Love Me with Fire and Brimstone

“The people who love you the most, tell you what you don’t want to hear.”
- Larry Shyatt (Florida assistant bball coach)

I found that quote on a daily basketball coaching email I get, and I liked it a lot. It’s something I’ve always believed, and it’s a lot like a Dan Rather statement I referenced on a recent post. Most of us don’t have nearly enough of this type of love in our lives.


Someone else who clearly believes in this is David McCullough, Jr., an English teacher who at a graduation speech reminded students that “You are not special. . . You see, if everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless. ... We have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement.” (You can read an article about the speech and watch a video of it here. It’s 12 minutes long and definitely worth your time).


People cannot reach their full potential in life - whether in terms of relationships, profession, knowledge, faith, etc. - without someone to tell them the difficult truths. A recent Des Moines Register article that struck a nerve with me on this topic was one about young people fleeing traditional Des Moines churches in favor of nothing at all or more “progressive” churches. The woman quoted most in the article stated what she saw as the key reason: most people don’t want to hear about sin, God’s judgment, or hell, so they seek out churches that don’t preach on those matters.

I don’t care if you go to a 200 year old church, a 200 day old church, or no church at all, but I do think that’s an extremely dangerous (yet common) sentiment. It’s the same sentiment I get when my students read Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” It’s rude, they say, for Edwards and churches today to establish that hell exists, that punishment and sin are real, that God has established standards of conduct and a desire for each of us to be better than what we currently are. God is love, they say. He’ll take me as I am, they add, followed by references to what a loving God will or won’t do in their mind.

Yes, God is love. And yes, He’ll take me as I am. Those are true, and that’s what I and many others want to hear. But we also need people in this world to tell us the truths that we don’t. They need to remind us that some of our behaviors are less than Christ-like, and that God does speak through ALL of Scripture. And they need to remind us of hell.

Here’s the thing: “Fire and brimstone” talk, the message of God’s judgment, is a communication of how good God is, of how far away from Him we are, and how desperately we need Him. It’s a communication that out of love he has created a way to bridge that gap and fulfill our needs. It reminds us He is the goal, not a comfortable, unexamined, unchallenged life here on Earth. And it reminds us that if God is for us, who can be against us?

I don’t like being reminded of my sin. I squirm when new sins I wasn’t even aware of are highlighted, forcing me to change. But I am thankful for those times. For through them, I am better and closer to the goal.

Games of Tag and Endless Conversation

I remember two things about growing up as Dad's partner when I was young and went with him to work on the farm.

The first is the countless rides in the truck. I have no idea how the game originated, but somewhere along the line Dad and I started playing tag in the cab of the truck. I know that playing a game of tag with absolutely nowhere to run seems silly, but somehow we made up rules about stop signs and placement of the truck and other absurdities that made it competitive and fun. It was an ongoing game, and we each took great pleasure in feigning having forgotten the game until the last second, when we could pounce and tag the other individual, jump out of the truck, and claim victory. The game was ongoing and lasted for many years. Bragging rights in our game of tag were larger than any trophy I could imagine in my youth.

The other memory I have of those days were the number of times Dad would get into a conversation with someone, and I had to stand there and wait, bored as hell. I could even predict when it was going to happen based on the time of day, location, and personnel we encountered. Dad would stand and talk for what seemed like hours to one of his landlords, or around a coffee table at the local welding business, or especially at the Coop. I knew better than to whine about it being time to go because I was bored; instead, I just stood there, occasionally listened, smiled when referred to, and bet with myself on how long it would take before we could leave. It didn't take long for me to figure out his "getting ready to leave" words. When certain phrases came up, I knew my wait was down to a couple of minutes.

As a man and a father now, I see two ideas I should have learned from these, whether he meant me to or not. The first is that every minute with my kids is an opportunity. Dad was a busy guy, and so am I now; what he showed in that game of tag was a willingness to make the moments we had together in the truck valuable. It was a stupid game of tag with ridiculous rules, and all DOT officials would probably frown on the lack of strict attention on the driving itself. But I remember it fondly, and it was something we did together that I remember more than two decades after the fact.

I also learned to value people. What I didn't understand in my youthful desire to get from place to place as quickly as possible is that Dad was building relationships. People are the real currency, not busyness. I have spent a great deal of time in my adult life rushing from place to place, hurrying to this duty and that accomplishment, chasing God knows what. In my rush to get I don't know where, I know there are times I saw people who wanted to stop and talk as a liability, not an opportunity. I wish I hadn't waited until I was 32 to learn the lesson of sitting around a table with cheap coffee, a cookie or two, and random conversation. But I know it now.

I may be a late learner, but I'm glad Dad was there to act out the lesson that no matter how busy the schedule is, slow down for your kids and slow down for people.  

A Smile as Big as My Face

Several months ago Emily, the girls, and I were at a hotel swimming pool. We played and splashed as most people would, and then a spontaneous game erupted: Throw the Roo. Roo is our affectionate nickname for my oldest daughter, Elise. Emily and I began throwing her up in the air to each other in the pool, catching her as she splashed and flailed and giggled into our arms. We had a great time.

This week Elise decided she wanted to draw a picture of us playing "Throw the Roo." While she's experimented with art by drawing shapes; cutting up construction paper into millions of pieces of confetti and taping them on individually to random areas of our home; and placing ink stamps, paint, and markers on paper and most areas of her body, this was her first real "scene" that she's drawn. Though a biased parent, I was impressed with the result, as I had never seen her draw anything like this before.

I was more impressed when she began telling me about the picture. She told me that she was the one in the middle, and "I have a smile that's as big as my face because I was having so much fun." That felt good. Really good. I'm not going to lie, I carry around a lot of guilt, hoping I haven't cheated my daughters out of a lot of fun times because I've chosen to drown myself in graduate work or been on bus rides to Des Moines for basketball games. I hope they're not going to look back on their childhood and remember a father who was either absent or in his office in front of a computer screen. And I'm sure I'll always worry about that, regardless of what my schedule looks like. It was great, though, to hear that an unplanned event months ago was still in her memory as causing "a smile as big as my face."

These are the events I am committed to chasing, randomly and purposefully, for both my kids and myself. I think back to times where I smile that big just remembering them - on the river with a friend, nights on the patio around the fire, wiffle ball games, date nights. All of them are with people.

It's a fallen world with fallen people who will most assuredly disappoint me and my family at some point. I'm sure I'll cause my own share of disappointment as well. But I know I want Throw the Roo-type events in my life. I'm committed to chasing them, not fictitious markers of success, one relationship at a time. I'll have to ask Elise to draw them for me, but you'll be able to tell which ones we are: we'll be the ones smiling.

Notes from 'Get Motivated'

Emily and I went down to Des Moines to the "Get Motivated" Seminar a couple of weeks ago. Dan Rather, Bill Cosby, Robert Gibbs, Karl Rove, and Joe Montana were among several speakers on a range of topics. I thought I'd share some of my notes on this blog post.

From Kirk Ferentz:

There are more games lost than are won. People lose because they fail to control the "avoidables" - those mistakes that don't have to occur. In sports and in life, it's not enough to avoid lamenting that which you can't control; you've also got to make sure that you absolutely take care of that which you can.

From Dan Rather:

1. You need someone in your life who will talk "straight" to you. Regardless of whether the truth is easier or hard, there needs to be at least on person who is willing to give it to you. Sometimes we need someone to confirm that we are indeed worthwhile. Others need to get knocked down a peg. Either way, a person like this is there to tell you what you can't see (but need to) on your own.

2. About yesterday - no tears. About tomorrow - no fears.

A quote from John Wooden

I thank God that I'm not what I used to be. If you're desperate to be what you once were, life is not moving in the right direction. 

From Robert Gibbs

Plan as meticulously in your personal life as you do for your professional goals. Everyone talks about their "5-year plan" or something similar that points to where one wants to go in their career. What do you want for your family? What do you want for your friendships? What kind of a person do you want to be? Plan for it. Prepare for it. Take practical steps to advance towards your vision.

From Bill Cosby

You're going to be 38 anyway! Do it! Cosby here is referring to individuals he hears say something like, "Well, I want to be a doctor; but I'll be 38 when I finally get done with school. I'm not sure I want that." Barring some unfortunate accident, 38 is going to come. Would you rather be a doctor at that point, or wishing you were one. Too intimated to start something because the end goal is so far away? Quitting smoking? New degree? Write a book? The more days that go by without starting, the farther back that end goal is pushed.

From Keith Craft

When you live a life that is focused on values, you'll make life better for those around you. A major goal for all of us is to make our own lives better. Much of the fodder for this blog is in regard to my search to make my own better. The point from Craft is that by focusing on values, you'll not only make your own experience better, you'll make the experience for those around you better as well.

Sometimes You've Got to be Stubborn

There are not a lot of words that are positive sounding synonyms for "uncompromising." Some that come to mind include stubborn, rigid, inflexible, hardheaded, dogmatic, and strong-willed. Strong-willed must be the most positive out of the bunch; it's the one my mother uses to put rose-colored glasses on the behavior of my youngest child.

My point with this little lesson in lexicon is that this quality is not one that we embrace in our culture. It is far better to meet in the middle, or be open-minded, or find common ground. In general I tend to agree. Gridlock from hard-liners in Washington has paralyzed the country, and it generally isn't a great quality in a business environment either. Marriages and other relationships are often made or broken based on the ability to be malleable. A good goal is a balanced lifestyle. 

However, it seems that the one topic in our culture that it is most unforgivable to take an uncompromising, stubborn, close-minded approach is in religion. To do so it to commit the sin of all sins in our culture: intolerance. And it is here where I think it is essential to hold firm and find it deadly to compromise.

This idea shows up in the novel Satanic Verses, a book that I wrote about earlier this month. It has much to say on this topic that really resonated with me, despite the fact that the book's focus is on Islam. For instance:

• At one point in the text, for the sake of peace the leader of a nation attempts to make a deal with a rebellious group that is pushing an entirely different religious agenda. One character responds with these words: ‘You miss the point,’ she says softly, coming closer to him, bringing her face very close to his. ‘If you are for Allah, I am for Al-Lat. And she doesn’t believe your God when he recognizes her. Her opposition to him is implacable, irrevocable, engulfing. The war between us cannot end in truce.’
• "For truth is extreme, it is so and not thus, it is him and not her, a partisan matter, not a spectator sport. It is, in brief, heated."
• Any new idea . . is asked two questions. This first is asked when it’s weak: WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway withe breeze? - The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world.

Whether you're on the same page as me theologically or not, if we're talking about something as precious and as important as faith, compromise must not be made. Learning should. Questioning should. Improvement in understanding should. But compromise? Never. For as the quote above says, truth is extreme. And if you don't think that you have the truth, why do you have it?

A friend of mine who isn't on the same page theologically but does enjoy good conversation, debate, and questioning recently sent me a CNN article about a hot-button religious issue. I'm leaving the article and the topic out of this post - I don't want there to be confusion about my topic and purpose here. My major problem with the article, though, is that there were two sides - and both claimed Biblical support. However, one side used actual biblical text; the other argued that biblical understanding must be adjusted as culture changes.

Christians - there can be no compromise with the shifting sands of culture. And for worshipers of culture, there can be no compromise with Christianity. Why make the attempt? Instead, stand strong, inflexible, and stubborn, growing but never offering the truth you hold dear as part of the bargain for being known as tolerant.

Independently Lonely

The Atlantic recently ran an interesting cover story entitled "Is Facebook Making us Lonely?" The article did a pretty good job of not simply throwing Facebook under the bus as an easy target; instead, it concludes that it makes lonely people lonelier and social people more social. The article is worth your time if you get a chance, but my focus in this post isn't necessarily on Facebook itself. Instead, a particular line jumped out at me from the article: "The problem, then, is that we invite loneliness, even though it makes us miserable."

That can't be right, can it? Inviting loneliness with our actions? Surely we would know if we were in fact taking actions towards loneliness. A closer look at my own actions, as well as those of our society, however, support the statement.

The article indicates that our culture here in America is particularly guilty in our quest for independence. We grow up believing that the worst possible adulthood would result in being "stuck" in the same town in which we grew up. We want financial independence, so we work ourselves to death trying to obtain it. We work endlessly on our homes, only we're too busy improving them to ever invite others over to enjoy it. We end up married to a job, miles away from friends and family, shut up in a home we're never satisfied with, watching TV alone so we can tweet alone what we are doing . . . alone. Whenever we can eliminate real people from the equation, we embrace it: self-checkout at the grocery store, self-serve at the pump, self-teaching with online high schools, online banking and shopping and entertainment. We are Americans, the rulers of self-reliance. And we're shocked that we feel lonely.

Many of my decisions over the past couple of years have worked directly against relationship building as well. In a quest for financial gain, professional protection, and more ashamedly, pride, I've been passing away the nights and weekends with a graduate degree. It's been a long, solitary journey. I've enjoyed much of the learning, but it's been learning away from friends, away from family, and away from society. While working towards creating future options, I sacrificed present people. It's been a costly couple of years.

Some people would rather be alone. Enjoying one's own company is not a crime. Being a recluse netted Emily Dickinson fame and fortune (though well after her death). In fact, the inability to be alone and be unplugged is a different problem entirely. To those of you who are happily alone - kudos.

But for people like me, it's time to live on purpose. Most of us desire relationships but are wired to chase independence. Without making conscious changes on purpose, this cycle will never change. I've begun making a few of those changes - my wife and I have set up a regularly scheduled dinner with close friends. I didn't write a blog and work out on Thursday night because having a beer with a couple of friends was more important. More changes are to come in July when I take complete possession of my schedule once again.

I know what I want, and it isn't to live life alone. I'm just not funny enough to stand myself for too long.

Monroe Multipliers

Contrary to popular sentiment, there are more reasons to be a school teacher than June, July, and August. True enough, those are three great reasons, ones that I intend to hold onto with a death grip until I retire. The other major reason that I enjoy the job is the possibility of becoming a multiplier. The definition of a multiplier is one who is able to multiply their influence: not only do they influence the people with whom they come into contact each day, they can potentially influence the future individuals that the original influencee will eventually influence, thereby multiplying their influence. Follow all of that?

I ran into two of the best multipliers this weekend while back in my hometown. The person most responsible for my beginnings as an English teacher is my old high school English teacher, Jackie Grier. Her most endearing quality fell in that she saw fit to not be daily impressed by my wit and clever antics, a practice I thought would be a general certainty. She criticized and demanded and preached; she brought personality and passion to ancient literature; and she wasn't afraid to pressure and guilt students into getting out of their comfort zones. She must have missed all those classes in college that teach about nurturing the souls of those darling students and creating a safe and loving environment for them to naturally develop. Any day I got too comfortable, she knocked my ass humbly back into my seat.

While I always knew I would teach, coaching wasn't something I really thought much about until I was coached  by Brian Hazelton for high school football. Originally I didn't go out for football because of a love for it; frankly, I was scared of the social ramifications if I didn't. While there, though, I developed a love for it; and more importantly, I learned about the type of influence I could have and wanted to have as a coach. From Coach Hazelton I learned how to talk to kids. Talk to them like they are men who are trusted, and they will behave like ones. Tell it like it is, don't fill air with ridiculous motivational cliches that no one believes, and always ask more. And be available. For anything. I remember knowing that I could ask that man anything and still expect a straight, honest answer, even if it was one I didn't want to hear. I also remember walking away from conversations with him always wanting to be just a little bit better.

I had several great teachers and coaches; I'm not one with jaded memories of authority figures who just didn't see what I had to offer. These I write about tonight because I look at what I am professionally now, and I know that more than most others, it is their traits that I've multiplied now as an English teacher and coach.

The multiplying continues. One of my former players who later also was a volunteer assistant coach for me is out interviewing now for teaching and coaching positions. A former student is currently at UNI, preparing to enter the ranks of English teaching. I don't know if I can attribute any of what they have and will become to what they saw from me in our time together. But I can hope. It is that hope, along with the hope of June, July, and August, that keeps me going ten years in.