I’ve been super busy with work lately. Lots of stuff has been happening, and there’s lots to do. Plus some dead lines coming up. Speaking of work though, Andy Trozan took a job with us. And he’ll be my minion. Now we have Nate and Andy both. What a sweet deal!

So I seem to have friends that enjoy getting me to do stupid and or crazy things. Chummel with the whole sledding incident. Kenan and our random adventures. Zac and making me run a half marathon. Now, you’ll notice that those are all friends from back home. So I thought, upon leaving home and getting college, things might change some. And having graduated college, things might change even more. And things did. And things did.

Now, Matt Voss, a good friend of mine from college, called me this week. He had this brilliantly crazy idea. And I’m just dumb enough to do it. We’ve decided that, in October, we will do something crazy. Something that not a lot of people do. But we’re going to do it. And it’s going to be incredible.

We’re going to run a marathon.

[Update] I will need to raise support. Apparently Voss led me astray. But I still am planning on doing this thing.

Last night Troy and I had a good discussion. We’ve visited it before, and I’m sure that we’ll visit it again. We were talking about how it is hard to find adult leaders for the youth. Namely, leaders often times feel like they need to force the students into a certain behavioral pattern. Or, in another way, we feel like we need to get kids to act in a certain fashion. But that’s not our purpose. We are aren’t here to be there parents. We aren’t here to make them act in a certain fashion.

Now, several people are already up in arms, but that’s probably because they are misunderstanding the point. Think about it. God meets us where we are at. God loves us for who we currently are. And God wants to meet them where they are at. Can we truly be so presumptuous to demand that they should meet us where we expect them to be? How will a student ever feel comfortable coming to God when all that he or she sees is us demanding a certain set of behaviors? The God that student will see is a God of standards, regulations and behaviors. Not a God that is loving and caring and genuinely interested in people for who they are (after all, He made us the way we are!).

This is why I find myself so frustrated with religious organizations that impose seemingly arbitrary regulations. For example, no drinking, no dancing, no smoking, no “R” rated movies, and the list goes on. One on hand, I concede the understanding that if your brother or sister in Christ would struggle with those things, then don’t do them. On the other hand, you are free to do those things (if your faith allows you to do them, as Paul writes) when you are not in their presence. It is not right to impose such regulations on people outside of the people that would struggle with those behaviors.

There are several reasons why we behave in this fashion though. We, as people, like to be able to measure things in a quantifiable, or at least visible, fashion. Being able to say that we don’t smoke, don’t have extra-marital sex, don’t drink, don’t dance, or don’t whatever are visible, tangible things that we can measure. But these fall so short of the real issue: what’s going on inside of our hearts. And that is why these measures are nothing more than bandages at best, and a load of hypocritical crap at worst.

So as we discussed these things, it dawned on me. It was a thought that I think I’ve had rolling around in the back of my head for a while. But verbalizing it made me realize the incredible gravity of it. The real reason we gravitate towards tangible, outward measurements is that we don’t want to be introspective. We don’t want to sit down and look into our own hearts. We understand that sin is an action. But we don’t want to think about sin as a condition. Because if it is a condition, then we must dig deep inside of ourselves. We must allow God to dig deep inside of us. And we must nail that foul creature that is our sinful condition to the cross day after painful, bloody day.

To say that we have a sin condition is, quite possibly, the biggest understatement I’ve said in a while. Greed, gluttony, selfishness, pride, arrogance. The things that Jesus hit incredibly hard on are the things that we don’t want to talk about. The money changers that Jesus chased out. Why? Because they were acting out of greed. They were taking advantage of other people. The pharisees that Jesus hammered repeatedly. Why? They acted out of arrogance and pride.

All of the people that Jesus hit the hardest on were the people that had systems set up to make themselves look good. They were the people that wanted to make others adhere to certain standards. They didn’t get it. They didn’t look into their own heart. They refused to see the sin condition in their own life, and instead sought to control the sin action.

So what of all of this? What does any of it mean? Don’t be foolish and act like the sin action is the most important thing. Don’t judge people on their actions. We all have different starting points. What you deem wrong (drinking, for example) may not be wrong for someone else. So don’t be so hasty to judge. Don’t be so hasty to expect certain behaviors. Don’t get caught up in how you think things should be. Try to see to the heart. Try to love people for who they are. Try to meet people where they are.

Think about it. Where would you be if God expected you to meet Him at His level, at His standard?

Memories gently cling to me
As the dew is oft to do in the early morn
‘Til the morning sun should melt the dew
So they do deliquesce in the passing years

Thoughts and feelings from long ago
Drift like music dancing in the wind
Carried on by the winds of time
Lost as they pass beyond this moment

Brandon and Beth had their little baby girl, Grace, yesterday. I’m incredibly excited for the both of them!

Congratulations Brandon and Beth, you guys are going to be great parents!