Hoarding...

One of the show's Laura and I started watching during our sitting times with Jude is A&E's Hoarders. The title of the show should give a fairly strong indication of what it's about.

But why am I thinking about it this morning?

My inbox has always been notoriously... full...

Right now, I have nearly 1500 messages there (don't worry... only 21 or so are "unread").

It got me to thinking about my dad. This isn't going to be one of those touching remembrances or a (perhaps) heartfelt lament of what it will be like raising our son having never met his paternal grandfather.

No... this is a little along the lines of the inheritance of sin.

So there's this verse in the Old Testament of the Bible that says, "And those of you who are left shall rot away in your enemies' lands because of their iniquity, and also because of the iniquities of their fathers they shall rot away like them." (Lev 26:39).

I really should mention that the context of the verse isn't dire hopelessness, but a hope found through repentance and the promise of forgiveness from God to His people.

But I'm thinking about this for a few reasons this morning. On the one hand, I think, "What sorts of things will I pass on to my son?" It's really caused me to second guess some of the things that I say and some of the ways that I act when I'm around him. On the other hand, it makes me think of the baggage I'm carrying as well.

I think there are some who would veer to heavily on the personal responsibility side to say, "Well, you just need to 'man up,' (in some respect) and take responsibility for what you do." There is another dichotomy that might say, "Well, you can't help what you do because you've been formed and conditioned by the context in which you were raised." Then there's the middle ground - the ground that I think a lot of us would stand if we really thought at some length about issues of sin. That is, that nature and nurture both play a part in the actions we perform and the motivations that drive those actions.

Specifically, there is the inner influence of the me that believes that comfort must be found (though, comfort is a good thing). That same self might decide that comfort shouldn't... or wouldn't... be found by seeking the Lord. So the outward me comes into view to say, "Look, remember how you may have been taught in the past? Think about the things that bring comfort... the things that bring security..."

In the house I grew up in, there wasn't a lot that went to waste. If we saw something on the side of the road that looked even remotely valuable, then it was valuable enough to be picked up. Granted, we weren't nearly as bad as the hoarders depicted on the A&E show, but we had our moments. We had a garage full of miscellaneous wood.

There were planks of different sizes.

There were sides of old plywood boxes.

There was furniture.

There were old pipes.

There were boxes full of rusty hardware.

I remember that there were times where I couldn't walk into my own room (this, however, was my own fault) due to the piling of things on the floor. And even now... it's really difficult for me to throw away some things, or to give others (that are in decent condition) away as there "...might always be a use for that later."

So this is a light thing, but perhaps heavy in its implications. My own father did not grasp for Christ in this life. And sometimes, I see the actions he pursued to bring comfort and security being amplified in my own life (perhaps they're amplified because they are introspective?). His days were spent by working hard when he was at "the office," and being served and entertained while he was at home. His weekends were spent foraging and gathering and seeing success as what had been accumulated through all of his aforementioned hard work.

And I see a lot of him in me.

On a somewhat side note, I think that we (being inclusive of you if you are of the people who subscribe to this faith of following after Christ) may have a tendency to gloss over sin and to shoot straight to the primary growth of the root rather address the reality of what comprises the secondary growth. Often, then, the answer is "Well, you need to love Jesus more," or, "You need to to worship Jesus rightly," or, "You need to understand that your real problem is you own base sinfulness and not just the effects of that base sinfulness." However earnest the "encourager," in these situations might be, what is often not taken into consideration is the fact that people who believe themselves as Christians are people who are wrapped up in a process of being changed while still living with the residual intricacies and problems of the sin that remains in their (our) lives.

As such, salvation is not the magic wand that removes the sense and belief of the power of comfort apart from God, or security apart from God, or acceptance apart from God, or anything else apart from God from the exercise of our day to days on this side of heaven.

But... a lot of times... we think it is.

A lot of times, it becomes really easy to judge people whose outward lives are a mess.

A lot of time, it is easy to deny the fact that Jesus saves people whose lives are an outer and inner mess.

More than that, there can be a total denial that culture, family, education, history, philosophy, etc. has the power that it does in shaping who we are and are to become.

What Christ has committed to in the incarnation, what he has committed to in His expression of true Humanity and true Spirituality is to call us instantaneously righteous by his death and resurrection while simultaneously living with us through our ineptitude in the process of living a life with him (I've heard a lot of people - professors and pastors - call this the "already" and "not yet" of Christianity. That is the reality of this life of living in faith of following after Christ.

But still... I really need to clean out my inbox.

** I was doing a search for a goofy picture I could add to this, so I searched "Jesus Hoarder" and ended up pulling a great snippet from Ed Welch at CCEF - you can read it by clicking here. He states (shortly) that hoarding is a little unique to western culture and gives some points to work with if you (or someone you know) is struggling with hoarding.

City Sense...

You'd like to think that it's something you get when you live in the city - a transformation caused by some of the pollution around you that gives you an innate and super ability to live, work and play in a city.

But really, it's just an understanding you come to.

Sure, after living in an urban environment, you develop some "abilities." For example, you should learn to parallel park a car - when I use the word, should here I don't use it in a suggestive sense, but in the sense that it's something that will happen as you park your car over and again on a curb in any populated neighborhood.

You learn how to feed a meter. Regularly.

You learn that bicycling is a more environ-friendly mode of transit and that it's generally faster than driving.

You learn (and this is something that I've hit on before) that amidst the beauty of a thing created (like a cityscape) comes the reality of a world that exists in brokenness caused by sin.

It's a funny place where everything can be simultaneously right and wrong. It is right for you to be where you are because you know, in one way or another, that you're called to be here. It's wrong because there are others calling you to move away.

It is right because in the confluence of ideas, art, culture, science, education, government and technology there is understanding that image bearers are able to imitate and reflect the God they may or may not know and recognize. It is wrong because in the confluence of crime, destruction, racism, discrimination, murder, greed and indifference there is an understanding that image breakers are willing and desirous of rebelling against the same God.

There's not really any one thing that got me thinking about this on this time out writing. If you've stopped here before, you know that it's something that comes up from time to time when I write; meaning that I'm thinking about this a lot. A few good examples would suffice to describe the sense that my city (Philadelphia) exudes.

When you're walking the streets here, you can experience two (or more) entirely different "cities," in the course of a mile or two. It's not uncommon to walk down a street and see a home valued at $600k+ next door to one that's dilapidated, condemned or (even worse) the base of a drug dealer. Center City is what you'd be familiar with if you came to visit, however. Center City is where all the large buildings are. It's where all the fun stuff is - the kind of things you do when you visit a city. While there, you'd probably also visit the Art Museum area and Old City. You'd notice that the streets in Center City are relatively clean, that there are friendly people to help you when you're lost and that there's a healthy police presence.

The sense of Philadelphia changes, however, if you go a mile north or a mile south of Center City. As you travel down Broad, away from the big buildings, it wouldn't be uncommon to see a neighboring car's window roll down and watch trash free float from there to the ground. Towards the fall, there are sometimes whirlwinds of trash as the weather gets a little more windy. The trash thing spans all colors of skin and economic status, apparently...

If you ride a train in, you might be awed by the striking beauty of the city (if coming in from the North or East, this view is to your left). Looking off to your right, it's easy to be sickened by the amount of garbage piled beside the train tracks - the amount of bad graffiti tagged on train tunnels and abandoned buildings.

The sense of a city, mine at least and I imagine most, is conflicted. The sense you develop in interacting with it is the same. It's easy to question trust in other people. You wonder when and how you should trust them. While in a town watch course, La learned that when you're walking the streets in any part of the city, you should always be aware of what's around you by turning your head every few seconds.

We've found too that there can be a cultural mistrust at large. It doesn't always seem like a good thing to some that younger people of a different color of skin or background would be moving to their neighborhood. Gentrification has detrimental ramifications and years of discrimination won't be left buried under the guise of hope and promise. In my mind and heart, I don't believe that anything apart from Christ can really work to heal this sense of deep sadness and betrayal that some (not all, trust me, not all) of our African American neighbors hold - it's complicated and ingrained in a few generations who have learned that you can't trust and that you'll never get anywhere for it.

City sense is not necessarily something you get, but something you become a part of. The sense of a city will exist with you in it, or with you away. It isn't a super power or ability, but it is something to interact with - something that can affect you and something you can affect.

I was once a bully...

I grew up in a kind of rough neighborhood in Huntsville. It wasn't the worst, but it was not the best by a long shot. I never knew it, but I kind of remember my dad saying something about not really liking living in Huntsville after we moved out to the burbs. There was an apartment complex nearby called Jackson Square - my parents never wanted me or my sister to go there. Part of their fear [and I kid you not] was the fact that mostly black people lived there. Part of their fear, too, was the drug dealing that was going on there. Part of their fear was the violence.

To be honest, I didn't hang at Jackson Square much. I just didn't have any interest.

I did, however, hang out with the kids who lived behind me a lot. We used to always pick on this kid named Donald. I was a real jerk to him. Every now and again we would just beat on him - looking back, I can't even understand why we would put a child through so much hellish brutality or why that same child would just keep coming back for more.

The "ringleader," so to speak, was a guy named Ron. Ron was pretty indiscriminate with his blows though. I think I probably received the hardest hit from him of us all in more ways than one. I remember that he was once so mad at me that he just walked up to me and hit me in my face [really, on my chin] and then he just walked away.

There was a time when I seemed to simply thrive off of violence - whether dealt or endured. When we moved out to the burbs, however, all that seemed to change [kind of]. I wasn't as much of a jerk as I was before. To be honest... a lot of that changed when I moved from elementary to middle school. I had changed from a neighborhood bully to a band geek.

I know God's forgiven me for all that crap that I put other people through, and I'd like to think that he could give me the ability to forgive others in the same fashion. In college, I remember being overcome with conviction so much to the point that I hand wrote a letter to Donald - a letter apologizing for what I did to him. He wrote me back. He said he forgave me. He said that the whole neighborhood had changed during the decade that I was gone. He said that Ron became a Christian and that everyone was better. He talked about how good everything was now.

That was nice, but I'm not sure I believe him.
Just like the bully - always right in his own.

My wife and I were talking one day about her artwork. She is incorporating a lot of people, events and artifacts from her past in this piece she's working on now. We discussed how we are the sum of our experiences and how who we are now communicates who we were. The Christian is more than the sum of his own [or her own] experiences though. What makes a Christian is not so much this one experience with a God who swears He was once a man, but a hope of an experience that can come all at once or never in our lifetime that has it's roots in another experience that happened all at once so long ago. Even in a world that doesn't acknowledge God, there is a sense that we are more than the mere sum of our experiences.

When I loved violence as a child, I didn't necessarily love it because I experienced it. I observed it. I had knowledge of it. But I didn't experience it first hand. Is knowledge the same as experience? I would think no. I watched westerns and war movies with my dad - he had experience with violence as a soldier. He would tell me stories of some of the actors - how this man had fought in this war and what was significant about this move and the heroes portrayed. Those were men and times who were familiar with the experience of violence. So, when I inflicted violence upon others, was it necessarily because I had experienced violence?

No.

It may be hard to follow - but we are more than what we can see. We are more than what we are doing, or what we have done. A similar thought came over me last night as I was walking through a local K-Mart [yeah, they still have those here]. I looked at all the people wearing red vests. I thought about how they drone about. Then I started to wonder where they live. I wondered if the corporate heads tried to make them seem inhuman by making them dress in uniform. I wondered if there was a more devious motivation to all of it. I digress. Here again, these are more than the sum of what they do. They are more than the sum of their experience.

In a way, I guess we are a sum of all of human experience in a non-reincarnate way. As a Christian, I believe that part of who I am is built upon the experience of Adam in the garden in his disobedience. As a Christian, I believe that who I have become and who I am becoming is built upon the experience of Christ in the garden in his prayer of obedience.

So...sorry for going from entertainment to deep thoughts. Caught me by surprise too.