Notes on the Journey

Minus One and Counting...

2011-12-24T07:40:00.000-06:00

A single solitary...

One day until the Christ-mass, a time that is so short, and yet seems to stretch to infinity.

It may seem it will never come, but it's near.

Minus Two and Counting...

2011-12-23T05:11:00.000-06:00

Two remain...

Two days until the Christ-mass.

Two days - two parents, waiting for the birth announced.

We wait.

Minus Three and Counting...

2011-12-22T05:11:00.000-06:00

Fewer are the days...

Three days stand between us and the Christ-mass.

Three days - the number of the Trinity.

Three days - the number of the Magi.

A trio is tuning for joyous song.

Minus Four and Counting...

2011-12-21T04:56:00.000-06:00

The days are growing short.

Four days remain before the Christ-mass takes place.

Four days - four is the number of the Gospel accounts.

Four days - four is the number of the four living creatures around the Throne.

Four days - two by two are the cardinal directions.

The day is drawing nigh.

Minus Five and Counting...

2011-12-20T05:56:00.000-06:00

We're still counting down the days.

Five days remain before Advent is fulfilled.

Five days are all that's left as Christ-mass approaches.

Five days of waiting and hoping.

Five days - what remains to be done?

Five days - the days speed on.

Minus Six and Counting...

2011-12-19T05:46:00.000-06:00

The countdown continues.

We're six days away from the coming of Christ-mass, the Celebration of the birth of Jesus.

Six days - the same amount of time that it took to complete the creation of all that is about us.

Six days - the time decreed for the workdays in each seven-day week.

Six days - the preparation gets into high gear, the preparation for the Celebration.

Six days - time is short.

Six days...

Minus Eight and Counting...

2011-12-17T07:09:00.000-06:00

The countdown has begun.

It's the eighth day before Christmas. We're counting down the days until our celebration of the birth of Jesus. Anticipation is rising.

What do you look forward to this Christmas? How is your life being shaped by the impending Celebration? Is this time of waiting a hectic mess, filled with too much to do and too little time to do it in? Or are there islands of peace and calm, pockets of time when you can sit and reflect on what we're actually coming to commemorate?

Wishes to all of blessing and comfort, joy and peace.

Eight days to go. And we wait.

Thanksgiving Day, 2011

2011-11-24T07:55:00.000-06:00

And now it's time for some gratitude...

Since today is Thanksgiving Day, I thought it would be a good exercise to list some of the things I'm thankful for this year. Without further ado, then, here we go.

I'm thankful for our Congress. In all the years I've lived, I have never seen a more dysfunctional group of men and women. Wed irrevocably to philosophical positions and pledges that make them little more than automatons spouting pre-scripted strings of words, those on the left and those on the right posture while the rest of the country goes to hell. Anyone who has the absolute brass to want to meet somewhere in between the poles of political thought - anyone who actually wants to legislate, in other words - is shut out, minimalized, marginalized, and ignored by those clustered at the polar extremes. It's this exemplary group of useless elected representatives who make me realize the old Biblical truth, that you can not trust in the will of men (and women) to benefit you in the long term; that blessings only come from g-d.

For the same reason I'm grateful for our Congress, I'm thankful for the current crop of high finance wizards, those greedy masters of the universe on Wall Street and elsewhere who think nothing of bankrupting the nation while lining their own pockets. Once again, Biblical wisdom is validated and verified. Truly, the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.

I'm grateful for the Occupy Wall Street (and elsewhere) movement. As disorganized and unfocused as it is, the people staging these protests point out very clearly just how out of whack things are in today's world. The percentages may be a bit off, but it's undeniable that the 1% (+/-) have done pretty well at the expense of the 99% (+/-). Greed is good. Yeah, I think g-d through his Holy Scriptures has some thoughts on that.

I'm thankful for televangelists, TV preachers of all sorts, and for Health 'n Wealth pulpit pounders, those who preach the gospel of prosperity. They shine a harsh light on the message of the carpenter from Nazareth, who again and again, said that you must die to yourself to truly live. The outrageousness of their message throws into sharp contrast what Jesus actually said, versus what they would have their followers believe. The reason they're so popular, is because they speak to a very popular idea, that the best life is the life we live here, where we can actually see and hear and touch the good things that are promised to us. Salvation is great, but I want some of my reward NOW. When you actually read what Jesus said, you see these frauds for the liars they are.

I'm grateful for the United States of America, for the nation where I live. For all the faults of her politicians, financial whizbos, and so many others, she is the nation that has offered the best hope for mankind, of balancing the competing desires of men and women into something that may actually benefit them in the long and the short run. Our culture is messy, our politics is messy, hell, we're messy. But we keep slogging on, trying to create a more perfect union. We've got miles to go before we're there, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands. But because of some well-thought-out ideas from a group of extremely talented men and women two hundred and some years ago, we have a country that I believe continues to be the best place to live on this planet.

Finally, I'm grateful for the gift of life from my g-d, for the gift of family from my parents and predecessors, and for the gift of children for my legacy. Today is a day to acknowledge all the gifts we're given. So, snarky comments and all, I am blessed. I am so thankful for all this.

Tax Collector

2011-09-21T19:38:00.000-05:00

He was a tax collector.

He was despised for what he did, by much of the Jewish population at the time. As a tax collector, he was considered an outsider. He was probably literate in Aramaic and Greek, and when it came time to write his life of Jesus, early church fathers tell that it was written in Hebrew.

Today is his feast day. What can we learn from Matthew?

First, he was called by Jesus to follow him. He didn't volunteer on his own - he was called, summoned by the rabbi Jesus. This must have scandalized the Pharisees, that such a man as this, a tax collector, a sinner, would be called to be an intimate of a righteous man.

Just like the other disciples, who would become apostles, he was called. And he responded whole-heartedly. He gave up what he had been doing, and followed. Leaving the past behind, he strove on toward the goal that was set before him. Just as Simon and Andrew were told they would be "fishers of people," Matthew was commissioned to make disciples of all nations.

Second, like those of us in the church today, he was far from righteous in his previous role. He was a tax collector, viewed by many Jews as a traitor to his own people. He collected taxes from Jews for the Romans - how much more traitorous could he be, working for the occupiers of the Land of Promise?

And yet, Jesus forgave him his sins, the shortcomings he had had in his previous life. He was made a new man. And just so, he took on a new character, and saw the world in a wholly different way.

Third, Matthew didn't have to get himself cleaned up before Jesus called him to a new life. He began doing right after the call, and his response. It was out of that new way of seeing the world that he changed the way he lived. The call was the trigger, and the response was the beginning of a new man.

And fourth, he is remembered to this day. He wrote - according to tradition - one of the four canonical gospels. Tradition says that he preached the gospel of Jesus in lands to the east of Judaea. Tradition says that he died a martyr.

He is St. Matthew. He is the patron saint of accountants, bookkeepers, bankers, and tax collectors. Even bankers, a group that gets a lot of dislike these days, have a patron saint. And who are we to say that each one of them has not been called, and has not responded, to the same call that Matthew answered two thousand years ago? Who are we to judge them? We instead would be well advised to celebrate the call, and pray for the response, that Matthew answered so completely all those centuries ago.

Grace and peace to all.

Drama in Three Scenes

2011-09-15T22:05:00.000-05:00

Scene I

The young couple walked hurriedly across the Temple court. Yosef and Miryam had come to Yerushalayim to fulfill the duties required of new parents by Torah. This they had done, and now they were anxious to return home. The sun was low in the sky, and the late afternoon was already cooler.

An old man came toward them unsteadily. He reached out a shaking hand and touched the head of Miryam's first-born son. Looking intently at her, he held out his hands toward her. For no reason she could fathom, she handed Yeshua to him. He cradled the baby in his arms, gently rocking him from side to side. He looked heavenward, and began to speak.

"Now, Adonai, you have blessed your servant and may let him go in peace. I have seen with my own eyes your deliverer, visible to all, who will give light to the goyim and glory to your people Isra'el."

He handed the child back to Miryam. "I am Shim'on. I have waited my whole life to see this child. He will cause many in this land to fall, and many to rise. He will become a sign that many people will speak against. And a sword will pierce your own heart as well, my lady. All these things will happen so that the inner thoughts of many may be revealed."

Turning from Miryam, he walked away into the crowd, his hands open to the heavens.

Shaking her head, Miryam hugged Yeshua and glanced at Yosef. He looked at her, and nodded. Pulling their cloaks around them, they walked with new energy toward the Temple gate.

Scene II

Miryam looked up at her son Yeshua. He had become a famous rabbi in the thirty-three years since that odd experience in the Temple in Yerushalayim. It was said of him that he could heal the sick, make the blind see, even raise the dead. He had fed thousands who had come to hear him speak, when there had only been a handful of dried fish and a few loaves of bread. He had gathered a large following in the first months of his ministry, but had lost many when he made it clear what he was asking of any who followed him. He had said, plainly and directly, "If you want to follow me, you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and continue to journey with me."

And now it had come to this. Yeshua had taken up his own cross. Miryam looked at him again, through eyes swollen from crying. He was above her, his arms stretched wide, nails driven through his wrists. He had been stripped naked, stretched across the rough wood of that cross, and other nails had been pounded through his heels. The Roman soldiers had then lifted the cross up and dropped it into a hole in the rocky ground, and steadied it with wedges pounded on each side of the upright.

Speech was impossible. Her voice failed her, and all she could manage were choked sobs. She reached out toward the bloodied wood, and Yeshua opened his eyes slowly and looked down at her. "Mother, this is your son." Then, looking over at Yochanan, one of his disciples, he said, "This is your mother."

Time seemed to stand still. The sky darkened, and the gusty wind picked up, blowing dust and debris around the rocky summit. Finally, Yeshua gave a cry, "It is finished!" His body went slack, and he was dead.

Miryam collapsed in front of the cross, weeping uncontrollably. Yochanan bent to embrace her. He helped her to stand, and led her away, as the rain began to pour from a blackened sky, strobing with lightning, rumbling with crashes of thunder.

Scene III

Today was the celebration of Our Lady of Sorrows. That is, this is the official celebration. In many regions around the Mediterranean, it's celebrated with processions on the Friday before Holy Week.

Even as Mary is praised and venerated as the Mother of God, the Theotokos, she's also the woman whose heart was pierced by the sword of seeing her own son die before her. She ranged from the heights of being God's favored one, to the depths of sorrow. Her life mirrored the range of experiences and emotions that we all have at some point in our own lives. She would understand, just as would her son.

I am not Catholic, but I can understand why this celebration takes place. If we as Christians truly believe what we say about the Communion of Saints, then it is with Mary that we may first commune. She was there first.

What joys have you had today? What sorrows? Who do you share them with? And who shares their own with you? Where do you draw comfort? Who can you depend on?

These questions are alive and valid today, just as they were in first-century Palestine. Answers are sometimes hard to come by, but they're worth seeking out.

The Triumph of the Cross

2011-09-14T20:32:00.000-05:00

Today is the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. What does this mean to you?

I'm not a member of the Roman Catholic church, but I do the Daily Office as they do, to the best of my ability. It's a discipline that takes time to fully engage with, but I've found that I have a more serene and more gentle day when I do it, than when I don't. Go figure - praying the Psalms at more or less regular times just does that.

In the process of doing the Hours, I encounter special selections of Psalms, Canticles, and Readings for the various feasts and solemnities. Today we were celebrating the Triumph of the Cross.

The Cross is the central emblem of the Christian faith. It's displayed on most churches, it's worn around the neck of millions of Christian men and women, it's an item of veneration and awe, and it was a tool of torture and death two thousand years ago when Jesus the Messiah was nailed to it and died upon it.

It's been used as a symbol of the renewed Tree of Life, watered with the Blood of the Savior. It's been an item of controversy with non-Christians, because of its use as an instrument of execution - how can we Christians celebrate this abominable thing? Its fragments have been the goal of searches over the centuries - there are supposed to be surviving pieces of the True Cross extant to this day.

The Holy Cross - a device that was used hundreds of thousands of times by the Roman Empire to execute in a particularly cruel and public fashion those who would not bow to the Pax Romana. And one particular cross was to gain eternal status as the throne upon which Jesus triumphed over death by dying the grisly death of a criminal.

Does that sound paradoxical, or even silly?

He triumphed by dying, on the cross, in a way that was as far from a kingly reign as one could imagine.

But that's what we Christians believe. He triumphed, because Death was not the end. Three days later, he was alive. The cross was his throne, because he was exalted upon it. He was lifted up, raised above the men and women that day on Golgotha's summit. He was indeed the King of the Jews, the old covenant and the new, because no other ruler until his time could have done what he did.

His whole ministry on Earth was a pattern of upsetting and redefining the status quo. He redefined what the meaning of the Sabbath was. He threw the money changers and merchants out of the Temple because his House of Prayer had become something less than it was called to be. He told person after person that the Kingdom of Heaven had come near, and then ordered them not to reveal that fact to anyone. A lot of good that did! He brought the dead back to life, even after they had been in the grave for days. It's no wonder that the establishment feared and hated him so much.

Which of us today would find ourselves aligned more with the Pharisees than with Jesus' followers in first-century Judaea. Which of us finds ourselves seeking the comfort and stability of middle- or upper-class life, and avoiding the uncertainty of a life constantly in motion, constantly challenging the way things are done.

This realization might be called the Scandal of the Cross. Just as it was an instrument of torture and execution in Jesus' time, it's an object of challenge to our comfortable ideas of what life should be today.

We are told to take up our cross and follow him. We modern-day Americans really have a problem doing that to the extent that Jesus wants, because he sees no problem with losing our life so that we might gain it. It's almost as if there were something more important than a convenient and comfortable life today.

It's this challenge that we face each time we really look at the cross. It's this realization that we must address as we journey on that road with Jesus. Once and at the same time, the cross, even today, can be an instrument of necessary pain, and a sign of triumphing over our weaker selves. Once and at the same time, it is both death and life. Once again, Jesus has upset the status quo, and once again, we're confronted with a new and infinitely larger reality.

Today is the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. Today is the feast of our vicarious triumph through it.

Osama, Part 3

2011-08-02T17:24:00.000-05:00

And so now we come to the end...

I wanted to comment on why we may not have felt much when we heard that Osama bin Laden had been killed by American forces back in May. Why did I delay so long posting about this? Why the long break?

A combination of events kept me from posting as early - months ago! - as I had wanted, but the fact of the delay makes the point that I wanted to express. That point is this - bin Laden's despicable acts happened ten and more years ago. A lot of time has passed since he was active in anything that harmed Americans here in our own country.

Time has a way of salving the wound. We don't exactly forget, but the trauma is moved further and further from our immediate concerns.

No, we don't forget, and for those who are jubilant that bin Laden is dead and buried at sea, the memory is as fresh as it was on September 12, 2001.

But for those of us who may feel numb, or a quiet sense of satisfaction that justice was done but little more, or any of a number of other quiet reactions, there have been more recent shocks to our systems.

We've been through the bursting of the housing bubble.

We've seen the Great Recession overtake us.

We've seen the election of a President who is liked by half the country, and reviled by the other half. We're not even sure - many of us aren't even now - if he's really eligible to be elected as President.

We've seen the prolongation of wars on two fronts, wars that are costing us lives, huge amounts of our national treasure, and a lot of our notion of what it means to be American.

And most recently, we've seen our government fail to do what past governments have done as a matter of course, raise our national borrowing limit so we can continue to pay our bills.

I could comment on that last item - I have very strong feelings about what the government is doing, and failing to do - but I'm going to hold off. We now know what the outcome is. Commentary can wait a bit longer.

The old saying is that time heals all wounds. In the case of bin Laden, and most others, that isn't really true. Time eases many wounds, but the wound still exists. The pain isn't gone all together. But our reaction to it, which may once have been one of arm-waving, shouting fury, is now muted and more subdued. Time has passed, and we've moved on.

Osama bin Laden is dead. He will not be resurrected, and the site of his burial will not become one of pilgrimage for those dedicated to his diabolical doctrine. Good riddance.

And now we move on. What next must we confront?

Osama, Part 2

2011-05-23T20:29:00.000-05:00

Osama bin Laden's dead, and there was cheering and fist-pumping.

Why is that?

I want to look at a few reasons why there was a celebration of sorts when the news of bin Laden's death was announced early this month. Let's begin...

First, this outcome was one that many people had been desiring for more than ten years. Bin Laden was not only the architect of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, but was also involved in the embassy bombings in 1998. He was a target for assassination or arrest from that earlier date onward. His killing marked the end of that long and often discouraging hunt.

Second, it confirmed that we had the means and the perseverance to pursue someone like bin Laden until our goal was reached. That fact alone was felt by many to be worth celebrating.

Third, it was American forces that took him out, that raided his compound without a single casualty on our side, and that then captured a treasure trove of very important information on his computer hard drives and other storage media. Despite long odds, the mission was a spectacular success. The loss of a helicopter was perhaps the only thing that didn't go as planned.

Fourth, Osama bin Laden was the face of the boogie man, the likeness that represented everyone who hates America and what we stand for, what we believe, who we are as a nation and a people. That face can no longer sit in protected isolation, and sneer at and threaten the United States. That voice has been silenced.

And finally, his death marks the end of a very painful chapter in American life. There will still be terrorist threats, there will still be attacks to be thwarted, but the person who was so successful at bringing them about is no more. America - 1, bin Laden - 0. Game over.

Even as a Christian, you can feel good about bin Laden's death, if you're so inclined. Read Psalm 149 - verses 6 through 9 read like this (from the NIV translation):

May the praise of God be in their mouths
   and a double-edged sword in their hands,
to inflict vengeance on the nations
   and punishment on the peoples,
to bind their kings with fetters,
   their nobles with shackles of iron,
to carry out the sentence written against them—
   this is the glory of all his faithful people.

Does that sound even a little triumphalist to you? I don't see any concern for the "nations," but rather an eagerness for "carry(ing) out the sentence written against them." I see vindication being played out. What do you see?

Or how about Psalm 68, verses 20 through 23? Check this out, from the ESV:

Our God is a God of salvation,
   and to GOD, the Lord, belong deliverances from death.
But God will strike the heads of his enemies,
   the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways.
The Lord said, "I will bring them back from Bashan,
   I will bring them back from the depths of the sea,
that you may strike your feet in their blood,
   that the tongues of your dogs may have their portion from the foe."

Now exactly what does that mean?

And finally, from Exodus 15, verses 1 through 4 (and onward, actually), this (again, from the ESV):

Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD, saying,
   "I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously;
   the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.
The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation;
   this is my God, and I will praise him,
   my father's God, and I will exalt him.
The LORD is a man of war;
   the LORD is his name.
"Pharaoh's chariots and his host he cast into the sea,
   and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea.

That sounds like a celebration to me.

Now let's be clear. I'm a Christian, and I believe in the Bible as inspired word. I also believe that it reflects the histories and attitudes of real people living through real events, as well as poetic expressions of their feelings and wishes, and so much more. This celebration of the "bad guys" getting what's coming to them is as old as humanity, and why should the attitudes of the ancient Israelites be any different from our own regarding bin Laden? That really would be expecting too much, don't you think?

So there you have a brief survey of why we cheered when bin Laden died, from both the secular and the scriptural sides. And yet, there was a more complex mix of reactions to his death in evidence in the days and weeks that followed the announcement. We've seen more revelations of what life in his compound was like, and a sordid life it was, apparently. These latest tidbits haven't changed the reaction or its complexity, though. And of course, news moves fast - the events surrounding bin Laden's death have been been displaced with other, more recent news.

I'll explore why we may have felt less than enthusiastic about his death in the next post. Stay tuned.

Well!?

2011-05-22T18:30:00.001-05:00

Well!?

What happened? Or, more to the point, what didn't happen?

Harold Camping has been predicting for some time that the world would be Raptured on May 21, 2011, at 6:00 PM local time. The event would be accompanied by massive earthquakes, opening of graves, and other signs of divine judgment.

It didn't happen. Harold Camping was wrong.

However, he at least was well-practiced. He had previously predicted the same sort of thing to occur in 1994. Does anyone remember the great Rapture of 1994? No, I don't either.

Now all that is left to do is to deal with the fallout. His followers are going to have to come to grips with having followed a false prophet. Some will undoubtedly leave the Christian faith because of the huge failure of Camping's prophecy to arrive as promised. Some will hunker down and continue to believe him. And some, shell-shocked and disillusioned, will stumble around to find something to replace their shattered hope. That might be a return to a different thread of Christianity. It might be a movement into another faith all together. No doubt there will be a great variety of responses.

I have only two real comments about all this, aside from a general conviction that this gives non-believers new ammunition to snipe at us "delusional" Christians. This, even if we didn't give Camping any credence.

First, just because Camping went through intricate calculations to derive his May 21 date, and just because nothing of note happened that day, does not mean that we shouldn't expect judgment of our actions in this world at some time in the future. I'm not sure that Revelation will play out like a movie script - my own notion is that it's a particular piece of apocalyptic literature to strengthen and encourage Christians in the first century, nothing more. I don't see it as end-times prophecy to be taken literally. Nonetheless, we are accountable to our fellow human beings and to the Lord of us all in how we care for his creation - the earth, and the living creation on it, which includes our brothers and sisters in the human race. This is an article of faith that most Christians have no trouble believing, and I'm certainly among them.

Second, Harold Camping committed a grave sin by being obsessed in his calculations of the day of Judgment. He displayed a god-sized mass of pride. Pride goes before a fall, we're told. In my mind, pride is the mother of all sin. This pride said that God was too slow in arriving to take his followers home, that merely being ready and doing the work Jesus assigned to us wasn't fulfilling enough - we had to know when we would go home. So Camping attempted to dictate to God - is there any other way to put this? - when and how it would happen. And he failed miserably - his exegesis was flawed, his prophecy was nuts, and he has cast the gospel of Jesus into disrepute. Shame on him.

Harold Camping committed a grave sin by being proud. But then, so have I. And so have each of us. Pride is the name of what we tried to do in Eden when we were just Adam and his wife Eve. That hasn't changed. And it's for that very reason that we're still here. God isn't done with us yet. It's his wish that all should come to salvation. There's so much work to do, and to be done. We may have a long wait until the last day does arrive. And the best way to spend that time - however long it might be - is to get back to doing the job we were given.

So enough of Harold Camping. Let's get back to work.

(I've been collecting bits and pieces about Osama bin Laden and his demise. I haven't forgotten about the ambivalence surrounding his death. More on that in the next post.)

Osama, Part 1

2011-05-04T19:22:00.000-05:00

Osama bin Laden is dead.

How does that make you feel?

Are you elated? Satisfied? Ambivalent? Proud to be an American? Conflicted? Devoid of emotion?

If so, you're in good company, based on what I've seen posted on forums and comment boards and op-ed pieces.

There seems to be a mood at once celebratory and sober. Even as we cheer the "bringing to justice" of a man who demonstrated just what evil looks like to our generation, we begin looking over our shoulders for a reprisal attack. Even as we feel pride in the precise actions of a SEAL team, we wonder what the right response is to the killing of another person.

There doesn't seem to be much unconditional satisfaction in this event.

I'd like to look at this moral ambiguity in more detail, from a Christian perspective, over the next few evenings. For now, I'll merely point out that it seems to exist.

We'll explore the cheering and chest-thumping in the next post.

A Change of Plans...

2011-04-17T16:47:00.000-05:00

This will be short...

I had planned on addressing what I saw as a crisis of confidence in this country, when I posted my last entry back in March. However, there have been several events in my life in the intervening weeks that have delayed any follow-up posts, and have forced me to concentrate on other matters, matters more personal.

Consequently, I can't be sure when I'll be able to address that national crisis that I sense. Instead, if I do post anything, it's likely to be a more personal Lenten or post-Lenten musing.

Lent is seen in the Christian tradition as a time of fasting, of focusing on things of importance, so that our place in God's kingdom is made clearer. Such it has been for me, even though I haven't really given up anything as I have done in past Lenten seasons. I didn't give up coffee, or meat, or anything else. Instead, I stopped spending so much time surfing the internet, and focused more on insuring that I got enough sleep each night. Oh, and dealing with those personal issues that I mentioned.

So, for the next few weeks, I will likely be posting only occasionally. The essays on a national crisis will have to wait. Perhaps for that, they'll be more to the point, and more worth reading.

The love of Christ be with us all.

Crisis

2011-03-19T17:58:00.000-05:00

I think we have a crisis.

I've been thinking about our national malaise lately, and I've begun to come to some conclusions. I want to examine this over the next few days. This post is intended to set the stage for what follows in later posts. I may even be able to suggest some ways to deal with this crisis, but we'll see, we'll see.

I say we have a national malaise. What else would you call a climate of discord and rancor like we see now in the political arena? What would you call the sense of uncertainty that hovers over home owners, workers, people in every walk of life? How else would you categorize the dread that plagues people concerned about being foreclosed, laid off, disemployed, marginalized, rendered impotent, ignored?

The crisis that permeates the United States in 2011 looks to me like a crisis of confidence, or in spiritual terms, a crisis of faith.

This crisis doesn't affect all countries. Take China, for instance. Does China strike you as a nation suffering from a lack of confidence in its ability to forge into the future and prevail? Are the Chinese paralyzed by fear of the unknown future?

But let's turn the bright light of examination on ourselves, and bring that mirror close in. Moreover, let's polish the reflecting glass to a high gloss so we can see ever more clearly.

Do we talk about how confident we are in the future?

Are we excited by the prospects of the next month? The next year? Ten years out?

Do we believe our children will live in a world better than the one we live in?

If we can't answer each of these questions with an unconditional "Yes!" then I submit that we're without that confidence that we must have if we're to succeed in the world of the twenty-first century.

If we have no confidence, then it would seem logical to assume that we also lack faith.

We are told in Holy Scripture that faith is confidence in things unseen, certainty in what is hoped for. I don't get the sense that we have that confidence, that certainty.

Over the next few days, maybe even weeks, I'd like to examine where this apparent lack of faith began, what characterizes it in the present day, and perhaps some things that we can do to restore a faith that we simply must have if our lives are to be lived well.

This may sound like a political commentary, but I assure you, it isn't. Jimmy Carter went into a spell of deep introspection years ago, and addressed the nation, telling us he sensed a national malaise. He was roundly criticized for that. There was much about the Carter administration that stunk of failure, but his perceptiveness was right on. This was true in his day, and it's more true in ours. This is not political - it's spiritual, and at that, not limited to adherents of a particular religion.

Stay tuned. I'll have more to say in the next post.

Adult Supervision

2011-02-23T20:16:00.000-06:00

You're unique...

You're unique, just like everybody else.

That's a tag line I've heard for years, a subtle put-down of a consumer culture that feeds off our desire to make a personal statement in the way we interact with the world.

We all want to make a personal statement. We all want to stand out from the crowd. Clothing makers, accessory makers, sellers of all sorts of consumer goods, all of them try to paint themselves as the agent of that statement of individuality.

What a shuck!

Look - the human population of this planet right now is somewhere between 6.5 and 7 billion people. If we accept the lower number, here's what it looks like written out:

6,500,000,000

That's a lot of people!

Do any of us seriously believe that we're so special that there's no one else in all those billions of human beings who isn't our equal in just about everything we do, or perhaps even our superior?

Really?

How about on a national level? The population of the United States is about 310 million people. If my arithmetic is correct, that means that we Americans are less than one-twentieth of the population of the world.

Numerically, we're also-rans. How is it that we have so much power, so much influence?

How is it that we're so special?

That's a good question. We have a relatively open and free society that is admired, even as it's feared, by many people in the world. We have a standard of living that is in most ways better than anyone else in the world. We have a lot going for us.

We also have a national debt that is beginning to overwhelm us. We have a healthcare system that sooner or later is going to bankrupt us. We have a society that is feeling the effects of too much rich food and too many good things - we're fat, and getting fatter, and it's affecting our health and long-term quality of life.

But we're special.

Unless we get a handle on these problems, and others equally serious, we'll be less special soon enough. History has a way of redressing imbalances when they exist - nothing lasts forever.

I don't want us to be has-beens. I don't want my country to be a shadow of what it once was.

Unless we begin to act like adults, though, the shadows will settle in on us, and it will be someone else's century.

Adults face facts.

Adults can make tough decisions.

Adults do what's necessary.

Adults don't hide from the truth.

Adults protect children, because children don't usually make wise decisions.

Children are swayed by impulse.

Children don't think about things long-term.

Children behave emotionally.

Children need to have adults look after them.

What are we today? Who will we be tomorrow?

The Emperor and his Clothing Budget

2011-02-23T19:52:00.000-06:00

How are we to spend our money?

Or, more accurately, how are we to spend our children's money? And our grand-children's money, for that matter?

I ask these largely rhetorical questions because I want to consider the recently introduced Federal budget for FY 2012.

What are we looking at? Some 3.7 trillion dollars, with a deficit of about 1.7 trillion. The budget is a model, though, because it begins to deal with the national debt. As it's been said, it begins to make the deficits "manageable."

Overall, it's claimed that the budget will begin to put into place savings of 1.1 trillion over the next ten years. That works out to about 110 billion dollars over that period. During that same time, the annual budget deficit is projected to vary from about 700 billion to 1 trillion dollars - per year.

This is "manageable"?

This is manageable in the same way that a burst appendix is manageable by continually evacuating the abdominal cavity of bowel contents and infection, and irrigating that cavity with sterile solution - in perpetuity! Otherwise, the person with the burst appendix dies.

Generally the treatment for a burst appendix is surgery. The damaged organ is removed, the hole in the large intestine is sutured up, and the surgical wound is closed, along with whatever necessary clean-up is required. This might be called an intervention.

From my perspective, the current budget is in need of an intervention.

For far, far too long we've been sold a bill of goods, by some very capable prevaricators. That bill of goods is this - we can have everything we want, and we can just put it on the credit card. And don't forget, the bank will just increase your credit limit if you need more stuff.

I think that more and more of us in the general population, though, are beginning to realize that this is just so much bullshit. You can not have everything you want AND put off forever the day when you must pay for it all. That day is rapidly approaching.

The best projections I've seen indicate that we may have, at best, another ten to fifteen years before the government won't be able to borrow enough money to run its essential programs. The budget will be almost totally consumed with debt service, and a few massively inflated entitlement programs.

Now let's step aside for just a moment, and take a slow breath. I've said in previous blog posts that I was going to try to steer clear of political commentary. I'm trying to do the same here, even though I am talking about things in the political arena. There's a spiritual dimension to this situation, and the fact that it's taking place in the cauldron of politics has no bearing on that reality.

It doesn't matter whether you're Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. The reality that we need to come face to face with, that we need to own, because our lives depend on it, is this - WE CAN NOT HAVE EVERYTHING WE WANT, BECAUSE WE CAN'T PAY FOR IT.

Spiritually, we lie to ourselves everytime we think we can have everything we want. This is true on a personal level, and it's true on a national level. Reality does not support that mode of operation. There are limits to what we can have, and there need to be limits to what we try to acquire.

More to the point, there need to be limits to what we aspire to acquire. In other words, we don't need a lot of the crap we try to get.

Thousands of years of human history give the lie to the notion that we have to have a suburban home of 2500 square feet AND a lake house AND an SUV to shuttle between them, in order to be happy. We don't need these things to have soul satisfaction.

Isn't that what we all want - a feeling of contentment deep in our hearts?

I submit that this is the truth that shows up the lie of the modern consumer society. That society is built upon the notion that you won't be truly happy until you have the NEXT thing - the bigger car, the better house, the newer TV or home theater system - the NEXT thing. It's this quest for happiness that keeps the consumer economy churning out this year's stuff, and next year's, and that of the next year. We're good little economic citizens if we keep this cycle of acquisition and disposal going - we're doing our social duty.

The US economy is built on this model. It's no wonder that the national government operates on the same principle.

So - here's where the model falls down. When you have to spend more of your money paying for the debt you've incurred than actually buying things you need, you're pretty close to being ready to shut down. An intervention may be required.

That debt, by the way, is a debt that our children and grand-children will have to deal with unless we man and woman up and face the music.

The first thing I think we need is to get past the idea that any deficit is manageable.

The second thing we have to do is face the demise of some cherished ideas. For instance, conservatives are going to have to realize that you can not continue to support wars abroad if your tax revenue is insufficient to pay for them. The cost of these wars is not only the immediate costs of salaries, munitions, transport, and maintenance and replacement of all sorts of war materiel. The costs begin to really balloon when you consider long-term veterans' care, or retirement benefits, or reparations to foreign nationals, or foreign aid payments to governments involved in the collateral operations of that one little war. The Bush administration would present the costs of their wars to Congress as supplemental appropriations. At least the Obama administration has the guts to actually put them in the budget.

The consequence for conservatives is this - either taxes are going to have to increase to some degree (the heresy!) or their militarism is going to have to be brought under control.

Liberals don't escape from the blinding light of reality either. It seems a truism that they believe that any social ill can best be addressed by a government program of some sort. These programs generally begin small, but somehow, over time, they become mammoth entitlements, something that becomes a right, by God!

Their confrontation with reality means that they're going to have to realize that government can't solve all the problems that exist, and that it never will be able to. We can not afford to have a perfect society.

For anyone in the national government to say - with a straight face yet! - that the deficits can be manageable, means only one thing:

The emperor has no clothes.

Our political representatives strut around in their finery, even as they agree that the deficit is really getting out of hand, and refuse to face the harsh reality of what's needed to actually get a grip on the situation. Either we make hard choices now, or hard choices will be made for us down the road. I don't see any other way to put it. Deal with it now, or have it dealt to you later.

And all that finery? That's made of the same thing as their outmoded ideas of Laffer curves, and government programs, and even the delusion of conservative or liberal "truth." It's made of thin air, liberally laced with pretense and self-deception. The emperor(s) have no clothes - they're running around Washington, a bunch of wrinkly naked men and women, trying to impress those of us who are coming to know better.

Spiritually, we need to face the world as it is. We need to see through deception, the stock in trade of the Father of Lies. We need to realize our own finitude, and come to grips with our true needs, and how they differ from unlimited wants.

Until we do that, and act on it by our choices in the voting booth and our support or lack of same for political choices made on our behalf, we're complicit in the decline of this nation.

This is bigger than politics, a lot bigger. It speaks to the heart of what kind of nation we are. We were once warned about avoiding foreign entanglements. We're there now, entangled in debt of our own making. How do we escape? Can we escape? The future awaits with the verdict.

I'm Still Here...

2011-02-10T18:36:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted anything in a couple of months now. What have I been doing?

Let's see - most recently, I took part in the Missouri Special Olympics Polar Plunge 2011 at Longview Lake Swimming Beach outside Kansas City. The air temperature was a balmy 41 degrees, and the water was at about 29 degrees. I was, as the announcer so poetically put it, "the dude in the diaper." I costumed myself as the New Year's baby, complete with top hat and a necklace that said "Happy New Year." Got the Golden Plunger prize for best costume, too. There were over 1100 people who dunked themselves in the lake that afternoon, and we raised over $200,000 at last count. All in all, it was a good Saturday afternoon.

I've continued to do the Daily Office throughout this time. It's harder and harder sometimes to find uninterrupted time to do all seven hours, and my practice has become rather fractured as a result. But I soldier on, and hope that at some point my days will stabilize and I can return to a more rhythmic pattern.

I've taken up making prayer beads and rosaries. I prefer to use hand-bent chain segments for the beading, rather than stringing the beads on cord or wire. It's more work, but it settles into a rhythm that is meditative and totally engaging. There are sure to be more prayer beads in my future.

Christmas was good, and the new year is a mixed bag so far. We've been undergoing economic setbacks even as we enjoy the occasional presence of our grand-daughter. She'll be four in April, and every time I see her, I can see a little more growth and maturing. All in all, the lack of some material goods is not a hardship, but helps us focus on the more important, and long-lasting, things in life.

Winter has lingered on, covering us in the Midwest with more snow than I've seen in recent years, except for last year, another season with lots of snow and cold. Anyone who doubts the reality of climate change - what's known as "global warming" - needs to look at the extremes of weather that are settling in on a regular basis. Here's the basic idea - you pump more heat into a system, you not only increase its mean temperature, but you also widen the extremes to which it swings. In other words, you get more storms, bigger storms, with hotter and colder seasonal extremes. I don't think we're going to have many "bland" years for a long, long time.

There's a short list of what has been on my mind these last couple of months. I've tried to stay clear of political commentary, because frankly, I think the whole theater of political combat is bankrupt and worthy of spiraling down the drain. What a waste of good people! There are other, more profitable arenas where I may be able to add to the discussion by commenting - politics isn't one of them.

So - how was your Christmas, and how has your new year gone so far?

From the Dark Side

2010-12-11T18:34:00.000-06:00

Sometimes God and I aren't on speaking terms...

Oh, God is always willing to talk to me. It's me, really. I get in a funk, a particularly dark mood, and I just don't want to deal with God.

It seems to come more frequently at this time of year. Perhaps it's the festive character of the season. Perhaps it's the unspoken pressure to be festive, and not feeling festive in your heart. Perhaps it's the shortness of the days, and the gray cold that seems too often to describe the daylight hours. Maybe it's the bare trees, and the brown fields. Whatever the cause, I don't often feel this way in the spring or summer, not even in the fall when the trees are reddening from their warm weather green.

Instead of having a heart-to-heart with God, I trap myself in a self-focused loop.

Here's what that loop often sounds like...

God is some kind of deity. He demands praise from his creatures, creatures he sticks in a poison existence. We deal every day with death and decay, and he demands praise. We try to live as he commands us to, and find that we can't do it. No amount of willing it to be true, makes it true. The shiny-happy lasts only so long.

And then someone dies. A marriage goes south. A job is lost. An assault waylays a life. The daily commute gets wrecked by a traffic accident. A drug overdose hospitalizes. A child tries to commit suicide. Eating disorders send another child to the hospital. Unplanned expenses wreck the budget. Family disagreements devolve into shouting matches, and the family flies to pieces.

Why, God, do you screw around with us like this? It seems like the only time you're ready to love us, is when our lives have turned to total shit. Why do you allow this crap to happen? Where are you when the whole mess is flying apart? Why can't you stop some of this stuff? Some of it - hell, stop all of it! You're God, the all-powerful, the all-knowing, the all-seeing. What good is all-that, when you don't intervene?

Wars go on. Murders continue. Divorces and drugs, terrorism and child abuse and abortions and economic collapse persist.

Where are you in all this? Well - where are you?

Yeah... Where are you...?

This sort of psychotic tape loop doesn't last very long. It can't. It goes nowhere. It doesn't have an answer, not one that I can accept, anyway.

The answer that the "me" who's stuck in this loop, would like to hear is that God is going to come down right now and fix things.

That's not the way it works.

God is more devious, if I may call it such, than that.

God is interested in teaching us. God is interested in strengthening us. God is interested in getting back in touch with us; ultimately he's interested in saving us.

This loop can't go anywhere, because the god that I'm waving my fist at, is not the God that lives and reigns in this world.

I have to stop myself from playing this particular number, and step back. I have to force myself to remember the times that God has been there, when I needed help. I have to force myself to remember what it felt like to truly talk to God, and to have him reply.

It has happened, you know.

I've been a fully committed, confessing, practicing, learning Christian now for just over fourteen years. There have been mountain-top experiences, and there have been spells in the deep desert. I've walked along some paths with a ready companion, and trekked through some pretty desolate patches where it felt like it was only me on the trail.

And God was always there. If I didn't see him as I traveled, I certainly ran into him as I came out of the wilderness.

The important thing is, I always kept moving.

That's the heart of the matter, actually.

Jesus told his followers when he first met them, "Come." He told them as he was leaving them, "Go." There was always a journey involved with the Nazarene. Life was a pilgrimage.

That hasn't changed. Life - life as a Christian, at any rate - continues to be a journey. We started one place, and we're going to another. All we have is a compass to show us the direction. The map isn't supplied.

Oh, we have guidebooks along the way. We have plenty of stories from fellow travelers.

It's said that Mother Teresa endured forty years of crisis in her faith in Jesus. She is revered as one of the most holy people in the twentieth century. And she had a "dark night of the soul" for the last forty years of her life. What did she do to deal with this darkness?

Simply, she continued. She went. She did. Her faith, tested as it was by the darkness that she felt enfolding her very heart, persisted in working out her salvation with fear and trembling.

A good tree is known by its fruit, Jesus tells us.

Faith without works is dead, James asserts.

I think Mother Teresa's life speaks for itself. Inwardly tested, outwardly fruitful. What kind of determination did this woman possess to go on in the face of the darkness? What kind of grace did she receive to allow that to happen?

When I'm feeling all down in the soul, all I have to do is stop, step back, and remember. There are multitudes who have gone before me. I have but to think about their example, and I'm better, and ready for another day. And the darkness loses another daily battle.

Gratitude, Part 4

2010-11-25T11:23:00.000-06:00

Here we are, Thanksgiving Day. I'm thankful for nothing today.

That's right - I'm thankful for nothing.

If it weren't for nothing, we'd have no sense of the something we do have. If it weren't for nothing, something wouldn't mean anything.

Of course, I'm playing with words here. The nothing that I'm speaking of, for sure, is the frame around the somethings that we really are thankful for today. When we think we have nothing, we really don't have nothing. We're just not thinking of the somethings that have been given to us. We need to reflect on absolute nothing to realize that we have been blessed.

In summary, then, I really am thankful for everything we have. This country is a greater blessing than many of us realize, something not to be taken for granted. Our families, with all the goofiness that they display sometimes, are blessings in ways that we often don't understand. Our jobs, our homes, all the things we are surrounded with, they're all blessings that we too easily overlook.

Thank God for the blessings we enjoy, and for this day when we can properly acknowledge the Source of all those gifts.

And that's what I'm thankful for today.

Gratitude, Part 3

2010-11-24T14:34:00.000-06:00

I'm thankful for gay people.

And illegal immigrants.

And super patriots.

And the poor and marginalized.

And others unnamed.

I say this because each of these groups of people force me to confront the sad reality of my Christian faith. That reality is this - given half a chance, I could go through life on autopilot, checking off various action items on my "Righteousness" checklist. Given half a chance, I'd never have to really deal with the people that aren't part of my Christian world. I could associate with the rest of the shiny, happy Christians, and never worry about the poor of the world, the dispossessed, the other.

Instead, each of these cohorts force me to realize that this a very big world, created by a loving God, who has made a multiplicity of people who don't fit into neat, well-adjusted boxes. The people in this world are a messy lot, filled with desires and ambitions, many of which are at odds with the Creator's goals. As a professed Jesus-person, I am commanded to have loving relationships with all these "others." I have to treat each of these groups as people, instead of faceless entities that I can conveniently ignore. So, my gratitude list is composed of the people who force me to keep my faith living and perhaps even a little raw, always ready to be surprised or maybe even shocked. No easy way out is available to me.

And that's what I'm thankful for today.

Gratitude, Part 2

2010-11-23T16:43:00.000-06:00

And here's the next thing I'm thankful for...

I'm thankful for the 50% divorce rate. Yep, I'm thankful that there are 50% of married couples - Christians and non-Christians alike - who decide that despite huge odds against a successful life together, they're sticking it out as a couple.

I suspect that this 50% endurance rate is going to be found to be pretty constant among straight couples as well as gay, for what it's worth.

There are a million different things that can undermine and damage a marriage to the point where the partners just don't want to continue the relationship. For that half of all married people who do endure though, I give thanks. You have inspired me to try to do what you've done. Thanks for all that inspiration over the years.

And that's what I'm thankful for today.

Gratitude, Part 1

2010-11-22T14:54:00.000-06:00

Since it's that time of year, and the holiday is rapidly approaching, it's time to be thankful for a few things.

I'm grateful, first, for the election that we had in this country earlier this month. Despite the outcome - some people liked it a lot, some people really were let down - we had an election that went ahead with very few problems. Compared to other parts of the world, our election went like a well-oiled machine. There was no civil unrest - that I'm aware of. There were no voters killed - that I know of. All candidates are accounted for - so far as I know.

Our ancestors gave us a system, modified from time to time over the years, that has worked fairly well. I'm grateful for their foresight, and for the dedication to perfecting our system that's occupied so much of our attention in all the years we've lived here.

And that's what I'm thankful for today.

Happiness

2010-11-20T18:00:00.001-06:00

I have found the secret to happiness.

I was talking to a co-worker the other day, and the conversation finally turned to the subject of what gave us pleasure. We had already decided that talking politics was a surefire way to lose whatever happiness or peace of mind we might have had. Talking religion, even though we didn't directly speak about that, is the same kind of subject - you are almost certain to be more agitated after the conversation than before it, and not in a good way.

Since we're both grandparents, we both agreed that playing with the grandchildren is a good way to get a smile plastered back on our faces. More than that, it will probably be a crooked, goofy-looking smile, if our experience is any guide.

So - what is this secret of happiness, and how does it relate to playing with your grandchildren? And what if you're too young to have grandchildren; what's the secret for you?

The secret to happiness is this - you are going to die.

You are mortal - you have a limited number of days to live on this Earth.

One day you won't wake up.

Owning this one fact, at a visceral level, perhaps at a cellular level, is the key to finding happiness.

This is nothing new - it's classic wisdom, and has been expounded for thousands of years.

The Rule of St. Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism, has this statement of the secret in Chapter 4, Verse 47 (from RB1980) - "Day by day remind yourself that you are going to die." St. Benedict lived from 480 to 547 AD, so this is pretty old wisdom.

As ancient as St. Benedict's words are, there are far older statements that proclaim the same wisdom. From the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Holy Bible we read this, in Chapter 11 - "How sweet light is, how delightful it is to see the sun! However many years you live, enjoy them all, but remember, the days of darkness will be many: futility awaits you at the end." (This, and all other Bible citations, are from the New Jerusalem Bible.)

In Psalm 90, we read this - "All our days pass under your wrath, our lives are over like a sigh. The span of our life is seventy years - eighty for those who are strong - but their whole extent is anxiety and trouble, they are over in a moment and we are gone."

This is ancient stuff indeed! So how does this knowledge lead to happiness?

First, if you know the reality of your situation, you can start living appropriately. If you know that you have a finite lifespan, you might be less inclined to fritter time away.

Or maybe not...

Your reaction to this whole idea might be along the lines of this - Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!

Or this - Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse.

What determines which course your "appropriate" reaction follows?

I think it's what you expect at the end of that life. Restated, do you expect something afterward, or do you expect nothing - literally nothing!

If you expect that when you die, you cease to exist, for all time going forward, then you might be inclined to party like there's no tomorrow, because, in your mind, that's just the way it is.

If, on the other hand, you believe, at a level just as foundational as your knowledge of your mortality, that you will see life again, in some form, then you might be more inclined to work out your salvation, as Paul puts it, with fear and trembling. Since we don't know exactly what awaits us, if there is an afterlife, fear and trembling sound appropriate as well.

Of course, there are other reactions to this knowledge as well.

For instance, you might figure that you can just trash your environment, strip mine the earth, deforest the Amazon Basin, because you know that you're going to heaven, and this world is disposable.

You might figure that you can party like there's no tomorrow, even though you believe there is, because you know that you're saved, and what you do between now and the day of your death will not revoke that salvation.

Or you might just sit back, sponging off everyone around you, just chilling until you die, because you believe that "all dogs go to heaven."

The Apostle Paul has sharp words addressed to people who subscribe to these life strategies in his various letters to churches collected in the New Testament. In summarizing those words, they boil down to this - "No, that's not the way it works!"

Let's get back to the secret to happiness, though.

If we know that we will die, and that there is something awaiting us afterward, then we can begin making our days of life count, both in the world we inhabit and in the life that awaits us beyond our own death. If happiness is to be found in anything, it is found when we realize that what we have done, what we are doing, and what we will do, make a difference, and that every day is holy and sacred, because there are only a few of them.

Let the words at the end of Psalm 90 close this post out:

"Teach us to count up the days that are ours,
and we shall come to the heart of wisdom.
Come back, Yahweh! How long must we wait?
Take pity on your servants.

"Each morning fill us with your faithful love,
we shall sing and be happy all our days;
let our joy be as long as the time that you afflicted us,
the years when we experienced disaster.

"Show your servants the deeds you do,
let their children enjoy your splendour!
May the sweetness of the Lord be upon us,
to confirm the work we have done!"

Body Image Redux

2010-11-17T21:39:00.000-06:00

Let's re-examine my last post, shall we?

Last time, I posited that perhaps the mob scene that is today's Christianity may be the way that it's supposed to be, with all the bickering about women's ordination, gay marriage, eternal security, papal infallibility, the gospel of prosperity, and so forth and so on. "The way it's supposed to be" is shorthand for a scenario that is moving according to God's plan for his church.

Well, once I had had a chance to talk to some friends about this idea, I was told by several of them that this whole concept was wrong, that God couldn't have intended for things to come to this pass of disunity and dissension.

I'm not convinced. Here are some further thoughts on what I originally proposed.

First, and rightly, there are plenty of Biblical citations that indicate that God's favored state of existence is one of peace between brothers. Matthew 5:9 - "Blessed are the peacemakers..." from the Beatitudes. Psalm 133:1 - "Look! How good and how pleasant it is when brothers live together!" Leviticus 26:6 - "I will grant peace in the land so that you will lie down to sleep without anyone terrifying you." 1 Samuel 20:42 - "Jonathan said to David, 'Go in peace, for the two of us have sworn together in the name of the Lord...'"

This is all true. And what is also true is what has occurred over the centuries. Namely, that peace is transitory at best. It was so for the Old Testament Jews, and it was true for the New Testament Christians. Within just a few years of the founding of the church, virtually from the beginning, there were heresies aplenty in the Roman world about just who and what Jesus was, about how his death actually achieved what was being preached, about who could be saved and what they had to do to reach that state of grace. The Epistles in the New Testament are written mainly, it seems, to set straight church members who had deviated from the path of orthodoxy. And that truth exists just as strongly today as it did in the first century.

Is this the way that God intended it to be?

One of my favorite "modifications" of a Biblical text is this - "where two or three are gathered in my name, there's a good chance of schism."

I said in the first post that Jesus is not a crowd. I stand by that - Jesus is one.

How can that be, if the argumentative mass of Christianity is as divided on as many issues as I've indicated?

I submit that this can be the case for one simple reason - iron sharpens iron (from a Proverb).

The dialectic method of argument is one way of searching for truth. It requires a thesis, an antithesis (a contradictory notion to the thesis), and ultimately should resolve to a synthesis, which becomes the new thesis for another, more expansive dialectic debate. Over time, if the participants are truly searching for truth (political partisans need not apply at this point, for the most part), ideas rise or fall in the cauldron of debate and intensive argument. Valid ideas continue to gain currency, and invalid ideas fall to the wayside.

Of course, all that is abstracted in a perfect world. In the real world that you and I inhabit, it's a lot messier, with bone-headed ideas gaining support even after they've been shot down by better ideas. The proof of what really happens (under the bone-headed idea) doesn't always apply in the argument that follows. Personal prestige is involved, as is influence peddling and all sorts of other ways of gaming the debate.

Why couldn't this be the way God intended? After all, this is part and parcel of the way that human beings actually operate. This is us, after all. And we're the Body of Christ. We're the Church!

More to the point, is "the way it's supposed to be" in existence now? Or is it still just over the horizon, waiting for us to finally reach a state of agreement that once and for all removes the disagreements that holds us in hostile camps in the church today?

I'm going to remain out here on my limb, believing that the way the church is made up now, with all the competing currents of thought and belief and practice, is what God intends for our time. God has shown himself to be patient - it's been almost two thousand years since the resurrection of God-among-us, Jesus the Christ, and we haven't been raptured away yet. There's obviously still work to do.

God loves us, as messed up and as contentious as we are. He's waiting for us to be grace-filled vessels of his Spirit, as we are intended to be. We come to that awareness but slowly; it seems we don't do anything right off the bat. That's true individually as well as corporately.

Jesus is not a crowd. Jesus is one. Jesus also lives in the past, in the immediate, and in the indefinite future, living through time and space as the One Son of the Most High God. We are there as well. The little window we have now on this grand vista is foggy, cloudy, and obscured by our finitude. Even that won't last, we're assured by Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians. We're in the future, but we just haven't gotten there yet. The future is different than today; it always has been. God awaits us to realize who we truly are. This present reality is not for all time, but it's something we must go through. Everything's fine, and on schedule.

Body Image

2010-11-11T13:53:00.000-06:00

We may need to recalibrate our viewpoint.

I was driving to work yesterday, after having taken part in our weekly Lectio Divina service, and I was struck by a strange thought. What if the body is much larger than we had realized?

I'm referring to the "body of Christ" that Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 12. He says that just as a body has many parts, all interdependent, so too does the body of Christ, the church. It's made up of many individuals, many parts, all working together under the direction of the head.

Generally, when I've heard this passage read and explained, there's been a sense that it applies to one particular church, perhaps one denomination at most. I'm pretty sure that's not the position Paul was taking.

I think he was speaking of the whole church, the church made up of every local church that had been founded after Jesus' resurrection. A church of churches, if you will.

Now, this isn't really a radical idea, after all. But when we talk about the church being made of many members, we seem to be speaking about a single congregation and its individual members.

What I want to suggest is that we see the CHURCH as the entire body of Christ, thousands of denominations, para-church organizations, ministries, house churches, every instance of a place and people that lays claim to the name of Jesus the Christ. I want to suggest that the members of this body are the individual congregations, not necessarily the individual persons who make up the congregations. I further want to suggest that this fractious crowd of believers, jockeying and elbowing and contesting with each other, disagreeing about dogma and liturgy and hymnody and women's ordination and all that, this whole bunch of disagreeable partisans, is just the way it's supposed to be.

First, let's look at the notion that the church is not just one of the bigger denominations.

By one count, there are about 2.1 billion Christians in the world today. Among that group, Roman Catholics make up the largest group, at just over a billion. I don't think "the church" is Roman Catholic, despite their own belief to that effect. Nor do I think "the church" is Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Anglican. I think "the church" is Christian, with all the other names being modifiers, as in Baptist-Christian, Roman-Catholic-Christian, etc.

The church is the body of Christ. Christ is not a crowd.

Let's look at my notion that the body is made up of communities, not necessarily individual persons.

Christianity has its roots and its initial development in Judaism. Jesus was considered a Jewish rabbi. His first followers were Jews. His initial ministry was intended for the Jews in Judea. It was only after his resurrection that there was any real growth in the non-Jewish population of believers in Jesus the Messiah. Much of that growth was due to the activity of the apostle Paul in his missionary trips around the Mediterranean.

The Jewish nature of the earliest church means that there was a social character to this movement. From their earliest history, the Jews had a social orientation that is perhaps hard for us in 21st century America to grasp. Israel was the new name of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham. Israel was also the name of the people that claimed him as their ancestor. This one name referred, at the same time, to both the individual ancestor and to his progeny. You could speak of a nation by invoking its progenitor. We don't do that today. We don't speak of Washington to refer to the people of the United States. We don't speak of Jefferson as a synonym for the state of Virginia.

The people of Jesus' day did speak like this, however. Their notions of individualism were almost certainly radically different than ours today, and their vocabulary reflects these different ideas.

Another indication of this is the way that churches were referred to in some of Paul's letters, and in the Book of Revelation. Churches in Revelation were named for their location; there was no mention of particular bishops or elders at those churches. Once again, it was more of a communal viewpoint than what we might see today.

I'm not saying in all this that individual persons weren't important. That, of course, would be stupid. However, there was a sense that the community mattered more than we allow it to matter today, at least in the United States.

Finally, I want to explain why I think the disorderly mass that is Christianity is just the way that it should be.

Does any one of us have a monopoly on the truth? Does any one of us know all, that we might be able to inform others? When we look in the mirror, do any of us really think we have it all down?

Indeed. We need the counsel of others to keep us rooted in reality. We need the advice of others to help us with problems for which we just don't have a ready answer. We need the support of others when our own resources aren't up to the challenge. We need the prayers of others when our faith can't utter a word to plead our case.

We and the others we need, all speak in different voices. We each bring to the conversation our own unique perspectives. We practice the dialectic method on a grand scale, and we all are enriched because of this dialogue.

By the same token, each of the communities that make up the CHURCH brings its own unique voice to the party. And it is a party, you know, the earthly precursor to the Feast of the Lamb. In our jostling and shifting, in our arguments over ritual and belief and music and architecture, we sing the song of God's creative extravagance with gusto. If we watch carefully, we actually see harmony come out of what seems to be cacophony.

Humans can't help but contend and compete, argue and butt heads. It seems to be the way we're made. It was that way in the times of the Old Testament, and it's that way today. We can compete in very lethal ways, and we can compete in ways that enrich us. If that's the case, then I suspect that God had something to do with making us that way. I don't understand why that's the way things have worked out, but then, God didn't ask me to critique his design.

So there you have it - a long-winded explanation of why I think it's just fine that there are Roman Catholic and Orthodox and Presbyterian and Charismatic and Baptist (hyphenated) Christians. To define "the church" as US, and the rest of Christianity as THEM, seems to me to fly in the face of God's design. We're all of us cells in the body of the Messiah. And isn't that a grand and glorious vision to live?

Somewhere In Between

2010-11-10T20:00:00.001-06:00

Somewhere in between is where we find ourselves.

This morning, like most Wednesday mornings, I took part in a weekly exercise at our church. We meet at 6:30 to practice Lectio Divina, or Divine Reading.

If you're not familiar with this practice, it's centuries old. It's been practiced by monastics and non-monastics alike for all this time, as a way of drawing closer to the mind of God in prayer and meditation.

Lectio, as we do it, involves reading a short passage of Scripture repeatedly in a group, slowly and deliberately. We chew over the words and listen to each reading until a word or phrase seizes our attention. When the reading has been completed, we take that word or phrase and journal about it, a writing prayer, slowing our minds to let the Spirit guide our thoughts. We may share the results of our journaling, or we may pass - it's an individual choice. We don't interrupt the speaker as he or she shares what focus they had; we don't try to evaluate, interpret, or "fix" the speaker. We share our prayers. All this takes place in the context of an abbreviated liturgy that begins and ends our time together.

Our passage this morning was Psalm 82. Here's how this sounds from the New Jerusalem Bible:

    Against the judges of the nations

Psalm    Of Asaph

   God takes his stand in the divine assembly,
   surrounded by the gods he gives judgement.

   'How much longer will you give unjust judgements
   and uphold the prestige of the wicked?
   Let the weak and the orphan have justice,
   be fair to the wretched and the destitute.

   'Rescue the weak and the needy,
   save them from the clutches of the wicked.

   'Ignorant and uncomprehending, they wander in darkness,
   while the foundations of the world are tottering.
   I had thought, "Are you gods,
   are all of you sons of the Most High?"
   No! you will die as human beings do,
   as one man, princes, you will fall.'

   Arise, God, judge the world,
   for all nations belong to you.

---

I was struck by the phrase "divine assembly." I wrote that it was a very ironic description, that the "gods" were in session, presided over by the real God. How much strutting and posturing must have been on display; where was humility shown before the real Judge?

My thoughts continued - their true nature was revealed; all their self-importance was so much sham. Poor and pathetic like those they judged, mortal all, unable to ransom even their own lives.

I prayed that I would not fall into the same trap, of hubris and vainglory. I prayed that I might understand my own mortality, and hold each day as precious and sacred.

Finally, I mused on what it was about us that God finds precious, and why we are worthy of the sacrifice of the life of his own Son. And my musings ended on that holy mystery.

When it came time to share, I repeated essentially what I just wrote. My thoughts had been focused on our human tendency to inflate our importance and ignore our humble state. Maybe it's just me, but that notion comes up again and again in my own prayers.

One of our other readers, however, had been seized by a different thought. He mused about our failure to see just how special we are in the eye of God. How we overlook or ignore the very image of God - the Imago Dei - at our heart.

When I heard this, I wondered if perhaps I have been focusing too much on my human frailties, and not enough on those things that (can) make me little lower than angels. What I saw was this:

   A "god" with his feet buried in dung...

   Look down - nothing but shit

   Look up - nothing but heavens

   Look inward - what is there?

And once again, I ended on a mystery.

Jesus followers live in a mystery space. We exist in the tension of pairs of paradoxical elements - free will & predestination, works & faith, unlimited love & irresistible justice, absolute sovereignty & sacrificial death on a cross at the hands of sinners. We would like to have nice tight answers to questions, but too often, they're slippery and must be spoken of in metaphor, analogy, and simile, in song and poetry and painting.

We're somewhere in between. I don't see any way out of that reality in this life. Here's another paradox for you, one that's a deep fact for Christians - patience and urgent desire. We have to wait, and we must keep our lamps ready.

Mystery and knowing; we're somewhere in between.

Grace

2010-11-06T18:15:00.000-05:00

"Without the assistance of grace, immortality is more of a burden than a blessing."

This sentence was in the Readings for the Office of Readings for Tuesday, November 2, 2010, All Souls Day. It's from a book by St. Ambrose on the death of his brother Satyrus.

I don't want to paraphrase what St. Ambrose wrote about. Instead, I want to share some thoughts I had as I've been meditating on that one sentence. For some reason, it's been sticking with me since I read it a few days ago, triggering associations and thoughts about just how necessary grace is.

Let's begin by defining grace. According to Merriam-Webster.com, grace is "unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification." That's a good definition for me, so we'll go with that.

Unmerited it is. We can't do anything within our own power to earn that assistance. That's Christianity 101. Sanctification is not a self-improvement program. It's beyond our power to effect it; it's beyond our power to demand it. It's a gift, from One Who is capable of making it happen.

Divine it is. The Lord, the Lord is His name. The Lord is God. This, too, is Christianity 101, Basics of the Faith.

Assistance it is. See the paragraph two up. We are incapable of doing what grace does, on our own. We need help.

All the rest of this is easy to unpack once you understand Who it's from, and for whom it's intended.

For whom it's intended... Well, yes, it's for fallen humanity. Refer back to the first few chapters of Genesis for the story of the Fall.

So - why am I making such a big deal of this? It's because, too often, we think that the need for grace ends when we breathe our last.

Grace is certainly necessary during our mortal lives. If we didn't get that divine assistance, we'd have absolutely no hope. Death would truly be the end of things, death and condemnation. We fell, through the agency of the first Adam. We inherited his legacy; it was willed to us, the unwilling, by the willful.

Grace is what breaks that inheritance. Grace sweeps the shards of that manacle away, rips the rags from our cringing shoulders, and cleanses us so we can put on new, bright garments for the Feast of the Lamb. Grace allows us to be reworked by the Spirit into the person we were made to be. Grace fixes things up. Grace equips us further to be instruments of grace ourselves in a damaged universe. It's the only "pyramid scheme" that actually does make everyone wealthier, the only one that's not a fraud from the word "Go!" Grace expended equals more grace abounding.

Grace is necessary in this mortal world. But it's even more necessary in the world after.

If you believe in life after death, how would it sound to spend eternity - eternity! - in a by-the-rules, toe-the-line "paradise," a realm where you would be expected to be perfect every second of every eternal day. I'm talking about an existence where you have to think about being perfect, where you have to be on your game the whole time.

I'm pretty sure that's what a graceless eternity would be like. Yeah, you'd be immortal, but wouldn't it be fun?

But now look at a grace-filled eternity. You don't have to think about being perfect - you are perfect. You are complete. You have been reborn into an existence where you can't help but be forgiving, gracious, humble, holy, righteous, self-effacing, giving, generous. You were formed into this person by the effect of grace lived during your mortal life. Now you, the living product of that purification, that regeneration, are living for all time in the presence of the One who made it all possible. There's no anxiety about being perfect - it's been done.

So - there you have it. The result of grace lived here and now is grace in the sweet beyond, grace refined, perfected, integrated completely with the new person, the work of the Spirit in the flesh.

It wouldn't be a burden. It would be a blessing, the blessing of blessings.

The Reading that started me thinking about all this ends with these words:

"Above all else, holy David prayed that he might see and gaze on this: One thing I have asked of the Lord, this I shall pray for: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, and to see how gracious is the Lord."

Amen. Grace and shalom to us all.

Finally...

2010-11-03T12:39:00.001-05:00

It's finally over.

The elections have been held, and the results, for the most part, have been announced. All that's left, really, for the winners, is to do what the voters want done.

I'm taking a break, short as it is, from my self-imposed exile from political commentary to advocate for what I hope is a universally adopted practice.

I want to see all of us, liberal, conservative, Tea Party, libertarian, whatever allegiance you claim, do what we need to do to make this representative democracy work. We need to let our elected officials know what we want. All of us!

For too long demagogues and lobbyists have had the ear of elected representatives, to the exclusion of "just plain folks." It's because of that advocacy overload that we get some of the abominations of legislation we've seen in the past.

We have the opportunity with this new crop of legislators, governors, auditors, and so forth, to right that lopsided balance, and begin letting our voices be heard.

There's a world of work that needs to be done for us to begin thriving in this country. The government, trying at one and the same time to be smaller and more useful, is not going to be able to do it all. So, here's to personal responsibility, here's to keeping our representatives informed of what we want and how we think they're doing, and here's to keeping informed on issues that affect us both short-term and long-term. There's no excuse anymore to be stupid, ignorant, or lazy. The resources are out there to become informed and empowered. Letting media - of the left and of the right - dictate what we should believe is beyond dumb. It verges on imbecilic. Use the internet, find primary sources, and don't believe everything you read. Or hear. Or see. The forces that want to manipulate you as a voter and as an individual have had it too easy for too long. It's time to stop them from having us as such easy targets.

Live your values.

Love your country.

Love your fellow Americans.

There is no more "us" and "them." We're all "us," and the boat isn't getting any bigger.

Two Selves

2010-10-30T18:37:00.001-05:00

I've been on a journey of self-discovery.

It's been just over three weeks since I last posted anything. I've taken that time to examine some notions that have embedded themselves into my mind. I'd like to share what's come of that examination.

The basic idea is that the Christian life - the life I'm trying to live every day - requires me to participate in the killing of my self.

Let me unpack that astounding statement, please.

The Christian life is a life centered on the person of Jesus the Messiah. The Christian tries to act as Jesus would act, to pray as Jesus would pray, to love as Jesus loved, and to experience life as Jesus did. In essence, we are trying to become Jesus in our own selves.

If I'm going to become more Jesus-like, if I'm going to displace my own wishes and prejudices for those of the man who I declare to be my Lord and Master, then some parts of me must be removed, excised - killed, never to return.

Let's call the Jesus-self, that work in progress, the real self.

If that's true, then the pre-Jesus self, the "old me," is a false self.

So, in brief, what I'm being challenged to do is to kill the false self and let the real self flower to its fullest extent in the years of life that I have remaining to me on this Earth.

What is this false self? How can it be false, if it was the "natural" me that existed before Jesus entered my tidy, well-organized world?

Imagine that we are each a self. We're the product of our nature, and our nurture. I'll leave to others all the argument about which is more dominant, and which aspect caused what character trait, behavior quirk, or belief choice. For the purpose of my illustration, we're each the product of our heredity and our environment.

Our heredity is beyond our control, for the most part. Our environment - ah, our environment - the things we expose ourselves to, the people whose views we share, the heroes we admire, these things are within our control, to varying degrees.

What are we told in modern twenty-first-century America that might have some effect on our self?

"You'll only be truly fulfilled if you have the newest car, you know."

"You deserve to live in that house. You've earned it!"

"Why not get that home theater system? It won't cost that much!"

"Those jeans make your butt look so cute. Go ahead - get 'em!"

"Don't you think that you're just a little too heavy? Wouldn't you feel better about yourself if you looked like that actress?"

"You'll never amount to anything unless you take this class."

"It doesn't matter if you like working there. For the sake of your career, you need to work here!"

"Why do you keep hanging out with those people? They're just so uncool!"

"What's with this interest in God? Are you nuts!? You have to check your brain at the door to believe that stuff!"

"Nobody will ever give a crap about you unless you get yourself together. You need to do this, and buy that, to shape up. Get on the ball - you're falling behind!"

Do any of these sound like the messages you hear every day? Do you get the feeling that you're being brow-beaten by every commercial and every magazine ad that you see? Do you feel a little uneasy that you're not the person you could be, because you just don't have enough cool stuff, or hang out with the right people?

Welcome to the consumer-centered manipulation circus of 21st-century America. The rest of the world isn't really so different, so I guess we could say it's the 21st-century world that bombards us with these sorts of messages.

Of course, the messages we hear are more subtle than I've portrayed them above. However, that's what you're really hearing so many times a day, in so many different venues, from so many different voices. We're awash in a sea of manipulative, carefully designed persuasive art that is primarily intended to keep us consuming the products and services of the modern industrial state. As long as we're good little cogs in the marketplace, everything rolls along fine and dandy, and it's the best of all possible worlds.

And over time, that best of all possible worlds kills our very souls...

On the other hand, I contend that when we become Christ-followers, and from that point, Christ-imitators, we begin to slay the false self and replace it with the true self that is the gift of Jesus to each of us. What do we hear from this Jesus that we're working to become?

"You are worth saving, worth dying for, in fact! It's done - the work's completed."

"Your Father in heaven loves you, has always loved you. You're a special creation in His universe. He's not content to leave you as you are, though. You can be so much more than you can imagine."

"Nothing pleases the Father more than hearing from you. He loves coming to your aid. He doesn't need you to be complete in Himself, but He wants to be with you just the same. See the difference?"

"I call you my friends if you do what I ask you to do. I only want what's best for you. Sometimes what's best for us requires pain. I've already been there, so I'm with you every step of the way."

"We make a great team. I'd love to go on forever like this; it can only get better."

"Stay with me, and I'll stay with you. I'll be here even when you think I'm not around."

This is what the three-part community of the Father/Son/Spirit says to each of us. These are some of the words that speak into existence the true self, and begin slaying the false self.

The true self does not come into being overnight, nor without a struggle. Like any pitched battle - and it is a battle, make no mistake - there are backs and forths, victories and defeats. The objective of this war is the future of our life. The theater of operations is our mind and our soul. The signs of combat are the changes we make in our lives as the true self comes more and more to the fore.

We begin finding different things to do with our money - but not always.

We begin re-evaluating associations and friendships - but not always.

We start to consider what we do with our spare time - but not always.

We may re-examine our political loyalties - but not always.

We may begin to work to repair broken relationships - but not always.

Our lives may seem to be in turmoil, and yet we may be smiling - but not always.

The true self is a different kind of person. That self is focused on a different goal, a different life-objective, than the false self that is being slain. Here's what a single verse from the Hebrew prophet Micah says about all this:

6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord really wants from you: He wants you to promote justice, to be faithful, and to live obediently before your God.

And this, from the pen of The Teacher in the book of Ecclesiastes:

12:13 Having heard everything, I have reached this conclusion: Fear God and keep his commandments, because this is the whole duty of man.

That's all. Hold in awe the Lord your God, obey his pattern for living, and love your neighbor as you would love yourself.

It all sounds so simple. Well, actually, it is simple. I've heard words of wisdom, though, and they are these: Simple doesn't mean easy.

That distinction is the subject for the rest of the life of each Christ-imitator. We each have to account for it in our own way; we each live our individual lives along our own personal trajectory. No two lives are alike.

---

I wrestle every day with how that death of the false self and the advance of the true self will look in that day. Some days I'm more successful in winning the battles than in others. Some days I lose badly, and I feel like I'm back in the old self all over again. God gives me the determination to get some sleep, and wake to engage in the battle of a lifetime all over again the next day.

May you be blessed with the faith and determination to engage in your own confrontation every day, and to remain on duty until final victory is won.

Amen! Grace and peace to us all...

Disconnecting

2010-10-07T13:38:00.001-05:00

It's been a few weeks since I posted anything on this blog. I thought I'd add a note to let everyone know that I'm still alive, and to convey what I've been doing lately.

I've been avoiding as much as possible the unending spew of political news and commentary that is flooding our media channels right now. It's not that I don't have any interest in the upcoming elections. However, the "debate" between the Democrats and the Republicans, let alone the independent parties, has gotten so partisan and so stupid that it's better to just wait until election day, make your choices, and then watch to see how the races come out. Consequently, I'm trying (sometimes unsuccessfully) to swear off a heavy diet of political fast-food for the time being.

In the process of trying to focus on those things that are important and worthy of attention in life, I've concluded that they didn't include participation in the social network sphere. Therefore, I've deactivated my Twitter account, and removed myself from LinkedIn. I've never had a Facebook account, so I'm free from that particular albatross.

I concluded that I don't live my life online like so many other people apparently do. I use internet technologies to provide me with access to email and chat for communication, to websites for research and enjoyment, and to blogging for personal expression. I don't have to continually monitor what my followers are thinking or doing, nor do I need constant alerts about what people in my network are up to at any given moment. My interaction with the net is more or less under my control, and I particularly don't want my activities to be used to target advertising at me. I hate ads. I will literally go out of my way to avoid buying something from a company that has annoyed me with their advertising. Google is therefore in direct confrontation with me, but I can filter ads on websites, and ignore the rest. Years of watching network television have given me eyes that are blind to ads directly in front of me.

Since I don't live my life with a receiver implanted in my brain to pick up the latest and greatest from the net, I figured there was no reason to waste time or computer storage on social network sites. Therefore, bye-bye Twitter, bye-bye LinkedIn, never gonna check you out Facebook.

There's another (sad) conclusion I've come to after having used Twitter for the last year or so, and to a lesser degree LinkedIn. That is, that most people's lives are banal in the extreme. It's not that people aren't worth knowing, loving, and caring for. They are, and rightfully so. What has become obvious is that I don't need to know about the banality and mediocrity of all my friends and associates. I don't need to immerse myself in that, nor they in my own. I don't care that they're having breakfast. I don't care that the dog crapped on the carpet. I don't give a hoot if DH is on a tear about his sports team. I don't feel the need to share my own mundane observations on a daily basis. No, posting something every week or two here should be sufficient, and gives me time to pick through the tediousness and perhaps actually deliver something of some value.

So, that's where I am, what I've been doing. I've been scaling back my social interaction, simplifying my presence, regaining some time and attentiveness. Living in the immediate surroundings. Being here now. Online life will take care of itself.

My prayer for anyone who's taken the time to read this is that they may have all the time they need to consider the world in which they live out the mundane life they have, and how the mundane and the sacred all collide for each of us in the simplest of events. Find the holy, and live in the sacred. Blessings to us all.

A Valedictory of Sorts

2010-09-14T14:47:00.002-05:00

This is going to be the final post for a while, at least the final post that deals in any way with politics. Our social fabric is too frayed from the personal animus that seems to grow more bitter every day. Even though I have voiced strong opinions in the past, I refuse to take any further part in the noisy mob that is tearing our country apart. So, with that said, here is where I'm leaving things for a time.

I intend to continue posting on topics that directly bear on personal faith, the practice of seeking the Divine and relating that to our lives on this small, lovely planet. I will not be addressing that practice in the political realm. You can expect to read future posts about finding time to pray, seeking solitude, and making faith real by incarnating it into good works. I will write about appreciation for simple acts of kindness, about opportunities to serve others, and about finding a path of quiet through the noise that always tries to divert our attention from the truly important.

Reality is a buffet served in a restaurant with an extensive menu. We can pick and choose the various items on the menu that please our palate, and ignore the rest. Everyone has a chance to get the perfect tray of food for their taste. What we lose in this model is the chance to sample dishes that may taste strange at first, but that upon further examination may have a flavor we find intriguing, tantalizing, exotic. We find that we can learn to like the unfamiliar, to appreciate the unusual.

The internet has bolstered this idea to new levels of isolation in the years since its advent. We can now surround ourselves with people who think like us, talk like us, sound like us, dress like us, behave like us, worship like us, be like us. We can absolutely encapsulate ourselves in an impenetrable bubble of "us-ness." The rest of the world can remain strange, threatening, and not worthy of our presence.

And we're all the poorer for the new ghettos we erect for ourselves.

It is true that the internet can foster community. But from what I've seen, these are all too often communities of likes, with less diversity rather than more. Relations between these communities often have all the intellectual content of a shouting match between hooligans at a football game.

My wish going forward is that I find ways to help get those ghetto walls knocked down a little, bring a little variety to daily life, and perhaps say some things that can build up and not tear down. I'm sick of the noise, sick of the hatred, and sick of having knee-jerk reactions to what I hear being spewed out by people who would be far more convincing if they behaved as adults are supposed to. The knee-jerk reactions will have to be dealt with, but I won't be sharing any here.

So - be blessed by whatever you consider the good, the holy, and the worthwhile. Keep checking back from time to time. There will be new things coming in the future.

A Modest Proposal

2010-09-09T23:04:00.001-05:00

I have a suggestion for all those people who are so exercised about the Islamic Cultural Center two blocks from Ground Zero.

Instead of bitching and moaning and getting all hateful about how the sanctity of the site is being violated, try doing something positive.

How about finding a Christian congregation that wants to build a church two blocks from Ground Zero? How about locating a Jewish congregation that wants to place a synagogue in the same vicinity? What about an ashram? Or a Buddhist temple?

My point, if it's not obvious by now, is this - if this site is truly sacred, then it should reflect the beliefs of those who died there. And that means a proliferation of worship centers, cultural centers, and similar places. If this site is sacred because of the deaths that occurred there, then we need to honor the highest ideals held by the noble departed. We need to have a concentration of places where those ideals are expressed in their natural form - places where the living can go and pray in whatever way is right for them on behalf of the people who are no longer with us.

I haven't heard anyone propose this idea. All I've heard is hardening of positions, and the potential for more disagreement, more hateful language, more acrimony. I'm sick of the bullshit about this issue. I'm sick of hearing people who ought to know better blow their credibility when they say stupid things. And I want someone, anyone, to take positive action on this. It's time for American values to rise above the noise.

All God's People

2010-09-08T17:38:00.000-05:00

There's a demon stalking the land...

And God is being put to the test.

Several events have been happening in America that give an absolute lie to any notions we have about our religious liberty.

First, is Barack Obama a Muslim?

He says he's a Christian. Many of his opponents say he's not. They say he's not even a native-born American. Franklin Graham says he was born a Muslim, because the seed of Islam is passed through the father, but that he's renounced the Prophet and professed Christianity as his faith. Glenn Beck says he's a racist.

All these pronouncements betray a deep skepticism about President Obama being who he says he is.

During the Presidential campaign, he was blasted because of incendiary remarks made by his former pastor. This was a pastor at a Christian church. What kind of Muslim would go to a Christian church? Obama distanced himself from his former pastor, and in the process gave an eloquent speech about the current and past state of race relations in this country.

Nothing said has dissuaded the "Obama is a Muslim" devotees from their beliefs.

So - is the President a Christian, a Muslim, or something else?

I think he's a Christian. I take him at his word. And it doesn't matter one bit. Read the following to see why.

Here's what our country's Constitution says:

Article VI - Debts, Supremacy, Oaths

"... The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

NO RELIGIOUS TEST WILL EVER BE REQUIRED AS A QUALIFICATION...

Barack Obama could be an atheist, and it wouldn't matter. Religious affiliation is not a requirement for the office of President of the United States. That's in the Constitution. End of discussion.

All his opponents, all those screaming about this, have one and only one option. Shut up - you are out of order.

And here's another thing slinking around our country - a huge controversy right now in New York City about the construction of an Islamic Cultural Center two blocks from Ground Zero. The organization wanting to build the Center already has the support of many prominent Americans, including the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. Many people agree that they have the right to build where they want to, but that they should re-evaluate their current location. The opponents to the Center at the current planned location say it desecrates the sacred site of Ground Zero.

In what way is the site of Ground Zero sacred? Who is it sacred to? Is it only sacred to Jews and Christians?

Here's what I know. Members of many faiths died when the towers fell. Christians. Jews. Muslims. Buddhists. Taoists. Atheists. Who's death carries the most weight when the sacredness of this site is established? Is it more sacred to Allah than to Yahweh? Why?

It's a sacred site, no doubt about it. It's sacred to Americans, because of the wound that we suffered when the attack took place. The wound afflicts us all, to this day, and it shows no signs of healing. As long as we act as if it's only sacred to members of one or two faiths, that wound is a festering nastiness that threatens to poison our entire nation. Those who have such virulent hatred of Islam, the most vocal opponents to the Center, and to Islam in general, do not speak for America. They are not patriots. They are haters. Who is their God?

And finally, we have the pastor and his church in Florida that are going to celebrate the 9/11 attacks this year with "International Burn a Quran Day."

General Petraeus says this one act will endanger Americans in Afghanistan, and our mission there and elsewhere in the Muslim world. He says it will serve only to provide material for recruiting new members for the Taliban and for Al Qaeda. His statement is having no impact on the pastor.

Plenty of other people and organizations have come out against this act. Angelina Jolie. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Attorney General Eric Holder. Rabbi Steve Gutow of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. The Vatican. And the list continues to grow. These voices of opposition are having no effect on deterring the pastor.

I'm a Christian. I bow to Jesus my Savior, and try to love all my fellow men, whether they be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or atheist. It's not always easy. It's particularly not easy to even claim association with Terry Jones and his Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. He claims to be a Christian, but he no more resembles what I know as the Christian faith than does Fred Phelps in Topeka. These people claim to be Christian, but they spit in my face with what they do. They defile my faith. I must speak out. They do godless things and fly in the face of Jesus' commandment to pray for their enemies, and forgive them, even as they don't know what they do. And so must I - I have no other options. But it's very hard to do, and I must pray for strength to do so.

These are the faces of the demon that's skulking through our land. These are the hateful nasties that can not exist in the sharp light of revelation. These poisonous spirits contaminate our country, and threaten to completely overrun us if we don't oppose them.

If you read this, and feel as I do, then please, comment.

If you think that all this hate is just fine... Then, may God have mercy on your soul.

A Nine-Eleven Meditation...

2010-08-24T20:29:00.000-05:00

As we approach the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I think it would be worthwhile to consider where we are as a nation.

In the days immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as a nation we were united more than I can ever remember in my life. We were united in our determination to retaliate for the attacks, taking our vengeance wherever it needed to go to deal with those responsible for organizing and sponsoring them. President George W. Bush, a figure who had been seen as divisive by many, said and did what he needed to do to bring us together. It was a golden moment. And we let it slip away, almost unnoticed.

In the years since that mountaintop experience of national unity and resolve, we've seen the partisan warfare that characterized so much of the Clinton years wound ever tighter, to an entirely new level of mindless hate and anger.

We've seen our influence in the Muslim world wax and wane, as we've embarked on barely justifiable military campaigns, with still more warfare talked about with other countries of interest.

We've seen our national treasury bankrupted, first by tax cuts for the wealthiest of us, then by "supplemental" spending to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and finally by an economic meltdown that was spawned by irresponsible lending and "innovation" by the nation's largest and most influential banks and investment houses.

We've seen a rebirth of fear the like of which I don't recall having seen since the depths of the Cold War.

We have people seriously discussing the need for "Second Amendment solutions" to the "problem" of the Federal government.

We have lies masquerading as truth, and demagogues masquerading as impartial commentators.

We have a nation that is declining as we watch, apparently helpless to do anything about it.

We are hopeless, fearful, angry, and in denial.

Did the hijackers of those four airliners on September 11, 2001, triumph?

I wonder...

Hope, something that has been at the heart of so much that is great about America, has been relegated to the punchline of a political joke. Yard signs poke fun at the current President - "How's that hopey-changey thing workin' for ya?"

Naked, virulent hatred is proudly displayed on other placards - "Barack Obama Half-breed Muslin." We're too stupid to know how to spell, and we're too ignorant to accept that a statement is a falsehood.

Barack Obama has succeeded George Bush as the man to hate. He's a Muslim, he's not an American, he's a socialist, he's a Nazi, he's a communist. He's not one of "us."

The more extreme members of the American body politic have found a voice. They distrust any incumbent politician (oftentimes with good reason, sad to say). No statement, regardless of how far-fetched, seems beyond their ability to believe, if it hits at the "establishment." They want a return to "Constitutional absolutism," even as they try to re-interpret that living document to suit their own myopic viewpoints.

It seems almost as if the inmates are running the asylum. Birthers, deathers, and true believers of every stripe just know that the "mainstream media" is lying to them - and in many cases, they're right. And how's that workin' for ya?

In many ways, I think this has come about because we've finally moved the internet, with its dazzling speed and reach, into the mainstream and embedded it into our lives. Any opinion, regardless of how crazy or ill-founded, can be legitimized with the world-wide megaphone of social networks, blogs, wikis, email, and streaming video. With 6.5 billion people in this world, no one can police every website that pops up, every blog that is begun, every Facebook page that appears. Individuals who can barely make sense of life can now self-publish their opinions and get distribution as e-books or print-on-demand copies.

The village idiot has found his voice, and now it's the shit heard round the world.

Is this a reversible situation? Can this country find reason to come together, besides our hatred and fear of anyone different? Can we begin to believe once again in the promise of better times ahead, instead of yearning for better times that never _really_ existed?

I want to believe that our best days are still ahead. I want to believe that I'll actually see some of them before I take that big dirt nap. But I have my doubts. I don't see many people who actually seem to believe this. Instead I see people fortifying their bunkers, getting ready to ride out the siege and occasionally go out and strike the enemy camp.

If anyone reads these posts, you know I'm a Christian. That means that hope is kind of essential to my philosophy of life. For me, that "hopey-changey" thing works just fine. I'm not bound by the limitations of this life, in this world. Ultimately, this is not my eternal home, but a way-station on the way there. But this way-station could be a lot better place for all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, if we'd do a few things to improve it.

Do we really need to pursue a zero-sum game, one where if I win, you must lose?

Do we really need to marginalize those who think differently than us? Really? Why?

Do we really need to be such ignorant shits, so often? We have really good brains - they work best when we actually use them.

Pride goeth before the fall. We're falling for our own line of bull. Is it really necessary to be so proud of it?

Is anyone out there? Does anyone care?

Contrarian Question Two-fer

2010-08-18T20:10:00.000-05:00

We've got a bonus question this time.

I've been posting some contrarian questions lately, proposing that some time-honored notions might be rife for re-evaluation and perhaps, even throwing out altogether. This question has rather cosmic attributes, so let's get right to it:

Is it possible that the "End of Days," "Judgment Day," "The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord," has already occurred?

I'm not going to go into the reasons why I pose this question at length, but I'll merely highlight some pointers to this as a valid possibility.

First, hope and change have been relegated to the category of punchlines to political jokes. The gates of Hell have posted over them the motto "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." I think that fact speaks for itself.

Second, Jesus, in the Olivet discourse (look it up) points out that some of those hearing him speak would be alive when the Second Coming arrived. Do you see any two-thousand-year-old Jews hanging around - anywhere? I didn't think so.

Third, the Book of Revelation talks about the Anti-Christ. Given the propensity of biblical literalists to cite this person, or that person, as the definitive Anti-Christ, and having done this for hundreds of years, I think it's safe to say that in at least one case, they must have been right. If the Anti-Christ has already made his appearance, and then been escorted off the world's stage, Judgment Day has come and gone.

We're the leftovers. Or, in the terminology of a popular series of novels a few years ago, the left behind.

Well, you may ask, why didn't we see the sun turn to blood, or the stars fall, or any of the other signs of those days listed in the Book of Revelation? Who's to say we didn't see these things? Have you seen some of the space images from the Hubble Space Telescope? Red suns, skies void of stars, the whole thing - it's all there! This is a big universe, after all.

So - if we're the left behind, what does that mean going forward? This is where the second contrarian question comes in.

Let's assume that my proposition is in fact the truth. Let's assume further that we're stuck here, that there will be no further passage of the righteous to Paradise. In other words, hope is now dead - this is as good as it gets.

That's pretty depressing, you might think. But wait - we now have the chance to create a world that truly reflects human values, not those hopelessly romantic notions that the God people kept imposing on us all those years. We can make the world in our own image!

Where should we start?

Here's that second contrarian notion.

I think it's time that we made the point, once and for all, that you're responsible for your own presence in this world. It's time to stop the stupid idea of charity. If events have conspired to screw your life into the ground, well, buddy, that's just the way things turn out.

This needs to be applied to both our foreign missions as well as to our domestic policies and practices. For instance, if you don't have a fortune, and you're so short-sighted as to not have bought health insurance, a sudden illness or accidental injury or any other unexpected health crisis is your problem. Show up at the Emergency Room without an insurance card, or a bank statement, and some really good ID, and you'll be shown the door. You can't mooch health care off the system any more. No freeloaders, and high time for that. It's all about freedom from government mandates, after all.

With any luck, this will help weed out the weak and slow, the elderly who are too infirm and slow to understand that there's no more free lunch. Within a generation, we should be a fit, healthy, and very free people.

There are a myriad of other consequences to this change in the way we live, but I think you get the idea. If you can't carry your own weight, you should just go off and die, and free up the resources for people who can pay their own way. And the sooner, the better.

Robert Heinlein wrote a book years ago, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. One of the things about that book that has stuck with me all this time is the acronym TANSTAAFL, which means THERE AIN'T NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH. That's eternal wisdom. That's the motto of this brave new world, if my contrarian notion is in fact true. We're embarking on a new adventure, and one that will create a much simpler world. Let's get it on!

A Christian Nation

2010-08-17T21:59:00.000-05:00

I'm going to make this brief.

I want to thank the Tea Party loyalists, the ultra-conservatives, and the more extreme members of the the Christian Right for finally, positively driving a stake through the heart of the notion that the United States is now, or ever was, a Christian nation.

The heart of the Christian gospel is love for the other, even your enemy, love for your God, and forgiveness even unto death. Jesus lived this, and died this - "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they do..."

The earmark of the people I mention above is an unforgiving judgmentalism, a rigid belief in their own righteousness, and a distinct lack of charity to those of their fellow Americans who have fallen on hard times. They want to "reload," to talk about "Second Amendment solutions" to the government that they don't like. They don't resemble Jesus the Christ in any way I can see; they're more like the Pharisees who looked on as the Romans crucified the Son of God and watched him die in agony on the cross.

As to the delusional belief that these United States are, or were, a "Christian nation"... Name one instance of mention of the name of Jesus - you know, the Christ? - in government publications, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, anything? Sure, there are the odd mention of "God," of "the year of our Lord," and similar terms, but those could just as easily be referring to almost any monotheistic deity. I'm talking about a concerted mention of Jesus the Christ, the "Christ" in "Christian nation." It's not there. What we actually find is more like the vague "God" in Enlightenment philosophy, something that was very typical in the 1700's when this country was founded. Vague God-talk; that's just about as specific as the half-assed "religion" we find in the "theory" of Intelligent Design.

No Christ here, move along, this isn't the Christian nation you're looking for...

Jesus wasn't an American, he wasn't a Roman, he was a first-century Jew living in an occupied country. He was also an absolutely unique being - fully human, fully God - and billions of people call him Lord. Some of us fall on our faces because we can't do what we want to do to honor him - we fail, we sin, we ask for mercy. Some of us are so proud of our righteousness that we strut about and crow about how we're not like "those people." There's a story in the Gospels about these two types of people. From it, we get the prayer of the Orthodox - the Jesus prayer.

"Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner." I hate to say it, but I don't think I'll be hearing any of my ultra-conservative countrymen saying this anytime soon.

Tradition

2010-08-09T22:22:00.000-05:00

I suppose I should be glad that I'm a Protestant...

I've been following some practices in the last few months that come from a monastic tradition. Specifically, as a result of doing contemplative retreats at a Benedictine monastery in northwest Missouri, I've become very attracted to the Liturgy of the Hours, or what's known as the Daily Office. In addition, I've taken to reading the Rule of St. Benedict on a daily basis, with the objective of reading it as Benedictines do - three times complete in a year. Other spiritual reading is part of this mix as well.

In sum, I'm a confessing Protestant who does things that a Roman Catholic would find quite familiar. And yet, for all that, I think I'd make a pretty bad Catholic. Let me explain.

The Roman Catholic church is the product of twenty centuries of Christianity filtered through the lens of the descendants of the Roman Empire. The traditional language is Latin; the organization is heirarchical; echoes of ancient Roman imperial behavior can be seen throughout the entire church.

Tradition in the Roman church is capitalized when it appears in church writings, and if I'm not mistaken, treated in many ways as equivalent to holy Scripture. And this is why I'd make a lousy Catholic. And for that matter, I'd make an equally lousy Greek Orthodox.

I don't have this veneration for Tradition, and that's a flaw I willingly confess.

Tradition is not nearly so venerated in Protestant denominations, particularly those of a more Reformed heritage. Reformed theology preaches "sola scriptura," "by Scripture alone" as the basis for all salvation and holiness. In this worldview, Tradition is an interesting addendum to what is true and right, but nothing more.

This attitude toward Tradition has permeated my thinking and religious observance my entire life. I've gotten somewhat relaxed since earlier days, but I still have nowhere near the attitude toward Tradition that Roman Catholics or Orthodox do.

Let's see what Tradition really is.

In every case I can think of, any given Tradition began as anything but traditional. Take the Tradition, or Sacrament, of Holy Communion, the Eucharist, the bread and wine from the Last Supper. It did not begin as a tradition; it was a one-off event, at a particular time in a particular place. It was only later that it became a capital-T Tradition. Over time it has become encrusted with so much symbolism and religious adornment that it's hard to see back to the original event. So let me help...

Here's the account from the NET Bible from the Gospel of Luke:

22:19 Then he took bread, and after giving thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 22:20 And in the same way he took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood."

And here's a similar account (NET Bible again) from the Apostle Paul, from 1 Corinthians:

11:23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread, 11:24 and after he had given thanks he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 11:25 In the same way, he also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, every time you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 11:26 For every time you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Do you see the development here? In the first, during a ritual meal, which Jesus held with his disciples, he redefines the nature of the Paschal feast, and takes that sacrificial role onto himself. He takes a loaf of matzoh and a cup of wine, at different points in the meal, and imputes symbolic significance to them. He tells his followers, "Do this in remembrance of me."

In the second account, we're presented with a somewhat more specific prescription for repeated practice, as in "every time you eat this bread and drink the cup."

My point is this. A meal with certain unique characteristics has been transformed into a rite that is the center of the Roman Catholic Mass. Eucharistic adoration is veneration of the host, which, sanctified by a priest, becomes the literal body of Christ to a devout Catholic.

I can not get my head around all this.

I understand praying the Psalms, as is done in the Daily Office.

I understand practicing contemplation, as I've learned to do in multiple retreats.

I understand reading the Rule of St. Benedict, the reading of other books of Christian meditation and spiritual introspection, and the use of gestures such as signing the cross.

I don't understand Tradition as it's developed in the Catholic church, to the extent that it has.

Protestants, however, for all their preaching about "sola scriptura," are not immune to encrusting simple events with traditional associations. If the rite of Communion were to be celebrated just as it was in the first instance, all of us worshipers would be wearing robes and sandals, reclining on pillows around a long table and eating and drinking while propping ourselves up on one elbow. If you've been to church to celebrate Communion, you know that's not the way it's done. Instead, you may find a tray filled with tiny shot glasses with a thimble-full of grape juice and little bread pellets that look like breath mints. Or maybe you'd find a single chalice filled with wine, and round, flat wafers of bread-like substance. Or, as at our church, you'd find a single chalice filled with wine (or grape juice - we swing both ways) and a loaf of bread from which you'd tear off a chunk and dip it into the chalice. No pillows, no robes, no sandals, no propped-up elbows. Not exactly original - instead, very Traditional.

Tradition is important. It can provide linkages to the past, a past two thousand years ago, and maintain continuity with that past. It can be examined to show how things go from simple at first, to complex as time passes. Tradition has value, and should be appreciated for that. But Tradition can also bind you when you should be liberated, can tie you to rituals that are irrelevant in the modern world and perhaps can be discarded centuries after they became Traditional. It's all a judgment call, as is virtually everything we do in the name of God and all holiness.

My traditions are not those, primarily, of the Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches. I am steeped and infused with a Protestant mind-set. I'm getting old enough that I feel I can re-examine my attitudes and open myself to new practices, as I've described.

Right now, from the vantage point of where I am on my walk with Jesus, I don't believe I could be a good Catholic. But who knows what might happen tomorrow, or the day after? Who's to say what might be in store for me, or perhaps even for the Catholic church itself? One man was nailed up on a cross like so much house siding, and his death and return to life forever changed the world, and who expected that. I really don't know what comes next, but I'm willing to wait and see.

Contrarian Question Three

2010-08-07T18:14:00.000-05:00

Let's look at another traditional practice, and see if it holds up...

The church is traditionally against "gay marriage" in any way, shape or form. Traditional values rule the day. Is it time to re-think this opposition? What reason might there be for a change of attitude about this?

What is the interest of the state in the institution of marriage, or civil union? Here's the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States -

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Three phrases jump out at me immediately in this context. The first is "establish Justice." The second is "insure domestic Tranquility." And the third phrase is "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." Let's examine each in turn.

The first interest of the state, it seems to me, that pertains to the union of two people in a legally recognized relationship, is to establish a just arrangement for uniting people in this unions. Justice requires no favoritism or discrimination; everyone is equal before the law. It would seem that justice, at face value, requires that legally sanctioned unions permit both heterosexual and homosexual couples to bond equivalently.

The second interest of the state in my view is insuring domestic tranquility. This "domestic peace" involves more than peace in the home; it applies to peace within the borders of the entire United States of America. Legally recognized unions of willing adults must further the interest of the state in maintaining a peaceful society. The contentiousness that the whole "gay-marriage" issue embodies, does not further domestic tranquility. Instead, it illustrates how an entire segment of the population is being kept from something that another segment has enjoyed for centuries. The injustice is openly on display, for everyone to see.

Finally, the phrase about securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and future generations should be easy to figure out. Liberty would allow homosexual couples to unite in a life-partnership, and have the same legal rights, of property ownership, of inheritance, of power of attorney, everything, that heterosexual couples have taken for granted for generations.

Here's the bottom line - as far as the interests of the state are concerned, allowing homosexual couples to exist with full legal rights is not only just, not only conducive to the general tranquility of our society, but also in keeping with the very spirit of this country since its founding. That's the interest of the state. You'll notice I did not mention anything about furthering any religious agenda or belief.

That was very deliberate. What I'm going to propose will probably strike many people as too much, but it allows the partnership of two individuals in this country without any care for their sexual orientation.

I think that the state, Federal, State, and Local, should abolish Marriage Licenses. Instead, there would be nationally recognized "civil union" or "life partner" licenses. These would be free of any religious connotations, and would simply give a legal recognition of the intention of two people to make a lifetime commitment to each other in a durable relationship. It would free the entire issue from the stigma that attaches to it now, because it would not use the term "marriage."

In fact, this new "license" would replace marriage licenses. Any couple, heterosexual or homosexual, would procure one of these licenses if they wanted a legally recognized union. Couples that chose to co-habit and not commit to this durable relationship would do what they do now, live with each other and have no binding commitment to each other. No legal rights would accrue to them either. I suppose that common-law status could be continued, but it would have to expand to include homosexual couples as well, if that seemed good to the various legislatures.

What of the institution of marriage? I'm not proposing that it be abolished, only the licensing of such a union for couples of a certain sexual orientation. Marriage would revert to what it should be, a covenant relationship sanctioned by religious bodies, according to the beliefs of those faith communities. If a church, for instance, absolutely refused to recognize homosexual unions, no problem. They would not perform wedding ceremonies for such couples. Another church might feel more accommodating, and so they would perform such ceremonies. This preserves the freedom of religious communities to be true to their beliefs and promote and advocate for those values. For those so inclined, freedom of religion is maintained, and for others, freedom from religion is recognized.

Is this idea too radical? Why? California's Proposition 8 was recently struck down. Other states have allowed such unions to exist, with full protection under the laws of those states. I think it's time that we allow life-partnerships to exist for all Americans, and move on to matters that truly threaten us.

I welcome comments on this article. Please keep them on-topic. Comments are moderated.

Contrarian Question Two

2010-08-03T19:45:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you just have to shift gears, and deal with new questions...

I had intended to address the next installment in this series on the re-examination of traditional beliefs, to questions about prohibitions on legalizing gay marriage. However, some events in the last day or two have inspired me to set that aside, and look at another time-honored belief instead.

I'd like to ask if the modern nation-state has reached the end of its usefulness.

In the modern world we've seen an explosion in the number of nations. In the 1950's there were far fewer than 200 nations in the world. Today, in contrast, there are well over 200. Many of these states have come about from the break-up of larger countries, such as the demise of the Soviet Union, or the partitioning of some of the Balkan states. Only occasionally have we seen nations actually joining together into a larger single state, such as happened with the re-unification of East and West Germany.

The nation-state as we define it has really existed for a relatively short time, historically. In the past, there have been empires, extending back to the Roman empire, the Persian empire, ancient Egypt, or some of the Chinese empires, among others. These might last for the lifetime of one empire builder, like that of Alexander the Great, or they might endure for centuries, in one form or another, like Rome.

For far longer than that, however, civilized or social man lived in what amounted to city-states, small fortified towns that typically controlled some agricultural land and perhaps access to a trade route or transportation corridor. To call these "states" is a bit of a stretch, compared to nation-states we have today.

Even further back, mankind existed as small clans, either nomadic or settled. The next valley over might see another clan, but the reach of one clan was very localized.

Life in those days tended to be short, perhaps brutish, and you typically knew just about everyone you'd meet in the course of any given week.

The nation-state as we have it today is a marvel of organization, with many levels of bureaucracy and delegation of power, with highly developed ruling elites and laws governing all levels of society. Freedom is a managed quality; you're free so long as you observe the laws and play by the rules. If you cross these lines, though, you can be sure that sooner or later you'll run afoul of the police power of the state. This can mean anything from a traffic warning to the death penalty. The modern state governs by carefully applied coercion.

This coercion can extend to the relationships between states. Warfare is a common event in the world of nation-states. This was true in the ancient Middle East, and it's true in the world today. Wars of aggression, holy wars, all sorts of organized conflict fall under this rubric.

In the twenty-first century I believe we're beginning to see the systematic failure of the nation-state. Small non-governmental bodies can wage attacks on large states, such as the attacks of 9/11. These same groups can then resist decimation by those same opponents by striking bargains with groups within the governments of sympathetic states in close proximity to the attacker's bases of operation. Guerilla warfare can go on for decades, when one group is fighting for autonomy from a national government.

On top of this new reality in armed conflict, governance of commerce is becoming harder and harder, as the world economy reacts to financial upsets in one country by plunging the entire global economy into recession.

Environmental degradation knows now boundaries. Climate change, a political football in too many countries, can't be addressed on a nation-by-nation basis. We're all on one planet; if my environment fails, the odds are pretty good that yours will too.

Population movements seem to happen regardless of policies put in place by nations that attract immigration. Borders are porous, and security is partial.

The budgets of these modern nations are undergoing pressures they haven't often experienced. The age disribution of mature populations is trending toward more and more old people. Who will care for these seniors, and how much financial burden will this place on younger people still in the workforce?

Finally, the trust that people have in the national institutions of their home countries is under attack, often from the abject failures of the ruling elites to address the problems mentioned above, and others, in any sort of timely or constructive way.

My question is simply this: Has the modern nation-state reached the end of its usefulness as an organizing principle for a technologically advanced world?

Modern-day anarchists are quick to say it has. Their solution is a stateless society, with volunteerism raised high as a social norm. Others talk about anarcho-capitalism, or agorism, or a rainbow spectrum of other social models.

Are these people hopelessly deluded idealists? Or is it perhaps time to open some territory for experimentation, to see if these models for a new society have any viability? In an age of internet start-ups, this doesn't sound so far-fetched, does it?

What do you think? Is it time for the nation-state to allow for some innovation, as a first step to gradually disappearing, and to being replaced by something really new?

I'm grateful to a fellow Twit, @PunkJohnnyCash, for inspiring this post. For some good reading to get started on considering anarchism as a possible social organizing principle, visit www.gonzotimes.com.

Contrarian Question One

2010-07-13T21:15:00.000-05:00

Sometimes old practices are worth looking at with fresh eyes.

I plan on posting several short pieces in the next few days, asking if it's time to do one thing or another differently than we've done it forever.

This time, let's look at the injunction to "be fruitful and multiply."

This Biblical commandment appears several times in Genesis, for starters. In its most relevant to us, in Genesis 1:28, speaking to the first man and the first woman, God says, "Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground.” (All Biblical citations are from the NET Bible, available here.)

I don't think it can get any plainer than that. We human beings are to populate the earth, and subdue it.

Are we there yet?

After the Biblical Flood, which completely decimated the earth, except for the eight human beings that survived in the Ark of Noah, the Lord God spoke to Noah and his family thus: “Come out of the ark, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. Bring out with you all the living creatures that are with you. Bring out every living thing, including the birds, animals, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Let them increase and be fruitful and multiply on the earth!” (Genesis 8:16-17)

Even allowing for that depopulation and subsequent population explosion, are we there yet?

There are roughly 6.5 billion people on this planet right now. Have we been fruitful enough?

I wonder if it's not time to recalibrate our reproductive urge. Six and a half billion people are a lot of people.

Large families have been a mainstay of many Christian groups for centuries. They're found in Judaism as well. Other faiths may have large families as an ideal. This is particularly true in poor countries, where large families can be an insurance policy that some children will live to adulthood and can care for their aged parents. As people move to cities in these developing countries, though, family size begins to shrink.

Is it time for those groups that encourage large families to begin discouraging them?

My own view is that we reached that point some time ago. I don't know what the earth's carrying capacity is, but I suspect when it's reached, the effects from exceeding it will be traumatic. On top of everything else we're experiencing today, do we want to have to look forward to that as well?

So, here's the question: Do we continue popping out babies like there's no tomorrow, or do we rein in the reproductive urge and start having smaller families?

Our (Post)modern World

2010-07-08T21:36:00.000-05:00

I can't believe what I'm hearing...

Is this where you find yourself? Is it hard to believe what you hear, or read, or view on the internet, or the radio, or the TV? Is reality a big shell game, and description of it a giant con?

I've blogged recently about how hard it is to find trustworthy sources, people or institutions that you can believe in to give you honest, accurate information and advice.

In thinking further about this, I've concluded that what we're seeing today in the United States, and to an only slightly lesser degree in other countries, is another consequence of the rise of the Postmodern mind.

"Postmodern" is a term that has a checkered history. It's been decried as nothing more than a buzzword that is meaningless in itself. It's also been used by various social critics and philosophers to describe sometimes contradictory interpretations of recent and current attitudes and beliefs.

I'm going to proceed from the notion that it describes, however generically, a real phenomenon that needs to be named if we're to get a handle on what is happening in our society.

My understanding of the postmodern world is that it is one where the notion of objective reality has been devalued, where those who proclaim that "reality" is this way or that way are viewed with suspicion, and where everyone is skeptical of the motivations of those proclaiming a "reality." In other words, a world that is a natural for the creation of conspiracy theories, the more elaborate the better.

Does this sound like the modern American landscape, political, social, economic?

We don't trust our government. Incumbents are in danger of being voted out of office. Government agencies are routinely criticized for being clueless about their assigned tasks. The government can do no good, even as we depend on it to do those things we're powerless to do individually.

We don't trust our institutions. If a school district wants to teach science, battle lines are drawn between advocates of Intelligent Design and Darwinian evolution, between proponents and opponents of human-mediated climate change, between adversaries arguing about nature and nurture in how human beings develop. Churches engage in partisan political activity - wink, wink, nudge, nudge - even as they try to maintain their tax-exempt status. Social activists, political parties, lobbying organizations, all are routinely targeted and painted as racist, socialist, communist, fascist, sexist, agist, whatever-ist.

We don't trust corporations. Politicians apologize to British Petroleum for being abused by the Federal government, financial reform is filibustered by a Republican Party that is against everything the administration does, even as Wall Street investment bankers enjoy extremely low approval ratings among the population. Apple introduces the iPhone 4, and immediately gets sued for reception issues concerning its antenna design. Even as workers at the American automobile companies go to work each day, other people bitch and moan about the bailout money that was used to save two of the Big Three car companies. The notion of working for one company for your entire career is a quaint memory, rapidly fading in light of unemployment hovering around ten percent, and underemployment much higher yet.

Our political landscape is in disarray. The Pledge of Allegiance reads thus:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

People sue to have "under God" removed, because it's an "establishment of religion." People are skeptical at best that there truly is "liberty and justice for all" under the existing government. And "one nation... indivisible" - do you honestly believe that any more?

What brought us to such a pass? Is it just the political climate, or is something deeper working against us?

World Wars I and II showed us that science, far from being the genie that was going to make our lives something close to paradise, was capable of ending all our lives, in new and horrible ways.

The Great Depression showed us that investment bankers and speculators could drive any nation into a pit from which it would be hard to climb back out. Out of the vengeance applied to Germany after WWI, and after the Great Depression, Nazism was almost inevitable.

Vietnam showed the United States that we could be defeated by a small, entrenched, and determined foe, willing to suffer years of privation and loss if they could but maintain their commitment to ultimate victory. Since 9/11, we've faced just such a foe again, in militant Islam.

In other words, the comforting assurances of the Modern world have been scuttled by real-world events, and shown for the sham that they are.

The current political climate in the US is just another in-your-face example of the kind of disruption and discord that the Postmodern world exhibits. In other words, it is an inevitable consequence of this time in history.

Where does that leave us? If you're a believer in the Man from Galilee, then you can draw some comfort from what he says. If you're not, then you can attach yourself to one polarized position or another. I don't think it really matters - Liberal or Conservative, Tea Party or MoveOn, you're subscribing to a blindered view of the world, and you can't help but see only part of the landscape. You won't have reasoned discussions or debates about important issues. Instead you'll call the other side names, use bumper-sticker phrases to echo your disgust with their views and actions, and work like hell to get your side in office, in power, forever and ever, amen. Cynical political operatives and "entertainers" will stir this pot to advance whatever side they're allied with, not caring one whit for the social disruption and even disintegration it produces.

Again, if you're not a believer, what are you to do, to survive this time of struggle, and make some sense of it? Can you just turn your back on it and do mindless things to entertain yourself until you die? Can you zone out and let yourself be tossed this way and that by forces that you can't control? Do you react with tried and true kneejerk platitudes, and just dismiss the whole frickin' mess? What's your answer?

I don't know what the next phase of our present social malaise is going to be. My prophetic gift seems to be on the fritz at the moment. Post a comment - they'll be moderated, so stay on topic - and offer your opinion. Let's get a conversation started.

Simple Thoughts

2010-06-23T20:56:00.000-05:00

I just had to share this...

This bit of nonsense surfaced in my In box this afternoon. With some trepidation, I'm going to quote it in its entirety...

John Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock
(MADE IN JAPAN ) for 6 am.
While his coffeepot
(MADE IN CHINA)
was perking, he shaved with his
electric razor
(MADE IN HONG KONG)
He put on a
dress shirt
(MADE IN SRI LANKA),

designer jeans
(MADE IN SINGAPORE )
and
tennis shoes
(MADE IN KOREA)
After cooking his breakfast in his new
electric skillet
(MADE IN INDIA )
he sat down with his
calculator
(MADE IN MEXICO )
to see how much he could spend today. After setting his
watch
(MADE IN TAIWAN )
to the radio
(MADE IN INDIA )
he got in his car
(MADE IN GERMANY )
filled it with GAS
(from Saudi Arabia )
and continued his search
for a good paying AMERICAN JOB.
At the end of yet another discouraging
and fruitless day
checking his
Computer
(made in MALAYSIA ),
John decided to relax for a while.
He put on his sandals
(MADE IN BRAZIL),
poured himself a glass of
wine
(MADE IN FRANCE)
and turned on his
TV
(MADE IN INDONESIA),
and then wondered why he can't
find a good paying job
in AMERICA

AND NOW HE'S HOPING HE CAN GET HELP FROM A PRESIDENT MADE IN KENYA

----------End of Nonsense----------

A couple of things are wrong with this "poem."

First, our president was "made" in the United States, despite what birther skeptics keep babbling. By the way, if you search on Google for the string "president made in kenya," you'll get around 5200 hits, as of June 23.

Second, the notion that President Obama can reverse a trend that began well over two decades ago is delusional. American companies, like any other company anywhere, are always trying to reduce costs so they can increase their profit margin. If labor can be had more cheaply outside the US, and produce an equivalent or better product, these companies will jump on that option, build or lease factories, and hire foreign nationals. American companies were doing this when Barack Obama was in college, and even earlier. This president has been in office a year and a half; oh, sure, he's going to reverse decades of job loss in the US by signing a bill or issuing a proclamation. Sure he will. And I do believe he would love to be able to bring more manufacturing jobs back to the US, but that's a decision that American corporate management will have to make. Are they going to do that immediately? What do you think?

Something occurred to me yesterday, as I was trying to comment on an article about a possible anti-business attitude in American government. My comment, so cogently written and eloquent, wasn't accepted by the forum system. Their loss...

Anyway, Charles Wilson, President Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense, has been misquoted often, but actually said, "For years I thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa." The misquote comes out, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country."

If that's in fact true, then what might be good for the country would be what happened over the last couple of years to GM. They were bankrolled, bailed out, forced through a fast-track bankruptcy, and parts were sold off piece-meal or shut down all together. The General Motors that exists today has repaid the loans made to it by the Federal government, and has completely retooled their corporate culture. They are leaner, cleaner, and more competitive than they were before their existential crisis.

Is this what is going to have to happen to the country before we come to realize just how intertwined this world economy is? Are we going to have to go through the turmoil of something like GM's bankruptcy? I pray we won't have to, but sometimes I really wonder if we can avoid it. Unless we get a grip, and start realizing just how little freedom of movement we now have, we're going to be blindsided in a big way. We need to start acting, and thinking, and believing smart; the kind of simple-minded nonsense that's displayed in the excerpt above just won't do us any good. May God grant us deep insight going forward - we really need it.

Trustworthiness

2010-06-23T20:51:00.000-05:00

Most of us aren't trustworthy.

In my previous post, I wrote about the worth of an opinion. How much do we trust the opinions we hear? How much credibility do we attach to what other people say, or write? In today's fractured, contentious American society, trust does not come easily.

Tea Party loyalists have a variable pantheon of people they trust. Sometimes a person can start out in the "Trusted" column, only to say or do something that doesn't reflect some set of conservative values, and they immediately get dumped by the loyalists for someone else. Litmus tests determine if a politician is a "conservative in name only."

Liberals are bent out of shape that the administration hasn't done more to advance a progressive agenda. Their support for President Obama has been shaken; some progressives have abandoned any hope that their favorite ideas will see implementation any time soon. The president's approval numbers show this starkly.

Middle-of-the-road voters, the moderates, are in a conundrum. Who should they vote for in November? Who should they believe? It's possible that many will be so alienated by the extremists on both sides of the political divide that they will just sit out this election entirely.

Who do you trust to deliver the goods?

I'm going to say right now that I'm with the folks who don't trust much of anyone to deliver what they promise. I'm not saying that I don't believe in some of the president's initiatives. I'm saying I don't believe he can bring them about. For all his oratory skills, for all his efforts to strike a note of bipartisanship, the president is saddled with a climate where immediate, visible results are what's demanded. People aren't seeing many of these. Consequently, the administration can't be trusted.

Corporations can't be trusted. Let's see if BP can recover from the mess they've made in the Gulf. Fancy public relations campaigns won't do it, eloquent spokespeople won't do it. The only thing that will bring them back from the brink will be success in stopping the leak, and cleaning up the oil. So far, there's little visible evidence of that, at least on the media.

Ah, the media... The 24-hour news cycle that seems to be the legacy of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980, which contributed so enormously to Ronald Reagan's election victory, is the bane of my existence. Chattering pundits, talking heads, opinionated buffoons, twenty-four hours a day these blabbermouths tell us what the hell they think of this issue and that issue and the next issue. And we the viewers eat it up. My one respite is the OFF switch on the TV; I can shut these people up at a whim. Do you trust your reporter, columnist, or interviewer of choice? Really?

So who does this leave? Friends and family, who listen to the same news you do, who have the same preconceptions you do, who are in one way or another just as prejudiced as you are? Priests and ministers, who are concerned with how much is in the offering plate, or how many volunteers will sign up for the next workday at church, as well as with the integrity of their spiritual lives, and perhaps some deep, dark secret they just can't confess? Teachers and scientists, who are the conveyors of fact and wisdom and exploration of the world, and who have been shown again and again recently to have made up out of whole cloth their scientific research?

Who are we to trust? Whose opinion can we truly believe?

Well, I've made no secret in these posts that I view the world from a Christian perspective. One thing I've come to realize over the last dozen or so years is that Jesus the Messiah is not an American conservative. He puts little value on the ownership of private property, which appears to be the ultimate good in a lot of conservative and libertarian minds. In fact, he's downright socialist in his attitude about what property should be used for. He's not a proponent of military force, or gun ownership, or "American exceptionalism," for that matter. He would undoubtedly stir up the sweaty wrath of a Rush Limbaugh or the swoony conspiracy theories of a Glenn Beck, if he were to make statements in today's media. He said as much, when he walked the earth, that he was here to create division, not to smooth things over and make everything shiny and happy - at least not immediately. Jesus was here to upset the apple cart, and bring about a new kingdom.

We Christians have spent the last two thousand years trying to build that kingdom, with extremely variable success. Some things, like the Crusades, have been unmitigated disasters. Others, like the abolition of slavery in so much of the world, have been shining successes. Much work remains. So much of this world remains the shit-pile that Jesus found when he lived. Much work still must be done, by people of good will and a spirit like that of their Boss.

I don't know who anyone else trusts. I don't put much trust in other people, because they're just human beings, and their intentions can be thwarted, derailed by opposition, or killed all together. I don't even trust myself all that much. I want to do one thing, but find myself doing another. So who should I trust?

I'm going to say here and now that I will continue to trust in that man who lived in Judea two thousand years ago, that Man who preached the Good News of God's love and grace for His creatures and His Creation. I will trust in that one Man who more than any other person in history has changed the world. We are all heirs of His, adopted into the Family of His Father. Oh, we're like black-sheep brothers and sisters, but we still get invited to the banquet. I have faith in Him, and faith, as all Jesus-followers know, is believe in things unseen.

Am I delusional? Foolish? Only time will tell.

Everyone's Got One...

2010-05-24T20:15:00.000-05:00

Everybody's got one.

That's what's said about opinions. Is every opinion of equal worth?

All this thought was inspired by a brief conversation I had the other day, where a friend made an off-hand anti-President-Obama remark. I replied with what I knew to be factual about the situation mentioned, and he responded by saying that was only an opinion, and you know that everybody's got one, just like they have...

Actually, upon reflection, almost all of us have a whole unruly mob scene of opinions, on a host of different things, but just about all of us have only one ... asshole. And that, to my mind, is an extremely good arrangement.

I know what everbody's got, so I just let the whole thing drop. The possibility of damaging a friendship over some casual remark wasn't worth the cost of dragging the conversation out.

The whole thing got me thinking about what an opinion is worth, though, so it was of some value.

For instance, what is an opinion worth, if everyone has one? Is it an opinion based in fact, or is it an opinion parroted brainlessly because it matches our prejudices or preconceptions? Does holding it require us to engage our critical faculties, or merely repeat the words like some idiot mantra?

Who would you go to for legal advice, a lawyer or Joe the Plumber?

Conversely, who would you go to for plumbing advice, Joe the Plumber or a lawyer?

Who would you seek out for medical advice, a doctor or the waitress at the nearest diner?

Who would be your choice for spiritual advice, a priest or Charlie Manson?

Who would you choose to prepare your income tax, a CPA or your twelve-year-old son?

In so many questions involving life and death, wealth and poverty, reputation and ignominy, we have to decide whose opinions we value. In other words, who do we trust to give us good advice?

Trust is a slippery thing, though. Sometimes we trust, and then we're betrayed. Do we trust again, or are we burned badly enough that we don't trust anyone, anymore?

I'd say that right now, in the United States, there are a lot of people who feel that they shouldn't trust anyone who's in power, in government or in business. Wall Street almost precipitated a depression because of shady deals, selfishness run rampant, and absolutely amoral "masters of the universe." Government has shown itself to be available for sale to the highest bidder, and politicians who claim the ethical high ground are found too often to have the morals of a cheap whore. Priests and ministers have been caught preying on young children. The list of scandals seems to have no end.

So -- what's an opinion worth? And who do you trust to deliver the valuable ones?

More on that coming in the next post. Stay tuned.

Hopey Changey

2010-04-19T20:36:00.000-05:00

Why is the negative so powerful?

It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted anything, and in that time, there's been plenty happening that probably deserves comment. I'm going to focus on one bit of all I've heard in that time, in the interest of keeping this post of reasonable length.

Specifically, I want to offer this one Christian's perspective on one bit of simple-minded negativity, and what it says about the people who utter it, and their comrades who repeat it.

I'm speaking of a statement by former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin: "How's that hopey, changey stuff working out?" She asked this rhetorically in a speech at the first Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday, February 6, 2010. I saw a version of this on a yard sign yesterday, so I know it's not the only instance of someone asking it. In fact, if you google the exact phrase "hopey changey stuff," you'll get almost 680,000 hits. Try "hopey changey thing" and you'll get around 2.3 million.

This is obviously a play on President Obama's book title, The Audacity of Hope, and the slogan of his campaign, Change We Can Believe In.

So, what's so wrong with that? The Republicans are out of power, having been turned out by the majority of Americans in the 2008 elections. Political campaigns never really end, and they're doing nothing more than energizing their core partisans by attacking the current administration with whatever weapons present themselves. This is just good hardball electoral politics, right?

As I said above, I want to comment on this as a Christian. I'm not exempting the Democrats from criticism, but it does seem to me that the Republicans are more likely to come up with phrases or actions that are worthy of some severe examination and critique. So, let's get to it!

In the first place, Sarah Palin calls herself a Christian, so I expect some consistency between what she says and what she says she believes. Christianity is nothing if not a faith defined by hope, and praying for change. We Christians hope in our resurrection after death, in a liberation from the destiny of every person who has ever lived - the grave. We pray for change in ourselves, another liberation from our weakness and inability to live righteous lives, just as we pray for a change in the way the world operates. A world of war, of abortion, of slavery, of murder and oppression and hate and dehumanizing rhetoric aimed at the "other" is not the world that we want to live in. We hope in a better world, one brought about by God's Spirit operating in his faithful, and we're doing what we can to bring it about. Admittedly, we stumble around a lot, and we bicker and disagree over exactly what that world looks like, but we sooner or later get it right. We have seen an end to slavery in parts of the world, we've seen people saved from starvation, we've seen people rescued from tyranny, and we've seen truth and reconciliation triumph after horrendous oppression.

I expect some consistency between utterances and beliefs. I demand it, in fact, if I'm going to take the speaker seriously. If Sarah Palin is who she claims to be, why is she belittling the very thing that we Christians claim as our own? Hopey changey stuff is our stock in trade; we can't separate ourselves from the fact that the status quo is not where we want to live.

More to the point, there are other things that she typifies that deserve to have a bright light shined on them. Things like how much we depend on our guns. Things like never having anything positive to say about our leaders, including the sitting President. Things like always being reactionary and negative. Other GOP luminaries say the same sorts of things, some of which are half-truths and some of which are out and out lies. What really makes the Republican Party tick, if these utterances are typical, and why are Christians drawn to it?

Republicans have wrapped themselves in the cloak of integrity and family values, even as a multitude of Republican senators, representatives, and governors has indulged in sexual behavior that's either dishonest to their spouses or absolutely illegal. I'm not singling the Republicans out, however, because there are numerous Democrats who have fallen off their self-erected "role-model" pedestals through the same dumb behavior. However, we had almost come to expect this of the Democrats; with the support of the Christian Right, though, suddenly repentant GOP politicians have fallen from grace with a lot of noise.

Oh, what the hell! No group seems free from angling in the wrong pool for their nookie. Republicans, Democrats, Christians of Protestant and Catholic denominations - all these groups are without excuse for their moral failures. Why should we trust any of them?

Why should we trust any of them, indeed? Why do we even give a shit? We've fallen so far off the wagon that we don't trust anyone. We don't trust our government, we don't trust our churches, we don't trust our bosses or labor leaders, our teachers or any paid experts that so easily will try to assure us of this or that.

Trust seems to be extinct. In this vacuum of trust, how is that hopey changey stuff working?

Well, I said this was my perspective on "hopey changey stuff," written as a believing, confessing, practicing Christian. My perspective is, basically, that it's working pretty well, actually. Politically, I got a tax cut last year. My country is viewed in an entirely different light now, as compared to a couple or three years ago. For all its flaws, I can actually believe that the administration is trying to return to a civility that has been lacking from political discourse for almost twenty years. I can even believe that there are some Republicans who feel betrayed by the "Christian" demagogues who have co-opted and reshaped their party. We've got people at least recognizing the fact that the government we have today is not going to exist as it is forever unless income and expenditures are brought into some sort of parity. Either we're not paying enough taxes, or our government has gotten too large, but we can't go on borrowing against tomorrow indefinitely.

How's that hopey changey stuff working? As a Christian, I'm not fazed. My belief is in a God who looks down at the trivial posturings of all of us as we strut around acting so important, and laughs. He laughs, but he loves us regardless. He laughs, but he has put into motion a rescue plan, a bail out, if you like, that I believe will not fail. It may not reach completion in my lifetime; it may take multiple lifespans to accomplish. But my God has set it in motion, and all the forces of negativity and denial and hatefulness will not prevail against it. His rescue plan involves the Christ, the man two thousand years ago who died, killed by the imperial power of his time, and then rose three days later to sneer at that paltry effort. Hopey changey is my creed, and it's my marching orders. It isn't all political, but hopey changey is where I live, one foot in the divisive rhetoric of the present, and one foot in the unlimited future.

Screw negativity!

Screw hatefulness!

Screw them all, and forgive their adherents, because they don't know what they do!

And hope and change the world instead!

What Pisses You Off?

2010-04-05T19:41:00.000-05:00

What pisses you off?

Now that Easter is upon us -- the entire week after Easter Sunday is Easter Week -- we are confronted with the need to embark on a new life. The period of Lent is that arena where we face those things in our lives that put barriers between us and God, and where we work intentionally to remove those barriers. Now that the barriers have been removed, or at least are smaller, the next phase begins -- fresh living.

Part of fresh living is facing those things that anger us, piss us off, and dealing with them, so we can move on beyond the same old baggage we had drug around for too long. Maybe we began dealing with all this during Lent, but most likely there's still work to do.

So, my question -- what pisses you off?

I've got some ideas about what pisses some people off...

Fundamentalists (of all stripes) are pissed off that no one sees the world in the sharp black and white that they do.

Atheists are pissed off that those god-believers, of whatever stripe, but mostly Christians, don't see how stupid the whole idea of an all-powerful deity really is.

Liberals are pissed off that no one sees the need for more collective action to mold us all into better human beings, with or without God, and preferably without.

Conservatives (modern-day American variety) are pissed off that the present regime in Washington isn't bowing to their obviously superior plans and beliefs.

Al Qaeda is pissed off that the United States doesn't just dry up and blow away.

Politicians are pissed off that no one seems to realize how hard their job is.

Moralists are pissed off that people still keep doing the same stupid crap they've been doing for centuries.

Sexual addicts are pissed off that no one seems to understand just how important sex is.

Writers are pissed off that editors just don't see the brilliance of their story-telling.

And finally, I suspect that God is pissed off because people are alike in so many important ways, and different in so many insignificant ways, and have so much trouble realizing which is which.

What pisses you off?

Are you willing to look the source of your frustration and anger square in the face, and work to reduce or eliminate its power over you?

Are you willing to take on the difficult task of forgiving people for angering or mistreating or thwarting or oppressing you?

Are you willing to buy into the idea that only grace -- the free gift that we Christians say God offers to each of us -- is the only way out of the cycle of vendetta that seems to consume the world of men?

Are you man or woman enough to take on the challenge of not being pissed off any more? Do you have the backbone for that job, or is it just plain easier to stay pissed off because it's so damned familiar and comfortable?

The daily news indicates that most of us prefer to remain pissed off. I pray that we someday reach a point where being pissed off is rare, because we're a long way from that now.

Easter is upon us, and we can have a fresh life if we're willing to pursue it. God assures us he's ready to help.

Second Person Plural - Endgame

2010-04-02T09:32:00.000-05:00

Endgame

You are staggering up the rocky path to the Place of the Skull, carrying the patibulum across your shoulders.

The crossbeam is rough, and is agony as its splintery surface rubs against the wounds from the flogging you had undergone before this death march. As you take step after painful step, you lose your footing and fall to the path. The crossbeam slips from your grasp, and the Roman soldier walking behind you lashes you with his crop. You try to rise, but the blood on your hands makes them slip on the worn stones of the trail. You fall face first, and lay there for a moment, even as the whip slashes your bloody ribs and back.

Finally, power from some inner reserve gives you the strength to rise to a standing position. You reach down, and try to pick up the patibulum. The soldier has other ideas. He drags a man from the crowd flanking the road, and forces him to pick the beam up and place it on his own shoulders. You follow this unwilling conscript, thankful for the relief.

Finally, you and the other members of the execution party reach the summit of Golgotha. The pits where the stipes of the crosses will be sunk are ready for their gory pillars, the wedges to stabilize the crosses set to their sides.

The man carrying your crossbeam drops it near you. The soldier roughly motions for him to move away. He looks at you, imploringly. You try to say something, but all that comes from your parched throat is a croak.

Your clothes are pulled off you, leaving you naked in the bright sunlight of mid-morning. You look down at your body, your arms, your legs. You have been flogged relentlessly, and your skin is a tapestry of bleeding wounds and torn flesh. Blood runs down your face from the thorns that crown your head. Even as you look down, you begin to weave from side to side, almost ready to fall.

Hands grab you by the arms and legs, and you're dropped like a dead man onto the hard stone, next to the stipes. The soldiers have been lashing the crossbeam to the upright, and you're dragged across the wood to have your arms spread wide on the beam. The upright is under your back, and every move is agony.

As your arms are pulled to the left and the right, soldiers grip your hands and arms as nails are poised above your wrists. The points bite into your flesh, and then the first stroke of the hammer hits the head. You can't help yourself as you scream in pain, as the point of each nail drives through your wrist and into the hard wood of the crossbeam. The blows from the hammer finally stop, and you're left in shock with blinding pain shooting up and down your arms.

Your feet are placed to each side of the upright, and more nails are placed against your heels. You try to steel yourself for the blows you know are coming, but you're unable to keep the agony within you. As you scream with each strike of the hammer, the soldiers laugh and make jibes at you, sticking out their tongues and spitting on you.

Finally, the hammer falls silent. The troopers grab the cross and heave it into the hole, letting it drop to the bottom with a sharp jerk. Your wrists and feet are shocked by the blow, but by now, the pain is so encompassing that it's all you experience. It's everything, it's your world, and it's becoming impossible to separate one source from another.

You look around at the people standing in knots on the summit. To your right, you see another prisoner, a thief, writhing in his own crucifixion agony. To your left is another man slumped down from his cross. The Romans are squatted at the foot of your own cross, grabbing at the robe you had worn until just minutes ago.

You are lifted up and exposed to the wind and the cries from the birds that spiral around this hill of death. Through the fog of pain, you wonder how long you will last. The air is getting cooler; the sky is beginning to darken as clouds mount up on all sides.

You glance down and see your mother standing with one of your disciples. Tears are streaming down her cheeks as she clutches the arm of the young man. She reaches out toward you. In a whisper, you tell her that this is her son. To your disciple, you say that this is now his mother. You can say no more, as you wheeze and cough, trying to draw in each breath against the weight of your body hanging from the spikes through your wrists.

Time passes. One of the Romans puts a sponge on the tip of his lance, pours some vinegar on it, and thrusts it at your mouth. You lean out toward the sponge, licking the bitter liquid, desperately trying to moisten your throat. The exertion forces you to cough once more, and your breathing begins to roughen.

With pain lancing through your limbs and your chest, you grab for each breath. Your eyes widen. Arching your back, you cry out, "It is finished!" And the world whirls away into blackness.

Second Person Plural - Jurisdiction

2010-04-02T04:48:00.000-05:00

Jurisdiction

You are being force-marched to the fortress of Pontius Pilatus, the Roman procurator of Judaea. You're on the edge of passing out. A long night of trumped-up charges and falsified testimony in front of the Sanhedrin has left you fatigued and bruised.

The Sanhedrin, the Jewish High Council, is forbidden by Roman law from carrying out the death penalty. After convicting you of blasphemy against the Most High God, they are sending you to Pilatus to be executed. During the week of Passover, the Romans are especially sensitive to anything that might lead to civil unrest. This should be an easy decision for the governor.

Your determination to see this through is strong, but you are nearing a point of physical breakdown. You don't know when everything will come to a head, but you hope that it's soon.

You finally enter the fortress gate. Hardened Roman troopers look at you and spit in the dust. It's early morning, and the chill of the night before is still present in the deep shadows in the courtyard. As you are pushed into the interior, you hear snatches of Latin coming from further in.

Finally, as you come around a corner, you see him. He looks you up and down, seeing the dark hollows under your eyes, the bruises on your face, and the abrasions on your wrists from the ropes that tied your hands together.

He looks away, and examines a bill of particulars that is handed to him. He seems disgusted with what he's reading. He's had a frustrating relationship with the local officials since taking on this post, and this looks like one more thing that makes him hate Judaea.

He questions you about who you claim to be, and who the Sanhedrin says you claim to be. Your mind is having trouble marshaling thoughts into something coherent, so your words are disjointed and mumbled. You finally realize that he would love nothing more than just releasing you and seeing you disappear into the Passover crowds. It isn't going to be that easy, though; the Sanhedrin will see to that.

Finally, he throws the document onto a table and calls for a centurion, telling him to take you to the palace of King Herod. Herod Antipas is in Jerusalem for the Passover. Pilatus is telling the centurion that Herod must decide your fate, since he has authority in this province.

You realize that this day isn't close to over, and that you have more trials ahead. With an effort, you straighten your back and follow the soldier out of Pilatus' chamber.

Second Person Plural - Orchard

2010-04-01T22:19:00.000-05:00

Orchard

You have led the men closest to you outside the City walls, across the valley and up the hill to the Olive Orchard. As the night has gotten colder, ground fog has been pooling in the low areas, and flowing down the slopes toward the water courses. You're standing now at the edge of the trees, and you look back at the City. It stands dark against a darker sky, with only a few torches giving any light. Clouds scud across the sky, only occasionally breaking to reveal the stars and moon above.

Your companions have straggled along to keep up with you. They're not feeling the energy of resolve that is coursing through your veins. The only thing in their minds is the need for rest. As the last of them come into the Orchard, you ask them to settle in around the trees and keep watch while you go some distance away to pray. You've gone apart from them to pray in the past; this is nothing they haven't seen before. Muttered assent dies away as you walk into the fog between the trees.

You kneel down at the foot of an ancient olive tree. You reach out to its gnarled bark, grasping with fierce determination something firm and tangible. You begin to talk in a low voice to the One, praying for courage to face the trials ahead. You lean your forehead against the fog-damp bark, and choke out imploring words.

"Father, if there is any way for this to be done another way, let it be so done. But, Father... No, it's not my will but yours that must be done. Let it be so, let it always be so."

As you draw in a ragged breath, you stand up and look back to where you left your friends. You can't see them through the darkness and the fog, but you know that they're sound asleep, despite what you asked them to do. You walk back to where they lie, all in slumber, all oblivious to the world. Wrapped in their cloaks, they don't see or hear you approach. You reach down and touch Cephas' shoulder. He starts and looks around without comprehension until he sees you. A break in the clouds has let moonlight silhouette you from behind. Your shadow falls across him as he struggles to his feet.

"Couldn't you have stayed awake even one hour, Cephas? It's too late to watch out now. They're here already."

As you speak, the light from several torches bobs toward where you're standing. A column of men in the armor of the Temple police marches toward you, led by Yehuda. He walks up to you, grasps you by the shoulders, and kisses you on the cheek.

At this signal, several of the Temple guards rush to you and grab you by the arms, roughly pulling your hands behind your back to tie them together. Cephas is finally awake, and reaches for his sword. With a slash he hits one of the men standing at your side, knocking him to the ground with a cry.

"Cephas, put away your sword! There is no time for that now. I must do this." With that, you free one arm and reach down to the head of the wounded man. His sudden intake of breath shocks those around him, as he stands up. He looks wonderingly at you as he feels his ear.

Your arms are once again grabbed and pulled behind your back, where they're tied together with rough cord. You're prodded sharply in the ribs with a sword haft, and Yehuda and the Temple police lead you out of the Orchard and into the night.

Second Person Plural - Supper

2010-04-01T19:16:00.000-05:00

Supper

You look around the room. Your followers, your friends, have been with you now for three hard years. There were once many more, but these twelve are now the true faithful. Almost everyone else has fallen away.

You have been telling them for weeks now what will happen in the days ahead. No one seems to really believe what you're saying. They nod, but you know you're not getting through; they don't really understand yet what you're saying.

You had arranged to share this meal with them to try once again to help them to understand what they needed to prepare for. Time is short, and this is the last chance you'll have to help them comprehend the shocks that they will experience soon.

When you stand and take off your cloak, and wrap the towel around your waist, you see shock in their eyes. When you pour water into the basin, and begin to wash their dusty feet, they begin protesting loudly.

"Master, stop this. Let us get one of the servants to do this."

"No, I won't stop. You have to know who you are, and who I am. I am showing you how you are to act toward each other. Even though you say to me 'Master,' and so I am, I am here to serve you. The goyim lord it over each other, but that's not the way you must be. If you are to be great, you must take on the role of servant to all."

When you get to Cephas, he refuses to let you wash his feet. "Cephas, you must let me wash your feet, or you can be no part of what is to come. All I need to wash is your feet; once I have done that, you will be truly clean."

As you complete the washing, you look around at these familiar faces one more time. The initial shock has been replaced with curiosity and uncertainty. No one seems willing to ask a question; they're all waiting to hear what you will say next.

As you eat this evening meal, you explain many things to these men you know so well. Lively conversation flows back and forth. Finally, it's time to explain what is coming. Will they finally understand?

You tell them that among them is one who will betray you. When the shocked expressions are replaced by protests and questions, you point to Yehuda, and say, "You know what must be done. Do it quickly." With that, he leaps to his feet and runs out of the room.

Cephas is adamant. "No matter what anyone else does, I won't leave you. No, not even if I die!"

"Cephas, Cephas, you are so sure. Before the morning sun rises, you will have abandoned me three times."

Everyone else is equally sure that they will never turn their backs on you. You look at their open faces, and see that they still don't understand what you're saying. How can you get through?

You begin telling them about the Presence, and about who you are and what is to come after you leave. You use words of encouragement, you lift them up in a shared prayer, but you're still not seeing comprehension in their eyes. Sadly, you realize that your expectations are becoming true. They will have to go through the next days more unprepared than you wanted.

You want them to understand at least what you are leaving for them. You pick up a flat of bread, break it, and announce that this bread is your body, broken for them. Then, picking up the wine cup, you tell them that it is your blood, shed for them. They are to eat the bread and drink the wine every time they think of you, to remind them of the new promise you are making to them.

You tell them that you will be going away for a time. By now, late in the evening, time has become vague, as uncertain and fleeting as the fog that is snaking through the low-lying parts of the City and its suburbs. It will mean nothing to them to be more specific.

As you finish the bread and the wine, you can see that the excitement from earlier in the evening is finally giving way to fatigue and drowsiness. Regardless, you know that you can't remain in this room all night.

You stand up and begin moving toward the door. When Cephas asks where you're going, you motion for him and the others to follow. They will know soon enough where you're headed.

Lenten Meditation

2010-03-23T05:36:00.001-05:00

The healthcare reform bill has passed the House, and will be signed by the President today at the Department of the Interior.

The Republican Party was unanimous in opposing this legislation. They remain unanimous in opposing it. They are going to try to repeal it immediately. They are going to mount court challenges to it. They will do everything they can to impede, stall, and block this legislation from going into full effect.

I have to give the G-No-P some credit. They have been consistent and disciplined in remaining on message the whole time, maintaining a united front against any bill that would change the status quo of healthcare reimbursement in this country. On that one point they show the Democrats how to do opposition politics.

However...

I am a Christian. That means that the status quo is my enemy. Jesus came to upend the status quo. That challenge is not completed yet. If I am truly a follower of Jesus, then I must be actively involved in reforming the status quo. What's the phrase? "Comfort the troubled, and trouble the comfortable."

I read a definition of "conservative" the other day. Among other things was the phrase "resistant to change." Well, change is coming. It will come either with or without our participation, but it will come. Christians are to be agents of that change, not preservers of a tradition that is counter-productive to helping our brothers and sisters live humane, productive, full lives. We are called to be subversive of the status quo.

Conservatism today has morphed from an essentially empirical suspicion of grand social theories and a reliance on things that were known to work, to an inbred desire to horde what I have, to gather more, regardless of the effect it has on others, and to preserve and enhance my personal power, which is the highest good. Care for life is only evidenced before a person is born; once they're out of the womb, look out for yourself, buddy, but don't try to get mine. Good luck with that "life" thing.

Now here's the challenge I feel. The Republicans are my fellow countrymen and women. More than that, they're my fellow human travelers on this blue ball we call Earth. And even more than that, they're my brothers and sisters before God.

What I see when I look at the Republican party is birthers, deathers, agin'ers, haters, race-baiters, dingbats, wingnuts, loudmouth blasphemers, schemers, and hateful people of every stripe, all united in hating what I and so many other Americans believe in. How in the world am I to reconcile with this howling mob? More to the point, how am I to treat them as a follower of Jesus?

In this Lenten season, I have to wonder if these same people are the kinds of people who stood around yelling at that man nailed up to the cross like a piece of siding on some 2 x 4's. Were these the same kinds of people of whom he said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?" Am I that forgiving myself? Now there's something to ponder as I walk day by day toward Easter...

Time and Tide

2010-03-16T21:05:00.001-05:00

"Time and tide wait for no man."

So says the ancient wisdom. How true...

Or is it?

Last time, I posted a tribute to our elected representatives. I wanted to commend them for standing up to pressure that arises every Spring when Daylight Saving Time goes into effect, and heroically refusing to repeal this measure despite all the complaining they hear. Once again they have faced the challenge, and faced it down.

With this bit of courage to inspire them, the progressive wing of our Congress has moved to the next level. They intend to face down the old proverb, and show that determined government action can defy the conventional wisdom.

We are witnessing the creation of the Federal Time Bank.

No one can deny that time is unfairly distributed in the world today. Young mothers never have enough time to do everything they want to do. The unemployed and the aged have too much time on their hands. This fact seems to be true for too many young men and women in our country as well. Busy corporate executives have too much to do to get it all done in the standard 24-hour day, even with assistants and aides all around. Three-year-olds certainly have too much to do and say to get it all accomplished in a mere 24 hours. Nobody seems to have just the right amount of time for what they want to complete before they have to finally go to sleep.

Well, that is old news. With the Federal Time Bank, everyone will have the opportunity to have just as much time as they need.

Time will be bought from those with too much on their hands, and deposited into a new Federal agency. Since time is money, the storehouse of time will become an incredibly valuable resource for the entire nation. Those Americans who just don't have enough time will now be able to buy blocks of time, at a slightly higher price than what was paid to the original time-holders, and the dream of a 30-hour, or 36-hour, or even 48-hour day, will suddenly be a reality. The difference in what is paid and what is charged will be used to defray the cost of operating the Time Bank, as well as being fed back into the Federal budget, to begin paying down the national debt.

This progressive idea is not without opposition, though. Almost predictably, Tea Party partisans are already organizing rallies against the plan. Bumper stickers are beginning to appear, saying things like "24/7 or Fight!" and "You can have my hours when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers!"

So far, the church has been largely mute on the issue. Since a thousand years is like a day in God's presence, the whole issue of people having extra time is viewed by most denominations as a blessing for those who can use it. It's no big deal. Some people, however, like the members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, are already railing against the whole idea, waving signs and placards at all sorts of public gatherings that read "God Hates TAG Heuers!" This is to be expected...

Let's communicate with our legislators in Washington that now is the time to make the Federal Time Bank a reality.

The Wonderfulness of DST

2010-03-15T19:48:00.001-05:00

The day is an hour longer...

Well, no, not really. What we have is an extra hour of evening sunlight. The day is the same old 24 hours that we've always had.

What I'm referring to, of course, is Daylight Saving Time (DST), an annual celebration of the power of government to change fundamental aspects of our lives. This past Sunday, March 14, we entered into the long months when we get up an hour earlier so that we can have extended sunlight in the evenings. DST has become an accepted part of the year. Our computers adjust to it automatically, as do our cell phones, and more and more household appliances. My clock radio sets itself for DST, freeing me up to remember how all the other clocks, with their various setting procedures, will be reset.

Government, powerless in so many areas to effect actual change, real, meaningful change, can monkey around with the clock and mandate that we "spring forward" and "fall back." We therefore have the illusion of change, a change that I suspect many people would just as soon give up.

But legislators will never give up an opportunity to appear to make substantive changes, or even improvements, in anything that they can address. DST as we currently understand it was proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson, an entomologist (bug scientist) from New Zealand. Ever since then, it's been put in place in many countries, mostly in the higher latitudes, for a variety of reasons. It's been enacted to save energy, although most studies indicate that energy consumption actually increases marginally during DST. It's been enacted to benefit farmers, even though, for the most part, farmers dislike the disruption of their schedules. After all, livestock, particularly dairy animals, have their own internal clocks, not very amenable to government mandate. It's been enacted to benefit commerce, and here there is some value. People will go to sporting events more readily if they're going to be held in daylight. Overall, though, there's been very little concrete value gained by putting DST into effect.

In an era when our two major parties are as far apart as I've ever seen them, in an era when virtually nothing is taking place in Congress, it's good to know that our government has focused its energies on important stuff. They very resolutely refused to repeal Daylight Saving Time, even though there are always loud grumblings coming from those of us who have to actually reset our clocks. As I said, politicians will never fail to give the appearance of making a difference, and in this case making a difference means keeping something in place that's good for us (since they have experts who will verify it). How boring our lives would be if we weren't periodically shaken out of our stupor from watching reality shows on HDTV to reset the clocks. Thanks, government, you've kept us alert once again.

(I should mention that for anyone attempting to transform their lives into a more monk-like state, DST is a godsend. Having to get up an hour earlier each morning for almost eight months must surely qualify as self-mortification in some sense. And it helps with humility as well. Anyone who has failed to make it to church because they overslept on that first Sunday of springtime DST is generally pretty sheepish.)

So, I extend a salute to our politicians and their never-ending quest to change the things they can, ignore the things they can't, and have the wisdom to know the difference. Well done, ladies and gentlemen!

Problems, Problems, All God's Children Have Problems...

2010-02-15T20:39:00.002-06:00

There's been a lot of noise lately generated by people who are angry about the state of our nation.

The Tea Party seems to be typified more by people who are pissed off at the present and past politicians for getting the country into the terrible fix it's in, than by a single overarching principle. The main complaint is that the system has been co-opted by a bunch of incompetents, and they're running it into the ground. We need to take it back, and the sooner the better. Oh, and while we're at it, the less government there is, the better off we'll all be.

The Republican Party, for its part, is wooing the Tea Party loyalists, trying to tap into the anger with the present administration and make political headway using that anger. The problem for so many Republicans is that the Tea Party is just as angry with them as it is with the Democrats.

The Democrats, meanwhile, even though they hold a majority in both houses of Congress, and have the White House, can't seem to get their act together and behave as the majority party. There have been attempts at bi-partisanship, but those have been greeted with weak support from the Democratic core, and outright disdain by the Republicans. The Democrats, the party of "Yes, we can," have been quite effectively stalled in most of their big initiatives by the party of "No, you can't!"

And in the middle of all this rancor, those of us who just want to see the government actually govern, find ourselves frustrated again and again, as first one measure after another gets stalled, delayed, and finally either discarded or watered down to such an extent that we find ourselves opposed to the Frankenstein monster that remains.

The anger is understandable. After an election that saw Barack Obama come into office with what seemed to be a mandate for change, we find a year later that much of what was true in November 2008 is true today. We've still got an economy teetering on the brink of either a jobless recovery or a double-dip recession. We've still got unemployment that's far too high. We've still got foreclosures kicking people out of their homes, and those homes losing more of their value. Even worse than in the Bush years, we've got monstrous Federal deficits that alarm just about everyone. We've got no real health care reform, and that was the centerpiece of the Obama administration's legislative agenda.

And even more galling to those of us who will never be financial industry CEOs, we have a financial sector that gives its managers and executives what we see as obscene bonuses, after many of those same managers and executives actually brought about much of the economic difficulty that we're dealing with today. We see government expansion into areas of the economy where we hardly have ever seen them before. We see that we're still embroiled in two wars and we're looking at the possibility of new fronts opening in other areas of the Muslim world.

We have trained experts failing to be able to make things better in a way that we perceive as real, even as other trained experts are not held accountable for the mess they made of the economy. We don't trust our government, we don't trust our corporations, we don't trust our institutions, we don't trust our schools, we don't trust science, and we sure as hell don't trust (the other guy's) religion. We want simple, quick solutions, and damn it all, we want them now.

It's a hard message to deliver, but someone has to say it. There are no simple, quick solutions, and there never will be. Just as the policies that led to the subprime mortgage crisis developed over years, following other actions twenty or more years ago, the solution to fix the problems we have now will take years to implement. We may have something approaching the present level of unemployment for years as the entire economy undergoes some fundamental changes, and our behavior slowly changes to match new conditions. Our expectations will probably be different, and probably scaled down, from what they were even a few years ago, about things like retirement, our children's prospects, and such. Throwing all the incumbents out is a popular idea among many at the moment, but there's enough overlap in careers of those who are in government now and those who have been in government that the contagion of the status quo will not be eradicated by replacing all the usual suspects.

China is feeling its way onto the world stage as a possible future super-power. Russia is feeling a new and powerful nationalism and desire for a return to something approaching a Soviet-era prominence. The European Union is experiencing some problems right now because of their own dependence on our financial wizards and their creative debt instruments, but the EU will be a formidable competitor once they get past these issues. We've got Hugo Chavez and newly socialist regimes in Latin America to the south, Russia to the edge of Europe, China across the Pacific, the Middle East like a powder keg with a perpetually lit fuse, and groups like Al Qaeda all too willing to hit us whenever they can. Africa sits like the world's poor relation, so full of promise and so full of problems. Quick, simple solutions are just not up to the task.

Well, who do we have ready to tackle this laundry list of troubles? We've got Sarah Palin, a woman who showed what it really means to stick to the job until it's done, making noises that she might consider a 2012 presidential run. Whatever you think of her as a person, as a government official she failed to deliver.

We have other Republican luminaries, governors and senators, some of whom have run before, and some of whom are just waiting to get into the contest.

On the Democratic side we have President Obama, who has been in office just over one year and already has a very mixed record of accomplishments. On the one hand he's changed our reputation in the world, and on the other, his main initiative is now stuck in a limbo between the two houses of Congress where a single filibuster could kill it completely. In some ways he's been genius, and in other ways he's stumbled around like a prize fighter who's been hit once too often. Skilled oratory goes only so far, and he needs to deliver on some of the things that people care about.

In all that I've written so far, I haven't really addressed any spiritual concerns, which is the main subject area that this blog tries to center on. It's time for that now.

For those Christians who think that America is God's answer to spread the Gospel to a dark and needy world, I say it's time to open your eyes and start looking at the real world. We have a need to get our own house in order before we can be that "city on the hill" that will shine God's light on the rest of benighted mankind. Being a capitalist paradise will not accomplish that goal. Having the world's highest standard of living will not accomplish that goal. Being in debt to countries like China to finance our profligate living will not accomplish that goal. A consumer society will not accomplish that goal. The "gospel of prosperity" takes us farther from that goal by the day. Continuing to allow our financial institutions to get us all farther and farther into debt will forever keep us from that goal.

We are not bright enough to bring about paradise on earth.

We are not wise enough to bring about a truly just society.

We are not rich enough so that everyone can live like we've been living.

We are not powerful enough to keep ourselves from death's door eventually.

We need a savior, and that savior is not us.

The Bible talks about how the rich will fade away, and the poor will be elevated. Read James 1 to see what I'm talking about.

The best we can do at present is to get into the habit of working together, putting our differences aside to work for the good of all. We can begin to practice what it would be like to live in that paradise that we want to see. As I've said before, this paradise won't come in this world, with us as we are. New hearts and new minds and new bodies are required; it will be God's doing. Our part of the bargain is getting ready for it, and that requires surrendering who we are in all our pride and ego. The political battles that anger us and drive us farther from what God would have us be will need to end before we can do that. No one is righteous, none is good, says Jesus, save the Father. Get comfortable with that fact, and you'll be one step closer to being the person God made you to be. Embrace your mess, and own up to it. You're closer still. Even with a long way to go, you're closer.

God loves us. He desires us to know that intimately. We need to understand this to get on with dealing with our problems.

Utopian Visions, Part 4

2010-02-10T19:59:00.000-06:00

There's an old country song by Hank Cochran called "Make the World Go Away." That phrase seems to be a suitable way to begin this post.

The last time, I wrote about God's tough love for his creatures. I said it wasn't a smothering kind of love, but a love that waits for us to open our eyes and see what is in store for us if we will only return to him.

Our blindness is something to which we cling with fierce determination. It is so much easier and more satisfying to demonize people with whom we disagree and make enemies of them. It's so much more fulfilling to deny their essential humanity, and that they might have valid reasons for doing what they do, than to do the hard work of actually listening to what they have to say. It is so much more enjoyable to take the cloak of judgment from God and wrap ourselves in it, and pronounce sentence on other human beings in this world.

We are damned if we cling to this insane way of life. Love and forgiveness are inextricably tied together. When you wish for a good life for someone else, you have in a very real sense forgiven them of any wrong they may have done against you. When you actually act upon that impulse, and work toward helping to provide that good life, you are turning faith into action. The Bible says that "faith without works is dead." What good is our faith if nothing comes of it?

More to the point about which I've been writing, what good is faith if it has no effect on the lives of people in the world, here and now? Does it do anyone any good to participate in the destruction of the natural environment that sustains us here and now? Does it do anyone any good to strip mine and clear cut God's good Creation?

There's a lively and acrimonious debate on the validity of man's contribution to "global warming," or as it's more precisely called, "climate change." A lot of the debate is over whether it's actually taking place. The climate records are pretty clear -- it's taking place. The argument might be more profitably about what part our own human activities have had in affecting this climate change.

Whether you accept the common view that mankind has contributed to climate change because of fossil fuel use, or deny that this is the cause, the reality is inescapable. The climate is changing. Adaptations will have to be made to facts like receding polar ice caps, diminishing snow pack in mountain regions, and rising sea levels. Weather cycles are changing, producing stronger storms and more extreme temperatures, both highs and lows, in winter and summer. These changes are impacting growing seasons and wildlife populations. Whether we made this happen or not, we will have to accommodate to these changes.

If our attitude is one of "let it go, God is gonna clean house soon anyway," then we truly are hateful and murderous people. We are judged on the quality of our lives in the here and now, and willfully acquiescing to the deprivations of others' lives does not reflect love as a real presence in our own.

Let me be blunt. God's love is a tough love, respecting our own choices, but always ready to forgive and welcome us back. At one and the same time, God came to earth as Jesus, divinity clothed in mortal flesh, and allowed men to kill him as a final and totally atoning sacrifice for our sinfulness. God made that gesture independent of anything we had done, have done, or will do in the future. Jesus' time on this earth was brief, but no one can deny the impact those thirty-three years have had on us since he walked among us. He came as the sacrifice, but he gave his followers marching orders. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Heal the sick. Befriend the marginalized. Judge not, unless you want to be judged by the same standard. Give up all you have and follow him.

By this measure, our love is to be as assertive as God's was. God sent his own being to live among us. We are to do likewise, to go where we are needed to be Jesus here and now. This is really like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, though; the father didn't drag the son back home. Instead, he waited all the days to see his son returning because his eyes had been opened to his true need. We must be where we are needed, to be there when our help is required. That's why we're in Haiti, that's why Christians are always where there is poverty, hatred, hunger, need of any kind. Sometimes we're slow in realizing the need, but we respond.

"Creation care" is what the new Christian environmental sensibility is called, one name among others. We were originally chartered with caring for God's Creation; that hasn't changed, even as we were evicted from the Garden because of our willfulness and pride. We are still to care for God's world. We can not exist independently of our world. Our technology doesn't give us that out. If the world goes, so do we. I'm not sure that God would be pleased. I don't have that kind of faith. Do you?

So, to wrap this all up, here we are. We believe in a future Kingdom of God that will see an end to all sorrow, to all pain, to death itself. I yearn for that communion with God that I swear belief in. I can not prove these things scientifically. Science is not the tool for that, as marvelous as it is at discovering the ways our world works. The appropriate tool for that is faith, the hope in things unseen. We will all one day know if this is truth or not, for as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:19, "For if only in this life we have hope in Christ, we should be pitied more than anyone."

We hope for this utopian vision, this Kingdom of Heaven, but we're not building it entire at this time. No, we're working on it, or should be, getting into practice for living in that world. You might say we're in a training camp for saints. We won't be able to build the perfect world as we are now. It will take new hearts in new bodies to achieve that. We can be obedient, though, and do what Jesus told us to do, to follow his marching orders. We can hear and humbly try to fully understand Micah 6:8: "He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord really wants from you: He wants you to promote justice, to be faithful, and to live obediently before your God."

Utopian Visions, Part 3

2010-02-04T22:19:00.000-06:00

In the paradigm of Jesus, we have a notion of murder, destruction, and hatefulness...

I'm going to keep this short and (bitter)sweet. Let me unpack that first sentence.

The paradigm of Jesus is the reflection and manifestation of his sacrificial personality in our own lives. We are to live lives of love, forgiveness, charity, and selflessness, and depend on God to meet our needs. Even for people who don't believe in the Godhood of Jesus, there is often a selflessness and a caring for their fellow human beings. Where does this heart of charity come from?

A notion of murder springs directly from words of Jesus. From Matthew 5:21-22 we hear: "You have heard that it was said to an older generation, ‘Do not murder,’ and ‘whoever murders will be subjected to judgment.’ But I say to you that anyone who is angry with a brother will be subjected to judgment. And whoever insults a brother will be brought before the council, and whoever says ‘Fool’ will be sent to fiery hell." [All citations from the NET Bible] What are we doing nowadays? We're calling those with whom we disagree fools, or worse. We have an attitude of murder toward these people. This is just as true of people on the left as on the right -- we're murderers in our hearts, all of us.

Destruction is what we seem to be bent upon. By ignoring the plight of the poor, by turning our backs upon the world as the climate changes (in part because of our own insatiable appetite for "stuff" to decorate our hovels while we entertain ourselves until we die, by thinking that we can just discard this world that God created and saw was good, by bulldozing Eden and strip-mining our own home, all we evidence is the minds of plunderers and molesters.

Hatefulness is more or less redundant, but I've added it for completeness. "God Hates Fags" is the strident message of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, home of Fred Phelps and his small mob of fundamentalists. Why is Fred so certain of this? Might it not be that God hates Fred? Or perhaps God loves him, and lets him go his own demented way, out of respect for his sovereignty as a person.

What is the "love of God" like? I'm pretty sure we don't often think about the nature of this tough love, but I think it's best represented by the parable of the Prodigal Son. From Luke 15:11-32:

"Then Jesus said, “A man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them. After a few days, the younger son gathered together all he had and left on a journey to a distant country, and there he squandered his wealth with a wild lifestyle. Then after he had spent everything, a severe famine took place in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and worked for one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He was longing to eat the carob pods the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have food enough to spare, but here I am dying from hunger! I will get up and go to my father and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired workers.”’ So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way from home his father saw him, and his heart went out to him; he ran and hugged his son and kissed him. Then his son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Hurry! Bring the best robe, and put it on him! Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet! Bring the fattened calf and kill it! Let us eat and celebrate, because this son of mine was dead, and is alive again – he was lost and is found!’ So they began to celebrate.

“Now his older son was in the field. As he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the slaves and asked what was happening. The slave replied, ‘Your brother has returned, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he got his son back safe and sound.’ But the older son became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and appealed to him, but he answered his father, ‘Look! These many years I have worked like a slave for you, and I never disobeyed your commands. Yet you never gave me even a goat so that I could celebrate with my friends! But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and everything that belongs to me is yours. It was appropriate to celebrate and be glad, for your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost and is found.’”

The salient feature to me is that the father loves his younger son so much that he lets him go his own way. He doesn't mount an expedition to get the son back; he is ready to receive him with welcoming arms when he approaches on his own. Everything in this tale speaks of the forgiveness of the father -- the actual injured party here -- toward his son. The door was always open for the son to return, but the son had to discover that he needed to be there. In some sense, the father loved his son so much that he was willing to let him go to a hell of his own making rather than force himself on the son.

There's a saying that if you love something, set it free. That's demonstrated by this parable, don't you think?

So, what does all this have to do with a utopian vision, care for the world around us, and paradoxically, a desire to just let the world go to pot? And what about those harsh accusations I've posted above? I'll have some words about all that in the next post.

Utopian Visions, Part 2

2010-02-02T21:47:00.001-06:00

Do we need a utopian vision to spur us on to try to create it?

The word "utopia" is an interesting name for an imagined perfect state of existence. According to Wikipedia, it's based on two Greek roots: "ou" meaning "not," and "topos" meaning "place." It comes originally from the book written by Sir Thomas More in 1516, "Of the Best State of a Republic, and of the New Island Utopia." The word seems to indicate that the place is an allegory, not a society that can possibly be created; why else would it mean, literally, "no-place"?

Since More may have been engaging in some ironic commentary on his own world of the sixteenth century, it was probably not his intention to lay out the ground rules for the creation of a perfect state. If that's the case, then our interest in the idea that we can create our own "perfected society" is probably a misappropriation of More's work. I'd say the odds are pretty good that he would have considered the creation of a perfect society by men of his day (or of our own) a pipe dream at best.

In our own time, we seem to be farther from a perfect state than we have been in years. The United States is characterized now by two political parties that can't seem to come together on anything to arrive at legislative consensus. Partisanship seems to be at an all-time high, with no interest on the part of either side to really meet in the middle. Instead, we see a scorched earth outcome as the only desirable result of our differences. Damn it, we'll show those frickin' ____________ (fill in your most hated party). The antipathy between the two parties isn't the end of that story either. Splinter political groups have arisen that feel as though neither major party truly represents them or their values. There's pressure to "take back my country." But whose country are we talking about?

And that's just nationally. Internationally, we find ourselves beset with new pressures to combat a resurgent China, a resurgent Russia, and the ever-present threat of terrorism from radical jihadis. Perhaps it's no wonder that ever since the advent of the Cold War, we've felt more identification with dystopias than with their more positive opposites. Who can believe that out of this we could create a perfect(ed) society? Our only hope seems to be in some future where the bad guys -- whoever they are -- have been eliminated and the good people -- whoever they are -- can be brought together into that promised paradise.

As I indicated in the previous post, I want to propose that this societal decay (which is itself debatable, in light of history's record of human societies in the past) is not because of the removal of prescribed prayer from American public schools since the early 1960's. Instead, I'd say it's partially to be blamed on a fascination with, and focus on, that utopian promise of an afterlife and lack of interest in the world that we currently inhabit. I also indicated that I can't find any physical evidence for life after death, or the promised paradise after our demise.

Now wait a minute, you may sputter. You're a Christian, right? Don't you believe in the promise of life after death and judgment day and all the other stuff that's written about in the Bible?

Yes, I am a Christian. And yes, I do believe in those things. What I also believe is that we can't prove that they're real, or will be real, by any scientific means that I'm aware of.

If that's the case, then, it appears that we have a stand-off. On the one hand, I believe in the value of good scientific evidence for things I hold to be true. On the other hand, I don't believe that scientific evidence exists for something that I hold to be true.

Maybe I'm just a crackpot... (Please, no cheering yet!)

So, to the question at the top of this post. Do we need a utopian vision to spur us on to create what we imagine?

Maybe we do. What we seem to have now isn't that kind of utopian vision, however. What we seem to have, in large part, is a willingness to forget about building the society we imagine, except the part about getting rid of the bad guys -- whoever they are -- and ignoring the fix we're in now, with all its complications. Instead of working to build something better right now, we're content to wait until everything is sorted out and we can enter that new Jerusalem ourselves.

So, in the paradigm of Jesus, we have a notion of murder, destruction, and hatefulness.

I'll have more to say on this next time.

Utopia -- Moving on from all that...

2010-02-01T20:35:00.000-06:00

Today I read a post at SmartPlanet.com about how IBM is reinventing the idea of Utopia for Disney at EPCOT. In the comments I read that the reason that dystopian visions have become so prevalent is because our country has banned prayer from public schools since 1963. This loss of prayer, according to this commenter's thesis, is directly behind all the social ills that we see besetting our society. More specifically, it's because of the lack of emphasis on a future utopian "life everlasting" that we have fallen into dystopian patterns now.

I'd like to take a contrarian stance on this, and propose that the reason we seem to have a fascination with dystopian ideas is directly related to the notion of a future utopian life in the here-after. More to the point, I'd like to propose that the more we put our emphasis on that afterlife, the more likely we are (based on available evidence) to disregard the world we have around us right now.

I'm going to develop this hypothesis over the next few days; I'm not going to lay the whole thing out in one post. I want to see if I can get a lively discussion going in the comments section. Consider it an experiment in readership cultivation.

Let's just put one proposal out there right now, and see what comes of it.

I don't believe there's any physical, independently verifiable evidence, or any experience that many of us share in our daily lives, that unambiguously confirms the existence of either life after death, or an eternity after some judgment day. Testimony is not sufficient to verify this, by the standards I just laid down. Intensity of personal belief in these things is not sufficient. The strength of one's convictions is no validation at all. Suicide bombers have great strength of conviction; do any of us have that much strength of conviction as Christians, to put it to the test? Perhaps a few do -- I'll have more to say about all that as these posts appear, but not right now.

So -- what do you say, reader(s)? Any comments? Any atheists out there? Want to join in the conversation?

This is the first of several posts that will examine the ideas of afterlife, utopia (and what it means, plus what it could mean), and what it takes to hold these beliefs as true.

Polar Bear Plunge redux...

2010-01-27T10:04:00.000-06:00

Last year I did something I'd never done before. I registered to do the Polar Bear Plunge for Special Olympics Missouri (SOMO). The event took place on Saturday, January 31, 2009, at Longview Lake east of Kansas City. The air temperature was 72 degrees, and the water was at 34 degrees. There was six inches of ice on the lake that had to be cut away to make room for the Plungers.

Overall, there were over 800 people who made the Plunge a success. Over $180,000 was raised. I had just turned 60, and it was something that certainly proved that I hadn't achieved complete sanity yet.

Well, this year I'm doing it again, and even going further. Because a friend was willing to belong to two teams, he and I are planning to plunge twice. If he can do it, I figured I can do it as well.

This year's Plunge once again is going to be at Longview Lake. We Plunge beginning at noon on Saturday, January 30. The high temperature for the day should be a balmy 23 degrees, but the water will still be at about 34. We're shooting to raise over $200,000 this year. Please help me do my part by donating whatever you wish at my Plunge web page Here... and clicking on the "Support Me" link there. There are a few pictures of last year's Plunge -- I'm the bare-chested guy with the fool's cap. It really wasn't bad at all, but that was then -- this year should be entirely different.

Thanks for all the support.

Saving Grace...

2009-12-21T19:45:00.000-06:00

Let's talk about salvation...

I've been listening to podcasts from Jesuit Media Initiatives in the UK for the last few weeks. I mentioned this in a post a few days ago. These podcasts serve as a good meditation or "Lectio Divina" exercise for me as I drive to work in the morning. Late this past week I heard one that, among other things, made the point that we are incapable of saving ourselves.

That simple assertion gave me the opportunity to think about what we are saved from, and what we're being saved for. Let me share what my meditation produced.

In the first place, I think we're saved from ourselves. What I mean by this is that the "me" that yields to easy temptation, that relies on impulse or urge to determine his behavior, is the "me" that I'm being saved from. If left to my own devices, I would not be worthy of communion with God. As I indicated in my previous post, I firmly believe in my own incapacity to join in communion with God, and that communion is something I desire more than anything in life.

Communion with God is the way I describe what I desire. Eternal life, going to heaven, these are terms that are used to describe the same thing. By whatever name, I view this state of being as the ultimate goal of my life.

As I said, I am not worthy of that communion on my own. I believe that I can not bootstrap myself into a state of righteousness that meets the "entry requirements" that God mandates. It is this "me" that "I" am being saved from, this insufficient person that can't make the grade.

So, there's what I'm being saved from. But what's the point of this liberation, if that's where it ends?

Consequently, there has to be something that we're being saved for. I've come to the conclusion that we're being saved, or reserved or set aside, for the new us. I'm being saved for the "me" that God is creating even as I'm putting distance between "me" at this time in my life, and the "me" that existed when God crashed into my life.

I see myself as a work in progress. I made a decision over thirteen years ago that set into motion a whole new set of events in my life. In the intervening time, I can honestly say that I have never regretted making that decision. I'm far from being the perfect pupil of the lessons I have been given to learn. I'm far from having perfect attendance at the feet of the Master. But I have never regretted accepting the scholarship that gained me admission to the Master's school. My salvation is my term in that school.

One day I shall be ready for graduation. I'm even now being prepared for that. And it's that graduation that has been reserved for me. The "me" who receives the diploma is going to be different than the "me" who is typing these words. I can't say what lessons yet wait to be learned. I can say, with confidence, that I will have the best Teacher guiding and leading me.

So there's the product of that one assertion made a few days ago during a time of meditation. I am challenged, confronted, and convicted as I listen to these exercises and others that I have opened myself up to. I find myself being stretched to think about things that at one and the same time have both personal and universal implications.

What stretches you? What do you open yourself to that challenges comfortable notions and knee-jerk beliefs? What discomfits you? And when you find these things, what good comes from them? May we all have those things in our lives that do this and grow us in the process.

My Manifesto...

2009-12-16T08:40:00.001-06:00

In this Advent season, I thought it might be worthwhile to make a statement of what I believe as a Christian. Interestingly enough, I came across something I had written to a good friend just over four years ago. I've tweaked the wording just a mite, but this is essentially what I wrote to Ken back in December of 2005...

Since you're always willing to engage in intellectual questions about Christian belief, I thought it would be fair to give you some insight into my own beliefs. Consider this a manifesto if you like.

I believe that God created the world in a certain order, sequentially, and over a span of time. I don't believe that this was a literal six days. I don't know if the biblical account is for the creation of the entire universe, or just for our solar system. I believe that the theory of evolution as proposed by Charles Darwin is the best scientific explanation we have at the moment of the process by which God has covered this planet with life in all its diversity.

I believe that God is in charge of the entire universe. I believe that He has created each of us, and everything about us, in a single act of creation that includes the time over which we exist in this physical world. I believe that our concern for predestination vs. free will is an oversimplification of the universe from God's perspective. Since we can't see that perspective, I believe that the sensible way to respond is to act as though we have free will. I believe that to do otherwise is to fail to deal with the universe as it's presented to us.

I believe that Jesus the Anointed One is the only way that I may achieve a communion with God. I don't know if this means the acceptance of the reality of Jesus' personal sacrifice on the cross, or the fact that that sacrifice was made at one time and in one place for all. I believe it's wrong to tell God how He must go about bringing those He has chosen into communion with Him--read the book of Jonah for His viewpoint on that arrogance.

I believe that I need to intentionally work on my way to the communion with God that I desire above all else. I believe that I will fail to achieve God's required holiness on my own--that is what His grace is for. I believe that I need to be constantly aware of that grace, and my need for it. I believe that any thought I may have of my own worthiness of communion with Him is pride, and the gravest of affronts to Him.

I believe that His love is unconditional (extended to all) but that there is more to the world than that. I believe His judgment is also a reality--I may yet be permanently separated from my desired communion with Him. I believe I must earnestly seek to live my life as He has told me to live--to love justice, to be faithful, and to be humble before Him. I believe that He has my best interest in mind when He tells me how to live; I believe that I am loved.

I believe that I may yet see an eternity of communion with God. I believe that I will experience loss in this life, just as I've experienced joy and blessing. I do not believe that the only way that I may grow closer to God is through adversity. I believe that He will sustain me in those times when He seems far away, but I also believe that I need to continue to seek His face when the times are good, that He is the source of that good and I need to keep that in mind. I believe that the bad that comes is part of the fabric of His creation, that the path to communion is narrow and that it must be traversed with His help.

Finally--I believe that I can't begin to understand the richness of the blessing that God confers on each of us each day. I believe that, on my own, I am blind and deaf to His love extended through time and space, as His creation moves along its appointed path. I love this awesome God, this God Who will not be confined to my small mind or my limited imagination.

Currency Conversion...

2009-12-14T21:19:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I don't think we really understand the depth of change that being a disciple of Jesus mandates on us.

I've started listening to a series of short prayer sessions, called "Pray As You Go," from Pray-as-you-go.org, a website maintained by Jesuit Media Initiatives of the UK. The sessions are downloadable as MP3 files, among other formats, and can be used to help focus one's meditation at the start of each day. There are other resources available on the site, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to enhance their practice of contemplation and prayer.

As I was driving to work this morning, I listened to the session for this third week of Advent, based on a passage from the Gospel of Luke. The passage, Luke 14:28-35, contained, among other things, the following message:

"In the same way therefore not one of you can be my disciple if he does not renounce all his own possessions."

I found that bit very troubling, because just minutes before, even as I was getting ready to listen to the session, I had been thinking about the economic house-cleaning that Jesus' new order seems to mandate. It was as if my thoughts were being prepared to hear something straight from the gospel, and once I was receptive, the message was delivered.

Let me try to unpack what I was thinking as I heard that passage, and as I thought about it afterward.

Prior to hearing the passage from Luke, I was reflecting on how our economic life is oriented toward the accumulation of wealth, the prudent use of that wealth, and the maintenance of that wealth. We have elaborate accounting systems for our wealth; we have currency exchanges for converting from one monetary system to another, for instance, just as we have complex markets that trade in the very currency itself, as well as in the things that it represents.

Our money manages us, in some ways, just as we manage our money. Our expectations of what we can acquire are controlled by what we can earn, save, borrow, and afford to spend. We do mental gymnastics over which high-def TV we really want, debating the value of various features, what size screen we really need, and so forth. Our goals direct us. Our desire for just the right "stuff" guides and focuses our efforts.

The availability of ready credit determines if work gets done, or doesn't. And how wrong can this be? How mistaken is this, in the real world? Look--the poor are poor, whether there is money for aid projects or not. The hungry are still hungry, the sick are still suffering illness, the oppressed are still being ground into the dirt by the oppressors. These realities exist regardless of whether or not someone can marshal the resources to address them. And what are the resources I'm talking about? I'm not referring to manpower, to equipment, to fuel for planes and vehicles, or for computer and communications gear. I'm talking about money. The money to address these needs is either there or it's not.

Is this rational? Is this acceptable to God? Is it conscionable to him that his creatures defer from aiding in a famine, or righting wrong, or healing the sick or comforting the dying, because they can't get funding?

I know it's not that simple. I know that the valuation placed on things is a way of managing scarce resources, so that needs and wants can be met with finite means. But I also am convinced that needs and wants are not the same thing, and that our finite means are a lot more abundant than we imagine.

Does anyone really doubt that every person in this world could be fed, if the production of the world's arable ground could be distributed more wisely?

Does anyone really imagine that all the children of this world would not be educated if the resources available world-wide could be placed where the people are?

Does anyone really think that human suffering wouldn't be affected and reduced if drinking water could be purified, or if sources of disease could be quarantined, or if shelter could be provided?

Does anyone truly think that people wouldn't live better lives if selfish dictators weren't stripped of power?

We have more important things to do with our money, of course. We've got to build up our armies. We've got to put up new sports stadiums. We have to put in more lanes on the freeways so we can support the increased traffic to and from the suburbs and the urban core.

"...not one of you can be my disciple if he does not renounce all his own possessions."

I can't get over the notion that most of us are pretty far from being true disciples of Jesus, as he himself defined it. Being converted is one of the hardest things in the world. What do we truly need to live purposeful, meaning-filled lives?

Even as we get ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus with gifts and presents, I can't help but wonder just how close I am to the one I call my Lord.

No Matter Where You Go...

2009-12-14T21:13:00.000-06:00

"No matter where you go, there you are."
--Buckaroo Banzai

That simple, even simplistic, phrase has been a favorite of mine for the twenty-five years since Buckaroo Banzai first hit the movie screen. While there was only the one movie about Buckaroo and his Hong Kong Cavaliers made, this bit of philosophy has stuck with me.

It's so simple, as I said, and yet so profound.

No matter where you go, there you are. What does that say about "you"? To me, the "you" that's at the heart of the sentence is that node of consciousness that co-exists in the same space as your physical presence. If you move a light bulb, you move the source of light that comes from it. The same here--your body moves from the kitchen to the bedroom, and your experience of the reality around you changes to reflect that move.

To speak of one's consciousness and one's body, as though they're two independent and separate things, may be getting things wrong. What if our consciousness is another dimension or aspect of our humanity, just as the particular shape of our body is? We name ourselves as human beings. We have a consciousness aspect, and a body-shape aspect. One human being, with consciousness and body simultaneous and inseparable.

What I'm looking at here is the difference between a dualism that separates our minds from our bodies, as though that were possible, and a view of humanity that sees the human being as a single entity, with aspects that manifest themselves in different ways. This is in some ways like my light bulb--if it has power, it will emit light, but the source of that emission will move as the bulb is moved.

Let's turn this phrase on its head, shall we?

Let's re-write it like this: "No matter where I go, there you are."

What we have now is a statement that could reflect the traditional view of followers of Jesus to the presence of God. It's said in various ways several times in the Bible, after all; in the Psalms certainly, in various prophetic books, in epistles. Probably the most direct version of this occurs in Psalm 139, where David calls out to God:

"Where can I go to escape your spirit? Where can I flee to escape your presence?"

So what does this mean? Is God's consciousness everywhere, in the same sense that our consciousness is located co-existent with our bodies? Is God dispersed throughout all Creation, present at every point in all space-time? Or is it something a little different? Maybe it's like this--if the spirit of God lives in us, we're aware--made conscious of ourselves--God's presence in every place where we find ourselves to be. It might be sort of like a radio receiver that is tuned to the God-channel, and can pick it up everywhere it's placed. The entirety of Creation is filled with God's broadcast, as it were, emanating from the very being of God, waiting to be received by a properly tuned spirit.

I don't know what the truth is, in this instance. I can speculate about this sort of thing all day. All I know is that if I'm not looking for God, I'm less likely to see him about me. That doesn't mean I can't be surprised by his presence, but it's more rare. I do know, with great conviction, that since I was surprised by God and his interest in me those thirteen years ago, I've been constantly on the lookout for his presence about me. No matter where I go, there he is.

Three Questions

2009-11-30T18:38:00.001-06:00

I have three questions that I've been turning over in my mind lately.

Three interlocking questions.

First, why do we think that we've got the proper and true understanding of the Holy Bible nailed down?

Think about this for a moment. Throughout the Bible, we repeatedly encounter people who had well-developed expectations about what God was going to do for them. These folks were more often than not the people of God, the Israelites. This was true in the Old Testament, and it's true in the New Testament.

Abraham went where God instructed him to go, but he didn't get to see the Promised Land as an inhabitant, but only as a traveler.

Isaac and Jacob followed in this pattern. They were nomadic, and Jacob (Israel) only settled down when he followed his sons to Egypt. They still did not take the Promised Land as their own.

Hundreds of years later, the children of Israel lived in slavery to the Pharoah of Egypt, crying out for a deliverer. Moses was sent by God to be that liberator. Even so, shortly after being freed from the yoke of Egypt, the Israelites demanded that Moses' own brother make them a golden calf that they could worship. What were their expectations?

This fickle people was forced to wander in the Sinai wilderness for forty years until the whole generation had died, because they failed to take God at his word. Instead, they waited for what they thought they'd receive. Their expectations were wrong.

This whole pattern is repeated almost endlessly by generation after generation of the Jewish people. God persists in coming to their rescue, even as they turn their backs on him again and again. Their expectations keep them from actually seeing what he's doing, and what he expects of them.

Even in the New Testament, those closest to Jesus once again have erroneous expectations of what he's about. The Zealots think he's going to declare himself King, and restore the Davidic throne. Even his own disciples expect him to do something that they can imagine. And he frustrates them again and again, first by dying on the cross at the hands of the Romans, and then by rising on the third day, after the disciples had just about given up.

So, here's the point. If those closest to Jesus had erroneous expectations of what he was about, why do we, in the twenty-first century, think we're immune from the same error? What gives us the seeming arrogance to think this?

Here's the second question. If we can admit that we might have ideas about what Jesus requires of us as Christians that are not what Jesus intended, what does that imply for our own expectations and behavior?

For instance, some Christians believe that we're on the eve of the Last Days. In their minds, events are rapidly converging on the Final Judgment and the Second Coming.

Of course, Christians have believed they were in the End Times for the last two thousand years. Read the letters of Peter and Paul. Do you get the feeling that these apostles had doubts about the immediacy of Jesus' return, that maybe the time between his resurrection and his return might be longer than they had originally thought? Do you think they were the only ones to think that sort of thing? Really?

If we as Christians can consider that perhaps we're not going to see the Second Coming in our lifetimes, then what does this do for our attitudes and behavior regarding things like care for the environment, for example?

I can remember being on the sky deck of the Sears Tower in Chicago one night years ago and hearing a friend, looking out over the city lights stretched out to the horizon, say, quietly, "It's all gonna burn." I suspect he was having an apocalyptic vision, straight out of the "Left Behind" books. I wonder if he still feels that way today. All I can say is that I haven't heard anything so frightening in years, for a variety of reasons. There was almost a glee in that quiet voice, looking forward to a cleansing fire. The feeling of glee, of course, only applies if you're on the winning side.

And here's the point of that second question. If we admit that we might be wrong on some things about Bible interpretation, if we can be a little less certain about our ideas of God and what he's going to do, how does that affect our long-term view of life on this planet?

My final question is this, and it should be obvious by now. If we give up certainty about everything we believe, what does this say about our faith? Is our faith in our own infallibility to discern God's will, or in God himself, to guide us and correct us when we believe or behave wrongly?

I can't believe that I've got God and all his world figured out. I can't believe that anyone else, anyone who is human and finite in this life, anyway, does either. The arrogance of that attitude stinks of pride to me. And pride, as I've said before, and as I affirm again, was the first sin, and remains so to this day.

Story Time...

2009-10-25T17:52:00.001-05:00

Let's channel our inner five-year-old.

The book of Genesis mentions how God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the evening. Adam and Eve were naked, but didn't know shame.

Was God naked?

I've posed this question to almost a dozen people in the last couple of days. Answers have ranged from "some things should remain a mystery" to "why do you assume God was physical?" The general consensus seems to be, though, that he probably was. It took my own son, however, to put a new spin on it. He agreed that God was probably naked, but then he went on. He mentioned that naked often is shorthand for "open, vulnerable, accessible." In other words, God was fully available to man and woman; there were no barriers at that time. So, the lack of barrier was not only physical, but it was also metaphorical and spiritual.

There was a lot more to the discussions that followed the question and immediate answer than I can go into here. Some folks wondered who this "physical" presence of God was? An angel? A "pre-incarnate" Jesus? It was all interesting, and probably says as much about the partners in the conversation as it does about the subject at hand.

At root, though, what the question produced was a sort of abbreviated story, or at least a scene from a story. If you follow up on that scene in Genesis 3, then you find that barriers were erected between God and man--by man's own doing--and there was an unforeseen change of scene for Adam and Eve. A new relationship came about because of their disobedience, one that was much less favorable to them. And that scene really set in motion a long story that we're still living in today.

And that's really what I want to look at in this post.

It has occurred to me that the reason that God created us was to have a different set of eyes.

God created the world--the universe!--and saw that it was good. What kind of being can do this--create out of nothing the entirety of the cosmos just by speaking it into existence? Genesis begins with "In the beginning God created." This is a definitive statement that God was already on the scene, and he established the beginning. He was outside of time, independent of the passage of hours, days, and all the other units that we're accustomed to. He began time.

Moses looked at the bush, with the voice of God speaking directly to him from it as it burned without being consumed. He wasn't quite convinced by what he was seeing and hearing. "Who shall I tell them sent me?"

"I AM THAT I AM. Tell them that I AM has sent you."

"I AM" is not a verb that indicates past or future, in the sense that we normally consider them. Names in the Old Testament were powerful things, indicative of the character of the person named. In some sense, they were identical to the person. God said that his name was I AM. God in essence didn't have a past and he didn't have a future. He surmounted time, encompassing it, being unconstrained by it. His very existence was an eternal present, without beginning or end.

I'm trying to indicate how God apprehends his creation. Humbly I suggest that he doesn't experience time as we do, because he's beyond it. He engages his creation joyously, with all of it immediate. He sees it, all of it, at once and forever.

In other words, God can't experience time in the same way we do.

So what does that have to do with us being here?

I think God created us to tell the story of his creation, because we're embedded in it. We understand the passage of time, beginning, middle, and end. That's the most essential element to a story--the passage of time. A snapshot isn't a story. It can be the beginning of a story, or wrap up the end, but it's not the story itself.

I think God wants to experience his creation in all the ways that he can.

So, he puts us in the midst of it, and equips us to tell its story.

Telling stories is one thing that we're good at. We will build a story even when there's little to no material to start with. We're inherently storytellers--we can't help ourselves.

Of course, a story needs more than merely the passage of time. It needs characters.

And what a rich vein of material we human storytellers have to work from. There are now over six billion of us on this one planet, and every one of us has a story to tell. We have a beginning--we were born. We have a middle--we have lived for some number of years. And we have an end--we will die. So each of us has our own story to tell, and we make that story even better by introducing other characters. We incorporate the actions of others into our narratives.

The interaction between us and the others sets up the next element that a story needs. Tension comes into play, because we have desires and needs and wants, and so do the other characters in these intertwined stories. We have conflict, we have drama, we have struggle. Cain and Abel. David and Goliath. The Israelites and the Egyptians. Jesus and the Pharisees. Peter and Paul. We have the passage of time, we have characters, and we have conflict and struggle. Good story material abounds.

But wait! Is that all that it takes to make a good story?

Not quite. No, we need something more. We need to have an encapsuling, an imaginative re-casting of the events. The storyteller has to process the material he's working with, and invest it with his creative contribution. In other words, we aren't dealing with only a reporter, but with a creator, an interpreter.

And that re-casting can change over time, unlike God, who is changeless, but not in any sort of static, dead-statue sort of way. Like I said earlier, it's all NOW to God.

A little side note here--if God is truly as I'm describing, then the whole debate over free will versus predestination becomes rather pointless. Even as we exist--past, present, and future--in God's eternal moment, we create in our own milieu what forever exists. Yes, there are some things that must remain a mystery--mainly because we can't wrap our time-limited minds around them. At least not yet.

The re-casting can change over time. Here's what I mean.

At the risk of over-simplifying tens of thousands of years of human existence, let's talk about the forest.

The forest primeval was dark and frightening, a place where the unknown was a tangible presence. Disaster awaited the unwary who wandered into its shadows.

One plucky soul ventured in, and survived. He found that there was material in there that could be used to build a shelter. He could live in the forest, or perhaps at the edge of it, and survive. The canopy of trees helped moderate the climate. The animals in there could provide food and clothing. He found that he was in possession of a resource that he could use to live a good life.

Other people discovered this, and sooner or later, the forests were being consumed to make housing and cleared for cultivated land and used for fuel and all sorts of other things that people needed.

Then one person realized that the forests that he saw now were nothing like the forests that he had seen as a boy. Land that had been shrouded in the mists of the forests of his boyhood was now filled with rows of corn. Something occurred to him--was the forest going to continue to get smaller and smaller as mankind filled the land with more houses and more fields and more people?

He began to worry that maybe fifty years or a hundred years in the future, there would be no more forest. He could imagine a time when there would be no more logs to build with, or shaded groves to go to in the heat of the day. He could see a time when wood for fires would be hard to come by, or maybe not be there at all.

He began to think that maybe there needed to be some care taken to preserve the forest for future generations even as it's used to meet needs today. He began to think of being a steward of the forest, so that it would continue to be in its own right even as it continued to benefit people.

People first were frightened, then saw themselves as possessors, and at the end found themselves to be stewards and managers.

So there's a story about mankind and its realization that we are on a finite planet, a home that we need to care for if we're going to continue to be able to live on it.

This is really a modern story. Creation care is a new idea to many evangelicals in the Christian community. I'm not sure why it should be. God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, and to subdue the earth and rule over it. He did not say to rape the environment or to desecrate his creation. Strip-mining Eden wasn't the command.

There's one more element to being the storytellers of God's creation that we do. We sometimes weave a story from incomplete or partial facts. As often as not, this is to make a point. If we included every little fact about what we're narrating, the story would falter and the point wouldn't get made.

That's what's at the root of the "inner-five-year-old" question posed at the beginning of this post.

Genesis doesn't really say that God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the evening. That idea is there by implication, but it's not explicitly stated. God was "walking in the cool of the day" when he discovered the great sin that Adam and Eve had committed.

Yes, they were naked. Until that moment when they ate the fruit, they didn't realize that was any big deal. At that point, they realized they needed to put up barriers, because they had betrayed God by not obeying him. Suddenly they had something to hide.

A gracious creator allowed them to hide that way, even as he knew everything that they hid. He fashioned coverings for them from skins. He also escorted them out of the garden, because it wasn't a place where they could live any more. Before there had been no barriers, and now that was no longer true.

And that's where we find ourselves today, telling the story of God's creation, each in our own unique way. We observe the passage of the time in which we live, we tell about ourselves and the other people in our lives, we go on about the struggles we endure, and we re-cast all this into a tale that only we can tell.

Was God naked?

I think God is still naked, meaning that he's still open to us, still accessible to a full communion. The only barriers are of our own construction. God has certainly shown that he made himself vulnerable. He had his own son come to us, and we killed him.

God had the last laugh, though. You already know how that story ended, or at least that last chapter.

What story are you telling for your creator? And how naked are you prepared to be before him?

Pax Obama

2009-10-09T23:00:00.000-05:00

This is a short post to celebrate the award of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to our American President, Barack Obama.

The award of the prize to him seems to have taken everyone by surprise, even the White House itself. The President says he was humbled by the committee's vote. Responses to this announcement from around the world have been largely positive.

Negative comments have come from the predictable places. The Taliban, through a spokesman, said that President Obama had done nothing to bring peace to Afghanistan. Considering that they're at war with NATO troops and Afghan army and police forces in various parts of that country, that's not too surprising. The only way that they would say that peace had been brought to that country would be by the Allied forces laying down their arms and surrendering. I don't see that happening. Sorry, mullahs.

Yes, negative comments came from the predictable places. That includes many members of the Republican Party. What they had to say sounded more like sour grapes than anything, since the words of the Nobel Committee announcement sounded like a pretty direct slap at the last American President in the White House. The most responsible thing that I heard any member of the GOP say was from Mike Huckabee, who said that conservative politicians need to moderate their criticism of the decision, because it will sound like "right-wing whining."

All in all, this honor is as much for the attitude change that the Obama administration has brought about in our relationship to the rest of the world as it is about the agenda that the President has set out. We here in the United States seem to be oblivious to how much of the world sees us. We need to realize that too often we view the world through a set of very provincial lenses, lenses that don't serve us well to see the world as it really is in all its complexity and variety.

Congratulations, Mr. President. You've done us proud!

Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs...

2009-10-07T17:38:00.001-05:00

America, America...

There's a billboard on a stretch of Interstate 70 near Blue Springs, Missouri, that exemplifies what I think is wrong in this country today.

It's composed of a red background, with a large hammer and sickle on the right side, and the following message in yellow:

HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR CHANGE NOW???
OBAMA-NATION
They are coming for you! The Taxpayer.
1st & 2nd Amendments are in jeopardy.
LIVE FREE OR DIE

Nobody seems to know who's behind the sign. It was reported on a local TV station October 1, and picked up by various national blogs just days later. The tag line isn't new; there are plenty of places where you can get coffee mugs and other merchandise that parrots the same sentiment.

So what's wrong with this expression of free speech anyway? Can't people still freely express themselves in writing?

You betcha! And there isn't even an obligation to get your facts straight. Never let it be said that people expressing themselves need to be limited by the world as it really is!

And that is what I'm talking about. What's wrong in this country today is that we're living in a fantasy land.

Look at these things, and see if you agree.

In the current recession I've heard that over five trillion dollars of wealth was lost in the fall of the stocks and bonds markets. Is that real wealth? Really? If it were something tangible, what would be required to utterly destroy five trillion dollars worth of it? That's not wealth--it's a phantasm, an illusion of wealth. If I were viewing it from a pathology standpoint, I'd say it was a delusion, at best.

Barack Obama and the Democrats carried the 2008 national election. They won by substantial margins in most cases. People like the sponsor of that billboard are in denial about this fact. They don't believe that the electorate of the United States actually said what they did--that the last eight years had gone badly, and that it was time for a change in leadership. They will not accept the decision of the majority of voters. Sorry, but that's the way that a democracy works--you know, the will of the people and all that.

The sponsors of the billboard moreover are living in a wonderland of their own, by imagining that the President is a communist. Or a socialist. Or a member of some group they don't like. That last part may well be true. Obama's opponents do not like him or the groups of which he's part. Those groups may be Democrats, liberals, educated people, people of mixed race, or whatever. Whatever the name of the group in question, these folks don't like it.

I need to ask very pointedly if these opponents of the current administration really know what a communist is. Or a socialist, for that matter. There has been a government presence, to one degree or another, in our national economy and our national society for decades now. It is not going to end because the opponents call it "socialist" or "communist" or any other disparaging name.

More to the point, what these folks oppose is that very government presence. I thought we had settled all that shortly after the ratification of the Constitution. I guess I was wrong. Every generation we have to learn anew that the tree of liberty is best planted in the soil of a nation, not in the desert of libertarian anarchy.

Do I sound too hostile to the ideals of libertarianism? I probably do, if you're a libertarian. Frankly, I've examined libertarian philosophy, and I find it laughable that people think you could build a viable society on its principles. Human beings are social beings--that means that we live best and most comfortably in groups. Groups need organizing principles and some degree of regulation to function best. There is always a tension between the rights of the individuals and the rights and requirements of the group. That tension has not been eliminated in the twenty-first century, and I doubt if it ever will be, as long as we humans are human.

But, to return to the issue at hand, we in the United States are too often living in a fantasy land of our own construction. For instance, it might be good to remember that the economic stimulus bill was passed under the aegis of a Republican administration, to address circumstances that were exceptional to say the least. And to some extent, those exceptional circumstances were the direct result of other delusions that we had allowed to come into common acceptance, delusions like thinking you could have what you want, when you want it, and not have to worry about paying for it. Delusions like thinking that at one and the same time you could criticize the government for being too governmental and depend upon that same institution to fight terrorism and protect you and this nation. Government in this delusion is seen as both the great problem and the only solution. That's more than delusion, actually; that's insanity.

We sing the National Anthem, about the "land of the free, and the home of the brave." Are we really all those things? We're hardly free--we're slaves to our illusions about the world, to the debt that we incurred on our own heads, to our hatred for any other person, even another American, who is different from us. Are we really brave, or are we cringing in fear at the possibility of having to change the way we live? We have the terrorist threat level; that's a great measure of the bravery we all feel. We're driven to a frenzy by fear mongers on the left and the right. Shame on them! We deserve better than this.

This country has had periods in its past when we had to look unflinchingly at the world as it was, and take dramatic steps to address the crises that we faced. We went through the Civil War to keep our Union together. We survived the Great Depression by united and concerted action. We instituted the Marshall Plan after World War II to keep Europe from descending into another death spiral that would ferment and bring about World War III. We have acted on principle in the past--are we still a people who can do that now? Well, are we?

Even in those times of crisis, there were those among us who were timid or worse, who refused to meet the challenge bravely, but instead preferred to snipe and badger and try to derail the efforts underway. Some of these people earned the name "traitor." Whatever they were called, though, the result was the same--they were on the wrong side, and they lost.

I view the world through the lens that my Christian faith provides. I don't believe that there is anyone in the world today, or at any time in the past, who was perfect or the answer to all problems, with one important exception. And we humans nailed him to a tree and watched him die. We're a messy bunch, and always have been. Sometimes, though, we have moments when things click and we get important things done. We're facing opportunities like that now. Are we really up to the challenge?

What do you think? Post a comment, and share your thoughts.

More to the Point...

2009-09-30T22:29:00.000-05:00

I figured there would be more to say about the language usage of Christians.

In my last post, I wondered about the tendency of many Christians to sanitize their language, sometimes to the point of becoming a reincarnation of Caspar Milquetoast (here's the Wikipedia article about this cartoon character).

I think we need to dig deeper into this, because often what happens is that the Jesus-follower is a model of decorum and circumspect language when among his Christian friends, but a profanity-spewing four-letter-word machine when among his non-Christian friends. In other words, he's a hypocrite.

On the other hand, Jesus is the very model of an integrated person. What he told you could be depended upon to mean exactly what he intended. His "tough" sayings are mostly meant to be tough, to force the listener to think and perhaps confront his preconceptions and prejudices and ultimately, his sin. Some of the tough ones, though, are hard to follow because we're not living in first-century Palestine, and frankly, don't have the cultural context in which Jesus' words were said.

When Jesus went after a person or a group, assaulting them with the force of his words, he was quite offensive. How would you like to invite someone to your house and be told that you and your friends were a "nest of serpents," "hypocrites!" and so forth? Jesus pulled no punches. There was none of the Caspar Milquetoast role for him.

Why did he go after the Pharisees and other officials in the Jewish religious establishment? Was he merely being mean, or was there something deeper at work? In various commentaries, it's explained that he was attacking the religious leaders for their hypocrisy. They were strict keepers of Torah, but failed to live up to the spirit of that law. They gamed the system so that they could be very punctilious, but always turned it to their own advantage. They were status seekers, corrupt in following what God had directed man to do. This corrupt nature wasn't universal among the Jewish leaders, though; there were some who had real interest in hearing what this new rabbi had to say, and could respond with a yielding heart. Most, however, were in love with the place where they found themselves, with all the power and prestige it commanded.

So does Jesus attack us if we're hypocrites, by our use of language and the way we live lives that are compartmentalized into religious and secular pigeonholes? Do we really believe that we're going to get a pat on the head and be told that it's okay, that he understands? It's just my own opinion, but I completely doubt that's the way his Gospel works.

I believe there's a place for forthright language among Christians. I'm saying that we should be aware of the power of profanity, of cursing, and of how we use words of that sort.

For instance, I hope I never have the urge to say something like, "Well, he was caught sleeping with her." For one thing, I doubt if sleeping was really on his or her mind. For another, it disguises what was going on. Call it what it was--he was screwing her repeatedly. Be honest.

Or maybe, don't say anything. We're told in various parts of Scripture that gossip is one of those things we should not do. Repeating tales about someone's moral failings, in titillating detail, probably qualifies as gossip. So am I wrong if I determine that I can gain nothing by repeating something damaging about someone else?

And let's be clear on the difference between cursing and profanity. Cursing, to me, sounds akin to pronouncing a curse on someone, an act of verbal aggression against another person. What do we experience when we shout, "Fuck you, you moron!" at another human being? We're hurling hatred, murderous intent, at another man or woman, and that makes us guilty of murder itself in Jesus' view.

Profanity, on the other hand, is "words that people don't want to hear," as I told my son when he was growing up. I refused then, and I refuse now, to call these "bad words." They're not bad words, they're words that make some people uncomfortable. Use them judiciously, if you're going to use them at all. Don't diminish their impact by peppering every sentence you utter with frequent repetitions of them. Sometimes they're appropriate, sometimes not. Good judgment on when the time is right will develop over the years as one grows older.

I suppose I should let the apostle Paul, the great writer of letters to churches all over the Mediterranean, have the last word. I've heard it said that Jesus founded the church, and Paul (and Peter and some others) worked out the details of how to actually implement it. In 1 Corinthians 10 we read this:

10:23 “Everything is lawful,” but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is lawful,” but not everything builds others up. 10:24 Do not seek your own good, but the good of the other person. 10:25 Eat anything that is sold in the marketplace without questions of conscience, 10:26 for the earth and its abundance are the Lord’s. 10:27 If an unbeliever invites you to dinner and you want to go, eat whatever is served without asking questions of conscience. 10:28 But if someone says to you, “This is from a sacrifice,” do not eat, because of the one who told you and because of conscience – 10:29 I do not mean yours but the other person’s. For why is my freedom being judged by another’s conscience? 10:30 If I partake with thankfulness, why am I blamed for the food that I give thanks for? 10:31 So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. 10:32 Do not give offense to Jews or Greeks or to the church of God, 10:33 just as I also try to please everyone in all things. I do not seek my own benefit, but the benefit of many, so that they may be saved. 11:1 Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.

So, everything is lawful (in the new Kingdom reality that Jesus ushered in, and Paul spent his life proclaiming), but not everything is beneficial. Do we feel that way about our language? Are we choosing our words carefully, or are we just operating by shooting from the lip? Like just about every other part of the Christian life, how we express ourselves requires thought and careful intention. I don't believe that precludes using forceful or even "dirty" words, but we need to know what we expect to accomplish when we do so. Is that goal part of our life of honoring God, or is it self-indulgence? I believe we'll one day have to give an account of what we did during our lives. How will we explain this sort of thing?

In Other Words

2009-09-24T23:00:00.002-05:00

Where do I begin...

Several things have occurred in the last few days that all have come together to inspire this post. I'm going to try to put them in some context, using the perspective of the Bible--as it is today in the minds of believers, and what it was like in the time it was being written.

First, there's the "Save the Boobs" public service announcement. There was a story on CNN.com today about the video that has gotten a lot of attention lately. Just to see what I'm talking about, here it is on YouTube:

There were several comments on CNN.com, mostly supportive of the idea of breast cancer awareness, which was really what the PSA was about. Several commenters, as of this evening, have taken exception to the ad--it was too sexy, it was exploitative, it didn't really address the tragedy of the disease, etc. In my own mind, the ad makes perfect sense. Yes, it is sexy, and yes, it does focus attention on something other than the tragedy of the disease. But that's the point--the ad does this to shock us out of our complacency and realize that breast cancer is a killer of young women, not just of older women. In that, I think it's a rousing success.

One sentiment appeared in several of the comments. People complaining about the ad were viewed as being too uptight, too hung up on the body of the model. One commenter said, "Relax people!"

This leads right up to the next thing I wanted to post about, which is that I'm currently reading "Lamb," a novel by Christopher Moore. It's subtitled "The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal." Now that seems like an appropriate thing to tick some people off. It purports to be the previously untold account of the first thirty years of Joshua's life. For those not aware, Joshua is closer to the actual name of the son of God than Jesus. Jesus is a transliteration of the Greek version of his name. So, it's the story of Josh and his childhood bud Biff.

Josh and Biff have a lot of adventures, and I won't go on at length to recount them. I'll only recommend that anyone curious find this book and sit down to a good read. It's by turns frat-boy hilarious and poignant. One thing that several commenters have pointed out in various forums is that there is some "dirty language" in the book. There are words that refer to the act of sexual intercourse. There's a word that is used to refer to human feces. There is mention--heaven help us!--of breasts, and of various things that can be done with them.

In other words, this novel is written in a modern day idiom, although it takes place in the first years of the first century. Does anyone seriously believe that people of that time spoke in King James English? Or at least, the Greek or Aramaic equivalent?

And that brings me to something that has been puzzling me for a long, long time.

Why are we as Christians expected to abstain from the use of "earthy" terms to refer to certain things? We'll say "oh, crap!" when we really mean "oh, shit!" We'll dance around various subjects because they're so indelicate. We'll get uptight because there are bare breasts in a picture, or somebody has their butt exposed.

And this wussiness is characteristic of the larger American society as well, even as parts of that society are fixated on really healthy things like beauty contests and smirking glances at "up-skirt" pictures on web sites. Britney Spears and Paris Hilton tapped into a national vein of twelve-year-old-boyism with their no-underwear paparazzi photos. Thank God for the digital patches that protect us from those flagrant body parts. And I'm so glad that not only do those dirty words get bleeped, but that we obscure the mouths (and hands--wouldn't want to see any offensive finger gestures!) of people who are just too free with their words.

This is really nothing new, of course. In some ways we've been a nation of hypocrites for a very long time. There have been plenty of books and articles written about our "cover that up!" but "let me see it!" mental disconnect over the years. I'm not going to delve into that, except to point out that the good Christian disdain for earthy language is just part of a larger phenomenon.

No, as I mentioned above, I wanted to view these two things through the lens of the Bible, as it is now and as it was when it was written.

As it is now, the Bible gets sanitized, euphemized, and frankly, in my opinion, de-fanged. There are plenty of places in both the Old and the New Testaments where earthy language is used, but we never really wrap our arms around those spots. Instead, we stick (more often than not) to the easier parts, the parts that don't slap us upside the head with a gutsy harshness that could take our breath away.

The Bible as it was written, though, now that's an entirely different item. Consider for a moment the times in which the Bible was written, two thousand and more years ago. In the Roman Empire, for example, it was routine to crucify someone very publicly, and leave their rotting corpse hanging on the cross until birds had picked the bones clean. Public executions by crucifixion were common--nothing got Roman magistrates or soldiers angry as fast as someone endangering the Pax Romana. There was nothing like the relatively easy sentences of today, when so many nations have eliminated the death penalty altogether. Even the mistreatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib pales in comparison to what was done in the Roman Empire.

The times during which the Bible was written, roughly two to three thousand years ago, were times that would have made many Christians of delicate mind faint. Slavery was rampant, the very basis of most societies. Life expectancy probably ranged from 25 to 35 years. Child mortality was wide-spread, and many children were left out in the open, to die of exposure, for a variety of reasons. Wars seemed to erupt at frequent intervals, often over the most minor of causes. Disease was rampant. Leisure was rare, and certainly not found by many beneath the nobility. In short, it was a harsher time that we have very little familiarity with.

It was in these harsh times that our Bible was written, in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. There are plenty of places in Scripture where earthy language--shockingly direct language--is used to make a point. For instance, in Ezekiel 23, we read this:

23:20 She lusted after their genitals – as large as those of donkeys, and their seminal emission was as strong as that of stallions. 23:21 This is how you assessed the obscene conduct of your youth, when the Egyptians fondled your nipples and squeezed your young breasts. [all citations from the NET Bible]

In Isaiah, there's this passage:

57:8 Behind the door and doorpost you put your symbols. Indeed, you depart from me and go up and invite them into bed with you. You purchase favors from them, you love their bed, and gaze longingly on their genitals.

Of course, there's the Song of Songs:

4:5 Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of the gazelle grazing among the lilies.

7:1 (7:2) How beautiful are your sandaled feet, O nobleman’s daughter! The curves of your thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a master craftsman. 7:2 Your navel is a round mixing bowl – may it never lack mixed wine! Your belly is a mound of wheat, encircled by lilies. 7:3 Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.

Interestingly enough, the note for the word translated as "navel" ponders whether it means "navel" or "vulva." It seems like someone is always getting their "horn exalted." David (the future king) had to bring back one hundred Philistine men's foreskins as a gift to King Saul to marry his daughter Michal. David, the perpetual over-achiever, brought back two hundred foreskins instead.

In the New Testament as well, we get hit in the face with the reality of life in a time perhaps more dangerous, or at least less sanitized, than our own. For instance, Paul writes in Philippians 3:

3:8 More than that, I now regard all things as liabilities compared to the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things – indeed, I regard them as dung! – that I may gain Christ, 3:9 and be found in him, not because I have my own righteousness derived from the law, but because I have the righteousness that comes by way of Christ’s faithfulness – a righteousness from God that is in fact based on Christ’s faithfulness.

What is translated as "dung" here could probably be put in a stronger vernacular as "shit." The translators' notes say that the word--ancient Greek "skubala"--refers to "a vulgar term for fecal matter." That sounds like shit to me.

Paul, the great letter writer of the New Testament, mentions all sorts of things people do that can get them crossways with God. Things like prostitution, incest, homosexual behavior, and on and on. There are child sacrifices in the Old Testament, temple prostitutes, hypocrisy, vanity, gluttony, swords stabbing so deep that the contents of the bowels come oozing out, people getting tent stakes driven through their heads when they think they're safe, genocide, death, murder, infidelity, and so much more.

And yet this is the book of God's word. This is the story that promises that God loves us and wants us to be reconnected with him. This book, with all the brutality of its imagery, all the bluntness of its language, is the holy Scripture that we say we follow.

All I can say about all this is that we need to do some major soul-searching about our attitudes about language, words, and what's important and not important. The God of the Bible is a god who uses direct, in your face language to get his point across. And more than language--look at what his Son had to do!

Christianity at its heart is not a faith for those of delicate sensibilities. PETA members may think that blood sacrifices were an anomaly, but Jesus' death on the cross shows that to be the delusion it is. Christians know this truth about our faith, if they're honest, but we just don't communicate it very well to those outside the walls of the church.

Enough of this musing. I don't believe for a minute that by the strength of my words I'm going to make any real change in the attitudes of people who would rather euphemize so much of the reality out of life. If I've planted any seed of subversion, though, an attitude of new interest in the Bible, then I'll consider this effort successful. There are some parts of the Bible that could be viewed as "dirty." This is the word of God, however. It got one man killed two thousand years ago because his words so offended the elite of his time. There's no way it can keep from being offensive.

Red, White, and Blue

2009-09-20T16:20:00.000-05:00

This is hilarious!

I was in Gmail, reading the latest messages, and at the top of the Inbox was the "Sponsored Link" to "Stop Robin Carnahan!" Clicking on the link took me to the NRSC.org webpage, where I read the following plaintive plea:

HELP TAKE BACK THE SENATE!
Stand with the NRSC by signing up.
Help us end the Democrats' one-party rule in Washington and bring some desparately-needed checks and balances.

...

By the way, this was all targeted at "Electing a Republican majority Senate."

I find this effort hugely ironic. Just a few years ago, Tom DeLay, Karl Rove, and so many other Republican luminaries were trying to create a "permanent Republican majority." There's a book on Amazon called "Painting the Map Red," by Hugh Hewitt, subtitled "The Fight to Create a Permanent Republican Majority." It was printed in March, 2006, when it looked like there might be a chance for that to happen.

The ad on Gmail was what I would expect from a party that got its clock as thoroughly cleaned as the Republicans did in 2008.

Now, philosophically, I think that the ideal situation is when there is more or less parity in party membership in the House and the Senate. This state of affairs requires that the Administration, the leadership of the two houses, and others involved in legislating develop a way of working together that will deliberate and create good legislation that achieves consensus. This is the ideal.

In today's polarized, hyper-partisan political climate, though, that ideal is about as likely to happen as the sun rising in the west. The party that tried to create a permanent majority in the first decade of this century now wants to try that whole operation again. Does anyone look back with fondness on the last eight years? Maybe there are some Republican operatives who do, but when I look back I see eight years filled with hubris, overweaning arrogance, incompetence, and no sense that "truth" was anything more than something else to bend and warp to serve the need to remain in power at all costs. Aside from a few bright spots like increased aid for HIV care in Africa, the last eight years were a disaster visited upon these United States of America.

In case you reading this think I'm some sort of uncritical Democratic Party fanboy, recalibrate your expectations. I expect the same intelligence, competence, and efforts to work across party lines, and for the good of the country overall, from the Democrats as I would from the Republicans. Since the Republican party seems at present unwilling to reach for a standard of competence and intelligence demanded by the problems and opportunities facing this country, that leaves only the Democrats stepping up to the plate.

The obstacles and obstructionism that the current GOP has been exhibiting are making it less and less likely that I will ever vote Republican again. Unless they come to their senses, and somehow moderate the more extreme members of their increasingly shrill party, they will continue to relegate themselves to being a minority party with a regional power base. And well-deserved it would be.

The courthouse in the town square of Harrisonville, Missouri, county seat of Cass County, has engraved above its doorway the motto, "A public office is a public trust." We've seen entirely too many instances in the past that show how easily this notion is discarded by our public officials and elected leaders. These desecrations of the ideal of public service have come equally from Republicans and Democrats. Our national troubles are too serious and put our nation at too much risk for business as usual to be the order of the day.

I EXPECT BETTER THAN WHAT WE'RE SEEING NOW FROM OUR PUBLIC OFFICIALS!

I can't believe I'm the only person in this country who feels this way.

Sticks and Stones

2009-09-19T12:22:00.000-05:00

...may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.

How many times have we said that as children? If some bully was calling us names, we might repeat this phrase, sure in the knowledge that so long as the bully didn't hit us, we would be all right.

Words are funny things. By themselves, they seem ephemeral, immaterial. Fleeting things that once said, can never be recaptured. Of course, why would you want to recapture something that can never hurt you?

Real things, on the other hand--now those can hurt you deeply. You can be injured by something falling on to you from a height. You can be hurt by an assault. You can be damaged by stormy weather, by an automobile accident, by the bite of an infectious mosquito.

Real things--these can be actual objects, or they can be events that impinge on your life. You can be hurt by the closing of the factory where you work. You can pay a price for the dissolution of a marriage. You can be thrown into turmoil by the loss of a parent.

Thoughts are kind of like words, except they're even more immaterial than words. Thoughts are secret, private, hidden away in the fortress of our skulls. That is, they are until they force their way out of that stronghold--as words. Then those private, hidden thoughts can be out in the wild.

But wait a minute! Are words really so immaterial? What about words that can hurt? Are there really such things? How about words like, "I Hate You!" Or, "You're Fired!" Or, "I Hope You Die!" How about all those hateful epithets that we use so often without even thinking? And where's the thought in that?

So, maybe, that childhood rhyme isn't really true after all. Maybe sticks and stones aren't the only things that can hurt us. Maybe words can hurt us every bit as deeply as anything that's physical.

The ancient Greeks knew a thing or two about words. They had the word "logos." That's the same word that appears in the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 1, where we read "In the beginning was the Word." The "Word" is Jesus, the "Word" in Greek is "logos." The logos was with God, and the logos was God. Suddenly a word becomes infinitely powerful--the very word is God. This word is something beyond our everyday experience. This word creates, maintains, judges, and can destroy.

Suddenly, you can utter "My word!" and mean "My God!"

When we talk about matters of the spirit, we use words. We have thoughts, ideas, and we express them in words. And they seem pretty safe. But give some thought to this--words are powerful. They move in ways that we may not realize at first. What's the phrase used in so many confessions in the church--"we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed." Ah--there's that progression. thought becomes word, and word engenders deed.

Word moves through that membrane and becomes deed. It shapes what we do. It takes on life of its own and moves about amongst men, and does its work. What thought formed in that mind to be expressed in that word, which became flesh in that deed?

There's a mystery. That just as we can think and speak and act, God thought, and spoke, and his Word became flesh among us.

The world is a lot more than literalists would have us believe. We live in a space that has not only physical and temporal dimension, but also conceptual and intellectual and spiritual dimension. Emotions live there. Demons can be found anywhere, waiting to attach themselves to minds that aren't aware of what lies in wait in the darker corners. Actions in the physical and temporal realm intersect and mediate in the intellectual and spiritual realm just as strongly. Words have a long train; they are attached to more than we might think at first.

We inhabit realms that we can't see with our eyes, but where there is a reality that can affect us just as much as anything we encounter in 3D. We set ourselves up for damage and hurt if we fail to be aware of this fact.

Of Two Minds

2009-09-18T14:32:00.000-05:00

I've had some correspondence lately with friends that has inspired me to examine the clash of attitudes that is currently afflicting our nation. I'm speaking, of course, about the toxic climate that characterizes our debates on politics, health care reform, race relations, and so much else.

I try, I really try, but I can’t avoid seeing the news, and the kind of hate that spews forth from the mouths of people like Rush Limbaugh, or the absolute terror sometimes visible in the weepy eyes of Glenn Beck. No, I can’t avoid this nauseating mess--it’s displayed, repeatedly, for all to see by Left-leaning people who are making a point about all the bile from the Screaming Right. The Left is saying it’s all racist hatred. I think it’s actually more than that, although the race of our President undoubtedly plays into this.

What I think we’re seeing is exactly the kind of reaction one should expect from people who don’t want to change. Even if the change will make things better for them, when change is being forced upon them, they'll resist it for all they're worth. President Obama’s campaign slogan was “Change we can believe in.” These people don’t want to change--it’s inevitable that they’d be hostile to anything this President does or stands for, and that’s not limited just to his politics, but also to him personally.

It interesting to me that there are people in this country who, at one and the same time, welcome the newest technological gadgets and services, and yet cling to old notions of what America really is. Somewhere in the middle of a spectrum of attitudes, these people are in a conflicted state that will find no peace of mind. At the one extreme, there are those who welcome change of all kinds, people who wrap their arms around novelty and new realities and find something thrilling about living with one foot in the future. At the other extreme are those who don't welcome any change, who can't abide that "internet thing," who find any change frightening and a threat to be fought. I'm probably a little closer to the "future huggers," while some of my friends are probably closer to the other end of that range.

I keep hearing the phrase “Obama’s America,” as if that were somehow different from the America that the rest of us live in. “Obama’s America,” as though the President is trying to separate and align us along racial lines. This is in spite of the fact that the White House has been trying to get bi-partisan movement going on a number of different fronts, despite the fact that in this whole “He Lies!” business, the President hasn’t responded in the way that partisans on the Left want him to respond, by playing the victim.

As a believer in Jesus the Anointed One, I find neither side in this struggle worth following. I know one thing, though--Jesus would never have condoned the kind of hate I see in such attitudes, and one day, there will be an accounting. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” The people on the Right and the Left who fan the flames of our strife are far from being a blessing to anyone at this time of national division. No, they’re in a hell of their own making, and only they have the key to finding their way out. It's just a sad fact that they're dragging the rest of us down with them. May God help us all!

Two Towers Falling...

2009-09-11T13:20:00.000-05:00

This is the eighth anniversary of a tragic day for this country.

Volumes have been, and will continue to be, written about that day and what it meant at the time and what it means for the future. There are memoirs, commission reports, scholarly papers, diatribes, historical essays, and so much more. Much is being said about this event today.

I'd like to make some personal observations on my own feelings about 9/11.

I will never forget the disbelief that our office staff felt as we absorbed the television coverage of what was happening on September 11, 2001. I'll forever remember the contrails looped across the bright sky as all aircraft in the United States were grounded that day. I'll never forget the feeling of national unity that rose out of the ashes of Ground Zero and the Pentagon and that field in Pennsylvania in the days immediately following the attacks.

Whatever else may be said about Glenn Beck, I think he's on to something with his 9-12 Project. After long years of rancorous political campaigns and caustic political "debates," I would love to see us return to a sense of national unity. It certainly beats what we have now. How far have we come...

One thing that died that day was our sense of where we were in the world. We learned first-hand that there were men out there who wanted us to die. We saw evil in an absolute disregard for the lives of thousands of Americans. We discovered that we were assailable.

We entered a new, darker world that sunny September day.

We're now involved in two wars thousands of miles from our shores. We're learning all over again the lesson of Vietnam--that American power and military might does not make for a quick victory against a determined foe. That we weary as a people of commitments that may last for decades, and at the cost of thousands of American lives.

But there are lessons that Vietnam never taught, lessons that we've learned too well, in my estimation.

We've learned that we can be fearful. It's hard to think that we're the same "land of the free and home of the brave," when fear of someone of a different political position can cause you to attack that person as bitterly as we've seen in the recent healthcare reform townhalls. That's not bravery; that's fear so strong you can smell it, and it stinks.

We've learned that it truly is a global society and economy. Even as our own sub-prime mortgage meltdown and its consequences began devouring our own economy, we saw other countries sink into recession themselves. Even as we begin to see returning financial activity, tentative and unevenly spread, we understand that it may be years before we see a return to levels of employment that existed before the Great Recession.

We've learned that the future may not be as rosy as we had always thought it was. We've lost trillions of dollars of paper wealth in the stock market meltdown; some boomers approaching retirement age have watched their entire nest eggs disappear. Homes have been lost to foreclosure, millions of them. Jobs have been lost, millions of them. Possibilities are being truncated, downsized, and completely eliminated for many people.

Reality is a brutal taskmaster. For all the dislocation and disruption that has occurred, though, isn't it better to face the world as it is, rather than as you wish it could be? 9/11 and its aftermath have helped to clear our eyes.

As dark as this world can be, there remains hope. As a Christian I don't have the option of being a pessimist. By swearing allegiance to the risen Jesus, I've publicly announced that I believe there is a bright future ahead. Even in my darker moments, I can't turn away from that deep abiding faith in the triumph of God over all that separates us from our true home.

I cringe when I hear about suicide bombers in Afghanistan. My heart blossoms when I see my grand-daughter.

I feel sadness for those Americans who have lost their jobs or their homes. I feel hope when I see that the church is helping them to make it to another day, and when the community of faith and its individual members are looking out for their neighbors.

I believe that this dark time will not endure. I believe in the future, regardless of how hard our present is. I pray that we will have the strength and humility and faith to see that future arrive.

This Really Sucks--Part Two

2009-09-08T10:35:00.002-05:00

You knew there was going to be a "Part 2" to this, didn't you?

When I posted my entry "This Really Sucks!" yesterday, I concluded that I couldn't hate the liars, idiots, fools, tools, gasbags, purveyors of lies, cynical opportunists, right-wing nutjobs, left-wing nutjobs, progressive shills, or anyone else who's embedded into the national debate on healthcare reform. I had to be a living embodiment of Jesus instead, and love, forgive, and pray for, all of us flawed human beings.

But that's so unsatisfactory. The ones who yell the loudest win, and they don't deserve to win. Right? Shouldn't truth win out?

Sure it should. And how do you go about working toward that end?

It's very simple, but not necessarily easy. The simple part is, you tell the truth. The not-easy part is, you don't de-humanize those who are not telling the truth.

Tell the truth. Tell it at every opportunity. Tell it with all the passion you can, but make sure it's truthful. Know what you're talking about. Check your facts. Lies and half-truths have no place in a debate of ideas. Spin should be a dirty word here.

I said that there was no sure-fire guarantee that the debate would be won by truth-tellers. God's promises don't always work that way. We're a long way yet from the fully-realized Kingdom of Heaven; it's still a work in progress.

But, again, tell the truth. Confront those spreading distortions and lies. We're told in Scripture that the truth will make us free (check out John 8:32 for background on what Jesus said about this). Don't demonize those you are trying to correct in the process. In other words, once again referencing Scripture, don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (from Romans 12:21).

Once again, tell the truth. Lies destroy. Lies distort. Lies keep people in bondage to false ideas, foment hatred, keep people apart. Lies are the first and foremost tool of the evil in men's hearts. The battle between truth and lies is one that must be joined.

Every man or woman who enters politics finds that there are compromises they have to make in the course of their public careers. They find that they have to break promises they made in the campaigns. This is inevitable. We don't know everything we'll encounter when we embark on a career in politics; we will always be surprised at some point. The noblest man or woman will find that their ideals didn't prepare them for everything. Things will be said that will be heard as lies by some supporters. But they will still try to tell the truth. And so must we. We will fail, but we must try again. And again.

I don't know what the outcome of this raucous "debate" is going to be. I do know, however, that we need to work to get facts out there, and combat the lies and craziness that seems to have taken hold for too many people. Too much of our national discourse lately has been at this level. We as Americans deserve better. Only we can provide it for ourselves.

This Really Sucks!

2009-09-07T11:51:00.002-05:00

This really sucks!

I've been doing the same thing as many other Americans lately. I've watched the network and website coverage of the healthcare reform "debate" that's been raging across our country. I've watched "birthers" and "death-panel" foes and gun-toting "Tree of Liberty" zealots spout their particular slogan of the day. I've watched as partisan spokesmen like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and just about anyone from Fox News spread lies, half-truths, and flat-out fantasies about healthcare and everything else that gets them riled up.

Just about anything gets these people riled up, it seems. They don't like liberals, progressives, President Obama and his administration, Democrats, or people who happen to agree with any of those groups. A few of them, like Governor Rick Perry of Texas, seem to want to take their ball and go home--the game has just become too hard for them, and it's time to secede from this Union.

I've found myself appalled and disgusted by the distortions and lying of this side of the political debate. And then along comes somebody from the other side, and does the same damned thing. Somebody calls Glenn Beck an idiot. Somebody makes disparaging remarks about Michael Steele, the chairman of the RNC. Keith Olbermann goes off on a rant against "The worst person in the world."

It really sucks that I can't hate all these people. It would be so much easier if I could just go after them and deny their humanity and demonize them like they do to each other.

I can't do that, though. And it's intensely frustrating.

I can't do it, you see, because I'm a Christian. I follow the teachings and life of a guy from a couple thousand years ago named Jesus. He was known by the title of "The Christ." That means "the anointed one," the "special one" selected by God to change the way we react to each other and with our creator. I happen to believe that Jesus was on a real mission, and that he was fully God and fully human. And I can't explain that any better than to say it's so.

Jesus doesn't give me a way to hate these people, those on the right or the left. He's pretty specific about it. He's quoted, for instance, in a book that was written about his life and sayings, the gospel of Matthew. Check out Matthew 5:44. "Pray for those who persecute you." "Love your enemies." There's not much wiggle room in those words. Dance around them all you want, if you truly believe that's what he said, then you have to follow through.

He doesn't give me an easy way to "beat" them, or to "triumph over" them.

I can't be guaranteed to come out the "winner" in any kind of debate, at least by the standards of the political arena.

Given the tone of our national discussion lately, you could certainly say that Jesus is being un-American. I don't think he wore an American flag lapel pin.

So what do I do about all these liars, cynical opportunists, partisan gasbags, and delusional demagogues?

I have to stop thinking of them in those terms.

I have to start seeing them as damaged persons, just as messed up as I am, just as willing to go for blood as my initial impulse is.

I have to forgive them their frailty.

I have to admit my own frailty.

I have to love them. Wish the best for them. Pray for them.

It's frustrating. It sucks. But I don't have a choice in the matter. Not if I'm going to be a friend of Jesus.

In Memoriam...

2009-08-27T09:08:00.000-05:00

I've been working on a post that was inspired by an article I read recently. The subject of the article is only indirectly related to the subject of my post, which is the fractured way that our (global) society deals with certain words in different contexts. That post, however, can wait for another day.

Right now, I'd like to express something that I hope is being felt by others.

Senator Edward Kennedy died a couple of days ago. Since then, I've heard nothing but fond remembrances of him, from both political allies and political opponents. One theme that seems almost universal is how great he was at finding consensus, being able to work across the aisle, in bringing together opposing interests in efforts to craft legislation in the Senate.

I wonder if now is a teachable moment. By that I mean that if even staunch political opponents can say good things about a man who was able to work across party lines, why can't we as a nation see benefit in being able to do the same? Why are we so polarized right now, so partisan, when we're in one of the most trying periods we've ever faced as a nation?

I can see how passionate debate can deteriorate into shouting matches, but why must it? I had Civics when I was in high school; I know what our system of government is supposed to be able to do. We seem unable to follow through on that premise now. What we have seems more like fear-mongering at its worst, virtually a call for mob violence to get "the other guy," whoever that "other guy" is. Compromise seems out of the question, and consensus is a trip no one is willing to make.

All or nothing is not the way to govern a country as diverse as ours. Politics has been called the art of compromise. This definition may be old, but I don't think it's out of date. I'd like to see more attention paid to this ideal now that we're remembering one of its greatest practitioners.

More on Expectations...

2009-08-23T11:11:00.005-05:00

It's been a couple of days since I posted anything, and I wanted to add a little bit to the last post. I came down pretty hard on the "Health and Wealth" theology that's found in so many places. I still feel that way, even more so now that I've seen a couple of recent infomercials from people preaching this doctrine.

Early yesterday morning I saw a bit of a segment on a cable channel with some preacher talking about how poverty was against God's will for us. He was dissecting the biblical story about the feeding of the five thousand, from John 6, and was using it to explain how if you cast what you have before the Lord, he'll return it to you multiplied many times. I don't know where this guy got his understanding of this passage, but he read a different Bible than I do. Here's what the actual passage says, from the NET Bible:

The Feeding of the Five Thousand

6:1 After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee (also called the Sea of Tiberias). 6:2 A large crowd was following him because they were observing the miraculous signs he was performing on the sick. 6:3 So Jesus went on up the mountainside and sat down there with his disciples. 6:4 (Now the Jewish feast of the Passover was near.) 6:5 Then Jesus, when he looked up and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, said to Philip, “Where can we buy bread so that these people may eat?” 6:6 (Now Jesus said this to test him, for he knew what he was going to do.) 6:7 Philip replied, “Two hundred silver coins worth of bread would not be enough for them, for each one to get a little.” 6:8 One of Jesus’ disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 6:9 “Here is a boy who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what good are these for so many people?”

6:10 Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” (Now there was a lot of grass in that place.) So the men sat down, about five thousand in number. 6:11 Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed the bread to those who were seated. He then did the same with the fish, as much as they wanted. 6:12 When they were all satisfied, Jesus said to his disciples, “Gather up the broken pieces that are left over, so that nothing is wasted.” 6:13 So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with broken pieces from the five barley loaves left over by the people who had eaten.

Nowhere in that whole passage can I see anything about how the boy reaped a harvest of riches from having given his bread and dried fish to Jesus. He may have eaten some of what Jesus provided, but the point of the story (I think) is to show that when you give something to Kingdom work, your efforts can be multiplied and have far more impact than just what you provide. There's no hint that it's going to come back and benefit you alone; if anything, the benefit radiates outward from you. The benefit that you get is knowing that you're part of this work. Notice that Jesus didn't create all the food for the multitude out of thin air--there was a seed, provided by the boy. We're involved, if this story is any indication, in the work of creating the kind of world that we're called to make, but we can rely upon more power than we ourselves can muster.

Anyway, let's just say that the anti-poverty preacher was doing a bit of really adventurous exegesis, and leave it at that. The next thing I saw was this morning, on the same channel, when I caught another infomercial for "miracle prosperity handkerchiefs" available FREE from the preacher who was hawking them. I didn't catch his name, but he was on TV, so that must mean that it's for real. Right? If it's on TV, then it must be true. This is the modern-day equivalent of what I've heard from less than sophisticated folks, that if something's in print, it must be true. I don't really think things work that way, but let's just move along.

Later this morning, same channel once again, there was some guy selling a program of "Financial Breakthroughs" that involves worship and "strategies and techniques" that you could use to tap into God's plan for your financial prosperity.

In something just over 24 hours, without any intention on my part, I came across three instances of some preacher hawking the notion of "Health and Wealth." Why did I find these? Is it because I was meant to? I doubt if that's the reason, frankly. I think I found them because this distortion of the gospel message is something that people want to hear, and there are plenty of people who want to sell it to a willing audience. People respond to anyone telling them that if they just do this or that, they can reap the harvest many times over. This is a popular message. That's true not only in this country, but in countries around the world. I've heard that it's a popular theme for preaching in Africa, for instance. Rich country or poor, this message gets attention and response from people eager for a fast track to riches. This urge to get a quick-rich-fix is probably associated with the popularity of gambling, playing the lottery, all those sorts of things. Heck, I've played PowerBall before--why not? Maybe my number would come up...

The message, whether wrapped in gospel allusions or more secular terms, is still that you can get rich by doing something other than working hard and saving and being thrifty. If you can just master that inside track, that secret knowledge, or put that offering in the envelope to Preacher Bob, you're going to get rich. And be healthy. And probably get better looking in the bargain. Even as people debunk the preaching, explain why the Bible doesn't say what these guys say it does, explain the odds of coming out ahead at the boats, even as we try to be rational about all this, the message still resonates with people hungry for something they feel they don't have. I doubt if that will change anytime soon. ...sigh...

Christian expectations, part two

2009-08-19T19:54:00.004-05:00

It's time for another installment of "Christian Expectations." Last time I examined expectations about how Christian believers fare in the educational system, particularly high school and especially college. This time, I'd like to look at expectations about our life situation. In particular, I want to examine expectations about our lives being blessed with riches, good health, healthy relationships, and so forth.

This notion that confessing, believing Christians will have a good, long life here on Earth is generally lumped under the term "Prosperity Theology." Believers in this strain of Christianity may call it "Word-Faith," "Health and Wealth," or "Name It and Claim It," but it's all pretty much the same thing. Preachers who espouse this doctrine include Kenneth Copeland, Robert Tilton, Benny Hinn, Creflow Dollar, Joel Osteen, and many others. Prosperity theology is generally found in charismatic or pentacostal churches, although it's not limited to these communities.

The basic idea is that by living pious, righteous lives, Christians will be blessed with material success in this life, and salvation in the next. There are plenty of passages in the Bible that can be cited to support this view. [I'm drawing these passages from the NET Bible, available here.] For instance, in 2 Chronicles 6:41, King Solomon is praying, "Now ascend, O Lord God, to your resting place, you and the ark of your strength! May your priests, O Lord God, experience your deliverance! May your loyal followers rejoice in the prosperity you give!" In Deuteronomy 30:15-16, Moses warns the Israelites, "Look! I have set before you today life and prosperity on the one hand, and death and disaster on the other. What I am commanding you today is to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances. Then you will live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are about to possess." In Proverbs 13:21, we see this: "Calamity pursues sinners, but prosperity rewards the righteous." Finally, if we've gone astray but later turn to God, we see in Psalm 68:6, "God settles those who have been deserted in their own homes; he frees prisoners and grants them prosperity. But sinful rebels live in the desert."

There are plenty of other passages in Scripture that would seem to support this belief. What's wrong with these passages? They seem clear enough. Is it really wrong to believe that God will reward us on this world if we follow his commandments?

The main point I want to make here is that it is wrong to believe that health and wealth automatically follow from living according to God's rules. There are a couple of very strong reasons for doubting that prosperity theology is valid.

The first reason is that there are passages in Scripture that debunk the notion. Just as there are proof texts to support it, there are texts that go the other way. Here are a few. For instance, Psalm 73:1-9 (it's actually longer than this, but here's the section that makes my point):
73:1 Certainly God is good to Israel,
and to those whose motives are pure!
73:2 But as for me, my feet almost slipped;
my feet almost slid out from under me.
73:3 For I envied those who are proud,
as I observed the prosperity of the wicked.
73:4 For they suffer no pain;
their bodies are strong and well-fed.
73:5 They are immune to the trouble common to men;
they do not suffer as other men do.
73:6 Arrogance is their necklace,
and violence their clothing.
73:7 Their prosperity causes them to do wrong;
their thoughts are sinful.
73:8 They mock and say evil things;
they proudly threaten violence.
73:9 They speak as if they rule in heaven,
and lay claim to the earth.

Psalm 17:14 says this:
17:14 Lord, use your power to deliver me from these murderers,
from the murderers of this world!
They enjoy prosperity;
you overwhelm them with the riches they desire.
They have many children,
and leave their wealth to their offspring.

Ecclesiastes 6:1-7 reads this way:
6:1 Here is another misfortune that I have seen on earth,
and it weighs heavily on people:
6:2 God gives a man riches, property, and wealth
so that he lacks nothing that his heart desires,
yet God does not enable him to enjoy the fruit of his labor –
instead, someone else enjoys it!
This is fruitless and a grave misfortune.
6:3 Even if a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years –
even if he lives a long, long time,
but cannot enjoy his prosperity –
even if he were to live forever –
I would say, “A stillborn child is better off than he is!”
6:4 Though the stillborn child came into the world for no reason
and departed into darkness,
though its name is shrouded in darkness,
6:5 though it never saw the light of day nor knew anything,
yet it has more rest than that man –
6:6 if he should live a thousand years twice,
yet does not enjoy his prosperity.
For both of them die!
6:7 All of man’s labor is for nothing more than to fill his stomach -
yet his appetite is never satisfied!

And finally, from the mouth of Jesus himself, this (from the Sermon on the Plain) in Luke 6:20-31: "Then he looked up at his disciples and said: 'Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God belongs to you. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you and insult you and reject you as evil on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and jump for joy, because your reward is great in heaven. For their ancestors did the same things to the prophets.
'But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your comfort already. Woe to you who are well satisfied with food now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for their ancestors did the same things to the false prophets.
'But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other as well, and from the person who takes away your coat, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks you, and do not ask for your possessions back from the person who takes them away. Treat others in the same way that you would want them to treat you.'"

The other reason is evident in that last passage cited. Jesus is pretty definitive in saying that the wealthy may have an easy time of it here on the earthly plane, but that such is not their due after death. He talks elsewhere about it being harder than a camel threading the eye of a needle for a wealthy person to get into the Kingdom of God (Matthew 19). In other words, instead of wealth being a reward, Jesus pronounces it almost a curse. Why do we have this seeming contradiction between what one set of passages promises, and what another set says?

I think the contradiction is one that we actually manufacture ourselves, to a degree. In the Old Testament, when wealth is promised as the reward for following God's commandments, we need to remember that this was a promise to a particular people at a particular time in a specific place. I think we generalize this promise to include ourselves in the twenty-first century at our peril; I don't think it works that way. I come to this conclusion mainly because of what Jesus says in the New Testament. Remember, the New Testament is the record of the new order that God has established. The old is no more, and the new is upon us. Jesus has come into the world, he's re-envisioned the Passover with the Last Supper, and he's shown what a true messiah can do, that even death can not triumph over him. Even the people of his own age wondered how he could speak with such authority.

Moreover, wealth by itself, in this new order, is here for a purpose, not merely for our enjoyment. Here's what Jesus in Luke 12:48 says: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, even more will be asked." It's evident from reading Scripture that the means to do God's work are not evenly distributed; we have a job to do, with whatever resources we have been given.

So what conclusion can we come to after looking at all this evidence? First, I would say that health and wealth may come to us, or they may not. Much is beyond our control. Second, if we are the recipients of wealth--financial, in health, in our relationships--then we have a charter to use it to further the goals of God's kingdom in this world, in this time. Finally, if we are not blessed with bags of money, we are still expected to take part in the work of creating and spreading that kingdom; it's not an optional pursuit.

There's a niggle in all this, though. I've heard friends of mine, even pastors, say that they put their lives totally in God's hands, that they trusted in him to help them meet their needs. They prayed about it, and things happened. I've tried praying for things like that, and largely the prayers have gone unanswered, or so I've felt. I prayed for healing for my father over ten years ago, and he nonetheless died of complications from Alzheimer's. But in the process of coming to grips with that, I learned sympathy for a man I had once intensely disliked, Ronald Reagan, and his family, even as he lingered year after year in the drive-by reality of Alzheimer's. I have prayed for success for a business my wife set up a few years ago. Even as we were beginning to become profitable, she had health issues that developed that required her to give up the business. But out of that, she's developed into a wonderful writer and a person with an iron will that will not admit to defeat. Even as we've gotten used to living on one paycheck, we've been able to meet our financial obligations and even give away a good portion to causes in the church and out. So, even as my prayers have not been answered in the way I wanted them to be, I've received blessing after blessing in ways that were totally unexpected. God has provided, but he chose what he would bless me with, and didn't just play the role of vending machine.

Ultimately, I think that "health and wealth" theology is too restricted, too selfish, to be real. I think God's agenda is much larger than anything that we short-sighted creatures can imagine. And I think that to try to put the Creator of us and the rest of the universe in that sort of box is frankly a very risky move that limits what he can do in our lives, if we're just ready to live a little more dangerously.

What is my expectation? I believe that there will be a tomorrow. I believe that it will be surprising. I hope that I'm up to being receptive to it.

Christian expectations, part one

2009-08-17T09:07:00.000-05:00

I've begun to wonder just why we Christians expect certain things to come our way, or for the world to work in a certain way. This has become interesting enough to me that I'm planning on making a couple of posts (at least) on the subject.

Today I'd like to look at the attitude of the educational system toward Christian believers. This musing was spawned by conversations or things I've heard in the past couple of weeks, mainly from friends, about the way that teachers in high school and college treat people who identify themselves as Christians. Briefly, Christian believers are met with skepticism at best, and derision or outright hostility at worst. In fact, there are those in the Christian community who feel that there's an organized conspiracy against them. Why do we Christians feel this way?

I'd like to suggest to my brothers and sisters in the faith that this is really what we should expect. I'd further say that we're being naive if we expect anything else. Let's look at recent events (of the last twenty years, say) to see why this might be so.

In that time, we've had televangelist scandals--think Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and all their ilk. We've had scandals involving very prominent clergymen--think Ted Haggard. We've had very public demonstrations of behavior that most people find repulsive--think Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. We've had self-identified Christian political figures admit to breaking their marriage vows and having affairs or dalliances--think everyone from Mark Sanford to John Edwards to Bill Clinton. We've had the on-going scandal of child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic clergy, and the allegations of wide-spread cover-up. We've had religious cults and breakaway groups mandating bizarre practices to follow their own doctrines--think Branch Davidians, as well as Fundamentalist LDS groups and their polygamous marriages. Does anyone reading this think that this is the totality of Christian weirdness? Is it any wonder, after reading a litany of accounts like this, that many people see Christians as fools at the most generous, and as frauds and hypocrites less so?

Why are we surprised by the reception that our beliefs get in academia, after all the seeming whack-jobs that have been paraded across TV screens and newspaper headlines and blogs and web pages and emails and word of mouth? And that only scratches the surface. Many of us deny the validity of the theory of evolution, or a 4.5-billion-year-old planet Earth. Instead, we hold to a belief in young-Earth creationism, or Intelligent Design. All these doctrines are in direct contradiction of the results of scientific inquiry over hundreds of years; why shouldn't professors in college wonder about our sanity?

Let me just interject here my own belief on the whole subject of Intelligent Design. As a Christian, I definitely believe in the existence of a Creator, maker of heavens and Earth. That means that I believe that there is cosmic intelligence that has formed us all. What I reject is canonical "Intelligent Design." It's not a "theory," in any scientific sense I recognize. If anything, it's an interesting philosophical conjecture, and nothing more than that. Bluntly, it's crap science and crap religion. It's crap science because it's not scientific, but instead seeks to re-define "science" to conform to its own non-scientific ideas. It's crap religion because there is no "god," only a "designer," and a pretty vague one at that. One day I may write much more in detail about the shortcomings, in my personal view, of Intelligent Design (as it's currently defined). For now, let's just say that it's not something I subscribe to or am likely to find attractive.

Getting back to the subject at hand, there's a much deeper reason than all the scandal and hypocrisy and failure to live righteous lives, that causes us as Christians to be viewed with suspicion by the rest of the world. We were promised that we would encounter persecution--check out Matthew 24:9, for one citation. The guy we claim is our Lord and Master promised that it would be like this. In other words, things are as they are supposed to be. The world is doing exactly what it's expected to do.

That may be a hard message to hear, if you've been expecting to be welcomed as the bearer of "good news" by those you meet. Academia, the hotbed of restless minds testing new ideas (the role of the student) and experienced minds inculcating skills of critical thinking (the role of the teacher), is where you should expect this treatment to be most stark. As Christians, we need to see this as an opportunity to test our own mettle in the fire of hard intellectual confrontation. We should welcome the encounter, instead of feeling like we're penalized in some way.

There are other expectations on the part of Christians that I think need to be re-evaluated in the light of both reality and what we're told in that book we hold in such high esteem. In my next post, I'll look at another one, a big one, and see if it has any validity.

Fashion

2009-08-13T21:38:00.005-05:00

Time to shift gears a little. I came across a tweet today about an article that appeared in today's New York Times. The article is here. This one article has inspired a firestorm of resentment and anger .

The only question I have for the article's author is this: Do you feel better now that you've gotten that venom out of your system? The tone of snark in the article was balanced by a knowing wink of the eye, somewhat along the lines of a super-sophisticated relative smiling benignly as their yokel cousin tried to figure out how to use a smart phone.

We have a society where men and women are simultaneously told that they should be content with themselves as they are (on the one hand) and told in so many insidious ways that, no, they need to be younger, more muscular, more sculpted, more beautiful. This article plugs right into that schizoid mindset. It's no wonder that we have young women with eating disorders, people having surgery after surgery to sculpt themselves into duplicates of their idols, and even AARP publishing articles that seem to deny the reality that people age and decline. We've got claims of age discrimination, even as we have "town hall meetings" where people shout about "unplugging granny." We've got hundreds of thousands of elderly folks warehoused in nursing homes as these rallies go on. Is it any wonder that people get to feel that maybe they are unnecessary, somehow less than valuable, even worthless?

I'm sure that there are legitimate complaints that can be leveled against any major retailer such as J C Penney, complaints about their mix of clothing sizes, clothing materials, store hours, whatever. I'm pretty sure this article is about more than just reservations about these sorts of things. We all have insecurities. This article seems to display some of the author's.