My Attempt at an Iraq Synopsis

Like so many other Americans, I have been immensely frustrated with the situation in Iraq. I’m frustrated by the Iraqi deaths and the American deaths. I’m frustrated at how the world hates Americans in light of our occupation. And I’m frustrated at how some conservative Christians so closely link support of the war with Christian pietism.

But even while I have been frustrated with the war, and at times downright angry about the war, I honestly didn’t have a clue what in the heck was going on over there. I heard about sectarian violence, but I didn’t know who the sects were. I knew a US exit strategy would be extremely difficult, but I didn’t know why.

Well, I suspect there are probably many other cynics out there like me who don’t have a clue what’s really going on in Iraq, and so I’d like to just give a quick overview. I’ve done some research these past few days, and my hope is that whether you’re a cynic or a supporter, that this overview will at least help you be less ignorant. I know I feel less ignorant now, and that’s a good thing.

Here’s the lowdown in elementary, and probably not fully accurate terms:

1. There are three main people groups in Iraq. The Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds. Sunnis and Shiites are two different forms of Islam (think Protestant and Catholic), while Kurds are an ethnic people group (think Italians).

2. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni, and when he was in power, his regime persecuted Shiites and Kurds.

3. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, our leaders were under the assumption that the Shiites and Kurds would view the Americans as liberators. After all, we were toppling Saddam’s Sunni regime that had oppressed them in the past.

4. However, this “liberator” mentality did not carry through. “Liberated” Shiites resented American occupation just as much “defeated” Sunnis resented American occupation. I don’t know all the reasons for this, but probably the easiest way to think of it is just to imagine the Iraqi army (or any other foreign army for that matter) occupying America. Would Americans welcome the foreign army, or resent it? What if the foreign army had laid seige to America in order to instigate the occupation? I think the widespread Iraqi resentment makes a lot more sense when we put ourselves in their shoes.

5. And so you now have a situation where the Sunnis resent the Americans, and the Shiites resent the Americans. And the Sunnis and the Shiites are at odds with each other too given the history of Saddam’s oppression and a myriad of other factors in their country. In fact, the Sunni/Shiite conflict is so strong, that it has erupted into heightened violence not only against the American soldiers, but even more significantly against each other. Sunni against Shiite and Shiite against Sunni. I just read a very helpful article in the latest Newsweek that explains the rise of Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite militant leader who is fighting both the Americans and the Sunnis.

6. And so basically, as the situation stands right now, the longer Americans stay in the country, the more the Sunnis and the Shiites grow to resent them. But were the Americans to pull out of the country like the Iraqis want, the fear is that the Sunni and Shiite animosity would erupt into outright civil war against each other. In recent weeks, tensions back and forth between the two Islamic sects culminated in al-Sadr’s militant Shiites burning many innocent Sunni civilians alive in a Mosque. Of course it goes both ways, because this attack was in response to a prior attack by Sunni militants on innocent Shiites. My understanding is that the main reason Americans are still in the country is to prevent this sectarian violence from erupting into outright civil war. And so if we leave, and war erupts, this is a terrible thing. But at the same time, the longer we stay, the deeper the animosity against us grows. Basically, we lose if we stay, and we lose if we leave. What in the heck are we supposed to do? After reading up on this, I really have no idea. I could just give a cop-out answer and say, “We never should have gone there in the first place,” but the reality is that we are there, and so that answer doesn’t solve anything. (Take note Democratic political candidates who complain about the fact that we’re there, but offer no solution about how to get out)

So there it is. I’m still frustrated with the war, but I at least understand a little better what’s going on now. I’m still frustrated we went there in the first place, but after reading the Newsweek article, I’m also frustrated that much of the good that American soldiers brought after the initial invasion (pouring millions of dollars into rebuilding schools, homes, etc.) has largely gone ignored and unnoticed.

In the end, what’s my consensus on this all? Well, I guess now that I understand the issues a little better, I’m not so quick to demonize Bush and Rumsfeld (take note Democratic political candidates). I now understand the dilemma of us being stuck there, and wouldn’t consider it outright stubbornness on Bush’s part that we’re still there. But at the same time, I am frustrated at the lack of foresight on this. I think it was wishful thinking to assume that the Iraqis would view a foreign invasion as liberation, and I don’t understand how we could have truly assumed that this would be the reaction. But hindsight is 20/20, and I probably would have seen things just as optimistically if I had been the one calling the shots in 2003.

But all the same, I still don’t understand why we invaded Iraq in the first place. The tie-back to bin Laden and 9/11 is a stretch at best, and it just does not make sense to me. Never has. Plus the international community was urging us not to invade, but we did anyway…

Well, there are my thoughts for what they’re worth…

 

Rooted and Established

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have the power, together with all the saints, to know how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all fullness of God.”

-Ephesians 3:14-19

Wow, I really needed to read that tonight. Do you ever have one of those days where it feels like everything that could go wrong does? That was today. Nothing emotionally detrimental or traumatic happened, but it was just completely out of control and stressful.

But then I read this passage. This idea of being rooted and established in love…

I really don’t have any huge insights to speak of, other than to just say that as I reflected on the idea of being rooted and established in God’s love, it was such a re-grounding for me. If you’re having one of those out-of-control days, just pause and reflect on this passage, and the ramifications of what it’s saying. Might shift stuff back into perspective…

 

He who is faithful

As many of you know, I often express myself best in writing. Things so often come out more clearly on paper than they ever do in conversation. Because of this fact, I have for the past year or so been writing e-mails to God. It is often the most natural and direct way for me to pray to him. I don’t do it all the time, but whenever there is something that’s really on my mind, really eating at me, or really welling up in my soul, I like to shoot him an e-mail and just pour out my heart in that way.

I could of course just write my prayers out, and keep them on my computer. But I kind of like the idea of actually hitting send, and shooting them off to another e-mail address, because that reminds me that I’m not just writing a journal, but I am actually communicating with God when I write out these prayers. And so last year I set up an e-mail account for God, and instead of registering the account to the name “God,” I decided instead to register the account to the name “He who is faithful.”

Whenever I write out “He who is faithful” in my e-mails to God, I often like to pause and reflect on what I am actually affirming. I am affirming that God is trustworthy, that He is one in whom I can put my faith, that he will not let me down, that He has a plan that far surpasses my own, that I can simply let go and trust Him. I am affirming the ways I have seen his faithfulness over the years, and I am affirming that He who has been faithful is faithful, and He will continue to be faithful. I can trust Him. I can let go of the reins of my life and hand them over to Him in full confidence that He knows what He’s doing, and He cares about me.

There have been a couple times the last few years, where I have been walking through valleys, and God’s faithfulness has eluded me. I have been down in the shadows, and I have felt forgotten – like somehow God lost track of me and stopped caring, like He just left me to figure stuff out on my own. It’s a horrible feeling. It feels like I’m a plastic sack being whipped around in the wind. Directionless, flimsy.

Those times are tough, but what I have found over and over again is that at the end of those trying periods, God always shows up in such a direct and powerful way, that I cannot deny it. He shows up and He shifts all of the trying times into perspective, and makes it clear that He’s still in control. Two years ago, this happened when I felt directionless after college. After several months of feeling this way, I was hired for my current job after a “chance” encounter with my now-boss in a gas station in a city in which neither of us lived. My boss literally travels all over the world on a weekly basis. He’s infinitely more likely to be in Lebanon or Cambodia than anywhere alongside an interstate highway, and yet somehow he was passing through Fargo, ND when I was passing through, and he just happened to be getting gas when I was getting it, and he just happened to be driving through my home town of Bismarck that evening. He needed a place to stay, he stayed with me, I showed him all my movies, and he hired me two weeks later – leading to a job where I film all over the world, and do exactly what I had felt God calling me to for months and months, but had no idea how it would ever happen.

And it all happened because of a “chance” encounter in a gas station.

When God shows up and reveals himself so powerfully after the periods of questioning, I often sit there and say, “God, why did I ever doubt you? It makes so much sense now. Why did I not trust that you knew what you were doing all along even though I couldn’t understand it?”

When I address God as “He who is fatihful,” it reminds me of the ways that He has been faithful, and it makes me realize that He will continue to be faithful. I need simply to trust.

My prayer is that with time I can have the constant understanding of God’s faithfulness be an ever-present feature of my life.

 

2005 Academy Awards

For anyone who’s interested, I have finally seen all five best picture nominees from last year (thank you Netflix!) and here’s how I would break them down if I had been one of the voting Academy members.

Best Picture: Capote
Runner Up: Munich
Second Runner Up: Crash
Third Runner Up: Brokeback Mountain
Fourth Runner Up: Good Night, and Good Luck

Admittedly, I saw Munich almost a whole year ago now, and watched most of the rest of the movies much more recently…and so if I saw Munich again, I might not rate it as high…

…but all the same, I must say that I was surprised that Brokeback Mountain and Crash were the two films that were all the rage last year. They were well done, yes, but I just thought Capote was absolutely superb, and such a step above those two. Everything about it was solid, and I felt like it came from the hands of a master craftsmen, while Crash and Brokeback had a degree of uneveness to them in my opinion.

I guess I could relate to the theme of Capote quite a bit too, because it was dealing with a very obsessed artist making art about a very tough subject matter (writing a book about a murder). I’ve been there with many of the films that I’ve made in recent years, and could very strongly identify with the emotional toil Truman Capote was going through towards the end of the film.

In any case, the film is rated R and has some language and strong violence, and so I cannot recommend it to everyone. But if you appreciate film like art as I do, it’s definitely one of the better movies I’ve seen in recent months.

 

Covenant Eyes

I think that there are few things that weigh as heavily on my heart as moral scandals involving Christian leaders. I have known several leaders (and have heard about many others) over the years who have had their ministries compromised due to scandals, affairs, pornography addiction, or whatever else coming to light.

Why does this weigh so heavily on me? I don’t know…maybe part of it just pains me to see someone who others look up to fall. It makes me wonder how many people that I look up to are actually hiding things. It makes me wonder if I could fall. It makes me wonder if I have fallen. It makes me wonder how real a faith can be when so many people who profess it don’t fully align their lives with it. It makes me wonder in what ways I am not aligning my life. It makes me frustrated that we speak one thing and do another. It makes me frustrated that we lack grace for others even when we need grace ourselves. It makes me broken and empathetic for the leader who is being publicly crucified. And it makes me frustrated with the leader too. It makes me feel so many things…and it happens every time news breaks about moral scandals in the church.

Sometimes the scandals involve people I know and love. Sometimes they involve people I’ve never met. But even if I have little respect for the person involved in the scandal, it still weighs heavily on my heart every time.

The foundation of the Christian faith is grace. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) Do we understand and live by this grace? Would the downfall of a Christian leader be such a detrimental thing if we truly understood that we are nothing more than people who God has forgiven?

It might make us more humble. Maybe we wouldn’t come across like hypocrites so much.

I don’t know…no profound insights from me today. My head was just swimming, and I needed to get some thoughts down.

I’ll just close this post though by saying that I think one of the most important things in our life is accountability. We live in a society that is getting progressively more and more individualistic. Everyone has their own phones, their own laptops, their own e-mail, their own cloaked identity in this global online community. And with that ability to communicate and exist independent of others behind the cloaked wall of cyberspace, comes much temptation to do things that we’d never want others to know we’re doing, and that we would never do in the plain sight of others.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

If you have never heard of the program Covenant Eyes, please check it out. It is an internet accountability program, and it is one of the greatest things I have ever used. What it does is pretty simple. You install it on your computer, it tracks every web site that you go to, and then every week, it sends the websites that you visit to your accountability partners. It doesn’t disallow you from going to any websites – it just gives you the understanding that you are no longer operating in secret. Sometimes husbands have their accountability reports sent to their wives. Sometimes pastors at a church have their reports sent to each other. I have mine sent to some close friends and mentors.

Please check this out. We cannot live above reproach if we are operating as lone rangers. We need each other to hold each other up.

www.covenanteyes.com.

-Dave

 

Intentionality

I was just logging some interview footage of a pastor out in Chicago talking about suburban and urban churches partnering together. I had asked this pastor in what ways that suburban churches could partner with urban churches if they felt like this is something they should do. He listed off a few ways, but then his closing statement was pretty insightful to me.

“When it comes down to it, if you are intentional about this, you will find a way to make it happen.”

That is so true. Not just as it relates to the specific issue he was addressing, but with so many things in life. I think that as humans, we have such a natural tendency to just float through life and then complain about how things aren’t working out right, or how it’s too hard to do things we know we ought to be doing (be that giving to the poor, eating healthy, or whatever else).

Well, let us always remember – if we truly desire to take some kind of right action in our life, and if we are intentional about it, we will find a way to make it happen.

I have found that one of the most natural ways to be intentional about things is to simply contact people who are more knowledgeable in an area I want to grow in and simply pick their brains, ask for their accountability, etc. Find out from them what practical steps I can take in the direction I know I need to head, and have them hold me to it.

A few areas I have done this recently…

1. Intentionality about being more environmentally conscious – contacted my uncle, who is very passionate about this area.

2. Intentioanlity about finances – contacted several older mentors in my life.

3. Intentionality about prayer and deep abiding fellowship with God – contacted a person I met last May in Hong Kong who has a spiritual gift in this area. Through contacting him, this led to him inviting me to come out and stay with him later this month in Tennessee to attend a conference specifically addressing this issue. I cannot wait to grow in this area through the extended time spent with him, and through the things I will learn at the conference.

4. Intentionality about managing my schedule – I have a LOT more work to do on this, but I recently contacted my good friend Ang, and my mentor, and am having others hold me accountable to it too (this one is gonna be a tough one, I can tell already…as I have a lot of bad habits to weed out of my system in this area)

Intentionality doesn’t solve everything. We need wisdom, balance, and a hefty dose of Divine guidance too…but I think we too often err on the unintentional side of life.

If we feel convicted to make a change in our life, then let’s make it. Stop dilly-dallying, and bring on the hutzpah!

 

In the zone, or zoning out?

I have always been the quintessential night owl. I pulled more all-nighters in college than anyone else I knew. I slept on the floor of my office countless hours while editing the Tsunami and Sudan videos. And I did it all without hardly an ounce of caffeine.

I never drink pop or coffee, so where did my late-night fuel come from you ask? From being in the zone of course. When the distractions of the day die down, when phone calls and e-mails stop coming in, when everyone else is in bed, and it’s only me and my video editing software awake in the world…that’s when the magic happens. I get in the zone and I get it done. Some of my best work has emerged from this 10 pm to 2 am creative golden hour…

There is no question that my most natural rhythm is to edit late at night. But this natural rhythm kind of butts heads against the rest of the world. For instance, I have recently made relationships and local church involvement a higher priority, and this is resulting in a lot of hanging out with friends at night, playing in a worship band at night, etc., etc. These things are great, but the only problem is that if I’m in a life rhythm where I work late, sleep in, don’t show up to work until late, and work late again….then suddenly my personal life and work life are totally butting heads against each other in the evening, and at a certain point, one of them loses out to the other. For my first year and a half or so working at EFCA, my personal life was losing out. For the past month and a half, my work life was losing out. I was just trying to do two things at once, and it wasn’t working.

This was frustrating me like crazy, and I didn’t know what to do about it. So this weekend I contacted a couple good friends to get their feedback on what to do about this nighttime dilemma. And you’ll never guess what they said…

“Why don’t you start working during normal business hours?”

What?! Normal business hours?! What kind of nonsense is that? Seriously!

Well, maybe there is a reason that “normal business hours” exist, and maybe my dilemma hits it on the nose. I’m just a bachelor with no family responsibilities whatsoever, and if it’s already this hard for me to balance a personal and work life in the evenings, then imagine how much harder it will be a couple years down the line when I’m married. And imagine how much harder it will be a few later when I have kids…

No question…if I’m going to be a present husband and father, I need to get a handle on this now.

And so yes, I can hardly believe I’m writing this, but I’m actually trying to shift my life rhythm to one where I actually show up to work at 8 or 9 am, and where I work until dinner time.

A couple steps I’m taking to make this exciting journey into the mysterious realm people call a “normal life” …

1. I’m talking through my schedule with a few people to help me get more of a handle on it and process it.

2. And for the past couple days, I have been logging my every activity the entire day. I write down what I do, how long I do it, and then just a few comments like, “I was in the zone” or “I was zoning out.” The point of this is to help me analyze trends in my day…see if there’s time earlier in the day that I can better capitalize on….basically, I’m just trying to figure out, “Is it possible for me to get in the zone during the normal working hours?” Surprisingly, I found that when I showed up to work by 10:00 this morning, I kind of got in a little bit of a zone the first couple hours. And then come 7:00 in the evening, I actually started zoning out big time. So maybe there is hope in the long run…

In the mean time, I’m honestly not too worried about getting a handle on this too soon here. Growth sometimes comes in spurts, but a lot of times it is just gradual. And though I would love to just say, “OK, I’m going to start working from 8-6 every day henceforth, no exceptions,” I know that I could not effectively make that shift over night. But I truly believe that if I am diligent about talking through my schedule with others, analyzing it, and trying to maximize its daily effectiveness…then I really could get to this point in the next few months. And some day my wife and kids will thank me for it.

Signing off,
The Artist Formerly Known as Night Owl

 

Advocacy

Ad-vo-cate – noun – a person who pleads on someone else’s behalf.

I just realized earlier this week that I think my greatest passion in life is advocacy. Sure, I love traveling to exotic places, filming different people, capturing events on camera…but when it comes down to it, when I sit down to edit the things I have filmed, the films that I get most excited about are the ones where I am not promoting a program, or promoting an idea, but where I am promoting people – telling their story and calling others to take action on their behalf.

I recently heard Gary Haugen from the International Justice Mission speak. Simply put, his organization saves people. They investigate where children are bound in sex slavery, and they free them. It’s a simple, straight-forward concept. People are in slavery. International Justice Mission frees them.

And yet despite its simplicity, I sat in silence for probably 10 to 15 minute after Gary spoke. I could not get over the absolute purity, rightness, and power of this idea: children are in slavery – and we free them. Slavery. Freedom.

After Gary spoke, the worship band at the conference played a song with the following lyrics…

“Our Savior, He can move the mountains,
My God is mighty to save, mighty to save.
Forever, author of salvation,
He rose and conquered the grave, Jesus conquered the grave.”

…and as they played this song, images of child slaves around the world being freed played on the screen. It was so unbelievably moving.

I think maybe this captures why I am so passionate about advocacy. That somehow through my films, I am fostering this to happen. It might not be a slave/free dichotomy. But it may be starving/fed, naked/clothed, orphaned/loved. If I can step up to the plate on someone else’s behalf and cause this to happen, what greater thing can there be in the world? What more powerful thing can there be?

I often get overwhelmed by the mess of the world. The deception, the hypocrisy, the selfishness. It’s in all of us, and we’re so capable of treating others like dirt. I watched “United 93″ last night, and when the terrorists took over the plane, I literally started shaking and sobbing. In July, when Israel started bombing Lebanon, I was infuriated. Right now, I’m struggling with unwarranted anger at a number of people, and I’m frustrated to no end with myself about this. Why is there this angst, this groaning of creation, this fury?

Yet somehow in the midst of all this turmoil, when I simply quiet my soul and reflect on the notion of a single person moving from a place of bondage to a place of freedom, I know that this is right. And if I can help make this happen for others, there is no greater thing. How can I most effectively devote my life to this?

My Sudan video has definitely been my biggest advocacy film yet, but I’m excited to do a couple more of them next year. One in the Middle East, and one on AIDS orphans in Africa. I am particularly excited about the AIDS orphan video, if for no other reason than that I will be living out James 1:27 – to look after widows and orphans in their distress.

With having such a passion for advocacy, I’m just so thankful that Christ is an advocate for me. Sometimes I feel like such a mess, and yet Christ is there to plead on my behalf, and free me. What comfort.

 

Key Result Areas (KRA)

Have you ever heard that analogy asking how many stones you can fit into a jar? First you put in a couple big stones, and it would seem the jar is full. But soon you realize that you can subsequently fit many small pebbles in the jar around those big stones. Again it seems that the jar is now full. However you can still fit a couple scoops of sand around the small pebbles. And then lastly, you can still fit water in the jar.

The point of the story is that if you start with your “big stones” and focus on them, and then add the smaller items later, you can easily fit the big stones and a number of smaller items into the jar. But if you started with the sand and pebbles, and then tried to put the big stones in, it’d never work. Big stones can’t fit around the cracks of pebbles as easily as pebbles can fit around the cracks of big stones.

The same goes for our lives and how much we do and accomplish in a given day/month/year. The stones are like tasks we are trying to accomplish, and the jar is our time. Focus on the big tasks, and you’ll get them done. Focus on the small tangent tasks and they’ll eat up so much of your time that you’ll never get the big tasks done.

I had heard this analogy so many times in the past, that it was almost getting to the point of being cliche for me. However, the analogy took on a whole new meaning when I actually started asking myself what the “big stones” in my life were, and if I was actually focusing on them or letting little pebbles run the show.

Back in January of this year, I decided to get proactive about my big stones, and selected 10 Key Result Areas (KRAs) for the year. These were nothing more than my carefully thought-through, carefully prayed-over chief goals for the year – the things that I absolutely had to accomplish by December 31, 2006, no questions asked.

A few of my 2006 Key Result Areas:

1. Get involved in a local church, stay involved, and join a worship band there. Check.

2. Become competent at scoring movies with Logic Pro, my music composition program of choice. Check.

3. Create a rock-solid financial budget which I abide by. Check.

4. Spend quality time with life-long friends on a regular basis. Continually making this a priority.

There are many more KRAs that I had for this year, covering all aspects of life (mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, recreational, relational, etc.), but this is just a small sampling of them. The main theme of my 2006 KRAs was simply to find balance and a degree of structure in my life. 2005 was a year of flying by the seat of my pants as I traveled all over the world, and pulled endless all-nighters at the office. 2006 has intentionally been a more low-key year in order to build a more solid foundation moving forward. In 2007, I will begin traveling a lot again, but I will be more grounded and effective this time around.

All in all, it is amazing to see how many “big stones” I have actually accomplished by carefully choosing my big goals for the year, by regularly referring to them, and by having several people hold me accountable to them. My KRAs just become a natural grid through which I view any task that comes before me – “Does this fit into my KRAs or not?” If it does, I jump into it with full abandon – if it doesn’t, I simply don’t make it a top priority. Do that for 10-12 months, and you’ll be amazed how many of your big goals you actually start accomplishing.

If anyone is interested to learn more about my approach to KRAs, feel free to shoot me an e-mail, and I can let you know more about them.

-Dave

 

Try reading this post at a normal speed.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cambrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is that the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig huh?