Well, I saw Nathan Fielder's documentary You Can See Everything last night, and it's really a pretty stunning movie. One that's particularly timely for some of my own personal ponderings. First, let me give you the premise. Nathan Fielder is a deadpan comic who likes to set up these absurd situations and has had a couple of popular television shows. A couple of years ago, he was contacted by a guy named Billy, who, if I have this straight, is actually married to Elizabeth Holmes. Elizabeth Holmes, or Liz as they call her in the film, was one of the founders of Theranos, a company that claimed to have developed a device that could run all these health tests with just one drop of blood. The company grew to be worth billions of dollars. Holmes became a superstar because she was a young woman with a strangely deep voice who modeled herself on Steve Jobs. Problem was, the device couldn't do what they said it could do. Eventually, she and her business partner and lover, Sunny, were brought up on fraud charges, among other things. After a lengthy court battle, both were found guilty. Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Billy popped into Holmes' life just as this news was breaking, roughly seven years before the start of the film. They quickly fell in love. They have two kids. And they are working on some new business venture together. The film picks up 34 days before she goes to prison. Billy's offer to Nathan Fielder and the film company A24 is that he can, with his crew, actually stay with them and film the last 34 days of Elizabeth's freedom. The goal, so they claim, is to show Elizabeth for who she really is, help humanize her, and basically rehabilitate her public image. Believe it or not, it's hard to say too much about this film without spoiling several wild twists and turns. But I do think I can say it's basically a game of cat and mouse. The question being asked is: Is Elizabeth Holmes a full-on liar? For example, she repeatedly claims that she's not motivated by money and that her device did what she claimed it did. Fielder repeatedly confronts her on this claim, which then makes you ask the question: Is there something innocent or naively broken about Holmes, and has she just been used as a pawn by her lovers, perhaps again? Is there something broken in her form of communication and her ability to understand how she comes across? That leads to a fascinating scene where Fielder has her watch Abbott and Costello's famous Who's on First? bit and asks her, "Why is it funny?" To which she gives a pretty mystifying answer. And as the story unfolds, the question isn't just whether it's a cat-and-mouse game, or who's the cat and who's the mouse, but whether these are two cats, and the mouse being played with is Fielder himself. The reason this film really hit me, besides just being filmed beautifully and having a wild premise, is that it touches on the issue of people being deluded and perhaps lacking self-awareness. My career, both ministerially and vocationally, has ended up being about dealing with situations that aren't what they seem to be on the surface. My background includes my early years working in collections and fraud, and dealing with complicated HR issues. As a pastor, I've found myself involved in some pretty horrendous abuse cases, three of which eventually involved me working with the police to varying degrees. In many of these situations, I was dealing with people who had been accused of something that they swore up and down wasn't true. And my job was, to the best of my ability, to get to the bottom of it and make a decision on how to move forward. These cases could be disorienting. The number of sweet, innocent-looking people who lie about crazy things in convincing ways and make you feel crazy for questioning the inconsistencies in their stories is legion. I've dealt with people pretending to be dead loved ones for years to take out loans and credit cards in their names. People who falsely accuse others of abuse only to later admit that they did so. A lot of the people I've worked with, I've seen grow cynical. And the best way to avoid that, if you work in these fields, is to always remind yourself that you're kind of like an emergency room doctor dealing with the most intense cases. It's usually not like this. However, that brings me to why I've been thinking about deluded, lying people. Maybe I'm just getting older and more experienced, but it seems like the number of people who believe crazy things about themselves, things that are at odds with reality in almost every way, is increasing. And I've been pondering: Is this a matter of mental health, where there's just something wrong with people's brains? Or is this willful deception? It's had me thinking about things like where Paul warns about impostors deceiving and being deceived, and God giving people over to delusions. And one of my big takeaways is pretty simple: If you engage in lies for long enough, or are allowed to believe lies for long enough, you start to think of them as if they are true, as if they are reality. Which is why one of the greatest ministries of a parent, a pastor, or someone in some form of leadership is doing the hard work of confronting someone and helping them see the truth about themselves. Parents who aren't willing to call out their children are sentencing them to a life of unreality, which will eventually bring them heartache. This actually comes up later in the movie. There is a fairly understated scene with Elizabeth Holmes' parents where you can tell that they love their daughter but believe some claims she's made that they shouldn't. And now she's ended up with a man who is a deluded, crazy person, perhaps for the second time. Anyhow, it's a really good movie... save one scene. There is a totally unnecessary three- to four-second scene where one of the characters is showering naked and you see everything. It's not the woman, and it's not sexual. And if I had to guess, I would say that scene is left in there to show you the sort of hypocrisy or contradiction of what's happening in the documentary. In one way, they will let you see everything, even themselves fully nude. But in reality, they're trying to hide the truth from you, and nothing is as it seems. It's not a bad metaphor for our age.

What's my plan? Same plan as always:

Years ago, I learned that not all gins are created equal. Tonight, thanks to a jar of Dollar General pickles, I learned the same is true of pickles.

Before you make a man a leader, whether it’s a sales manager or an elder in the church, there are a couple of simple questions you should ask yourself. First, is his leadership sought out? There are a lot of people who like to talk and insert themselves into the lives of others. Sometimes that can be mistaken for leadership ability. But they could actually just be busybodies who like to talk about doing things more than actually doing them. This is the opposite of leadership ability. They’re avoiding real work under the guise of being helpful. That’s why it’s important to ask whether their leadership is sought out. Is this someone people naturally go to when they have a complex situation they’re trying to figure out? Do people seek out his judgment, advice, and direction? Both promotions and ordinations are essentially confirmations of something that already exists. A simple metaphor would be that there has to be a fire burning. Making someone a leader doesn’t start the fire. It should only throw gas on it. Second, what is the quality of the people seeking out his leadership? This question isn’t all that different from the first. Is it just low performers? Is it just entry-level people? Is it just people starting out in life? Or is it high performers, peers, and people who have been around the block a few times? What you’re trying to determine is whether this man possesses an ability and capacity that distinguishes him from others. Young people and entry-level employees can easily mistake seniority in life for actual ability and capacity. One of the greatest challenges of leadership is leading people who are very much your equals, or even above you in certain ways. That requires something more than simply being older, more experienced, or more outspoken. If no one is seeking out a man’s leadership, or if the only people seeking it out are those on the very bottom rung, chances are he isn’t a leader. Not yet, anyhow. There are certainly many other questions to ask before putting a man in leadership, but in my assessment, these are two of the most revealing

Hop off the train of disobedience...

You matter to people who will still care and think about you long after you are irrelevant to most everyone else. Set priorities accordingly.

100%. It’s just as bad or worst in reformed/confessional homes. We focus a lot on how the world actually is AND how it could be…

I only play two games: Fight Night (2011) and Civ 5. I’ve been waiting for a new Fight Night for 15 years. I am excited its coming, but I fear it’s going to be terrible.

If the evil zeitgeist of our age is, “You will own nothing and be happy,” then you should be able to see how well that aligns with those who tell you there’s no point in even trying to own things and you might as well give up. People who have a stake in something fight harder to protect it. So, if you want to make people easier to control, you want to divorce them from ownership, one way or another.

First, I doubt this… Second, I hate this. Work as a gift from God. We were created to work. Third, this is the somewhat inevitable rise of neo-feudalism. It may not take this form, but it is already developing.

Every once in a while, I get asked, “Who are your favorite pastors?” I think it’s a funny question. It’s like asking, “Who’s your favorite boxer, artist, football player, or actor?” Those are questions I could answer fairly easily. But asking who my favorite pastor is is closer to asking who my favorite dad, mom, or grandparent is. It’s not so much whether they’re my favorite. They just are. They’re who God has given me. Of course, what people are really asking is, “Who is your favorite writer, speaker, or content producer who happens to bear the title of pastor?” It’s not someone you actually know, other than maybe shaking hands in the lobby or chatting over coffee at a conference. You don’t really have a relationship with that person. All of my pastors have been quite influential in my life. My first pastor was Roger Webb. My second was Randy Warwick, followed by Brian Nevins, then Russell Smith, then a pastoral team led by Tim Bayly, and lastly, Andrew Dionne. All these men have shaped me in very significant ways. And since they were the pastors of churches I joined, they were my pastors. I don’t think of them in terms of favorites. I think of them in terms of influence. Roger pushed me to simply trust God and follow Him wherever He might lead me. Randy taught me, very much by his example, to invest in others and sometimes radically delegate responsibilities. Brian was incredibly compassionate and also introduced me to G. K. Chesterton. Russell was my first Presbyterian pastor, and through his influence, I dove deep into the writings of men like Iain Murray and Martyn Lloyd-Jones, along with the Westminster Standards. Tim was quite the personality, but he was a man who thought a great deal about the inner workings of organizations and the human soul. Andrew was very much a workman, disciplined when it came to sermon preparation, leading elders meetings, and so forth. There were things about all these guys that grated on me at times, and we had some significant theological or philosophical differences. But they were all my pastors, and they all loved me and invested in me. I am who I am in no small part because of their influence. They were real men with real sins and real foibles. Very few of them are the sort of men you would invite to speak at a conference. None of them had super popular podcasts, and only a handful actually wrote books. But again, they were real men whom I actually knew. I think we make massive categorical errors across nearly every area of life these days. Sermons have been turned into commodities. Pastors into celebrities. Churches into purveyors of goods and services. Online social media connections into friendships. And we’ve become so accustomed to these substitutions that we hardly notice the difference anymore. Recovering the West is going to require a stubborn sort of person who simply refuses to play along. You're going to have to be willing to be at odds with the current culture if you want something different. Painting: Hanne Lore Koehler

For the Christian who fears and loves God, the steps outlined by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 18 for dealing with church discipline are always worth following, even when you have reason to suspect they will not be received well. In verse 15, Christ says, “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.” This is the most basic form of church discipline. If someone has sinned against you, Christ commands you to go to him and show him his fault. And if he listens, you have won your brother. What a wonderful thing it is to win a brother! This is a God-ordained means through which the Spirit is pleased to work. Sometimes all it takes for reconciliation is for a person to point out how he was wronged. It may be that the other person didn’t fully realize it. It may be that humble correction brings him to repentance. Many hard hearts have been cracked wide open through the work of the Holy Spirit. So just because we think someone might not listen isn’t reason enough to refuse to go. After all, Christ commands us. When we go in obedience to Him, we go relying on His power. This is not merely a natural thing, but a supernatural thing. But note what Jesus says next in verse 16: “But if he does not listen to you…” Built into this command is the possibility that the first attempt won’t go the way you want it to go. Thinking someone won’t listen isn’t grounds for disobeying Jesus’s command to go to your brother. He has already accounted for that possibility. As a matter of fact, He doesn’t say, “If he doesn’t listen, oh well. You gave it a good try. You can give up.” Listen to what He says: “But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed.” The fact that Christ commands a second attempt if the person doesn’t listen underscores the importance of making a first attempt, when he might listen. The second attempt is an escalation. You bring one or two others to help establish the facts and witness the person’s response to correction. And if he still will not listen, there is a third step: bring the matter before the church. In our Presbyterian understanding, this involves bringing it before the elders who govern the church. Note that even with this third, serious step, there is still the possibility that it will not lead to the resolution everyone is seeking: repentance and reconciliation. The entire flow of Matthew 18 accounts for the possibility that a person will refuse to hear and continue in stubbornness. So refusing to follow the first step because you think, “What does it matter? He won’t hear me,” is disobedience to Christ and a failure to understand how He works through church discipline. It may be that the person’s refusal to listen becomes a further matter requiring discipline. He will not hear the individual, the two or three, or even the church. When the facts have been established and correction is biblical, persistent refusal to hear reveals contempt for the community and its God-ordained authority. That is contentiousness. That is rebellion. And how can you live in Christian community if you refuse to live in subjection to one another and to God-ordained authorities? You cannot. But the person who rejects biblical correction is not the only one who can be in sin. The person who refuses to take the first step for pragmatic reasons can be in sin as well. We should follow Matthew 18 because we love Jesus, because Jesus tells us to, and because we trust Him to work through His Word to accomplish His will. Some people may flee discipline. We must not flee the commands of God. So, brethren, has someone sinned against you? Consider whether you can simply overlook the offense, forgive him, and truly let it go. If you can, wonderful. If you can’t, set up a phone call or a face-to-face meeting this week and deal with it. Keep short accounts. Do it for your own good. Do it for the individual’s good. But by all means, do it for the glory of God.

Well done, @dmichaelclary!

One of the most difficult forms of discipline to practice is choosing not to shield someone from the consequences of their actions. We’ve all made terrible decisions and suffered through the fallout of our foolishness. Consequently, when we aren’t able to keep someone from doing something stupid, we’re still tempted to shield them from the consequences. There are times when that is the right thing to do. Think of a child running into the street. You don’t say, “Well, let him learn his lesson.” That’s the sort of lesson you might never come back from. You shield him from the consequences. But one way to shield a child from foolish decisions is not to shield him from the consequences of less serious decisions. For example, my Uncle Jerry once let me touch an electric fence. It definitely hurt and even left a tiny mark on my finger. But it certainly didn’t kill me, and it taught me to be more careful. Had he shielded me from that lesson, I might have learned it somewhere else with far more dire consequences. It also gave him a pretty big laugh. There are cases in which older children are told they can no longer live under their parents’ roof because of repeated disobedience. “If you won’t live by the house rules, then you can’t live here.” The parents are essentially saying, “I’m not going to bankroll a life of disobedience, and I’m not going to shield you from the consequences of your actions. I’m going to let you find out what happens when you don’t respect the authority of this household or show basic appreciation.” They are teaching their children by allowing them to suffer the consequences. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but one night, when I was about sixteen, I was acting the fool. I think I’d even had quite a bit of alcohol. I came home and got into an argument with my dad. He finally said, “Fine,” and locked the door. I had to sleep in the stairwell that night. It was a good lesson. My dad drew a line in the sand and maintained it, and that helped me grow up. If you shield people from consequences over and over again, they will continue to act foolishly. It can actually embolden them to become more reckless. This is true of children, employees, and church members. Sometimes one of the most unloving things ever done to someone is shielding him from the consequences of his actions. There are truly abusive parents. But I’ve also known many parents who regret their lack of sternness when their children were younger. They wish they had been stricter, at least in certain areas. There are absolutely times to overlook things. You certainly don’t want to make things bigger than they are, and there’s a big difference between simple mistakes and deliberate foolishness. But there comes a point when looking the other way and shielding people from consequences allows them to continue down a path toward all sorts of terrible things. Your abdication will be part of that story. We must cultivate a gracious attitude that loves people enough to disappoint them, even when that means letting them take a hard landing without cushioning the fall. This also helps us understand excommunication. Removing someone from the Lord’s Table is part of delivering them over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. In other words, the church is saying, “You want to live recklessly, at odds with your profession of faith? We’re not going to shield you from the consequences by allowing you to continue enjoying the benefits of the communion of saints as though nothing has changed.” The hope is that, as they experience the severe consequences of life outside the church, God will use that discipline to lead them to repentance. Whether it’s letting your child repeat a grade, letting someone get fired from a job, or excommunicating an unrepentant church member, you must have the courage to look like the bad guy and not look the other way. You must play the long game. You don't because you love them and know this is part of how God works out His good will. Painting: Augustus Edward Mulready