Book release! "My Window Faces South" is available!

BIG NEWS! I'm really excited to be able to tell you about my NEW BOOK - "My Window Faces South", now available on Amazon. I've spent the last few months compiling, editing, and arranging around 50 of my favorite poems to put in this collection. I hope you enjoy it! 

Shoutout to Bethany René Mark​ for the incredible coverart! Make sure to drop over and subscribe to her blog "With Favor & Fight​"

 if you haven't already! 

Head over to Amazon to order a copy - they're only $7.50! 

https://www.amazon.com/Window-Faces-South-Timothy-Reed/dp/197334243X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1513267511&sr=8-1&keywords=my+window+faces+south+timothy+reed

Sand-Crab and Scarab

Sand-Crab and Scarab

By Tim Reed

    It was at an antiques store. Or at least I think it was. Some squat building along the Oregon coast hiding between two taller nondescript stores, like a sand crab hiding from a gull. I move about, beneath brown-shell ceiling, sorting through some scattered bones of some forgotten past. There’s a stale smell in this mausoleum, as though these objects are being held in a vat of ether. Coke bottles, gilt porcelain, and flowered postcards seem naked and exhumed under the pale sea-green fluorescent bars. I am both repulsed and seduced by theses shelves, racks, and buckets of kitsch – like a child staring at the blackened flesh of a mummy. I too, stare at that necrotic form, waiting to see if those lids will open. But of course, they’re only antiques. Only antiques.

     Absentmindedly, I flipped through a long wooden tray of old medicine posters and Norman Rockwell Americana. Some cheap stereo obscured by jumbled booths plays some cheap radio station filled with noisy ads and the routine, four-chord anthems. I shifted my weight and stifled a yawn. Some glitter of blue glass caught my eye, and I glanced up. As I broke my vigil, the mummy’s lids grated open. Then, he caught me in his gaze – locked and immobile as stone. Black, hatched lines on a humble lithograph reflected my soul-face. On a barren field, there I was with knee bent. In my arms, the most sacred weight. I try, but I can’t see my face – it’s turned away, riveted upon hers. Two or three feet away, I see the strange fruit of my labor. Six feet by four feet by six feet, the ground has opened its mouth in a yawn. But the somnolent dirt is patient and no stranger to grief. Her face is young, but frightfully pale. How, I do not know, for there isn’t a scrap of color to be seen on that page. But I know her, and her loss is almost too much to bear. The lids close, and suddenly I am back under that irreverent paneled ceiling.

     I can see the sandy brown hair of my sister over the top of the next booth. She rounds the corner. “There you are.” she says “I wondered where you’d gone off to. Have you seen the old records they have over in the corner?” I look up at her. “I think, Meg,” I shift my weight and struggle to compose my thoughts in a way that doesn’t sound absurd. “I think, Meg, that my life will be marked by some great tragedy.” I can tell she doesn’t quite know how to respond. I don’t know how to respond. I can tell she thinks it’s absurd. And it is. How could one lithograph in one squat crab-store in one beach hovel town signify any more than another grey day on the Oregon coast? But my ears are tuned to the unexceptional presage, the significance in the ordinary.

    Together, we laugh it off and make our purchases. My sister, with some tasteful sundries, of course. They’re gifts for family and friends. The holidays are still three months away, but she’s always frightfully efficient. I walk up to the counter with my scarab from this pharaoh’s tomb, cleverly disguised as a two dollar-fifty lithograph. Outside, the sun has set and far out in the onyx night I can hear the disconsolate waves rising and falling like buildings, men, and civilizations. A soft, cold rain dabs the dirt-stained streets like a mother cleaning the face of her child. But she can’t remove the crab from the sand or the scarab from my hand. She can’t remove that prophecy that my heart clings to with white knuckles. “I’ll need this later.” I say to myself. Where did I learn my future? It was an antiques store. Or at least I think it was. But it was more.

Musings on Creation

By Tim Reed

     We, as humans, use the creation story as a limitation to God. True, it's difficult to imagine a God who speaks the universe into existence. However, have we stopped to consider that this was by no means somehow the maximum of his ability?
     He chose to create that which is on the very border of our ability to understand, showing that his truth revealed in nature is enculturated at the deepest level imaginable - it is voluntarily limited to the pea-brained intellect of mankind. Even the creation account is at once a display of God's power as it is his pity. It is a statement of man's potential as it is his weakness.

Good Friday - Lady Julian's 4th Showing

     

Good Friday - Lady Julian's 4th Showing 

II Corinthians 2:14-16
 But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task?

     Although I usually like to share my own work, I should like today to share an excerpt from an author that has been incredibly influential in my thinking and Christian life. Lady Julian was a 15th century English mystic, most famous for her work "Revelations of Divine Love" and a proponent of unity of will and affection with God. 

     As we enter Good Friday and the time of Christ's passion, it seems only appropriate to share this, her 4th revelation of divine love, where she sees an image of Christ on the cross and writes a humble theology about the blood of Christ. I hope that your heart takes hold of the truth presented here, though it be in somewhat archaic language. 

The Twelfth Chapter:

   After this I saw beholding the body plenteously bleeding, in seeming of the scourging, just as thus : the fair skin was broken full deep into the tender flesh, with sharp smitings, all about the sweet body : the hot blood ran out so plenteously, that there was neither seen skin, n[or] wound, but as it were all blood. And when it came where it should have fallen down, there it vanished : notwithstanding the bleeding continued a while, till it might be seen with advisement. And this was so plenteous to my sight, that me thought if it had been so in kind and in substance for that time, it should have made the bed all on blood, and have passed over all about.

    Then came to my mind, that God hath made waters plenteous in earth to our service, and to our bodily ease, for tender love that he hath to us. But yet liketh him better, that we take full [w]holsomely his blessed blood to wash us from sin, for there is no [liquid] that is made that liketh him so well to give us : for it is most plenteous, as it is most precious, and that, by the vertue of the blessed Godhead; and it is our own kind, and blessedfully overfloweth us by the vertue of his precious love.

    The dear worthy blood of our Lord Jesu Christ, also verily as it is most precious, as verily it is most plentuous. Behold and see the vertue of this precious plenty of his dear worthy blood. It descended down into hell, and brake her bonds, and delivered them all that were there which belongeth to the court of heaven.

    The precious plenty of his dear worthy blood overfloweth all earth, and is ready to wash all creatures of sin which be of good-will, have been, or shall be. The precious plenty of his dear worthy blood ascendeth up into heaven in the blessed body of our Lord Jesu Christ: and there is in him bleeding, praying for us to the Father, and is and shall be as long as us needeth. And evermore it floweth in all heaven, enjoying the salvation of all mankind that be there, and shall be fulfilling the number that faileth.

27 Days of Poetry - Day I

27 Days of Poetry

Every day, for 27 days, I will write a poem - a gritty, honest, beautiful, ugly, common, unique snapshot of my thoughts and experience. 

I can't promise they'll all be great or will change our life. 

It's just one step forward into a more authentic life - a life where I meet myself face-to-face. Where I meet you, bringing the depth of my joy and shame to the coffee table. Where I meet the God-man in me and know Christ in my actions. Where I begin to see His name etched on my identity.

So here we go... Poem #I

I am 27
by Tim Reed

It's not the number of years I own
It's not the day or the year I was born

...so Why 27?

Because it's ordinary

...but it's far from cliche

  It could never live up to its 31, 40, or 365 rivals

...but it secretly never wanted to

It never represented a 1, 3, or 7's simplicity

27 is messier than that.

It's a number you don't notice - wouldn't choose

It's half-even, but with an unavoidable oddity

Why 27?

Because my life will never be just another Rick Warren reality

...because I don't want it to be. 

Perspective

P E R S P E C T I V E

Your perspective.

 It's the beginning or the end of how you live your life. With the incorrect perspective, you'll find yourself more and more focused on the small, meaningless things in life - promotions, fashion, departing pleasures, shallow friendships, more money and possessions, etc...

With the right perspective, every small part of every day is viewed as part of the wider truth - it is not for this life we live.

You and I have no one to impress in this world but Christ - no goods to gain except the gift of Christ in us. No pleasure richer than the hope that we have in Him. No relationship more precious than that of being an adopted son of God and a brother to Christ. No fashion more incredible than the fact that our every need is supplied and the way in which our Father clothes the flowers of the fields. No money or possessions more important than our brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ.

Don't conform to the pattern of this world and its fickle, meaningless pursuits - follow the purposeful path in Christ and the meaning that He has placed in you! Why would you follow the small, insignificant things when within your very renewed person you have the Spirit of God living?

 Lead your heart to know this truth.

Let your heart lead your feet to walk this truth.

IT IS NOT FOR THIS LIFE WE LIVE!!!

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." ~Hebrews 12:1-2

On the Devaluation of Communication and Relationships

by Tim Reed

     It's apparently that time of year again- the time for the obligatory young-adult Facebook purge. Pardon me if I'm not excited by your valiant "counter-cultural effort". But if you have an interest to know why I'm disinterested, please read on.

     Economics. The reason I have lost my interest in the vast majority of social media is economics. Let me illustrate. You have something of extreme value to you - perhaps a priceless family heirloom. All of a sudden, a man knocks on your front door and offers to buy this treasure from you. As you are hard up on cash, you are interested in the man's offer and ask him how much he is willing to pay you. With a gleam in his eye, he gives you the choice between 10 pounds of gold or 10 pounds of dirt. 

What would you choose? 

    Wouldn't you choose the gold (banning the idea that you are, perhaps, a fanatical gardener)? Why? Don't we value more what is rare and beautiful? Why isn't dirt as valuable? Isn't it because it is everywhere and we see it all the time? Why are people willing to pay so much for priceless art? Isn't it because it's absolutely unique and almost never seen? At this time, I think my parallel should be blatantly obvious. 

     What value do we place in communication when it is so easily done and so readily received? What value is there in people's words and voices when we see them every day, in an endless barrage of social media? All day long, everyday we receive idea after idea after idea with no cost to us. Routinely we share thoughts, post after post after post with decreasing impact. In the wake of the electronic age, we have lost the necessary cost of relationship. We have lost our meaning as a society, and what have we gained instead? 

Insecurity. 

Fear.

Meaningless communication.

Shallow relationships.

Call me an old soul if you like - it's not an insult to me. I don't mind criticizing the new if it's meaningless.

     There was a time when communication actually mattered - when people mattered. There was a time when communication was weighty - when you remembered what was said to you by those people you choose to be in fellowship with. Words had value - but they were more rare. Words had value because they were more rare. You knew people - but you knew less people. People had value because you knew them, because you knew less people. Friendship meant more when we were more concerned with the quality of our friendship rather than the quantity of our friendships.

    Relationships used to cost us something. Communication used to cost us something. It came as an epiphany to me when I realized that when I removed all barriers for people to be friends or to communicate, something strange happened. People didn't form friendships. People didn't participate in deep communication. Friendship without cost is like breathing without air - it doesn't work. I can think of two of the best forms of communication (and therefore friendship - for how can friendship exist without communication?), and neither of them is without barriers, and both require investment. First of all, I can think of spending intentional time with people, face-to-face. This requires that we set aside time!

 "But I don't have any time to give!"

    You don't know how many times I've said that. And here's the truth for you - you never will have enough time. But true friendship isn't about cramming meaningful relationships into the open places in our life - it's about carving time out of our schedules because we value something. It's going to cost us something somewhere, but the reward of true friendship and communication is priceless. When you look at it this way, prioritization becomes pretty straightforward.

    Secondly, I think that we should bring back writing letters.

"But it's so awkward!" "I have horrible hand-writing!" "I don't have the time to write a letter!"

Again, I used to believe all of these things until I really looked at letter-writing. First of all, it takes time. Valuable time. Ring any bells yet? It costs us, and sometimes dearly. We have to set apart time to write (an archaic skill for many of us who have a keyboard-centrism that is alarming in and of itself for a myriad of reasons). We have to work through hand cramps and live without the world of "backspace" and "autocorrect". Transparency comes more naturally because our flaws and humanity comes through in a profound way - flaws that need to be shared. In addition, it costs us postage! But it just adds another layer of meaning to our communication. That person is valuable - my communication with that person is valuable.

    My day lights up when I receive a hand-written letter because I see the value! I know that whoever wrote to me thought that communicating with me was worth the cost - they think that I'm worth the cost. And when I work my way back through all of those same barriers, I am privileged to show the same thing.

     As much as people don't stress the vehicle for communication and the medium for friendships these days, I want to leave a golden legacy behind me. I don't want to participate in the deluge of information anymore - I want to breathe value into my words and relationships. I want people to remember me as a real person - flawed and messy, but real. Maybe you won't be comfortable with my transparency, but I'm going to be transparent anyway.

 These are my thoughts, and they're gritty - my sister says that I'm "abrasive". But that's real. I don't just want to be real, I want people to experience how real I am and experience the value I place on them. And I want to know the real people around - I want to learn about them in real ways.

     And this is fundamentally why I'm not impressed with these temporary social media purges. Since when has sacrificing shallow fellowship for two weeks become something that is laudable in and of itself? Inevitably, you come back to your stream of endless communication, like a pig to the slop - too afraid to leave behind a part of your culture you view as indispensable.I've gotten sucked in too, so I'm not just writing inflammatory anti-social-media propaganda as a person with their head stuck in the sand. I know how hard it feels, but isn't it worth it to reclaim a part of our humanity that is so distorted by our concept of friendship and communication?

    So what about my fear of missing out? It's there. I'll freely own up to that. But I'm also willing to fight for real, valuable communication. I'm willing to fight for costly, messy relationships. I'm not asking you step out with me, but I am asking you to think about the importance not only of what we say, but how we say it.

I think that the difference could be just what we've been missing. 

Moths to Flame

     What I'm going to talk to you about may sound a bit mystical. What I'm going to talk to you about may challenge you personally, and will certainly stand in opposition to our culture. What I'm going to talk to you about will almost never be viewed as a popular thing. What I'm going to talk to you about is at the core of American culture. What I'm going to talk to you about is at the core of modern society. What I'm about to talk to you about is a sickness - a disease. What I'm going to talk to you about today is fear, disguised in heroism and self-importance. What I'm going to talk to you about today is at the root of the death of critical thought, true creativity, and most importantly - spiritual growth and maturity.

What I'm  compelled to talk about today is our obsession with "busyness".

      Stop and think for a moment. Is not busyness one of the prime cultural values we have? I'm not talking about diligence - I'm talking about busyness. Diligence is careful and persistent work or effort, whereas busyness is the quality of simply being busy.  We spend every day, packed to the brim with activity - both meaningful and meaningless. Even our amounts of "down time" are filled by social media, hollow and unproductive hobbies, movies, television, etc... You name it.

 In a world where we often spend much time and money on down time, we have lost the core of what it means to rest. In a world where we spend year upon year in colleges and jobs learning day in and day out, we have lost the capacity to truly think and engage life within our own minds. In a world where Christ-followers will spend weekends at conferences or countless hours listening to worship music, podcasts, or speakers, we have lost our capacity to interact with God on His terms and in the quiet. In a world where we are constantly told that obtaining self-esteem is King, we have buried our inadequacy in a frenzy of activity and have become petrified to face ourselves.

Fear.

Fear is what drives our obsession with busyness.

     We are primarily afraid to face ourselves. When we stop and think in absolute mental quietude, with no tasks or amusements to obscure reality, we are brought face to face with ourselves. We get to see ourselves and our heart, unpixelated, with no perfume or glamour, with no positive self-image or motivational platitudes - we see ourselves in the raw reality of our humanity. We see ourselves, and it frightens us. Suddenly, no task or accomplishment is relevant. No humor or kindness is enough to mask the bitter truth of the unedited "me" that I see. This is why so many of us become obsessed with ourselves and our "tasks", "responsibilities", "occupations", "roles", "goals", or "dreams" - distractions that speak sweet lies over our inadequacy. As long as we stay busy, we get to feel good about ourselves. We even heap needless stress on ourselves like some sadist who can't slake his lust for self-inflicted pain. The unspoken truth that we believe is that even this pain and stress is better than having to face ourselves in the quiet.

     But we are not just afraid of ourselves. We are afraid of God, and we have to listen to Him when we quiet ourselves. We have to recall His truth and are brought to our knees when we see our inadequacy in stark comparison to His adequacy. When we are brought to face His truth, the lies that we adopt into our thinking and feelings begin to squirm. If only we would stay here long enough to deal with these lies, instead of quickly retreating and allowing the parasites of untruth to remain unchallenged.

     We are afraid to trust God's sufficiency. I am afraid to trust God's sufficiency. When I feel the need for love, or peace, or comfort, or direction, I prefer to trust the works and busyness of my own life rather than to relinquish control to the "known unknown" that is God's goodness, character, and plan. I would rather delve into the emptiness of vain work than to make Him and His abundant grace my joy.

     We are lastly afraid to trust God's work in us. We look at ourselves and see where we are, but so often neglect to see where we have come from and the promises of God about where He is taking us. When we only look at our present state, we become even more depressed about our failings and even less trusting of our heavenly Father. How do I know? This is the exact pitfall that I stumble into, sometimes far too often to admit. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. If we were honest with each other, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of us that get depressed when we stop and face ourselves and face God.

But this was never meant to be.

Truth: God IS sufficient to our every need.

Truth: God IS at work in us, changing us and shaping us to be more like Christ.

Truth: With God's redemption, we know that He is the dearest friend we can have, and that He covers every iota of failure that we have.

Truth: We have no excuse to sacrifice the richness of time spent learning who God is and who He has made the "new creation" inside of us to be.

Truth: It's about time that we stop wallowing in the sadistic habits of busyness just to avoid ourselves and God.

Truth:  My God, I am not - but You are.

     If we do not get over ourselves and learn to spend time now in thought, meditation, and prayer - time alone with our unedited self and with our King - we will squander this abundant life that He has given us. We will take the gifts and joy He has given us, and we will never use them. We will be content to bury these good things in the basement of our lives just so that we never have to confront the lies in our lives.

     We will always have slow (or no) spiritual growth in our lives if we do not make these mental and spiritual habits of self-confrontation and communion with God intentional. We need to take time away from our own self-importance to let Him speak into our lives.

We need a mid-life crisis.

Not the Harley Davidson or wardrobe transformation mid-life crisis. Not the vacation home in Hawaii or the grandchildren obsession mid-life crisis. The crisis that questions a life spent. The crisis that wonders if you've left a legacy. The crisis that makes you ask if what you've done was meaningful. The crisis that makes you ask who you are. I think people are forced to this crisis point at retirement because they're suddenly forced to slow down and reflect. They're suddenly alone, with no curtain of tasks or roles to hide behind. They've finally grown up.

Why does it have to take 55 years of our lives to get there?

It doesn't.

I'm calling mid-life crisis displaced reflection. It's a displaced self-realization. It's a displaced God-realization. We try to fill it with many things, but that's the purpose of the crisis. It's a tension that we were always meant to feel. We still would, if we weren't injecting ourselves with the numbing drug of the lies about God and about ourselves.

It's time to go cold-turkey.

This is where you won't be popular.

When you decide to tell people "no" because you need to spend your time more wisely. When you don't keep in touch with people every 2 seconds on facebook because you were away from your computer or smartphone thinking about God's identity that He's placed in you. When you miss some inconsequential work event because you took the time to get away and to think and pray.

People won't understand.

They'll think you're lazy.

They'll think your priorities are screwed up.

But the truth is, we need this. We need it more than the cheap veneer of pleasant lies. We need it more than a "positive self-image". We need it more than professional recognition. It's time to ditch the busyness for a life better spent now. It's culturally unacceptable. According to the habits of the younger generation, it's unprecedented and definitely "uncool". But it's worth it. God is worth it. We are worth it, when He is in us.

Where are you, men and women of valor?

Where are you, children of the King?

It's time to come into the light. 

God: Neither Cog nor Chemical

A reaction to secular marginalization of the "religious experience"

     As I was sitting and thinking at one of my favorite coffee shops downtown, I happened upon a magazine. I don't typically like to read magazines, but I started flipping through this one (an issue of "The Week", from August 24th-31st, 2012)  and my eye was attracted to an article cheekily named "Hearing the Voice of God - Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann, says Jill Wolfson, studies how evangelicals experience their connection to Jesus". My curiosity piqued, I started to read through the article. Apparently, Luhrmann decided to conduct some studies among a select group of evangelicals to "[try] to understand as an outsider how an insider to this evangelical world was able to experience God as real and personal and intimate." Expecting that evangelicals would be shown to be merely some misguided "freak-show", I read on skeptically. Luhrmann focused on what she terms "theory of mind", meaning the way in which we as humans conceptualize our own minds and the minds of others. She went on to look specifically to prayer as an example of the way that evangelicals experience God. Although I don't usually like to quote paragraphs of other articles en masse, this segment is essential in understanding the approach and agenda Luhrmann arrived at for this study.

     "Luhrmann's provocative theory is that the church teaches those who pray to use their minds differently than they do in everyday life. They begin by holding conversations with God in their heads, modeled on the kind of chummy conversations they'd have with their best friends. As they talk to Him, tell Him about their problems, and imagine His wise counsel and loving response, they are training their thoughts, much as people use weights to train their muscles. The church encourages them to tune in to sounds, images, and feelings that are louder or more intense or more unfamiliar or more powerful - and to interpret these internal cues as the external voice of God."

      The article then goes on to talk about a study that Lurhmann performed in this theory of mind. In a 2007 study, she had a group of randomly divided Christian volunteers split into two separate groups. One group listened to iPods with lectures on the gospels for a month, the other group listened to lectures on imagination-rich prayer for a month. "Their recordings invited them to see, hear, and touch God in the mind's eye, to carry on a dialogue with Jesus." After the month of listening to the different content, she found that the second group "... used mental imagery more readily and had somewhat better perceptual attention, and the reported more unusual sensory experience. In short, they attended to their inner experience more seriously, and that altered how real that experience became for them." This study supported one of the main affirmations of the article: namely, that evangelicals simply train their cognition to "participate with the divine".

      Though not as militant as many similar articles these days on the 'religious experience', the article definitely does embrace some "freak show" techniques, with such wording and examples as "Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried, and raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God" and "Members told her about having coffee with God, seeing angel wings, and getting God's advice on everything from job choice to what shampoo to buy." Evangelicals are shown in these examples to be emotional, irrational people, depending on the strength of some unknown force to even make choices as simple as shampoo. Almost worse, Christians are "patted on the head" as some sect of lovable, but misguided fools - simply reacting to stimuli that we have been trained to interpret as the divine. The experience of the Christian in prayer is effectively reduced to a system of cognition. Furthermore, our worldview is thus formed by thought and affections produced only by a function of our training. Evangelicals receive "religious" input, their training interprets this, and they engage in emotions and decision making as a result. They have, in effect, been shown as "Pavlov's Penitent" - a simple working of behaviorism.

     As I finished the article, I couldn't help but have my thinking stimulated. This view of prayer, relationship with God, evangelical cognition - it all begs further thought. This view of Christian antics is quickly becoming the majority among the secular society in which we live. If we as Christ-followers are not attacked openly, we are very often marginalized and endured by those around us. Granted, we as Christians often do just that to our secular friends. However, blame-game aside, is this behavior correct?

     With God being theorized by modern "scientific" studies as a chemical experience or as cognitive training, is it not important to examine these arguments? All of these studies rely upon one truth claim - everything that is knowable or real is accessible only through what we can see, hear, touch, examine, etc... The whole of modern Western society has espoused this extreme version of empiricism, from which they conduct these studies and form these viewpoints. What if, however, empiricism is at fault? What if, as I believe, the real extends beyond that which can be touched, smelt, tasted, seen, or heard? And what if, furthermore, the real is held together by an immaterial Person who gives life and meaning, substance and theory to all things living and dead, material and immaterial?

    In the words of one of my favorite songs,

But our hearts tell a different story;
our hands feel a different pulse.
Something fathomless, deeper than our pride can dive;
numinous, higher than our hearts can rise,
transcendent, further than our thoughts can reach;
immanent, closer than the air we breathe. 

("Treading Paper" by Thrice)

      So, I've talked about what my thinking has exposed about Luhrmann's studies and theories, but what good is criticism without an alternative? It is useless. I propose that we participate with God not simply by training our minds to react to 'religious stimuli'. I propose that we are beings that are both material and immaterial, created by God for fellowship with Him. For those of us who have had immaterial, spiritual eyes given sight by the livening work of Christ, we engage the spiritual reality of Christ in us when we pray, live, and think. There is nothing that we do that is not affected by this sight and participation with Christ who has partnered with us. There is a way that we participate in Him that is transcendent - a way that is not the direct of a cognitively knowable or empirically observable input. This way is not simply the result of a "function box" on top of our shoulders that takes in stimuli and vomits out religious responses.

     I do wonder, though, if we as Christians give fodder to this prevalent theory. When I think of the examples from this article, I wonder if we as Christians are shirking the responsibility we have for acting as mature men and women in our transcendent participation. The concept of asking God which shampoo to use is simply repulsive to me! What do people think that God is - a "20 Question" game or some sort of faerie that you have to answer every trifling question? I wonder if we don't look for guidance "every step of the way" to a fault. Has He not placed His Spirit in us, enabling us for fruitful thinking and training us in wisdom and judgement? He has called us sons, dear brothers, friends, and future judges over weighty matters in times to come. What judge feels the need to ask his King which shampoo to buy? Outrageous. It's time for many evangelicals today to seek maturity and wisdom in addition to faith and childish "desperation". The youth heroism and fanatical obsession with "childlike faith" has in many ways distorted and destroyed the fulness of our identity in Christ as it was designed.

      I wonder also if we are too flippant in the way we either participate, or assume we participate with God. Do we simply make prayers in the mode of "the kind of chummy conversations [we]'d have with [our] best friends"? We have lost a reverence and an awe for God, my dear brothers and sisters. Yes, we have intimacy and vulnerability, but are we supposed to simply emote to God and vent all of the thoughts on our mind as they present themselves? Are we not told "Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few"? (Ecclesiastes 5:2)

     There is a multiplicity of voices in our world today seeking to attack and marginalize the way we participate with God. There are scads of evangelicals today that provide fodder for criticism and ridicule by their immaturity. There is an epic struggle between empiricism and the immaterial. Be thoughtful, my friends, and be consistent. Listen with patience, interpret with love, respond with insight. 

"If anything means anything,
There must be something meant for us to be,
a song that we were made to sing.
There must be so much more than we can see."

("Treading Paper" Thrice)