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Chris​Hubbs​.com

Avionics engineer by day, web and tech nerd by night.

self reflection

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    My own personal Philippians 3

    If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

    But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.

    –The Apostle Paul, Letter to the Philippians

    I have many times read this passage and heard it taught with the message “your family history and good works don’t matter, only giving up everything and serving Jesus matters”. As I read it today, though, where I am in my Christian journey, it hits a little bit different.

    My own personal Philippians 3

    If anyone thinks they have confidence in their evangelical Christian credentials, I have more.

    I prayed to ask Jesus into my heart when I was 3. I was baptized by immersion at a Christian & Missionary Alliance church after giving testimony to my faith when I was 7 or 8.

    My church started AWANA clubs when I was in first grade. I completed 3 years worth of Sparks club in 2 years to get the associated trophy. I completed every year of AWANA after that, all the way through high school, memorizing hundreds of Bible verses. I was given the AWANA Citation Award at AWANA national Bible Quizzing and Olympics. My team didn’t win the Olympics, but won the sportsmanship award, which is probably even more meritorious.

    I was homeschooled in a Christian homeschool grades 1 through 12. I learned from the best Christian curricula. I soaked up Ken Ham’s creation science videos in Sunday School and youth group. As a 7th grader I sent a letter to my best friend, aghast that he entertained the possibility of “long-day” creation. I quoted 2 Timothy 4 to him and said I would be one of the ones who stood up when others were going wobbly.

    I attended an IBLP Basic Seminar when I was in high school. I bought and took home a cassette tape of their Gothard-blessed choir arrangements of hymns, excited to have Godly music to listen to. I attended a church with the authors of a Quiverfull book and the midwife who reported in Gothard’s newsletter that a Cabbage Patch Kids doll was being used by the devil to prevent a healthy home birth.

    I was fully invested in the political implications of my evangelical faith. I speed-dialed Rush Limbaugh and tried to convince his call screener that I should talk to Rush about the dangers of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I bought a constitutional law overview book written by Michael Farris and was jittery with excitement when I got to hear him speak and shake his hand. I marched in a parade carrying a campaign sign for a Republican Senate candidate.

    I sat in years of adult “precept by precept, line by line” Bible study. I went through Evangelism Explosion training, memorized all the cards, and went door-to-door asking people “if you died tonight, and God asked ‘why should I let you into my heaven?’, what would you say?”.

    I passed up full-ride scholarship offers to public universities and instead took out loans to attend a Christian university. I lived in a dormitory that only allowed opposite-gender visits for 3 hours on Friday nights and 3 hours on Sunday afternoons under supervision. I took 15 credits of Bible and Christian ethics along with my engineering classes in order to graduate.

    I started leading worship in church when I was in high school. I led worship at church and in college chapel during my college years. I joined a Baptist church within the first month of moving to Iowa and within the first year was leading worship there. I formed the team, led practices, led the music at multiple services every week for years. I met weekly with the church staff to evaluate the previous week’s services and plan for the upcoming week.

    I became a deacon at that Baptist church before the age of 30. Then I became an elder. I attended the Emmaus Bible College pastor’s conference, the Moody Bible Institute pastor’s conference, and the Desiring God pastor’s conference. I led Bible studies, did in-home pastoral care visits, tracked giving and sent out yearly giving receipts.

    I was part of an elder team that planted a new church in an under-churched neighborhood near downtown in our city. I did tech setup and tear-down and led worship there every week for two years.

    I moved to a larger Evangelical Free church. I served on the worship team there and became the interim music ministry leader when the staff worship pastor left. For multiple years we did three-service weekends spanning Saturday night and Sunday morning with full band and tech team.

    I read hundreds of books on theology and the church. I read John Piper, Tim Keller, Don Carson, Francis Schaeffer, Mark Driscoll, Russell Moore, and N. T. Wright. I led book discussions, wrote blog posts about them, and bought extra copies to give away to others.

    I had three children and raised them in the church. I pushed for us to homeschool them. I dragged them to church every time we went. I did read-alouds of the Jesus Storybook Bible and all the Chronicles of Narnia with them. I drove them to youth group, encouraged them to volunteer, taught them instruments or got them lessons so they could join the worship team themselves.

    But Jesus

    Somewhere in all those years, Jesus stepped in.

    Jesus opened my eyes to his love for every person. Even and especially for those who didn’t look like me or believe the way I did.

    Jesus made it clear to me that all my book learning and ability to argue people into a corner was a harsh cacophony if I didn’t actually love those people and want their best.

    Jesus showed me that God loves my loved ones even more than I do, and that God’s love is the same in kind, and infinitely greater in quality and quantity, as my own love for family is.

    Jesus made it clear to me that so much of the memorization and learning and doctrine we were so proud of as evangelicals manifested as unloving, judgmental, manipulative gate-keeping to those who weren’t in our little club.

    Jesus helped me see that God’s plan for the universe is so much greater and more redemptive than rescuing a small fraction of holy humans out of a burning earth into an ethereal heavenly plane.

    Jesus made it clear to me that his desire is for followers who love God and love their neighbor rather than those who cling to power through politics, nationalism, racism, and misogyny.

    Jesus showed me that loving my neighbor might actually mean directly caring for my literal next-door neighbors more than it means laboring to support church programs while I hold good intentions in my heart for others and invite them to those programs.

    Whatever my accomplishments were to me, I now count them as nothing compared to knowing the freedom and confidence that Jesus has given me as I now know him as the true representation of God, a God who fully knows, loves, and embraces each one of us just as we are.

    Amen.

    ∞

    Fast Car, or, why I'm crying at my desk this morning

    “You’ve got a fast car, I want a ticket to anywhere…”

    If you’ve been a pop music fan at some point in the last 35 years, you’re probably now hearing an acoustic guitar riff in your head. Tracy Chapman’s song Fast Car came out in 1988 and was a Top 10 hit. It’s a wonderful song.

    I heard Fast Car for the first time about 3 months ago when a social media post linking to a YouTube of Chapman playing the song in front of a restless crowd at Wembley Stadium came across my feed.

    I listened to it, mostly impressed at a 24-year-old enthralling a huge crowd with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a microphone. I was probably doing something else at my desk at the time, and didn’t really listen to the words.

    Fast forward to a couple weeks ago when my wife and I were out for a weekend and had dinner on a bar patio listening to a guy play acoustic covers. He played Fast Car. I mentioned to my wife that I’d never really heard the song before a month or two ago. She was incredulous. “You don’t know this song?” It’s about that time in any such conversation that my insecurity and shame creeps in.

    I grew up in a fundamentalist homeschooling household where we weren’t allowed to listen to “secular music”. Classical was OK, and the Christian radio station was fine when it played softer stuff (and tolerated when it played “rockier” stuff), but other than that, nope. By the time I was 17 or 18 and had my own car I could turn on whatever radio station I wanted, but by that time the legalism was pretty well engrained in my young soul and my only comfortable dalliance with “secular music” was the old-time country music I played on the piano as part of the impromptu band at Rinky Tink’s ice cream shop during open mic nights.

    If you’re my age (mid-40s), all that music you grew up hearing in the late 80s and early 90s? I know none of it. Michael Jackson may as well not exist for me. I was scandalized by my cousin’s U2 Achtung Baby poster, both because it was a “secular” rock band (joke’s on me: they’re probably the most Christian rock band of the last 40 years) and because it had the word “baby” on the poster, which undoubtedly referred to some girl they were interested in, and being interested in girls was wrong until you were old enough to get married.

    I was a lonely 12-year-old, and 13-year-old, and heck was just without friends and pretty lonely for a lot of my teenage years. I was 12 years old and desperate enough for help that I called in to donate my own hard-earned funds to the Christian radio pledge drive when the reward premium was Charles Stanley’s book How to Handle Adversity. I anxiously waited for the book to show up, convinced it’d have answers for me. When it finally did, I read what the good reverend from Atlanta suggested: 1) Pray. (Check, been doing that lots.) 2) Lean on friends for support. Well… shit.

    I still looked to music to soothe my soul, but the music I listened to as that angsty just-barely-a-teen was music that told me everything would be OK and you shouldn’t really feel sad because God. (Glad’s song Be Ye Glad and Steve Camp’s Love That Will Not Let Me Go come to mind.) There was eventually some CCM music that hinted at it being OK to be angsty - Michael W Smith sang Emily (“on the wire/balancing your dreams/hoping ends will meet their means/but you feel alone/uninspired/but does it help you to/know that I believe in you?") and then later on a duet with Amy Grant on Somewhere, Somehow (“somehow far beyond today/I will find a way to find you”) - but I felt ashamed to listen to them and feel that way. (They’re still guilty pleasures.)

    I signed up for Columbia House Music Club when I was 17 and somehow snuck in a Bryan Adams best of CD. I presume I only knew his name because his Everything I Do (I Do It For You) song was a big enough hit it got played at my (apparently not quite so fundamentalist but still fundy enough we sang Christianized lyrics to Friends in Low Places in chapel) summer camp. Adams' songs rocked (which I loved) but shocked me and had me feeling bad about listening to them. OK, a song like Kids Wanna Rock was ok because it was just about restless kids. But Run To You was about… sex. We can’t be talking about that, now. Nope. Skip the track.

    It took me well into my 20s to finally let myself listen more broadly to “secular” music, my fundamentalist self surprised to find that Bono was a Christian and U2 was singing amazing stuff, that Win Butler was wrestling with his own spiritual ghosts in his songs for Arcade Fire, that it was OK to just enjoy music that wasn’t written about God because it was good music. And in some ways it was fun to have so much music backlog to discover, since aside from Simon and Garfunkel I didn’t really know much of anything of pop music.

    But it also means that, for a music guy, I’ve got these big gaps of music knowledge that I’m ashamed of. I try to soak in as much information as I can so I don’t appear to be uninformed, but that façade only lasts so long.

    Part of me doesn’t really want to hit publish on this post, because eventually my Dad will read it, and he’ll apologize again. As he’s realized the past couple years how much damage that fundamentalism did to all of us he’s been really broken by it, and apologized over and over. I’ve forgiven him. I’m a dad, too, and have already had to apologize to my kids for the damage that kind of Christianity did to them before I came to my own realization. (I am glad, though, that they’ve grown up with Coldplay and Adele and Arcade Fire and then felt the freedom to find their own music regardless of what genre label it falls under. We’re slowly undoing that mess.) But aside from guilt and forgiveness, I am finding that to start to heal I have to acknowledge the pain of that teenage boy. It was real. It shaped who I am today in a ton of ways.

    You got a fast car
    I got a plan to get us outta here
    I been working at the convenience store
    Managed to save just a little bit of money
    Won’t have to drive too far
    Just ‘cross the border and into the city
    You and I can both get jobs
    And finally see what it means to be living

    You got a fast car
    Is it fast enough so we can fly away?
    We gotta make a decision
    Leave tonight or live and die this way

    So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
    Speed so fast it felt like I was drunk
    City lights lay out before us
    And your arm felt nice wrapped ‘round my shoulder
    And I-I had a feeling that I belonged
    I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

    Lyrics from Fast Car by Tracy Chapman

    13-year-old Chris would’ve felt every word of this song. Would’ve felt less alone, knowing that other people experienced the same ache. But Chris didn’t get to listen to that song when he was 13. And Chris didn’t stop and really listen to this song until this morning. Which is why 46-year-old grown man Chris is sitting at his desk this morning in tears, listening to Fast Car on repeat.

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    Humility

    There are days I foolishly think I’m fairly well-read and have thought through good chunks of doctrine and theology; and then there are the days where I’m reminded that I’m a rank amateur.

    I’m thankful for the folks who so patiently share their wisdom and experience. You know who you are.

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    The sure sign that I'm not blogging enough...

    …is that I start blogging about blogging, and I start thinking more about how I’m going to modify my blog layout/structure/etc than what I’m going to write about next.

    That being said, I’ve been tempted lately to mess around with Jekyll, spin a simple layout/theme of my own, and convert this site to a static site driven by text file inputs.

    But if I’m honest with myself, I know that my blog doesn’t get so much traffic that making it static actually matters performance-wise, and I might not even like the blogging process as much when I change it up. I’m really just interested in the setup and conversion process.

    I think I need to find something more productive to work on.

    ∞

    Some resolutions

    In a week I’ll turn 34, and begin my 35th year of life. That seems momentous somehow. For this 35th year, it’s time to do a couple of blog-related things.

    First: I’m abandoning the Tumblr blog. Not enough value to me to keep it. I’ll make the effort to post links, pictures, and quotes in this space instead.

    Second: I’m going to pick up Kari’s habit of keeping track of good things from every day of the month and doing a monthly post to capture them. They’re great as a retrospective and should encourage gratefulness.

    Third: I’m going to try to blog at least something every week day. Need to get into the habit of writing more. We’ll see how it goes.

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    Listening

    Thoughts from multiple discussions over the last week:

    Most of the time, when people come to tell you that they’re frustrated or upset with you (be it your spouse, a friend, a church member, etc), what they’re looking for first of all isn’t a solution to the problem; what they first want is to be heard. Down deep they know that you love them and want the best for them, but if you go immediately into problem-solving mode without having first stopped to really listen, instead of helping the situation you end up reinforcing their unhappiness.

    It’s hard to just keep your mouth closed, listen, and not immediately be defensive, but quiet listening and acceptance (not necessarily accepting the fault, but accepting that the hurts are real) will accomplish much.

    I still have plenty to learn in this regard.

    ∞

    I still feel the same...

    I thought I’d feel different by now.

    I remember sitting in a recliner in the living room of a quiet house after the boys I was babysitting had been sent to bed. I remember thinking what a nice scenario it was: a house, a wife, children, stability. I remember being that high-schooler sitting there, leaning back and trying to imagine, for a moment, what it would be like to be in that position someday. I remember thinking that it would be a great quiet confident feeling to sit back, survey my domain, and relax in the peace that came from such stability. I remember thinking how wonderful it would feel to be that different person.

    That was 1993, nearly half a life ago. I’m married to a wonderful woman. I own my own home. (No recliner yet.) I have a daughter that is the sweetest little girl that has ever walked the earth. Another child on the way. I have a job that I like, and that likes me. All those things I had wished for, I now find I have. But I still feel like I’m the same person. I still have internal conflicts, fears, and doubts. I’m still imperfect. (Why did I think that would ever change?) I still worry. I still feel guilt, frustration, and anger. I still wonder about the future. There are still times when I am happy to just crank up my iPod and let the music block the world out for a while.

    This is probably my biggest surprise about growing up: that while everything around me has changed, and I undoubtedly have changed, I don’t feel like I’ve changed. Maybe I lack perspective. Maybe if I compared snapshots instead of the continuum, I’d see the differences more starkly. Maybe I’m just forgotten what it felt like to be a teenager. But maybe not.

    A person twice my age will read this, shake their head, and think I could’ve told him that, and it’s likely that 20 years from now I’ll say the same thing. But today I’m not willing to write it off quite that quickly. It means something that the desires of a dozen years ago are still wandering around in me today. There’s something to be learned from the knowledge that home, wife, and child haven’t fully satisfied them. I know some of the answers, but for today I think I’d rather just sit back and ponder the questions. Maybe I need to go find a recliner…