Chris Cree

Whatever I find interesting

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Too Much is Never Enough

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Have you ever noticed that as we go through life we get increasingly harder to impress?

Fireworks is one area where I struggle with that. I was on a ship in New York harbor for the 4th of July in 1986 when the Statue of Liberty was rededicated after her two year renovation. I saw the laser beam shoot across from Governor’s Island to the statue to kick off the fireworks display when President Reagan gave the signal.

Fireworks Statue of LibertyThen I saw the entire New York City skyline (complete with the Twin Towers) disappear behind a wall of fireworks. Fantastic. Impressive. Breathtaking. I really can’t find the right words to describe how wonderful it was that night looking over the rail of the ship across the harbor, hearing an entire city cheer at the incredible explosions of color and light.

Compared to that night most fireworks displays are… nice.

Part of the trouble is that I am a child of the MTV generation: Too much is never enough.

Do you struggle with that kind of thing at all? Maybe the words of the prophet Haggai apply to you:

This is what the LORD Almighty says: Consider how things are going for you! You have planted much but harvested little. You have food to eat, but not enough to fill you up. You have wine to drink, but not enough to satisfy your thirst. You have clothing to wear, but not enough to keep you warm. Your wages disappear as though you were putting them in pockets filled with holes!

Left on our own we have an ever increasing appetite for more and more. It makes us ugly. And it never really satisfies.

J. Paul Getty, the billionaire businessman, reportedly answered the question how much is enough with these words: Just a little more.

Our own nature puts us on a gerbil wheel that we can’t get off.

Fortunately for us Jesus offered a way off the wheel.

But the water I give them takes away thirst altogether. It becomes a perpetual spring within them, giving them eternal life.

Imagine getting off the wheel and leaving the MTV generation behind! That idea is worth looking into, don’t you think?

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Speak up or Shut up: What’s the right thing to do?

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The other day I posted a little rant about my frustration when people don’t plan. In the conversation that developed out of that Liz and I got to talking about being able to see when people are about to make some kind of mistake and when it’s appropriate to say something or not.

That is a whole big issue. When do you speak up? When is it none of your business?

These are tough questions with no single “right” answers. And for sure there are no easy answers. Me, I tend to be opinionated and outspoken. My track record includes an obnoxious streak so I try to be more careful these days and weigh out whether I should speak up or not.

Often it is a tough decision. Let me give you an example.

I had a roommate once. He was a really nice guy, grew up in the church. He was in his mid 20’s and volunteered helping out with the youth group at his church. I noticed there was one girl that he seemed to spend a lot of time with.

Now I didn’t grow up in church. I’ve been out there in the world and seen some stuff, if you know what I mean. I’ve learned a little about people. And I saw a potential problem developing for my roommate and his friend.

She was under 18 and to my perspective they seemed to be spending maybe too much time together. But who am I to judge, right? Besides I knew my track record (borderline obnoxious, hey?).

Well it bothered me enough that I went to two separate friends of mine I trusted and asked them discretely for advice. Both of them independently recommended that I not say anything. They said that I didn’t really know him all that well and maybe I was misreading the situation. He might not take to kindly to my view of things and it might ruin our friendship. Well, knowing who I am I decided to go against my own instincts and kept my piece.

You know what happened.

Doh Homer SimpsonAfter I moved out of the house (actually I moved completely out of the state). She ended up getting pregnant and they got married. Now before you get all outraged at him remember he really is a nice guy who genuinely wants to do right by folks. He was however just as naive as she was. Should he have known better? Sure.

If that was where it ended, then all’s well, right? Well unfortunately their marriage didn’t last. I don’t know any of the details other than there were some more children involved before it was over. So now we have several lives that are more complicated than they needed to be.

Hindsight is 20/20 and I should have said something. I regret not speaking up. The whole thing was a powerful lesson to me on the importance of giving advice and I am now more inclined to speak up even when what I say may not be received well. And even when I might be totally wrong and misreading the situation entirely. I guess I’d rather look like a boob than see someone else get hurt.

Here’s a couple nuggets from Proverbs on the issue:

Wounds from a friend are better than many kisses from an enemy.

The heartfelt counsel of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense.

But there are definitely times when it is better to keep your peace. Some lessons are best learned by experience. Some of our relationships are just plain not close enough for it to be appropriate for us to speak up.

So here are some things to think about that might help you through this dilemma.

  • How well you know the person versus how serious the issue at hand is. You can think of it as an equation or a scale. On one side put your relationship with the person, how well you know them, the likelihood you can speak to them about a tough subject without them misinterpreting your intentions. On the other side weigh out how serious the issue is. It truly is often better not to sweat the small stuff. If it is no big deal, then shut up!
  • What are the implications and possible consequences of not speaking up? Think through what might happen. What’s the worst case? The best case? How many people might be affected?
  • Is there a lesson that the person probably won’t learn without making the mistake at hand? As much as I prefer to learn from the mistakes of others, the reality is I learn best and fastest from my own mistakes. That’s just the way we’re wired
  • Has the mistake already been made, or is there still time to avoid it. This may seem common sense to most folks. But there are some out there who feel it is their job to point out every single mistake people have made. Telling someone “you just screwed up” is a whole other deal from warning them that they might be about to make a mistake. More often than not, when people blow it, they know it. They probably don’t need you to pick that scab for them.

The bottom line is all our actions have consequences. That principle applies both to us and to them. We face consequences whether we speak up or stay quiet. They face consequences for whatever choices they make, good or bad.

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Christians Mixing with Pornographers

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How do you treat people who are different than you?

There was a time, before I started following Jesus, that I thought all Christians were unthinking whack-jobs filled with hatred. There’s a lot of evidence out there to support that viewpoint.

For example, when I was in Pensacola, a lot of us flight students would go hang out at an Irish pub on Friday nights. (Apparently it’s still there.) Like clockwork we could count on a small church crowd on the corner across the street. They’d be waving signs and yelling through a bullhorn about how all of us were going to hell simply because we were going into the pub. I remember they had a tendency to point out specific people through via their bullhorn hoping for some attention.

I wanted to go over and ask them if they realized no one was listening. And explain that all their shouting and sign waving was a huge turn off for me. I got the feeling that they were trying to convince me to come around to their way of seeing things but their approach was having the totally opposite effect. If I had to be like them to get to heaven then it didn’t sound like someplace I’d want to hang out anyway.

Eventually I was able to separate the person of Jesus from some of his more inept followers, but I get the feeling that a lot of people look at Christians the way I did, and many Christians give them good reason.

ProBlogger.netWhich brings me to the point of this post. One of the resources I read faithfully as I learn this blogging thing is ProBlogger.net. Darren Rowse posted a great interview today. The title is certainly eye catching. Baptist Minister Interviews Adult Webmaster about Blogging”¦.

I knew Darren was a pastor. I found some of his other blogs a while back via his About Darren page, including LivingRoom, which is about the house church he leads.

What impressed me most about the interview is that it came out of a relationship with this guy that Darren already had. And it came about because the guy apparently first reached out to Darren. (Oh, and I learned a couple more good pointers too.)
More Christians should be like that, spending time and getting to know people who are different and don’t think like they do.

Jesus Loves PornstarsThe other thing I saw this week is that a Christian group has created a stir by reaching out to the porn industry. xxxchurch.com recently published a version of the Bible with a cover that says “Jesus Loves Porn Stars”. Apparently some Christians are upset because they feel that this is somehow disrespectful to scripture.

I don’t get it. I don’t have a degree in it or anything, but I have done some pretty serious theology study on my own. And I’m not aware of any theological school of thought that claims the Bible’s cover is divinely inspired. It is the contents that are important, not the packaging.

But then there are way too many Christians who are more concerned with appearances than with substance or reality. Jesus had some pretty harsh things to say about religious people in his day that were overly focused on appearances.

“How terrible it will be for you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! You are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy–full of greed and self-indulgence! Blind Pharisees! First wash the inside of the cup, and then the outside will become clean, too.

“How terrible it will be for you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs–beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity. You try to look like upright people outwardly, but inside your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Christians would do a whole lot better to listen to Jesus and treat people more like Darren and the folks at xxxchurch.com.

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Late Night Driving with a Clear Conscience

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I got home from work fairly late last night. I finished up with the ship and walked down the gangway sometime around 1:30 AM this morning. Not a big deal, really. All part of the job and everything went smoothly for once.

I was driving home with the tunes blaring to help keep me alert. You need to be when you are driving around town at those hours to keep a safe distance from all the cars that weave back and forth or drift out of their lanes.

It is amazing to me the difference in drivers sometimes. I use the cruise control whenever I can when I’m on the highways and the by-pass and I pretty much set it to the same speed all the time. Sometimes I’ll be one of the slowest cars out there with everyone whizzing by. Other times everyone is going 15 MPH slower than I am on the same road. My speed didn’t change. Savannah is weird that way. And last night it seemed I was in a rocket ship because everyone was going slooooowwww.

I’ll tell Gorgeous sometimes if we’re heading home a little late from something, “Watch out for that one. He’s drunk.” She doesn’t understand how I can say that with such certainty. But there was a time in my life…

Police Cars at NightAnyway, I tuned into my neighborhood sometime around the 2 AM hour and it looked like there must have been a bad accident, flashing lights everywhere. Lots of blue lights mixed in with the amber from a tow truck.

My first thought was “Oowie! That doesn’t look good.” Then I did a quick mental check to see I knew of an easy way around by an alternate route because it had been a long day, I really just wanted to get to bed. And in my experience Savannah’s Finest isn’t particularly concerned with traffic flow around accident scenes. They’ll block major roads way longer than they need to in the interest of safety.

But hey, they’re allowed. They’ve got guns.

Well I saw they let a car go around what must have been the wreck so I decided to just suck it up and wait it out. It turns out that was a good call because I’d run smack into a DUI checkpoint, not an accident. And on a Thursday night even. Go figure.

I’m a little slow on the uptake, but I figured it out when I saw a line of police officers beside the road, each one talking to a driver. So after presenting my license and proof of insurance (and saying a quiet thank you for our secretary who’d just given us our new insurance cards) I was on my way home.

As the officer was handing my documents back he yelled to his team, “We’ve got another one trying to cut through!” I wondered to myself it that was someone trying to avoid talking to the police, or someone just trying to get past a traffic tie-up.Savannah Police Car

The whole thing got me thinking how nice it is not to be concerned about an encounter with the police. They say people who often drive drunk get to be experts at spotting cop cars. It is probably because of the rush of adrenalin that hits their system when they see one, knowing what could happen.

Paul explained this principle

For the authorities do not frighten people who are doing right, but they frighten those who do wrong. So do what they say, and you will get along well.

And it is true. When our conscience is clear and we know we’ve done nothing wrong we worry a whole lot less. I was completely unafraid of talking with a representative of the Savannah-Chatham Police Force, even when it was approaching the two o’clock hour. That lack of fear hasn’t always been the case…

Given a choice, I prefer no fear. Besides my bed at home sleeps better than any accommodations Chatham County would provide at that hour!

Enjoy! And stay safe this weekend.

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A Little Rain Must Fall

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Last night it rained here in Savannah. It was pretty heavy at times with lightning crashing all around and lots of wind. The kind of rain where the National Weather Service keeps breaking in on the radio to tell you about it and warn of potential hail on the pocket change scale. Fortunately they weren’t comparing it to fruit. Hail on the fruit scale can be pretty scary.

As I’ve said before, I like rainy days. I even like the bad storms. There is something awe inspiring about watching the uncontrollable power of an intense storm. I especially like sitting someplace dry like a screen porch and watching the storm rage around me.

On Deck of Container ShipYesterday I got to be right out in it. And that’s not so bad when you are dressed for it. Unfortunately I wasn’t. When I went up onto the ship it was sunny and a steamy 95 degrees. Sure there were clouds in the sky. And I’d even heard the NWS break into the radio once as I was heading out to the port. But they were talking about stuff a couple counties away from where I was. And I distinctly heard them say something about very little apparent motion to the storms they were talking about.

But then you can’t trust the weather guessers, can you?

There I was huddling out on deck under a container trying to keep dry without so much as a jacket. I’d make dashes out into the deluge to snap a photo or two and then right back under cover. Then the water started collecting on deck and I found myself standing in a small river.

Rain at the Container TerminalI don’t even mind so much getting wet, especially when I know I can go straight home after the job to get dried off and a change of clothes. The digital camera and the cell phone don’t deal with it so well, however. Funny, that they weren’t even what I was worried about. My paperwork was far from dry. Nothing like a little downpour to make your notes bleed all over each other.

During the job was not so bad because I could sort of camp under cover. The real trick was getting back to my car. It was a bit of a hike. And there was no cover. In the end I was pretty soggy.

Jesus gave us an interesting perspective on the weather. He said this about God:

He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Why is that profound? Well for one thing it doesn’t matter who you are. The weather that’s happening is going to happen to you.

It also means that God is no respecter of persons. He is going to give all of us the balance of rain and sun that we are going to get regardless of what we might “deserve”.

In the end there is still nothing we can do to control the storm when it decides to rage.

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When People Don’t Plan

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How do you respond when someone makes life more complicated for you?

Do you ever see it coming before the problems get there? If you do, does that make it easier or harder to deal with?

Complicated Flow ChartI’m pretty good at seeing why things might go wrong and developing contingency plans to deal with them. Much of my career has involved problem solving and I’ve found prevention is one of the best ways to deal with most of them. Several of my job titles have even had the word “Planner” in them.

What is it Ben Franklin said? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?

Gorgeous says I’m a bit of a “hole poker”. She says that I poke all kinds of holes in plans and any plan that survives my efforts ends up being a pretty stinking good one. I tend to be pretty good at seeing why things won’t work, and as a result lean toward the “glass half empty” way of looking at things.

I would prefer to be more of an optimist.

But I’m not – yet.

That’s why I get especially frustrated when people do things that become a hassle for me. Way too much of the time I see the hassle heading at me.

Like today. We got called to do a job by a shipping company. The problem is, there are a whole bunch of things that need to happen yet before we can do our part. Some of them have to be done by a vendor of the customer of the company hiring us. And the vendor doesn’t currently have a very solid reputation of coming through.

In the words of Jayne Cobb, “I smell a lot of if coming off this plan.”

I am working at becoming more optimistic. I try to keep in mind that we will still get paid for the job (eventually), and probably even more than if things went smoothly. I try to remember that if it was easy, anyone could do it and they wouldn’t need to hire us in the first place.

But too often my mind reduces the optimism to so much “blah, blah, blah.”

The adage, “A failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part” doesn’t really hold true in my line of work. I still get to deal with the emergency. And often it is completely unnecessary.

How do you respond? Do you tend to see how things might work, or what might go wrong?

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Are People Naturally Good or Evil?

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Let’s talk about a core life philosophy question. This question is really the starting point of all religions. Even the passionately non-religious have to answer this question if they are going to be honest about their beliefs.

Are people by nature good, or are they by nature evil?

By that I mean do people have the natural ability in themselves to successfully determine the morally right from the morally wrong and consistently choose to do the right things in their lives?

Humanism is one broad spectrum of philosophy that says people are generally good in that they are quite capable of making right moral choices.

The Fundamentalist preacher on the other hand will tell you that you are a sinner, Jesus wants to save you and you are doomed without his help.

Now my point here is not to start a debate about the finer points of Humanism or Christian Fundamentalism. I’m not an expert on either and may very well be inaccurate in my characterization of one or the other. I ask that you cut me some slack in that department today.

My point is to look at the question at hand, and examine one of the core qualities of people in general.

And I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have my own ideas on the issue. I look at the world around me and I see very little evidence that people are naturally good when left on their own. A quick scan through the news headlines reinforces that view. Or look at just about any toddler. Most of the time one of the first words we ever learn is “Mine!“

But what I’m really interested to see is the evidence on the other side. I looked at it once and came to my own conclusion. But maybe I missed some things. Can anyone show me how I’m mistaken? Are people really good at the core?

Believe it or not, I’m willing to be shown I’m wrong here. Just leave a comment and show me.

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Success Tips from Forest Gump

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Forest GumpWe watched Forest Gump again last night. I get a kick out of it because some parts of the movie were filmed right here in Savannah. I was shocked to see that the movie originally came out 12 years ago. Holy smokes! Where did that time go?

Watching the movie again got me to thinking. What are some of the things about Forest that made him so successful? Even though the movie was pure fiction, could some of those same things apply to us?

Here are some of the things I came up with:

  • Forest was intensely loyal to his friends. He did some really crazy things for his friends Jenny, Bubba, and Lt. Dan. And a lot of the time he was doing good things for them in spite of the way they treated him back, not because of it. Especially where Jenny and Lt. Dan were concerned, Forest helped them in the face of abuse and even after they repeatedly told him they didn’t want his help. They didn’t deserve his friendship, but he gave it selflessly anyway. Often times that same loyalty to his friends paid unexpected dividends that made him more successful than he would have been with out it.
  • Forest was incredibly focused in the moment. He didn’t worry about what might happen if things went badly. He didn’t often let himself get distracted by the why’s behind what was going on around him. Forest just stayed wholly in the moment and did the best he could where he was right then.
  • Forest assumed the best in people he met. Whether it was a drill sergeant, folks at the Black Panther party, the guy who liked to use the f-word a lot, or the girls he met with Lt. Dan, Forest always gave people the benefit of the doubt, and treated them with respect. And he only ever got aggressive or challenged folks if they actually physically assaulted him or one of his friends.
  • Forest accepted the reality of the world around him. Forest knew he wasn’t smart. He knew Lt. Dan lost his legs. Even so, he never let those things get in the way. He never felt sorry for himself because of his own weakness. He just accepted it and pressed on doing the best he could. Forest treated people’s weaknesses as matter of fact, not as something to be glossed over and hidden. Contrast that with Lt. Dan going on a multi-year pity party.
  • Forest invested time and effort into his endeavors. Forest talks about spending years in the army, playing ping-pong, shrimping, and running. Some things he was naturally good at it like running, ping-pong, or the army. Others, like shrimping, he was a miserable failure at initially. But that didn’t matter to Forest. He invested the time and effort it took to get good at the things he knew he was supposed to do.

I know there are tons of other things about Forest that could help us get more out of life if we adopted them into our lives too. But that should be enough to get most of us started.

Enjoy!

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Signs and Questions

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SignsLast night I was feeling pretty zombified and didn’t have enough brain power left to do much of anything productive so I poked around what had been recorded on TIVO and found Signs. I’d seen it before, so I figured it was a good choice because I could turn it off and catch the end some other time.

In the movie the Mel Gibson character has a speech where he says people basically fall into two categories. There are those who believe that someone’s watching out for them arranging miracles in their lives, which gives them hope. And then there are those who believe that they are completely on their own, anything good that happens is just pure luck. He ended his speech with a series of questions

See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?

Those are good questions. How would you answer them?

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Finding Hope

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Yesterday traffic was backed up on the way into work because of an accident. A red Monte Carlo had deposited itself wheels up in the median. For me it was a very minor inconvenience. I work weird hours anyway so no one even noticed that I got to the office 10 minutes later than I planned.

But for whoever was in the Monte Carlo I’m sure it was a pretty big deal. The whole thing probably messed up their day pretty badly.

It is amazing how quickly things can change in life. And unexpectedly too. I’m sure that driver didn’t wake up and think, “maybe today I could upend my car in the median. That would be a trip!” Yet he ended up dangling from the seat belt a bit before 9 AM just the same.

The truth is we don’t know what the day will bring. The Bible says that it isn’t our place to know (as much as we want to!) James tells us

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

Life is a fleeting thing. That’s a good motivation to make the most of today. But it could also be pretty stinking depressing. I mean how are we supposed to go on with the knowledge that it all could turn to disaster at any moment?

Is our only hope to adopt Chuck Noland’s philosophy?

“I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. And who knows what the tide could bring?”

That’s the way most folks look at life. They think that if they keep breathing long enough, they might get lucky and something good just might happen to them. Maybe fate will smile at them one day. They invent some hope to cling to. Otherwise life would just seem too pointless to carry on.

The good news is that life doesn’t have to be that hopeless. We can have hope for a fulfilled and meaningful life. Even though the uncertainty remains, we can know peace. Jesus said

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

If Jesus overcame death and walked out of the tomb they buried him in, then He has the authority needed to offer us actual hope for a life full of meaning and purpose.

And that is a genuine encouragement whenever we find ourselves hanging upside down in the median of life.

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