I get the impression that we as humans like to establish rules based on exceptions. Several examples come to mind, the two I want to address right now are medical ethics and contemporary Christian philosophy. Yeah, I know, two pretty diverse topics. While my purpose is not to be inflammatory, what I say may be controversial and arouse anger in some individuals. However, I’m not going to debate the moral absolutist right or wrong on these issues – I merely want to consider the trends I observe. With that said, I’ll dive right into this.

First, medical ethics – an issue that is no longer an issue limited to healthcare professionals. A lot of the medical practice’s dos and don’ts are now established by lawful conduct instead of by moral code. While I don’t want to focus much on that issue, I bring it up because this concept, that medical professionals only have to be compliant with legal standards, demonstrates to me that ethical rules in medicine don’t necessarily improve the quality of healthcare when those rules are determined by exception.

That’s a long thought and a lot of big words. Let me see if I can explain this more. Many of the legal codes of healthcare (Patients’ Bill of Rights, Confidentiality stuff like HIPAA) are great. They explain many of the responsibilities of the healthcare provider, as well as protect patients from bad care. However, laws can only explain so much. And personally I get kinda skeptical when judges are the ones telling healthcare providers what they can and cannot do (not to mention prescribing medical law, no pun intended). Anyways, it seems like whenever there’s some law that says that everyone has to do this (ex. all parents of minors must be notified if the minor is getting an abortion), or that this treatment is okay for everyone (ex. Plan B oral contraceptive being made an over-the-counter drug) it ends up that the arguments made by detractors and/or proponents relies on some form of “exception” that justifies it being made a rule for everyone.

For minors getting abortions, questions of “what if” scenarios pop up: what if the parents would force the minor to raise the child against her will, what if the parents don’t know about the pregnancy, etc. They’re certainly questions that require thought, for sure. At the same time, the other side argues, “what if the minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will by her boyfriend?” or “what if the minor died because of post-abortion complications without the parents’ knowledge?”, which are equally thought-provoking and troublesome. Like I said, I don’t want to get into the moral judgment of who’s right and who’s wrong, and I also don’t like appealing to majority-rules arguments, so I’ll just raise the question, which one is the exception, and which one does the rule enforce?

You see similar things asked when there were debates about whether the Plan B oral contraceptive should be made over-the-counter. There were questions about drug missuse and abuse by opponents, and questions about unexpected situations (like rape and sexual abuse) by proponents. Again, which situations are the exception, and which situations do the rule enforce?

Honestly I don’t know the answer to those questions – I think both sides have a little bit of both and also have compelling reasoning. I know that sounds kinda weak, but again, I reiterate my opening statement: I’m just considering the trends that I’m observing. I have my personal opinions on what I think is right or wrong, but that’s not what I’m trying to address. I’m merely “thinking out loud,” to borrow the expression – except that instead of speaking I’m typing. Moving on to modern Christianity.

There have been many “new” philosophies that are being introduced by people who claim to be Christian. While most of these people don’t claim to have developed a truly original perspective of the faith, they do propose some seemingly unorthodox thoughts that are suppose to “enrich” our life as a Christian (assuming that one is a Christian). What I ask myself as I’m looking at these ideas now is this: what perspectives are based on exceptions found in the Bible, and which ones are based on the prescriptive texts on those corresponding subjects? I’m running out of time to write on this (I gotta get back to studying), but I’ll just make a brief mention of some popular Christian writings, some of them probably really good, some of them probably really bad, and let you all consider them as well.

I’ll limit this to these five (some are book titles, some just a short description of their thoughts):

• John Piper’s Christian Hedonism (reference Desiring God and seen throughout his other books and messages)
• John Eldredge’s Wild At Heart (pretty much all of his books have some aspect to this idea)
• Bruce Wilkinson’s The Prayer Of Jabez
• Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz
• Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life

Okay, back to studying. I hope I got through this post without offending everybody. But at the same time, I hope all 2 of my readers out there will find this post challenging and stimulating.

Stay tuned for the next post, which could be about Romans, making decisions, something else completely different, or not until I’m done with tests. Which one will it be? You’ll have to wait and see!

The catchphrase of the day is “It’ll change your life.” Pretty much every product sold on the market is guaranteed to do so, as well as every program or thought. We’ve all bought into this idea on one level or another.

I start this post pondering this idea because I just finished a summer program. While it didn’t promise to “change my life,” it did present many counter-cultural issues and challenge my thinking and conduct.

I haven’t really said much about where I was or what I was doing this summer, mostly because I didn’t know how to describe it. I spent eight weeks in Boulder, Colorado, where I lived with four other guys, learning about life, family, and home. For the men, that mostly meant learning practical around-the-home maintenance stuff: plumbing, electrical, structural remodeling, etc. Five women were part of this “Project” as well – they learned about skills of homemaking, like sewing, cooking, bargain shopping, raising children, etc. Now, looking at this from the outside, it appears to be completely sexist and backwards from the “modern” man and woman. I did say that this program raised some counter-cultural issues.

One of these issues was this idea of roles. The program strongly advocates gender equality. Women and men are equally valued and respected. However, gender equality does not correspond with sameness. This program was not designed to tell women that they can’t do home repair and that men can’t cook. What I took from the program was that within families and marriage relationships, men and women need to be respected as equals with different roles. For a “successful” marriage and family, there has to be a willingness on part of both husband and wife to role-play. The Bible is clear on the roles of man and woman. The man was created for hard work. The woman was created to help man. Manhood is rejecting passivity, accepting responsibility, leading courageously, and expecting God’s greater reward. Womanhood is rejecting worldly temptations for significance, believing in God’s priorities, nurturing the next generation, and expecting God’s greater reward. In marriage, the man is the head, as Christ is the head of the church. That means that the man is placed in authority over his wife, not to lord it over her but to protect her and love her. The woman submits to her husband, as the church submits to Christ. That means that the woman chooses to follow her husband, not to blindly accept his decisions or to be trampled, but to support and encourage him.

Okay, that’s a poor explanation of the summer, but I need to move on. Because program structure aside, there were some things that were brought to my attention this summer.

Firstly, my heart has and hopefully will always be to minister to others. Being others-centered is a freeing experience – not much compares to acting like Jesus. But the biggest obstacle to me caring for others is myself. Whether it’s my feelings or my desire to be liked by others or my fears or anything else, nothing should keep me from thinking of others. Sure, a lot of that is caring about what others think and how they’re feeling, but I shouldn’t let the way they feel about me affect my caring for them at all. I think that I’ve let criticism about my actions prevent me from trusting in God and doing good. This definitely doesn’t mean that I won’t make mistakes – I lost count of how many times I learned that this summer. But it does mean that I don’t need to focus on myself every time I get criticized for what I do or how I do it. I also don’t need to focus on myself when others tell me I need to. The more others-focused I am, the less my idiosyncracies will be an issue. I guess to sum it all in one sentence, God molds my character, not me. The more I try to change myself to make others happy, the less I am able to give out to others – I’ll be too busy working on my own flaws (God knows there’s a lot). It’s a tough pill to swallow, but I hope that that lesson will stay with me.

Secondly, I learned that I need to be more open about myself with others. My familial upbringing taught me to listen to others’ problems but never talk about my own. In one sense, I don’t really have many struggles, but at the same time, I was made aware that I can come across as this “perfect” guy who doesn’t need help from others and has it all together. But I’m not perfect. What I’ve learned is that this perception comes because I don’t ever share what’s troubling me. Part of this is my sense of propriety – I don’t like to trouble my friends with my problems and struggles because I don’t think they’re that important, but at the same time I feel alone a lot because most people don’t know what’s going on and don’t seem to care. So I learned this summer that I should be honest about my struggles and feelings. Sure, probably most people don’t care about what’s going on in my life, but more people care about my life than I think.

Lastly, I learned that there are times when criticism and rebuke need to be handled with an apology and moving on. Not every piece of criticism is true. In a sense, this lesson is similar to the first lesson, because it’s about being others-centered. I think that it’s important to receive criticism and rebuke with humility, rather than to respond out of pride. But that doesn’t mean that every rebuke or piece of criticism is true, either. I think that it’s a sad deal that most people are not interested in understanding others – we make assumptions about others and are more interested in making ourselves understood more. This summer I learned that I play the “I’m wrong, everyone else is right” game – if people criticize my actions or motives, I’ll believe that there’s an element of truth to what they say. If my conscience is clear and I haven’t violated Scripture, I’ll assume that there’s something vile hidden deep within me and get down on myself. It goes back to being self-centered. What I ought to do is to apologize for offending whoever is criticizing me, ask for forgiveness before them and God, and move on. There doesn’t need to be a huge sense of contrition after every single mess-up. I don’t have to repent for things that aren’t sin. So while all of this sounds really arrogant and prideful, it’s really keeping things in God’s perspective. Am I wanting to please God, or people? Being God-centered and others-oriented means that if my motives are pure, I can and should learn to not offend people, but those things should not prevent me from trying to do good as best as I can. And part of that is trying to understand people, and being okay with not being understood.

I could probably go on with this, but I’ll leave it here for now. So do I think my life was changed this summer? Not really. But God’s still teaching me things, and He’s still in control of my life. I think that as I continue to obey His Word, I will begin to look more and more like Jesus. That’s my hope and prayer.

As you can see in my sidebar to the right, I have a new section to my website! It’s called Shameless Shoutouts – the part of my website where I give a shameless shoutout to someone who has influenced me or encouraged me in some way. I think this should be pretty fun (though it may be some time between updates). I have lots of friends, and hundreds, if not thousands of people have influenced my life, so if you haven’t appeared on this segment of the site, it doesn’t make you less worthy…it probably just means I haven’t gotten to you just yet! In some way, I hope that this section will encourage you just by learning more about these people in my life, just as these people have encouraged my life.

So who is it this week? Read on for the whole story!

I’m a failure today
I think I have all the signs
I can’t believe I’m here again
Oh, why can’t I succeed?

But I turn to You and I pray
How could You love me anyway?
Nothing good comes from man
But You say, “Come and follow me…”
Oh…

You take all my worries
You take my fears
You take all my failures
You, You set me free
I’m free, I’m free

Today’s a new day
Walking in Your loving grace
You bring promises
Removing my weighing chains

So I turn to You and I pray
How could You love me anyway?
Nothing good comes from man
But You say, “Come and follow me…”
Oh…

You take all my worries
You take my fears
You take all my failures
You, You set me free
I’m free, I’m free

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This song has always been really encouraging to me – it’s written by one of my good friends, Kristen. On her CD, Fulfilled, she explained how this song came about from a time when she came to understand that God loves us in spite of the many failures in our lives. In fact, He loves us because He cannot do anything else – anything less would violate His own nature.

This song spoke peace to my soul today, after I slopped through my anatomy tests. Med school has been a refining experience; I’m realizing that there’s so much I don’t know or understand, and every little bit of selfishness and resentment keeps being brought up to the surface. Today was definitely one of those days when my failures seemed to outweigh the successes in my life. But, as this song (and the correlating Scriptures) reminded me, it doesn’t matter whether I’ve failed every test this week or been the most insensitive jerk in the whole world. God is glorified when I am humbled before Him, and acknowledge that He alone can set me free from the prison of failure that can weigh my heart down.

“But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
- Romans 5:8 (NIV)

“But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection of the dead.”
- Philippians 3:7-11 (NIV)

“Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
For I will yet praise Him,
My Savior and my God.”
- Psalm 42:11 (NIV)

Free
Kristen Davison
© 2005 Kristen Davison

I’m making melody in my heart to You
I’m making melody in my heart to You
Pouring out Your praise with everything within

I’m making melody in my heart to You
I’m making melody in my heart to You
Yours will always be the song I love to sing

How can hearts not love Your name?
How can souls not sing Your praise?
Jesus, You’ve put music in my soul

====================================

“Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
- Ephesians 5:19-20 (NIV)

When I wake up in the mornings, I usually have a song that is coursing through my heart. Usually just singing to the Lover of my soul when I wake is more than enough to make the rest of my day joyful.

The lyrics to this song are very simple, but have always challenged me. The idea that I pour out my praise with everything within makes me wonder, do I praise God with every part of my being? Do I honor Him in all that I do? Do I acknowledge Him in my thoughts?

Another idea that has spurred me in this song comes from the idea of singing the song that I love to sing to my God. This is a song that comes from the natural overflow of my heart, prompted by the revelation of the Creator and leads me to creatively praise Him.

Singing this song is always a joyful experience. I pray that it will be a permanent condition of my heart, that sings in truth and by faith, “I’m making melody in my heart to You, pouring out Your praise with everything within!”

The songs of our hearts, the ones that are our true expressions of worship, come from deep within our soul. Those melodies, those lyrics, originate from our new hearts and go straight to our Father. So the next time you sing praises to God, be sure to sing out the words that burn deep within your spirit.

I’m Making Melody
Matt Redman
© 2000 Thankyou Music (Admin. by EMI Christian Music Publishing)