Author Archives: Brandon Adams

#WalkUpNotOut Is Not Victim-Blaming or Mere Niceness. It’s the Gospel.

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darkhandHaving spent five years teaching in the public school system, I have many thoughts on bullying.

I’ve learned that what I consider a light tease towards a person I don’t know too well, but actually kinda like, may instead be salt in an unseen wound.

I’ve learned that what some call bullying may be only a blink-of-an-eye pattern that happens twice and strains the classic definitions, but should be resoundingly educated against regardless of what label it falls under.

I’ve learned that despite those definitions, some bullying does have the stronger individual on the receiving end. Nobody is impregnable.

I’ve learned that bullying doesn’t just come from one-parent kids on the wrong side of the tracks, but from children of popular and powerful families as well.

But most of all, I’ve learned that kindness is not just niceness. In this world where we get ten negative comments to every positive one, a kind word is water in the desert. Some people out there would give their next meal for one.

So when Rachel Held Evans last week took aim at the viral anti-bullying campaign #WalkUpNotOut, intended to replace school walkouts with acts of kindness towards unknown peers, you can imagine I rolled my eyes.

rachel

This tweet misses the point in so many ways that it could be a kicker for the Seahawks.

Evans’ voice is joined by the usual left-wing cacophony about how treating people well won’t end school shootings. That’s a classic example of a “straw man” – an argument nobody was making, erected in the hasty fear that it might crowd out their preferred solutions. It also forgets that plenty of people blame the shooter for his actions, not the victims. Now Rachel has this tweet out there, copied by itself into meme form, without the benefit of her later clarifications, looking like she dismisses outreach as “being nicer”. I doubt she actually does, but…hard lesson of social media there, Mrs. Evans.

I do agree that violence will never completely cease this side of the mirror dimly. We fight it, we pray against it, we make laws against it (and argue which ones to pass), we avoid it ourselves, and that’s all proper and urgent. Yet only heaven will bring order and peace.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing whatever is within our reach. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have as many hoses on this fire as possible. #WalkUpNotOut has the nice distinction of being something we can control, right here, right now.

Most of all, however, we should walk up to people because…it’s the Gospel.

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Praying St. Patrick’s Breastplate

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You know the handful of pioneering saints who carried the name of Jesus on such vast scale that we sit envious in church hearing about them? St. Patrick was one of them.

via Praying St. Patrick’s Breastplate

Satan and Bathwater Theology

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hell.jpgRecently, I was emailed by a follower basically asking, “is Satan real, or an illusion?”

I can’t believe I’ve reached the stage of being asked questions – yeeeeeeeeeeee – but fortunately, there’s Scripture. I’ll just go there.

Satan is real. He is treated as a conscious being with intelligence and personality. And he is a (limited) threat.

This subject makes people sensitive. There’s a lot of (pardon the expression) heated opinion about Satan and his precise role in the Christian’s life. Good teachings, bad teachings, and bad teachings that spring off both the good and bad.

Personal conviction: I want Scripture, straight-up, as it truly is. I don’t want man’s “compensational” teachings. Np Scripture tossed aside or marginalized because “people will run the wrong way with it”, or because it frightens them, or because it diminishes God in their preferred system. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater, in other words. The term “bathwater theology” describes this phenemenon well, and there’s a lot of it floating around.

Here’s what I find in Scripture (and may God lead me well in this).

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He Won’t Forget Your Obedience

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Where the ten scouts saw only Anakites and a bloody repayment for their obedience, Joshua and Caleb saw the power of God.

Brandon Adams's avatarBrandon J. Adams

roadYou’re confronted with a choice.

The wrong choice is obvious, but it looks better in the short term; you can see the reward.

The right choice is also obvious, but you don’t see any gain to it. All you can see down that road is losing out for the sake of being good. Being honest on your timecard when nobody would know either way; breaking up with that person who’s apathetic towards God; clamping down on that beer habit when it feels like the only thing keeping you going.

I’ve written along these lines before, but…how the church would change if we remembered that God promises rewards for obedience?

I should say this right away: the greatest reward of obedience is God himself. Tim Keller recently said it well: “Don’t obey God to get stuff. Obey God to get God.” More of his peace, his power, his unfettered presence…

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God Does Not Bless Messy Motives – by Carla Gardner

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I’m on board with this – with the caveat that God also operates on grace, and does give to those who are not worthy, because that’s all of us.

God wants to bless people, but God can only bless a person if their heart and prayers are for the right reasons. There are some people who desire things only because they see other people with things, […]

via God Does Not Bless Messy Motives — Wisdom Drops

How I Stumbled at Work and Grace

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There was a period last year in which I could seemingly get almost nothing right at my primary job.

The nature of my job is such that errors lent themselves to a nice paranoia. They’d take long stretches of time to come back and show themselves, so I’d spend weeks worrying over any large batch of work I sent out. They also had a habit of clumping together for some strange reason. So when it would rain, it would pour – come in Monday and a huge batch of mistakes from two month ago, sitting on my desk.

My boss was decent about it. He’s a good guy to work for. But this went on for months, and he eventually let me know in no uncertain terms that improvement was needed.

God had a lesson in it.

But it wasn’t what you think. It wasn’t just the lesson of “work harder, be diligent, be the best at your job in order to glorify me,” although that Scriptural lesson is always before us.

It was about how hard I am on myself.

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Under Attack

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davidkitz's avatarI love the Psalms

Reading:                                      Psalm 89

(Verses 38-45)
But you have rejected, you have spurned,
you have been very angry with your anointed one.
You have renounced the covenant with your servant
and have defiled his crown in the dust.
You have broken through all his walls
and reduced his strongholds to ruins.
All who pass by have plundered him;
he has become the scorn of his neighbors.
You have exalted the right hand of his foes;
you have made all his enemies rejoice.
Indeed, you have turned back the edge of his sword
and have not supported him in battle.
You have put an end to his splendor
and cast his throne to the ground.
You have cut short the days of his youth;
you have covered him with a mantle of shame (NIV).

Reflection
Though we…

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Struggling to Be Thankful? Just Get Older

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When I was younger (not that I’m old now, thank you), I had an issue with being ungrateful.

Every parent out there probably just said “amen”.

When you’re young, you don’t know how much you don’t know. It rarely occurs to us that others have it worse; we just don’t see it. I often struggle with the section of my heart that just plaintively shouts “NO. I’m tired of cliches. Just fix this, God!” whenever hardship shows up. May God have mercy.

But reaching the age of 33 has quieted that voice. Time has given me the chance to see more suffering. It’s devious, unfair, and creative, just how badly the world can go wrong for people. And it makes me thankful.

I’m seeing clients’ bodies break down from cancer, paralysis, mood disorders, even diabetes induced from head injuries in war (didn’t even know that could happen). Six-figure medical bills, ensuring debt for their children no matter how well they settle with the insurance company. It leaves me grateful that I can breathe, run, even walk, or pay for something – and noticing each time I do. Noticing. I thought being grateful for my sight and hearing was for older folks who had ascended to some higher plane of earthly wisdom. Nope – it’s for me, too.

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There is More to Prayer than the Answer

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This is probably the best post I’ve seen from Dave yet. Powerful, quotable, and TRUE. Highly recommend.

J David Peever (Dave)'s avatarlive4him.ca

I sit and wait for God to let me in on His, up until now, secret plot for my life. I have heard it a thousand times or maybe only one hundred times, as a matter of fact I don’t know how many times I have heard it and I don’t know how many times I have preached it but I do know that yes, no or wait are the only possible answers to my requests. So I sit and wait with nothing to do but wait until wait becomes a yes or no or maybe a no not now becomes a wait a little longer or a yes for now becomes a no for later or a wait becomes a…

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God Is Not a Magic 8-Ball (And How to Know If You’re Treating Him Like One)

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA“Have you been asking God what He is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell you what He is going to do— He reveals to you who He is.” – Oswald Chambers

So I’m sitting at my desk years ago, slowly eroding a mountain of math papers and waiting for God to do something. You know the feeling. I have to change jobs in the next month; I’ve got applications out in the wind. A dark knot has taken up residence in my stomach. I know God’s moving. I sense the electricity in the air – the “God space” I sometimes call it with my students, those junctures where he likes to step in. But I don’t know where or when he’ll appear. And with the end of school year closing in, I’d really, really like those details.

Finally, a call comes in. My applications have been seen. “Are you available to interview next week?”

Sweetest words ever.

Immediately the pit of anxiety lifts. Someone once said, “All happiness is the release of internal pressure”, and right now such quotes seem sage. It occurs to me that I’m happy just to have prospects; they offer a few days’ vacation from anxiety, a few days of effortless peace.

But the interviews go nowhere. The gnawing pit returns.

I’ve known couples who must bear the question of “Will our baby be healthy?” for an unavoidable season. While the couple waits, the knot feels like an unavoidable companion.

Or there’s the myriad of singles who repeatedly drag a parent, mentor, or friend to coffee over the honest question tugging at their heart: “Will God ever bring me anyone?” After talking their latte cold, they walk away with renewed hope. It feels so good. But after a few more months pass and nobody shows up, the pit returns. And they arrange another chat.

“How is this ministry going to work out?”

“Do you plan to heal my father?”

“Are you going to come through in the way I’m hoping?”

“Will everything be okay?”

After years of this all-too-familiar cycle, the Holy Spirit popped his own question to me. Through conversations over many years, it ultimately came down to this:

Why do you need to know the outcome to get rid of the knot?

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