong about that.  I might be completely misunderstanding Jesus' words.  Somebody might have copied them wrong.  Someone else who looked like Jesus might have been impersonating him on the one day that Matthew was paying attention.  But you can see that with something that straightforward, you have to work pretty hard to make a good case against it.
   On the other hand, some beliefs that seem to be completely supported by scripture when the first person convinces you and quotes a Bible verse (Proverbs 18:17, Matthew 4) can get pretty shaky pretty fast when you start to put pressure on them.  Think of it in construction terms.  You want the lowest parts of the building, the ones closest to the foundation to be the sturdiest.  Then you can build other solid, but less critical beliefs on that solid framework.  “Facebook is a detriment to society!”  Sure, that can be part of my belief structure but it’s not close to the core.  Capitalism, save the environment, small government, reformed, anti-Facebook, pro-business, young earth, progressive, Kantian, neo-Marxism, might all be good ideas (probably not all of them).  Those sorts of beliefs need to be put in their proper place and not too closely identified with the heart of Christianity, the gospel.  They cannot become interdependent.  Faith in the gospel must not rely on confidence in interpretive methods and social strategies.
   I think my central point is that dogma should be grayscale, not black and white.  There are some beliefs that should be held very closely.  Once doubts have been entertained they must be dismissed unless a new, separate case is made (like a suspect who can't be tried for the same crime twice).  On the other hand, it is important to bring our beliefs into question at some point so we can determine the basis for those beliefs.  If our justification is solid, then our belief will be all the more steady.  If not, perhaps we should consider alternatives and pursue deeper lines of questioning.  Here’s my parting challenge:  Think of the beliefs that are most important to you, and the beliefs you are most confident in.  Hopefully, there is some overlap.  Then try to support the important beliefs with the ones you are most confident in (1 Peter 3:15).