Glibity

Glibity. Probably not a real word. On the other hand, it certainly seems to be a leading characteristic for worship leaders. It seems that the primary quality for a worship leader is glibity = the ability to get up in front of an audience and not put people to sleep within ten minutes.

Not a bad quality, of course. But when it becomes primary, or even solitary, we gots problems. And oh, do we gots problems!

We want our worship NOT to lead us into contact with God, but to be "worship lite": we want to praise God from a great, great distance. We want to maintain our dignity! True worship might rob us of dignity because we might be forced to do something, well, UNDIGNIFIED!

I can just hear the protests: "God wouldn't ask us to do anything undignified!" Which is, essentially, to believe that God is a good American who wants and requires a good American response to him -- a good American encounter that is superficial and ends with "lets do lunch!"

But I see Abraham, asked to sacrifice that which was most precious to him. I see David dancing around the Ark of the Covenant. I see Isaiah falling on his face, sure that God should kill him. I see Peter bowing down in the bottom of his fishing boat and asking Jesus to go away. I see the apostle John even bowing before an angel -- not even GOD! -- and having to be told not to do that (so: even being in the near vicinity of holiness ought to cause us fear!).

But instead, we prefer glibity -- because we don't want to encounter the living God. We do "worship lite," then do lunch.

It means we don't take God seriously. First, we probably don't even really believe God will show up. Does anything really happen when the church gathers for worship? Or are we just meeting together because God told us to do it and we have to get our card punched each week? I don't think God is about that. God wants us to worship, not because he has an ego problem and needs our praise once a week or so in order to maintain his fragile ego, but because he wants to be with us -- and not with us in the usual manner (along the lines of "lo, I am with you always"), but in some kind of special -- in fact UNusual -- way. But most Protestants stopped believing that long, long ago (in the bid to reject the RC doctrine of transubstantiation, most of us decided that Jesus doesn't really show up in the Lord's Supper at all; did the baby go out with the bathwater?).

Second, we probably don't believe that God's grace and love are large enough to allow him to show up and pay any attention at all to us. I mean, after all, we're a pretty stinky people, right? And God should probably kill us all because of our sin, right?

Right. He should. We deserve it. On the other hand, his grace and love ARE big enough to allow him to forgive and to pay attention to our feeble, paltry efforts to praise him. It is WE who have the ego problem, then: we think this whole thing depends on us! We've made OURSELVES the centerpiece of the whole operation, and Luther's dictum is true again: homo incurvatus in se (roughly, we "curve" everything back on ourselves, again and again making ourselves the center of the universe).

I love how Annie Dillard put it: if we really believed God, we'd come to church wearing crash helmets. We are, she says, like children playing on the floor with our chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. Do we really have any idea of who God is -- the God we ask to be present with us?

But we don't wear crash helmets. We want our worship to be lighthearted and glib, with just a faint whiff or goldleaf thin layer of holiness in order to make us think we've done something right.

Please do away with glibity and begin to employ the reverence due to the Creator! I'm so tired of going to church and coming away feeling like I've been to a Rotary business meeting (with apologies to Rotary Club members!) or to a group hug and/or group therapy program. Those things can be ok, but the only healing for what really ails us is the encounter with God. And that will force us to our knees or flat on our faces. It won't be pretty, and it won't be glib.

Christian Diversity and Taize

Traveling the world is a special privilege. I'm so blessed to be able to do a little travel now and then. This summer has been especially blessed -- 6 weeks in Europe and 2 weeks in Singapore. One of the greatest blessings is seeing Christian faith in people so diverse!

Do you know about Taize? Read their email bulletin I'm pasting below. This is a world-wide youth movement that has a powerful witness. I love reading this, and maybe a few others will as well. Their URL is near the bottom of the bulletin.

News from Taizé by email
Taizé, Monday 21 July 2008
--------------------------------------------
* The summer meetings in Taizé
* Sydney: prayers at Saint James'
* From Dar-es-Salaam to Nairobi
* The brothers in Bangladesh
* Prayer

The summer meetings in Taizé
--------------------------------------------
At mid July the meetings are at their height. For the brothers, the
summer means being astonished again every year: why do so many young
adults keep coming back to the hill? This week, those from Europe have
come from over thirty different countries, from the Atlantic to the
Urals. Others, less numerous, have travelled much further, from thirty
countries of America, Africa and Asia.

This week, among those who have travelled farthest are volunteers who
will stay for three months, from India, Guatemala, and Uganda and from
Indonesia, Laos and Colombia.

What brings everyone together, brothers and young people from all over
is certainly the prayer. The multiple facets of the summer meetings give
a place more and more central to these times together, morning, noon and
evening, in the Church of Reconciliation. In the great diversity of
languages and cultures, in the very broad denominational palette that
brings together Christians of many backgrounds, in the variety of the
themes proposed each day for reflection, the one who gathers all
together is the Risen Christ.

He brings us together, and he calls as well: during the Saturday evening
prayer, a young man from the Netherlands responded to that call when he
received from Brother Alois the prayer garment of the brothers. It was a
beautiful witness, for everyone present, of a practical commitment in
the footsteps of Christ.

* "Remaining faithful to the end"
During the summer, some of the young people choose as their daily Bible
introduction a deeper study of the first three chapters of Revelation
(Theme: "Remaining faithful to the end"). Amandine, from Geneva, chose
this group. She underlines the importance of the times of sharing that
follow the explanation of the day's passage by one of the brothers. "In
the discussion groups, we tried to respond to the - sometimes complex -
questions with the help of our Bibles and our personal experience. Even
if our knowledge was limited, as the week progressed we were able to
acquire new knowledge and to familiarise ourselves with the text." This
Bible introduction enables many people to discover a book that at first
sight seems difficult to approach, but which in fact gives a profound
witness to the love of God.

* "The silk road"
The young people from Asia arriving in Taizé at the beginning of the
summer quickly began their experience of prayer and meeting with young
people from other countries and continents. With some other Asians,
Ajeng, a theology student from Singapore, was asked to prepare two
workshops which they entitled "The Silk Road". She writes:
"All the Asian volunteers were very excited, knowing that we had to
present our countries and cultures. In fact, this has been a means of
bonding for us, for we have got to know each another better, personally
as well as culturally. The theme proposed made us do some "small
preliminary research" and trace back our backgrounds. It is surprising
to discover that Asian people share many things now because of the Silk
Road period! Just as the traders travelled a long distance to exchange
something precious like silk, we too have travelled all the way here to
Taizé, to seek God, who is so precious for us. Yet we realize that we
can not become mere "consumers" of faith. We were invited to tell our
stories and to listen to other people's stories as well. With
discernment, this exchange can be a positive way of building up our faith."

* "Difficult to say goodbye!"
Two young people from Madagascar, Ravaka and Victorien, arrived to be
volunteers in Taizé a few weeks ago. They have just finished leading a
week at Olinda, the house for young families. For the young adults from
other continents who come to spend several months in Taizé, this is a
quite new experience, which Ravaka sums up like this: "The real
challenge is to create a good atmosphere in the group. For not only do
you have a group of thirty children to care for, but in addition they
speak several languages and their cultures are sometimes very different
from ours!" Every week the children are split up into different groups
according to age. For example, for the oldest – between 12 and 14 – two
activities are proposed: sharing on a Bible text and discovering the
different countries represented in the group. Victorien adds, "In the
afternoons, it was the leaders' turn to present a play. The last day, we
received a card expressing the thanks of the parents... it was difficult
for the children and the leaders to say goodbye!"
"Echoes of the young adults meetings":
http://www.taize.fr/en_article7052.html

Sydney: prayers at Saint James's
--------------------------------------------
For a whole week Sydney's streets and railways stations echoed to the
sounds of animated young people from all the continents of the world.
World Youth Day had attracted a quarter of a million pilgrims who came
together to celebrate their faith and their hopes. Where the massive
buildings of the commercial district meet the large park opposite St
Mary's Cathedral is the lovely, warm sand stone church building of the
Anglican Church of St James. And it was in this church that people came
to join some of the brothers of Taizé in prayer each day. As the week
progressed, more and more young people began crowding into the church
until by the end of the week not everyone who wanted to get in were able
to – even with up to four prayers in an afternoon and evening...
There were always people of different denominations present. Young
people read the Scriptures in up to six different languages. They also
helped lead the intercessions. On three of the evenings, Brother Alois
spoke to the young pilgrims.
At the close of the final evening prayer each day the cross was laid on
the floor and people waited patiently in a long line for an opportunity
to entrust to Christ some of their anxieties and fears and hopes. At the
final prayer, the Prime Minister of Australia who had earlier in the
week spoken to the young pilgrims at the opening event, attended with
his family, staying for two hours to pray with the young people.
http://www.taize.fr/en_article7190.html

From Dar-es-Salaam to Nairobi
--------------------------------------------
I am a Tanzanian aged 25 years old. I am from Dar es Salaam, and I am a
laboratory technician by profession. I was in Taizé, France during the
summer months of 2006. Currently I am on my annual leave so I decided to
spend some days as a volunteer, to help with the preparation of the
meeting in Nairobi.... The way I see the preparation for the November
meeting is that things are moving at quite a good pace. It seems to be
well organised. This meeting will be a golden opportunity for the youth
to discover themselves and spend quality time for their spiritual life
and growth in the Church and stop, listen and reflect to what our rapid
changing societies are offering us today. On a very personal note, I
thank God for giving us this opportunity to be part of this pilgrimage
of trust in East Africa and Africa as a Continent. It will be a time for
us to discover and learn something from other youth coming from several
African countries. And for the youth coming from outside Africa it will
be a memorable time to know more about our peoples, lives, culture and
give Africa a new face. ... Keep the spirit high up "Kwa pamoja tutafuta
njia ya matumaini" Together seeking paths of Hope. Karibuni Sana!!
Kwenye mkutano wa vijana tarehe 26-30 Novemba 2008. Ahsante! Makolo
Christopher Ludosha. http://www.taize.fr/en_article7168.html

The meeting in Nairobi will take place from 26 to 30 November 2008:
http://www.taize.fr/en_article6670.html
Practical information and registration:
http://www.taize.fr/en_article6671.html
To Nairobi from South Africa: http://www.taize.fr/en_article7114.html

The brothers in Bangladesh
--------------------------------------------
I have just come back from visiting some families in the region of
Dinajpur. There were marriages in the families of young people we know
and who work with us in Mymensingh. It was raining and everything took
place in the mud.... But it was really good to see many people again.
Dipok, who is in Taizé at present, comes from this region.
After many attempts that did not succeed, we finally had a pilgrimage of
trust with disabled people in Khulna. There were 200 disabled
Christians, with their families, a large group of young volunteers (many
of whom took part in the meeting in Kolkata) and on the Saturday over
fifty disabled Muslims and their families came as well. There was a big
gathering for the inter-religious prayer at noon: beautiful Muslim songs
sung by a young blind man and some very poor mothers – of families where
there is no father – shared their stories. Mgr Theo was present, and the
local bishop came for the end. I went with several young people to help
– the journey lasted ten hours by bus! Much gratitude on all sides. The
prayer with the candles on the Saturday evening was a feast! ...
http://www.taize.fr/en_article7032.html

Prayer
--------------------------------------------
God of peace, your presence is often a mystery for us; to welcome you we
need a heart that is simple, and filled with trust.


---

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"America is Drowning in Pretend Patriotism"

Click Here.

This is a link to an insightful article by Robert Scheer of Truthdig.

Jimmy Carter on the Palestinian Humanitarian Crisis

Click here for a quick summary by the Ekklesia Project.

Click here for the full article by Jimmy Carter in The Guardian.

Former President Carter has recently visited the Gaza Strip and has seen first hand the suffering of the Palestinians. Our nation is largely responsible for this situation, and we need to change our national policy. Send these articles to your senators and state reps!

More from Human Smoke

Someone asked Mohandas Gandhi about English pacifists. It was May 1938.

The problem with the English pacifists, Gandhi said, was that they made moral calculations: "When they speak of pacifism they do so with the mental reservation that when pacifism fails, arms might be used." A true pacifist never calculated. "Someone has to arise in England with the living faith to say that England, whatever happens, shall not use arms," said Gandhi. "They are a nation fully armed, and if they having the power deliberately refuse to use arms, theirs will be the first example of Christianity in active practice on a mass scale. That will be a real miracle."

No miracle occurred.

Oswald Garrison Villard, an editor of The Nation, wrote that great armaments were the road to fascism. "They bring with them increased worship of the State, increased nationalism, increased State service, and therefore play into the hands of those like Hitler and Mussolini who declare that the citizen is made for the State and not the State for the citizen," he said. It was July 2, 1938.

Happy Birthday, Israel: 60 years of. . . .

I wanted to say "screwing the Palestinians," but that would be rude. God forbid we be rude and say a word like "screw." Someone might get upset.

But we don't get upset over 60 years of oppression of the Palestinian peoples. Go to www.palestineremembered.com for a good account of the history of this oppression.

Church leaders around the world are signing on to a document that states clearly the oppression of the Palestinians, and Christian complicity in that oppression. Click here to read about it.

Part of the story recounted in Human Smoke (the history of the beginnings of WWII I'm currently reading) is that the Jews were sent to Palestine because no one else would take them. Great Britain refused. The United States refused. No one would let the Jews from Germany emigrate because everyone hated Jews. Everyone else in the Western world shared the antisemitism of Hitler and Goebbels and Goering. So we refused to let them emigrate to our countries, largely leaving them in Germany to be slaughtered, then afterward sending them to Palestine and thus giving away the land that had belonged to the Palestinians for centuries. Yes, the western nations gave away land that wasn't theirs. Why? Because we could. We had the military might to make it stick. The Palestinians couldn't resist against it.

So, Jews were slaughtered in Germany because of German/European antisemitism; Jews were banished to Palestine because of British and American antisemitism. We continue to suffer from terrorism today because of an antisemitic past. And here's the really neat trick: we disguise it by creating a Jewish state! So, it LOOKS like we are "Pro-Jewish"!!! Ingenious!

We owe both sides a deep apology.

Human Smoke

From Human Smoke, the book I'm currently reading:

Captain Philip S. Mumford, a former British officer in Iraq, joined the Peace Pledge Union. He gave a speech about why. "What is the difference between throwing 500 babies into a fire and throwing fire from aeroplanes on 500 babies?" he asked. "There is none."

Good question. Good point.

Another:

The church bells in Guernica begain ringing. It was market day, Monday, at 4:30 P.M., on April 28, 1937. German pilots were in the air. They wore the badge of the Kondor Legion: a condor plunging earthward with a bomb held in its claws.
They were over the town for three hours. The curate of the Church of Santa Maria de Guernica wrote: "Before God and my country I bear witness that the airplanes threw incendiary bombs." The Times of London wrote: "The whole town of 7,000 inhabitants, plus 3,000 refugees, was slowly and systematically pounded to pieces." A reporter for the Daily Mail wrote: "A sight that haunted me for weeks was the charred bodies of several women and children huddled together in what had been the cellar of a house. It had been a refugio."
Later Hermann Goering said that Guernica had been a testing ground for the Luftwaffe. "It was a pity," he said, "but we could not do otherwise, as we had nowhere else to try out our machines."

Read this book.

On Being Alien

A good friend currently wonders if he "fits here anymore." Here is my late-night response.

I suppose that depends in part on what you mean by "here." Abilene? Church of Christ? Earth? You probably don't fit any of them very well, especially given the fallenness of them all. But the last two (!) are what God is working on redeeming (certainly he's abandoned Abilene??? :-) ), and I think that's where we "fit" into the world -- with the memory that it is God's, that God isn't happy with it in its present state because God doesn't "fit" here anymore, either. I mean -- when's the last time you saw God walking around in the garden? The world has done its best to kick God out. No wonder that we who are imago dei also feel like it's a bad fit (when we're aware, at least). The only way we can "fit" is to join forces with God, which means to be fighting against the way the world is, which means NOT to "fit." A paradox. May God have mercy.

How Would Jesus Vote?

A good article on Evangelical Christian democrats by Amy Sullivan in the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/02/24/ST2008022402257.html?sid=ST2008022402257

Be sure to read the discussion with Amy about the topic and about her book here.

In the discussion she points out that about 1/3 of Democrats are pro-life. Hurray! But that's not as high as the percentage of Republicans that are pro-choice! Weird.

Pacifism and Romans 13

I'm a pacifist. I think all Christians should be peaceful people = non-violent. I think being a disciple of Jesus means that we should not resort to violence to protect our material interests -- which means that Christians should not serve in the military or on police forces where they are obligated to take other human lives. Period.

There is more to the position than that, but that's pretty much as far as I get with some folks before they toss Romans 13 into the conversation as a rebuttal. After all, the claim goes, governments are all appointed by God to keep the peace. Therefore, our armed forces are just doing God's work, which means Christians obviously can and perhaps even SHOULD participate.

Here is the relevant part of Romans 13 (from the New Revised Standard Version, found on www.crosswalk.com):

1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; 4 for it is God's servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. 6 For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, busy with this very thing.

7 Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

Now, we can ask ourselves what this text actually does say, and then also what it does NOT say. First of all, historical context. The writer is Paul the Apostle, a Jewish Rabbi who has come to believe that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. Both Paul and his readers (who are Christians in Rome) live in and under the authority of the Roman Empire. Nero was likely the emperor at the time -- not a big fan of Christians, to say the least. The Christians in Rome seem to be a group made up of Jewish and non-Jewish believers in Jesus.

Paul's theology of government seems to me based in the Jewish scriptures, particularly in the stories of the later history of the Jewish kingdoms (north and south) found in Kings and Chronicles and in the prophetic works that correspond to those events. To summarize, God is in charge of all of these kingdoms and/or governments. He moves them around like pieces on a chess board to accomplish his own purposes, of which humans are not necessarily aware.

Though there had been a short period of time, during the reign of King David, in which Israel had truly been a theocracy, this was not the norm. In fact, even during David's son's reign (Solomon), it seems clear that God was not being relied on for the security of the kingdom. Ask yourself this: how many wives and/or concubines did Solomon have? Answer: 1 Kings 11:3 -- "Among his wives were seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines." Wow! This guy had at least (!) 1k women at his disposal! "At least," because the text says "among his wives"! We don't know how many more there were, but the 1k women were "among" the total number! I'm impressed!

Now, as yourself this question: how many children did Solomon have?

Go ahead, ask. Search it out in Kings and Chronicles. I'm waiting. Ok, times' up. Answer: 1 (ONE, as in A WHOLE NUMBER THAT IS LESS THAN TWO AND MORE THAN ZERO). Yes, only one.

How in the world did that happen? Well, it seems to me there are a couple of possibilities. One, there was something physically wrong with the man. After all, that one son, Rehoboam, was advised to prove to the people that his little finger was thicker than his father's loins! But as Freud is purported to have said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar -- and a metaphor is just a metaphor.

A second possibility is that Solomon had more children that weren't mentioned in the text -- perhaps because Solomon had them killed. At least one of the "foreign gods" Solomon worshiped with his wives ("Molech": see 1 Kings 11 and 2 Kings 23:10) demanded child sacrifice. It could be that Solomon had had other children that he sacrificed. On the other hand, if that were the case, why wouldn't the text mention this in the process of listing Solomon's sins at the end of his life? It doesn't appear that the text is trying to put a positive spin on Solomon and sweep his sins out of sight under the rug (Chronicles is guilty of this, but not Kings).

The third possibility is this: Solomon was not a hedonist, and these marriages were all political alliances. The security of the nation under Solomon was not in the protection of God, but in the marriage-alliances Solomon had made with all the nations around them. Because of Solomon's marriage-alliances, he had also worshiped the gods of all of his wives, and he actually built shrines for them all. (Trivia question: how many temples did Solomon build? Answer: more than one, and perhaps as many as 1000 -- for each of the gods of each of his wives and concubines.) Because he worshiped all those other gods, the kingdom was split after his death and divided between his own son, Rehoboam, and a rival, Jeroboam. This was God's action.

Further, later in the story God actually turns against the Israelite kingdoms and brings the armies of foreign nations against them to defeat them. Pieces on the chessboard.

The point is that for Paul the Apostle, though there had been that brief moment in Israelite history in which God had ruled through David, that was long past and irrelevant to his own situation under the Romans. It hadn't worked out well anyway! And that Maccabean period? Well, again, it had ended badly, and besides that, Jesus had said things like "My kingdom is not of this world."

So, in Romans 13, Paul is affirming the truth that God is ultimately in charge, and that he uses world governments to keep relative peace in the world. Romans 13 is NOT a call for Christians to get involved! In fact, Christian involvement in the Roman government could not even be on Paul's radar screen (had he had one)! For Paul and the early Christians, God has put Rome in charge, and this is NOT an indication that God is on the side of the Roman gods, nor that the Roman government is in any sense "Christian." It is merely an indication that God is using the Romans as he has always used human governments, and Christians have nothing to fear so long as they avoid committing crimes.

On the other hand, we Christians do generally recognize that there is a time when we would be forced to invoke Peter's statement that "We must obey God rather than any human authority." But here's how I sometimes hear this one used: Christians MUST be willing to kill on behalf of our government if the government says kill.

So, if someone had been drafted and sent to Viet Nam back in the 60s or 70s, that person would have been obligated to kill, and it would have been godly to do so.

But, by the same logic, Nazi soldiers in WWII were just "obeying God" because they were "obeying orders." Those in charge of the extermination camps tried to use the "Nuremberg Defense": "we were just obeying orders." It didn't work -- they were held to have been morally responsible. By that logic Iraqi soldiers are on God's side now, and American soldiers are fighting against God because we deposed a ruler who had been set up by God. Etc., etc. Oh -- and that "American Revolution"? Uh oh. Now we're in trouble. We opposed a government set up by God. Shoot. I hate it when that happens.

You see, in Paul's situation under the Roman Empire, his words are certainly true: in essence, Christians are to stay out of the way of what God is doing with the Empire and it's power. That's it. But our situation is different, and perhaps more complicated, since we do have some element of voice in our government. Paul and the early church didn't.

Final note: Paul says "give honor to whom honor is due." I wonder if that's a blanket statement for us always to honor those in power, or if it means we have to discern who is, actually, due "honor." Of course, this statement echoes Jesus' statement about giving "to Caesar that which is Caesar's." A quick note about that story: it's one of the really great jokes of the New Testament. Jesus is talking to a bunch of Jewish scholars who are trying to entrap him, and they get trapped in their own false logic. Any Jew worthy of that title should have known that God is creator and that it all really belongs to him. Jesus threw a feint -- a "false punch" -- by pointing to the face on the coin. They went for it, and Jesus walks away without a scratch. THAT'S FUNNY!

To summarize: I don't think anyone can legitimately use Romans 13 to justify Christian participation in any kind of killing. It simply says "God will do what God will do with governments, so stay out of their way." We must always remember that we live by a different standard than the world, and that sometimes "We must obey God rather than any human authority."

Monty Python theology

Ok, here's a good exercise for you if you're feeling like you're (to quote Karen Carpenter, that famous optimist) "On Top of the World," or if you have begun to think that the world is really a quite happy place (you are disqualified if your "office" has padded walls) and/or that humanity is making progress -- every day, in every way, we're getting better and better!!!

Go to the Barnes & Noble website, browse the "Religion and Spirituality" section, specifically the "Books under $10" section. You will likely find some of the following.

First, The Joke's on Ewe: Jokes, Riddles and Funny Stories Little David Told his Sheep. Now, I'm aware that solitude can have strange affects on people, and some people believe that their pets answer when they talk to them, but this scares me. On the other hand, now the story of David "feigning" madness in front of the Philistine kings makes much more sense. And it's obvious that David was called to be in Saul's court not just because he could pluck a harp -- he was doing standup. Maybe Henny Youngman was a direct descendant.

Then, there are various books containing "church jokes" (mostly written by Nietzsche?), and "Fun Facts About the Bible," not to mention God Plays Golf.

You see here how hard some people will work to try to make following Jesus seem palatable -- or even fun. I mean, if God plays golf, maybe I can get into the Heavenly Country Club!!! (Hmmm -- I wonder what the girl on the beverage cart sells there? Or would it be free? O -- wait -- we couldn't be thirsty in heaven!!! Ha!!! On the other hand, what fun would golf be if. . . . Nevermind.).

Ok, here's another: Sinners in the Hands of God Made Easier to Read. Is this what it means?


I can almost hear Jonathan Edwards proclaiming boldly: "Those who are morally challenged need to maximize their opportunities to create a positive trend in their self-talk, creating a behavior-change that will result in better relationships, greater contentment and less guilt and negativity. If those people do NOT do that, God will, quite possibly, create a situation in which the negative self-talk and negative choices may bring about further negative consequences that will encourage deeper self-examination that will motivate one to relinquish the guilt and negativity and trend toward behaviors that bring positive self-talk and positive relationships, toward the goal of full acceptance of oneself as a beloved creature of God with whom God wishes full fellowship, intimate communion and communication." Jonathan Edwards meets Joel Osteen.

A friend of mine who no longer professes Christian faith has this gripe against church: churches lie. They're not truthful about the gospel, grace, sin and/or judgment, not to mention about who God is (assuming that churches actually do know who God is!). He says that if churches told the truth about those things, our songs would essentially tell us that we suck and deserve to go to hell. In other words, we would stop sugar-coating the gospel and our own very human need for redemption and grace. Some more contemporary churches are discovering the same thing. It's one thing to go to church to get a good free show, complete with rock and roll and laser lights. It's quite another thing to go to church and have an Isaiah 6 experience -- where face to face with the Holy God, we are compelled to hit the deck and cover the backs of our heads. I mean, this is bigger than any tornado drill -- or the real tornado, come to think of it.

A few years back the acting troupe Monty Python made a movie called The Life of Brian. According to a documentary on the group, they started out to satirize Jesus. But after reading the gospels, they decided there was no content there to be made fun of, so they trained their sights on how churches present Jesus. I've still not seen the whole movie straight through (though I own a copy), but one scene I've caught a number of times is the crucifixion scene which features the song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," a quite cheery tune with bright and carefree whistling -- sung by those being crucified, and joined in by the gathered crowds. In other words, this is what Monty Python apparently thought was what churches presented as the message of Jesus (best if spoken with a fake British accent): "just keep your chin up; things will get better! Always look on the bright side!" As if that was what Jesus' life and death were all about. Bull.

I told my teenage son about this scene one time, and for years we had our own little private gag (!) going on in church. Whenever one of us would hear some part of a sermon that aligned with the "look on the bright side" message, we would (very quietly) whistle a bit of that tune, and then stifle our laughter.

Annie Dillard has said that no one really takes seriously what we profess to be doing in church -- that if we did, we'd go to church wearing crash helmets -- and that we're like children mixing up a batch of TNT in our new chemistry sets to kill a Sunday morning. She's right. We're killing ourselves with kindness, not to mention laughter.

We do this because we think people need to hear something nice about themselves -- for instance, that God loves them unconditionally. Certainly this is true. But all heresy is a matter of overemphasis. To emphasize God's love and grace in such a way that it excludes or hides from us God's holiness becomes heresy, not to mention falsehood. It's shallow.

I recently heard a sermon series on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, in which the essence of Jesus sermon was presented as a message of self-esteem and lowering one's stress level. I could have whistled through the whole thing.

So, if you hear me whistling in church, you'll know why. Pay attention. And if I miss one, you have my permission to whistle.

The Defeat of Cynicism

Pope Leo the Great, Christmas Sermon
Dearly beloved, today our Saviour is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness. No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin, came to free us all. Let the saint rejoice as he sees the palm of victory at hand. Let the sinner be glad as he receives the offer of forgiveness. Let the pagan take courage as he is summoned to life. In the fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God’s wisdom, the Son of God took for himself our common humanity in order to reconcile it with its creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of death, in that very nature by which he had overthrown mankind. And so at the birth of our Lord the angels sing in joy: Glory to God in the highest, and they proclaim peace to men of good will as they see the heavenly Jerusalem being built from all the nations of the world. When the angels on high are so exultant at this marvellous work of God’s goodness, what joy should it not bring to the lowly hearts of men? Beloved, let us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, because in his great love for us he took pity on us, and when we were dead in our sins he brought us to life with Christ, so that in him we might be a new creation.

"'Christmas! Christmas!' when there is no Christmas."

"'Peace! Peace!' when there is no peace." One of the Jewish prophets cried out against the false prophets who declared peace when there was violence all around. You have to wonder how the false prophets could have gotten away with it -- could have gotten any kind of a hearing that would arouse a response. I mean -- when there is violence all around, isn't it obvious? How could someone declare peace and have anyone take the message seriously? It's a mystery.

On the other hand, one of my favorite little malaprop is: There's a seeker born every minute. In other words, people will hear what they want to hear, believe what they want to believe.

Channel surfing late last night I ran across a travel channel show about tribal life. I didn't catch the name of the island, but it was some island that had been occupied by US forces during WWII. After they left, the natives started up a cult of expectation of their return. The cult is called "John Frum," as in "John from America," and it raises the American flag each day, has Friday worship in which the hope and expectation is expressed that John Frum will return to bless them. No, I'm not making this up. Google it.

People will believe what they want to believe. Perhaps I'm just feeling extra cynical this Christmas. Lets see: this year I've just heard from a friend whose wife left him last week, though he's been trying hard to keep the marriage together. I have other friends whose marriages are on the rocks, or completely gone. Another friend's son has just been diagnosed with cancer. Etc., etc. I talked to the first one mentioned just a bit ago, and he wished me a Merry Christmas. He meant it, too, even though his heart is breaking and mine aches with him. I don't know what to do with that.

So, chalk it up to a bad mood if you want, but when I see our government trying to convince us that we're all about peace, I'm juuuust a tad skeptical. When I see materialistic churches trying to "put the Christ back in Christmas," my skepticism turns black. Can we be that blind?

Ok, sorry -- dumb question.

But what bugs me most is my own ability to affect any of it. "Cosmic Therapy" indeed. The truth is that I can't even fix myself, so certainly I can't expect to be able to fix the world. I know, of course, that only God can fix the world. But I continually despair of our human attempts to have any impact at all.

In a few minutes my family will attend a Christmas Eve service that will proclaim the entry of God into his creation with the hope that creation itself will ultimately be redeemed. Marana tha.

Christmas in Fallujah

Check out this song/video by Billy Joel.

Chills. Brace yourself.

HB 1804 must die!

Mr. Shane Jett, the Republican Representative from Oklahoma's District 27, has considered proposing legislation that would help to curtail the effects of our recent immigration law, HB 1804, on the Oklahoma economy. You can read about it here.

Though his legislation does not go far enough, it's a start. It doesn't address the moral issues, but only the economic issues. I suspect that's the best that can be done immediately -- address people's wallets. HB 1804 itself was enacted out of fear that "they" (meaning the undocumented immigrants) were taking money out of "our" (meaning those of us whose families got here earlier, whether legally or illegally) pockets. In other words, it was pure selfishness.

But, I support what Mr. Jett is trying to do. Hopefully, this will be only a first step toward getting HB 1804 off of the books. Here is most of the text of a letter I have sent to Mr. Jett. It explains my feelings about HB 1804 as clearly as I know how.

Dear Mr. Jett:

I appreciate very much your effort to compose a bill that will enable a guest worker program, and I want to encourage you to do so as quickly as possible. For a variety of reasons I see HB 1804 as immoral, bigoted and racist. It is an embarrassment to the state of Oklahoma. Thank you for your compassion to our neighbors who are less fortunate than many of us and who are doing their best to make a better life for their families.

Let me tell you about a Hispanic young lady who was in one of my classes this semester. This young lady is very intelligent, and aspires to go to law school. I have no doubt she has the ability to do so. She certainly has the drive, and was an outstanding student. But in mid-October, she didn’t show up in class for 2 weeks. I knew she had been planning on doing a mission trip with her church to Peru, so at first I didn’t think much about it. But absence was very atypical for her, so in the second week I began to be concerned. I emailed her, but she didn’t answer. Finally, at the end of the month, she appeared in my office nearly in tears because she had to drop most of her classes. She told me the whole story: her father had been arrested for having hired undocumented immigrants in his business. Though she and her family are all citizens, they tried to help others move here and establish themselves. The INS had been going door to door in her neighborhood checking for undocumented immigrants. Some of her father’s employees had been arrested; others had been forced into hiding. This young lady had had to take over her father’s business and try to keep it running (her family’s only income) while her father was in jail, and she had to keep it running with a skeleton staff. Quite a task for a 19 year old!

Mr. Jett, this is a Christian family. These are solid citizens. Yet this young lady had to see her father treated like a common criminal because he had extended Christian charity to people less fortunate than himself as they tried to improve their own lives. She also had to drop out of school in order to run her family’s business. So her own career is in jeopardy at this point!

You are right that HB 1804 makes no sense economically. It also makes no sense morally, and I believe we need to have it overturned as quickly as possible. The way it has been implemented, with the INS going door to door in south Oklahoma City, is reminiscent of how the Nazis treated the Jews in the WWII era! It seems to me that those who pushed for it and who support it have forgotten why it was their own families immigrated to this nation. They have also neglected to ask themselves to what length they might go to establish a decent life for their own families. I know that I would be willing to break an immigration law if it would mean a better life for my children and grandchildren. Those who try to argue that these undocumented immigrants are simply criminals because they have broken a law have failed in their moral reasoning to understand the situation. The vast majority of these folks are not people who are simply living as outlaws in order to avoid working for a living! Their “crimes” cannot be understood on the same level as, for instance, drug dealers, murderers or thieves. A more parallel case might be breaking speed laws in order to get your child to a hospital in an emergency!

I don't know that we can get that law thrown out, but I want our legislature to know how I feel about it. And I believe this is an unjust law, and that means it is a good candidate for civil disobedience.

Fasting

Comments at OC Outreach, 11/05/07. These are mostly quotes from other sources (mostly documented, but perhaps not adequately for academic standards), with a few notes of my own interspersed.

Fasting

Abbot Palladius: “the first step away from God is a distaste for learning, and lack of appetite for those things for which the soul hungers when it seeks God.”

David Hume: “And as every quality, which is useful or agreeable to ourselves or others, is, in common life, allowed to be a part of personal merit; so no other will ever be received, where men judge of things by their natural, unprejudiced reason, without the delusive glosses of superstition and false religion. Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they every where rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man's fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; neither qualify him for the entertainment of company, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment? We observe, on the contrary, that they cross all these desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper. We justly, therefore, transfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the catalogue of vices; nor has any superstition force sufficient among men of the world, to pervert entirely these natural sentiments. A gloomy, hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the calendar; but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delirious and dismal as himself.” (David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. 1898 ed. Quoted from http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/Hume-Enquiry%20Concerning%20Morals.htm; accessed 11-04-07).

"Is not the neglect of this plain duty (I mean fasting, ranked by our Lord with almsgiving and prayer) one general occasion of deadness among Christians?"
--- John Wesley, *The Journal of John Wesley*

No “Precious Moments”: Jesus’ method of evangelism

“Peacemaking, he said repeatedly, is hardly possible without a well-formed spiritual life, with the usual elements of prayer and fasting, quiet reflection, and sacramental life. Prayer was at very top of the list. How can one love a person one will not pray for? Or, without prayer, find the strength to overcome despair?” (Jim Forest, “Meeting Thomas Merton.”)

The early church expected those who fast to give away what they would have eaten, either in money-value or in food, to those in need. (Shepherd of Hermas 3.5.3; Augustine's Sermon 208). Origen (Homilies on Leviticus, 10) even praised those who fasted in order to give to the poor.

Fasting = solitude, silence and humility = repentance.

Abbot Moses of Scete: “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”

“It was said of Abbot Agatho that for three years he carried a stone in his mouth until he learned to be silent.”

Abbot Pastor said: A man must breathe humility and the fear of God just as ceaselessly as he inhales and exhales the air.”

One of the elders was asked what was humility, and he said: If you forgive a brother who has injured you before he himself asks pardon.”

Thomas Merton observed, "It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love others. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them; it is pure affection and filled with reverence for the solitude of others. Solitude and silence teach me to love others for who they are, not for what they say."

Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu. Translator/Editor Thomas Merton. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1965. ISBN 0877736766

Yen Hui:
What is fasting of the heart?
Confucius:
The goal of fasting is inner unity.
This means hearing, but not with the ear;
hearing, but not with the understanding;
hearing with the spirit, with your whole being...
The hearing of the spirit is not limited to any one faculty, to the ear, or to the mind.
Hence it demands the emptiness of all the faculties.
And when the faculties are empty, then the whole being listens.
There is then a direct grasp of what is right there before you
that can never be heard with the ear or understood with the mind.
Fasting of the heart empties the faculties, frees you from limitation and from preoccupation.
Fasting of the heart begets unity and freedom.
Yen Hui:
I see. What was standing in my way was my own self-awareness. If I can begin this fasting of the heart, self awareness will vanish.
(4:1, pp. 75-76)

Enemy = you/ego.

“Yet another elder said: If you see a young monk by his own will climbing up into heaven, take him by the foot and throw him to the ground, because what he is doing is not good for him.”

To one of the brethren appeared a devil, transformed into an angel of light, who said to him: I am the Angel Gabriel, and I have been sent to thee. But the brother said: Think again – you must have been sent to somebody else. I haven’t done anything to deserve an angel. Immediately the devil ceased to appear.”

“The next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and your witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more, and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.” (Thomas Merton, in a letter to Jim Forest. Quoted in “Meeting Thomas Merton,” lecture given by Jim Forest at the meeting of the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland at St Lawrence Church in Winchester, England, 29 November 2003; http://www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/jimsessays/meeting-thomas-merton/; accessed 11-04-2007).

Meister Eckhart:

“Man never desires anything so earnestly as God desires to bring a man to Himself, that he may know Him.

God is always ready, but we are very unready; God is near to us, but we are far from Him; God is within, but we are without; God is at home, but we are strangers...

“If it is the case that man is emptied of all things, creatures, himself and god, and if god could still find a place in him to act . . . this man is not poor with the most intimate poverty. For God does not intend that man should have a place reserved for him to work in since true poverty of spirit requires that man shall be emptied of god and all his works so that if God wants to act in the soul he himself must be the place in which he acts. . . . (God takes then) responsibility for his own action and (is) himself the scene of the action, for God is one who acts within himself.” (Meister Eckhart, “Blessed are the Poor” [sermon], in R. B. Blakney, Meister Eckhart, a Modern Translation, NY: 1941, p. 231; quoted from Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite [NY: New Directions, 1968], 9.).

Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite, “Author’s Note”:

Where there is carrion lying, meat-eating birds circle and descend. Life and death are two. The living attack the dead, to their own profit. The dead lose nothing by it. They gain too, by being disposed of. Or they seem to, if you must think in terms of gain and loss. Do you then approach the study of Zen with the idea that there is something to be gained by it? This question is not intended as an implicit accusation. But it is, nevertheless, a serious question. Where there is a lot of fuss about “spirituality,” “enlightenment” or just “turning on,” it is often because there are buzzards hovering around a corpse. This hovering, this circling, this descending, this celebration of victory, are not what is meant by the Study of Zen—even though they may be a highly useful exercise in other contexts. And they enrich the birds of appetite.

Zen enriches no one. There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while in the place where it is thought to be. But they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the “nothing,” the “no-body” that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey.

“Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not be totally changed into fire”?