"K.I.S.S."es

In honor of the recently passed Valentine's Day, here is a "K.I.S.S."

(I'm guessing that many of you know that "K.I.S.S." stands for "Keep It Simple Stupid".)

Today we, as a people, are pretty suspicious of complexity. In cases like a tax attorney who can take a person earning a zillion dollars and make them pay no taxes, we look at complexity as a morally suspicious indicator. Not necessarily "wrong", but something to keep an eye on. The old “I’m not sure how they did that but something just doesn’t look right…”

But today I listen to spiritual, economic and political questions being reduced to competing slogans: "Conservative" vs "Liberal", "Pro Life" vs "Pro Choice", Global Warming “Scarifiers” vs Global Warming “Deniers”... it goes on and on. And these are all issues where important, and often relatively complex, issues are reduced to a simple slogan pertaining to a simple principal which one side or the other believes is the core issue at play.

This is because real issues and real life aren’t simple and they aren’t always easily understood. We use slogans because they clean things up, make them neat (and sometimes they justify the conclusion we’ve already reached on a subject). The problem is that a simple slogan doesn’t really make the complexity go away. Slogans only hide the complexity. As we become adults we eventually acknowledge that “The Devil is in the details.” The very details the slogans help us ignore.

On the other hand, simple principles are often the key to sorting out and resolving complex issues. The problem is “finding the right principal for the problem” and, of course, maintaining the humility to understand that you may be wrong. I think I struggle with these issues on an almost daily basis and heaven knows I don’t have all the answers. But I have come to believe that "K.I.S.S." is important, but it also needs to be modified a little:

“Keep It Simple Stupid...
But Never Make It More Simple than It Really Is."

That’s right… “K.I.S.S.B.N.M.I.M.S.T.I.R.I.” (Yeah, right. I can see right now, that’s really gonna take off and sweep the globe!)

[…chuckle…]

I’m thinking maybe we should just seek God’s face, listen to Him and follow His direction, instead of all this other stuff. Is that too simple? Probably. I'm a simple guy...

“For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.”

- Proverbs 1:32-33

A Small Point about the Divorce Rate

I often hear people quoting a 55% or 60% divorce rate and mistakenly implying that any couple getting married faces less than "even odds" of making it "until death do we part." That isn't true.

What people are not considering is that the "Divorce Rate" incorporates people who are involved in multiple marriages. The divorce rate for second marriages is generally accepted to be around 66.7% and the odds of third (or higher) marriages ending in divorce is about 75%. When ALL marriages are added together you get an average divorce rate of 55% (or ~60% in some studies.)

If you work the math backwards, a 55% overall divorce rate implies a 44% divorce rate among couples marrying for the first time and that the remaining 56% of couples marrying for the first time will be married for life!

Imagine what this number would be if the church withdrew the imprimatur of approval from "christian" divorce. Can you imagine the dramatic difference this change would have on countless children's lives?

Here is how the numbers work for 1,000 couples marrying for the first time:

Calculating a Divorce Rate

	Divorce	Total	Successful	Total
	Rate	Divorces	Marriages	Marriages
1st Marriages	44.0%	440	560	1,000
2nd Marriages	66.7%	293	147	440
3rd Marriages	75.0%	220	73	293
TOTALS	55% !!!	953	780	1,733

[...and keeping in mind that these calculations assume that everyone who divorces remarries, etc. These calculations are just to demonstrate the flaw in using the overall average as a predictor of first marriages.]

Flogging the "Saints"

People have recently pointed out to me that I am "awful hard" on Christians. I taught a Sunday School lesson to a class of friends that was very direct about asking them to examine themselves and quanitify (to themselves) their real commitment to Christ. Some were offended and felt that the lesson was driven by my personal observations about them.

[sigh...]

I taught a lesson about people inapropriately elevating a church's order of worship to an "element of faith" and becoming too attached to thhe same. That became construed as, (by at least one,) an attack on church leadership.

[sigh...]

Read this blog and what will you find? Criticism of Christians...

[sigh...]

These all beg a very important question:

"Am I just a malcontent sowing disruption amongst the fellowship of believers?"

I've met folks like that and I've always hated dealing with them. I mean, let's face it, there will always be something to criticise and some folks will never pass up a chance to do so. Is that me?

I've questioned myself and searched my heart about my motives and here is what I find:

I find that being an American Christian, (with "Christian" politics, "Christian" education, "Christian" behavior, "Christian" world-views and "Christian" opinions,) has become more important to many people than being a follower of Christ.

The letters of the New Testament speak repeatedly and powerfully about unity among believers in following Christ, but American Christians have substituted conformity and accomodation of sin for that call to unity and diminsish the call to follow God in the interest of maintaining order and sustaining a status quo.

Finally, and most terribly, I find Christians clamoring about the disintegration of our country's values and principals at a time when the collapse of Christian integrity is one of the greatest factors propelling the destruction of our country's values and principals.

As I sit here and write these things, foremost in my mind is the Pastor at my church, a man I sincerely love and respect. Paul carries a burden for the lost in our community and seeks to serve and follow Christ. Am I criticising Paul? No. He's no more perfect than I am and he makes his share of mistakes, but I deeply believe his heart is all about serving Our Lord. And my heart goes out to him in the work he has taken on.

Leading a church today is like trying to herd cats. And in the effort to get a group of modern "believers", (with their narcissism and relentless self-centeredness,) to move in in a common direction requires acts that could easily unwind the very purpose of our gathering. As with the Pharisees, the drive to conform Christians to human rules threatens the very soul of believers. And I've seen this danger in the majority of churches I've visited in my adult life.

Ultimately there is only one remedy for this problem: Christ calling us as individuals and changing our hearts.

I put these lessons, these observations, out in the desire that God will find those "who have an ear to hear" and possibly use these postings within His Will for others. I do know He has used these points to reprimand me. I pray that God will protect others from unwarranted criticism and that hearts will be pricked only according to His Will.

Given my profound personal failings, I'm very wary of casting myself as a "Righteous Source of Truth sent to Reprimand Deluded Sinners and Misguided Saints!" I try to remain open to criticism while also taking it with a grain of salt. I've found that Jane Bean's saying from many years ago is still true about me, and probably similarly true about others:

"The Truth will set you free, but first it's gonna tick you off."

My deepest hope is that people will hear me out and then take these things before The Lord for His direction. And I understand and accept that anyone who believes that Christians' role is to stand in judgemnent of the lost are going to find my postings uncomfortable.