Soldiers In Suburbia

{This blog was originally posted at Gloria Dei where I was a guest blogger for a few weeks}

In just a short time now, our friend Nick will be leaving his family and home to return to Iraq where he is deployed with our Nation’s armed forces. We hope and pray that his all-too-brief time with family and friends was well spent and that he was able to relax and enjoy his leave.

I didn’t speak to Nick a lot about his time in Iraq, but his being here sure got me to thinking about it. I’ve spent a lot of time this past week trying to put myself in a soldier’s boots – trying to understand what is must be like to leave a wartime environment and return to suburbia. How difficult must it be to go from one extreme to the other?

Imagine it.

One day, you’re in a hostile land, living in a compound patrolled by guard dogs and sentries with machine guns. You live in a constant state of readiness, always on alert. You carry a sidearm at all times and you never leave the relative safety of the buildings where you eat, sleep, and work without wearing your Kevlar vest and headgear. There are indigenous people who are glad you are there, some who hate you, and some who want to kill you. And, because you can’t tell one from the other on sight, you must regard everyone with suspicion. At any time, a split-second decision may have to be made regarding the question “friend or foe?” The outcome of this choice, made so hastily yet reinforced with months of repetitive drills and training, may affect whether you or those you serve with live or die.

This is your life.
Every day.
24-7.
For months at a time.

Now, imagine 48 hours later, you are in suburbia.
Would you feel weird standing at Wal-Mart, McDonalds, or the Mall? Surreal? Would you feel naked without your Kevlar, without the comforting weight of your sidearm at your hip? Would you look at all the smiling, laughing faces and ask “How can you be so happy? Don’t you know that there is a war? How can you be so naïve?” You would soon see that they don’t want to hear about this war waging half-a-world away from them. They don’t care. They are willingly ignorant of the reality of war… or of an enemy that hates them. Or maybe they just don’t believe it. Would you be offended by their apathy and distortion of truth?

I read a blog earlier this week about living as a Believer in an unbelieving world and the plain analogy of my own thoughts smacked me in the face.

We are soldiers, and we are at war with an enemy who hates us. We do live in a world that chooses for it’s own convenience to be willingly ignorant of a God who is Just and Holy. Romans 12:2 says “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

“Do not be conformed…” The fact is that we should feel out of place in this world, like a soldier in suburbia. Suburbia is not our home. Jesus said in John 18:36 that “My kingdom is not of this world.” As children of the King, our home is where His Kingdom is.

Meanwhile, suburbia has another king. 2 Corinthians 4:4 tells us “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

It is this little-g god, who keeps the world content in ignorance, blissful in a living death.
It is this god who distorts truth and promotes apathy.

To me, the challenge is in keeping the soldier’s edge, in not conforming to this world, in nurturing that out-of-place feeling and yet endeavoring to carry out the work of the Great Commission. How do we reconcile the two directives? We’ll talk more about it at the Yoke next week. See you there.

And don’t forget to pray for the men and women who are serving our country in the military.

All scripture quotes from the English Standard Version (ESV).

Chuck Norris Facts

By now, you've probably seen the political advertisement for Mike Huckabee that includes a cameo by Chuck Norris -- If you haven't go to your favorite video page now and search for it. It's original, and funny.

I had to share one of the funniest web pages that I have come across recently: http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com

This site lists hundreds of 'true' fact about the Chucker. Gems such as:

Guns don't kill people. Chuck Norris kills people.

Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

Maybe it's just me, I like Chuck, and I think this page is a riot.

Halloween - To Trick, or Not

This is a portion of an essay from the archives of one of my favorite bloggers, Tim Challies:
You can read the full text here.


Perhaps the greatest fallacy Christians believe about Halloween is that by refusing to participate in the day we are somehow taking a stand against Satan. And second to that, is that participation in the day is an endorsement of Satan and his evil holidays. The truth is that Halloween is not much different from any other day in this world where, at least for the time being, every day is Satan’s day and a celebration of him and his power. A member of the discussion list wrote the following last year around this time: “Yeah… I’ve heard all of the ‘pagan’ reasons Christians should avoid Halloween. The question is whether we are actually participating in Samhain when we participate in Halloween? Who or what makes the ‘Witch’s League of Public Awareness’ the definers of what Halloween is, either now or historically? Such a connection between Samhain and my daughter as a ladybug or my son as a Bengals Boy is highly dubious.” And it is highly dubious at best.

I am guessing my neighbourhood is all-too-typical in that people typically arrive home from work and immediately drive their cars into the garage. More often than not they do not emerge again until the next morning when they leave for work once more. We are private, reclusive people who delight in our privacy. We rarely see our neighbors and rarely communicate with them. It would be a terrible breach of Canadian social etiquette for me to knock on a person’s door and ask them for a small gift or even just to say “hello” to them. In the six years we have been living in this area, we have never once had a neighbor come to the door to ask for anything. Yet on Halloween these barriers all come down. I have the opportunity to greet every person in the neighbourhood. I have the opportunity to introduce myself to the family who moved in just down the row a few weeks ago and to greet some other people I have not seen for weeks or months. At the same time, those people’s children will come knocking on my door. We have two possible responses. We can turn the lights out and sit inside, seeking to shelter ourselves from the pagan influence of the little Harry Potters, Batmans and ballerinas, or we can greet them, gush over them, and make them feel welcome. We can prove ourselves to be the family who genuinely cares about our neighbours, or we can be the family who shows that we want to interact with them only on our terms. Most of our neighbors know of our faith and of our supposed concern for them. This is a chance to prove our love for them.

The same contributor to the email list concluded his defense of participating in Halloween with these words: “One night does not a neighbor make (and one night does not a pagan make), but Halloween is the one night of the year where the good neighborliness that flows from being in Christ is communicated and reinforced. We are citizens of another Kingdom where The Light is always on.”

My encouragement to you today is to think and pray about this issue. I do not see Halloween as a great evangelistic occasion. I do not foresee it as a time when the people coming to your door are likely to be saved. But I do think it is a time that you can prove to your neighbors that you care about them, that you care about their children, and that you are glad to be in this world and this culture, even if you are not of this world or this culture. Halloween may serve as a bridge to the hearts of those who live around you who so desperately need a Savior.

Who Won That Game?

Yesterday, a professional baseball game was played between the Washington Nationals and the Florida Marlins. This 12-inning marathon was played at Dolphin Stadium in Miami which can seat around 75,000 fans.

The attendance for yesterdays game? Around 400.

Yep. 400 folks attended this match-up which lasted just over 4 hours.

You can read all about it at the Washington Post link below (photo credit goes to the Post as well):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/12/AR2007091201874.html

Several years ago, I had an on-going debate with Preston, a co-worker and friend of mine. Now, Preston is a baseball purist and a fan to some degree. I'm really not, I admit.

So anyway, we were discussing the fact that several high profile games had their outcomes impacted by either poor officiating, or spectator interference. I pointed out at that time that baseball needed to revamp the officiating -- you, know, add a replay official to use slo-mo to overrule those bad calls, and get rid of the umpires who are sometimes biased and always incumbered with basic human limitations. I also pointed out that the games were far too long and that people now-a-days lack the attention span to watch a game in excess of 3 hours.

Of course my friend scoffed at me, and told me that you don't mess with the National Pastime. He was pretty passionate about his views, and frankly, I just liked messing with him. And, as he was and still is, bigger than me -- I eventually let it go.

Yesterday's Miami game just proves that I am right though. It doesn't matter that these two teams suck right now. People will go see professional athletics, if certain criteria are met. Hey Baseball Commissioner, you wanna save your sport? Here's what you need to do:

1. Get rid of the home plate umpire. We have computers that can determine a strike zone without bias and without error. If you still think that the Umpire needs something to do, let him yell out the results that the computer gives him.

2. Bring in an instant replay official that can overrule a close call on a base or catch.

3. This one's my favorite: Institute a time clock, much like a shot-clock in basketball. Have the time start when the pitcher gets the ball. Then give him 30 seconds to get rid of it. I once read that if you took all of the action in a baseball game - pitches, hits, steals, etc. - and pieced it altogether, you'd have about 9 minutes of action. 9 minutes of action from a 4-hour game aint gonna cut it. You get your major league games down to 90-120 minutes and you'll have a better chance of the Generation X-er's putting away their Nintendos for a while to watch a game.

4. Lastly, if none of the above work, then you are probably going to have to hire a 40-girl pom/dance squad. Dress them up in cleavage and sequins and let them squirm around on the field during the 7th-inning stretch.

Ok, that last suggestion was just a joke.

And, sorry Preston - I don't want to mess with the National Pastime. I just want to enjoy it more.

@%!*! College Football Fans

Sports fans are ruining sports for me.

Maybe that's too broad of a statement. I'll rephrase.

College students are ruining college athletics for me.

They are just plain obnoxious. Even the students at my Alma Mater -- especially the students at my Alma Mater.

In fact, I'm sure that I have attended my last home game at OSU. The last game that I attended left me embarrassed to be OSU Alumni. It wasn't the performance of the team on the field that made me feel that way -- it was the student body and the fans in the stands. I hadn't attended a game in a few years before I went to this game. I didn't realize it was standard practice to chant profanities in unison at the opposing team and officiating staff. Silly me.

I was just glad that I didn't have my kids with me that day.

How sad is that? The fact that I don't want to take my sons to a football game at my own university? I guess I'm just not ready to explain the "f-word" to my six year old yet (yes, believe it or not, I have managed to insulate him from that word thus far in his life).

I watched some of the Rutgers - Navy game this past weekend. It wasn't enough for the Rutgers fans that their team handily beat the smaller Navy squad. No, they had to be jerks about it too. There is an excellent article regarding this from the New Jersey paper "The Star Ledger". Here's the link:
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/columns-0/1189484859197200.xml&coll=1