Jordan Peterson and the Question of Belief

Within the past few months I stumbled upon Jordan Peterson. And by "stumbled" I mean, I was binge watching his videos for pretty much all of November and December last year once I was introduced to him. Some of you may know exactly who I am referring to and I'm sure many of you have no idea who he is as well.

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist from Canada, who is known for his contributions to conversations on psychology, philosophy, politics, and religion. His videos with Joe Rogan and a contentious and laughable TV interview with Channel 4 News are a couple of the videos that gained him a significant following. Also his highly publicized book entitled "12 Rules for Life" has sold over 3 million copies so far.

His personal YouTube channel has nearly 2 million subscribers and one of his most popular lecture series on the stories of Genesis consists of two-hour-long videos each with hundreds of thousands of views and in some cases millions. He captured the attention of so many people, who never would have ever considered listening to approximately 40 hours of lectures on the Bible, and presented the stories in a more sophisticated manner than many of us experienced in Sunday school. I found them to be incredibly fascinating (especially the one on Cain and Abel) and I linked one of my favorite excerpts from his lectures below to give you a quick peek into who he is.

He never claims to be a theologian but sought to demonstrate the value in these older texts and the lessons that could be learned from reading them. He never even claims to be a theist, atheist, or agnostic during his conversations. The result of his lecture series though, among his many other interviews and lectures, is that people have been reconsidering their own personal beliefs and worldviews. And not just that, there are many cases of people being lifted out of depression and nihilism. So what the heck is going on with this guy and the people who are listening to his lectures?

At the end of each lecture, he would have a time for attendees to ask questions. And one of the most common questions he gets presented with is "Do you believe in God?" It's a personal question. It is a question so often asked to determine which group are you in. Do you belong to the Christian, agnostic, or atheist communities or a different faith group all together? We like to delineate ourselves and see if we're rooting for the same teams. Especially with all of the success and publicity he has received recently, there are many people clamoring to hear him identify with their group.

I'm sure at some point in our lives we have all been asked this exact question. Sometimes we're prepared to give an emphatic "yes" or "no", or maybe we cringe a bit at the question and evade an answer out of fear of how our answer will be received. Many have felt pressured into saying they believe something that inside they really don't believe. Or maybe among friends and family, there is a pressure to say we do or don't believe in a God, because the alternative answer would be unpopular or shameful.

Jordan Peterson, put into a similarly awkward position, however gives quite an interesting response. He most often replies to this question with the response "It depends what you mean by 'God' and it depends what you mean by 'believe'?"

His response initially seems like a cop out. "C'mon man... just answer the question!" But I think as you listen to his lectures you realize the genuineness with which he says it and the deeper reasoning behind the response.

The word "God" can mean so many different things to so many different people. Do you mean the old white dude up in the clouds standing behind the pearly gates? Do you mean white Jesus with the dashing brown hair and those spiffy brown sandals who's everybody's best friend? Do you mean that judgmental God who is willing to let people burn in hell because they didn't obey the rules? Do you mean the Jesus who would be taking part in social justice parades today or rocking a MAGA hat? Or a different God from a different religion all together?

And what about the question of "What do you mean by belief?" Is it just a verbal proclamation? Is it mostly an intellectual posture? Is it a matter of how we act? Is belief a one-time occurrence in our lives where we say the magical prayer so we get an out-of-jail free card to go to heaven?

To answer "Do you believe in God?" with a simple "yes" or "no" requires so many assumptions that we may be completely misunderstanding each other when discussing the topic. I think that is why Jordan Peterson responds the way he does. And I think it's for this reason that he has gained so much popularity. Jordan Peterson elaborates in over 40 hours worth of these lectures that God and belief, among many other topics, are not so simplistic, that there is more nuance to the conversation, and he allows his listeners to explore their own ideas.

The Bible is full of stories of people's understanding and knowledge of God changing as they experienced him. Even the disciples, those closest to Jesus, had their understanding of who God was completely changed within the last week of his life. Jordan Peterson, though not a self-proclaimed Christian, is wrestling in front of everyone with who he thinks God is and it has been changing people in incredible ways, myself included. 

And dare I say that we can look elsewhere than the Bible to gain an understanding and knowledge of God? I think Jordan Peterson's contention with the tragedies of the 20th century and watching his own daughter struggle with debilitating health issues that has shaped his understanding the way it has. 

Jordan Peterson in one of his interviews said that he avoids answering this question with a simple "yes" or "no" because he isn't even scratching the surface in his forty hours of biblical lectures. That takes humility to admit that honestly. And I think it's his authenticity that really makes people gravitate to his messages. He doesn't provide an exhaustive explanation of who God is or what it means to believe because he can't, and if we're being honest, none of us can. 

I agree with so much of what he says but not everything. But that's not really the point. He's clearly struck a chord with so many that were longing for this type of long-form conversation on God and meaning within our lives. It's been absent for so many of us and I think there's been a longing for it. I would highly recommend watching his videos, especially if you're within the church, because I think there are many things to be learned from him from how he has conversations, the insight he can give into the psychology of the human mind, and a fresh outsiders view on the value of these stories.

Maybe we can all revel a little more in the mystery surrounding who God is. Maybe it's okay for us to admit just how little we know and be willing to ask tough questions. Maybe it's in the seeking out of who God is that we will find the deepest and most profound answers. Maybe Jordan Peterson just might be helping this younger generation take a step back and really assess what we all believe in and what "belief" really means. 

Why We Shouldn't Throw Away Fairy Tales

One of the things I most look forward to as a father will be the opportunity to read stories to my son. Morgan and I have already started the habit of rocking him to sleep while reading books and I am excited for when he's old enough to really engage with the stories.

For some reason, there's something about stories that resonates so much with me and maybe that's the case for you as well. I'm not ashamed to say I'm the type of guy who gets teary-eyed at the end of movies like Up, Wreck-It Ralph, and Toy Story 3. How can you not shed a tear when Carl gives Russell the Ellie badge, when Ralph is sacrificing himself into Diet Coke Mountain, or when Woody, Buzz, Jessie and their friends are all about to be melted in the incinerator and they are locked arm-in-arm facing it together?

These stories don't have to be animated films though to create these deep feelings. Maybe war films like Saving Private Ryan conjure up similar emotions as you witness their camaraderie and sacrifice. While they aren't usually my cup of tea, romantic films like The Notebook get people welling with emotion as they see the deep love Allie and Noah share. Or maybe you were feeling emotional when half of our favorite heros from the Marvel Cinematic Universe vanished into dust before our eyes in Avengers: Infinity War. Hopefully no one needed a spoiler alert on that last one!

Maybe the stories that most resonate with you are from literature. I remember the shock when reading Harry Potter and the scenes when Dumbledore and Snape died. As with any great piece of fictional writing, these were characters I had come to know and identify with and to read of their deaths was to in some way experience that myself.

These experiences drive us go to the movies and read books. These stories seem to point to certain values or ideals that resonate with so many of us. Even when we can't articulate into words what exactly in the story resonates with us, their impact is felt. In a way, these fictional stories, although they are not necessarily true historically, abstract out themes and concepts that are incredibly true to our real-life experiences as human beings.

What's interesting is that lately there seems to have been more dialogue about Disney's princess stories. Now I'm not going to argue that the Disney version of these older stories are the epitome of fairy tales, but I do think that they are the ones we collectively are the most familiar with.

Keira Knightley, an actress probably most commonly known for her role in the Pirates of the Caribbean, recently said on Ellen that the movies Cinderella and The Little Mermaid are banned in her house because of their depiction of women. Her comments sparked some discussion with people voicing both support and opposition to her thoughts. I don't think she's alone in holding these opinions.

Even a scene in Ralph Breaks the Internet, featuring the Disney princesses, which I will admit I found to be humorous (and still do), poked fun at the past princess stories that Disney had created and as stated in news headlines "spoofed the Disney Princess Industrial Complex" and was a "moment that mattered." A scene like this would not have happened if Disney did not realize this was a widely shared sentiment.

As funny and creative as that scene is, the question remains... Is what this scene portrays about these older stories true? These movies have been mostly acclaimed since they were released. The question is then what changed recently? Are we better people today that we can look back on these stories and see them for what they really are? Or do we have a different and maybe inaccurate perspective on what these stories were really meant to convey?

Take Sleeping Beauty for instance. This is a story that could very easily be construed as "a woman is in trouble and needs a big strong man to save her." There is the obvious plot line of being willing to fight for true love, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing to teach. However, I think Sleeping Beauty contains a strong lesson on parenting.

Aurora's (Sleeping Beauty) parents, did not invite Maleficent to Sleeping Beauty's christening. In essence, her parents were unwilling to allow anything that could be potentially dangerous into her life, which I think we all know, whether or not we want to admit it, is impossible to do.

They were then confronted by Maleficent and issued a curse that on her 16th birthday she would die from pricking her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel. Her parents then decided that in order to protect their daughter, they would burn every spinning wheel in the kingdom and send her away to live with the three fairies. They decided to keep her secluded from all spinning wheels, which I think is a metaphor for all potential things that they believed could cause her harm. Interestingly though, they couldn't keep her from pricking her finger on the spinning wheel as Maleficent still found her way to Aurora.

There is so much more to this story that could be extracted. We could learn from the isolation of Maleficent contrasted with the family and community of all the other characters. Or we could compare Prince Phillip's courage to the fear of Aurora's father. Or how about the importance of strong female supporting characters (which is present in a lot of these fairy tales) around Aurora and the importance that mentorship has in a young person's life.

In Beauty and the Beast, Belle is responsible for redeeming the Beast and is by far the most admirable of all the characters. Gaston, represents the epitome of the self-aggrandizing jerk that I hope we all agree no man should be emulating. Ariel, Pocahontas, and Mulan all represent incredibly strong and courageous women in their stories. Cinderella is a great demonstration of good things coming to those who are diligent with their responsibilities and that is a great lesson for men and women of all ages. 

Disney adapted these fairy tales that had been passed down for several centuries across cultures. There are reasons these stories were shared for so long and that Disney was willing to adapt them into films. You can compare it to evolution and survival of the fittest. These stories that have been handed down to us have been maintained because they speak to some of the deepest virtues and values that we have come to embrace as a culture better than other stories that have been told. Yes, they may be imperfect stories, and worthy of critique, but I think we need to be careful about thinking we are so different or (even worse) better, than our ancestors and that they cannot through their stories speak into our lives.

For the same reason that not every movie and story made today will be remembered 100 years from now, not all stories of old have been passed down by our ancestors to us. There's a reason Lion King will be remembered and not The Emoji Movie or why books like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter will last instead of The Twilight series.

I'm not saying we can't joke about these movies. I just think we need to carefully watch what we joke about, because it very easily and quickly be adopted as "truth."

It feels like there has been a growing disdain or casual indifference to most of what we inherit. It's almost like we've become so preoccupied with the mistakes of our ancestors that we are now in the process of trying to clean the slate of their influences in our lives, which often manifests as the throwing away of everything that they created, valued, and passed down to us, including their stories. We view these older stories as antiquated, irrelevant, or (even worse) oppressive in the themes they portray.

However, I think there is a real danger in this interpretation of these stories and as a result the dismissing of them. Reducing each of these stories down to the plot line of "a woman is in trouble and needs a big strong man to save her" or fill in the blanks "_______ is oppressed and needs the oppressor ________ to save them" is stripping these stories of their real value and intended message.

I'm not saying there's never been oppression, nor am I saying that these stories are perfect in the stories that they tell. However, I think we will be giving up on some of the best stories we have to learn from and discrediting the significance of what our ancestors learned if we just throw them away. I believe that the degree to which we decide to give critical thought to the themes of these stories is the degree to which we will draw benefit from them. Yes, we can still criticize these stories, but to discard them could be like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And if that's the precedence we set, why should we expect our descendants to want to hear any of the stories we tell? 

C.S. Lewis once said, "But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."

I hope we can continue to give these stories a chance to teach us and consider why they have been deemed valuable for so long. I think they have so much to teach not just my son, but me as well because they have been shared with so many people across time and have resonated with so many. I don't want to be a parent, like Aurora's father, that in an effort to shield my son from all of the potential malevolence in the world keeps him from living his life. Similarly , I think it's much better to engage with these stories and be able to learn through the process, then to not even give them a chance.

Let's be careful about what we decide to throw out  because our ancestors are worth listening to and we may be getting rid of the very best they were trying to share with us. 

The Lenses Through Which We See the World

Once a year I have to go see the optometrist. Each year it's the same old tests. "What are the smallest letters you are able to read?" To which I always reply, "I cannot read the big E without my contacts."

I'm usually laughing as I mention it because I know it's an E but it just looks like a blob. If it weren't for contacts and glasses, I would have a hard time believing I would still be alive today. Tough to imagine that I wouldn't have walked out into traffic or off a cliff by this point. Thank goodness for technology and for specialists who have been trained to help people like me attain eyesight. I wouldn't be able to function through life otherwise.

While we all may vary in our level of independence, we all to some degree or another depend on others. That is unless your a hermit tucked back in the middle of the woods. But you wouldn't be reading this blog post if that were the case....

Anyway, many of us see specialists to help us through all sorts of aspects of our lives. Doctors, financial advisers, and gym trainers are perfect examples. But they can't do everything for us. Even though we oftentimes rely heavily on their expertise, we almost always still have a role to play.

Doctors may recommend a treatment plan, but often it requires us to follow through on the recommended modifications and sometimes significant lifestyle changes to realize the desired health outcome. Financial advisers may recommend savings plans and investment strategies to get you to where you want to be financially in the future, but it requires discipline to stay to a budget and a commitment to achieve those financial goals. Gym trainers can encourage and push you through their recommended exercises to improve your health and conditioning, but ultimately you need to push yourself to actually complete the exercises and say no to that third Yum Yum Donut.

Our wants and needs drive us to pursue the assistance of others if we are unable on our own to meet our needs. We start planning for the future, knowing that we want to help pay for our child's tuition in the future or save for a new house, and seek the assistance of a financial planner to get there. We go through the holidays and pack on the pounds and then realize maybe I should get a trainer to lose this weight and keep it off. Recurring illnesses or pain may drive us to finally visit the doctor for a diagnosis.

Until we recognize the need or want, the need for assistance is not evident. More often than not though, the earlier the need is recognized and corrective actions are taken, the greater the outcome in the long run. Establishing good financial, exercise, and health habits at an early age is of much more benefit than waiting until later.

So this got me thinking, what want or need are people like mentors, life coaches, psychiatrists and pastors addressing? And I'm not talking about the life coach who helps you brush your teeth and not act like a snowflake. I'm talking about the life coach who helps feed you the thoughts that drive you to push through the daily grind. To get up in the morning with a purpose and be able to keep pushing through life. Because it can be a grind at times.

Now I realize there can be significant differences between all of these people. There are substantially different qualifications for being a life coach, a mentor, a pastor, and a psychiatrist. But I think there is some significant overlap in the roles these people play in the lives of others. 

Paul Vanderklay, a pastor who runs his own YouTube channel, which I would highly recommend, defined his role as a pastor as "helping people align their story with the story of others and the story of the Bible." Now, this is not necessarily a post about pastoring. For the purposes of generalizing this for all mentors, life coaches, and spiritual leaders we could replace "the story of the Bible" part of his quote with "a framework or lens through which we see the world."

Our story can be quite complex. There have been things within our control and many things out of our control. Highs and lows. Both comedic and tragic moments. Mistakes made and incredible feats accomplished along the way. Maybe there have been unrealized dreams or everything we could ever need has been handed to us. Each of our stories, though they may share some similarities, are incredibly unique.

The stories of others, although often hidden beneath the perfect facade of social media and our "put-together" behavior in public, often have many of the same elements that ours do. Pain, happiness, hardship, joy, strife, love, peace, war, injustice... The more you listen to other peoples stories and study history, the greater sense you get of how difficult and complex this world has been, continues to be, and always will be. A visit to the Holocaust museum or a brief study of the 20th century is all it needs to be overwhelmed with the heaviness of the human condition.

Today more than any other time in history we are confronted with, more often than not, the worst of the worst stories in the world. Mass casualty shootings, natural disasters, the spread of disease, wars, kidnappings and murders, sexual predators, corrupted institutions... At no other time in history have we been bombarded with the tragedies of life from across the globe with the frequency and explicitness we do today. It doesn't take long to see the depravity of this world and how incredibly sad and difficult the stories of humans have been and continue to be.

And this is why I love how Paul Vanderklay defines his role as a pastor. In addition to knowing your own story and engaging with the stories of others is the need to have a framework or lens through which to understand these stories. For those of you who go to optometrists you are probably familiar with a phoropter. (Don't feel bad if you didn't know the name for it because I certainly didn't.)

The optometrist will continue to change the lenses in front of your eyes and check your vision to see how clearly you read the letters in front of you. The very first lens used usually provides a very low resolution view of the letters, but as additional lenses get added or changed, your vision should improve assuming your seeing an optometrist worth his or her salt.

Likewise, the role of mentors, life coaches, and spiritual leaders in our lives is to help us to find a lens or framework through which we can see our lives and the lives of others in the greatest clarity possible that we can. Easier said than done, because as I stated before this world is incredibly difficult and the more you study the human condition the more complex the framework and precise the lens must be for us to function well. I think more often to not, the emotional, spiritual, and mental turmoil we all experience is almost always due to dissonance between our story, the stories of others, and the framework or lens we are using to view the world.

Maybe we haven't dealt with an aspect of our story and really gotten to the root of an issue. Maybe we're so disconnected from others, that our story gets out of alignment of the shared human experience or we lose an understanding of others and what it means to relate with them. Or maybe our framework through which we view ourselves and others is incompatible with our life. Maybe the lens through which we view the world is directing us in a direction that does not lead to the betterment of our story, or to a life that is compatible with the rest of humanity.

Similar to the optometrist changing out lens as they are determining our prescription, we can all be modifying our frameworks to try understand the world, and I think that's so often done best with the assistance of others. As we talk through our lives and really dig into our perceptions of the world, the low resolution frameworks like happiness, popularity, power and money being the meanings of life will inevitably have to be replaced by higher resolution lenses through which we can see the world if we will ever be able to handle the complex and difficult stories that we all share. And who knows, maybe that new worldview that we adopt can take us beyond a state of just coping with the difficulties of life and extend to a greater appreciation of what existence has to offer.

We may never get a 20/20 vision of the world, but here's to hoping we can all at least read the big E of life, whatever that may be, and continue to refine our worldview from there. And don't be afraid to reach out to someone for guidance. We all need guidance whether we wish to admit it or not. Just like the optometrist is saving me from blindly walking into traffic or off a cliff, that person, or those people may help us from falling into the deepest pits of life. We have a role to play in figuring out our way but we weren't meant to figure this out on our own. 

For Those of Us on the Naughty List

I'm so excited for the Christmas season. Every Christmas Eve for several years now, my family has watched Elf. It's become a tradition, and I tradition that I really hope we hold on to for years and years to come. I've probably seen it close to 30 times and can proudly quote a majority of the movie. One of my favorite scenes from Elf is when Buddy is prepared to go to New York City and begin his quest to find his dad. Santa gives Buddy his tips and insight before he commences his journey to the Big Apple and ends it with this brilliant and memorable moment in the movie.

Will Ferrell does an impressive job imitating the behavior of a young child throughout this movie. His reaction to finding out his father is on the naughty list is so spot on for the reaction of a typical child. I can recall a specific instance on Christmas Eve asking my mother if she thought I had been good enough that year to be on the Nice List. While I don't remember exactly what I had done that year, I do remember the unrest I had inside. Had I done enough good? Had I done too much bad? What bad things did my parents know about that I didn't want them to know about? It weighed heavily on my young mind.

Getting an ambiguous reply from my mother, which I now know was an opportunity to get some sick enjoyment out of my suffering that night (just kidding Madre), lead me to think even more about this whole naughty-nice thing. What was the criteria? How "nice" was nice? How "naughty" was naughty? Did I just have to be above the 50th percentile? Was it a scale where as long as the good outweighed the bad, I made the nice list? What was the standard?

There was something raw about this night, something that made it so memorable. I was not at rest whatsoever. In fact, I don't recall sleeping much of that night at all because I realized I really hadn't been as nice of a kid that year as I should have been. As much as I wanted that new Gameboy, Nerf gun, K'NEX set, or whatever the hot toy was that year, a part of me didn't feel deserving of it.

As I laid in bed, staring for hours at the ceiling and listening to the soft ticking of my wall clock, it was easy to make up excuses, distort the narrative, or look at good and bad actions in terms of a scale as ways to justify or avoid confronting mistakes, but it didn't really give me relief. I've hurt people. I've done things that, simply put, were not right.

Despite trying to be as good as possible, I've become exhausted with the pursuit of perfection, because it's not attainable. Deep down, there are things I know I should and should not do and my life has not always aligned with these. I know that the "good person" label should be reserved for those doing good and whole acts and thoughts 100% of the time. With perfection as the standard, I see myself as deserving of the naughty list. Despite my best efforts at being good, I know I have and will continue to come up short.

So I guess I may as well give up hope then right?  I may as well invest in a furnace for all the coal I will be accumulating. If I can't do it on my own what hope is left?

Eugene Cho, pastor of Quest Church, spoke at Collyde Summit this past September and one part of his speech regarding this topic really resonated with me. He had recently been pulled over for going well above the speed limit. With this context he gave us three different scenarios.

In the first, the officer gave him the ticket for the full offense despite his pleading for a lesser or nonexistent punishment. In the second, the officer forgot the offense and let him go without penalty. In the third, the officer gave him the ticket for the full offense. But then, the officer pulled out his own checkbook and wrote a check for an amount greater than that on the ticket and gave it to the driver.

The first scenario depicts justice. The driver was in the wrong for speeding, and the authority gave him the appropriate penalty. The second depicts mercy. While he was wrong for speeding, the authority did not punish him for it. He had forgotten or excused his mistake. The third however, depicts grace. It makes no sense. The man who is at fault, is blessed by the authority despite his wrong doing. He did nothing to deserve the check and yet the authority gave it to him. The authority takes the penalty upon himself and substitutes himself for the driver.

If you were to personally experience all 3 of these, which would leave the biggest impact on you? Which one would most likely cause you to stop speeding in the future? I'm assuming most would say scenario #3.

The thing is that our mistakes are worse than a speeding offense. That "raw" feeling I experienced as a young child, was a real confrontation with the fact that there is something wrong with me. That I'm not as good as I should be.

Michael Yankoski illustrates it well in his book "The Sacred Year."

"So sin is like cancer, eating us alive, diminishing what we're made to be. It's a cancer of the mind, a cancer of the heart, a cancer of the soul. And it has spread out like a tumor throughout our whole selves. And like the Bible says, 'the wages of sin,' like the effects of untreated cancer, 'is death."

This life can weigh heavily on us, wear us down, and change us. We lose our childhood innocence and start to justify actions and behaviors just because that's how the world works. Just like doctor's exams aren't often pleasant, looking in the mirror and seeing ourselves for who we are is not easy or pleasant, but it's necessary. And there's hope!

As we enter the Christmas season, lets celebrate that we've been offered the gift of grace through the life of Jesus Christ. A man who did no wrong during his life, gave up his own perfect life for us. Like the officer, giving out of his own checkbook the payment for the ticket, Jesus paid the price of our mistakes with his own perfect life. Not out of indifference for us, but because he truly loves us. If his action was as simple as writing a check I could label it as indifference. But the fact that he was beaten, whipped, mocked, pierced with nails and thorns, and crucified on a cross to make that exchange for our wrongs, tells me it was out of love.

He came to give this gift to everyone, especially those who saw themselves as people who regret past actions. If you don't believe me read Luke 15:11-32 or Luke 18:9-14. And that love, is enough to turn people from the bad things we've done to the more fulfilling life of good. It's a gift that we don't deserve, but that is offered to us. It doesn't matter what we've done, because he paid for it all on the cross and continues to change lives everyday. People have been and continue to be freed from addictions, greed, lust, envy, hate, self-loathing, pride, gluttony, anger, and the list goes on. He wants to remove that cancer from our lives. He wants so much more for us. If you haven't accepted this gift, please know that He waits anxiously for you to open it.

Wouldn't you accept the check from the officer? Will you accept the gift of forgiveness, acceptance, and love from God? Trust me, it's the best gift one can receive.

To those of us feeling deserving of the naughty list, I hope we can all enjoy the freedom, peace, and hope that comes with the Christmas season! As Line #2 in the Code of the Elves says, "There's room for everyone on the nice list."

Longing for Something Different

This past year has seemed especially difficult. Natural disasters, international tensions, shootings, bombings, all on top of our personal hardships that wear us down repetitively. And while it seems like this year has been particularly difficult, which I believe it has been, these hardships have always been a component of the story-line.

Just a couple weeks ago we remembered the terrible event 12 years ago, that shook our nation and demonstrated just how evil man can be and just how much pain a people can endure. And this isn't by any means the lone instance of this. Just think back to history class when we learned of all of the suffering that has occurred in the history of mankind, let alone just in the past century.

Oppressive leaders, sex-trafficking, child abuse, poverty, racism, hunger, disease and illness, war, genocide, slavery, domestic violence.... Our news is saturated with hard times, sad stories of pain, and the cruel actions of so many people. But is this new? Has there ever been a peaceful time? A time without pain, or hardship, or suffering? A time where everyone treated everyone else with complete respect and received the same?

It seems like a lofty thing for us to ask of humanity (this whole peace and love thing), and yet isn't that what we hope for? Why do we feel as if the world should be different if this is all we've experienced? Hardships, pain, and turmoil is "normal", the only thing we've known, and yet we long for something different. It's like desiring apple pie when you haven't tasted apples or pie before.

So have you personally ever noticed this gap? Have you longed for a better world despite the repetitive failure of our circumstances to even come close to meeting that expectation. If many people desire an ideal world, which I believe many of us do, it says a lot about who we are. Exhausted, we may start to give up hope, but even if we start to accept the status quo, the reality is we still preferred something else. We crave something this world isn't offering.

So is this "better world" attainable? Is there a legitimate hope that exists for something different than the status quo? And if so, what do we rest our hope in?

Those are the big questions.

I'm going to offer my worldview and I would encourage you to keep reading, and join the conversation.

It was when I saw how messed up this world is, the pain we all endure, my own shortcomings in being a "good" person, and the trouble and hardships I've caused others, that I first realized the gap between what I longed for in the world and reality.

I believe that this gap can only be crossed with the help of Jesus Christ, who came and lived a perfect life, and sacrificed himself through death on a cross. God loved us enough to come down as a man, weak, tempted, beaten, mocked, and killed. He suffered like us. He shared in the hardships just so we could know him and know that He loved us and was willing to die for us. He died as an atonement for the mess that exists in our lives that has caused the turmoil and miseries of this world.

Even since Jesus' death and resurrection, his commandments to love one another and make disciples, has pushed the church into the next chapter of His story-line: to work on restoring this world to how it's supposed to be. A perfect community with God and one another, and without pain, hardship, suffering, or death. And he promised he would come again to restore this world completely, ridding it of all of its shortcomings.


A peaceful world is what we long for. On our own, we haven't been able to fix it, but God has entered our story, shared in our suffering, and has offered hope for a better world and a better life for those who follow. He has been, is, and will continue to be working to fix this world. It's a story that fits what can be observed about this world. It's a story that offers hope in the midst of sadness and despair. It's a story that if true, changes everything.

These struggles we go through are real. The pain is real. But there's hope given that says it's only temporary and that it will be dwarfed by the happiness and fulfillment of what's to come. I long for the day, when I experience something different. Much, much, much different.

4 Common Misconceptions About Eternal Life

Despite growing up going to church, I never really understood eternal life. I was fine with the idea of being surprised at life's end as to whether or not heaven exists. I mean I've been a "pretty good" person so I'll live life and then confront whatever may be next when it's in front of me. But for those who enjoy asking tough questions and looking for answers, or what constitutes to some people as intellectuals, society's common depiction of heaven can be troubling.

But this depiction that is commonly pondered on is based off of incorrect conceptions about what eternal life really is, and I think these same misconceptions prevent so many from understanding Christianity and what it's purpose is. I want to discuss 4 of the misconceptions I personally had that, when found to be incorrect, changed my view on the faith entirely. I love thinking through deep stuff like this and I hope you enjoy and take something from some of my thoughts from the past couple months.

1. Eternal Life is Simply Living Forever.

I'm a drummer and my family would tell you that I never stop drumming on something at all times. The steering wheel during drives to and from work, the kitchen table during dinner, railings go up and down the stairs... You get the picture. But the idea of doing something, heck even drumming, forever seems well... pretty boring.

In the same way, I had always found the idea of heaven to be well.... boring. Heaven was a bunch of people, clothed in white, in the clouds, behind those pearly gates, playing harps and singing hymns together forever and ever. On and on... and on........ and you get the picture...

This life looked so much more fun than heaven did, and therefore heaven deserved to take the backseat in priorities to my own life here. Living forever might be fun for a few months, I guess years if you keep meeting new people, but after a while... yawn...

But this belief that it's simply living forever, strips "eternal life" of it's greatest characteristic. In the Gospel John, Jesus states,

"... I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."
                                                                                                             - John 10:10 -

He doesn't state that he has come so they may live forever. He states that they may have life, and have it to the full.

When we say eternal life, so much pivots around both of these words:  Eternal and Life.

Life is something that is quantifiable. One can have a lot of life, while another can have very little, seemingly dead. Often we look at it as unchangeable and that we're each given one and it's a life regardless of how it's lived. I would argue that we can have an abundance or scarcity of life.

Think about it. Two drivers on the road are both cut off by an aggressive driver. One of them reacts by flipping off the guy who cut him off and lets this detract from the rest of his day and makes him miserable with other people. The second driver, who realizes the insignificance of what has been done to him, realizing he's okay and didn't crash, and doesn't let it affect his life and relationships with others. This is definitely an extremely simplified situation but hopefully it helps illustrate the point.

And Eternal. While we often associate this with unlimited time, it actually is meant to quantify the amount of life that is offered to us. Think of never ending life being represented by an infinitely long string along a timeline. What real eternal life is that same string of infinite length, but also with an infinite thickness. It's about experiencing an infinite quality and quantity of life forever.

I think we can all say this world is difficult and trying. Multiple shootings, natural disasters, and heart-wrenching stories have occupied our news, especially this past year it seems. Living forever doesn't really fix that, but an abundance of "life", now that sounds enticing and worth looking for.

2. Eternal Life Starts at Death

The light. The moment when we pass from this world and continue on to whatever comes next. A man stands there (I guess this is God) and he determines whether or not you get eternal life and go to heaven, or go to hell. This is the common perception of when eternal life begins.

Growing up, I saw a huge disconnect between this life and this supposed eternal life. It seemed like it was simply a hope for people that needed lemonade in a world that was handing them a ton of lemons. This life seemed "fine" in many respects, and it was difficult to buy into the belief that we would live an entire life here, have it end, and then start another like this one never happened. And when things seem disconnected, one has a legitimate reason to question them. But I think it's the fault of our culture's oversimplification of eternal life that has led to this disconnect.

C.S. Lewis' book The Great Divorce I believe paints a better picture of when eternal life starts, or better yet, when the progression for it starts. He throughout his book emphasizes that right now, in this life, on a daily basis we can either gain life or lose it. Jesus said that he came so that may have life and have it to the full, which means that it wasn't here before. Power, riches, beauty, sex, relationships, and titles have all been pursued by man as a way of achieving fulfillment, and yet time and time again we have seen how they have failed to fill the void in the individual that longs for purpose and significance and often left them a more deteriorated and lost individual. Christ showed us how to live a full life and then provided the forgiveness, mercy, and sacrifice to enable us to have it.

So in a world that tries to continuously feed us lies about what will make us happy and give us a worthwhile life, I would argue there is only one way to a fullness of life. It starts here and now, not after death.

3. Eternal Life Can Be Earned.

God opens the books and weighs the scales to see how much good and how much bad we've done. It's simple and it's fair. Like karma, if you do good things, good things happen to you like receiving eternal life. If you do bad things bad things happen to you, you're going to hell. It's balanced and just.

But when you realize you're not as good as you thought before, you start to give more thought to what the whole point of this life is. Could I even earn eternal life if I tried? And what does eternal life look like?

How could an imperfect person be in the presence of a perfect God? If I've made but one mistake, how could I possibly be fit for heaven?

"For the wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
                                                                                                       - Romans 6:23 -

God doesn't want to judge and keep people out of heaven. He wants to be with us and doesn't want us to experience death.

The ultimate way to demonstrate ones love for someone, would be to give up one's life for that person to save them, right? A close family member or a significant other is about to walk in front of a speeding vehicle and you dive in and push them out of the way taking the punishment.

Simply put. That's what Jesus did when he died on the cross. Sin earns death, and death is the absence of life. This world will wear us down if you don't have anything that's able to fill you up and give you life. He took the sins that deserve death from those who believe in who he claimed to be, and gives the eternal life he had to those same individuals. It was a demonstration of love. It was God showing just how much he loved mankind and how much he wanted us to be with him. We don't earn eternal life, it's a gift from God, sitting in front of us waiting to be opened.

4. Heaven's Boring

A cartoon version of heaven may work for children but as an adult, I refuse to believe such a childish idea. As I hit my teenage years, I really had a hard time accepting heaven when it was often portrayed like fantasy. As much as I wanted to believe it because my church, and family believed it, I couldn't myself. It wasn't until I realized how unlike those typical depictions heaven really was, that I actually committed to believing in it. I'd like to briefly describe as best as I can what I think heaven will really look like. This are small glimpses into what I believe is impossible for us to completely explain or grasp.

Community. First off heaven is a community that is built on 100% pure relationships. Look at the elements of two or three of your best relationships in life. Think about some of the intimacy, trust, and love that is experienced in these. Now imagine that this exists between everyone, where there is no fighting between individuals, there is no sadness or hurt feelings, and everyone can find pure joy in everyone else.

Freedom. It's a life away from so many of the things that restrict life like listed before. The pursuit of money, power, glory, and pleasure are all intrinsically valueless, and heaven provides fulfillment and frees the individual to satisfy the hunger and thirst for pure life that they long for.

Transformation. It's not just about living forever. It's much more about becoming more of who we were intended to be. Imagine a life without guilt, without disappointment in yourself because God has helped you reach the pinnacle where you no longer hurt others.

We often look externally, to possessions and experiences, for excitement and fail to see all the opportunity within the individual and especially within relationships to experience excitement. I think heaven presents a beautiful environment for us to experience those jaw dropping experiences but most importantly within perfect relationships and as the people we were intended to be, pure and without sin. Thanks for reading!

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened."
                                                                                                          - Matthew 7:7-8 -

Changing for Better or for Worse?

Well these past four years sure did go by fast, and upon reflection it's amazing how much I believe I've changed since my freshman year. I can remember auditioning for the Blue Band and then thinking that so much of my self-worth was riding on that result. I remember  planning to pursue engineering because I enjoyed the subject, but also because I wanted to live comfortably and this occupation would give me the money to do so. I remember thinking that wearing your dorm key on a lanyard was cool. I couldn't have been more wrong on all three (especially that last one).

We are constantly changing. Day-to-day we may seem the same person, but really reflect over the past few years or even months and I'm sure there's something that has changed in your personality, your temperance, your desires, or your dreams. To believe that we are unchanging, that we can't grow and develop or diminish and decay, can be dangerous. The truth is, we are taking one of those two paths in almost every situation. So are you changing for better or for worse?

First, what are you working towards? What is culminating goal that you have set for yourself? Your final destination dictates the trajectory that you will try to take and therefore should be given much thought. The thing to watch for though is that in pursuit of this goal, does it cause you as a person to grow or deteriorate? Pursuit of happiness, a common goal for people, could lead to the compro In the grand scheme of life though, lanyards are of much less importance than things like relationships and our contributions to our community. The goal you have makes you more aware of the progress or the retrogression you make over time.

Second, what setting are you putting yourself in? A plant placed in fertile soil with plenty of nutrients will often thrive more successfully than when it's planted in a bunch of rocks. Are you surrounding yourself with groups that instill good values and support for you? I wrote a post before called "The Rule of Five" which talks about this exact topic. The people we surround ourselves with will have a big impact on who we change into.

Lastly, what attitude do you have regarding change? In Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable about the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. They both go into the temple to pray. The Pharisee was prideful and lists off all of the great things he does and then lists the ways that he is better than the Tax Collector. But the Tax Collector simply humbles himself and asks for mercy. Humility leads to positive change because it allows us to recognize our shortcomings instead of keeping them in the dark. We can always find worse actions of others to compare ourselves to. If we use these actions to justify our actions ourselves entirely we're in trouble.

This world is changing, and watching the news lately I have been deeply saddened by just how much more pain, violence, deceit, and discouragement there has been lately. We all contribute to how this world changes, for better or for worse and we probably contribute more bad than often we would like to admit. So let's do our best with what we have because we could always use more people consciously trying to change for the better.