Jesus: Son of God, Mountain Biker

For some people, a connection to the Almighty is established by raising hands and lifting voices -mostly in the same key- to God. There have been many times that I too have been blessed by glorifying God through music.

I, however, cannot play music. God bless my Mom for trying to make me, but I never learned to read music. I can't even play by ear. Those who know me know that my singing is sort of like throwing darts. It is best done after a couple of beers in a noisy room where no one is really paying attention. I occasionally hit what I am aiming at, but the safest place is behind me. All this to say that for me, music is limited in how well it connects me to God.

When I was growing up, my Dad would occasionally play golf on Sunday mornings, citing that God made the trees and grass too so it would be a shame to have them go unnoticed. At the time I thought he was just looking for a way to get out of our stuffy Methodist church on warm summer mornings.

Now years later, I am beginning to think he was on to something. Living in Colorado and not enjoying the outdoors is a crime, and I am not one to run afoul of the law. Like most people here, I love the powder and 3,000 foot verticals that make winters on the slopes wonderful. I also need something to do in the off season.

Cycling has long been a passion of mine. About five years ago in Illinois, a couple friends of mine introduced me to the joy of riding where sane people don't go. Moving to Colorado, I learned that there are places where even the insane don't go. These places God created for mountain bikers.

There is almost no greater thrill for me in life than riding, face frozen in a stupid grin, hands poised over the brakes, tires nowhere near the ground, down a slope full of football sized rocks and angry tree roots. Throw in a couple of jumps, loose gravel and cactus trying to swipe your tires and I am closer to heaven that any human has a right to be.

I believe God loves doing the impossible. If He really has the creative heart that we claim He has, there must be a part of Him that loves doing that which we firmly believe cannot be done. Anyone who mountain bikes knows full well that there are things that cannot be done...but are. There is a unique thrill that I feel when I drop over a lip into a downhill. When my brain starts screaming NO! and tries to tell my body to bail out but I keep going, I discover something beautiful. Just as you are becoming convinced that you should have called your lawyer and had your will drawn up, you find that you really are going to clear that rock. You have lived to ride another day. Applause. No autographs please.

That moment is the one where I see God in a way that nothing else in life allows. I get to see the wonder of how he created my body to perform in a way that I could never expect. I get to see His laws of physics, harnessed in my bicycle, demonstrated in a way that most people don't get to experience. I get to see God show off. To steal a line from Chariots of Fire, I feel his pleasure when I ride.

So, is this worship? I used to think no. I used to think that it wasn't holy enough. It wasn't sacramental. It wasn't boring, austere and done between the hours of nine and ten thirty on Sunday morning.

I started to think that it could be worship when someone told me something about keeping my body, the temple of God, in shape. This too turned out to be only part of the truth. Saying that biking kept me in shape or helped me focus at work was also missing the mark.

To say that riding was worship because it served any other purpose was to say that it wasn't worship at all. It was maintenance. I have come to understand that it is worship, plain and simple, just as it is. If God cannot be glorified in the simple act of riding, there is no point in doing it.

This has challenged me to think about the reasons behind much of what I do. What higher (or perhaps lower) purpose am I serving when I go to work, when I talk to my friends, when I eat, when I study, when I ask a girl out, when I go to church, when I raise my voice in song? I cannot truly worship in any of these things until I can worship in each of them alone.

Maybe Later

Alright. I know pride when I see it.

It is time to end the three week silence by admitting that the Roman Civ class needs some more research. We will just put up a 'to be continued' sign on that one and come back later.

In the mean time I offer a thought on the tendency of Americans to create hierarchical structures of value that govern the manner in which we place importance on certain activities and thought processes.

Failure:

I was recently complaining to a friend of mine that I often felt like and fear failure. Rather than attempt to counsel me by listing accomplishments that he had seen me succeed in or asking me about my childhood to determine what bent or skewed view of success and value I had internalized, he simply asked me one question.

"What are you supposed to be?"

Of course, I had no satisfactory answer to this question. He went on to challenge me that my problem was not that I had the wrong view of success and failure, but rather that I shouldn't have a view of success or failure at all. Far from a New Age relativistic argument that there is no such thing as objective good and bad, he was trying to get me to think of one simple thing.

If God created me without my consent, and if He is truly omnipotent, then it is up to His discretion to direct the course of my life. It is no secret that I do not know the future, and thus I don't know where this all knowing God has set the course of my existence. The question then arises:

If I don't know the specific purpose I was created for, how can I know if what I am doing today does or does not serve the ultimate purpose of my existence? In other words, if I don't know what success looks like, how can I know what failure is?

Infuriatingly, this leaves me with only one recourse in attempting to find self-worth. The Love of Christ, the understanding that there is no intrinsic value to my existence accept His delight in it, is my only basis for believing I am a success or failure. (i.e. if He loves me-approves of me- then the Divine project that is me is a success) As there is nothing I can do to avoid, destroy or eliminate this Love, there is no way that I can fail. Therefore, thinking of myself as a failure is a failure (ur...wait a minurte...) on my part to properly understand reality. That is to say, calling myself a failure is a LIE.

It has always been challenging for me to maintain a grasp on the idea of my worth being seated in Christ's love for me because I put that at the top of the list of many criteria that I use to determine the rectitude or appropriateness of my actions. Putting such a value judgment at the top of the pile will never keep it there. Just as the efficacy of the Cross is diminished by our attempts to add to Christ's work, so the efficacy of his love is undermined by our attempts to justify our existence by any other form of validation.

So: The truth is that for the believer, failure is impossible. The truth, so I hear, will set you free.

Greetings, Roman.

"I would have [the reader] trace the process of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of the modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them."

- Livy (59 B.C. - 17 A.D.)

From his preface to

The History of Rome from its Foundation

"There is nothing new under the sun."

- God

From his international best seller

Those who have spent any time around me will have at some point been subjected to my theories on our present state of affairs as a nation and how this relates to the politics, society and culture of Rome in the latter part of the Republic. I have long maintained that if we wish to understand where we find ourselves today we must look to the best example history will provide. I believe we would be shocked at what we find there.

The next few/several postings will be selected thoughts from this theory. I will admit at the outset that this theory is full of holes, not properly researched and it is more than a little presumptuous for me to put it out there in the first place. Then again, such is blogging at its essence.

All that being said, I will set a little of the stage at the outset. Livy lived through the most troubling and tumultuous times any Roman could have conceived of. He would have been old enough to have at least a child's memories of the dying days of the Republic, and would have remembered well as it breathed its last with Caesar in 44 B.C.

During this period, most Romans must have felt as though they were riding a horse with no reigns. Powerless to stop the life they loved disappearing, they watched as family influence and money influenced politics to a greater and greater degree. The ridiculous lives of the opulently rich occupied the public's attention. People felt increasingly isolated from the true process of democracy.

For many, it was also the greatest period they could have ever imagined. As wealth continued to pour in from an economic empire protected by the invincible might of the Legions, many became too busy or preoccupied to care about the cost of their lives of comfort. Parties and games were becoming more popular. Vacation homes on the coast were becoming a must have item.

Sound familiar? Through the next couple of postings I will look other aspects, from the military, to politics, to culture, to the family, to religion. For me, these similarities are everywhere in our modern lives. Perhaps you can tell me where I am wrong. Perhaps you can point out some stuff that I have not seen. Perhaps this isn't news to anyone else, but for me this helps me think about how to live and work and play in America at the dawn of the 21st century.