A random internal conversation

As I work through my thoughts on Day by Day discipleship, my mind keeps coming back to the questions I have previously raised about the interaction between a Christian's physical and spiritual natures. The question of the difference between growth and progress has also been added into the jumble of my thoughts.

I welcome any feedback you might wish to offer.

Starting question: Can we experience spiritual growth in the midst of continued sin?

What is an evidence of spiritual growth?

The Fruit of the Spirit

What are the Fruit of the Spirit?

The Fruit of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Can non-Christians display the Fruit of the Spirit?

Yes

Does this create a problem?

By not emphasizing the elimination of sinful things we (as brothers and sisters in Christ) cannot tell if someone is really changing.

Does God know they are changing (growing)?

Yes, but we don't. It makes it harder for us to know if they are doing the right things.

But are their lives showing Fruit?

Yes, but they are still doing bad things; they are living a sinful life.

Do you still do bad things?

Yes, but I can ask for forgiveness of my bad things

Does asking for forgiveness take away the consequences of doing the bad things?

No, but it helps to put me back in alignment with God.

So the attitude of remorse is as important of an evidence of spiritual growth as the displays of the Fruit of the Spirit?

No, but it is evidence that I take my sin seriously.

Do you take your sin move seriously than God?

No.

God took your sin seriously enough to allow himself to be killed for it. It has been taken care of forever. Does he want us to remain shackled to it when, in his eyes, it died with him on the cross?

No. But you're not growing if you keep doing the same bad things over and over.

Is that one of the Fruit of the Spirit? Sinning less? More consistent overcoming of temptation?

No, but self-control is a Fruit of the Spirit.

So God wants us to take more control of our lives. From whom are we taking control? From God? From ourselves?

From ourselves. From our sinful nature.

From our physical nature? That is temporary? That will be recreated to reflect the recreated spirit that was reborn when we answered call of the Spirit and our relationship with God was restored?

Our physical nature may be temporary but it still has an impact, an effect, on our spiritual nature.

In what way?

Ending question: Does our physical nature, and the things that are done to satisfy it, impact or effect our spiritual nature?

Additional questions raised in the midst of this inner conversation: If our physical nature impacts/effects our spiritual nature, in what ways is this impact/effect evidenced? Does the impact/effect stunt our spiritual growth? Will we continue to experience spiritual growth when we exist in the new heaven and new earth? If, after becoming a believer in Jesus we continue to sin too much, will we be in a remedial spiritual growth class in the new heaven and new earth? Will we experience less of God?

God, can you clue me in?

 Each morning I jot down the Verse of the Day (VotD) from both the BibleGateway app and the YouVersion app. Some days, the verses are remarkably similar in their message; other days, the verses are very different.

Today is the first day in the few months since I started trying to do this consistently that both apps have had the same verse.

"For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." - Jeremiah 29:11 (NLT)

Normally, in my sinful arrogance, I would quickly pass over this verse, as it is a verse that I consider to be cliched in our contemporary Christian world of "bumper sticker scripture" and "gossip as prayer request". Had only one of my Bible apps utilized this verse for its VotD, I would have written it in my journal and moved on quickly.

The double whammy of this verse in both apps caused me to stop, look beyond myself and really think about what God is saying to me this morning.

I have been having a rough couple of days as I process a conversation I had regarding the queer community and Christian faith and discipleship. I told Brenda yesterday that I feel like something has been opened in me for this community. My heart hurts for this group.

Books I am reading and the podcast to which I am listening come from people whom I believe are genuine in their love for God and understanding of Christian doctrine; yet, it is different from the doctrine with which I was raised and under which I currently sit as a member of my church.

My thoughts are a jumble as I try to think through this mess of emotion and belief. I feel hopeless and I think that's why I need to pay attention to the verse in Jeremiah, more today than before. 

What I am going through has not taken God by surprise. He has numbered my days and knows the work I will do. He knows my thoughts before they work their way through my mind and the words that I will write before I type them.

I feel the most appropriate response is for me to try to recommit myself to listening for his voice.

Footprints on the path to Day by Day Discipleship

Photo via Good Free Photos

I've been thinking about "Footprints", the poem which tells the story of a person who sees two sets of footprints in the sand and concludes with God saying, "When you see only one set of footprints during the hard times in your life, that is when I carried you." This gives everyone warm and fuzzies (I even have those "emotional goosebumps" right now, just writing this).

I'd like to write a continuation of that poem about the same person, coming to the end of their life (not just a dream, as is the case in the original poem) and seeing the good and bad times and the single tracks at times that distinctively are God's footprints (after all, not even Shaq can fill God's shoes) but seeing fewer and fewer instances of those single prints. Instead, there are more instances of the two sets of footprints walking through the tough times. Then there comes a point where there is just the person's own footprints leading up to the very feet upon which the person is presently standing.

Again, the person turns to God and, with despair in their voice, cries out, "You stopped carrying me! I thought we were getting closer! I thought I was growing in my faith! Why did you stop supporting me?"

God would answer, "We did become closer and the more you trusted me, the less you needed me to carry you. As you grew, you were able to walk with me through those difficult times in your life. As we became more aligned, and your thoughts became my thoughts and your ways became my ways, that is when you carried me through the tough times in your life. Well done, good and faithful servant."

There's more to come with my notion of Day by Day discipleship but I believe that God is speaking and I want to be a good and faithful listener.

Day by Day Discipleship - The nerd stuff

In January of 2024, I published an article to my Medium.com account entitled, “I Want To Live Like A Dog". In this article, I first present my idea that I would like to live "Day by Day". In an attempt to redeem the difficult circumstances of life, I wrote:

"I am going to try to “use the difficulty” by staying in the moment, living day-by-day. I know the phrase “day-by-day” because of a song by that name by the Christian hip-hop group from the 1990s, DC Talk. DC Talk’s song was a cover of a song, by the same title, from the 1971 movie Godspell. The song’s refrain follows a 13th century prayer, believed to be written by English bishop Saint Richard of Chichester:

May I know Thee more clearly
Love Thee more dearly,
Follow Thee more nearly.

Perhaps these 800-year-old words will help me with the approximately 800 minutes a day that have the opportunity to stretch into eternal moments of turmoil. Does this temporal attitude eliminate the worries or concerns of the future? No, but hopefully it will minimize the stress and frustration I feel when faced with situations from which I cannot escape or change.

Another video I recently watched (also at regular playback speed) was Neil DeGrasse Tyson talking about how a dog packs its entire life into about 1/7th the amount of time of a human. As NDT says in his video, “[dogs] are some of the most joyous creatures that live among us… their lives have already factored in their mortality.” (link available upon request)

I think I will factor in my mortality and strive, on a daily basis, to choose joy and focus on accomplishing the things at hand which are meaningful in the moment."(1)

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One of the books on my "started but have yet to finish" list is a book called The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. This is a book that looks at four generations (called Turnings by the authors) that occur in repeated instances throughout the ages. In the introduction to The Fourth Turning, the authors describe how humanity has historically thought about time. Here are some meaningful insights from the introduction:

"Over the millennia, man has developed three ways of thinking about time: chaotic, cyclical, and linear. The first was the dominant view of primitive man, the second of ancient and traditional civilizations, and the third of the modern West, especially America. 

In chaotic time, history has no path. Events follow one another randomly, and any effort to impute meaning to their whirligig succession is hopeless…

…Cyclical time originated when the ancients first linked natural cycles of planetary events… with related cycles of human activity… Cyclical time conquered chaos by repetition, by the parent or hunter or farmer performing the right deed at the right moment in the perpetual circle… Eventually, great cycles came to mark the duration of kingdoms and prophecies, the coming of heroes and shamans, and the aging of lives, generations, and civilizations. Cyclical time is endless, yet also endlessly completed and renewed…

Unlike chaotic time, cyclical time endowed classical societies with a prescribed moral dimension, a measure by which each generation could compare its behavior with that of its ancestors…

So what's the alternative? Enter the third option: linear time - time as a unique (and usually progressing) story with an absolute beginning and an absolute end. Thus did mankind first aspire to progress. In Greco-Roman civilization, the cyclical view of time was punctuated by inklings of human improvement. The Greeks sometimes hoped that Promethean reason might deliver mankind from perpetual destitution, while the Romans believed that a powerful polity could endow its citizens with a glorious destiny. Most important, the rise and spread of the great Western monotheisms inspired the hope that mankind was fated for more than just fortune's wheel. The Persian, Judaic, Christian, and Islamic cosmologies all embraced the radically new concept of personal and historical time as a unidirectional drama. Time begins with a fall from grace; struggles forward in an intermediate sequence of trials, failures, revelations, and divine interventions; and ends with redemption and reentry into the Kingdom of God.

…Along the way, linear time has succeeded in suppressing cyclical time. Ages ago cyclical time conquered chaotic time. But in recent centuries the conqueror has in turn been chained and shackled. The victory of linearism was neither immediate nor absolute… But by degrees, cyclical time as a living faith has been pushed ever deeper into obscurity.

…More recently, the West began using technology to flatten the very physical evidence of natural cycles. With artificial light, we believe we defeat the sleep-wake cycle; with climate control, the seasonal cycle; with refrigeration, the agricultural cycle; and with high-tech medicine, the rest-recovery cycle.

Triumphal linearism has shaped the very style of Western and (especially) American civilization. Before, when cyclical time reigned, people valued patience, ritual, the relatedness of parts to the whole, and the healing power of time-within-nature. Today, we value haste, iconoclasm, the disintegration of the whole into parts, and the power of time-outside-nature.

…Before, people prized the ability to divine nature’s energy and use it. Today, we prize the ability to defy nature’s energy and overcome it."(2)

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These thoughts about humanity's view of time throughout history made me think about a lesson from a high school physics class. If you will permit me a bit of digression into the realm of mathematics, I would like to introduce the cycloid.

Imagine a circle. Imagine the circle is spinning. Now imagine a spot on the rim of that spinning circle and think about how that spot's movement in space would appear. The spot might start at the top center of the circle and, as the circle spins clockwise, the spot would move to the right and downward in an arcing motion. Then, it would hit a point where the spot would change direction and seem to start moving back towards the left while still continuing to move downward. Another point would be reached in the spot's motion where the left direction of movement continues but now the spot begins to creep back up. Lastly, the spot reaches yet another point where it again starts to move to the right as it travels upwards to the top of the circle until it lands at its starting point. Congratulations! You've just visualized a circle in two-dimensional space!

Right and down, left and down, left and up, right and up. Left and right. Up and down. [No, I'm not giving you a Nintendo cheat code.] There are times when the spot is moving forward (compared to its starting point) and times where the spot is moving backwards (compared to its starting point).

Let's add a third dimension to this circle but we do not want to make it a sphere (by introducing a third geometric dimension). Instead, we want to introduce time (linear time, if you are still keeping in mind what was written above) as the third dimension for our circle. When we now think of the motion of our point on the rim of the circle, we have what is called a cycloid. See below.

A graph depicting a cycloid. (3)

As the spot on the rim moves through time around the rim of the circle, we see that there is no longer a backwards motion apparent in its movement. What was a seeming display of progression and regression becomes instead a representation of growth and decline.

How can we apply this to our Day by Day Discipleship? We'll explore that in out next blog entry.

Thank you for reading!

1. Why I Want To Live Like A Dog. Ryan Henneberg. Medium.com. 2024

2. The Fourth Turning. William Strauss and Neil Howe. Three Rivers Press. 1997. Pages 8-11.

3. http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMAT6680Fa08/Kuzle/Assignment%2010/cycloid.html

Back to the basics

Since my last post, I have been wrestling with how to continue the dialog regarding the interaction between our physical and spiritual natures. I have two unfinished drafts, one a definition of terms and the other deals with the question, "do we have two natures or three natures?". I open them in my text editor, write on them for a while and then I hit a road block in the brain.

In the morning, I write down the verse of the day from both YouVersion and BibleGateway. This morning, my scriptures were:

"I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life." (John 5:24)

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on the earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20)

At the time I read these verses I thought, "Wouldn't it be nice if it were that simple?"

I turned my attention back to the book, unChristian, by David Kinnaman, which I mentioned in my last post. The chapter I am now reading is about the issue outsiders (the author's preferred term for nonbelievers or non-Christians) have with the perceived attitude of the church that people "just need to get saved". With evidence from his organization's research, Kinnaman outlines that the message of accepting Jesus as a fix for all of life's problems is contributing to the negative image of the church held by a growing number of people in our society.

Kinnaman proceeds to state that one way to combat this overly simplified (and seemingly inauthentic) message is for churches to emphasize that our relationship with Jesus should lead to spiritual transformation. Let me stress, the ideas in unChristian are not new, they are existing ideas presented with mountains of information, based on professionally processed data.

Kinnaman states that spiritual transformation should lead to us being more like Christ and offers three areas for consideration where this transformation can be seen in our lives: our thinking, our loving and our listening.

Some quotes from this section of the book:

Thinking

"the most consistent influences on behavior is how a person thinks."

Young people are "not being taught to think" and there is a problem as they "experience a one-size-fits-all message that fails to connect with their unique sensibilities, personality or intellectual capabilities."

Loving

"Just because a person believes the right things about Jesus - this is, he or she has a highly developed biblical worldview - does not automatically make the person loving. A deep shift is needed from the sin-altered, me-first and consumer-minded perspectives that so often plague us as Christians in America."

Listening

"I [Kinnaman] have come to the conclusion that the most important character quality is soft-heartedness."

"Knowing the right answers is not sufficient; we have to be able to apply what we know. The first step is realizing what we don't know. Listening to God, through the Bible and often through other people, is how we learn. The better we listen, the more productive we become for God's purposes." (1)

This leads me "back to the basics". I've been thinking a lot about the list of grandiose thoughts and questions that I have put forth in my first few entries to this blog and I feel like God is pressing the brake pedal on those challenging, intellectual ideas.

A verse that has passed its way though my mind several times recently is Luke 16:10, "If you’re faithful in small-scale matters, you’ll be faithful with far bigger responsibilities. If you’re crooked in small responsibilities, you’ll be no different in bigger things." (VOICE) I think that God is steering me back to a smaller idea, a smaller vision, for the time being.

About a year ago, I had an idea for something called "Day-by-Day Discipleship". I believe it is this idea to which God is currently directing my attention and efforts. I believe the questions of our physical and spiritual natures' interaction with God's grace and truth, how this applies to humanity in general, and the queer community specifically, will be future conversations and blog entries; for now, I'm going to do my best to be faithful in the little things.

Thank you for taking the time to read!

1 - unChristian. David Kinnaman. Baker Books. 2007. Pages 81-82.

The Nature of Humanity - Are we defined by what we do or who we are?

Is there opportunity to expand upon our understanding of the nature of humanity?

I am not a philosopher nor am I a theologian. A most apt description of my way of thinking is "lazy intellectualist" and even then I am probably overstating my mental stick-with-it-ness.

When I ask the question about the expanding of understanding the nature of humanity, what I think I am really asking is, "can we take what has been thought about the material and immaterial nature of humanity over the centuries and express it in a way that makes it relevant to 21st-century American culture?"

The reason I am wondering this is because, from the moment I found out about my child's transgender experience, I have had the idea of us being physical beings and spiritual beings running as a background track for everything in my life. When Toby and I had our first conversation after the announcement of his transgender identity, I stressed to him that we are more than just our physical bodies and that what we do with this life should be more about our spiritual development than about the satisfying of what our bodies are telling us it wants.

As I've thought about this, in terms of Toby's journey, it has also caused me to think about how much of our Christian religious focus seems to be on correcting the things done with this physical body. It makes me wonder: how connected are the physical and spiritual aspects of each of us?

I am currently reading a book called "unChristian" by David Kinnaman, a researcher for the Barna Group when the book was published in 2007 and now that organization's CEO. Though the book is seventeen years old, the trends identified in it have continued since its publishing. The age group of people about whom this book was written were 16-29 in 2007 (33-46 in 2024). These are the individuals in our society that would be now called "Xennials": the last years of the Gen X generation and the oldest of the Millennial generation.

Not surprisingly, the number one road block/negative feeling/bad experience that this age group identified with regards to Christianity is the perceived hypocrisy within the Christian Church. "Outsiders consider us hypocritical - saying one thing  and doing another - and they are skeptical of our morally superior attitudes. They say Christians pretend to be something unreal, conveying a polished image that is not accurate. Christians think the church is only a place for virtuous and morally pure people." (1)

In the passage from unChristian below, you see why this becomes an issue. By our own admission, Christians are not leading lives that live up to our own expectations. 

Text from unChristian by David Kinnaman (2)

Getting back to the question posed above: how connected are the physical and spiritual aspects of each of us? It would seem that the message of spiritual freedom described by Jesus as "abundant life" has gotten bogged down in a newer version of the compensatory laws of the Old Testament. Paul Clayton Gibbs, in his book "Kingdom Centric" describes these compensatory laws thusly, "In the Old Testament, they believed that black was black and white was white. Do something bad, and bad things will happen to you. Do something good, and good things will always be the result. Pursue sin and be punished; pursue righteousness and be rewarded." (3)

The idea that we, as Christians, have returned to this "I will do X so that God blesses me. I will not do Y so that God does not punish me" kind of religion is affirmed with more research-based information from Kinnaman's book. "The most common message people hear from us [Christians] is that Christianity is a religion of rules and regulations." (4)

When the researchers working with Kinnaman asked Christians about their personal faith priorities, the most common response was "lifestyle - being good, doing the right thing, not sinning." (5) One of the solutions to the lifestyle-focus of contemporary American Christianity is transparency, which I will explore in a later bit of writing.

I realize that traditionally, the teaching "body bad, spirit good" has been labeled as Gnosticism and considered heretical; however, as we hear things like "God is more interested in who you are than what you do," if makes me wonder if this is really true or is it just another contemporary Christian slogan, ready to be framed and placed for sale at Hobby Lobby or Mardel.

Earlier this week, I wrote in my journal: If I keep focusing on the "don't" then I bring bring back into the house the trash that Jesus has already taken to the curb. If I keep focusing on the "do" then I am nailing myself to a cross of my own making. In focusing on the "are" I see each opportunity throughout my day to be a chance to not be Ryan-like but instead become Christ-like.

Other potential bits of writing inspired by this session include:

Truth - Revealed, embedded or collectively discerned?

The hypostatic union of Christ and humanity's body and spirit

Who's driving the car - the body or the spirit?

1 - unChristian. David Kinnaman. Baker Books. 2007. Page 29.

2 - unChristian. David Kinnaman. Baker Books. 2007. Page 47

3 - Kindgom Centric. Paul Clayton Gibbs. Harris House. 2024. Page 41.

4 - unChristian. David Kinnaman. Baker Books. 2007. Page 48.

5 - unChristian. David Kinnaman. Baker Books. 2007. Page 49.

Questions to explore

Below are some questions I have been wrestling with and will be writing about in the next few weeks.

In no particular order,

Is there opportunity to expand upon our understanding of the nature of humanity?

What is the relationship between our physical nature (body) and spiritual nature (spirit)?

Can we have a repentant spirit while living in an unchanged body?

Does a one-time profession of faith establish our restored relationship with God?

If our relationship with God is forever secure through a restored spirit, yet our physical existence remains largely unchanged, what is the impact, eternally, of our diminished fellowship with God?

On Writing Style and Motivation

During the last year I have returned to writing, both as an outlet for the creative mind given to me by God as well as to make sense of the world I see around me.

As I start to write this, I am reminded of the scripture from First Corinthian, chapter 2:

My brothers and sisters, I did not pose as an expert with all the answers. I did not pretend to explain the mystery of God with eloquent speech and human wisdom. I claimed to know nothing with certainty other than the reality that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Liberating King, who was crucified on our behalf.

1 Corinthians 2:1-2 (Voice)

[If you are not familiar with The Voice translation, here is information about it from BibleGateway. https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/The-Voice-Bible/ Since my intended audience for this blog is a small group of trusted friends whom I know to be mature Christians, I feel comfortable using a translation that some may say takes more liberty than one would want if sharing with non-believers or new believers.]

When I write, I want to use the gift of language; however, I do not want to write in overly fancy words. I want to be intentional without being excessively thoughtful.

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Part of the reason for this post on motivation is that a couple of weeks ago, as I sat and thought about what I was planning to write and where all of this was going to go in the future, I was grabbed by a sense of "putting the cart before the horse". Feeling that God was directing me, I turned to a blank page in my journal and started examining my motives. Below are my thoughts. [Bracketed thoughts are my own commentary, written as I transcribe from my journal.]

Am I just a man who wants to see the world burn? [reference to Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight] Am I just someone who wants to upset the status quo? Does the contemporary Evangelical Protestant Church need a Martin Luther? [In case you haven't met me, I struggle with pride.]

[Prompted by my current "read for study" book unChristian by David Kinnaman] If we move past a focus on lifestyle, how is the Holy Spirit evidenced in one's life? The presence of the Fruit of the Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-Control.

Can the Fruit of the Spirit, as evidence of one's growing relationship with God, be present in the life of someone who has not addressed a traditionally non-Christian lifestyle? [Specifically I am wondering about those who have accepted a non-heterosexual orientation or transgender identity.]

Getting Started

The purpose of this blog is to create a space where I can explore the thoughts and ideas that I have with regards to my perceived calling to be a written-word influencer.

Specifically, I hope to use this space to provide an opportunity for trusted people in my life to read and comment on the material that is flowing in and out of me in hopes of refining my thoughts, attitudes, beliefs and actions, as manifested in my writing.

Heed counsel, act on instruction, and you will become wise later in life.

Proverbs 19:20 (Voice)