Here is the state of Abilene's snow as of 10:45am:


Because of these treacherous, impassible conditions, Abilene has pretty much shut down for the day. ACU issued email warnings to "STAY INSIDE AND OFF THE ROADWAYS." (Yes, in all caps.)

Maybe this is because of the massive arctic blizzard that is going to hit later today. Let's see what that looks like:



Wait... what?

Looks like classic Desert Snow Reaction Syndrome.

Well it looks as if all things are possible:


About 1/200 of an inch of snow and classes get cancelled and the school shuts down completely. Welcome to the West Texas desert!

Two old friends (who don't even know each other) got in touch with me this week and I spent some time catching up with them. Even though I am only three years out of my undergraduate days, it is so interesting to see where where my peers and I have come to this point. So many are married, having kids, working jobs, owning homes, making money, settling down, and... growing up. I know that it is purely a self-made perception, but sometimes feel like I am simply behind the curve. Of course, I know this is not true. Everything I am doing in life right now exists because I chose it. Nevertheless, I am having to grow into a mindset that recognizes that many people who have school behind them, toddlers running around their feet, 8 to 5 jobs, and mortgages are no longer those "older" people but folks my age. And younger. Somewhere along the way I made some serious choices that simply meant that those things would not be part of my life at this time. Not that I am wanting them to be, it just means that I have to accept that many of the things that a lot of people unconsciously accept as makers of typical "adulthood" are not true of my adulthood to this point. As I reached the end of college I embarked on a path that simply took me in a different direction. I pretty much stayed a college student, and not just by becoming a grad student. Undergraduate students and the college experience have pretty much become my life. So, the challenge for me is how to maintain a connection to that world while still becoming a real, well-adjusted adult. We all know people who could never move on. I certainly don't see myself as one of them, but I don't want to kid myself either. If I become a "real" campus minister in the near future I am going to have a special challenge to overcome because I'm not quite an established older guy with his own life and family, nor am I a peer of the students. Right now I'm a quasi-student/adult who is going to have to find the real boundaries. Something tells me this is not going to be easy but will be very important to do.

So, here's to old friends who are living the American dream (even though one is Ukrainian). May God bless you and continue to guide you in all your ways. And to those who see their lives as having taken a somewhat different path, well guess what, you are living it too. Don't ever let yourself think that you are not.

Some experiences from today:

1. Today I was sitting around a table with some friends, and, as has become almost inevitable, the subject of Graduate School of Theology came up. This group was fairly diverse (in a relative sense) - meaning males and females, graduates, undergraduates, and many different majors. Somehow the topic arose regarding how far separated Bible majors are from the language and life of the rest of the student body. I generally agree with this, as I see firsthand how GST students tend to live in their own type of world and have relatively little contact with the way life is run outside of the halls of theological academia. Several of these students agreed wholeheartedly with the sentiment that theological students seem to be in their own enclave. This then turned to the use of language, with the point being that GST-types tend to speak in a language that is generally unknown or uninteresting to most others. I attempted to point this out by providing an example from a highbrow theological lecture I attended on Thursday night. My sentence went something like "She answered the question by pointing to a very esoteric...." which was then might by a huge "WHAT IS ESOTERIC???" from everyone. I guess this puts me in that group. I thought esoteric was a word more people knew. Apparently it is not, and that's okay. But it is something that completely invalidated my point and only assigned me deeper into a world in which people on the whole simply have no interest. Also, saying the words "penal substitutionary atonement" sounds absolutely ridiculous around people outside of the Theological Ivory Tower, yet is such a vogue thing to discuss among my ilk.


2. I sat in the chair and knew that something was wrong. The girl cutting my hair was obviously having a terrible day. I didn't really know where to go with this but something really nagged me to pursue this. So I went with it and eventually discovered that she had recently moved to Abilene to get away from a terrible divorce situation. She is 22 and has twin boys. She has a new boyfriend who is turning out to be a loser and she has no car, little money, and no idea what to do next. She feels like a complete failure as a mother and a woman. She is disgusted with the kinds of things that are talked about by the people working around her. Her boys' third birthday is tomorrow and she is barely able to provide for them, no less give them the kind of celebration they deserve.
   
   I didn't know what to do. So I listened. I asked questions about her kids, about how she is doing right now and what she needs. I paid her and told her I would pray for her and talk to some people who might be able to help her. So I'm going to and we'll see what happens.

What we have here is somewhat of a paradox of life. On the one hand, I am in a place where I am supposedly training for ministry. What does this look like? If I take stock right now it is writing exegesis papers on Hebrews 6, historical-critical reflections on the Heliland, Greek translations, and endlessly researched lectures on Biblical literalism in the 2nd century delivered to an audience of PhDs. Is this ministry? What does the socio-rhetorical Patristic Exegesis expert have to offer the suffering woman looking in the mirror about to cry because she couldn't even get a babysitter for her children so she could go to work? Am I walking around in a bunker that has no real place in the world? These are hard questions that I wrestle with every day. I want this to count for something and I want to have faith that it will and does. I just want to have experiences that show me how to embrace the heart of God more and how to bring that more into the world.

I'm around a lot of people who really like to theologize about helping the poor and speak very dramatically about it. Yet, honestly, I don't see a lot of that going on. At least not among these people.

I do see other people, in other contexts (usually outside of this highbrow Christian bunker) who are actually doing this. But they are not usually the ones who spend a lot of time talking about it. They just do it. This seems to be the way it goes a lot - those who actually spend their energy doing something useful for humanity and the Kingdom often have little motivation to intellectualize about it or dramatize the idea while standing behind the fancy podium at the top of the Hill. Once again I recall seeing Dale Voss through the window of the classroom, on his knees in his maintenance uniform, cleaning the dirt behind the big plant. Then often I see him later that week, sitting in the front of Wal-Mart patiently and happily waiting on the dozens of Malagasy students he has just driven there in a big van so that they can do their shopping for the week. I suppose it could be said that the Malagasy students are not "poor" but I guarantee you will redefine that word if you are a foreign person in a totally foreign place with nothing to your name except your suitcase.

I sometimes wonder what exactly were the experiences that James had that led him to write his letter that we now read in the Bible. I also wonder why it is one we pay little attention to in the upper-eschalon world of religious academia. Perhaps the two are related. There is a lot of discussion in my world over the nature of God, the Trinity, mysticism, spiritual formation, theistic pietism, soteriology, eschatology, and etc. One of my professors describes himself as a "post-foundationalist missional neo-restorationist catholic." This is said somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but this arises out of the kind of things that this academic world does and this kind of theological identity labeling is serious business here. One of my fellow students describes himself as (or aspires to be) a neo-orthodox monastic. Others very boldy carry the emergent label. Others love to consider themselves non-institutional (in the postmodern sense, not the CoC sense), while others claim Third Wave Trinitarian Theistic Millenialist Post-Orthodox Missional Apostolic Ascetic Augustinian Incarnational Ipsoflogonasticism. Actually I made the last one up but I am sure there is someone establishing a blog dedicated to it right now. What this all comes down to is the worship of a certain kind of theological philosophy rather than what our belief produces in our lives. As a result we become a people who talk ourselves to death regarding our brand of theology rather than a people that take the fuel of the seeds of the gospel and transform it into lives of action and transformation. "You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe - and shudder!" James said go to town with your belief and your faith, but if you want to really be a Christian, show me how that is making a difference. Show me what that is inspiring you to. Show me how your faith has made you different today from what you were yesterday. You stood on the Hill yesterday and dramatically talked about asking that homeless person to church. So where are your homeless friends on Sunday? You philosophized in class and on your blog endlessly about the trinitarian nature of the Godhead. How is that changing what you do with the $20 bill in your pocket? What about that guy in the corner who nobody has talked to in weeks? What about the hour you had alone in the car? How much of that was with God?

I say all of this because I constantly need this kind of transformation. I love to think about things. I lay awake at night pondering mysteries. But even though God, creation, and existence are all infinitely complex constructions, God is also amazingly simple in what he calls us to. God, the prophets, Jesus, and the biblical writers did a lot of chastising of people for spinnging their wheels and completely missing the point. So, let's have our philospohical merry-go-rounds but know when it is time to get off and get dirty in the simple Gospel.

Long-time readers of this little blog know that in the past I have been rather critical of my current educational experience - the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University. I have laid off of this for a while in my ongoing efforts to find a better attitude and to take hold of what God was doing despite my objection to several layers of things that take place in the ivory towers of highbrow religious academia.

God certainly has blessed this. But I want to take a moment to make some comments directed at my fellow participants in this seminary experience. To them, I have one general idea I want to get across:

Lose the ego.

This comment is based on a variety of experiences, but two in particular cropped up the other day. Some fellow GSTers and I were sitting around a table in a class when a conversation cropped up that concerns the church I happen to attend. One guy remarked that he doesn't like the preaching. This is a fair enough assessment, of course, because preaching styles are not going to suit everyone at every church. However, he went on to say that he usually doesn't like the preaching anywhere because he is very critical of it. Whenever he goes somewhere and listens to the preaching he always thinks he can do a better job. At this several of the others sitting around the table concurred.

Really.

Is this what we are producing? A bunch of young homelitical snobs? A crop of hot-shot preaching professionals who somehow have cornered the art of delivering the message of God?

This was followed shortly thereafter by a light-hearted conversations between some friends, one of which is a graduate Marriage and Family Therapy student. She was humorusly pointing out the fact that she was particiapating in some required personal counseling for herself and found that she was paying more attention to and judging the techniques the therapist was using than paying attention to what the counseling was meaning to her personally. At this one of my GST friends remarked that the same goes for he and the others of us in GST when we go to church. He stated that it was hard to be a worshipper as a GST student.

Really.

My fellow seminary students, it is time that we check our spiritual egos at the door and take on the real formation that only comes from God. GST makes you special in no way, regardless of the intellectual high-hats that want to lead you to believe that you are acquiring special knowledge and insight unavailable to the common man. If anything, our systematized journey into the world of scripture, theological reflection, history, and ministry should leave us even more humble at the feet of God. Should this not inspire an even greater level of worship? Does this not leave us with an even bigger awe at the eternal mystery of God and his kingdom? Does this not leave us at the feet of those who have come before and have traveled the firey road of ministry, whether it be preachers, elders, or maintenence workers who sacrifice for international students?

God wants you. God wants your service. God wants you to take this blessing of theological education and use it to understand your place in his glorious kingdom machine. But if even before you have left the tiny ACU Bible Department world of ACU you have already mastered the ins and outs of theological skill, then a tiny world it shall remain.