Pastoral Musings from Rain City

in case you missed the memo...

2009-11-05T17:06:00.001-08:00

I've moved my posts... all new ones are presently HERE.

I'll move archives over someday... I hope.

pray for Ft. Hood... and families... and wisdom

Marriage... away it goes...

2009-10-24T10:06:00.001-07:00

new post about the future of marriage on the new blog:

www.raincitypastor.wordpress.com

see you there

The Bible as an Idol?

2009-10-20T10:39:00.001-07:00

There's a new post, over on my new blog, about the danger of the Bible becoming our idol. It has to do with how both liberals and conservatives often seem to reshape the Bible to fit their ideologies, rather than allowing the Bible to reshape them. Read more on the new blog here.

I'll be moving the blog permanently soon, so mark your RSS feed, or bookmark, or newsfeed, to new address. Thanks

Sojourners and Shalom in Ingrid Michaelson's Music

2009-10-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly moving my blog over to a different site, so forgive my archaic technological limitations as I simply point you to my most recent post, which is available in full at

http://raincitypastor.wordpress.com/

I'll be double posting for a while, as I learn wordpress, taking your feedback, and then making the full switch at the end of this month. Please post your comments on the new site rather than this one. Thanks much...

Obama and Isaiah... why He won the prize

2009-10-13T16:10:00.000-07:00

"God has placed eternity in the hearts of men..." is one of those mysterious verses in the Bible that is best explained through illustration, by pointing at something and saying, "that's what it means". Now that Obama's been awarded a the Nobel Peace Prize before actually doing much of anything substantive to contribute to world peace, I think we have an example of Ecclesiastes 3:11.

Don't go all "Rush" on me, and scream about liberal conspiracies. Your tirade will cause you to miss something valuable.

Don't preach, either, about how Obama deserves this award, and how his presence at the table as someone who tries negotiating before bombs is enough of a cause for him to triumph over these candidates. He doesn't, and it isn't.

If we step back though, and take a deep breath, we might realize that Obama was granted this award, not for anything he's done, but for what his style represents. Rightly or wrongly, the committee was impressed with the removal of the defense shield, and his willingness to engage in dialogue with enemies with whom the previous administration refused to converse. Did you get that? They were impressed that he was reducing weapons and talking with his enemies.

Why be impressed with that? I'd suggest that the committee was impressed with that because our hearts long for the kind of world that will exist when Christ reigns. He will say, "come let us reason together", and when justice rules perfectly, He's promised that we'll melt our weapons down and turn them into tools of agriculture. Hmmm... Christ's reign looks like what again? Reason and dialogue, and a reduction of weapons. No wonder people like Obama. I'm not defending O's political strategy, nor challenging it. I am saying that people like reducing weapons and talking for a reason, and the reason is because God put it in their hearts to like it - we're made for peace and dialogue.

Oh, and there's a giant warning here too. Humanity's greatest failures have come whenever people have promised the fruits of the kingdom without the reign of the True King. History has shown that there's only One who will be able to bring this about. Like or don't like O's strategy. But don't confuse it for the kingdom - to do so would be disastrous.

PS -- I'm gonna' be moving my blog.. so I'll double post here for a week or two, but the new address is THIS ONE. Check it out, bookmark it, and give me feedback. Thanks much

"Christianized" - A word in search of a definition

2009-10-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

My studies of Acts 18 and 19, along with a conversation this past Sunday evening, have reminded me of the great tragedy often happens in the church because of our failure to proclaim the "full gospel". No, I don't mean speaking in tongues; I mean the earth shattering power and priority of Jesus power to reconcile us, not only with God but with each other. Miss the human reconciliation and the gospel is hardly the gospel at all. Here's what I'm talking about...

Rwanda's been in my world a fair bit this past year. This past week, and old friend was in town who has travelled to Rwanda and been the Genocide Memorials. When I spoke near Boston last winter, I had the privilege of meeting some Rwandan Christians and hearing, first hand, about the genocide that occurred in the mid-nineties. You can read about those thoughts here, or skip straight to this article that explains some of the situation. But if you're in a hurry, just consider this quote from the article:

Rwanda is generally regarded as one of the most "Christian" countries in Africa and the world, one of the real "successes" of Christian missions in Africa! Statistically speaking some 80% to 90% of the population regard themselves as Christians. An absolute majority are Roman Catholics, and a strong minority Protestants. Much of this Christianity is of a strong evangelical persuasion

Of course, the mystery question is this: Why would the most intense genocide in recorded African history occur in the most "Christianized" nation in Africa? The answer to the question seems to hinge on the meaning of this verb, "Christianized". When I was in seminary, back in the 80's, there was a big debate about what it meant to be Christianized.

At the time, the prevailing definition indicated that someone was "Christianized" if they'd received Christ as their personal savior. "No", the missions professionals were telling us back then, "that's not enough. They need to not only know Christ as their savior, they need to share Christ, and be following in the footsteps of Jesus guiding other people to become followers of Christ. Until that happens, people are "Christianized."

No, I don't like the word Christianized either (it sounds like people have had some sort of chemical treatment or medical procedure, like sanitized, or sterilized), but don't miss the point because you don't like the word. The missions pros said that replication of one's faith was the determinant of faith's reality.

By that definition Rwanda was a smashing success story - until all the Christians started slaughtering each other. The genocide memorial in Rwanda includes this church building. If you want the straight truth, pictorially, you can find that here. The fact is, families fled into the church thinking that there they'd find safety, but the reality of tribal hatred and loyalties ran deeper than the blood of Christ.

And therein lies the problem. When the gospel we preach declares our hope for reconciliation with God, but ignores the explosive truth that God invites, even requires, our testimony of reconciliation with one another, we emasculate the message, stripping it of it's life changing power in the here and now. It was, many believe, this truncated 1/2 gospel, that explains the "Christian genocide", an oxymoron if ever there was one.

Let me make this clearer. It's not enough to get people to accept Christ as their personal savior. It's not enough to teach them how to get others to accept Christ as their personal savior. Ultimately, the gospel as about far more - it's about granting us, by virtue of our own transformation, the power to live differently, as instruments of reconciliation rather antagonism; peace rather than war. This was, and IS, the offense of the gospel, because it demands of us a laying down of human loyalties, and an appropriation of Christ's love, enabling us to love those who we wouldn't otherwise. Thus are the walls broken down between black and white, slave and free, rich and poor, Tutsi and Hutu - or that's as it should be.

But when all I have is a 'personal savior', I can keep my nationalism, my lust for power, my resentments, as long as I've prayed the prayer to accept Jesus. We'd never say it that way, but look at our own history of slavery and racism, look at Germany, look at Rwanda. What we say doesn't matter. It's how we live.

Did you know that if you go to Rwanda today and ask a person which tribe they belong to, Rwandans are forbidden, by law, to answer the question? "I'm Rwandan" is the answer you'll get. Yes, what Jesus said is true, "the world puts us to shame sometimes". (That's my paraphrase of what he said here)

O Lord of Reconciliation...

Forgive us for reducing the gospel to nothing more than appropriation of your death, while failing to allow the realities of your resurrection life affect our politics, relationships, sexuality, buying habits, and so much more. Shepherd us, that we might increasingly represent, in all these areas, the fulness of what you came to bring. And may our understanding of the scope of your salvation continue to grow until the end of our days.

Amen...

Generosity Requires Resources -

2009-10-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

It's a general principle, right? You can't give what you don't have. A second, and equally important principle, is that real life is found in giving what we've received, as Jesus reminds us here. I speak of the necessity of both receiving and giving in my o2 book, showing how God invites us to freely receive from the wellsprings of His life, AND to freely give out what we've received by blessing our world in tangible ways. Learning to do this is like learning anything: it takes practice. o2 can help you develop the kinds of habits that will make your inhaling of Christ and your exhaling of blessing more real and consistent.

I'd like to depart, for the purpose of this post however, from the spiritualized implications of this and note that the principle applies, not only to our life in Christ, but to the realities of this physical world. An example of this was paraded before our eyes this past weekend, if we listened to the President's radio address, and the Republican response.

In listening to Obama, I realized that the challenge before him is that he's trying to lead us into the kinds of social safety nets many Europeans have, but failing to mention that most Europeans are taxed at a higher rate than us (when personal income tax, VAT, and business taxes are all taken together). To have these kinds of services, all of us would need to ante up, and that won't happen anytime soon. So the deficit spirals out of control, which will lead, inevitably, to a tanking dollar. Obama's plea this morning was that we needed his health care reform in order to save businesses, a legitimate concern, but he's calling for a reform that can't be paid for without either raising taxes and inflating the deficit.

How do the Republicans respond? Their senator from Michigan responded to Obama's radio address by calling for (hold your breath now, because this is really radical coming from Republicans): TAX CUTS! Yes, tax cuts will make everyone healthy, and solve the deficit. I'm growing weary of the pattern here - entrenched politicians shouting at each other across the aisle while unemployment goes up, the dollar goes down, and we continue to fail in our attempts to find solutions to real and entrenched problems.

Could someone please stand up and say to both sides: Generosity Requires Resources. Both sides are trying to gain votes by being generous with money that doesn't exist. It's dangerous and irresponsible, but the charade will continue until we begin to the price. We'll pay the price soon enough, in one or more of these ways: interest rates will rise, inflation will become an unquenchable fire, the dollar will decline. Of course, in all this, the people who'll be hurt most are the poor.

Both parties are entrenched in the paradigm of being generous with resources they don't have. How should we, as followers of Christ respond?

Twitter... and breathing

2009-10-04T20:43:00.001-07:00

Interested in twitter? I'm here now. I found myself enjoying keeping up with what other people are doing, and thought it would be fun to join the party... it really is just as simple as that.

In other personal news, I'm working in earnest on my 2nd book right now, just as the O2 book is beginning a blog tour. You can learn about that over here.

Finally... had a great conversation last night after the service about the nature of the gospel, which led to discussion about the primary purpose of God's redemptive purposes. It was all very rich, and I'd love to blog about now, but on Sunday night's my brain's a little mushy. I'm off to compline, but wanted to simply post quickly and let you know about the twitter thing...

The Fork on the Road...yesterday's post with real links

2009-10-01T06:15:00.000-07:00

Are you wrestling with deciding on a major? Are you at a vocational crossroads? Have you been downsized? Has a relationship turned sour? Are you goals eluding you? If you answered yes to any of these questions read on... I have a story for you:

My son took a trip to Austria several years ago. He was going to meet up with me because I was over there teaching in a wonderful Bible School. This was the travel plan: Plane/Train. He was 19 and it was his first time out of the country. Instead, here's what actually happened: plane delay (24 hours), plane, train (but a 100 year storm that dropped trees on the tracks in Europe), back up the train to try another track; same problem on the second track; be told (in German, which you don't speak) to get off the train and wait for a bus instead; get on the bus; be told (in German) that buses don't cross boarders from one country to another so this is the end of the line; watch as everyone gets off the bus; get off the bus; call your dad (it's 11:45PM) and say, "I'm in a town in Germany, the name of which I can't pronounce. What do I do?; wait while your dad calls a friend who lives in Salzburg. When your dad spells the name of the town she says, "O, that's only 15 minutes from here, across the boarder in Germany - I'll be right there"; get picked up in a car by an Austrian woman; spend the night with her and her husband; catch train to destination, arriving 72 hours later than planned...

"Later than planned".... "Other than planned" - These are the realities, not only of travel, but of life with Christ. Read Acts 16 and you get this eery sense that Paul has no idea what he's doing or where he's going. Look at verse 6: "forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia", and then verse 7: "the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them". Paul had plans, strategies, goals. But Proverbs 16:9 exposes God's little secret, because that's where He says (in my paraphrase) "Go ahead and make your plans. That's an important part of living. But I have the trump card. Love, God"

As I read through this story, which reveals the interplay of Paul's plans and God's sovereign overruling, several truths jump out at me:

1. God uses our desires. As you read Acts 16, you discover the simple truth that, when Paul met Timothy, Paul wanted to Timothy to join him on the mission, so he invited him along. Again note the simplicity of the statement: Paul wanted this man to go with him. We're suspicious of desire sometimes, secretly believing that if we enjoy something, there's no possibility that it will be God's will. That's rubbish. Of course, it's true that God has the freedom to call us into contexts that we'd never choose, and all of us will find the path of the cross in our lives. But along the way, there are "good and perfect gifts". I LOVE Seattle, because of the mountains, music, coffee, and rain. That God has called me here gives me great joy, and this joy is important, because this same calling is filled with monumental challenges as well. Don't despise desire. Instead, express it to the Lord.

2. God says no because there's something better. Though we have both plans and desires, the reality is that God says no. He said no to Paul preaching in Asia. He said no to Bithynia. He said YES to Macedonia. Within this "NO" principle, I find something beautiful: God doesn't punish Paul for trying to go to Asia or Bithynia, as if Paul should have been isolated in a cave somewhere, fasting and praying in order to find God's will. In fact, the reality of the Christian life is that we find God's will, not by surfing the web or watching "The Office" but by getting off our butts and doing "whatever our hands find to do".

My own journey towards finding God's will was a little bit like my son's trip to Europe. I was going to be an architect and so attended Cal Poly. God spoke and I changed my major to music and attended Seattle Pacific University, thinking I was going to be a musician. Then I taught a Bible study, loved it, and headed to seminary to become a teacher of the Bible. Along the way, I accepted an interim pastor position on an island in Washington state, which turned into a six-year gig, where God shaped my heart to be a pastor, which I now am in Seattle.

Looking back, I could never have fabricated this script. There have been desires granted, desires denied. There have been doors opened, doors closed. It's unfolded though, as the great adventure that the Christian life is supposed to be. So if your plans aren't unfolding perfectly, can I encourage you in Jesus name: You're in good company. Abraham; Joseph; Moses; David; Jeremiah; Isaiah; Mary; Peter... need I continue? You're in the company of great adventurers who learned to hold desire and plans with an open hand, allowing God to shape it all uniquely into the calling He had for each one. May such be your story as well as you follow Him.

Note: a podcast of this develops these themes more fully if you scroll down and hit play on the podcast available here.

plans, providence, and the fork in the road

2009-09-30T11:41:00.001-07:00

As I read through this story, which reveals the interplay of Paul's plans and God's sovereign overruling, several truths jump out at me:

Note: a podcast of this develops these themes more fully and is available here.

Buy or Rent: Eschatology simplified...

2009-09-25T16:19:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I spend some time in Colorado with my son, trying to climb Long's Peak (and throwing up instead), and then climbing other lesser peaks, and doing a little rock climbing. It was intended to be a sort of "vision quest" thing, a time of bonding between father and son and, while some good things happened along those lines, one of the more memorable elements of the trip was our relationship with our rental car.

We'd rented a Subaru because, after all, this was Colorado. I anticipated needing four wheel drive because the point of any sort of vision quest type of trip with a son is to conquer stuff (in our case, rock), and most rock worth conquering isn't found in close proximity to paved roads.

Sure enough, after getting kicked with altitude sickness on Long's Peak, we headed to the west side of the Continental Divide, and from there, to the back roads in search of trailheads for peaks that held the promise of being spectacular, but in a 12,000' sort of way rather than 14.

As for the drive in, I'll just say it this way; getting there was half the fun. "Road" was a stretch of definition as we pushed deeper and deeper into the mountains. At one point I was certain that I was driving up a dried up creek bed and must have missed a turn somewhere. The boulders we were driving over were so big we felt, at times, like we were riding a bucking horse, and when the car came back to earth, we'd hear a big thud, as rock met underbelly of Subaru. "No problem" I said to my son, smiling, "it's a rental".

And there you have it. "It's a rental" means that, since it's not ours, the problems that come to the car through abuse aren't ours either. It's "ours for now" to do with as we please, but of course, it's only temporary. Our real car is back in Seattle, it's underbelly safe from abuse because at this moment, "the rental" is our reality.

This is Eschatology 101, because eschatology is nothing more than a fancy word to describe what a person believes about the end of time, and though there are many nuances, when you boil them down, the fundamental question is this: "Do you own or rent?"

If you rent, it means that your relationship with this earth is temporary. God has given us this earth in the same way the Hertz people gave me a Subaru: "drive it hard because it's not yours to keep anyway." This is, at its worst, the theology of those who believe that the earth is just some sort of staging ground for the grander reality of heaven, which comes later. Here's a quote that pretty much encapsulates this view.

On the one hand, I can hardly blame the guy for believing that it's all going to burn. After all, his church is in the center of the San Fernando Valley, and if the earth is destined for destruction, humanity's done a great job helping God towards that end in this valley. Once a paradise of agricultural diversity, it's now an environmental disaster, testimony to our addiction to materialism and fossil fuels, two consumptions of which all of us in the west are guilty to varying degrees. But MacArthur's views are rooted, not in the tragedies of his valley, but in a mis-representation of the Scripture.

Yes, Peter says it will all be burned up with fire, but so will my house, and my car, both of which I own. The fact that they're subject to decay doesn't negate my call to stewardship. Can you imagine not cleaning your toilet ever, and telling your guests that the reason you've chosen this path of neglect is because "it's all going to burn anyway"?

Instead, maybe we should recognize a couple of things:

1. How it's going to burn, and how much of it's going to burn is hardly the point, because the promise of the Bible is that "a new heaven and new earth" are in store for us" and one gets the feeling that these newbies will need to be stewarded just like the present one. So let's the drop the "it's all going to burn" paradigm that makes us act like Subaru renters, and become owners instead, "joint heirs" as Jesus said, who will"inherit the earth" as Jesus said.

2. We're called to represent now, in little ways, the future which is yet to come. As such, we'd do well to care for all living things, and for the earth itself, which is presently moaning, not because it's going to burn up, but because we're behaving like Orcs.

So let's look at our eschatology this way: forget whether it's burning today, tomorrow, or never. The truth of the matter is this: as heirs with Christ, we OWN the earth; we don't rent. As owners, we have both the privilege and responsibility to steward creation, invite justice, celebrate hospitality with good feasts, and just basically enjoy the hope of the future; right here; right now.

sex, and the city, and shame, and more...

2009-09-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

There's an issue floating around in the Christian single sub-culture, sometimes near the surface, sometimes deeply subterranean. The issue is the vast disconnect that appears between practice and profession when it comes to our sexual ethics. A recent survey indicated that over 90% of engaged young people who professed to know Christ and follow His teachings agree that sexual intimacy is to be confined to the bounds of covenant relationship, i.e.: marriage. In spite of this clear sense of conviction, however, roughly 2 out of 3 reported that they'd violated this principle, and roughly 1 out of 2 reported that they're presently violating this ethic, as they sleep with their fiance.

The sample from this survey was arguably too small to draw any meaningful conclusions, but it does represent a reality we ought to address: when it comes to sexuality, there's a chasm between what we say we believe, and what we actually do. What factors contribute to this chasm?

1. Our culture's attitude towards sexuality. Whether it's Seattle's "Stranger", reruns of "Sex in the City", advertisements for beer, cars, deodorant, or the text of a recent hip-hop song, let's not kid ourselves into believing that we're immune from the sexualized nature of it all. We're trying to hold our sexuality according to God's redemptive plan, but God's ethic requires some serious swimming against the overwhelming tide of our culture. At every turn the message to "touch me", "taste me", "do me" is present, either directly or subliminally, declaring through it's presence that our sexuality is an appetite, like food - and we all know what to do when we're hungry.

I'll note before moving on, that this isn't some sort of 21st century phenomena. 1st century Rome shared these values, as have countless cultures scattered across time and geography through the ages. To think differently than the prevailing culture is, of course, one of our primary challenges, and primary means of transformation. So, it helps to be aware of the ocean in which we're swimming.

2. Shame - The Christian community elevates virginity as a virtue. This, of course, is appropriate, because this is what Scripture teaches. However, there's something inherent in how we talk about virginity that makes its maintenance tantamount to the free climb of a rock face: fall once, and you die. Thus have many shared, in the confidentiality of pastoral work, or with friends or counselors, that "it's over. In a moment of weakness I took off my purity ring, and then, well you know what happened." Dejected, and feeling a sense of shame never intended by Christ, he or she decides that, since they've already lost it, there's no point in battling. Purity is now unattainable. Why bother? Of course, most wouldn't say it that way, but that's the way it actually plays out.

I suppose there are 30 more reasons for the battle, but I got a late start today, so I'm going to limit my comments to these two, offering some thoughts about how we might best navigate the waters of our sexuality, in light of these realities.

1. The culture piece is gigantic, but of course, we knew that from Romans 12. If there's a current pulling me in one direction, and it's not the direction I want to go, I need to find a way to travel against the current. The answer isn't withdrawal from culture, because there are other factors at work besides culture (just ask the monks who wrote this poetry). Instead of trying to be a fish out of water (which is what it would be like to try and be a non-sexual being in a sexual world), I simply need to flood myself with right thinking, which will help me understand my identity, sexuality, and calling, from God's perspective.

You might try this, or this, or this, to get you started. The reality is that if I read the Stranger and watch Friends or Sex in the City, more than I read my Bible or listen to my pastor's podcasts, I'm failing to swim upstream. Thus I shouldn't be surprised when I land downstream, my boat having been dashed to bits by the rocky realities of sex without covenant, realities that exist for certain, but which aren't addressed by "Friends" or in "The Stranger"

2. It's this shame thing that really enrages me, because it comes from the damned accuser, AND it comes from the church. We need to talk about the incredible restorative power of God's grace and the reality that His mercies are new every morning, that yesterday's failures are gone, gone, gone. We need to speak of the reality that all of us are fallen, and thus stop throwing rocks and begin blessing and healing.

There is o so much more to say about this important subject, because I know that people are living with confusion, shame, guilt, and anger - having been abused, or hardened, disillusioned, and shamed. Let's start the dialogue.

What else contributes to our sexual struggles and confusion?

What other things have people found helpful?

If you stay respectful, you can stay anonymous... and thanks for responding.

Let the sun shine

2009-09-16T07:15:00.000-07:00

There's a great article in today's NYT about solar energy. It's about a company in the Silicon Valley that decided to expand it's product line by producing products related to solar energy. They're succeeding wildly. They've built 14 solar panel factories and are churning out products as fast as they can make them.

Are there any solar powered homes on your street? I didn't think so. So who's buying this stuff? The location of the factories tells all: Five are in Germany; Four are in China; there are one each in Spain, India, Italy, even Abu Dhabi has one. How many factories are there in America? None. Yes, we've got employment problems, but there'd be no reason to manufacture solar panels in a country that doesn't take the possibilities of solar energy seriously. When I travel in Germany I notice that they have "solar farms", and that lots of houses have solar panels strategically placed to absorbe the sun's energy. This is because the government has mandated that utility companies need to buy back extra energy produced by these panels, thus reducing the time it takes for the investment in solar to pay for itself, and providing the utility with extra energy so that they don't need to build new generators. And with 50,000 new jobs in alternative energy in Germany, they're proving that this isn't some 'green fanatic' scheme, spun by wild eyed radicals. Seems like a win for everybody right?

Not in America, apparently. Here, utility companies are free to raise rates based on increasing demand, so that they can acquire capital to build new plants, while citizens are free to invest in solar energy that will pay for itself in 20 to 30 years. Of course, only the richest few are able to do that, with the result that the solar production is exploding in Europe and Asia, and basically dead on arrival in the USA. The paltry subsidies we pay consumers to install solar basically pays for the panels to be shipped from China.

Jobs and Energy are two of the areas where our country needs to wake up and be willing to make some big changes. But the political rhetoric of the summer has me increasingly concerned that there may not be enough political will to change, at least not yet. The day will come when oil isn't available due to politics, or geography and then we'll start talking. But by then the infrastructure will be in place, already well established in Germany, China, and much of the world, and we'll come as buyers rather than sellers. In a nation already burdened by ridiculous trade deficits, I fear that 20 years from now, every sunny day will be a reminder of what could have been.

thoughts?

In praise of secular universities...

2009-09-15T16:42:00.000-07:00

So you, or someone you know, is off to a secular university this fall. You're worried, because this was a decision made due to financial realities, or pragmatically, because the desired major wasn't available at an affordable Christian University. This new setting has you on edge. There are cigarettes (both the manufactured kind and the funny ones) everywhere, and swearing, and guys and girls sleeping on the same floor of the dorms, or even worse, in the same rooms.

And that's just the student life stuff. Just wait until you're sitting in the classroom hearing about evolution, and reading Atlas Shrugged or James Joyce. Sure, "Christian Math" and "Secular Math" are pretty much the same thing, but that's where the similarities between Christian and secular universities end. Suddenly you find yourself in the midst of fierce democrats, environmentalists, feminists, anarchists, and God only knows what other kind of people that are making this world so "dark and depressing". What will happen in this post-modern, pluralistic soup to which you or your loved one has been sentenced? Will faith survive?

I ask it again, more slowly, because it's a very important question: Will - faith - survive?

Surprisingly, I'll be bold enough to suggest that the answer has nothing to do with whether the institution in question is Christian or Secular, for the reality is faith is awakened and strenghened, or decimated and destroyed on BOTH secular and Christian university campuses every year. So I'd suggest that the question isn't whether your faith will survive secular university, but whether your faith will survive university at all, because the reality is that faith hangs in the balance during university years, no matter where the student is attending. And the answer is good news. You can do more than survive; your faith can thrive, grow, and find new life, wisdom and creativity, no matter where you're attending! As one who attended a California State University, and a Christian University, I think the principles and practices that will contribute to a thriving faith are pretty much the same at both "Secular U" and "Jesus U" - what are these principles???

You need real fellowship - When I was at Secular U, real fellowship was easier to find, because at Jesus U, there was this sense that "everyone's a Christian" (even though it wasn't true) and so most of us seemed to take our faith for granted, rather than cherishing our fellows believers as precious allies. I'd suggest then, that no matter where the student attends, he/she should make the pursuit of genuine fellowship a priority. "You become like those with whom you hang out" is a Biblical principle, so find some people with a burning passion to love and serve God and walk with them, run them, play ultimate frisbee with them, pray with them, eat with them. It might be harder to do on at Jesus U, but it can be done there too. Just don't confuse fellowship with using God words and going to chapel.

You need to serve - I liked Secular U because my Christian friends and I were on a mission to share the reality of Christ with those in our dorm who didn't know Jesus. We'd meet to pray for them, we'd build relationships with them by playing basketball together or going to the beach. I played in the marching band and went to the parties after the game, not to get drunk, but because these people were my genuine friends. Some of them came to Christ. There's nothing grander than embracing the mission to be the presence of Jesus on a campus. Again, it's a bit harder to do when everyone assumes that Jesus already lives on the campus because He's the subject of classes, and the topic of chapel. But behind the veil, Christian campuses are filled with young lives who are tortured with doubt and ambivalence about their faith. You can purpose to be a light there too by befriending and building relationships with students, become a safe person for those with questions, doubt, disorders, and failures to share their struggles, all with the goal of helping people see the liberty that's available in Christ.

THINK - I loved that Secular U challenged me at times to think about why I really believed this stuff at all. The challenges made my faith stronger, not weaker, because by forcing me to think about the reasons for my convictions I realized that my faith was, in fact, my own, not just an inheritance from my parents. At Jesus U, I found that people turned their minds off more quickly, accepting propositions offered by their teachers as "gospel truth". I mean no disrespect when I say that sometimes, this had tragic consequences, leaving students with either hollow, untested answers that they'd learned to parrot for tests, or a faith so deconstructed by post-modern uncertainty, that they became overwhelmed with doubt and simply walked away, choosing the bar on Saturday nights as their place of worship, or escape from worship. All of this could be avoided if we'd be willing to engage with both the secular and Christian professors, welcoming new challenges to our thinking, while continually returning to Christ and the Bible as the source of our convictions.

I loved both experiences. Secular U shaped my faith, strengthened it, and brought me out of my shell. Jesus U allowed me to discover my gifts and calling and refined those things.

So you, or someone you love is headed off to Secular U? No worries; at least no more worries than if you're off to Jesus U. Both places need the light that you have to offer. Go for it... and have a great year!!

late summer pics... outdoors and a 90 year old mom

2009-09-12T13:01:00.000-07:00

late summer 2009

I'll let the whole thing speak for itself

Wildness...and the mark of Cain

2009-09-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

I'm presently finishing a marvelous little book about John Muir. I spent last weekend in Yosemite with family, and my son, who rode his bike from Seattle to Fresno, via San Francisco and Yosemite, had stayed in the same motel that John Muir stayed in, with Teddy Roosevelt. So conservation and the wilderness has been on my mind a great deal lately.

Muir would write, "Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over civilized people, are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is necessity; and that mountain parks are useful not only as fountains of timer, but as fountains of life."

If Muir viewed urbanized people of the late 18th century as nerve shaken and over civilized, I wonder what he'd think of our lives today, where for many, the only encounter with fresh air is those few steps between door and car, and any sense of wildness has been fully exorcised from our lives, leaving us with a sort of sanitized techno-living, whereby we eat unhealthy foods, and embrace unhealthy sedentary lifestyles that include far more sitting, stressing, and staring at screens than God ever intended?

I'm of the opinion (and it's only an opinion, so I don't make a big deal of it in the church I lead) that these choices aren't morally neutral, but are far, far, from what God intended. One can go back and see the original plan in Genesis. When the plan went wrong, Cain become the line that represents people trying hard to live in a way that insulates them from any sense of dependence on, or awareness of the creator. How did he do this? God told Cain that his destiny was to be a wanderer on the earth, but instead of wandering, we read that Cain settled down and made a city. Then came tools and agriculture, all of which served to make our lives "easier" (at least in the short term), and all of which served to insulate us from encounter the beauty and terror of wildness. Thus was humanity tamed; thus did our wildness die, thus did our encounters with God move away from the revelation that comes through nature, depending instead, increasingly, on the book.

The problem was that we view God's injunction on Cain to be a wanderer as a curse, rather than God's provision to reinstate in Cain a sense of dependency on God. Because of this paradigm, we've come to view nature as the adversary, and our ability to settle and insulate ourselves from nature as a victory. This, I believe, is tantamount to calling 'good evil' and calling 'evil good'!

Please don't get me wrong. The book is good, important, central, to our faith. There are declarations therein which could never be uncovered through the general revelation that comes from the wild, and those revelations are the foundation of our faith. However, there are revelations as well, that come from creation that are more subjective, changing us in powerful ways and opening us up to transcendence and eternity through, as Psalm 19, Romans 1, and Romans 10 all say, "what has been created". To insulate ourselves from this kind of encounter, focusing solely on the book, must be damaging in some way, just as to focus only on nature at the expense of the book would be damaging. The real answer is: YES... nature and book.

So here we are, with intellectualized faith and industrial agriculture, both of which seem to be weakening us, like some sort of Kryptonite for the soul. The problems with intellectualized faith have been cataloged in many places. An example of the problems with industrialized agriculture can be seen here. We're paying for this insulation from the wild, in other words, in our spirits, souls, and even our bodies.

I'm not advocating that we become Luddites. But I am suggesting several shifts in our thinking are needed:

1. away from 'only the book' to 'the book and nature'. I offer this because this is exactly what the book suggests, in all the passages I listed above, and more. Those who, like David, are shaped by living in the wilderness, seem to see facets of God's character that appear inaccessible if one's life is lived indoors. This means...

2. we need to time and courage to 'get out'. Start small, with a walk in the park if that's all the time or capacity you have right now. But start. Expose yourself to what God wants to teach you about His character through creation. If you're an old hand at this already, then push yourself a bit further. Try a night of solitude in the mountains. Don't take your i-pod... just go.

3. away from industrialized agriculture, towards localized and organic foods - because we need to change the entire way food gets distributed on the earth. We need to this for the sake of health, and the environment, and the global hunger situation. We can begin by affirming those farms who are producing local organic goods, because these use far less petroleum, both for production and distribution. Also, by buying these, I'm not buying a techno-fruit, produced through genetic manipulation. There's a great deal to learn about this subject, and if you're interested, you should consider this movement as a starting place. If we do this, we'll also move away from Omega 6 oils in our bodies, towards Omega 3's. The article referenced above will explain these important oils and the effect they have on our health.

4. away from sedentary living, towards incorporating movement. We're not made to sit on our butts all day.

5. away from whatever it is we're doing, towards some sort of Sabbath practice. To be both/and people, city and creation, book and general revelation, solitude and community, we're going to need to find time, for cooking, walking, getting outside. God has given us this time. It's called "Sabbath"

I thought as I got older I'd stay inside more. That will probably happen later, but for now, the opposite it true. I'm more barefoot, more organic, more candles, more full night's sleep, more sitting outside to read and study. By resisting Cain's path, I'm finding something that helps connect me with God, my family, and my own body.

How can we help each other recognize the dangers of "Cain's Lifestyle", pointing each other, instead, to health and life?

The missing cross...

2009-09-08T07:17:00.000-07:00

It's easy to be critical of the church, especially retrospectively. Like Monday morning quarterbacks, we can all look back through the centuries and see the folly of crusades, colonization, slavery, and the unholy marriage of political power and wealth with the name of Jesus. These failures are, ostensibly, the reasons offered by millions for their rejection of Christ and, especially, of the church.

Maybe, but I suspect otherwise. I believe what's going on among most who reject the invitation to step into God's story is largely the same thing going on among those who claim to be in the thick of God's story - we are, all of us, recoiling at the cross.

Of course, the church claims to embrace the cross. We sing songs about it; we wear it around our neck as jewelry; it figures prominently in our architecture; and most significantly, we teach it's centrality. The problem, though, is that in teaching it's centrality we tend to teach the reality that Jesus died FOR us, and so our responsibility is to receive this free gift so that we can be pardoned for our failures and be made right with God.

To declare that this is the heart of the gospel would be like saying that cutting down trees and making bats is the central theme of baseball. Talk about missing the point! The reality is this: Christ walked the path of the cross and then triumphed over the grave. Our journey with Christ begins by acknowledging our need for this gift and receiving it, but this is just the beginning, like receiving our bat and glove. The point is wholly other. The point is that we're now empowered with the same capacity to walk the road of our own cross, laying down our lives in literal and/or spiritual ways for three reasons:

#1 - because Jesus tells us that this is our calling

#2 - because this is where our credibility and life imparting power lies

#3 - because we believe that there's more to life than THIS life.

The early church gave validity to Christ's claims because it was the Christ followers who, in the time of the plague, were willing to open their homes and provide hospitality to the dying, often at cost of their own lives. Wherever the faith presents itself as powerful and real, it does so because there are real and tangible acts of relinquishing rights (to life, our happiness, or being first, or secure, or powerful, or vindicated) on the part of Christ's followers. Of course, the sad testimony of the church is that, too often, we've appropriated Christ's death FOR us, while overtly or covertly avoiding our own calling to die WITH Him. Thus does the church's lust for power, wealth, and prestige, mar the church's testimony, creating a caricature of Christ.

Yes, Christ died for us. But He beat death in order that we might be freed from the fear of death, in order that we might have the entire world opened up before us as we listen for the voice of our Guide and follow Him wherever He might take us. We know this, though, that the path that will impart life to others will only be seen to the extent that we say YES to the Guide who calls us to lay down our own agenda, instinct for survival, or lust for pleasure or power, choosing instead our own CROSS because we believe that life goes on, and on, forever.

As I begin the fall routine, I pray that I'll be willing to walk the path of the cross.

"E" - the estrogen factor of American Christianity

2009-09-02T06:23:00.000-07:00

I'm intrigued by a study David Murrow did (found here, archives of the Winter 2008 issue) that examined a possible hypothesis regarding the vast percentage difference between the genders when it comes to church attendance. It's about 60/40 in our church, and this is common. This imbalance is unique to Christianity, as Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus all display a remarkable gender balance in their faith practices.

One could speculate about the 'why' of this, and such speculations abound, including hypotheses that address the patriarchal bent of other religions ("of course men are in... they carry all the power cards!"), or their cultural mandate ("it's just that everyone's in, unlike our secular society"), but Murrow's hypothesis is the one I find most intriguing.

He asked both Christians and Non-Christians to answer the question: "Which set of values better characterizes Jesus Christ and his true followers?" They chose between:

Set #1
Competence
Power
Efficiency
Accomplishment
Achievement
Proving Oneself
Results Objects
Technology
Goal-Oriented
Success
Competition

Set #2
Loving Cooperation
Personal Expression
Communication
Relationship
Beauty
Support
Help
Nurture
Feeling
Sharing
Relating
Harmony
Community

95% of those surveyed said list #2 represents the values of Christ. In reality, the lists aren't the values of Christ and/or someone else, but the lists of masculine and feminine values from John Gray's book, "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus". You can debate the merits of this book. You can decry the generalizations and stereotypes. What you can't do is ignore the reality that men don't get involved in faith communities as consistently as women.

The thesis of the surveyor is that American Christianity has been feminized. That's one theory. But those who go down that right tend to simply move the ethos of the church from one imbalanced list to the another. This doesn't seem adequate.

Instead, I'd suggest that men are staying away for a few simple reasons:

1. Men are bored by church. It might be because the sermon's boring, or it might be because there's no compelling vision or venue for involvement. When Christ called his disciples he didn't call them to sit in endless meeting, but to go out and change the world. The school of faith that Jesus ran took place in markets, on walking trails, at sea. Yes, there was teaching, but the teaching was only important to the extent that there was a real thing happening. I'm bored by reading books about the technicalities of mountaineering - unless I'm about to go climbing. Our need to provide a balance of teaching and activity is vital, and addressed here.

2. There's no "vision quest" anymore. My 23 year old son just phoned me from Yosemite Valley in California. He got there by riding his bicycle over 1000 miles, from Seattle, down the Oregon Coast, down the California coast, to San Francisco, and then east to the Sierra Nevada mountains, and into Yosemite. I can tell, just by phone, that he's profoundly changed by doing this. In a sanitized world where even play sets are injury proof, we run the risk of boring our sons to death with Bible stories, Bible ethics, Bible characters, and oh so mellow music, when what might be needed is a week at sea, or a 1000 mile bike trip, or a month in Central America or Africa or... ? You tell me.

3. There's just not enough vision. I don't want to overgeneralize, so I'll say it this way: There are millions of men, and many women as well, who need a mountain to climb; who need a vision that will engage their whole selves; who need to shoot for the moon and the stars when they wake up each day. These people (of both gender) are the ones the church runs the risk of losing if we don't help people see that 'church life' isn't about sitting quietly and singing sweet songs - it's about being spun out (see previous post) of comfort zone, and using our gifts to make the invisible God visible in tangible ways. Doing that will require character qualities from BOTH lists, and both genders.

What do you think? Agree or disagree? Why is there a shortage of men in church?

The Spinning Thing

2009-08-31T11:33:00.000-07:00

Warning: I'm more of a pastor/poet than physicist, by several light years.

When I was a kid, our family spent a week each summer on the California coast. One of the highlights of that week was a trip to the boardwalk. One of the highlights of the boardwalk was the fun house, where for a quarter, you could slip into a magical world of crazy mirrors, tubes that turned, wave machines, slides, and best of all, the spinning thing. I don't know it's name, but it was this game you'd play, whereby 6 to 8 of us little kids would sit on a platter attached the ground. The platter began spinning, faster and faster, until one by one, kids begin to slide off. The object was to stay on as long as possible, so we'd scratch and claw as we sought to cling to the spinning thing, but invariably, the thing would win and we'd slide off onto a waxed floor, where we'd slide even further, landing only God knows where, in the fun house.

Later, in physics class, I learned the scientific principle governing the spinning thing: centrifugal force. Later still, like in the past five years, I've been learning about this same principle as applied to our collective life in Christ. Reading through the book of Acts in my early Christian days, I don't think I ever fully grasped how similar the young church was in mindset to we kids clinging to the spinning thing.

After all, the church was told from the beginning that the would be spun out of Jerusalem, "to Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth." Then they clung - to the heady power and fellowship that was found in earliest days of the church, right there in Jerusalem, right after Pentecost. "What, me leave? I'm fine right here, thank you very much." When we've connected with God and found some good friends with whom we're sharing openly and intimately, our instinct for stasis kicks in, and we begin to cling to what we have, rather than follow the flame and the cloud as it leads us into new frontiers.

The good news, though, is that the wheel begins to spin faster. Persecution breaks out in Jerusalem and some leave. It becomes increasingly obvious that this new chapter is going to include both Jews and Gentiles, because a whole new category of people is being created: "little Christs" who will make God's live visible. Our ideologies are spun out, as we wrestle with who actually constitute the "saved", and it slowly dawns on us that even those who (gasp) are uncircumcised, can know Christ. Even Roman soldiers are meeting Christ! Women are finding a voice. Slaves are finding a place at the table on equal footing with their masters. The wheel keeps spinning, faster and faster, in individual lives, lives of churches, and lives of nations, so that as the church grows old, it becomes this globally interconnected web of Christ followers, sharing their unique gifts across cultural chasms as heralds of the reconciliation of all peoples and all things that will come someday in fullness.

We'll look back and see that we clung to the spinning thing, that we resisted change, that we sought to freeze the present. We did it when we resisted our kid's growing up. We did it when we refused new relationships. We did it when we complained about the changes at church. We did it when we kept our prejudices and fears intact, choosing to kill the movement of God's spirit instead.

Ultimately, we pray, the spinning thing prevails and we let go, however reluctantly, of the past. When our family moved to Seattle, we left a town where the phone book consisted of one 8.5x11 piece of paper. We were afraid to leave our comfort zone, but the spinning thing had won, and we were flung into the thick of urban living. That was 14 years ago, and our church has subsequently grown from 250 to 2000, all because the wheel was spinning fast enough that we were forced to let go of our own dreams and plans. Thank God. He knew what was best for us.

I'm convinced that the force which breaks us free from the spinning thing is the centrifugal force force of the Holy Spirit. He knows just when to dial up the speed and fling us out of our existing geography, relational web, way of doing things, beliefs, prejudices. And if we cling (thanks be to God) He keeps dialing up the speed until we surrender. What are you clinging to: beliefs, geography, job, beliefs, prejudices, relational capacity, daily routine???

The Image of God in Ted...

2009-08-27T06:54:00.000-07:00

I remember, about a decade ago, interviewing for a ministry position and getting into a doctrinal discussion about the image of God in man, particularly debating the question of what extent the image of God resides in fallen humans. "None" was the right answer, according to the team across the table from me, steeped as they were in a strong reformed theology and doctrine of depravity. "Humanity lost any capacity at all to display the character of God when Adam aligned with Satan."
There it is. Simple. "Cut and dried" as they say. They quote some passages from Romans 3 that talk about none who do good, and how our righteousness is as filthy rags. Yes. I understand. I went to seminary.

The problem with this, it seems to me, is that it fails to take into account the profound respect that God has for all humanity in Genesis 9 where God says that human life is valuable precisely because we are made "in His image" - all of us. Fallen? Yes, tragically so, as each of our lives testifies in various ways. Yet, it's so often the case that, right there in the midst of our fallenness, we rise up for moments and align ourselves with God. Isn't Mozart's Requiem something that displays God's image, in spite of the drinking, gambling, and womenizing that characterized the composer? To declare that no unregenerate person displays the image of God in the face of evidence to the contrary seems tantamount to offering a mathematical explanation regarding why it's not raining while standing in the middle of a downpour; evidence to the contrary is everywhere, if we'll just pay attention.

All of this is the backdrop for my contention that, among politicians, Edward Kennedy displayed the glory of God's image more gloriously, and the tragedy of man's falleness more tragically, than most politicians who've graced the pages of history with their exploits.

The tragedy is easy to see. Chappaquiddick stands at the top of a sizable list of improprieties, leaving us with, at the very least, severe question marks regarding judgement and moral character. Christians will excoriate him for his treatment of Justice Bjork and his liberal views on abortion. All this is horribly true.

But there's another side to the man. In 1964 he was instrumental in passing the critical Civil Rights Act which has helped turn the ship of American history away from blatent racism towards egalitarianism. Kennedy's Immigration Act of 1965 sought to give non Europeans some sense of reality for the words that are inscribed at Ellis Island: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free. If you're a woman and you played high school sports, it's because you had an advocate in Ted Kennedy. If you're disabled, and you have access to major buildings and sidewalks in your city, it's because of the efforts of Kennedy. If you're a senior citizen living on fixed income and thus receiving "Meals on Wheels", it's because Kennedy went to bat for you.

A constant advocate for the downtrodden, marginalized, and weak, I can't help but think of James definition of true religion when I think of Kennedy, which has to do with caring for widows and orphans in their distress.

You can argue the politics if you like, declaring the government shouldn't care about racism, or gender equality, or health care, that the extent of their 'intrusion' should be to pave our roads and provide an army, leaving us to fend for ourselves with the rest of life. You can point to his failures. But what you can't do is declare that he didn't "give a damn" about the least of these. As the church has, in recent years awakened to her calling to care for those who can't care for themselves, we've been reminded that caring for those on the margins is our calling precisely because such acts of mercy make the character of Christ visible.

Ted cared for the "least of these" and in so doing, displayed something of the image of God. This is not only a blessing, but a challenge. The challenge lies in our propensity to put black or white hats on everyone, presuming the unfallen to display only the character of Satan,and painting the saved in white because, as we like to say, we're "clothed in Christ".

It's all a bit too convenient. Reality forces us to wrestle with the truths that Samaritans, the couple down the street who live together and smoke pot, and political liberals, all manifest compassion, sometimes more visibly than the "saved". Maybe it's time for a little humility on our part, and a little gratitude, and a little openness to the possibility that there are those in this world who've not yet been born again who, nonetheless, display Christ's character at times. May we learn from them by their acts, and honor them.

Infidelity comes out of the closet...

2009-08-26T16:03:00.000-07:00

The hot new infidelity web site, which promises that you'll have an affair or you get your money back, is doing a bus tour! The bus stopped yesterday at, of all places, Temple Square in Salt Lake City as part of it's "have an affair anywhere tour", which you can read about here.

Of course, we're all shocked and offended at this new online access to cheating. And yet, a new person is signing up every fifteen seconds, which is considerably more web noise than pastoral musings are able to produce. It appears that there are more people interested in a romp in the hay than, say, a discussion about Christian ethics, or the ramblings of a middle aged guy about how he encounters God in the everyday things of life, like sunrises and good conversations. Who'd of thought???

All sarcasm aside, though, I'll just observe that this "coming out" of infidelity seems to be simply the next chapter in our cultural evolution as consumers. It's gone something like this:

1. Declare that our right to the pursuit of happiness is inalienable, a divine right granted by God.

2. Allow that pursuit of happiness to be defined materially, with the result that we become a people characterized, throughout our history, as claiming land by divine right, either displacing or killing the occupants (both animal and human) as a result.

3. Throw in a healthy dose of mobility, enabling us to move out of our settings when they become challenging.

4. Continue the relentless pursuit of our divine right to happiness by seeking an economic dominance that will enable us to try and fill the aching void in our souls by shopping for more, bigger, and faster stuff, in spite of the clear and undeniable evidence that such pursuits are killing our planet and failing to deliver on the hollow promise.

There it is. Suddenly you have the perfect cocktail of discontent, rootlessness, and predisposition to demand the fulfillment of personal needs as a means of happiness. Throw all these elements in a blender and what comes out? A web site that matches you, in your pursuit of happiness on demand, with someone else who is just as frustrated, wounded, discontent, or bored. Now you can have that happiness that neither a faster car, implants, or season tickets were ever able to provide; easily and privately. The web site even comes with an app for your i-phone so that your paranoid spouse, who monitors your web tracks, will remain none the wiser.

This isn't shocking at all. This is simply the next step in our culture's worship service, held perpetually at the altar of self-fulfillment. What's sad to me is that the church has been quick to aim the gun at adulterers and pull the trigger, without taking the time to see the cultural elements that have created this problem. Until we think about our collective values and choose intimacy and interdependency over isolation, and service over self-indulgence, and quiet simplicity over loud ambitions, the infidelity siren will continue to sing, and souls will continue to crash and burn on her rocks.

The Art of the small things...

2009-08-24T15:22:00.000-07:00

Enjoy this picture. Blow it up and take a good look. It was taken Saturday, up by Mt. Baker, where I was hiking with my wife. This was as much view as we had all day, as the mountain parted her skirt for just a moment or two before draping herself in the modesty of fog again. The whole time up on the mountain was like this; a hint of the bigger vision followed by everything shutting down and closing in, forcing the micro view despite our achings for the macro view. Instead of glaciers, lichen. Instead of canyons, a marmot. Instead of summit, dew on a blossom.

I like the big picture, like a clear understanding of the final destination, the summit where we're going. I like clarity more than fog. But clarity isn't always an option, and in fact, if the truth be told, we'll humbly acknowledge that the very clarity we claim to have regarding lots of details regarding our future is, in fact, a mirage. We can't even figure out the weather, let alone markets, terrorists, why cancer cells lose and win, and the foibles of our own human hearts. There's fog - everywhere. It comes and goes with the winds of grace, but it's a reality for all of us. This summer my pastoral role has reminded me, numerous times, of the realities of fog. Someone's making a decision regarding med school, having been accepted, but not necessarily having the stomach to go. What is the future God has for her? Another is hanging by a thread over the abyss of foreclosure. Another has discovered her husband's affair, shattering her vision of intimacy and trust. Fog.

Fog, though, doesn't blind us. It simply reduces our range of vision, forcing us to pay attention to a smaller world. It's easy to whine when our vision is restricted, when the future is uncertain. Instead, try paying attention to the little things. This, after all, is what Jesus advised anyway, hinting that we wouldn't always understand the big picture, because the reality of the things is that there's more fog around us than we care to enjoy. And yet, said Jesus in the New Testament, and Jehovah in the Old, "I'll give you all you need for the day; all the guidance, all the provision; all the resources for whatever you're doing, even if what you're doing seems very very small."

So here we are, a lot of us, unable to see the future. But perhaps it's precisely because I can't see the future that I can see a sink filled with dirty dishes, or that I've not had a decent conversation with my spouse, or that the bedroom has become a giant storage closet of unsorted obligations that shout "you're too busy", but I only just now heard, because I was, well, too busy to listen.

The fog shrinks our view, but the things we see in our shrunken view aren't unimportant. In fact, it just might be that while we're in the midst of minding the micro vision of our lives, listening to our neighbors, cleaning our homes, tasting our food, praying, that we'll see the macro vision once again. When the fog clears I discover that it was my attention to the big vision is made up of millions of tiny acts of faithfulness anyway, and that it's those who pay attention to the little things that gain, not only a seeing of the grand vision, but the privilege of walking in it.

That's all for now... I'm going to go home and clean my room.

Quick thoughts from a mentor...

2009-08-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes (often? usually?) my best thoughts aren't my own, but those that I mine from others. This morning, before heading off for a full day, it's a joy to share some words from a mentor of words, Wendell Barry. What he says here, I agree with, without reservation. He writes:

Let me be plain with you dear reader.

I am an old faishioned man I like

the world of nature despite its mortal

dangers. I like the domestic world

of humans, so long as it pays its debts

to the natural world, and keeps its obligations.

I like the promise of Heaven. My purpose

is a language that can pay just thanks

and honor for those gifts, a tongue

set free from fashionable lies.

neitjher this world nor any of its places

is an 'environment'. And a house

for sale is not a 'home.' Economics

is not 'science', nor 'information' knowledge.

A knave with a degree is a knave. A fool

in a public office is not a 'leader.'

A rich thief is a thief....

The world is babbled to pieces after

the divorce of things from their names.

Ceaseless preparation for war

is not peace. health is not procured

by sale of medication, or purity

by the addition of poison. Science

at the bidding of corporations

is knowledge reduced to merchandise;

it is a whoredom of the mind,

and so it the art that calls this, 'progress.'

So is the cowardice that calls it 'inevitable.'

Amen... preach it Wendell

Impact or Aroma? An important distinction

2009-08-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

Pastors, just like real people, have trade journals and magazines, which of course, are filled with advertisments and articles intended to make us better at what we do. A quick purusal of these tools reveals that a recurring theme, in both articles and ads alike, is how important it is to make an IMPACT for Christ. "We're going to impact the world by planting one thousand churches." "How to impact your neighborhood with the gospel." "The impact factor!" "Impact your city for Jesus!!" "Real leaders make an impact!!"

I finally decided to look up the word in order to see what it really means. I discovered that the word, while occassionally used with positive connotation, is largely negative and destructive. It means,

"...to affect or influence, especially in a significant or undesirable manner..."

"...to collide or forcefully strike..."

I don't want to make too much out of a single word, but I'm afraid that overusing the word "impact" as it applies to our calling might not be wise. It can have the subtle effect of creating Christ followers who are militant, ambitious, unduly confrontive, and intent on overhauling the culture "for the cause of Christ." What does this look like?

It looks like Dobson's now famous letter intended to scare America away from Barack Obama.

It looks like calls to boycott certain companies because they offer employee benefits to same sex partners.

It looks like pastors and organizations with large audiences decrying a certain few sins, centering in on sexual issues and declaring that the future of the free world hangs on our wholesale condemnation of these issues, while turning a blind eye to the greed, militarism, and nationalism that might just be the bigger problems.

It looks churches driven by ambition and lofty goals, mobilizing their congregants to activist lifestyles that are ultimately exhausting. Working hard, like Martha, to make in impact, while neglecting the more important things. Thus do emotionally, phsyically, and spiritually spent pastors, flame out in nervous breakdown, financial misconduct, or sexual sin, in spite of their impactful message. IMPACT for certain, but too often, in the worst sense of the word. Did I mention that a quick look at my concordance revealed that this word is entirely absent from my Bible? There's a different word used by God to describe influence...

It's liberating for me to realize that even the great Paul, whom none of us could possibly characterize as a spiritual slacker, chose a gentler word to describe what He knew God was doing through him. In II Corinthians, he declares his confidence that God is expressing, through him, the sweet aroma of Christ.

It's the difference between a wrecking ball and the smell of your morning coffee, the difference between blowing up a building, and walking through a forest wet with fragrant morning dew. Which is noisier? Which elicits more public response? Which is more appealling?

I'm increasingly convinced that our ambitions related to making an impact are misguided, nothing more than a cloak to cover our own insecurities with God's 'blessing'. Instead of an impact, our ambitions ought to be related to being an aroma, as Paul says, "TO God... AMONG men." Aromas are a byproduct that reveal the essence of something. They don't set out to BE aromas, they simply are: Pine trees smell like pine; cigarette smoke like tabacco; coffee like heaven. That's the way it is.

Christ followers, when they're living in the moment as worshipplers, listening for the voice of Jesus and stepping into His calling, smell like Christ. They're bringing words and actions of hope. They're following their master in a thousand little acts of self-denial, putting their spouses needs before their own, loving, giving, encouraging. They're living creatively, embodying beauty in unique ways, whether through the cooking of a meal, the healing of a body, the encouragement of a tired soul, or the empowering and liberating of someone held in bondage, for whatever reason.

It's these unheralded, unprogrammed, un-noticed acts that are filling the world with the incense, the sweet aroma, of Christ's life. When I was young, I was obsessed with impact. As I grow older, I'm less impressed, even increasingly wary, of impact. Aroma is where it's at, becoming the quiet fragrance of life in a world where the stench and pollution of death is everywhere.

The aroma ambition is liberating, in that it frees me from the ambitions, constant measurements, fears, and obsessions, that are necessarily wed with IMPACT. I've pretty much traded in IMPACT for AROMA... wake up and smell the coffee. You'll like it better here.

Meditations: So Sew

2009-08-16T07:22:00.000-07:00

It's a good weekend for looking back, what with Woodstock and all that. My looking back though, doesn't go quite that far, since I was only 13 when the festival came down, and living on the wrong coast. Instead, I looked back this weekend, to an island, and was reminded of the parable about the seed and sower.

Back in 1990 I'd had enough of being a pastor, and so had set out to do something different (was it calling? frustration? my own initiative? God's? Yes). As a result, I would spend the next six years travelling the world and teaching from the scriptures for Torchbearers Missionary Fellowship, a coalition of Bible Schools scattered on various continents. Of all the places I taught, the place where I invested the most time was the school closest to home, located on a spectacular island in British Columbia. That first year of my new ministry, I probably spent 10 weeks up on this island teaching students. What I loved about doing that then is the very same thing I love about doing it now, which is that my role when I teach there is twofold: teach, and hang out with students, hearing their stories, and sharing in their lives.

I still remember when I was invited up for six weeks to simply teach and shepherd students. "Are you kidding me? You mean, besides teaching the Bible, you'd rather have me playing two on two volleyball with students, or roasting oysters on the beach than make budget proposals, attend board meetings, and interface with government officials about building codes? Um, yes, I'll be there on the next ferry." Thus began a relationship with the ministry on this little island that has continued for 19 years.

I still go teach there. I still love hanging out with students, sharing the scriptures with them, sharing meals with them, and hearing their stories. However, one of things that I've grown to wonder after all these years is, "what happens to these students?" Of course, I know that statistically speaking, some press forward and some don't. But my question is more personal. "What happened to Chris? Linda? Stacey? Liza? Darrin?" because these were some of the ones with whom I spent the most time during that very first year, when I lived there so much of the time.

I boarded the ferry again, one week ago today and headed there to teach this week, not for a week of Bible School, but for a family conference, which is like a "Bible study vacation" (unimaginable for some, I know, but in this big world, there are lots of people who love having their meals prepared, their dishes done, and their children cared for, while they in return wrestle with themes from a book of the Bible, as these guests did this past week while a taught Exodus).

My big surprise and joy came when, upon arriving, I realized that many of these past students had signed up for the week of teaching. Now in their mid-thirties, they'd made the trek from Alberta or Saskatchewan or wherever in order to return to this island, a place of their own spiritual roots. There they are, in the picture, only now they all have teenagers.

Yes, they have questions. Yes, they've faced disillusionment and trials. And yes, they're still walking with God! I was able, at various times throughout the week, to speak with most of them, amazed that they remembered specific things from talks I'd given in the springtime of 1990, when I was 34. We took the picture above on the ferry, as we were leaving (one student never left the island... he's the one working for the ferry).

As I stood here with the students, my heart warmed by the reality that, through all the joys and sorrows, all the disillusionment and idealism, these students are still showing up, still seeking and serving Jesus. And that's when I remembered those words from Jesus about a sower who went out to sow seeds in the field. As a kid, when I saw that parable on the flannel board, and we planted tiny seeds in the soil, I was told again and again, until I couldn't bear to hear it any more, that Iwas the soil and God was planting seed in me so, by God, be a good little boy so that the soil of your heart will let the seed grow.

Yeah. I get it. But Friday, on the ferry, I was reminded of something equally true: I'mnot just soil...I'm a sower of seed, and the reality is that, because of my particular calling with students, I don't always get to see whether the seed really takes root or not. But long after I've boarded the ferry and moved on to other things, the seed that's been sown will work it's mojo, not because I'm clever, but because God uses things like rocks, donkeys, and messed up humans to accomplish his purpose. I was reminded by the faithfulness of these old friends to keep on sowing; when I feel like and when I don't, when the soil seems receptive and when it doesn't. One never knows, nor does one need to know, what will happen when particular seed meets particular soil. But if seed and soil never meet, one knows for certain, that there will be no fruit.

O Lord, God of seed and soil;

Thanks be to you for the miracle of life
That happens as seed meets soil
Be our constant reminder that we are both:
seed and soil giver and receiver.
So enable us to sow faithfully that
Your blessings is spilled through us
Into the soil of this beautiful and broken world.

Amen .

Health Care - more than sound bytes needed

2009-08-13T17:18:00.000-07:00

The health care debate is in full bloom and so it's time to write about it and, I hope, get some discussion going. From what I've seen though, on the news this week, I'm skeptical that any real healthy discussion is going to take place for two reasons.

The first reason is because this issue is revealing just how addicted we are, as a nation, to our political categories, and the vilifying of whoever our opposition might be. We vilify through sound bites, as Sarah Palin has done by talking about an imaginary death panel who hold the rights to live or die in their power. We vilify through implying that Obama's health care logo has it's origins in Hitler's Socialist Party Logo. These stupid accusations and associations don't help the conversation at all. Such comments make it difficult for many to even listen to the very good and important things that the pro-free market people have to say.

Secondly, and related, it's increasingly clear that the average American wants sound bytes, rather than doing the hard work of digesting the complexities of this issue. For those inclined though, to do that hard work, I'd recommend this very lengthy article, written by a life long Democrat whose first hand negative experiences with the health care industry have led to his thorough study of the problems, and his worthy, decidedly pro free-market proposals. If you've no time to read the whole article, please read the bullet points and quotes, at the very least, before commenting.

This conversation is important, not because we want to become like Europe or be different than Europe (or Canada), but because health care is consuming more of our resources every year, resources not used for other things. The path is unsustainable, even for the insured, let alone those who are losing their homes or dying because they have no insurance. What are some of the major issues? Pour a cup of coffee... this is long post. But please read... it's important!

1. Health Care isn't Health or Happiness

Medical care, of course, is merely one component of our overall health. Nutrition, exercise, education, emotional security, our natural environment, and public safety may now be more important than care in producing further advances in longevity and quality of life. (In 2005, almost half of all deaths in the U.S. resulted from heart disease, diabetes, lung cancer, homicide, suicide, and accidents—all of which are arguably influenced as much by lifestyle choices and living environment as by health care.) And of course even health itself is only one aspect of personal fulfillment, alongside family and friends, travel, recreation, the pursuit of knowledge and experience, and more.

Yet spending on health care, by families and by the government, is crowding out spending on almost everything else. As a nation, we now spend almost 18 percent of our GDP on health care. In 1966, Medicare and Medicaid made up 1 percent of total government spending; now that figure is 20 percent, and quickly rising. Already, the federal government spends eight times as much on health care as it does on education, 12 times what it spends on food aid to children and families, 30 times what it spends on law enforcement, 78 times what it spends on land management and conservation, 87 times the spending on water supply, and 830 times the spending on energy conservation. Education, public safety, environment, infrastructure—all other public priorities are being slowly devoured by the health-care beast.

2. Health Insurance isn't Health Care

After explaining why health insurance is so obviously important as a means of protecting one from going bankrupt because of catostrophic illness, Goldhill writes, "...health insurance is different from every other type of insurance. Health insurance is the primary payment mechanism not just for expenses that are unexpected and large, but for nearly all health-care expenses. We’ve become so used to health insurance that we don’t realize how absurd that is. We can’t imagine paying for gas with our auto-insurance policy, or for our electric bills with our homeowners insurance, but we all assume that our regular checkups and dental cleanings will be covered at least partially by insurance. Most pregnancies are planned, and deliveries are predictable many months in advance, yet they’re financed the same way we finance fixing a car after a wreck—through an insurance claim. Comprehensive health insurance is such an ingrained element of our thinking, we forget that its rise to dominance is relatively recent. Modern group health insurance was introduced in 1929, and employer-based insurance began to blossom during World War II, when wage freezes prompted employers to expand other benefits as a way of attracting workers. Still, as late as 1954, only a minority of Americans had health insurance.

3. the Moral Hazard Economy

Every time you walk into a doctor’s office, it’s implicit that someone else will be paying most or all of your bill; for most of us, that means we give less attention to prices for medical services than we do to prices for anything else. Most physicians, meanwhile, benefit financially from ordering diagnostic tests, doing procedures, and scheduling follow-up appointments. Combine these two features of the system with a third—the informational advantage that extensive training has given physicians over their patients, and the authority that advantage confers—and you have a system where physicians can, to some extent, generate demand at will.

Do they? Well, Medicare spends almost twice as much per patient in Dallas, where there are more doctors and care facilities per resident, as it does in Salem, Oregon, where supply is tighter. Why? Because doctors (particularly specialists) in surplus areas order more tests and treatments per capita, and keep their practices busy. Many studies have shown that the patients in areas like Dallas do not benefit in any measurable way from all this extra care. All of the physicians I know are genuinely dedicated to their patients. But at the margin, all of us are at least subconsciously influenced by our own economic interests. The data are clear: in our current system, physician supply often begets patient demand.

4. There's no one else to pay the bill

"...Let’s say you’re a 22-year-old single employee at my company today, starting out at a $30,000 annual salary. Let’s assume you’ll get married in six years, support two children for 20 years, retire at 65, and die at 80. Now let’s make a crazy assumption: insurance premiums, Medicare taxes and premiums, and out-of-pocket costs will grow no faster than your earnings—say, 3 percent a year. By the end of your working days, your annual salary will be up to $107,000. And over your lifetime, you and your employer together will have paid $1.77 million for your family’s health care. $1.77 million! And that’s only after assuming the taming of costs! In recent years, health-care costs have actually grown 2 to 3 percent faster than the economy. If that continues, your 22-year-old self is looking at an additional $2 million or so in expenses over your lifetime—roughly $4 million in total.

Would you have guessed these numbers were so large? If not, you have good cause: only a quarter would be paid by you directly (and much of that after retirement). The rest would be spent by others on your behalf, deducted from your earnings before you received your paycheck. And that’s a big reason why our health-care system is so expensive."

5. The Government is NOT good at cost reduction

"...Cost control is a feature of decentralized, competitive markets, not of centralized bureaucracy—a matter of incentives, not mandates. What’s more, cost control is dynamic. Even the simplest business faces constant variation in its costs for labor, facilities, and capital; to compete, management must react quickly, efficiently, and, most often, prospectively. By contrast, government bureaucracies set regulations and reimbursement rates through carefully evaluated and broadly applied rules. These bureaucracies first must notice market changes and resource misallocations, and then (sometimes subject to political considerations) issue additional regulations or change reimbursement rates to address each problem retrospectively."

6. Uncompetitive

This lengthy section of the article explains that our heatlh care industry is, properly, one of the more heavily regulated industry. I say properly because it's of some value to know, for example. that your doctor has proper training, and that the equipment being used in your hospital is sterile. However, the reality is that the regulatory system is prone to enact laws authored initiated by lobbyists with the intent to kill the competition. Goldhill shares several examples of this, including a congress enacted moratorium on starting small clinics that specialize in one form of surgery. Killing the competition, as we all know, has the effect of elevating costs.

Here's an example of how our health care providers refusal to talk about prices stifles competition: "...Eight years ago, my wife needed an MRI, but we did not have health insurance. I called up several area hospitals, clinics, and doctors’ offices—all within about a one-mile radius—to find the best price. I was surprised to discover that prices quoted, for an identical service, varied widely, and that the lowest price was $1,200. But what was truly astonishing was that several providers refused to quote any price. Only if I came in and actually ordered the MRI could we discuss price.

Several years later, when we were preparing for the birth of our second child, I requested the total cost of the delivery and related procedures from our hospital. The answer: the hospital discussed price only with uninsured patients. What about my co-pay? They would discuss my potential co-pay only if I were applying for financial assistance.

Keeping prices opaque is one way medical institutions seek to avoid competition and thereby keep prices up. And they get away with it in part because so few consumers pay directly for their own care—insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid are basically the whole game. But without transparency on prices—and the related data on measurable outcomes—efforts to give the consumer more control over health care have failed, and always will"

7. On the technology front...

We live in a culture where the production of new technologies eventuates in increased productivity and eventually, a decline in prices. Thus do DVD players today cost one tenth of what they cost when they first came out. But in the health care world, the lack of competition makes this nearly impossible. For example...

"...health-care technologies don’t exist in the same world as other technologies. Recall the MRI my wife needed a few years ago: $1,200 for 20 minutes’ use of a then 20-year-old technology, requiring a little electricity and a little labor from a single technician and a radiologist. Why was the price so high? Most MRIs in this country are reimbursed by insurance or Medicare, and operate in the limited-competition, nontransparent world of insurance pricing. I don’t even know the price of many of the diagnostic services I’ve needed over the years—usually I’ve just gone to whatever provider my physician recommended, without asking (my personal contribution to the moral-hazard economy).

By contrast, consider LASIK surgery. I still lack the (small amount of) courage required to get LASIK. But I’ve been considering it since it was introduced commercially in the 1990s. The surgery is seldom covered by insurance, and exists in the competitive economy typical of most other industries. So people who get LASIK surgery—or for that matter most cosmetic surgeries, dental procedures, or other mostly uninsured treatments—act like consumers. If you do an Internet search today, you can find LASIK procedures quoted as low as $499 per eye—a decline of roughly 80 percent since the procedure was introduced. You’ll also find sites where doctors advertise their own higher-priced surgeries (which more typically cost about $2,000 per eye) and warn against the dangers of discount LASIK. Many ads specify the quality of equipment being used and the performance record of the doctor, in addition to price. In other words, there’s been an active, competitive market for LASIK surgery of the same sort we’re used to seeing for most goods and services. The history of LASIK fits well with the pattern of all capital-intensive services outside the health-insurance economy."

8. A Way Forward

It's difficult to offer a representative quote for this part of the article, but you can read this part here. The summary though, would be to suggest that if we were to make health care MORE of a free market reality rather than less, we'd all be better off. However, the author goes on to also declare that there's a great need for us to address the fundamental moral issue of accessibility for low income people. If both of these truths are taken into consideration, at least two truths become clear:

First: the current proposal will fall terribly short of achieving real cost saving reform

Second: any proposal that will ultimately work must stand outside both the socialist and capitalist paradigms that are presently driving this conversation. Of course, this latter truth is in keeping with all that God proposed when He spoke to Israel about economics in the Old Testament. That system defied categorization in that it was terribly pro-private property, pro-wealth creation, and pro-communitarian sharing of responsibility for the poor, whom Jesus said we would, "always have with us".

Until we can free ourselves from party loyalties and sound bites, we're going to be a stuck on a treadmill.

I welcome your thoughts...

Sojourners or Settlers - an important question

2009-08-12T07:18:00.000-07:00

I'm teaching in Canada this week at a place where the international mix of guests, staff, and students always makes for lively discussion. I could tell you about conversations regarding health care (I hope you'll talk to some real live Canadians and Europeans, whose assessments of this subject might be a tad more realistic than Rush Limbaugh's) but I'll save it for another time because there's a more important subject worth considering.

Last night, after my lecture, I spent some time with a couple of German women who are passing through Canada on holiday before returning to their medical careers in Europe. Both were raised in the communist, totalitarianism of the GDR (East Germany) and even the small fragments of their story that I learned last night are worth sharing with you so that you ponder some important questions with me. They spoke of their childhood, and the role that the church played in the demise of communism. They spoke of the challenges that came with growing up as Christ followers in a political climate intent on silencing any vestiges of the gospel. They explained how, towards the end of communism's run, the church buildings of old became strategic centers where people gathered for to offer prayers for a change in national direction. The few became groups. Groups became 'the masses'. The masses became a national movement. And the walls came down.

"Right after freedom came" one said, "the churches were full. Everyone came." Then, after a moment of silence, the other said, "but not anymore. I suppose it's the materialism that comes with freedom." I I left our conversation shortly after that, feeling that our conversation held some significant elements to ponder. In my ponderings, I've been reminded of several things:

1. Historically, it's the people who are, existentially speaking, sojourners, that live clinging to God. Consider the Black Church in America, or the Reformationists in the midst of Catholicism, or the Radical Reformationists in the midst of the Reformationists, or the house churches in China, or the random few believers in Eastern Europe in the mid-twentieth century. It always seems to be true that it's the people without the power that are clinging to Christ most profoundly and, in their clinging, are shaped by God's heart, filled with unquenchable light.

2. This unquenchable light seems to shine as long as we're sojourners, but it also seems true that as soon as we settle down, we settle into darkness. Political power has seduced the church countless times throughout history. It's as if the church, at various times, has 'gained the whole world, but lost it's soul'. Mediocrity, greed, complacency, division, boredom, and gross materialism become hallmarks of the people of God, who increasingly mirror the values of the principalities and powers of this world. Thus does salt lose its saltiness. Thus do we suffer loss as we gain.

I wonder if I'm right, and if I am right, I wonder what can be done about it. As Eastern Europe gains their own versions of Walmart and Costco; as they fill their ears with the buds of ipods and their minds with our values, their churches are emptying. What does that tell us? I know what Jesus says: "No man can serve two masters." But I'm wondering what we, who didn't ask to be born into wealth and comfort, can do, to become sojourners who are clinging desperately to our God, rather than settlers who've made a pact with the comforts of this world, and in the process blown out our candles?

I welcome your thoughts...

The Rain has come...

2009-08-10T13:15:00.000-07:00

The Rains…

Monday morning – 2AM

Having fallen asleep to the sound of winds assaulting the various flags at the Bible Centre where I’m teaching this week, I wake to the sound of raindrops pelting the flat roof that extends right outside my open window as the skies, pregnant with moisture, give birth to long awaited showers. I smile and turn over, drifting quickly into contented sleep.

6AM

As light dawns, I waken slowly to the sound of wind, once again, gently caressing the flags, but also to the sound of birds. Gulls and geese are celebrating the rain with me, down on the field by the water, presumably feasting on the harvest that comes from a newly watered earth. Beyond the field, the sound. Beyond the sound, the mountains, with clouds captured by their walls, watering thirsty cedars.

Welcome rain. When last you left us, some 80 days ago, I didn’t know you’d be gone so long, didn’t know I’d miss your mists so much. Only your return awakens my slumbering longings for you, and all the beauty, cleansing, and contemplation that comes when you wash the earth, fill the seas, cleanse the souls. Welcome rain.

I ponder, as the clouds drift across their mountain canvass, the rains spoken of by Hosea. Our world gets parched, terribly so, by the absence of spirit, because sans spirit, we’re stripped of beauty, justice, hope, rest, joy. The dessert landscape of our parched souls is sparse, and we’re wearied by the looking, settling for substitute versions of life, in a dry barren land. Television and money, indulgences and diversions, ambitions and acquisitions, these become our food, bending our appetites towards destruction. Worst of all, our appetites adapt.

And then the rains come, and we realize that we’ve been feasting on dirt, realize that abundant streams await, from which we might imbibe hope, simplicity, hospitality, generosity.

Come Holy Spirit. Pour your rain on my soul this day. Saturate me with your life, that my appetites for life might be awakened, that rivers of living water might flow through me. I thirst. I thirst.

The Sabbath dance, in 6/7

2009-08-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

I'm privileged to teach in Europe every year for a week or two. Europe, you know, is what the Republican party is afraid we're becoming if we let everybody have access to health care. It's the "post Christian" culture that so many fear we'll become, at great cost to our personal freedoms, if we don't vote properly.

These fears seem almost entirely misguided to me because, though our culture has incredible riches and unique blessings, we'd be wise to exercise some humility and recognize the vestiges of the gospel that reside across the water. What would it mean if we harvested some of our European friends cultural values?

It would mean that we'll spend less on health care per capita while our mortality rates would drop and our longevity rates rise. Church bells would ring at the beginning, middle, and end of each day, along with each hour. Public schools would celebrate "prayer day" where they learn about prayer in history, and spend time actually praying. There would be less access to AK47s and other rapid assault rifles for common citizens, and rates for homocides would be lower, as would the rate of incarceration. It would mean that a barista wouldn't lose their home because they need open heart surgery. These are good and needed changes. I'd suggest the only thing we have to fear is fear itself (to quote a favorite recent socialist).

However, rather than tackle the whole "socialist, church bells, prayer day, gun control" culture, I'd like to just talk about the Sabbath, which is practiced far better in Europe than it is here. Our culture is open for business 24/7. As a result, we've collectively lost our sense of rhythm, and this has serious consequences:

1. Because shops are open 7 days a week, we buy! This piece of our culture has the effect of enabling our propensity to wear ourselves out. In contrast, only activities that enhance leisure and relationship building (cafes, ski areas) are open on Sundays in the places I travel in Europe.

2. Because we buy, we do stuff, and the stuff we do often has the effect of displacing the leisure of eating a meal, slowly, with good friends, good wine, good conversation. Instead we're painting the fence, or cleaning the house, or whatever.

3. These things we do, combined with our love of TV, are effecting our relational capacity. A friend from Europe visited some college students here in the states and found their capacity for lingering conversation lacking, as they preferred, instead to play wii or watch movies.

Of course these are generalizations. Of course there are exceptions. Still, I'd argue that we need to learn from our European friends, how to dance to the rhythm of 6/7 time. Work hard six days a week, and then spend a day investing in rest, restoration, recovery, relationship, recreation, receiving all of it as the gift God intended.

We surely have different vestiges of our Christian heritage more prominent in our culture than our European friends have, but we both have these 'hangovers' from the Reformation (good hangovers... if ever there could be such a thing). It's high time we acknowledged that, maybe they're onto something with this Sabbath thing, and we learn from them. We might not be able to change the culture at large, but surely we can march to a different drummer ourselves can't we?

Have friends over for a meal
Sleep in
Worship
Play music with companions
Do something with your spouse: take a bath together, go for a hike, read aloud to each other

In short, make one day different, a day when you quit fighting the battle for survival, and simply enjoy the relationships, food, creation, health, that God has placed on your plate right now. Here's a book that might help get you started... and good Sabbath to you.

calling and context... an important distinction

2009-08-07T07:49:00.000-07:00

Reading through the comments about the quarter life crisis has had me thinking about my own trajectory over the past 30 years. Though there are many issues (relationships, money, ambivalence about commitment), it seems that the issue of finding one's 'destiny' remains (as it was when I was 25) one of the most important issues. Since this issue of decision making, and wanting to 'get it right' are important factors in this post college, post masters, post-post graduate period of life, I offer these observations, based on looking back:

1. Finding one's calling is the first thing. "Calling" might be a bad word because it can be interpreted as finding the particulars of life, such as where, in particular I'll live, and what, in particular I'll do. The prior question, though, really ought to be, "what energizes me?" because, as Frederick Beuchner said (approximately): "our calling is to be found in that place where the world's need and our deep gladness intersect." Each of us needs to discover the activities that energize us and those that drain us, the activities at which we excel, and those the one's at which we're terrible.

2. The calling is more general than you think. My own journey has included seemingly disparate pursuits; architecture, music composition, Bible teaching, beginning a wilderness ministry, pastoring an urban church, writing a book. Though, at first, these things seem utterly unrelated, looking back, I can clearly see a theme: I enjoy creating. Once something's been created, I'm not so good at maintaining it, but the creation of the new thing ( a new building, a new public space, a new string quartet, a new sermon) is deeply energizing to me. It slowly dawned on me, over the years, that the 'what' that was being created was less important to me, than the act of creating.

For others it's serving, or leading, or facilitating, or reconciling, or relating, or discovering that become the operative words. Finding that operative word, that thing which motivates and energizes, is terribly important. I'm not sure how it's found, other than to say that I was never told by my parents that I could "do anything". Instead I was taught, directly and indirectly, to follow a path that energized me, without giving much consideration to the possibilities of livelihood. Having received permission to pursue the energizing stuff, I gravitated naturally towards creating.

3. Finding contexts is more art than science. In my case, the movement from architecture to music, music to Bible teaching, came about as a result of what I can only describe as encounters with God. I wouldn't have chosen to be a Bible teacher or a pastor, wouldn't have known these things bring me joy, any more than I knew that I loved mushrooms until I tried them on a pizza once. Prior to that pizza, I'd presumed them to nothing more than disgustingly soft fungi. Who knew they'd be good? Who knew Bible study and teaching would be a joy? Someone asked me to teach a class once. After saying no a few times, I said yes. It's made all the difference. I'd better not presume that I know what context I'll like until I try it.

Along these lines, I'll note that we need to be open to contexts outside of our comfort zone, as Paul was when God gave him a Gentile context for ministry rather than a Jewish one. Am I open?

On the other hand, it's helpful to recognize that, like calling, some contexts can bring us deep gladness, and we should embrace that as a gift. I love the Pacific Northwest; the rain, the trees, the glaciers, the salmon, the mediocre sports teams, the great symphony, the coffee obsession, the casual lifestyle. It's as if I'm made for this place on the earth. Almost every morning, when I wake up, I thank God that I'm able to live in this place and do this thing that bring me joy.

In general, I wonder if all of us 't worry too much about context and not enough about calling? I wonder if we think that the key to fulfillment is finding the right context (ie: the right job in the right place) rather than seeking to understand our calling and, whatever the context, jumping into the deep end, absorbing ourselves in learning to do better whatever it is that we're created to do.

I hesitate to offer any of this because my own story is only my own story, and is certainly fraught with not only unique circumstances, but failures and shortcomings. Still, I hope that the principles related to context and calling are helpful to those in the quarter life crisis. I find them to be profoundly helpful right now, in midlife, as I think about my own future: context comes from calling.

1/4 Time Crisis?

2009-08-05T06:15:00.000-07:00

Someone sent me an article in the mail recently. It came (gasp) in an envelope, which had a stamp attached and my name written on it. The article was photocopied, and with it was a note that said something like this...

"My daughter, in her twenties, sent this to me, and told me that this is pretty much exactly how she and her friends feel..." The article is, "welcome to your quarterlife crisis". I'm not sure how I feel about the article, because I'm not sure how I feel about the now popular notion that people in their mid-twenties are facing a crisis, as if twentyfive is the new fifty when it comes to emotional health, in the same way that our new discoveries of olive oil, meditation, and exercise, are supposed to have turned fifty into the new thirty when it comes to physical health.

The author spells out the crisis at several levels; it's a career crisis because these people don't yet have a firm sense of direction; it's a relationship crisis because these people are marrying later; it's a money crisis because these people are amassing debt due to school loans, lust for travel, and a general void that's filled by spending. Here are the author's anecdotal illustrations of the angst:

He bikes to work at an advertising agency, where he uses his master’s in English to proofread ad copy, and spends several hours reading music blogs and watching movie trailers, periodically Twittering updates about his workday to his 74 followers. He doesn’t really hate his job, but feels as if his skin is crawling with vermin most of the time that he’s there, so he has a plan to move to Thailand, or to maybe write a book. Or go to law school.

At her government job, she instant messages her friends and mostly ignores the report she’s drafting because she’s planning on quitting anyway — and has been planning to quit for about a year now. She spends her lunch hour buying boots that cost slightly more than her rent, then immediately regrets it.

The article goes on to talk about the multi-faceted nature of the crisis, concluding by offering support resources ranging from credit counseling, to social networking, to career counseling. I finished reading the article, and immediately wanted to share several musings for your feedback and reaction.

1. Does the fact that things have changed mean that this is a crisis? Maybe, but I'm not sure. OK, so people are marrying later now than they were when I was in college. When I was in college, my generation was marrying later than when our parents did. And the generation before that was even earlier. Debt? It's the same story. We carried more than our parents, and now our kids carry more than us. Part of me thinks this crisis is the product of baby-boomer's self-obsession. We're so self-referential that we think generations who don't do it like we did are somehow missing the mark. Narcissus would be proud of us, but I'm not sure this pathology even exists. Many, many of my friends in their twenties, though they've rejected the boomer's obsessions with upward mobility, and are often ambivalent about 'settling down', have a commitment to serving this broken world and making a difference that was decidely lacking in we, their parents. So perhaps we who are older need to lighten up and celebrate a new generation of adults who want to live meaningful, creative lives, and whose commitments to that make them marry a little later, change jobs a bit more often, and have a few more adventures. Personally, I admire and respect this new generation. Their energy, creativity, and authenticity inspire me.

2. On the other hand, it's possible that I'm idealizing this new generation and completely missing the mark. Maybe they are, in fact, self-absorbed, commitment phobic, and lacking any kind of ethical north star to ground them in commitments. It's even possible that both observations are true; there's greatness and new challenges.

3. If the artcile has any measure of accuracy, I'd want to offer the following bits of advice to this emerging generation:

A. I don't blame you for being a bit commitment shy, considering what we, your parents did to the notion of marriage. However, the truth remains that it's there are some elements of our souls that will only ripen in the context of profound commitments like buying a house (commitment to place), getting married (commitment to intimacy), and commitment to your faith community (commitment to Jesus' mission). Don't just DO any of these things because of social pressures, but don't run from any of these things either. There's a need, at some point, to jump in the water.

B. A rich storehouse of intimacy with Christ, and an ordering of life according the time honored practices of the faith, provide a rich center, out from which direction and guidance will come. Become a traveler of these ancient paths and you're more likely to be Gandalf at the end of your story than Gollum.

There's more that could be said, but I wrote primarily to hear from you, so please help me by responding:

1. Is this quarter life crisis real?
2. How does it show up?
3. What can we who are older offer?

Julian's foot gives despair the boot...

2009-08-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

Some weeks are harder than others and this past week, on the difficulty scale, was in the upper mid-range for me. The clash of theology and relationships; words misspoken, and misunderstood; friends, young and hospitalized; and enormous decisions in my work at a time when I feel tiny, not enormous. These all came together in one beautiful, overheated mess.

By the end of the week, I'm asking all kinds of theological questions, wondering if I've gotten right, or totally mucked it up, wondering if I'm on God's side or the side of fear, wondering why God couldn't have spelled a lot of His ideas out more clearly, rather than leaving us here to shoot at each other when we don't agree.

It was against this backdrop that I found myself at a party on Thursday night. Maybe you've been in that space where you know that you're supposed to be pleasant, know that it's a pleasant occassion and that you don't need to unload all your weariness and inner turmoil on these wonderful people, some of whom have flown cross country today to be here with old friends. You know that the last thing anyone needs is your baggage, your burden, your questions. It's a party, for God's sake. Lighten up. But I need answers, or at least an encouraging word, because if the truth could be told, I've mountains of doubt about what I believe and don't believe right now, and I'm supposed to be the answer man.

That's when I see my daughter, who's agreed to help serve at this party I'm attending. She smiles, gives me a hug, and walks away. That's when I notice something on her foot. What is that, a grease mark? She walked by again with a bowl of gaucamole or something, and I was able to see that it wasn't grease on her foot, but a brand new tatoo. She stopped and spoke with a friend, and I was able to read the text: "and all shall be well", which I immediately recognized as a quote from Julian of Norwich.

If I were to have a crush on a 14th century theologian, it would no doubt be Dame Julian, who offered expressions of hope and grace at a time when the Black Plague was fanning the flames of a theology of fear and judgement. She hoped for universal salvation, but though she didn't feel she could fully endorse that, she was able to claim with confidence that God would, in the end, make all things well. Here's the larger context of the now famous quote that "all's well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well":

Ah, good Lord, how could all things be well, because of the great

harm which has come through sin to your creatures?

This was God's response to her:

And so our good Lord answered

all the questions and doubts which I could raise,

saying most comfortingly:

I make all things well,

and I can make all things well,

and I shall make all things well,

and I will make all things well;

and you will see for yourself

that every kind of thing will be well.

...And in these words God wishes us

to be enclosed in rest and peace.

It's a good word, reminiscent of the mysterious optimisn of Paul found here. And it was the foot, with Julian's words on it, that kicked me back into hope. Yes, our present fog and ignorance is creating oceans of pain. Yes, we fail. Yes, we're motivated by fear, hurt, anger, way too much of time. Yes, injustices persist, and every step forward seems at time to be a step closer to a cliff. And yet, Julian and Paul are right. God is inexorably for us, and all of us are heading towards a time when the fog will clear, and Christ will reign, and beauty will transform, and disease will end, and... of course... all manner of things shall be well.

Oh Lord Christ...

For the reminder, a foot at a time, that the ship's headed somewhere beautiful, we give you thanks. In spite of our collective failings, our fears, our judgements, and capacity for breaking things, You remain at the helm. Let us see the end more clearly, that we might impart hope more fully, live more graciously, and be your hands and feet for hope.

Food vs. Food Inc.

2009-07-31T09:04:00.000-07:00

We're in the midst of trying overhaul the health care system of our country, and debates are flying across cyberspace about taxation, socialized medicine, and the dangers of rationed health care. Did you know the roughly 60% of home foreclosures have their roots in a family health crisis? One major surgery can wipe out a lifetime of savings which, in a country where the primary means of independence in one's senior years comes from taking of yourself by saving for the future, is no small matter. These are just some of the reasons that the subject is important. Entrenched special interests are the reason this isn't easy.

What's missing from all of this though, is a discussion (careful, I'm about to sound like Ron Paul), of personal responsibility for the pursuit of health. This conversation might be offered in the public square, but never as more than a footnote. I want to scream, "This issue isn't a footnote. This is the centerpiece of the way forward!" I'm sitting here eating a fresh melon as I write this.

I began the morning with some great coffee and then did several sets of high intensity jump roping, along with some leg lifts. Last night my supper consisted of some beef that wasn't raised on antibiotics and hormones, zucchini and onions sauteed in olive oil, and a glass of whole milk. I slept for about eight hours. In short, I'm trying to exercise, eats tons of fruit and veggies, along with some fat and protein, and get enough sleep. I've cut out soft drinks and most grains, most of the time. I'm not a nutritionist, so don't take this and run with it without considering some evidence. I know too, that none of these habits are magic bullets in this fallen world. We could get sick in spite of our best efforts. But if anecdotal evidence is worth anything, I feel better with these new habits of eating exercise than I have in years. I'm increasingly convinced that stewardship of the body can help us be more creative, productive people during the years we're given here.

An abundance of sugary treats, along with meat raised on feed lots and filled with meds, are stressing our national insulin response and leading to diabetes and obesity, even in teens, and who knows what kind of problems due to the meat (these are the themes of "Food Inc."). We sit on our butts and watch TV rather than playing games. And in the midst of this, we're trying to make health care more accessible. More accessible is nice, but less needed is even better, and that will only come about as a result of one of two things:

1. a change in government policies, whereby we give localized and organic agriculture a fair chance, start treating sugar like tobacco, and encourage, even mandate, exercise in schools, all the way through college. Since none of this will happen, we'll need, instead, to...

2. take responsibility for our own health. Buy organic. Eat more fruit and veggies, less fluffy grain stuff, cut out sugar. Exercise. Play games that require more than wrist dexterity. Get enough sleep.

If a nation did this, the movement of the people would change the market forces, and we'd have a breakout of health. This isn't just a national policy issue. I feel strongly that this is stewardship issue because the reality is that we're not disembodied spirits. As whole people, we have spirits and bodies, and the two aren't divided; they're interwoven.

Our new life in Christ is expressed that resides deep within, in our spirits, is expressed in our bodies, as we serve in food banks, throw a party for our neighbors, play ultimate frisbee with our kids, work long hours and come home to love our families, create, teach, serve, clean, or do whatever else it is that we do in Jesus name.

You'll do it better if you're healthy. So, perhaps the next time we open our Bibles to feed on the word, we should think about what we're putting in our bodies too. When we ponder where we're to go today, we ought to think about the spirituality of taking our bicycle or walking rather than just hoping in the car. These little decisions are important for the kingdom, and we do ourselves a disservice when we ignore them.

What next???

2009-07-29T08:25:00.001-07:00

There's more to be said on the subject of homosexuality and covenant relationships. Much more. But these printed words are leaving me, like Lisa wrote in her late night response last night, weary.

I'm weary because I feel as if I'm failing at conveying grace and truth interwoven.

I'm weary because I suspect that lots of readers are looking for code words and phrases to see if I've "gone soft" or, if they're on the other side, to see if I'll finally get it right. This saddens me, and reminds me of the guys in Mark 3 waiting to see if Jesus would heal the man with the withered hand, so that they might accuse him. That made Jesus angry, and it makes me angry too.

Don't get me wrong. The forum last Wednesday and the online discussion has been great. It's all progress in the dialogue. But the next steps, it seems to me, need to occur in more face to face settings, where we can hear the whole person, not just the words. Next steps are important though, and I hope our conversations can continue, because what's happening here is we're learning to listen and be heard, learning to wrestle with alternative interpretations we've perhaps not considered before, learning to pray and love, learning to approach one another in our mutual brokenness rather then in on some false moral high ground, yet doing so without collapsing all convictions.

This is the community of faith. It has been all along. The same kinds of discussions have occurred around countless issues, beginning with discussions early on about whether those who had denied Christ to save themselves during persecution should be admitted back to the church for fellowship. Then there were issues about which books would be in the Bible. After that, discussions about the deity and humanity of Christ ensued. Women. Anti-Semetism. Slavery. Racism. The discussions just keep on coming; divisive issues that make people feisty, afraid, and protective. There's a cloud of dust, and when it settles, we've moved forward. I pray that we can live in the dust with integrity, humility, and courage. We must. We must.

Thanks, to all of you who are willing to participate. We'll work on keeping the dialogue going as we move into the fall. In the meantime, I'll keep the dialogue going, but offline, as a pastor more than a theologian, dealing with the agony, ecstasy, joy, and pain that attends this issue for all who are seeking to love others unconditionally, and follow Christ.

I'm going to close this post by quoting from another blog to which I contribute, because the past two days the posts have, ironically, been about this same subject. Here's some of what Eric Allen wrote:

...Amongst friends, family and church members Dan and Laura felt alone. They are amongst the finest people in the world. Dan is an elder in the church and he serves and as a public defender in the world. Laura is an OBGYN nurse in the world and a servant in the church. My heart mourned for them. They couldn’t tell anyone. And most of all they feared the churches response. They thought that the church for whatever reason would remove Dan from his eldership and on top of that they felt that their family would reject, judge and shun them and their daughter. I tried to reassure them that this was not the case. But it was a hard sale. Let’s face it there is a lot of junk swirling around our churches regarding homosexuality.

.... I want to incorporate compassion with our morality, which in the end might change everything but that’s what compassion does . . . it changes things. If you’ve been around the church at all then you know that non-judgmental compassion is delicate work. Few do it well. To see something wrong with someone and still have compassion for them is an art. Jesus and a few saints throughout history are about the only ones to do this with success. I am suggesting that in general that we have floundered in our response to sin...

...It was suggested by various members of the group that the Bible ‘clearly’ states that homosexuality is wrong. Being a student of the Bible I wanted to know just how ‘clearly’ homosexuality was spoken of in the Bible. I came away with an almost skinless skeleton. The truth is; you can read for a long way in both directions and not run into it. And when you do, you run into a bunch of contextual issues that makes it difficult and painstaking to apply to today. I suspected that their “clearlies” were driven from our cultural nausea rather than Biblical thoroughness. Because it just wasn’t there. It’s only mentioned five times in all of Scripture. Although despite the lack of discussion of homosexuality in particular I still contend that the book affirms heterosexuality. And I am clearly not arguing any differently. I am pleading that we re-evaluate the way we think and talk about this topic. Let’s get rid of the overstatements because we all know that it is more complicated than that. Let’s face it this world is broken and complicated and we are the privileged ones who get to put up with it....

... I don’t want to ignore it and push it under the rug. I don’t want to secretly make fun of it and be scared of it when encountered. I want to confront it with truthfulness and goodness as God himself has intended sin to be confronted throughout all of human history. I want to confront it as modeled by the words and mantra of the homeless Messiah from Galilee . . . the true God dressed in our skin.

and it goes on from there, Eric's piece does, with good and challenging thoughts. I couldn't have said it better myself. In fact, I didn't. You can read the whole piece here.

Romans 1

2009-07-28T21:01:00.000-07:00

Here's another question:

How do both parties respond to homosexuality as mentioned towards the end of Romans 1?

In my last response to this morning's post, I alluded to the reality that people can read the same Bible and come to dramatically different conclusions. I was thinking of President Lincoln's second inaugural address when I mentioned that. Regarding the deep divide in America during the civil war, Lincoln said:

Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."

Lincoln understood, and so do I, that people read the same Bible and come to dramatically different conclusions, even while praying to the same God. What are we to make of this? As I stated in a previous post, hermeneutics isn't a "hard" science, with easily testable hypotheses. We get into trouble when we think that, through the exercise of our intellect alone, we can arrive, regarding every single passage of scripture, at a bombproof interpretation.

This breadth of interpretation is seen nowhere more clearly, perhaps, than in the first chapter of Romans, especially towards the latter half of the chapter. Men are burning with lust towards men, and women are burning with lust towards women. It's clear that this kind of behavior (there are others as well, no doubt far more convicting for most of us, which is why we tend to skip them and focus on same sex issues), is evidence that God's voice has been rejected. That's the point of the passage; the kinds of behaviors described are a thermometer of one's relationship with God.

I'm sitting in the woods as I write this, so have access to none of my resource books on ethics, etc. Perhaps its better that way. I can simply generalize. I'll begin by articulating the standard evangelical party line. It goes something like this:

"There it is, right there in Romans 1 - gays hate God. They're out there burning in their lust for one another, and Paul has just declared, unequivocally, that they're behaving this way because they hate God. Don't tell me that you can love God and be gay. That's not what MY Bible says."

This kind of thinking violates nearly every hermeneutic principle I set out a couple of days ago. This is the kind of teaching that leads to hatred instead of love and objectification instead of relationship. Using the scriptures to incite fear and hatred can only be described as heresy.

A significant contextual question must always be, "what would these words have meant to the original hearers?" I can promise you one thing; of all the possibilities available for speculation about that subject, the one thing that would never have entered the mind or heart of Paul was that he was condemning people living committed same sex unions. Here's why:

1. men with men, women with women, was the common phrasing for homosexual promiscuity, such as was common throughout the upper echelons of the Roman Empire. Did know that Julius Ceasar was known as, "Every woman's man" and "Every man's woman". Senators and interns back in the Roman hey day make the Governor of South Carolina look like a saint. I could write more with resources at hand, but in the forest, you'll have to trust me. When the original hearers absorbed those words, they most likely thought of the homosexual equivalent of our Mardi Gras festival. Yes, that is in fact, a sign of depravity. Any times sexuality objectifies another, using them for gratification without living in the reality of a comensurate commitment, it's depravity, gay or straight.

2. Paul wasn't condemning committed homosexual covenant relationships because they didn't exist, and of course, nobody condemns or forbids things that aren't even a possibility.

These two problems with the standard evangelical party line as it relates to Romans 1 are why I went to great lengths in a previous post to explain why I don't think someone who has same sex desires is inherently living in sin, any more than someone who has heterosexual leanings towards promiscuity and objectifying the opposite sex. Paul is going to great pains to show, in this particular instance, that the problem is the promiscuous behavior, not our longings.

So that's how I read these texts, at least that's how I read them when I'm in woods with nothing but a Bible in my hands. I know people will read them differently, people who love and pray to the same God. There are two kinds of good dialogue that can come from this.

The first is intellectual. Challenge my hermeneutic. Let others challenge yours. That's important. It's how our convictions are refined.

The second is more personal. I'm wondering how this dialogue sets with people, gay or straight, believing or not. If you're going to share something personal though, I hope it will be rooted in following the entire thread of the past few days.

thanks for your engagement in this discussion...

An answer, I hope in Truth and Grace

2009-07-28T07:41:00.000-07:00

A few more things...

As I shared last Wednesday evening, the conversation about this subject took place between people who agree that the Bible, not cultural trends, is our source of authority. Thus my answer to these questions will be rooted, I hope, in what I believe that the Holy Spirit is saying to the church through the Bible.

One more thing. Psalm 48:13 says that "This God is our God for ever and ever. He shall be our guide forevermore." Because God has made us free, we needn't agree with Psalm 48. We can say, "No thank you. I'll choose to find my guidance from... " and then we can fill in the blank with whatever seems to work for us. At the outset, I think it's important to share with you why I've chosen to say, "God is my guide."

My choice is rooted in the observation that God's precepts and principles have proven themselves, to me at least, to a be a life enhancing playing field. There are limits; fences. Our lives are circumscribed by God's truths as he invites us to live here (generosity for example) and not here (greed). We don't do it perfectly of course, which is why we need Christ. But though we fail, my own life story has led me to believe, after all these years, that God's playing field is, indeed, the place where life can best be lived. I'll hasten to add that playing on God's field most assuredly will lead to a life of self-denial and suffering at various points, for the reality is that I'm inexorably drawn to some of the values on the wrong side of the fence. In a fallen world, all my dreams won't come true. But I'll best be able to find my way by participating in a community that sees God's YES and God's NO as equally life enhancing and preserving.

Here are the questions:

How do you believe God views the union of two people of the same gender? Do you believe it is sinful even if monogamous, loving, and committed?

How can we as a church deny the experience of gay and lesbian Christians that feel called by the Holy Spirit to a covenant relationship? What does the church have to lose or gain by blessing same gender unions?

Let's begin by asking the question: "What does the church have to gain or lose by blessing same gender unions?" because I think everything else will flow from that.

What's at stake, and this isn't just an opinion, but a reality, is the hermeneutic principle that "historical orthodoxy" isn't to be lightly overturned. As I shared already, this doesn't mean that theologians of any particular moment in history shouldn't challenge existing interpretations, for if there were no challenge, many horrific attitudes and actions of the church would still be happening today. On the other hand, there's a real risk in our post-modern era to view the entire past as mistaken and approach theology today as if it's a blank slate, bringing all our 21st century biases to the table when trying to interpret the Bible. This is a huge mistake!

So, at the outset we need to realize that if the church were to bless same sex unions, it would overturn the overwhelming testimony of how the church has understood marriage. The article referenced in the previous article seems fairly accurate and, while not without problems, it is clear that, from Genesis to Jesus, to Paul, to the early church fathers, and then throughout the various arms of the church that have come about because of schisms, marriage has not had a provision for same sex unions within it.

This observation leads me to the another hermeneutic principle that is important for our discussion, namely the issue of looking for movement (such as we saw with dietary regulations). One can find movement on many important social issues, issues on which the church has ultimately moved. Woman were treated differently by Jesus than would have been considered normative in the Old Testament, and Paul made further movement still, acknowledging a female apostle, and declaring that "when a woman prophesies (a declaration carrying the very authority of God), she's to have her head covered". Similar movement is made on the issue of slavery.

However, when it comes to marriage, this movement is simply not there. God declares a reference point regarding what marriage is supposed to be in Genesis 2. Jesus refers back to the same reference point. So does Paul. This lack of movement is, in my world, a hugely important consideration. Like the flame and cloud that guided Israel, we need to be willing to move when God moves. But when that same cloud is stationary, we need to be stationary. The testimony of scripture doesn't indicate that humanity has held to God's reference point well at all.

This is the crux issue, much more than our respective interpretations of Biblical texts about homosexuality, or anything about the nature vs. nurture debate. To bless gay unions would require climbing too hermeneutic walls that simply seem too high: God's lack of movement on the issue, coupled with the church's lack of movement.

What this means:

The church must decide how seriously it takes marriage. Everything written above seems to confine sexual intimacy to two people in a marriage covenant. Surely such a playing field will lead to suffering for all of us. Straight singles need to wait until they're married. Married people need to release their demand for sexual intimacy at various points, due to health issues, weariness, travel, emotional hurdles, and more. Holding our sexuality in this way is an enormous challenge, but the fact that it's challenging isn't evidence that we've got the ethic wrong. I'll note, as I have before, that our collective failure here as heterosexuals is far more dangerous to society than how the smaller homosexual community holds their sexuality. It's an issue for all of us, but for society the impact of departure from God's reference point will be felt more by the departure of the 95% than the 5%.

The church must get over it's homophobia. If the conversation is out of the closet, then we can offer our friends a place at the table, a place in the pew, a place to pray, listen for God's voice, and know, albeit imperfectly, a sense of family and intimacy in this broken world. Some, I believe (because I've seen it), will come to experience a transformation enabling them to marry. Others won't. That's God's prerogative. But all will experience the embrace of a loving God.

I'll close simply by suggesting that, as Lauren Winner writes in her marvelous book, our sexuality isn't a private matter after all. In her book calling all Christians to either chastity or marriage, she observes that this ethic, far from intended to isolate is intended to drive us towards a greater sense of community. Further, she observes that our departures from this (which she believes to be God's ethic) has communitarian and cultural consequences. I agree. That's why the discussion about how all of us are to hold our sexuality is an important one.

Whew! I fear getting shot at from both sides on this one... but if you could know how much I wrestle with articulating this with truth and grace, perhaps you'll use blanks?

the foundation to answer the questions... part 1

2009-07-27T21:25:00.000-07:00

Context: Last Wednesday, four people from our church represented the debate between Tony and Peggy Campolo over the issue of whether the church should sanction same sex unions. I argued (and believe) Tony's position, which calls gays (see previous post for important definition) in Christ to celibacy and challenges the church to create hospitality, intimacy, support and family for them, while two gay friends argued (and believe) Peggy's position, which favors such unions.

However, we ran out of time to answer the all the questions that ensued, so I'm going to spend some time answering some questions that encapsulate much of what seemed to be left hanging. Because the week is full, I'm going to cast a couple of questions out there that are similar and offer one fuller answer to cover them both. Here are the questions:

How do you believe God views the union of two people of the same gender? Do you believe it is sinful even if monogamous, loving, and committed?

How can we as a church deny the experience of gay and lesbian Christians that feel called by the Holy Spirit to a covenant relationship? What does the church have to lose or gain by blessing same gender unions?

The answers to these questions flow from a prior question, one that wasn't asked on Wednesday night, but which pastors must ask each and every day. That question is: "what is your source of authority, your basis from which you derive your ethic?"

Of course, the simple answer would be "from the Bible of course!" and we might say it with a boldness and certainty that will silence all dissenters, as we deftly appeal to Leviticus, and then Exodus, and the Romans, and then I Corinthians, as a means of declaring: "God said it. I believe it. That settles it." You can discover here, why this notion is riddled with problems, but the short answer is that none of us simply read the Bible and apply its precepts in a wooden and literal way. If we did, we'd advocate the execution of all employees who work on Sunday (or perhaps Saturday, depending on your interpretation of the Sabbath - but of course, we don't interpret, we just read and obey). "All right then employees who work on the Sabbath, line up for execution."

Yes, that's both silly and sarcastic. But it's intended to demonstrate that we who declare that the Bible is God's "breathed word" to humanity and as such is our final authority on all matters of faith must still do the hard work of interpretation and application in order to live according to God's heart and revelation in this time and place. There's a "science" to this, called hermeneutics, and pastors/ theologians apply hermeneutic principles to the text to understand both what the text means and how to apply it.

The trouble of course, is that hermeneutics isn't quite as exact a science as, say, the addition and subtraction of whole numbers. There's a wide divergence of rules out there, and while I'll not get into the entire landscape, I'll tell you a few of the ones I use in order to work through ethical issues:

1. I always need to try and discover what the author's intent was when this was delivered to its intended audience. "Who wrote this book of the Bible? When? Why? What were people facing that caused this to be written? Who was the audience?" This is why we go to lengths to work out the context of any given passage. This context will naturally lead another question....

2. Are there precepts and principles that are applied uniquely to the original hearer's time and place? This is a lengthy and challenging discussion, but for now I'll simply say that there are times when I'll come to discover that a principle applied to only a certain time and place, such as when violators of the sabbath were to be executed. They might fine you if you try and open your shop on Sunday in some tiny Austrian village, but they won't kill you! Some precepts don't last. There are other times when it's clear that the precept or principle applies down to this day, such as the covenant made with Noah which, among others things, declares that government is better than anarchy.

3. Is there movement on an issue? This is a fascinating discussion (at least, for Bible geeks like me) because it turns out that there IS movement on a number of issues. Dietary laws were declared here, and then they changed here, and then they changed again here, and then they changed again here, and then they changed again here. The upshot of this is that I'm not about to preach on vegetarianism any time soon using Genesis 1:29 since that is "soooo yesterday." There's movement too on some other issues, which I'll cover tomorrow, even as I address the central question of this conversation, namely whether or not there's movement on the issue of homosexuality.

4. What has the church said? When interpretations get challenging, as they do, it's important to remember that we're presently holding the torch for one short leg of a long race that has been faithfully run by millions before us, some of whom paid for the preservation of truth with their blood. For this reason, "historical orthodoxy" matters a great deal to me. You probably realize that I'm not at all implying that there's never a time to stand up to "mother church". Indeed, a quick survey of church history's landscape indicates that we got it wrong a lot of the time. I'd suggest, though, that just as there's a real danger in blindly following an ignorant church as it sanctions slavery, and crusades, and the notion that the sun rotates around the earth, there's an equal (and in our age, perhaps greater) danger of dismissing 2000 years of church ethics because of something Freud said, or because some new study has come along. Yes, there are times to overturn, and those who resist any movement at all imply that the bride of Christ is already perfect, a notion unsupported by scripture. However, changing an ethical stance shouldn't be done lightly, and I happen to be under the conviction that in most cases, it shouldn't be done alone either. So there you have it; some principles to guide the answers to the questions. Unfortunately it's 10:30 and I need to do some other e-mails and reading before sleep wins out, so the next post will bring these principles to bear on the Scriptures that I use to answer the two questions.

How to talk about homosexuality....

2009-07-24T08:55:00.001-07:00

"I'm gay, OK?"

Well, no, not me. But those are words I hear; maybe because I'm a pastor, maybe because my ministry is urban, maybe because I work with young adults around the world. That opening line usually leads to ensuing conversations, hearing someone's story of their struggle with sexuality. Because of my position as a pastor though, the conversation isn't limited to sexual struggles; it's about sexuality and faith, and how the two are integrated, or whether they can be integrated.

Before you stone me, or label me as a heretic for even having this conversation, I hope you'll read a little further because I'm convinced that part of the reason this has become such an inflammatory issue is because the word "gay", or "homosexual" doesn't have an agreed upon definition. For example...

When I say, "I'm heterosexual" for example, you presume that to mean that I, a male, am sexually attracted to women, not men. Yes, that's right. However, you most likely don't make any other assumptions. You don't presume that I'm addicted to pornography, or have multiple partners, or sleep around. You don't presume that promiscuity is my favorite form of recreation. Your assumption is, rightly, limited to the reality that I'm attracted to members of the opposite sex.

However, when you hear someone say, "I'm homosexual", I'm guessing that some of you don't bring that same limited definition to the table. You presume the person to be sexually active, presume promiscuity, presume all kinds of destructive sexual practices, presume that the "gay pride" lifestyle (whatever you think that is) is the lifestyle of the person speaking to you, simply because they said, "I'm gay."

What if "I'm gay" were limited, by definition to this: "I'm attracted to members of the same sex"? If that were true, then one could be gay and celibate. One could be gay and agree entirely with the Bible's admonition that sexual activity isn't recreation, that promiscuity isn't an option.
Could one even be "gay", according to this limited definition, and know Christ?

The overwhelming testimony of the Bible is that God has called us to sexual fidelity, to limit our expressions of sexual intimacy to our partner, with whom we've made a life long commitment.
Who is reading this who hasn't, at the very least, been tempted to depart from this? Heterosexuals are tempted to infidelity, promiscuity, fornication. They get aroused by people other than their partner. But of course, Jesus has reminded us, more than a few times, that temptation is different than sin. The reality that Jesus was tempted in all things, yet sinless, reminds us of this.

So there you have it. Someone is attracted to men instead of women, or vice versa. He/she, finds someone attractive. They're tempted. It's not a state of being that should result in pre-emptive, wholesale condemnation, any more than you should judge a man who, on seeing a woman, is tempted to turn her into an object for his use. I mean, temptation is temptation, gay or straight. There she is. Short skirt. Heels. Attractive. I wonder? .... oops. Back to reality. It happened. He was tempted. Just like Jesus. Is he condemned for that? If so, Jesus too is guilty.

So, the next time someone says, "I'm gay", please try to limit your understanding to this: "I'm attracted to people of the same sex". Otherwise, I'll expect that, when you hear this from them and pre-emptively judge them to be promiscuous, that you'll judge me the same way.

I know there are questions and comments about the capacity to change one's gender orientation. I'll note that I know people who have changed (not in the sense that they don't still struggle with same sex attraction from time to time, but in the sense that they're now married, with children, happily so), and believe change to be possible. I'll also note that I know people who tried desperately to change, through therapy, counseling, exorcism of demons, fasting, and more. Their failure to change resulted in despondancy and even temptation to suicide, because when you're assured that you can 'change' and then nothing happens in spite of your prayers and efforts, you wonder if God hates you, wonder if life's worth living. So we can neither absolutize the possibility of change, nor entirely negate it. A better paradigm is this: "God is calling all of us to an ongoing journey of transformation, born out of intimacy with Christ." Of this we can be certain.

We had a discussion on Wednesday evening at our church, using the debate between Tony Campolo and his wife as a context for bringing the topic of homosexuality and faith "out of the closet" so to speak. I won't get into the content of the debate right here. I'll only say that, more important than the content of the debate between two pastors and two gay friends, was the spirit of the debate - a spirit of mutual respect, dialogue, listening to each other, even as we disagree over the issue of gay-covenant relationships. I hope it was a dialogue embodying grace and truth.

Such a dialogue, I believe, can only happen, when the words, "I'm gay, OK" aren't weighed down with a boatload of presuppositions about that person's behavior, resulting in pre-emptive condemnation. Maybe, if we can take the statement at face value, and begin diaolgue and relationships, then the kind of transforming work God wants to do in all of us can continue.

NOTE: Next week, I'll be posting some questions that arose from our Wednesday evening discussion. Feel free to post, but with this post, and the few ensuing ones regarding this subject, I'm going to ask that you NOT post annonymously. I'll sweep the site and remove annonymous posts because if we're going to speak the truth, we should also have the courage to walk in the light. Pray with me that such a dialogue, even online, will help us all better understand the heart of God.

Rainy Sabbath

2009-07-23T20:54:00.000-07:00

A small respite between activities.

I need to breathe

Ethics Series, Weddings, Funerals, Sermons, Studies, Vision, Leadership, Counseling, Budget Season, e-mails, board meetings, writing projects - these are all good, but the cumulative effect is...

I need to breathe

I drive north in the afternoon traffic, beating rush hour by a breath. Death Cab, Cold Play, and some 60's stuff perform until north of Mt. Vernon. Then it's worship music, the kind hip Christians, and emergent Christians don't like. Though I know that the cool people get wry smiles when they hear music like this, I'm not cool. So Rich Mullins songs about peace, and some worship band I met from Phoenix singing about God's trustworthiness, with a little Sufjan thrown in, and some other stuff by artists I don't know - these all work for me, remind me that God is good, and that serving Him is meaningful.

I take a breath.

The words wash over me all the way to the writing cabin.

Dinner, made by my hands: grilled onions and mushrooms, spinach with garlic, beef, and a glass of milk.

Clouds gather.

I eat, pondering the fullness of the week - Zechariah, and the encounters of Sunday; last night's wonderful time in our summer ethics series (more later); a breakfast meeting today with old friends to prepare for a funeral this Saturday (his mother passed away); wedding preparations for Saturday night; the realization that life marches on, that the days are growing shorter. That it's good, very good, to be alive.

It's raining.

Bach displaces the worship music -- err, not really. A change of genre yes, but still worship.

"Welcome rain. Wash over me."

I'm breathing again.

Home tomorrow to begin a very full weekend.

"thank you God, for the gift of Sabbath"

Some sins are worse...

2009-07-21T07:29:00.000-07:00

There's a sort of "party line" when it comes to sin that says, "sin is sin. It doesn't matter what form it takes, it's rebellion, death, darkness." The party line will quote Galatians and note that if someones stumbles in one point of the law, their failure is total. They'll explain, as I did this past Sunday, that "you can be in a cathedral or a brothel and be in rebellion towards God" implying that all sin is the same.

Um... not really. Yes, all sin is rooted in our rejecting of intimacy with our creator, our desire to go it on our own. Yes, all sin is destructive. But even a cursory reading of gospels indicates that Jesus was patient with some who were living in sin, while he raged against others, seemingly showing now mercy.

He's patient, for example, with sexual sin, as he reaches out to the woman in John 4 who's living with her lover after several failed marriages. Let's not forget the woman caught in adultery in John 8, or the woman busting into Simon's party.

He also seems patient with shady tax dealings, though in His case the shady figure with whom he's dealing isn't a tax evader, but an IRS agent. Violence? His own disciples want to reign down fire on the people who don't like Jesus, and one of cuts a guy's ear off when Jesus is being arrested in the garden. They'd make good radio preachers, and even in this Jesus shows remarkable restraint, as he does with the false confidence of those same disciples later on. Through of this, Jesus shows patience and compassion.

On the other hand, in Mark 7:6-7, Jesus shows no mercy and compassion when he exposes the thing that He hates most of all: hypocrisy. He quotes Isaiah, as he says that the religious leaders are the worst sinners of all because their actions on the outside don't correspond to who they really are. They're acting a part, playing the role of holiness while on stage, in front of people. the word hypocrite comes from the Greek word meaning, "actor", and it becomes clear through Jesus ministry that this sin is the worst sin of all.

The reason this sin is exposed by Jesus as the worst sin is because this is the sin that will prevent people from experiencing transformation. What happens when hypocrisy becomes ingrained in us? We make a pact with duplicity. We invariably place ourselves on the moral high ground, seeing the failures and shortcomings of others with 20/20 vision, while being blind to our own garbage. Do this long enough, and you begin to actually believe that you are the part that you're playing on stage - the holy one. This play acting disgusts Jesus.

Of course, anyone can play act, but it becomes increasingly easy to do so, the longer you hang out with church people, and the higher you climb in Christian social circles. In fact, it even seems that there's a subtle wicked synergy that can happen when Christians are together. We're sorely tempted to put on our show in a similar way that I'd never consider going to a Sounder Soccer game without wearing my Sounder shirt. It's as if, subtly, our collective gatherings become the stage for a religious play, and our real selves get left at the door. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but even if this only happens a little bit, that little bit is hypocrisy, the one thing God hates most of all.

A friend of mine recently wrote, "Jesus did not die for Christians, nor for Atheists, nor for Hindus, Buddhists, or Muslims. Jesus died exclusively for sinners." We nod in hearty agreement. We shout "Amen". But unless I actually stop performing, and come to Jesus, not as a religious hero, but as a sinner, I can't come to Jesus at all.

The good news in this is that I'm suddenly freed from performing. No longer needing to put on my religious clothing for the religious game, I can be honest to God - with my failures, my doubts, my weariness, and the darkness of my heart.

The bad news is that, if everyone else is wearing their game shirt, I'm going to feel a little awkward with my plain old clothing. But the fraternity of the awkward is, strangely enough, where Jesus delights to hang out. He calls it, "outside the camp", where the designer labels of Christian performance aren't seen.

What does this mean for church life? For worship services? For your own walk with God? I'm very interested in your thoughts.

Growing Old with God

2009-07-18T19:18:00.001-07:00

I call my mom tonight, both to say hello, and to talk to her about her upcoming party in September. You see, she's turning 90, which means that she grew up in the great depression, married in the midst of the war, and raised my sister and I in the midst of Kennedy's assassination, Vietnam, and Watergate. She lost her first child at birth, and in the process nearly lost her life, leaving her without the capacity to bear children. It was because of this that my sister and I were adopted into the Dahlstrom family and heritage. Her husband's multiple childhood bouts with pneumonia would lead him to an early death, and my adopted sister would die at the age of 43, leaving only my mom and I for the past 14 years.

All of this is the backdrop for what happened when we talked tonight. In preparation for her party, I said, "do you have any favorite Bible verses mom?" She left the phone for moment and returned with her Bible.

"Yes, let's see" she said, as she opened her Bible and began recounting her favorite verses. "Of course, there's Matthew 6:21" she said, and Hebrews 1:1-3. II Timothy 3:16 is about the Bible being sufficient and breathed by God. James 4:10-11 reminds me to be humble. II Peter 3:18 reminds me to keep growing in Christ. Of course, there's Colossians 2:6-9 as well." Then there was a pause before she said, "But my favorite is Isaiah 26:3: 'Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee'. Of course, that's my favorite verse, if I could only pick one."

By this time tears are streaming down my face; tears born of gratitude and compassion for this woman who raised me. Don't mistake this for hollow sentimentalism. I remember a lot more than family devotions growing up. I remember baseball games and blowouts, celebrations and family meltdowns, uproarious laughter and seething silence. There's no mirage of perfection in the rear view mirror. What there is, though, is a sense that I was chosen into a family where both parents allowed, at least in some measure, the reality of God to bleed into their daily living. They read their Bibles. They gave money away. They served their neighbors. They attended church and took my sister and I as well.

You don't know, as a kid, if the whole thing is a pretentious show, a cultural trapping, an environment for business connections, or the real deal. But mom's endured the death of her first child, the death of her husband, and the death of her oldest adoptive child. At 75 and still working for the city, she bought a four door car so that she could drive to the rest home in order to pick up the "old people" and take them to church. Now, nearing 90, she's pretty much confined to her room.

But when I ask her if she has a favorite Bible verse, and she can rattle off half a dozen of them as she thumbs through her well worn Bible, I know that this wasn't a show for her. This was the real deal.

Sometimes I grow weary of emergent cynicism, and post-modern arrogant deconstructions. Though I understand that every piece of this fallen world (every person, every family, every nation, every church, every spouse, every parent, every neighbor) will reveal scar tissue if we look closely enough, I also know there's a lot of grace and unspectacular obedience to Jesus floating around out there that's somehow being missed. But the world views born of this one dimensional fixation on doubt and failure depress me.

This is why Mom's answer to the simple request for a favorite Bible verse was a breath of fresh air. "Thank God" I found myself thinking, "that there are still reminders in this world that people have whethered immense storms and come through, not perfectly, but with enough wholeness that, as their 90th birthday approaches, their love for Jesus Christ shines through with greater clarity than ever."

What do these stones mean to you?

2009-07-13T06:32:00.000-07:00

In a few hours Donna and I will return to Seattle, but before heading to the airport I wanted to write a bit about our time in Washington DC. I was out east to do a wedding, but it's hard to spend time in this city without digesting our American heritage and history. Moving from monument to monument, taking in not only the words carved in stone, but observing the families and generations absorbing our national history, reminded me of several truths:

1. There's value in memorial stones. I watch a mom explain to her young son how her grandfather fought in WWII. The marvelous memorial for this war, recently added to our national treasures, offers etchings of various scenes from both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters of conflict. These brass works of art tell the story, from the attack on Pearl Harbor, to the landing at Normandy, from the building of planes to the medical and pastoral responsibilities of support teams. Better than words, these etchings provide talking points so that, just as in the day of Joshua, when children ask "what do these stones mean?", parents can offer a ready answer and pass the story down from one generation to another.

I was struck with the importance of story, and reminded that I'm not only part of national story, but part of a long story of God's working in history. In the same way that our nation has done a marvelous job of keeping the story alive and passing it on through stones, we too need to find ways of sharing the story in which we find ourselves, so that children, youth, and adults, can see the grand working of God in history and respond to the invitation to take up the mantle of serving for their generation. These monuments ignited a question in me: How do we, as followers of Christ, create memorial stones? How do we share the story?

2. Words matter. I took dozens of pictures of stones into which the words of Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt and others were carved. (See some of these words and other pictures here) I'm reminded that, while it is through story that we share the "what" of our history, it is through words that we share the "why". The ideals of our nation are memorialized in stone, and it's vital that, as citizens of this land, we become steeped deeply in these ideals, for they ought to govern our values and priorities; they ought to become the basis for our actions. Likewise, as people of faith, it's not enough to share the stories of God's workings in history, and how God has used people. It's vital that we share the words, the "heart of God", the "ideals of God", for without these critical doctrines, the stories float, without mooring, through our souls. At best, they can only offer shallow inspiration; at worst, the stories of God without the heart of God can become the basis for perpetrating horrific crimes on humanity, as is often seen through fundamentalists like Rev. Phelps.

3. Our nation is honest. Perhaps what was most heartening about my visit to DC was the fact that our nation displays not only our high ideals and glorious triumphs, but our failures, our lapses in judgment, and our ethical dilemmas. One museum dispalys not only tokens of heroism and sacrifice, but also the tragedies and ambiguities of Vietnam, and a letter to president Reagan from a soldier refusing a medal of honor because of atrocities committed in Central America at the hands of America. The American Indian museum is open and honest about the great struggles our Native Americans have endured at the hands of our government. That our country openly displays not only our strength, but our weakness, is part of what makes me deeply proud of my country, for it is in humility and honesty that a ruler will be exalted!

4. Cynicism isn't helpful. It's easy for me to become cynical about our American government, and the reasons for that ease could fill a book. I've been reminded this weekend, though, that our collective calling will never lead us upward towards our national potential unless we deeply ponder the ideals of liberty, freedom, accountability, generosity, and hope, on which our country was founded. It's easy to throw stones. It's much harder to offer solutions. But solutions begin with the vision upon which we were founded. And both as the people of God, and the people of America, this is our time - the torch is in our hands.

The shore or the river...

2009-07-06T08:31:00.001-07:00

This morning's reading from the "Divine Hours" (my guide for morning prayer) speaks of God's advocacy of behalf of the poor needy. My initial reaction is to say, "Really? Advocacy? Has God been to Sudan lately? Or Palestine? Has he seen the tents under the viaduct in Seattle, or on the outskirts of Fresno?"

I continue down this path of skepticism and challenge to God's declared truth until I think to myself, "I'd better stop thinking this way, or else I'm going to start doubting everything" as if I'm in a raft, headed towards a waterfall. I desperately paddle for the shore by looking for some way of harmonizing declarations like these with my experience. "Ah, the poor" I say to myself; "they're poor because..." and then I complete the sentence with any number of assessments I've heard down through the years about poverty: things about laziness, and corruption, unbelief, and deficient political systems. I'll throw in a praise chorus or two about how God blesses those who love Him and suddenly realize that I'm no longer being swept towards the edge, but am paddling safe in a theological eddy.

Comfortably resting at the ideological shore, no longer doubting God's word, I catch my breath. As I recover from the scare, I realize that, while there's safety on the shore, this is a place that's bothering me. It's bothering me because, when I'm honest, I realize that the answers that got me here are lies and generalizations. I look back to the river and see that there are hundreds of rafts heading towards the waterfall and plunging over. They're filled with people living in tent cities, or refugee camps, or dumps outside Manila and Delhi.

Slowly, it dawns on me that I'm not alone on the shore. I'm there with millions of others who, like me, have answered the hard questions with insufficient answers, answers that are ultimately justifications for the unconscionable gap between the rich and poor of this world. Those on the shore can find a treatment for every ailment and even for things that aren't, from erectile dysfunction to undersized breasts. Those stuck on the river can't afford aspirin or shoes, and have no access to clean water.

My answers plague me as insufficient, and so I cry out to God: "Why aren't you doing something?"
"Because you're my body" replies the Voice, "and you're sitting on the shore."

Appalled at the rightness of His answer, I protest: "Look at the risk! If I jump in..."

"Yes, I know, but jumping in is what I do. Unless, that is, my body is in rebellion, refusing the respond to its own head. That kind of paralysis is personally disabling. What's worse though, is that, stuck on the shore, my body's refusal to be where I want it to be is killing millions."

We who are on the shore are singing. We're reading our Bibles. We're arguing about Calvinism and debating whether the future of the church is "house", "emergent", or "mega." But the arguments are happening on the shore while 30 thousand children a day drop over the edge of the falls.

Make no mistake; the river IS risky. Sometimes people in the river get killed. Standing for justice gets people tossed in jail sometimes or worse, branded as a heretic. That's why the shore is so heavily populated these days. There's campfires and kum-by-yah.

I don't know where I'm going with this metaphor (this is, after all a blog of "musings"). I suppose I'm trying to paint a picture that says, "Sure, we all need to moments on the shore to catch our breath and restore our strength. But I began by wondering why Jesus isn't helping the poor, and the answer, of course, is that He will, but only to the extent that His body, the church is listening to Him, and responding. This is Wes and Heather serving in Bolivia. This Walter. He's in Ghana. This is Spilling Hope, a water project for Africa.

Don't get too comfortable on the shore. Jesus wants his body in the river.

Shooting the moon

2009-07-04T08:08:00.000-07:00

"We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assurdly, we shall all hang separately" Benjamin Franklin.

Our celebrations today are rooted in a the grand experiment of democracy that took root these two plus centuries ago. It was nothing less than a full blown rebellion against existing power structures, nothing less than treason. No matter whether the ideology underpinning the revolution was just or unjust; it was rebellion, cessation, and as such would, of course be challenged.

Though there is much for which we're grateful here in America, and many ideals at which we marvel, perhaps the most amazing attitude of our founding fathers was their commitment to shoot the moon, going for broke in pursuit of the profound vision that undergirded their cause. Treason, you see, can't be taken by baby steps; it's an all or nothing proposition.

That "shooting the moon" willingness to risk everything in pursuit only works when, running parallel to that spirit is a commitment to doing whatever needs to be done in order to reach the goal. This "whatever it takes" spirit has, more than once, seen America through challenging days: civil war, a great depression, a late entry into the 2nd world war that required all of our nation's collective ingenuity and diligence, and more. We demonstrated that same attitude when, only a few years after the first manned space launch, we declared that we would put a man on the moon in less than 10 years. And we did.

Today we'll gather with friends, eat big, and enjoy blowing things up. We'll celebrate because, woven into the fabric of our national origin, is a willingness to risk, and a commitment to do whatever it takes to get the job done. Let's celebrate those qualities in a big way, thanking God for the privileges that have accrued because of how they've been applied to the high ideals of democracy. As well, let's commit ourselves to the responsibilities that come with privilege: commit to generosity, justice for all, being a blessing.

We need, though, to do more than celebrate. We need to recover that same spirit. "Yes we can" our president says. I hope so. In the midst of crises too numerous to mention, it seems that the paradigm of our leaders has less to do with "Yes we can change the world" than, "Yes we can get re-elected, by giving money away, and refusing to call for the collective sacrifices needed to address the enormous challenges of our day." Thus it is that, with each passing day, massages made to energy and health legislation are shape shifting them towards irrelevance.

Boldness is our heritage. So is sacrifice. All the changes that are needed in order to address the pressing needs require these elements of our national DNA. And more than any legislation, it's this DNA that is in need of recovery as we celebrate today

Focus on the Dysfunctional Family

2009-07-01T06:43:00.000-07:00

I was talking with a friend yesterday and we were pondering the reasons why Christian marriages are statistically as strong or weak as marriages among people with no faith. I wonder if you any of you know whether research has been done in this arena that's available, either a commercial book or a thesis? If so, I'd be grateful to hear about the resources.

Lacking such resources, we were pondering that the Christian marriage has a lot going for it on the positive side, in that the believer's marriage is a vocation from God to display Christ and church, and it's a covenant, intended to permanent. They also have at their disposal the power the resources of revelation from the Scriptures, and the power of the Holy Spirit. Finally, they have this calling to live as people of grace, forgiving one another as they've been forgiven in Christ.

In light of these pluses, why would Christian marriages be as likely to fail as non-Christians? The only thing I can imagine is that these positives are either unappropriated by the Christians, or that there are some negatives in the Christian mindset/culture canceling out the positives. Here are some of the possible negatives I see in my pastoral world:

1. We're less grace filled than we ought to be. Depending on the denominational flavor, Christian communities can often be, of places, the place most terrifying to be authentic with struggle and failure. Since our message is that God transforms lives, there's a subtle pressure to always be displaying the upside of our transformation: "Yes... I was a failure, I previously struggled with addiction, lust, anger, greed -- but that done now because of Jesus" This can be a tempting declaration or persona, even if it's not true, because admitting one's failures can make one the subject of gossip.

2. If we're less grace filled than we ought to be, then in our lack of authenticity, we become more isolated, and our isolation cuts us off from the relational resources we need in order to sustain our marriages.

3. The misunderstanding of gender roles in marriage (I'll not tackle this today... too many meetings) leads to domestic violence in marriages, and woman's loss of authentic identity. Just as male headship has been abused, and unhealthy reaction to that abuse has also created a pendulum swing, so that our spiritual vocation as husband and wives is drowning in a sea of social confusion.

4. We don't actually appropriate the resources of God's truth and the Holy Spirit's empowerment that I listed as assets above. Lacking these resources, we only have the higher call, but less tools to get us there, resulting in more failures!

I could go on, but I'm running late this morning. I'm wondering if some of you might help me by offering your own thoughts and resources to the conversation. I'll contribute first by encouraging you to read this article in the NY Times, and this page offering a host of tools and practical advice for marriage improvement.

Beat it...off the front page

2009-06-29T16:39:00.000-07:00

I tried to watch the news a little bit this weekend, but it was challenging to find any real news. Though cities in Iraq are seeing upticks in violence, and North Korea is making rumblings about the launching test rockets in the direction of Hawaii, all I could find on the airwaves were speculations about Michael Jackson's death, and intrigue over the notion that a plain spoken governor from South Caroline could score with an Argentinian lover. It's as if, starving for vegetables and protein, we're offered nothing but the intellectual equivalent of cotton candy.

This is the diet, of course, because the reality is that most people want cotton candy for supper, and that's the real problem. That we idolize sports stars is bad enough, though they at least have their very own stations and commentators obsessing over their drug charges, affairs, contract disputes, whinings, and even occasionally, their on field performance. But musicians and movie stars, especially those few whose talents or quirks put them in the rarified stratosphere of global fame, these few become the centerpiece of our national attention whenever their life takes a turn or comes to a close.

That we are so intrigued with the lives of high profile people says something about our culture; I'm just not sure what it is. Why might we know more about the drugs in MJ's body than the implications of a potentially seismic shift in how health care is run in our country? Why is hard for high school seniors from either coast to find Chicago on a map, yet easy to name all the Jonas brothers and what they like to eat for breakfast?

I have a few theories about the trivialization of culture:

1. Our lives are too boring, and thus we're drawn to excitment beyond ourselves. The industrial age has created hoards of people who hate their jobs. To the extent that my own life lacks thrill, perhaps the extraordinary lives of others become a form a sustenance. Michael Jackson was certainly "extra-ordinary" in the truest sense of the word.

2. Vicarious living is easier.

3. Voyeurism is fun.

4. Entertainment figures provide comfortable diversion from challenging realities, and since comfort is more pleasant than challenge, the news of entertainers is preferrable to the news of economic and political challenges.

5. Being culturally literate is important.

These elements, in combination, seem to be the soil in which is fascinations and obsessions with pop icons grows, even as our engagement with more important matters diminishes. What needs to happen to shift the paradigm? Can it be shifted? Should it?

Please don't misread me. Michael Jackson, like Mozart, was a brilliant, creative, tortured artist, who shifted the culture of his day dramatically. The world should mourn his loss. But to elevate his death, and obsession with the details of his death to the level of front page and first story for days on end seems, in a world where 30 thousand children die each day of treatable diseases, misguided.

Health Care - a revelation of ideology vs morality

2009-06-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

It's a long story, a side-track really, so I won't lead you too far down this rabbit trail, which is really more of a confession about my exercise habits. About a year ago, I discovered something called "cross fit", which is mostly about an exercise philosophy that says, "mix it up - don't just jog around the lake every day. Lift some weights. Do some squats. Play tennis. Climb. Jump rope. And importantly, don't just jog, sprint. In fact, sprint up hills!"

"Yes", I say to myself, "jogging is from Satan. After all, look at how sore I am after running around the lake, three times a week, year after year. I'm finished with this nonsense! Instead I'll do what the cross fit people say to do: some lifting here, some sprinting there, an occasional climb."

Well, one year later I'm here to tell you that the easy part was giving up jogging. I mastered that in the first week. That's right; no more mind numbing repetitive exercises for me. Instead I'll be...well, here's the confession part: I'll be either sleeping, or watching TV, or being sedentary in some other way; anything but getting out and doing these short bursts of intensive exercise that are supposed to be so good for you. Actually getting my butt out the door to do these other health giving things is, in fact, much harder than the simple act of declaring that such things are good for me.

The problem, you see, isn't in what I say I believe. The problem is that what I actually believe is revealed, not by what I say, but by what I do. What I say I believe, when the day is done, doesn't matter at all. The coffee shop discussions about justice, poverty, simple living, worship, church life, and sexual ethics might all serve the purpose of helping us clarify where we ought to be going. But unless we go there, the ideology we say a believe becomes an anesthetic, numbing my soul to our own lack of moral fiber.

It wouldn't be so bad if this were only a personal problem. Instead, the evidence is that this is THE problem that prevents so much that is good from ever taking root in our lives, our families, our nations. We confuse our own rhetoric with reality, declaring to ourselves and others that because we have good intentions, we're good.

Nowhere is this more visible at this moment, than in the present health care discussion occurring in congress. We all agree that it's deplorable that our nation spends more per capita on health care than any nation in the developed world, but ranks lower in life expectancy, and higher in infant mortality than most of the nations on the chart. It's sickening that this is the only developed nation in the world where people lose their life savings, retirement income, and homes for a single surgery. Did you know that 18,000 people die each year in our country of treatable diseases?

David Brooks, my favorite conservative journalist, exposes the shame and posturing on both side of the political aisle that will, I'm afraid, ultimately create an emasculated bill, failing to deal with the real issues of cost controls. A bi-partisan proposal that begins by taxing health benefits has been pronounced 'dead on arrival' by those with the power to kill it, even though it has bi-partisan support and will serve to create a real alternative without driving America further into the cave of bankruptcy. You can, and should, read about it here.

Instead, all alternative plans on the table face the challenge of either being too expensive, or too narrowly focused, to be effective in fixing the problem. The Wyden/Bennett plan taxes health care benefits because, and this may come as a surprise to some senators, FIXING HEALTH CARE WILL BE EXPENSIVE. That this fundamental reality is lost on some politicians, as well as millions of Americans, is astonishing to me. In Europe and Canada, people are taxed at much higher levels, and nationalized health care keeps costs (and negatively, some would say, availability) under control, but grants access to 'basic health care' for all people. It's a solution - but it costs taxpayers money, rather than resorting to the treasury's printing presses again.

Unfortunately, nobody wants to pay. So the collective leadership are presently talking a good game, declaring their ideals for affordable health care. But early on in the discussion it's clear that what is meant is this: let's find a way to gain all the benefits of muscle mass without that sweaty nasty thing called excerise. Let's find a way to eat sugar coated 'fried muckos' for breakfast, while lowering our cholestoral and blood sugar. Preaching good health while they dine on moral doughnuts, our leaders are marching the health care initiative to an early grave.

thirsting for coffee with God

2009-06-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

"If any man is thirsty, let Him come to me and drink..." Of course, it's a bit of a rhetorical statement, offered as it was at a time whenon demand faucets and indoor plumbing hadn't yet been invented, and offered in a place that regular saw temperatures above 100, (or 30 if you're Canadian). Of course they're thirsty. The words of Jesus aren't really words about thirst; the thirst part is presupposed.

The real heart of the statement is that when you're thirsty, you're to come and drink of Jesus. Now, I love metaphor as much as most people (save some geeky poet friends), but there are times when Jesus' words frustrate me no end. He talks about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. What's that supposed to mean? When His mom comes looking for Him, he turns to the crowd and says, "Who is my mother?" as if He's forgotten what she looks like. And now this: "if you're thirsty, come and drink of me." Unlike some of the most popular parables, Jesus never took the disciples aside in the back room and explained this thirst metaphor. He just hung it out there for us to embrace and practice without offering a stitch of explanation.

While this frustrates me, it's also true that these open ended statements are part of what makes the Bible live for every generation. Because everything's not spelled out, we need to wrestle with it, pray about it, talk about it, contextualize it, and hold our answers with enough boldness to explain why believe them, and enough humility to discard them when more light shines on our convictions and shows us we need to shift. So, realizing that we don't have the privilege of Jesus sidebar interpretation, here's how this living word has been speaking to me lately:

First of all, I reiterate that the issue isn't whether or not I'm thirsty; thanks be to God I am, and most of the time. I thirst for intimacy in my marriage, meaning in my work, healing of my soul, authentic relationships with my adult children. I thirst to be informed by truth and grace as I fulfill my responsibilities of a shepherd. I thirst for sanity in world, peace, justice, beauty, hope.

If those were the limits of my thirsts then learning to drink from Jesus would be simple because these are good thirsts and a good drink will quench a good thirst. My problem, though, is that interwoven with those few noble thirsts are lots of other things, uglier things. I thirst to be adored, to be left alone, to be comfortable, to be so wealthy and secure that I need never depend on anyone again, least of all God. I thirst for relational autonomy way too often. I thirst for the stimulation of the city, and the beauty of the mountains. I thirst to expand my sphere of influence, and to move to the middle of nowhere, where I can fish, cook, climb, and be the master of my own universe.

What a mess of thirsts! And herein lies the hope of Jesus words, the point for me at which they begin to make sense. It's encouraging that Jesus doesn't moralize about my thirsts, casting judgement on my desires. I can already hear some of you accusing me of heresy here, but don't light the fire yet. For too many centuries, the church has wrongly assessed that our problems stem from our desires. But I can't find Jesus running around ranting about our desires anywhere in the gospels, even the non-canonical ones!

Instead, His invitation is related to what we do when the pangs of any thirst are born in our hearts, never mind whether the thirst comes from our wounded, rebellious soul, or our deepest longings for the world God created. In both cases the admonition is the same: if you're thirsty, come to Jesus. This is profoundly liberating for me because I'm learning to link my relationship with Jesus with all my thirsts, not just my healthy ones, but the unhealthy ones too.

It's also counterintuitive. The gnawing unhealthy thirsts tell me that they won't be satisfied with anything less than an unhealthy beverage, the soul equivilant of a monster slurpee when what I really need is fresh squeezed OJ. Of course, this is where faith comes in. This is where I'm learning to interact with Jesus and find some measure of satisfaction in Him, both when I'm thirsting for healthy intimacy, and when I'm lusting for pleasure or escape. Somehow, the turning to Christ in the midst of my unhealthy thirsts has the effect of changing my appetites; not instantly, and not entirely, but subtly and slowly. Thanks be to God, I'm slowly losing my appetite for soul slurpees.

The methodology Jesus had mind for "drinking of Him" remains a mystery because I don't think He had a methodology in mind. He wants us to wrestle with this stuff. For me, a born and bred Baptist, it's taken nearly half a century to discover that this "drinking of Christ" works best for my sould when I pray daily prayers from a book like this one, which is a decidedly non-Baptist practice. "Coffee with God" is what I call it, and it's become increasingly important to my mornings, not in a legalistic way, but in some sort of better way. It entails brewing a pot of French Press and then sitting (outside or in, depending on seasons) with Jesus as I pray the daily prayers, drawn from the Psalms, and pour out my heart. I do this because of all my thirsts, and for this reason, I'm learning to thank God for this holy and unholy juxtaposition of desires because together they lead me to the water of Christ I'd never have found if I weren't thirsty.

Tash Talking: Musings on Universalism

2009-06-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

This summer our church is doing a series called "Theological Cliffs" whereby we delve into some of the more controversial doctrines of famous theologians like CS Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Simone Weill, and others. The Lewis controversy resides in his doctrine of salvation, specifically the question of "What must a person do to be saved?" In particular, Lewis' position is provocative to evangelicals because of some veiled hints in "The Great Divorce" that everyone might be saved, and because of the following quote from "The Last Battle" in his "Chronicles of Narnia" series.

In this story, a soldier goes through something analagous to the doorway of death. The soldier has served a god named Tash all his life, and he comes upon the great Lion named Aslan, who represents Christ...

"in a naorrow place between two rocks there came to me a great lion. the speed of him like an ostrich, and the size of him was an elepnat's; his har was like pure gold and the brightness of his eyes, like god that is liquid in the furnace. In beauty he surpassed anything that was in the world, even as the rose in bloom surpasses the dust in the desert. Then I fell at his feet and though, surely this is the hour of death, for the lion (who is worhty of all honor) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the lion and die than to be kind of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, "Son, thou are welcome." But I said, "Alas, Lord I am no son of Thine but the servant of Tash." He answered, "Child, all the service thou has done to Tash, I account as service done to me." Then by reason of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, "Lord is it ture, as the Ape said, the thous and Tash are one?" The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, "It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services that thous hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is note vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man do a cruelty in my name, than though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed accepted. Dost Thou understand child?" I said, "Lord Thous knowest how much I understand." But I also said (for the truth constrained me), "Yes I have been seeking Tash all my days."

"Beloved" said the Glorous One, "unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly, for all find what they truly seek."

1. What is Lewis saying? Is he really teaching universalism?

2. What are the implications of what he's saying when it comes to evangelism?

3. Can what he's saying be correlated to what Jesus said in John 14:6.

Focus: Priceless

2009-06-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

There's a new book out about the stupefying of America and the basic thesis is that we're growing dumber because we're unwilling, or unable to pay attention and focus on one thing at a time. What do you think of this thesis? (excuse me a moment, my cell's ringing and it's important; not that you're not important, but you know, it's just polite to answer). Now, where was I? O yes, I was saying that there might be a connection between the cracks in our productivity infrastructure and our attention bearing capacity (a moment please, someone's tweeting and LOL, it's hysterically funny. I mean who eats oysters and pickels for breakfast anyway?).

Did you know that 2 out of 3 voting Americans can't name the three branches of the US government? (and speaking of branches, we're finally trimming that giant fir tree in the front yard. OMG, it's been growing out of control and after talking to some people in the know we decided that we could take it on ourselves, but I'm going to need to sharpen my chain saw...but I digress). Anyway, our failure to understand basic things is rooted (don't even get me started on the danger of roots making their way into our sewer pipes. It happened to our neighbor), says the author, in our failure to be able to focus on one thing at a time.

It's ironic that this new book is, at the time of this entry, ranked #22 on the best-seller list for books about pop-culture (it's presently linked on Amazon to the book people buy along with my book. Oh, you didn't know I wrote a book. Yes, well it came about, um, I'll need to tell you later, my phone's ringing), because this is the week that the Time Magazine cover story is about Twitter. (Just a minute, someone came into my office to talk about church planting and satellite campuses. It's entirely new terrain for our staff and we're investigating how it works) Oh, and so as I was saying, Time points out how we valuable twitter will be in our culture and I'm like, "really? I don't think so. I don't know that I want people tweeting during my sermons because how will I know if they're listening? Plus, who really cares?". So (just a second, my chat box is open from gmail), the question is this: Is there value in swimming upstream against the multi-tasking, intrusive tech (oops, a reminder came up that I've a lunch appointment in 15 minutes), culture that we've come to accept as normative?

How should we then live?

A. continue to multi-task but shut it all down at a certain time (say, 9PM or so) and read, meditate pray?
B. be more agressive in fighting back by unplugging in large swaths, allowing intrusions only at scheduled times?
C. leave things as they are?

I'd like your thoughts because...

Declining Math scores: 40 billion in lost competitive productivity
ADD: tragic loss of (wait a sec - the phone's ringing again)
Increasing mean age of project managers in America to nearly 60 years old: alarming
Loss of thoughtful discourse regarding literature and ideas: disconcerting (oops... IM on the phone about a rehearsel)

Focus: Priceless

Apologetics from Tiananmen Square

2009-06-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

This is the week that, 20 years ago, Chinese military opened fire in what has come to be called the Tiananmen Square massacre. There's a marvelous piece here, by the NYT's Nicolas Kristof. In addition, I have a personal story to tell...

It's December 23rd, 1993. I'm speaking to a group of international students at a ski retreat, and one of the breakout sessions I've been assigned is titled, "Science and the Bible". I come prepared to talk about geological discoveries that reinforce my belief that the Bible is largely history. You know the stuff - stories about Jericho's walls falling down, Noah's ark being found, and an explanation for what the Bible meant when it says that the sun stood still. I, the guy who's last science class was basic physics during my first year of college thirteen years earlier, was to explain to these PHD candidates in Biology, Nuclear Physics, Astronomy, and numerous other disciplines, why the evidence is overwhelming that they should believe the Bible based on these scientific discoveries.

In retrospect, the exercise was laughable, as these scientists weren't easily persuaded by what I had to say. For every point, they had a counterpoint. Back and forth we'd go, lobbing grenades of evidence at each other in order to reinforce our beliefs. Finally, when we'd seemingly exhausted ourselves, and the circle feel quiet, an older Chinese gentleman spoke. He'd been silent throughout the comical discussion, except to introduce himself at the beginning as a physicist.

"I am a physicist; and I am a Christian."

Someone asked, "What evidence do you have for your belief in the God of the Bible."

His answer was simple. "I was in Tiananmun square on June 4, 1989. I have seen how men behave when they believe there is no god. It is for this reason I believe, and nothing anyone can say will ever persuade be to go back to my unbelief."

This was an important moment for me. Seeds were planted in those few sentences, that would take root in the soil of my soul, and eventually germinate into an understanding of the interplay of faith and reason that looks as post-modern as modern - and as modern as post-modernity.

The reality is that none of us believe the things we do in a vacuum. We believe (that's faith) for reasons (that's evidence). There's never enough evidence to quench our need for faith. There's never enough faith to quench silence all the questions of the evidence side. We believe "because", and this point we fill in the blank with any number of things. But I'll tell you this - it will never be adequate to fill in the reason and evidence side of this equation with archeology and history, physics and astronomy, because these sciences are nothing more than thesis scientist believe because of their own blend of evidence and faith.

No, the "evidence" side of the equation, I began to discover on that snowy night in '93, is best filled, not with science theory about the rocks of Jericho, but with first hand experience - things like seeing Christians love their enemies, or negatively, seeing those who deny the existence of God mow down women and young people for daring to express their views. The "evidence" in other words, even for this physicist, wasn't found in the stars, it was found in the actions of humans.

Jesus talked about this too. "By this all men will know that you are my disciples...."

Dostoyevsky said something too. (see top quote of this)

I hope we're listening and, as a result of what we hear, intent on letting our light shine.

Leno, O'Brian, and Christ - O My.

2009-06-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

Jay Leno is out, and Conan O'Brien is in. The question that remains is whether or not Conan can recapture some of the flagging market share in the precious 18-49 year old demographic. Under Leno's leadership, the tonight show realized a 35% drop in that group. While some of this is attributable to the dramatic changes in media delivery (young adults are turning off the their TVs, tuning into the internet instead for 'on demand' access to shows, and to cable, as seen in the soaring Daily Show.

This endeavor is a risk for NBC, and instructive for we who are called to share Christ. That NBC is monitoring their effectiveness and responding to the changes demands of their audience is good capitalism. When churches do the same thing, however, the word "good" should be used very carefully; so should the word "bad", for the reality is that could be either, good or bad... or both.

The real danger, in fact, resides in a monochrome assessment of whether "market analysis" has value. Those who say, "responding to the market is good" run the grave of risk of continually altering the message to entice hearers, or retain hearers. Of course, Paul warns Timothy that such an approach becomes the soil out from which heresy grows. Lowering the bar, twisting the clear ethical mandates of the gospel, or in any way 'widening the road' is an ever present danger. When our paradigm is rooted in a continual assessment of market share, the danger becomes our inevitable mode of operation. Ironically, these accommodations ultimately render the gospel powerless, and hence irrelevant.

This is part of the reason that theological liberal churches often struggle to find vibrancy and health. I'll hasten to add that this is also a clear and present danger in the entire "emergent church" culture. Embracing the tendencies to shrink back from the ethical mandates of the gospel doesn't capture market share; it simply makes you nothing more than a classroom (only lacking qualified teachers), or a bar (only lacking alcohol), or a concert venue (only lacking good sound systems are creative artists). Responding the market isn't inherently good.

Then is "market response" inherently bad? Wrong again. It's not holy, or pure, or mature, to callously disregard the response of people to your message; its' just poor communication. If I'm sharing Christ and nobody is listening, it might be that everyone's heart is in a state of utter rebellion, and that God's spirit isn't at work anywhere, among anyone with whom I speak. Or it might be that I'm using language they don't understand, or answering question they're not asking. It might be that I'm confusing the wine of the faith with the wineskin, insisting on neckties, or choir robes, or the King James Version of the Bible. Such posture reminds me of Jesus' assessment of religion found here. Paul indicated the one of the assets of the gospel is its profound malleability. It's wine skin can shape shift, so that it looks profoundly different in Nepal than it does in Seattle, in Atlanta, than it does in Beijing. Because of this, Paul was a student of culture, and used the cultural material of the day to frame his declaration of God's timeless truth; the good news; the gospel of Christ. Failure to follow his example isn't holy; it's irresponsible.

A Wedding Story...

2009-05-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to Seattle Public Theatre's west coast premier of "A Wedding Story". A friend is in the play and, as is usually the case when I attend theater, I walked through the doors with a complete vacuum of expectations. A few short minutes into the play, however, I knew that this was going to be profound and meaningful at many levels, and covering a wide range of topics including:

1. children caring for aging parents
2. the challenges of holding the nuclear family together in a mobile society
3. our longings for sexual pleasure
4. the seasons of marriage
5. our ambivilance about commitment
6. Alzheimers disease and it's devastating effects on everyone touched by it
7. healthy and unhealthy ways of coping with disruption and loss in our lives
8. homosexuality (not a major theme, but certainly a sub-plot)

As my wife and I headed home afterward, I realized that I'd just walked through a slice of the issues we pastors deal with on a weekly basis. We're trying to help people navigate life's tumultuous waters by drawing upon both the revelation and strength of Christ, and even the caring and shepherding is fraught with it's own challenges, as I learn nearly every week.

I'm learning that theater is a powerful medium for exposing people to truth and the poets of our day, the musicians, filmakers, playwrights, should be among the mediums that we who follow Christ should digest. Yes, this play has more than a few points that are wildly divergent from the Christian world view, so know that going in (language and promiscuity, for example). I've written elsewhere about why I think such is setting can be appropriate for Christians, but for now I 'll just note that, when Paul walked across the hillside in Athens, looking at the idols and carefully reading their inscriptions, history tells us that he was gazing at idols which, by today's standards would surely be called pornographic. It also tells as that Paul was provoked by the encounter, even as I was provoked (and deeply touched) last night. The play draws the patron in to the lives of each person involved in this family as they deal with aging, brokenness, longings for intimacy, and how we rise up to the moments of challenge, or don't.

I get angry when people quote verses glibly, in response to another person's suffering or their choices. Christians rage against homosexuality who have never spoken with a gay person. We offer verses about the body wasting away while the spirit is being renewed as a means of comforting those facing terminal illness. Our approach is sterile, clinical, lacking empathy.

The theater is a safe place to learn how to empathize with gay people, with those struggling with sterile marriages, with those whose bodies are in rebellion and slipping away, and those whose cynicism regarding commitment has grown in the real world fires of betrayal and abandonment. If your ethics are pure theory, hammered out in a classroom, or on a mountain with a Bible... you need to start meeting people. But if that's too much, at least go to the theater, and start learning there. Either way, your approach to people will change - your convictions might not change (or they might), but your approach will change. You'll learn to weep with people over their brokenness, over their failure, over their sense of alienation.

"As your own poets have said..." - we'd do well to pay attention to them

musing about community...

2009-05-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

Years ago, a man came to the church where I pastor to teach for a few days. He mentioned something in passing that has stuck with me for more than a decade. He said that, every year or so, he and his wife get away to a cabin with several other couples for a few days. They share good food and drink, relax, and connect with one another in ways that you can only when you're spending extended time away from phones and internet.

That's not the unusual part though. What struck me so profoundly was when he shared that these couples lay everything on the table with one another: goals, financial choices, the state of their marriages, the struggles and joys they're having with their children. They challenged one another, prayed for one another, expressed their love for another through this investment of listening, laughing, encouraging, truth telling... and then they went home.

There'd be lots of ways to acheive this same kind of intimacy, so I don't want to get stuck on the form, as if we need a cabin, five days, and good wine to know community. What I am "stuck on", is the awareness of how rare this is, how difficult it is to find genuine depth of intimacy and community anywhere at all.

Can the church "create" community? Increasingly, I'm convinced that the answer is no. We can teach about, demonstrate to some extent through our own lives, invite people to nurture it in their own lives, practice some measure of hospitality, and provide structure. But this is nothing more than pointing a hungry man to the refrigerator and saying, "help yourself". When the day is done, the hungry person still needs to open the door, pull out the ingredients and cook.

Made for intimacy, myriads find it lacking anywhere: absent from marriage, absent from friendships, there's a loneliness that pervades, and it strikes me that people of faith aren't immune from this struggle. Why is this? I think there are several reasons:

1. Ambivelance: We like intimacy and we like autonomy. "Sure, I want intimacy - when it's convenient, and safe, and doesn't infringe on my right to make my own choices without the intrusion of other people's opinions in my life. I like the "kum-by-ah" kind of campfire moments, the holding hands and hugging. I like it when my views of reality are reinforced. But I don't like the challenge, the accountability."

2. Mobility: These people I referenced at the beginning get together intentionally, even though they've moved apart from each other. Unless there's intentionality about sustaining relationships, they won't be sustained. Of course, this intentionality is, for many of us, problematic, because the little phrase, "not today...I'm too tired, or too busy, or..." becomes a mantra, and the years pass without connecting. It takes work to stay connected in a mobile society and twitter updates are no substitute for physical proximity.

3. Our fallen nature: This isn't a technology problem; this is a human problem. It goes all the way back to the garden, when Adam and Eve made their little coverings, and hid from God. We've been running and hiding ever since, but baptizing our running and hiding, too often, in the respectable busyness that defines our times, or in self-righteous indignation when intimacy exposes our own issues. It's easier to cut and run

Endurance...

2009-05-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

There's this kind of skiing called "randonee", which means skiing uphill with a free heel and skins on your skis for friction, and then locking your heel down, removing the skins, and skiing back down. I love this stuff, and spent some time this weekend huffing and puffing my way up for a little more than an hour, and then skiing back down in five minutes.

On the way down I met a guy making his way up, and I stopped to check out his equipment and exchange thoughts about bindings, weather, snow conditions, avalanches etc. etc. What a surprise to see, as I drew near, that I'd encountered someone old. No, I mean actually old, which means older than me by nearly three decades, which puts his birth just before the Great Depression. After a few minutes of mountaineering small talk I said, "I've gotta say this: I'm impressed that you're doing this. Do you come up here often?"

"At least once a week" he said. "I'm slower than I used to be, but I still enjoy it." When I asked about "used to be" he said that he'd been coming up into these mountains for dozens of years, hiking into the deep backcountry and skiing out. He's grown older, but he's continued to show up...in the same mountains.... year after year. Of course, he's the healthier for it, because when many of his peers are having a hard time walking to the car, he's still enjoying a health vibrant enough to celebrate creation. This isn't to caste aspersions on those with limitations in old age, because there are too many factors that come into play in order to make a snap judgment. I'm just saying this: there's value in continuing to show up.

After the skiing, I made my way home and showed up to officiate the wedding rehearsel of a very good friend. I've officiated the weddings of all his brothers, and officiating his is significant for me because it means that I've continued to show up for about 14 years now in the same church, the same city. It's funny, because I didn't think I had it in me to keep showing up, week after week, to help teach and shepherd a community. Staying that long means watching people come and go. It means realizing that, by this time, you're leadership has sometimes been a blessing to people, sometimes a discouragement. It means you've forgiven, and been forgiven. It's means that relationships have evolved and mutated...sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

Continuing to show up means that, eventually, you'll be overwhelmingly grateful that you hung in there. Like the view from the top of the mountain, getting to fruitfulness and transformation, both personally, and in marriages, and in churches, requires endurance. On the way to the top yesterday, there were a few times when I said to myself, "who needs this?" I'd stop, drink some water, catch my breath, and then keep going. What motivates me in the mountains is both the beauty at the top and the lessons learned by wanting to quit, but pressing on instead.

The bummer about endurance is that you only realize the blessings of it after you've woven it into the fabric of your soul. But weaving it is tough. It requires a belief that something better is farther down the road, or higher up the mountain. So you keep going. If you turn back prematurely, you won't know, precisely, what you're missing, because you'll never experience it. Thus do the glories of endurance become elusive.

The wedding I'm doing this weekend is significant for many reasons. My friend exemplifies commitment in relationships better than anyone I know (the picture is of him and I climbing in Colorado together - where he joined me for a few days a couple years ago during my teaching time there), and this gives me great confidence regarding the days that are ahead for he and his lovely bride. But this wedding is also a reminder to me of the glories that come from continuing to show up for relationships, for community, for calling. Sometimes it's boring. Sometimes it's frustrating. Sometimes we feel betrayed because any time we show up with others, it's just a matter of time before humanity bumps into humanity and feelings get hurt. But when we keep showing up, there are rich rewards to be enjoyed.

I recognize it's not that simple. Infidelity, domestic violence, heresy, and spiritual abuse are all realities. There's a time to draw a line. But the penelum has swung in direction of cycnicism to such an extent that we're often pre-emptively withdrawing, from marriages, relationships, faith communities, at the first sign of disillusionment. The best views, though, reside at the top... and getting there takes years.

Christians Behaving Badly...

2009-05-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

It's all over the news these days. Google "Catholic" and "abuse" and you'll find more than enough reading material to sadden, anger, and sicken you for days. What you won't find is much of an analysis regarding the why of this tragedy. Protestants will glibly declare that the problem is the doctrine of celibacy, conveniently turning a blind eye towards the grave failures in our own camp.

Let's forget about celibacy for a minute and look at this through a different lens. At the risk of oversimplifying things, and realizing that there are complexities in each human heart and situation, I suggest that there's are several deep truths we must consider:

1. form without power is worse than nothing at all. Paul addresses the church in Corinth, warning them that they're headed down a path that will eventually be very ugly if not checked. His warning in I Corinthians 4 is that "God words" are deeply destructive when they're not coupled with God's genuine power of transformation. This is because, as history shows us, the forms of the faith can be perpetuated long after God has left the building (see Ez 10:18). When this happens, you'll have institutional structures used to feed the only appetite left in some individuals, namely our flesh.

2. our culture has a terrible double standard with respect to sexuality. We appropriately decry sexual abuse, and the use of power to dominate others sexually. We also rage against the objectification of women. At the same time, we mock abstinence as some unattainable ideal, treat sexual expression as just another form of recreation, like playing tennis, and use sex and objectified women to sell everything from soda pop to cars. These realities aren't offered as license for religious professionals to be abusive. The call for self-control runs throughout the Bible, and the danger of allowing ourselves to live by our appetites is clear. But perhaps we as a culture shouldn't be surprised that, having declared two messages at the same time, a large percentage of the populace, including people with power, have chosen the low road of allowing our appetites to govern our behavior. It affects everything from shopping, to eating, to sexuality.

There are no doubt other contributing factors. Feel free to share your thoughts. But whatever the reason, the church is in the news once again for all the wrong reasons. Once again, we're not "as bad" as the surrounding culture. We're worse. That's nothing new. We who serve as leaders would do well to call our own lives, and our communities to a sense of dependence on God's power for our transformation, and sense of commitment to God's ethics in every area... including our sexuality.

the end -

2009-05-19T08:13:00.000-07:00

Julian of Norwich and the Apostle Paul collided in my readings this morning, leaving me with a resurgence of hope and confidence that I thought I'd share.

Julian, who lived during the black plague, and wrote "Showings" was the onee who said, "All's well. And all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be well." The context wasn't pretty. She lived in a time of death. She herself knew profound suffering. She had many questions regarding the ways of God and the "why" of sin in the world. And yet, this is the statement that seems to frame her life.

When I was reading Ephesians 1 this morning, I was struck by Peterson's interpretation of 1:11, which reads, "He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in Him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth."

We can ponder the end of the story with confidence; a confidence that the whole universe will be shot through with the glory of God. We don't know fully what that means, but we do know that means the end of suffering, the end of death, the end of war, poverty, loss disease, terror, rage, addiction... of course the list could go on all morning. But you get the picture: When the final chapter is written, God will have dealt with all of it. Beauty, purity, unimagined intimacy, LIFE, will remain. Indeed, "all manner of things shall be well." This reality has implications:

1. While living, in the present, with the reality of suffering, we have the possibility of an underlying peace, a peace rooted in our confidence of where history is headed. We have not only the possibility of peace, but the responsibility of allowing the peace of Christ to guard our hearts and minds, so that our decisions and living aren't rooted in fear or cynicism, greed or fanaticism, pride or shame. In short, peace is our privilege, and our responsibility.

2. Since we know the end of the story, we're invited to, as it were, move the story along, by embodying the hope and ethic of the end right now, right here in the midst of the darkness. This is what I wrote of in the previous post. The snapshots of God's reign can, and must begin inwardly, as we allow Christ to free us from phobias and addictions. It can and must spiral out from there into our families and world. This gives us a mission, a purpose.

3. This means Christ followers should whine less than other people. But of course, the testimony of history is that we don't, as a group, whine less than others. God's people complained in the wilderness of the Old Testament, even though God had promised to lead them into a land. Their tendency was to fixate on daily appetites, and whine about little things (menu options, Moses' marriage, the org chart for the journey... all the equivalents of whining today about...??)

I closed my devotional reading, closed Ephesians 1 and wrote this in my prayer journal:

Thank you God for the ever needful reminder that history is heading towards a glorious conclusion. Even as I read it, I realize how often this reality gets buried under a thousand petty concerns and personal issues. As a result, I miss the beauty, miss the snapshots of where you're leading, miss the signs of glory... give me eyes to see. Saturate me with the confidence of faith that lives in the present darkness as a candle, a forerunner of the light. I know this is the path of joy, of being a blessing, of living with confidence and meaning. Good shepherd... lead me there. Thank you in advance, for all that awaits me in following you. In Christ's name... Amen

Snapshots of the Kingdom...

2009-05-16T21:25:00.001-07:00

It's always tremendously encouraging to me when I hear someone's story, or have an encounter, and leave thinking to myself, "that's like the kingdom of God". These moments are what I call snapshots of the kingdom.

There I am in India, in 1993, holding hands with a woman who's asked me to pray for her because she so desperately wants the light of Christ to shine through her life, but is having a difficult time making it financially, as her shop has been blacklisted because of her faith. But there we are, praying together, holding hands, barriers down, looking to Jesus. Click: a snapshot of the kingdom.

There's my friend in Iraq, serving in the military as a nutritionist, and as she's making the rounds among surrendered Iraqi soldiers, one of them sees her cross and makes wild hand gestures which she eventually comes to understand has declaration that they share the same faith in Christ. He asks her to pray for him. They too, enemy combatants according to the kingdoms of this world, join hands and pray. Click: a snapshot of the kingdom.

I've dozens of snapshots, a veritable scrapbook in my heart, but my most recent favorite comes from my daughter's blog, where she writes about the multicultural assembly at the school where she teaches. You can catch the whole story here. The kingdom snapshot showed up in this part:

This is who we are, this Multicultural Assembly, an experiential collage, full of people eager to tell their stories. A few weeks ago, the journalists were considering the ways in which our school, never an athletic standout but with nationally ranked chess and rocket teams, was different from more “typical” high schools.

“You know, we don’t have one of those… you know, hierarchies here. The cheerleaders and the sports people, they’re not the most popular,” someone remarked. And I love this about my school. The class presidents are in the school plays and the captain of the wrestling team is singing a Vietnamese pop duet on stage at the multicultural assembly.

We cheer loudest for the Special Olympics basketball team and listen to podcasts of our Rocketeers on an alternative talk radio show. Wherever I look, students honor the gifts they see in each other, celebrating successes and uniting in the face of loss.

Click: I see the nations joining hands in Isaiah 2. I see the dividing walls broken down in Ephesians 2. I see that my daughter loves these things, and I know that I'm proud of her because of it, proud that she has eyes to see these precious values, so easily discarded in our world.

The snapshots are everywhere, if we'll but look, really paying attention, with hopeful eyes. There's plenty that's wrong in this world, and in our own hearts too, and plenty even to argue about within our family of faith. But the main thing, after all, is nothing more than offering snapshots of the kingdom to others, and seeing other snapshots where they occur. If we fail here, we fail, no matter how righteous, or self-righteous, our rhetoric on any matter.

Thanks K... for sharing another snapshot. I'm proud of you.

Tortured Faith...

2009-05-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

The most recent polling data expresses that Evangelical Christians are divided over the issue of torture, but that a) Evangelicals have a higher acceptance rate of torture than other expressions of Christianity, and b) there is a relationship between church attendance and torture: the more often you attend, the more likely you are to approve of torture!

Why is this? I'd suggest that it's because of the reality that church history is filled with justifications for war; it's reality, it's cost, it's justifiability. You can find it easily in CS Lewis. Even among those committed to non-violence, it's not hard to find convictions melting away in the heat and reality of the moment, as seen by Bonhoeffer.

I don't have conclusions as much as observations:

1. Since the primary calling of a Christ follower is to make Jesus visible, it's a slippery slope to ever justify violence. The justification itself presumes a position (usually) of moral high ground, presuming to both know enough and be righteous enough to resort to violence or torture for the greater good, and in God's name. Of course, the other side also claims the same moral high ground quite often... the more so these days as so much of war has religious overtones.
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2. God DID say that the purpose of the state is to curb evil, so that it doesn't reign unchecked, coursing through cultures, conquering nations, furthering darkness. Further, God advocates that the state must bear the sword in order to do this. Since I've never met a Christian pacifist who advocates anarchy, I'm assuming that Christian pacifists advocate that all use of violence be outsourced to people without faith? How would we presume that such people will have the wisdom to know when to use their guns? Wouldn't it be better for Christ followers to be in a positions where they have adequate authority to choose, on the basis of their dual citizenship as those belonging to heaven and earth, when to use violence?

3. There are no easy options here, and we who write from the towers of theory must be careful to hold our positions with humility. Bonhoeffer advocated non-violence until Hitler showed up. Even then, while party to an assassination attempt, he declared that there were "no good options". I sometimes think that's the reality of it when living in a fallen world. We're here, in the midst of sin, as citizens of a new world, while still living in an old one. Working it out is tough.

Maybe people's thoughts would help clarify our convictions...??? I welcome your posts.

un-privatizing the gospel

2009-05-12T09:52:00.000-07:00

I know you've heard it a thousand times if you've anywhere near the church over the past 50 years. "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior". The phrase personal savior didn't appear out of thin air. There are countless encounters in the Bible between God and individuals. God meets Jacob, more than once, in order to shape him as God's child. God meets Moses personally. David compares God to a shepherd who cares for each sheep personally, and Jesus takes up that same theme with his story about leaving the 99 sheep to go after the one who didn't show up for church :) It's because of all this that I want to be careful not to denigrate the phrase "personal savior". There's perhaps nothing more comforting in our faith life than the understanding that Jesus walks with us personally, guides us, comforts us, cares for us, heals us, transforms us.

And yet...

This piece of the faith, which plays so well in our individualistic culture, is in reality more of a sub-plot in God's story than a main theme. The sub plot of your attendance at a baseball game might be your discovery of garlic fries. They're good and as you enjoy them you might start a discussion with your friend, right there in the top of the 8th inning, about the cholesterol fighting merits of eating garlic. But your friend, as he distances himself from you in the interest in inhaling fresh air, will probably point out that the bases are loaded and there are two outs, and "we didn't come here to eat garlic fries, we came here to watch the game!"

And so it goes. "We didn't come to Jesus to get a personal savior. We came to Jesus to join a profound story that will end with a reversal of the global curse." Global Curse means, precisely, that the curse is more than just personal. There's a problem in the world and the problem isn't just my thought life, or my finances spinning out of control. The problem isn't just that I need a little help with my marriage, or the kids, or some career guidance. The problem is bigger. How big???

Watch this...

Of course, the great promise of Christianity is this (as one author has put it): "The answer of Christianity (is that) everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost." We're invited to Jesus not because we've personal problems that need fixing (though we do), but because the world is broken. I'm invited to step into the grand project of sowing seeds of hope in the world, offering a foretaste of what will be when Christ reigns fully and finally.

This is why I don't like the phrase "accept Christ as your personal savior". It's not an untrue statement, as much as it's the garlic fries at the baseball game. If all I do is sit by the snack booth and eat fries, I've missed the point. So it is for us, when we gather for worship and sing songs about all Jesus means to me...me...me, neglecting the grand cosmic transformation that's unfolding, of which we're invited to play a part. If I miss this, I remain entrenched the the kingdom of this world, singing songs about personal salvation and renewal, and comforting myself that I'm going to heaven when I die.

This is why I'm inclined to talk about sin as more than personal. It's not just that I've failed God somehow - it's that I'm part of global system that boasts genocide, sexual trafficking, and AIDS epidemic, gross economic inequalities, health issues, environmental issues, and the threat of nuclear annihilation. There's a better story on the way...and it starts now, when I turn to Christ and become part of the solution.

Constant shelter in a sea of constant change

2009-05-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

I find myself thinking a lot about change recently for a number of reasons. For one thing, it's the month of May, which means that for many, big changes are just over the horizon. Lots of people are getting ready to move on, leaving college for the year, or forever, and embarking on the new thing. The economy has many in a state of change as well, ranging from the changing of buying habits to the changing of jobs, perhaps housing situations, even geography. The world is changing. Our relationships are changing. Our neighborhoods are changing. Our bodies are changing. As we grow older, the dynamics of relationships with our spouses, parents, and children all change. Our emotions are changing. This is the way it is.

In this sea of change, God drops the declaration that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We've sometimes extrapolated, from this and a few other verses, that God doesn't change at all - what we call the doctrine of immutability. This doctrine creates questions for some of us, because the reality is that much has changed regarding how humanity relates to God. He's not in the habit of talking to people anymore, as happened with Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and so many more. He's approachable in a different way because God doesn't live behind a curtain in the temple anymore. He's directly accessible to all people everywhere, 24/7, come, on the basis of Christ's work on the cross, as you are. He doesn't guide us with a cloud by day and fire by night anymore. He doesn't invoke genocide anymore. He doesn't insist that we avoid wearing wool and linen together anymore.

In a world of constant change, adaptability is important, and I find that what helps me adapt to the many changes that are real in my life (changing body as I age, changing relationships, changing world, changing economics, changing responsibilities) is the notion that there's a place where I can go and find things the same every time. So it's important for me to know the sense in which God doesn't change because I bank on this as a source of security.

How does God not change? The proper answer would be a book, not a blog, but the blog answer is nothing more than a word picture. I'm writing this entry from a tiny cabin in the woods, where I go to write, pray, cook, read. It's made of logs cut down from the property on which it resides and so the walls are solid, substantial, sturdy. Of course, those logs will change. Someday they might burn to the ground, and if that doesn't happen, they'll surely rot away. So this isn't a precise picture of immutability. But it is an approximation.

For the last few years, as I've taken up writing as a hobby (another change, partly because I can't climb as much anymore, another change), I've headed up here every once in a while. Every time, it's been a shelter for me. Sometimes it's been extra cold. Sometimes, in the heat of the summer, pleasantly cool. Little things change - pipes have cracked, requiring care. Right now the heat stove doesn't light. But it has been, every time I've come here, shelter.

Jesus invites us to come to Him as shelter. He tells us that, when we learn to be with Him in intimacy, we will find rest for our souls. He says it as a promise, as if we'll find it every time. He'll be our shelter, from storms, from doubts, from weariness, from failure, from the pain of shattered dreams, from the constant changes that are our lives. He is the door, the shelter, the place of rest. And this doesn't change. In the book of Hebrews we're told to come boldly, confident that acceptance awaits us. Like a sturdy log cabin, He's always available as shelter.

I'll leave the cabin in a few hours - back to the city, back to other responsibilities, back to the sea of change we're all trying to navigate in tact. But in the quiet of this morning, as I've pondered the gift of shelter, I've realized that I've a greater, more lasting, perfectly unchanging shelter, in Christ. Learning to live in the rest of that shelter is, perhaps, the most important thing I will ever learn, or teach.

Concert for Concerted effort... spilling hope

2009-05-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for something to do this weekend in Seattle, you might want to check out the Marathon/Republic concert being held this Saturday night. This free concert is sponsored by the Spilling Hope project, which is devoted to raising money for water projects in Uganda.

It's been deeply encouraging to see how, as people's awareness of both the grave need, and the simplicity of the solution, has grown, people have changed their lifestyles as our church has launched this challenge. Further, it's heartening to realize that for very little money, the water situation can change for villages, and this change can lead to addressing infrastructure issues such as health care and education, both of which are needed for any substantive economic development.

Here's a CNN report on the water crisis. "It's not a technological problem, or an economic problem, it's a problem of will and commitment." How great would it be to see the church at the forefront of solving a problem by demonstrating the needed will and commitment to do so. Here's the link to Living Water International's Africa initiatives, and here's a Spilling Hope video with Africa specific issues and dates of events at Bethany Community Church

We have the potential of blessing tens of thousands of people presently without water if we all do our part. So... if some of you have changed your lifestyle, living more simply in order to give to the project, please post a comment here and share what you're doing... it might give others ideas, or help others get involved. Thanks... I'm excited for the concert, and awed to consider what we can do when we all work together toward a common goal.

what does health look like?

2009-05-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

During these past few weeks when I've been reading and teaching through the minor prophets, I've been profoundly struck by the importance of humility, brokenness, and gratitude in our relationship with God. The repeating revelation of this truth has, during this same period, been coupled with a growing question regarding beauty.

As I was riding home on the bus today from the Mariner's baseball game, the diversity of people was perhaps best represented by two single individuals sitting close to each other. One woman had an inflated earth globe, sort of like a beach ball, sitting in her lap. She was reading a book about living in the world after oil runs out. Her short hair, full lashes, careful make up, artsy earrings, and chic yoga pants all contributed to her aura of health and beauty.

Sitting across from her was a large man wearing multiple layers of unwashed clothing, a snow cap covering his head, and unshaven, uneven whiskers covering his face. His eyes, when they were opened, looked tired. He was leaning on a cane, even when sitting down. Getting off the bus at the same stop as yoga girl, his movements were labored, and he walked with a limp. By the time he exited the bus, she was far down the road, the whole world in her hands.

Of course, one can't know very much at all by making these simple assessments, and any conclusions drawn would be unfair to both individuals. Still, I was more aware today of the possibility of beauty in this broken man, and more aware of the possibility of tragedy in this young woman. Again, to speculate such would be wrong. But just easily, one could be way off by attaching stereotypical meanings to these two: She's using her gifts to change the world. He's burnt out on something, and now paying the price. Maybe. But it's just as possible that this man, in his brokenness and poverty is living more heroically than the woman. We just don't know unless we peer behind the curtain and get to know the real person. The snapshot assessments of beauty are wholly inadequate if beauty has to do with the soul.

Perhaps the same thing is true of churches. The snapshots can look good or bad...but mean little. In fact, Jesus more than hints around that our conventional wisdom snapshots would lead us to believe that we're healthy when we're really sick. And too, we'll miss true health when it's staring us in the face because it's criteria is so remarkably different than what we would presume.

Sometimes, as a person, a pastor, and a leader of a church, I feel like Yoga Chick: well educated, healthy, working hard for the best interests of the world, or at least the world I'm carrying in my hands. Other times I feel like the man with the cane: broken, dependent, but persevering, showing up, getting on with it in spite of myself. I'm wondering in all of this; where's the real beauty, and where's the cosmetic show?

Are you listening...

2009-05-01T19:51:00.000-07:00

"Let him who has ears, hear." That's how Jesus says it my translation of the Bible. But another author captures the essence of it well in his transliteration called "The Message". After a parable, or a talk, Jesus would summarize by saying this: "Are you listening? Really listening?"

It's a good word, and it makes sense that Jesus was say it, because the testimony of the ages, and of many moments of our own hearts, is that we're not listening. We're too busy talking, or competing, or comparing, or ignoring, to listen.

Our fractured hearts are often on the run, trying hard to find some kind of success that we can convince both ourselves and others that we're worthy of love. And all this trying has the effect of tuning out the Voice that, if we were to hear it, might just assure us that everything's going to be fine, that we're deeply love and utterly accepted regardless of whether we succeed or fail at our grand plans. If this is true, maybe we can relax a little bit, let go of the plans, and content ourselves with doing just exactly what God asks of us - big or small, anonymous or with notoriety.

But we'll never get to that point without the assurance that we're deeply loved just as we are, and we'll never really come to believe that in anything deeper than our minds unless we learn how to listen for God's voice. If you're interested, here are some practical steps:

1. Read the Bible aloud, slowly, a short passage. Read it again. Ask God to speak to you through what you've read. Meditate on it. Enter into it. Listen. Read it again, slower even, if needed. You need to listen. Mark what God has shown you, either in your journal or in a simple prayer of thanks to God.

2. Listen to creation. I was just sitting in the back yard this evening as the sun was disappearing behind our neighbors how to the northwest of us. As I listened, I could easily here a drummer practicing for marching band, a car horn (several), the general noise of Aurora, and some airplanes. Ah, but there's more. Quieter, less intrusive, were the birds. Several species have found their way to our neighborhood over the past years, as our collective efforts to reforest the flats between Phinney Ridge and Greenlake are coming to fruition. I'm not an birder, so can't give you names - but they're sounds are stunning. I noticed them earlier today, as I used part of my day off to ride my bike around Seattle. You could hear plenty of humanity, but every once in a while you could also hear the birds. Mmmm. They remind us of so much that is hopeful, healing, and good.

Listening demands focused attention, and focused attention demands attention be diverted from whatever it was that previously occupied me. There's the crux of the problem. I'm not sure we really believe that turning away from our ambitions, comparisons, and competitions, will yield anything of value. I don't know if we could be much more wrong about anything.

Are we listening? Really listening?

Shopping for truth: The Fork in the consumer road

2009-04-29T09:07:00.000-07:00

If you have a few minutes, check out this article in Orion Magazine, and compare it to this editorial in Fast Company. If you don't have time to read the articles, here's the summary:

Orion - We can, indeed must live differently than the "gospel of consumption" peddled so effectively by culture. We can scale back on our consumption, and thus scale back on our working hours as well, finding more time for creation, family, friends, and creativity. This is good for our souls, good for the environment, and good for our families.

Fast Company - We won't live differently, because there's always a new product just around the corner that will fuel a new wave of consumerism. Just look at the cell phone. First nobody needed one. Now we all need them. Just look at the i-phone. One high tech creative product creates an entire spin-off industry of i-phone apps. This, according to Fast Company is precisely what Orion calls the "good news" of consumerism: we'll always buy more stuff. And that, we're told, is good for everyone.

Well friends, which is it? And if it's the former, what should we do about it? I've written about this in a chapter on generosity in my book, but I'd like to ponder for a few minutes the contradictory nature of these two paradigms and ask:

1. are these two views of the world contradictory to the extent that they can't be synchronized?

2. if yes, what does that look like? If no, which view more closely embraces the gospel of Jesus?

These aren't hypothetical questions, for the dilemma of our current world is that if enough people start living simply, planting their own gardens, buying their clothes from 2nd hand shops, mending their shoes and cars instead of buying new ones, we're stuffed. And yet, if we continue to shop as we've shopped, live as we've lived, we'll continue to degrade the environment, continue to try and find the cheapest price for products, which means companies will continue to outsource production to places where environmental and labor laws are least constrained, which means....??

If Paul says this, then what should I buy, for I clearly can't apply this literally. And regarding what I buy, and when: Should I bend towards local shops, or warehouse sales? Should I eschew the latest product and keep my stuff 'til it breaks, or should, for the good of the economy, buy new stuff, better stuff? How does discipleship affect shopping?

Our GDP shrunk at annual rate of 6.1% last quarter. People are shopping less, driving less, ravaging the earth less, talking with friends more, AND unemployment is on the rise. Finding our voice as followers of Jesus in the midst of this is important, and challenging.
I welcome your thoughts

Gender Roles - are you kidding me?

2009-04-28T07:37:00.000-07:00

Preface: I'm mindful that any discussion about gender roles is certain to evoke strong responses. This is because the issue has been saturated with wrong notions, resulting in an abusive patriarchy to which none of us should ever want to return. However, in our justifiable efforts to free ourselves from destructive notions, I wonder if we've tossed an important baby out with the bath water? I wonder if there can be a liberating way to view genders in the marriage relationship, a way that leads us to Christ, liberates us with a sense of calling, and guides us to something that's neither reprissive and regressive, nor simply politically correct. Bear with me. Read. Give me your thoughts. Unlike most posts, I'll try to offer response, at least for a few days. Here we go:

It's wedding season for pastors. Very soon, many of our staff will begin investing their weekends in blessing couples who will declare their intent to love each other, "'til death do us part". We might tweek the language to sound more recent than the 17th century, but if we take the covenant of marriage to mean anything serious at all, we'll help couples communicate that they're making a commitment to see things through. In saying this, they're rolling some statistical dice, because of course the reality is that sustaining marriages, especially sustaining them in a way that engenders long term and real love, is not only a challenging task, but increasingly rare. America, a recent book on marriage declares, experiences "more turbulence in family lives, more changes of partners and parents, than any other nation."

The author of the book goes on to declare that the reason for this has to do with our two conflicting values. On the one hand we view marriage as a sacrament, a covenant to be made with God. On the other hand, one of our highest cultural values is, as the author puts it, "individuals that emphasizes self-expression." So here we are, trying to become what the Bible calls one-flesh, while, at the same time, trying hard to maintain our autonomous pursuits of self-fulfillment. I understand that we all need boundaries, that we all need a sense of self if we're to be whole people.

But Jesus taught that we find our truest sense of self, ironically, by "losing our lives". This doesn't mean being a doormat by any means. There are numberous examples of Jesus, perhaps the most 'self-actualized' human to ever live, saying no to the demands of people because he was marching to a different agenda, that of His Father.

We too are invited to the liberating sound of a drum that offers a different rhythm than prevailing culture and this might be seen nowhere more clearly than in marriage. We discover, both from the starting point of marriage in Genesis and Paul's unpacking of those words, that marriage is a place where Christ's relationship with the church can be explained and exemplified. There's Christ, the groom, loving the Church, the bride. Christ's love: sacrificial, purifying, initiatory, healing, life-giving. The church's response to that love: receptive, open, trusting.

It might be dangerous to simply throw these concepts out there and let tham hang without a book's worth of qualifiers, but I'll run the risk, limiting my comments to clarifying what I don't mean and what I do mean.

What these texts DO NOT mean:
a) that these roles somehow preclude women from taking up callings outside the home, vocationally or otherwise.
b) that these roles bleed into church life in some way. As I'll need to write soon (as a result of writing this), I believe the scriptures indicate that ALL of us are the bride of Christ, and as such all of us are invited to serve one another, taking up the roles God might give us in the community of faith, whatever those roles might be, realizing that this verse and the general tone of New Testament teaching indicates that no role is closed to either gender in the church.
c) that these roles indicate some sort of authoritarian, despotic power play in marriage, where women are called to mindlessly and dangerously submit to the whims of the husband. Such an abusive interpretation of this passage has led to endless heartache through the centuries.
d) that these roles limit initiation to males, and responsiveness to females...at all. Consider Paul's adomonition regarding sexuality in I Corinthians 7, which (radically for it's day) grants women the same sexual rights as men, implying that both genders have initiatory rights. This isn't about machoism, big trucks, and domestic violence. It's not about creating the women of Pleasantville. I get sick even thinking about how often the Bible's been misued to go down that ugly road.

Let me put it another way. There are a variety of ways this vocation of displaying Christ and the church can play out. He stays at home, she works. Vice-versa. Both work. He handles money. She handles money. He studies theology and she bakes potatoes. He bakes potatoes and she studies theology. Both bake potatoes and neither study theology. It's important to understand that the vocation of displaying Christ and the church is environmental before it's anything else. You can read it wrong, jump into stereoptypical roles, and completely miss the point. I've seen it happen - often. This is the reason, I believe, that we've run from the topic completely, afriad to even have the conversation.

To clarify the concept using positive statement....

What these texts DO mean:
a) that couples are invited to accept the vocation of displaying Christ andthe church by being mindful of that calling as they build their life together.
b) that such mindfulness will mean wrestling with the ways in which initiatory, self emptying love can be offered by husbands, and trusting receptivity by wives.
c) that such a calling won't have easy answers, clear lines, or legalistic nagging as part of the living it. Where any of these tendencies are present, a principle intended to liberate becomes ugly very soon.

Yes, you read that right: the principle is intended to liberate - it does so because it calls husbands to a kind of love we're incapable of expressing without the strength of Christ. It calls wives to a level of trust and receptivity that leads them to lean of Christ for sustenance when they have no resources of their own. And this, I believe, is the point. When I'm called to an enormous undertaking I can do one of two things:

1. decide that it's impossible, and so scale back on the undertaking to enable its fulfillment with the limited resources I have.

2. accept the undertaking and raise capital, looking for resources other than my own to enable me to get the work done.

Unfortunately, I fear that in marriage we've opted for #1 far more often than #2 - how's that working for us? Just look around. I don't want to return to 1950. I'm just asking that we wrestle with the concepts of Genesis 2 and Ephesians 5, and work on taking up the vocation of displaying Christ and the church in our marriages.

Monkeying around with the church

2009-04-25T14:44:00.000-07:00

In his hot new book "The Monkey and the Fish" Dave Gibbons, "offers a 'third-culture' way to being the church." This is supposed to enable church leaders to live out their mission in "bold and revolutionary ways." It's supposed to be encouraging, inspiring, and challenging. So why, after reading it, was I none of these? I'll offer three thoughts, and would welcome your insights as well. Before proceeding though, I'll note that my critique of Gibbons work is not directed solely Gibbons. His book encompasses an entire genre, (also seen here, and here) that bothers me. When I ask myself what, precisely, it is that irritates, here are some of the things that come to mind:

1. These books are built on a straw man. We're told that young people are fleeing from established churches, told that churches built on 'old models' (attractional models, for the missionally minded) are dying, unsustainable dinosaurs. And then, because of the obviously inevitable demise of anything which had it's origin before 1990, we're offered solutions. We can make a difference, can be relevent, can reach the unreachable. We just need to do things differently.

The solution is vital if the assumptions about the death of the church are true. Further, there are statistics to indicate that more people ARE fleeing the church, so it appears that the assumption might be legitimate. Always though, when I read this, I want to stand up and aks, "What about us? What about University Prespbytarian Church (also in Seattle)? What about ... and then I could easily name dozens of churches around the country that were founded n the first half of the 20th century and yet are thriving.

These thriving churches should, if we take their presence seriously, lead to an entirely different line of questioning. Rather than shaking the dust off our metaphorical converse sneekers as we distance ourselves from our cold hearted elders, perhaps we should be asking questions about what can be done to renew, sustain, and enliven existing faith communities. The reality is that there are hundreds, if not thousands of churches that have buildings, pastors, staffs, busses, and even (if I can be allowed the use of what would be a swear word in emergent circles) "programs", that are being used by God to change lives, heal sick neighborhoods, raise up a new generation of leaders, and change the world.

2. Esoteric Language is annoying. Look at this subtitle: "Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church". Is this supposed to invite me to read the book? I realize that I sound as if I'm nit-picking, but I sometimes feel as if new words are needed only because we've abandoned much needed old words, and rather than working hard to recover their meaning we invent new ones. For example, I presume that when Jesus says, "abide in me and you will bear much fruit", he means that a byproduct of people living their lives in initmacy with Jesus is that other lives will be changed. Of course, if other lives are changed, they'll want to be part of this great new movement, and so we'll need to have structures in place enabling us to serve those who are new to the faith, and new to the faith community. But fruit will come from abiding. Abiding. Now there's an old word. What does it mean? Unpacking that seems far more important for the health of the church than creating a new term like "liquid leadership" because no matter how "liquid" I am, or how "third place" I am, if I'm not abiding, I'm stuffed.

3. All options aren't equal. In several places, Dave makes it clear that he's not trying to denegrate the old models, but proceeds to offer numerous stories of new works, such as a church meeting in a dance club in Bangkok, as indicative of where the future is headed. Again and again, the implication of the book is that established churches need to change dramatically, or die. This might, as a stand alone statement, be true enough. But when Dave goes on and offers endless examples, not of renewal, but of brand new works, the implication is that old works won't change, and so join the liquid third wave of newness.

Please don't misread me. I'm thrilled with the countless new works unfolding across the globe, believing that God is in many of them. I also have a sneaking suspicion that, if you were to take a telscopic view of the whole church across the globe, and if the one's who were in touch with God's voice and filled with God's spirit could shine as bright lights, there'd be bright lights among the new AND the old, along with dead bulbs in both camps. Newness is overatted. The real issue is whether or not God's glory resides in a work.

Dave offers some marvelous insight in the book, addressing issues of the different ways Eastern and Western cultures look at the world. He also offers some marvelous challenges regarding our collective calling to be intentional about crossing cultural chasms in Jesus name, perhaps providing some of the best language to define the meaning of yet another new term: "missional".

But for all that, I found that in the end, I won't do much differently as a pastor for having read this book. This scares me on the one hand, because I read so much material that either implies, or states directly, that we leaders need new words, new structures, new priorities, if we're to stay alive. On the other hand, it frustrates me, because I think to myself: "another 'new key' to church", and that means people will read the book and try to start church meetings in dance clubs when (and I think even Dave would say this), that isn't the point at all.

We need to continually assess the forms our ministries take, I'll grant that. And it's important to read not only the scriptures, but the culture, as we're called to build bridges between the two. But our calling is no different today than it was when Paul wrote Corinthians. We, the church, are the visible expression of Christ's life on earth. In order to clearly be that, we who lead need to point people to Christ, teach people how to draw upon the resource of His life and follow Him, and then expect fruit to come, because that's what happens when Jesus is seen today, or yesterday, or 1900 years ago. It's actually pretty simple.

Thirsty - and Running Dry

2009-04-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

This Saturday evening, as part of the Spilling Hope project at Bethany Community Church, we'll be sponsoring a showing of the film, "Running Dry", followed by a panel discussion about the global water crisis. I was at Fred Meyer one afternoon recently and was thoroughly seduced by a demo model of a surround sound system for our living room, reduced to $150 for the whole system. I hesitated to buy it because it looked to complex for me to assemble on my own, deciding instead to go home and talk it over with my wife after previewing "Running Dry".

The film was the death blow to the sound system. There was no way to justify buying it after seeing what a substantial difference $150 could make for people on the very edge of survival. Running Dry surveys the water problem via a global tour of the continents, showing how the unique geophysical and political challenges of each region contribute to this global crisis. Unlike energy, there are no alternative sources for water other than... well, water. It's a finite resource, increasingly facing challenges due to climate change and pollution. Throw in the reality that some countries can confine water within their boundaries by diverting the flow away from their neighbors (who are often their enemies) and you have a recipe for disaster.

It doesn't take much investment, though, for real answers. The change from our collective lattes can save lives, and build foundations for health, which of course if the precursor to education, economic development, and ultimately, hope. And that's just with latte change. Throw in a few bucks diverted from surround sound, or whatever, and you can really start to see something happen.

It's easy, for many of us, to write a check. It's harder to seek a deeper understanding of the problem - but understanding leads to empathy, and empathy leads to real transformation, not just 'over there' but in our own stewarding of the precious resources entrusted to us as the wealthy of this world. We have an opportunity, a responsibility, to make a difference. It begins with seeing the problem. If you can... check out "running dry", along with a panel discussion of water and development experts who will answer questions. Discover the challenges and opportunities that are ours at this amazing moment in history.

Unthinkable...

2009-04-21T06:48:00.000-07:00

Occasionally I find a book that's hard to put down. This happened a week ago, when "The Age of the Unthinkable" became my companion on flights to and from Montana, along with the late nights in the cabin where I was staying in Rockies. It's written by Joshua Ramo, a former journalist who splits his time between China and America. It's this split that gives him a unique capacity to explain the broadly different ways of looking at the world that exist between East and West.

The subtitle is, "Why the new world disorder constantly surprises us and what we can do about it." Covering subjects as wide as Gertraud Stein's life in Paris, Cubist art, the Vietnam war, intelligence gathering methods of Israel, military strategies of Hezbolah, and the invention of Wii, the primary thesis of the book is that we need to spend more time looking at the context of our world and problems if we're going to find ways forward on the myriad of problematic fronts we face, because the old way of looking at the world (as static, where nation states fights for territory is the greatest threat) is wholly inadeqaute and inaccurate. We live in a world where a terror act on 9-11 costling less than one million dollars, has resulted in security measures costing one million dollars an hour. It's a David/Goliath kind of thing, and it's everywhere - how did Wii slay the x-box giant? How do terrorist cells turn back nation states from acheiving their goals? How do we live in such a world in a manner whereby we're not only able to survive, but able to be forces of hope and creativity?

The answers, accoriding to Ramos, are found in learning to examine and absorb the ever shifting context of our worlds (economic worlds, political worlds, vocational worlds, environmental worlds, faith worlds), because addressing contextual issues is often where solutions to our deepest problems resides.

His thesis is hopeful. Observing the dangers that a few dozen hedge fund traders or a few terrorists can do, he quickly adds: "it is also possible that each of us, any of us, can unleash powerful and permanent change. Some of this change will be simple. We can each start to live more resiliently: saving more, eating better, driving smarter, educating our children to be global and competitive, volunteering, reaching out to neighbors and new friends." And then, significantly, he adds that, living in an uncertain world is the reality of this age, and there will be moments when we're afraid. "At the times we're most scared", he adds, "we'll need to replace the habit of striking back with new efforts to connect to the world instead of alienating it and isolating ourselves." Connecting means taking the time to understand those who think differently than us, seeking, as St. Francis prayed, "to understand more than to be understood."

The book makes little mention of faith, no mention of prayer or Bible reading, or Jesus. Why do pastor's read such books? Why did the apostle Paul read Greek poetry? Our calling is bring the truths of our faith to bear on our world, and we do this by seeking to understand BOTH our faith and our world. Either without the other falls short!

If you enjoy books that challenge your paradigm and offer a telescoping sweep of our world, then this is a must read.

grace wins...

2009-04-18T11:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a scrap of paper found near the body of dead child in Ravesnbruck concentration camp in Germany, the site where over 90,000 women and children during WWII:

"O Lord, remember not only men and women of good will, but ill will. But do not only remember the suffering they have inflicted on us, remember the fruits we have brought thanks to this suffering; our comradship, our loyalty, the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this. And when they come to judgment, let the fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness. Amen. Amen. Amen."

The words remind me of another. God give me the grace to follow, emulating love of enemy in order that grace might triumph for, as one author has written, 'colossal evil is unprepared for an encounter with colossal grace.' May the colossal grace of Christ infuse our hearts, our marriages, our friendships, our workplaces, our relationships with our children, our neighbors, and yes, even our enemies. Amen. Amen. Amen.

melting..

2009-04-16T12:19:00.000-07:00

The sun is winning. This afternoon the thick clouds aren't thick enough to mask the heat of the sun and this heat is thawing this little valley. As I write, the icicles from my roof are beginning to run free, and I'm hearing snow slough off the roof. The sidewalks, having been cleared occasionally during this past storm, and already dry. Winter is dying. Yes, the ground is still covered with nearly a foot of what's become a dying slushy, but the trees are free again, and soon all will be free.

My heart has melted too, overcoming the deep freeze of indifference and despondency that sometimes grips me. I hope I learn from these kinds of moments; I think I do. This time around, as I gain a grip on hope once again, pack my bags, and turn my heart towards my calling back in Seattle, I take away at least three lessons from the dark night of the soul.

1. the same Bible that pushed me in, led me out. I know my convictions about most parts of the Bible, and hold them firmly, with courage and humility. But there are some parts that still mystify me because they're veiled enough, and obtuse enough, that one can read six scholars and get six different views. In my weariness of this past week, I found myself weary of the certitude scholars proclaim about things which can't be 'certainly' known. The date Joel was written is open for debate, as is the dating of many events he sees in the future. And though there's precious little evidence to grant certitude, everyone seems to have it. This bothers me; bothered me enough this past week that I was upset, both with the obtuseness of scripture and the arrogance of people who claim to get it.

Still, I read. This morning, I read Psalm 106, and this passage leaves very little room for guesswork, either in it's historical interpretation or personal application. "They quickly forgot His works" - Yes, that's me. God does amazing things as our church gathers to celebrate the resurrection. Lives are changed. Challenges accepted. Hearts healed. But 48 hours later, all I can see is that God should have spilled out the historical context of Joel better so that arrogant scholars wouldn't pretend to know stuff when they're really just guessing. I'm a fool! Like Israel, I easily forgot all the things God did, allowing His obvious work in the big things to be covered with the ice of my cynicism regarding a small epistemological issue.

2. Still reading the Bible, "they craved intensely" in the wilderness. I'm reminded this morning, that my appetites for technology, for comfort, for carrot juice, for good coffee, are just appetites. Let them control my contentment level when they're denied, and I'm setting myself up for a life of grumblings, always waiting to live fully because I think fullness depends on satisfied appetites. I fell into that this week, and the Bible reminded me this morning of that danger.

3. Romans 1:12 speaks of the mystery that two people can both feel as if they receive more than they give, as they find themselves encouraged, each by the other's faith. I know this happens on missions trips, when I feel that friends in Nepal or Central America, or Europe give me so much more than I give them. But a memorable moment was mine last night when I read the comments from my previous post this morning. I was deeply touched by all of them, but particularly the last one - touched, encouraged, and convicted. Yes Michael - one is enough. Thanks so much for melting my heart with your encouraging words.

Nothing's changed really; pirates still steal ship, not just because they're pirates, but because they're trapped in poverty. Children still die. Scholars still pontificate with confidence about things they really don't know. But for me, I'm back in the sunshine, and the deep freeze of discouragement where I'd been stuck for a few days is nearly thawed completely. I'm grateful.

One of my take aways from this: I need to keep reading my Bible. The fact that my Psalms reading pattern brought me to 106 this morning was deeply encouraging. I needed to hear it.
I pray and hope that I'll continue to show up... looking for God in creation, His word, and fellowship, because revelation is like sunlight - life giving, thawing, healing.

lament...

2009-04-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

After a marvelous Easter celebration, I've no doubt that God is at work in the world and in His church. We saw people meet Christ, and saw hundreds step into God's story in order to bring hope to the world. I'm grateful for this, and confident that God will continue to work among us. At the same time...

This week my musings range towards the darker side of things. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's that winter is hanging on here in Montana and the "how long O Lord" of winter has me thinking about bigger issues about which humanity and creation cry out, "How long O Lord?" Maybe it's because I'm tired. Maybe it's because I've been doing a lot of research and reading lately about global hunger, poverty, and the impending water crisis. But whatever the reason, I'm wondering, "How long O Lord?" quite a bit this week. This is what I asked God in my prayer diary...

How long will you wait to act in this world and bring an end to the disease and hunger, the war and poverty, the senseless violence and suffering? I feel as if I'm supposed to just jump in and do my part, throw one starfish back into the ocean, and I can do that, will do that. But come on God, the endless plagues, famines, wars, and oppressions must be wearying to your soul, not to mention your reputation as a good and loving God. Why not act? Why not set up your rule? Why not put an end to the madness? How long O Lord?

I've a second complaint, also in the form of a prayer request. It seems that we, your people, are prone to having our worlds shrink when we say yes to following you. It doesn't happen that way all the time, but it happens that way all too often. Why is it that we, your people, know each other, but not our neighbors? Why do we fight about little slivers of doctrine, trying to dissect the interplay of man's free will and your sovereign power, but sort of gloss over the main things, the things that are intended to propel us into the world as people of hope and celebration, mercy and generosity? Why is this God? Why do you put up with that? Why do you put up with us? Can you teach us to see the main thing, to fixate on the main thing, to teach each other the main thing, to live the main thing?

We've plenty of institutions doing things in your name. We've lots of words, denominations, camps, schools, para-church organizations, web sites, blogs (yes, I know). But your real life, it seems to me, is like 1/2 tsp. in these gallons of activity. Maybe you should evaporate the rest of it so that the world can see you more clearly. I pray that you'll do this distilling work, pray that you'll enable we who desire to love you, and love our neighbors, to be fortified, purified, so that we might live out our calling more fully.

I know, I'm the pastor. I'm supposed to inspire. The reality for me, though, is that I sometimes hold joy and confidence in one hand, and struggle in the other. This is one of those times. I can't help thinking that sharing my own journey, my own struggles, my own wrestlings, is appropriate sometimes. God can take it when we're frustrated, and maybe it's right for the larger community to see these musings, not just the happy ones. Just read the Psalms and you'll find that out. So there it is... right from my journal on this snowy day in Montana.

Maranatha.

Your thoughts?

I think it's true... He really IS risen...

2009-04-11T09:14:00.000-07:00

If you attend(ed) Easter services at the church I pastor, you know that the focus of the teaching was on the implications of the resurrection, rather than providing evidence for the resurrection. For those interested in the evidence side of things, I taught a series this past fall in which addressed this. The podcast can be found here. In this teaching, I offer the following thoughts about the resurrection:

the reality of the resurrection and ascension –

it’s tempting to try and remain in some neutral posture about a real resurrection but there are two problems: 1) both Jesus’ disciples and Paul’s teaching make this an impossibility (see I Corinthians 15:3 – ‘first importance’ – Without the resurrection, all we have is teachings and ideals – what we DON’T HAVE is any meaningful hope for the future, or source of power for personal or societal transformation 2) our neutrality doesn’t exist – we either believe or don’t believe. Consider John 20:24,25: Thomas does not believe – and he moves from unbelief to belief. The neutral ground is a myth because the issue isn’t DO YOU KNOW (as in, "I know I'm wearing clothes)… the issue is DO YOU BELIEVE…(as in, I believe, though I don't have first hand evidence, that there was an earthquake in Italy, or that people walked on the moon, or that the Holocaust happened)

those who do believe are not living in a fantasy world – belief is deeply rooted in careful thought, and the weighing of evidence – (NB: this evidence hangs together collectively)

a) the evidence of an empty tomb – if Jesus weren’t raised from the dead, eventually some of his followers would have gathered the bones together and done with them what other followers of other ‘so called Messiahs’ had done – they would have made a shrine of the bones and Jesus’ tomb would have become a holy site – that it didn’t weighs heavily as evidence of a resurrection

b) the evidence of personal sightings – the empty tomb by itself would not be enough evidence, because there were grave robbers – but the testimony of the disciple’s encounters with Jesus and Paul’s declaration in I Cor. 15gives credence to the resurrection story

c) the expectation of the disciples – it would be possible to explain the resurrection by declaring that the disciples had so desperately wanted a resurrection to happen that they began to believe it actually happened. But the biggest problem with this is that the disciples didn’t expect Jesus to rise from the dead, because the notion of a resurrection was a new teaching and while Jesus hinted at it, they clearly didn’t yet understand it at the point of Jesus' crucifixion. That’s why Peter would say, “I’m going fishing”

d) the written testimony of witnesses including women – if you wanted to build a case to prove the resurrection and you were making up some stories to declare it, the last thing you’d do is include women as the first people to view Jesus, because back in the day, their testimony wouldn’t be accepted as credible evidence anywhere in the Roman empire

e) Roman soldiers were held accountable for killing their victims – a drugged and beaten Messiah who really didn’t die would not have provided convincing evidence to the disciples of the entire new doctrine of the resurrection -

The recurring phrase, ‘we are witnesses’ would have been supremely easy to dismiss with any compelling evidence to the contrary. Instead, at the cost of their lives, the original witnesses gave birth to a new kind of hope, a hope born out an empty tomb. This is what the church believes.

Finding the "Good" in Good Friday

2009-04-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

This is the day when we ponder Christ's suffering and death; the day when the cross is draped in black. They day when all the candles are snuffed out and darkness reigns. It's the day of pondering Christ's death, His suffering, His crying out (the 'seven last words'), His reproach. With a narrative like this, one would think that the point is to fully enter in to the suffering of Jesus, empathizing, and responding with a kind of sorrow filled gratitude... He did that FOR ME?

While such sorrow-gratitude has a measure of appropriateness to it, that kind of response would hardly merit this day being called "Good Friday". Black Friday, Dark Friday, Death Friday, perhaps; but not Good Friday. What are we to make of this?

1. It's "good" because this is where Christ became "propitiation". That's nothing more than a fancy word indicating that the breach of relationship between God and humanity was healed through Christ's death on the cross. A careful reading of I John 2 reveals the reality that God's not mad anymore... at anyone. Christ's death absorbed the wrath of God. Sure, you can argue about whether God should have wrath, just like you could argue about whether the sky should be blue, or whether water should be the sustaining liquid for the world rather than the milk of cows. But you're not running the universe, and neither am I, so declaring that we don't like the way God has set it up doesn't ultimate change things. What does change things, if the Bible is true, is Christ's death. It means that no longer is anyone judged on the basis of their own righteousness (or lack thereof), unless, by rejecting God's gift, they demand to be judged on their own merit instead of Christ's. That's always an option, but not one I'd choose.

2. It's "good" because dead people leaving their graves became a 'down payment' on a future world where all death, disease, destruction, war, pollution, greed, hatred, will be destroyed. We're invited to live now in the goodness and hope of the world that will someday come in fullness, and we're given the capacity to do so because of what happened on the cross. Death paved the way for life.

Good Friday marks the convergence of darkness and light, because the darkness of Jesus death marked the beginning of the brightness that IS, and SHALL BE the hope of Christ's Reign, a hope that will heal the world, a hope that could be inaugurated in no way other than by His death.

Good? Yes, like the goodness that comes when someone gives you BOTH their kidneys so that you can live; like the goodness that comes from realizing that someone covered your school debt, so now you're free to serve in the Peace Corp, or dig wells in India; like the goodness that comes from realizing that, through the death of a revolutionary, a regime of darkness has been toppled. It's good, certainly. But it's goodness at a cost. And we distort the gospel tragically if we fixate on either the goodness, ignoring the cost, or vice versa. That's why they call Good AND drape the cross in black.

Praying for Easter...

2009-04-09T09:51:00.000-07:00

I'm excited about Easter Sunday this year, because we're inviting neighbors, and challenging our community to invite neighbors. It will be a time when I'll be declaring our belief that Jesus' triumph over the grave means that a new way of living began - a way that enables people to live sacrificially, generously, imparting hope to our broken world.

We'll be kicking off a 50 day challenge to live more simply and share the difference. Our collective involvement will, we pray, provide clean water for at least 15,000 people. If you're looking for something to do on Easter... join us. If you already have something to do, pray for us!

Here's our invitation: