Just in case some of you people out there didn’t know, Amber and I became proud parents of a healthy, beautiful baby boy named Jensen Ray on January 31, 2010. The past three weeks have been an amazing yet challenging blur as we’ve been adjusting to having a new family member and a new routine at home. Here are just a few things that have been on my mind lately:

We are blessed with an incredible family. The first few day would have been 1000 times more difficult without the gracious help of Amber’s parents who cooked for us, ran errands, and held the baby so we could get some sleep. Then just a week later, my parents came to visit and did more of the same–shopping, cleaning, changing diapers! I can already tell that all of our brothers will be awesome uncles. We’ve also had fantastic and encouraging visits, phone calls, and emails from practically everybody in our extended family as well. These past few weeks have been just tremendous because of how supportive and helpful and excited our family has been been for us.

We have amazing friends. So many of our friends have offered congratulations, financial help, food, and advice. Honestly, the love that’s being shown to us by our friends here in Abilene and elsewhere is pretty overwhelming and humbling. I’m so grateful for the gift of friends.

Our church community is awesome. Again, it’s just humbling to have so many people offer support via prayer, meals brought to our home, gifts, and helpful words of encouragement. It has been such a wonderful reminder that being part of the Church is being part of family and a community…thanks to all you awesome North Park members!

They really do grow up fast. We’re only three weeks into parenthood, and already our son has grown (at least 1/4 “) and we can really see him learning and becoming even more aware of his surroundings.

It’s all worth it. Yup, having a kid has already changed our lives drastically–for the better. It would be a lie to say it hasn’t been stressful or overwhelming sometimes, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in world. Every time I hold my son, I’m bombarded with blessings I can’t even articulate. God is good and has been faithful to us, and I can’t help but be reminded  of that whenever I’m with Jensen. I just love that kid.

I’ve struggled a lot over the years with the idea of calling…that very specific sense from God as to what you’re supposed to do with your life. I’ve never had a “light from heaven” moment where my grand purpose in life was revealed to me. Rather, I feel like God teaches me slowly and methodically as I strive for a life of daily obedience. Although I think God has been faithful to communicate his will for me in this way, it is sometimes discouraging when you hear all of the talk in evangelical circles regarding everybody else’s “call”…especially when you’re in vocational ministry. You start wondering if there’s something wrong with you, because you didn’t have a dramatic, ecstatic experience of divine communication.

Because of these struggles, I’ve become fairly recently interested in doctrines of vocation. Who knew Christendom even had such a thing? But as I learn about the historical Christian perspective on calling and vocation, I’m deeply encouraged, and I feel confirmed in my sense of how God is revealing my vocation to me.

This past Sunday, my pastor preached on this idea, and his statements really resonated with what I’ve already been thinking. He said that in general, your calling from God probably exists at the intersection of your greatest passion, your gifts and abilities, the world’s need, and God’s glory. What a great way to think about vocational purpose.

How have you discerned God’s calling on your life?

This book is getting old now, but I just read it for the first time. I’m glad I waited, so I could separate it a bit from the hype that surrounded it on its first release. I found it to be a remarkably easy to read, beautifully written collection of essays on what Christianity is all about. Miller has a way of disarming you with his gentleness and wit, and then stabbing you with the cold, hard truth when you recognize yourself in his portraits of those that have missed the real and simple message of Jesus regarding sin, grace, and redemption. I  alternately laughed (like, out loud) and became very serious.

So much of this book is worth reading and re-reading…and I can’t even begin to talk about all of it here. The part that hit me like a freight train was the section on how we talk about love, beginning on page 218 in the paperback edition. Miller notes the economic language with which we discuss our human relationships: we invest in people, our relationships can become bankrupt, and people are priceless. He says,

“The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money….This was the thing that had smelled so rotten all these years. I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did.”

As he explained how this is played out on both the church and personal level, I felt my heart sink. This was me. For the past 2, 3, 4 years, I’ve withdrawn from many human relationships–with Christians and non-Christians, family members and friends–because I didn’t think it was worth the effort. I didn’t think it worth the effort because I believed no one would really put in the same kind of work in the relationship as I would…and if they’re not going to be equally as “invested” in the relationship, why even have one?

As I pondered this part of the book out loud with my wife after reading, I had to struggle to keep my emotions in check as the full weight of my own selfishness hit me. Even if my grossly unfair assumptions about other people were true, this is no reason to withhold Christ’s love and grace and commitment to them. After all, it’s not my love to withhold. Any love I can give comes by grace through Christ anyway. The more I thought about it, the more I found this mindset of love and commitment as a trade good to be deeply ingrained in my worldview. I am honestly ashamed, because I can look back now and see why many of my relationships have failed, how I could have been a better husband, and the impact it had on all sorts of personal ministry. To make matters worse, all I had to do was take my cue from the clear example of our Savior, who loves us so much–despite anything we have done–that he died for us, so that we would be redeemed and have life.  I believe this is the kind of unconditional love I should be sharing with all people.

I’m uncertain as to the specifics of what this means going forward–all this happened about 9 a.m. this morning. I know I need to stop withholding friendship and commitment based on a perceived level of reciprocity, and I really need to mediate anew on Ephesians 5, which begins this way:

“…walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God...”

An edited version of this article was recently published in the HSU Brand. Pick one up if you’re on campus!

Jeremy Camp was in town a few weeks ago with Bebo Norman and Natalie Grant, and it was a really fun show. Bebo Norman is a fantastic songwriter and first-rate acoustic performer…I was really excited to be able to see him live for the first time. Natalie Grant put on a surprisingly entertaining show…I was honestly shocked at how fun it was. And Jeremy Camp, well, he’s Jeremy Camp, so his performance was undeniably solid, even though he usually doesn’t do a whole lot for me in either music or lyric departments.

As I was enjoying the music, I looked around me and couldn’t help but think that it’s just cool that we can be bring our youth group to an event that provides a ton of rockin’ good fun while still promoting a positive, God-centered message. It’s hard for me to not get behind that. Nevertheless, I found myself growing a bit uncomfortable during certain portions of the concert…mainly, the “worship” portions.

When Jeremy Camp prayed “we want this night to be completely and totally about you, God,” it was hard to doubt his sincerity. Yet, I think it’s undeniable that this concert literally could not have been all about the Father. The unmistakable screaming of about 500 teenage girls behind me let me know that this was at least 50% about Jeremy Camp. I mean, would the Abilene Civic Center have been packed out for a “generic” worship service? I doubt it. We came to see Jeremy Camp put on a show, and then participate in some worship songs. If it really had nothing to do with any earthly person, then there’s no reason to put names in headlines.

I have no issues with Christian entertainment or Christian entertainers in principle. I really appreciated and enjoyed 90% of last night’s concert. But I do have concerns about the increasingly blurry line between a worship service and a “worship concert.”

In my view, a worship service is God’s people coming in community to him, not to any mortal man, for the purpose of praise, adoration, and the hearing of his Word. On many levels, the worship concert experience is similar…there are certainly worshipful moments, usually a decent amount prayer, and Jeremy Camp even gave a brief devotional message based in Scripture. While those things were present, however, the majority of the event was still entertainment-driven–which means it was necessarily more about Jeremy’s charisma and my response to the fun, catchy music.

As a musician, I understand the power of music to evoke certain emotions, and I’m certainly not opposed to emotion in worship, but in these concert situations I find that it can be easy to confuse our emotional response to the music and a favorite celebrity with a meaningful encounter with God. This is dangerous territory to be traversing, but I felt that Jeremy Camp actually did a pretty good job navigating that particular minefield by rooting the “worship set” in songs that had lyrical substance.

I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer about what was really a great, fun time participating in Christian music, but I can’t shake the unease that hits me when I hear Christian entertainers talking and behaving as if what they’re doing isn’t entertainment. It may be entertainment and more, or even God-driven entertainment (I’m fine with that), but it’s entertainment nonetheless, and we need to be careful that we don’t equate a concert with our more community-driven, truly Christ-focused church gatherings.

Recently, I started working with my good friend and fellow LinuxMusicians.com administrator Matt Ashton to promote some of my acoustic/singer-songwriter projects. Matt runs a cool indie label for Christian musicians called Autumn Street Records, and provides free services like booking, web-design, and even some mixing and mastering help.

From the website:

Our label represents bands and solo artists alike. We also represent a family of musicians. The vision of ASR is to bring together artists and producers who can work together and promote each other’s music productions.

A great thing about Matt and his vision for ASR is his emphasis on ASR as an open organization. An obvious commitment to open file formats, DRM-free monetization strategies, and free software (stuff like Audacity, Ardour, & GIMP) are all things that make me excited to work with ASR to promote my music and the music of others that have a similar vision.

Check out my ASR profile here.

Based on some things I’ve been reading online, as well some recommendations from friends, I decided to pick up a copy of the 2007 revision of the New Living Translation, 2nd edition. I understand that original Living Bible was a paraphrase (sort of The Message before The Message) and that the first edition of the New Living Translation was not without its problems…but word on the street (er, ‘net) is that the NLT 2nd edition, and especially the 2007 revision, is pretty top-notch–undoubtedly one of the best “dyanimic equivenlce” (thought for thought) translations available.

So far I have yet to convinced that it’s the best of its breed, but I have to say I’ve really enjoyed reading from it. My understanding is that the goal of the NLT was to keep things simple, clear, and very easy to read. So you won’t find lots of big words, and you’ll find it a pleasure to read aloud. Unlike “essentially literal” (word-for-word, as much as possible) translations, Paul’s letters are modified to that the sentence structure makes a bit more sense to English speakers…and it makes a world of difference. While reading my ESV and NLT together, I immediately felt like I had a better grasp on what Paul was saying from the NLT. Part of that is because the NLT adds implied words, where as the ESV, being essentially literal, doesn’t. This is especially helpful in certain sections of Romans, where Paul is talking specifically to/about certain people groups. The NLT provides helpful headings and modifies some sentences with things like, “So, for the Israelites…” or “Remember, Gentiles…” This keeps things straight in your head…with an essentially literal translation, it can be easy to get confused by Paul’s giant run-on sentences and think that he is either speaking in a global sense to or to different group of people.

That being said, there are tradeoffs. After years of study with the NASB and ESV, the Pauline epistiles–while easier to understand–don’t sound like Paul to me. Many of his strongly phrased arguments and rhetorical devices get reworded in a way that seems softened. For example, the repeated exclamation “By no means!” (ESV) throughout Romans is translated “Of course not!” in the NLT. In Romans 9:20, the ESV states,

“….who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ “

The NLT renders the same verse like this:

“No, don’t say that. Who are you, a mere human being, to argue with God? Should the thing that was created say to the one who created it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ “

While the essence of this verse is certainly intact, we also lose the sense of admonishon from the ESV and  the word-picture of God as potter or “molder” of our lives. I’ve noticed this about a few passages throughout the Old and New Testaments in NLT; the essence of the meaning is there, but some of the symbolism/word meanings are lost. This robs the scripture of some of its original and intended literary richness.

See how the venerable 23rd Psalm loses a bit of its grandeur…. Here’s the NLT rendering of  Psalms 23:1-4:

The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need. He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name. Even when I walk through the darkest valleys I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me.

And the ESV:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

The more formal language of the ESV is both more familiar and more meaningful to me. Phrases like “…paths of righteousness for his name’s sake” and “the valley of shadow of death” just seem more like the way Holy Scripture should be. Naturally, I recognize that in this specific case, my thoughts are highly subjective and based mostly on a certain set of aesthetic preferences.

One thing I really appreciate about the NLT is how it makes certain culturally awkward (or even incrompehsible) verses accesible to the English speaking crowd. Take Ps. 147:10 in the ESV, for example:

“His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man…”

Okay, that’s awkward ;). Here it is in the NLT:

“He takes no pleasure in the strength of a horse or in human might.”

That makes a little more sense, doesn’t it?

Obviously, neither the ESV as an essentially literal translation, nor the NLT as a dynamically equivalent translation are  perfect. But, from what I can gather, they are both great translations each in their own right, and accomplish each of their very different goals well. So I’m very glad I picked up my NLT…I anticipate many blessings by using it alongside my trusty ESV, and I’m now more convinced than ever that both essentially literal and dynamically equvialent translations are needed and should be studied by all Christians.

Have you read the NLT? What are your thoughts?

Further reading:

• Who Translated the New Living Translation? (And More Thoughts on Advocating English Translations)

• Words in the New Living Translation (Thoughts about dynamically equivalent translation in the NLT)