Lego and a weird credit card payment
A month or so ago I ordered a Lego set that my kid fell in love with. It was super-popular and backordered, so I paid for it via Apple Pay and figured it’d show up when it showed up. (Having a Christmas present bought early isn’t a bad thing!)
While I was gone on a trip, I got the shipping email from Lego, and by the time I got home the package had indeed arrived. (Lego cat is now built, and will probably end up going to college with the kid. They love it.)
Yesterday I got an email from Lego with my invoice that said that my payment mechanism had failed, and to please contact them at their 1-800 number to resolve the payment difficulty. The email looks legit. The 800 number they list is the US customer service number that is listed on the Lego website. I checked my credit card bill and indeed, I’ve never been billed for it. A quick online search reveals that this has happened to other people and was indeed legit. So all in all, I think the request is legitimate.
Best I can guess, Lego validated the Apple Pay payment at the time I made the order, but then by the time the order shipped and they actually tried to charge it, Apple Pay had expired that number. OK, I can call Lego and give them payment information. Mostly I’m amazed that Lego shipped me a $100 order without confirming first that my payment went through. Who in the world does that these days? Real customer service! Guess I’ll take it.
Not made for omniscience
This from Fr. Kenneth Tanner got to me in a way that lots of words about social media intake haven’t quite.
The firehose can be addictive - to feel like you know everything that’s going on, to see people’s reactions, to opine myself. But it can also be overwhelming in a negative way. There’s so much. To really engage where I’m at, I need to be more careful about how wrapped up I let myself get in the rest of it.
iOS 18 User Beta 1 is out! Now, the annual question: how long will I hold out before installing a beta? If history serves, about half a day.
And yep, 45 minutes later it’s all done for us but a little more rain. We picked up 2” in a hurry, but aside from one small branch that came down I don’t think we took any damage. #IAWX
Family party in the basement watching the storm coverage with a Tornado Warning in our county. Looks like the worst is past of us, but there’s still more to come. Probably 45 minutes to be in the clear.
I’m never sure when I clean the coffeemaker whether the coffee actually tastes better or whether it’s just a placebo effect.
Sometimes being the responsible one at work means leading a big meeting; other times it means starting your day by running the descaling cycle on the coffee machine.
The #Fever were up 31 early in the third quarter and are collapsing here in the 4th, allowing the Mercury back within 11. Some bad coaching here - how the heck do you let the opponent go on a 19-0 run and not call timeout?
Caitlin Clark with 15 points and 9 assists at halftime for the #Fever leading the #Mercury. But for a couple of her teammates’ fumbles, she’d already have a double-double. More importantly, her 15 points are not leading the Fever’s scoring.
#WNBA
More mess at The Village Church
A small bombshell dropped in the Neo-Reformed evangelical world with today’s episode of the The Bodies Behind the Bus Podcast (BBTBPOD). BBTBPOD, which centers stories of those harmed by abusive evangelical church situations, today released an interview with a former chair of the elder board at The Village Church (TVC) in Denton, Texas, originally a campus and then a full plant from The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, pastored by Matt Chandler. Chandler is a big name in the Neo-Reformed world. His sermon audio has been very popular; he took over leadership of the Acts 29 church planting network when Mark Driscoll got out of hand, and has authored numerous books.
Today on BBTBPOD, former TVC Denton elder chair Chris revealed that in 2007, leaders from TVC hired Steve Chandler, Pastor Matt’s father, to work as a custodian at the Denton campus, knowing full well that Steve had a history that included confessed child sexual abuse. This history was not made known to Steve’s supervisor or the staff of the Denton campus until 2009, at which point “safety standards and protocols” were put in place. Steve worked in that role, with full access to the building at all times, until 2012. It was not until 2019 that this information was revealed to TVC membership at a members’ meeting. The statement given to the church at that members’ meeting largely lionized Steve, praising him for “steward[ing] his testimony for the edification of the church”. Steve was reportedly given a standing ovation by the membership at the end of the meeting.
That TVC would hire a known child sexual abuser is horrifying. That they would not inform that person’s direct supervisor or insist that safety protocols were immediately in place is, at best, wildly irresponsible. That when it finally came to light, the statement presented to the church served to lionize the offender and ignore the victim is tragic and infuriating. That all this would be done to provide employment for the father of the celebrity lead pastor is awful. That the church leadership would handle it that way in 2019, in the midst of all the other sex abuse scandals churning under the surface in the Southern Baptist Convention (later coming to light in 2022) is inexcusable.
Why am I writing about this here? While I’ve been out of the evangelical church for 4 years now, I spent most of my adult life in it. I was a Driscoll fanboy for a long while, and when he clearly got out of hand, I became a Chandler fanboy. I wrote positively about it when Chandler took over the reins of Acts 29 back in 2012. I have friends who have been members of TVC. So I write this with some feeling of responsibility both to own up to my own responsibility, and to sound the warning to any who still might hear me and read this far.
The Village Church is not a safe place. Its leadership has demonstrated through several well-documented cases that it cannot be trusted to responsibly handle instances of sexual abuse and misconduct. Matt Chandler himself took a leave of absence in 2022 for vaguely-specified misconduct involving “frequent, inappropriate messages” with a woman not his wife. At each instance TVC’s first move has been to protect the church’s reputation rather than to protect the victim. I am personally convinced there is a direct line that can be drawn between the determinist and patriarchal theology that TVC, Acts 29, and similar Neo-Reformed churches teach and their awful handling of abuse. These churches do not deserve our support or our participation. Those who love Jesus should be praying for the truth to come to light, for justice for the criminals, and healing for the victims.
The best kind of meeting is a cancelled meeting, but the next best kind is a very short one.
Yesterday was college orientation for our second kid. Six weeks from today we move them into college. I’m not ready for this.
When we were at U of Nebraska yesterday for freshman orientation there was also apparently a big evangelical youth camp of some sort on campus. Seeing all those youth earnestly doing individual and group devotions triggered all sorts of memories. I hope those kids find their way out.
A couple recommended reads: Trusting your Heart, and Christianity as an MLM
A couple posts came through my inbox while I was traveling the last few days which I want to pass on and feel like they have some parallels:
Katelyn Beaty asks “What if you can trust your heart?"
I have written before about evangelicals' love for playing the Jeremiah 17:9 card. This tactic is regularly used to push people into submission to their leaders' arguments even when their internal compass says something isn’t right. Beaty calls out this unease with feelings so prevalent in Reformed evangelicalism, and says we need to pay attention to our whole selves, our gut instinct as well as our rational thought.
…I’ve only grown in the belief that our gut is always speaking and deserves to be listened to. “Gut intuition” is distinct from emotions more broadly. But both are pre-rational, something we feel in our bodies before we have the words to articulate them. And I wonder if that’s why a lot of the evangelical world has trouble honoring them: we’ve inherited a mind-body dualism that says that mind is good and the body is bad. And, of course, that the body is the realm of women: messy, “irrational,” “crazy,” prone to quick changes and fluctuations, etc. This is all Plato, not Jesus, folks…
I can’t tell you the number of stories I’ve heard that someone’s “off” feeling about a person, place, or institution proved to be disastrously true, that they should have spoken up sooner but stuffed their feelings in the name of loyalty to a leader or cause. And I wonder if we’d have fewer church scandals if Christians honored intuition as a worthy source of truth — even as a place where the Holy Spirit is speaking to or through us, if only we would listen.
I think she’s onto something there.
Second is Katharine Strange’s post on ‘Christianity vs. Therapy’. In reviewing Anna Gazmarian’s Devout: A Memoir of Doubt, Strange discusses evangelicalism’s long-standing beef with psychology and therapists. Many evangelical churches are strong on Biblical Counseling, a movement which trains laypeople to exclusively use Scripture to counsel people, a movement which is strongly antagonistic to professional psychotherapy. (Oh, do I have thoughts on this. But I’ll save them for another post.)
Strange pulls at another thread in suggesting why evangelicalism is so opposed to therapy, and it resonates with my own experience:
But I think a large part of the problem boils down to the way that Christianity is “sold” in this country. As I’ve written about before, there’s so much pressure to convert our friends and neighbors that what we often end up presenting to the world is a kind of “prosperity gospel lite”—Jesus as cure-all. Being both Christian AND a person with problems is bad for the brand.
This “multi-level marketing” version of Christianity leads to a religion that values a mask of perfection over authenticity. Belonging, in this case, means cutting off parts of ourselves, whether that’s our sexuality/gender expression, our personal struggles, or even the fact that we experience basic feelings like sadness, irritation, envy, etc. It’s toxic positivity as a ticket to sainthood. Churches that buy into this methodology create lonely people even in the midst of community (for what is belonging without authenticity?) They also have a tendency to thrust narcissistic and authoritarian types into leadership because these are precisely the kind of people who are best at never letting the mask slip. Such environments can easily erupt into abuse, religious trauma, perfectionism, and scrupulosity.
While I knew MLMs were largely fueled and run by religious people, I hadn’t ever really thought about the idea that evangelicalism is essentially selling Christianity as a sort of MLM, by MLM principles. Now I can’t unsee it.
In the past 4 weeks, we as a family have spent 13 days traveling together, spending every day together and every night in a hotel or dorm room. You can tell it’s starting to wear thin. Tomorrow night we will get home and just be home for a while. I can’t wait.
Just finished watching Fargo Season 5. I’m sitting here in awe. 9.5 episodes of wonderful thriller drama, and the last 30 minutes was the purest Gospel you’ve ever seen. When Dorothy holds out the biscuit and says you just have to eat the bread and accept the forgiveness? Tears.
Last day in the office before six days out. Let’s do this.
Am I coming or going?
I looked at the calendar today and it said July, and I thought surely that has to be a mistake. July already? Where has the time gone? Then I reviewed. Since the beginning of May, here’s what my weeks have looked like:
- NHD State Competition in Des Moines + one day work offsite
- Two days of work travel to Minnesota
- Three days of work travel to DC
- Three days of vacation for HS graduation activities
- Memorial Day holiday week
- Three day work offsite
- Full week of vacation - NHD nationals in DC
- Half week of vacation - DC trip
- Full week in the office (finally!)
Now this week is a holiday-shortened work week and then I’m gonna be out of office Monday/Tuesday next week for college orientation in Nebraska. Then I have five, count ‘em, five regular summer work weeks before taking Anwyn to college for move-in. Then high school starts for Katie, we’re down to just one kid in the house (oof) and it’s fall.
I am not ready for this.
Started in on a novel from the library. Had to put it down. Competently written dystopian thriller, but the dystopia is just a little too close to home. I don’t need that right now.
Ugh, this debate. On one side, a lying gasbag. On the other side, an old, tired man. I mean, I’ll vote for the old, tired guy over the lying gasbag in a split second. But I wish we had a better option.