The world worships heroes, admiring their strength, cunning, and ability to stem the rising tide.  Our arts and entertainment tip our cultural hand and reveal the innermost thoughts and desires of our hearts.  Through sheer training, skill, and determination our heroes do what we in our hearts wish we could do.  But our hearts are misguided and, thus, so are the hearts of our heroes.

Where the world says that heroes fight evil people to protect the innocent, Christ declares the standard by which all the world is to be judged and condemned, for who has ever loved God and their neighbor without fail?  And if all are guilty, must not our hero defeat himself?  Who can be a hero but one who is good, and who is good but God alone?  Rise, you who have never sinned, and show us the light.  Rise from our ranks and light the world.  Alas, is there none among men who can answer the call?

Christ came from heaven, the Son of the Living God, and became a human.  He came in weakness, not conquering the world by show of force or refuting by argument every lie.  Instead, He played His part faithfully and exited the stage.  By God’s own design and by His power, the otherwise small part that the incarnate Son played as a homeless preacher and miracle worker became, through the death of the player, the rescue of the world from its archenemy: sin and death.  This is the “foolishness of the cross” of which Paul speaks.

And yet Christians today (and throughout history) have thrown away their unique strength-in-weakness and instead found strength in strength, just like every non-believer on the planet.  Where Christ loved His enemies to the point of being murdered by them without calling on His Father’s armies to come to His aid, Christians today arm themselves with guns and say prayers before entering the battlefield.  Rather than preach the truth and leave the rest to God, as did Christ, Christians today stage protests, lobby vigorously, and engage in legal wrangling to force good behavior on evil people.

I don’t have much more to say.  Let me instead show you what one who lives the life of Christ looks like:

There was a single woman who worked two jobs to support her children.  On her first day at one of her jobs, she had told her boss the good news of God’s kingdom, but he had rejected it on account of the hypocrisy of Christians.  Every week, that employer found reasons to dock her pay, even though this was illegal, and every week the woman thanked the man for her paycheck and went home.  Without her full paycheck, she could only afford to pay the bills and give what remained to those in need, never having anything left over.

One day, the woman’s pastor called her into his office because a close friend had told the pastor of the woman’s dire financial situation.  Intending to offer her a discounted rate on the upcoming Dave Ramsey Financial University program at the church, he asked what gave her particular trouble about managing her finances.  She replied that the Lord always provided what she and her children needed materially, and then asked the pastor to pray that she might better love her Lord.  The pastor probed deeper into the reason for her meager funds, insisting that God wants His children to have material blessings, as well.  She explained her manager’s actions.  The pastor was indignant.  He advised her to speak with a lawyer–suggesting a prominent church member who happened to be in that profession–so that the courts could rectify the situation.  Firmly and swiftly the woman rebuked the errant pastor, asking him how she could preach to her manager about the limitless love and forgiveness of God while at the same time battling him for a few dollars that God could provide in an instant.  The pastor explained that God doesn’t expect Christians to just let people walk all over them, and asked how Christianity could survive with such tactics.  In response, the woman asked how Christianity could even have started with its founder dead, then she blessed the pastor, asking God to give him wisdom, and returned home.

Week after week for three years the woman prayed for her boss.  For a long time, the boss grew meaner and meaner, docking her so much that she had to moonlight with a third job on occasion just to have enough left over to share with those in need.  One day, however, she received a phone call in which her manager confessed his confusion over her perseverance and lack of retaliation for his actions.  She responded by telling him once again the good news of God’s kingdom.  That very day the angels in heaven rejoiced because another lost soul was saved.

As for the pastor, he grew in power and influence, eventually moving into politics and ending up as a senator arguing for the necessity of waterboarding as a non-torturous method of coercion to protect the nation from terrorists.  When He stood before Christ at the end of his life, did Christ know him?  Only God knows.

As for me, I know what path I will follow.  Will you entrust yourself to God and live the life of Christ?

Terrible Sunrise

This was the sunrise on the worst day of my life, when the love of my life and I parted ways.  At the time, God used its beauty to comfort me, but as I look at it now I see only doom and trouble.  My hope is in the Lord, who restores all that is broken and lost.  His hand is strong and His heart is good; His word will stand firm forever.

Osama bin Laden should receive the support of U.S. conservatives because he:

• is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan with strong foreign policy and decades of experience defending his country and his people from the forces of communism (Russia) and secular, liberal ideals (remember, he made a name for himself attacking the U.S. under Bill Clinton’s presidency).
• believes in limited government and a strong military, having held off world superpowers with a ragtag crew of misfits and preemptively dealing death and destruction on his enemies.
• is a fiscal conservative who has never taxed anybody and has made a fortune in the oil industry.
• has strong family values.  He upholds the sanctity of marriage to such a degree that he has not one, but several wives.
• is pro-life.  It is estimated that he has fathered between 12 and 24 children (source).
• crosses party lines with his commitment to the environment/creation stewardship.  Proof:  He doesn’t drive an SUV (or anything, for that matter) and he lives in a cave.
• is tough on crime, training for many years with the Taliban, whose strict judicial sentencing rules have never allowed a criminal to escape the severe punishment “God” wants humans to dish out to one another.
• supports the right to bear arms, even brandishing an assault rifle throughout a press interview many years ago.
• wants prayer in schools.  He has been instrumental in the formation of many instructional camps at which prayer several times throughout the day was a firm requirement.
• strongly supports immigration reform, having toiled many years to keep foreign invaders off his native land.
• is incredibly patriotic.  He and his supporters can frequently be seen waving the U.S. flag around with unparalleled vigor, often symbolizing the blazing glory of “our nation” by lighting it on fire.

With such a strong background and firm platform, he is obviously the change we need to lead America into the future.  Do these great United States a favor in November and vote for Osama bin Laden.

Check back here at thegrateful.org in the next few days for my real thoughts on politics, governments, worldly nations, and Christian involvement in such matters.  Suffice it to say for now that my soul longs for the day when Christians no longer engage in turf wars in the world’s sandbox, trying desperately to gain hold of a foreign kingdom while ignoring their own high calling of sons and daughters of God in his kingdom.  Christ’s purpose was to bring eternal life to sinners of every nation, tribe, people, and language–not advance the ambitions (political or otherwise) of humans.  If we trust Him for everything, we can love everybody without worrying about whether that will weaken us or render us vulnerable.  God’s power is made perfect in our weakness.  If loving our enemies and living as though the gospel is truly the one thing that everybody needs, we won’t get caught up in wordly affairs.  Wars, governments, police action, human law & justice systems, etc. have nothing to do with Christ, and God’s sovereign control over them means that His sons and daughters need only live according to His kingdom.  Allegiance to any other kingdom–worldly or otherwise–is impossible and only leads to confusion and destruction.  Oops, I said more than I expected.

Grace, peace, and love to all of you in Christ.  May He lead you into all wisdom so you can know the truth of what I’ve written.  Forgive me if the satirical presentation leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

By the way, we must love and forgive Osama bin Laden as completely as God forgives us our sins.  He does not hold us accountable to the law of justice, only the law of love.  So too must we firmly pronounce forgiveness for bin Laden and, by loving, truthful, non-vindictive witness, hold him accountable to his duty to love God and love his neighbor.  We need not press for human justice.  We need only pray for his salvation, that he may become a brother of ours in Christ.  I pray for that day.  May it be so, Lord.  Amen.

End rant.

*** In reality, I am indeed completely un-patriotic and I consider myself a Christian, not an American.  The U.S. just happens to be the particular set of man-made borders in which I was born, raised, and now live.  I have no love for any country except my Father’s kingdom, which is not of this world.

A blade of grass in a field, backlit by the sun.

I took this photograph a few days ago on a camping trip in northern Idaho near the Coeur d’Alene River.  The thumbnail doesn’t do it much justice, but when enlarged (click on it), you can see the beautiful interplay of light and shadow on the grass.  As a very amateur photographer with a Kodak EasyShare Z760 point-and-shoot camera, nice results are far more often a matter of chance than skill.  Even still, sometimes the small effort of pointing the camera at an object at the right angle offers suprising results.  I consider this a fitting metaphor for how God deals with His sons and daughters in Christ.

Very often it seems that God gives us a general direction then sits back, orchestrating circumstances behind the scenes as we do what we can to fill in the blanks.  When we seek Him faithfully throughout such times, He guides our steps though we don’t perceive it.  If, because of a prideful assurance of our own assumptions, we fail to seek Him at times like these, we instantly wander away from our Lord and cannot return until we confess our wandering and turn away from our assumptions.  The moment we repent, our God leads us back onto the original path and sends us on our way.  Once we have been restored, we will never wander again from that course; God’s wisdom has been planted in our hearts.

Do not make the mistake of giving undue importance to your own efforts.  All God needs is for you to be faithful, not adequate.  Remember, it is in our weakness that God’s power is made perfect.  Why did Jesus always tell the lame to walk?  They were unable to walk, and to tell them to do so would have been unspeakably cruel unless His power was there to make possible what was for them impossible.  If you place the emphasis on your own effort or strength, you will fall into despair over your inadequacy and either reject God outright or unwittingly compromise with the evil one to find an easier way.  (Sadly, the vast majority of us have done just this in so many spheres of life that we are scarcely distinguishable from non-believers, except for a peculiar churchy jargon and a slightly more polished exterior.  Indeed, to many Christians, faithfulness is identified by ideology: conservatives are faithful, liberals are unfaithful–or vice versa.  Those who have been given wisdom understand that such mentalities come from a very low view of our high calling as sons and daughters of the Most High.)

Understand also, dear reader, that our direction itself must come from God.  Too many today have decided on a path for themselves and proceed to follow it while trying to seek God’s guidance on how to go about it.  They do not realize that their assumptions about what God is and is not interested in, rather than God Himself, have dictated their direction, and so to seek God’s guidance in that is like a child asking his parent how best to light himself on fire.  Therefore, we should tread carefully and understand that whatever path we think God has called us to may yet be misguided, and though God may be using it for His own purposes and working miracles, that is only because of His great power and ability to work out the weak, the evil, the misguided, and the inadequate for the good.

The way of life is truly a narrow road.  If your idea is the same as everybody else’s and it has not been learned through blood, sweat, and tears, be wary.  But in all things, trust in God’s goodness and seek His wisdom.  Praise God if He has brought you from preoccupation with shallow things into His throne room, where wisdom hangs on the walls like paintings and adorns the air itself.

For me, it seems that I must take the steps that I see, but without worrying if they will or will not pan out.  This means that I will continue to do what I have been doing: applying for jobs that pay as much of a livable wage as possible and seem like I might actually qualify for them.  Sometimes I get a little ambitious, but that’s okay, too.  For instance, today I applied for an entry-level software development job.  I personally know that I can do the work, but since I have no work experience in programming, how am I to prove it?  I gave as many details as I could about the kind of skills I have, but who knows what will happen…

In the end, I have to remember that as long as I am being faithful to what God has given me (a job hunt and a thesis), He will work out the details.  I have hope, even though I can feel the anxiety knocking at my door.

Now, it just so happens that Luis Palau’s CityFest was occurring at the waterfront this weekend. Think of it as a big rock concert/extreme sports show/Christian festival/evangelistic crusade combined with something they call Season of Service (SoS, for short).  SoS is essentially an effort to get Christians involved in volunteering, the idea being that the rest of the city will see the festival in combination with SoS and get a better overall idea of what Christians are all about (from the perspective of Luis Palau’s organization).  This is accomplished by making partnerships with businesses, non-profit groups, and even city governments to obtain funding, support, volunteers, etc. One of those partnerships was with the City of Portland’s “Project Homeless Connect” (PHC), which is where my story really begins.

As I came strolling down the sidewalk from the north, I came to the area where PHC’s tents were located.  Across the street from PHC, I saw a homeless man (we’ll call him Mr. A) in roughly his late twenties or so sitting with two dogs, two bicycles, and some other belongings. He was being questioned and sternly lectured by two Portland police officers. Sensing the Holy Spirit’s leading, I waited until the police left and proceeded to talk to him. I asked what was going on. He told me his story.

Basically, he and his wife (6-10 weeks pregnant) were either at or travelling in front of PHC’s tents when his wife unexpectedly passed out. Somebody called an ambulance, which proceeded to take to her a hospital across town. Unfortunately, the ambulance could not accommodate the couple’s dogs and other belongings, so Mr. A had to stay behind.

Apparently, Mr. A and his belongings were blocking a truck entrance to PHC’s tents. According to him, his inability to move his belongings when a truck arrived resulted in the police being called. He made it sound like somebody got impatient. If I had to guess, though, I would assume that, in his distress, he was probably stubbornly refusing to move. I do not know the details, however, because I didn’t grill Mr. A (his mind was understandably elsewhere), and the coordinator of Project Homeless Connect (we’ll call her Mrs. B), who called the police, refused to explain her perspective on the situation when I contacted her.

Regardless of the details, there are two problems with PHC/Mrs. B’s response which indicate a failure to love as Christ would have them do. First, she did not help Mr. A get to the hospital to find out how she was doing (That took a few hours of traveling with the help of one of God’s servants, who, to the best of my knowledge, has received no updates on her condition). Second, rather than bear with him in patience and limitless mercy when–I assume–he acted difficult, Mrs. B pawned him off on the police, who had the power to ruin his life, as well as cause exceeding hardship for his unborn child and his wife, by sending him back to prison (he was on parole). Thankfully, they showed a touch of mercy (combined with strong threats, according to Mr. A), which Mrs. B of Project Homeless Connect did not.

What does this have to do with Luis Palau, CityFest, and the “Christians” of Portland? Well, by being partnered with PHC–a partnership which included many CityFest volunteers and a location at the waterfront implying a connection between PHC and the Christian community–they also became guilty by association of the evil done to Mr. A by Mrs. B and the PHC. Obviously, PHC, as a secular organization, cannot be expected to do what is right in the eyes of God, since as Jesus said, “No bad tree can bear good fruit” (Mt. 7:18, Lk. 6:43). My interaction with PHC has only been to call Mrs. B personally to repentance before God. However, as Christians, we are advised not to work alongside non-Christians, because our purposes, hearts, and lives are pulling in two opposite directions. As the apostle Paul put it:

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? (2 Cor. 6:14,15, NIV)

As a result, the organizers and participants of CityFest need to know what has happened, how the name of Christ has been tarnished and the purpose of Christians has been confused in the eyes of Mr. A and others like him because of this unholy alliance (I hope that doesn’t sound like an exaggeration).

My heart aches for Mr. A and I am sad that Christians, through their partnership with Project Homeless Connect, are now guilty by association of heartlessness.  We have a duty to love every single individual to the degree that Christ did.  He died at the hands of His enemies, for His enemies.  I know there are actual Christians who would think nothing of calling the police to deal with another human being instead of dealing with them in love, patience, and faith in God’s ability to sort situations out, but that is a different story entirely.  I just pray that Christians will learn that our purposes are very different from those of the world, and the love we have is not the concoction of pride, pity, and fraternity that the world calls love.  The world’s love will always fail, but Christ’s love never fails.  Why would we partner with non-Christians to show the world what Christians are like?  We have a hard enough time doing right ourselves–and we have regenerated hearts and the Holy Spirit!

At this point, I need prayer for wisdom on how to proceed, if at all.  I write this publicly not to shame CityFest or Luis Palau’s organization, but to serve as an example of why we are advised not to be “unequally yoked.”  Should I move ahead with contacting Palau’s organization to explain the matter to them and exhort them to change their tactics?  If they did, it would serve their ministry well and would be to everybody’s benefit.  I would submit that there are other things they could change that would do even more toward that end, but I am trying to focus on this one issue.  At least they are preaching Christ, even if it is a message that is thoroughly confused/infused with middle-class, American culture.  It would be best if all Christians knew the fulness of what Christ wanted for us, but I can only pray for that day.

UPDATE (8/27/2008): After another interesting night of prayer, I realized that I needed to rewrite this article to reflect the true character of love, especially as it is manifested in gentleness, patience, and kindness.  I took out the inflammatory junk and tried to be fair.  The love in my heart wants to embrace the CityFest organizers and the whole evangelical subculture as brothers and sisters.  I don’t know why I find it easy to love the most heinous of sinners but struggle to love my fellow Christians when they follow after the world.  I think it is because I cannot blame a sinner for sinning anymore than I can get mad at a squirrel for eating nuts, but I guess I expect regenerated Christians to know better.  As for why they don’t, that I don’t yet understand much.  I can only love and pray, I suppose.

OLDER UPDATE (8/26/2008): After an interesting night of prayer, I get the sense that I should not pursue this in the eyes the public.  Instead, if God does want me to pursue this, it must be done privately and individually.  Anything else does not seem to be from love.  Activism fails to love because it is just like calling the police on a homeless man; it cares only about the end result and not about the person you are trying to stop.  As such, there will be no Part II, unless I have good news someday that all parties involved desire to share.  NB: Other Christians, no matter how misguided, are not our enemies.  We should lovingly pray for and encourage our brothers and sisters in every good way so they can have love, faith, wisdom, and be known by God.

Do continue to pray for me so I can know if and how to proceed privately.  I’m still not sure that the time is right for me to do this.  The sense I got while I was praying is that I should just continue to go out there and reach the folks in need without worrying about the Christians who are, to put it nicely, detracting from that effort…  Not sure yet.

Regardless, in the process, I have stumbled across many blogs and such by Christians who have many different approaches to homeless ministry.  Some, like The Bridge and HomePDX, take a relationship approach, sans talk of repentance/salvation.  I don’t want to say much about them, because I have never seen what they do in person, but at least the sense that I get from perusing their websites is a sense that any verbal proclamation of the gospel is considered cheap, insufficient, or simply won’t work with their particular “demographic.”  On the other hand are the typical rescue missions and the churchfolk who volunteer there.  Their emphasis is largely on meeting physical needs and aiding in societal reintegration while preaching the gospel of salvation (often before every meal, according to the stereotype).  The charge levelled against them is a lake of engaging the homeless relationally.  I don’t know if this charge is true or not, since I haven’t been involved in a rescue mission either.  One thing that I did see while I was researching this was that Christians were divided over which way was the right way to do this or the best way.  Why can’t both be complementary?

Remember the famous body analogy of the church.  Everybody does something; nobody does everything; nothing is better or worse than anything else; everything is necessary.  Throughout history the church seems to have fallen into the trap of single-mindedly pursuing conformity and calling it unity.  Who are we to judge God’s servants?  Perhaps God is doing something different through the “relational” folk than he is doing through the rescue missions.  Both groups would be better served if they would all participate together.  (Actually, I would be surprised if the particular groups I have in mind weren’t already working together in some way, but I am sort of making an example by way of generalization.)

I believe that there is a place for simply welcoming people in and listening to them without judgment.  I also believe there is a place for speaking from the Spirit directly into a person’s heart, even if that brings about the division Christ said would occur.  As for when each is needed, seek God together on that, in actual unity.  Do not compete over whose method is better.  Instead, work together.  If you come across a person who, despite your preaching, claims there is no love in your message, send them to those who will love them unconditionally.  Likewise, allow the preachy guy to come to your “relational” meeting and speak the words of truth to them.  It’s a win-win. 

I don’t know if that made as much sense to my readers as it did to me, but whatever. As for me, I think I may be supposed to play a role in both approaches. My compassion is moved to bear the burdens of those who ache, but the Spirit within me jealously seeks the best for those people and will not always be silent.

Anyway, what inspired this post most immediately was the bickering between Christians on this site over here. We need real unity.

Disclaimer: In the brevity of this post, I made sweeping generalizations for the sake of making a point. I have no ill feelings and level no judgments at all against anybody I mentioned here.

My plan was to finish the thesis in time to graduate in December so I could start a master’s program for theology in the spring.  However, I have a few other life changes going on right now, too: finding a job, finding a new place to live in a few months, finding concrete ways to serve God (to put it as simply as possible), and a few others.  While I could theoretically postpone all that for a few months while I scramble to complete the thesis, I honestly don’t feel right about that.  Plus, somebody mentioned something I hadn’t even thought about before: if I wait to apply to grad. school in the spring (so I can attend next fall), I can use the extra time to find scholarships and such.  That would be helpful, because I already have a ridiculous amount of student loan debt.  Furthermore, I can now breathe a little more deeply as I fully digest all the research I’m doing.  Maybe I’m just trying too hard on this thing, but I don’t know any other way to do it.  Besides, I have a plan, and that feels great.

Altogether, this seems like the most practical route to take, and I firmly trust that God will bless my faithfulness in it, even as His faithfulness is revealed to me every day.  Praise to Him!  Every heart in heaven and earth, worship the Lord who has done far more than we can ever imagine.  May we all one day be known by Him in Christ.

According to Concordia University’s senior thesis handbook, I have to turn in a preliminary rough draft by the 7th Friday of the semester in which I want to complete it.  That would be October 10th, in my case, which is only eight weeks from now.  Considering I have roughly twelve main books to pore over right now, with a few others that I’m not sure I’ll need and several more coming through inter-library loan, I am feeling quite overwhelmed.  To some degree, the current conception I have of my topic feels broad, or maybe it is just the approach I am taking with respect to that topic that feels broad.  Either way, this thing is coming down on my head pretty hard.

My senior thesis is my unicorn.  It has taken on mythic proportions as the beast I will never tame.  Every time I take it on, it escapes.  I need to ride this dang unicorn!  (This reminds me of a joke that I like: Confucious say, ‘A truly wise man never plays leap frog with a unicorn.’)

How can I approach this in faith?  I know my God wants me to finish this thing once and for all, but why is the timing always so bad?  Eight weeks.  In a way, I am glad that I haven’t found a job yet, because I am free to work on this thing full-time.  However, even with eight weeks of straight time, can it be done?  I don’t know; I’ve never made it this far in the process before.  All I can say, then, is that I must try my hardest.  In the end, as long as I give it my all, it does not matter if I have to stretch it out until the spring term.  I have only to answer to God and myself, but I would sure love to have it done soon so I can start grad school in the spring.

I should have a better idea of what is honestly possible when I talk to my thesis adviser in the next few days.  If I can get some specifics on what kinds of things to look for in my research, and what discussions to avoid/pare down in the thesis itself, it can be done.  However, if it remains as broad as it looks right now, I have too many thousands of pages to read and too many ideas to assimilate in too short an amount of time.

At any rate, I have hope that this beast will be tamed even if I have to lose sleep for a while.  All I need is some direction.  As I said in the title, “Okay, Señor Thesis… This time it’s personal!”

I could write daily like a diary, but I don’t particularly feel like sharing the details of my private life, nor do I think it would be all that interesting to run-of-the-mill non-voyeurs.  Not only that, but if I did, whoever reads it would get a very strange picture of who I am.  Whether you know it or not, dear reader, your mind will form a picture of me based on whatever I say.  If I focus on writing about the details of my life that strike me as significant, you will not see the parts that I fail to notice.  Your mental picture of me, then, will be skewed heavily in whichever direction my sense of significance leans.  I don’t like that.

Nobody can really sum themselves up as a person by sitting down to write a few paragraphs, let alone a book.  Many autobiographies have been written, but they can only capture the person as he understands himself (or, perhaps, as he wants to be seen).  And even the people that know a person do not truly know what goes on inside of them.  Nobody, it seems, can be fully known this side of eternity, though in heaven we will be fully known.  Even if we could be fully known right now, that knowledge would only be valid for a moment, because while we still live in time (as opposed to timeless eternity) we are always changing.

So if we can’t know a person fully, we can only know them to the degree that we are currently interacting with them.  Past knowledge does not count, and we don’t know the future.  We live by either summarizing people in our heads or merely interacting with them but never knowing them.  Probably we do some combination of both.  Regardless, true knowledge of a person seems impossible.  But I think I have missed something: the spirit.

If we live in the Spirit of God, we have some intimate connection with others who live in that same Spirit.  In this, we can begin to have reliable knowledge of a person, for we will see them as God sees them.  Their imperfections and sins will not shock us, nor will we be scandalized by their sins.  Our trust in them will not fade or break, for our trust will be in the God who is shaping them.  We will see that they are no different than ourselves.  Perhaps their weaknesses and gifts are different, their failings more or less severe; but in all things, we will place our hope in the Author and Perfecter of our faith.

If we lose sight, then, of our Lord, we also will lose sight of those who are in the Lord.  Fear, distrust, and distorted perceptions will cloud our vision.  When this occurs, the first and vital step is to fall to our knees before God.  After, and only after, we should approach the person with open heart and let God reveal them to us according to His wisdom and knowledge.  If there has been a breach in the relationship, we are commanded by our Lord to mend that relationship before taking another breath.  And we must do all these things will the strength that comes from Christ, who was able to be obedient even to death.

How does all of this relate to how personal I get on this website?  I don’t really know.  It just kind of came out…  I guess I don’t think it is very possible to relate the very essence of my being via computer, and even if I could, I don’t think I would feel comfortable broadcasting it to the world.  As such, I will only go as personal as is necessary to glorify God or provide information that might help another person.  In communication with individuals, I will go much deeper, depending on the person, the nature of our relationship, and the wisdom of God.

So, if details about myself are scant, it isn’t because I am a reclusive blogger, high and mighty, or trying to be mysterious.