charlieDEAN’S Blog

Someone sent me this screen capture from Fox News — where they are “fair & balanced.”

I read this on the lifechurch.tv blog this morning from Craig Groeschel and I was reflecting on my ‘07 thus far.  This year, for the first time in many years, I’ve dedicated myself to reading through the Bbible in a year.  After pretty intensive reading programs in seminary I had gone to a more eclectic approach to reading the Bible.  A coworker was starting a Bible reading plan — so I joined him… a couple thoughts…

1. If you’re going to do this, do it with someone else — it so much fun to have someone to talk to about it as you’re going along
2. Don’t over do it.  What I mean is…take it as it comes…stick to the schedule…don’t get too far ahead or too far behind, or you’ll forsake the discipline.
3. The thing I like the most is that left on my own I tend to read the same stuff — I like that this forces me to read things like Leviticus.

So — what am I reading?  This morning I finished Dueteronomy, Romans and Matthew — and I read Psalms 70 &71.  The thought that is still rattling around my head is somewhat comical — it has to do with Moses’ last speech to the Israelites where he basically tells them, “I know you’re going to screw this whole covenant thing up, but good luck, I’m outta here!”

Sadly, in the church world, we encoutner this way too often.

I know I should be moved with compassion — but I just kind of find it funny and sad — at the same time!

Sometimes…when I’m working in a coffee shop I shut off my iPod and eavesdrop — people assume that I’m not listening because I leave the ear buds in.

     okay…I feel better that I’ve confessed.

I’ve been thinking about fasting a lot recently. The churches I was raised in almost never talked about it…so I’m kind of alone in my journey figuring some things out…I’ve talked to a few people along the way…most of them are like me…trying to figure it out.  I have some thoughts on these things, but what do you guys think?

• Does it have to be a secret?  I know that Jesus said not to draw unnecessary attention to oneself when fasting…but he didn’t necessarily say which should not tell anyone, did he?
• If it is a secret…what about community fasts — where everyone is supposed to fast together?
• Was fasting in the Bible times like the muslim fast (sunup - sundown, no food), or was it literally no food of any sort?
• Is having a smoothy cheating?
• What is the goal of fasting?  To prove to God that I’m serious about something that I’m praying for?  To pray more?  To develop disicpline?  I seem to hear people saying a lot of different things.
• What if my motives are mixed and part of the reason that I’m fasting is not because I’m so spiritual but because I think I’m fat and could stand a couple days sans food?

Go ahead…add your own questions.

A confluence of events…

• my small group has been working through The Story and we just finished the OT last night
• I’ve been researching and thinking about the connection between Old & New Testaments for a project I’m working on at Northwoods
• I’ve been challenged by the likes of Rob Bell & Scot McKnight to dig into the OT to understand the NT deeper.

So here’s a thought (feel free to critique/weigh in).  I don’t think this is necessarily profound, but it’s something that I’m just starting to get.

The Old Testament is Broken…and that’s precisly the point.

This feels so simplistic as I type this — but I guess I’m coming to a deeper understanding that it was God’s intention that The Law wouldn’t work.  I think at times I’ve almost believed that torah was Plan A, and when that didn’t work God imlemented Plan B — the Jesus option.  But I’m just starting to see that God designed the Law in such a way that it would lead to frustration, angst, complication & catch-22.  “Plan B” was always the intention — but without the failure of “Plan A,” “Plan B” would have had no context — no raison d’être.

There’s a certain beauty I see in it all — a glorious unfolding of God’s plan over time.  I think that Kevin put it well in small group last night when he suggested that God, in the OT treated his people as children — but in the NT he treats us as more mature.  I’m not sure that we are necessarily more mature — but I do get a sense that the NT relationship with God is a more mature of relating — one being to another.

I guess what’s so exciting about thinking through some of this is that it leads me to a place where I don’t feel like I have to justify some of the crazy stuff that one encounters in the OT — I have a greater sense of being able to say…it’s broken…and that’s the whole point.

For some of you, this might be a long read (292 pages), but it’s broken up into small, easily-digestible chunks

“In a very important way, writing gets easier, because I’ve been doing it full time now for thirty-plus years, and just as you would get better and better if you practiced your scales on a piano, I’ve gotten better, and can try harder and harder pieces. But writing is always hard. It does not come naturally to me at all. I sit down at the same time every day, which lets my subconscious realize it’s time to get to work. I give myself very short assignments, and let myself write really terrible first drafts. But I grapple with the exact same problems every writer does, which is having equal proportions of self-loathing and grandiosity. I sort of live by the Nike ads: Just Do It. So I sit down. I show up. I do it by pre-arrangement with myself, because I know I’ll feel sad and terrible if I shirk on that days writing. I do it as a debt of honor, to myself, and to whatever it is that has given me this gift of being able to tell stories, and to make people laugh. Laughter is carbonated holiness. Other people’s good writing is medicine for me, and I hope mine is too, for my readers. “

read the whole interview on Amazon.com.

I’ve wanted to do this post for a while now, so here it is…

11 Tips to Becoming a Better Reader

1. read at the time of day you’re most alert whenever possible
2. mix it up — don’t read the same genre all the time.  I like to tell people that reading is like eating — you don’t eat the same food all the time, you shouldn’t read the same stuff all the time
3. if a book is bad, QUIT — nobody is keeping score, you don’t get points for finishing a book that you’re not excited about.
4. keep a notepad close by — whenever I’m reading, other stuff comes into my mind and it’s distracting — so I keep a notepad next to me and jot stuff down, so I won’t forget about it, and then I put it out of my mind
5. music off — or at least really quiet — It’s really just about impossible to have good comprehensive of a book when there are other distractions
6. reading is like excersizing — the more you do it, the stronger you get - you’ll read faster, comprehend more, etc.
7. read stuff you like.  People (including myself) will always be telling you “you should read this,” — it’s okay to listen to them, but don’t read a book just because someone tells you to — find something that you’re interested in
8. mark up your books — I write in every non-fiction book I read — it helps you remember things, plus later on, when you go back to that book looking for that quote, it’s easier to find
9. set up accountability — find people to read a book with you, to discuss.  I still do this with books that I think might be challenging — it forces me to stay disciplined and to get it done by a certain time.
10. take a book everywhere you go — you never know when you might get 15 minutes to read — I always have a book in my bag with me
11. have a plan — I’m not too anal here, but I always have a general sense of where I’m going next.  I have a shelf in my office of “books on-deck” — currently there are 8, and I anticipate there being 3 or 4 more there by week’s end.  I know people that plan out their year — I just can’t do that — It’s too structured for me.e

I just finished reading Here’s to Hindsight, by Tara Leigh Cobble.  (Someone asked me how I get so much reading done at home with four kids — 1. I shut off the TV at night and read — often for 2-3 hours, 2. reading is like a muscle, the more you do it the stronger & faster you get)

 Anyway…I read this book because a) it was free and b) a blurb on the back compared it to Donald Miller and Anne Lamott — two writers I admire.

Tara is a “road musician” — probably someone you haven’t heard of, but who travels all over the country out of sheer love of music and a clear sense of God’s call.  If you like memoir writing, you may enjoy it.  Part of reading a memoir is that you begin to like/dislike the person and not just the ideas.  With most books, you don’t really care about the author as a person — only their ideas.  With this book, I found that I liked her, even though I thought the comparisons to Donald Miller and Anne Lamott were a little far-fetched.

Anyway…if you have any ambitions of having a Christian music career…it’s probably a “must read,” as it really describes life on the road and what it means to do relationships via long distance.