Welcoming Rene

Our dear friend and brother Rene Cacheaux will be joining us as the newest member of Witless Brevity. I'd like to be the first to welcome him; feel free to do the same.

Truth

I had coffee with a few friends last week, and an old friend brought up a very interesting question.

When Christians start to doubt their faith they normally turn to Pastors, Bible Study leaders and/or Apologetic books. Doubting Christians hardly ever go to atheist or books arguing against religion. Why is that?

In his opinion, Pastors, Bible Study leaders and books normally reaffirm things Christians already know, but secular sources give Christians a completely different viewpoint.

Now the question is this:

If truth is what we aspire to know, then how come when Christians doubt they only search for truth in things that will further support their faith?

Is because we as Christians would rather have security and hope than have truth? And is that the way it should be?

Or

Is it for a completely different reason they choose to seek Christian sources opposed to atheist ones?

Friends, lend me your thoughts.

DWC, at a glance

.....This past week was my first DWC experience. Rather than sum up the week, I'm going to sum up part of the last evening. As I got to know several prominent Cru members, including David "Pimple" Dalrymple, Jessica Irving and the up-and-coming Joel Peabody, a man named Max came up to me and began interrogating me. Max looks about 30-35, balding, and I believe he was born in China. He is an undergraduate at a small Christian college 30 minutes south of Dallas. I'm not even sure why he was with the UT group, but the first day, shortly after Stewman informed me I was a leader, I met Max.

.....Flash forward to the last night, and I find myself being asked difficult questions about faith, denominations, non-Christians and other matters. I'm not sure why he saw me as an authority figure, but during the course of the hour and a half conversation, he alluded to doing some research about my father and Dallas Seminary. I can only assume he made the conclusion that I, being his team leader and having my father for my . . . father . . . crap . . .anyway, because of these reasons, I suspect that's why he came to me.

.....So, as natural in conversation, we started with the easy topic of predestination vs. free will, or, as Max put it, Calvinism vs. Armenianism. Soon, there followed questions of assurance of salvation, and after that he asked me if I believed that if someone continually committed a sin, if they were truly saved. I told him I believed that if someone is truly saved, then there is nothing they can do, no matter how many times they do it, that will separate them from God. Otherwise, Jesus did not die for ALL our sins, which is pure heresy. So, he asked me how to deal with a sin that continues to trip you up. Through prior knowledge and one of the workshops taught that week by Nick DeCola, "Will I Ever be Free?," in which he talked about how to deal with sins that continue to plague us, I told Max he should continually pray about it, but also embrace fellowship and look for an accountability partner.

.....He then proceeded to tell me how he felt like he couldn't tell anyone at his school, because he was afraid they would report him. He said if anyone is reported or caught for certain sins (he never told me exactly what, but used pornography as an example), they get fined (he said $300), and then after a second occurrence you get expelled. What's wrong with Christians today?

.....Don't get me wrong, there are definitely some things that should get you kicked out of school, but most of those are covered by Johnny Law. So, if Johnny Law intervenes, let there be expulsion.

.....I know this (meaning the extreme punishment) isn't normality with all Christians (especially those at WitBrev), but where did we get the audacity to condemn our fellow, equally fallen man?

How to Sequitur

“That’ll be sixteen dollars and thirty cents,” said the guy behind the counter at the Queen Anne office supply store.

I was out walking around the neighborhood to run a few errands, and at this particular stop I was buying some blank CD's. I had noticed a number of simple blue signs and things with the number “12” printed very large on them, most notably a huge flag on top of the space needle, and I had assumed that these had something to do with the Seahawks playoff game tomorrow against my Dallas Cowboys.

Curious as to the significance of this number, I asked the clerk, “Who is number twelve, is that Shaun Alexander or something?”

The clerk, who was evidently not a huge Hawks fan, replied, “I don’t know. I think it’s for the Twelfth Man or something.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Big game tomorrow against Dallas, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess there is,” he responded, apparently just realizing that the playoffs were starting the next day in our NFL-crazed city.

“I’m actually from Texas, so I’m a Cowboys fan,” I said, still unaware that he didn’t give a crap about football.

“That’ll be interesting tomorrow. All your friends will hate you for being the only person rooting against Seattle,” he said jovially. This was probably the first time in the conversation where one of us said something that actually engaged the other person where they were at, him coming to my level as a football fan and meeting me there. Watch how I handle it.

“Actually, pretty much all of my friends are from out of town, so none of them are big Seahawks fans. They won’t really care,” I said, ignoring the fact that he actually was trying to join me in the conversation and taking it someplace else completely.

“Okay,” he said, handing me my receipt. “Have a nice day.”

“Have a good one,” I waved back as I walked out of the store, just beginning to realize much too late the awkwardness that had just occurred.

I thought about this seemingly insignificant awkward conversation the whole walk home. I thought about how we weren’t really having a conversation, instead I was coming from one point of view and he another, and when he actually made an attempt to meet me where I was, I shifted and took it someplace else, rejecting him for the sake of correcting the inaccuracy of his statement.

This example is admittedly really very small, but I wonder what this short scene of mismeeting reveals of my own character and the ways in which I approach relationships, whether to the guy behind the counter at the office supply store or to my good friends.

The problem seems to be that my comments to him didn’t really respond genuinely to him or to his statements, or as native Latin speakers (Roman, not Hispanic) and modern day lawyers would say, my comments were “non sequitur”, which means, “It does not follow”. What would it look like for me to follow, to yield to another person, instead of remaining stoic in whatever arbitrary location I happen to be in and forcing the other to shift around in several different directions to try to find me? How can I love my neighbor if I won’t at least meet him halfway?