Christianity

And forgive us our trespasses…

Dave Farquhar Christianity

Our first adventure in Belle Glade happened before we could even see the town. To get our attention, God used one of the most powerful forces in the known universe: a dozen bored teenage boys seeking amusement.
We spent our first night at Wellington Presbyterian Church, about 30 miles from our destination. The next morning, after a very brief (and very cold) shower and a shave, I returned to find a couple of them playing with the classroom intercom. They’d push the button that paged the office, then they’d listen to the beep and the system kicking on and then back off.

I’m sure there were more amusing things in the building than that, but at 8 in the morning they hadn’t found it. Read more

A couple of brief stories

Dave Farquhar Christianity

I spent the past week in Belle Glade, Fla., which is a farming city near Lake Okeechobee, and a curious mix of extremes–I’ve never seen such wealth and such poverty in such close proximity.
Literally 30 minutes away, we passed a large estate with a garage in the yard, full of vintage Rolls Royces. I zipped past pretty fast but it must have been five or six.

The church we stayed at in Belle Glade was in a lower middle-class neighborhood, not unlike the community just to the north of where I live. To one direction lay a bustling commercial district. In the other direction, ghetto.
Read more

The most disturbing story in the Old Testament

Dave Farquhar Christianity , ,

Probably everyone who’s ever been to Sunday School is familiar with the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of his son, Isaac.
Matchbook-cover version: To test Abraham’s faith, God ordered Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his long-promised son, born to him and his wife Sarah when they were aged 100 and 90, respectively. He was their only son. Abraham loaded them up, and as he prepared to slay his son on the altar, an angel came to him and stopped him.

Did you know there’s another case of human sacrifice to God in the Old Testament, and the Bible is a whole lot less forthcoming on whether the burnt offering actually happened?
Read more

What am I?

Dave Farquhar Christianity

OK, I’ll share my scores from Belief-O-Matic, the online test that asks you a bunch of questions and tries to guess your religion.
Read more

Man on a mission.

Dave Farquhar Christianity ,

I’m going on a mission trip. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve gone on a mission trip, and I found out a few Sundays ago that the absolute deadline to register was, well, the Tuesday after. I’ve been a little bit torn of late on mission trips; people spend lots of money to go spend a week far from home and yet, there’s a mission field right around them. I know what my mission field is: It’s 20somethings and 30somethings in South St. Louis County. And trust me: There are lots of them.
Sometimes they come to church, and no one talks to them. How do they feel? You can’t really generalize. I try to talk to some of them, but I’m an extreme introvert and there are usually more of them than there are of me. And they have ways of sitting so far apart in the sanctuary that basically you have to pick one single or couple, go talk to him/her/them, and that’s all you’ll get to talk to that Sunday. Sometimes you see the people you didn’t get a chance to talk to the next Sunday. And sometimes you don’t.

St. John’s Lutheran in Ellisville has a sign in the parking lot as you exit. It reads: You are now entering the mission field. Very true. But what I want are signs inside the church that read: You are still in the mission field.

So I laid it out really plain and simple to God. The door was closing on my opportunity to go. If He didn’t want me to go, there were plenty of opportunities for Him to close that door. I had a project going on the week of the meeting. I wasn’t sure if I could get off work. Those were big obstacles. They both fell far more easily than I thought they would. I nearly finished the project, which was supposed to take me all week, on Monday night. And I went into work, checked the vacation calendar, and no one else in my department had booked a single vacation that month. So I had the week clear more than a week in advance. I didn’t need any more confirmation than that.

I’m going to Belle Glade, Florida, in June, accompanied by about 40 of my cohorts from Faith Lutheran Church in south suburban St. Louis. We’ll be partnering up with a local missionary group down there, and, in conjunction with one or two local churches, putting on a Vacation Bible School. That’s our main focus. But auxilliary ministries always have ways of popping up where there are VBSs. So we have no idea what else we’ll be doing, other than we’ll be doing other things. It will probably run the gamut from construction to one-on-one individual ministry. The group we’re working with has been in Belle Glade for several years and has made a big difference in the community. We just want to be a part of that.

Those of you who pray, we would greatly appreciate if you would keep us and the two communities in Belle Glade that we’ll be serving in your prayers. (And Mom, I promise we’ll stay away from the alligators, if there even are any alligators in Belle Glade.)

This trip isn’t going to be cheap. I’m going to pay my own way, because I can afford to. That’s not the case for most of the people who are going. The youngest of them are in their early teens, and some of them probably have never seen $700. I wouldn’t have been able to earn $700 on my own when I was 13.

This is the first time I’ve ever made a solicitation from my Web site, and I don’t intend to make this a regular thing. I’m participating in the fund raising. I’m not looking for huge donations. A donation as small as $5 is enough to make a difference. I don’t want these donations to interfere with your regular giving to your own church, so if you’re thinking of deducting the amount you give from your next offering check, don’t do it.

If you’re interested in participating financially in this ministry, please contact me privately and I’ll send you my church’s address. We’ll gladly provide a tax letter for you if you wish.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow, in my typical unpredictable fashion.

Does God have to heal?

Dave Farquhar Christianity , ,

Strong religious content again. I make no apologies. People who are offended by this kind of stuff are probably long gone anyway.
My friend and co-worker Charles Sebold helped inspire this one. Charlie’s page is worth a read. He writes with considerably more brevity than I do, but if you like the kind of content I produce, you’ll probably like Charlie too.

Charlie pointed out an alternative reading of Genesis 3:16 on Saturday that dovetails nicely with the interview I conducted Sunday night. Genesis 3:16 is a verse that feminists hate, mostly because they read it incorrectly. True, it’s been misapplied over the years. Here’s how it reads:

Then God said to the woman, “You will bear children with intense pain and suffering. And though your desire will be for your husband (or: And though you will desire to control your husband), he will be your master.”

Some men wrongly use this verse to lord over women. Charlie raised an interesting question. Keep in mind that when Jesus spoke, He used parables that people would understand. Doesn’t it stand to reason that He learned the technique from God the Father? Also keep in mind that we, God’s people, are referred to as the Bride of Christ. And keep in mind that Adam and Eve sinned because they wanted to be like God. Pure power trip.

So let’s paraphrase it in light of that:

Then God said to the woman, “You will bear children with intense pain and suffering. And though humanity will desire to control Me, I will be your master.”

Eve undoubtedly already knew the desire to control Adam. Undoubtedly if she desired to control God, she also desired to control Him. I’m sure she got the metaphor instantly. I’m sure Adam got it too–he understood control.

We still have control issues today. It tends to fall into one of two extremes. One extreme denies that God is in control, whether it’s by choice or ineptitude, and believes that God won’t reach down and help us. An awful lot of mainline denominations fall into that trap, wittingly or unwittingly. Many fundamentalists hit the other extreme, teaching that if we say or believe the right things, God is obligated to perform a miracle. St. Louis Rams superstar Isaac Bruce falls into that category. During the Rams’ Super Bowl season, Bruce totaled his car. He threw his hands off the wheel, cried out, “God, save me!” and believed God was obligated to save him. Bruce walked away from the accident. When asked why the same thing didn’t happen to Payne Stewart when his plane went down, Bruce said Stewart didn’t say the words. Now, while it’s very admirable that Bruce’s gut reaction was to say “God, save me!” instead of one or a series of four-letter words your mama didn’t teach you, it’s wrong for Bruce to believe that God is obligated to do anything, and it’s wrong for Bruce to judge people whose lives God chooses not to preserve.

What Isaac Bruce forgets is that God’s priority is to get as many people into heaven as possible. Yes, God loves us and cares about us and cares about what happens to us. He cares when I lose my keys and how many stoplights I have to sit through on my way home late on Friday nights. But if for some bizarre reason me sitting through 10 lights for five minutes apiece could help someone else get to heaven, it’s gonna take me an hour to get home. Every time.

So, when my work is done, I’m finished, no matter what age I am or what condition I’m in. The reason for that is really simple. Those of you who are married will understand this. Being alive and on this Earth is like being engaged. When you’re engaged, you can spend a fair bit of time together, but not as much as when you’re married. Your desire to spend more time with one another, and to do things you can’t do when you’re not married, are what drive you to get married. And whether you’re willing to admit it or not, you long for that day. Some people lie to themselves and try to tell themselves there’s something better than that day, and their lifestyle reflects it, but in reality by living that way, they’re in their own way longing for that day.

God has that same longing for us. He longs for us to cross over and be in Heaven, where He can spend more time with us, and higher-quality time with us. God looks forward to our deathbed like we look forward to a wedding day.

So, yes, God wants to heal us, because He doesn’t like watching us suffer. But that’s secondary. God wants us to want Him to heal the people we love. Somewhere I read a very interesting study titled, “Why God Needs a Human.” Interestingly, Jesus’ hands were tied when He went back to His hometown, because in His hometown, the people had no faith in Him. He tried to perform miracles there, but they weren’t as spectacular nor as numerous as anywhere else. So our unbelief in what God can or will do does seem to hinder His work.

So yes, we are supposed to want God to perform miracles on the people we love. Intensely. And when He does, the results are often spectacular. My friend Emily totaled her car a few months ago. She didn’t walk away from the accident like Isaac Bruce did. So some might say Emily didn’t have as much faith as Isaac Bruce did. To that I say, well, you don’t know Emily, and I don’t know Isaac Bruce, and it’s not my place to say anything about anyone else’s faith. But Emily should not be alive today. She says the only thing she remembers about her accident is an angel coming and getting her. And Emily was found laying in the road, where there was danger of her being run over. I would argue she was there for good reason–the dangerous place is also the place you’re most likely to be found quickly. And the same angel who could take her out of the car can just as easily be there to protect her. Potentially there was more than one.

When Emily tells that story, people get goosebumps. When Emily talks about her comeback, people get inspired. I didn’t know Emily very well before her accident–we met about a month before it happened–but at the very least, this incident in her life gave her another tool in her arsenal. And thanks to that, God may get another engagement or three He wouldn’t have had otherwise.

God knows–and only God knows–when it makes sense to heal. Our job is to be concerned on behalf of our brothers and sisters. But in those cases when God decides it’s time to call someone home, it’s not up to us to question the timing.

—
That’s much easier said than done. I wrote that bit about 4 pm on Sunday, in preparation for an interview for my documentary. Well, it’s not my documentary. I deliberately separated myself from the story, so I’d go in knowing just the very basics–a young couple from our church, named John and Karin, had twins in early September. Tommy, the boy, is completely healthy. Katie, the girl, has a heart condition. You can instantly tell when you see Katie that all’s not well with her. Don’t get me wrong–she looks fine. But when Katie and Tommy are in the room, you can’t hear Tommy breathing unless you listen for it. You can hear Katie. They’re short, desperate breaths. Tommy breathes about 60 times a minute, Karin said. Katie breathes 100 times.

I had John and Karin tell me the story, more or less from the beginning. Twins, a boy and a girl. Wonderful. Then Karin notices a yellow sticky-note where they were keeping Katie. The nurse wouldn’t give a straight answer. Heart murmur. That’s OK though. A lot of babies have what looks like a heart murmur and it goes away. Katie’s didn’t go away. Enlarged heart. OK, so you wait for the baby to reach 11 pounds, then you do surgery. Katie wasn’t growing.

I saw Katie and Tommy’s baptism, through the camera eye. I filmed the entire service. One of the church members wanted John and Karin to tell their story on video. John and Karin were very open to the idea. I agreed to the project, assuming certain resources would be available to me. It took about 45 minutes one Tuesday afternoon for all those resources to come together. OK, God’s pretty clearly behind this one–all the doors are wide open and the sun’s shining in and I do believe I left my sunglasses in the car. Alright alright, Dave can take a hint or twelve.

Pastor broke down while he was baptizing Katie. I caught the whole episode on tape. You can tell a lot about a Pastor from the way he handles infant baptisms. I’ve seen Pastor baptize dozens and dozens of babies. One has cried. Exactly one. Pastor has cried once, and that was with Katie. He loves her like his own daughter. So do a lot of people in the congregation.

Well, come late November, Katie had a growth spurt. Here she is now, the end of December, 10 pounds. That’s not much for four months, I know–I was born 10 pounds. But 10 pounds is close enough. Her surgery is Wednesday. It’s going to be a 10-hour ordeal. There’s little question that the surgery will make her a normal baby. The question mark is whether she’ll survive the surgery. Many don’t.

John and Karin sat down and talked with me for about 30 minutes, telling me their story. Everyone involved in the project knew what they wanted John and Karin to say–they knew John and Karin and they’d heard them talk. What they didn’t know was how to coax them into saying the good stuff. After a couple of conversations with people who knew them, I knew, mostly instinctively, what questions to ask to bring the story out. Four years of journalism school proved useful after all.

So I rolled the camera, played with the lights to get John and Karin to look good, and started asking questions. They answered the questions I meant to ask, rather than the questions I actually asked. Easiest interview I’ve ever done, far and away. After 20 minutes, Karin had to leave with Katie–she was uncomfortable in the lights. Karin apologized. I told her not to. At that point, John said there were three things he wanted to say. I told him I had plenty of tape. So he poured his heart out. Some of it I can’t use. But some of it was among the best stuff to come out of the interview.

The gist of it: They know God has a plan. They don’t know what it is, they don’t understand everything. But they trust Him. They trust Him more than I do.

By that time, Pastor was there, along with some of John and Karin’s friends. They wanted to pray for the whole family and annoint Katie with oil, as James 5:16 says to do. I caught that on tape too, along with some of the chemistry of the group. Pastor wanted me to emphasize the importance of small groups with the video, so I wanted to capture the essence of the group. The group was an awful lot like mine. That’s good. John and Karin said without the small group’s support and concern, they wouldn’t be what they are right now. I know. Without my small group, I wouldn’t be either. And I thought I had the coolest small group in the world, but this group is just as good. Same love, different people, that’s all.

There must have been 15 people in that room who’d have given their hearts to Katie if it would help. Katie didn’t understand what was going on. She looked over at her dad and her brother, then up at her mom and stopped crying. A room full of people confessed their sins to one another, as James 5:16 says to do. That’s awkward, but none of that stuff will leave the room. I’ll destroy the audio portion of the tape if it turned out–I was having problems with the microphones at that point. A room full of people prayed with intensity. And pastor pulled out a vial of oil, annointed Katie, and prayed for strength for her. John and Karin were holding their twins, sitting in front of an altar, Pastor standing right behind them. It was a beautiful picture–John and Karin sitting there. Pastor’s got their back. And God’s right behind all of them. Meanwhile, they were all surrounded by a tight circle of friends, hands outstretched.

By the time it was over, I think everyone except Tommy and Katie was crying.

I took tape home last night, but I didn’t take any equipment. Right now I don’t need to be editing video. I need to be praying that Katie makes it through Wednesday and sees Thursday. And the next Thursday. And let’s see… There are 52 Thursdays in a year, so about 4,000 Thursdays after that.

The tape can wait.

Weeks in the making…

Dave Farquhar Christianity

I had someone ask me a few weeks ago, not terribly long after the 9/11 attack, why I believed in God. After all, most sysadmin types don’t. Or they aren’t Christian–they’re pagan, or they dabble in Eastern religions. I understand the appeal. For one who’s used to building PCs and even operating systems from best-of-breed components (or best-of-economy components, or some other selectable criteria), the idea of assembling your own religion from best-of-breed components is nearly irresistable.
I can tell you how I became a Christian, but that’s not the same as why I remained one. I’ll focus on the latter. It’s a more pleasant mental place to be.

So let’s go back to that original question: Why can I be a Christian after such a terrible thing? And since you believe in God, why didn’t your God do something about it?

Someone sent me a nice explanation for it. It’s a little longwinded, so I’ll summarize and paraphrase. It said we’ve been telling God we don’t want Him. And God’s a perfect gentleman, so when He’s told He’s not wanted, He butts out. We’ve told God we don’t want Him in our schools. We’ve told Him we don’t want Him in our courts. We don’t want Him in our government. We don’t want Him in our business. We don’t want Him in our streets. We don’t want Him on our televisions and movie screens. And each time we’ve told Him to get lost, he’s sorrowfully complied.

Then, when tragedy hits, finally someone misses Him.

So where was God when those evil men hijacked those four planes?

Well, we told God where we didn’t want Him to be. But I saw Him. I saw Him in the actions of Todd Beemer, who rounded up all the big guys he could find on United Flight 93 and overtook the terrorists. I saw Him in President Bush, the onetime laughingstock who’s guided our country the past two months.

That’s consistent with my experience. I’ve seen places where God isn’t welcome, and I’ve seen bad things happen there. Lots of bad things. Sometimes terrible things.

But everywhere I go where God is truly welcome, good things happen.

So, yeah, I believe in one God who created the heavens and the earth. I believe He had one son, Jesus Christ, who is the only way to God the Father–incidentally, God the Father is the same God that Muslims and Jews believe in. We’ll come back to Jesus in a minute. And I believe in the Holy Spirit. I can’t explain the Holy Spirit. But I’ve seen His work, I’ve felt His presence, and yeah, it’s weird. But powerful. I know some of the appeal of Satanism and of pagan religions like Wicca–most of the appeal–is power. They don’t compare to Holy Spirit power. And personally, I’d much rather go to a God who’s willing to look bad by saying no when He knows what I’m asking for is bad for me or someone else, rather than going to a god who’ll give me whatever I ask for to ensure I come back for more. God’s a whole lot smarter than me, and has a much better perspective than me. I’m better off when I defer to Him.

OK, back to that whole Jesus thing. Do I really believe Jesus is the only way? Well, Jesus said He was. I just got back from spending a good part of the evening with three good friends. Whatever they say, I’ll take them at their word if they tell me it’s true. None of them has ever done what Jesus did. So I take Jesus at His word.

But there’s another, more selfish, more lazy reason for it. This appeals to the sysadmin in me. I make computers do as much of my job as possible. That’s why I like Christianity, because Christianity does all the work for me. Let me explain.

Truth be told, there is one world religion, and that religion can be summed up in exactly two words: Be perfect. Now, religions like Hinduism and Buddhism and Confucism all tell you to do that, and they give you some ways. Beyond that, they offer no help.

Islam teaches full submission to Allah. Again, it offers no real help other than some practical advice.

Judaism is a bit different. Again, it tells you to be perfect. It offers some practical advice. But it takes it a little further. It also offers a promise. It offers forgiveness of sin. It offers reconciliation with God. But it doesn’t say how.

That, my friends, is where Christianity kicks in. It delivers on that promise of Judaism and offers others. The most beautiful one: Jesus told His disciples He was going away, but He’d send the Holy Spirit to be with us, and live through us. God, living and breathing inside you. You’re not perfect, but God is.

That’s the beauty of it. Let’s just say–God forgive me–that Jesus was wrong. And we’ll say that Gandhi and his Hinduism was right. So Gandhi went to heaven on the basis of his works. Well, who was greater? Ghandi or Mother Theresa? Tough call. If Gandhi’s in heaven, Mother Theresa’s definitely not in hell.

Now, I don’t hold a candle to either of those two. But I’ll put my best up against the best of my peers in any other religion. I know we all struggle. But we do some good things too. If I’m wrong, and it is on works alone that we get to our ultimate destination, my Christianity will get me the same place as my peers’ Buddhism or Islam or Judaism gets them.

And that’s why I don’t think Jesus can possibly be wrong. He’s either right, or when He’s wrong, He’s still right.

So I’ve seen enough of God that I won’t deny His existence. I’ve seen and felt and breathed enough of His power to know I want Him on my side. And here’s Jesus saying, “Be perfect. Not only will I help you, but when you fail, I’ll pinch hit for you, and credit my statistics to you.”

I’d be a fool to turn down that deal. So that’s why this sysadmin who ought to be an atheist or a pagan or a Buddhist is a Christian.

When bad things happen to good people…

Dave Farquhar Christianity , ,

When bad things happen to good people. A couple of weeks ago, I got e-mail from a friend I’ll just call by her nickname, Hammer. Hammer moved to upstate New York this summer, after having lived in a small Illinois town outside of St. Louis her whole life. Hammer e-mails her friends a lot, and she’s probably the wordiest and most vocal person I know, myself included. Hammer told me (and others) about a longime friend who’d been going to our church for the past six months, who wanted to join our small group, but didn’t know any of us.
Her story was that of a fairly typical twentysomething Lutheran growing up in the 90s: Didn’t catch every break, made some good decisions and some bad decisions. She was successful, especially considering her age, but maybe a bit lonely. She didn’t have very many Christian friends.

I took it hard. Hammer described this girl, and I was about 99.8% certain I knew who she was talking about. Six months and no one close to her age had talked to her? That’s just wrong. So that night, after Wednesday service, I walked up to her. I didn’t care how uncomfortable it felt. I held out my hand and hoped I wouldn’t sound like a bumbling idiot.

“I’ve seen you around but I’ve never met you,” I said. “I’m Dave.”

She smiled. “I’m Emily,” she said.

My hunch had been right.

I had no idea how to invite her to Bible study, but that was fine. Hammer’s mom was right there. “Emily’s interested in your Bible study,” she said. I waved over to some of my cohorts, who came over. We made some quick introductions. My friend Brenna offered to meet Emily at church and drive with her to our next session, since it was in a part of town she wasn’t familiar with.

The next Friday, she was there. She fit right in. Like I said, her story–at least what I know of it–is virtually interchangeable with mine and with most Christians my age.

I flagged her down the following Sunday. She thanked me for inviting her, and said she’d been a bit nervous at first. She didn’t know what to expect–would she find a Lutheran monestary, or would she find people like her?

“You found people like you, right?” I asked.

She smiled. “I think so.”

“Good,” I said.

I saw her again Wednesday. She mentioned her back had been bothering her that day, and she asked if we were meeting Friday. I said yes. I asked for her e-mail address so I could e-mail her directions.

“Good,” she said. “What’s your phone number?”

I know I gave her a shocked look. She chuckled. “In case I have any questions about the directions,” she said.

I smiled and gave up the digits.

On Friday, my phone rang. No, it wasn’t the Charter cable guy I talked about yesterday. That was later. It was Emily. She told me she’d spent the day on the couch, her back had been acting up, and she wouldn’t be able to make it.

I told her we’d make sure we said a prayer for her.

“I was just about to ask if you would do that for me,” she said. I didn’t get the impression she was used to people volunteering to pray for her. Then I asked if she’d gone to see her doctor. No, she said, because a doctor would just give her pain pills, but she’d been to see a chiropractor. Good answer. She said he took x-rays, and he didn’t do anything else but shock her. She said that helped for a little while but she didn’t know what that was for.

“That’s to stimulate the nerves,” I said. “Once he gets the x-rays, he’ll probably pop you with this springy thing to move some bones back in place.” Those are technical terms, by the way. Well, the only technical terms my simple mind can understand.

“So you’ve been to a chiropractor before?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” I said. I described the procedures a little more. It’s uncomfortable sometimes but helps. Hopefully I put her mind at ease a little.

“Would you do me another favor?” she asked timidly at the end of the conversation. I thought she was going to ask me to build an addition to her house or something.

“Sure,” I said. (What can I say? I’m a sucker.)

“Would you say a prayer for my brother too? He’s moving, and left today, and I just want him to be safe.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “We’ll do that for you.”

I’ve heard thank-yous that sincere before, but they’re rare.

I prayed for both of them that night. I prayed for her and for her brother right when I hung up the phone, then later during the Bible study. That night, before I went to bed, I prayed again. I asked for her to be up and around on Saturday.

Sunday morning, I heard the answer to that prayer. We got to the point in the service when we pray, and one of our Seminary students led the prayers. He included Emily. “That’s nice,” I thought. Then I heard the rest–“Emily, who was in a car accident early this morning.”

Details were sketchy. My phone rang later yesterday afternoon with more details. She’d seen her chiropractor Saturday and had been feeling much better, so she went out. “Early” meant much closer to midnight than 8. She rolled her car and spent some time in ICU.

But she was alive. That was the important thing.

The answers did nothing but raise more questions. Why this? Why now? What did I accomplish by praying for her?

I don’t have any answers. At least not any good ones.

Obviously, the evil one sees her as a threat. Seeing as he’s seen 12 billion different people and has a long memory, something in her rang a little too familiar, he saw an opportunity to take her out, and he tried.

God could have prevented it by keeping her on the couch one more day. I don’t know why He didn’t. He didn’t have to say yes to our requests as quickly as He did.

I could spend all day second-guessing Him like I second-guess Joe Torre and Bob Brenly. It wouldn’t accomplish anything productive. It’s better to look to Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 8, verse 28 instead. It reads: “In all things God works for the good of those who love Him.”

Including car crashes.

What good can come from this? She’s about to find out what she’s made of. She’s likely to reach deep down and find something she never knew she had.

Why do bad things happen to good people? For the same reason bad things happen to bad people–bad things happen to everyone. They usually seem to make bad people worse, and good people better.

Country clubs revisited

Dave Farquhar Christianity

Country club churches. I had a conversation with my good friend Brad about country-club Christianity. We didn’t come up with any great answers but I think we took a couple of good steps. What’s not being in a country club look like? Talking to strangers, that’s what. And I think I know what the last line of the conversation should be. Not, “Nice to meet you.” Your mama taught you to say that, because it’s polite. It’s what everyone expects to hear. You shouldn’t say that. You should be rude. I think those last words should be, “I’m glad you were here.”
And you better be glad he or she was there, because God is.
Now, here comes the important part: follow-up. Remember that person’s name. Pray for that person during the next week. Make sure you pray for the chance to see that person again. If you didn’t care about that person on Sunday, I guarantee you will after you pray for ’em for a week. Then, on the next Sunday, find that person again and make sure you say something. I don’t think you should necessarily tell that person you’ve been praying for him or her. It seems to make people nervous.

I don’t know how the conversation should go. You figure it out. You’ve made friends before. But I still think you should be rude and close with the line, “I’m glad you were here.”

And don’t forget the follow-up. And if the person’s not there next Sunday? Find another stranger. But don’t forget the first one.

Neither Brad nor I have any idea what will happen if a lot of people start doing this. But I know nothing bad will come of it.

Something else. Tomorrow I want to talk about Linux some more. And I want to talk about cubes. Cubicles at work? No. Apple Cubes? Not exactly. I saw one of these yesterday and I want one, so chances are it isn’t from Apple.

An easy DIY mailserver

Dave Farquhar Christianity , , , , ,

Mail the easy way. It figures that I would find this now, after blowing most of a Saturday trying to get a mailserver set up. This won’t give you any nifty spam filtering, but if you want a fast, reliable, secure, mail server with every other nifty feature you could want, run to Qmail the Easy Way. There, you can download a script that goes and gets all the sources you need and compiles them for you. You get Qmail for SMTP (the fastest and most secure mail server available for Linux), Courier IMAP and POP for receiving, DJBDNS for name resolution, and a nifty Webmail interface. Combine that with your favorite Linux-from-sources distro, and you’ll have a rock-solid, fast-as-possible mail server for a whole lot less money than an Exchange server. And the hardware requirements are far lower. Dan Bernstein, the author of Qmail and DJBDNS, claims Red Hat used a 486 to test Qmail and it performed so well they just threw it into production.
If I had a lot of IMAP clients connecting I know I’d want a Pentium-class machine, but I remember back in the day running Domino under OS/2 on Pentium-90s. When we moved to Domino on NT running on a 533 MHz Alpha, it made our heads spin because we thought 90 MHz was good enough. This was with about 200 people connecting to it. This qmail setup would be a whole lot more efficient than Domino running under NT.

And if you want it all? All you’re missing (possibly) is fetchmail for grabbing mail from foreign mailservers, procmail for a filtering language, and a spamfilter package.
Incidentally, Bernstein writes highly secure, highly efficient software, and he’s really dictatorial about what changes go in it. That’s partly because he guarantees its security–he’ll pay you $5,000 if you can compromise it and he can replicate what you did. Yes, it’s open source, and he gives it away, but since you can’t modify it unconditionally, the BSD people hate him. And since you can’t do anything you want with it except close it, Stallman and his FSF hate him. Since I try to offend the BSD and FSF zealots any time I can, I think that would be reason enough to use Bernstein’s software, assuming it was capable. But it’s not just capable. It’s smaller, faster, and more secure than any alternative and he’s even willing to warrant it–something the likes of Microsoft and Oracle will never do–and you can compile it on any architecture with whatever optimizations you want, and it’s free, so I say you and I are fools not to be using it.

Time to be offensive. It’s been a really long time since I’ve offended people by talking about religion. I was talking with one of my good friends from church (and another part of the conversation reminded me that if I ever decide I want to try to make a living by writing, I need to offer him a job as beg him to be my agent) and we were talking about God’s will. His son had been having some problems, and he was questioning his attitude a little. I understand. My attitude would be similar, and I’d be questioning it afterward too.

I don’t remember what he said, but I paraphrased it back to him to see if I understood what he meant: “I ask for God’s will, but I admit that a lot of times I’m afraid of what God’s will is, and that it might be different from mine.”

“Perfectly said,” he said. (He always says I state things perfectly. I’d better not ever read him that e-mail I wrote at around 9:30 on Wednesday that I’ve been regretting ever since…)

“I know where you’re coming from,” I said. “I’m afraid of it too, most of the time.”

He stopped for a minute and asked if that was OK. I thought about it for a minute. It’s definitely natural to want something different from what God wants. And if you think you might be wrong but want to be right, sure, you’ll be afraid of God’s will. And that’s certainly preferable to being hostile to God’s will, insisting on your way or the highway. You have to reach a certain level of maturity to be willing to ask God’s will, even when you’re afraid of it.

But that’s not all there is. God will take that if it’s all He can get, but what God really wants is unconditional surrender. The Lord’s Prayer says, “Thy will be done.” No strings attached. Jesus prayed, “If it’s possible, take this away from me. But not my will, but Yours be done.” No strings attached there either.
One of us cited Abraham as the human who got as close to that ideal as is humanly possible. But I pointed out how Abraham got there. For 99 years of his life, Abraham didn’t trust God completely, and he did things on his own. At least twice he felt his life was in danger, and he lied to protect his skin and nearly forced his wife into adultery in so doing. We can look back and say, “Abraham! God said he’d make you a great nation! You’re sitting there childless, and Sarah’s not pregnant yet either. Are you a great nation yet? No way! And God’s at least 9 months away from being able to deliver on that promise. You know what, Abraham? You’re invincible! Those guys could try to kill you and they absolutely would fail.” But we’ve got the advantage of hindsight.

At some point, Abraham must have looked back over his life and come to that conclusion himself. Because by the time he was about 110, he unconditionally did anything and everything God told him to do.

I’m convinced that Abraham became the superhero of faith by looking back over his life objectively and being observant enough to see God’s hand in everything, and being far enough along in years to be able to see a whole lot of God’s work, and see that God’s way was good, better than anything he could have possibly put together on his own.

So yeah, I feel bad about being 26 and attaching strings to my surrender. I’ve got a whole book of God’s made-and-kept promises, and I have read the whole thing, cover to cover. But nothing’s more convincing than your own experience, and at 26 I’ve still got some of that to gain. He’s further along than I am in the experience department and in the miracles department–he’s got two kids that no doctor can explain. The second is less than a year old, but if he’s like a cat and has nine lives, he’s already used up two or three.

Hopefully neither of us needs a whole lot more convincing. I think we’ll both get there before we turn 110, but I’m not surprised that neither of us is there yet.