I sit here trying to write an email, but I’m drawing blanks.
In about an hour I’m going to record a podcast with Dr Stephen Crosby, and I sit here trying to work on this email that part of me doesn’t want to write, but part of me says must be written.
Ever gotten that way?
If I ignore the impulse to write it, I’ll regret it, but if I do write it, I’ll wonder if I should have bothered.
I’m sitting on the fence of ambivalence wondering which yard I’ll fall over into.
So, what do I do instead? Go to my site here, open up this visual editor and start writing, knowing I have really nothing to say worth sharing.
The lady upstairs on the third floor is blaring her music. She knows we can hear it, and feel it through the walls and floor. I have spoken to her at least 15 times that it’s a distraction. Each time she has a different response but always seems to forget that if we’ve complained that many times to her, then it still is something we’d like to stop doing.
Ronald, my roommate and girlfriend’s brother went up there the last time to explain how I work part-time from my office on the first floor here, and they told him that their son is autistic and the loud music is therapeutic for him. I offered to bless him with an invention I’m sure they’ve heard of before called “headphones” to no avail.
When I record podcasts from my office or even my living room, my condenser mics don’t pick up the noise and I know a little bit about how to clean that up in post production, so that’s all fine and dandy, but it’s a huge distraction to me while doing it.
Also, what’s this crap about her son having autism? My brother has Asperger’s syndrome and he never needed to blare the music loud enough for the windows to shatter. I’m highly dubious that her son listens to 80’s pop music such as Cher and Madonna and sings along to it like a middle-aged woman with a high-pitched voice.
Please, don’t try telling me it’s for your son. I may be from another culture, but if there’s one thing that’s universal, it’s that teenage boys don’t willingly listen to Madonna.
Maybe in the 80’s.
My morning coffee is almost out, for the third time, so I think I’ll make this the last one I drink and end this blog post with a quick thought on a verse I spent some time meditating on this morning.
Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity – 1 Tim 5:1-2, ESV
This is a pretty clear-cut way to deal with people at various ages in community, but this, along with Matthew 18:15-18 is rarely the way I see people rebuke others.
Case in point.
I have encouraged a few friends to follow a ministry I once followed that alleges to have such great revelation on grace, but yet behaves anything but graciously. He mocks people and ministries by name, calling them derogatory names. People much older than him who’ve been around a while. It may be true that they are terrible ministries or men teaching Scripture out of context, but someone my age is not in the same place the Apostle Paul would be in when calling people some of the things he called people in his letters to fellowships of believers.
When I read Paul’s admonition to Timothy, I can’t help but think Paul knew how to treat people, even his enemies in a dignified and respectable way.
I’ve been embarrassed to hear from friends of mine who’ve followed after this other ministry, that when they’ve disagreed with him, he’s cussed him out and blocked them.
I posted a Facebook status the other night,
How can some so-called “grace” preachers and teachers be some of the most ungracious people in sharing that message?
And Dr Crosby was among those who commended on it, saying
“Having a philosophy of grace is not the same as being immersed in the reality of grace. Reading the map, and taking the trip are not the same thing.”
How true that is.
I want to take the trip, myself. So, when I come across someone who is way off or advocating things that encourage “works” mentalities, I feel obliged to try doing something to stop it. But there’s a proper way to do it that I think is exemplified in this passage.
Maybe I’ll take a look at that email now.
Not because I have a rebuke to offer, but because I now see I can handle it better than if I wrote it earlier.
This is the episode of the podcast I wound up recording with Dr. Crosby.
