"Keepable" standards.

At the parenting core seminar this past week, Andrew Nichols helped us think through getting to the heart of behavior rather than mere behavior control. He made the point that parents wrongly focus too much on outward behavior, whereas God is not concerned merely with outward behavior as we see most evidently in Jesus' confrontations with the Pharisees; and one of the things that parents might be prone to do is to have a "keepable" standard. The example raised was whether or not children are taught to just ignore bullies. A biblical, grace-full response to bullies should not be merely ignoring them, as the world expects and is the world's standard, but instead should do good unto our enemies and bless those who curse us.

I found this incredibly helpful for thinking through my own legalism and the standards that I set to make me feel "good". This usually consists of having a quiet time and praying daily. It's surprisingly easy (although it shouldn't be surprising if we listen to Jesus' words in the gospels) to fall into the legalistic method of setting goals as a threshold to measure our righteousness.

General Updates:

• The new Karate Kid movie is excellent; I highly recommend watching it. Not necessarily a must on the big screen, but I would argue even an improvement upon the original.
• The batcave guys + AJ + Kelton had a surprise birthday party for me last Saturday, which was awesome. Inaugurated our new grill with hot dogs and homemade burger patties, had some Magic Hat that Kelton brought, and watched some Lost.
• Candace hosted a cookout in VA on Saturday afternoon where I got to see Deep again, met two Pakistani women, and an Egyptian family who had converted to Christianity. I was able to practice a little Arabic with them.