It was a bad customer service experience, and I was the victim. But I don’t want to talk about my victimhood. I’ll get over it. The short version of the story is that we had made a service appointment several weeks ago with a promise that we would receive text-message reminders as the service date neared. Well, the service date came and went with no reminders and no service. In fact, the reason for what we discovered was a cancellation was quite understandable, and, after all, it was a scheduled service call, not an emergency. The frustrating lapse in customer service came after the cancellation. The first time I called about the cancellation, I was told that it couldn’t be helped, but that I might be put on a waiting list for future service, but that they had no idea whether the new service call might be in a few days, a few weeks, or even a few months. Stuff happens. Yes, I was frustrated, and I am afraid my frustration showed – not in expletives or accusations but in tone.

I waited a week to make my next call, and as my frustration subsided, I vowed to myself not to add to the tension and anger that fills too much of our social interaction in our age of victimhood.

Back to customer service below.

Empathy, by dictionary definition is “the ability to share someone else’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s situation.”

Empathy is under attack in our age of anxiety. Joe Rigney is a pastor and professor who has written a book about empathy, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits. Rigney “argues that modern empathy can become a counterfeit virtue and a form of emotional manipulation when it is detached from biblical truth.” (Here’s a counterpoint:  Mere Orthodoxy Review.) Empathy is also under attack in the secular world with self-described atheist writer Gad Saad’s Suicidal Empathy in its tenth week on the New York Times Bestseller list. Saad believes modern empathy – feeling another’s pain – is an irrational form of altruism that has created a “horrifying system of inverse morality.” Victimhood is celebrated and success is demonized.

The Christian pastor and the atheist writer agree that the empathy they deride is a perversion of a better kind of empathy described as compassion or sympathy.

Yes, imagining what it would be like to be in another person’s situation can be debilitating, counterproductive, and lead to a loss of compassion and constructive helping. A former American president was famous for feeling our pain, but sometimes we need more. While not simply “feeling your pain,” however, empathy is a Biblical virtue. We are to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15).

Back to customer service. Before I made my (hopefully) final customer service call, I was pretty sure whoever I talked to would not rejoice at taking my call, but I didn’t want her to weep, either. I assumed I was not the only one with a cancelled service appointment having to call to reschedule (and I was correct).

So, no accusations or blaming tone: situation to be resolved and empathy to be shown to that poor customer service worker whose day was hardly full of rejoicing. I think I may have succeeded. Our service call has been rescheduled for seven weeks from now. Our conversation was friendly in tone, and she told me it was all the computer’s fault.

I tell you this not to make myself the hero of my own story. I am not. I tell you this to suggest that rejoicing and weeping with others may be just what our age of victimhood and anxiety needs. Lesson still being learned.

The heatwave that hit much of the country the first week of July did not spare northeast Indiana. It was hot.

One of those hot days a friend asked me if I still went out to run in the warm mornings. Yes, I did (virtue signaled, please acknowledge – if virtue is its own reward, virtue seen is a close second). I am usually out at daybreak, and so avoided the worst of the high temperatures, but with a 75-degree morning the coolest part of the day, the 86-degree “real feel” put me well into the warm-running category. The 80% humidity didn’t help.

There’s a lot not to like about running in the heat, but there was something invigorating about it, too. Despite the sweat, it felt great. Was it a runner’s high from the heat causing more endorphins to be released? Were my muscles and joints more limber than on cold mornings? Or was it just the reward of my virtue? I asked Google why I was feeling so good, and I was told that one of the advantages of warm-weather running is, “increased maximum cardiac output (measured in liters/minute of blood flow) and increased blood plasma volume, both contributing to an increase in VO2max. (VO2max is the maximum rate of oxygen consumption, often referred to as the size of one’s ‘engine’.)”

Nothing makes you feel good like an increased VO2max.

This week’s morning temperatures, even “real feel,” have been back into the lower 60s. No virtue in such running and I think my VO2max may have decreased a bit. Still, there’s a lot to like about running in the cool(er) of the morn. Looks like we’ll be back to hot by the middle of next week, however. Get ready to rise, VO2max! Continue reading →

I am preaching at our church in Ossian on Sunday and very much looking forward to it. The text I was assigned (I really do like being assigned a text as opposed to being left to my own devices to choose one) is 1 Peter 2:9-17. My sermon will be the middle sermon of a three-part series on “Seeking God’s Best for the Places we Call Home.”  This past Sunday our pastor preached on “God’s Best for our Community.” Next week a visiting missionary will talk about “God’s Best for the World.” My topic is “God’s Best for our Nation.” Yes, it fits well with July 5 and the semiquincentennial (I may even say that word in the sermon – our pastor said it Sunday) of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Oh, there will be a tiny bit of red, white, and blue in the sermon, but the point that comes from the 1 Peter text is that we Christians, while citizens of various earthly nations, are called to be a different kind of nation, “God’s holy nation,” Peter says. Unlike Rome’s goal to spread Caesar’s rule, our nation’s purpose is to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9) Continue reading →

I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all that you have done;
I ponder the work of your hands. Psalm 143:5

I was in Denver last week for the General Assembly of our denomination. While it was, I think, a good meeting in terms of content and outcomes, my greatest joy, as always, was the time spent with friends. I especially enjoyed a lunchtime conversation with someone I have known for a lifetime, dinner with friends from not so long ago, and what has become an annual face to face with a former colleague now a continent away. Perhaps my greatest joy came from the group of fellow pastors staying at the same hotel and with whom I shared more than one dinner or evening of good conversation. And they’re all young – young, as in young enough to be my sons (SPECIAL BONUS: Our son Christopher, the Air Force chaplain, was among them!).

Our last evening we were sitting around a patio table on a warm Colorado evening. Food, drink, and conversation were good. As it often happens when friends are together, we began to share stories of times past, the good old days. I decided it was best for me to just sit and listen.

“Remember when your parents had to print a map from MapQuest before a trip?” one of the thirty-somethings said, sweet nostalgia in his voice. Stories of MapQuest dead ends and Garmin failures followed. Continue reading →

It is photo directory time at our church. Most church-goers know the drill. Every member or family or regular attender is asked to sign up to have their photo taken by a professional photographer.  Around December each of us will receive a copy of the church’s photo directory with the portraits, names, phone numbers, and street addresses of all of those who participated. In the meantime, the directory company will try to sell us multiple copies of our portraits to give to family members and loved ones as Christmas presents. It’s designed as a win-win. The church members get photo directories, and the company makes money off the portraits it sells.

For all the hassle the process tends to be, I am all in favor of church photo directories.

“Who is that person who always sits on the left side towards the back?”

Right now our church is at the point of trying to get as many of us as possible to sign up to have our photos taken. Becky and I have made our appointment. Continue reading →