John Gunter

Life - Faith - One Bridge

My two Asian earthquakes (and what I’ve learned)

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Pics taken by a friend two days after the big earthquake.
Pics taken by a friend two days after the big earthquake.

“Get back in the car and drive off of the bridge!!!” These words broke the chaotic, rancorous silence as I anxiously shouted in the local language at our terrified cab driver. My world was in the process of crashing down. . . literally.

It was May 12, 2008 at 2:28pm. My good friend, Paul Quiros, was with me. I had been working with him all week in investigating the possibility of his law firm opening up a practice somewhere in this country. Our second leg of the journey landed us in the middle of a bridge, seemingly at the end of the world for most people in my life in America.

As we drove and talked and prepared for our next meeting, the bridge underneath us abruptly began moving. When I say moving, slamming back and forth is more like it. It was a packed road. There were buses and trucks and cars back to back as far as the eye could see.

EVERYONE panicked in abject fear, abandoned their vehicles, and ran. No one really knew where they were running, but frantically run they did. Paul had the presence of mind to yell that we had a better chance of survival by staying in the car and getting off the bridge than we did running.

I screamed at our driver to get back in the car and drive. His eyes were literally [Read more…]

An open letter regarding prayer and (seemingly) Bible contradictions

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As was the case a few weeks ago, I wanted to share another “open letter”.  This one was to both the same girl from the previous letter (CLICK HERE to read it) and her best friend.  In follow-up to the question about dating, they sent me the following questions regarding prayer and the Trinity.  I answered their questions by explaining my principle in dealing with seeming contradictions of faith and the Bible.

Tools of the trade for writing and emailing. . . at a local Starbucks
My setup at a local Starbucks. . .

I know this is more technical than any other post on this blog, but hopefully it will be helpful to someone with similar questions.  Again, I do not claim to be a theologian, but rather a Christian who has wrestled with my own faith on many levels.  This email is the product on some of my personal wrestlings.

As was the format with the letter on dating, the first part of this post is the email the two women sent to me.  Following this is my response.  These are both abbreviated, as I deleted the personal content of the exchange.  (I have added some headings in this post to better assist in organizing it.) [Read more…]

“Baseball Saturday” for the glory of God. . . (video included)

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The men of Baseball Saturday; me, Rush Stuart, Scott Littlepage, Tyler Leuck, Andrew Ols, Ty Nash, Michael Gregory, Conner Norton, Sean Doody, and Manny Mann.
The men of Baseball Saturday; me, Rush Stuart, Scott Littlepage, Tyler Leuck, Andrew Ols, Ty Nash, Michael Gregory, Conner Norton, Sean Doody, and Manny Mann.

Saturday was special here in my neck of the woods. The American men in our city decided to get together and hang from noon on. In this city of many millions (literally), there are only a handful of Americans who live here permanently. My guess is 30-50 in total. This is probably a generous guess, as I personally only of know 22. Of that number, 11 are men.

Ten of the eleven men I know in this city decided to dub the 6th day of last week. . . “Baseball Saturday”. The content of the day was simple; American food and baseball all day. We were to both play baseball and watch baseball in the midst of gorging on red meat and other such American culinary delights.

We met for lunch at McDonald’s (the only “American restaurant” within an hour of where I live). After destroying our bodies, we headed over to a local university in search of a field to play baseball. Between all of us, we have seven baseball gloves, two baseball bats, and four actual baseballs, so “playing baseball” is a pretty generous description of what we were planning.

We found a soccer field, but were quickly dispersed by an official university function.

We ended up finding our way to a dimly lite, closed basketball gym on campus. We decided the place was perfect for our “Plan B”. [Read more…]

4 “big picture” principles on living the single life well

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This post is from “My thoughts on singleness (a series. . .)” which I have been writing off and on, for the past three months. You can find the other articles in this series if you CLICK HERE.

Driving the Todd girls around. . . one of the families whom has opened their family to me.
Driving the Todd girls around. . . one of the families whom has opened their home to me.

There are entire sections in book stores on marriage. What does it mean? How to thrive within marriage? How to deal with marital conflict? Etc. . . .

However, I’m pretty sure no such sections exist for singleness. Cards on the table. . . I have never looked. Wish I could now, but being in Asia makes this type of practical research impossible.

It is with this motivation that I have been writing this series on singleness.

Yes, there is much difficult with being single. However, there are practices we can follow and habits that we can form to help us thrive, and not simple survive, within singleness.

Here are a few big-picture principles I have embraced in living my life which have helped guide my singleness.

1 – Serve the world around you with the energy of a family man (or woman)

One of the benefits of being a long-time bachelor is that I have had the opportunity to see many of my friends get married and have children. As I have observed, families take a ton of work! I really admire my friends who are great parents. There is no short-cut in parenthood. It is an exhausting, all-encompassing endeavor.

In my singleness, I have tried to be equally committed to my calling, with as much effort, passion, and commitment as my friends with children exert. Their lives are 120% about serving their worlds around them (their kids; if they are good parents), so why should mine be any different?

In marriage, as in singleness, we are called to give our lives to the world around us. For marrieds, this is obvious where your priorities are lie. With singles, our priorities are not as obvious, but

[Read more…]

The transcendent values of BASEBALL

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My friends Troy Coons, Phil Autry, Julian Krevere, and I at a Braves game two years ago
My friends Troy Coons, Phil Autry, Julian Krevere, and I at a Braves game two years ago

As I sit here in a local coffeehouse, I am thinking about baseball.  We are on the cusp of one on the greatest weeks of each year; Opening Week of the Baseball season.

I love the sport and always have.  I don’t remember a time in life where baseball wasn’t important to me.

Baseball is different than any of the other American sports.  I’m not necessarily saying better, I’m just saying different.  No other sport is called our “National Pastime” like baseball.  As I think about it, I do believe there are transcendent values to the game of baseball which are unique to the sport.

So, in honor of opening week, here are four (plus one bonus) of the more “transcendent values” of the game of baseball which have kept me engaged with the sport well beyond my playing days.

1 – The generational aspect of baseball [Read more…]

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