Sighs and Musings

Life : Shutting down comments

This site has been under a rather annoying attack of late, and to reduce the amount of time I need to spend managing it, I am shutting down comments for a while (not like I have posted much new recently).

I'll announce if/when the ban gets lifted.

Posted by Steven at 07:07 AM | Permalink

Faith : A Parable in Golf

(Feel free to substitute other appropriate activities for Golf – the story remains the same. For me personally “Board Games” works just as well).

Imagine a world where there is a subculture of people who believe Golf is the ultimate activity. These Golf fanatics gather together every week in special-built auditoriums to hear professional golfers talk about the game. The professionals give talks every week explaining the fine points of the game and advise the gathered fans on how to improve their swing. The fans also sing songs about how great Golf is and, because paying for the building and the professional golfer to speak isn’t cheap, they collect donations so the meetings can continue. A whole industry has grown up around these fans. Books are written about how to read the green and to choose which club to use, and dedicated bookstores exist to sell these books (as well as trinkets with Golf-related logos).

And yes, sometimes a few of the fans actually go and play a game of Golf; although for most of the fans it is enough that they know how to play from having been to weekly talks on the subject. Few actually own clubs and many have never even touched a golf ball, yet they remain confident in their understanding of the game because they have listening to people talk about it since they were a child. Those occasions when a fan actually plays the game are significant events, and quite often the fan is asked to say a few words about their experience at the weekly meeting before the professional comes up and gives their Golf lesson.

Now things are not always peaceful among the Golf fans. Major disagreements exist on topics like the correct stance when putting, whether it is appropriate to use a golf cart when playing, and what kinds of clubs are legal to use. Some disagreements have become so heated that fans with different views will simply not play with each other. Among the professionals, different tours have formed and certain players only play on certain tours and won’t even visit a golf course that is used for a different tour.

There are also some fans (led by professionals) who have taken upon themselves to defend the honor of Golf. They protest at football games, and object when schools teach things like volleyball. They complain about TV shows where a golfer is shown hitting a ball into a rough since golfers aren’t supposed to do that. Of course all that protesting takes up a lot of time, so these fans rarely have the opportunity to actually play the game themselves. It is more important to them to discourage other people from engaging in “lesser” activities.

"He who has an ear, let him hear"
:)

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink

Life : Regarding Mentorship in The Church

As part of his comment on my previous post, Stacy asked:

What is your perspective on the mentor/mentee relationship? Do you see that as a viable avenue for spiritual growth?

Mentor/Mentee is a bit of a touchy subject as I was witness to some of the failure of the Discipleship/Shepherding Movement a couple decades ago and know people who lost their way because of being dominated by others in the name of mentorship. For those not old enough to recall, starting in the late 70’s there was a big push (led by a small group of well-know Christian leaders) to use mentorship relationships as a means to encourage spiritual growth among Christians. Sounds logical, and it certainly has good Biblical foundations.

Unfortunately, in a far too many cases this was pushed to an extreme with the mentor lording in over the mentee. I personally avoided being harmed (I have no problem telling someone “no” and leaving relationships that aren’t healthy); but saw many younger Christians messed up by it. I still run into people who are afraid to go back to church because of bad experiences with “Mentors.”

I’ll also note that a couple of the early leaders later publicly repented of the teaching – not for their own actions (which remained reasonable) but for misleading the church into dangerous territory. I personally believe that anytime your create an unequal relationship within the church, you are asking for problems (although unpacking that statement would take several posts – but I am headed in that direction). We serve the church in different roles; but none of those roles are higher, more important, or more powerful than others. Church structures that violate that principle will always result in sin.

All that being said, the idea of mentorship is quite biblical and there clearly is a place for it in Christian discipleship. I started to write, “the trick is to provide appropriate safeguards” and realized I was slipping into the same error I was writing about in the previous post – thinking of programs to “fix” failures in the church as opposed to going back to organic solutions.

The reality is that the good mentor/mentee relationships I personally have had were not structured as mentor/mentee relationships. They were relationships I had with more mature (experienced) Christians where we each were free to speak into the other’s lives. Given the differences in experience, I was more often on the receiving end of input; but the individuals made a point to seek out my advice (even if just to show me how my advice was still looking at the issues from a worldly perspective). We were truly “submitted to one another” but I was gaining benefit from the other’s greater experience.

It’s that kind of relationships we need to create in the church – ones that are structured as mutual, egalitarian relationships; but yet allow less mature Christians to gain benefit from the experience of more mature ones. I’m just afraid that as soon as you start to call it Mentor/Mentee, you are asking for trouble.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink

Faith : Of growth, natural and otherwise

When a farmer sees that some crops may not be growing as they should, the farmer starts to look at things like the weather (has it been too hot? too cold? too sunny? cloudy?); the soil (too acid? base? not enough nutrients? etc.); irrigation (too much water? too little?) and the like. Essentially, they look at the environment in which their crops are growing because they know that plants will grow just fine on their own if you give them the right environment. What they don’t do is grab the plans and start pulling on them to try and stretch them; or paint them to make their color better - trying to directly make plants grow better never works.

This is a lesson the church needs to learn.

I believe that Christians will grow to be fruitful disciples quite naturally if they are given the right environment to grow in. Their fruit will both be personal (love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) and evangelical (sharing their faith with others). There is nothing you need to do to get a Christian to grow in this way if you have given them the right environment.

If there are aspects of growth that are not present in people lives, what we need to be asking is: what is lacking in the environment in which they are growing? Why is this growth not happening naturally as it should? There are numerous factors that could be involved and listing them all is impossible; my desire here is not to give answers but to encourage the right questions to be asked.

Unfortunately, in most churches what happens is that when someone sees that the congregation isn’t growing in some way is that a program is created to artificially produce growth. People aren’t sharing their faith, so let’s start a door-to-door ministry or a tract distribution ministry. Men aren’t supporting each other so let’s create a men’s ministry. People aren’t reading The Bible so let’s create Sunday School classes to teach them.

Now it could be countered that these programs are just attempts at establishing the right environment, and I accept that many sincere, well-meaning people view it that way. In many cases they believe that because they have never seen church done any other way. The distinction I am making here is between told “now we are going to do X (study, evangelize, build relationships, etc.)” and doing X because you are driven to do it from inside (by your heart and by God’s Spirit within you).

When I first began my journey of following Jesus, I read the Bible through in about a year. I didn’t do that because I was told to do it – I did it because I wanted to understand this thing I had become a part of. You would have had to struggle to get me to not read my Bible. Likewise, in those early years I was quick to tell people about what I was learning about God, and led several people to begin their own journeys. Again, I didn’t do this because it was Saturday morning and therefore time to “do evangelism” – I did it because I was excited about my new relationship with Jesus and talked about it (just like I talked about everything else I was excited about).

It took several years of being part of your typical American churches for those natural desires to be squeezed into the church’s programs and for the passion to disappear.

I am also not suggesting that organized activities are a bad thing. If a group of men, who have already started to form relationships with each other, want to get together regularly to support each other in their faith, that’s a great idea – such meetings would be a natural, organic outgrowth of their relationships. If a group of believers find themselves drawn to the homeless who are living in a local park and want to express God’s love to them (both in actions and words) in an organized way, by all means. Such actions come about because the individuals are growing in an environment that encourages love and action. My objection is only to creating programs and institutions to do something that people should be doing; but no one wants to do because the environment doesn’t encourage such growth. My plea is that when we discover something lacking in the discipleship of people in the church, we ask "why are they not motivated to do this on their own?" and look at the environment we have provided to them in our churches to see what is lacking to support that growth.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Life : I’m Baaaack (for now)

I suddenly find myself with a lot of things I want to write about, so I have decided to reboot my blog (given the IP issues, I am certainly not going to put these essays up on Facebook). I have no idea how long this wave of inspiration will last; but while it does, I’ll be posting my sighs and musings here again. I continue to recommend that people follow this blog via an RSS reader – that way you don’t have to keep checking here to see if there are new posts. You’ll get them whenever I post, regardless of the lag in between. It is still too early to tell if I will be able to settle in to a regular schedule or not.

Before I get into more substantial comments, it would seem appropriate to catch people up on the state of my life (although I suspect that anyone still looking for posts here already knows). A couple years ago Anne and I moved from Silicon Valley up into San Francisco. Well, the short version is that we moved back down. What’s more, we have decided to end our wandering ways (or at least stopping looking for opportunities to move out of the area) and have purchased a home. So at the age of 50, I am finally putting down some roots. As one might imagine, a lot of thought went into both decisions, and some of that thinking will end up on this blog in due course.

Associated with the move, we are once again looking for a new church home (not that we ever really found one in San Francisco – another source of posts to look forward to). There is a church within a half mile of our house that we are cautiously optimistic about; but are still getting to know it. I can already see that it is a place that I can learn from (they have some interesting differences which hint at a fresh perspective); but the bottom line as always is: where does God want me?

Finally, it has been 14 months since I have regularly blogged. That has given me some time to re-organize my thoughts on some subjects, and I have some new ways of looking at old subjects. I keep looking for an opportunity to start writing a book instead of a collection blog posts; but that has not yet come together. So I’ll keep working on my ideas and my writing skill here.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink

Life : Anyone Still Out There?

I haven’t posted a lot recently – what writing I have been doing has been longer format stuff that doesn’t fit on this blog. However, I have had a few ideas for shorter essays and was wondering if anyone was still looking here for new posts. So... if you are still following this blog, post a comment, or otherwise let me know. Thanks.

Posted by Steven at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Life : 50 years on

Today is my 50th birthday. A time for introspection and refection – two things I do quite well.

To start off with, this is not the only odometer that is rolling around a bunch of digits this year:

* 50 years ago today, I was born
* 40 years ago this coming April I began my journey following Jesus
* 30 years ago this January, I started my career as a full-time software engineer
* 20 years ago this January, I moved to California
* 10 years ago… Well, there are some things that happened 10 years ago; but nothing that cries out as a landmark to celebrate. Perhaps 10 years from now I’ll think otherwise.

Oh, and 23 years ago this coming March, I got married (not exactly in sync with the rest – so it goes).

So I’ll consider these in turn.

50 Years of Life and life is good. While there are many things I would be tempted to change if I could, the reality is that I’m not at all convinced that I would be a better person if I changed any of them. Even my worst regrets have built positive things into my life, so should I regret them at all? The reality is that compared to 99% of the people in the world, my life is amazing; so on what basis can I complain about anything? The truth is that while there are still things I want to do with the years ahead, my life has been a good one.

40 years of faith and my love of God and appreciation of His love for me continues to grow. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that my faith is a dynamic thing, constantly growing. My relationship with God continues to get stronger as he works in me to help me see the world from His point of view. I don’t think I would be able to appreciate my life as well as I do if it wasn’t for God’s Spirit in my life acting as comforter, counselor and teacher.

30 years of engineering and frankly I’m getting tired of it. Don’t get me wrong – I have a great job working with great people. It would be hard to imagine a better engineering position elsewhere. It’s just that I’m starting to feel like I’ve done everything I want to do as a software engineer. Yes, I can keep doing the same things for many more years; but I could also retire today as an engineer and have no regrets about my career.

22 years of marriage, and I think we have finally figured it out. Seriously. We’ve had our ups and downs over the years; but at this point I think we both understand each other enough and understand how to cooperate in the cramped space of a marriage enough so that 1 plus 1 really is greater than 2. Learning how to be married really is a lot like learning how to be part of a pair of people trying to cook in a tiny kitchen (perhaps preparing three dishes – two that you are doing on your own and one that you are doing together). It’s all about finding the balance between giving each other enough room that you can get your own things done, helping each other out when extra hands are needed, and finding joy in the things you discover to do together.

20 years in California and the move to the city has kept it fresh (for now). We moved up to SF in part because we had grown bored of living in the South Bay. Too much suburbia. Of course moving up here brought into sharp relief the things we really did like about where we used to live; but it’s all under an hour away, and I’m down there at least once a week anyway. We both still miss the East Coast (particularly our friends back there); but at this point we’d also miss California if we ever moved away.

OK, so much for retrospectives. What’s next?

I’m really overcome with the sense that I for all I have learned in the first 50 years of my life, what I need to focus on in the years ahead is passing all that on to other people. I’m still not sure by what means to do that. Write some books? Become a teacher? Become a pastor? All of the above? I’m not sure; but I really think the focus of my life needs to switch into output mode. What that will involve in terms of lifestyle changes is unclear; but changes are needed to go with the new focus. I have seen God doing a lot of clearing the undergrowth from my life the last few years. I think that was in preparation for what’s next.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink

Life : The prodigal returns to the fold

Four years ago (almost to the day - check out the post) I - who has started developing for the Macintosh 2 months after it was release and who worked for Apple for 7 years developing the Mac OS - abandoned the Mac for the PC. You can read the post to see how and why that transition happened. In essence I did not see the value investing my time in learning a whole new OS (Mac OS X) and a new programming language (Objective C) and neither did a lot of the independent developers who wrote the cool programs that made the Mac fun for me.

The news is that I am typing this post up on my new iMac that rests in the place of pride on my desk and my old PC is sitting in the corner, disconnected.

The reasons for my return to the Mac is manifold; but the real game changer is the iPhone. Now that I have a programmable device that I carry just about everywhere with me, the ability to program it for myself (even just utilities for my own private use) is something I can’t resist. What’s more, a cursory examination of the iPhone App Store provides ample evidence that the indie developers have returned to Apple as iPhone developers.

On top of that, the new Macs (being Intel-chip based) can run Windows, and I am setting up this computer to dual-boot, so I can still use Windows on those occasions I need to.

What’s more, I have a sense that God wants me to invest my energies into more creative activities (writing, programming, etc.) and to spend less time playing games, and the Mac is just a better computer for that (with fewer distractions for games).

Now I still have my 12” Sony laptop that I use to read Email (I use that because I can take it on trips easily, and I don’t have to worry about syncing my email archives between different machines); but for the foreseeable future I expect to be using a Mac a my primary computer at home.

Anne (who never left the Mac) is quite pleased.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink

TV : Dollhouse: Epitaph One

OK, if that’s where Joss is headed, I’m in for the ride.

For as much as I was looking forward to Joss Whedon’s return to television with the new show “Dollhouse” this past Fall, I have to admit I was disappointed in the first few episodes (although I understand that was a result of Network’s interference - I've also seen the original pilot and it was much better). The series did pick up significantly in the second 6 (of 12) episodes, with a couple being superb. But in the end, while I could see the show being a venue for examining certain interesting ideas, I didn’t have a sense of where he was headed with it as a series – how would things evolve to keep the show interesting after multiple years?

Now I understand, and really want to see this play out.

The reason I understand is the episode “Epitaph One”, intentionally unaired but also intentionally included in the DVD boxed set. The existence of this episode requires a bit of explanation. The Fox TV network only ordered 12 episodes for season 1 and would only ever air those 12 episodes they paid for. However, in the international market, DVD boxed sets with 13 or more episodes are able to negotiate much more profitable deals, so the people at the division of 20th Century Fox responsible for the DVD sets asked if Joss & co. could somehow create a 13th episode for the DVDs. Thus the “missing 13th episode” came into existence.

What makes this so interesting is at the time this episode was created, it wasn’t at all clear if the series would be renewed for a second season (odds were actually against it). So, for this final episode Joss & company decided to make something of a “series finale” – something that would provide a kind of closure to the show should it be canceled. The effect is that “Epitaph One” gives a pretty clear idea of the overall arc that Joss has planned for the series without giving away so many details as to make any additional seasons produced anticlimactic.

And a pretty amazing arc it is.

“Epitaph One” is set in 2019 in a post-apocalyptic world where civilization has completely collapsed (and in fact has been collapsed for a while, so there are fewer than 10 years before things fall apart). What’s more, it becomes clear that the Dollhouse (or at least Dollhouse technology) is responsible for humanity’s downfall. There are devices that reprogram any person that come to near to them into killing machines and the streets are filled will crowds who kill anyone who is not reprogrammed. Other weaponized applications of Dollhouse tech are also implied. The story follows a small band of survivors trying to find someplace safe who stumble on the ruins of the LA Dollhouse in which the rest of the show is set. They access stored memories in the Dollhouse archives to provide “flashbacks” which give some hints of how this all happened and allowing for some great scenes with some of the series regulars (The last scene with the character Topher is an amazing performance).

Now Joss has hinted that some of the events in the show were written to be deliberately misleading as to how things came about; but even with some variation, it is clear that Joss’s vision for Dollhouse has some real scope. I hope he is able to run it out to the end.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

TV : Torchwood: Children of Earth

Now that’s the way to do SciFi on TV.

I’ve not been a big fan of the BBC television series “Torchwood” (broadcast in the US on BBC-America). I checked out the first few episodes of season 1; and since then, when there have been episodes that that got a lot of buzz in the UK, I watched those select episodes when they aired in the ‘States. The series, a more “adult” spin-off of “Doctor Who” isn’t bad, it just didn’t seem to me to have a lot to say beyond entertainment.

For season 3 however, they decided to do something different. Rather than produce a weekly serial, Russell T. Davies decided to do the season as a mini-series. Five episodes over five consecutive nights, telling one large story. The results were comparable to the new of Battlestar Galactica in quality.

At a high level, the plot is fairly generic SciFi - aliens show up and make some demands of humanity with the threat that they will wipe us out if we don’t comply. What the producers of the show did right was that rather than focus on the aliens and technology (as most SciFi does), the series is really about the humans’ reactions to what happens. The show holds up a mirror to human nature, and what it shows isn’t pretty. In many ways, the series asks the same question that Battlestar Galactica did - are there things that we can do to save ourselves that make us no longer worth saving?

The result is a study in the banality of evil, as civil servants try to do “what’s best for the nation” while politicians work to maintain “plausible deniability” and save themselves. Peter Capaldi does a great job playing the civil servant John Frobisher - a tragic villain who is in way over his head and is left dangling by his superiors. The role is one that could have played more clearly dark; but Capaldi’s performance adds a lot of depth to the character to help you see his internal struggle and fear. He is at some level the “good man” his admin’ claims he is; but step by step he is drawn into the path of ruin.

The producers also made some good decisions about the presentation of the aliens - keeping them in a mist-filled room so the audience never gets a clear look at them, allowing the audience to fill in the gaps with their own nightmares; aided by the random shrieks and green ooze that occasionally splashes against the glass wall of the chamber. On top of that you have Capaldi’s performance making Frobisher’s horror at being so close to the creature palpable. What the aliens want from us is also held off until the middle of the series, and why they want it isn’t revealed until the final segment - to great effect. This series could be used as a textbook on the lesson in writing that “less is more”.

I’ll also add that the show made a great use of the regular characters. Early in the series, Torchwood (the people in the best position to fight the aliens) is destroyed because they know things about these specific aliens that would be an embarrassment for the government, and our heros spend the series on the run while trying to help humanity. Denied the use of their usual equipment, we get a much better sense of who these characters are as people.

I’m particularly impressed with how Captain Jack Harkness (leader of Torchwood and a human who is actually from the 51st century) is handled. This is a character originally created for the series Doctor Who and became a part of the spin-off when it was started. While on ‘Who, Harkness was granted, through unusual and unique means, a kind of immortality (he becomes an intrinsic part of the definition of the universe, so no matter what happens to him, the universe restores him). The result is that he literally has a death wish (he fights aliens in hope that one day he’ll meet someone with the technology that can actually kill him). This series was however the first time I really bought from the writing and performance why he wants to die - a man who lives forever collects lot of regrets.

Well done. I have no interest in owning the DVDs of seasons 1 and 2; but I will be buying season 3 when it comes out.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink