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I often hear myself comparing the behavior of Christians with that of “mature” Christians.

At this stage in my life I would call myself a mature Christian. I’ve been one for 11 years.

But mature compared to?

Other Christians.

I am diligent in maintaining my daily devotions. I’ve rid myself of all the obvious sins. I tithe and give over and above. I use my gifts to advance the Kingdom.

By those standards, when compared to other Christians, I am definitely more mature than most.

The problem is . . . that’s not the standard by which our lives are judged. Our standard is the life Jesus lived. The life God has called us to steward. Our level of obedience.

1 Peter 2:22 (NIV)
²² “He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth.”

1 Corinthians 4:2 (NLT)
² Now, a person who is put in charge as a manager must be faithful.

1 Samuel 15:22 (NIV)
¹⁵ […] “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the LORD?
To obey is better than sacrifice, […]

If I tithe and give over and above, that’s great. It’s easy to trick yourself into thinking your spiritual life is rock solid because you’re being more “obedient” than 95% of other Christians.

But if God has called you to extravagant giving, then you’ve failed miserably. Your maturity is that of a deceptive child.

Stop fooling yourself into thinking you’re mature.

We’re not.

P.S. This post came across rather cynical. Completely unintentional. God’s been challenging me the past couple days and this is how the post came out.

The bottom line is: seek maturity in obedience to Christ, not in comparison to others.

I’ve been irked at myself lately.

Imagine for a second I’m *gasp* married. Here would be a typical day/week in my married life.

Mornings…

I’d read or listen to this incredible biography about my beautiful wife. It reminds me of how amazing she is.

Work days…

When I get to work, I look at this note card I’ve taped to my laptop. It has a quote from the biography I’m reading; something I thought would be worth remembering about my wife.

During lunch I’ll thank my wife for the  yummy food she’s given me. Mmmm, food.

Evenings…

Every once in awhile I may want to sing some songs about my wife. I want her to know how much I love her and tell her how appreciative I am of her sacrifices and that she’s in my life. I’ll also tell her what I’m struggling with and how she could help me.

Before bed I’ll thank my wife for spending the day with me. And that I love her.

Weekly…

On Sundays I’ll sing some more about my wife. This time with thousands of others who love their wives just as much as I do. Someone will also do a teaching on my wife’s biography. It’ll help me understand the subtle complexities of her personality.

Then on Tuesdays I’ll get together with a smaller group of 15 and we’ll talk about what we learned about our wives and how we can be better husbands.

What’s Been Irking Me

We talk so much about Christianity being a relationship with Jesus, but sometimes, it doesn’t even resemble a healthy relationship.

And I’m ticked off at myself at how I’ve let the act of doing replace the act of being.

If you insert Jesus everywhere I talk about my wife above, you’d have an accurate portrayal of the “relationship” I have with Jesus.

Continue that type of relationship for any length of time and it’ll eventually lead to divorce. Not once during my daily/weekly routine do I ever engage Jesus directly.

There is no deeper, intimate connection.

It’s always peripheral.

What is Jesus saying? What does he miss about the good ol’ days with me? How does he want me to spend time with Him?

I would never know.

It’s as if Jesus follows me all day, but I never once turn towards Him and have any meaningful conversation. But I talk about Him a lot!

Relationship fail.

Luke 10:39-42 (NIV)
³⁹ She [Martha] had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted…

⁴¹ “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴² but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better…”

This is an area that will always be a constant struggle for Christians. What are some ways you guard and fight to keep your relationship with God healthy. One that actual resembles a mutual, two-way relationship?

Over the past couple of months I’ve been on the hunt for a music subscription service worthy of my $5/month.

With the release of Spotify in the US, I’ve now used Pandora, Rdio, MOG and Spotify.

Here are my thoughts about each.

Pandora

Pros

• Custom stations that actually play similar music.
• Terrific genre stations.

Cons

• Limited song selection (800,000).
• Can’t play songs on-demand.

I love Pandora because it chooses what I listen to and it does a ridiculously great job at it. I can create a new Pandora station with a few artists I’m in the mood for and be confident the resulting station is going to be exactly what I want. And if not, I can thumbs up/down songs to tweak the results.

The only problem I have with Pandora is it’s limited song selection (800,000). After awhile songs begin to be repeated.

Relative to others music fans, I don’t have a wide range of music I listen to so this becomes a problem.

Enter the other services: Rdio, Spotify and MOG…

Rdio

Pros

• Great design, user experience.
• Solid Mac desktop app.
• 9 million tracks.
• Great for finding new music/connecting with other music fans.

Cons

• Custom stations not very good at picking related music (at least compared to Pandora).

I’m going to start with Rdio because it’s approach is fundamentally different than MOG/Spotify in two ways: social and discovery.

Rdio describes themselves as a “social music service.” Rdio is built on top of a social network. You can follow users and stalk their listening habits.

This feature goes hand-in-hand with Rdio being a music discovery service as well. Rdio continually encourages you to listen to music as evidence of the main page being what they call “Heavy Rotation.” It shows you what you’ve been listening to the most and lets you see what others are listening to in your network (or site wide). It will also recommend other artists based on what you’ve listened to.

One thing that stands out about Rdio is the design. It’s pretty on the eyes, easy to use and their Mac desktop app is great.

It does not have any pre-built stations like Pandora, but you can create a custom station based on a specific artist, what’s in your Heavy Rotation or what’s saved in your collection (think of it as your favorites). My experiences with these custom stations were lack-luster. I wasn’t pleased with the selection (and there’s no way to influence the station) so I rarely used that feature.

MOG

Pro

• 11 million tracks.
• More control over custom stations (but feature still not usable overall).

Cons

• Horrible site design/layout. Using site is like having a root canal.
• No native desktop app (have to use browser-based player).

What was impressive about MOG was it’s catalog of 11 million songs (until Spotify released in the US). Unfortunately, that’s about it.

The site is poorly designed and a pain to interact with.

One feature MOG does have, however, over Rdio/Spotify is the ability to create custom stations and influence the station by rating songs or using a slider which gradually goes from playing just songs from the artist to slowly introducing other similar artists. But like Rdio, it’s recommendations engine was sub-par.

Finding new music through MOG is done through perusing the Editor Picks or browsing through playlists that have been created. So music discovery is not nearly as strong as it is in Rdio.

Spotify

Pros

• 15 million tracks.
• Good Mac desktop app.
• Integrates well with existing music library.

Cons

• No web-based player.
• Virtually non-existent music recommendations.
• No ability to play custom stations.

Where Rdio is on one extreme of social music and music discovery, Spotify is on the opposite. There’s no social and no music discovery. If you use Spotify, you pretty much have to know what you want to listen to.

One unique feature Spotify does have is their desktop client. It’s designed to replace iTunes. It’ll scan/add your current music library to the app and let you sync your iPhone/iPod using it.

So which is best?

After using them all, I really miss Pandora and how good it’s music recommendation engine was. It fit my music-listening habits well. I just want to listen to music that sounds like ______, but I don’t want to explicitly choose everything I want to listen to.

But, alas, Pandora’s music catalog kills it, so I have to choose one of the other three.

MOG is definitely out of the picture because of it’s horrible site, but rumor has it they’re rolling out a new design soon. Perhaps I’ll take another look when that happens.

Lately, I’ve been using Rdio, but will most likely switch to Spotify (because of it’s larger music catalog). If I cared about the social aspects or discovering new music, then Rdio is the clear winner.

But for my needs, I just want to listen to music. So in my head, the more music I have access to, the better. Rdio doesn’t provide anything I have to have.

In an ideal world, a music service would exist with the music recommendation engine of Pandora, the song selection of Spotify and the design of Rdio. ;)

What are your thoughts? Which service do you prefer and why?

John 12:3-8 (NIV)
³ Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. […]

⁴ But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, ⁵ “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? […]

⁸ “Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. […] ⁸ You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

There’s no question Jesus has called us to serve the poor.

But this story in John demonstrates something interesting. Namely, how obeying a commandment such as feeding the poor may not glorify God as much as you’d think.

Imagine what would have happened if Mary had sold the perfume and the disciples used the money to meet the needs of the poor? That would have been awesome. It would have totally honored and glorified God (Matthew 25:40).

The problem, as Jesus said, is that the poor will always be around. But Jesus and the opportunity Mary had would not be.

While there would be countless Christians able to serve and meet the needs of the poor, Mary was the only one uniquely positioned to anoint Jesus with perfume.

And she seized it to Jesus’ honor.

John 17:4 (NIV)
⁴ I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you asked me to do.

God is glorified when we are obedient to his voice.

The truth is, I could spend the rest of my life crusading and fighting against human sex trafficking but bring God zero glory. Similar to if Mary had sold the perfume and fed the poor. There are plenty of other Christians who God has called to that. I’m just not one of them.

In my own way, I can, however, anoint Jesus with perfume.

What has God asked you to do? What has God uniquely positioned you for? What jar of perfume do you have?

John 12:3b (NIV)
³ . . . And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

I pray our lives glorify God with the fragrance of that perfume.

Let’s compare lists and find out!

I’ve grouped movies into three categories: great, very good and good. Since there’s a bazillion movies out there, I’ve selected only movies made after 2000 and that are in IMDb’s Top 250.

Each section below is sorted alphabetically. There’s no internal ranking in each group.

Great

• Batman Begins (2005)
• Finding Nemo (2003)
• Inception (2010)
• Monsters, Inc. (2001)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
• Star Trek (2009)
• The Dark Knight (2008)

Very Good

• Gran Torino (2008)
• How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
• Ip Man (2008)
• Memento (2000)
• No Country for Old Men (2007)
• Ratatouille (2007)
• Requiem for a Dream (2000)
• Snatch (2000)
• The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
• The Departed (2006)
• The Incredibles (2004)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
• The Prestige (2006)
• The Social Network (2010)
• There Will Be Blood (2007)
• Toy Story 3 (2010)
• Up (2009)
• WALL·E (2008)

Good

• Amélie (2001)
• Avatar (2009)
• Big Fish (2003)
• Black Swan (2010)
• District 9 (2009)
• Donnie Darko (2001)
• Gladiator (2000)
• Hotel Rwanda (2004)
• In Bruges (2008)
• Inglourious Basterds (2009)
• Into the Wild (2007)
• Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
• Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
• Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)
• Million Dollar Baby (2004)
• Mystic River (2003)
• Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
• Shutter Island (2010)
• Sin City (2005)
• Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
• Spirited Away (2001)
• The Wrestler (2008)
• V for Vendetta (2006)
• X-Men: First Class (2011)

Movies I’ve Watched But Didn’t Make the Cut

• Children of Men (2006)
• City of God (2002)
• Downfall (2004)
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
• Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
• Infernal Affairs (2002)
• Let the Right One In (2008)
• Mary and Max (2009)
• Oldboy (2003)
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
• The Lives of Others (2006)
• The Secret in Their Eyes (2009)

Movies I Have Not Watched

• Amores Perros (2000)
• Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (2003)
• The King’s Speech (2010)
• The Pianist (2002)

What do you think? Do we have similar movie tastes? Any movies you think I should watch?