Think on these things

Finally, dear brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is excellent or praiseworthy, think on these things, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, shall be with you.

~Phil 4:8~

Recently I've been having conversations that sometimes turn to interest news I've read about in higher education. Why? Because I am getting a MA in Higher ed and I read about a million pages every day on the topic and I am now forced to think of issues I never would have considered in the past. Is this a problem? Only because it's boring to everyone else.

You know how they say "to a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail,"? Well I've noticed that whatever I am really studying becomes my hammer. Which only makes sense. But there was a time when the Bible was my hammer.

In the Old Testament the Israelites used to bind up small scrolls of the law and wear them on their wrists as well as putting them on the door. If you were a wealthy man instead of moving down to Florida and spending your money on fast cars and faster women you would stop working and sit under a fig tree and meditate on the scriptures. That was considered the good life.

I don't feel like a bad person because I am studying something else. But when I was working at a camp I was really surrounded by God's word. Ruminating on it and talking about it as well as teaching it and reading it. And I really liked the way I felt at camp that summer. I don't work at a camp anymore, but I'm wondering how I can get that feeling back.

Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.

~Joshua 1:8~

Stuff Girls Like (good natured teasing)

English as a Second Language

This suggestion for S.G.L. was submitted by reader Matt Beres. And the man is right.

Even though we've been taught that you can serve God in any vocation we've REALLY always grown up believing that being a missionary is the best thing you could ever do with your life. ESPECIALLY if it involved Africa.

This is no longer true. Go onto any college campus and tell a girl that you want to be a missionary after you graduate and she will say "oh that's great." Tell the same girl that you have a passion for teaching English as a Second Language and she will start flailing her arms in some capacity whilst enthusiastically shouting "Oh my gosh! ME TOO!"

And this doesn't even necessarily need to be a lie. But it seems that the (average) college going male and female have different views on how ESL is to be approached. Girls seem to have an affinity for learning Spanish and going to poor countries to love toothless natives and teach them English using the skills they have picked up in ESL certification classes. Us guys on the other hand were envisioning something that looked a lot more like picking an interesting destination in China and wandering around until some university picks us up and PAYS us (I know, it's like stealing) to speak to their class just because we have an American accent. The fact that we don't know the difference between a demonstrative determiner and gerund is irrelevant because we are doing something with our lives!

Cortney is ESL certified and taught English one summer in Ecuador. When I tell this to girls they all nod and smile as if to say "I'm so happy Steve found a woman who has realized life's great calling. Steve needs that because he only speaks one language."

If you look at the glass half empty this is just another thing (like walking) for men to feel guilty about not doing. but if you are an opportunist it can be viewed as way to get in good with girls without actually having to do anything. It's not actually necessary to become ESL certified to become a hero in our culture. All you must do is mention something about intending to learn Spanish and you have secured yourself a second date.

Me: "Do you know any resources I can use to learn Spanish? I'm into ESL"
Girl*: "Do you know any churches where we could get married tonight?"


*This is "not" how I got Cortney to date me. And this article is "not" in any way about her.

God in a box

I would like to point out, though it has nothing to do with this post, that if you read the comments left on the previous post you will see a girl clearly demonstrating my point.

And now to the matter at hand.

I would like to stand up for the Big Guy. By which I mean established church, and also God. These are two entities that can get by without my endorsement, but I will give it to them just the same.

It is very popular now a days to rag on the church, or a specific church, for letting us down, for missing something, for over programming and missing the point, for being inauthentic blagh blagh blagh... thank you for your opinions super edgy emergent Christian who really "gets" God and has a tattoo of your favorite Starbucks drink. Donald Miller would be proud.

Despite my sarcasm, the unconventional Christians who cry out for change ARE right. Yes, they are. But that doesn't make anyone else wrong. In some peoples efforts to take God out of the conventional box they have blinded themselves to just how big He is. Example:

"I hate worship services that are just planned right down to the minute. There is no room for the Holy Spirit to move. I like a more free-flowing, living service so that God can really enter that place. You guys put God in a box"

As if anyone COULD put God in a box. Don't imply that the Holy Spirit cannot accomplish in 60 minutes the same amount as you would expect him Him to accomplish in 90. I don't think God has ever has his cosmic plans thwarted because he needed more time. I believe God can do as HE pleases just as well when a pastor uses an outline and a PowerPoint as when he "says what God puts on his heart."

When we assume that people are "limiting the Holy Spirit" all we are doing is showing how limited our view of Him really is.


So in the same way let us not throw stones at people who are "blowing" or "missing" an aspect of Christianity. I'm NOT defending any establishment as having it all together, nor (despite my sarcasm) am I condemning the anti-establishment trend setters of my generation. I honestly believe that the church IS missing something. Every church is missing something. Because no matter who you are or what you are trying to accomplish You have a box. And try as hard as you can but you are never going to completely get rid of the box, and you are never going to fit God inside of it. We can't encapsulate eternity. In one sense no one has ever put God in a box

In another sense, everyone has. The beautiful thing is that even though we can't fit all of God in a box we can take a look inside people's boxes and see that part of God is, in fact, there. And different communities, establishments, and people are all going to have different sizes and shapes for their boxes.

This Blog is just one of my boxes, and right now you are looking inside. And as Christians we need to be looking in as many boxes as we can in effort to make our own much bigger, and not to be threatened by the shape of some one elses box.

God is in the slums, he is in the lives of the prostitutes and homeless. He is in back-alley coffee houses and hostiles. BUT he is ALSO in little churches with populated mainly by Sr citizens, he is in mega churches with flashy stage presentations, and he is in all things in between. We are all on the same team here, and try as hard as you will NO ONE can put my God in a box.

Stuff Girls Like

Now forgive me for naming this post something that will make you think of stuffwhitepeoplelike or stuffchristianslike (both very funny) Trust me, that is not my intent, but I can't think of a better title for a post about stuff that girls like.

And here's why I'm writing this post. Because I'm not trying to list things that girls generally enjoy. Girls would be far better at doing that than I am. What I wanted to do was draw attention to a few particularly strange but universally accepted obsessions girls can't seem to get over.

Here are the two criteria I employ for defining "stuff girls like"

1) It must be close to universal but never explicitly talked about
2) Girls must act shocked and offended when you don't like it too.

Example 1 Walking:
Girls love to walk. If you have a girlfriend that means you have gone on several walks. My girlfriend generally takes a walk every day. The idea of taking a walk by myself makes about as much sense to me as playing tennis by myself, but girls are enamoured with it.

Now it's true, that I like to go for runs, and you might make the argument that walking is like running except slowed to an excruciatingly tedious pace. My Rebuttal: I also like to read, but running is to walking as reading is to hooked on Phonix flash-cards.

You know this is true because no matter where you are, no matter how good of friends you are with the person, no matter how far she has to go, if it is a "nice day" outside a walking girl will NOT accept a ride in your car.* She will always say "oh no I'm almost there" meaning she is only half a mile away.

It is true that I am fully capable of walking a half a mile but I'm also capable of washing dishes by hand, and I've yet to the person (man or woman) who says "oh no I'm fine without the dishwasher, I really like the feeling of water against my hands. Thanks though."

This is nowhere more evident than when your dirty dark secret comes out that you sometimes drive distances of less than a mile. Perhaps you are on a college campus and you've decided that you don't want to walk 8 minutes to the library to fetch a book and walk 8 minutes back. If you ever let a girl know you've done this she will look at you and say "why would you drive?" and the fascinating thing about this is that she will be utterly serious. She doesn't know why you would do that. It's a curiosity to her. But if you explain that you "didn't want to walk" you might get any number of responses from her, but whatever she says you will leave the altercation feeling that your character and love for "God's world" has been called into serious question.

I hope no one takes offense at this post. It is meant to be humorous. And I hope you do not take offense to the fact that I live and work on a college campus and I drive to work every day.

*As to the "accepting a ride" situation I postulate that to girls accepting a ride is kinda like declaring "I really want to date you" and so they avoid it at all costs, which is the same reason they will most likely refuse to wear your coat/sweatshirt no matter how cold they are and how many layers you are wearing.

Sixpense; and more sixpense

After he had fully determined that the young man was at the bottom of this state of affairs, he, Jean Valjean, the regenerated man, the man who had laboured so much upon his soul, the man who had made so many efforts to resolve all life, all misery, and all misfortune into love, looked within himself, and there he saw hatred (493).

The above is a quote from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables which I reviewed earlier back before I stopped doing book reviews.

But I relate to it. I'm an ugly person inside. And if you have been keeping up at all with this blog you will know that this year has been a difficult time of self discovery for me. Larry Crabb says "to know me is to like me, to really know me is to really like me, but to truly know me is to be disgusted." The sinner inside is never pretty, but he is very real.

C.S. Lewis tells a story about a father who gave his son a sixpence. The boy promptly went out and bought his Father a present. The father, of course, was happy that his son decided to spend the money on him, but in reality, the father was not any better off in a material sense than he was at the beginning, since it was his money to begin with. He was "sixpence none the richer"*

We are all the little boy, and when we offer our lives and service to God he is, of course, thrilled that his child would return to him in such a way. But once again, he is sixpence none the richer. Because it was His to begin with.

To tell the truth though, the sixpence is all way have to give. The only thing we have is ourselves. Which really doesn't seem like much.

But here's a thought. We say "Lord all I am and all that I have is yours." And we mean it. But the truth of the matter is that we don't really know ourselves. Not fully, and I believe that we can't give to God what we don't really have. Johari calls this our "unknown self." There are places in our own heart and mind that we have never been, and until we go there, we can't surrender them to God.

And that's the fun/hard part. When you look inside yourself and see something hideous you can give God another sixpence. It is a wretched and depraved sixpence to be sure, but our God is in the business of redeeming. So Rejoice! As bad as it hurts you are getting another chance to give God the only thing you are qualified to give. That is, unless you want to keep it for yourself...but who would want to do that?

*Yes this really is where the band gets its name.

A day in the life

Hello all you faithful readers out there in blogland. I know you have been sitting on pins and needles waiting for my latest installent of musings.

I was waiting to post this until I had pictures of the events I'm about to describe, but becuase the lovely Cortney Michelle Korshak is not that big of a fan of uploading things that will have to wait for another day.

But speaking of Cortney, this Saturday I was able to introduce her to the REAL love of my life.*

And no, I'm not talking about C.S. Lewis, becuase he is dead, and that would be creepy. I'm talking of course about THE Ohio State Buckeyes.

Cortney and I traveled to Colombus to witness the Scarlet and Gray take the field against some guys. Unfortunately we only arrived there 45 miuntes early. Which is really stupid because apparently every car in the state of Ohio was lined up trying to get onto campus. I am convinced that no one car pooled. Families of five drove six diferent cars. I saw it.

But patience is a virtue so we waited in line at the first exit until 11:59 when the traffic guards blocked the exit with a series of cones and told me to go around to the next one.

[imagine lots of rage in this line of text]

An hour later we found our seats, which were almost close enough to the field to make out which team was which. But we were together, we were watching the bucks...we were happy.

On the way home we completed our super fun date by going to Applebees where I met an interesting man with whom Cortney went to Costa Rica (not by coincidence, we called him). They fondly recounted tales of spanish things and people and tortillas and stuff while I looked over Cortney's sholder at the T.V. screen depicting the humiliating defeat of the Michigan Wolverines.

Yes my day was deffinately going well despite the difficult start. Then I noticed that one of the tires of my car, (in celebration of all the wonderull things that had happened in college football) had burst in a fit of joy!

[insert more rage]

But that was cool becuae I had a spare tire in the trunk and I got to change it in front of Cortney and show off my manly know how**

Moral of the story? I hate Michigan.


*Sorry babe
**Thanks Jake Drake for randomly taching me how to change a flat

Essays on Greatness: Part One

When considering college athletics what comes to mind when you think of tradition and a long-standing history of pride and excellence? You think of Notre Dame of course! But guess what? Liking Notre Dame as a football team is like rooting for Great Britain to become the worlds leading superpower again. England is full of tradition and cool old buildings and junk, and sure they gave us a good start, chartered some states, and sent us Led Zeppelin, but now a days they're just tea sipping panty-waistes with crooked teeth. If anyone knows how to rest on their laurels it's England, Notre Dame, a Tenured Professor, and Mr. T.

But barring "Our lady" and that state up North, no team* has the proud tradition and history of the Ohio state university.

If I may, let me educate you on some of the finer points in the history of THE Ohio state University and the great state from which it hails.

The name "Ohio" is derived from the Seneca word ohi:yo’, which has been interpreted to mean "beautiful river" It was admitted to the union as the (insert factual number)th state and did not allow slavery. Michigan, on the other hand not only supported the practice of enslaving disenfranchised blacks but also made a practice of enslaving women and particularly ugly children.

Contrary to popular belief Columbus neither found nor founded the institution in question, this myth persists due to it's early popularity in the new world. But eventually, because expanding the campus was beginning to become costly they stopped building dormitories out of gold and the name "El derado" was eventually dropped.

The Ohio State University (as YOU know it) was founded in 1870 as a land-grant university in accordance with the Morrill Act of 1862 under the name of the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College...In 1878, and in light of its expanded focus, the college permanently changed its name to the now-familiar "The Ohio State University" (with the article "The" as part of its official name).

As you can see, I have consulted a credible source that might not be Wikipedia**

In 1835 those dirty Michiganders wanted into our land so they invaded in what later became known as the Toledo War (I am not making that up). But because the Federal government wasn't man enough to do what must be done (mainly sell Michigan to Canada) we ended up giving them the Upper peninsular in exchange for Toledo. This is not what I call a fair trade.


However, out of this was born the greatest sports rivalry since that young upstart Mr. Pibbs first squared off against the established Dr. Pepper (as the worlds foremost drink that tastes exactly like Dr. Pepper.)***

In the late 1800's coach Woody Hayes invented the sport of football with the help of assistant coach Theodore Roosevelt in the back woods of Augusta Main. Their first team "the rough riders" single-handedly won the Spanish American war as they gallantly took the field to the fan's triumphant cry of "Remember the Maine; to Hell with Spain!"

For years the Rough Riders dominated all competition in the NCAA, (which was then called nothing) and eventually inspired other knock off football team imitations bordering on questionable Mr. Pibb like quality. Among these teams were the Notre Dame fighting
Irish,**** The Michigan Wolverines, The USC Trojans, the Pennsylvania Pacifists, the Denver Broncos, The Miami Heat, the Georgia Bulldogs, the Richmond Whigs, Manchester United, and Team USA.

Roosevelt eventually retired from the Rough Riders to raise a family and become a public servant of some little renown. Leaving Hayes to coach the team by himself. However due to copyright agreements the term "rough riders" was owned by history books, so Hayes adopted the name "buckeyes" after the hard and poisonous nuts which comprised the (man making) diet Hayes and his team observed rigidly. Near the end of his career Woody moved the team to Columbus Ohio becuase it was round on both sides and high in the middle. Which is where we find them today




*With the exception of some other teams
**But it is.
***This is not a very hotly contested title
****Who actually take their names from a particularly violent bar fight over the nationality of St. Patrick, who, ironically enough, did turn out to be English. The offended Irish parties however, being Irish, never apologized for the incident, but rather adopted a characiture of the child they beat up as their mascot