The Outlaw's Outlet

My life is multi-faceted and I'm juggling multiple concerns all the time. This isn't unusual and I'm sure you can identify with what I'm saying. What I find interesting about this is that while I'm simultaneously trying to master balancing multiple concerns, my culture is trying "disassemble" me in order that I might fit into the "compartments" that my life is chopped up into. The "compartments" are things like family, friends, work, hobbies, God, politics, and etc. Culture tells me that each "compartment" has a different set of rules and values. As human beings we have many domains of concern that range from simple, but important things like breathing and eating to more complex and intangible things like meaning and fulfillment. In between these extremes are a multitude of additional concerns that we stack up in order of importance. We carry multiple domains of concern simultaneously whether we realize it or not and ...

I've thought a lot about the future. My future with my wife, my family, my kids, my career, my business ventures, places we'd live, things we'd do, destinations we'd visit, etc. Late in my college days I wrote a strategic plan for my life. A few years ago I've developed a personal mission statement and a list of goals and aspirations. To date I've written 9 business plans made up of smaller individual plans including marketing plans, strategic plans, financial plans, and etc. I've negotiated business mergers between companies and put together plans that outline the terms of the merger. I've put together plans for re-structuring existing businesses as an organizational consultant. I've helped plan worship services for local churches that I've served in. I've made plans for events, conferences, vacations, and the list goes on and on. In short, I've made a lot of plans. I've come to realize a couple things about plans. First ...

I live in an environment full of complainers with few exceptions. Before you get mad at me because I just threw everyone I know under the bus, let me also confess that when it comes to complaining, I am chief among them. Frequently I initiate the conversations around me that engage others in the "art" of complaining. As a modern westerner I have many clever disguises for complaining and can easliy engage in the practice under the auspices of some other high-minded endeavor like debate or critical thinking. There are times when debate and critical thinking are healthy and good practices, but not when they devolve into a thinly veiled rant. We really have turned complaining into an art form. For example when I don't get my cheeseburger within 30 seconds from my favorite fast food chain, I can without hesitation - as though programed to do so - launch into a critical examination of the efficacy of the fast-food "system" questioning the competency and attitud...

The more experiences I accumulate, and more pointedly, the more failures I experience, the more I find the "could'a, would'a, should'a" conversation to be mostly unhelpful. I'm not saying that we should not seek to learn from mistakes and failures and there is a lot that can be gleaned from studying history, both our own as individuals and history in general. But there is a point at which this process transitions from cathartic and enlightening to wallowing in self-pity or worse, judgment, anger, bitterness, and condemnation. Its a slippery slope. I find myself often treading ever so closely to the edge of the judgement, anger, bitterness, and condemnation "cliff" with those I love the most . . . ok. . . my wife. You were all thinking it anyway. As Jess and I walk through life together and share common experiences, some of which blow up right in our faces in a bad way (i.e. failure), it is helpful to consider how we might have done things diff...

Krino Interesting that I had never heard that word, much less knew its meanings prior to last Sunday's church service where Keith Korver explained it in a sermon. First, to Keith - who will probably never read this - I must say that you pack more profound material into 30 minutes than most other teachers I've heard. Each point, illustration, and concept he unpacks could be a sermon in itself. Good thing too, because nearly everyone in the room can latch onto something, chew on it, digest it, and be nourished. This is the nugget I took away from his sermon last Sunday. Krino - Greek word meaning "to judge" or more, explicitly, to: condemn, avenge, damn, sentence, or levy a punishment against. Yikes. No wonder Jesus says explicitly NOT to do this. In a passage of scripture that is neither cryptic nor subject to varied interpretation Jesus boldly warns against "krino-ing" others "lest we be krino-ed". He goes on to say that the measure w...