Non-Fiction

My thoughts about things, mostly from a spiritual perspective. Some of this material could be considered creative nonfiction.

God in a Hazy Shade of Winter

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

Recently, as I was sitting at a traffic light and staring up at billboard, the thought hit me that since God is eternal, and that since man has only been on the earth for a few thousand years (I know this point is debatable), the whole span of human existence is but a mere blip for God.

I wondered then, “What did God do for all the ages leading up to our existence?” Does He have a much bigger role that He is filling, rather than just “Creator of Humans”? There is a whole universe out there, after all. And the vast majority of it has to do with us tiny, weak humans.

I have always thought of humans and the earth as being God’s big success story, that His big accomplishment was us. However, we are really only a minute part of what God has done. It’s kind of like how a small child imagines that he is his parents’ whole life. He isn’t able to fathom them ever having a life before him — as though they were born parents.

One thing I have wondered about for years is what Satan was doing after He and his cohorts were kicked out of Heaven, but before God created man. Satan is called the “god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4), but what was happening before there really was a world (earth) and people to tempt? Why did God even allow Satan to enter the Garden of Eden in the first place? I think I’m getting ahead of myself.

The more I’ve thought about all these questions, the more I realize that I’m asking the wrong questions, or maybe it’s just that I’m making inaccurate assumptions about God.

God isn’t constrained to time like we are. For example, we often think in terms of humans having been around for a specific length of time, say 6000 years (again, debatable). Furthermore, we understand that God existed before humans, and will, of course, exist for all eternity with His believers in the New Jerusalem, after earth as we know it is gone, and He has created a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. 21:1-2). Thinking about time in a linear fashion is the only way we know to do so.

I believe that God is also able to do the same thing — view time as a long line stretching to eternity in both directions, both past and future. However, I believe that for Him there really is no such thing as time. Everything past, present, future exists all at once for Him. He sees it all, all the time. He’s God. He’s big. He can do that.

Therefore, to ponder what God was doing before He created us, is really basing the question on faulty assumptions. In Exodus 3:14, God calls himself, “I AM”. God is, was, and will be. There has never been a time, nor will there ever be a time, when God does not exist.

In fact, even framing the last sentence the way I did is inaccurate. God came before time, not the other way around. It would be impossible for there ever to be a time when God did not exist, because He created time. God exists without time.

This brings me back to my original question then, “What did God do for all the ages leading up to our existence?”. I believe the only way to answer it is by concluding that for God humans have never not existed. We’re no less real and alive to Him today than say, a billion human years ago.

A different kind of post…

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

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Today’s post is going to be a little different. I’m going to free write about a random word, editing very little of the final product. I decided to use the 10th word in the 10th row from today’s article on the Wikipedia homepage. It happens to be the word “crew” (unless I counted wrong).

The first thing I think of is the crew of a ship, like the Love Boat. At the beginning of the 4th grade I went through this phase where I liked to draw yachts, like the 50 or 75 foot kind. The only trouble was I really only knew how to draw one kind, and that was a 3-leveled, very simple kind of boat. I’d see other kids at school, like Mike or Bobby, drawing boats so I would draw them also. Sometimes I drew them at home. I remember sitting down at the desk I had put in my closet (yes, I know that’s weird) and started drawing a boat. For the first time I guess, I realized that this was the same exact boat as I had been drawing all along. No difference except for sometimes I added a little stick man on the bow. I didn’t know how to draw any other kind of boat, so I just gave up and decided my boat-drawing days were over. I never have drawn very well. I used to hate art class. I dreaded having to turn in anything to Mrs. C. because I was sure she’d think I was some sort of imbecile for not being able to create depth or shadows or anything and that my people always looked like they had tree branches for arms and legs and long spindly fingers if I drew any. I was smart and did well in school. Generally I got all A’s. Drawing was beyond me, however. I guess the way I felt in art class was the way a lot of kids felt every day of every school year. They probably dreaded turning in their writing assignments for fear of being branded stupid and being laughed at, either in class or worse, in the teachers’ lounge. Of course we had no empathy for those kinds of kids in class. I’m sure I laughed at a few of them over the years, wondering how anyone could be so stupid. But I was wrong; we were all wrong. Now when I look at a wonderful drawing or painting, I wonder how anyone could be so talented as to be able to create something so beautiful and alive. How could they see it in their mind before it was ever formed on the paper or canvas? I guess we should never judge others. No, I know we should never judge others. We don’t know their story, where they came from, the problems they’ve had to face, the sorrow and hurt in their hearts.

And that’s the lesson I learned from writing about the word “crew”.

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Thinking about Genesis…

/ Clay D. / 1 Comment

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As I sat in the Easter service this past Sunday contemplating the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection, I had a thought. What if God gave us the creation account as the first story in the Bible so as to set the bar for the entire rest of His narrative? It makes sense to me.

If we know nothing about the Bible and the first thing we do is pick it up and start reading at the beginning with Genesis — BAM! it hits us right in the face.

You mean God created the whole universe from nothing? He just spoke it — and the world was formed?

The Genesis account is no doubt difficult for human minds to grasp, especially our western, educated, logical minds.

However, if we can wrap our heads around what the Bible tells us regarding the world’s creation, or even just suspend trying to understand it at all and just accept it on faith, then we allow ourselves the possibility to believe the rest of the miracles in the Bible.

Surely, if we accept that an eternal, timeless God created the world from nothing just by speaking what He wanted, then surely we can go on to believe that He can part the Red Sea and allow His people to escape to freedom.

Surely if we we’re OK with the fact that God created the first woman from a rib taken from the first man, the we can accept something small such as His son turning water into wine.

Healing leprosy? That’s nothing compared to populating the entire animal kingdom at will and then saving it by sending a male and female of each kind to seek refuge from a worldwide flood aboard a huge ark that, incidentally, took 120 years to build.

Of course, there is no way to prove my theory, but maybe if God has a Q&A session in Heaven, I’ll get an answer.

 

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Jesus is Just Alright, or Which Came First — The Easter Bunny or The Black List?

/ Clay D. / 4 Comments

undercoveragentAt the very end of “The Black List” recently, Liz lays her head on Red’s shoulder. Acting as a father figure, he holds her and gently places a kiss on the back of her head. She cries from the unimaginable facts she has recently discovered about her husband.

Red has just completed building a music box for her. It plays the same song as the one her father gave her when she was a little girl. Liz realizes that just as her father played it for her when she needed someone there for her, Red has made it so that it would be ready for her when she finally reaches the point where she would have to face the facts about her husband.

It was touching. At that moment she was completely cared for, completely protected. Red knew what Liz needed and he had prepared for it in anticipation of what was to happen.

Out of nowhere I realized that is exactly what I wanted:  to be a little boy again, held in the arms of my mother when all the world seemed against me. When all I wanted to do was ball my eyes out, she would hold me, stroke my hair, and tell me everything was going to be OK. I didn’t have to be strong at that moment. She was. My father was. They provided for me and protected me. It was a strong, solid safety net — one that kept me from certain tragedy (or so it seemed to my young mind).

I’m beginning to see how God is that safety net for us, His children. I’ve known for a long time that He wants to be our Comforter, our Protector, but it’s taken me an even longer time to turn that head knowledge into heart knowledge — to accept the fact that He really is there, no matter what. He longs to have us rest in Him: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3).

I recently heard Timothy Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, teaching on Jesus’ ascension. One of the verses he references is John 10:17. Here, Mary Magdalene has just discovered that Jesus has risen from the dead. He says to Mary, “‘Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

As Keller explains, Jesus tells Mary not to hold on to Him, that He must go. The ascension was a good thing, because only by ascending is Jesus able to sit in His place of honor, at the right hand of the Father. After His resurrection, but before His ascension, he walks the earth just as any ordinary man might do. By ascending to Heaven, however, He is able to assume the role He was always intended to hold.

Because Jesus is in His seat of power at the right hand of the the Father, He watches over us continually, interceding for us, no matter what.

Certainly, Jesus had power when He was in human form. After all, He was still King of Kings. However, all the final pieces fell into place when He assumed His intended role.

It’s been a difficult journey for me, trying to grasp how much God truly loves His children. Even though the analogies we might make through stories like the ones on “The Black List” can spur us toward thinking about God’s vast love for us, these comparisons can never begin to illustrate all that He has in store for us. “But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

My belief is that we’ll never really under God’s immense love this side of Heaven. We simply have to trust in Jesus, patiently waiting until we’re able to worship Him in person and experience His full glory.

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Something to think about…

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

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I’ve always been troubled by the idea that two equally God-fearing, God-worshipping individuals could have such radically different opinions theologically, politically, and socially. For this to be possible, it seems almost as though God’s system is faulty. The truth should be clear and easy to discern.

Could it be that God designed things this way? Perhaps He wants it to be easy to grasp the fundamentals of the Christian faith (Jesus is Lord, He was crucified for our sins, and then was resurrected). This possibility leaves other, outlying details subject to interpretation, based on what kind of and how much importance each of us places on individual tenets of the faith.

If this is true, then we, as believers in Christ and earnest seekers of truth, never give up our quest for knowledge. We never quit thinking, never quit debating each other, never quit refining our own beliefs, never quit being sharpened by our fellow believers (Proverbs 27:17).

For example, I may place great emphasis on complete and total surrender of everything in my life to God, keeping for myself only enough material goods for a meager sustenance and lifestyle, allowing me to give generously to others and lift them up. Another person may cherish the freedom we have in Christ to buy, sell, and turn a profit,  thus creating a more lavish lifestyle for himself.

One individual may emphasize the social aspects of the gospel, crusading for justice and equality for all mankind. Another individual’s mantra may be based on a capitalistic interpretation of God’s word — “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10b).

Is any one of these approaches completely right or wrong, or are they all a part of the greater whole of God’s word and will?

I don’t have the answer to this question. I believe, however, that having such differing opinions is valuable to us as believers in Christ. As we keep searching for truth in the Scriptures, may God’s word become sharper and clearer to us, as we become more and more unified in our faith in Jesus.

 

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In Support of Kids!

/ Clay D. / 1 Comment

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Recently I was chatting with an acquaintance of mine. He is one of those guys who has a lot of friends. Countless times I’ve heard him mention something about “this buddy of mine”.

My acquaintance (I’ll call him Bob for simplicity) and I were talking about divorce, as he went through a divorce recently and has a young daughter. We had been discussing child support in terms of the mandatory court-ordered kind, but our conversation had drifted more into supporting a child in general.

Bob mentioned something to the effect that a child is the gift that keeps on giving — meaning not something positive, but in the negative sense in that it is something you have to keep paying for. “I’ve only got 8 more years though, and then that’s it,” implying that his financial obligation would be over when his daughter turns 18. To be fair, I’m not sure if he merely meant the monthly child support payment he makes, but it came across to me that he meant his entire obligation would end at that time.

As if that weren’t bad enough, a few moments later in the conversation Bob referenced “one of my buddies who got this ol’ girl knocked up.” He said, “I told him not to marry her just because you got her pregnant. Just look at it as another payment.”

Of course, Bob was talking about the assumed child support payment the father would take on.

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How can you look at a child as “just another payment”. Certainly, the father should take financial responsibility for the child, ensuring that his or her needs are adequately met (not to mention those of the mother).  However, true responsibility for the child goes far beyond buying diapers, clothes, or school supplies. Children need a father just as much as they need a mother.

According to statistics recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , almost 41% of all births in 2012 were by unwed mothers. More shocking, at least to me anyway, is the statistic from the U.S. Census Bureau that 62 percent of women aged 20-24 who gave birth in 2011 were unmarried.

These figures are hard to digest. No wonder kids these days are suffering — emotionally, intellectually, mentally, and physically.

I realize many people in the world believe that it is old-fashioned to insist that a child be reared with one mother and one father, especially given today’s wide range of acceptance for what is termed a “normal” family.

I hate to say it, but as long as our culture believes it is acceptable to ignore God’s plan for the family, we will all continue to suffer.  He defines what a family should be in many places throughout the Bible.

Genesis 2:24 says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

Mark 10: 9 expands  on the idea of husband and wife remaining together: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

I’m not naive. Certainly, I understand that there are unavoidable circumstances where children cannot have both parents — a married male and a female — to raise them. I have all the compassion and sympathy in the world for single moms (and dads), and I know quite a few of them. I also realize that children are capable of thriving in a less-than-ideal environment. But why put our kids at risk for a lifetime of struggle and hardship if it’s not necessary?

Summing up my argument, as much as it is possible we should strive to create the ideal type of home as God set forth for us — a matched set of married parents living together with their children (and, of course, a chocolate lab).

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My Apologies to Susan Sontag

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

“I believe…that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap.”

How much of what we believe is based on few actual facts or, worse yet, no facts?

Recently I realized that the whole of my opinion on Susan Sontag has been based on the quote above from the the movie Bull Durham. I haven’t even seen the movie, other than a couple of famous scenes, including the famous Crash Davis rant from which this quote was taken.

I often stumble upon Sontag’s name on the various websites I frequent, where she is held in high regard. Some part of me has always dismissed her as a feminist who wasn’t worth taking time to learn more about. Finally, after the umpteenth time of coming across a reference to her or something she wrote or said, the idea of her remained in the forefront of my brain long enough for me to realize that I had never personally researched her or read anything she’d written.

I thought a bit longer about my opinion of her. Sure, I knew her name, but that was all I knew with certainty. I had formed my entire opinion of her based on one line from one character in one movie that I had not even bothered to watch in its entirety. I never realized how thin my actual knowledge of her was, and had been for 15 or 20 years.

What’s even worse is that the impression of Sontag I had in in my mind was all formed subconsciously. Even though I couldn’t have even come close to reciting the quote from Kevin Costner’s character, its disparaging remark about her had left a negative, distasteful impression of this woman with me, causing me to dismiss her immediately as an “unworthy” feminist every time I ran across any mention of her.

And I’m not even sure how I got that she was a feminist out of the character’s statement; there was no mention of feminism at all, only self-indulgence. All these years I had remembered that there was a quote about her in the movie, but not at all what the quote actually said — only that it was negative.

How many other beliefs and opinions in my life have I formed from flimsy information, perhaps on a subconscious level without realizing it?

Perhaps this should be a lesson to myself to take time occasionally to pause and reflect on my values and beliefs, making careful note as to where I’m getting my information and what criteria I’m using to form my opinions.

It’s the small things…

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

Contentment

Just like I’ve done thousands of times before, I got out of my car this morning and began walking toward the door to my workplace.

This time something caught my eye, however. A fresh dent on the left front fender of my car — not too bad, but definitely visible. It was up higher than another car would have caused; it was perhaps done intentionally, perhaps not.

I may try to fix it myself, or I may just leave it alone to avoid making it look worse. It’s not that big a deal in the big scope of things.

After I got inside the building to begin my work for the day, I remembered what I had just been listening to on the radio before parking my car. Chuck Swindoll had been teaching on the book of Ecclesiastes; this morning’s topic dealt with the folly of riches.

He gave an illustration of a welder who was perfectly content in life because his concerns consisted of getting out of bed, going to work and welding whatever was put in front of him, going home and spending time with his family, watching TV, and going to bed. He didn’t have an abundance of wealth that he worried about losing.

I thought of Ecclesiastes 5:12: “Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep.”

When I recalled the teaching on the radio, I remarked to myself how that verse in Ecclesiastes is indeed very true. I wasn’t really worried about another dent in my car because it’s 18 years old and already has other dents. What’s another small one? If I owned a brand new car, I’d be fretting about calling my insurance company, possibly filing a police report, etc.

Having an old car eliminates all that concern. Sometimes I lament that my car is not newer, but at times like this, it really is a sweet blessing.

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Sags and Bags

/ Clay D. / 1 Comment

Looking back through old high school yearbooks is always fun for me. Taking time to sit down and revisit old memories is one of the things I like to do best. Usually it happens when I’m not expecting it. I’ll be cleaning out a closet or going through some old boxes, and all of a sudden this wonderful book of memories is in my hand.

I’ll see an old friend’s picture and I’ll think, Boy, he looks really young. Nowadays he looks old and wrinkled, telltale signs that he is losing the battle with time and aging. He’s got the same face as he had then, but it is definitely more complex now — more wrinkles, lines, and sags. Underneath is still that fresh-faced teenager, except that the passing years have added baggage to it.

It reminds me of using Photoshop to enhance a photo or drawing by adding layers to it. The original image of the person, landscape, or object is still there, only now it has been deepened with additional features.

I believe that the process and experience of writing is similar to the way a person ages.

Periodically I will take time and look through old journals of mine that I keep safely locked away in an old suitcase I bought at a yard sale. Some of the entries date back almost 30 years, but the most interesting ones I wrote in my high school and college days.

In particular, I have an old, blue, single-subject Mead notebook that we were required to journal in for my English class my senior year in high school. We would write in them, and every couple of weeks the teacher would collect them, read them, make comments, and return them to us.

The content of this particular journal is not nearly so personal as most of my other writings, due to the fact that I knew someone else would be reading it. Our teacher told us over and over to “write what is personal, but not what is private.”

Richard Nordquist does a wonderful job here of explaining the difference between public and private writing. He also tells us how keeping a journal can be therapeutic and gives us a few suggestions on how to get started. His article would have been helpful to me back in high school,  as I was often stretched in trying to find suitable topics to write about, something that was interesting to me and that I thought the teacher would find worthwhile.

Every time that I go back and read through my old Mead notebook I am amazed that some of the thoughts, feelings, and fears I had as a 17- or 18-year-old are still there, bouncing around in my brain.

I was so worried about the future back then. Many entries detailed my fear at choosing the right college for the following year, and what my life would be like one year from that day, and about girls that I liked but were too afraid to ask out. I still think in much the same way as I did then; many of the fears I have now fall along similar lines, although with more adult themes..

Even though a lot of times the subject matter I write now is very similar to what I wrote as a teenager, my emotions and my writing style are more mature, more elaborate now than when I was younger. I may write the same things I did then, but hopefully I write them better now, with more layers, more depth.

Same face, more wrinkles. Same writing style, more depth.

My years of life experience — with all its pain, sadness, happiness, and tears — makes this added dimension possible. It is something that can not be substituted with something else, nor can it ever be taken away.

  When I sat down recently to read through this treasured old notebook, I noticed a couple of very intriguing things. After a long fall and winter of lingering, grinding depression, in March of 1987 — the latter part of my senior year — I wrote down four occupations that interested me:  Air Force pilot, drummer, psychologist, and writer.

I don’t know exactly how I came up with this list, and I don’t really recall wanting to pursue any of those occupations back then (except maybe writing, but that would have been a far-fetched idea at the time).

I suppose that I did dream of these others, however, because the ink on the page still can’t lie even after all these years.

The interesting part of this story is that of the four occupations I had written down so many years prior, in the weeks leading up to this last re-reading of the journal, I had spent time thinking about three of them (the Air Force would never have let me fly with my eyesight).

It’s amazing that after all these years, and all the jobs and careers I’ve experimented with, I still return to this same core of interests.

I’ll be forever grateful to my English teacher that year, Mrs. C., for requiring us to maintain a journal. Rereading it periodically over the years since graduation has been a wonderful source of joy and inspiration.

I recently found this blog entry from Mya. It’s amazing how similar her experience is when she looks through her closet and sees clothes and accessories dating back over the years and decades. She calls it “my window to myself”. This perfectly describes how I feel about my high school journal.

The tendency to romanticize the past has always been a significant weakness of mine; it goes hand and hand with my depression. I read in my blue journal that even as an 18-year-old I was longing for a simpler time.

In my journal I recalled camping out in my backyard with my best friend when we were in fifth grade. I was nostalgic for the movies and music of that wonderful summer. Reliving those childhood days, if only in my mind, helped me deal with the stresses of facing an unknown, potentially harsh future after high school graduation.

Nowadays my writing as an adult often reflects a longing for the simpler days of high school, when my biggest concerns (as recalled almost three decades later) were homework and girls — not a mortgage, kids, health concerns, and a job that is less than glamorous.

It seems I’ve never been satisfied with my present life.

I continue striving to take joy in my life on a daily basis. Maybe I just need to listen to God a little more closely.

Church Depresses Me

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

DISCLAIMER/WARNING:  You have probably heard everything in this post somewhere else before, maybe several times.

Church is hard for me. Not the worship experience itself, but being around the other worshipers.

If your parents were like mine, when you were a little kid they probably made you dress up in your best clothes for church. When I was 4 or 5 I had a solid white suit that I wore with a solid white shirt, solid white tie, and solid white shoes. I don’t know why, but I loved wearing it. Too bad I kept growing.

Even though many people wear casual clothes to church these days, it seems they still try to look their best and act their best when they show up for church.

Here’s where the hard part comes in for me. It begins when I drive into the parking lot and see streams of people headed toward the door.

Wow! They look really good! Nice clothes, nice shoes, nice hair, nice makeup (on the ladies).

Then I look across the parking lot at all the cars.

Nice new SUV’s, nice clean minivans. Hey, that’s a nice BMW!

And then I look at myself.

OK, I guess I look alright on the outside. Not too bad I suppose. But look at my old Toyota. It’s got dents, a few scratches, and it could definitely use a bath.

I go inside the church to the huge auditorium. All around me are smiles and laughter as people reunite with friends after a week’s absence. Everybody looks so happy.

I don’t feel so happy myself. How am I going to make my mortgage payment next week? My wife and I had a huge fight this morning. The kids are sick. I stepped in cat puke on my way out the door. I’ve got to go back to work tomorrow for another long week. All I really want to do right now is go home and go back to bed.

Do you see the difference in the two approaches? I’m not in any way being fair to myself. I can only see the outside of the guy sitting next to me, but I know everything going wrong in my own life. I’m comparing his outer best with my inner worst. There’s no way I’m going to feel like I measure up to others taking that approach. It’s no wonder that most Sundays I feel depressed within a few minutes after getting to church.

I can’t continue these kinds of thought patterns if I hope to approach church in the right frame of mind. If I truly want to be there to worship God, then I must change the way I think.

Realistically, the way these people look may be the best they look all week. Today, they’ve got nice clothes on and are all shiny, smiley, and happy. Tomorrow morning at 9:00, they may be wearing a drab uniform or a business suit and tie they hate, have a scowl on their face and be dreading dealing with their awful boss all day.

I have no idea what is going on in the lives of all the other people seated around me at church. Logically, I know that every single person in the room has some sort of struggle that they’re dealing with. Nobody has a perfect life. The following quote is sometimes attributed to Plato, but nobody seems to know for sure who first said it:   “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

I applaud whoever came up with it, because it certainly makes sense. We never really know what pain somebody may be hiding just to keep up appearances on the outside. When it’s all said and done, we’ll all in the same boat.

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