Salty Bread (for those who don't feel at home in this world)

Moving Day

2009-10-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

I’m moving my blog to Wordpress. You can now find Salty Bread here.

Same blog. Different location.

See you there!

Me First!

2009-10-17T06:43:00.000-07:00

Me first! It’s something you hear on playgrounds every day. Children don’t have to be taught how to be selfish. It comes naturally. But not just for children, for grown-ups too. We live in a Me first! society full of Me first! people. Just look at how folks maneuver and speed up to get ahead on the highways and push past in the grocery lines. It even affects religion. Go into any Christian bookstore. The self-help section is the largest. Me first! The Bible says, “Husbands love your wives” but husbands leave their wives and children to “find themselves.” Me first! Women and men put their careers ahead of family. Me first! We live in a self-promoting, self-absorbed generation.

It was no different in Jesus’ day. James and John came to Jesus and asked him to do them a favor: “Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory” (Mark 10:37). They wanted to be Jesus’ right-hand man. Only they didn’t know what they were asking for.

These sons of Zebedee were seeking the ultimate political appointment, only they got it all wrong. They weren’t asking a man who was about to set up an earthly, Messianic kingdom, as they supposed. They were asking someone hell-bent on getting himself killed. Jesus was a dead man walking. He was a criminal on his way to execution. And to be with him was to be guilty by association. Only they didn’t know that when they asked their question. Like a good Jew, Jesus answered their question with more questions: “Can ye drink the cup that I drink of? And be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”

Their immediate, unreflective reply was Yes, we can! They sounded like giddy Obama groupies just waiting for their man to take power. Jesus and his disciples were again talking past each other. Not only did James and John have no idea what they were asking of Jesus, they had not a clue as to what he was asking of them.

People often don’t realize what they’re getting themselves into. I’ve read several memoirs of young men who enlisted in the military in a time of war but didn’t realize what they were signing up for. Especially in World War I most joined for adventure, glory, and patriotism. What they got instead was long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of terror followed by disillusionment and cynicism. Few found what they set out after.

Jesus was great at turning things upside down, like when he overturned the moneychangers’ tables. He turned the Sabbath law on its head: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). He reversed economics. Instead of “get as much as you can,” he said, “Go, sell all you have and give to the poor” (Matt. 19:21). Jesus inverted the impulse of self-preservation: “Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it” (Luke 17:33). He even promised to reverse life and death: “he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). In Mark 10, he turns the tables on his two ambitious disciples, telling them, “whosoever of you wants to be the greatest, shall be servant of all” (44). The disciples didn’t get it. We don’t either.

The truly great Christians are not seeking positions of power but follow Jesus on the not-so-well-worn path of self-sacrifice that leads to suffering. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said “when Jesus calls a man he bids him come and die” (The Cost of Discipleship).

Discipleship means following Jesus’ teaching and example, not the shallow Me first! preaching we hear from megachurch pulpits or on TV. Robert McElvaine, author of Grand Theft Jesus, calls it “ChristianityLite.” With lots of wry wit and sarcasm he characterizes the Me first! attitude prevalent today: “Turn the other cheek? Self-sacrifice? Help the poor? Nonviolence? That shit’s too hard!” (4-5).

If we’re going to get serious about following Jesus, we need to start by repenting of our Me first! approach to life. (Me first.) Self-centeredness is a sin, and sin must be paid for. Jesus “gave his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). This transactional theology makes my liberal friends squirm. Christianity is not a civilized, sophisticated religion. It’s primitive. There’s blood and sacrifice. Jesus had to die as a “ransom” to pay the penalty for my sins, and yours.
If we repent of our selfishness and pride, Jesus will show us a better way: “not to be ministered unto, but to minister” (Mark 10:45). It’s the way of service to others. Others first! instead of Me first! That’s what Gospel living is all about.

White Church Calls Black Pastor

2009-10-14T19:36:00.000-07:00

Dr. Jeffrey Haggray

This week historic First Baptist Church of Washington, DC (FBC DC) took a bold step across the racial divide when the traditionally white congregation that once had slaves as members called Dr. Jeffrey Haggray as its first African-American pastor. (Presidents Truman and Carter both attended the church while in office.) In a previous post I summarized lessons learned from Dr. Ed Pruden’s memoir A Window on Washington in which the author recounts his long tenure as pastor of FBC DC. One take-away from the book was that “racial integration took a long time, even in the nation’s capital.” Now the church and capital are once again setting an example of racial reconciliation. I applaud FBC DC’s membership and congratulate Dr. Haggray on this happy and momentous occasion.

Dying In Between

2009-10-13T13:43:00.001-07:00

Our faith gives us great hope that we will see our loved ones again. As Christians we know death is not the end. When the body dies the soul lives on. We believe in eternal life and the resurrection of the dead. We look forward to the glorious day when all those who died in Christ shall rise with him, then death will be defeated and swallowed up in victory.

Unfortunately, the same belief, which brings us hope and comfort, can also cause doubt and anxiety. Maybe you know what I’m talking about. (If not, consider yourself blessed.) Most of us have been tormented at times by questions we’re afraid even to speak out loud—questions like: Will I ever see father or mother again? What about my friend, who took his own life? What about our baby, who never even got a chance to be born, much less accept the Lord? These are the kinds of questions that gnaw at one’s soul. My aunt, “Tante” Karla died last week. She grew up in a Baptist church and in a good Christian home, but in her adult life she didn’t attend church and never openly professed faith in Christ as far as I know. Does this mean she’s now separated from the love of God?

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know. I’m not qualified to judge anyone else’s salvation. Only God knows what goes on in a person’s soul. I can’t tell you what happened in her heart at the point of death, if anything. But I’ll tell you something I do know that gives me comfort and hope: my aunt is in the hands of a loving God whose mercy is greater than I can imagine.

When Jesus was crucified he hung on a cross between two sinners, two thieves. One mocked him in unbelief. The other embraced him with sincere faith and was promised paradise as a reward. It was a dramatic end for both—triumphant for one, tragic for the other. Most of us live our lives somewhere in between. Between acceptance and rejection. Between faith and doubt. Between desire and dispassion. We live in a dark world where the path before us is often unclear and our own hearts become uncertain. We see through a glass darkly, the Bible says, like trying to look through a dirty window (1 Cor. 13:12). Maybe it has to be that way. There can’t be true faith without some element of doubt. Otherwise it wouldn’t be faith. Even those of us who believe, still live in between the now and the not-yet, between time and eternity.

Not only do most of us live somewhere in between, many people, like my Tante Karla, also seem to die in between—between acceptance and rejection of the truth. But think about this: What was in between the two thieves, between the one who professed his faith publicly and the one who cursed openly? Jesus! That’s where Jesus is. And that’s where hope is.

Dirty Little Secrets

2009-10-12T18:51:00.000-07:00

In a recent blog post “Abortion and the American Conscience,” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler highlights some of the chilling racial and population-control motives behind the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal in this country. He calls this “one of the dirty secrets of the abortion rights movement.” While I applaud Mohler’s tireless support for the unborn, I was disappointed because his post ignores the dirty little secrets of the religious, pro-life movement. Didn't Jesus say something about a mote in a brother’s eye and beam in one’s own?

Many forget that Southern Baptists initially supported abortion rights and other Evangelicals were slow to oppose Roe v. Wade. (Mohler hints at this lack evangelical pro-life concern in the wake of Roe v. Wade when he admits, “Evangelicals . . . were largely out of the debate” speculating that “a majority of evangelicals seemed to see abortion as a largely Catholic issue.”) Even Evangelist Billy Graham has been less-than-consistent in his statements on abortion over the years.

Here are some facts Mohler left out of his blog:

-Dr. W. A. Criswell, two-time Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) president and longtime pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas (and Billy Graham’s pastor for many years), initially voiced his support for Roe v. Wade, saying, “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had life separate from the mother that it became an individual person, and it always has, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.” Criswell later changed his position, becoming pro-life, as Ronald Reagan, now a patron saint of the Religious Right, had done before seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 1976. (Reagan signed the pro-choice Therapeutic Abortion Act into state law when he was governor of California in 1967, over five years before Roe v. Wade.)

-The SBC passed multiple pro-choice resolutions in the 1970s both before and after Roe v. Wade. Only subsequent to the conservatives coming to power in the SBC in 1979 did the denomination begin to pass pro-life resolutions. The same year, Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority with an anti-abortion agenda intended to awaken Evangelicals’ to political action as means of social transformation. In subsequent years the Religious Right largely forgot Evangelicals earlier apathy toward abortion.

-A majority of Southern Baptists and Evangelicals voted for the self-proclaimed born-again Presidential Candidate Jimmy Carter in 1976, despite the fact that he was pro-choice.

Don’t get me wrong. Like Mohler I’m pro-life. But I’m also pro-truth. When it comes to dirty little secrets, it’s not just the pro-choice crowd that has something to hide.

Christians are Scheming Swindlers

2009-10-07T23:10:00.000-07:00

In my previous post I blogged on the lections (Bible readings) for last Sunday, lamenting the way both the theological right and left have selective hearing. Then I came across this gem by nineteenth-century philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you?

(Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard)

Why is it that we let pastors, biblical commentators, Christian authors, and even (gulp) bloggers talk us out of the plain meaning of scripture (if there is such a thing)? It was the serpent who beguiled Eve by asking, "Yea, hath God said . . .?" (Gen. 3:1) In other words, "God didn't really mean that, did he?" Selective listening is a ubiquitous problem that makes the whole world hard of hearing. We all twist scripture for our own self-serving purposes at times. I want the Bible to speak to me in a way that rouses me out of my spiritual lethargy, but I'll admit don't always feel that way. Lord, Give us ears to hear what you are saying!

Left and Right Both Get it Wrong

2009-10-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

Theological liberals tend to be more permissive of sexual sins but passionate in their opposition to social and economic injustice. Conservatives get their knickers in a twist over sexual immorality but often ignore economic exploitation to the point of oblivion. In scripture, however, both sex and labor are powerful forces that need divine regulation.

On the sixth day of creation God established both the Sabbath and marriage, making these two the oldest divine institutions. God limited work to six days of the week and circumscribed sex within an exclusive union between one man and one woman. Work and sex are both (re)productive activities God enjoins and protects.

There are, in fact, not one but two creation stories in Genesis—the first majestic, the other messy. Guess which one involves human relationships? (Duh.) When God made the sun, moon, and stars from nothing and filled the earth with living creatures, he pronounced everything “good.” But when he went back to survey his handiwork, he said something was “not good”: “It is not good that man should be alone” (2:18). The Bible doesn’t tell us why it’s not good for man to be alone. Maybe because there’s nobody who will ask for directions. Be that as it may, God’s resolve to make a “helper” for man suggests the need for a coworker more than a soulmate.

If the original purpose of woman was to assist man with his labor, then the so what? of this creation narrative is a little surprising: “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (24). God surgically removed a rib from Adam’s side, in order to create a new kind of physical union—sexual relations between man and woman. At least that’s what’s implied by “they shall become one flesh.” Woman was created to provide a suitable partner for man in both labor and sexual relations. And that partnership was supposed to last (“shall cleave unto his wife”).

Moses, the lawgiver, allowed for divorce and remarriage (Deut. 24:1-4). Jesus, who often played fast and loose with the Sabbath, did not. He said, “Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her” (Mark 10:11). Legalism says follow the rules and you’ll be rewarded. Disobey them and you’ll be punished. Jesus was no legalist, yet he gave a more restrictive rule when it comes to marriage and divorce. In context he explained that this higher standard is based on God’s original purpose.

Gospel living is not about what you can get away with and still be within the legal limits. It’s about walking with God and following his plan; and that plan, according to the Bible, is to be sexually active only within the protective bonds of marriage and economically productive without exploitation or workaholism.

Lexically Discombobulated

2009-09-30T18:28:00.000-07:00

I heard a word today that I haven’t heard in a long time: Catawampus. Or is it catty-wampus? It was used in a documentary to describe the motion of side-wheel steamboats on the ocean—how they’d waddle and lurch sideways like a drunken sailor. It’s got a certain Twain-esque quality, witty and playful, and it made me grin.

Then I started to think about how many funny words there are in English—words like akimbo and lollygag, fillibuster and rigamarole, boondoggle and nincompoop. Some words are comical because of their rhyming sounds. Mamby-pamby and fuddy-duddy come to mind. Others tickle one’s fancy because of their onomatopoetic quality, like kerplunk or cock-a-doodle-doo.

Word combinations can be funny too. William Safire, who died this week, came up with a doozey when he coined the phrase “nattering nabobs of negativism.” He was a presidential speechwriter for Richard Nixon, who should have gone to the hoosegow. Safire also wrote for Vice President Spiro Agnew, who had a funny name. Speaking of funny names, when I lived in Santa Barbara I used to rent movies from Video Schmideo.

Language is a cockamamie thing that can occasionally make even a cantankerous curmudgeon like me smile.

(If you liked this post, I’d recommend you peruse Alphabet Juice by Roy Blount, Jr.)

Learning to See

2009-09-13T06:42:00.000-07:00

I remember when I first started reading the Bible, really reading it. When I was young the Bible was read to me at church and revered in the home, but I didn't begin perusing its rich library of literature until high school. I recall the mixed joy and frustration as I worked my way through the Pentateuch, marveled at the wonder and mystery of the Bible’s apocalyptic literature, and learned from the profound yet practical theology of the epistles. It’s a journey of discovery I’m still on today.

I’ve been on another journey of discovery lately—a journey into the world of fine art. I used to think of art as mere decoration, something pleasing to look at. When I was a child I thought Norman Rockwell was the greatest artist in the world and spent hours leafing through the coffee table book we had of his illustrations in our family’s home. Later I graduated to Monet’s Water Lilies and other images I found “pretty.”

I’ve been learning that art is more than aesthetics, a lot more than mere decoration. Art is as varied as life itself. And, like the Bible, art can be mesmerizing, thought provoking, frightening, inspiring, funny, confusing, convicting, offensive, and so much more. I’m awed by the variety of art and its ability to speak to me, if I let it.

When I first began studying the Bible, I needed a lot of help to understand, like the Ethiopian eunuch sitting in his chariot (Acts 8:26-40). Commentaries, study Bibles, and other helps served as my guides and still do. Whenever I came across a passage I found troubling or difficult, I was quick to find a way to lessen the tension, often explaining away the problem for my own comfort’s sake. (Jesus didn’t really mean sell all you have, did he? Of course not!) Now when I read the Bible I look for those things that confuse, trouble, or even offend me. Usually there’s a teachable moment, and if I listen, I’ll hear God speak.

Just as I've found a new way of reading the Bible, I've develop a new approach to art. I used to shun all modern art. When I saw an abstract painting or sculpture, I’d think to myself, “That’s not real art” and turn away. I’m learning to look a little longer and ask a few questions: Who was the artist and what was she trying to say? Was she reacting against something? What genre or school of art is it from and how does it fit into that tradition? Is there anything new or unexpected here, if so what?

As part of my effort to learn how to appreciate art more, I recently read a book by Michael Kimmelman called The Accidental Masterpiece. It’s a good book, but one small passage had a bigger impact on me than any other: “Art is about a heightened state of awareness. Try to treat everyday life, or at least parts of it, as you would a work of art.” Art is about learning to see.

It’s also about learning to listen. A few days ago I read this passage from Thomas Merton:

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence, there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling in the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life’s leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth. If we have not silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have not rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will seem silently to withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.

Immediately my mind turned to the avant-garde composer John Cage, whose 1952 work 4’33” is made up of three movements without a single note. When he performed this piece he just sat at the piano and played nothing. I used to think that was a stupid gimmick—musical chicanery meant to impress gullible pseudo-intellectuals. Now I’m wondering whether he was trying to say something similar to what Merton said: silence is as important to music as sound, and if you listen to silence you actually hear something. But you have to be a lot more attentive when listening to silence.

I also thought of the artist Robert Rauschenberg, famous for his collages and sculptures made with junk he found. Yes, literal trash. In 1953 he erased a painting by the famous abstract artist Willem de Kooning, probably the most famous artist at the time. The work is called Erased de Kooning. It’s simply a blank canvas that had once been full of color. Maybe one of the many things the mischievous artist was saying has to do with the importance of the empty space on a canvas. At least that’s one effect of this unique un-painting.

Don’t get me wrong; I still like Norman Rockwell. Some refined intellectuals look down their noses at him and consider his art mawkish, overly sentimental. The problem is those snobs haven’t looked closely enough at his oeuvre. I’d challenge them to take a look at Rockwell’s 1964 painting The Problem We All Live With, done at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s one of the most striking social critiques by an artist.

So, I’m learning to look at art, if not life, a little more carefully. What have you noticed lately?

Wisdom and Joy for Fifty Cents

2009-09-07T06:07:00.000-07:00

I think the greatest invention of humankind is the public library—a place where you can learn so much for free. Next comes used bookshops and thrift stores, where you can buy books for next to nothing. One nice thing about moving to a new area is getting to explore new secondhand stores for treasures. It’s a cheap thrill I learned from my wife. After a day of poking through dusty piles of cast-off goods, I came back home yesterday with a small stack of books for fifty cents each. In my collection were a couple of full-color art books (one on The Prado collection, another on the Musee D’Orsay), a biography of Paul Klee (ok, I’m on an art kick right now), Halftime (a self-help book about midlife crisis—don’t ask), a military history for work, and a devotional by Frederick Buechner (pronounced BEEK-ner, I’m told). Lacking any profound thoughts of my own on this Labor Day weekend, I’ll share with you the passage for today from Buechner’s book:

To Suffer in Love (September 7)

What man and woman, if they gave serious thought to what having children inevitably involves, would ever have them? Yet what man and woman, once having had them and loved them, would ever want it otherwise? Because side by side with the Buddha’s truth is the Gospel truth that “he who does not love remains in death.” If by some magic you could eliminate the pain you are caused by the pain of someone you love, I for one cannot imagine working such magic because the pain is so much a part of the love that the love would be vastly diminished, unrecognizable, without it. To suffer in love for another’s suffering is to live life not only at its fullest but at its holiest. “One mustn’t have human affections—or rather one must love every soul as if it were one’s own child,” The whiskey priest thinks to himself as he says good-bye for the last time to his own daughter in Greene’s novel, The Power and the Glory. (Listening to Your Life, 239).

When God Tells You to Sin

2009-09-04T08:31:00.001-07:00

What do you do when God tells you to sin? Sounds contradictory, even heretical, doesn’t it? It’s a difficult if not impossible question for those of us who believe the Bible to be a product of divine inspiration, not merely a record of human experiences with God. Acts 10 records a vision in which God tells the Apostle Peter to do something he’s never done and always believed was wrong:

On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending upon him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: Wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean. And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven. (Acts 10:9-16)

What God asked Peter to do clearly violated biblical dietary laws. It’s too easy to say the vision was a metaphor or a parable about racism, while that is certainly true too. The symbolism wouldn’t work well if the literal meaning were false. That is, if God intended Peter to keep kosher after the vision, never eating any unclean animals, it would have been much harder for him to “get” the importance of accepting unclean people like the gentile Cornelius. (The vision prepared Peter to go and preach the gospel to Cornelius and his house.)

Reformed theologians sort Old Testament laws into three categories: civil, ceremonial, and moral. Only the moral laws are still valid in New Testament times they say. This solution is as elegant as it is contrived. Nowhere do we find this classification system in the Bible, and Jews have always believed that keeping ritualistic laws was their moral and spiritual duty.

It also doesn’t help to plead for a special case. Peter was an apostle, who lived when the Bible was still being written. True. But even if we don’t claim any kind of special revelation for ourselves, we’re still left wondering whether God changes or contradicts himself. No one wants a fickle, schizophrenic god, but I think we sometimes put God in a biblical box that’s too small to contain him.

The passage above illustrates a difficult religious conundrum. What do we do when there is a conflict between religious authorities? How do we prioritize them? Does a vision from God trump the Bible or vice versa? I was taught to go with scripture over any kind of subjective experience. That was Peter’s approach: “Not so, Lord!” But the Bible seems to undermine its own authority in this passage, putting a mystical experience over holy writ.

I’ve been thinking about this passage for two weeks now, and I’m still wrestling with it. Once I think I’ve got it figured out, I’m moving on to the story about when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac!

Modern-Day Martyr

2009-07-29T07:14:00.001-07:00

I arrived back in Virginia from Germany Friday evening and went straight to a hotel, because the movers had come to pack up our belongings for our move to Annapolis. (See my previous blog post about my new job.) Saturday morning, I woke up jet lagged around 4:30 am and headed to the IHOP, one of the few restaurants open at that hour. While sipping my coffee I perused the Washington Post. One tiny news report caught my attention. The headline read: “N. Korea Accused of Executing a Christian.” (You can read a longer version from the previous day’s Post here.)

The story was about a woman, Ri Hyon Ok, “a Christian woman accused of distributing the Bible, which is banned in communist North Korea.” Ok, “a 33-year-old mother of three,” was executed after being accused of spying for South Korea and the United States. (While it’s almost impossible to verify the truth of such reports coming out of communist North Korea, I’m going to assume that Ok was indeed killed for Bible distribution, not espionage.)

I’ve been thinking about Mrs. Ok since Saturday. It would have been easy for her to rationalize a different approach to her faith. There’s no scriptural mandate to distribute Bibles. She had a family to think about. And didn’t Paul say something about all authority being given by God? Who was she to disobey her God-appointed rulers? But Ok did not rationalize away her Christian duty. Instead she did what most of us would be too cowardly to do. She put her faith into action, despite the danger. The Bible for which she died sheds light on her situation. Jesus said, “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:10).

When the Apostle Paul was in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), he had a peculiar vision one night: “There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us” (Acts 16:9). When he got to Macedonia, however, he didn’t find a man; he found a godly woman named Lydia (v. 14). Through Lydia God established a beachhead for the Gospel in Europe. Pray he will do the same in North Korea through the faithful witness of Ri Hyon Ok.

Flyleaf Verse

2009-07-22T23:33:00.000-07:00

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his servants.

O LORD, I am your servant. (Ps. 116:15-16)

The first verse above is written in the flyleaf of my Bible. It’s there to comfort those who mourn. To help them see that death is not the tragedy we make it out to be, especially for those of us who believe. In its crudest form the subtext goes something like this: “Why are you so overwhelmed with grief just because someone you love died? The Bible says death is a good thing, so cheer up!” Yikes.

I got quite a shock this morning when I read the verse in context. “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his servants,” so far so good. Then the next verse: “O LORD, I am your servant.” Bam! I was taken aback. It’s not talking about someone else’s death. It’s talking about my own!

In any case, the psalmist is talking about his own death, not another’s. Apparently he was weighed down with grief to the point of despair. In verses 8 and 9, the psalmist says God delivered him from death and expresses his determination to live, even to do the things he promised to do (14). Then he declares a new understanding about his own death, now no longer imminent. Death is not something to be dreaded, at least not from God’s perspective. It’s “precious”—like picking up a child after the first day of school, or, better still, like a child who was lost being found.

When I think of my own death, I usually regret mistakes I’ve made or worry about things I won’t have accomplished. It’s not bad to take stock of our lives and to be aware of the consequences of our actions. However, it shouldn’t get in the way of living.

I’m adding to the flyleaf of my Bible, “O LORD, I am your servant.” And this: “P.S.: Don’t forget to live!”

Finding God

2009-07-19T01:24:00.001-07:00

Where do you find God? No, it’s not a trick question. For many people a house of worship is where they find God—in community with other believers gathered for that purpose. That’s a wonderful place. But what about those in between times, when God’s people are scattered? Maybe, like me, you worship at home with your family. But what about when you’re far from home and community?

I’m currently in Germany, chipping away at my dissertation. (The cathedral of Mainz, pictured above, is what I see framed in my window.) Here I have no faith community, no family, no place where I feel at home. So what then?

Thomas Merton, a modern mystic, has some advice:

If I were looking for God, every event and every moment would sow, in my will, grains of God’s life, that would spring up one day in a tremendous harvest. For it is God’s love that warms me in the sun and God’s love that sends the cold rain. It is God’s love that feeds me in the bread I eat and God that feeds me also by hunger and fasting. It is the love of God that sends the winter days when I am cold and sick, and the hot summer when I labor and my clothes are full of sweat: but it is God who breathes on me with light winds off the river and in the breezes out of the wood. (Spiritual Illuminations)

May you find God today wherever you are, whether in church, at home, or far everything familiar.

Movie Tip

2009-07-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

Chick flicks are a guilty pleasure of mine. My wife, on the other hand, prefers action-adventure. Go figure. I used to like war movies, especially classics like The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Dirty Dozen, Paths of Glory, and The Cruel Sea. Since my own personal war experience I don’t enjoy those movies as much. I prefer love stories. Some of my favorite Romantic movies (“chick flick” is derogatory, I’m told) are Casablanca, Sabrina (both versions), Cyrano (the one with Gerard Depardieu), An Affair to Remember, and My Fair Lady. (I draw the line at Jane Austin films; they lower the testosterone level too much.)

Now I’m adding another movie to my favorites list: Crossing Delancey (1988), which I just discovered. It’s a modern love story about an uptown girl who is set up with a downtown guy by her typical Jewish grandmother and an annoying matchmaker. It’s sort of a cross between The African Queen and Fiddler on the Roof. Imagine, an engaging romance without a single sex scene. If you’re looking for a good movie to rent or download, try this one. Mazal tov!

Colorblind

2009-07-03T06:06:00.001-07:00

Wednesday was “I-Day,” Induction Day, at the U.S. Naval Academy, the day new midshipmen are sworn in and begin their training. It was my first day at USNA too, although my experience was low key and less stressful. The word that best captures the uniqueness of incoming class of plebes is “diversity.” It’s the most racially diverse incoming class in the Academy’s 164-year history.

However, not everyone is thrilled. One English Professor has raised concerns about the “dumbing down” of the school and, by extension, Navy’s Officer Corps as a result of the new diversity push. (Read the Washington Post article here.) He wants the admissions process to be colorblind. Academy officials insist it is. While I too am concerned about fairness, I’m not sure colorblindness is always a good thing. There's a particularly dangerous and insidious form of colorblindness—not a colorblindness that regards all as having equal worth but one that refuses to see the unique challenges experienced by racial minorities and the benefits diversity brings to a liberal, well-rounded education.

Personally, I’m excited to begin teaching at time when the U.S. Naval Academy is more diverse than ever.

The Father Heart of God

2009-06-19T16:50:00.000-07:00

In 1967, Chaim Potok published his best-selling novel The Chosen about two teenage Jewish boys growing up in 1940s Brooklyn. One of the boys, Danny, was raised in a strict orthodox community where his father was the spiritual leader. Danny is expected to take his father’s place as head of the community one day, but there’s a problem. Danny is a brilliant, gifted boy and his father believes he doesn’t have enough empathy to be a good rabbi. So he intentionally shuns his own son, talking to him only when they discuss the Torah. He inflicts pain upon his son for his own good. What kind of father would do that to his own son?

That got me wondering, Does God do that? Does our Heavenly Father inflict pain and suffering on us? The Book of Job explores the problem of suffering in depth. Job is a most unfortunate man, despite the fact that he is righteous. He goes from being wealthy to abject poverty and from health to miserable chronic illness. He loses all of his children—everything. His wife tells him to curse God and die. This he does not do, but he does complain, a lot, and protest his innocence. He can’t help asking God, Why?

Several things are clear in the text. Job did not suffer on account of anything he did wrong. In one of the most troubling verses in the Bible, God tells Satan that Job retained his integrity, “even though you made me destroy him for no reason” (2:3). Even if God didn’t cause Job’s misfortune, he clearly permitted it. Despite allowing Job to suffer, God is good. How can these things all be true? How could an all-powerful God allow the innocent to suffer and still be called good? It’s the classic statement of the problem of evil.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said fathers naturally give good gifts to their children and adds, “How much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Matt. 7:11). I’ve heard some people argue that “Father” is a Christian, not Jewish, term for God. They say you won’t find God addressed as “Father” in the Old Testament. That may be technically true, but the idea of God as father is certain there. In the book of Isaiah, the LORD says of Israel, “I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against me” (1:2). If God is indeed our Father, then we have to ask, What kind of father allows his children to suffer?

Job not only wanted an answer, he demanded one. “My desire,” Job says, “is that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book” (31:35). Little did he know that his life would become one of the main stories his “adversary”—that is, God—put in His book! Well, after thirty-eight chapters, God finally shows up. Better late than never. Only he doesn’t give Job a direct answer to his question. God answers Job’s question with more questions, starting with, Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? (38:4).

God goes on to ask Job how much he understands about the origin of the universe, about oceanography, about meteorology, and other things. This arrangement of rhetorical questions shows that Job’s understanding is too limited to grasp the answer to the questions he asks. Feeling appropriately rebuked, Job confesses that said things he didn’t comprehend, things too lofty for him (42:3).

I like the fact that God didn’t deny Job’s pain or try to minimize it by saying those glib things we sometimes hear such as, “You’re young enough to have more children.” There are no easy answers to hard questions like, Why do the innocent suffer?

Ultimately God answered Job’s question not with words but with deeds. He sent his only Son, Jesus, to earth to participate in our suffering as an example of God’s love. Jesus was falsely accused, unfairly condemned, and cruelly tortured before dying a criminal’s death. The God of the Bible is not aloof from or unresponsive to human pain and suffering. He redeems it—through the death of his only Son. This is the Father Heart of God: He loved us enough to suffer with us and for us.

The Shack Group

2009-06-13T05:41:00.001-07:00

Over the past two weeks I’ve been attending a discussion group on William P. Young’s novel The Shack. This engaging, thought-provoking book plunges the reader head first into the problem of evil (Why do bad things happen to good people?). It’s a real page-turner, but I have some reservations about the theology behind the book. I also don’t like the way the author keeps the reader guessing, Is it true? Did it really happen? It’s gimmicky, at best. But that’s not what I want to talk about.

The discussion group has been a joy. It’s made up of young and old, Baptists and non-Baptists, ministers and lay people. Most are white Americans, but there are also minorities, including some foreigners. Some participants are theologically conservative, others progressive. Yet we’re all there for the common purpose of discussing the book, which means we’re talking about, and debating at times, what it means to believe in God.

In the book of Revelation, there’s an image of heaven in which those around God’s throne sing a new song:

Thou art worthy to take the book,

And to open the seals thereof:

For thou wast slain,

And hast redeemed us to God

By the blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation

And hast made us unto our God kings and priests

And we shall reign upon the earth.

I’m drawn to the fact that heaven is made up of a diverse group of people. In contrast, the churches I’ve attended for most of my life have been quite homogeneous, often intentionally so. Most Sunday mornings I worship in a sea of white, middle class, Republicans. Our common faith in Jesus Christ should unite us, not demographics. I want to find a church that looks a little more like heaven, or at least more like my discussion group.

A Rumor of War

2009-05-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

Everyone struggles with stereotypes—expectations of what we are or are not supposed to be and do. Often in the military, chaplains are pegged as cheerleaders, jolly people who go around spreading sunshine. Anyone who knows me knows that my personality is not well suited to this role. I’ve resisted the temptation to be the chaplain who hands out candy and slaps people on the back. I feel more comfortable dealing with people in pain than with those who want me to be a happy, sappy chappy. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the rhyme.)

I just finished reading Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War, a realistic memoir of a Marine Corps infantry officer in Vietnam, which has been on my reading list for some time. I came across a fascinating passage in which the chaplain is a thought-provoking, albeit irritating, ethical commentator. It’s is too long to reproduce here, but I’ll share the end of it. The author has just recounted a contentious conversation with Chaplain Ryerson, “who was as thin and cheerless as the doctor was heavyset and jolly,” about the apparent futility of the war and its toll in human suffering.

Leaving the mess, I went back to my desk. It was difficult to work. The tent was stifling, and I felt confused. The chaplain’s morally superior attitude had rankled me, but his sermon had managed to plant doubt in my mind, doubt about the war. . . .

“Twelve wrecked homes.” The chaplain’s words echoed. “That’s twelve wrecked homes. The doctor and I think in terms of human suffering, not statistics.” I thought about Sullivan again. He was one of those statistics, just like the four enemy soldiers killed that morning. The only difference was that they were in different columns on the colonel’s scoreboard. “Twelve wrecked homes.” I thought about Sullivan’s young widow in Pennsylvania and a chill passed thought me. Maybe her husband had died for nothing, maybe for something. Either way, it could not make much difference to her now. (179-80).

The chaplain’s pastoral concern for the families of the dead was clearly a factor in his righteous indignation. His “morally superior attitude” may have been caused by the stressors of war allowing his inner voice to come out unguarded or it may have just been his personality. Whether or not he was tactful, there’s a positive lesson to be learned from his approach to ministry in the role of ethical advisor. As chaplains, we have to resist becoming mere spokesmen for the government—what the Soviets called propaganda officers. Otherwise we’ve sold our birthright for a mess of pottage.

The Lord is My Shepherd

2009-04-28T17:34:00.000-07:00

The 23rd Psalm is a psalm of comfort and assurance. As a child I recited it when I was afraid. As an adult too. Under fire in Iraq, my Christianity was stripped of its superstructure. All of the theological sophistication vanished like the threat of WMDs and my faith was momentarily compressed into its most basic expressions—the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm.

With just six verses, the 23rd Psalm is the theological equivalent of the Gettysburg Address—short and profound. It’s a favorite at funerals, and for good reason. Not just because it mentions “the shadow of death,” but because it avoids easy answers to the problem of pain and suffering. It doesn’t give the glib responses and clichés we often hear from well-meaning believers, such as, “Everything will be OK,” “Every cloud has a silver lining,” or, “You’re young enough to have another child.” No, the psalmist is no Pollyanna. He’s not whistling in the dark to keep up his nerve. He offers no simplistic solutions or pious platitudes—not even the assurance that “God works all things together for good.”

Rabbi Harold Kushner, who wrote the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, said in an interview “that the 23rd Psalm answers the question, how do you live in a dangerous and unpredictable world?” There’s no denying the darkness in the valley. Yet his solution is very simple: “Thou art with me.” The Shepherd-God—whom the psalmist addresses personally in verse 1, “the Lord is my Shepherd—he does not take away the danger, rather he leads us through it. Again Rabbi Kushner:

People who have been hurt by life get stuck in “the valley of the shadow,” and they don’t know how to find their way out. And that's the role of God. The role of God is not to explain and not to justify but to comfort, to find people when they are living in darkness, take them by the hand, and show them how to find their way into the sunlight again.

As much as we say we want our freedom and autonomy, there’s nothing more comforting in a crisis than knowing someone else is in charge. In all of our dark valleys, someone else is in charge. That’s one thing that stands out to me about this psalm—its focus on divine activity. It is God who takes the initiative. He’s the one making us lie down to rest in green pastures. He’s the one leading us beside still waters and in the right paths or “paths of righteous” as the King James has it. Over and over, God is the subject and we are the object.

The final verse contains a surprise. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me.” The Hebrew word for “follow” actually means “pursue.” God’s goodness is not shuffling along behind. It’s hot on our heels, chasing us like a hungry cheetah after an antelope. Fortunately for us, we get caught. God’s mercy allows us to “dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” This is a promise of the resurrection, when the people of God will be raised up to live with Him. It’s not the punishment we will escape or the perfection we will obtain that brings comfort. Rather, we’re told our reward in the world to come is being with the Lord, not just for a time but for eternity.

It’s not flattering being called a sheep, especially if you know how dumb sheep are, but given the biblical alternatives (wolves, goats) being a sheep isn’t all that bad, especially when your shepherd is God.

A Good Story

2009-04-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

Set in 1939, the movie Australia tells the tale of an English aristocrat, Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), who inherits a cattle station down under. She reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattleman named “Drover” (Hugh Jackman) with whose help she drives her cattle across hundreds of miles of unforgiving landscape only to get caught in the Japanese bombing of the town of Darwin. Early in the movie there’s a dialogue between the two:

Drover: “All I own I can fit into my saddlebag. I’m not saying it’s for everyone.”

Lady Ashley: “Definitely not for everyone.

Drover: “Most people like to own things. You know, land, luggage, other people. Makes them feel secure, but all that can be taken away, and in the end the only thing you really have is your story. I’m just tryin’ to live a good one.”

Think about that for a minute. The only thing you really have is your story. Are you trying to live a good one?

Amazing Love

2009-04-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

I took my Navy physical fitness test yesterday and did well—better than I thought I would. I did so well, in fact, that I suspect the course we ran was short of the prescribed 1.5 miles, since I was only fifteen seconds off my best-ever time and all the other runners said their times were better than they expected too. Whether or not the course was short, I came in only five seconds behind the fastest runner. (Did I ever mention how competitive I can be?) He and I ran the whole way together, but at the end of the course I started sprinting. Unfortunately, I took off too soon (because the test proctors were lollygagging thirty yards short of the real finish line) and the other guy passed me just before the end.

Marines snicker at the Navy’s wimpy one-and-a-half miler. They run three miles for their PFT. There’s a whole different attitude about physical fitness in the Marine Corps (where it’s considered essential) and the Navy (where it’s nice but not necessary). Before Marines take their test they always ask how many sit-ups and pull-ups they need to do and how fast they need to run in order to “max out.” In other words, they’re aiming for a perfect score. Sailors typically ask a different question: “What’s the minimum I need to do to past this #!@& thing?”

Believers can also be sorted into two categories. There are those who are just looking to do the minimum to get by in their spiritual lives and those who are “going all out” for God. Funny thing is God loves both groups the same. My perfectionism fights against it, but it’s true. God loves me when I’m living right, and he loves me just as much when I’m messing up. If anything, his love is stronger when I am weak and need him more. I don’t know why sometimes I have such a hard time believing in God’s unconditional love. Maybe it’s because my love, even at its altruistic best, is still conditional.

Spiritual Fitness

2009-04-14T08:38:00.000-07:00

I ran four miles yesterday. I’ve been running more lately, because I have a mandatory, semiannual Navy physical fitness test coming up. I used to hate to run. My body hurts. I get tired. It’s no fun. Same goes for other sports. I’ve always been more bookish than brawny. A couple years ago when I was living alone in Germany that all changed. I started running more. Then I joined a gym and began working out. I lost weight and got in shape. At first it was hard. I had to make myself do it. But after six months I was hooked. I became a physical fitness junkie. I actually got to where I enjoyed the workouts and runs. (Imagine that!)

In the past year or so, I’ve slacked off. Busyness with work, family, and dissertation became excuses not to exercise or run as much. When I did, it was hit and miss. I hurt more and didn’t enjoy it as much. Lately I’ve had to force myself to run and I don’t workout, ever. (Just one more thing on my long list of regrets.)

St. Paul uses the Greek word “agon”—where we get “agony” and “agonize”—to describe the Christian life. It’s translated “struggle,” “conflict,” or “contest.” The Apostle encourages his protégé Timothy to “fight the good fight [agon] of faith, lay hold on eternal life”(1 Tim. 6:12). It’s the same word ancient Greeks used for athletic competitions like the Olympics. Some of the early monastics were called “athletes for Christ” because of their extreme, and at times competitive, asceticism. Both sports and spirituality involve struggle, conflict, determination, sometimes even agony.

Right now I don’t like either physical or spiritual training, but I’m trying to thank God for the struggle, even when it hurts and I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle. Maybe if I do this consistently I’ll get to the place where I appreciate, perhaps even enjoy, the struggle. Maybe. For now I’m in no danger of becoming a spiritual fitness junkie.

Tenebrae

2009-04-10T04:23:00.000-07:00

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering" (Letters and Papers from Prison).

Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me."

Maundy Thursday

2009-04-09T06:36:00.000-07:00

In the ancient Mesopotamian myth the Epic of Gilgamesh, a selfish and abusive King Gilgamesh of Uruk is seeking immortality. By the end of the tale he becomes benign and benevolent but only after suffering loss and coming to grips with his own mortality. After losing his best friend Enkidu and going through a deep depression, Gilgamesh embarks on a long journey to see the Noah-like Utnapishtim and his wife—the only two mortals who have been granted eternal life by the gods. After a harrowing trip fraught with many perils, Gilgamesh arrives and learns from the ancient one secret stories of ancient times. Gilgamesh is then given once change at immortality. If he can stay awake for six days and seven nights, he will transcend his mortality and achieve eternal life. He fails. He falls asleep. He’s mortal and will remain so until he dies. After much suffering, loss, and failure, Gilgamesh finally reconciles himself to his own mortality.

King Gilgamesh then goes back to Uruk and surveys the wall he built around his capital to protect his people. He realizes that the wall is his legacy—that and the sacred stories of ancient wisdom he has brought back from his journey.

Today is “Maundy Thursday” or “Holy Thursday” or, if you’re Baptist like me, the Thursday before Easter. It commemorates Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples, when he washed their feet and gave them a new “commandment” (Latin mandatum or “maundy” in English) to love one another “as I have loved you” (John 13:34). That night the disciples followed him to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus told them to watch and pray, but like Gilgamesh they fell asleep (Matt. 26:36-46). They failed the test, and they would fail again. They ran away and hid when Jesus was crucified. Peter, who said he would never deny Christ, denied him three times before sunrise.

Wisdom only comes through suffering. Gilgamesh did not gain wisdom until he lost a loved one, suffered through mental illness, and failed an ordeal. The disciples did not gain wisdom until they too had fallen asleep, lost their master and friend, and failed miserably. Through their experience of loss and humility the disciples gained wisdom. They gained wisdom and a lot more. They did not merely resign themselves to fact that they mortal and must do good on this earth while they are alive. They received transformation through the resurrected and living Jesus and the Holy Spirit, who descended upon them at Pentecost (which is a story for another day).

Before we can experience the transforming power of the Easter miracle, we have to accept our own weakness, our frailty, our sinful humanity. A good place to start is by allowing someone to wash our smelly, ugly feet.

Time to Pray

2009-03-29T10:08:00.000-07:00

I’ve taken some time off from blogging. I wish I could say I used the opportunity to rest and renew spiritually. Fact is, I’ve been busy with a lot of other things and have found little time to pray. Does that ever happen to you?

In our home we have family devotions every evening, but I also try to set aside alone time for morning and evening prayer. Unfortunately my prayer time has been a little hit and miss lately, even though I feel the need to get away, unplug, and focus on the inward journey. One helpful thing I did this week was made plans to go on a spiritual retreat—48 hours alone with myself and with God, no program, no distractions. It’s not something I’ve done very often, but again it’s something I feel the need to do.

At church this morning I filled in for our regular Sunday School teacher, who is away at a funeral. The lesson was on Isaiah 38 where the prophet tells an ailing King Hezekiah, “Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live” (v. 1). That’s all the motivation Hezekiah needs to make his spiritual life a top priority. Hezekiah turns his face to the wall and prays, weeping bitter tears (vv. 2-3). God spares Hezekiah and promises him fifteen more years of life. God’s judgment is always contingent upon his mercy. Remember Jonah’s prophecy that Nineveh would be destroyed? God reserves the right to relent.

It shouldn’t take a terminal illness or a prediction of judgment to motivate us to take our spiritual lives seriously. I know that intellectually, but I’m glad for the gentle reminder today.

The World To Come

2009-03-14T14:54:00.000-07:00

I finished a good book last night recommended to me by Rabbi and Navy Chaplain Melinda Zalma. The World To Come (whose title can mean either the future or the afterlife) is a well-written story about an ordinary man named Benjamin Ziskind who steals a million-dollar Marc Chagall painting from an art museum. The author, Dara Horn, who studied Yiddish and Hebrew Literature at Harvard, weaves flashbacks into the narrative to give the backstory about Ziskind’s family and their connection to the purloined painting. She sprinkles Yiddish tales and discussions of faith and the meaning of life throughout her at times charming and at times disturbing but always engaging novel.

You can read a NY Times review of A World to Come here.

Spring Cleaning

2009-03-09T15:28:00.000-07:00

Christ Drives the Money-Changers from the Temple by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1626, 43x32 cm, Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow, Russia.

When I read John 2:13-22 about the cleansing the temple, I’m shocked by Jesus’ behavior. Who is this angry Jesus, whip in hand, driving the animals from the temple and overturning the moneychangers’ tables? He is not the tame Jesus I normally have framed in the portrait gallery of my mind.

Jesus says to those selling doves, “Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise” (16). In the parallel passage in Mark’s Gospel, he adds, “My house shall be called a house of prayer” (11:17). Apparently there were two main things that set Jesus off—profaning sacred space and preventing prayer—even more than the economic injustice and exploitation of the poor most commentators focus on.

Jerusalem in general and the temple mount in particular were sacred in ancient Israel. The Psalmist calls them “the city of our God” and the “mountain of holiness” (48:1). It was here that Abraham took his son Isaac to sacrifice him at Yahweh’s command, and it was here that Yahweh provided a substitute. It was here that King David brought the Ark of the Covenant and Solomon built his temple. For the Jew, it was the center of the universe, the place where heaven and earth touched. This was holy ground. The buying and selling of animals and exchanging of money at the temple, however necessary for its ritual, was a form of desecration. Not to mention that the merchandising likely took place in the Court of the Gentiles, disadvantaging those foreigners who wanted to draw near to God’s house.

It’s too easy for us to stand on the sidelines and cheer, if we think of Jesus as just a social reformer, cleaning up corruption at the temple. The idea of profaning the sacred, on the other hand, should make us turn the focus inward. We need to think about the ways we confuse the secular and the sacred in our own lives. Peter Kreeft says, “Our society sometimes doesn’t seem to know the difference between sex and money. It treats sex like money and treats money like sex. It treats sex like money because it treats it as a medium of exchange, and it treats money like sex because it expects its money to get pregnant and reproduce all the time.” This is but one example of how we profane the holy. I’ll leave you to think of others.

Then there’s the bit about my house being called a house of prayer. It’s not the temple ritual that Jesus is much interested in. In fact, he came to put an end to that. But he cares deeply about helping people to connect with God, directly, through prayer. With all of the noise, smells, and haggling going on, no one could pray and that made Jesus angry.

Jesus prayed often. He prayed early in the morning, in the evening, all through the night. He prayed when others slept. He prayed at meals. He prayed before important events in his life. He prayed before he ministered and when he did miracles. And he taught his disciples how to pray, what to pray, and for whom to pray. If there was anything Jesus was passionate about, it was prayer.

He became angry when he saw that there was neither room nor enough peace and quiet to allow people to pray. If Jesus cared that much about prayer, maybe we should take it a little more seriously ourselves. Perhaps it’s time we did a cleansing of our own temple—a little spring cleaning in our hearts to remove all of the things that keep us from praying.

Getting It All Wrong

2009-03-01T17:31:00.000-08:00

I think of the soldiers who went off to World War I full of nationalistic zeal only to have it choked out of them in gas-filled trenches. My German grandfather was a foot soldier for the Kaiser in World War I. My uncle, his son, was a Nazi submariner, who survived World War II physically, but came home at the end of the war with deep, emotional scars. Those who go out rejoicing, often come home weeping.

But it’s not only the losers who experience a profound sense of betrayal and loss. It was a British soldier, Wilfred Owen, who wrote the bitter and haunting poem Dulce et Decorum Est, and Owen was on the winning side. Winning side? Can there be any winners in war?

The fifth-century BC Greek dramatist Aeschylus said, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” Or, as an updated, pop culture version has it: “The first casualty of war is innocence” (Platoon). Truth, innocence, idealism, patriotism, sanity . . . there are many victims.

If you had asked me in March 2003, why the U.S. military was getting ready to invade Iraq, I would have said, “Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction he’s ready to use on us and our allies. We have to stop him now before he does!” Everyone else in my battalion would have said the same. I was convinced that our cause was just because of the credible, serious, and imminent threat our government (and a president I voted for) outlined repeatedly on TV. I never suspected for a minute that they could be mistaken, or worse, lying. (Even after returning from Iraq, I was sure WMDs would be found, soon. You can read my comments here.) Whether willfully or not, the U.S. Government told us what appears in hindsight to be false, and the casus belli for the Iraq War has long since disappeared like mirage in the desert.

Many people have had times that rocked their world and turned deeply held value judgments upside down. Those experiences leave you wondering, “If I was wrong about that, what else have I gotten wrong?” Has that ever happened to you?

The Apostle Peter too had his Aha! moment. In Mark 8:31-38, Peter is so sure he’s right, he tells Jesus he’s wrong. It takes a good deal of moral courage to stand up to the boss and tell him off—especially if your boss is the Son of God!

Peter confronted Jesus about his defeatism, his crazy idea of the Messiah as a suffering victim, rather than a conquering king: “that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (v. 31).

Then the rebuker becomes the rebuked. Jesus yells at Peter: “Get thee behind me, Satan!” (v. 33). Has Jesus lost his mind?! He’s screaming at his lead apostle as if he were demon-possessed. In a moment Peter passes from disciple to devil.

The words “behind me” (opiso mou in Greek) appear twice in this passage. In verse 33, “Get behind me!” means “Get out of my way!” In the very next verse, however, Jesus declares, “Whosoever will come after me (opiso mou), let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” It’s a play on words that almost works in English. Jesus is saying, in effect, “Either get behind me or get out of my way, Peter!”

There are two choices: the path to power and glory or the one to shame and suffering. Peter was so sure that the Messiah was supposed to be on the former, he rebuked Jesus for suggesting he would go down the latter. Suffering Messiah? No way! It’s an oxymoron. You know, like “jumbo shrimp” or “military intelligence” or maybe even (gulp) . . . “Christian soldier”? Nah, that’s going too far.

The only way to be a true disciple of Jesus is to follow him down the low road, the road to defeat and humiliation. But before we can do that, we have to repent. Repentance (metanoia) means to have a change of mind. We’ve got to admit where we’ve gotten it all wrong. But that’s not easy to do, now is it?

The Balanced Life

2009-02-28T08:50:00.000-08:00

For a long time I have been fascinated by those rare individuals who are able to balance the contemplative and the active life—otium et negotium. People like Sir Thomas More, literacy advocate and mystic Frank Laubach, and N. Gordon Cosby, founder of the Church of the Saviour in DC, are in this elite group. Most of us default either to a life of action or reflection, and more people gravitate naturally to the former than the latter. I’m not sure why, but it’s easier for most of us to do than to reflect, meditate, pray, or just be. We like to move, not sit still. Someone needs to remind us, “Don’t just do something, stand there!” The Lord did when he said, “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).

We hear a lot about how self-serving we have become in our modern society. The consumer culture has perpetuated a me-centeredness that leaves little room for generosity and service. Yet, ironically, with all of this self-indulgence we have done ourselves a disservice by not doing more for ourselves. The needs we are trying to satisfy superficially can only be met in the depths of our being. I remember the homey way a Baptist deacon in a country church put it, “You can’t make hunger go away by rubbing a hamburger on your belly.”

One of the many books I’m reading right now is Elizabeth O’Connor’s Journey Inward, Journey Outward. It seems to me that loving God with your whole being and loving your neighbor as yourself requires both a vibrant devotional practice and a life of service for others. But how can you pull it off when you have a demanding work schedule, busy home life, and a dissertation to finish?

Go Navy!

2009-02-25T17:22:00.000-08:00

I'm giving up doubting for Lent. Whenever I used to daydream about schools I’d like to teach at, the U.S. Naval Academy was always at the top of my list. Last fall I applied for a teaching position there and prayed very hard I'd get it, yet I convinced myself I wouldn't.

Well, it’s official now. I got the job, beginning in July. I’m not going as part of the chapel staff (though that wouldn't be bad either!) but as a history instructor. It’s a three-year recall, which means I’ll be on active duty, serving in uniform and drawing my full pay and allowances as a Commander. My family and I will have good income during hard economic times, and I'll be doing something I love and am passionate about.

Above my desk at work I have the following Bible verses: “Delight thyself also in the LORD: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass” (Psalm 37:4-5).

The Descending Way

2009-02-18T12:23:00.000-08:00

A wise person (I don’t remember who) once said, “A surplus of virtue is more dangerous than a surplus of vice because a surplus of virtue is unchecked by the constraints of conscience.” Think about that for a minute. A surplus of virtue is more dangerous than a surplus of vice. It sounds counterintuitive—like Jesus’ paradoxes (e.g., the last shall be first)—but it’s true. Inside each of us is the desire to dominate, to lord it over another. And the more we are convinced of the rightness of our cause, the more we feel justified in wielding power over those whose cause we deem less holy than ours. Yet this desire to dominate does not come from God. It’s part of our sinful nature.

Many of my conservative friends and former students are political activists. They want to lead the nation and shape society for Christ. They are cultural warriors who see their mission as restraining evil and promoting virtue in the world. And they seek to do this by obtaining positions of power and influence in government. I know their motives are good, but their methods are questionable, even worldly. It’s how the world promotes its agenda.

Jesus’ plan for social change was not through political activism but radical social action. He didn’t seek to serve in places of power. He exercised power by service in the lowliest of places. Following Jesus means giving up our quest for upward mobility and trading it for downward mobility.

Jesus repeatedly chose the descending way over the ascending way. He came down from heaven to earth, trading his heavenly glory for an earthly life of service and self-sacrifice. “For the son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). After being lifted up on the cross, he went down to the tomb, then down to the depths of hell. Down, down, down—the descending way.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die” (The Cost of Discipleship). The way to glory leads through the cross, and we will all be judged by what we did, or neglected to do, for “the least of these” (Matt. 25:40).

We sometimes sing the hymn Higher Ground, which begins, “I’m pressing on the upward way.” Maybe we should change it to the “downward way.” If we did, would anyone believe us?

Christianity and Borgism

2009-02-14T15:11:00.000-08:00

Marcus Borg’s well-written, thoughtful book The Heart of Christianity has become a manifesto of sorts for progressive Christians of the postmodern age. When I finished reading it, I found myself asking the question, What’s new? Universalism isn’t. Neither is pantheism. Or Arianism. And there have always been those who denied the divine origin of Scripture.

Cutting the doctrinal heart out of the Christian faith and still insisting on calling it Christian is also not new. In 1923, J. Gresham Machen published his classic polemical work Christianity and Liberalism in which he argued that there is so much difference between orthodox Christianity and modern liberal Christianity that they are, in fact, two different religions. The same applies to traditional Christianity and Borg’s faith, which he calls the earlier and emerging paradigms, respectively. In my mind, the differences are so vast that they are two different faiths, despite their common heritage, vocabulary, and liturgies. Truth in advertising would seem to require a different name for this newer faith. Borgism, anyone?

Four Loves

2009-02-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

The love for equals is a human thing—of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.

The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing—the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.

The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing—to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.

And then there is the love for the enemy—love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.

(Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat)

What's In Your Hands?

2009-02-06T20:20:00.000-08:00

I read a challenging passage of the Bible this morning—Galatians 5:19-21 on the “works of the flesh.” I usually focus on the next section—the “fruit of the Spirit” (22-23). It’s no wonder. Elsewhere St. Paul tells us that nothing but nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:38). Yet in Galatians he lists several sins that will do just that: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies. While it’s relatively easy to think of God sending to hell people who practice no-kidding idolatry and orgies, some of the other sins seem a lot tamer and less severe, like envy or strife. And it's clear that not everyone who does something really, really bad goes to hell. Didn’t God call King David, an adulterer, a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam. 13:14)? Didn’t he choose Moses, a murder, to deliver his people from slavery in Egypt and give them his law? How can ordinary people be sent to outer darkness for doing what some of the greatest biblical heroes did? Besides, isn’t unbelief the only sin that will send a person to hell? God judges us only for what we believe, not what we do, right? Right?

Jesus explained that at the Last Judgment the kingdom-bound, righteous “sheep” will be separated from the hell-bound, sinful “goats” based upon acts of mercy they either did or did not do (Matt. 25:31-46). Jesus said it, not me. That doesn’t mean we can earn or deserve our salvation. But it does mean that the real litmus test for saving faith is not our creed but our deeds. Belief alone, without works, is not enough. Works are the biblical evidence of faith (James 2:14-26).

When a man asked Edwin Wilson, “Do you know where you’d go, if you were to die today?” he answered, “Yes, I’d go to hell.” For almost half a century, Wilson carried a heavy burden on his soul. A white Southerner, he had beaten John Lewis, a young, black freedom rider, for trying to enter a whites-only waiting room at a bus depot in Rock Hill, SC. Lewis is now U.S. Representative John Lewis, a member of Congress. Wilson confessed his sins to God, but he also needed to confess to the one he had wronged. Good Morning America brought Wilson to Washington, DC where he met with and apologized to Lewis in an emotional reunion. You can read about and watch this touching event here.

Southern Baptist hymn writer and seminary professor B.B. McKinney (1886-1952) wrote the famous hymn, “The Nail Scarred Hand.” Over and over, it repeats the words, “Place your hand in the nail scarred hand.” Wilson was finally able to place his hand in Jesus’ nail-scarred hand, because he let go of his hatred—both his hatred of blacks and of himself for what he had done to them.

Another challenging Bible passage (at least for me) is Mark 10:17-30 in which a rich young man comes to Jesus and asks a good question, What must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus told him the right answer, Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. It’s not the answer I or most evangelicals would have given him, but it was nevertheless what he needed to hear. Tragically, even though Jesus gave him the right answer, the man went away sad and empty handed because he could not let go of his riches. You see, in order to reach out in faith to Jesus, we have to let go of whatever we’re holding onto—whether it’s money or racism or whatever.

What are you holding onto so tightly that you’re finding it hard to let go? You will never be able to touch God and other people until you let go of whatever it is.

The Four Chaplains

2009-02-02T17:26:00.000-08:00

The hero is not fed on sweets,

Daily his own heart he eats;

Chambers of the great are jails,

And head-winds right for royal sails.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

On February 3, 1943 at 12:55 a.m., a German U-Boat torpedoed the SS Dorchester, a crowded U.S. troop ship carrying 902 men. Onboard were four U.S. Army chaplains: two Protestants, one Roman Catholic priest, and one Jewish rabbi.

Panic broke out in the damaged vessel as frightened men trying to make it to safety stumbled over dead bodies and debris. Although they had been told to sleep with their life jackets on, many had taken them off because it was hot below decks and the bulky World War II life jackets were uncomfortable. On deck men ran around in the dark. Some jumped into the freezing North Atlantic water.

The four chaplains broke into a supply locker and began handing out life jackets to the men who had none until finally they ran out. Then, one by one, the chaplains took of their own life vests and gave them to soldiers lining up to get them. “It was the finest thing I have seen or hope to see this side of heaven,” said one survivor who witnessed the selfless act.

In the 20 minutes before the ship sank, the chaplains worked to calm the frantic men, help them to safety, and minister to the wounded and dying. The four chaplains linked arms and prayed aloud as the ship slipped beneath the icy water. Only 230 men survived. Among the 672 who died were the four chaplains: Lt. George L. Fox, Methodist; Lt. Alexander D. Goode, Jewish; Lt. John P. Washington, Roman Catholic; and Lt. Clark V. Poling, Dutch Reformed.

Jesus said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:3).

Lessons from a DC Pastor

2009-01-31T11:30:00.000-08:00

For the past couple weeks I’ve been suffering from an irritating and unsightly bacterial infection of the eyelids called blepharitis, but I’m nearly over it. (Prayers appreciated.) I also didn't have phone or Internet service for a week until Verizon fixed the problem today. It’s good to be back online.

Yesterday I received in the mail and read Dr. Edward Hughes Pruden’s memoir, A Window on Washington (Vantage Press, 1976). Pruden was pastor of FBC Washington, DC (FBC DC) for 32 years, from 1936 to 1969. President Truman attended this church while Pruden was pastor, and it’s the same church where Jimmy Carter later taught Sunday School while he was in the White House.

Here are some interesting lessons I learned from Pruden’s book:

1. Church growth is driven primarily by demographics.

“The city soon became crowded, and it was estimated that between the years 1940 and 1950 the increase in the population of the metropolitan area was the same as though the entire population of Atlanta and Richmond had moved into Washington and its suburbs. With such a rapid influx of new people, acquiring new members for the church was no problem. One of my fellow ministers said that all one had to do on Sunday mornings was to open the front door of the church and jump back so as not to be run over. It was at this period that several of the downtown churches, including our own, went to two morning services” (20).

2. Contemporary worship and other-than-Sunday services were already tried in the 1930s and 1940s.

“Some churches conducted two types of services—a traditional service at eleven in the morning and a contemporary type service on Sunday afternoon. Other churches tried week-night worship services for the convenience of people who were out of the city for the weekend” (21).

I’m not sure exactly whether the above comment referred to the 1930s or 1940s, but it’s in the chapter on “The Roosevelt Era” before the chapter on “The War Years,” so it’s likely pre-1941. Also, what did they consider “contemporary” worship—Fanny Crosby instead of Isaac Watts? It would be interesting to find a contemporary worship bulletin from this period.

3. Outreach to apartment dwellers flopped.

“The churches in the general area of the one I served got together and organized what was called the Massachusetts Mile project. We selected that portion of Massachusetts Avenue nearest the churches involved, and sought by various means to reach the people who lived in the apartment houses in this area. Mailing lists were secured from apartment house managers, and letters and literature were sent. Efforts were made to have church member in these apartments to invite their neighbors to tea or have them in for dessert, and have one of the pastors present so that he could get acquainted with some who were not attending church. A retired minister was employed to go from door to door as a representative of all the churches involved and extend an invitation to services, and leave printed materials containing pertinent information regarding the various congregations. Some churches conducted two types of services—a traditional service at eleven in the morning and a contemporary type service on Sunday afternoon. Other churches tried week-night worship services for the convenience of people who were out of the city for the weekend. Few of these efforts were really successful. Either the apartment houses attract a type of individual who does not feel the need for fellowship with other Christians in corporate worship, or else the very nature of apartment houses themselves does something to the person who has formerly felt the need” (emphasis added, 21-22).

4. Pulpit robes are deeply rooted in Southern Baptist tradition.

“Within our [FBC DC] membership at that time were two aristocratic ladies, Misses Fannie and Lucy Boyce, the daughters of Dr. James P. Boyce, founder and first president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Boyce belonged to a wealthy and influential South Carolina family, and, during the early years of the seminary, had assured its continued existence by his own financial support. The commodious apartment in which the Boyce ladies lived seemed almost like a museum with its family portraits, furniture, and silver. Miss Fannie Boyce indicated on one occasion that she would like for me to wear a pulpit robe, saying that her father and other Baptist ministers in the early history of South Carolina were accustomed to wearing robes in Baptist pulpits. This was all the encouragement I needed since I had been wanting to wear a robe for some time” (emphasis added, 26).

According to Pruden, he was the first FBC DC pastor of to preach in a robe, more than 130 years after the church was founded in 1802. A few members left the church in protest. I’d surmise that J.P. Boyce and the SC churches referred to above were part of the Charleston tradition, which is both older and more liturgical than the Sandy Creek tradition. Both of these Baptist traditions have their modern-day heirs, but an overwhelming number of SBC churches follow the more informal Sandy Creek tradition.

5. Pastors should avoid politicking.

President Truman stopped attending FBC DC after Pruden publicly opposed his decision to appoint an ambassador to the Vatican. There were plenty of clergy speaking out on the issue but only one pastor ministering to the sitting president. While Pruden had the right to speak out, it cost him his unique ministry to America’s Chief Executive as Truman apparently no longer felt comfortable attending FBC DC after that (102-103). (Truman also got hopping mad at a young preacher named Billy Graham when he used a visit to the White House for his own self promotion.)

6. Racial integration took a long time, even in the nation’s capital.

Pruden highlighted his belief in “inter-racial . . . goodwill and understanding” in his first sermon at FBC DC in 1936, but he makes clear that the church did not welcome its first non-slave black member until about a century after the Civil War. Although he does not pinpoint the year, it was “after the Supreme Court decision of 1954” Brown v. Board of Education (134). Sadly, there are still many Baptist (and other) churches that do not welcome African Americans.

Related to the topic of racial reconciliation is an excellent article in today’s Washington Post by Rev. David R. Stokes: “Pro-Life and Civil Rights Camp Should Band Together to Right Wrongs.” I made a similar argument in my recent blog post Less Racism, Fewer Abortions.

A Different Kind of Teacher

2009-01-28T07:53:00.000-08:00

What image comes to mind when you hear the word “teacher”? I picture a bespectacled middle-aged woman with hair pulled back in a bun. How about “exorcist”? A very different image comes to mind. In our culture, teachers and exorcists are at opposite ends of the normality spectrum. Exorcists deal with dark, satanic forces and are featured in horror flicks. Teachers assign homework and wipe children’s runny noses. Many kids want to become teachers, but I’ve never heard one say, “I want to be an exorcist when I grow up!” In Mark 1:21-28, Jesus is both teacher and exorcist.

Before the Enlightenment most people thought about demons much the way we think of germs. They’re everywhere. You can’t see them. They’re dangerous and potentially deadly. Many people no longer believe in demons, at least not in the literal sense. But Jesus certainly did and had some spectacular encounters with them, showing that he had power even over evil spirits.

What great joy and relief the demon-possessed man and his family must have felt when Jesus finally delivered him from the evil presence. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for him before—partly because we don’t really have a category for demon possession in our society. We only encounter it second hand, in missionary stories and Hollywood films. We do, however, have many people whose lives are controlled by various physical and mental handicaps and addictions. Anyone who has had a special needs child or a mentally ill spouse or a sibling with a drug addiction or a friend with AIDS understands something about suffering and social stigma that accompanies these conditions. I’m not suggesting that demons are the cause of any of these problems. I’m saying that these situations can give us a clue about the suffering the demon-possessed man and his family went through before Jesus set him free—the same Jesus who taught us to pray, “deliver us from evil.”

Yet there was something that impressed Jesus’ contemporaries more than exorcism. (Exorcists were a dime a dozen in Bible times.) What really astonished them as Jesus’ teaching. Mark doesn’t even tell us what Jesus taught on this occasion. But he does tell us how he taught: “For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (22).

Jesus’ authority was different than that of these experts in Jewish law. The word “authority” comes from the same root as “author.” A few months ago, I overhead a chaplain arguing with my boss about whether or not something was in a particular Secretary of the Navy directive. “I assure you,” my boss said, “it’s in there. I know it’s in there because I wrote it.” Jesus was not only an expositor of scripture, but he was also its origin. Christians believe in the deity of Jesus. As God, Jesus is the one who “inspired”—literally breathed into—scripture (2 Tim 3:16) similar to the way God breathed life into Adam (Gen. 2:7). Indeed, Jesus is the source of all life (John 1:3, Heb. 1:2). That’s why his teaching was, and is, powerful.

Give ’em Hope

2009-01-22T20:18:00.000-08:00

If you’re my age or a little older and grew up in an evangelical home, chances are you had the bejeezus scared out of you by end times films like A Thief in the Night and Hal Lindsay’s book The Late Great Planet Earth. The younger generation has the Left Behind series to give them nightmarish visions of the future. Yet when the Apostle Paul speaks of Jesus’ coming and our being caught up to meet him, he says, “Comfort one another with these words” (1 Thes. 4:18). Where’s the disconnect?

Barbara Rossing’s book The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation (Westview Press, 2004) shows the many errors and contradictions in dispensationalist teaching which lie behind popular end times books and movies. She accuses dispensationalists of selective literalism, poor exegesis, and down right fabrication. Instead of predicting the future, she sees the Book of Revelation, which never mentions the rapture, as a source of hope.

Here’s a small sample of Rossing’s book: “Like the visionary journeys in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Revelation’s vision of seals, trumpets, bowls, and other manifestations are meant to be a wake-up call. . . . The journeys are not intended as literal predictions of events that must happen; they are nightmarish warnings of what may happen—if we do not follow God’s nonviolent Lamb” (91).

Although an engaging and thought-provoking book, The Rapture Exposed goes so far to avoid the mistakes of dispensational literalism that it may to take too much of Revelation symbolically. I was left wondering whether the author even believes in Jesus’ Second Coming in any real sense. Read it with caution, but read it.

The Revolution

2009-01-22T17:55:00.001-08:00

“Every generation needs a new revolution.”—Thomas Jefferson

It amazes me how many thousands of men and women willingly leave everything behind to answer the call when their country goes to war. Families are separated, careers put on hold, studies suspended, lives rearranged. I wonder how many of us would drop everything and willingly go into harm’s way when Jesus calls. That’s exactly what he demanded in Mark 1:14-20, which includes Jesus’ first recorded sermon. And, unlike most sermons, it was short and imperative: Repent! Believe! Follow me! There’s a sense of urgency in Jesus’ words.

Jesus told people first of all to repent. It’s not popular today to talk about sin. It’s not popular, but it’s the loving thing to do. German Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Nothing is so cruel as the tenderness that consigns another to his sin. Nothing is more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin.”

Why was Jesus so urgent? Because the kingdom of God is “at hand.” The kingdom is not just in some distant future. It’s here! Paradoxically, God’s kingdom is both a future and present reality—both “now” and “not yet.” In a real sense, the kingdom we’re expecting and praying for (“thy kingdom come”) has already arrived. We’re like underground revolutionaries who have been waiting a long time and are now being told it’s time to start the revolution. To misquote Karl Marx, “Sinners have nothing to lose but their chains. They have the world to gain. Sinners of the world, repent and believe the Good News!” It’s a radical reinvisioning of society more revolutionary than Communism. Just read the Sermon on the Mount.

But unlike Communism, the movement Jesus began is a non-violent revolution. (“My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight,” John 18:36; “Do not resist evil.” Matt. 5:39) Isn’t that kind of . . . weak? Exactly! (“My strength is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Cor. 12:9) In combat my Marines used to marvel at me, “Chaplain, you don’t even carry a weapon. You’re the bravest one out here!” (Yeah, whatever.)

People are looking for something greater than themselves. Something they can believe in. Something they can live for. Something worth dying for. Only the something is really someone. His name is Jesus, and he’s still looking for a few good men . . . and women.

Are you ready to join the revolution?

Inaugural Prayer Punditry

2009-01-20T13:14:00.000-08:00

In 1980, Rev. Bailey Smith, then president of my own Southern Baptist Convention, caused a brouhaha when he declared “God doesn’t hear the prayers of Jews.” Today, Dr. Rick Warren, another prominent Southern Baptist, didn’t even give them (or any other non-Christians) a chance to pray when he offered a faith-specific, Christian prayer at President Obama’s inauguration—unlike Rev. Joseph Lowery, who gave an inclusive and memorable benediction, and Rev. Barry Black, the U.S. Senate Chaplain, who prayed reverently and appropriately at the inaugural luncheon. Warren had every legal right to do what he did, according to the First Amendment, but he was still wrong to do so.

He was wrong because there is nothing in Scripture that requires adding the words “in Jesus’ name” to every prayer. That’s not what praying in Jesus’ name means anyway. He was wrong because Paul tells us, “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient: all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify” (1 Cor. 10:23). Warren may have had the right to pray in Jesus’ name, but it didn't edify those present who don't call on our Savior’s name. He was wrong because it went against the spirit of the occasion, which focused on diversity and bringing us together as a nation in spite of our differences. But most of all he was wrong because it violated the Golden Rule.

Put the shoe on the other foot, Christian, and ask yourself how you would have felt if at the inauguration a Rabbi prayed a Jewish prayer that excluded Christians. Or if an Imam prayed an Islamic prayer. If you can't say amen to someone else’s faith-specific prayer, how can you expect them to say amen to yours?

For an intelligent discussion of the issue from one Jewish military chaplain’s perspective, see the following article by Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff: “Prayers That Hurt.” (I served with Chaplain Resnicoff one summer in 1993 when he was a senior Navy Captain and I was an Ensign Chaplain Candidate.)

Speak, Lord

2009-01-17T20:04:00.000-08:00

And Samuel answered, “Speak, for your servant hears.”—1 Samuel 3:10

All the children were invited to come forward in church for the children’s sermon. One little girl was wearing a particularly pretty dress, and as she sat down the pastor leaned over and said, “That is a very pretty dress. Is it your Easter dress?” The little girl replied, directly into the pastor’s clip-on microphone, “Yes, and my mommy says it’s a bitch to iron.” Much to parents’ chagrin children often speak the unvarnished truth, saying things adults would never say—at least not to their pastor!

God had a message to give to Eli the priest and it was not a pleasant one. It was a word of judgment on Eli and his sons because of the father’s permissiveness and the sons’ corruption and sexual immorality. But where could the Lord find someone who would have enough moral courage to speak truth to power? After all, Eli was a Judge and God’s Priest at Shiloh. Not many people would be willing to tell such a prominent man what needed to be said. So God bypassed all of the normal channels and gave his message to a young boy named Samuel. (Jewish tradition tells us he was 12 years old.) After some coaching from Eli, Samuel listened to God and faithfully reported God’s message to the superannuated priest, even though it was a harsh Word of judgment on Eli and his house: “Then Samuel told him everything, and hid nothing from him” (v. 18). Eli accepted his fate with resignation, though I think God would have relented had Eli and his sons repented like the Ninevites in the book of Jonah.

And the end of the chapter we read, “And all Israel . . . knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the LORD” (1 Sam. 3:20). A crucial difference between true and false prophets is that the former seek to please God more than people and the latter seek to please people more than God. Like it or not, when God speaks it’s not always to pat us on the head. If God’s voice is saying only what’s nice and pleasant and what we want to hear, we can be sure it’s not God.

Hit It Hard!

2009-01-16T14:19:00.000-08:00

I just returned from a two-day conference in New Orleans. While in the Big Easy a friend and I visited a local landmark, Café Du Monde, for their famous café au lait and beignets. It was a little disappointing. Besides the chicory (only Cajuns would think of putting daisies in coffee!), the coffee was so hot it scalded my tongue. The beignets (BEN-yays)—fried dough with powdered sugar—were not my favorite. They tasted like, well, fried dough with powdered sugar. (At another meal, this one in the Gumbo Shop, I had a hot bread pudding with whiskey sauce, which was to die for.) My friend and I strolled around Jackson Park past St. Louis Cathedral and were hailed by fortunetellers hawking their services. (No thanks.) We even walked down part of Bourbon Street on our way back to the hotel Maison Dupuy. Every sin imaginable is for sale on Bourbon Street.

What kept coming to mind while I was in New Orleans was a story about young Abraham Lincoln's business trip to the city on a flatboat full of produce. In the market he witnessed a slave auction in which people were bought and sold like the goods he had come to sell on behalf of his employer. Husbands were separated from wives, parents from children, and brothers from sisters. Lincoln was so disgusted by what he saw he is reported to have said to a friend, “If ever I get a chance to hit that thing, I will hit it hard!”

I wonder what injustices in our society today are shocking the consciences future Lincolns.

Less Racism, Fewer Abortions

2009-01-11T10:47:00.000-08:00

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward.—Psalm 127:3

I listened to a story yesterday on Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life with Ira Glass entitled “Babies Buying Babies.” It really made an impression on me. Elna Baker tells about the time she worked at FAO Schwartz, an upscale toy store in New York City. Dressed as a nurse, she sold, life-like, newborn Lee Middleton Dolls for an “adoption fee” of $125. After a segment of MTV's show Rich Girls aired in which a girl adopted one of the dolls, they began going like hotcakes. Rich parents and their spoiled children lined up to “adopt” these newborns until the unthinkable happened—all of the white babies sold out five weeks before Christmas. With the dolls on back order from the factory there was no chance of resupply until the following January. Minority babies sold slowly, first the Asian babies, then the Hispanic babies, until all that was left was a nursery full of black babies. Even a defective, factory-reject monster baby the workers nicknamed “Nubbins” was adopted ahead of dozens of perfect little black babies.

Thankfully, racism in America is not as bad today as it used to be, though the story above illustrates we still have a long way to go. On January 20th, we will get our first minority president, and with all of the excitement and celebration this day rightly deserves I’m afraid we might forget that it nearly coincides with the 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade (Jan. 22). This coming Sunday (Jan. 18) is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, a day to remember how precious human life is and to mourn the loss of over forty million babies who have been aborted in America alone. (You can get resources for Sanctity of Human Life Sunday here.)

The point of focusing on the sanctity of human life is not to condemn people who have had abortions, but to shine a light on an important moral issue. I realize some women are caught in impossible situations where there is (or seems like) no other choice besides abortion. I’m not passing judgment on them, and the answer is to go beyond merely preaching, though it’s not a bad place to start. Overturning Roe v. Wade, whether by constitutional amendment or judicial action, will not solve the underlying ethical and social problems or end abortion. We need to do more to prevent unwanted pregnancies, help pregnant mothers in difficult circumstances, promote adoption, reduce poverty and racism. And, yes, there is a connection between race, poverty, and abortion. (Interestingly enough, this year Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is the day after Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, though rare is the church that will celebrate both.)

The rate of abortions for non-whites in America is double compared to white women. The ratio of abortions to live births is higher among minorities—39 for every hundred live births for nonwhites vs. 25 for every hundred among whites. Some have, using hyperbole, even compared abortion to racial genocide because of this disparity.

Maybe if more white parents were willing to adopt minority babies there would be fewer abortions. Just a thought.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism

2009-01-06T17:48:00.000-08:00

There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism—Eph. 4:5

I take a broader view of baptism than most Baptist preachers. I credit my seminary professor Rev. Dr. George R. Beasley-Murray and a dear, hydrophobic Methodist saint for challenging my views on the subject.

While I regard immersion (the meaning of the Greek word baptizo) as the most historically and biblically accurate method of baptism, I do not believe using a different mode (e.g., pouring) makes baptism invalid. (By the way, the image above is an early 3rd century Roman catacomb fresco depicting baptism by “effusion,” or pouring.) And although I couldn't imagine administering baptism any way other than by dipping a person fully under water, I’m not sure how much is gained by insisting that those who were initiated in other Christian traditions be immersed, if they are satisfied with their own baptism—even if it was infant baptism. I know this is not “believer’s baptism” and it’s far from ideal, but we live in a less-than-perfect world in which regenerate believers belong to a wide variety of Christian groups with a myriad of differing beliefs and practices. And there are probably more true Christians who have not been immersed upon their own profession of faith than who have been. I smirk whenever “pedobaptists” (baby baptizers) call our practice “adult” baptism, since I know Baptist pastors who baptize four and five year olds (I’ve even heard of three year olds), which is not much different than infant baptism. Anyway, Shouldn't the doors of church membership be as wide as the Pearly Gates . . . and no wider?

Isn’t it inconsistent that we Baptists consider the elements of the Lord’s Supper (Communion) an indifferent matter (white bread, matzo, little square crackers, who cares?) but turn around and insist on baptism by immersion, which is always done one time backwards? Would a baptism be “invalid” if the person were dipped three times forward as in the Brethren churches? Or if a person baptized himself, as John Smyth did, who founded what some consider the first-ever Baptist church four hundred years ago this year? If we do not insist on unleavened bread and Kosher wine for Communion, why are we such sticklers for historical accuracy when it comes to baptism, especially when we consider it “an outward sign of an inward reality”?

The sixteenth-century Anabaptists practiced baptism by pouring, not immersion. And no less than John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress and the most well-known 17th century Baptist, held the position called “open membership,” resulting in a “mixed” congregation with both those baptized as believers and those who were baptized as infants in the Anglican Church and later joined the Baptist church as adults. He articulated his views in A Confession of My Faith (1672). Bunyan’s broad-minded approach to baptism and church membership raised the ire of some of his co-religionists, especially Particular Baptist William Kiffin—just as I’m sure this blog post is bound to irritate some of my fellow Baptists today.

Baptism is a rite of Christian initiation, and it signifies the believer’s spiritual baptism (1 Cor. 12:13). How appropriate is it to “initiate” a person who has been a believer and member of another Christian denomination for decades? Doesn’t insisting on baptism by immersion in such a situation make it simply a pro forma ritual that focuses on externals, instead of a truly spiritual act?

Deus revelatus

2009-01-04T11:44:00.000-08:00

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem —Mathew 2:1

No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him —John 1:18

Today is Epiphany Sunday, though someone forgot to tell my pastor. It’s too bad many Baptist churches celebrate Christmas but ignore Epiphany (Jan. 6), which falls on the twelfth day after Christmas and marks the beginning of a new season in the church calendar. Both Christmas and Epiphany date back to the fourth century when the Roman Empire was being Christianized. Christmas, which was originally created to compete with and eventually replaced the pagan festival of the Unconquered Sun (Dec. 25), recalls the birth of Jesus. Epiphany, meaning “manifestation,” reveals the purpose of his coming: the manifestation of God in Christ. Without Epiphany we wouldn’t know why Jesus’ birth is significant. You might say Epiphany answers the So what? of Jesus’ birth.

In the West, the visit of the magi is commemorated on Epiphany. Magi (sing. “magus”) were Zoroastrian astrologers from ancient Persia, not three kings. (The English word “magic” is related to “magi.”) One of my favorite depictions of the magi is Peter Paul Rubens’s masterpiece The Adoration of the Magi (above), which now sits above the altar in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, UK. You can find an image the painting with the altar here.

Shortly after his conversion and baptism in 1927, T.S. Eliot published his poem, “The Journey of the Magi.” You can listen to a recording of Eliot reading his poem here.

The poem ends with these lines:

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different;

This Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us,

Like Death, our death,

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

Eliot makes the point that for the magi there was both a birth and a death—the birth of Christianity and the death of magic. After returning home things could never be the same again. I imagine it was the same with Eliot’s conversion, because conversion always involves both death to sin and self and rebirth.

The Apostle Paul put it this way,

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. —Gal. 2:20

Jesus is the manifestation of God—Deus revelatus. Happy Epiphany!

Where Was God?

2009-01-01T11:44:00.001-08:00

In my last post, I wrote, parenthetically, Where was God? when telling the story of a little boy named Brent Davidson who was brutally murdered. This frequently asked question gives voice to one of the most troubling conundrums of monotheism (Jewish, Christian, Islamic, whatever). It’s a dilemma called the “problem of evil” or the “problem of suffering.” For polytheism this is no problem. Either you didn’t appease the right god or you angered the wrong one. Monotheists have a hard time explaining how an all-powerful, benevolent God would allow innocent people to suffer. It’s a sticky problem to say the least (just ask Job), and it’s been sticking to me like Uncle Remus’s Tar Baby for a long time.

Where was God? There’s something healthy about saying what’s in your heart and mind, even when it’s not polite or pious. But it’s also good to be reminded, even rebuked, when what you say is wrong, perhaps even heretical. At the recommendation of my friend and former pastor, Dr. Tom Jackson, I’m reading The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus by Peter J. Gomes, pastor of Harvard University’s Memorial Church and Plummer Professor of Morals. In spite of (or perhaps because of) his progressive theology, Gomes gives me a lot of food for thought. In fact, there’s even a section entitled “Where Was God?” dealing with the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I found it particularly convicting. Gomes writes, “Nothing in the Bible promises us a stress-free existence in this world, and that to confuse worldly success with divine approbation is a dangerous, even idolatrous, enterprise.” (I thought I knew that.)

Where was God? Gomes takes issue with the question itself: “The implication was that that God was not on duty, for if God had been doing the right thing by God’s people, the disasters . . . simply would not have been permitted.” The question Where was God? commits the “fallacy of the declarative question.” That is, it’s not really a question at all. It’s an accusation: “God, you weren’t there!” Really?

On that awful day a dozen years ago, when an innocent little boy was tragically murdered, his throat cut from ear to ear the same way lambs were ritually sacrificed in biblical times, God was all around me—both metaphorically and in reality—yet I was too overwhelmed with anger and fear to see it.

Where was God? God was beside me, in the parents, mourning the loss of their beloved son. God was within me, comforting a distraught mother and father through me. God was before me, lying dead on a blood-soaked gurney. And God was above me, whispering in the deafening silence, I am here.

Wailing Wall

2008-12-30T19:15:00.000-08:00

The day before Christmas I bought myself a copy of Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees for fifty cents in a Hospice Thrift Store. It was so good I couldn’t put it down, and it’s now one of my favorite books. (It's been adapted into a major motion picture, which I haven’t seen and probably never will.) I don’t read many novels, but this one caught my eye because I used to be a hobbyist beekeeper. (Bet you didn’t know that about me.) Here’s a blurb about the book from the author’s website (www.suemonkkidd.com):

In this New York Times bestseller, a young girl's search for the truth about her mother leads her to three beekeeping sisters who take her into their mesmerizing world of bees and honey and of a mysterious Black Madonna. A novel about mothers and daughters and the women in our lives who become our true mothers. A story about the divine power of women and the transforming power of love.

One of the beekeeping sisters, an emotionally unstable woman named May, took on others’ emotional pain so much she was easily overwhelmed by it. When something was troubling her, she’d write it on a piece of paper and put it in a crack in her personal “wailing wall” in her backyard. It was the only thing that seemed to help her cope.

If I had my own personal wailing wall, I’d write “Brent Davidson” on a scrap of paper and tuck it in to a crevice. Brent was a six-year-old boy who was brutally murdered after getting off the school bus one day while his older brother and other school children looked on. (Where was God?) Brent’s father was a sergeant in my battalion—it’s been a dozen years ago now—and I did the memorial service. There are lots of other things I would write on scraps of paper—most of them too personal and painful to mention here. What would you write if you had a wailing wall?

Surprise Christmas Gift

2008-12-27T10:18:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about things we sometimes inherit that we couldn't otherwise afford. A few years ago I inherited my grandmother's fine china from Germany. My mother never really liked the pattern, or so she says. Amelia and I couldn't afford china, not really. We bought some cheap china at a discount dinnerware store in St. Augustine, FL just before we wed. My wife's philosophy was cheap china is better than no china; mine, the opposite. She won.

This Christmas my parents surprised us again when they gave us the silverware my mom got from her parents for their wedding in 1959. I'm not talking about cheap stainless steel or silver-platted flatware, but real sterling silverware, service for twelve. My mother claims she never really like it. (She and her mother had "issues," not just different tastes.)

I could make a spiritual application about how we inherit blessings and salvation from God, but I won't. I'll just say thank you mom and dad for your generous gift.

Mary

2008-12-24T17:33:00.000-08:00

Every Christmas Eve my family and I try, whenever possible, to listen to A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols broadcast from King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, England. As the name implies, the service uses Scripture readings and hymns to present the sweep of salvation history from the fall in the Garden of Eden through the incarnation. It’s a beautiful and biblical presentation of the Good News that God has come in the flesh to save sinners.

Each year a new carol is commissioned for the occasion, and this year’s offering was a piece by British composer Dominic Muldowney, who chose for his hymn’s lyrics a poem about the Virgin Mary by the Nobel Prize-winning German playwright Berthold Brecht (1898-1956). It’s a gritty poem written from a very human perspective. Here’s an English translation of “Mary”:

The night when she first gave birth
Had been cold. But in later years
She quite forgot
The frost in the dingy beams and the smoking stove
And the spasms of the afterbirth at dawn.
But above all she forgot the bitter shame
Common among the poor
Of having no privacy.
That was why in later years it became a holiday for all.

The shepherds’ coarse chatter fell silent.
Later they became the Kings of the story.
The wind, which was icy cold,
Turned into the song of angels.
Of the hole in the roof that let in the frost nothing was left
But the star that peeped through it.
All this was due to the vision of her son, who was very
Fond of singing.
He lived with the poor
And was in the habit of mixing with kings
And of seeing a star above his head at night-time.

St. Nick

2008-12-22T14:54:00.000-08:00

Santa Claus as we know him is a fictitious character who has nothing to do with the holiday we celebrate on December 25th. But his historical antecedent, St. Nicholas of Myra (died Dec. 6, 345 or 352)—I’ll just call him Nick—is one of the inspiring heroes of the early Christian past. Nick lived in Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey (just ask me if I’ve been there), and he’s the patron saint, meaning spiritual protector, for some of the most unsavory people: sailors, fishermen, pawnbrokers, and prostitutes. (There are some neat stories about another famous guy who hung out with fishermen and prostitutes, but I’ll save his story for another time.)

In one popular story about Nick, he fished a sailor out of a stormy sea, saving his life. In another he punched a heretical preacher in the nose for teaching heresy about Jesus at the Council of Nicea in AD 325. And then there’s the famous story about his generosity. It goes something like this:

Once upon a time there was a poor man who had three daughters. He didn’t have enough money for a dowry, which meant the girls would not be able to marry and likely wind up prostitutes. Nick knew that the penurious man was too proud to accept charity, so he tied up gold coins in a sack and threw it in the man’s window just before the oldest daughter reached marriageable age—in the nick of time, you might say. (Sorry about that.) The next night he did the same for the second daughter. The father, determined to learn the identity of his wealthy patron, decided to lay in wait the third night to catch the man as he strolled by to toss in a bag for his youngest daughter. But Nick outsmarted him. He threw the last bag of gold down the chimney instead. It happened to land in a stocking the daughter was drying on the hearth. To this day the symbol of pawnbrokers is three gold balls, symbolizing Nick’s three sacks of gold. (I’m tempted to say, “And now you know the rest of the story,” but I’ll refrain.)

You may doubt the veracity of these stories. Most scholars do too. It sounds like a bunch of holy hooey, right? Well, maybe. But if you find these legends hard to believe, have you heard the one about the virgin who gave birth to God?

Goodness Gracious!

2008-12-19T18:10:00.000-08:00

The economy is shedding jobs like a golden retriever in the Sahara Desert and many people are facing a scary, uncertain future because of it. A man in my Sunday School class broke down in tears last Sunday, because he’s a Bush appointee who’s going to be unemployed on January 20th— in exactly one month—unless something close to miraculous happens. It's an awful time to have to look for work. I felt ashamed because I worry about my future employment, and I have a great job with the U.S. Navy (at least until September 30th next year).

As far as my pessimism goes, I’m usually somewhere between a Marsh-wiggle and Chicken Little. Yet despite my glass-half-full outlook I’m often surprised when the fig tree actually does blossom, when there’s fruit on the vine, when the fields yield produce, when the flocks are not cut off from the fold, and when the herd remains in the stall (Hab. 3:17). Time and again, I have experienced unexpected good things. Why?

Well, the answer might just be in the very first Bible passage I ever committed to memory as a child. Do you remember the first Scripture you ever memorized? For me it was the 23rd Psalm, which begins “The Lord is my Shepherd. . . .” You probably know it by heart too. Remember the part that says “surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”(v. 6)? That word “follow” (Heb. yirdephuni from the root word radaph) actually means to pursue, chase, or hunt down.(1) The goodness of God is not trudging behind us at a leisurely pace while we wait for it to catch up. It’s hot on our heels like a cheetah after a sick antelope!

(1) I was recently reminded of this meaning by R. Wayne Stacy in his sermon “The Hound of Heaven,” in The Search: The Soul’s Secret Signature (Nashville: Fields, 2000), 43-48.

Which Pocket, Lord?

2008-12-15T08:34:00.000-08:00

Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Pshis'cha (1765-1827) said that everyone should have two pockets: one to contain, “I am but dust and ashes,” [Gen. 18:27] and the other to contain, “The world was created for my sake.” [Sanhedrin 37a] At certain times, we must reach into one pocket; at other times, into the other. The secret of correct living comes from knowing when to reach into which.

I keep such “pockets” on my computer where I have both an “I-love-me file” and a “humility file.” (I refuse to call it an I-hate-me file.) In the former are all the things I’m proudest of, starting with my Fulbright Grant. In the latter I put all the disappointments, including grants I didn’t get and other rejections that still sting. When I’m feeling down I look at my I-love-me file for a little encouragement. When I’m feeling a bit too smug I peek, very quickly, at my humility file.

Which pocket today, Lord?

Love Actually?

2008-12-14T14:10:00.000-08:00

Chick flicks are one of my guilty pleasures. (My wife Amelia, on the other hand, likes action adventure. Go figure.) One of my favorites is the British romantic comedy Love Actually. (Who could forget Hugh Grant dancing to the Pointer Sisters’ “Jump (For My Love)” or Rowan Atkinson as a goofy, gift-wrapping jewelry salesman?) Set in the days leading up to Christmas, the film follows multiple storylines about love and romance. One story focuses on a trio: Juliet (Keira Knightley), Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and Mark (Andrew Lincoln), Peter’s best friend. Mark is both best man and amateur videographer at Juliet and Peter’s wedding. When the professionally made video turns out disappointing, Juliet shows up on Mark’s doorstep unannounced to get a copy of the footage he shot of the nuptials. Much to Juliet’s surprise and Mark’s embarrassment, the video is nothing but close-ups of her, revealing Mark’s secret love for his best friend’s girl. “But you never talk to me. You always talk to Peter,” Juliet protests, “You don’t like me!” How could Juliet have been so close to someone who loved her so much and not even realize it?

I sometimes doubt that God loves me. Do you do that too? Intellectually I know that’s not right, but I do it anyway. I never doubt that God loves my kids or my friends or people in deepest, darkest Africa. But me? Really? You love ME, God? I wonder sometimes. You never talk to me the way you talk to others (at least the way they describe it). Look at all of the stuff you’ve put me through, God. You don’t even like me! At least that’s the way I feel at times. And why should you? My loyalty to you is fickle, my love cold. I’m not the kind of Christian I should be. I’m not very loveable.

Maybe the problem is the word love itself. It’s slippery and hard to define. We use it to describe how we feel about everything from our closest family members (“loved ones”) to sports (“I love the Gators!”) to food and drink (“I love coffee.” Really, I do.) to deity (“I love God.”). I’ve heard all of the sermons about “agape”—unconditional, godlike love. But from reading the Bible, I’d say it appears God does put some conditions on his love. Although he “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,” he also damns people to hell. OK, it’s their fault. I get that. But it’s still hard for me to reconcile the idea of “unconditional” love with eternal punishment. It seems to me that either his love is conditional (or unconditional only for a select, arbitrarily chosen few as Calvinists contend) or he shouldn’t damn people to an eternity of outer darkness. Can you love someone unconditionally and still send them to eternity in hell, even if that’s what they deserve? (I realize some of my fundamentalist friends have just written me off as a liberal for even asking the question.)

Karl Barth, one the most famous and sophisticated theologians of the twentieth century, once summed up his theology with these surprisingly simple and familiar words, “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.” My response: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

I wonder if when I get to heaven God’s going to sit me down and show me a video with all close-ups of me.

Six Flags Over Jesus

2008-12-14T14:02:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to the dress rehearsal for the Living Christmas Tree at the church we’ve been attending here in Northern Virignia. I didn’t want to go, but three of my kids (Nadine-13, Maddy-11, and Mark-9) are singing in the children’s choir, so it was my parental duty to attend at least one night of the big show. And what a big show it was! A hundred singers were arranged like ornaments in a 25-foot tree with over 20,000 synchronized lights.

Those of you who know me know that I like traditional worship with a liturgical bent. I’d rather sing the doxology than praise choruses, and I consider Fanny Crosby contemporary Christian music. (OK, I'm exaggerating slightly, but you get the idea.) I was dreading going to this evangelistic extravaganza with its over-the-top glitz and sappy Gospel drama set in Marge’s Beauty Shop. As the performance began, the lights in the sanctuary went down and a spotlight shone on the pastor, wearing a tuxedo and looking more like an emcee than a minister.

Hundreds of hours and I don’t want know how many thousands of dollars went into the production. I wouldn’t want to disparage the good intentions and hard work of all those involved, including my children. However, as I was groping to find a way to describe this event that seemed more suitable for Branson, Missouri than a First Church of one of the most sophisticated cities in America, a colleague suggested just the right descriptive: Six Flags Over Jesus.

All of my high-church, liturgical friends are getting a good laugh at this point, but some of you, including my wife and kids, are probably thinking, “But I like Six Flags!” Lots of people do. And many see no problem with a little razzle-dazzle in church. Worship style is a matter of preference to most people (Is it really?), and I’m probably sounding like a sanctified snob right now. But there was something that deeply impressed me about this evening.

The church opened its doors free of charge to hundreds of special needs children, adults, and their families. Before the Living Christmas Tree all were treated to a pizza dinner in the fellowship hall, which was decked out with enough Christmas cheer to set tiny tots eyes aglow, including a giant candy cane made out of red and white helium balloons that stretched across the ceiling. Singers sang Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, and even (gasp!) Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, and one of the pastors went around in a Christmas novelty hat that wiggled, and flashed, and made music. I cracked a smile in spite of myself. But what melted my Grinch-like heart was not the Christmas decorations, music, or festive atmosphere. It was the compassion I saw the church members show these “special friends” and their families—bringing them food and drinks, taking them to the rest rooms, talking and laughing with them. Jesus said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40).

If someone asks me where I’ve seen the presence of God lately, I’m going to say with a smile, “At Six Flags Over Jesus!”

Mythmaking (Thanksgiving)

2008-12-14T13:51:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows the story of the first Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims, who were fleeing religious persecution in England and cultural assimilation in Holland, landed at Plymouth Rock in order to found a colony where they could experience religious freedom. Although half their number died that first winter, friendly Indians like Squanto and Massasoit brought them food and taught them how to grow corn and catch fish. A year after they arrived, the Pilgrims hosted a thanksgiving celebration with Indians and Englishmen feasting and frolicking together. And so goes one of our most popular founding myths.

There are many details of the story that have been added or deleted. The Pilgrims first landed at Cape Cod, not at Plymouth. It took them a month to find the site of their permanent settlement, and early accounts never mention setting foot on Plymouth Rock. Their first encounter with Indians was hostile, not friendly. And, although they were fleeing religious persecution in England, the Pilgrims were hardly “poster children” for religious toleration. Squanto was named after a Native American spirit the English later identified with the devil, so you have the irony that the Christian Pilgrims survived with the help of an Indian named Satan. And the saints were not always so saintly. William Bradford and his wife Dorothy left their young son back in the Netherlands, and she died in an apparent suicide shortly after arriving in the New World. Plymouth was never the kind of godly community Pastor John Robinson and others had envisioned. And, from the first, there were always so-called “strangers” among them—people who did not share the Pilgrims’ beliefs.

More than factual errors, however, the Pilgrim story represents mythmaking on a larger scale. One modern definition of history is “stories well tell ourselves about ourselves.” By focusing on the story of the founding of Plymouth Colony, Americans in the 19th and 20th century were saying something important about how they saw themselves: Americans are white, Anglo, hardworking, family-oriented, and Christian—that is, Protestant Christian—people. And there is certainly some truth to this image. However, there is much that this myth ignores.

For the past generation or so, historians have become more aware of the “constructedness” of history and the crucial role the historian plays in the process. As educational opportunities have expanded for women and minorities, the story of America’s founding has been changing—not because the facts have changed, but because historians have changed. A more recent generation of historians has decided to focus on different facts and tell other stories—ones that had been previously downplayed, neglected, or ignored altogether.

In his book American Colonies, Alan Taylor explains this trend:

Indians have come back into the story as central and persistent protagonists. Instead of dismissing slavery as peripheral, recent historians have restored its centrality to the economy, culture, and political thought of the colonists. And new scholarship illuminates the essential role of women in building colonial societies. With the expanded cast has come a broader stage that includes attention to New France, New Spain, and New Netherlands.

Growing up in Florida, I was often confused about how the Pilgrim story related to the one about of Ponce de Leon and the founding of St. Augustine, which came a full century earlier. Who founded America anyway? Was it the English Separatists we call Pilgrims or Spanish Catholics—or was it the Indians? The answer is (d)—all of the above . . . and more. In colonial times there came Spanish, French, Dutch, Scandinavian, and African people to these shores, where they met dozens of Native American groups, some fearsome and hostile, others friendly and docile.

America was then, and remains today, a multi-cultural land of racial, ethnic, and religious diversity—though that was hardly what anyone saw as ideal at the time and tensions among competing groups occasionally erupted in violence. Like the Pilgrims, we never live up to our own ideals, and we all practice mythmaking with ourselves.

We are never quite the people we tell others that we are. Sometimes we’re not even the people we think we are. Growing up, I always thought of myself as a “true American”—and by this I meant a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, Christian. And there’s some truth to this image. My father’s family arrived from England in the 17th century. They were both white and Protestant. Yet my mother is a German immigrant and my first cousins are half German, half Filipino Catholics and neither my uncle nor my aunt was born in North America. And neither spoke English growing up. Yet the diversity of my own family is more authentically American that the stereotype I had in my mind as a child.

The Apostle Paul says, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (1 Cor. 13:11).

As America grows more mature, we, her citizens, have become more aware of what we were really like during our county’s infancy. As we grow older, we too can recognize the folly of our childhood self-image: whether we thought we were going to be president one day or believed that we were losers, who could do nothing right. As we mature, we become more self-aware. We were never quite as good, or as bad, as brave, or as cowardly as we once saw ourselves.

As the Plymouth Colony grew into its adolescence in the 1640s, a revolution took place back in England. Parliamentarians defeated the Royalists and executed King Charles I. Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of England—a Puritan king of sorts, who had more power than the Stuart monarch he replaced. Although he was a religious fanatic, and some would say a tyrant, one thing he was not was vain. He had unsightly warts on his face. Once an artist painted a flattering portrait of him. When he showed it to Cromwell, the Lord Protector was not pleased. He told the artist that he would not pay a farthing for the likeness unless it portrayed him faithfully—warts and all.

Are we willing to see ourselves, our families, and our country warts and all? That’s exactly how God sees us. And that’s how He loves us—warts and all.