The Kingdom is like.... Captain America

I will not ruin the new movie release of Captain America for you bc I have not yet seen it. I, like you, have only seen the trailer but there is one scene from the trailer that so moved me because it reminded me of God and what He values in His Kingdom. In this particular scene, a military officer and a scientist are walking through a bootcamp of soldiers in training and they are talking about the qualifications and type of man they need to be a candidate for the new super soldier experiment. The officer unexpectedly throws a grenade into a crowd of men and the skinniest, most unlikely hero dives on the grenade to save the other soldiers from being harmed. Turns out, the grenade is fake but the test was real. The skinny guy ends up being the candidate and eventually...Captain America.

I love the message that this scene conveys because it reminds me of all of the 'unlikely heroes' that God uses in His Kingdom. God, like, but far superior to, the super soldier program, can provide all of the strength, ability, and skill for the calling. The things that we in the world value are exterior things....things that God can add to any man at any time because He is God. The beauty of it all is that Captain America was Captain America before he had the powers and the shield and the cool costume because he already possesed a hero's heart. The heroes of God's Kingdom in the Bible had a hero's heart first, and then God added the powers and miracles as they were neeeded. If we are to be heroes to the broken world around us, we must first seek to have a Kingdom heart and then "all these things (strength, miracles, and maybe even a cool costume) will be added to you as well."

Cigarette Smoke

I love the smell of cigarette smoke, particularly Salem cigarettes. I think it's because my mom smoked that brand when I was a child (she quit after we started doing the 'stop, drop, and roll' bit every time she lit one up) and the smell reminds me of being a kid.
It's funny how the societal perception of smokers has so drastically changed over the last couple of decades. Now when I walk past the designated smoking area in the airport, I immediately rush to hyper-judgement of the 'dirty' smokers with their 'dirty' cigarettes huddled together in their glass chamber of addiction. In our modern caste system of addictions, cigarette smokers are at the bottom of the pile...the lepers.
I have a pretty good idea of how God feels about cigarettes overall but I suspect that there is one particular type of cigarette smoke that God may actually like. It's the cigarette smoke that you smell outside of an AA meeting. Every Tuesday night, I lead worship for our college worship service and as I'm leaving, I always see the AA crew hanging out in the parking lot of our church because they have just wrapped up their meeting. Not everyone is smoking but someone almost always is and I love the smell because of what it represents. It's a step forward...it represents getting up one more time after getting knocked down... it represents the transition of going from a greater and more destructive addiction such as cocaine or alcohol to a lesser and more non-consequential addiction such as cigarettes. I know that God's ultimate design is that we not be addicted to anything but, in a fallen world, sometimes, we just have to take it one step at a time. I'm sure, in their journey to freedom, there will be a place where they realize that they need to be free from their addiction to cigarettes but for now, the smell of their smoke will be the smell of little and daily battles fought that lead to life changing victories.

"The Head Punches Of A Friend Can Be Trusted..."

Last week, I had the privilege of training with John B., who is a friend of mine who has an extensive background in competitive kickboxing and mixed martial arts. We were working on a combination where I would throw a left hook to his head followed by a right leg kick. As we were practicing the combination, John pointed out that I was continually dropping my right hand as I threw the leg kick, leaving my head very exposed. I asked him to go ahead and pop me everytime I dropped my right hand...and he did. It only took a few times of him landing a clean left hook to my head that I started learning to get my right hand up and protect my head. Fortunately, he wasn't hitting me full-on or he very well may have knocked me out (even with head gear on) but he was hitting me hard enough for me to know that I had been hit and hard enough for me not to want to be hit anymore.

As I thought about our training, a scripture passage in Proverbs that says, "The wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses" kept running through my mind. I greatly appreciated the fact that my buddy was letting me have it because I knew that he was actually looking out for me. From his experience, he knew how important it was to make me protect myself so that when I faced an opponent who actually wanted to knock my head off, I'd be ready.

I'm pretty sure that as men, we need to surround ourselves with guys like my friend John. Guys who are willing to 'hook' us in the head with statements like "hey man, I see you spending a lot of time with that lady and she's not your wife...what's up with that?" or "dude, you're out playing golf or hanging with your buddies almost every weekend and when you are home, you're buried in the t.v. or your computer...if you keep it up your kids are going to be grown up and gone and you'll have nothing but regret." These hooks might hurt initially but in the long run, they'll force us to get our guard up so that we don't get knocked out.

The Gospel According To Imi Lichtenfeld

Not long after the first Karate Kid movie came out in the eighties, I'm pretty sure that there was a huge epidemic of butt kickings. Let me play out the scenario for you...kid goes to movie, said kid is inspired to learn martial arts and begins to take classes at local dojo, kid learns a wide variety of katas and forms and builds a false sense of self confidence, kid gets into fight with football player thinking that he will overwhelm football player with a whirlwind of spinning round house kicks and crane form, football player slams kid to the ground and beats him senseless. Have you heard that story before?

This type of scenario is one of the reasons that the a form of martial arts called Krav Maga was created. If you have ever seen a Jason Bourne movie then you have seen many of the techniques and efficient brutality utilized in Krav Maga. This type of efficiency and simplicity is what drew me to and started me on the journey of learning this martial art. I have only been at it for about 4 months now but as I have been studying Krav Maga, I can't help but notice a correlation to the story of Jesus and the new "system" that he exemplified and taught.

To make this correlation, let me first explain Krav Maga's history and origins. Krav Maga is a fighting style that was developed by Imi Lichtenfeld in the early 1930's. Lichtenfeld had a background in boxing and wrestling but came to realize that, because of their complexity, those fighting systems in their pure forms did not translate well to a street fight scenario so he created a fighting style that was built on efficiency and natural human movement. In essence he took away all of the complicated forms and systems and created a fighting style that was compact, efficient, and highly effective which is the reason that it is being taught to special forces and law enforcement agencies all over the world. Ultimately, Imi Lichtenfeld created a fighting style that actually worked in a real fight.

And that's what makes me think of Jesus. Jesus came into a context where Judaism had become a really complex system of laws and rituals. There were very specific laws for every single minute detail of life. This system of laws was initially given by God (though this was not God's final plan for man's salvation) in a simpler form but Israel's religious leadership found a way to greatly complicate it by adding countless "fence" laws on top of laws on top of laws....basically, you had a system that was so complex that it no longer applied to real life.

....and then you have Jesus...who comes telling stories instead of implementing systems. You have Jesus talking about love and then demonstrating love by healing the societal outcasts and spending time with the city's "low lifes" and "losers"...You have Jesus simplifying the entire religious system down to two requirements.. "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength...and love your neighbor as yourself. All of the law and prophets hang on these two commandments.." Basically, Jesus was showing us a way of living that was in line with our natural human movement, a way that works in real life...simple not sophisticated....relational not religious.

Ultimately, you have Jesus speaking and then embodying these words; "greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends...and I have called you friend". The need for salvation could not be remedied with a system...the need for salvation can only be remedied by a Savior.

Tower of Babel

This morning I watched a news report on a young man who has an incredibly powerful mind and is able to memorize massively lengthy numbers (memorized Pi = 3.141592653589..... after one look) after only seeing them once and he was able to learn Icelandic, which is one of the planet's most difficult languages to learn, in only a week. One of the things mentioned in that report is that, after monitoring and testing his brain, scientists found that the different sections of his brain worked together as opposed how most brains work where the different sections of the brain work separately from each other.

In some strange way, this news report made me think of the biblical account of the Tower of Babel where, after seeing the progress man was making in technological innovation, God caused men to longer speak the same language which brought about ensuing chaos. I wonder if that is where God simply "flipped a switch" in the mind which caused it to stop working as a cohesive unit. I have often heard that scientists have calculated that we only use about 20% of the minds capacity and there is another 80% that basically remains a mystery. Maybe there was a time where man was able utilize the full 100% of the brain's capacity and God decided to dumb men down a notch or two..

So why would God do something like that? Why would God figuratively make us function with "one hand tied behind our backs"? Did He feel threatened? Was He afraid that we might build a tower to heaven and find that He was just "the man behind the curtain"? I'm pretty sure that that is not the case...so why would God purposely shut down the potential of something that He had created?

Maybe God saw where such innovation could lead when mixed with a fallen nature. What if God decided that it was too early in the history of the world for man to figure out how to make an atomic bomb? What if He clearly saw that we would, through our industry mixed with our greed, destroy our surroundings and eventually destroy ourselves long before God had deemed that time to come. Maybe He wasn't ready to watch his precious creatures die a viciously slow and painful death from cancers that were caused by chemicals and toxins that we had synthesized.

It just might be that the whole Tower of Babel incident was one more incredible act of God's mercy and kindness towards a people who were too stupid to see that they were too smart for their own good..

Flowers

A while back, I stopped into Starbucks to ...well, to simply purchase happiness. Liquid happiness. while there, a lady in her fifties walked in with flowers and gave it to one of the baristas behind the counter. She said something like "your 21st birthday is a big deal...happy birthday". and that was it and she left.

I could tell by the response of the young lady behind the counter that this lady was not a family member or a close friend or anyone else that one would expect to get flowers from on their birthday. I think the gift bearer was simply a regular customer who thought that birthdays are big deals (especially 21st birthdays). The young lady was in tears at such a sweet and thoughtful gesture.. and to be honest..I also was in tears because it was such a profoundly beautiful moment.

I don't know if the lady who brought the flowers was a christian or not, but her kindness made me realize how pitifully rare it is that christians are known for such deeds. I'm afraid that it is more common for a Starbucks employee to watch a customer who has just chewed them out at the drive through drive off with a big fat fish symbol or a lame christian bumper sticker on the back of their car. I know that there are believers out there who are an exception to that perception but shouldn't kindness be one of the most common characteristics of those who claim the name christian. Kindness is, after all, one of the fruits of the Spirit (a.k.a. expected personality traits). I think we should be people who are known for buying flowers for strangers on their birthdays (and not so that we can attach a gospel track to the flowers) just because we want to just make a big deal of their birthday in case no one else has...

Robots

I remember getting my first robot when I was a child. It basically was this really crude remote control robot that tried to walk but really just sort of wobbled back and forth. It is amazing how far robotic technology has advanced since the days of that first robotic toy (though the toy was definitely not on the cutting edge of technology even then).

Today I watched an excerpt on TED.com about robots and the seven 'species' that have recently been developed. (http://www.ted.com/talks/dennis_hong_my_seven_species_of_robot.html) It is absolutely astonishing to see the technological advances that have been made recently. The new robots can navigate over almost any terrain, they can stand up and sit down, and one particular robot can actually play the game of soccer independent of anyone controlling it remotely. One of the species utilizes a spider or crab like structure using multiple legs. Another species uses mechanics wrapped in a rubber skin and through a series of pinching and expanding movement, is able to move itself. The robotic movements of these different varieties are triggered by everything from electronic impulse to air compression to chemical reaction.

What's ironic about the future of these robots is that the inspiration for their engineering comes from very ancient design. I think the term 'species' is very accurate because all of the robots borrow the physics, motion, and mechanics of creatures already found in the natural world. Think about it, of all of the possible "out of the box" thinking and engineering that man is capable of, he is being forced to realize that the most practical and efficient engineering comes from nature or creation (which implies a creator) that has been there from the beginning.

In watching the brilliance of how the engineers had gotten each robot to move, I think about my own body and all of the amazing things that happen in just taking a step or breathing. There are movements being triggered by electronic impulse, chemical reaction, and air compression all at once... and all of that is through biological and organic means.

All of this just reminds me of how incomprehensibly brilliant God is and when comparing today's robots to the subtleties and complexity of the human body, I begin to see today's technology in a light that is not unlike the way I see that first primitive toy robot that I had as a child...

Romans 1:20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.