bierkergaard

As an educator, by far the most gratifying reward for the work is for a former student coming back and expressing thanks and appreciation for the role I played in their life. Don't get me wrong...I like getting a check every two weeks, however the best deposit and return on investment is the positive difference we have made in eternal accounts. Today was one of these days. My former student is a truck driver. I don't try to steer everyone of my students to college. It is not where some of my students should be going. Instead, they are better advised to use the gifts that they have to drive the road they are equipped for. I know that I should not by driving trucks for a living based on my lack of depth perception. I prefer being in the seat of my desk. I would suck driving a tractor trailer, and dangerous at that. All labor and work has value, if done with excellence. My former student mentioned a trucking maxim  acronym. It is called: Get Out And Look (G.O.A.L.). This ad

This is a new steel church built in the 'burbs. One designer called it "sexy." Man, I don't know what I think about  this. I like cool architecture...too many churches look like McMansions that would blow down with a huff and a puff. But, I want to register a deeper complaint. The Church in the Bible is not a place; it is a people. Whenever we start thinking physical structures, we are already playing into the world system. Jesus said that "man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from God." Bread could be a substitute for building. Man does not live by the building alone. We fool ourselves when we think a building, music, or anything else but good lives is what is required for evangelization and discipleship to happen. How many churches (places) are stuck in a debt rut because they thought the place was the key to reaching the community only to find that you could build it and they still might not come. How about going to them?

As I cleared the parking lot on Sunday in the A.M. of cigarette butts, I contemplated trash. Like who throws it, who picks it up. What the role of the Church should be in picking up the trash in society. And it is not just physical trash, but ideological trash. Worldviews that should best be discarded, and the wreckage that ensues because of false premises. I always get frustrated and even angry when mere men criticize the faith because of the trash pile of thought and action they sit on like a throne. Acting the king when quite the beggar. Throwing garbage. The Parking Lot Movie/documentary is a thoughtful piece of work. Although the topic is not trash, it is about the dynamics of parking lots as a sociological phenomenon. Parking lots are a lot more complex than I gave them credit for...class warfare, labor, privilege, existential boredom, the mobile society. How many layers are in the lot like an onion? While I was picking up the trash on Sunday, there was a church close by.

Yesterday, I spent my Sunday morning--usually spent in church--picking up trash at a local Christian adoption agency's parking lot in the city of Lancaster. The church I have been attending has a monthly community service event in lieu of an actual church service. The parking lot wasn't quite as disgusting and dingy as the photo above. Mostly cigarette butts. No dead bodies, syringes, or used condoms. I did find an old AAA battery. That was about the most noteworthy item. I typically avoid working on the Sabbath. I labor diligently on the other six days and need a day to recharge so I don't wind up drained like that battery. When I read the Bible cover to cover twice a few years back, I grasped the importance of the Sabbath rest. There was even a dude in the Old Testament who was stoned for picking up sticks on the Sabbath. Taking Sundays completely off saved my sanity while working and going to school for my Ph.D. For ten years, Sundays were an oasis of rest in a pa

Yesterday, I wrote about the difficulties of being a Demi-Goddess--defining our self-image by our actual physical image. As told in the unraveling story of Demi Moore's descent. May she rise anew and ascend with an all-around image more spiritually-grounded. God's image in us, marred by the Fall, still reflects the perfection of God. We all have Eden in our collective consciousness. An ideal world gone wrong through bad choices. It is now in our genes. But, the perfection that was possible, and the perfection of God, haunts us like a specter. The shadow self knows that there is a sun shining, exposing our sin, illuminating our flaws. A zit on the forehead of our souls. Do we pick at it, avoid thinking about it? Trapped. Perfectionism is an outcome of the Fall. We strive to be perfect, thinking anything less is a failure. Now, this just applies to higher achievers who actually want to get "A's" in life. There are far too many slackers and sluggards who revel