Virginia Schoonover, 1920-2008

My Grandma passed away on Thursday afternoon.  She was diagnosed with cancer about 4 1/2 months ago – they told us it would be terminal and she probably had about 3 months or so.  Apparently 3 months wasn’t long enough for Grandma to finish everything, which was fine by us.  The family’s handling it pretty well.

Brother, Grandma, and me.

It was certainly sad to see her go, but it got me to thinking about all of the wonderful memories I have of her and my Grandpa (who passed away in 2005).  Things like…

• How they used to take me camping to Eastern Washington when I was a kid (Sun Lakes, specifically).  Even after I rolled off the bunk and landed on my Grandpa scaring him half to death in the middle of the night.
• When they’d come up to our house (again when I was little) they always picked up a box of those sugar cake donuts.
• Grandma always had candy hidden all over their house, because Grandpa wasn’t allowed to eat it because of his diabetes.
• Christmas Day we always drove down to their house to see that side of the family.  They always had the only tree I knew of with tinsel on it.
• The time when we were camping, and Grandma found a tick on her leg, so she poured alcohol on it to get it out.  I was like two, so naturally I was fascinated with the practice of getting insects drunk.
• Seeing them at their 50th wedding anniversary, and wondering if I had what it takes to pull something like that off.
• Getting to spend a lot of weekends in the last 4 months visiting with Grandma (just us) and getting to know her as an adult firsthand, instead of whatever my parents passed on.

Waiting, Watching, Wishing

I’m not sure I’m cut out to sell things on eBay. Sitting around for 7-10 days hoping somebody bids on my stuff, unable to not check it for more than an hour or two… it’s annoying. You’re probably wondering what stuff, and why don’t I need it anymore, so let’s rewind.

Jesusanity

It’s not really a word… or at least you won’t find it in the dictionary. Drs. Darrel Bock and Daniel Wallace made it up when they wrote Dethroning Jesus, and they define it as “the trend to dethrone Jesus and view him as a wise and revered leader rather than as the Christ of Christianity.” Now in all fairness I haven’t read the book (although I probably will now). Instead, I heard about all this at a lecture by Dr. Bock down at the Mt. Baker theater titled “Two Stories about Jesus and the Public Square: Understanding the Difference.”

Dr. Bock is a great speaker which made the whole lecture highly enjoyable, but the subject matter is plenty interesting on it’s own. What I found most interesting is that he pointed out that most of the scholars who portray Jesus as a wise teacher or prophet aren’t lying – they point out many true things about Jesus. They just don’t tell you everything about Jesus. If you’ve ever been curious about the truth in all of the pop culture claims that try to defraud the Bible or dethrone Jesus, this is definitely something worth checking out. Especially if he’s coming to a town near you… but even if you’re just one of those book nerds who likes to read.

Something You Are

I had a minor epiphany this Fall when I was down visiting my Grandma giving a presentation about my Africa trip to her retirement home (and various family members that showed up). While I was setting up one of the ladies on staff at the retirement home asked “so, you’re like a missionary huh?” Innocent question, but one I’d never really thought about seriously. I didn’t think much about for a few months it until I noticed I have this quote from Mark Driscoll on all my little social networking pages, and the truth of that lady’s question hit me like a truck. “Reformission requires that every Christian and church realize that missions is about not something they do but something they are. We are all on a mission with Jesus every day, and we are either good missionaries or bad.” Duh. So in hindsight, I guess I should have answered yes without mumbling.

By the end of this year I’ll have been on or lead 9 short term mission trips to six cities in four countries. Most were only a week long. Nine doesn’t seem like very many to me… I sure don’t feel like a real missionary most of the time. Regardless, people that know me well sometimes ask if I’m ever going to run off to Africa or South America and be a full time missionary. Frankly I’d like to, but like I told my roommate it’s never really been about what I want.

Anywho… in the short term I’m really looking forward to going back to Guatemala in March. Here’s a couple of videos from the last time I was there in 2004.

Teenage Affluenza

I stole this from Matt’s blog. We showed it to the high school students at 3D tonight. I like it.

The Restored Paradigm

A few weeks ago I wrote about “The Wrong Paradigm.” As it turns out, my “unnamed” friend is quite the PHILanthropist… and wrote a strong but thoughtful rebuttal to my views on comparing jobs and dating. Having had some time to collect my thoughts (and catch up on homework), I present the sequel to my first post.

I think perhaps I should have called my original entry “The Broken Paradigm,” (in fact, re-reading my post I did call it a broken paradigm at the end.) because the more I think about it, the less I see wrong with the concepts of jobs or dating. What I see wrong is us. Jobs, either as careers or stages of life, have been around as long as man, although we’ve invented many new ones along the way. Many people in the bible were assigned jobs by God (the prophets and disciples immediately come to mind). Marriage of course is one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind, the union of man and woman into one flesh. So if jobs and marriage came from God (and thus there’s nothing wrong with either), what happened?

I pretend to neither be an expert on the subject of human nature, nor to have any definitive answers on the subject. However I think a large source of the problem is our flawed view of relationships. In my last post, I wrote how comparing jobs to dating was dangerous because we don’t see jobs as a lasting commitment. My friend commented “For a regular job, yes, this is a terrible analogy: your career moves in steps, and each stop should serve to move you to the next. However, if I’ve learned anything from years working in churches and missions, it’s that ministry isn’t a regular job. It’s a relationship.” I completely agree. I just wonder why the relationship part stops at ministry. We as Christians should be treating every job that way, every relationship as if it was done under the scrutiny of Jesus. Spoiler alert: it is! (“I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” – Matthew 25:45)

Jesus couldn’t have been more clear in the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5:46-47) when he says “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?” By segregating “church jobs” and “regular jobs”, we’re conforming to what the world tells us ok, and that’s wrong. (I feel another verse coming… Romans 12:2 anyone?)

Last time I concluded with “the first step towards recovery is to stop settling for less than we were meant for – to abandon our broken paradigms altogether.” I still stand by that statement, but I think it’s important to point out that this doesn’t constitute giving up altogether, but rather living like you were meant to be, instead of how the world tells you things should be. Ignore what the world says, because they’re dead wrong. Treat jobs as commitments and relationships, not as a paycheck. Treat dating as courting your future wife (or husband), not a good time. Pee INTO the wind (not for the faint of heart).

The Wrong Paradigm

One of my good friends (who shall go unnamed) has been career searching for a while, and while we were talking about it he made the comparison that checking out and interviewing for a potential job is like dating – there’s this trial period where you assess compatibility before you commit to anything. While I in part agree that they can be viewed similarly, I submit that in general this is not only a wrong assumption, but a dangerous one.

The fundamental problem is that the comparison isn’t really an apples-to-apples one. You interview to find a job, and you date to find a wife (or husband). But honestly, how many people do you know that seriously plan on working at the same job until they retire? Compare that to how many people plan on having the same spouse until they die? Marriage is supposed to be a lifelong commitment – “for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).

(small rant: don’t take an oath to stick with somebody through thick and thin, until death, if you don’t really plan to keep it)

While perhaps our parents or grandparents kept the same job through their career, it’s unheard of anymore. Jobs are merely one step of your career, something that fits well right now. Unhappy with your job? You’re just two weeks from not having to go anymore. A better offer came along? Who does your old employer think they are to stand in the way of your career??

Sadly, it seems many people DO view relationships and jobs the same way these days – a divorce rate around 40-50% doesn’t exactly emphasize a lifelong commitment. That’s of course assuming that they got married in the first place, many live-in couples make the analogy complete, they can just quit (as in: break up/move out) once they’re unhappy or a better offer comes along.

Just since this summer three separate people I know had their spouse just walk out on them for a new guy/girl. One of the “quitters” is in my extended family, and his own mother refuses to talk to him now. The whole situation is so utterly and completely wrong. We (as a society) are broken – or better yet, as C.S. Lewis called it in Out of the Silent Planet, we’re “bent” (as in, distorted from what we should be). The first step towards recovery is to stop settling for less than we were meant for – to abandon our broken paradigms altogether.

Inhale

Western started again. Returning to 60-80 hour weeks isn’t exactly something I ever look forward to, but at least this is my last quarter. Ever. Still, that’s 10 weeks (and a lot of programming) away.

The weird part is, it doesn’t feel like I’ve stopped to catch my breath for a long time. Long enough that I don’t really remember (even though I know it was last summer). Sure I had over a month off, but it wasn’t really a break. While Africa was amazing, it was not a vacation. I put at least as much into that trip as I got out of it. Afterwards, two weeks was barely enough time to spend processing the experience and recovering (jet lag, I’m looking at you) before I plunged back into my normal jam-packed life.

Somehow I seem to have missed the part where I take a deep breath and regroup. Summer felt more like a couple of pit stops along the way, just enough to keep the motor running.  I hope Winter turns out to be more refreshing.

Acclimation

It’s always weird coming home from a mission trip. There’s the jet lag (well, depending where you went) and the going back to work after a vacation, but those you get over after a few days. What takes a lot longer to get used to is the new set of eyes you’ve been given, a new Weltanschauung. Africa was the seventh mission trip I’ve gone on myself (I’ve lost count of how many I’ve supported financially or prayerfully or otherwise), and yet coming back I find myself going through the same transition that I did 11 years ago when I went down to Tijuana for the first time. Sure, the specifics are different, but the experience is largely the same every time. The frustration that nobody quite understands is there every time too.

I’m talking about the reality of coming face to face with an existence nothing like your own, and having to process the fact that the people you met barely scrape by on $50 a month (sometimes less), while you might easily spend more than that on average every day. (I did the quick math, if I spent everything I make each month it’s over $80 a day. Ouch.) It doesn’t matter if you’re traveling across the world to minister to a distant tribe of people untouched by the West, or going to Mexico to build a “house” that’s smaller and less impressive than the shed you helped your Dad build growing up, or going around to street kids downtown and asking if they’d like to stay in a hotel that evening because somebody they’ll never meet donated some money. The impact is the same. The staggering divide between us and them is the same. The injustice of it all is the same.

Back to the bit about frustration. A missions experience simply cannot be conveyed in words. You MUST live it. My hope is that those who haven’t had the opportunity or motivation would take a step of faith and go, even if it’s just downtown to a soup kitchen, in order to see what I’m talking about. You’ll be glad you did, and you’ll never quite see things the same again.

8 random facts about myself

Since I’m sit here waiting for some server tasks to run, I figured I’d accept Miss Elsner’s challenge…

1. In the morning I’m a total creature of habit. If my keys, watch, phone, etc. aren’t in their proper place, I’ll leave without them because it never occurs to me to go and look for them. In the event that keys weren’t in the right place, I just lock myself out of the house trying to leave (Jason received many bribes letting me back in).
2. I hate calling people on the phone. I’d much rather use text messages, email, or talk to them in person. Since I also hate text messages (just not as much as phone calls), it’s a minor miracle I’m not completely isolated from other people.
3. I won’t eat corn, and I won’t eat raisins, and I make no exceptions, even if there’s corn in the soup (yes, I pick out all the corn from a cup-o-noodles). I find them both disgusting. When I was a kid I ate them though. So much in fact, that I threw up. I’ve never looked back.
4. I learned four new programming languages this summer (JSP, Python, Ruby, and Oz). I actually liked two of them.
5. My DVD collection is alphabetized. I also convinced my roommate to alphabetize his DVDs too.
6. I only own one computer.
7. I sponsor two boys (ages 7 and 4) through World Vision. One in Nicaragua, the other in Tanzania.
8. Pepsi is better than Coke. I understand if you like diet soda and don’t want to purposefully drink nastiness, but people who just want the normal cola and buy Coke for reasons other than “it was on sale” are just kidding themselves.