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Whew.  Too many serious posts this week.  It’s making my head spin.  Or implode.

Anyway, check out these three links for funny stuff that will clear the cobwebs:

1 – Bryan Allain’s super hilarious “The Truth About…” videos: Start with the truth about bears and work your way through all of them.

2 – Tyler Stanton’s videos…any of them: just click HERE and start laughing (you can even laugh before the video starts – no matter how hard you fake laugh, your real laugh will be even harder when the video starts playing)

3 – Go to Tripp Crosby’s blog, scroll down to Organ Hero, and laugh. For a blog that’s dead, it’s pretty funny.

This isn’t exactly new stuff – it’s been around for a couple of months, but just in case you’re not on to these guys, and you need a laugh after three days of intense posts, there you go.

Don’t forget to check out the Fireside Writer’s Conference information. Only three months to go – stay tuned for a few more announcements about newly acquired speaker-folks in the next week or two, as well as a few opportunities to win some great prizes for spreading the word and/or signing up to attend.

Anyone out there read “Lone Survivor”? It’s a book about 4 Navy SEALs that get dropped into Afghanistan to take out a Taliban leader.  At one point they cross paths with some shepherds and have to decide if they’re going to kill them in cold blood, or let them go and take a huge risk.  They let them go.  The shepherds go back and tell their Taliban buddies, and all hell breaks loose.

Three of the SEALs die in the ensuing firefight. One gets taken in by a villager and lives to tell the tale.  But here’s the part of the story that’s been sticking in my head this week:

At the end of it all, the armed forces send SEALs back in to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades. Even though the fight took place over a 7-mile stretch of mountains, they search until they find them, and they bring them home.  They couldn’t take the risk of deserting a living soldier, but even if they knew they were dead, they’d still go back.

This made me reflect on life: what do we do to people who make mistakes in life that lead to emotional or relational injury? What do we do to our friends or fellow human beings that screw up? Are we determined to go out there and find them and bring them home, dead or alive?  Do we treat them with grace?  Or do we say things like:

“It’s their life.”

“Sometimes you have to pay for the decisions you make.”

“You reap what you sow.”

Or even worse, do we look through the scope of our sniper rifle from our position of safety, pick them out where they’ve fallen in enemy territory, and shoot them in the head ourselves with slander and gossip?

I can think of some people that I helped rescue from behind enemy lines, and it was awesome.  I can also think of some folks I left for dead – it’s a shameful feeling.

Brett Harrison referred to this idea on his blog a week or so ago (I think), but I couldn’t find the post.  Check out his blog HERE.

First of all,  thanks to everyone who read and commented on yesterday’s post. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.  Here are some follow up thoughts:

1) I thought everyone kept a respectful tone in their comments, which I appreciate. Because most of us have been greatly influenced by the modern era, we tend to feel that the things we believe are part of our identity.  The modern era placed such a huge emphasis on knowledge and being right, so we tend to take it personally when someone tells us we’re not right or when our long-standing beliefs are challenged.

2) We can all use more practice when it comes to disagreeing with each other in a peaceful way – hopefully yesterday provided that.

3) Words and their meanings change over time, usually subtly, sometimes drastically. I would challenge everyone not to become wed to a particular word in order to convey a concept because, especially these days, the perceived meanings of words are changing all the time, faster than ever.  None of the English words in the Bible are sacred in and of themselves – Jesus did not speak any of them specifically, word for word.  They are simply our best interpretation of what was said in the original language.  If we’re not keeping our finger on a word’s pulse of meaning, if we lose touch with how most people are defining a word, we could very well be conveying a message we don’t want or mean to convey.

4) Communicating a concept requires that the communicator maintain some sort of flexibility depending on the audience and situation.  Jill touched on this in the comments of yesterday’s post – in a foreign country, if you don’t speak the language, you’ve got to come up with creative ways of communicating.  Sometimes, based on our upbringing or background or socioeconomic status, we are speaking “different languages” from other folks, even if we both speak English.  If you are trying to communicate a complex set of ideas (like how to build a nuclear power plant, or what being a Christian means), be prepared to get creative in the language you employ.

What words do you think have lost meaning, or changed their meaning, in our lifetime?

In the interests of full disclosure, you should know that the first 8 comments were made when only the title was posted.  I also wrote this piece prior to those comments.  If you can keep that time line straight in your head, you’re probably also a good juggler or a successful executive administrator.

* * * * *

There are some words the church should stop using.  I have a whole list.

But when I say they should stop using a word, I don’t mean that the concept is dead or never existed or is incorrect; I just mean that the word no longer seems to fit, mostly due to the changing culture and how we now view that word (in English).

The first word I would like to annihilate is the word “sin”.  Dear church, please don’t use that word anymore.

On Friday I jumped on Twitter and asked the Twitterverse what their first thought was when I said the word “sin”:

@BrandonSneed said vuvuzela. Hard to argue with that.

@XCcampbell said “Muzac remakes of classic rock songs.” I have no idea what that is.

@LadyCrow said “Yum! Perfume.” This says more about how marketing departments have harnessed our natural inclination towards the “verboten” than it does the church’s use of the word, but still a fascinating response that probably deserves an entire post unto itself.

Here are some other responses I got: Separation;  Hurt;  Painful;  Offense; Crime; Violation.  And these all make sense, to a certain degree.  I was beginning to wonder if maybe folks did have a good handle on the meaning of sin.  Maybe it’s not lost it’s meaning. But then I got this response:

Damnation.

And a few others along those lines.  That last association came from a self-proclaimed “outsider” and this is what I suspected.  Sin has come to represent the list of things the church does not approve of, often a legalistic and man made list.  “Outsiders” hear the term and feel that it represents all that the church finds repulsive in them, as people, yet they know that people in the church are violating this list of “sins” all the time.

But sin is so much more than just the breaking of a man made rule.

“All have sinned and come short of the glory of God”  Romans 3:23

* * * * *

So what did the original word for sin in the Bible, amartia in Greek, mean? One of the Greek definitions is “missing the mark.”

All have missed the mark.

Kind of hard to argue with that. This morning when I got frustrated at my child for throwing their cereal on the floor and yelled at them, I probably missed the mark (I don’t think the emotion is the “missing of the mark” as much as how we respond to that emotion).  So if I got angry (not missing the mark) at someone for pulling out in front of me and I gave them the bird, I’ve missed the mark.

And even on the days I manage not to DO anything wrong, I’ve still had plenty of thoughts that have missed the mark.  All day, every day.

* * * * *

By eliminating the use of the word “sin”, I’m not trying to do away with the concept that we as humans screw up – in fact, it’s in our nature. I’m certainly not trying to downplay the seriousness of this “missing the mark,” how it can get our lives all knotted up and hurt us and the people around us. I just don’t think that “sin” is the best way to communicate the concept of “missing the mark” because most people outside the church think of an arbitrary list created by the church that basically forbids many things they consider fun.

Instead of using “sin”, why don’t we just talk about “missing the mark”?  Instead of saying “sin”, why don’t we talk about the specifics?  The word “sin” is like the word “postmodern”: it means too many different things to too many different people, and in the process has lost its true meaning.

Should the church keep using words if people no longer know what they really mean or understand them the way “insiders” do?

Are there other words you think the church should stop using?

Have I completely lost the plot?

Since I’ve shared my story of being pushed out of the nest of a comfortable life, and into the free fall of trying to make a living doing things I love, others have shared similar narratives.

A friend of mine used to be a highly successful mortgage broker. You can probably guess at the transition he encountered during 2008.  But he has always been a highly talented musician, and the decision to close down his brokerage led to him pursuing some music gigs.  Today he maintains the same standard of living as a musician that he did when he was running the business and keeping his passions on the back burner.

Another friend of mine has decided that, since his insurance and other renewable items run out at the end of the month, he’s going to close down his construction business. Not due to lack of work – he just sees it as the right time to pursue things more in line with his life’s passions.

I know of two guys who have been putting off starting their own non-profit, mostly because the non-profit they were working for provided them with a decent income.  Now it’s going under, and they’ve decided to do what they’ve been putting off for years – start their own non-profit.

In nearly every story about someone chasing their passion, whether it’s starting a business or becoming self-employed or going after that dream job, there’s a force that has pushed them out of their comfort zone.  It almost seems necessary.

So what do you think? Should we wait until that force kicks us out of the nest before we start chasing our dream life? Should we be preparing ourselves for that moment all the time? Should we just jump on our own, without being chased out?

Maybe you’ve already jumped or been pushed out?  I’d love to hear your story, too.

As individuals we have become so isolated from our ancestors. Many of us don’t live close to any family anymore.  Many of us, due to divorce or whatever, have too many parents and grandparents to keep up with.  In most cases we’re all too busy to spend time with the older generations.

On Tuesday this week I drove down to Maryland to visit with my grandmother’s brother: my great-uncle Amos and his wife Hannah.  He is 71 and a real family historian.

The first thing I noticed when I walked into his living room was a framed piece of canvas with the names of a family embroidered on it – beside each name was the person’s year of birth: the first was 1860, then 1861, 1865 and so on for each of the children.  My great-great-great grandmother’s name was on that piece of canvas, stitched almost 125 years ago.

Amos told me all kinds of wonderful stories, and as he told each one it was like a puzzle was being put together in my mind. So many of the character traits of my ancestors are in me! I felt a sense of connection, this idea that even though they have come and gone, a part of them lives on in me, and my children.  It’s a comforting feeling.

My great-great grandfather Amos was a writer – he took time out of his extremely busy days as a farmer to write on the walls of his barn.  We have a journal of his from 1893 – 1896 (a portion of which looks like it may have been written on the banks of the Panama Canal as the canal was being completed and the first ships moved through the locks).  He hated the heat and loved the snow.  He had bushy eyebrows and loved telling stories to his kids.

I feel like I know him, because he is me.

Amos’s son-in-law, my great-grandfather, was a kind man, let his wife do most of the disciplining (so that’s where it comes from Maile!), and was willing to stand up for the things he felt were important. He even spent a night in prison when the government tried to force the Amish to send their kids to public school, in some small way leading to the rights of US citizens to create private schools, or home school.

I’m beginning to think there’s something to be found in the lives of our ancestors that we cannot find anywhere else. I get a feeling inside of me that I’ve never experienced before, as I discover more about these men and women.

Sometimes I wonder, if 150 years from now, my great-great-great grandson tries to find out more about me…what would he discover?  What kind of heritage will I have left behind?

I’m working on a book about these things that I’m going to self-publish for the family: both the process of searching through the lives of my Amish ancestors, and their lives themselves.  Some of the stories are just fascinating.  Perhaps I’ll start posting some of them, as I get into it.

Have you learned any lessons or heard fascinating stories about your relatives who are no longer here?