What’s your greatest fear?

People are not just frightened, but genuinely fearful of the most amazing things.  Things like the following:

• Anglophobia- Fear of England or English culture.
• Deipnophobia- Fear of dining or dinner conversations.
• Ephebiphobia- Fear of teenagers.
• Hellenologophobia- Fear of Greek terms or complex scientific terminology.
• Metrophobia- Fear of poetry.
• Sinistrophobia- Fear of things to the left or left-handed.
• Zemmiphobia- Fear of the great mole rat.

I’m not making that last one up.  Google it.

Of course there are many, many, many more.  We all know (and possibly even share) some of the more common ones.  Fear of the dark.  Fear of loud noises.  Fear of enclosed spaces.  Fear of spiders.  Fear of clowns.  However, I don’t think we’d necessarily count these as the real biggies, those fears that, if we give any real consideration to, whatsoever, we’ll end up losing sleep over.

You know the ones I’m talking about.

Fear of ridicule.

Fear of pain.

Fear of death.

Fear of insanity.

Fear of insignificance.

You might even share what, up until recently, would have been my answer to this post’s leading question.

Fear of failure.

So, what happened recently that caused this to stop being my greatest fear? Well, I’m glad you asked.

The simple answer is that I read a book, specifically The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (he wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance).  It’s a book about winning your inner creative battles, of which I have many, most of which I seem to lose.  So, this book was helpful, helpful like a root canal or invasive surgery or a back-waxing is helpful.

In one particular chapter aptly entitled “Fear” Pressfield revealed to me the fact that failure was not my greatest fear.  He accomplished this by making me aware of a greater, deeper fear I’ve held for who-knows-how long without even realizing it. After listing out more of our very real, deep-seeded fears than I have here, he wrote the following on pp. 142-143.

These are serious fears.  But they’re not the real fear.  Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it.

Fear That We Will Succeed.

That we can access the powers we secretly know we possess.

That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are.

This is the most terrifying prospect a human being can face, because it ejects him at one go (he imagines) from all the tribal inclusions his psyche is wired for and has been for fifty million years.

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are.  More than our parents/children/teachers think we are.  We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us.  That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity.  We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land.  We fear this because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know.  We pass through a membrane.  We become monsters and monstrous.

We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them.

Pressfield closes out the chapter by asking the simple but loaded question, “Do you believe me?”

Now, if I’m honest, I have to admit that, in the time I’ve been mulling over this, I probably haven’t run it through all of the Biblical and theological filters that I should.  But, in answer to his question, I think I have to say, “Yes.  Yes I do.”

What about you?

Mission statements became all the rage a couple of decades ago.

They’ve fallen out of fashion a little bit, not that they’ve disappeared all together.  They’re just not given quite as much prominence as they once were.

Regardless, I’ve been trying to think what my personal mission statement might be.

Sure, it would be easy (and even appropriate) to go with a Bible verse, but I’m trying to think through it on a much more specific level.

Right now I’m coming up blank, though.

This has me concerned… very concerned.

I’m not sure if it should, but it does.

But you don’t want to hear about that, do you?

Instead, I’m wondering if I might hear from you.

Do you have a personal mission statement? What is it?  Does it even matter?

We all love stories.  Whether we’re watching them on a screen, reading them in a book, listening to them around a campfire or whispering them to our children before bed, there’s something universally enchanting about being told a good story.

Of course, few of us really put a lot of thought into what exactly makes them “good.”  We just know when they are.  However, in his new book, Donald Miller does just that.  He boils the essence of a story down to this: a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.

And this makes complete sense.  Whenever we think of our favorite stories, we inevitably think of our favorite characters and the journey on which they embark and we get to join them.

Luke Skywalker.

Elizabeth Bennet.

Bruce Wayne.

Scarlett O’Hara.

Frodo Baggins.

The Oceanic Six.

Jesus.

But few, if any, of us would ever consider how we as a character fit into and affect the ongoing story of our lives.  Don (hopefully he won’t mind if I call him “Don”), however, did when two filmmakers approached him about turning His best-selling memoir Blue Like Jazz into a movie.  In actually crafting the story of his fictionalized self, he was forced to examine his own life, what he wanted and what he was willing to overcome to get it.

Reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, I found myself doing the exact same thing with regards to my own life.  I’ve passed it on to various friends, and they’ve done the same thing.

You see, there seems to be this generation of us who have done everything we’re supposed to.  We’ve studied hard and gotten good educations, landed solid jobs, began investing in our futures, started families of our own, and tried to care for the least of these and leave the world a better place than when we found it.  But underneath it all, there’s still been this current of unease, as if there’s something more or at least could be.

Through his writing in A Million Miles, Don helps any of us for whom that rings true by allowing us to peer into his own story, and see if from what he learned we might discover something about our own and how all of our stories play a part in the greater Story.

It isn’t about mere positive thinking.  It isn’t a selfish, self-centered self-help void of God.  It isn’t about achieving the American dream.  It isn’t a postliberal narrative theology.  And it isn’t about navel-gazing or stopping to smell the roses.

This book is about living and living with meaning, not for a couple of hours in a theater or curled up on your sofa on a rainy Saturday afternoon not just for a season, but for a lifetime.

What do you want?

What’s standing in your way?

How are you going to get it?

encounter

[en-koun-ter]

-verb (used with object)

1.         to come upon or meet with, esp. unexpectedly: to encounter a new situation.

2.         to meet with or contend against (difficulties, opposition, etc.): We encounter so many problems in our work.

3.         to meet (a person, military force, etc.) in conflict: We will encounter the enemy at dawn.

-verb (used without object)

4.         to meet, esp. unexpectedly or in conflict: We were angry when we encountered, but we parted with smiles.

-noun

5.         a meeting with a person or thing, esp. a casual, unexpected, or brief meeting: Our running into each other was merely a chance encounter.

6.         a meeting of persons or groups that are in conflict or opposition; combat; battle: Another such encounter and we may lose the war.

7.             Psychology. a meeting of two or more people, as the members of an encounter group or a number of married couples (marriage encounter), conducted to promote direct emotional confrontations among the participants, esp. as a form of therapy (encounter therapy).

This weekend I’ll be over at the Confluence Conference with the Georgia BCM’s.  I’m leading a “seminar” on creating authentic encounters with God.  My posts have been kinda lite this week because I’ve been spending lots of my free time working on the content.  That continues to be the case today.  So, I thought I’d take a minute to just ask you a simple question.

What was the last authentic encounter you had with God?

I was sleeping.  Hard.  I’d only started Beeson a couple of weeks before and was still adjusting to how much harder it was than my undergrad plus I was working the warehouse at Event Xtras manhandling big inflatable obstacle courses and wasn’t getting along with my roommate.  Anyway, I was tired.  I’d hit the snooze button, a couple of times, I think.  My alarm started going off again, but, though I kept hitting it, the sound wouldn’t cease.  I was in a state somewhere between sleep and waking when I realized it wasn’t my alarm at all.  It was my phone.

I grabbed it wondering who in the world would be calling me so early.  It was Liza.  We were engaged at the time.  She had come to Birmingham too and was living with some relatives while looking for a job before we got married in January.  When I answered she was a little frantic, which immediately had me worried.  She just kept telling me to turn on the news, that someone had flown a plane into one of the towers of the World Trade Center.

Honestly, I was frustrated for being woken up for this.  I picture some amateur pilot who had flown a small Cessna through the city, lost control, and crashed, a tragedy to be sure, but nothing to wake me up about.  However, since she was so insistent, I got up, got off the phone and turned on CNN.

I was confused.  I couldn’t figure out what happened.  What wasn’t helping matters is that none of the anchors seemed to know much of what was going on either.  I began flipping back and forth between other news channels, and everyone was reporting different information, mostly because no one was sure what had happened at all.  Then, there was a universal pause, a brief moment of silence, as another plane entered the frame.

Reporters frantically began giving eyewitness accounts from the scene narrating what we all were watching in horror.  This second plane flew in to the other tower.

Two planes crashed into both towers of the World Trade Center?  What the hell was going on?

Over the next few hours we continued to ask that question.  We had a lot of questions, actually, but they could all be summed up with that one.  A third plane flew into the Pentagon.  People trapped in the towers above where the planes crashed began jumping, even swan diving from impossible heights.  The south tower collapsed creating a cloud of dust and debris that enveloped everything around it.  Reports came in of a fourth plane down in some field in Pennsylvania.  In the midst of the chaos following the first tower’s collapse, the north tower fell too.  News feeds that had featured footage of firemen and other rescue workers running into the buildings began reporting on their horrific loss.

What the hell was going on?

Of course, that’s exactly what was going on.

Hell.

Hell on Earth.

Our prosperous, comfortable, “Christian” pseudo-Eden of a nation was invaded by Hell.

Contrary to what some church leaders believed and even espoused on national television it wasn’t God’s judgment on us for abortion or homosexuality or greed or pornography or any other grievous sin.

It was sin.

Or the result of it.

It was the work of Evil in the world.

And we stared at it, in its eyes, for most of us in a way in which we’d never been forced to before.

At the worst, for those of us who just watched but weren’t there, it paralyzed us in helplessness, fear, and despair.

At the best it unified us together.

Of course, that was just initially.  Since then there’s been much worse results, namely war.  Lots of war.  Long war.  Costly war.  And there’s no time now to try to evaluate all the others.

But maybe, just maybe, hopefully and prayerfully, it scared the Hell out of us.

And maybe with Hell gone, we were left to turn to Heaven.

And though many of us wouldn’t find there the answers we wanted, we would find the only answer we really need.

*EDIT*

Some other friends have added posts about today.  Check out Shane’s here and Malinda’s here and Ruth’s here.

So, I’m heading to South Africa on Friday.  What’ll I be doing?  A few different things that I’ll be telling you about in a later post.  The purpose of this post is different.

Getting to South Africa requires a lot of flying.  A few years ago Delta started offering direct flights to Johannesburg from both Atlanta and JFK.  On Friday, I’ll be flying from ATL.  This flight lasts anywhere from seventeen to nineteen hours.  Yes, you read that correctly.  It’s a long flight to say the least.  The discrepancy is whether there is a fuel stop in Dakar, Senegal or not and if there is how long that stop ends up taking and whether or not we have to actually change planes (as you can see, Delta’s definition of a “direct”flight is a little flexible).

Unlike many other airlines offering flights to where I’m going, including South Africa Airways, KLM, and Air France, Delta does not offer personal entertainment stations unless you’re in business class (and who can afford that?).  So, you’re usually stuck watching mediocre or lame movies on a community screen (if you can see that screen) and praying that your headphone jack (or jacks) works.  So, usually I make do with watching some stuff on my iPod or computer, but usually I just read.  I’m a fast reader, though, and can really get through some books.  For instance, when I went to South Africa last year I read five books.  When I went to Kenya, four.  When I went to the Philippines, six.  You get the idea.

Anyway, I thought I’d check and see if any of you have any good recommendations for me.  What should I be reading?  It might be new or old, popular or obscure.  I don’t care.  My interests are pretty varied.  I probably won’t be too keen on “how to” books, self help, romance novels or gift books.  And please, for the love of all things good and decent, no Twilight.  I tried them already.  I got through the first two and just couldn’t get through the third, much less the fourth.  Those books make my acid reflux act up, plus I think they might be ruining adolescent females.  But other than that, let me know any suggestions you might have.

What do you think I should be reading?

There’s millions of ideas for blog posts that rush through my mind in a given day (okay, not really, but tens at the least). Finding the time to write them, though… that’s another story. At any rate, I remain committed.

So, I was working on a devotion recently for our new 31 Verses Every Teenager Should Know book (you can check out the others here). The 1 of the 31 I was working on at the time was Luke 14:33:

“In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”

Now, you’ll notice that this verse begins with the phrase “in the same way,” which makes you wonder, “in the same way as what,” which lets you know that if you’re just reading that verse by itself, then you’re missing out on something, the context. So, you really need to back up and read some more. For the sake of what I’m writing about here you might want to check out verses 25-33 of that chapter. In case you don’t feel like it, let me break it down for you.

Jesus (of Nazareth, the Christ) had just chosen to turn a lovely dinner party with some Pharisees into a series of teachable moments during which He could kinda stick it to them and the other guests (lovingly stick it to them, of course). This culminates in a parable about a wealthy, well-t0-do man who was throwing a great banquet. His invited guests all had other things to take care of. So, they were blowing him off. As a result, he decided to pretty much invite anyone and everyone who would come, including almost exclusively the dregs of society. Well, this sounded great to the dregs and a whole lot of people started following Jesus around wanting to know what He was all about.

Jesus decides to oblige them by fist and foremost letting them know that, just becaue they’re all invited to the feast, it doesn’t mean that life’s simply going to be one big party. He uses some pretty harsh langugage about how a person can’t be His disciple unless they hate everyone in their lives, including themselves. This is obviously shocking (most are probably hoping its some sort of divine hyperbole). So, Jesus uses a few metaphors to explain what He’s talking about.

It’s like a guy who wants to build a really big tower or a king who wants to go to war. Both are facing extremely daunting tasks, tasks at which, left to themselves, they wouldn’t be successful. So, each sat down ahead of time and figured out what it was going to cost them and whether they could and/or were willing to pay that price.

So, it’s in that same way, in the same way as those two guys, that a person who does not give up everything cannot be Jesus’ disciple.

Now, I can’t read this verse and think of Jesus saying something similar to the guy we know as “The Rich Young Ruler” (or RYR for short). During that encounter (which you can read about in Matthew 19:16-30, Mark 10:17-31 or Luke 18:18-30), as I’m sure you remember, the RYR comes to Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him to keep the commandments to which the RYR responds that he’s done that (impossible, by the way). So, Jesus tells him that the only other thing he lacks is to go sell everything he has, give the money to the poor and then leave his life behind and follow Jesus. When the RYR hears this, it says he was saddened, and from what we can tell, couldn’t give up all that he had.

Now, these two different moments with Jesus are obviously dealing with the same issue, the price one is willing to pay to follow Him. However, with regards to the RYR, it seems that Jesus is making a requirement (and trying to get to the core of the RYR’s obstacles to following Jesus in the process). Whereas, in the previous instance with the crowd, it appears that it might be more of a willingness to give up everything as opposed to actually having to do so. After all, for most of us, following Jesus won’t result in us having to abandon our homes and families, give away everything we have or sacrifice our lives… but it might. So, we just need to be willing to have that happen, should God deem it necessary.

Right?

So, as I was writing this short devotional (less than 300 words) I wanted to make that point in my summarizing sentence. Something like, “Jesus calls us to take the time to determine if we would still follow Him if it costs us everything, even our lives.” And leave it at that. But something kept nagging at me. The idea that it actually does cost us everything to follow. When we do, nothing is our own anymore. It is all His. We may not be called to sacrifice it or abandon it as it might sound, but we no longer control our lives or approach these things in the way we would want to. It’s now all about Him and what He wants, not all about us and what we want. I was trying to water down what He was saying, to make it sound better, feel better, go down easier. I think I was selling it short. So, I wrote a new closing sentence.

“Jesus calls us to take the time to determine if we would still follow Him if it costs us everything, even our lives, because, in a lot of ways, it does.”

Anyway, I know that this isn’t super-deep or insightful or groundbreaking or anything, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a few days now.

You?

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,’ and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Luke 10:25-29

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while. Actually, I’ve been thinking about it for a long while, not this post in particular but definitely about the subject. I really started thinking about it more often once President Obama pretty much locked his party’s nomination last year during which time I heard him called a terrorist, a communist, a racist, a murderer, and the Antichrist (and that was all just in emails I received).  Thinking about this subject began to consume significant amounts of my time the night of the election when I sat in bed watching the results come in from across the country while simultaneously checking tweets and Facebook status updates continually.  As I watched crowds of people from all walks of life in Grant Park swell with pride that manifested itself in both cheers and tears, I read comments from my friends, some of you even, from people I respect, that made me grieve.

In all the name-calling I heard thrown the President’s way, rarely did I hear “Christian,” and if I did, it was from political pundits analzing his campaign on CNN or MSNBC (but not Fox News) and not from any of his fellow brothers or sisters.  But I don’t want to talk about President Obama, not specifcially anyway.  He’s not what I was spending so much time thinking about (though maybe I should have).  The topic that has been concerning me so much and that is the subject of this post is simply what I wrote above in the title.

And who is my enemy?

In Luke 10 (in the Bible) we’ve got this great scene that plays out.  Some lawyer comes up to Jesus because he’s sat around and figured out what he considers to be an inquiry that at the very least will test if he’s worth his weight in matzah and at the very best could actually reveal him to be the Messiah.  He asks Jesus what he has to do to live forever  Jesus, being the sly teacher that he is, responds with his own question, basically asking the lawyer to sum up the Law he so devotedly serves.

Now, remember, we’re not just talking about the big 10 here.  The Mosaic Law had been expanded to include 613 different statutes with a bunch of extra rabbinical writing added on top to explain and define the 613.  This was no easy task and was basically a theological minefield that consisted of one giant land mine.  However, the guy gets it right.  He actually gives the exact same answer that Jesus himself gives in Matthew 22 and Mark 12 when asked, “what is the greatest commandment?”  So, this is no late-night-commercial ambulance-chaser.  This guy’s got goods, and Jesus acknowledges it.

“That’s right,” he says.  “Do that and you’ll live forever.”

Now, don’t forget, as smart as this guy might be, Jesus is the teacher in this situation.  He’s leading this guy on.  He knows there’s no way possible for this lawyer to actually keep those commandments.  Let’s forget the other 611 for a moment.  Try for one day to, one hour, even, perhaps just a moment, to live fully those two laws and you’ll come up short every time.  The smart lawyer knows this too.  So, he wants to back himself off a little bit, get himself off the hook.

He asks, “and who is my neighbor?”

Jesus answers with the story of the Good Samaritan.  I won’t exegete the whole parable here (there’s much better people than me who have done so elsewhere).  I’ll just say this.  His answer to this question was basically, “everyone’s your neighbor, even the person you detest more than any other, the most wretched, foul, on-the-fringe human being you can conceive of, whether they can reward or return your love or not… that’s your neighbor.” (Those are my words, obviously… I’m paraphrasing, in a way)

I think we… we who seek the Christ, the Son of the living God, to know Him, to know His will and obey it… we who carry the Gospel of the righteousness of God and serve as His ambassadors to a lost and dying world… we who claim to know and love the Word of God, His revelation of Himself to all humankind… I think we don’t often enough ask, “who is my neighbor?”

Most of us seem to be much more interested in wondering, “who is my enemy?”

Of course we’re not so overt in our inquiry.  In fact, the only reason we want so badly to know who our enemies are is so that we know who we’re against.  And as is the case who were against is directly correlated to what we’re against.  So, once we know what we’re against we can then know what we’re for.  At least that’s how it looks to those on the outside.  This convoluted public persona we’ve propagated has us giving the appearance that our principles, values, convictions and beliefs are much more defined by what we don’t stand for as opposed to what we do.  At the very least this is a colossal image problem in dire need of a makeover.  At the worst, it’s an indictment on all of us (Christians, that is).

My favorite performance poet, Taylor Mali, has a piece entitled Silver-Lined Heart (you can download it on iTunes if you’re interested) that’s pretty much addressed to other poets, particularly those on the slam circuit, that too often distinguish themselves and make their points in a similar way to what I’m talking about.  He ends this poem with following stanza.

So don’t waste my time and your curses on verses
about what you are against, despise, and abhor.
Tell me what inspires you, what fulfills and fires you,
put your precious pen to paper and tell me what you’re for!

I don’t know about you, but I’m with Taylor.  I’m sick of us on TV and in our pulpits and in front of our youth groups and in our endlessly forwarded emails railing against all of “those people.”  Those Gays.  Those Democrats.  Those Republicans.  Those Muslims.  Those Rednecks.  Those Pagans.  Those baby-killing doctors.  Those welfare mothers.  Those gun-toting cowboys.  Those Asians.  Those Africans.  Those Mormons.  Those Catholics.  Those Baptists.  Those crazy Pentecostals.  Those stuck-up Anglicans.  Those Arabs.  Those Terrorists.  Those French.  Most of us can barely tolerate each other (any Christian that doesn’t go to our church and at least half of the ones that do) much less the rest of the people we’re supposed to be introducing to Jesus.

And before you get all over my case and accuse me of being all high and mighty and exhort me to get down off my pedestal, let me be clear that, as the apostle Paul said so eloquently, I am chief amongst sinners.  And so are you.

And sure there are and are going to be things worth fighting for and that require confrontation.  We shouldn’t be a doormat for anyone.  Meek doesn’t mean weak.  Just ask Jesus.  If you believe that as a Christian President Obama is blowing some things, then as a fellow believer you have an inherent duty to call him on it.  But there is a difference between disciplining and damning.  There is a difference between confrontation and combat.  There is a difference being holy and being holier-than-thou.  There is a difference between being righteous and just being right.  There is certainly a difference between love and hate.  And just in case you missed it there are differences between us and it looks to me like that’s how God intended it.  Turns out our Creator is pretty creative.

I’m embarrassed at the picket signs and accompanying shouts touting what some people errently believe God to hate.  I’m embarrassed that the best press a religious youth event can get is when it involves a screaming match outside on the steps between two rival groups of “sinners” and “saints.”  I’m embarrassed when moralism replaces Godly living.  I’m embarrassed about how I’m represented on television by spokesmen for my faith foaming at the mouth in righteous indignation over what they believe they’ve suffered at the hands of the liberal media elite.  I’m embarrassed at the political environments that rule so many of our churches and ministries.  I’m embarrassed… for me… for them… for you.  And the closer I get to the heart of God, however small those incriments might be, the more weary, burdened and sad I get… because that’s how I think He feels about it.

We Christians seem to be incapable (or at least ill-prepared) of combating the evil around us because we cannot separate that evil from people to whom we attach it.  For that reason, we are in constant sin.  Sure there are going to be those who persecute us, who seek our destruction, who want to alienate us and shut us up, who even kill us and who hate us.  Of course there are.  Remember from John 15, they hated Jesus first.  But I want to be hated because I’m like Him, not because I represent Him poorly.  And even when I am hated, I am never justified to respond to anyone who feels that way in the same manner.  Never.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Ephesians 6:12

You see, the question of “who is my enemy” is a moot point.  It doesn’t matter the least little bit.  Why?  Because anyone who’s my enemy is also my neighbor, and even if they weren’t, I’m to respond to them in kind. “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…”  LOVE!!! Come on!

That verse is from Luke 6, by the way.  Verse 27 to be exact.  Now go read the rest of the chapter and think on these things.

That’s all for me right now.  I’ve got to go repent of the hatred I felt for some of my fellow Christ-followers I felt in writing this post.  Hopefully, this was part of the cleansing process for me.  Maybe it will be for you too.

May the grace of God be with you… and with me.

What’s the purpose in blogging?
OR
What should be the purpose in blogging?
OR
What’s better: to blog for the sake of blogging or to blog when you actually have something to say?
OR
Is this post a waste of your time?
OR
Isn’t there or shouldn’t there be intrinsic value in your blog since it’s basically putting your thoughts out there for others to read because otherwise it seems to be a colossal display of a malnourished ego?

By the way, I’m writing this post from the WordPress app for my iPhone. I think it’s really groovy.

“There are no original ideas.  There are only original people.” – Barbara Grizzuti Harrsion

“No idea’s original/there’s nothin’ new under the sun/it’s never what you do/but how it’s done.” – Nas

Originality isn’t easy to come by.  For a creative*, that’s a tough pill to swallow.  Originality is what makes you stand out, what sets you apart from the rest of the crowd, hence it being “original.”  Of course, it normally helps if it’s also good and desirable.

You can be as original as you want, but if you’re no good, does it really matter?  And if you’re terribly original but not at something anyone cares about, then who’s going to notice?  Obviously you can be both good and desirable but not original at all, but that probably means whatever you’re doing will never last.  It’s the originality that’s key.

And it’s the quest for originality that often keeps me up at night.  I’m one of those people that just isn’t okay with being like someone else, or copying someone else’s idea (whether I improve on it or not).  And when I find myself doing just that, which I too often do, I hate it.  I wonder what worth there could possibly be in what I’m doing.

Of course the worst is when I acutally have an original idea only to come to find out that it isn’t original whatsoever.  Someone else is doing it or has already done it or is about to do it.  If it’s someone really incredible at what they do, then at least it’s a bit flattering or encouraging ’cause it tells me I actually know what I’m doing.  But it’s always followed by the sickening revulsion that someone beat me to the punch.

As a creative who believes in God, things get even more complicated.  I serve the Creator, the source of all creation and creativity, the one who is so original there is literally no one and nothing like Him.  All things good, true, and worthy come from Him.  I seek Him and the things of Him above all, forsaking anything else.  So, when I get an idea I believe to be from Him, that He wishes me to specifically develop for whatever reason, only to discover it’s unoriginality, I struggle… to say the least.

I’m not really talking about anything specific.  I’m not even sure why I felt the desire to write this post.  It’s late, and this just happened to be something I was thinking about.

So, there you go.  What do you think?

*By “creative” I mean anyone who is involved in thinking up and developing new ideas.  This obviously covers a wide range of people and vocations.  So, when I consider myself a “creative,” I’m not really inducting myself into some terribly exclusive group of people.

On another topic, footnotes are a new thing for this blog.  I’m not sure how I feel about them.  “Academic” comes to mind, and I’ve never particularly cared for that word.