Here’s a secret I learned long ago. It’s a big one and it’ll propel you into a future of greatness…. STOP TAKING SOCIAL CUES FROM YOUR PEERS. Instead of taking social cues from people your age, take cues from people ten and twenty years older than you. Are you looking for a church that has a lot of people who are your age so you can hang out? That’s fine, but try looking for one where most of the people have families and perhaps a little grey hair. Why? Because the sooner you can relate to their priorities, the sooner you’ll be ready for the next stage of life. I’m in my late thirties but I’m more interested in hanging out with people who are retired. What’s it teaching me? It’s teaching me what matters later in life is friendships, family and love. In matters of faith, what matters to them is not theological debate, but closeness with Jesus and unity with believers.
A recent article in the New York Times asks the question why so many people in their 20′s are taking so long to grow up. In the article, Robin Henig proposes: “It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.” [...]
A good friend and I were hanging out the other day and she asked about church, if I went, where I went and so on. That’s a blog for another day, or perhaps a book, or perhaps a few slips of paper put into a wooden box and then buried. My friend had recently had a baby, and I asked her if having a child made her want to attend church more. I was surprised when she answered that it did not. My friend grew up in an extremely conservative family in a conservative small town and attended a conservative church. She said, rather surprisingly, that she didn’t want her child to grow up constantly being taught how “other people” were different, learning to see the “unlike me” in the people around him. In part, I completely understand how my friend feels. But I’d not lump that characteristic in with the church as I’d lump it in with all of humanity. There are pockets of people who do not seem to make a big deal out of the differences in others as much as the similarities, but those pockets are few, and some of them are part of the church [...]
My friend Shauna Niequist has a book coming out and I asked her if I could feature an excerpt. The book is Bitter Sweet, thoughts on Change, Grace and Learning the Hard Way. Congrats on the new book, Shauna. Here you go: My best friend Annette and I laid on our towels until we realized that someone was standing in our sun. We squinted up at a big man with a big camera wearing a Girls Gone Wild hat. He told us that if we went out in the water and kissed and took off our bikini tops, he’d give us each a hat. We stared up at him. Where to start, really? We sputtered out unrelated phrases like, “Um, those are our husbands, right there in the water …” and, “You know, that’s not really our deal …” and, “Uh, we’re like a lot older than you think we are …” Finally, we gave up explaining and said, “No, thank you. No. No, thank you.” He shuffled away, and a few minutes later, there were lots of girls in the water, kissing and taking their tops off. Huh. Questions abound. Our first question: “Wait—did he really think we were [...]
In movies, the bad guy has to display he is the bad guy through actions. It won’t do to have a subtitle come on the screen that says “this is the bad guy.” A cliche, yet effective methodology is to have the bad guy belittle somebody who is weaker, poorer of less fortunate. A bad guy will belittle a servant, a waiter, a spouse or child. The reason screenwriters write these scenes is because, eventually, the bad guy is going to get killed, and they can’t let anybody in the audience feel sorry for them when this happens. They have to establish how bad the bad guy really is. In real life, the bad guy doesn’t always get killed off, but that doesn’t change the fact we don’t like him. And ultimately, bad guys get what they deserve. They end up alone, or worse, surrounded and yet lonely. They may take advantage of people but the world doesn’t run on money or fame, it runs on love, and when you take advantage of people, you end up without love. The other problem with real life is it’s hard to tell whether or not you are the bad guy. We all [...]
