Category Archives: Everything

Who Is Building Your Author Platform?

  By Ted | May 24, 2013 - 10:00 am | , , ,
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This post shares some unconventional advice I got from an unexpected place on building your author platform.

“Success is one thing. Impact is another. I live to impact people.” – Ray Lewis, Baltimore Ravens linebacker 1996-2012.

ray lewis impact

Ray Lewis is about to make an impact

One of my goals with writing is impact. Like Ray Lewis, I want to impact people. To accomplish that goal I need a platform to help me boost the signal of my message so it can be heard over all the noise.

I know I can get lost in a sea of blogs, Tweets, Facebook and Google+ posts. The lack of traffic, and comments on my blog was really starting to bother me. Was I just screaming into the void?

My perspective changed after hearing an interview that Christian singer/songwriter tobyMac did. He talks about platform from the perspective of a guy who has a large one.

I’m not sure I’ve fully recovered from what he said. He talked about how he encouraged people seeking to build a platform to not go around prodding and kicking down doors. He put forth the radical idea to rely on God to provide you with the platform when He knew you were ready for it.

He didn’t give this advice as some sort of good theory. tobyMac claimed that it was the way  he himself has always approached his platform and his life.

He emphasised that it didn’t change the ‘sweat equity’. tobyMac still learned his instruments.  He studied successful artists. He practiced for hours, and hours, and hours every day to hone his craft.

I’m working on my craft, both as a fiction writer, and a blog author.

I’m still learning all I can about blogging and social media. My friend, Patrick, hosts an outstanding weekly chat on Twitter about blogging called BlogGab. I’m learning something every single week.

But the leap of faith is to believe that ultimately God will open the doors. It is a radical thought. I do the work, but I depend on God for the results. Noah worked on the ark for years before the first drop of rain. The Apostle Paul spent three years studying, praying and preparing himself for his ministry. If you’d had seen him during that time, you would never have guessed that he would one day have the platform and the impact that he did.

What does it mean?

It means I can exhale. I’m in a season of learning and maturing.  I don’t have to stress or worry over my numbers right now. When I’m ready, the numbers are going to come. I do my part, and I trust in faith that God will do His, in His way and in His time.

I don’t get a ton of traffic most days, but right those visitors I do get are the most important people to me. You are the ones I’m serving even today, and each one of you is an opportunity for impact.

Thank you for making my blog part of your day. I know everyone is extremely busy, and I truly appreciate it.

Micro Reviews of 9 Free WordPress Themes

  By Ted | May 20, 2013 - 10:00 am | ,
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If you are looking for a new theme for your blog, here’s some brief notes on various free WordPress themes I’ve tried.

There comes a point in every blogger’s life where he wakes up one morning and decides his theme no longer works. That moment has come for me.

For a long time I’ve used the excellent Snips theme by Fthemes. However, after looking over some of my analytics numbers, it hit me that no one ever needed to click on the post itself. All my posts were on the front page. It also meant that if I wrote a long, meaty post that you’d have to scroll down pretty far to see my other content.

The theme certainly looked like it was supposed to be doing only excerpts on the front page. It even put a friendly Read More button on the post, but you’d never need to click it.

I’m sure there was something I could have done in one of the files to fix it, but when I went to the support site, I learned that support was for paid themes only. Since I have chosen to use a free theme I accepted that limitation.

Everything else about the Snips theme was wonderful, but this one element became a deal breaker. It was time to look for a new theme.

I’m fairly demanding when it comes to a theme. I wanted a slider, and a place for some widgets, but my biggest demand was that it pretty much had to work straight out of the box with only minimal adjustments in settings. I can read code, and edit a PHP file if I have to, but I’m just as likely to go look for another theme. I’m just not at the point where I’m going to spend money on a theme.

If you are looking for a new theme for your blog, here’s some brief notes on various themes I’ve tried.

Ascetica

Good looking theme, but I couldn’t figure out how or where to setup the Slider. That was all I needed to see.

D’zonia

This theme asked me to manually set up the slider by linking the images and adding the text. I was also limited to just three slides. They have a pro version which probably has more options. I could probably have lived with that, but I decided to keep looking around.

Figero

Same issues as D’zonia. Same result.

Nublu

This theme caused my site to run painfully slow. The troubleshooting advice was the pretty standard “turn off all your plugins and then turn them all on one by one until you find the one that is causing the issue.” That’s actually great advice, but I run my blog in something of a hierarchy. There are some plugins I like more than a theme. If it won’t play nice, I get a new theme. But there are some plugins that aren’t a huge deal, and I’ll try to replace their functionality if that’s the problem. I wasn’t willing to troubleshoot it to that degree at the time and kept looking.

WP-Creativix

I liked this theme intially, but I couldn’t see where my widgets went. I held this one in reserve in case I didn’t find anything I liked better.

Attitude

This would have worked well if all my photos were the exact same size, but they aren’t. What happens is as your slider changes from a larger picture to a small one, all the content on the page ‘jumps’ up. That could be very distracting for a reader. Not entirely the theme’s fault, but enough to put this theme in the recycle bin.

Respo

Another theme I initially liked. The problem was about 80% of my images didn’t work. I have no idea what the issue is. I also wasn’t crazy about the Latest/Popular/Random/Tags box. You had to click each one to see what was there.

Brightpage

I really liked this one, but I found some problems. One, the slider layers in the images. Again, not a problem if all your images are the exact same size, however; if they aren’t you’ll see the image from on old post layred over the image of a new post. Also, I found the font for the sidebar a little hard to read. And last, the sidebar Recent comments were a little smushed, and again hard to read. This was another one I held onto incase I didn’t find something I liked better. It could have been a contender.

 Mantra

I couldn’t have described for you in words exactly what I wanted in a theme, but from the moment I saw the preview of Mantra I new it was something special. The color scheme was exactly what I wanted. The slider was a breeze to set up.

And then I saw the options page. Now for some people, this might be a turn off, but for me, I was like a kid in a candy shop. There were so many buttons, and switches and things I could customize. It was absolutely amazing. I could make the Theme exactly how I wanted it, and I never had to go digging into a php, css or html file. Again, I’m fully capable, but having everything at my fingertips was wonderful.

I loved Mantra so much that I even donated to the developer. It installs a “Buy us coffee” button on the admin panel, off to the right and unobtrusive.

 

 

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Passion For Your Audience Regardless of Size

  By Ted | May 16, 2013 - 1:00 pm | , ,
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I was taught a simple formula for success. You find someone successful at what you want to be successful at, in the way that you want to be successful at it, and then you do whatever it is they did to get there.

So when someone who’s made it big as an artist talks my ears perk up. When they are talking specifically to people they know are at the beginning of the journey, I’m on the edge of my seat.
toby Mac
tobyMac is a singer/songwriter who has made it big. The guy can sell out stadiums and puts out number one hit after number one hit. While I’m no musician, and the truer statement would be that I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, there are enough parallels between the singer and the author that I think what he says might have some application for me.

Recently, he was addressing a group of young people going to a summer camp for musicians. His theme was having a passion for your audience regardless of size.

It’s one of those ideas that seems so obvious, and yet, one that I’m not I always truly live out. Whether you are a blogger, a writer, a singer, or someone making YouTube videos, there is always that temptation to not give it your all. I mean really, whose going to see it, a dozen people, max? Better to buckle down when you know their will be more eyes on you.

I know its the wrong approach. It’s not about producing the next NYT best seller. It’s about writing a book that tells a great story each individual reader enjoys. It’s about how each reader is affected, and how their thinking is challenged or changed.

This is a time when I toiling in relative obscurity. Not many people are going to read the stuff I’m writing right now and I’m okay with that. tobayMac’s message was that it didn’t matter what size your crowd was. Everything the artist produces must have that fire, and that burning passion whether it’s going to be read/heard/viewed by 10 people or 10,000 people.

You just never know which short story, what bit of flash fiction, which blog post, or novel someone is going to pick up. Whatever it was will be their first impression of you. Everything we produce has the potential to draw in fans, or help someone decide that you aren’t what they were looking for.

I can only produce the best work I am capable of producing today. I can see (and to my great delight my critique partners can see) that my stuff has improved over the past couple of years. I know it will be better still in a couple of years if I keep writing, reading and learning.

The trap is thinking that what I’m doing now doesn’t matter because it’s only going to be seen by a small group of people. It matters. There’s an expression that comes to us from the world of sports. Its ‘playing like his hair is on fire’. That’s the passion that’s needed in everything we produce.

Ultimately, the author is always producing for an audience of one. Each reader is an individual, and each story is a collaborative effort between the author’s words and the reader’s imagination.

“Come away with a fire to play where God has you—whether it’s in front of 10 or 10,000–do it with passion!” – tobyMac

 

photo – Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TobyMac

Never, Ever Give Up, and Finish the Stuff You Started

  By Ted | May 6, 2013 - 7:13 pm | ,
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never-give-up-frog-211x300A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the Short Story contest that Tami and I had entered for students who had graduated from Holly Lisle’s How to Think Sideways  (affiliate link) course.

The theme was “The Adventure of Creating”. Entries couldn’t be any longer than 2,500 words. The Deadline for sending in the entry was set for the 30th of March 2013.

I had roughly a month, but the theme had me flummoxed. The adventure of creating? I started thinking about some ideas. I thought about starting. I thought about it quite a bit. What I didn’t do was writing, once again proving that thinking about writing and writing are in fact two very different things.

Time has a way of evaporating on me in these situations, and next time I look up its the middle of March. I stopped thinking about writing and actually put some words into a Google Doc. I finished my first draft the Tuesday before it was due. That left until Saturday night to whip it into shape, and I knew I couldn’t do that alone.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is how critical getting a good critique is for my writing. I put up a thread on the Saucy Ink forums asking for a critique partner. I knew it was ridiculous short notice, and honestly, I didn’t expect anyone would be able to look at it, but two people made time to look at it and gave me some great critique points.

I had some major revisions to work out and only a couple of days to get them done. Scenes need to be added, others cut, and the whole thing was still longer than the contest guidelines.

I distinctly remember walking out to my car after work, thinking about how much work my story needed, and how little time I had left. It was Easter Weekend. I had volenteered to help out with our Easter Egg hunt at church, among other committments.

Finalists in the contest would be published in an anthology. I knew pretty much from the time I put the first word into Google Docs that my story would not be a finalist.

The temptation to just let it go was strong. I had waited too long, procrastinated too much. It wasn’t going to get picked anyway. I should just accept the consequences of my actions, then curl up with my beautiful wife on the couch and apologize to my critique partners. This was over.

I’d love to tell you it was some great epiphany, some mystical voice telling me to stay the course that help me reject that temptation. Nope. It was nothing more than something I had read on the blog of author Chuck Wendig. It was a statement that I have never fully recovered from.

“I am a writer, and I will finish the [stuff] I started.”

Friday night turned out to be a long night, and I was still crunching on revisions Saturday night.

The contest rules stated the deadline was  “Saturday, the 30th of March midnight your time(wherever you live on Earth, Moon or Spacetime not permitted) “.

At 11:30, I was close. I just needed a few formating changes, and a tweak here or there. That’s when my two year old son started crying. My wife was in the shower. It was Daddy to the rescue. I watched the minutes tick down as I changed and rocked the little guy. Finally, my wife got out of the shower. I dash back down the stairs and make the last couple of revisions.

At 11:53pm, I hit the “Send” button. The next day I read Tami’s entry. It was awesome (and inspired my 5 Ways I Mentally Write the Ship post).

I hadn’t quit, even when the temptation was strongest, and I had “good” reasons.

The list was published of the finalist stories that were accepted. I got the email from Tami. Both of us got in!

Throughout the whole process I was convinced I wouldn’t get in (and equally convinced Tami would).

At first, I just sat there slack jawed. I felt like Luke looking up at the X-Wing Yoda had lifted out fo the swamp. I didn’t believe it. I kept waiting for the email to disappear as some figment of my overactive imagination. Tami must have known this because she included a link to the page on Holly’s site where the winning stories were listed.

There it was.

Trials of the Magideem by Ted Atchley.

Never, ever, ever give up, and finish the [stuff] you started!

Tolerance May Not Mean What You Think

  By Ted | May 1, 2013 - 3:08 am | ,
1 Comment

ID-10022096The news about Jason Collins, the first active player in one of the four major sports leagues to publicly acknowledge he is gay, has sparked many conversation across cyberspace. Many people are showing support for Collins and in doing so believe they are being tolerant.

They just might be wrong.

We have, at least in America, been misusing the word tolerance. You can’t show tolerance toward someone you agree with. You can only show tolerance for someone whose views you disagree with. The Miriam Webster dictionary puts it this way

Tolerance : sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own

(emphasis added)

Without conflict, without disagreement, there can be no tolerance. If you don’t differ or have a conflict with Mr. Collins beliefs or practices, you cannot, by definition, be tolerant of him. You simply agree with him.

Intolerance

The difference between tolerance and intolerance is how the disagreement is communicated. Tolerance always affirms the intrinsic value of the other person. Intolerance seeks to tear down and destroy that value, not just of the person’s beliefs, but of the person herself or himself.

Intolerance is characterized by an inflammatory tone, rudeness, name calling, and a general lack of respect. Tolerance leaves the personhood intact. With tolerance, people can come to a point where they agree to disagree, but their relationship with each is not affected in a negative way.

Sometimes, the greatest thing tolerance does is keep its mouth shut. Tolerance allows people to be wrong, and determines if voicing disagreement is even the best course of action at that time.

Intolerance demands that everyone know, loudly and publicly (and sometimes rudely), that someone is wrong. Intolerance acts like since it is right, everyone else must be wrong, and those who are wrong can be treated as almost less than human.

Intolerance often demands that the person it disagrees with be silenced or destroyed. Intolerance says if you don’t agree with me, I’ll give you 1 star reviews, or I’ll boycott your restaurant or home improvement store.

I see so little tolerance these days especially around divisive issues like sexual orientation. Intolerance is answered with more intolerance: tit for tat, eye for eye. In our online lives, we seem to give ourselves permission to treat people in ways we would never dream of treating them in a live, face to face encounter.

I’m also well aware that much intolerance has come from people who profess to be Christians. People like me.  To whatever extent I am able, I’d like to apologize for the intolerant words and actions of those who claim Christ, especially my own. No excuses. No explanation. Just remorse for the damage that was done.

To Christians

If you are a follower a Christ, remember that our instruction is to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).

That means we speak with patience and kindness. That means we speak without boasting or being easily angered. It means we don’t force ourselves on others, we don’t fly off the handle, we don’t have a ‘me first’ attitude, we don’t keep score of the sins of others, we don’t revel when others grovel. We put up with anything, trusting our God, always looking for the best, never looking back, and continuing on to the end.

I don’t claim to always get this right. Not even close.

That comes from a 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. We speak the truth in love and 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 tells us what love is.

If you want to insert yourself into a conversation, test what you are about to say against that standard.

 

 

Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How Zombies Help You Avoid the Passive Voice

  By Ted | April 17, 2013 - 6:00 am | ,
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One of my grammatical struggles is the passive voice. I seem to be drawn to writing it.

Well, the first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem. Sometimes, I seem almost blind to it. Recently, I’ve received a tip that has been a tremendous help in identifying passive voice sentences in my writing.

It came to me via one of the members of my online writing group. The original appears to have come from Rebecca Johnson (@johnsonr) who is a professor of Ethics and Culture for the US Marine Corps in Washington, DC.

Ms. Johnson says in her tweet:

“I finally learned to teach my guys to ID the passive voice. If you can insert “by zombies” after the verb, you have passive voice.

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Let’s look at two sentences and apply Ms. Johnson’s test.

The candy was eaten.

Now we add “by zombies”.

The candy was eaten by zombies.

That works which indicates we have a passive voice sentence. Revisit it! Revisit with fire!

Here’s the alternative.

Zombies ate the candy.

Again, we add “by zombies”.

Zombies ate the candy by zombies.

Apparently, we have some brain flavored candy, and some zombies with a strong sweet tooth. The sentence really doesn’t work with the phrase “by zombies” added. This indicates it is probably active voice.

Thanks to Laura of Saucy Ink for sharing this little trick with me.

 

 

Image courtesy of Kittisak / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

5 Ways I Mentally “Right the Ship”

  By Ted | April 15, 2013 - 6:00 am | ,
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The other day Miss Stark was talking about triggers on her blog.

“Whether we are drafting or revising or querying or waiting on editor subs, we can swing from euphoria to despair and back again before lunch time.  Or sometimes the ride is slower; we’ll bubble happily along for weeks, and then SOMETHING happens that tips our little canoe.  Suddenly, we’re in the water. Drowning, as it were.”

Where I am in my journey today, the trigger that tip my little caneo is reading something brilliantly written. Here’s the summary of my latest encounter.

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My friend Tami and I had entered a short story contest sponsored by our mutual writing Yoda: Holly Lisle. Tami was kind enough to share her story with me. I know I’m biased cause Tami is a friend, but wow. It was absolutely wonderful. She peppered in all these great visceral descriptions of what the main character was going through. Check this one out:

The loan officer approached with a grim look. The hard lump of fear that Sophie had been nurturing just below her breastbone for the last six months took a nosedive, slamming into her stomach and shattering into exactly ten thousand glittering shards.

She wove her theme right from the beginning until this beautiful wrap in the ending. I know she’ll get picked for the contest. She might even win it.

Then I look at the story I submitted and I instantly know that was a mistake. Oh, not that entering the contest was a mistake. My mistake was comparing my story to hers. I know I’m not that good. I know I’m not in the zip code of that good. And it’s just the tiniest baby step from there to I’ll never be that good, and why keep going when the very best I could ever do is become a mediocre writer who will still have to plug away at his ‘day job’.

*WARNING!* Canoe listing. We’re taking on water! *WARNING!*

Then the thought process goes something like this. Why bother writing tonight. You could write 1000 words in your WIP, and they won’t be good enough. You’re not there. These are just more words for the scrap heap.

The thing is, the story I wrote is probably one of my better efforts. Tami even loved the characters. Score!

When these times come I have to mentally right the ship. Here’s how I’m doing it.

 

How do I mentally ‘right the ship’?

#1 Remember It’s a Journey

I’m better today than I was 1 year ago. I’m making progress. No, I’m not where I want to be, but I’m closer than I was.

Thorin Klosowski says it this way:

“Wherever you are in life with whatever you’re doing – you’re going to be ahead of some and behind others. That’s okay. Own where you are. Take time to embrace and celebrate that. Continue moving forward. And never compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.”

- http://lifehacker.com/5955160/dont-compare-your-beginning-to-someone-elses-midd

#2 Defeat the Voice of Perfect

Facebook’s company motto is “Doing is better than perfect”

Etienne Garbugli @egarbugli says “Work iteratively. Expectations to do things perfect are stifling”

I have to realize I will never be a point where I’ll just sit down and bang out a perfect draft. This is today, and will always be an iterative process.

#3 Evaluate My Alternatives

Time is not going to stop because I hit a trigger. Days I don’t write can never be recovered. 2020, my goal year for successfully publishing a book is 7 years away. It will be here in 7 years whether I write another word, or write 10 novels worth of words.

#4 Remember My Why

I have all these stories in my head with all these characters. I started down this road to learn how to share them with the world (and as a reward for sharing them I’d make piles and piles of money).

#5 Renew My Dream

F. Ted Atchley III, Author. People who love my stories. People saying things like “this author changed the way I look at the world.” Hosting a party for my Online writers Group.

What keeps me going is the dream that one day, if I don’t give up, I’ll make it.

 

 

 

Image courtesy of Evgeni Dinev / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Hunger Games – Book Review

  By Ted | April 12, 2013 - 11:15 am | ,
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I’ve added a new category called Book Reviews. If you click the button on the toolbar above, you will see a list of all the books I have reviewed on my site.

hungergames

Hunger Games. I’m pretty much the last person who hadn’t read this book, but I finally got around to moving it from my To Read to Read list.

I didn’t want to like this book. I’m not sure what it is but I’m much less patient with books outside my genre. It’s like I’m looking for the author to give me an excuse to put them down and move on to the next one on my list. Yet, I couldn’t put Hunger Games down.

In my neck of the woods, we have this expression “sticks in yer craw”. It means that something has you occupied that is difficult to resolve. That is main takeaway from the book. It was the kind of story that even after you put the book down is difficult to resolve. I guess it was just the ‘wrongness’ of the whole world (quiet, I’m a writer. I can make up words!)

It was the kind of story that occupied your mind during those times you had to be away from it, those irrating breaks for things like susteance, sleep, and work. I didn’t want to like it, but I had to finish it. There were very few moments where the book gave you a moment to catch your breath.

The ending did a wonderful job of the ending setting up a whole new set of conflicts and problems. It makes very curious to see how the next two books play out. I can sort of see where Kantiss’ thoughts are heading, but the odds against her are so overwhelming, I can’t even fathom how she’ll pull it off.

I did have some minor complaints, the chief one being that I found the style offputting. Collins writes in a first person present voice that was difficult adjustment for me. Early on, I would find myself mentally translating her into a more familiar past tense.

There were a couple of info dumps where Kantiss would relay that she wasn’t telling the whole truth and then say something to the effect of ‘now here’s what really happened’ and launch into a backstory. However, by the first time I hit one of them Collins had me so wrapped up into the story that I didn’t really care.

There were some pretty gruesome scenes. So much so that I’m actually a bit unsure if I want to see the film adaptation. One of the advantages to reading is I can control how bad a particular injury might look. The screen doesn’t offer me that option.

I don’t think I can say enough about how well the character of Katniss was done. I have a younger sister myself and I immediately identified with her protective nature. She came across as real, and deep, and complex.

This is the first dystopian I’ve read in a while, although I used to read them heavily. Back then, the cold war was still on and most dystopian was set in post nuclear type of world. I kept thinking about how incredible and appealing our simple messed up world would look to the people who lived in Panem.

I wasn’t able to do much armchair quarterbacking on this one. I ended up reading it more as a reader than a writer. About all I could was tip my hat and appreciate her work.

Another Take on God Forsaking the Christos

  By Ted | April 1, 2013 - 4:48 am | ,
2 Comments

Eli Eli lama sabachthani! My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?ID-1005856

This is a popular part of many Easter messages. One traditional explanation is Christ, for the first time ever in his existence, was no longer one with the Father. Christ had taken responsibility of all the sins ever committed or that ever will be committed. Sin separates man from God, so the sin Christ took in separated him from God.

But several years ago, I heard a different explanation.

How much of the following poems or songs could you recite from memory given only the prompt shown?

“Oh, oh say can you see…”

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States…”

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,…”

“Our Father, who art in Heaven…”

Just as those poems and sayings are intimately familiar to us, there were sayings that were equally familiar to the audience of Jesus’ times.

“My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?” is actually the first line of the 22nd Psalms.

Just like our popular sayings, the disciples of Christ would have immediately recognized the opening of Psalm 22. Basically, Jesus was just too exhausted and out of breath from the whole crucificiton thing going on to get to the whole thing out. So he started it knowing his audience would recognize it.

It was originally written by King David thousands of years before Christ was born or before crucifiction was invented as a capital punishment. Despite that, it provides a remarkable depiction of what he was going through. Here is a small snippet:

scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me. My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.17 All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.

(The roman soldiers actually did cast lots for Jesus’ clothes).

Then look at what David says in verse 24!

For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one;

he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.

Perhaps instead of telling his audience that God had abandoned him, his message was just the opposite. He wanted to let them know that God still had his back. That God had, in fact, NOT hidden his face from his, and that God had listened to his cry for help!

It certainly changes the way you view his cry. I don’t pretend to know which interpretation is correct, and there are lessons we can learn from either.

Happy Easter!

Image courtesy of bela_kiefer / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Same Sex Marriage Debate Reaches Supreme Court

  By Ted | March 26, 2013 - 11:32 am | ,
2 Comments

The following blog post discusses the author’s feeling about the ongoing debate on same-sex marriages. Continue reading at your own risk.ID-10084275

Supreme Court Weighs In

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently hearing two cases concerning same-sex couple marriage rights. The first is United States v. Windsor where the court is going to determine if the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violates the constitutional rights of same-sex couples. The second is Hollingsworth v. Perry which stems for a challenge to California’s Proposition 8 which places a ban on gay marriage. Proposition 8 passed by a narrow margin in 2008.

What’s the big deal with gay marriage?

The root problem was the government assigning financial and civil benefits to married couples.

Why is the government involved in marriage anyway?

I think it would clear up the matter considerably for the government to drop all recognition of marriage. Leave that to the church and the clergy. The financial and social benefits of marriage (making your spouses funeral arrangements,   giving custody of your minor children, visiting your sick spouse in the hospital, filling a joint tax return, etc.) should be put into a class of civil unions that the government provides. The government can put whatever criteria they want on it. Two people? Three? Of course they would be open to anyone regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.

Control

Once we clear away the financial and civil benefits, the only issue left is one of control.

Much of the passion is fueled because the opponents of same sex marriage have chosen control instead of compassion, and legalism instead of love. The people who opposed them now delight in that control being taken from them. Maybe they should.

Donald Miller says it this way.

“I do not believe a person can take two issues from Scripture, those being abortion and gay marriage, and adhere to them as sins, then neglect much of the rest and call himself a fundamentalist or even a conservative. The person who believes the sum of his morality involves gay marriage and abortion alone, and neglects health care and world trade and the environment and loving his neighbor and feeding the poor is, by definition, a theological liberal, because he takes what he wants from Scripture and ignores the rest.” ― Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What

Much like in the abortion issue, the government is trying to weigh in on a moral issue that should remain the decision of individuals. This shouldn’t be decided in the legislature, but in a one to one, friend to friend, heart to heart, person to person relationships.

My question with both issues is why are those trying to pass legislation trying to get people to live by the morals and ethics of a religion they don’t accept or practice.

Jesus always wanted us to have a choice. A choice to follow him or a choice to not follow him. If people choose not to follow Jesus, then they shouldn’t be forced into Judeo-Christian ethics through abortion laws or same-sex marriage laws.

We should afford them the same free will choice that Jesus/God gives us. Jesus never tried to force someone into a relationship with Him. He’s not insecure, He’s confident. He knows a relationship with Him is only thing that truly fulfills that deep spiritual longing we all feel.

It’s like Jason Gray says in his song, “More like falling in love”

It’s gotta be…..
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance

No Condemnation

Unfortunately, it seems Evangelicals have managed to communicate well on only those two subjects.  What the culture has heard from us is not the message they should be hearing. They have heard condemnation. That wasn’t Jesus’ message.

When Jesus walked this planet, the Jewish religious leaders brought him a woman ‘caught in the very act of adultery’  (John 7:53-8:11).  They reminded Jesus of the Law of Moses (part of the Old Testament) that said they should stone her. Stoning meant throwing large rocks (stones) at her until she died. They asked Jesus what He thought they should do. They were hoping his response would give them grounds to arrest him or discredit him.

The Bible tells us Jesus started writing or drawing on the ground with his finger. Some people have put some real religious overtones into what he was doing like writing the sins of the woman’s accusers or writing the Ten Commandments. My friend Paul put forth the suggestion that Jesus was so disinterested in their question that he started doodling in the dirt. Only when they continued to pester him to answer did he rise up and say “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  Then he went back to his doodling. The Bible says the men went away, starting with the oldest first.

Then Jesus asked the woman, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

And then Jesus says one of the most beautiful things this woman could hear.

“I do not condemn you, either.” 

Do you think for one second that if instead of a woman caught ‘in the very act of adultery’ the religious leaders had brought Jesus a man caught ‘in the very act’ with another man, He would have responded any differently? Do you really think he would have said, “Oh that’s completely different! Quick, get me a stone!”

I don’t think so.

 

 

Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net