Pedestrian God

Would a Fool Do That?

Jul 02 2014

The word “fool” has bounced around in my head a lot over the last few weeks. And that’s one of the reasons there has been a brief period of silence from my regular blogging schedule. Everytime I started to write, all my thoughts and sentiments felt foolish. Rather than forge ahead with my words, I spent more time reading Scripture and almost none writing. I read through Proverbs twice.

This blog series is dedicated to “A Season for Wisdom” but the last two weeks have left me contemplating the opposite – foolishness.

A fool is any person who acts unwisely, imprudently, or with the intent to trick or deceive someone. With several of our youth students, the ultimate insult is to accuse them of acting like a fool.

In the words of Dwight Schrute, the most inspiring thing Michael Scott ever said to him was, “Don’t be an idiot…Whenever I am about to do something, I think – would an idiot do that? – and if they would, I do not do that thing.”

I counted the word fool or foolishness 79 times in these 31 chapters. 27 of them come from chapters 14-17 alone. That’s 1/3 of the uses in only 3 chapters!

So we’re going to transition to a time in this series of asking ourselves the Dwight Schrute test question – would a fool do that? – if so, we are not going to do that thing.

But first, we will study the character traits of a fool. So make sure you’re signed up to have these blogs delivered to your inbox, it would be foolish not to!

What the LORD Hates

Jun 13 2014

Proverbs 6:16-19

Six things the LORD hates; in fact, seven are detestable to Him:

Arrogant eyes
A lying tongue
Hands that shed innocent blood
A heart that plots wicked schemes
Feet eager to run to evil
A lying witness who gives false testimony
One who stirs up trouble among brothers

I find lists like this one found in Scripture are important to memorize – not to quote to someone else in a moment of judgment – but to have on the forefront of my own mind to evaluate my own actions.

Rather than expand on these seven points, let’s commit them to memory together. Read through them a few times and ask the Lord if any of these are present in your life. And if so, ask the Lord and the person you wronged to forgive you.

1. Eyes
2. Tongue
3. Hands
4. Heart
5. Feet
6. Testimony
7. Trouble

Why You Don’t Need to Marry Augustus Waters

Jun 05 2014

Augustus Waters’ name was spoken so many times by the middle school girls in my Sunday School class that you would have thought he was a boy in our youth group rather than a character in a #1 New York Times Bestseller book. Naturally, I was curious as to what drew such attention to this book, especially since it lacked zombies and werewolves (perhaps this is the end of that trend – I do hope so).

I borrowed The Fault in Our Stars and found that I read the book in its entirety that Sunday afternoon. From an initial cultural standpoint, I was excited to realize that the author is John Green, vlogger of Mental Floss. As an English Major with an emphasis in Creative Writing, I was fascinated that this male author had chosen to narrate the book from the point of view of the female character.

The first line of the book drew me in,

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.

Our coming of age love story sums up like this: Hazel, miraculously recovering from thyroid cancer that moved to her lungs, meets Augustus “Gus” Waters, osteosarcoma survivor (who lost a leg to it), and the two fall in love.

What kept me glued to the couch that day (other than a 100 degree fever), was the heads on approach that John Green took to the issue of religion and belief in these two characters who had both faced their own potential death as teenagers.

Characters can struggle with beliefs. In fact, Kate Weiss recently wrote a guest blog on this very subject. After all, if a novel is based on reality, don’t we all struggle occasionally? And I would even say that I do not have a problem with characters who have not fully formed their beliefs before the novel is over. But I do think that in order for me to endorse a book, I need to see glimpses of the truths found in Scripture.

But my middle school girls didn’t chatter about the truths of the book, they fantasized marrying Gus.

Matters of the Heart, a Poem

Jun 02 2014

A poem for the Proverbs series inspired by Proverbs 7:3b “Write them on the tablet of your heart.”

Each spoken word, a mallet.
Tink. Tinktink.
Frenzy of chisels
etch the surface,
carve ruts which brim
with scripted flakes
of writing. Unmuzzled
thoughts split the tablet to pieces.

Fidelity & Stupidity

May 28 2014

Read the Proverbs blog series from the beginning here.

Fidelity isn’t inherent to our natures; it has to be taught. Chapter five of Proverbs contains a father’s warning to his son to keep away from seductive women – not go anywhere near them.

Unfortunately in our “do what feels good” culture today, fathers no longer tell their sons to “drink water from your own cistern” (verse 15) – a euphemism for remaining faithful to one’s wife. Sons are exposed to pornography, witness condescending conversations, and handed condoms. The role of the man is degraded from “father” to “baby daddy.”

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