Entering A New Year

New Year's Eve was a good day. After all I got to go shopping, spend time at home playing video games, play with my son, spend time with my wife, see my newest niece for the first time, go to my in-laws for homemade pizza and a movie and a game of golf, and then ring in the new year with my wife and a Sam Adams and eBay (yeah, that last part is pretty random). I raise my toast to 2010. One of the many things that I look forward to is meeting C.S.Lewis in March.

I Truly Have A Wonderful Life

Year after year working at the radio station I would watch It's A Wonderful Life on TV on Christmas day, while I was alone at work. Every year I felt sad as I watched the movie, feeling lonely and just plane sorry for myself. Then three years ago, while I was at work--alone--, my (then) fiance showed up at the radio station to surprise me. She had driven two hours to spend the evening with me. That evening we watched It's A Wonderful Life on TV on the large projector at the radio station, and I no longer felt sad or lonely.

Three years later, as I sit at home watching the movie, I can't help but smile. I truly have a wonderful life. I can relate with George Bailey in that I've worked jobs that I wouldn't wish on anyone, just to support my family, and I've had to make some sacrifices for the good of my family. But, like George, when I stop and evaluate my life I truly realize that God has given me a wonderful life.

Today I was able to spend time with my little family and that alone makes anything I've given up to be where I am well worth it. Seeing my beautiful wife's excitement about opening her Christmas gifts, and seeing my little boy enthusiastically play with his first box of Legos filled me with so much joy. There were sacrifices, and some of the blessings we have received this year made some of today's joys possible. I was able to sell an old prized baseball card I had held onto in order to buy my wife a Christmas gift, and we saved up a gift card that was given us for our son's birth to buy him the Legos. Do I ever wish that we lived on easy street and didn't face some of the struggles we do? Without doubt. But when all is said and done, I know that God has blessed me with so much, and like George Bailey I truly have been given a Wonderful Life.

Time Flies

Three years ago I asked a young lady to marry me, atop a mountain in Japan. Now that young lady and I are 2+ years into our marriage, and expecting baby #2.

I'm glad she said yes. :-)

In Need of Coffee and Conversation

There aren't too many things I really miss from my years of bachelor life. However I do miss getting together for coffee with friends. Sometimes the center of attention was the coffee, but usually it was the friendships and discussions.

While I am grateful for a godly wife that I can discuss theological issues with, sometimes I miss having male friends that I can get together to talk with. I have a few friends that I probably could talk about just about anything with, but now that we all have children it seems like an insurmountable task to try and find time to get together.

This evening I had a short chat online with an old friend. Our time chatting about politics and religion made me miss the past trips to coffee shops with friends. I miss talking U2 with the youth pastor at the church I attended after college, or politics with his predecessor. I miss talking about how the rubber meets the road in our Christian walk with both men, as well as a few others I would get together with. In all, I miss the caffeine and the iron sharpening iron.

Maybe someday I will once again be able to have good discussions about anything and everything with friends over a cup of coffee. One can hope at least.

The "Good Enough Revolution" and Christianity

Last week while flying to Georgia I took a magazine along with me to read in flight. One of the articles in the magazine was called “The Good Enough Revolution” and it talked about how for many people do not feel the need to buy/get the best product, but rather one that is “good enough.” They gave a few examples (small camcorder’s with lower quality point and shoot digital cameras, MP3 vs. Hi-Fi audio) about how people are trading quality for ease of use and cost. Instead of purchasing an HD camcorder or 12MP DSLR Camera, people purchase compact SD camcorders and tiny point and shoot cameras. In most cases, people realize they aren’t getting the best quality available to them, but they are willing to make that trade off for different reasons.

Here is part of the article from Wired Magazine:

Jonathan Berger, a professor of music at Stanford University, recently completed a six-year study of his students. Every year he asked new arrivals in his class to listen to the same musical excerpts played in a variety of digital formats—from standard MP3s to high-fidelity uncompressed files—and rate their preferences. Every year, he reports, more and more students preferred the sound of MP3s, particularly for rock music. They've grown accustomed to what Berger calls the percussive sizzle—aka distortion—found in compressed music. To them, that's what music is supposed to sound like.

What has happened with the MP3 format and other “good enough” technologies is that the qualities we value have simply changed. And the change is so profound that the old measures have almost lost their meaning. Call it the MP3 effect.

After reflecting on this article I started to think about how the “Good Enough Revolution” seems to be infiltrating Christianity. Instead of seeking the gold standard (“Be holy for I am holy”) we settle for mediocrity—which we believe costs us less. We don’t come right out and say we don’t want the best, but we say just that with our actions. We make the small compromises, or at least small in our opinions, and think that it won’t affect the way we live our lives in any significant ways.

There comes a point when we are likely to believe that stretching ourselves further is beneficial for the kingdom of God. Instead of only being able to do “X” we can now do “x y & z”. Much like a CD can only carry a dozen or so high quality songs, yet can carry a hundred or more MP3’s, we think we the trade-offs we are making are good. However, much like frequencies have to be nixed in MP3’s to shrink their size, something must be cut out in order for us to replace quality with quantity.

At first we may not notice much difference in the quality, but as time goes on the proof shows itself in the pudding. Just as a first generation MP3 may not have major noticeable flaws, the further you get away from the original (read: pure) recording, the more the flaws will begin to show. Or if we trade our rifle approach for a shotgun approach we may cover a wider area, but our accuracy and effectiveness suffers.

As we move from one generation to the next what philosophy are we passing on? Are we encouraging those that come behind us to pursue the gold standard, or are we saying –with our actions, if not our words—that “good enough” is,…well, “good enough”?