Fine Wine Reality: An Acquired Taste

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“Reality is like a fine wine,” he said to me. “It will not appeal to children.” — p.11

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about community.  Not just the automatic group affiliation kind, but the authentic and rare occurrence of knowing and being known by others.  I suppose community can happen at various levels:  a sports team, a neighborhood, or sometimes even among people at work.  But the best and most sought after community, it seems to me, is through Christian family like church, or in a close circle of Christian friends.

And sometimes it seems very rare for some individuals.

One of the more touching examples of community I was fortunate to witness happened not so long ago to people I actually know.  One person was undergoing treatment for cancer.  She had to go to another city to have surgery.  I can only imagine how she must have felt, the fear of what might happen, the emotional stress of trying to deal with uncertainty, and the physical strain of travel on top of chemotherapy.  But she didn’t have to go through that without support.  Her supervisor at work and his wife accompanied her and her husband to the medical center and stayed there until the surgery was over.  They didn’t say, “She has physical family to tend to all that” or “I’m busy with work.  I can’t take off.”  He took the days off, they paid for lodging while they were there, and they went to some effort.  They didn’t send a card in their place.  They didn’t use prayer as a way to do something easy while avoiding personal contact or more extensive time commitments.  They dropped everything and went, and it was their pleasure to do so.

I wrote in an earlier post that certain things about a formulaic approach to the gospel are appealing to me.  Formulas are concrete.  They suggest direction.  They offer steps to follow, something specific to do.  Do the steps and the results are supposed follow.  Relationships, on the other hand, are rarely as simple.  Real relationships can be messy.  People don’t always respond as we think they should.  You can’t set them aside and expect to take them up again when you have time.  You have to nurture them.  And they require letting go of self so that you can allow the relationship to touch you deep inside and maybe even change you.  Relationships require risk.   Maybe that is what is behind Donald Miller’s story of how reality is an acquired taste.  Not everyone will choose the complicated, messy way over the simple, quick-fix promise of the formula.   But the reality is that relationships and community are one of the few real things in this life because they are one of the few things that reach  beyond this earth and let us glimpse a piece of God.

Donald Miller goes on to say on page 11, ” … the times in my life when I have been most happy haven’t been the times when I’ve had the most money or the most freedom or the most anything, but rather when I’ve been in love or in community or right with people.”  That’s the reality I want.  That’s the taste I want to acquire, because ultimately it is the only taste that can satisfy.

Freshman Book Discussion Impressions

I got to attend the book discussion held this past Friday August 21.  It was a great discussion with the new freshman.  Dr. Steven Moore and peer leaders Kevin Claypool and Kyle Smith all led us in some really interesting exploration of ideas inspired by the book.

If you missed it, be sure to check out the podcast of the discussion.

The format of the forum was that of a personal debate gradually moved to include the whole group.  Dr. Moore would begin by making a sweeping, sometimes controversial statement.  Peer leader Kevin would interrupt him with a different viewpoint, playing the role of devil’s advocate and challenging some of the statements.  From there, the rest of us would join in.  Kyle would be in the middle, summarizing and often throwing out more food for thought.  This style really prompted frank discussion.  By taking strong, sometimes extreme sides on the issues, the moderators  got us thinking and were able to jump-start the whole conversation.

One of the first topics was the need for affirmation and approval.  Dr. Moore stated that basically everything we show on the outside — our clothes, our houses, our physical appearance — is to impress other people.  It’s a drive for acceptance.

Kevin stated that it might be possible to do these things for other reasons.  For example, if we exercise we might be doing it to impress others and to look good, but it is also possible to exercise for health reasons and to take care of the bodies God gave us.

So how to do you know when you are doing things to impress others for earthly reasons or for selfish purposes?  Does trying to impress people mean we are less focused on what matters most to God?  How do we judge others?  If we change the way we present ourselves or the message of Christ to others, does that mean we are less authentic?  Ultimately, do we spend more time seeking approval from others, or do we, as Donald Miller puts it, seek our glory from God?

This was just one of the debate topics explored during that discussion.  The other major topic was about war and Christians and politics.  It was a passionate yet sensitively handled conversation.

By the way, the moderators suggested that if anyone wants to know what they really think about an issue, we should meet them after class or have coffee together!

The talk could have gone on much longer than the alotted time.  We had to end it before we were through.  If you didn’t get a chance to make your comment, or if you would like to continue the discussion here, go ahead and comment below.  We’d like to hear from you.

Relational Dynamics

Miller spends a lot of this book, especially Chapter 1 and Chapter 10, talking about how the gospel is not about a formulaic approach but about a relational one.  In fact in his reflection on the book, he writes “… I realized the formulaic version of Christianity was irrational, and for that matter, unbiblical. True Christian spirituality mirrors relational dynamics more than the workings of a free-market economy.”  These statements made me wonder if I tended to do the same thing.

I have to admit that certain things about formulas are appealing to me.  I like step-by-step approaches.  I often find myself trying to organize things in procedures and structured outlines, whether it is for a paper I have to write, a lecture I give, something I’m trying to summarize and assimilate, or even this blog post.  I like sermons that have specific points, practical things to follow.  It makes me feel like like I have a way to proceed, a way to make the concepts real.

I do think that Christianity is about relationship, not about a checklist.  The Bible uses story, relationships between people, and relationships between people and God to illustrate what God is like and how he wants to relate to us.  Jesus himself — “God with us” — is the ultimate expression of desire for relationship.  Perhaps one of Miller’s points is that we need to remember to concentrate on who God is and how he wants us to know him before we try to reduce a divine relationship down to a specific set of “things to do”.