The Interview

Karl at St. Stephen’s Musings asked me five interview type questions. You are all invited to participate. (See directions at the end of the post.)

1) You have written some short fiction in the past. Do you have other stories in the works?

Yes, I have been working on a story based on an incident with a college professor. It was about a homework test for a programming class in my senior year of college. I can program practically in my sleep, so I just made sure that I could answer the homework questions in my head. Somewhere there was a miscommunication. We were supposed to write the answers down on paper because the questions on the test were like, “Write your answer to #3 on page 29.” We were not allowed to open the book. So, without the questions, I could not provide answers. I ended up turning in a blank sheet of paper and walking out of class. Later, I talked with the professor. I told her that if she asked me anything from the book, I could answer her right there and then. I knew the material cold. She didn’t ask me any questions. I guess she knew that I knew my stuff from my performance within the class and from a pervious class with her. In response, she quoted the prodigal son parable to me. I earned an “A” in the class, but I always wondered which son she thought I was in the parable. Was I the lost son, or the dutiful son? It took me 17 years to find out what she meant.

2) What made you want to start a blog? What keeps you motivated to blog?

I call my weblog a journal. It is a journal for me to put my thoughts, beliefs, and feelings down on paper. I had always wanted to write, but was never disciplined or motivated enough until I found my faith. A lot of things have changed about me since finding my faith. I wish I had started a year earlier, immediately after finding my faith. I had originally wanted to post entries from many different areas, especially about math (hence the play on words in the name CowPi), but faith in God has moved into the center of my life. (No big surprise.) I joke that Jesus only needed 40 days in the desert, but I needed 40 years. I thought I knew a lot about the world until the Lights were really turned on. I do not believe my story is unique, and if one person can find something in what I write that may bring them a fraction of a bit closer to God, well, isn’t that what community is about?

3) How did you come to settle in Oklahoma?

My wife is from Tulsa. We met during college in Memphis. We married right after we graduated. She had a ROTC scholarship, and was obligated to join the Air Force upon graduation. We requested the air base in Oklahoma City as her first duty station to be near her family. Most people request exotic places like Hawaii or Europe, so getting an Oklahoma slot was easy. After several duty station changes and her medical retirement from service, we came back to Oklahoma.

4) What do you like best about being a high-school math teacher? Would you want to teach at another grade level? Why or why not?

The best thing about teaching is the students. I love doing math, especially the cool stuff in trigonometry and calculus, but it is the people that give me the energy to continue. You cannot touch people without them touching you. I didn’t know it when I first went into teaching, but it is a way for me to serve others, which is ultimately a way for me to show my love for God.

I thought I would like to teach college level, but I don’t think that there is any continuity in it for the instructors. At the high school level, especially so in a small catholic school, I can witness students grow in all areas of their lives from freshman/sophomore level up through their senior year. It is awesome to be a part of it.

5) You had several very influential people of faith in your life growing up. Tell us a little bit about how they helped guide you to the Roman Catholic Church.

I grew up in a home with two loving and supportive parents with a neat little brother. God was not the center of our lives. (Note, all of us, in turn, found God later in life.) Mom took us to a Protestant church for a couple years when I was around eight or so. I loved going to Sunday school, but the whole religion thing never sunk into my happy-go-lucky childhood. As a result, I developed an agnostic view point. It wasn’t until I met a great friend in college did I finally get a glimpse of what faith was. Tim taught me a lot about prayer and a little about the Bible, but I was missing one important ingredient—faith. I just didn’t get it. I didn’t believe in my heart that God affected change within the physical universe. I didn’t understand the relationship between Him and me. I didn’t have any firsthand experience to help me.

I married a wonderful woman who was Catholic. We were married in the Catholic Church. We tried the RCIA classes, but unfortunately, none of this really worked either because I was still missing faith. I could intellectualize it all, but I didn’t feel it with my heart.

I was teaching in a large public school in February, 2001, when I reached a crossroads in my life. A former administrator from the catholic school I now teach at had gone back into teaching that same year for she had reached her crossroads the year before. Gail was there to offer me the choice to move to teach in a different environment. I did not understand it at the time, but it was a move into a faith-based community. And I did not have any faith!

After the move to the new school, and later in the school year, David asked me to go on this retreat called Kairos. (There was also this one particular student that insisted that I go too.) The retreat is for high school juniors and seniors, but staff were more than welcome too. In fact, it was David’s talk at the retreat that God allowed me to step outside of my doubt and skepticism, and find Him, to find my faith. The handle I reached out to was so simple. I had heard it a thousand times. It just took the right moment with the right people for my heart to feel it. God was my friend.

(This is probably why I sound a little possessive about my faith. It was the only thing I could hold onto while my eyes and heart adjusted to the Light.)

Afterwards, I went back to the RCIA classes with my wife. At school, Brian, David, and I formed, for a lack of a better term, a small prayer group. And this past Easter, I received the big three: baptism, confirmation, and holy communion.

 

Official rules for an interview:

  1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying “interview me.”

  2. I will respond by asking you five questions—each person’s will be different.

  3. You will update your journal/weblog with the answers to the questions.

  4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.

  5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

  6. I will answer reasonable follow up questions if you leave a comment.

(Thank you Karl for the questions.)

Never Too Late

As a recent convert, I find great comfort in today’s reading of Matthew 20:1-16, The Workers in the Vineyard:

Jesus told his disciples this parable:
“The Kingdom of heaven is like a landowner
who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard.
After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage,
he sent them into his vineyard.
Going out about nine o’clock,
he saw others standing idle in the marketplace,
and he said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard,
and I will give you what is just.’
So they went off.
And he went out again around noon,
and around three o’clock, and did likewise.
Going out about five o’clock,
he found others standing around, and said to them,
‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’
They answered, ‘Because no one has hired us.’
He said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard.’
When it was evening the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman,
‘Summon the laborers and give them their pay,
beginning with the last and ending with the first.’
When those who had started about five o’clock came,
each received the usual daily wage.
So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more,
but each of them also got the usual wage.
And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner, saying,
‘These last ones worked only one hour,
and you have made them equal to us,
who bore the day’s burden and the heat.’
He said to one of them in reply,
‘My friend, I am not cheating you.
Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?
Take what is yours and go.
What if I wish to give this last one the same as you?
Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money?
Are you envious because I am generous?’
Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

This parable is about hope, and holds at least three lessons for me. First, it is never too late to find your faith in God. (Or Him find you.) While there is life, there is always hope. (This is one of the reasons why I do not believe we are living in the end times. I believe that as long as God can find one more soul, life on earth as we know it will continue.)

Second, this parable jabs at our human sense of fairness. It does not seem fair for a worker that only works for one hour to get a full day’s wage. God’s ways are not human ways. We should rejoice as God does when another lost sheep is found, no matter what hour of the day. Also, we should be grateful to have the opportunity to work for God in His vineyard, regardless of the length of time.

And third, we should not be comparing ourselves to other people. This is a slippery slope trying to keep up with the Jones’. Isn’t there a commandment about coveting your neighbor’s things? Our relationships with other people are very important, but the most important relationship is between one’s self and God.

Are you working in the vineyard today?

Before and After

Over the last month or so, little things have been popping up here and there that have reminded me of my old self—the self-reliant, skeptical agnostic.

I used to believe in a Creator-God, the Initiator of the Universe. I was not sure if He interfered with things on this planet, and if He did, science would find an explanation for it. Science seemed to have most of the answers I was looking for at the time. I had developed a sense of morality and ethics that paralleled Christianity’s, but did not rely upon God. As for Jesus, well, I saw him as a great moral teacher. And then I found my faith…

Karl at St. Stephen’s Musings posted a link to an article in the newspaper The Oregonian called “Jesus of Nazareth: lord or lunatic?” that gently slapped me into remembering my old ways of thinking.

In the article, David Reinhard asserts that you cannot accept Jesus as just a great moral teacher. Sure, Jesus talked a lot about morality, but that was only half of his story. He also called himself Son of God. As in the article, here is the full quote from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either he was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

In other words, you either accept all of Jesus, or none of Him. You cannot have it both ways.

Now here is the rub: when I was an agnostic, Reinhard’s article would not have changed my mind or heart about Jesus. I would have stubbornly stuck to my faulty beliefs. I would have been content in my dark, little room. Again, I am reminded of the quote from my previous entry:

“I know you inside and out, and find little to my liking. You’re not cold, you’re not hot—far better to be either cold or hot! You’re stale. You’re stagnant. You make me want to vomit. You brag, ‘I’m rich, I’ve got it made, I need nothing from anyone,’ oblivious that in fact you’re a pitiful, blind beggar, threadbare and homeless.” Revelation 3:15-17 (The Message)

(Reinhard’s article prompted me to run out and buy a copy of Mere Christianity.)

Original Sin

Before I found my faith, I had a real problem with the concept of original sin. The first time I attended RCIA classes with my wife, I used it as one of my excuses for dropping out of the classes. I remember someone describing original sin as a stain on humanity, that is all humans have this propensity to sin. Yeah, okay. I was coming from the perspective that all humans were not perfect. We all make mistakes, and to call our mistakes a sin seemed a bit heavy handed.

Of course, now I know that I had an immature sense of sin. I did not understand that sin is about choice—a choice that either brings you closer to God, or pushes you away from God. Our imperfection comes from not always making the choice that brings us closer to God. We are inconsistent creatures.

Now, original sin is a choice that says, “I don’t need God. I can do it all on my own.” Adam and Eve were the first to say this. They originated this choice. Everyone since then has made the same choice, except for Mary and her son Jesus.

— — —

I suppose that most people, either raised in their faith or a convert, reach a point in their lives where they honestly decide in their hearts to believe. They decide to no longer “go with the flow” but take responsibility for their choice to believe. I remember the day I found my faith; or, perhaps I should say that God managed for me to step outside of my doubt and skepticism, and let myself be found. Looking back at that afternoon, I could almost imagine a light going on over my head and a warmth engulfing my body, but that would be embellishing the story. Something did click inside me that afternoon, a change from off to on, and I could begin to see the world in a whole new perspective.

Sometime during the next day, the idea of original sin caught up with me. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I realized how much I had disappointed God. It was a good thing that I was already sitting down when I came to this realization because, as I think back, I probably would have fallen to the floor and curled up into a fetal position. I had felt so smug in my self-reliance. I knew in my heart what it was like to be the Lost Son. Although my baptism has absolved me of this sin, it is still a bitter and humbling mistake that haunts me from time to time.

Revelation 3:15-17

“I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,’ and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.”

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