Rant of the Exiles

A couple friends asked me how to live out their Christian faith in the workplace. They work in high-tech and they're under lots of pressure to perform. I spent nine years at IBM/Hitachi working as a business analyst and project manager. I did well because for the most part, I acted like a jerk. Thus, I am well-qualified to know how one should NOT live out his faith in a corporate environment. But one thing I did notice is workplace communication is often dishonest. Take for example, a basic element of social interaction, the greeting: How are you? Depending on your role and job environment, you will ask or be asked this question anywhere from a couple times to a couple dozen times a day. When you greet someone in the hall, get a drink from the water cooler, warm up your food in the break room, or call a coworker on the phone, you open with this phrase.  You lie when you ask the question. You lie when you respond to the question.  You...

The hurt map is the topography of all your pain. It is a panoramic picture of a lifetime of accumulated grief, loss, sadness, weakness, fear, and anger. Besides valleys of despair are vast deserts of loneliness. Whitewater rapids of confusion swirl next to steep ravines of disappointment. Dead-end trails of frustration wind through forests of conflict. And mountains of fear dominate the landscape. You flash back to your hurt map every time you encounter a similar geographical feature in real life. If you walk into a forest, you're taken into the forest of your hurt map. You're instantly transported to a place of conflict. You sniff the tension in the air, hear dead leaves crunching under your feet, and watch the trees pressing in. You don't choose to remember the hurt map - it just happens. Whatever feature the forest had in real life disappears and the forest of your hurt map becomes the bigger reality. And you fight or flee from that place of pain.  Each person...

Pierce Brown's follow-up  to his debut novel Red Rising is better than the first book in his trilogy. The second I finished it, I looked up from the couch and said to Judy and Caleb: That was so good. That was so GOOD. That was SO good. Brown is an incredible story teller. There all kinds of twists. The action and pacing are relentless. The kill count is high. There's pretty much every variety of intrigue and betrayal. Brown is a master at getting you inside the main character, Darrow, and understanding his motivations. He is a classic tragic hero. The premise of the trilogy is a conspiracy to overthrow the universe's color caste system. Golds are the master race - bred to rule with an iron fist. They are literally, gold in complexion and have gold sigils on their hands and different physiology. Only like colors can breed with each other so they're like different species. Then you have, among others, Silvers (businessmen), Blues (ship pilots), Greens (prog...

At tonight's Good Friday service at our church, the children's ministry performed a musical (Micah with a solo!) and Peter and Paul from Operation Dawn, a gospel drug rehabilitation center, shared songs and testimonies of life change. I shared a condensed version of the following words: When Jesus died on the cross, he was surrounded by an unlikely group of companions. The people you would most expect to be there were absent. DISCIPLES ARE ABSENT:  The men whom Jesus had spent almost all his time with in the past three years were missing in action during the moment of his greatest pain. They had deserted, denied, or betrayed him before the trial. This group of men took pride in their intimate relationship with Jesus, thetime they spent with him, and the fact that Jesus privately explained every parable to them. All of them helped feed the 5,000 and 4,000, watched him walk on water, cast out demons, heal disease, and even witnessed his transfiguration. But at t...