The Armchair Grammar Police

I'm no expert on grammar or the English language. There, I said it.

But guess what, kids. That doesn't stop me from going around acting like I'm one. Now, there are some people like my friend Tony who can tell you exactly why and how you screwed up a particular statement, citing official rules of grammar he actually remembers from Mrs. Haas' (or whomever's) 11th grade AP class. Me? Well, most of the time I just pride myself in knowing when something's wrong with your sentence. And there's occasional glee in telling you about it (but only if you should know better). I'm the life of the party, for sure.

(Stray thought... Murphy's Law says that due to the nature of this post, I'm going to have a massively horrible grammatical error in here somewhere, and Tony will point it out.)

This group is not unlike like that of the Armchair Sci-Fi Movie Laws of Physics Police, of which I guess I'm a deputy rather than a full-fledged officer. You know, the guys and the occasional girl who'll watch one of the Star Trek movies before the most recent one and, with no warning, blurt out exclamations like, "You can't hear engines [or explosions] in the vacuum of space! I can't believe they'd do that..."

Yes, indeedy, not at all different from The Armchair Grammar Police. You know, I'm on the force. While I work in many departments, I may be most skilled at Lyric Investigation.

My wife and I were trying to learn a song not long ago, and the melody of its bridge immediately reminded me of Phillips, Craig & Dean's classic CCM smash hit from yesteryear, "Favorite Song of All". Every Christian worth his salt in contemporary music knew that song by heart. Every good Christian, anyway. I remember when my friend Mike operated Christian Concert Ministries and brought PCD to Huntsville, AL. Being named "Dean" and all, I guess I was easy to get to know for Randy, Shawn, and Dan, and we hit it off very well (they even remembered me when I saw them years later). I enjoyed hanging out with them that day, going to KFC and chatting, setting up for the show, etc. These are fantastic, likable, and very genuine guys.

But back to the big hit song; specifically the bridge lyrics. I've honestly tried, but I just can't ignore this:

It's not just melodies and harmonies 
That catches His attention
It's not just clever lines and phrases
That causes Him to stop and listen

Yikes. How did that make it through the rewrite process? I guess the extra syllable was needed for meter and rhythm on "catches" and "causes," but it wasn't needed to do this thing we call "writing correctly." (As a side note, you can probably imagine how grating I find it when someone sings "you and I" where it should be "you and me," all because they need the "I" to be a rhyming word. Please just spend a few more minutes brainstorming instead of becoming a language butcher.)

I was working in the yard yesterday and the bridge of "Favorite Song of All" kept looping in my head, over and over and over and over. I thought all manner of things, most of them along the lines of, "Why did such cool, intelligent guys have to write the bridge like that?!" and, "Did nobody in the control room at the studio say, 'Hey guys, that wording's a little... you know... wrong'?" Sure, I probably need some sort of medication, but I have other obsessive issues about doctors and medicines. (Right about now you're probably thinking how blessed my wife is to be able to live with such a wonderful man.)

Eventually it dawned on me that I kept singing the first part of the bridge, and because of my obsession with the grammar thing I never got to this part:

But when any heart set free,
Washed and bought by Calvary begins to sing,
(That's His favorite song of all...)

Wow, hey, that's an amazing lyric! Unfortunately I wasn't singing that part in my head all day. Just once, and it smacked me in the face. Isn't it crazy how obsessed, distracted, and even angry we can become about our pet stuff, and in doing so completely miss the message? This is especially true of people in all walks of life, with all kinds of personalities: those who don't like TV evangelists, people who are racists, folks who don't think silver jewelry looks good, guys who like to debate theology (not that I know any of those kinds of people, of course, nor am I one of them...), and just about any people group or personality you can name.

It's the height of irony that one of my favorite verses in the Bible is Philippians 2:3: "Don't be selfish; don't try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves." Actually, I'm not too good at that. Maybe I don't like the verse so much as it's a "big" verse for me.

Pretension can't exist in the life of a person who's living out the Word. And that often humbles me and shames me, embarrassing as it is to admit such a thing.

Big thanks to http://ididnotaskforthesepowers.blogspot.com for putting the badge image in stealable format. You guys really need to check out this post. If you're a regular reader of EGBDF, consider this  a warning that you will probably not want to read all of Evil Genuis' posts. The author is hilarious, but you will very likely be shocked and/or offended.

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It's Hard to Be Humble...

In the weekend meeting with our fellow believers today we'll be looking at Philippians 2:3-4:

Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. (NLT)

Now, we can't just take those two verses and build doctrine on them. There are other words surrounding these, and they give us the purpose behind the instruction above, but this phrase really sticks out at me:

Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.

It's striking to me that even after following Jesus closely, listening to Him teach, watching Him love people and give to them, the apostles had an argument about which of them was better than the others (Luke 9:46-48). Matter of fact, on another occasion (Matthew 20:20-28), James and John got their mom to ask Jesus if they could sit in special places when Jesus established His kingdom. Amazing.

Question: where do you draw the line at considering others as better than yourself? I mean, if you're a forklift operator, you probably wouldn't consider an unskilled, untrained person to be better at you than driving a forklift. Someone could get killed. Obviously this isn't an across-the-board deal.

What other Biblical instructions and principles guide your actions and decisions where this is concerned? And does Biblical instruction really guide your actions, or do you just talk like it does?

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End of the Arrogance

From today's study at InterVarsity Press come these two questions:

1. Who might you be tempted to impress during the next few days?
2. What act of humble service could you do for this person instead?

They're based on Philippians 2, which over the years has become one of my favorite passages. It cleanly and simply summarizes what the life of the believer is to look like.

As you read the words of these verses, imagine that you are a member of the early church at Philippi. The Gospels have not yet been written; your fellowship has been formed based on the apostles' teachings. Paul tells some characteristics of Jesus here; that He was God, yet He became a servant. And he says that we're to imitate Jesus in that way (the sevant part, not the God part). I've emphasized several phrases that stick out to me.

Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose.

Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.

You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

Though he was God,
    he did not think of equality with God
    as something to cling to.

Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
    he took the humble position of a slave
    and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
    he humbled himself in obedience to God
    and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
    and gave him the name above all other names,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.

Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people. Hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ’s return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless. But I will rejoice even if I lose my life, pouring it out like a liquid offering to God, just like your faithful service is an offering to God. And I want all of you to share that joy. Yes, you should rejoice, and I will share your joy.

- Philippians 2:1-18, NLT

Again, the two questions:

1. Who might you be tempted to impress during the next few days?
2. What act of humble service could you do for this person instead?

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Birthday #1

Today is my son's birthday!

I'm just a little disappointed that my perspective changes as I get older (I'm talking about myself here). It would be kind of refreshing if I still approached life with reckless abandon. However, I do my best to remember what was happening each time I told my dad, "I'll never do that to my son," when I thought he just was being mean. It sounds trite to say that it's beginning to dawn on me that he actually had a reason for doing those things, but there; I said it.

When I was 16 or 17, I put a bumber sticker on my car that read, "Avenge yourself. Live long enough to be a problem to your children." My dad graciously let me drive around with it for a while before he removed it. But I think that I'm avenging myself quite well sometimes. I notice that in spite of the fact that I'm doing my best to look at situations objectively, I'm often a little cloudy.

If you're a parent, you may have found, like I have, that it's awful to get upset with your kid for not immediately doing something you've asked him to do, only to find out that he was, for instance, helping his sister to do something and it prevented him from obeying immediately. Sometimes what I think has been a show of rebellion actually turns out to be a situation in which I'm quite wrong.

To draw a quick parallel, I've done this with other Christ-followers, too. Probably more often than I think. One of the verses that I've talked about repeatedly is Philippians 2:3, "Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves." (NLT) I'm obviously not saying that everyone is right all the time, or that their actions are acceptable no matter what, but I've found that it's taking the easy road to assume that if someone's perspective doesn't line up with my own, they're wrong, they're not listening to God that day, etc.

"Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry." (James 1:19, NLT)

I'll close by saying happy birthday to my son! I'm partially paranoid, so I won't tell you his name or his age in case you're a crazy internet nut case...

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Humility and Self-Confidence

This was written as a letter for a specific purpose, and I wanted to share it with you here. Covers a few things that I've blogged about before, but does so just a little differently.

I’ve always walked a little bit of an odd line when it comes to self-confidence vs. humility. Although it may sound like it, those two things aren’t opposites, and they should co-exist in everyone’s life; especially in the life of a Christ-follower.

The first verse that probably comes to mind when thinking of humility is, “Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18, NLT) That verse is really so self-explanatory, I won’t even try to add anything to it.

But one of the passages in the Bible that I believe has taught me the most about humility is this one: “Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.” (Philippians 2:3-4, NLT) That’s a rather difficult couple of verses to actually do. Thinking of others as better than myself is honestly not something that comes easily for me.

But taking this and working to live it has had some unusually positive results. I’ve found that if I expect someone’s motivations for what they do to be excellent rather than assuming the worst (which is unfortunately what comes naturally for most people), I wind up learning to like them first, and then learning to actually love them. Part of real, genuine humility is being able to see the strengths of other people – it’s actually not the process of learning to belittle ourselves or acting like we don’t like ourselves just so people will think we’re humble.

When we take the focus of “humility” off of ourselves, we’re no longer constricted to think that somehow self-confidence goes against true humility. Always expect the best of yourself, and continually push yourself to do better at everything. If someone recognizes your efforts and pays you a compliment, it’s not arrogant or anti-humble to accept it.

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