Posts in Category: down to earth believer
“In Praise of Gruggles”
What, you ask, are “gruggles”?!
“Gruggles” is a word I made up in conjunction with a friend who may or may not want to share the birthing of such a bizarre word. “Gruggles” is a blend word. It’s a bit like “smog” (smoke + fog), or “staycation” (stay + vacation). “Gruggles” is a word that combines the idea of growth with the idea of struggles.” Hence, “gruggles”!
My friend and I were talking about how we have the same issues that we deal with over time. I used the word “struggles”, but he preferred the word “growth”. So, I took it on myself to coin the word gruggles.
I suspect that all growth is related to struggles. I wish that there was a way we could simply go to bed and grow, and maybe there is. However, I haven’t yet discovered it. (God knows I’ve tried!)
I thought about quoting a lot of Bible verses at this point in the post, but do I really need to do that? Common sense and our experience repeats this truth over and over. The only thing that doesn’t take struggle of one kind or another is death.
No struggle; no growth. Thank God for gruggles!
“Nibbling our Way to Lostness”
Psa. 119:10 “With my whole heart I seek you;
let me not wander from your commandments!” (English Standard Version)
How do you get lost? Sorry to ask such a personal question, but I’m curious as to whether I’m the only one who gets off the right path little by little.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I can also go into what a friend of mine called, “a premeditated backslide.” Absolutely, I can!
But more often, I deviate from the right path ever so slightly. The problem is that, once I get off the path, it is so easy to keep going.
Psalm 119 exudes an intense desire to stay on the path that God has marked out. The psalm is filled with words of love for God’s words and commands, as well as motivations for obeying those words and commands. “With my whole heart I seek you . . .” (the first half of verse 10) is typical.
However, the second half of verse ten recognizes a distressing truth. The psalmist prays that he may not wander from the truth. We humans do not generally pray for something that is a slam dunk. Apparently, wandering is always an option.
Victor P. Hamilton, my beloved undergrad Old Testament professor, notes that the Hebrew root translated “wander” in verse 10 “. . . is used to describe how sheep got lost (Ezek 34:6). They simply nibble their way to lostness.”[1]
A question I need to ask myself often is “Am I nibbling myself to lostness?” I have a track record of doing that. Sometimes, the nibbling is literal. Eating just a little more than I need, and I’ve gained fifteen pounds. Not all at once, of course. I was just nibbling!
Tolerating evil thoughts. But of course, I was just nibbling. Judging others is one of my current hot-button nibbles. I struggle with this, even though I am well aware that Jesus said “Don’t!” Oh, come on! Just a little nibble of the botulinum toxin won’t hurt.
Watching/reading/listening to too much news and depressing myself is one of my current drugs of choice. But of course, I was just nibbling. (This is an incredibly now issue. I was tempted to check the internet to see what stupid things we were doing or plotting to do to one another currently. I decided to finish writing this post instead. Good decision!)
In his book, The Screwtape Letters,C. S. Lewis noted that “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
Don’t nibble yourself to death today. I’ll try to avoid that as well.
[1] Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, volume 2, page 904.
DTEB, “Fair—and Merciful—Weights and Measures”
As I was out walking the dog and listening to my You Version Bible on my smart phone this morning, I was struck by the following verse:
Prov. 11:1 “A false balance is an abomination to the LORD,
but a just weight is his delight.” (English Standard Version)
I was even more struck with a rather personal extended application of the verse to my own sometimes judgmental attitude. I did not like the application, but I no doubt needed it.
False weights and measures are, in the literal sense, an economic issue. Here is what Kidner says concerning the matter: “The Law (Lev. 19:35f.), the Prophets (Mic. 6:1f.) and the Wisdom Writings (see also 20:10, 23) agree in condemning dishonesty primarily for God’s sake. For the same reason we are encouraged to give not only in full but to overflowing (Luke 6:35, 38). See also 16:11 . . . .” Christine Roy Yoder comments that, of eleven things that are listed as abominations of Yahweh in the book of Proverbs, three of them involve unjust weights and measures.[1] (See also Amos 8:5; and Micah 6:10-11.)
However, the figurative meaning of this saying was what I especially needed and didn’t like. I felt that God was asking me about my tendency to want mercy for me, but judgment for others. Isn’t that having different weights and measures? Other people’s wrongdoing is heavier and more than mine, surely! And, of course, my motivations are always pure, whereas the motivations of other people are often suspect.
I was hoping that I had misheard God’s Spirit, but was pretty well certain that I had not. When I looked up Luke 6:35-38 (to which Kidner referred, as already noted), all doubt was removed.
“Luke 6:36 “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
Luke 6:37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
Notice how Jesus intensifies this business of a fair “measure.” We are not simply to be just. Rather, we are to be merciful and generous. In fact, this merciful measure doesn’t stop with not being judgmental. No! Jesus calls his disciples to forgive!
And since I need a lot of mercy and forgiveness, I need to extend a lot of mercy and forgiveness to others. Measure for measure! The same standards of mercy for others that I need for myself.
Man, do I ever have a lot of work to do!
[1] Christine Roy Yoder, Proverbs, Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries (Nashville: Abingdon, 2009), 130.
“Not All Repetitions are Vain”
The praise team at our church was singing a song in which they repeated the same words over and over. Vain repetition? Well, there is such a thing. But I don’t think that the praise team was guilty of it.
Admittedly, repetition can be empty or vain. Jesus warned his disciples about this, and we also need to hear that warning. “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” (Matthew 6:7)
The King James Version of this verse warns against “vain repetitions.” However, not all repetitions are vain or empty. Some are very helpful and rich.
One good function of repetition is that it emphasizes a thing, a person, a prayer, an idea. When that thing, person, prayer, or idea is important, then repetitive emphasis is in order. I tell my wife every day that I love her. Vain repetition? I don’t think so! Emphasizing something that is true and important? Yes!
Another advantage of repetition is that it is wonderfully helpful when I’m trying to learn something. There is a saying that goes something like this:
“Repetition is the handmaiden of learning.
Repetition is the handmaiden of learning.
Repetition is the handmaiden of learning.”
I am currently learning a bit of Spanish with the help of Duolingo. The lessons are very repetitious. Thank God! With my a.d.d. mind, I have to go over and over things before I really get them. Only when something has become second nature to us is it really part of our nature at all.
Of course, what I/we are repeating needs to be true and helpful. In this day of the twenty-four-hour, seven-days-a-week news cycle, there is a tendency to simply repeat whatever news or allegations are currently making the rounds. And the problem is that if a thing is said over and over, we tend to believe it. But lies can be recycled over and over too. That doesn’t make them true, however.
And, of course, there is the anonymous net and antisocial media. Things are repeated and repeated until we believe them. Now that is vain repetition!
But if a thing is true and important, it is worthy of repetition. Such repetition is anything but vain.
Sing that repetitious song one more time, praise team! At least one more time!
“A 360, a 180, or a 1?”
I’m not good with numbers, but I am fascinated with words. On the other hand, sometimes I get excited even by numbers.
Take the expression, “doing a 180,” for example. Sometimes people talk about a radical change as “doing a 360”. However, if you do a 360°, all you’ve done is a circle. You’re right back where you began. So, unless I’m missing something (always a possibility), I think that a radical change is doing a 180.
As our Bible study guide pointed out last night, the Hebrew word teshuvah means “to turn”. Interestingly, this Hebrew word for repentance is also the word for apostasy! It all depends on which direction you are turning. Are you turning away from sin and toward God (repentance), or are you turning away from God to go your own way (apostasy)?
Now, I freely admit that I get lost easily. This is true whether you’re talking about traveling geographically or in terms of life itself. There are times when a 180 is precisely what I need to do.
However, why should I wait until I’m that lost? Why not seek to live so that, if I get even a little off the path, I allow God to make me aware? Why not repent quickly, before I’ve done a lot of damage to myself, other people, God’s loving and tender heart?
So, my goal is to get it down to 1°, to repent quickly, not to wait until I’m crazy way lost.
I can’t be among the one-percenters when it comes to material wealth. Never really wanted to be. Don’t now. But the one-degree-ers—now that is a worthy goal.
“Depends on Where You Look”
Is the world (or at least the human part of the world) a mess? Or is the world achingly beautiful?
Depends on where you look.
For example, this morning I was outside, and I nearly witnessed a wreck. The highway department is working on a small section of road near our house. In order to avoid a longer detour, people are cutting through the housing development across the road from us. This is despite the signs that read “NO THRU TRAFFIC”! The sign is positioned so that it blocks the right lane at the entry of the subdivision. Of course, many people are paying absolutely no attention to the sign, and there is a lot of traffic through this residential area.
So, there was a truck pulling a trailer waiting to pull out of the subdivision onto the main highway, and there was a car trying to turn left into the subdivision. But the sign was in the way, so the car turning left got hung up with his/her car right in the path of oncoming traffic on the main road. A car came barreling down the highway from the other direction. Fortunately, he/she was able to stop before hitting the car. But it was close.
Why all this unnecessary drama? Hurry, I suppose, and an unwillingness to obey the law because people were in a hurry. I am reminded of what someone said many years ago when things weren’t quite as hurried as they are now. “Hurry is not of the devil. Hurry is the devil.” Hurry is ugly, and it breeds more ugliness.
But the reason I was outside to see this little scenario unfolding was because of beauty. The sun was just coming up and kissing the tops of the trees, when a very brief shower arrived from the west. I hustled downstairs and out the kitchen door to see if there was a rainbow. There wasn’t, or at least, I didn’t see one. But the sunrise was beautiful, and the fragrance in the air after the shower reminded me of the Garden of Eden, even though I’ve never there. A few leaves were falling from a nearby tree, and my wife’s flowers were as stunningly beautiful as the one who planted them.
We need to look at the ugliness of life and consider whether we might be contributing to it. Yes, we do! And slowing down enough to obey the warning signs might be advisable as well. There are a lot of small children in that subdivision across the road. Being in a hurry and not heeding the signs could lead to something much more horrendous than a car accident.
But we need to look at the beauty of life as well. Indeed, we need to look, not only at the beauty, but for the beauty.
Everything depends on where you look.
“Lust, Entitlement, and Pride”
One of my fellow addicts summarized his basic struggles (and my own) in the following manner: “My problem was lust, entitlement, and pride.
Lust: I want it!
Entitlement: I deserve it!
Pride: I can handle it!” (Anonymous)
He went on to say that “having a scare” won’t keep you from acting out in your addiction. Only honesty can do that.
Of course, it isn’t just addicts who struggle with lust, entitlement, and pride. These are human struggles. Addictions are just the usual human struggles on steroids, and those of us who are addicts are not a different species, just a different sub-species of human.
We are all responsible for the things we want. Wants can be encouraged or discouraged. The idea that people’s desires are malleable is behind all advertising. Advertising does not exist to tell us where to get what we need. It exists to tell us what we want, and that these wants are needs.
And, if we want something, surely we must be entitled to it, right?
One of the things for which I’ve never been able to forgive my parents is that they never consulted me to see if I actually wanted to be. I think that being is an important choice. They should have taken my feelings about the matter into their considerations!
If I was not entitled to my choice as to whether to be or not to be (and, as Shakespeare famously said, that is the question), then what else am I entitled to claim as my own? Even life is not possessed, only lived. This is true and has always been true. Covid-19 has simply reminded us of this basic fact.
And then, there is pride, the pretense that “I can handle this.” No, you can’t. Neither can I. The truth is that we do need other people. And I believe that we also—indeed, supremely—need God. That’s true for a baby in arms, for the elderly (which I am now), and for a strong twenty-something person. We may not like it, but it is still true.
So, whether you are an addict or not, I hope that you’ll be honest. It might be a good, daily routine to put in place to begin your day with three basic, honest confessions:
- I am responsible for my wants, and I don’t really need to have many of them.
- I am not entitled to anything.
- I can’t and don’t have to do this alone, whatever the “this” is.
I am not promising that this will be a miracle cure for whatever ails you. I am saying, from my own experience and that of many others, that if you will confess these things and live them out, your life will get gradually better and be enriched in a thousand ways.
Of course, the living out of these confessions is the thing, isn’t it?
DTEB, “Yard Sign with which I Mostly Agree: Principles Above Personalities”
I was walking back from the auto repair shop (new brakes) and was noticing a lot of political signs. I live in a very pro-Trump area, so I was not surprised to find that there were quite a few signs for the Trump-Pence ticket. I did see one yard that had two signs: “Black Lives Matter” and “Biden-Harris.”
Many yards had no signs at all. Did this mean that they simply didn’t care? Or did it mean that they didn’t want to indicate to other people for whom they are planning to vote? Or do they simply not like yard signs?
As I mulled over these matters, I saw a yard sign that looked different. At first, I thought it might be a sign for someone who had painted the house or done some other kind of work for the homeowner. But, when I stopped for a closer look, I read the following:
This was rather refreshing. That is not to say that I agree with it all. If “WOMEN’S RIGHTS” are intended to include the right to an abortion as a means of birth control, I find this very problematic. But, other than that, I agree with everything else. (And, incidentally, and with the realization that many of you will vociferously disagree, I do not think that the abortion issue is the only one for us to consider during this election cycle.)
However, what I found particularly refreshing about this sign was not simply what it said, but more so, what it implied. The implication of the sign was that principles matter more than personalities.
The last phrase of the twelfth tradition of twelve-step groups is that we “. . . place principles before personalities.” And that is something about which we should all think deeply. What are our principles? Not opinions, but our deep convictions and principles. Not our own personalities or those of others, but the deepest core of who we are as individuals and as a nation.
And this is something we need to do, not once every four years, or two years, or each year. This matter of having good, solid principles and living them out is the journey of a lifetime. In fact, such a journey may be another word for life itself.
My own belief is that principles and convictions need to be anchored in God. I believe that God’s own principles flow out of the deepest part of who God is. And at this point, at least, God wants us to be like God.
If we want to have really good, solid principles, perhaps we should think more about God, and less about Trump-Pence and Biden-Harris.
DOWN TO EARTH BELIEVER
- God’s Specific Likes about Us April 25, 2025God pulled off a surprise love attack on me this morning. God lured me into the trap in a quite trivial way. I thought I would start my day, not by grading students’ assignments, but by reading and meditating on some Scripture. By the way, I am not saying that reading Scripture is trivial. The […]
- “Strange and Wonderful Creatures” March 28, 2025I did not sleep enough last night. Five hours of sleep may be enough for some, but not for me. However, when I tried for a while to go back to sleep after waking up at 1:00 a.m., I realized that it was not going to happen. I might as well get up and work […]
- “Even Computers Need a Rest Sometimes!” February 11, 2025Jumpy cursor! I was trying to grade student assignments, and my cursor was jumping around like a Mexican jumping bean. I would start typing something, and then I would be on a different line. Here is the sort of non-sentences I was ending up with: be Please see my respolownse video. Of course, what I […]
- “Lives as Well as Lips” February 5, 2025“Praise the LORD! Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever! Who can utter the mighty deeds of the LORD, or declare all his praise? Blessed are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times!” (Psalm 106:1-3, English Standard Version) […]
- DTEB, “The Wanna-Wanna Method” January 29, 2025“. . . work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, Phil. 2:13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12b-13, English Standard Version) In a text exchange with a friend, he confessed that he really, really wants to make some bad […]
- “Fun, Cat Videos, and Transformation” December 9, 2024“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17, English Standard Version) One of my twelve-step sponsors suggested that I need more fun in my life. He knows me well, but on this one, I was determined to prove him wrong. […]
- “The Enemy is Perfectionism” December 6, 2024“The good is the enemy of the best.” (A common saying.) “The best is the enemy of doing anything at all that is good.” (My take on the saying and my reality.) Some of you have been wondering why I haven’t been posting any of my musings in the past way-too-long. I am tempted to […]
- DTEB, “Getting Christ and Ourselves Back in Focus” November 11, 2024“Col. 3:1 ¶ If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Col. 3:2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Col. 3:3 For you have died, and your life is hidden […]
- “Search Me!” October 27, 2024“Psa. 139:23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23-24, English Standard Version) I am participating in a Bible study, and this is a prayer […]
- “Christian Speech” October 26, 2024“Eph. 4:29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” Foulkes, in his excellent commentary on the Book of Ephesians, writes the following, which I quote at some length: “29. Now the […]
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