Devotional Excerpt of the Day, 12/11/08
“Living as we do in an imperfect world, we make our peace with its broken realities ”” sometimes we make our peace too easily. We begin to expect that we, too, will reflect its values. We begin to think that a bit of conspicuous consumption here, a degree of profanity there, a wandering and lustful eye here, a bit of sloth there, that all these things are normal, just part of being a person. It is and it isn\’t. It is normal, but it is far from the abundant life God has for us. And so Jesus asks us as well ”” ‘Do you want to be healed?'” — from Rev. Mike Jordan’s Advent devotion series. Check it out every day!
Best of Bweinh! — The Pope v. Billy Graham
Originally printed in April 2007, here’s a true interfaith dialogue!
| In this corner, supporting Pope Benedict, is Mike J! | And in this corner, backing Billy Graham, is Job! | |
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Sit down, Billy. The Holy Father is about to educate your behind. Seriously, let’s think about this, people. In one corner, you have a backwoods preacher from the American South. Quite a dandy in his early days, Billy donned the white bucks and powder blue sportcoats for Youth for Christ rallies as far back as the 1940s. Two whole generations of evangelical women cursed Ruth Bell under their breath for shattering their dreams and taking Billy off the market. Even today, women admire him and men want to be him; pianists want to play for him, and even Michael W. Smith and dcTalk knew they had hit the big time when Billy Graham asked them to play for a “youth night” in a late ’90s California crusade. All of this makes Graham a beloved figure, a bona-fide American religious folk hero. It does not make for a worthy battle. Because in the other corner, resplendent in papal garb, his robes billowing proudly behind him, his miter defiantly piercing the sky, is Pope Benedict XVI, born Joseph Alois Ratzinger. He’s not a folk hero. He’s a junkyard dog. He was known universally as the Vatican’s “doctrinal watchdog” prior to his selection as the 265th pope of the Catholic Church. And as if his international reputation were not enough, the Catholics that knew him best, the ones from his native Germany, referred to him as Der Panzer Kardinal — “the Tank Cardinal.” Why? Because he’s such a ruthless defender of the faith. But you don’t have to take my word for it! Ask the late Father Jacques Dupuis (if you could), or Sri Lankan theologian Tissa Balasuriya. The former had the temerity to suggest that God was active in non-Christian religious traditions, the latter the unmitigated gall to refuse to sign a Vatican-approved statement of faith. Dupuis wound up trashed in a document Ratzinger wrote; Balasuriya was excommunicated, before the ever-gentlemanly Pope John Paul II restored him to the church. You can mess with a guy named Billy. You cannot mess with a Ratzinger. You wind up trashed, excommunicated…or worse. The man’s first papal encyclical was entitled Deus Caritas Est — “God is love.” Notably absent was any statement of Benedict’s own feelings. The obvious message: God is love, and Benedict ain’t. The man is a flat-out papal bull. |
The very notion that Pope Benedict could somehow best Billy Graham is so ludicrous I almost asked to be recused. No chance in heaven! Benny’s only advantage is that if he gouged Graham’s eyes or hit below the belt, he could absolve himself on the spot while the Rev. filed all that messy Grace paperwork. But I still don’t see it. Graham didn’t win prominence by an ancient tradition of selection by peers; he received it by the eons-old tradition of selection by God. And Graham’s a natural fighter; whether Nixon or Parkinson’s, he handles his problems personally with sleeves rolled up and pride rolled down. So l’approvazione, papa, lo porta! Let’s go to the arena floor… In this corner, at a holy 210 — the man who put “I can” in Vatican, the Stonin’ Roman…Germany’s own Joseph A. Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI!!! And in this corner, weighing in at a lanky 205 — The Master Pastor, The Great Wheaton Beatin’…Charlotte’s own Rev. William F. Graham, Jr.!!! *ding ding ding* “Look at Graham charge from his corner! I haven’t seen anything like this since Joel Osteen fought the Dalai Lama in that New Delhi kick-boxing match last June! The Pope is on the ropes, medallions flying everywhere!!” “Bob, this is tough to watch. I think Ratzinger forgot to drink his holy water, and he’s gonna need a miracle.” “Graham continues his crusade! An uppercut to the the Father’s midsection and a roundhouse to the nose!!!” “Bob, it appears the Rev. is nailing all 95 theses to Ratzinger’s chin tonight! I’ll bet the Pope wishes he were still a Cardinal so he could fly far, far away!” “Good call, Gary. Ooh, a stiff right hook from Graham, and the Pope falls to his knees in exhaustion — or is it prayer to Joseph? Patron saint of lost causes?!” “Pope Benedict XV felt that one!” “Hold the chariot, Gary, the Pontiff is up and he’s going after Graham with fury in his eyes!!! The Catholics here are yelling ‘inquisition, inquisition,’ as Benedict rains blow after blow on Graham’s head and body.” “Wow, Bob! Nothing apocryphal about that last punch! But it’s amazing how Graham’s hair stays right in place!” “Is that LA Looks he’s got in there?” “If I gambled, I’d go with Dep, Bob.” “Golly Gee! Now the Protestants are up as Graham delivers punishing blows to the caretaker Pope!! Everyone’s a Calvinist tonight; this is pure destiny!! The Pope is down for the count!!!!” *ding ding ding* “And it’s over — Graham by knockout!” |
Quote of the Day, 12/1/08
“Healing is precisely what Jesus promises. He promises to heal those who would be healed. His healing is not trite, never easy””there is always a cross to bear if you follow him. But, oh!””the healing he brings to his people, some of whom never suspect it.” — Rev. M. Jordan, in the introduction to his newest Advent devotional series on God’s healing.
Check it out, every day from now to Christmas, here at his site!
Best of Bweinh — One Hundred Words (1)
Originally published May 14, 2008.
There comes a moment in each sports season where I begin to let go of one team and move on to the next one. The Philadelphia Flyers ”” Bweinh! predictions to the contrary ”” are not going to win the Stanley Cup.
Yet I\’m not upset, really. I feel less ticked at their letdown, and am content to release these Flyers to the haze of history, and give my heart to another.
I have developed this coping mechanism over the last 97 Philadelphia professional sports seasons, each one ending without a championship. Perhaps the 98th ”” the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies ”” will not disappoint.
–MJ
Best of Mike: Of Football, Falling Planes, and False Attachments
Originally published September 10, 2007.
Like all of us, I remember exactly where I was six years ago Sept. 11. Those were days while we were both in school, days before we had children, days for sleeping late. So I woke up around 8:15 or so and hopped in the car to the Acme to pick up my Daily News, which I planned to enjoy with a nice cup of coffee. I didn’t have the radio on, which I suppose was unusual. I went in and bought my Daily News (Bobby Abreu was on the back page and the Phillies had a crucial series with the Atlanta Braves coming up) and I saw some employees huddled around a TV. I left the Acme around 9, flipped on KYW News Radio, and it was obvious the world had changed forever. Mixed in with the grief and shock I felt that day was an emotion it has taken me six years to admit to myself, much less to any of you:
I felt alive.
Now, mind you, I don’t mean to say that I liked what was happening that day. But there was a sense on that day that, for the first time in my life, what I was living was real. There was a vitality to the day; when I went to the seminary where the students had a prayer meeting, I kissed Jill goodbye with more intention. The love I had for my colleagues was deeper, as we exchanged warmer hugs. The frustration I felt at some of my would-be prophetic colleagues for their easy answers was more than academic.
Perhaps I felt that for the first time in my life, I was part of something real. Perhaps, in fact, I felt so alive because I felt — maybe for the first time, really — that I might die.
The miracle of the day, or maybe not a miracle but common grace that God gives all of us, is that I was okay with that. I felt like I might die, but still I felt completely safe, like there was a life no terrorist could touch inside me. I felt like the course of my life was being altered by something enormous and world-shaking, that suddenly being a Christian was going to be a dangerous and underground thing again, and at the same time I felt completely assured that I would be okay as an alien and a stranger on this earth — or at home in heaven.
I still haven’t sorted out exactly why I felt that way on that day. But I think that it had something to do with the fact that, for the first time in my life, everything was up for grabs. For the first time, all the things that tied me down no longer had their power to bind. All the secret peace treaties I had drawn up with America — “You protect my body with military might and provide me with a prosperous land, and in return I’ll serve God” — all those treaties were now null and void because it became apparent that America could not keep them. I think I felt alive and safe in God on that day because everything but God was under threat.
Henri Nouwen wrote and spoke extensively about “false attachments.” A “false attachment,” for Nouwen, is when you give your emotions, your heart, to something which ultimately disappoints. In The Genesee Diary, Nouwen talks about how he so often allowed his spirits to rise and fall based on his number of speaking engagements, his perception of how others looked at him, and even whether or not he received mail. As he saw it, he allowed so many things to dominate his heart rather than the One who would free it to be all it could be. I think on September 11, 2001, for the first time, I saw my false attachments for what they really were — powerless to deliver the satisfaction I believed they would. Those terrorists intended it for evil, and indeed wrought great evil through it. Yet on that day, I think I saw what I will clearly see when the Kingdom comes in its fullness: I saw that all earthly kingdoms and peoples were powerless, and I saw that there is only One who is worthy to be attached to. This, I think, is why I felt fully alive.
Fast-forward six years to a time when I did not feel fully alive: Sunday’s Eagles-Packers football game. The Eagles are historically ill-prepared for season openers, and managed to lose a game to a vastly inferior Green Bay squad which spent most of the day unable to get out of its own way. And I was angry. In fact, I was so angry I watched the Giants-Cowboys game in hopes that somehow, someway, both teams would lose, or at least make each other miserable in the process. I wasn’t quite to the point of hoping that players got injured, but I was actively hoping to see some disappointment. The Giants scored an early touchdown on a long pass to Plaxico Burress, but then they botched the extra point and their punter got squashed in the process. This was good, as I saw it, because everyone was disappointed.
I wondered today how things have changed in the last six years, a full fifth of my life. All I know for sure is that today I am still experiencing residual anger about the capricious bounces of a football, while six years ago I felt alive even though planes were falling all around me. This is the power of false attachments, and to be honest, I have no idea when they came back. I have no idea how I got here; I have no idea when exactly I signed away my birthright for this mess of pottage. All I know is that false attachments creep back in when no one is looking, and if we are not vigilant against them, we are complicit in their power over us.
May God save us, his people, from false attachments; and may it not happen through terror, but through a re-birth only his Spirit can provide.
River to Sea
This past Saturday, a longtime dream was realized when six friends and I ran the River to Sea Relay, a 7-person, 92-mile relay race across New Jersey. Each team member ran two legs of unequal length, one in the morning, one in the afternoon.
The team members ranged from a 17-year-old local high school track runner to my 58-year-old dad. The race is a staggered start, meaning that the slowest team started first (around 6 AM) and the fastest team started last (around 10:15 AM), with hopes of a close finish. We believe many teams must have sandbagged their reported times, however, as we were the 40th to start — and let’s just say our time was not better than 39 other teams. This late start meant that we had to run the 92 miles at 8:33 per mile to finish by the mandated 8:30 PM.
Interestingly, I was the median runner on the team; three were slower than me, three were faster. I figured the fast and slow would cancel each other out if I could keep on pace.
We began at 7:25, my dad running the first leg down from the Delaware River bridge into Milford, NJ and south along the Delaware through the hamlet of Frenchtown; he ran a 4.8 mile leg in about 44 minutes. My soon-to-be sister-in-law Kristie ran 8.2 miles further south, finishing in about 75 minutes. We were slightly behind when I started the third stage, a trail run further south to Lambertville, NJ. A six-mile run took 47 minutes, getting our team closer to pace.
Then our fast runners were up consecutively. The fourth stage, affectionately known as “the Beast” for its terrible hills, saw one of the most amazing running displays I’ve ever seen. Steve Johnson, a marathoner from our church, tackled 8.7 miles, almost all uphill, in 59 minutes, moving us ahead of schedule. Mike Snyder, an 18-year-old runner from our church, ran 6.5 miles in about 50 minutes, and Steve Trimble, a friend of Mike’s, ran an eight-mile leg in about 68 minutes.
This was a fine, if unexceptional, time — until you consider he ran through a monsoon for half of it and had to run for shelter when it began to hail for a few minutes. Just keeping us on pace was a miracle, and the leg ended with him vomiting up ingested rain water from the beginning of the stage. The seventh stage, a four-miler, was tackled by my brother Chris in about 36 minutes. We were about 12 minutes ahead of schedule, halfway through the race.
Kristie took the first leg of the second half, a 5.5 miler. Exhaustion caught up with her, however, and she had to walk for a bit. However, she put up sub-10-minute miles, keeping us ahead of pace. My second leg came next — the longest of the race. I wasn’t sure if the young runners on our team were really training hard for the race, so I doubted they should take a 9.15-mile leg in the heat of the day. Even though they are far more gifted runners, I knew I would maximize my lesser gifts.
Big mistake. Continued here!
One Hundred Words (26)
Do you love to sweat? Do you love the Garden State? If you do, you will love my plans for Saturday. Six friends and I will be running the River to Sea Relay, a 92-mile relay race across New Jersey. We will be starting at 7:25 AM at Milford, on the Delaware River, and hopefully 13 hours later will collapse into the Atlantic Ocean, but not before traveling through 34 beautiful New Jersey towns. The sights, the sounds — and yes, that unique New Jersey smell — will be enjoyed by all. I’ll share pictures and a write-up next Monday.
–JMJ
One Hundred Words (20)
Behind every preacher’s confident gaze there is a wondering if she is being heard. In every sermon there is a hint of vocational crisis. Whenever someone has something urgent to say, it is equally urgent that someone — anyone! — is listening.
It often seems to laypeople that preachers treat preaching as its own reward, that preachers are a different breed somehow. Yet we rely on the same means of grace as anyone else: a kind word of thanks or specific appreciation for a new insight you got from a sermon or her example.
Hug a preacher — odds are he needs it.
–MJ
Best of Mike: Holy Sadness
Originally published on February 18, 2008.
“There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our lives…even in the most happy moments of our existence, we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is the fear of jealousy . . . In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance . . . in all forms of light, there is surrounding darkness.” ~ Nouwen
I read an article in Newsweek recently called “Happiness: Enough Already.” (Find it here.) Its point was that in modern times, we tend to view sadness as a condition to be corrected by therapy and/or medication. The author argued that while there of course are times when a person’s sadness overtakes them and should be managed by medicine, sometimes people are just sad naturally and it is a normal part of life.
I think Henri Nouwen, the great Catholic devotional writer, would agree. Perhaps he was just melancholy, but I think he’s on to something. Even in our brightest moments of joy, we can feel sad that the joy is fleeting, not here forever. Each embrace makes us realize all of life is not an embrace; each friendship makes us realize that there is a measure of distance between us and others. Essentially, each happiness reminds us that not all of life is happy.
Are these just the musings of a depressed individual? I don’t think so. I think this is someone who has a holy dissatisfaction with life. Each human joy brings with it a reminder that we do not yet know complete joy. All human intimacies, no matter how rare and delightful, remind us that we were created “naked and unashamed,” totally vulnerable with each other, until sin fractured our intimacy and left us alone. Each human joy reminds us that we have not yet arrived at the fullness of joy.
Nouwen’s ever-present sadness marks a man who is simply longing for his home. May such a holy sadness accompany us — not so we can mope around this world, but so that we can live all of life with the awareness that better things await.
Clash of the Titans LXXXIII: Rap Music
| In this corner, opposing rap music, is Kaitlin! | And in this corner, supporting rap music, is Mike! | |
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While the phrase “rap music” may not necessarily be an oxymoron, the genre and the ethos of the culture it perpetuates directly contradicts many of the values dear to the consumers of mainstream media who would champion it. Rap music, and most notably gangsta rap, is powered fundamentally by provocative content. Divorcing the form from its content divests the music of its force and intent. In 1997, Dr. Dre attempted to tone down his message. “I have kids and wanted to get away from the ”˜b—–s and ho\’s\’ and the violence,” he said. But the resulting album generated less than half of his usual revenue. “I had to come back to the real. Back to the gangsta,” he said. This “gangsta” culture, however, is merely a poor and potentially detrimental caricature of urban life. Spike Lee, in the film “Bamboozled,” satirized the portrayal of African Americans in contemporary media, arguing that rap propagates the harmful stereotypes that most would want to see eradicated. Performers such as rap artists, he contended, play into mainstream prejudices, glorifying the ghetto lifestyle at the expense of the people they purport to represent. Byron Hurt, who directed a film that identified the misogyny and skewed masculinity inherent to the genre, would agree. “We need to have artists second-guess creating lyrics that are anti-woman in the same way that they would second-guess writing something that is anti-Semitic,” Hurt said. Rap music gives many consumers a false sense of familiarity, a fake compassion. Said Hank Shocklee, a prominent producer in the rap industry and half of rap ensemble Public Enemy: “If you\’re a suburban white kid and you want to find out what life is like for a black city teenager, you buy a record by N.W.A. It\’s like going to an amusement park and getting on a roller coaster ride ”” records are safe, they\’re controlled fear, and you always have the choice of turning it off. That\’s why nobody takes a train up to 125th Street and gets out and starts walking around. Because then you\’re not in control anymore: it\’s a whole other ball game.” By creating the conception of such a blatant and unfounded racial divide, rap music denies consumers the opportunity to discover for themselves how few differences actually exist between seemingly disparate people. Journalist David Samuels sees in rap music “a voyeurism and tolerance of racism in which black and white are both complicit.” Somehow, he said, the deviant behavior characteristic of the culture seems appropriate or even acceptable. “The values it instills find their ultimate expression in the ease with which we watch young black men killing each other: in movies, on records, and on the streets of cities and towns across the country.” Rap music essentially undermines the entire endeavor to recognize the equality of all, regardless of racial, gender, or socioeconomic differences. Unless the genre, and the culture associated with it, undergoes a thorough overhaul, it should be thoroughly avoided. |
I luv rap music “I Luv Rap Music” — DC Talk I love rap music too. First, because it says something. When I was growing up, rap was symbolic of all that was wrong with the world, all that had gone haywire. Dutifully, I avoided it through my adolescence. But then I discovered it — Public Enemy. Arrested Development. And I found music that unapologetically said something. It wasn’t like country music, a paean to an old way of life that could never return; it wasn’t like pop, all painted and gummy; it was real, it was about issues, it was about life. Of course, much rap says nothing worth saying; but when you have heard rap that speaks to the black community about issues especially important to that community in a language that naturally rises from that community — then you have heard music with meaning. I also love rap from a professional perspective. Preachers and rappers both make their living with words. Each of us has a stock of standard stories to draw upon and our professional reputations are staked upon being able to tell those stories well, using communication appropriate to our community. Some of the most clever wordplay and arresting language is used — regrettably — not in the pulpit, but behind the microphone. As a preacher, rappers actually give me something to look up to as there is such focus on the moment of communication and communicating in a memorable way. Finally, I love rap because it brings this suburban white male into contact with a culture that is different from my own. I don’t mean to romanticize gangsta rap; I recognize that much of it is not pure artistic response to harsh realities but created by and for a listening market. But listening to it — even the worst of it — keeps me connected to an urban society different from my own. At times, contact with that different culture challenges me to change and ask provocative questions; for instance, we should ask why inner-city America is still overwhelmingly religious while the suburbs are increasingly secular, if not atheistic. That challenges me, makes me think about what is deficient about the brand of Christianity I practice. At other times, contact with that different culture challenges me to think about how I can address deficiencies and needs in that culture, even coming from outside of it. Regardless, it does me well to listen to rap because it takes me outside of what I know and challenges me to think differently. |
One Hundred Words (1)
In the spirit of Proverbs 10:19, our newest regular feature will be a series of posts of 100 words — or fewer.
There comes a moment in each sports season where I begin to let go of one team and move on to the next one. The Philadelphia Flyers ”” Bweinh! predictions to the contrary ”” are not going to win the Stanley Cup.
Yet I\’m not upset, really. I feel less ticked at their letdown, and am content to release these Flyers to the haze of history, and give my heart to another.
I have developed this coping mechanism over the last 97 Philadelphia professional sports seasons, each one ending without a championship. Perhaps the 98th ”” the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies ”” will not disappoint.
–MJ
Bible Discussion — Luke 21
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next chapter of Luke, Luke 21.
PREVIOUS DISCUSSIONS:
Genesis: 1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18 | 19-22 | 23-26
27-29 | 30-32 | 33-36 | 37-39 | 40-43 | 44-46 | 47-50
Exodus: 1-4 | 5-8 | 9-11 | 12-14 | 15-18
19-22 | 23-26 | 27-30 | 31-34 | 35-40
Romans: Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6 | Ch. 7 | Ch. 8 (I)
Ch. 8 (II) | Ch. 9 | Ch. 10 | Ch. 11 | Ch. 12 | Ch. 13 | Ch. 14 | Ch. 15-16
Luke: 1:1-38 | 1:39-2:40 | 2:41-3:38 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14-15 | 16-17 | 18 | 19 | 20
INTRODUCTION:
David:
Starting in 20:46 and carrying through to verse 6 here, Jesus dealt with the wrong attitudes people had about ‘mammon,’ and the things of this world. Pharisees playing at religion for profit, a widow’s gift of a penny worth more than the overflowing bags of the wealthy, and his disciples’ inordinate affection for the beauty of the Temple building. None of it mattered — especially in the face of what is coming to pass, God\’s judgment on the earth.
Mike:
Jesus encourages His disciples to be ready for the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God.
Steve:
This passage seems to me to be directed not only to the disciples, but also to those who would read it throughout the ages, wondering about the signs that would foretell the return of Christ. The advice Jesus gave is just as valuable now as it was then. Do not be frightened when you hear of wars and revolutions, destruction and pestilence, for it will come in God’s time, just as it did on a smaller scale in the years following His ascension. And meanwhile, Jerusalem will be “trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Josh:
“. . . and they will put some of you to death . . . but not a hair of your head shall be lost.”
I assume the second statement refers to spiritual salvation, since a cure for baldness would offer little comfort after hearing that your own mother was going to kill you.
Connie:
v.19 — “By your patience possess your souls.”
Mike:
How Jesus leads into the coming-of-the-Kingdom story with the jarring image of the Temple being destroyed ”” how powerful and unsettling that must have been to the original hearers!
Steve:
Jesus compared the day of His return to a closing trap, but not just toward the unrighteous — toward those who believed, yet let their hearts become “weighed down” with the things of the world.
BEST BAND NAME FROM THE PASSAGE:
Mike: Flee to the Mountains
Josh: Another Fig Tree
David: onestone
Steve: Delayed End
Connie: Trampled by Gentiles
Clash of the Titans XVIII: Hockey Fights
Originally published May 1, 2007!
| In this corner, arguing against fighting in hockey, is Mike! | And in this corner, arguing for fighting in hockey, is Dave! | |
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Hey, I have an idea. You know hockey? That sport with the small base of rabid fans? What a sport it is! Such speed, as players fly down the ice; such grace, as the best players weave in and out and around defenders on their way to the net; such precision, as the best shooters pick their spot and put it in the one area the goalie can’t reach; such power, as the best shooters wind up for 100 MPH slapshots that nearly tear the back of the net. Which brings me to my idea. Let’s clog the ice with goons! Let’s take that sport, with such a unique combination of athleticism and grace, and let’s make sure every team has at least one guy whose job it is to go out and fight the other team’s one guy. Let’s make sure that the fast, exciting guys (many of whom are from another culture) cower in fear that they might get knocked in the head while Western fans nod appreciatively at the Russian getting his due at long last! Let’s be sure that head shots stay legal and that at least once every game there is a fight with at least one player caught in the flattering “jersey-stuck-over-my-face” pose! Why would anyone want to watch Sergei Federov or Simon Gagne or Sidney Crosby or Daniel Briere, with their crisp passing and deadly accurate shooting, when we could watch Todd Fedoruk or Colton Orr mangle each other for a while? Further, let’s make fighting part of an “unwritten code” so that it’s cloaked in romanticism! A near-apocalypse would happen if a dozen (coincidentally?) mostly black NBA players cleared the benches and brawled; lengthy suspensions would result and white America would cluck their tongues at how bad the NBA’s getting. But if we have a “code” for mostly white players to live by, with consequences like getting your teeth knocked out, then suddenly it’s quaint! We can say it’s just part of the game, always has been, and always should be. Hey — Hammurabi had a code! So should we. What would hockey be without the fighting? Speed, agility, grace, precision, drama? Who would ever watch that? |
I am here to defend the use of Goons in hockey. If you don’t know what a Goon is, let me explain. He’s the guy who lumbers off the bench and pulverizes the opponent who dares to initiate, or even attempt to initiate, some type of painful contact with a hockey team’s “skilled” players. A skilled player, of course, has a Russian, Swedish or Finnish name and the same size uniform and skates as the Goon wore in Pee Wee hockey. I know that the usual tack would be for me to cite the Code, that unwritten (yet often written about) set of laws that serve as the rules of engagement for Goons. I would explain to you that skilled players are valuable assets who need protection and explain how deterrence necessitates fisticuffs — like a safety leveling a wide receiver who catches a pass across the middle, you do it so they think twice the next time they think about doing something they shouldn’t. But I’m going in a different direction — economic concern. For the Goons. Here’s the question to consider — what else can these guys do for a living? These are not, as one athlete has said, “the brightest tools in the shed.” These people have struggled to learn human speech and have even found a meaningful way to contribute to society that (usually) doesn’t involve violent crime. Why turn them out? And Goons are entertaining! During a tense playoff game several years ago between the Flyers and Devils, noted Goon Claude Lemieux (my spell check offers lummox here) was trash talking Flyers captain Eric Desjardins. After a particular rush ended with a Desjardins shot rather than a pass, Lemieux taunted him with the remark, “You always think about yourself first! What does that ‘C’ on your shirt stand for? SELFISH?” And then we have Bernie “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion’s now-famous words of wisdom to his Montréal teammates before a big game: “Three things we must do tonight, and that is shoot and pass.” Where else can the world use men like this? Burger King? Wal*Mart? Sure, but these places seem to have enough imbeciles already, and if they were also huge and muscular, I couldn’t make fun of them anymore. We need to keep fighting in the NHL — to keep Goons employed and off the streets. |
The funniest thing currently on the Internet…
…can be found here.
It\’s funny because it\’s true. Anyone who has listened to Tony Campolo or Jim Wallis has left either disappointed and angry with every Christian they know (themselves included) or wondering what the heck just hit them. Sometimes both.
I study revivalistic worship at Drew University. Revivalists are accused (and not without some merit) of perfecting a certain recipe for worship:
1. Scare people with the torments of hell that await them.
2. Offer Jesus as an antidote to those torments of hell.
3. Watch as the converts roll in.
This way of preaching works. It did for Charles Finney 200 years ago and it does for many preachers today. Many people are converted by this type of preaching.
The only problem with this recipe is that it rarely produces mature Christians. Certainly, it gets more people to “sign their name on the dotted line” for Jesus, and whether this truly makes them Christian or not I do not presume to say. But it demonstrably fails to produce mature Christians.
People who experience worship in this way generally fall into one of two categories. They see the paramount importance of the decision for Christ, and so either they decide that there\’s no need to go much deeper, since the important stuff is done; or they come down the aisle again and again, always anxious, never sure that the last time really “took.” Such Christians never know the joy God designed for us to know in Christ.
Campolo and Wallis and their ilk might not like this assessment, but I think of them as being a lot like those revivalists. They use the same recipe as above; only step one is different. Rather than scaring us with the torments of hell, these prophets scare us in other ways: “The poor are dying, you know.” Campolo once famously said, “I have three things I\’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases caused by malnutrition. Second, most of you don\’t give a s***. What\’s worse is that you\’re more upset by the fact I said s*** than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.”
Just like a revivalist scares his audience and offers an antidote, so speakers like this scare their audience and offer the antidote as a more socially-oriented form of Christianity.
Of course Campolo is right. We should not forget this. The fact of hunger, the fact of poverty ”” and not the mere facts but the human faces behind them ”” are vital to God. Wrestling with questions like these is foundational to our Christian identity. We simply cannot be content while such problems exist in the world.
Yet there is something about their technique, borrowed as it is, that produces the same results as those old revivalists. They tend to produce progressive Christians overwhelmed with social problems, who operate from a place of anxiety, even anger, and rarely know the deep joy of Christ.
Speaking as a somewhat progressive (somewhat conservative) Christian, I would love to see the church proclaim a different message. God is doing something in the world: bringing in His Kingdom, begun and incarnated in Jesus. We are privileged to be a part of it. Inasmuch as we do take part in it, we will know the joy of Christ and touch the world with his love. Inasmuch as we do not take part in it, we cheat ourselves. But we do not have to be scared that God\’s work somehow depends on our whipping ourselves into spiritual shape ”” if we fail God, he yet remains faithful.
In short, I would love to see Christianity proclaimed as a life to be lived, progressively discovered, with many layers. The Christian life is so beautiful, so profound, so challenging, such an adventure. Almost every day I find something new I am holding back and I have the joy of turning it over to God, or trying to. I am grateful and content with what God has wrought in me so far, and grateful and content that my future is in his hands and that he will do more with me in ten years than I can imagine now. That is the Christianity I love, not a series of terrifying decisions where I live in constant alarm over the state of my soul or the state of inner-city Philadelphia.
I do not have to be bullied into walking down an aisle of conversion. I do not have to be bullied into walking into a “bad” neighborhood and sharing Jesus\’ love in an incarnational way. Preachers do themselves a disservice by bullying their congregations. We live in an angry, drab, gray world where people are imprisoned by their ways of living and don\’t even know it. What is needed in such a world is not more bullying, but beauty. What is needed are preachers who can speak transparently, who recognize the Kingdom has its own beauty that can speak to this world if we will but let it.
Best of Mike — Pied Beauty
Originally published on July 16, 2007.
Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things–
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him.
I am not a poetry person, usually. Yet I ran across this poem a couple years ago and it captured me and has not let me go. I love how it images the “useless” things in creation: freckles, the play of clouds in the sky, the chestnuts that fall to the earth. All of these things are “counter, original, spare, strange” and yet their beauty cannot help but point to the greatness of the One who made them.
Romans 8:19 says, “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” Why? Why bother? Why would creation wait for us? Isn’t the creation Hopkins describes perfect on its own? What possibly could creation want from us?
I think creation longs for us because the children of God are to be the pinnacle of all this wonderful creation. We, of all people, can afford to be counter, original, spare and strange to a world which lives in captivity to itself. When God set us apart to be his people, he made us beautiful and strange in the same way so much of his creation is beautiful and strange. We do not have to reflect the tired gray of those around us; instead, we can be dappled and beautiful and strange and point the world to the Beautiful One.
It was a wonderful revelation when I realized that part of our call as Christians is to be beautiful, the pinnacle of a beautiful creation. Not what the world calls beautiful, not silicone or sinew, but the simple beauty of being what we were created to be. I struggled (and still struggle) to have the world see me as pious, knowledgeable and wise, but at my best I am simply focusing on being beautiful, on settling for no other agenda for my life than finding who I am and being that person. This is a personal task, to be sure, but never individualistic — I discover myself best in community, when other beautiful people are gently alerting me to what is beautiful in me.
What about you? Will you settle for being virtuous in another person’s eyes? Will you allow the Democrats or the Republicans to sell you their version of the beautiful life? Will you allow the tabloids to tell you who is beautiful? Will you allow Pottery Barn to define beauty for you?
Or will you follow the One who dared to say the beautiful life always begins with a crucifixion? Will you be children of that God? Will you be counter, spare, original, strange? Will you be a playful part of the way God is redeeming creation? The chestnuts and the finches, the trout and the skies — all of dappled creation awaits your answer.
A Few Thoughts on Vocation
A person knows when she has found her vocation when she stops thinking and begins to live . . . When we are not living up to our true vocation, thought deadens our life, or substitutes itself for life, or gives in to life so that our life drowns out our thinking and stifles the voice of our conscience. When we find our vocation — thought and life are one. — Thomas Merton
All of us know how difficult it can be to feel like we are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Our desires are at war with our reality; we find ourselves wishing we could spend more time on some activity but feel unable to give it the attention we want. Or, worse, we’re unsure what we really, deeply want in life. If life is about finding the unique purpose God has charged us with, that is of course the deepest desire of our heart; and yet often we don’t know what that is.
Catholic mystic Thomas Merton gives us a clue. When Merton speaks of “vocation,” he is speaking more deeply than our paid employment. He is speaking about the deep callings of our hearts, that unique way of being human that both encourages your heart and touches the world with God’s love. When we are living out our vocation, Merton holds, there is a certain integrity to our lives. If we are living out God’s call on our lives, our thoughts and desires will not be at war with reality because we will be living out the deepest desires of our hearts.
In other words, suppose your vocation is “brother”; that is, suppose God’s plan for your life is that you are a brother to other people, to be a faithful, brotherly presence to others in the world. You will know the most peace in your life when you are actually acting as a brother to other people, and when you construct your life in such a way that you are leaving time for this deep calling and desire of your heart.
If you are fortunate, your paid employment and your vocation will overlap. If not, you have to be creative and find a way to live out your vocation and still keep your job! Still, you must live out your vocation if you want to know this sense of wholeness in your life. If you spend your life chasing other goals, wealth, self-fulfillment, or even some other form of Christian ministry, you will never know the same peace and integrity you will know when you are living as a brother.
The natural corollary to this is that we need to be aware of when we are feeling that sense of joy and wholeness. We need to be attentive to our spirits, to get to know that feeling of deep joy that comes when we are doing exactly that task for which God created us, and to begin to discern patterns in our lives. Is there a behavior that interrupts or hinders that sense? We must lay it aside. Is there a behavior that prompts or increases that deep wholeness? We must encourage and increase it. In so doing, we begin to learn more fully what it is to enter into God’s vocation for our lives.
Clash of the Titans LXXVII: Basketball
| In this corner, supporting basketball, is Mike! | And in this corner, opposing it, is Tom! | |
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Those who dislike basketball need to meet my wife. I\’m 6\’3” and she\’s 5\’3”. I\’m stocky and she\’s, well, slight. (At least she was before she was pregnant, but that is not the point of this story nor is it particularly wise to say.) When pressed to choose, most assume that I was the high school basketball player in our home. After all, I\’m a fair shooter and a middling rebounder. But I was not the high school varsity player ”” she was. This is because basketball is the most egalitarian game one can play. A $10 basketball and a neighborhood court, YMCA, or high school gym, and you can play. No bats, no helmets, no pads. There are no height requirements; there are advantages to being small and quick, and advantages to being a giant though slow afoot. There are advantages to being able to shoot 30 feet from the basket, and advantages to banging around under the hoop. Basketball also can serve as a language when words will not do. I spent seven summers working as a camp counselor at a local YMCA in a small, economically depressed city near my home. Though my charges were near-universally of a different color from me, though we spoke differently and had different heroes and role models, basketball was a way I could communicate with them. Whether it was a standing challenge to beat me in H-O-R-S-E or running five-on-five with local high school kids, it was a way to fit in, a way for my ideas and being to be taken seriously, a way to break down barriers between us. Perhaps basketball could even help President Bush\’s much-maligned foreign policy. A game of 21 with Kim Jong Il? Around the World with Kofi Annan? One-on-one with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ”” if we win, they have to take North Dakota; if they win, we have to take Manitoba? The possibilities are endless ”” thanks to basketball. |
A sporting event is a contest, a pitting of self against other, in which there can only be one champion. The players are combatants, playing through pain, injury, and weather to bring the battle to a close. But not so basketball. No, organized basketball is most often played indoors, protecting its mollycoddled players from the danger of sun, rain and wind. A polished wooden floor and sterile fluorescent lighting lend a bleak aura to the basketball landscape. The Mayans in pre-European America had a similar sport. But their hoop was vertical, their court was outdoors and there was no use of the hands. Any child can toss a ball through a hoop with their opposable thumbs, but try doing so with a bounce off a hip. Combine that with the imposing physical nature of basketball’s ideological predecessor and you have a sport worth playing! In contrast, modern basketball players are kept apart throughout the “struggle,” the least physical contact resulting in a foul. They trot up and down the court like so many braided-maned polo ponies, either bouncing the ball against the ground while they prance or limply slapping at it in an attempt to jar it from another’s control. The observed proper technique for these slaps leaves the wrist hanging as limply as the decorative nylon netting that hangs, streamer-like, from hoops at either end of the court. These aforementioned hoops separate basketball from true sports of the people. Without the resources to find a tall pole with an attached hoop of metal, a young person cannot practice this loathsome pastime. But any enterprising youth can find a stick and a ball, improvise some bases, and have a rousing game of baseball. Likewise can be improvised a soccer pitch, with markers delineating the goals’ width and a spirit of good sportsmanship their height. The only firm requirement for these sports is space. From the super-short super-tight shorts of the 70s to the ridiculously baggy ones popular today, basketball has long acknowledged its status as court jester in the kingdom of sport. Yes, basketball remains true to its roots: slapdash construction of a peach basket with a hole in it, dreamed up by some Canadian to give his students something to do when it was too wet to go outside and play a REAL sport. |
Dateline: Houghton
I am here at my beloved alma mater for the first extended length of time since my graduation almost (gulp) nine years ago, working on the beginnings of my doctoral dissertation. I am in a strange building which resembles a large Country Inn & Suites except for the London Underground-style sign over the door that assures me this is actually the College Flats. Good to see the Anglophilia of recent years is intact.
Coming back to a place after so long brings memories back and makes me reflect on myself and my journey. Some random thoughts:
1. I’m different than I was then. For one thing, I had a wife and almost-two-year-old daughter in tow. They dropped me off here and continued on to Jill’s parents, where they’ll spend the week while I work here on my paper. Grace, my daughter, gleefully announced, “This is where Daddy lives now!” Yeah, I’ll miss you too, kid.
So much is different in my life than when I was here last. The people I love are different. Some are gone, like my Grandpa Lindley who taught at Houghton. Some are forgotten. Some are loved more intensely than I thought possible when I was here, like Jill and Grace. My outlook on life is different; I realized how much of my four years here were spent in crisis mode. Sometimes, I ran from the crisis, and sometimes I romanticized the crisis and wrote poetry about it, but I always felt like I was in crisis. I always wanted to prove myself as a student, as a popular guy on campus, as a spiritual leader, as a friend, as a boyfriend, as a comic. I had to be the best at everything, and it had to appear effortless.
As I ran tonight around campus, I was at times painfully aware that I am 30. Flecks of gray, the whole thing. But I was also relieved not to be 20 again. I was relieved that I’m out of that stage where I feel like I have to separate myself from the pack, that so much depends upon every little move I make. I’m relieved, frankly, that I have learned the spiritual value of inertia: that sometimes there is real value in simply staying put, in not doing anything but simply being and listening where you are. I’m relieved that I don’t feel like I have a future to create anymore. I have a future, but it is entirely in God’s hands. In my case, this was a lesson I could learn only from the passage of time; perhaps some 20-year-olds have it down, but I think my experience is not uncommon.
2. God is so much better than we ever realize. As I reflected further on my 20-year-old self, I realized how little I would trust that person if I met him today. And yet, when I think about the major life decisions that 20-year-old made, I’m stunned at how well they turned out. I married wisely. As a pastor, I know how many people lament their marriage choices. Blinded by hormones and inexperience, in the fishbowl that is Houghton life, it can be difficult to choose a spouse well. And yet no other decision besides my decision to follow Jesus has shaped me so profoundly for the good as my decision to marry Jill. She balances me, teaches me, learns from me, supports me and gives me someone to support. We have the tools to raise children well who will help in building God’s Kingdom, and we have complementary gifts to do our own Kingdom-building with our time here. A 20-year-old can only make such a decision well with God’s help, and He has been faithful and good.
Same with my decision to enter seminary. That decision was made about 2 in the morning as I worked overnights at a gas station between my junior and senior years in college. I had hoped to go to grad school for history, but came to a realization at a certain moment that I simply could not do that and needed to focus my energies on something related to the church and worship because those were my real God-given passions. How the heck does a 20-year-old know what those passions are? Perhaps some 20-year-olds do, but I didn’t. But God was faithful and good and opened up a door I never could have imagined, leading me into graduate work in Liturgical Studies, which I literally did not know existed when I decided to go to seminary. This work has given me life and God uses me in it to bring life to others; and my decision to do it was not of my own strength, but completely God’s.
3. I still don’t know very much. There are enough 20-year-olds who write for this website that I want to be careful to say that I’m not now endowed with perfect perspective on life that you don’t have. On the contrary. As I ran tonight, I realized that things will be different when I am 40, and that the little dreams I dream today will probably die and be replaced by better dreams than I can imagine. That’s simply the way of the God we know, who called Jeremiah to buy a field in the middle of a war, who called Noah to build a boat long before the flood started, who called Peter to eat dirty food and bring dirty people into the Kingdom. It is, in fact, the same God who chose to bring salvation into the world through the womb of another confused teenager, the young virgin Mary.
May God continue to do great things through unwitting people; may he continue to sow life in the world through the blind, faithful flailing of youth, and old age; may he use you in all your inadequacies, all your anxieties, all your flaws.
Bible Discussion — Luke 11
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next chapter of Luke, Luke 11.
Genesis: 1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18 | 19-22 | 23-26
27-29 | 30-32 | 33-36 | 37-39 | 40-43 | 44-46 | 47-50
Exodus: 1-4 | 5-8 | 9-11 | 12-14 | 15-18
19-22 | 23-26 | 27-30 | 31-34 | 35-40
Romans: Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6 | Ch. 7 | Ch. 8 (I)
Ch. 8 (II) | Ch. 9 | Ch. 10 | Ch. 11 | Ch. 12 | Ch. 13 | Ch. 14 | Ch. 15-16
Luke: 1:1-38 | 1:39-2:40 | 2:41-3:38 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
INTRODUCTION:
Connie:
This is a great passage for the Spitzer scandal backdrop this week, because Jesus begins by emphasizing our need for daily dependence upon God — through prayer for our every need: physical, mental and spiritual. He goes on to show that although hypocrisy may be effective for a time to succeed in the natural world, it cannot bring lasting reward in the Kingdom of God. The outside must match the inside.
David:
Jesus teaches His disciples to pray in this chapter, to persevere in prayer, to understand where their authority comes from in prayer (binding the strongman), and to avoid the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees.
Mike:
A rollicking adventure of a chapter where Jesus teaches about prayer, unclean spirits, and then denounces some lawyers!
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Mike:
v. 52–Jesus’ charge that the lawyers “have taken away the key of knowledge.” He seems to accuse those who know the law the best of misinterpreting it, and thus barring themselves and others from the rich life the law could provide.
David:
In verse 42, Jesus compared the Pharisees to hidden graves that men walk over without noticing. This action would render them unclean, in their theology. I believe that unknowingly accepting hypocritical and false teaching does the same to us now.
Steve:
Luke says Jesus drove out a mute demon, and that when it left, the possessed man could speak, amazing the crowd. Interesting.
Josh:
In this passage the entire “woe” segment is sparked by a Pharisee who was taken aback that Jesus did not wash up before a meal. I wish I’d known that when I was younger and Mom was on me about washing up.
Chloe:
Abel is counted among the prophets.
Connie:
The scribes, Pharisees and men of law grew angry, despising and blaspheming the words of Jesus; then a woman spoke up and admired Him and the wisdom and power with which He spoke.
At first I dismissed His rebuke to her as one to those whose would later idolize Mary, but really it was much more than that. Jesus led the woman to a higher consideration. Though it’s a great privilege to hear the word of God, the ones who are truly blessed — that is, blessed of the Lord — are those who hear it, keep it in memory, and keep to it as their way and rule. Look at how many heard the same things she did that day, yet used them to scheme against Him.
BEST BAND NAME FROM THE PASSAGE:
Josh, Mike: Queen of the South
Chloe: Sign of Jonah
Steve: Lamplight
David: woeuntoyou
Connie: Best Seats in the Synagogue
A “Baptismal love letter”
A priest whose blog I read writes “baptismal love letters” to the infants she baptizes and posts them on her blog. (FYI: her blog is here, and those of you who think I’m liberal should read this lady.)
Anyway, I’ll be doing a baptism Sunday for three of our young people, and here’s my letter to them, which will be featured in our bulletin on Sunday. Hope it is meaningful for you too.
Tyler, Melissa and Patrick,
Today you join a ragged band. As you are baptized, I am mindful that Christians have not always lived up to their baptismal vows. Too often, we have been indifferent to truth and to love; too often, we have pursued our own agendas instead of “following Christ in word and deed throughout our lives.”
And yet, here you are. Splendid, youthful, and each of you beautiful. Each of you with God’s Spirit living in you, refracting differently through each of your hearts and personalities. Each of you is a shining testimony: that despite our shortcomings as Christians, God’s Spirit is still active and touching hearts through His church today. Somehow, sometimes despite His people, God still works! Each of you is proof of this.
Today, as you are baptized, the old heads will sigh and cry, and you will be hugged and cheered and loved. But if we are careful, we might forget (and even you might forget) why we cry great tears of joy. We cry, not because you are so young and full of possibility (though you are).
We cry because despite it all, God is still good. We cheer you because you are the most recent evidence that God is still active.
My prayer for you is that you reflect this truth your whole life long. May it not be just for a day when you are young, but throughout your whole lives, may God’s purposes and love be seen in your life. As you grow up and grow old, may you be the hands and feet of Christ, bringing hope and joy to a dangerous world.
~ In Christ’s love, Pastor Mike
Best of Bweinh! — Romans 8 Discussion
Read Part One here, and Part Two here!
Best of Mike — The Clamp
Originally printed April 23, 2007.
Here is something I came across in my reading for school this week.
The clamp in which evangelical Christianity perpetually finds itself is that it simultaneously wants to define itself over against modern culture and yet be convincing or persuasive with respect to that culture.
~ Graham Hughes, Worship as Meaning
Hughes does not write as an evangelical Christian, but I think he lays a finger on the evangelical dilemma and perhaps the reason for so much evangelical ennui.
On the one hand, we reject much of modern culture. We decry it as hedonistic or relativistic or insufficiently grounded. Yet, on the other hand, we are the masters at imitating that culture and twisting it to other ends.
So we can go to our local Christian bookstore and find a chart that says, “If you like U2, you might like (insert flavor-of-the-week band here).” Or we can stress the ease with which a person becomes a Christian, saying, “You’re still the same person; it’s just, you know, you have Jesus now.” Or we can create thoroughly consumerist modern Christian churches which offer all the music and good coffee you could want, so long as you’re willing to accept the Gospel as part of the bundle.
I have to admit that I am both fascinated and repelled by our ability to use culture so well. It demonstrates a certain flexibility and resourcefulness that is commendable.
Yet I wonder if it does not cost us. In our desire to make the gospel so accessible, we often play up its similarity to modern culture. Yet it makes the next, vital step of Christian discipleship extremely difficult, perhaps impossible. That next step is being able to self-differentiate from modern culture, asking critical questions of it. How does the modern way of living bring Christlikeness, bring true life? How does the modern way of life bring death and distance between us and Christ? Sadly, we know that there are too few ways modern culture brings life, and too many where it brings death. Mature Christians have to be capable of detecting and avoiding that which is dangerous in the culture around us.
But because we are so wedded to the similarities between our churches and modern culture, all too often our churches (clergy included) are ill-equipped to help people navigate these waters.
Perhaps our church music and architecture and our very ways of evangelism and living should not seek to impress the world with how much like the world we are, but how very different we are.
Clash of the Titans LXX: Oprah
| In this corner, arguing on the side of Oprah, is Mike! | And in this corner, arguing against her power, is Josh! | |
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It’s easy to hate on Oprah. Oprah is generally blamed, perhaps rightly, for perpetuating a sort of pseudo-religion, a stand-in for the Gospel, if you will. She promotes self-help books like The Secret that promote un-Christian (and downright wacky) ideas, and darn it, she’s just more successful and has more money than the rest of us. Yet amid all the derision, we often forget the remarkable good Oprah has done. I’m not simply talking about her new South African school or other big donations, important though those are. I’m talking about a far greater accomplishment. I’m talking about the fact that I have been in many gatherings of white women, my grandmother’s age, talking about a black woman seriously. Some of these women are quite liberal, while some put the fun in fundamentalist, but none of them grew up in a culture where African-American women were accorded respect. And yet, here they are, talking about her last show, reminiscing about great interviews in the past, forming an emotional bond with a black woman. Astonishing. Is the emotional bond with Oprah perfect and praiseworthy? Probably not. It’s arguably not even real; you could argue white people love to have pseudo-relationships with African-Americans who remain safely behind television screens and stereo speakers. But you have to admit that it is something, given where we have been as a nation, that ladies of privilege–young and old–dab their tears and share their smiles with a woman of color born into hard Mississippi poverty and raised in a ghetto. Oprah’s not a messiah; but let’s celebrate the significant inroads she has helped to make in the racial arena. |
Let me start by saying that I’m not the type to begrudge anyone the opportunity or ability to become rich, famous, and influential. So I’m not here to hate on Oprah just because she’s probably the most powerful woman (person?) in the world. I also think it’s great that she’s so philanthropic, even if that is part of her shtick. For what it’s worth, I’m sure it’s mostly genuine, even if it is undeniably crucial to her own future success. But when it comes to the hero worship of the big O, I just don’t get it. Other than going on several semi-successful diets and giving away more cars than Bob Barker, what has she done that’s all that impressive? I mean, besides all that charity work. More to the point, what has she done for me? I guess what really bothers me isn’t so much that everyone else takes her so seriously, but that she does as well. A couple years ago, she rubber-stamped James Frey’s memoir as a best seller by recommending it to her lemmings via her all powerful book club. When it later came out that Frey was a fraud, he was summoned back to the show for a good whuppin’. How dare he lie to Oprah… er, I mean, to the people? He threatened her credibility… um, I mean, betrayed millions! In the end, I simply find the Oprah entity to be vapid, but probably no more so than everything else on TV. Considering what she’s up against in the daytime lineup, I suppose it’s no wonder she’s emerged as the people’s champion. |
Holy Sadness
“There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our lives…even in the most happy moments of our existence, we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is the fear of jealousy . . . In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance . . . in all forms of light, there is surrounding darkness.” ~ Nouwen
I read an article in Newsweek recently called “Happiness: Enough Already.” (Find it here.) Its point was that in modern times, we tend to view sadness as a condition to be corrected by therapy and/or medication. The author argued that while there of course are times when a person’s sadness overtakes them and should be managed by medicine, sometimes people are just sad naturally and it is a normal part of life.
I think Henri Nouwen, the great Catholic devotional writer, would agree. Perhaps he was just melancholy, but I think he’s on to something. Even in our brightest moments of joy, we can feel sad that the joy is fleeting, not here forever. Each embrace makes us realize all of life is not an embrace; each friendship makes us realize that there is a measure of distance between us and others. Essentially, each happiness reminds us that not all of life is happy.
Are these just the musings of a depressed individual? I don’t think so. I think this is someone who has a holy dissatisfaction with life. Each human joy brings with it a reminder that we do not yet know complete joy. All human intimacies, no matter how rare and delightful, remind us that we were created “naked and unashamed,” totally vulnerable with each other, until sin fractured our intimacy and left us alone. Each human joy reminds us that we have not yet arrived at the fullness of joy.
Nouwen’s ever-present sadness marks a man who is simply longing for his home. May such a holy sadness accompany us — not so we can mope around this world, but so that we can live all of life with the awareness that better things await.
Clash of the Titans LXV: Surveillance Cameras
| In this corner, supporting public surveillance cameras, is Connie! | And in this corner, opposing their use, is Mike! | |
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June 2, 2007 — Kelsey Smith, 18, was abducted and strangled by Edwin Roy “Jack” Hall, outside a store where she had purchased a present for her boyfriend. Hall’s identity and apprehension was aided by the store’s use of security cameras. On his MySpace page, “Jack” called himself a “Sweet Troubled Soul,” interested in “eating small children and harming small animals.” Prosecutors are considering the death penalty. February 1, 2004 — Carlie Jane Brucia, 11, was returning from a sleepover when she cut through a car wash. There she was led away by a man, never to be seen alive again. The camera at the car wash showed a man in a uniform shirt approaching Carlie, talking to her, and then leading her away. NASA assisted by enhancing the image, and the FBI helped find Brucia and her abductor. Police arrested Joseph P. Smith, who had been arrested at least 13 times in 11 years, and had been previously charged with kidnapping. Carlie’s family described her as a beautiful young girl who loved her cat named Charlie and enjoyed time with her friends. February 12, 1993 — Jamie Bulger, 2, was kidnapped from a mall in Liverpool, England, by two 10-year-old boys, who then took him for a long walk which ended with them senselessly beating him to death and tying him to train tracks. The boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, had been stealing things all day at the mall. Caught on CCTV with James, the boys were convicted of his abduction and murder. May 30, 2005 — Natalee Holloway, 18, disappeared while on a post-graduation senior trip in Aruba. She was last seen leaving a popular nightclub with three young men — Joran van der Sloot, Deepak Kalpoe, and Satish Kalpoe. All three men were arrested but released, and there was no security tape available of her on the island. Her family and friends hold out hope for a miracle, and her mother travels to churches, sharing her testimony of God’s strength and presence in her life, despite these devastating circumstances. I could have listed numerous cases of missing kids where cameras could have provided some needed answers and valuable closure. I personally believe that when you are in public, you and your actions are public property. |
The argument in favor of surveillance cameras is a touching one. How many crimes against innocents — especially children — could be prevented? Isn’t saving a life — just one life — worth any qualms we might have over privacy issues? Of course, exactly the same argument could be raised for banning McDonald’s. Many more people die from the results of overeating than are murdered each year. Shouldn’t our government be concerned with this? Isn’t saving lives the point? While people who feel this way (including my worthy adversary) are to be commended for their humanitarian spirit, I don’t understand the role of government in this way. Government doesn’t exist to save the lives of its citizens, it exists to preserve the rights of its citizens without which freedom is a hollow word. The genius of the seminal documents of our nation is that they recognize the dangers of totalitarianism: give all the power to the state and watch the state misuse it. The right to privacy implied in the Constitution provides an important safeguard against this. I may occasionally choose to give up my right to privacy. With a club card, I allow the grocery store to know what I purchase in return for discounts. I allow cookies on my computer in order to use internet services I enjoy. I am willing to compromise my right to privacy in extraordinary circumstances, or simply for something special I enjoy. But I am unwilling to compromise my right to privacy simply to walk around town or use the subway. Does that mean that occasionally people will violate the rights of others, even the sacred right to life? Yes, of course, and those people should be punished appropriately. But violating the basic rights of all to protect against a few predators is simply unacceptable. |
Best of Bweinh! — Metric/Imperial Clash
Originally printed on April 17, 2007!
| In this corner, supporting the metric system, is Tom! | And in this corner, supporting the imperial system, is Mike! | |
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As a people, Americans have always paid our collective independence more than its share of lip service. We claim to be a land of freedom, say we have thrown off the bonds of tyranny that yoked our nation in her infancy, and present ourselves to the world as a paragon of liberty. Yet we persist in using a system of weights and measures based not on any semblance of sense, but on the whims and physical characteristics of the despotic few who governed the monarchies of antiquity. The standard system ruled the roost of world business for centuries, growing comfortably fat off the toil of our brows and calculating machines. Wide rolls of strange numerical conversions began to hang from its jowls as it glutted itself at the table of commerce. Was this monster decimal? Octal? Dodecahedral? Who could afford to question? Time was better spent trying to determine the number of ounces in a hogshead, or inches in a furlong. But a new wind was about to blow. Amid the tumult of the last time the French showed any collective semblance of bravery, a few daring souls decided to forge a universal system of measure. Rather than the length of a king’s thumb, or the volume of your average sheep bladder, they selected a length they would use for a base, a length of the people. The world was changing! The king was dead; he could no longer force the people to memorize numbers like 12, 16, 1160, or 5280! Instead, they counted their fingers, counted their toes, averaged the result and arrived at the number 10. That’s right, the same number upon which our entire system of numbers is based. Not only can you convert between a nanometer and a kilometer just by moving a decimal place, you can even move between two and three dimensions without straining. Without measuring someone’s anatomy. Without consulting a council of bearded elders, table of ciphers or magician’s grimoire. When was the last time a child was able to proudly tell his teacher the number of cubic inches in a gallon? But any precocious tot can be instructed that a thousand independent little cubic centimeters together become a proud, powerful liter. In a time of increasing foreign tension, should we really be raising the next generation to measure the world in a way foreign to the others who call it home? Is it worth enduring the confusion and inconsistency of the standard system, just so our grandchildren will measure their ice cream in the manner of our fathers? Just look into your heart, and count your toes. I think you’ll find they hold the answer. |
I pastor a church in a threatened part of the world. Chester County, Pennsylvania, just east of Lancaster, is a county of rolling hills and mushroom farms, and is a traditional home to horse trainers. You can still pass an idyllic Saturday in the southern part of the county watching the county as it used to be. But the town where I pastor, Exton, has long been under threat. Every chain restaurant in the world, it seems, has moved in. I live about twenty minutes away, in Coatesville; a mere ten-minute drive from our church or home could take you to five McDonald’s, three Wendy’s, two Friendly’s, three Applebee’s, and countless other familiar restaurants that have conspired to all but destroy local cuisine. We don’t need more themed chain restaurants beating the individuality out of us, and we sure don’t need a metric system forcing us all into a mold, even if it is a perfectly square, perfectly sensible, extremely user-friendly mold. Do you really prefer the meter to the yard? We know how the meter came into being: it was a product of the “pure reason” so popular (and so stunningly bloody) in the French Revolution. Indeed, in 1799, the French stored away the originals of the meter and the other metric units, adorning the metric system with the motto, “For all men, for all time.” On the contrary, we don’t know precisely where the yard comes from, only that its origin lies in charmed tradition. The girth of a person’s waist? The distance from Henry VIII’s nose to the tip of his outstretched thumb? No one knows for sure–all we know is that it’s a much better story than a bunch of progress-minded revolutionaries laying off the bloodshed long enough to standardize something random, then attempting to force the rest of the world to use it. And they have tried to force the metric system. Don’t believe me? Ask the “Metric Martyrs,” a group of five English grocers who were fined for failing to measure their produce in metric units. Ask any Canadian you want. Their government went to the trouble of creating a logo to demonstrate their allegiance to metric’s new world order, pushing imperial users into underground quietness. Like Narnians, they must patiently await their chance to again enjoy their nation as it used to be. So, go ahead, vote for the metric system. And while you’re homogenizing the world, would you also cast a ballot for eradicating local accents, closing the family-owned hardware store, and creating a list of state-approved songs for worship? Thanks so much. |
Advent Devotional — Tuesday, December 25
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Christmas Day
“This is the revelation of God’s love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him.” (I John 4:9, in the Midday Reading in The Divine Hours)
Christmas Days come and go so fast. This year, I will be celebrating my 30th Christmas and I cannot tell you in detail about any single one of them. I only have snippets of memories here and there. I can remember being about 7 or 8 and arriving home from my grandparents’ house after midnight, sitting bleary-eyed before the lighted tree, trying to squeeze another few minutes of joy from the day. I can remember being 12 and starring in our church’s Christmas pageant, The Sixth-Grade Scrooge, and experiencing the rush of making an audience laugh for the first time. I can remember being 23 and visiting Jill’s parents, listening to her sister ring handbells at the local Methodist church.
Because Christmases are so fast and furious, it is vain to try to use them to communicate very much. We say that Christmas is about family. And about love. And about Jesus. And about giving. And about feasting. With all these Christmas ideals swirling about, it’s no wonder we don’t know any of them very deeply! We try to make the holiday do too much.
This year, I invite you into a deeper idea of what Christmas is. Because, first and foremost, Christmas is not about any of those things I have just mentioned. Most of all, Christmas is about God showing us how much He loves us. When we look into the manger, and we see the Baby lying there, we see God’s love more fully than we see it anywhere else. God gave us many good gifts before Jesus: water and food, summer and winter, the Law, the Prophets. And God has given us many good gifts since Jesus — our families, our homes, our churches, each other. Yet all those gifts point back to that one Greatest Gift, sending His Son to earth for our sake. His presence with us is the best evidence that God indeed loves us and longs to draw us to Him.
May you know that deep love of God this Christmas, and may the Baby of Bethlehem remind you always of how deeply God loves us.
Advent Devotional — Monday, December 24
Monday, December 24, 2007
Christmas Eve
“Come now and look upon the works of the Lord, what awesome things he has done on earth.
‘Be still, then, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth.’
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” (Psalm 46:9, 11-12, from the Vespers Psalm in the Christmas Eve reading in The Divine Hours)
Psalm 46 is a hymn to God’s strength. “We will not fear,” reads v. 2, “though the earth give way, and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.” At times, this language about God’s strength turns violent: “He breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire,” reads v. 10.
We don’t often associate Christmas Eve with God’s strength. It is a cozy holiday; in the eyes of the world, it is a time to celebrate the universal beauty of mother and child. In the eyes of the church, it is a time to celebrate God’s humility, not divine strength.
Yet what if we were to recognize that Christmas Eve was in fact the greatest show of God’s strength the world has ever known? It was not earthquake, wind, and fire; it was not the raising up of one nation and the dashing of another; it was not the divine voice atop the mountain, frightening the people of Israel. Instead, it was the conscious laying aside of those things. In the coming of Jesus, God was strong enough not to rely on His “brute force,” His ability to cause the rise and fall of people and empires; instead, God was strong enough to come as a helpless Baby, convinced that what would conquer the world and steal away every human heart would not be thunder, but self-giving. Of all the works of the Lord, none was more awesome than this.
What if we learned to define strength in this way? We Christians sometimes believe the lies of the world, that the truly strong are those who can assert their will upon others. We tend to believe, like everyone else, that the strong are those who can punish with shock and awe, that the strong devastate the world. But what if we started to believe that the strong don’t always look strong? What if we believe that the true strength of God lay not in His ability to overwhelm us, but to give Himself completely away for us?
It is the weak who must constantly demonstrate to others how strong they are. It is the strong who are so sure of their strength that they don’t have to constantly put it on display. It is the strong who are comfortable giving themselves away, knowing that in God they will always have enough.
The divine strength of God, the strong arm of Israel, lays in a manger tonight and begs to be held and nursed and cuddled. Can we find it in our hearts to give ourselves away like our strong God?
Advent Devotional — Sunday, December 23
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Fourth Sunday in Advent
“Purify my conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in me a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” (The Prayer Appointed for the Week in The Divine Hours)
Do you ever wonder about the innkeeper who provided a stable where the baby Jesus could be born? I’m never sure if he’s one of the good guys because he provided some place for the baby Jesus when the inn was completely full, or one of the bad guys because he didn’t rustle up something a little better for this very pregnant little family. I suppose, as with most people, it’s a mixture of both. Perhaps he had kind intentions — he could have done more, but he could have done less too.
Whatever the case, the innkeeper provides a challenge for us today, because so many of us are like the innkeeper. We’re on the fence in our lives. We’re not ready to totally throw God out of our lives into the cold; but neither are we ready to fully embrace God, bringing Him into the inner sanctum, especially if that means disturbing some prestigious guests like pride and arrogance. And so we choose a compromise, a stable if you will: God is welcome, but only on the margins of our lives.
It is always tempting to offer Christ a stable. It means that we can view Him from a distance, from inside the inn, where it is warm and cozy, and not have to deal with the cold and hay and straw and animals of the manger. It means that we can enjoy the “Christmas story” without really having to make the reality of Christ’s birth a permanent, year-round part of our lives.
This prayer perfectly expresses the sentiment of Advent. As Christians, we should not want to find just a stable for Jesus, a place on the periphery of our lives where we can enjoy Jesus from a distance. Instead, we want to provide Christ with the mansion of our hearts. We do not want to keep Jesus on the outside, but fully invite Him in so that He can change us. And so we pray for purity; we pray that God, by His constant presence in our lives, will purify us so that Jesus will have a fitting home to come to. We pray that God will touch every corner of our hearts during this season and make them a place fitting for the King of Heaven to come and live.
Advent Devotional — Saturday, December 22
Saturday, December 22, 2007
“Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea-monsters and all deeps;
Fire and hail, snow and fog, tempestuous wind, doing his will;
Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars;
Wild beasts and all cattle, creeping things and winged birds;
Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the world;
Young men and maidens, old and young together;
Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his Name only is exalted, his splendor is over earth and heaven.
He has raised up strength for his people and praise for all his loyal servants, the children of Israel, a people who are near him. Hallelujah!” (Psalm 148:7-19, from the Midday Psalm in The Divine Hours)
When the Psalmist wrote these words, who knew that they would come to a culmination in a stable, on an ordinary summer night, in the village of Bethlehem?
Creation has always risen to praise its Creator. With the exception of humanity, gifted with the power of choice, creation cannot do otherwise. Birds flying north for the summer and south for the winter, rhythmic waves beating the shore, trees shading from tender pink to lush green to burnt orange to bare brown — all these things give the Creator praise, for they live their lives exactly as they were created. Of course, we can choose to live a life that does not give praise to God, which we do frequently and with disastrous effect. But there is nothing quite like a human being living the life God has created him or her to live; just as with the rest of creation, it gives silent testimony to the goodness of God’s design in our lives. Psalm 148 envisions just this scene: creation rising up to praise God, led by the capstone and culmination of creation, human beings created in His image.
It seemed an idea too cosmic to happen on earth; and yet here it is, happening. The Son of God lays in a manger bed and all around him is creation, bearing Him silent praise. The canticle O Magnum Mysterium says it well: “O great mystery and wonderful sacrament, that animals should see the Son of God, lying in their manger!”
In their lowing and braying, and in the gentle breeze, creation continued on, exactly as it was intended. But humans, too, gave Him praise: Joseph and His mother Mary, the shepherds, and soon the wise men came, and of their free will, gave honor to the newborn King. The vision of Psalm 148 finally was realized as all creation came into God’s presence in a new way to give Him praise. Let us join our voices with all creation.
Advent Devotional — Friday, December 21
Friday, December 21, 2007
“Now His mother and His brothers arrived, and standing outside, sent in a message asking for Him. A crowd was sitting round Him at the time the message was passed to Him, ‘Look, Your mother and brothers and sisters are outside asking for You.’ He replied, ‘Who are My mother and My brothers? Anyone who does the will of God, that person is My brother and sister and mother.’” (Mark 3:31-35, from the morning reading in The Divine Hours)
In our culture, Christmas has taken on a variety of meanings. One of the dearest meanings to many people is “family”: Christmas is a time to be with family, to re-connect with relatives that live distantly and to forgive old grudges that may be standing in the way of the family being all it could be. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this sentiment, and Jill and Grace and I are very happy to be spending the time before Christmas through Christmas Day with my family, and some time after Christmas with her family. People’s families are (or at least can be) wonderful gifts from God.
Yet we should not push the point too far. Jesus is teaching a crowd when He was alerted that his (biological) mother and brothers were outside. Jesus uses their visit as a teaching moment. He stresses that what truly creates bonds between people is not blood, but a shared willingness to do the will of God. While blood kinships can be great, true kinship is found between people who share a passion for seeing the Kingdom of God advanced.
Maybe this will shape the way you approach this Christmas. Perhaps circumstances force you to celebrate this Christmas apart from family. This Christmas could be a time for you to discover new relationships, thicker even than blood, in your church or your Bible study. The world looks at those separated from family at Christmas as pitiful; don’t fall victim to their sympathy! Instead, take a chance and deepen these essential, eternal relationships with other Christians.
On the other hand, you may be fortunate enough to celebrate Christmas with your family. In your case, my counsel is to remember your relationships with other Christians. Don’t fall victim to the cult of family. Love them, honor them, respect them, but don’t limit your celebration to time with them; instead, remember to support and honor your relationships with others in your churches and communities during this time of year.
Advent Devotional — Thursday, December 20
Thursday, December 20, 2007
“Enlighten, Lord, and set on fire
Our spirits with Your love,
That dead to earth they may aspire
And live to joys above.” (Adapted from The Short Breviary, from the Vespers Office in The Divine Hours)
Dying to earth is heavy language. The hymn (and the Scripture that inspired it) does not encourage us to co-exist with the world, or to critique the world; it says to die to it. What does it mean to die to the world?
We often forget that sin is not just a personal choice, but a deeply ingrained reality of human life. Suppose you live in a town where the only grocery store is operated by a man who is known to abuse his wife and family. Should you shop there and support this man or not? This man’s sinful behavior puts the rest of the town in a bind, where no action is really “right” — you hate to put money in the man’s pockets, but you hate to put his family at further risk by not supporting him. Further, you have the dilemma of how exactly you’re going to get your food if you don’t support him. One man’s sin means that the whole town has to reckon with his sin and choose the lesser of several evils.
If you look at the world in this way, you will soon sense something of the enormity of sin and the impossibility of “solving” it, humanly speaking. We cannot root sin out of the world simply because, like the grocer above, its present reality ensures its future reality. As long as one person is sinning, we all will be pushed into sinning. “As sin entered into the world through one man…” said Paul, and we can see how that is the case.
Part of what we must do as Christians is to die to this reality. To the extent possible, we should “opt out” of such a death-dealing culture. This is not to say we become total separatists, and live our lives in total denial of the earthly world in which we live. But it is to say that we are self-conscious about our way of life as being separate and incompatible with a sinful world.
We do this when we create and strengthen our churches to be little outposts of the Kingdom of God, little places where the Way of Christ is followed and there are different rules. We do not deny there is sin in our midst, but rather than blindly following a culture where sin is an established fact, we seek to be different. We seek to lay aside one way of living completely for another.
Advent Devotional — Wednesday, December 19
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
“The voice of the Lord breaks the cedar trees; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.” (Psalm 29:5, from the Midday Psalm in The Divine Hours)
My daughter Grace is now at the age (20 months) where she loves to hear stories of when she was a newborn. “Do you want Daddy to tell you a story?,” I say as we settle into the rocker before her afternoon nap. “Yeah,” she nods.
And so I do; I tell her the story of her first night in the world, where her grandparents and parents took turns holding her and eating pizza in the Birth Center. I tell her that her grandparents came to stay with us for a week after she was born, and all we did was watch her and eat chocolate. Now, she’s started to provide sound effects for the stories; and so when I say how relieved we were to hear her cry for the first time, she mimics the sharp staccato of a newborn cry: “Weh! Weh! Weh!”
It is this voice that we are accustomed to associating with the Lord at this time of year: the precious little yelps from a newborn to be nursed or held. And yet we dare never forget that the voice that cried like this is powerful beyond measure. This Psalm envisions tall cedars being broken, not by the strong arm or might of the Lord, but merely by His voice. What love the Father has for us, to choose to limit Himself to humanity for our salvation!
The Author of the universe, like my daughter, begged His earthly parents to tell him stories; the voice that broke the cedars has become a baby’s cry.
Advent Devotional — Tuesday, December 18
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
“Because you have kept my commandment to persevere, I will keep you safe in the time of trial which is coming for the whole world, to put the people of the world to the test. I am coming soon: hold firmly to what you already have, and let no one take your victor’s crown away from you. Anyone who proves victorious I will make into a pillar in the sanctuary of my God, and it will stay there for ever; I will inscribe on it the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem which is coming down from my God in heaven, and my own new name as well.” (Revelation 3:10-14, from the Morning Reading in The Divine Hours)
Sometimes, we think of Advent as just a precursor to Christmas. If we use Advent for spiritual preparation, we think of it as preparing the way for Jesus to come into our hearts in a new, spiritual way.
But Advent is more than that, because the Bible talks repeatedly about Christ’s return, a time when Christ will come back to the earth in a tangible, physical way. By paying deeper attention to matters of the spirit at this time of year, we also are preparing ourselves for that return of Christ, making room for Him in our hearts and minds.
The New Testament was written in a time when people expected that return to come imminently. Much of the New Testament, including this passage, is taken up with urging Christians to persevere until that day comes. Though we do not expect Christ’s return soon (but who can say?), the word of perseverance is a good one. Like the early Christians, we find ourselves in a society that is increasingly hostile to our beliefs. The ignorant vitriol of the new crop of atheist writers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins has swayed the hearts of many people against God.
There is also a more subtle sort of secularism at work in the suburbs, which treats Christianity with a velvet barbarism, so if our children will play sports or go to birthday parties, they must do so on Sunday mornings. In such a world, we as Christians should always be striving to represent Christ well. Our lives should be characterized by gentleness, honor, nobility, and discipline. In the midst of a culture that glorifies self-destruction in so many ways, Christians must persevere in living an abundant life, even when that life is peculiar or out of place in the world. Could our life seem anything but strange to people who have not known the joy of knowing God?
Ancient Christians sensed this tension between the Christian and pagan ways of life. The Desert Fathers withdrew to solitary living in order to preserve the Christian way. Eventually, monasteries developed with the same goal: to establish and preserve some community on earth that would live out the ideals of Christ.
Maybe a good call for us modern Christians is to reclaim a streak of those early monks and nuns. Even as we go about our daily lives, we must preserve a way of living and not capitulate to a death-dealing culture. In doing this, we prepare ourselves to receive Christ with joy rather than fear when He comes again.
Advent Devotional — Monday, December 17
Monday, December 17, 2007
“Blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.” (Luke 1:45, from the Morning Reading in The Divine Hours)
With these words, Elizabeth commends Mary for her faith. When Mary is visited by the angel Gabriel and notified of God’s plan for her life, she does not rebel but says, “May it be with me according to your word.” She accepted God’s plan meekly because her faith was great: she believed without reservation that God would do with her child and herself what the angel promised.
As they always do for unwed mothers, Mary’s prospects seemed bleak. Her fiance considered leaving her. The townsfolk whispered. I’m sure her family wasn’t universally happy at this turn of events. And most of all, the questions of how she could ever support and adequately raise a child ate at young Mary.
And yet, despite all this, Mary clung to the promise God made to her through Gabriel: that God would raise up her child to be a mighty one, called the Son of the Most High; and that he would be the ruler in an eternal Kingdom. She stubbornly clung to this belief before this baby was born, and as he grew into a man. Even when he suffered the indignities and pain of crucifixion, there stood Mary at the foot of the cross, weeping and believing.
We Protestants ignore Mary at our peril. May we be so quick and tenacious in our faith that God will deliver on all he has promised in our lives and in this world.
Advent Devotional — Sunday, December 16
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Third Sunday in Advent
“Look, he is destined for the fall and for the rise of many in Israel, destined to be a sign that is opposed — and a sword will pierce your soul too — so that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare.” (Luke 2:34-35, from the Morning Reading in The Divine Hours)
Last year, I had the privilege of pronouncing a blessing on our first daughter, Grace. “May He make you brave and beautiful,” I said. “May God use you to speak beauty to a cold and dead world.” A blessing I found lovely, and one I was proud to give our daughter.
In contrast, I’m not sure I’d want to pronounce on Gracie the blessing Simeon here pronounces on Jesus. It reveals that from the very start God had a purpose in Jesus’ life: to cause the rise of some, and the fall of others. In a sense, Jesus was to be a flashpoint: the central question of how one viewed God would be answered by how one viewed Jesus. Those that rejected Jesus, despite their piety and religious standing, were found to be rejecting God. And those that accepted Jesus, despite their sin and notoriety, were found to be accepting God. Indeed, Jesus’ life and person caused the secret thoughts of all these people to be laid bare; how a person looked at Jesus was a far more reliable indicator of their spiritual state than their actions.
To be a flashpoint, to cause some to rise and others to fall, to cause great social upheaval, is to live a life that rarely ends peacefully. Laying bare the thoughts of those that have a vested interest in keeping those thoughts secret is not a rewarding task. Setting up a Kingdom which is opposed to the kingdoms of this world inevitably will bring the wrath of those worldly kingdoms against you. In a sense, Simeon’s blessing on Jesus was not completely a blessing.
I am beginning to understand why Simeon told Mary that Jesus’ life would cause a sword to pierce her soul as well. When I prayed that God would use this baby girl to speak beauty to a cold and dead world, I was giving her a double-edged blessing. A pornographic and death-dealing world does not understand beauty. A world where art is a consumer product, or just another instrument to titillate and shock, is a world that does not know beauty. A world which misunderstands beauty will not understand someone who speaks beauty to it; such a world may even dislike the one who speaks beauty to it.
I, of course, do not want Gracie to be disliked by the world. Like Mary, I wish more than anything for my child to have a peaceful, ordinary life, with prosperity, peace and many loved ones. And yet for her life to be meaningful, for her to speak beauty to a world which does not understand it, or do whatever worthwhile task God calls her to, her life cannot always be easy. I pray that both Gracie and her parents have the strength to endure whatever faint echoes of the cross and the sword we have to face.
Advent Devotional — Saturday, December 15
Saturday, December 15, 2007
“Grant us grace to heed their [the prophets’] warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer…” (The Prayer Appointed for the Week, in The Divine Hours, from The Book of Common Prayer)
Well, we have reached the ten-day countdown to Christmas Day. My feelings as a kid and as an adult on December 15 are very different things. As a kid, December 15 felt like a day when you could officially start believing Christmas was near. I’d counted days since the middle of October, keeping a lonely vigil over the calendar even when no one else was interested. But by December 15, reality was beginning to sink in everywhere: school was beginning to slow down for the Christmas break; even delinquent present-buyers were requesting my wish list; and even the snap in the air said that Christmas was near. And so I could respond with the joy of childhood abandon.
Fast-forward 20 or 25 years, and my response to December 15 is altogether different. For one thing, church responsibilities sink in hard and heavy at this time. Is the concert together? How are things looking for church this week and next? Christmas Eve falls on a Monday, which is just cruel to a pastor, because you basically have to have everything ready by the end of the previous week, as well as the regular Sunday service. By December 15, reality begins to sink in everywhere: you’ve got job responsibilities to attend to, as well as all the usual family and travel arrangements, and Christmas is coming soon, like it or not! No more do I respond to that inevitable date with childhood joy; now it is greeted with a healthy dose of adult dread (OK, with some joy mixed in). The reality of Christmas’s coming is different for different people; for some, it is a cause for joy and celebration, and some dread its arrival.
This prayer realizes that there is a spiritual truth that parallels this common feeling. The coming of Christ means different things to different people. For those who are prepared for his coming, it is a cause for joy; the prayer identifies this group as those who have heeded the prophets’ warnings and forsaken their sins. Their hearts are emptied of all selfish and fearful motives, and there is room for Christ to come in and take control; Christ comes as the deepest longing of their hearts. But for those who have failed to prepare spiritually for Christ’s arrival, for those who are still clinging to selfish and evil longings, the coming of Christ is not a cause for joy but for fear. Because they have loved rather than renounced things that are not pleasing to Christ, His coming is most unwelcome, interrupting their lives.
This is part of the meaning of Advent. We are called on to spiritually prepare ourselves anew for the Christ who is always coming. As we would do in our homes before a visitor arrives, Advent asks us to clean up and prepare our hearts so that Christ’s presence in our heart will not be an unwelcome intrusion, but an occasion for joy.
Advent Devotional — Friday, December 14
Friday, December 14, 2007
“The glory of this new Temple will surpass that of the old, says Yahweh Sabaoth, and in this place I shall give peace — Lord Sabaoth declares.” (Haggai 2:9, from the Midday Reading in The Divine Hours)
It’s hard for us to imagine the devastation the citizens of Judah must have felt. During their almost 50 years of exile in Babylon, the old men and women had kept hope alive by telling their children and grandchildren stories of their homeland. Now, finally allowed to return, there is merely rubble where the beautiful temple once stood. Their homes are all gutted or gone; their neighborhoods have become fodder for jackals and squatters; nothing is as it once had been.
Along comes Haggai, who probably registered in the public mind as something of a cruel nuisance, whipping his followers into an excited frenzy, convincing them that they could restore their home to a glory which even exceeded the glory of the past. Perhaps this was a nice notion, but common sense said it could not be achieved, at least not anytime in the near future. And there was no need to waste the efforts of young men and women on rebuilding old buildings when they needed to tend to their families and prepare for the grim new reality they all faced in their situation.
There is something of the dreamer in every faithful Christian, which is not satisfied simply by coping with “reality,” but re-imagining it completely. The Christian questions the wisdom of the world, because the world’s wisdom essentially boils down to coping as best one can with the reality that life is grim and that nothing of eternal import exists. So we tend to our retirement accounts, the things that give us pleasure, and enjoy a few fleeting moments whenever we can.
But the Christian cannot be satisfied by existing peacefully within this the grim worldview. The Christian has to look forward to the coming of the Kingdom of God, has to believe that it has started in a unique way with the coming of Jesus and will be brought in its fullness when He comes again. The Christian has to believe that the desolation we see with our eyes is not the whole story, and that life is so much more than simply coping as best we can with this reality. The Christian has to believe that the Kingdom is here and is coming. Like the faithful in Haggai’s day, we assure others that what we see is not all there is; and like them, we keep building even when it doesn’t make sense. We work on building a Kingdom that cannot yet be seen because it is that Kingdom that has given us life.
Advent Devotional — Thursday, December 13
Thursday, December 13, 2007
“Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the winds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, he the source, the ending he
Of the things that are, that have been and that future years shall see.”
(Of the Father’s Love Begotten by Aurelius Clemens Prudentius; from the Evening Prayer in The Divine Hours)
This hymn illustrates Christ’s eternal nature: He is both Alpha and Omega; both the source and the capstone of all things in all times.
What does it say that such a One chose to take on flesh and to lay in a manger? This is the question that will confront you if you choose to face it in the next couple of weeks. We, who know all too well the limitations of the human experience, have to ask what it means that God would willingly take on those limitations. What does it mean that the Almighty decided to need diapers? What does it mean that the one who called together God’s people from the four corners of the earth suddenly had to walk like the rest of us, plodding over the soil?
Perhaps the message is this: before we follow Christ to the cross, we must follow Him to the manger. Before we, like Peter, assert our ability to follow Christ to death, we must first demonstrate our ability to follow Him into a seemingly lesser life, a life the world does not always understand. In fact, maybe our inability to follow Christ to the cross is directly related to our unwillingness to follow Him to the manger. Maybe we are incapable of following Christ to death if we have not first followed Him to a new kind of life.
Perhaps the call of the manger in our lives means willingly giving up income in order that those around us may have more. Perhaps it means moving out of a privileged neighborhood into another. Perhaps it means a call to sexual chastity, even celibacy, in a promiscuous world. Perhaps it means choosing to drive in less car than you could, live in less house than you could, and eat less food than you could. Perhaps this is what is involved with going to the manger: taking the things the world calls power and laying them aside, taking your birthright and giving it away.
Bible Discussion — Luke 1:1-38
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the beginning of a brand new book for us, Luke 1:1-38.
Genesis: 1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18 | 19-22 | 23-26
27-29 | 30-32 | 33-36 | 37-39 | 40-43 | 44-46 | 47-50
Exodus: 1-4 | 5-8 | 9-11 | 12-14 | 15-18
19-22 | 23-26 | 27-30 | 31-34 | 35-40
Romans: Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6 | Ch. 7 | Ch. 8 (I)
Ch. 8 (II) | Ch. 9 | Ch. 10 | Ch. 11 | Ch. 12 | Ch. 13 | Ch. 14 | Ch. 15-16
INTRODUCTION:
David:
Luke always lets you know exactly what he’s doing at the beginning of each passage, and here he states in clear and beautiful language the purpose for this epistle. He has attained a clear spiritual and chronological understanding of the Gospel that Theophilus has staked his life on, and he wants to be sure his friend has that same clarity as a sure foundation.
Mike:
Two godly women set an example for their husbands — and us — as they agree to play challenging parts in the coming of God’s Kingdom. For one, a pregnancy was beyond hope and for the other, it was beyond imagination.
Connie:
An account of the ministry of Jesus, as written by Dr. Luke to his friend Theo. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the most-quoted for the Christmas season and by the Peanuts Christmas special.
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Connie:
Both Zacharias and Mary asked Gabriel “How?” types of questions in response to his declarations, but only Zach was punished… Hmmm.
Mike:
1:29: “[Mary] wondered what sort of greeting this might be.” She wondered if the angel’s greeting — “The Lord is with you” — was really good news, or whether it might just be terribly inconvenient to her life plans.
Steve:
Elizabeth was also from the lineage of Aaron, which made John the Baptist a priest from both sides.
BEST BAND NAME FROM THE PASSAGE:
Mike: No Business Being Pregnant
David: Zachariah
Connie: Theophilus
MC-B: Zechariah’s Division
Steve: Struck Mute
Advent Devotional — Wednesday, December 12
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
“As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God. My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God; when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?”
(Psalm 42:1-2; from the Morning Psalm in The Divine Hours)
The praise chorus which was inspired by this psalm is a quiet sort of song which conjures up the pastoral scene of flowing streams and verdant meadows. Of course, to the deer, the desire for flowing streams is not a romantic longing — it is a matter of life and death. The deer needs water to survive; a self-replenishing source like a brook was life to a deer. A deer would frantically, desperately search for water just to survive, to get by. It is this image that the Psalmist uses to talk about his own thirst for God; a frantic, desperate thirst, as yet unrequited.
Advent asks us to cultivate that same thirst for God. That thirst is a difficult thing to grow. For one thing, we live in a culture that assures us God is unnecessary and quite possibly even harmful to our happiness. But for another, many Protestant churches have stressed God’s availability to us. The concept of the priesthood of all believers, for instance, has (rightly) told us that we do not need a priestly mediator to interact with God–that each of us has access to God for our own individual selves. And of course we have and treasure that access; but it is difficult to cultivate a thirst for anything that is always available — even God.
So how do we cultivate this thirst? In his providence God has given us many ways. One meaningful Advent-sort-of way is fasting, taking away the delight of a beloved food (or all food for a short period of time). When we treat that self-denial as a spiritual discipline, prayer accompanies our fasting: Lord, let me long for you in the way I’m longing for doughnuts. Our spirits are trained to desire God again; through denying ourselves smaller pleasures, we learn to associate that longing with our greater longing for God. Let me encourage you to find a way of fasting, be it through food or some other gift of God you wish to give up for a time; in it, you will learn to thirst for the living God.
Advent Devotional — Tuesday, December 11
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
“He (Zechariah) asked for a writing tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God.”
(Luke 1:63-64; from the Morning Reading in The Divine Hours)
Zechariah is one of the more fascinating characters in the Christmas story. Because he fails to immediately believe the angel’s promise of a son, he is struck mute for nine months. When his son is born, he is freed from his muteness when he agrees with the angel and his wife Elizabeth that the baby is to be named John.
We tend to think of this as a punishment, and perhaps in a sense it was. But maybe it was more for Zechariah’s sake than anything. I believe that the deepest need of Zechariah’s heart at that time was silence. Think about it: he had just seen an angel appear before him, a supernatural messenger of God before his very eyes. This angel had given him good news, and instead of receiving it with joy, Zechariah demanded a sign: “How will I know that this is so?” So an angel stood before him, and still this was not proof enough for him that this was true; he demanded something more than the appearance of a supernatural being!
As remarkable as this seems to us, it reveals something about the human condition: we are able to miss even the most obvious messages God sends to us. The noise of our world renders God’s voice inaudible. The confusion of the world makes God’s good gifts look restrictive, makes our own self-destructive paths look appealing. Of course, the antidote to this is silence. When we intentionally shut off the noise of the world, we hear the voice of God without distraction and then we become more able to hear that voice amid the world’s noise. Intentionally choosing times of silence is a key to hearing God clearly in the world.
Of course, we cannot be trusted to intentionally choose the gift of silence; neither could Zechariah be so trusted. So he had silence graciously thrust upon him. And after nine months of imposed silence, finally he was able to recognize a good gift of God when he saw it. “His name is John,” he wrote, and finally he was able to move from silence to proclaiming the good news of God.
Likely you will not have silence thrust upon you these next two weeks. But I pray that silence suffuses your very being until Christmas Day. Live as one set apart from the world; live as one who observes it. Make a conscious effort to drown out the noise of the world, so that you can hear the Incarnate Word when He is spoken. And in so doing, may God equip you to proclaim the good news of that Boy to the ends of the earth; and may God’s vision for your life be born in this time of silence.
Advent Devotional — Monday, December 10
Monday, December 10, 2007
“Once he came in blessing, all our ills redressing;
Came in likeness lowly, Son of God most holy;
Bore the cross to save us, hope and freedom gave us.
Still he comes within us, still his voice would win us,
From the sins that hurt us, would to Truth convert us:
Not in torment hold us, but in love enfold us.”
(Hymn by Jan Roh; in the Vespers Reading in The Divine Hours)
“The sins that hurt us.” We don’t often think about this reality: sin hurts. Even us Christians think of sin as something really hard to avoid because it’s so much fun. Illicit sex, a life of stingy, self-satisfied wealth while the world starves, an ability to take advantage of another without uneasiness: these things may seem wrong to us, but equally they seem thrilling. We channel these feelings into healthier, or at least less destructive, activities: we may watch them on a movie screen, but at least we don’t act on our feelings. Yet we often forget that sin hurts. And not just in the sense of where you’ll land in the afterlife. Sin hurts here, in this world.
Think about your body. It is a marvelous machine, capable of so much, especially at a young age. Yet when we fail to use our bodies for their intended purposes, we actually harm them. For example, when we treat food as an emotional crutch rather than as fuel for the purposes of God, our bodies often reflect it in being overweight. When we fail to exercise our bodies, while working at jobs where we sit all the time, our bodies are incapable of being all they can be — all that God created and intended them to be.
Sin works in the same way. When we fail to act on God’s intentions for our lives, we bear the scars here and now. When we make a habit of degrading our neighbor, something in our conscience goes numb and it becomes more and more of an effort to love our neighbor. We retreat into ourselves, trusting fewer and fewer people, until ultimately we are incredibly lonely. When we make stingy and selfish decisions, we are less and less inclined toward the generosity God intended us to display. We turn further and further to possessions and money for happiness, and live our lives in a constant state of disappointment that they cannot deliver.
It is for this reason that God’s voice still “would to Truth convert us.” It is not because God wants us to live a life of renunciation where we sign away our rights to enjoy anything. It is because God wants us to see what we Truly are, the purposes for which we were created. And if we live in that way, if we live with an eye toward taking on behaviors which reinforce those purposes, and rejecting behaviors which work against those purposes, we will live truly happy lives.
Imagine owning a shiny, sleek convertible and insisting it was actually a Land Rover. You’d take the convertible off-roading for about 30 seconds, until you tried to drive over a rock or through a creek. Then you would realize the folly of treating something that was created to be one thing as something entirely different. So it is with us; when we pretend that we were created to achieve, or to gain possessions, or to exalt ourselves, we are headed for disaster.
Advent Devotional — Sunday, December 9
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Second Sunday in Advent
“Fling wide the portals of your heart;
Make it a temple, set apart
From earthly use for heaven’s employ,
Adorned with prayer and love and joy.” (From Lift Up Your Heads, Eternal Gates by George Weissel; in the Vespers Reading in The Divine Hours)
This hymn expresses almost perfectly the sentiment of Advent. The first verse essentially says, “Jesus is on the way;” and our response is summed up in this second verse. Because the Savior is here, our response must be to open our lives completely to Him. We “fling wide the portals of our hearts,” giving Him complete access to our lives, to tinker in whatever nooks and crannies He wishes to change. The goal of all this is holiness, that is, we wish for our hearts to be “set apart,” different from the rest of the world. We have different purposes: we have moved from “earthly use” to “heaven’s employ,” trading in human purposes for God’s purposes in our lives. We also have a different sense of what makes us beautiful: “prayer and love and joy” serve as our adornments rather than whatever the world is calling beautiful at the present moment.
In what ways are you pursuing holiness today? Let me suggest that the hymn’s message is a wise one. In order for us to become set apart, in order for us to allow God’s purposes to shape and mold our desires, we first need to “fling wide” open the gates to our heart. Our first step has to be to allow Christ unfettered access to our lives.
We often pay lip service to this without realizing what it really means. It means that in a sense we can never be at home here, as many in the world are. Our sense of security cannot come from our jobs, our homes, our nation, our possessions, for allegiance to Christ may (probably will) threaten these things from time to time. Instead, our sense of security has to come from its best and only source: from God himself. “All other ground is sinking sand,” says another hymn, and this is true. To become truly holy, truly set apart, can be a painful process of letting go of other allegiances that are comfortable to us.
May the next few days of Advent be for you a time of “flinging wide” the gates to your heart, and allowing Christ access. Even when it’s scary, even when it’s painful, may you find your security not in created things, but in God himself. May this be so not for your own sake alone, but for the whole world you can touch with the hands of Christ.
Advent Devotional — Saturday, December 8
Saturday, December 8, 2007
“Yes, I know the plans I have in mind for you, Yahweh declares, plans for peace, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. When you call to me and come to me, and pray to me, I shall listen to you. When you search for me, you will find me; when you search wholeheartedly for me, I shall let you find me.” (Jeremiah 29:11-14a; a midday reading from The Divine Hours)
On the face of it, this passage is part of a letter from Jeremiah to the people in exile in Babylon. The first paragraph of the letter is downright depressing: to the people who had hoped that this exile would be short-lived and that they’d be able to return home soon, Jeremiah says, “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease” (Jer 29:5-6). In other words, settle in; you’re going to be there a while.
But then Jeremiah delivers this word to the people, that God still has plans for them, plans for a future and a hope. Though many of them would not live to see it, God still had their best interests in mind. There would be a future for God’s people.
I remember during my time in college, we would sing a song where the words were simply the NIV version of this Scripture: “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for good to give to you a future and a hope.” The song caused many sentimental tears as seniors contemplated life beyond Houghton and reflected that God would take care of them wherever they went.
Of course, this is true. But in that setting there was something supremely foreign to the original text. We were college students, many of us children of privilege, graduating from a school known as one of the “Evangelical Ivies.” We were going into a world where job prospects were bright, where a degree could take us a long way in business, ministry, or graduate school. Most of us were returning to homes where our parents would put a roof over our heads and food in our bellies as long as we needed them to, while we got our feet under us.
This word was not written to children of privilege; it was written to foreigners and aliens in exile. And it did not tell them that if they just held on, they would see evidence of God’s faithfulness; it assured them that they would not see such evidence. And even though they would not see such evidence, still God was faithful. It assured them that even though they would live and die as foreigners, God was still in control and had a plan bigger even than their individual lives and success.
One cannot hear this passage as it was intended until he is in exile. One cannot understand it until she has given up their need for resolution in their lives; we cannot grasp it until we have given up our need to understand, reconcile, or be satisfied with their lives. Only when we have given up happiness as a main goal can we know, as those ancient exiles did, that God has a plan bigger than ourselves.
Advent Devotional — Friday, December 7
Friday, December 7, 2007
“Lo, how a rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming,
As men of old have sung.
It came a floweret bright,
Amid the cold of winter,
When half-spent was the night.” (Lo, How A Rose, 15th century German carol; part of a reading from the Vespers Office in The Divine Hours)
Jesus as a rose; it is a decidedly non-Scriptural thought, but worthwhile. The passage to which the hymn alludes is, of course, Isaiah 11:1: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” The idea is that the line of David, long since considered dead, would again gain life in a coming king, a king we Christians understand to be Jesus. Of course, Jesus is depicted as a young shoot which will grow into a strong tree, noble and majestic, even more so than the stump which preceded it.
And yet those 15th century German Catholics (Christians were all Catholics then) took this verse and made Jesus not a strong tree, but a tender, beautiful rose. Not a sapling rising up from a dead stump, but a gentle, defiant rose poking through the snow in the dead of winter, even in the middle of the night. As I say, the image is not Scriptural, at least not exactly. But I think it is an important image nonetheless. In a way, they are quite similar; each points to Jesus embodying life even in the midst of death all around him. Both dead tree stumps and long German winters are inhospitable to life, and both saplings and roses point to life in the midst of such inhospitality.
But I think the analogy of the rose is an important one because it is beautiful, and if I may say it, feminine in a sense. Often, we characterize Jesus’ life and mission in stereotypically masculine terms: conquering death and hell, vanquishing demons, achieving our salvation and rescuing His people. Yet Jesus’ life was more than a contest won, more than a task accomplished.
His was also a life that embodied beauty. Can we not say that the Christian life is the most beautiful life there is? Can we not say that the Christian vision of a life rightly lived, using the gifts He has given us for His sake and the sake of the world, is not just effective but also beautiful? Was not His self-sacrifice on our behalf not only justifying but beautiful?
Christ came to do more than the simple accomplishments of tasks that needed to be done; He came to embody this beautiful life and to allow us to enter into it more fully than we ever could on our own. For that we need more than a utilitarian tree; we need a beautiful Rose.
Advent Devotional — Thursday, December 6
Thursday, December 6, 2007
“But there is one thing, my dear friends, which you must never forget: the Day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements will catch fire and melt away, the earth and all it contains will be burned up.” (2 Peter 3:8, 10, part of a reading in the Midday Prayer in The Divine Hours)
Peter wrote to a congregation in crisis. The church had been targeted for whatever reason by a group of teachers espousing false doctrines; Peter wrote to set the church straight and to encourage them to hold fast to the truth.
One of the doctrines these false teachers taught was that Christ was not going to return. One can understand how such a doctrine would make sense to this congregation. Christ had come and gone at least 30 years prior to the writing of this letter, and as the first generation of Christians were dying out, no doubt it was tempting to rethink this vital Christian doctrine and try to make sense of it some other way.
2 Peter argues strongly that Christ will indeed return, and offers another reason for Christ’s delay: that God reckons time differently than we do, as “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (3:8). God’s time is not necessarily shorter or longer than ours, it is just different; and it is impossible to predict when Christ will come back. But Peter ramps up the intensity a bit by reminding his listeners to be aware that the Day of the Lord was coming with apocalyptic signs and suddenness. Since the time was impossible to predict, Christians needed to live in a constant state of readiness.
The paradox of Advent is that on one hand, we are awaiting the coming of a helpless baby; on the other, we are awaiting a day in which the sky will vanish and everything will burn up. Whether or not we take the passage literally, the point is clear: the coming Day of the Lord will be a day of tremendous apocalyptic upheaval in which nothing will be left untouched. This seems far removed from the pastoral scenes that decorate our Christmas cards.
This paradox is a healthy thing, because it forces us to realize anew that Jesus was no ordinary baby. Here is one destined to cause the rising and falling of many people. Here, in the stable, is the chief cornerstone of the New Jerusalem; here, in the stable, is the stumbling-block to the Jews and the foolishness to the Gentiles; here, in the stable, is the first-fruits of those who have died; here, in the stable, is the one who will rend the sky and bring forth the Day of the Lord, when we all will stand in His presence, as our advocate and judge.
Advent Devotional — Wednesday, December 5
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
“Cease doing evil. Learn to do good, search for justice, discipline the violent, be just to the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:16b-17, part of the Midday Reading in The Divine Hours)
Isaiah here gives us quite a difficult to-do list. In the context of a passage where God has grown tired of his people’s offering, what Isaiah is essentially asking us to do is to repent, to re-orient our lives — and this is done through active steps of discipleship.
Our Christian subculture assures us that the important thing is what we believe, not what we do. Check the bumper stickers at your local Christian book store: “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” “No Jesus-no peace. Know Jesus-know peace.” And these are true as far as they go. But here Isaiah makes the point that what makes our worship acceptable to God is also a matter of what we do. It is a matter of ceasing one way of life and beginning another. It is about knowing goodness and justice rather than self-aggrandizement. It is about caring for the weak in society (the widows and the orphans) and about the violent (notice the command to “discipline” rather than “punish” the violent).
John the Baptist took all this one step further: “Repent,” he said, “for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” God is coming and if you want to be able to stand in his presence — if you want this to be good news instead of bad news — you will need to purify your lives. You will need to take on certain practices, and you will need to let some dear things go.
During Advent, the call is the same: God is coming! And for much of the world this is a threatening truth. The story of Santa and the elves provides a non-threatening alternative to the story of the coming of God into the world. Santa doesn’t demand much except a passable week of good behavior close to Christmas; but God sees through our souls with the Creator’s eye and longs for us to live up to the capabilities with which he created us.
In order for the coming of the baby Jesus to be good news and not bad news for us, we too have to re-orient our lives. It will mean thinking of ourselves as owned by and submissive to God, as opposed to the freedom-loving autonomous moral agents most Americans conceive themselves to be. It will mean thinking of the world as a holy, flawed place, as opposed to the romantic ideas of nature harbored by some, and as opposed to the unimportance placed on the world by others.
But even more than thinking differently, it will mean acting differently. It will mean decisively leaving behind old practices and embracing new ones, knowing that if we can get our hands and feet to act differently, our hearts and minds will catch up.
Advent Devotional — Tuesday, December 4
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
“The days are coming — declares Yahweh — when the plowman will tread on the heels of the reaper and the treader of grapes on the heels of the sower of seed, and the mountains will run with new wine and the hills all flow with it. I shall restore the fortunes of my people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them, they will plant vineyards and drink their wine, they will lay out gardens and eat their produce. And I shall plant them in their own soil and they will never be uprooted again from the country which I have given them, declares Yahweh, your God.” (Amos 9:13-15, reading from the Midday Office in The Divine Hours)
Often, we picture eternity of the Lord as a time of total rest. That certainly is one picture of heaven that we get in the Scriptures. This is quite another picture. Here, the day of the Lord is pictured as a day, not of rest, but of incredibly fruitful work. The ground is so fertile that the minute the grapes are picked, someone comes through to plow the land to prepare the next crop; the minute the grapes are sown, someone is coming along to pick and stomp them for the new wine. People rebuild cities, not like today’s cities, but cities where people will own their land and have a connection to it, growing their own food and their own wine. In all, Amos pictures a people rooted in a country given them by God, working the precious gift of the land and always seeing a reward for their labors.
This is one of the busiest times of the year for a pastor. The season causes all sorts of pastoral issues for people, ranging from the first holidays without loved ones to Seasonal Affective Disorder because of the short periods of daylight. There are services to get together, bulletins to print, sermons to write, parties to attend, and the list goes on. Most frustrating is when I feel that I’m barely keeping all the balls in the air, doing everything but not able to do it as well as I’d like.
The vision that keeps me going through this time is the thought of vacation at Christmas time. After the last service Christmas Eve, we buy take-outs at the Exton Diner (a yearly tradition for us) and eat at about 10:30 at night. We get up Christmas morning and suddenly there are no responsibilities. We join my parents for Christmas dinner and then sometime in the next couple days we usually make a pilgrimage to western New York to spend time with Jill’s family until after the New Year. Then I am rested and rejuvenated for the next season of the year. Often, we think of the Christian life in this way — a season of work here on earth to be followed by rest in heaven.
But I’m not sure I’d want that kind of heaven. Haven’t you known a time on earth here where your work was so meaningful, so right? Haven’t you known a time when you were working and saw the fruits of your labor right in front of you? I have. There are times when I preach and the words flow off my tongue and right into the hearts of people who need to hear it, and I know they receive it because they tell me so. In those moments there is nothing I would rather be doing than working, than practicing the craft that God has given me to practice. And I’m sure that as it is for preachers, so it is for bakers and salesmen and writers and accountants.
The point of Advent is to look forward to the Day of the Lord, which came in Jesus and is coming again some day. As we await Jesus, let’s not simply await rest, though we need it; let’s look forward to a day when our work will be fruitful and meaningful.
Advent Devotional — Monday, December 3
Monday, December 3, 2007
“Listen now, House of David: are you not satisfied with trying human patience that you should try God’s patience too? The Lord will give you a sign in any case: It is this: the young woman is with child and will give birth to a son whom she will call Immanuel. On curds and honey he will feed until he knows how to refuse the bad and choose the good.” (Isaiah 7:13-15, a reading from the Midday Prayer in The Divine Hours)
Traditional Christian interpretation has held that this passage is a Messianic prophecy, that the child named Immanuel, to whom we are to look forward, is indeed Jesus himself. Despite historical criticism that looks for another figure closer to Isaiah’s day to fulfill this saying, this meaning has persevered. Today, many Christian scholars take the approach that this saying may well be double-layered: it may refer to a person in Isaiah’s day as well as to Christ, in some mystical way.
This double meaning makes a lot of sense when we look at our lives. “Immanuel” means, of course, “God with us.” And whatever the exact nature of this prophecy, the Christian is able to say with confidence that, in Jesus, God is with us to the full. And yet there are innumerable other ways in which our lives hint at God’s presence each day: in the dying of the earth in the fall and its rising in the spring; in the presence of a mother at a cradle; in the presence of a daughter at a death-bed; and primarily in the word of Scripture rightly read or proclaimed. Yet none of these hints of God’s presence takes away from the fullest expression of God’s presence among us through Jesus. In fact, all of these hints gain fuller meaning when we see them in light of Christ; in fact, these hints can even point us to Jesus and the fullness of God’s presence with us.
This season is a particularly fruitful season to look for those hints of God’s presence. A selfish world suddenly turns (at least partly) generous; themes of family, hospitality, and giving resound with this time of year. May God use these hints to point you to the fullness of his presence through a relationship with his Son.
Advent Devotional — Sunday, December 2
Sunday, December 2, 2007
“Restore us, O God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.” (Psalm 80:3; part of the Vespers Psalm, in the Vespers Reading, p. 6)
Part of the reason Advent and Christmas speak so profoundly to our spirits is the fact that they echo the eternal battle between darkness and light. In many of the world’s religions, darkness is a metaphor for confusion, chaos or sinfulness, while light is a metaphor for viewing the world rightly, in order, in holiness. Christianity is no exception. Throughout the Gospel of John, for instance, we read about the struggle between darkness and light, starting in the very first chapter: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5). In this verse, Jesus is described as the light, the very embodiment of holiness and wisdom, the one the darkness can not overcome.
This verse from Psalm 80 is a profound statement. It is written from the perspective of a person who is being severely tested. In the words of verse 6, “You have made us the derision of our neighbors, and our enemies laugh us to scorn.” It is certainly more severe testing than most of us have ever known; it is a psalm written from deep darkness. The writer’s nation is the laughingstock of the known world, and daily people fear for their lives.
In the midst of a life like that, it takes great faith to say, “Show us just the light of your face, and we shall be saved.” We have a hard time saying it even in our little trials! We beg God for solutions we can see: a windfall of unexpected money, a negative test result from the doctor, a letter of acceptance from the grad school. We often need these resolutions to prop up our failing faith.
And yet it is not the resolutions of difficulties that save us. Only the presence of God can save us; only the light of God’s countenance can cut through the darkness. What we need, though often we cannot express it, is not money, health or acceptance. What we need is the light of His countenance more than any of these things.
What will come at Christmas in your life is anybody’s guess. You may have a Christmas straight out of a Currier & Ives scene: the whole family gathered, a great feast on the table, three inches of snow on the ground and more falling, even a couple of Clydesdales outside. Or circumstances may force you to spend the holiday alone, watching re-runs, eating instant noodles in a dark, lonely family room. You may even spend it with a sick relative. Who knows?
But what makes Christmas special, and amazing, is not the fact everything is just so. It is the fact that the light of Christ is cutting its way through the darkness. And darkness has no answer for the light which is to come.
But for now, during Advent, we symbolically enter the darkness, and wait. And our heart’s cry, “Show us the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved,” is a cry heard in heaven.
Does your branch of Christianity celebrate Advent? What does it mean in your tradition? Is it, as suggested here, a symbolic entrance to the darkness in order to wait anew for the light? If so, I hope this devotional is a good guide on the way. If not, welcome to the darkness! Maybe these devotions can make this Advent a time of reflection for you in a way the season has not been before.
Advent Devotional — Introduction
Each day from Sunday, December 2 until Tuesday, December 25, Pastor Mike will share with Bweinh! a special Advent devotional!
One of the things I have come to realize as a young man is the power of rituals. The process of repeating the same behavior again and again — sometimes “meaning it,” sometimes not — often has the effect of putting new layers of meaning into those actions. So a school fight song ceases to be simply a collection of syllables and notes but causes memories and friendships long dead to flood back. Or seeing a baseball game makes one nostalgic for youth, and time spent at the ballpark. Or even finding a rerun of a beloved TV show brings back the family and friends with whom you used to watch it.
Most American churches are long on inventiveness and short on ritual. “Ritual” has a bad connotation, meaning something empty and not heartfelt. We relentlessly invent new ways of doing church, new songs to sing, new prayers to pray, new approaches to preaching. We design contemporary, clean churches that self-consciously resemble office parks. But in so doing, we forget the simple power of repetition in rituals. Change in a human being is rarely like dynamite blasting away rock; more often it is like the slow erosion of water on that rock, gradually shaping and smoothing the rock into something different. It is that type of change–gradual but no less real–that ritual is designed to work in us.
All this is to say that as a kid, I grew up loving Christmas. It was the one time of year when a good evangelical Protestant boy could experience all the ritual he could handle! At Christmas, everything was a ritual — the Christmas Eve service, the kinds of cookies my mother baked, the reading of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, the food on the table Christmas Eve and Christmas Day; all these were rituals. Even new Christmas behaviors were evaluated on whether or not they’d make for good rituals. A new TV Christmas special, for instance, was judged on whether or not it was worthy of being part of the tradition, like Rudolph and Frosty, or whether it was fly-by-night and would be ditched next year. Having grown up in a culture that did not ritualize easily, Christmas was a breath of fresh air.
It is with this in mind that I present to you this daily Advent devotional. It is my sixth (!) such effort since becoming the pastor at Exton in 2002; I suppose that just writing these is becoming another Christmas ritual for me! Regardless, I hope that it builds in you a desire to make this a ritual: a time spent with the Lord each day during Advent. I know there will be some days you feel like it, and some you don’t. There will be some days you reach the end of the devotion and feel that the text or my reflection has spoken directly to your soul, and there will be some days you wonder why on earth I’ve chosen what I’ve chosen or written what I’ve written. I hope you enjoy and appreciate the days that touch you, and I hope you keep with it after a day which does not seem particularly meaningful, so that God can shape you with the power of ritual.
This devotional can be used in one of two ways:
1. Use it on its own. Just read the text printed for the day, and the reflection.
2. As part of a larger daily process of prayer. Those of you who know me well know that I find prayer books very useful. They help to keep my prayer life structured. One book that I have used is The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle. This book has four short times of prayer, written out, for you to repeat out loud or silently each day: in the morning, midday, evening, and before retiring. It is actually a three-volume set that covers the whole year. However, the author has also released just the Advent and Christmas season in a little paperback called Christmastide.
Each of my daily reflections will be taken from a piece of the prayers printed there. So if you want to join me in a deeply prayerful Advent, pick up the book and use it for your personal devotions and use this set of reflections to amplify the process of prayer there. (If you prefer, The Divine Hours are printed online each day here.
I hope this little book of reflections helps you in reflecting on the greatest gift of God — his Son!
Bible Discussion — Romans 8 (Part Two)
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next chapter in the book of Romans, Romans 8. Romans 8 Day continues!!
Again, joining us as guests are Capt. Steve Carroll, Rev. Dave Maxon, and Maj. Doug Jones!
Genesis: 1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18 | 19-22 | 23-26
27-29 | 30-32 | 33-36 | 37-39 | 40-43 | 44-46 | 47-50
Exodus: 1-4 | 5-8 | 9-11 | 12-14 | 15-18
19-22 | 23-26 | 27-30 | 31-34 | 35-40
And the book of Romans: Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6 | Ch. 7
RANDOM THOUGHT:
Maj. Jones:
There is now no condemnation. Satan can’t condemn. Jesus won’t condemn. We shouldn’t condemn ourselves; unfortunately, we sometimes forget that truth.
MC-B:
This would easily make my top ten list of chapters of the Bible that a Christian should be extremely familiar with.
Steve:
Freedom from the Law was one thing, but for us to be described not only as children of God, but “joint heirs with Christ,” is an unimaginable honor. We will be glorified together.
Mike:
What is the difference between foreknowing, predestining, and calling? Why does Paul draw this difference?
Pastor Dave:
“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” If people ever truly understood the depth of God’s love towards us, it would radically change their Christian experience in a positive way. Gone would be all those nagging thoughts — “He doesn’t love me,” “What did I do wrong to deserve this,” “What am I being punished for,” “Am I saved?” We would all walk with encouraged hearts, full of anticipation, knowing that no matter what’s around the next bend in the road, our ever-present help in time of need, the Lover of our souls, was with us.
Capt. Steve:
At night, when I am putting my son to bed, I often tell him, “Of all the little boys in the whole wide world, your Daddy loves you the best.” What am I going to say if my wife has another boy?
Erin:
What does it mean for the Spirit to intercede for us with groans?
David:
This chapter presents Christians as “spiritual” people, while Jude presents the wicked as “sensual” people. Are we being led by our senses or the Spirit? All that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — are not of the Father, but of the world (1 John 2:16).
WHERE IS JESUS IN THIS PASSAGE:
Capt. Steve:
“At the center of it all.” He provided the means of this new life. He Sent His Spirit, who empowers and frees us from sin’s control.
Djere:
Not condemning, rather, having set us free, He is raised from the dead!
MC-B, Connie, Pastor Dave:
Everywhere — without Him, there is no way that humanity can approach God in order to have the relationship with Him that is detailed by this passage.
Erin:
This passage is all about Paul trying to understand Jesus!
Mike:
He is the pattern for the life of this new family, the church, and the giver of the Spirit which animates the life of this new family.
Chloe, Josh:
At the right hand of God, interceding for us.
Maj. Jones:
Jesus is throughout the entire chapter, beginning with freedom from condemnation and sin, making us joint heirs of the kingdom, keeping us firmly in His hands through any and every trial.
David:
In 8:32, being delivered up for us all.
VERSE TO REMEMBER:
Steve:
8:18 — “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”
Mike:
8:19 — “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.”
Tom:
8:32 — “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”
Chloe, Pastor Dave:
8:28 — “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”
Erin, Connie:
8:38-39 — “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Capt. Steve:
8:6 — “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”
David:
8:14 — “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”
Josh:
8:15 — “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ ”
Djere, MC-B:
8:31 — “What then shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”
Maj. Jones:
So many verses, so little space — verses 10, 17, 26, 28, 31, and 35-39!
Bible Discussion — Romans 8 (Part One)
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next chapter in the book of Romans, Romans 8. That’s right, it’s Romans 8 Day!!
And not only do we have almost-universal participation, but joining us as guests today are Capt. Steve Carroll, Rev. Dave Maxon, and Maj. Doug Jones!
Genesis: 1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18 | 19-22 | 23-26
27-29 | 30-32 | 33-36 | 37-39 | 40-43 | 44-46 | 47-50
Exodus: 1-4 | 5-8 | 9-11 | 12-14 | 15-18
19-22 | 23-26 | 27-30 | 31-34 | 35-40
And the book of Romans: Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6 | Ch. 7
INTRODUCTION:
David:
This Chapter articulates the key difference between the world and the Christian. The people of this world walk in the flesh, “fulfilling the desires of the flesh, and of the mind” (Eph 2:3) — but “as many as are led by the Spirit, they are the sons of God” (Romans 8:14). The test to determine which you are is Romans 8:9 — “…ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit if . . . the Spirit of God dwell in you.” You must be born again of God’s Spirit.
Capt. Steve:
This is the kind of passage that I start reading quietly to myself, but by the end of the passage, I am shouting the words at the top of my lungs, and people are sticking their heads in my office to make sure everything is okay. “It’s all fine — I just got a little excited!”
Mike:
Set free from our slavery to death, we are made God’s beloved children. In a flourish, Paul declares that the calling of the children of God is the crowning moment for all of creation (v. 19-20) and that God’s love for his children never fails (v. 31-39).
MC-B:
This passage contains some of the most important tenets of Christian faith, so I suppose I should probably actually discuss this one, huh?
Maj. Jones:
Whenever I am asked about my favorite portion of Scripture, I always say Romans 8. As I now reflect and ask myself why, I am reminded of the assurance of life, liberty and the source of my joy and contentment.
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Pastor Dave:
How yellowed and worn, the edges of the page that holds Romans 8.
Capt. Steve:
The Holy Spirit is praying for us. How does that work?
Josh:
Verses 38-39 contain a fairly well-known list of things that cannot separate us from God’s love, but the list actually starts in verse 35.
Djere:
“Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” — The words “for us” are omitted in the NU text. I’d never noticed that before.
Mike:
The phrase in v. 2: “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free…” Still wrestling with what precisely that means.
Connie:
The verses preceding Romans 8:28 are the ones that emphasize the Holy Spirit as our Intercessor. I always separate them and use them separately, instead of realizing that His intercession can lead us right to knowing HOW all things in our lives can and will work to our good, as long as we love Him and walk in His calling.
Steve:
It can’t be wrong or inappropriate to pray for God’s will in a situation — that’s precisely what the Holy Spirit is doing.
Maj. Jones:
Paul begins in verse 35 by asking who, but then lists many whats.
BEST BAND NAME FROM THE PASSAGE:
Connie: Sheep for the Slaughter
Capt. Steve: Plan B
Chloe: For Your Sake
Tom: The Pangs; Indwells
Pastor Dave: Glorified; Foreknew
Djere: Firstfruits of the Spirit
David, Mike: Abba
Steve: Peril
MC-B: The Whole Creation
Erin: The Creation Waits
Josh: No Charge; Famine Nakedness Danger
Clash of the Titans LIV: Soccer
| In this corner, a soccer fan, is Djere! | And in this corner, against the game, is Mike! | |
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GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL! GOAL! GOAL! GOAL! GOAL! GOAL! Hey there, sports fans! Whether you’re the spoiled spawn of a disinterested suburban trophy wife or more useful to your parents tending the cassava fields than at school, everybody loves soccer! Scratch that: everybody loves fútbol! Here in America, it used to be that we would raise a collective yawn every four years for soccer’s World Cup, knowing full well that nations we could literally wipe off the face of the planet would make our best and brightest look like a high school junior varsity squad. But things are changing! Soccer in America is the most popular organized children’s sport, and being a soccer mom is hip! Everybody wants to be a soccer mom… even Mike! With the addition of international footballers like David Beckham and Juan Pablo Angel, new clubs like FC Toronto, and the “Superliga” tournament pitting the best of the MLS against the best of the Mexican fútbol leagues, soccer’s on the rise. And why shouldn’t it? Americans are fat and lazy. The cure? Soccer! A soccer field looks familiar to Americans — a wider and longer NFL field, but players on the pitch run for almost 90 straight minutes, not stopping after every play to release a hip hop album. Americans lust for blood. The cure? Soccer! Hooligans riot for weeks when their teams lose a match to a rival! Players have been shot to death for scoring own goals! And when a player commits a penalty, the ref pulls out a card — he doesn’t toss a froofy kerchief to the four winds of heaven — and books the offending player. There are no coaches challenging the call on the field, no umpires spitting tobacco, and best of all, no John “Turducken” Madden. Americans want to be entertained. The cure? Soccer! Hands down, the single most aesthetically appealing points in any sport — bar none — are soccer goals. How many times can you see some 11-foot-tall college dropout reach up and place a ball in a basket? How long will you watch 14 400-pound college “graduates” slam into each other so 1 tiny man can dive over the blubbery mess into the end zone? Are you bored with jacked-up, ‘roid-ragers hitting little white balls over a fence with a stick? Soccer goals are quick and amazing at the pro level, the propulsion of a ball 30 or 40 yards with pinpoint precision. The spin, the physics, the drama, the beauty of a well-struck goal can cause entire nations to bless or curse. Not that Americans would know anything about that. What’s that? NASCAR’s on? YEE HA! |
I know that saying this will make me sound like a jingoistic pig, but would someone please explain what is so beautiful about the beautiful game? Three things that are not so beautiful: 1. Red cards. In my mind, if a team has to play a man down for the entire remainder of the game, there ought to be dismemberment of some sort involved. But because some guy, in the heat of the moment, tackles another in a particularly egregious fashion, all of the sudden he’s out of the game and his team is now forced essentially to hope for a tie? Really? When Paul Lo Duca whined and moaned through the Mets’ epic collapse, getting ejected from games, were the Mets prevented from using a catcher? No? Why? Because it’s ridiculous, that’s why. Oh, and by the way, that red card–all a judgment call. Not that the refs having all that power has ever led to corrupt officials. 2. Offsides. Okay, I’m snoozing my way through a game–oh, pardon me, a match — when finally — finally! — someone manages to break through all alone to face the goalie. For the first time, I raise my eyelids slightly, only to have the ref blow the whistle and inform everybody in attendance that the previous moment of heart-pounding excitement was an infraction of the rules. Oh good. Now I can go back to my sleeping, and the crowd can go back to their drinking, unconcerned that any substantive action may take place on the field–er, pitch–to distract us from those worthy pursuits. 3. Soccer parents. Something must be done about these people. I’m at a JV soccer match today at the local high school watching a girl from our youth group. A girl goes down on a somewhat hard tackle. The ref lets it slide and continues play. Behind me, a man, entitlement dripping from his lips, says, “Hey ref–what’re you looking at?” and proceeds to carry on an argument with the ref. In a crowd of 50 people max, this man, unencumbered by any sense of shame, barks at the ref at a girls’ JV game. Don’t tell me this happens to this extent in other sports. Soccer’s big here in the ‘burbs, where people have it all, but are in constant fear of losing it all. The incredibly dull nature of the game gives these people time to ponder the emptiness at the core of their lives and makes them even more agitated about it. Suddenly, a ref’s judgment call turns into a personal attack on my precious little Fiona! Hell hath no fury like a tight-lipped nervous suburbanite scorned. A vote for soccer merely perpetuates this insanity. Don’t do it! |
Clash of the Titans XXVII: Legalizing Marijuana
| In this corner, supporting the legalization of pot, is Mike! | And in this corner, opposing marijuana legalization, is MC-B! | |
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Those of you who know me as being perhaps on the theologically liberal end of the spectrum of Bweinh!tributors may be surprised to find out that I am essentially politically conservative. This is something that has developed in recent years, probably as I have grown older and responsible for running a household with my wife Jill. During our first year of marriage especially, we were not making much money. “How are we going to pay for it?” became a consistent refrain — when thinking of buying a car, new furniture or even a pizza for dinner. So while I hear and am genuinely moved by pleas for universal health care or raising the minimum wage, the question still pops up: “How are we going to pay for it?” Eventually, the answer comes to me: “You are . . . you and the rest of the tax base.” And while I ought to be ready and generous to give to worthy causes, I would just as soon not take the US government’s word for it in deciding what a worthy cause is. Just on the off chance that the US government decided something immoral was a worthy cause (perish the thought!), I would rather not have the mechanism already in place to force me to pay for it. We need the government to protect citizens from trampling each others’ rights; we don’t need a government determining right and wrong for individuals when that behavior has no impact on the lives of others. It is the same sort of logic that informs my position that marijuana should be legalized. I’ve never used marijuana; and not like Bill Clinton never used marijuana either. I’ve never used it, period. And I can’t imagine why someone would. But you know what? The threat posed to society at large by marijuana usage is minimal at most. It poses no undue risk to the general populace; it does not rob anyone else of their rights. Marijuana does not threaten to kill or injure anyone besides the user. And if people want to do things harmful to themselves, tobacco is already legal and shows no signs of becoming illegal. As far as I can see, the main reason for keeping marijuana illegal is that our government wants to send a message that it is abhorrent and dangerous behavior. I don’t condone marijuana usage. But neither do I want our government exploiting its power to determine what is abhorrent and dangerous. Remember, orthodox Christianity isn’t always pretty in the eyes of our government either, but it’s protected belief and behavior . . . for now. |
I guess I’m counted among the social conservatives of the world. Jonah Goldberg once described social conservatism (to me and my peers at SLU) as erring on the side of keeping things the same when change is proposed. He illustrated his point vividly — during the 1960’s, a significant number of hippie communes began suffering from terrible diseases no American doctor had ever seen. To make a long story short, it turns out the age-old traditions of bathing and personal hygiene were not just “the man’s” hang-ups after all. People are good judges of what is beneficial for them often enough that most decisions are safe in their hands; personal choice is one of the greatest tenets underlying philosophical liberalism and democracy. However, these also generally assume people are self-interested, and what’s good for me is not always good for you. Sometimes I can even be fooled into making a decision that’s good for me in the short run, but hurts in the long run. It’s a real shame that we don’t have a natural experiment to show what happens if otherwise responsible adults spend too much on expensive, addictive habits and not enough on their health, family, education, etc. But of course, we do. We could examine the effects of cigarettes, which cause cancer and eat up resources that could be used more productively. However, aside from addictiveness, tobacco does not have many of marijuana’s characteristics (no mind- altering experience, man!), so it’s probably better to compare marijuana to alcohol, a much more sobering comparison (pardon the pun). Both drugs produce an altered state of mind and can transform you into someone that you are not. Legalizing marijuana doesn’t just put it into the hands of homesick Europeans and responsible folks like you and me. It could also put psychoactive drugs into the hands of a welfare recipient who should be out looking for work or caring for his/her children, or a person getting behind the wheel of a car. Granted, there are still DUI/DWI laws, but think about what an unbridled success those have been and you’ll understand my desire to keep pot illegal. Such regulations barely deter anyway; few believe the risk of getting caught is significant. Finally, though I may be guilty of employing the slippery slope fallacy, it’s not a particularly good argument for legalizing marijuana. Why make anything illegal at all if the government cannot make moral judgments? Even protecting me from my neighbor implies my life is worth more than what’s spent on protection. Like most arguments, the argument about legalizing marijuana comes down to a matter of degree — to what degree will we let the government determine what Americans shouldn’t put into their bodies? I have no disdain for people who draw the line elsewhere, nor do they lack in morals, but I sincerely believe some people are not responsible enough to limit their detrimental behavior, so marijuana should remain illegal. |
Bible Discussion — Romans 6
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next chapter in the book of Romans, Romans 6.
Genesis: 1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18 | 19-22 | 23-26
27-29 | 30-32 | 33-36 | 37-39 | 40-43 | 44-46 | 47-50
Exodus: 1-4 | 5-8 | 9-11 | 12-14 | 15-18
19-22 | 23-26 | 27-30 | 31-34 | 35-40
And the book of Romans: Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5
INTRODUCTION:
Mike:
Paul presents his readers with a decision: will they be a slave to “sin” or will they be a slave to God?
David:
In the last chapter Paul made the statement that “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” He now deals with two questions that he assumes will come to the reader’s mind.
The first: “If grace brought sin, shouldn’t we continue (stay) in sin so that grace will keep coming?” The second: “Well, if we can’t stay in sin, can we visit occasionally (now that we have grace to forgive us when we do sin)?”
Erin:
Paul continues his logical argument for the Christian life in this chapter, focusing on why Christians should not just take Christ’s sacrifice for granted and continue living a sinful life.
Connie:
Sin versus grace! Watch them battle it out in a no-holds-barred fight to the death! Don’t miss it, right here, on Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday!!!
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Steve:
When the Romans were slaves to sin, they were “free in regard to righteousness,” able to raise as much heaven as they dared.
Connie:
Verse 15 is a great verse to fight the “once saved, always saved” doctrine.
Josh:
Just how often Paul likes to interrupt himself to ask questions that misrepresent his arguments, then shoot them down.
Chloe:
God is the slave’s master in this passage. How must this have sat with the abolitionists in the 19th century?
Mike:
v. 19: “I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations.” I wonder what Paul really wanted to say, but couldn’t because of the weakness of his audience. I’m certainly glad his audience was weak, because the slavery analogy is so profound.
BEST BAND NAME FROM THE PASSAGE:
Steve: Reckon
Connie: Old Man
Josh: By No Means
Erin: Baptism Into Death
Mike: Somebody’s Slave
Chloe: Natural Selves
David: Undergrace
Bible Discussion — Romans 5
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next chapter in the book of Romans, Romans 5.
Genesis: 1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18 | 19-22 | 23-26
27-29 | 30-32 | 33-36 | 37-39 | 40-43 | 44-46 | 47-50
Exodus: 1-4 | 5-8 | 9-11 | 12-14 | 15-18
19-22 | 23-26 | 27-30 | 31-34 | 35-40
And the book of Romans: Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4
INTRODUCTION:
Steve:
We’re through the tough sledding of the first few chapters and their focus on human depravity — now it’s time for the payoff, which starts right off with the good news — “therefore, having been justified by faith.” The rest is just icing.
Mike:
Paul builds on his previous chapter to examine the results of our justification: we have peace with God, and our sufferings have new meaning as they eventually produce hope in us. He also compares Christ’s life-giving ministry to the death-giving “ministry” of Adam’s sin.
David:
Paul explains our new position in Christ, and introduces the idea that the law came to show us our shortcomings, so that we might receive God’s grace.
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Steve:
Verses 13 through 17 are one long parenthetical statement in the NKJV…
David:
God intentionally puts us into a process that includes tribulation so that it can produce patience, experience and hope in us. Too bad he didn’t just make those things “gifts.”
Chloe:
I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve never read Romans very closely, but now that I’m carefully trudging through the cryptic sentence structure and overloaded nouns, I’m suddenly finding an astounding comfort in these chapters. God’s Son died for His enemies. I was God’s enemy. I am no longer. Praise the Lord!
Erin:
How much the chapter stresses Jesus’ humanity — His ultimate sacrifice is death, yes, but being fully man for that to be possible was a huge sacrifice as well.
Mike:
Verse 10 says we are “reconciled” to God through Jesus’ death, but “saved” by his life. Interesting distinction, though we shouldn’t push it too far, I suppose.
BEST BAND NAME FROM THE PASSAGE:
Steve: In Due Time
Erin: Received Reconciliation
Mike: Reconciled
Tom: Imputed
Chloe: Powerless; The Trespass
David: Adam’s Transgression
I need the wisdom of Bweinh!ers…
…to help me with my sermon this week.
It’s on Luke 16:1-13, the parable of the dishonest manager.
Any insights into the parable that readers/contributors have would be welcome, but I’m especially wondering if you think it’s fair to treat this parable as an allegory. I can’t find any reputable commentary that says it is, but it just seems so logical to me that when a master and a steward appear in a parable, it’s likely about God and religious leadership (see the parable of the vineyard, Mt 21:33-45).
To me, one of the messages of the parable is that wise Christians share the good news that the crushing debt the world thinks it owes God is much less onerous than it seems. The shrewd and generous Christian reflects the shrewdness of God, who is not so much about exacting punishments that fit the crime but showing deep love to His creation. So God commends us when we do this, because our “shrewdness” reflects his “shrewdness.” We are cunning and unfair in the same way God is cunning and unfair–always working quietly to give us more than we deserve.
Is this a fair reading of the text? What do you think?
Bible Discussion — Romans 3
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next chapter in the book of Romans, Romans 3.
Genesis: 1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18 | 19-22 | 23-26
27-29 | 30-32 | 33-36 | 37-39 | 40-43 | 44-46 | 47-50
Exodus: 1-4 | 5-8 | 9-11 | 12-14 | 15-18
19-22 | 23-26 | 27-30 | 31-34 | 35-40
And the book of Romans: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2
INTRODUCTION:
Mike:
Romans 1: The Gentiles are guilty!
Romans 2: The Jews are guilty!
Romans 3:1-20: EVERYBODY’S GUILTY!
Romans 3:21-30: But:there is some good news.
David:
Paul has revealed God’s wrath against the ungodly, then extended the parameters of ungodliness to include the Jews. Now he attempts to ameliorate their position while simultaneously reaffirming their guilt. And he does it all in a language he has not mastered, making it all the more confusing.
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Steve:
Paul asks what the profit of circumcision was, immediately answering, “Much in every way!” He must have had lowered rates of HIV in mind.
Chloe:
Verse 2’s explanation of why the Jews were important — they were entrusted with the very words of God. Wow, how privileged are they? But then again, now we’ve all been entrusted with the Word of God.
Josh:
Verses 10-18 appear to be one long quotation, but are actually several shorter quotes from all over the OT, seamlessly compiled to establish a point.
David:
Paul says there are many advantages to being a Jew, but lists just one — they received the law.
BEST BAND NAME FROM THE PASSAGE:
Josh: Grave Throat; Not Even One
David: Just Damnation
Chloe: Every Mouth
Mike: Venom of Vipers
Steve: My Lie to His Glory
Of Football, Falling Planes, and False Attachments
Like all of us, I remember exactly where I was six years ago Sept. 11. Those were days while we were both in school, days before we had children, days for sleeping late. So I woke up around 8:15 or so and hopped in the car to the Acme to pick up my Daily News, which I planned to enjoy with a nice cup of coffee. I didn’t have the radio on, which I suppose was unusual. I went in and bought my Daily News (Bobby Abreu was on the back page and the Phillies had a crucial series with the Atlanta Braves coming up) and I saw some employees huddled around a TV. I left the Acme around 9, flipped on KYW News Radio and it was obvious the world had changed forever. Mixed in with the grief and shock I felt that day was an emotion it has taken me six years to admit to myself, much less to any of you:
I felt alive.
Now, mind you, I don’t mean to say that I liked what was happening that day. But there was a sense on that day that, for the first time in my life, what I was living was real. There was a vitality to the day; when I went to the seminary where the students had a prayer meeting, I kissed Jill goodbye with more intention. The love I had for my colleagues was deeper, as we exchanged warmer hugs. The frustration I felt at some of my would-be prophetic colleagues for their easy answers was more than academic.
Perhaps I felt that for the first time in my life, I was part of something real. Perhaps, in fact, I felt so alive because I felt–maybe for the first time, really–that I might die.
The miracle of the day, or maybe not a miracle but common grace that God gives all of us, is that I was OK with that. I felt like I might die, but still I felt completely safe, like there was a life no terrorist could touch inside me. I felt like the course of my life was being altered by something enormous and world-shaking, that suddenly being a Christian was going to be a dangerous and underground thing again, and at the same time I felt completely assured that I would be OK as an alien and a stranger on this earth–or at home in heaven.
I still haven’t sorted out exactly why I felt that way on that day. But I think that it had something to do with the fact that, for the first time in my life, everything was up for grabs. For the first time, all the things that tied me down no longer had their power to bind. All the secret peace treaties I had drawn up with America — “You protect my body with military might and provide me with a prosperous land, and in return I’ll serve God” — all those treaties were now null and void because it became apparent that America could not keep them. I think I felt alive and safe in God on that day because everything but God was under threat.
Henri Nouwen wrote and spoke extensively about “false attachments.” A “false attachment,” for Nouwen, is when you give your emotions, your heart, to something which ultimately disappoints. In The Genesee Diary, Nouwen talks about how he so often allowed his spirits to rise and fall based on his number of speaking engagements, his perception of how others looked at him, and even whether or not he received mail. As he saw it, he allowed so many things to dominate his heart rather than the One who would free it to be all it could be. I think on September 11, 2001, for the first time, I saw my false attachments for what they really were–powerless to deliver the satisfaction I believed they would. Those terrorists intended it for evil, and indeed wrought great evil through it. Yet on that day, I think I saw what I will clearly see when the Kingdom comes in its fullness: I saw that all earthly kingdoms and peoples were powerless, and I saw that there is only One who is worthy to be attached to. This, I think, is why I felt fully alive.
Fast-forward six years to a time when I did not feel fully alive: Sunday’s Eagles- Packers football game. The Eagles are historically ill-prepared for season openers, and managed to lose a game to a vastly inferior Green Bay squad which spent most of the day unable to get out of its own way. And I’m angry. In fact, I was so angry I watched the Giants-Cowboys game in hopes that somehow, someway, both teams would lose, or at least make each other miserable in the process. I wasn’t quite to the point of hoping that players got injured; but I was actively hoping to see some disappointment. The Giants scored an early touchdown on a long pass to Plaxico Burress; but then they botched the extra point and their punter got squashed in the process. This was good, as I saw it, because everyone was disappointed.
I wondered today how things have changed in the last six years, a full fifth of my life. All I know for sure is that today I am still experiencing residual anger about the capricious bounces of a football, while six years ago I felt alive even though planes were falling all around me. This is the power of false attachments, and to be honest, I have no idea when they came back. I have no idea how I got here; I have no idea when exactly I signed away my birthright for this mess of pottage. All I know is that false attachments creep back in when no one is looking, and if we are not vigilant against them, we are complicit in their power over us.
May God save us, his people, from false attachments; and may it not happen through terror, but through a re-birth only his Spirit can provide.
Bible Discussion — Romans 2
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next chapter in the book of Romans, Romans 2.
Genesis: 1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18 | 19-22 | 23-26
27-29 | 30-32 | 33-36 | 37-39 | 40-43 | 44-46 | 47-50
Exodus: 1-4 | 5-8 | 9-11 | 12-14 | 15-18
19-22 | 23-26 | 27-30 | 31-34 | 35-40
And the book of Romans: Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION:
Mike:
Paul turns the tables on his “righteous” readers. In ch. 1, we can almost hear them “Amen”-ing Paul’s devastating critique of ungodly Gentiles. But in ch. 2, he argues that the religious folks are equally unrighteous.
David:
In Chapter 1, Paul introduced the Gospel and proved the whole world guilty before God. In chapter 2, he deals specifically with the Jews, who condemned and despised the Gentiles, but did not acknowledge any guilt among themselves.
Connie:
This chapter is Paul’s “prophetic” realistic view of hardened religious hearts and his warnings that God is not fooled by outward appearances and actions.
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Steve:
Verse 5 says that rather than repenting, “in accordance with [their] hardness and [their] impenitent heart,” the Romans were “treasuring up wrath,” to be cashed in on the day of judgment. I never noticed this particular turn of phrase before, and its connotation of gradual accumulation of punishment is chilling, like a Direct Deposit of damnation.
Connie:
I guess I never realized that this problem could be so widespread. Keith Green sang about it. Recently Mother Teresa’s private letters even alluded to it. Do we all suffer from it at some point, but believe we’re the only one?
Djere:
I guess I never really noticed how judgment-heavy Romans was… the first couple chapters are so thick they’re a blur.
Mike:
How very focused on works Paul is here: at least in this passage, it is our wicked works that lead to God’s judgment — vv. 3, 6, 8, 9, 12. It’s too easy to break down Paul’s thoughts into faith vs. works. Rather, there seems to be an inward change that is vital to salvation, and works testify to that inward change.
BEST BAND NAME FROM THE PASSAGE:
David: Babes
Josh: Mere Man; Glory, Honor and Immortality
Chloe: Perish Apart
Djere: Inward Jew
Connie: Inexcusable Man
Steve: Impartial
Mike: Instinctively Obedient Gentiles
Through with exams
Hi all–I know some of you were praying with me through the ordeal of my comprehensive exams at Drew University. I finished two of them this past week and have one left in November. This is the kind of exam that essentially boils down to “Write everything you know about…” The exams were 6 1/2 hours long; my Reformation Liturgies exam was just over 10,000 words and my Revivalism and Frontier Worship exam was about 12,000 words. Pastors can say a lot without saying anything, though, so I’m just hoping I did well enough to pass!
Anyway, thanks for your prayer and concern on my behalf!
Clash of the Titans XXIII: Wikipedia.com
Originally published on May 19.
| In this corner, arguing for Wikipedia, is Mike J! | And in this corner, arguing against citing Wikipedia, is Steve! | |
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Let’s be honest and first admit that Wikipedia has its shortfalls. The accuracy of many articles is a concern, and it the format also has difficulty when the facts about a person are beyond question, but open to several different interpretations. My dissertation will be on revival evangelist Charles G. Finney. His Wikipedia entry has a tag warning that the information provided may not be neutral. Why? The biographical facts of Finney’s life are unquestioned, and much of his writings survive. But Finney is a controversial character because people are not sure how to interpret his legacy. Was he a Calvinist? Was he not? Did he save American Christianity or kill it? Were his methods of evangelism a consistent mechanism for the Holy Spirit’s act or a clever substitute for the Spirit? Everyone who thinks about Finney has a stake in the answers to those questions and so his Wikipedia entry can be a battleground. Yet let’s also be honest and confess that complete and total accuracy and neutrality is not the role that Wikipedia plays in our culture. It may well be true that Wikipedia is not completely accurate or neutral; it also is no doubt true that I don’t have four wheels and a horn. That’s because I’m not a car, nor should I apologize for not being one. In the same way, Wikipedia is not a completely accurate or neutral source for information, nor should it apologize for not being one. The site itself even says so: on its “about” page, we are warned that especially newer articles may contain “significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism.” No, you can’t cite Wikipedia authoritatively. But you can learn from it. When I needed a jumpstart for another paper on Finney, Wikipedia led me to a site with all of Finney’s works. The links also led me to a bit of interesting debate from varying perspectives on Finney, as well as the website of the church he founded. While I couldn’t cite anything directly from the site, I found it helpful in getting off the ground. Wikipedia is also able to cover more arcane and interesting topics than a normal encyclopedia. Hitting the “random article” button five times gave me articles on HSY (a Korean fashion label), Tagin (an Indian people-group), ’70s Rock Must Die (a 2000 album by a group called “Lard”), Carson High School, and Kirkland House (one of the undergrad houses at Harvard). Who else would cover all of these things at all, even if their coverage wasn’t completely bias-free (as if any coverage ever is)? You also can enjoy Wikipedia. Some people decry the vandalism and turf wars that go on — I sort of like it. It’s a case study in people being people — sort of like Survivor on the internet. If people want to waste their lives arguing on Wikipedia, isn’t it at least nice that we can be amused by their foolishness? So instead of being disappointed that Wikipedia refuses to be respectable, let’s enjoy its strengths: it has potential to provide new information on esoteric topics and provide geek drama at the same time. What’s not to like? |
There’s a lot to like about Wikipedia, conceptually. There are millions of frequently enlightening articles, especially those on uncontroversial matters, ephemeral lists, and complex topics. Most of their guidelines and principles are wise and thoughtful, and no one denies it’s an educational and entertaining way to spend an hour. But other than this article, I will never cite to it here. Wikipedia often reminds me of feudal Europe in the Middle Ages — rule by the whims of the few. You know the party line — anyone can edit anything — but in truth, the site is like any other bloated bureaucracy, full of ardent protectors of power and self-interest. If an article has a wise, benevolent ruler, or a good group of editors, it may be neutral and well-sourced. But in the frequent event there’s a turf war among users who each want it their way, it becomes part-faculty meeting, part- soap opera, a storm of endless bloviation about complex acronyms and ‘sockpuppets.’ Kissinger once said, “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” I think he used that example only because he wasn’t yet able to watch “Netscott” and “Radiant!” argue for days about whether discussions or surveys were better to “build consensus” on Islam and Slavery. More than just the culture irks me. When researching our Council question about drugs, I read the Wikipedia article about the War on Drugs. It had a questionable claim that marijuana was America’s largest cash crop, and cited an article in a British newsletter, which in turn cited a report from something called the Bulletin of Cannabis Reform. Apparently, as long as information is cited, it can come from the most biased sources. In fact, most of that article reads like the platform of the Marijuana Reform Party, but good luck getting its defenders to let you change that. People, even those who should know better, frequently defend their work like it was their child, especially about politics. Remember Richard Gere publicly kissing that actress in India? I looked her up, and the second result was Wikipedia, which called her an “AIDS sufferer.” That didn’t seem right, so I looked further — turned out she only PLAYED an AIDS sufferer in a movie; she was actually an AIDS activist. And “activist” was on Wikipedia for weeks, until someone changed it slyly. And there it stood, proud and unchallenged, for over a week, until I came along. This is why I can’t and won’t cite Wikipedia — you can’t trust it. And you can’t count on anything to still be there in two minutes, let alone two weeks. For instance, “DanEdmonds” decided it was inappropriate to include “AIDS activist” in the article, so he removed it. I went to the Wikipedia ‘drugs’ article as I wrote this, and its first sentence read: “Drugs are good for you.” I changed it back immediately; the sentence had only been up an hour. But in the past 24 hours, there have been 19 similar attacks by vandals — it’s almost all that’s done to change the page. What a waste of time! You know quite well how many morons and troublemakers there are in the world. If you still want to trust a vast random sampling of humanity to be authoritative about any subject, be my guest. I’ll stick to using it to find Sir Mix-A-Lot trivia. Did you know politics are “important” to him? |
Best of Bweinh! — The Palms
Originally published on April 2, 2007.
I was talking with our church’s associate pastor yesterday. Steve and his wife Francesca served as missionaries for eleven years — four in the Dominican Republic and seven in Bolivia. We were talking about the palms, as yesterday was Palm Sunday. I’m not sure if the churches of other Bweinh!tributors hand out palms, but our church does.
As Steve and I broke apart the palms to hand out after the service, he told me that in Bolivian Catholicism, the tradition is that the palms are woven into crosses and then kept all year. The following Ash Wednesday (forty-six and a half weeks later), the palms are brought back to the church and burned to make the ashes for Ash Wednesday. I knew that in some Catholic traditions, the palms were burned for their ashes, but I figured the palms were kept at church. I didn’t know that individuals took them home and kept them on their own.
Palm Sunday is one of those holidays I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with. I love it, but all the same, it leaves me uneasy. All it does, really, is remind me how fickle people can be. One minute we’re waving palms and singing, “Hosanna!” The next minute we’re just itching for an execution.
Watching a palm desiccate and crumble throughout the year might just remind me of that. In our church, kids use palms as swords and then leave them, forgotten, on the playground or the floor of the fellowship hall. But keeping it and watching it lose its green, watching it become brittle and guarding that it doesn’t completely fall apart — that might just remind me of how fleeting emotions are. You can shout “Hosanna!,” but if that’s all you have, then before long, your spirit will look much like this dry palm, and maybe crumble just as easily.
To employ a phrase one scholar uses (about something completely different), Palm Sunday is a holiday that “carries the seeds of its own destruction.” The minute we make worship solely an emotional event, we ensure that there will be a time when worship is impossible. Like a palm, our emotions too will wither and come to life in cycles, through the seasons of our lives, and worship will mean something different in each of those seasons.
This is not to say that emotions are unimportant in worship. I have had deep emotional encounters in worship with the living God, some ecstatic, some devastating. But we must realize that the reality of worship does not depend on emotion–it depends on whether or not we have met with God. How will we know if we have met with God? A simple test is whether or not we have changed as a result. When people meet God in the Bible, lots of different things happen, but everyone changes. When you encounter the Almighty, the Unchangeable One, you change.
In the end, the message of the palms is deeply prophetic. When we rely simply on emotion or intentions, our efforts fail — sometimes slowly, sometimes spectacularly. Eventually, our good intentions borne of emotion burn up, and then they mark us as human, as fallen, as made of dust and returning to dust. Perhaps this is when the real change starts, when we see God and our first impetus is to repent in ashes, rather than to wave the palms.
Clash of the Titans X: The Pope and Billy Graham!
Originally printed April 3, here’s a real interfaith dialogue!
| In this corner, supporting Pope Benedict, is Mike J! | And in this corner, backing Billy Graham, is Job! | |
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Sit down, Billy. The Holy Father is about to educate your behind. Seriously, let’s think about this, people. In one corner, you have a backwoods preacher from the American South. Quite a dandy in his early days, Billy donned the white bucks and powder blue sportcoats for Youth for Christ rallies as far back as the 1940s. Two whole generations of evangelical women cursed Ruth Bell under their breath for shattering their dreams and taking Billy off the market. Even today, women admire him and men want to be him; pianists want to play for him, and even Michael W. Smith and dcTalk knew they had hit the big time when Billy Graham asked them to play for a “youth night” in a late ’90s California crusade. All of this makes Graham a beloved figure, a bona-fide American religious folk hero. It does not make for a worthy battle. Because in the other corner, resplendent in papal garb, his robes billowing proudly behind him, his miter defiantly piercing the sky, is Pope Benedict XVI, born Joseph Alois Ratzinger. He’s not a folk hero. He’s a junkyard dog. He was known universally as the Vatican’s “doctrinal watchdog” prior to his selection as the 265th pope of the Catholic Church. And as if his international reputation were not enough, the Catholics that knew him best, the ones from his native Germany, referred to him as Der Panzer Kardinal — “the Tank Cardinal.” Why? Because he’s such a ruthless defender of the faith. But you don’t have to take my word for it! Ask the late Father Jacques Dupuis (if you could), or Sri Lankan theologian Tissa Balasuriya. The former had the temerity to suggest that God was active in non-Christian religious traditions, the latter the unmitigated gall to refuse to sign a Vatican-approved statement of faith. Dupuis wound up trashed in a document Ratzinger wrote; Balasuriya was excommunicated, before the ever-gentlemanly Pope John Paul II restored him to the church. You can mess with a guy named Billy. You cannot mess with a Ratzinger. You wind up trashed, excommunicated…or worse. The man’s first papal encyclical was entitled Deus Caritas Est — “God is love.” Notably absent was any statement of Benedict’s own feelings. The obvious message: God is love, and Benedict ain’t. The man is a flat-out papal bull. |
The very notion that Pope Benedict could somehow best Billy Graham is so ludicrous I almost asked to be recused. No chance in heaven! Benny’s only advantage is that if he gouged Graham’s eyes or hit below the belt, he could absolve himself on the spot while the Rev. filed all that messy Grace paperwork. But I still don’t see it. Graham didn’t win prominence by an ancient tradition of selection by peers; he received it by the eons-old tradition of selection by God. And Graham’s a natural fighter; whether Nixon or Parkinson’s, he handles his problems personally with sleeves rolled up and pride rolled down. So l’approvazione, papa, lo porta! Let’s go to the arena floor… In this corner, at a holy 210 — the man who put “I can” in Vatican, the Stonin’ Roman…Germany’s own Joseph A. Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI!!! And in this corner, weighing in at a lanky 205 — The Master Pastor, The Great Wheaton Beatin’…Charlotte’s own Rev. William F. Graham, Jr.!!! *ding ding ding* “Look at Graham charge from his corner! I haven’t seen anything like this since Joel Osteen fought the Dalai Lama in that New Delhi kick-boxing match last June! The Pope is on the ropes, medallions flying everywhere!!” “Bob, this is tough to watch. I think Ratzinger forgot to drink his holy water, and he’s gonna need a miracle.” “Graham continues his crusade! An uppercut to the the Father’s midsection and a roundhouse to the nose!!!” “Bob, it appears the Rev. is nailing all 95 theses to Ratzinger’s chin tonight! I’ll bet the Pope wishes he were still a Cardinal so he could fly far, far away!” “Good call, Gary. Ooh, a stiff right hook from Graham, and the Pope falls to his knees in exhaustion — or is it prayer to Joseph? Patron saint of lost causes?!” “Pope Benedict XV felt that one!” “Hold the chariot, Gary, the Pontiff is up and he’s going after Graham with fury in his eyes!!! The Catholics here are yelling ‘inquisition, inquisition,’ as Benedict rains blow after blow on Graham’s head and body.” “Wow, Bob! Nothing apocryphal about that last punch! But it’s amazing how Graham’s hair stays right in place!” “Is that LA Looks he’s got in there?” “If I gambled, I’d go with Dep, Bob.” “Golly Gee! Now the Protestants are up as Graham delivers punishing blows to the caretaker Pope!! Everyone’s a Calvinist tonight; this is pure destiny!! The Pope is down for the count!!!!” *ding ding ding* “And it’s over — Graham by knockout!” |
Clash of the Titans XXXVIII: Soda
| In this corner, opposing soda, is Chloe! | And in this corner, supporting soda, is Mike! | |
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So I did all this research for this Clash, 23 pages worth, and it thoroughly convinced me I was right in calling soda (pop) the drink from hell, and then I realized none of you care and you’re going to drink soda anyway. Well, that’s okay. Rot your teeth. Get fat. Develop osteoporosis. See if I care. That didn’t come out right. I do care. I also care if you develop cancer (from the benzene) or just keel over because you left your diet soda out in the heat and it turned into formaldehyde. Um, ew? The proof that I care is right here, this Clash. Soda just isn’t that healthy. (I’m thinking about pulling the “Your body is a temple of God” card, but I feel bad doing that unless I stop drinking high-fat coffee and eating potato chips.) Soda also causes great strife. Whole families have been ripped down the middle by the soda v. pop debate. It’s tragic! How can we allow such a minute detail to break down the family unit? Why do we let this satanic drink rule our lives? Soda facilitates drug use. Because people hear Coca-Cola used to have cocaine in it, they think that’s cool, and so they put cocaine in their soda. It also makes your ears turn green. Soda makes you burp. Therefore, it facilitates bad manners and makes you look like a hick. An obese hick, with bendable bones and no teeth. Well, the bendable bones thing is cool, and you could make a lot of money at a carnival with that — except that you’re a hick, and no one wants to watch a hick bend his bones. Soda is bubbly, which a lot of people like (it’s like your drink is spitting in your face; haven’t you realized that yet?), but when you think about it, it actually leads to drinking problems! See, people drink soda, get bored with the whole bubbly without the buzz thing, and look for something more potent. They find themselves at beer, and we all know that beer is a drink from hell. See? Drinking problems! Soda leads to car accidents. How many times have you gotten that Yeti Gulp (100 ounces!!!) and found it didn’t fit in your miniscule drink holder? So you nestle it in the passenger seat, hoping the seatbelt will do the trick. Then it spills, you swear (another sign of the devil), and lean down to clean up the mess — then slam into the patrol car you didn’t see. Yeah, that was the soda’s fault. Did I already mention that when you drink a soda, it’s actually spitting in your face? |
I know, I know, many sound arguments can be raised against soda. It’s bad for your teeth, and your gums and probably rots your soul too. My worthy opponent will no doubt raise these and other points and build a sound case. Against this, I can only ask: have you ever had a cold, really cold, just-barely-frozen Coca-Cola in a frosted mug with a twist of lime? If you have, you know that those sound arguments fade away into the background, along with all troubles and cares. There is, bar none, no better way to spend 140 calories. But if you have not, there is nothing I can do except insist that you go out and try it before casting your vote in this Clash. If you do, I’m certain your vote will be for me; if you do not, your poor benighted soul will vote against me. We all know soda addicts: the jittery lass at the office who downs 12 Diet Cokes a day; the hefty fellow at the Chinese buffet who can’t settle for four pounds of fried wontons but has to wash them down with subpar root beer; the trucker who nurses a 64-ounce Double Big Gulp from Tulsa to Waco. This is not responsible soda consumption, taking a veritable nectar of the gods and turning it into a cheap drug, a stabilizing crutch for emotional problems. You don’t have to drink soda at every meal; heck, you don’t even have to drink it every day! But tell me with a straight face that an excellent pizza doesn’t deserve a good Dr. Pepper. Tell me a hot-off-the-grill cheeseburger doesn’t deserve a cold Cherry Coke. Tell me 3rd Shen would have been anything without lukewarm Caffeine-Free Diet Coke the Salvation Army couldn’t give away. Tell me there’s anything as good as slightly flat ginger ale when you’re a little sick to your stomach. You cannot tell me these things! Your little health-conscious PC soul wishes to, but you cannot, because you know soda is an essential part of these slices of life. Without soda, a root beer float is just a lump of boring vanilla. Without soda, church-reception punch is just cranberry juice. Without soda, burritos, bratwursts, pizzas and yes, even some breakfast cereals (Count Chocula, anyone?), are widowed, crying out for their mates who were created for them from the dawn of time. Don’t deny them the companionship they so richly deserve. And don’t deny yourself one of life’s tingly pleasures–soda. |
Pied Beauty
“Pied Beauty”
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things–
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced–fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him.
I am not a poetry person, usually. Yet I ran across this poem a couple years ago and it captured me and has not let me go. I love how it images the “useless” things in creation: freckles, the play of clouds in the sky, the chestnuts that fall to the earth. All of these things are “counter, original, spare, strange” and yet their beauty cannot help but point to the greatness of the One who made them.
Romans 8:19 says, “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” Why? Why bother? Why would creation wait for us? Isn’t the creation Hopkins describes perfect on its own? What possibly could creation want from us?
I think creation longs for us because the children of God are to be the pinnacle of all this wonderful creation. We, of all people, can afford to be counter, original, spare and strange to a world which lives in captivity to itself. When God set us apart to be his people, he made us beautiful and strange in the same way so much of his creation is beautiful and strange. We do not have to reflect the tired gray of those around us; instead, we can be dappled and beautiful and strange and point the world to the Beautiful One.
It was a wonderful revelation when I realized that part of our call as Christians is to be beautiful, the pinnacle of a beautiful creation. Not what the world calls beautiful, not silicone or sinew, but the simple beauty of being what we were created to be. I struggled (and still struggle) to have the world see me as pious, knowledgeable and wise, but at my best I am simply focusing on being beautiful, on settling for no other agenda for my life than finding who I am and being that person. This is a personal task, to be sure, but never individualistic–I discover myself best in community, when other beautiful people are gently alerting me to what is beautiful in me.
What about you? Will you settle for being virtuous in another person’s eyes? Will you allow the Democrats or the Republicans to sell you their version of the beautiful life? Will you allow the tabloids to tell you who is beautiful? Will you allow Pottery Barn to define beauty for you?
Or will you follow the One who dared to say the beautiful life always begins with a crucifixion? Will you be children of that God? Will you be counter, spare, original, strange? Will you be a playful part of the way God is redeeming creation? The chestnuts and the finches, the trout and the skies–all of dappled creation awaits your answer.
Bible Discussion — Exodus 19-22
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next four chapters of the Bible, Exodus 19-22.
Previously in Exodus: 1-4 | 5-8 | 9-11 | 12-14 | 15-18
The book of Genesis:
1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18-2 | 19-22 | 23-26 | 27-29
30-32 | 33-36 | 37-39 | 40-43 | 44-46 | 47-50
INTRODUCTION:
David:
In this section God revealed the Law to Moses. Paul later told us in Romans 5-7 that the point of this revelation was not to save people, but to kill them, to prove to them how awful they were so God could save them.
Connie:
Two months from the day the Israelites were delivered from the slavery of Egypt, they found themselves encamped before Mount Sinai, where they encountered — nearly face to face — their God. He presented them with a covenant agreement, promising to make them a special and holy nation unto Himself if they will follow His laws.
Mike:
The law–God’s way of ordering society–is introduced to the people.
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Chloe:
Moses sent Zipporah and their sons away while he was leading the Israelites out of Egypt. It makes sense, but that must have been difficult for all of them.
Mike:
There was no punishment for a slaveowner who brutally injured his slaves, just so long as the death was not immediate.
Steve:
After studying American law for three years — and in painful depth for the past two months — it’s very interesting to me how many of the same concepts, from degrees of murder to responsibility for trespass, are addressed similarly in Exodus.
Connie:
“Showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments” in verse 6 contrasts with verse 5 — “showing iniquity to three or four generations.” This demonstrates how God’s mercy is greater than His wrath and extends even more to the generations of righteous people. The lingering effects of righteousness will last far longer than the lingering effects of wickedness.
BEST BAND NAME FROM THE PASSAGE:
Connie, David: Rephidim
Djere: Stripe for Stripe
Steve: Thick Cloud, Covet His Ox
Chloe: Capable Men
Mike: Thou Shalt ROCK!
The Road to Emmaus
Apologies should be sincere.
My last apology for my infrequent postings was sincere.
So is this one.
The difference is, I hope, that I’ll actually be better about posting more often.
To encourage me to do so, I hope you’ll pray that my pastoring and studying time is more efficient so I have more time for this worthy project.
Or you could send a love gift.
Large bills are fine.
Anyway, onto my thought for today:
The story is told in Luke 24 of a time when Jesus met two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus. Jesus had risen from the dead, but these two disciples did not yet know this; they had heard that the tomb was empty, but nothing was at all clear or certain at that time.
The trouble was, in the words of verse 16, “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” So Jesus asked them what they were talking about, and they told him the story of the crucifixion and the empty tomb. Jesus was amazed that they still didn’t get it and began to explain the story to them. “Beginning with Moses and the prophets,” we read, Jesus “interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scripture.” Finally, the three arrived at home, where Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. Then, and only then, did they recognize him.
I wonder if it would be too big a stretch to see this as a model for church. I think not; Luke was that great chronicler of early church history and I think he here is laying a foundation for how we are to see the church.
Word. And Table. And then we see Jesus.
Like those two disciples, we arrive into the presence of the Lord on Sunday confused. Like them, we hear rumors of God stirring, but for all intents and purposes, the evidence points to God being dead. We come into the Spirit’s presence, call for God to be with us, but like those two disciples, we don’t even know He’s here.
But then the Word is broken open; psalms are read, the gospel is spoken, the words explained and taught, the divine Word demonstrated. And then, likewise, we come to the Table and the bread is broken, and there–finally–we see Him clearly, in the Word and the Table, in the truth and in the fellowship; there we see the Broken and Spilled Out One.
I wonder if you have thought about worship in this way: not as entertainment, not as edification, but as encounter. The kind of encounter that leaves your heart “burning within you,” as it did for those disciples on that day. Be open to the encounter of the Word and the Table.
Quote of the Day, 7/5/07
“Whoever doesn’t start by acknowledging their own inadequacy will never enter the God-centered life. Whoever pretends that they’re big enough and strong enough to do it on their own can never know the joy of being truly intimate with God, because to be truly intimate with God you have to become dependent on him.” — M. Jordan
As the Deer
Hi all — first, a public apology for being such an infrequent Bweinh!tributor lo these many weeks.
I am in the midst of studying for comprehensive exams at the end of the summer and that and pastoring a church and being a husband and dad is taking a bunch of time these days!
But — enough excuses.
Some thoughts on a familiar psalm and song:
Psalm 42, begins “As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O Lord.” Most likely, you are familiar with this through the song “As the Deer.”
It’s sort of a romantic image, bringing to mind Bambi sipping away while another fawn lays close by, not a care in the world.
Such a pretty image — but it misses by just a little bit. A deer truly, deeply longs for flowing streams. In a desert culture such as the one the psalms were written in, flowing water was vitally important. Animals may find a bit of standing water here or there, but there was no guarantee that standing water would be available. But flowing water — spring water bubbling up from the ground, that was a guarantee. If you found flowing water, you were guaranteed a reliable water source. A spring of flowing water was something you could count on.
I wonder if you long for God in this way. I wonder if you long for God not simply as a deer hanging around a beautiful stream in verdant country. I wonder if you long for God with the wild excitement of a helpless deer desperately seeking water who finds it — and not just standing water, but flowing water which guarantees life indefinitely. I wonder if you long for God with such wild excitement because you know you need him to survive, to live another day.
Clash of the Titans XXVII: Marijuana Legalization
| In this corner, supporting the legalization of pot, is Mike! | And in this corner, opposing marijuana legalization, is MC-B! | |
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Those of you who know me as being perhaps on the theologically liberal end of the spectrum of Bweinh!tributors may be surprised to find out that I am essentially politically conservative. This is something that has developed in recent years, probably as I have grown older and responsible for running a household with my wife Jill. During our first year of marriage especially, we were not making much money. “How are we going to pay for it?” became a consistent refrain — when thinking of buying a car, new furniture or even a pizza for dinner. So while I hear and am genuinely moved by pleas for universal health care or raising the minimum wage, the question still pops up: “How are we going to pay for it?” Eventually, the answer comes to me: “You are . . . you and the rest of the tax base.” And while I ought to be ready and generous to give to worthy causes, I would just as soon not take the US government’s word for it in deciding what a worthy cause is. Just on the off chance that the US government decided something immoral was a worthy cause (perish the thought!), I would rather not have the mechanism already in place to force me to pay for it. We need the government to protect citizens from trampling each others’ rights; we don’t need a government determining right and wrong for individuals when that behavior has no impact on the lives of others. It is the same sort of logic that informs my position that marijuana should be legalized. I’ve never used marijuana; and not like Bill Clinton never used marijuana either. I’ve never used it, period. And I can’t imagine why someone would. But you know what? The threat posed to society at large by marijuana usage is minimal at most. It poses no undue risk to the general populace; it does not rob anyone else of their rights. Marijuana does not threaten to kill or injure anyone besides the user. And if people want to do things harmful to themselves, tobacco is already legal and shows no signs of becoming illegal. As far as I can see, the main reason for keeping marijuana illegal is that our government wants to send a message that it is abhorrent and dangerous behavior. I don’t condone marijuana usage. But neither do I want our government exploiting its power to determine what is abhorrent and dangerous. Remember, orthodox Christianity isn’t always pretty in the eyes of our government either, but it’s protected belief and behavior . . . for now. |
I guess I’m counted among the social conservatives of the world. Jonah Goldberg once described social conservatism (to me and my peers at SLU) as erring on the side of keeping things the same when change is proposed. He illustrated his point vividly — during the 1960’s, a significant number of hippie communes began suffering from terrible diseases no American doctor had ever seen. To make a long story short, it turns out the age-old traditions of bathing and personal hygiene were not just “the man’s” hang-ups after all. People are good judges of what is beneficial for them often enough that most decisions are safe in their hands; personal choice is one of the greatest tenets underlying philosophical liberalism and democracy. However, these also generally assume people are self-interested, and what’s good for me is not always good for you. Sometimes I can even be fooled into making a decision that’s good for me in the short run, but hurts in the long run. It’s a real shame that we don’t have a natural experiment to show what happens if otherwise responsible adults spend too much on expensive, addictive habits and not enough on their health, family, education, etc. But of course, we do. We could examine the effects of cigarettes, which cause cancer and eat up resources that could be used more productively. However, aside from addictiveness, tobacco does not have many of marijuana’s characteristics (no mind- altering experience, man!), so it’s probably better to compare marijuana to alcohol, a much more sobering comparison (pardon the pun). Both drugs produce an altered state of mind and can transform you into someone that you are not. Legalizing marijuana doesn’t just put it into the hands of homesick Europeans and responsible folks like you and me. It could also put psychoactive drugs into the hands of a welfare recipient who should be out looking for work or caring for his/her children, or a person getting behind the wheel of a car. Granted, there are still DUI/DWI laws, but think about what an unbridled success those have been and you’ll understand my desire to keep pot illegal. Such regulations barely deter anyway; few believe the risk of getting caught is significant. Finally, though I may be guilty of employing the slippery slope fallacy, it’s not a particularly good argument for legalizing marijuana. Why make anything illegal at all if the government cannot make moral judgments? Even protecting me from my neighbor implies my life is worth more than what’s spent on protection. Like most arguments, the argument about legalizing marijuana comes down to a matter of degree — to what degree will we let the government determine what Americans shouldn’t put into their bodies? I have no disdain for people who draw the line elsewhere, nor do they lack in morals, but I sincerely believe some people are not responsible enough to limit their detrimental behavior, so marijuana should remain illegal. |
Bible Discussion — Genesis 47-50
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next four chapters of the Bible, Genesis 47-50.
Previously in Genesis:
1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18-2 | 19-22 | 23-26
27-29 | 30-32 | 33-36 | 37-39 | 40-43 | 44-46
INTRODUCTION:
David:
Jacob gathers his children to bless them and prophesy over them. He removes Reuben as firstborn, giving that right to Joseph and splitting the inheritance between Ephraim & Manasseh, and speaks God’s judgment over Simeon and Levi for the murder they had committed.
Mike:
The children of Israel are each given a blessing as Jacob nears death.
Tom:
I look at this passage — particularly Israel’s blessings on the 12 tribes to be — like a cruel fiction writer’s “happily ever after…” before he pulls the rug out from under the reader with another paragraph. In this case, the paragraph is the Israelites’ need for deliverance from their deliverance.
MC-B:
Joseph? Reducing the people to servitude?
And he was doing so well.
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Steve:
For a nation that apparently hated shepherds, Egypt wasn’t afraid to use them. Someone had to watch the livestock, after all.
MC-B:
I think I always skipped this part when I read the Joseph story; after all, all the action was done with.
Chloe:
The language of these chapters strongly foreshadows the coming enslavement. People right and left are telling each other that they’ll be their servants or slaves, or telling their sons that they’ll end up as slaves.
Tom:
Beyond the whole “his people surviving the famine” thing, the Pharaoh was much, much better off economically after Joseph.
David:
Jacob instructs them to bury him in the cave of Machpelah with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah and Leah. Rachel, his true love, ends up buried under a tree in the wilderness, and his final resting place is with Leah.
Mike:
How Jacob in the end is buried with Leah — his “least favorite” wife is the one whom he chooses to be buried near. I also never noticed that Jacob was embalmed in the manner of Egyptians.
BEST BAND NAME FROM THE PASSAGE:
David: Royal Dainties
MC-B: A Very Large Company
Mike: The Wrath of Levi
Steve: Darker Than Wine
Chloe: Desolate
Tom: Out of Canaan
Clash of the Titans XXIII: Wikipedia
| In this corner, arguing for Wikipedia, is Mike J! | And in this corner, arguing against citing Wikipedia, is Steve! | |
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Let’s be honest and first admit that Wikipedia has its shortfalls. The accuracy of many articles is a concern, and it the format also has difficulty when the facts about a person are beyond question, but open to several different interpretations. My dissertation will be on revival evangelist Charles G. Finney. His Wikipedia entry has a tag warning that the information provided may not be neutral. Why? The biographical facts of Finney’s life are unquestioned, and much of his writings survive. But Finney is a controversial character because people are not sure how to interpret his legacy. Was he a Calvinist? Was he not? Did he save American Christianity or kill it? Were his methods of evangelism a consistent mechanism for the Holy Spirit’s act or a clever substitute for the Spirit? Everyone who thinks about Finney has a stake in the answers to those questions and so his Wikipedia entry can be a battleground. Yet let’s also be honest and confess that complete and total accuracy and neutrality is not the role that Wikipedia plays in our culture. It may well be true that Wikipedia is not completely accurate or neutral; it also is no doubt true that I don’t have four wheels and a horn. That’s because I’m not a car, nor should I apologize for not being one. In the same way, Wikipedia is not a completely accurate or neutral source for information, nor should it apologize for not being one. The site itself even says so: on its “about” page, we are warned that especially newer articles may contain “significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism.” No, you can’t cite Wikipedia authoritatively. But you can learn from it. When I needed a jumpstart for another paper on Finney, Wikipedia led me to a site with all of Finney’s works. The links also led me to a bit of interesting debate from varying perspectives on Finney, as well as the website of the church he founded. While I couldn’t cite anything directly from the site, I found it helpful in getting off the ground. Wikipedia is also able to cover more arcane and interesting topics than a normal encyclopedia. Hitting the “random article” button five times gave me articles on HSY (a Korean fashion label), Tagin (an Indian people-group), ’70s Rock Must Die (a 2000 album by a group called “Lard”), Carson High School, and Kirkland House (one of the undergrad houses at Harvard). Who else would cover all of these things at all, even if their coverage wasn’t completely bias-free (as if any coverage ever is)? You also can enjoy Wikipedia. Some people decry the vandalism and turf wars that go on — I sort of like it. It’s a case study in people being people — sort of like Survivor on the internet. If people want to waste their lives arguing on Wikipedia, isn’t it at least nice that we can be amused by their foolishness? So instead of being disappointed that Wikipedia refuses to be respectable, let’s enjoy its strengths: it has potential to provide new information on esoteric topics and provide geek drama at the same time. What’s not to like? |
There’s a lot to like about Wikipedia, conceptually. There are millions of frequently enlightening articles, especially those on uncontroversial matters, ephemeral lists, and complex topics. Most of their guidelines and principles are wise and thoughtful, and no one denies it’s an educational and entertaining way to spend an hour. But other than this article, I will never cite to it here. Wikipedia often reminds me of feudal Europe in the Middle Ages — rule by the whims of the few. You know the party line — anyone can edit anything — but in truth, the site is like any other bloated bureaucracy, full of ardent protectors of power and self-interest. If an article has a wise, benevolent ruler, or a good group of editors, it may be neutral and well-sourced. But in the frequent event there’s a turf war among users who each want it their way, it becomes part-faculty meeting, part- soap opera, a storm of endless bloviation about complex acronyms and ‘sockpuppets.’ Kissinger once said, “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” I think he used that example only because he wasn’t yet able to watch “Netscott” and “Radiant!” argue for days about whether discussions or surveys were better to “build consensus” on Islam and Slavery. More than just the culture irks me. When researching our Council question about drugs, I read the Wikipedia article about the War on Drugs. It had a questionable claim that marijuana was America’s largest cash crop, and cited an article in a British newsletter, which in turn cited a report from something called the Bulletin of Cannabis Reform. Apparently, as long as information is cited, it can come from the most biased sources. In fact, most of that article reads like the platform of the Marijuana Reform Party, but good luck getting its defenders to let you change that. People, even those who should know better, frequently defend their work like it was their child, especially about politics. Remember Richard Gere publicly kissing that actress in India? I looked her up, and the second result was Wikipedia, which called her an “AIDS sufferer.” That didn’t seem right, so I looked further — turned out she only PLAYED an AIDS sufferer in a movie; she was actually an AIDS activist. And “activist” was on Wikipedia for weeks, until someone changed it slyly. And there it stood, proud and unchallenged, for over a week, until I came along. This is why I can’t and won’t cite Wikipedia — you can’t trust it. And you can’t count on anything to still be there in two minutes, let alone two weeks. For instance, “DanEdmonds” decided it was inappropriate to include “AIDS activist” in the article, so he removed it. I went to the Wikipedia ‘drugs’ article as I wrote this, and its first sentence read: “Drugs are good for you.” I changed it back immediately; the sentence had only been up an hour. But in the past 24 hours, there have been 19 similar attacks by vandals — it’s almost all that’s done to change the page. What a waste of time! You know quite well how many morons and troublemakers there are in the world. If you still want to trust a vast random sampling of humanity to be authoritative about any subject, be my guest. I’ll stick to using it to find Sir Mix-A-Lot trivia. Did you know politics are “important” to him? |
Bweinh! Soundtrack — Michael Card
Every weekend, a different Bweinh!tributor will discuss a song or songwriter that inspires or interests them. Read the first six soundtrack entries here.
Those of you who know me well know that I like music that sounds authentic. It could be almost any genre, as long as it feels pure and grounded somehow. I also like a clever turn of a phrase, and informed, nuanced lyrics.
So it may be somewhat surprising that I hadn’t really listened to Michael Card before I won a cassette tape copy of his “Poiema” album from a radio show at Houghton. If I’m not mistaken, the show was hosted by Bweinh!’s very own Josh Jones and his roommate, Hubie Hostetter. (If I’m mistaken, guys, I’m sorry–it’s been 8-9 yrs.)
I fell in love right away. Now I own a lot of Card’s music, and still have a lot more to collect. Of all his work, I’ve grown to like his album with John Michael Talbot, “Brother to Brother,” the best. Here, the two perform duets of the songs that each wrote independently. Card took quite a hit in the evangelical community for this album; many canceled concerts and wrote harsh letters decrying him as one who compromised and sold out. But for Card, it was a chance to work with a musical hero as well as someone he admired in the faith. The step looks downright prophetic today, as evangelicals and Catholics continue to discover areas of common concern and ministry while still maintaining sharp differences.
My favorite Michael Card song is “In the Wilderness.” It is a meditation on how God calls his children to “wilderness times”–painful times in our lives that we cannot understand. But he believes that God calls us to those wilderness times to shape us and change us more radically than any other way can.
It is reminiscent of the idea of the “Dark Night of the Soul,” as St. John of the Cross put it: we are given times of suffering in order that we might learn to love God and not merely the things God gives us. God is so good at giving gifts that we often fall in love with the gifts and forget the Giver. When the gifts are removed, only the Giver remains and we are thus trained to love the Giver more completely and fully.
My mom
This may seem a bit early for Mothers’ Day, which after all is not until Sunday. But my next piece will not come until after the holiday, and then it will seem a bit like leftovers.
So I just wanted to remember and honor my mom today. My mom has always been really good at giving direction to my life.
When I was in high school, I wanted to play basketball. My mom knew that I was not much of a basketball player (even though she was too nice to say so), and she told me that she really thought I’d like to act in the school play more. Of course, I didn’t want to do that and so I slogged through one miserable season of freshman basketball, but the year after that I was acting in plays and I found my niche.
When I was in college, she thought I would really like to go to seminary. I was wrestling with whether to go to grad school for history or to seminary. She helped me to see that if I was going to spend my life studying, it may as well be studying something I felt was of life-or-death importance.
I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today without my mom, who knew me better than I knew myself as a young person.
How about you? How has your mom shaped your perception of who you are?
Bible Discussion — Genesis 33-36
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next three chapters of the Bible, Genesis 33-36.
Previously in Genesis: 1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18 | 19-22 | 23-26 | 27-29 | 30-32
INTRODUCTION:
Maj. Jones:
I’m Major Doug Jones. My claim to fame which allows me to post as a guest contributor is that I am Josh’s father. I have served Jesus as a Salvation Army officer (pastor) for almost 31 years. I enjoy reading this weekly Bible discussion and hope to share something that will bless others as these bright young minds have been blessing me.
MC-B:
Another Old Testament story, another tale of rapes and massacres but also of the blessings and plans of God.
Steve:
Ups and downs, highs and lows, the book of Genesis has them all, as we see a happy reunion between Jacob and Esau, followed by unnecessary genocide.
Mike:
Jacob has been called back to Bethel. On the way, he has a meeting with Esau that God in his grace makes far more peaceful than it ought to be on the surface. After this, he arrives at Shechem and is tempted to stay there — the land is good and he figures he’s close enough to Bethel. But after his daughter is raped, Simeon and Levi gain revenge, forcing Jacob to leave and go to Bethel, where he meets God again.
David:
This is quite a homecoming for Jacob. God reaffirmed his name change to Israel, he suffered the loss of his wife, the birth of his most precious son, the death of Rebekah’s nurse and the death of his father. Oh, and his daughter gets raped and his sons commit murder. Plus Reuben sleeps with one of his concubines.
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Job:
With the feared coming of Esau, Jacob placed his wives and children in order of favoritism, with Rachel and Joseph in the safest position.
Tom:
Jacob starts off chapter 31 by hiding behind a bulwark of handmaids, wives, and children until Esau and his 400 men were close enough for Jacob to tell if his gifts of livestock had succeeded in pacifying the horde. What a little weasel.
Josh:
When Isaac called Esau in chapter 27 for his final blessing, it was largely because he felt his death would come soon. He certainly seemed pretty far gone — he couldn’t even recognize his own son. But in chapter 35 we learn Isaac survived the entire time Jacob was gone, a period spanning no less than twenty years.
Maj. Jones:
Running from Esau in chapter 28, Jacob ran into God at Bethel with his dream of the ladder. Now God has brought him back to Bethel to change his name to Israel.
Mike:
The random reference to Reuben sleeping with his father’s concubine, Bilhah.
MC-B:
Again, I only remember this story vaguely. How long until we get to Jonah and the whale?
Ouch. That long, huh?
Steve:
It’s quite clear that regardless of their bad decisions, Shechem loved Dinah very much. And interestingly, the author of Genesis refers to him as “more honorable than all the household of his father,” making Simeon and Levi’s behavior even worse.
David:
Rebekah’s nurse is travelling with Jacob, his mother’s nurse. She must have been of great age and great character to choose to sojourn with Jacob.
Clash of the Titans XVIII: Fighting in Hockey
| In this corner, arguing against fighting in hockey, is Mike! | And in this corner, arguing for fighting in hockey, is Dave! | |
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Hey, I have an idea. You know hockey? That sport with the small base of rabid fans? What a sport it is! Such speed, as players fly down the ice; such grace, as the best players weave in and out and around defenders on their way to the net; such precision, as the best shooters pick their spot and put it in the one area the goalie can’t reach; such power, as the best shooters wind up for 100 MPH slapshots that nearly tear the back of the net. Which brings me to my idea. Let’s clog the ice with goons! Let’s take that sport, with such a unique combination of athleticism and grace, and let’s make sure every team has at least one guy whose job it is to go out and fight the other team’s one guy. Let’s make sure that the fast, exciting guys (many of whom are from another culture) cower in fear that they might get knocked in the head while Western fans nod appreciatively at the Russian getting his due at long last! Let’s be sure that head shots stay legal and that at least once every game there is a fight with at least one player caught in the flattering “jersey-stuck-over-my-face” pose! Why would anyone want to watch Sergei Federov or Simon Gagne or Sidney Crosby or Daniel Briere, with their crisp passing and deadly accurate shooting, when we could watch Todd Fedoruk or Colton Orr mangle each other for a while? Further, let’s make fighting part of an “unwritten code” so that it’s cloaked in romanticism! A near-apocalypse would happen if a dozen (coincidentally?) mostly black NBA players cleared the benches and brawled; lengthy suspensions would result and white America would cluck their tongues at how bad the NBA’s getting. But if we have a “code” for mostly white players to live by, with consequences like getting your teeth knocked out, then suddenly it’s quaint! We can say it’s just part of the game, always has been, and always should be. Hey — Hammurabi had a code! So should we. What would hockey be without the fighting? Speed, agility, grace, precision, drama? Who would ever watch that? |
I am here to defend the use of Goons in hockey. If you don’t know what a Goon is, let me explain. He’s the guy who lumbers off the bench and pulverizes the opponent who dares to initiate, or even attempt to initiate, some type of painful contact with a hockey team’s “skilled” players. A skilled player, of course, has a Russian, Swedish or Finnish name and the same size uniform and skates as the Goon wore in Pee Wee hockey. I know that the usual tack would be for me to cite the Code, that unwritten (yet often written about) set of laws that serve as the rules of engagement for Goons. I would explain to you that skilled players are valuable assets who need protection and explain how deterrence necessitates fisticuffs — like a safety leveling a wide receiver who catches a pass across the middle, you do it so they think twice the next time they think about doing something they shouldn’t. But I’m going in a different direction — economic concern. For the Goons. Here’s the question to consider — what else can these guys do for a living? These are not, as one athlete has said, “the brightest tools in the shed.” These people have struggled to learn human speech and have even found a meaningful way to contribute to society that (usually) doesn’t involve violent crime. Why turn them out? And Goons are entertaining! During a tense playoff game several years ago between the Flyers and Devils, noted Goon Claude Lemieux (my spell check offers lummox here) was trash talking Flyers captain Eric Desjardins. After a particular rush ended with a Desjardins shot rather than a pass, Lemieux taunted him with the remark, “You always think about yourself first! What does that ‘C’ on your shirt stand for? SELFISH?” And then we have Bernie “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion’s now-famous words of wisdom to his Montréal teammates before a big game: “Three things we must do tonight, and that is shoot and pass.” Where else can the world use men like this? Burger King? Wal*Mart? Sure, but these places seem to have enough imbeciles already, and if they were also huge and muscular, I couldn’t make fun of them anymore. We need to keep fighting in the NHL — to keep Goons employed and off the streets. |
I’m slowly becoming catholic
Not Roman Catholic, mind you. Just small-c catholic.
Catholicity has to do with understanding the church as universal, as full and complete. In a catholic vision, there are not multiple churches with which we may choose to cast our lots — there is one and only one church, fully God’s. While other churches may imitate and even reflect the light from the true church, there remains only one church.
So growing up, like most evangelicals, I was not catholic. I hoped people would join a church, not the church. I didn’t understand the full unity of the church as a goal worth pursuing — I mean, sure, it would be nice, I suppose, but it was not worth the expenditure of effort the ecumenical movement put into it. Now I’m a Baptist minister, among the group perhaps least concerned or committed to catholicity in the whole Christian spectrum.
But I find myself re-thinking catholicity.
I’m becoming catholic because of how tightly consumerism and denominationalism have become bound in our culture. Denominations (and now, frequently, congregations within denominations) have become brands competing for human souls. Don’t like the worship at my church? Go down the street, you’ll find one there more to your liking. If you don’t like that, if you like “smells and bells,” go visit the Episcopalians. If you like raising your hands, go visit the Pentecostals. Eventually, just like we all settle on a brand of deodorant we like, we all can have a church we like too.
I’m becoming catholic because I don’t know if we’ve ever considered how much this harms the gospel. When the church plays by a consumerist model like this one, the results are every bit as serious as heresy.
Why do I say this? Because the moral force of the church depends on beings something more than a spiritual Wal*Mart. Our ability to demonstrate and decry the dehumanizing effects of consumerism depends on our willingness to play by a different model.
Think of it this way: when have you grown the most spiritually? Likely it was during a moment of crisis, when you were forced to think differently about yourself than ever before. For some people, that comes during a life transition: the death of a parent leaves you next in line for the grave. The birth of a child makes you realize a spiritual responsibility for the next generation.
For other people, though, we are forced to think differently when we meet a challenging idea. I had a huge spiritual growth spurt when a mentor in seminary told me she had always considered me a very spiritual person. I was working so hard, desperate to prove myself an academic, and she saw a side of me that I never saw before. I didn’t want to see it at first but now it deeply shapes how I see myself.
We all run into these sorts of challenges — when an unfamiliar hymn is sung; when a preacher is more conservative or more liberal than we are used to; when a service does not seem Holy Spirit-anointed to our way of thinking and yet lays claim to God’s Spirit being there. In all of these times, our consumerist mindset tells us we need to go seek a new brand of worship, because this one is no longer satisfying.
Of course the reality is that spiritual growth only comes when we stay in those situations instead of running away. Spiritual growth depends on getting past the “fight or flight” reflex and dealing constructively with issues that confront us. This does not mean we are relativistic — on the contrary, when we rub up against differences, we find out who we really are and we begin to articulate it with conviction and depth.
Catholicity in this context is a virtue. Because it terrifies us, yet re-assures us, with the news that there is nowhere else to run. You cannot take the spiritually perilous step of looking for another church, because there is only the church. You cannot run away to find a more suitable brand, because there is only one brand, the Church.
We can question what form of catholicity is most authentic to the gospel. I do not believe that it means we all must become one church institutionally, or that it demands a rigid top-down hierarchy. This is why I’m still a Baptist and not a (Roman) Catholic.
Yet Protestants have to be more serious about thinking creatively about catholicity. What does an authentically catholic church look like? If not institutionally (as in Rome), what? How can our churches be more welcoming and hospitable to the idea of catholicity? How can we better work in concert with other churches, even churches with which we may disagree on important issues? These questions are especially important to free-church evangelicals; for one thing, it is our tradition that needs a heavy dose of catholicity, and for another, our way of thinking is so dominant in Western Christianity that for us to ignore the virtue of catholicity has major consequences.
Bible Discussion: Genesis 30-32
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next three chapters of the Bible, Genesis 30-32.
Previous discussions from Genesis: 1-4 | 5-9 | 10-14 | 15-18 | 19-22 | 23-26 | 27-29
INTRODUCTION:
Rev. Joel:
Hi, I’m Rev. Joel Tom Tate, former RD of Shenawana Hall. Since I’m the pastor of the North Chittenden WESLEYAN church in North Chittenden, Vermont, you can consider yourself strangely informed.
The only profitable way to read this passage is with humility. If you read it as though it was written by and for primitive people you will find yourself resisting the obvious meaning and implications of the text.
Steve:
It’s hard for me to understand the female characters of Genesis, because I can’t possibly grasp how vitally important it was — for status and survival — for them to bear male children. Cattiness, competition, fighting over a man — all that I can grasp without any problem. But Rachel’s rage and desperation, not just at being outdone by her sister, but at failing at what was then the primary task of a woman, is very foreign.
Mike:
Jacob wrestles with those who would deceive him and those who would bless him.
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Job:
The Scripture says, “And Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean by not telling him that he was fleeing.” Jacob had made deceit his own little Canaanite cottage industry, and while credit needs to be given to Moses for never painting any of the patriarchs in too good a light, it is interesting that in this verse (and this verse alone) the writer of Genesis gently reminds us that, hey, it was just an Aramean getting deceived, not a member of the chosen tribe.
David:
“And God remembered Rachel…” I have memories of myself spying the clock at work and realizing, “Agh! I forgot to pick Rachel (my daughter) up from school!” I’m sure it really wasn’t like that for God here, although it may have felt that way to Rachel.
Mike:
Bilhah bore a son as a surrogate for Rachel, and it was referred to as “bearing upon [Rachel’s] knees.” Apparently, the adoptive mother caught the baby so that from moment one, the child would imprint with the adoptive mother. How beautiful for Rachel — how difficult for Bilhah!
Josh:
I’m somewhat surprised it took Laban an entire week to catch Jacob. Jacob only had a 2-3 day head start, and all his possessions, women, children, and animals to keep track of. Jacob must have really been pushing his crew to get away.
Rev. Joel:
Jacob was the first gigolo, his sexual services being purchased with a bunch of roots.
Tom:
Rachel used her “moon time” to get away with something. It might have been the first time, but it would not be the last.
Steve:
Jacob refers to God as the “God of [his] father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac.” The “Fear of Isaac” is an interesting way to identify God, especially if we remember that little story about Abraham, Isaac and the sacrifice.
The Clamp
Here is something I came across in my reading for school this week.
The clamp in which evangelical Christianity perpetually finds itself is that it simultaneously wants to define itself over against modern culture and yet be convincing or persuasive with respect to that culture.
~ Graham Hughes, Worship as Meaning
Hughes does not write as an evangelical Christian, but I think he lays a finger on the evangelical dilemma and perhaps the reason for so much evangelical ennui.
On the one hand, we reject much of modern culture. We decry it as hedonistic or relativistic or insufficiently grounded. Yet, on the other hand, we are the masters at imitating that culture and twisting it to other ends.
So we can go to our local Christian bookstore and find a chart that says, “If you like U2, you might like (insert flavor-of-the-week band here).” Or we can stress the ease with which a person becomes a Christian, saying, “You’re still the same person; it’s just, you know, you have Jesus now.” Or we can create thoroughly consumerist modern Christian churches which offer all the music and good coffee you could want, so long as you’re willing to accept the Gospel as part of the bundle.
I have to admit that I am both fascinated and repelled by our ability to use culture so well. It demonstrates a certain flexibility and resourcefulness that is commendable.
Yet I wonder if it does not cost us. In our desire to make the gospel so accessible, we often play up its similarity to modern culture. Yet it makes the next, vital step of Christian discipleship extremely difficult, perhaps impossible. That next step is being able to self-differentiate from modern culture, asking critical questions of it. How does the modern way of living bring Christlikeness, bring true life? How does the modern way of life bring death and distance between us and Christ? Sadly, we know that there are too few ways modern culture brings life, and too many where it brings death. Mature Christians have to be capable of detecting and avoiding that which is dangerous in the culture around us.
But because we are so wedded to the similarities between our churches and modern culture, all too often our churches (clergy included) are ill-equipped to help people navigate these waters.
Perhaps our church music and architecture and our very ways of evangelism and living should not seek to impress the world with how much like the world we are, but how very different we are.
Clash of the Titans XIV: Metric v. Imperial
| In this corner, supporting the metric system, is Tom! | And in this corner, supporting the imperial system, is Mike! | |
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As a people, Americans have always paid our collective independence more than its share of lip service. We claim to be a land of freedom, say we have thrown off the bonds of tyranny that yoked our nation in her infancy, and present ourselves to the world as a paragon of liberty. Yet we persist in using a system of weights and measures based not on any semblance of sense, but on the whims and physical characteristics of the despotic few who governed the monarchies of antiquity. The standard system ruled the roost of world business for centuries, growing comfortably fat off the toil of our brows and calculating machines. Wide rolls of strange numerical conversions began to hang from its jowls as it glutted itself at the table of commerce. Was this monster decimal? Octal? Dodecahedral? Who could afford to question? Time was better spent trying to determine the number of ounces in a hogshead, or inches in a furlong. But a new wind was about to blow. Amid the tumult of the last time the French showed any collective semblance of bravery, a few daring souls decided to forge a universal system of measure. Rather than the length of a king’s thumb, or the volume of your average sheep bladder, they selected a length they would use for a base, a length of the people. The world was changing! The king was dead; he could no longer force the people to memorize numbers like 12, 16, 1160, or 5280! Instead, they counted their fingers, counted their toes, averaged the result and arrived at the number 10. That’s right, the same number upon which our entire system of numbers is based. Not only can you convert between a nanometer and a kilometer just by moving a decimal place, you can even move between two and three dimensions without straining. Without measuring someone’s anatomy. Without consulting a council of bearded elders, table of ciphers or magician’s grimoire. When was the last time a child was able to proudly tell his teacher the number of cubic inches in a gallon? But any precocious tot can be instructed that a thousand independent little cubic centimeters together become a proud, powerful liter. In a time of increasing foreign tension, should we really be raising the next generation to measure the world in a way foreign to the others who call it home? Is it worth enduring the confusion and inconsistency of the standard system, just so our grandchildren will measure their ice cream in the manner of our fathers? Just look into your heart, and count your toes. I think you’ll find they hold the answer. |
I pastor a church in a threatened part of the world. Chester County, Pennsylvania, just east of Lancaster, is a county of rolling hills and mushroom farms, and is a traditional home to horse trainers. You can still pass an idyllic Saturday in the southern part of the county watching the county as it used to be. But the town where I pastor, Exton, has long been under threat. Every chain restaurant in the world, it seems, has moved in. I live about twenty minutes away, in Coatesville; a mere ten-minute drive from our church or home could take you to five McDonald’s, three Wendy’s, two Friendly’s, three Applebee’s, and countless other familiar restaurants that have conspired to all but destroy local cuisine. We don’t need more themed chain restaurants beating the individuality out of us, and we sure don’t need a metric system forcing us all into a mold, even if it is a perfectly square, perfectly sensible, extremely user-friendly mold. Do you really prefer the meter to the yard? We know how the meter came into being: it was a product of the “pure reason” so popular (and so stunningly bloody) in the French Revolution. Indeed, in 1799, the French stored away the originals of the meter and the other metric units, adorning the metric system with the motto, “For all men, for all time.” On the contrary, we don’t know precisely where the yard comes from, only that its origin lies in charmed tradition. The girth of a person’s waist? The distance from Henry VIII’s nose to the tip of his outstretched thumb? No one knows for sure–all we know is that it’s a much better story than a bunch of progress-minded revolutionaries laying off the bloodshed long enough to standardize something random, then attempting to force the rest of the world to use it. And they have tried to force the metric system. Don’t believe me? Ask the “Metric Martyrs,” a group of five English grocers who were fined for failing to measure their produce in metric units. Ask any Canadian you want. Their government went to the trouble of creating a logo to demonstrate their allegiance to metric’s new world order, pushing imperial users into underground quietness. Like Narnians, they must patiently await their chance to again enjoy their nation as it used to be. So, go ahead, vote for the metric system. And while you’re homogenizing the world, would you also cast a ballot for eradicating local accents, closing the family-owned hardware store, and creating a list of state-approved songs for worship? Thanks so much. |
From the Anglican File
“There is no greater argument in the world of our spiritual danger and unwillingness to religion, than the backwardness which most men have always, and all men have sometimes, to say their prayers — so weary of their length, so glad when they are done, so witty to excuse and frustrate an opportunity: and yet all is nothing but a desiring of God to give us the greatest and the best things we can need, and which can make us happy — it is a work so easy, so honourable, and to so great purpose, that in all the instances of religion and providence (except only the incarnation of his Son) God hath not given us a greater argument of his willingness to have us saved, and of our unwillingness to accept it, his goodness and our gracelessness, his infinite condescension and our carelessness and folly, than by rewarding so easy a duty with so great blessings.”
Jeremy Taylor, a seventeenth-century Anglican priest, authored these words in The Rules and Exercises of Holy Living. Essentially, he holds that the most compelling argument that we are in spiritual danger is our desire not to pray.
Common sense would seem to dictate that if an easy behavior results in great reward, then people would perform that behavior at every opportunity. If, for instance, there were a “steak dinner” button on my computer, I’d be pushing it constantly — far more often than I should. Yet prayer — so easy a duty rewarded with such great blessings — often is neglected, in my life, and I’m sure in many of yours as well.
I cannot think of one solitary time — literally, not one time — in my life when I have prayed and regretted it. On rare occasions, God has answered my prayers in obvious and stunning ways. At other times, God has not changed the situation, but has radically changed me by shaping my heart. Never ever have I regretted it.
And yet it is still hard to get up the willpower to pray at times; still I go through dark stretches where I don’t want to pray at all, and more often than not I don’t. Though prayer has never disappointed me, I still am “witty to excuse it,” proud of my mental acuity in finding an excuse to “get me off the hook.”
The very fact that we want to “get off the hook” when it comes to prayer demonstrates our spiritual weakness. When my more liberal friends wonder why I am comparably conservative, this is often what I think about. I know our ability to convince ourselves that wrong is right and right wrong — and there is no more obvious example than our desire not to pray.
Ummm…
….wow. Those of you with a taste for ’80s TV and/or revisionist Episcopal theology may enjoy this link wherein Mr.T and Rev. John Shelby Spong square off.
The rest of you, well…sorry.
Bible Discussion: Genesis 19-22
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next four chapters of the Bible, Genesis 19-22.
Read our take on Genesis 1-4, 5-9, 10-14, and 15-18 here!
INTRODUCTION:
Capt. Steve:
Hi, my name is Captain Stephen Carroll. I’m the pastor of the Salvation Army church in the Stapleton neighborhood on Staten Island, and I’ll be joining the Bweinh!tributors in today’s Bible discussion.
Mike J:
There are many wildly disparate stories in this passage. Perhaps the one thing that draws them together is that we consistently see God doing disturbing things — things we really would rather he not do. Things like raining down sulfur and fire on people, things like closing fast the wombs of innocent women because of Abraham and Sarah’s trickery, things like telling Abraham to banish Hagar and Ishmael to the wilderness, things like telling Abraham to sacrifice his son.
Djere:
Overall, this seems to be one of those passages atheists love. Fire, brimstone, a woman miraculously turning into a pillar of salt, and incest — all in the first 30 verses.
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Steve:
Abraham had an excuse for the whole ‘she’s my sister‘ story this time — maybe she was, in a roundabout sort of way, and maybe she promised she’d go along with it for safety’s sake. Didn’t help Abimelech any.
Also, Lot got paid back for the horrible thing he tried to do to his daughters. It usually seems to work out that way, doesn’t it?
Josh:
Abraham had to buy back his own well. It actually smacks a bit of “protection” money paid to mobsters.
Capt. Steve:
22:16 says, “‘I swear by myself,’ declares the LORD.”
Djere:
Lot whined to the angels destroying Sodom that he couldn’t possibly make it all the way to the mountains, so they let him settle in a small town. What did he do when he got there? Whined and headed to the mountains. Lot, seems like if the High King of Heaven sends you a message, you should shut up, buck up, and climb the mountain the first time.
Mike J:
Hagar and Ishmael are thoroughly sympathetic characters. As opposed to the recipients of the covenant (and other non-recipients of the covenant), who are frequently conniving and spiteful, Hagar and Ishmael do nothing wrong. As before, Hagar’s cries to the Almighty are deep and heartfelt and God responds to her again, this time with a well of water.
Job:
After Abimelech was corrected by God concerning Abraham and Sarah’s true relationship he still referred to Abraham as Sarah’s “brother” — perhaps ingratiating Abraham and garnishing his excuse that, technically, they were siblings.
Clash of the Titans X: Pope Benedict v. Billy Graham
| In this corner, supporting Pope Benedict, is Mike J! | And in this corner, backing Billy Graham, is Job! | |
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Sit down, Billy. The Holy Father is about to educate your behind. Seriously, let’s think about this, people. In one corner, you have a backwoods preacher from the American South. Quite a dandy in his early days, Billy donned the white bucks and powder blue sportcoats for Youth for Christ rallies as far back as the 1940s. Two whole generations of evangelical women cursed Ruth Bell under their breath for shattering their dreams and taking Billy off the market. Even today, women admire him and men want to be him; pianists want to play for him, and even Michael W. Smith and dcTalk knew they had hit the big time when Billy Graham asked them to play for a “youth night” in a late ’90s California crusade. All of this makes Graham a beloved figure, a bona-fide American religious folk hero. It does not make for a worthy battle. Because in the other corner, resplendent in papal garb, his robes billowing proudly behind him, his miter defiantly piercing the sky, is Pope Benedict XVI, born Joseph Alois Ratzinger. He’s not a folk hero. He’s a junkyard dog. He was known universally as the Vatican’s “doctrinal watchdog” prior to his selection as the 265th pope of the Catholic Church. And as if his international reputation were not enough, the Catholics that knew him best, the ones from his native Germany, referred to him as Der Panzer Kardinal — “the Tank Cardinal.” Why? Because he’s such a ruthless defender of the faith. But you don’t have to take my word for it! Ask the late Father Jacques Dupuis (if you could), or Sri Lankan theologian Tissa Balasuriya. The former had the temerity to suggest that God was active in non-Christian religious traditions, the latter the unmitigated gall to refuse to sign a Vatican-approved statement of faith. Dupuis wound up trashed in a document Ratzinger wrote; Balasuriya was excommunicated, before the ever-gentlemanly Pope John Paul II restored him to the church. You can mess with a guy named Billy. You cannot mess with a Ratzinger. You wind up trashed, excommunicated…or worse. The man’s first papal encyclical was entitled Deus Caritas Est — “God is love.” Notably absent was any statement of Benedict’s own feelings. The obvious message: God is love, and Benedict ain’t. The man is a flat-out papal bull. |
The very notion that Pope Benedict could somehow best Billy Graham is so ludicrous I almost asked to be recused. No chance in heaven! Benny’s only advantage is that if he gouged Graham’s eyes or hit below the belt, he could absolve himself on the spot while the Rev. filed all that messy Grace paperwork. But I still don’t see it. Graham didn’t win prominence by an ancient tradition of selection by peers; he received it by the eons-old tradition of selection by God. And Graham’s a natural fighter; whether Nixon or Parkinson’s, he handles his problems personally with sleeves rolled up and pride rolled down. So l’approvazione, papa, lo porta! Let’s go to the arena floor… In this corner, at a holy 210 — the man who put “I can” in Vatican, the Stonin’ Roman…Germany’s own Joseph A. Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI!!! And in this corner, weighing in at a lanky 205 — The Master Pastor, The Great Wheaton Beatin’…Charlotte’s own Rev. William F. Graham, Jr.!!! *ding ding ding* “Look at Graham charge from his corner! I haven’t seen anything like this since Joel Osteen fought the Dalai Lama in that New Delhi kick-boxing match last June! The Pope is on the ropes, medallions flying everywhere!!” “Bob, this is tough to watch. I think Ratzinger forgot to drink his holy water, and he’s gonna need a miracle.” “Graham continues his crusade! An uppercut to the Father’s midsection and a roundhouse to the nose!!!” “Bob, it appears the Rev. is nailing all 95 theses to Ratzinger’s chin tonight! I’ll bet the Pope wishes he were still a Cardinal so he could fly far, far away!” “Good call, Gary. Ooh, a stiff right hook from Graham, and the Pope falls to his knees in exhaustion — or is it prayer to Joseph? Patron saint of lost causes?!” “Pope Benedict XV felt that one!” “Hold the chariot, Gary, the Pontiff is up and he’s going after Graham with fury in his eyes!!! The Catholics here are yelling ‘inquisition, inquisition,’ as Benedict rains blow after blow on Graham’s head and body.” “Wow, Bob! Nothing apocryphal about that last punch! But it’s amazing how Graham’s hair stays right in place!” “Is that LA Looks he’s got in there?” “If I gambled, I’d go with Dep, Bob.” “Golly Gee! Now the Protestants are up as Graham delivers punishing blows to the caretaker Pope!! Everyone’s a Calvinist tonight; this is pure destiny!! The Pope is down for the count!!!!” *ding ding ding* “And it’s over — Graham by knockout!” |
The Palms
I was talking with our church’s associate pastor yesterday. Steve and his wife Francesca served as missionaries for eleven years — four in the Dominican Republic and seven in Bolivia. We were talking about the palms, as yesterday was Palm Sunday. I’m not sure if the churches of other Bweinh!tributors hand out palms, but our church does.
As Steve and I broke apart the palms to hand out after the service, he told me that in Bolivian Catholicism, the tradition is that the palms are woven into crosses and then kept all year. The following Ash Wednesday (forty-six and a half weeks later), the palms are brought back to the church and burned to make the ashes for Ash Wednesday. I knew that in some Catholic traditions, the palms were burned for their ashes, but I figured the palms were kept at church. I didn’t know that individuals took them home and kept them on their own.
Palm Sunday is one of those holidays I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with. I love it, but all the same, it leaves me uneasy. All it does, really, is remind me how fickle people can be. One minute we’re waving palms and singing, “Hosanna!” The next minute we’re just itching for an execution.
Watching a palm desiccate and crumble throughout the year might just remind me of that. In our church, kids use palms as swords and then leave them, forgotten, on the playground or the floor of the fellowship hall. But keeping it and watching it lose its green, watching it become brittle and guarding that it doesn’t completely fall apart — that might just remind me of how fleeting emotions are. You can shout “Hosanna!,” but if that’s all you have, then before long, your spirit will look much like this dry palm, and maybe crumble just as easily.
To employ a phrase one scholar uses (about something completely different), Palm Sunday is a holiday that “carries the seeds of its own destruction.” The minute we make worship solely an emotional event, we ensure that there will be a time when worship is impossible. Like a palm, our emotions too will wither and come to life in cycles, through the seasons of our lives, and worship will mean something different in each of those seasons.
This is not to say that emotions are unimportant in worship. I have had deep emotional encounters in worship with the living God, some ecstatic, some devastating. But we must realize that the reality of worship does not depend on emotion–it depends on whether or not we have met with God. How will we know if we have met with God? A simple test is whether or not we have changed as a result. When people meet God in the Bible, lots of different things happen, but everyone changes. When you encounter the Almighty, the Unchangeable One, you change.
In the end, the message of the palms is deeply prophetic. When we rely simply on emotion or intentions, our efforts fail — sometimes slowly, sometimes spectacularly. Eventually, our good intentions borne of emotion burn up, and then they mark us as human, as fallen, as made of dust and returning to dust. Perhaps this is when the real change starts, when we see God and our first impetus is to repent in ashes, rather than to wave the palms.
Bible Discussion — Genesis 15-18
This week, Bweinh.com looks at the next four chapters of the Bible, Genesis 15-18.
Read our take on Genesis 1-4, Genesis 5-9, and Genesis 10-14 here!
INTRODUCTION:
Steve:
Contrary to what I heard a bohemian college boy tell two adoring Gothic lady friends in an all-night diner on Monday, the God of the Old Testament really is the same as the God of the New Testament. In these chapters, we see the same love and desire for fellowship that sent salvation in the form of Christ, expressed in an intensely personal covenant with Abraham and his tribe.
Mike, Josh J:
God here chose Isaac to bear the precious covenant, while at the same time blessing Ishmael, though he was outside the covenant.
SOMETHING YOU’D NEVER NOTICED BEFORE:
Job:
Hagar was the Egyptian boomerang. From there, it was her descendants that would bring Isaac’s back to the Nile.
Chloe:
Abraham cut a ram in two pieces. What did that look like? How hard must it have been?
Mike:
God asked Hagar to return to a situation where she was being treated in a hostile fashion by her mistress and to “submit to her” — not that this is a prescription for people to return to abusive households, I just never noticed it before.
Steve:
Interestingly enough, God knows and tells Abraham precisely what’s going to happen to his as-yet unborn descendants, as well as the future iniquity of the current inhabitants of the land — not yet complete, but just give it about 400 years.
Tom:
Sure, it takes place before the Kosher laws were handed down, but I had to notice the meal Abram prepared for the three men (or angels, or G-d), was decidedly NOT kosher. “So he took butter and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree as they ate.” Maybe that law got thrown in there because G-d didn’t like the pairing when Abram served it?
The Word cannot be spoken
Our priest exulted, “How wonderful His ways,”
then climbed his pulpit’s Calvary. The tide,
lit by the after-dawn had brimmed the bay’s
calm space, reflecting light on the roof inside.
What boy, by a choir-loft window, could resist
turning to look? A seal swam round a trawler
whose lantern-masts were moored above in mist,
and rippled sparkling water-lap down all her
salt-rust length. Past diesel pumps and dock.
the sun unpicked the nets by the fish-house door
as I watched the seal clamber on Pollock’s Rock.
The mist had almost dissolved and a green pour
of ocean swelled and turned by the harbour stair
while the priest struggled, explaining God’s design,
and the seal shook his watered quaff of hair,
slicked down for Sunday morning, just like mine.
~ Oliver Murray
I am a “struggling priest.” And so are most evangelicals, really.
“Struggling priests” try — usually unsuccessfully — to give words to that which cannot be expressed, only experienced. In Murray’s poem, the priest climbs into the pulpit to “explain God’s design.” And yet the little choir-boy begins to experience God’s design not through the sermon, but through the green pour of the ocean, the play of dawn upon the bay, a swimming seal, and the sights and sounds of people at work. In all this, the boy sees God’s design and thus knows it far more than he would after any didactic sermon. It must be experienced to be truly understood.
Don’t get me wrong. I am no hopeless romantic. I know that words are necessary to fully understanding the gospel. I treasure those who hammered out the core of the faith at Nicaea and other councils. I value those who write great works of scholarship to defend and promote the faith once delivered. I honor those who make their living with words today, through sermons and writing and even librarians who organize these countless scores of words we manage to produce. Heck, I even hope to be a person who uses words to God’s glory.
But we must confess that sometimes words imprison the Word. Sometimes, our words render the Word inaccessible. Sometimes, my struggling to explain God’s Word renders it harder for someone to truly understand the Word. Making it as accessible as possible, as plain as possible, sometimes turns it into something it’s not.
In the language of this poem, for every boy lucky enough to sit outside and watch fishermen, sea, and seals, there are hundreds of people who can see nothing but a struggling preacher and desperately try to make heads or tails of what he’s saying, but end up further from God than when they started.
More broadly, sometimes our struggle as evangelicals to effectively communicate the gospel ends up altering the gospel. Many think of evangelism as making a sort of “sales pitch” for the gospel, drawing heavily on wisdom from the corporate and marketing worlds in order to make the gospel easily understood and digested. While there is something laudable in those attempts, we have often failed to ask the question, “What does trying to ‘sell’ the gospel do to the gospel?” If, in the way we speak of the gospel, we lead others to think it is a transaction we make with Jesus, have we not diluted the call of the gospel to the point it’s no longer recognizable as the good news of Jesus?
Drawing up four spiritual laws and other formulae to “explain” the gospel may just have the opposite effect from what we want: they may just push people away from the good God of light-play and labor, of seals and seas.
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